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I don’t think it will ever see the light of day. There was never a script. Just an idea that evolved from a dozen or so pages. I had to participate as producer, but it didn’t go farther because Fox decided it didn’t want to do it. As far I was concerned, I had already done Prometheus and I was working on Covenant.
Well bugger. That is a shame. I can only assume it’s because Scott has Alien: Covenant coming out in May and wants nothing else to distract us from it. It also looks like he wants to be the main man when it comes to all things Alien. Back in March he told the Sydney Morning Herald that:
If you really want a franchise, I can keep cranking it for another six … I’m not going to close it down again. No way.
Six? SIX? What is this, the new adult version of Glee? I’m not so sure I need six new alien movies anytime soon, not unless Trevor gets to star in each one as the first victim of chronic indigestion. That said I’ll wait till Alien: Covenant is out. It’s looking… hopeful.
Last Updated:An appeals court has blocked President Obama’s recess appointments to the NLRB from last January.
Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images
Would you believe me if I told you that President Obama is in constitutional trouble—with hundreds of decisions of the National Labor Relations Board from the last year now potentially invalid—over the meaning of the word the?
That’s what three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said Friday. The president has constitutional egg on his face because the judges have blocked his appointments of three NRLB members on Jan. 4, 2012. The president said that on that day, the Senate was in recess, which meant he could exercise his authority to make a recess appointment. But the Senate claimed that it was not in recess at all. Never mind that its members were off on a 20-day holiday. The Republican minority took care during that time to gavel the Senate in and out, every few days, for what Obama called “pro forma” sessions. And that, staunch conservative Judge David B. Sentelle says for himself, and two other judges who also happen to be Republican appointees, is enough to beat the president at the game of declaring recess.
Or perhaps I should say only the recess. What we’re looking at here is this clause from Article II of the Constitution:
The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.
As Sentelle framed it, “the Recess” cannot ever mean anything like “a recess.” “This is not an insignificant distinction,” he writes. “In the end it makes all the difference.” The Framers were not talking about “a generic break in the proceedings,” Sentelle continues, “Either the Senate is in session, or it is in the recess. If it has broken for three days within an ongoing session, it is not in ‘the Recess.’ ” The upshot is that if the opposing party minority says the Senate is in session, then it does not matter where the flock has fled, or even for how long. The Senate Republicans did this by using their majority power in the House.* Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, essentially, gets to decide when the Senate is open or shut, with whatever fiction he wants. The president is at his mercy.
Wow, imagine how happy that must make Mitch McConnell. Maybe he will even crack the smile in my favorite picture in the Daily Caller’s slideshow of McConnell-turtle companion photos.
OK, enough irreverence. What exactly was Obama doing, declaring the power to make a recess appointment in the middle of a session, even a fake one? Well, for one thing, Senate Republicans had blocked his NLRB choices for months (via the filibuster with which Harry Reid has saddled us for another long winter). For another, Obama had some history on his side. On Volokh Conspiracy, John Elwood writes that what he calls “intrasession recess appointments” (as in, Obama’s at the NLRB) “have been made fairly commonly since WWII, and have been particularly common since the Reagan Administration. UN Ambassador John Bolton and Judge William H. Pryor, Jr. are two of the more high-profile intrasession recess appointments in recent years.”
Yes, Bolton and Pryor were George W. Bush appointees. Elwood also points out a 2004 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit that’s on the president’s side here, and in conflict with the D.C. Circuit’s decision today. The 11th Circuit weighed in about the validity of Pryor’s appointment, which took place during a nice 10-day break for President’s Day in February 2004. In an opinion by Chief Judge Larry Edmondson, the court did not get stern about the meaning of the word “the.” Instead, Edmondson wrote, “We do not agree that the Framers’ use of the term ‘the’ unambiguously points to the single recess that comes at the end of a Session. Instead, we accept that ‘the Recess,’ originally and through today, could just as properly refer generically to any one—intrasession or intersession —of the Senate’s acts of recessing, that is, taking a break.” Edmondson (a Reagan nominee) also pointed out that at the time, 12 presidents had “made more than 285 intrasession recess appointments of persons to offices that ordinarily require consent of the Senate.”
That should at least assure you that President Obama did not run amok. Two other federal appeals courts decisions, by the 9th Circuit and the 2nd Circuit, also blessed judicial appointments made in the middle of a Senate session. It’s true that this practice didn’t get going until 1857, but according to Elwood, that’s because Congress took only three short midsession breaks up until that point (seven days in 1800, five days in 1817, and five days in 1828).
If you’re still bothered by the idea of the president rather than the Senate deciding on the Senate’s own rules—after all, concerns about separation of powers and a power-hungry executive come into play—consider this argument defending the Jan. 4 appointments from Akhil Amar and Timothy Noah. They point out that McConnell did not speak last January for a majority of senators. If anyone did, it was Majority Leader Harry Reid. “Neither David Sentelle nor Mitch McConnell should decide when the Senate is or is not in session,” Akhil said when I talked to him today. “Fifty-one Senators should decide. It’s awkward when three Republican-appointed judges substitute their decision for that of a Democratic controlled Senate.” Akhil also called one part of the D.C. Circuit’s ruling (not joined by a third judge, Thomas Griffith) “radical.” This part of the opinion found that the only vacancies a president can fill during The Recess are those that open up during that particular recess.*
What happens next? Well, the NLRB is in a fix, because everything it’s done in the last year is now up for constitutional challenge. Also if the D.C. Circuit is right, it only has one member with a valid appointment, which means no quorum. And the appointment of Richard Cordray, head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is also in limbo, since he too got his job on Jan. 4, 2012. The Obama administration can appeal to the whole D.C. Circuit for what’s called en banc review—a do-over with eight of the court’s 13 judges.** Or it can go straight to the Supreme Court. The Obama lawyers must be making their own turtle faces right about now.
Updates, Jan. 26, 2013: This paragraph was expanded to clarify how Republicans prevented the recess. (Return to the updated paragraph.) This paragraph was expanded to provide more detail about the court’s ruling. (Return to the updated paragraph.)
Correction, Jan. 25, 2013: This article originally stated that the D.C. Circuit has 13 judges. That’s true, but five of the 13 have senior status and do not hear en banc cases. (Return to the corrected sentence.)It was another sorry chapter in a once great airline’s history. When police officers boarded the twin-engine Airbus at Leeds-Bradford airport last year, the captain had a ready excuse for the alcohol they could smell on his breath.
In Pakistan, explained Irfan Faiz, pilots only have to allow 12 hours between “bottle and throttle” to ensure they are sober enough to fly.
That did not satisfy a judge at Leeds Crown Court, and the pilot was sentenced to nine months in prison for having three times the legal limit of alcohol in his blood.
At home, the news was greeted with a mix of embarrassment and weariness – but little surprise. In its short history, Pakistan International Airlines had already gone from pride of a nation to national joke, known as Perhaps I Arrive and Panic In Air.
The man charged with turning things around is still trying to work out how any of it could have happened.
Shujaat Azeem, a pilot and businessman, shook his head as he listed the problems he had found already in his short tenure: the fuel-guzzling 747s shuttling around domestic routes, the bloated workforce and the fraud scandals of mind-boggling ingenuity.
“We had 287,000 free tickets issued last year,” he said, one of a string of statistics that he reels off in horror. “How can you ever make money like that?”
The answer is that you can’t. Last year, PIA haemorrhaged
44 billion rupees (£266m). It is only subsidies that have kept the nationalised airline in the sky, and even then nine of its 35-strong fleet of planes are unserviceable.
Last year, a new business-friendly government headed by Nawaz Sharif was voted into power, inflicting a heavy defeat on the Pakistan People’s Party with its unique combination of 70s-style central planning, low taxation and rampant corruption.
The International Monetary Fund immediately stepped in with a £4bn loan over three years, contingent on privatising state-owned industries including PIA. That means somehow turning it into the sort of business an investor might want to buy and they already have their sights on the right sort of aviation entrepreneur.
If the government can pull that off, then Pakistan’s economy may well be on the road to recovery – but there are big challenges ahead.
Capt Azeem, who flew fighter jets before becoming pilot to Rafic Hariri, the business tycoon and Lebanese prime minister, was running a ground handling company at the time. He was invited to overhaul Pakistan’s entire aviation sector and return PIA to the glory days he remembered from his childhood.
“It was the epitome of style. PIA was going places. It was one of the prides of this country,” he said.
The airline’s history mirrors the history of Pakistan, its highs and its lows. It was born out of the maelstrom of partition from India in 1947, and shaped by the politics and geography of a new country.
It began life as Orient Airways, set up on the instructions of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s founding father, who knew that his dream of an independent homeland for Muslims would need its own transport infrastructure.
One of its early tasks came in the immediate aftermath of partition, when its small fleet formed part of a relief operation ferrying Muslim families to the new state from Hindu-dominated India. In the years that followed, its role was to try to cement the two wings of the new country – today Pakistan and Bangladesh – flying thousands of miles across India between Karachi and Dhaka.
PIA was formed a few years later when Orient was merged with other airlines as part of a new national flag carrier.
Those early years were marked by innovation. Even today, proud Pakistanis can reel off the milestones.
It was the first Asian airline to operate jetliners (Boeing 707s), the first to offer films to all classes of passengers and the first to induct the 777-200LR into its fleet, the longest range commercial airliner.
Such was its success, that it became the template for new airlines. In the 1980s, when Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum decided to launch an airline in Dubai, he leased his first two aircraft and their crews from PIA. Today Emirates is going from strength to strength.
In contrast PIA’s creaking fleet is nothing but a case study in mismanagement. Before Capt Azeem stepped in, dozens of domestic flights would be cancelled each week. Sometimes planes would be taken out of service at a moment’s notice for the use of a minister and entourage leaving passengers stranded.
Since the 1970s, the airline has suffered three hijackings and five fatal crashes. The worst came in 1992 when an Airbus A300 crashed on approach to Kathmandu, killing all 167 people on board.
The horror stories are legion: blocked toilets, unfriendly staff, in-flight entertainment systems that don’t work for the duration of the eight-hour flight from Islamabad to London.
One foreign aid worker described being stuck on the tarmac last year when smoke billowed from an engine on a 747.
“The cabin crew opened an emergency exit but then realised they couldn’t close it. The door pretty much fell off,” she said.
The biggest problem, said Capt Azeem, was an aging fleet. His first priority is to retire the three 747s after this year’s Hajj – when thousands of Pakistanis will travel to Mecca – replacing aircraft that are almost 30 years old with newer fuel efficient models.
Such is the makeshift nature of the schedule, with aircraft having to fill gaps as others are sidelined for emergency maintenance, that long-haul 747s and 777s frequently carry passengers between Islamabad and Karachi or fly empty at exorbitant cost.
Five 777s are due in coming weeks, along with 11 leased A320s for domestic and medium routes, which will begin arriving in July.
That will slash fuel costs, said Capt Azeem, a figure that currently accounts for more than half of all PIA’s outgoings.
Already punctuality has improved and with flat bed seats planned for long-haul flights for the first time, Capt Azeem believes he can lure back wealthy Pakistanis, foreign diplomats and businessmen who have fled PIA. They prefer to spend their money on comfortable Gulf airlines and a menu that goes beyond chicken curry and a cheese paste sandwich – despite their unsocial timings and indirect routes to Europe and Canada.
“Our flights are direct and we fly at better times of the day. If the food is good, if the service is good, there’s no reason why they would not want to take PIA. We have a population of 180 million people. Over 1.1 million Pakistanis live in Britain. We have a lot of people in Paris, a lot of people in Barcelona, Milan.”
Unprofitable routes, such as to Amsterdam, have closed. The baffling global network of offices has been slimmed down and 200 staff brought home.
“We closed Chicago. We don’t have flights there. I don’t know why we had offices there,” said Capt Azeem.
He has taken time out on a Friday evening to discuss the plans over a mug of green tea. He has another meeting later – unusual in a country where many government workers finish at lunchtime for prayers and the start of the weekend.
His years in the private sector, part of a telephone consortium that brought the internet to Pakistan in the 1990s and set up one of the major mobile phone services, mean he has struggled with a considerable culture shock in getting to grips with PIA’s problems.
Political interference has hobbled the airline, he said. For years its chairman came from the Ministry of Defence and jobs were treated as gifts.
“Anyone who wanted to do someone a favour, they would hire him into the airline,” said Capt Azeem. “Corruption is another thing that has brought down this airline. In every contract there was a kickback or something like that.”
The result was an airline that employed 772 staff per aircraft - another number that seems burned into Capt Azeem’s brain – compared with fewer than 200 at other airlines.
Several hundred have already been dismissed after an investigation found they had faked their qualifications. And there are ambitious plans to transfer hundreds more jobs into standalone catering, maintenance and training operations in partnership with private companies.
For now, though, much of his time is spent undoing the various mystifying decisions taken in recent years – such as removing business class seats from the fleet of A310s.
“We still had the seats, they had just taken them out. So business travellers stopped using PIA. And that’s where the money is,” he said, pausing for a few seconds contemplation. “I have absolutely no idea why they did it.”
He is also overhauling the Civil Aviation Authority after finding that planes overflying Pakistan were not being automatically billed as they are almost anywhere else in the world, reducing revenue by a third.
“That was being done manually – for whatever reason,” he said. “Well the reasons are obvious.”
He is coy about how much it will cost to make PIA profitable, with its new planes, new menus and better-trained staff. Simply running more efficient planes and trimming the fat, he said, would be enough to get close to break even.
One source of ready cash is the company’s adventure in luxury hotels. It owns the 1000-room Roosevelt hotel, close to Grand Central Station in Manhattan, and the Scribe in Paris. Selling them could raise £1 billion, enough to wipe out decades of loans that cost £6 million every month just in interest.
None of it will be plain sailing.
His tenure has proved controversial already. He was appointed aviation adviser last year, before being forced to resign for holding a Canadian passport. (Senior officials and ministers are not allowed to hold dual nationality). He was eventually reinstated after his job title was changed to special assistant.
More opposition is sure to follow. Imran Khan, the former cricketer and head of a populist political party, has promised to fight any privatisation attempts with mass demonstrations. There are frequent accusations that Mr Sharif is intent on forcing through reforms without paying due attention to parliament or the constitution.
That leaves the government’s timetable for PIA looking rather bold. Capt Azeem hopes to be in a position to sell 26 per cent of a profitable company in a little over a year’s time, to keep the IMF at bay, and to bring in strategic investor to buy more planes.
What sort of entrepreneur would be interested in taking a gamble on an airline with such a chequered history?
“We would very much welcome Richard Branson. At some stage I will be writing to him.”Get the latest news and videos for this game daily, no spam, no fuss.
2015's Halo 5: Guardians did not include any kind of split-screen, something that Microsoft was criticized for. Today, the company confirmed that Halo 6, or whatever the next game in the series is called, will indeed have split-screen support.
This was confirmed by 343 Industries executive Bonnie Ross during a speech at DICE 2017. Ross said not including split-screen in Halo 5 was one of the "painful learnings" that Microsoft faced after taking over ownership of the Halo brand from Bungie.
"For any FPS going out forward, we will always have split-screen in," she said.
Ross also said Halo: The Master Chief Collection's rough launch was another "painful learning" for Microsoft. The company previously referred to this as a "black eye" for the developer.
Struggles like this are "incedible painful for the community and for us--and it erodes trust," she said.
Immediately after Halo 5 came out, Halo franchise director Frank O'Connor said the blowback from the game's lack of split-screen support was "huge." It was technically impossible for 343 to add split-screen to Halo 5 through a patch, O'Connor said.
The game's 60 FPS frame rate is partially responsible for this. When 343 made the decision to have Halo 5 run at a locked 60 FPS, the team did so with the understanding that it would create "some issues" and technical impossibilities for the rest of the game.
The number of people who play Halo games via local split-screen is small relative to the total player base, O'Connor explained.
No new Halo FPS games have been announced. Xbox boss Phil Spencer recently suggested the next Halo FPS will not be released this year, which is no big surprise, given that Halo 5 is not even two years old.
What do you make of Microsoft's new commitment to Halo split-screen? Let us know in the comments below!Kobach (R-KS, Secretary of State), is concerned about outside parties helping voters register to vote. Because they use the national voter registration form which states must accept, Kobach is working on a unique loophole: file that form, and you can only vote for Senate/House races, you must file a separate form if you want to vote for Governor, State Assembly, your city offices, etc.
Rep. Jim Ward, D-Wichita, an opponent of the proof-of-citizenship law, said he received confirmation from the Department of Legislative Research this week that Kobach is moving forward with the plan to limit voters who follow federal registration rules to voting only in federal elections.
Separately, a memo to all the state’s county election officials outlines procedures for identifying and tracking voters who use the federal form and creating a separate category for them in voting databases.
“This means you should take note when a federal form comes to your office and keep a list of the names of individuals who submit them … Whichever form a person uses, if an applicant does not submit a U.S. citizenship document, you must follow up and request one.” Voters who fill out the state form and don’t submit the citizenship proof have their voting privileges suspended until they do. At present about 17,500 voters are “in suspense.” Kobach, Bryant’s boss, confirmed he’s planning for elections with different ballots for different voters, depending on whether they register under federal or state rules. He said it’s “merely a contingency plan” in case he loses a lawsuit seeking to make federal officials adopt Kansas rules for voters in Kansas.
Kobach’s legal analysis of the decision is that it applies to federal elections only. “The federal government doesn’t have the authority to tell Kansas what to do in Kansas elections,” he said. That, too, will probably have to be decided by a court.
But maybe that isn't enough. Maybe voter confusion and multiple sets of ballots might also help defeat your opponents.Kobach kicks off with a great response of why this is all a good idea:See here! You can't tell us what to do! We set our own rules, we can shut out voters however we please!
The ACLU has countered if Kobach continues on this path they will begin a lawsuit in November.
For Kansans, this is just one more reason to try and make real change in this state...
Update: Thank You For making this hit the top of the Rec list. I wish this was a happier issue, but I'm glad that it gains attention. Kris Kobach has written a lot of legislation, from Arizona's immigration bill and now Kansas and soon Arizona's voting acts, which will be mirrors of each other. There has to be a real effort to change some outcomes in Kansas.. if not, Kansas will be the shining light for those who wish to oppress and deny the vote. I'd prefer my state not be the beacon that showed the way to taint elections and curtail the rights of so many.Elaine Thompson/Associated Press
There are plenty of potential prospects that the Indianapolis Colts will consider at pick No. 29.
Recently, the discussion has centered around offensive linemen and safeties, where the Colts could draft a tackle, center or safety. Landon Collins, for example, is a popular mock draft choice to Indianapolis because of the team's annual need at safety. Offensive linemen are an annual mock for the Colts as well, as they haven't had a top offensive line in a decade.
If I were to pick an ideal area for the Colts to invest in, however, it would be a defensive playmaker. That could be safety (Collins), linebacker (Eric Kendricks), edge-rusher (Bud Dupree) or defensive line (Eddie Goldman, Malcom Brown, Arik Armstead). All of those players mentioned would fill needs, especially in the Colts' desire to stop the run more effectively than they did in a horrendous AFC Championship Game performance.
But cornerback is an important need as well, and the Colts could use their first-round pick on a top corner if he drops to the bottom of the first round.
This is my ideal scenario for Indianapolis, which I laid out on Wednesday. This is something that many Colts fans don't necessarily agree with, whether it's because of the perceived greater need at other positions, Peters' off-field issues or something else.
If he's available, however, the Colts can't afford to pass Peters by without deep consideration. There is always a need for studs, and Peters has the potential, production and prototypical size to be a bona fide star.
The Need: An Understated Hole
The biggest pushback that I've seen on taking Peters or another cornerback is its perceived ranking among positional needs.
It makes sense to some extent. At the beginning of the offseason, few were looking at cornerback as a top need. Josh Wilson of Stampede Blue didn't even list cornerback as one of the Colts' biggest needs, nor did national writers like Marc Sessler of NFL.com.
Matt Slocum/Associated Press
There are a couple of reasons cornerback deserves to be on the list, and as high up as any other need.
On one hand, early offseason needs, for many analysts, are often heavily influenced by a team's most recent game. For the Colts, this was the bludgeoning in the AFC Championship Game, where the Colts' failure to stop the run, failure to run the ball and inability to pass the ball when T.Y. Hilton was bottled up were the glaring weaknesses.
Now, those are all weaknesses that certainly need to be addressed, but they were also exaggerated because of recency bias. Forgotten was the game in the weeks prior, when the Colts run defense was stellar, Boom Herron ran the ball well and the Colts were efficient offensively.
Then there is the fact that free agency has largely addressed all of those needs, although not necessarily solved them.
Andre Johnson and Frank Gore were the perfect fits offensively, while Todd Herremans and Kendall Langford give the team big, powerful bodies in the trenches to compete for starting jobs. Trent Cole gives the Colts a much-needed pass-rushing presence, while Nate Irving and Jerrell Freeman's tender solidified inside linebacker, for now. At safety, the Colts re-signed Mike Adams and brought in former Atlanta starter Dwight Lowery.
Did any of those moves solve the needs completely at the respective positions? Of course not. But they certainly took away from the immediacy.
But a real need from the beginning that has not been addressed is the long-term future in the secondary. The Colts have nonexistent depth behind the starters at safety and cornerback, and the starters are very upgradable, whether it's because of age (Adams) or performance (Lowery, Greg Toler).
This is where cornerback comes in. Safety is a part of this need in the secondary, but cornerback is just as important.
Tim Sharp/Associated Press
Toler finished 2014 as the Colts' second-lowest graded defensive player by Pro Football Focus' measure, with his minus-15.0 coverage grade ranking as the sixth-worst among 108 qualifying cornerbacks—and that was when Toler was healthy. The 15 games played in 2015 marked a career high for Toler, and the first time since 2010 that he started in 10 or more games.
When Toler or Vontae Davis get injured, the Colts defense breaks down.
Remember the Colts' 51-34 loss to Pittsburgh in October, when the Colts got destroyed by the Steelers passing game after Davis left with an injury? Remember last year's defensive collapse in the second half of the 2013 season after Toler was injured, forcing Josh Gordy into a significant role?
You can never have enough cornerbacks in today's pass-heavy NFL. That's especially true when there's no depth after your top two outside corners, one of which is prone to inconsistencies and will be a free agent after this season.
The Talent: The Right Traits
If it weren't for his off-field issues, Peters could be a top-five overall talent in this draft, according to analysts like Robert Klemko of SI.com.
When you look at Peters, he just physically looks like a press cornerback. That's something that coaching can't alter, and it's one of the reasons why he's such a highly touted prospect. Now, that doesn't mean he has eye-popping athletic traits in any area, but he is well-rounded and well-proportioned to his frame.
Peters' size (6'0", 197 pounds) is above average, and he uses his size well in press coverage to push wide receivers to the boundary. His arms are about average length at 31.5", but he is active, timely and physical with his arms, making them seem longer than they really are at times. Couple that with an above-average vertical jump of 37.5" and you get a cornerback that can fill a lot of space quickly.
Now, Peters isn't eye-popping in his change-of-direction skills, with a below-average three-cone drill but fast short and long shuttle times and a decent 40-yard dash time. But his long arms and understanding of route running give him a good chance at recovering when he is beat on a receiver's break.
Again, it's not about having top-end athleticism for Peters, but about the whole package. He has the right combination of a long, strong body, and he knows how to use it.
In coverage, Peters is extremely physical, using his hands to frustrate receivers and get under their skin, not unlike Richard Sherman tends to do in Seattle. As Chris Burke of SI.com puts it, he works very hard to make receivers work to beat him in press coverage. That fighting mentality is exactly what you want from a press cornerback, although it's also aggression that has gotten him in trouble off the field (we'll talk more about that in a minute).
But on the positive end, Peters' attack mode coupled with impressive instincts give him a sizable advantage in man coverage, as NEPatriotsDraft.com articulates:
When he plays in press man he shows a good backpedal and an ability to stay low, which gives him great change of direction. He also has aggressive hands to jam the receiver at the line of scrimmage. Peters has fluid hips and does not lose any speed when coming out of his backpedal.Because of his aggressive nature, he plays much bigger than his size and uses his body well to cut off routes or force the WR out of route. Sometimes it even looks as though he is running the route better than the WR.
But what really separates Peters from many press corners are his ball skills. Where somebody like Vontae Davis is faster and a bit quicker than Peters, Peters locates the ball in the air much better and has the body control to get his hands on it.
Peters is not unlike Greg Toler in his playing style, which is a good thing for Indianapolis. While Toler is very upgradeable, his style is exactly the fit the Colts want opposite Davis, which is why they signed Toler at roughly $5 million a year in 2013.
Peters isn't the cleanest of prospects from a technique standpoint, but that's part of why he's such an impressive prospect. If he can play as well as he does now, with inconsistent technique, what can he be with the same defensive back coaching that turned Vontae Davis into a Pro Bowler and turned Darius Butler's career around?
The Mind: Concerning Maturity?
Now, the real question for Peters isn't his talent, but his mind.
Can Peters put his ego in check long enough to serve a team in the right manner? Cornerbacks should be brash, with enough confidence to forget about the last play in the blink of an eye, but there's a line where confidence (even acceptable arrogance) gets in the way of a player's coachability.
This is the reason why Peters might be around at pick No. 29, despite his talent.
After former coach Steve Sarkisian left Washington for USC, Peters struggled to adapt to authority under the new coaching staff. Peters was close to Sarkisian, and called his leaving "heartbreaking," per Tom Pelissero of USA Today.
Peters was suspended for the first quarter of the Fight Hunger Bowl game at the end of the 2013 season after turning a school project in late, and he then got a bit too brash as the 2014 season began. A sideline tantrum resulted in a one-game suspension by head coach Chris Petersen early in the season.
On the bright side, it's something that he now seems to have perspective on, per Pelissero:
I was just immature with it, man. My name's getting talked about. A lot more people know who I am. I'm dealing with a lot of family, friends back home. I just didn't take it right. I got big-headed with it. I didn't focus and didn't see it clearly of how I can do things, and it caused me to bump my head.... I just embarrassed the whole University of Washington program on live television – me throwing, as my mama would say, a hissy fit. I threw a hissy fit, man. I embarrassed my teammates, the coaching staff, the program, man. I wouldn't have let me back on after that.
Peters was suspended later in the season, something he describes as the culmination of his issues, denying the report by an anonymous NFL scout that he had choked an assistant coach.
A physical altercation is also something the University of Washington staff and Peters have both denied, with defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski calling the report "bull****," according to Adam Jude of The Seattle Times. Defensive backs coach Jimmy Lake also denied the report.
Still, there's no question that Peters had run-ins with the coaching staff, and it has the potential to impact his playing career in the NFL. Peters did impress coaches with his honesty and openness in interviews at the combine, according to Doug Kyed of NESN.com.
Much of Peters' development revolves around him landing in the right place, and Indianapolis could be a place that fits. While the team has had its fair share of problems with off-field substance abuse issues, the Colts have done a good job of handling players with maturity issues in the team setting, with Vontae Davis being the poster child.
The NFL Draft: Long-Term Talent Over Short-Term Needs
In the end, my calling for Peters revolves around my belief that he has the best chance of being a long-term impact player. So often in NFL draft analysis, we get caught up in immediate needs, trying to find guys who can have immediate impact and start from Day 1.
But the NFL draft's value comes from what players provide long-term, not just their rookie season. Cornerback might not be the most pressing of needs on opening day given the team's starters, but if an injury occurs, it will be. After Toler's contract is up, it will be. Cornerback is such a key position in today's NFL, if you can get a star, you go out and get them.
Really, the Colts' situation at corner makes it an even more ideal place for Peters. He won't be forced into a full-time role right away and can get acclimated to the NFL at the right pace, cleaning up both his technique and his act while playing the dime cornerback role for Indianapolis.
With Davis already locked up for another three seasons, the Colts could have a top-end cornerback group in place for the franchise's next stage with Peters thrown in. If he's still on the board at No. 29, that potential is too good to pass up.Oregon Senate Approves Medical Marijuana Dispensary Bill
SALEM, OR — The Oregon Senate voted Wednesday to approve a bill that a House-approved bill that would expand the state’s medical marijuana program to license and regulate medical marijuana dispensaries statewide.
The bill, House Bill 3460, was approved without debate by an 18-12 bi-partisan, and now heads back to the House to approve some changes made by a Senate committee last week. The House is expected to vote on the changes this weekend.
Medical marijuana dispensaries already exist in Oregon, but are operating in a legal grey area. The Oregon Medical Marijuana Act (OMMA) allows patients to grow their own medicine or have someone else to it for them, but does not provide for — or prohibit — medical marijuana dispensaries from operating.
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This has led to varied differences in toleration of the dispensaries based on the attitudes of local officials. In some areas of the state, such as Multnomah County, which includes the city of Portland, dispensaries have been largely tolerated. But providers have been raided in less tolerant areas of the state, with operators facing prosecution in Jackson, Lane, Washington, and Malheur counties.
The proposed bill, House Bill 3460, aims to change that by directing the Oregon Health Authority, who oversees the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program, to establish a registration system for medical marijuana facilities.
The bill was introduced by Rep. Peter Buckley and Sen. Floyd Prozanski, both Democrats, and has received endorsements from state Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, the League of Oregon Cities and U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer.
Under the bill, dispensaries would be required to seek a license from the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program similar to the license that patients and registered growers are required to obtain under current law. Dispensary operators would have to pass criminal background checks, log the amount of marijuana coming into their businesses, and verify that it is being grown by state-registered growers.
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The facilities also would have to comply with regulations for pesticides, mold and mildew testing, which will help ensure medication isn’t contaminated.
Each medical marijuana facility would pay a registration fee of $4,000, according to the bill’s fiscal note. If an estimated 225 facilities register, the state would receive about $900,000 in the next two years. Revenue from the fees would help offset the cost of creating and running a new registration system.
Two significant changes were made to the bill last week by the Senate Committee on Rules following concerns voiced from the Oregon District Attorneys Association, who changed their position on the bill from “opposed” to “neutral” after the changes were made.
In the original bill, anyone with two or more prior convictions for distribution or manufacturing a controlled substance in the state of Oregon would be prohibited from operating a dispensary. |
good security, because if John Smoltz ever thinks that plaque would look nice on his mantle, we know when he’s coming for it. Even if they hired an extra watchman come October, I’m not sure it’d do much good. As Benito Santiago, Mike LaValliere, or a trio of 90’s relievers can tell you, catching Mr. Swipetober is easier said than done.
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EmailTaiwanese smartphone maker HTC defended itself against a suit brought on by Apple yesterday, saying it doesn't infringe, but develops its own technologies.
HTC is not only a mobile technology innovator, [we] also hold a large number of patents, the company said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Wednesday.
The Taiwanese company, the world's largest maker of smartphones that use Google's Android mobile operating system, including the Nexus One, said it will work with the U.S. justice system to protect its own innovations and rights.
Apple filed a lawsuit against rival handset maker HTC on Tuesday, over the alleged infringement of 20 patents related to the iPhone's user interface.
The patents at the center of Apple's lawsuits involve user interface technologies including icons, multi-touch and gestures, as well as technologies related to touch screens, power management, semiconductors, and the underlying hardware, software, and services architecture.
We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We've decided to do something about it, said Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in a statement.
HTC believes the Apple lawsuit poses a threat to its business in the short-term, HTC said. But some analysts believe this may prove to be a blow to companies like HTC vying to compete against Apple.
While this lawsuit could take years, we believe [Apple] may have a case here as the inventor of many key technologies including multi-touch and gestures, Kaufman analysts Shaw Wu said.
We think a likely outcome is an out-of-court settlement where some of the infringing features are taken out by HTC and/or licensing fees are paid to AAPL. In our view, competitors will likely need to work on alternatives.
The case is filed with the U.S. District Court in Delaware and the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC).When I chose a text editor, nearly fifteen years ago, I chose emacs because I liked the idea of using something that was deeply customizable. While I didn't intend to start using that customization immediately, it seemed to me like it would be much more future-proof to learn something flexible. I've never actually used this very much, but a couple weeks ago I wrote a new mode for the first time, so I thought I'd write that up.
I keep my calendar as an html table, and every so often I go over it to move activities that have happened to the past. One could automate this completely, but I I like having an opportunity to review things and make fixes. So about five years ago I wrote a little function:
(defun move-to-past () (interactive) (setq debug-on-error t) (search-forward "<tr>") (beginning-of-line) (let ((mtp-killed-text (delete-and-extract-region (point) (progn (forward-line 5) (point))))) (find-file "~/jtk/past.html") (beginning-of-buffer) (search-forward "<tr>") (beginning-of-line) (insert mtp-killed-text)))
This was easier than what I used to do: manually finding the line, pressing ctrl+k ten times, opening past.html, finding the right line, pressing ctrl+y. But it was still kind of annoying: I needed to type meta-x then move-to-p[tab][enter], and do this for each entry I was moving. It wasn't so annoying that I couldn't stand it, but it was irritating enough that I often put off moving things from future.html to past.html for months at a time.
I wanted to make this easier to invoke, so that I could just press a simple keyboard shortcut and move the entry to the past. I had set shortcut keys before, like:
(global-set-key "\C-xg" 'goto-line)
This means I can type ctrl+g 53 and jump to line 53, which is great. Except this is a global shortcut, and if I set a nice short shortcut for move-to-past that would get in the way when I was in other contexts. I needed to make something that only applied to future.html, so I defined a new mode:
(define-derived-mode procsched-future-mode html-mode "ProcScheduleFuture")
So far, all this does is create procsched-future-mode, which is just an alias for the mode for editing html.
Next we can define a shortcut that applies only to this mode:
(define-key procsched-future-mode-map "\C-p"'move-to-past)
Now if I'm in procsched-future-mode and press ctrl+p, it will trigger move-to-past.
Manually enabling procsched-future-mode mode is annoying, though, so I can set it to enable automatically for files named future.html :
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("future\\.html\\'". procsched-future-mode))
Now whenever I'm in a context when I would want to press ctrl+p for move-to-past it will just work, but ctrl+p is still available for other uses in other contexts.
We can go a step farther, and define a few more useful things, so we can easily delete entries or switch back from past to future after moving something:
(defun delete-event () (interactive) (setq debug-on-error t) (search-forward "<tr>") (beginning-of-line) (delete-and-extract-region (point) (progn (forward-line 5) (point)))) (defun switch-to-future () (interactive) (setq debug-on-error t) (switch-to-buffer "future.html")) (define-derived-mode procsched-past-mode html-mode "ProcSchedulePast") (define-key procsched-future-mode-map "\C-o" 'delete-event) (define-key procsched-past-mode-map "\C-p"'switch-to-future) (add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("past\\.html\\'". procsched-past-mode))
Now I can press ctrl+p to move something to past, then ctrl+p again to move back to future. Or I can press ctrl+o to delete the event if it didn't actually happen.Scientists from the UK caused quite a stir this week, when they announced that we don’t necessarily need to complete a full course of antibiotics in order to treat infections properly. It’s a provocative message, but skeptics say their advice is grossly premature—and even reckless.
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is not caused by putting an early stop to a prescribed course of antibiotics, but by antibiotic overuse, argue a team of infectious disease experts in The British Medical Journal. The team, led by Martin Llewelyn of the Brighton and Sussex Medical School, is asking doctors, educators, and policy makers to “stop advocating ‘complete the course’ when communicating with the public.”
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Which, wow. This is a complete turn-around from what we’ve been told for years—that we need to finish our bottles right down to the last pill in order to properly treat our infections and prevent the proliferation of microbial resistant bacteria. According to these experts, we’ve been wrong about this, and what’s more, the “complete the course” culture may be responsible for the rapid decline in antibiotic effectiveness.
But the experts Gizmodo spoke to said the BMJ opinion piece, while important, may be sending the wrong message. They say a lot more research needs to be done before doctors can confidently start telling their patients to ease off their medications, and that the sweeping statement presented by the BMJ researchers fails to take the complex, multi-faceted nature of bacterial infections into account. In a word, they described the opinion piece as “dangerous.”
“The public should be encouraged to recognize that antibiotics are a precious and finite natural resource that should be conserved.”
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Llewelyn and his colleagues say the convention of prescribing long treatments is based on an outdated notion.
“Traditionally, antibiotics are prescribed for recommended durations or courses,” write the BMJ authors. “Fundamental to the concept of an antibiotic course is the notion that shorter treatment will be inferior. There is, however, little evidence that currently recommended durations are minimums, below which patients will be at increased risk of treatment failure.” Today’s prescription culture, they argue, is “driven by fear of undertreatment, with less concern about overuse.”
At the same time, the authors say there’s growing evidence that short course antibiotics—treatments lasting just three to five days—work just as effectively in treating an assortment of bacterial infections, and that we should move away from “blanket” prescriptions. But Llewelyn and his colleagues admit there are exceptions, citing the need to prescribe more than one type of antibiotic to TB infections, which are notorious for developing resistance.
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The authors also admit it’s not going to be easy to change the culture, as the idea of taking a full course of antibiotics is “deeply embedded, and both doctors and patients currently regard failure to complete a course of antibiotics as “irresponsible behaviour.” But Llewelyn’s team is optimistic that the public will accept short-duration treatments if the medical profession openly acknowledges this shift in opinion, and that the public “be encouraged to recognize that antibiotics are a precious and finite natural resource that should be conserved.”
“I think the article is exciting, for so many practices in medicine it’s important to ask the origins and whether they are helping or harming patients,” said Harvard Medical School researcher Michael Baym, an expert in antibiotic resistance who wasn’t involved with the BMJ opinion piece. “The article establishes very well that the traditional seven-day course of antibiotic is not well founded, and that, consistent with evolutionary theory, a longer course does not lessen the emergence of resistance.”
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That said, Baym says that replacing the general advice to finish a course with general advice to not finish a course is likewise based on insufficient evidence.
“I think the real conclusion is that we need to get away from the idea that all antibiotics and all infections require uniform thinking, and instead do specific studies to find out ideal treatment regimens for specific infections and specific antibiotics,” Baym told Gizmodo.
Maha R. Farhat, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School, agrees with Baym, saying the authors made an ambitious statement that isn’t currently founded in sufficient evidence.
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“Most infectious disease doctors and antibiotic resistance specialists would like to see less use of antibiotics but the reality is that we we don’t yet have enough evidence to throw a blanket statement as the authors did,” Farhat told Gizmodo. “It’s true that collateral resistance is an issue, but what this should call for is more research and not a premature change in public health recommendations and awareness campaigns as the authors suggest.”
Farhat says the authors also failed to discuss evidence showing that antibiotic noncompliance—i.e. not necessarily shorter therapy, but interrupted therapy—is a key driver of resistance in both the patient and the larger population.
“Doctors, including myself, often emphasize the ‘take as prescribed’ statement because of a larger fear of the former [the patient]—which is more likely—than the latter [the larger population, or collateral resistance].”
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Vaughn Cooper, a microbiologist at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, says we most certainly need to reconsider the the “one-size-fits-all” approach to antibiotic prescriptions, but he describes the new editorial as being “clearly dangerous.”
“Arguing that antibiotic course duration is not sufficiently evidence-based is worthwhile, but the editorial essentially argues that patients should not finish their course of antibiotics,” Cooper told Gizmodo. “This, too, is not evidence-based and increases the likelihood of adverse outcomes for patients disregarding medical advice when a course of antibiotics is clearly warranted.”
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Cooper says the BMJ authors conveniently ignored what scientists already knew about antibiotics in terms of duration and efficacy, pointing to a New England Journal of Medicine study from last year showing that standard duration treatments—some lasting as long as ten days—do not increase a child’s level of antibiotic resistance (at least for kids with ear infections), and that children who are taken off antibiotics early exhibit worse outcomes.
“Suggesting patients not complete the recommended treatment course...is hazardous, for several reasons,” said Yonatan H. Grad, Assistant Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. “Not all infections are the same. For some infections, like TB, it is critically important to complete the treatment course, because, as has been demonstrated all too many times, not doing so promotes antimicrobial resistance in TB and recurrence of infection.”
Grad takes issue with the paper’s suggestion that patients stop taking antibiotics when they start to “feel better,” saying it’s too vague and subjective a recommendation. He also worries that a growing batch of unfinished bottles in the medicine cabinet will promote the inappropriate use of antibiotics, and have the exact opposite effect of what was intended.
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“The critical problem of antimicrobial resistance should encourage us to revisit how we approach antibiotic use, as there are many opportunities for improvement,” Grad told Gizmodo. “As this opinion piece suggests, we need more clinical trials to determine the effectiveness of shorter duration treatments.”
Until that happens, you’d best finish your medications “as prescribed.”
[BMJ]The founding pastor of SouthLake Presbyterian Church in Huntersville has agreed to plead guilty to wire fraud in connection with the embezzlement of up to $1.5 million from the church and its SouthLake Christian Academy K-12 private school.
Pastor Wade Malloy admitted conspiring with Wayne Parker, the school’s longtime headmaster and chief financial officer, to embezzle at least $550,000 to pay for Malloy’s personal expenses, according to a criminal bill of information filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Charlotte.
SHARE COPY LINK Wayne Parker, the former headmaster of Southlake Christian Academy in Huntersville accused of embezzling $9 million from the school, walks into the Charles R. Jonas Federal Courthouse on Thursday, July 28, 2016.
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Those expenses included college tuition, room and board for one of Malloy’s children, medical bills, taxes, cars and credit card bills, court records show.
Malloy’s plea hearing is scheduled for Wednesday. The wire fraud charge carries up to 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Malloy, who lives in Stanley, founded the church in 1991 and remained its pastor until 2014. He and church members founded the school in 1994.
When Parker was hired at the school in 1996, Malloy knew Parker had a federal conviction for corruptly obstructing and impeding the administration of the tax laws, according to the bill of information.
The embezzlement at the Huntersville church and school stretched from 2000 until 2014, prosecutors said.
To accomplish the scheme, Malloy directed Parker to issue additional paychecks to the pastor above and beyond what he was entitled to by terms of his employment, according to the bill of information. As the scheme progressed over time, Malloy directed Parker to use church and school money to pay for Malloy’s personal expenses.
The wire fraud charge stems from Parker and Malloy causing wires to be sent interstate in the form of emails and credit card payments, records show.
By the time the FBI got involved two years ago, the loss of money had long since passed staggering. Over the course of his embezzlement, Parker stole an average of $650,000 a year.
He spent it building at least two homes, including a 7,000-square-foot waterfront mansion on Lake Norman. He used the rest on international travel, luxury cars and boats, along with Carolina Panthers permanent seat licenses and tickets.
When parents donated money to the school in memory of their dead child, Parker stole it. When his accounts ran short during construction of the lake house, Parker cut the pay of school employees by 5 percent and blamed it on the economy.
As part of the maze he constructed to hide the money, Parker opened dozens of checking accounts and credit card lines. He took out seven loans and created nine limited liability companies.
Malloy and Parker resigned when church members launched an internal probe of the school finances in the fall of 2014.
Malloy could not be reached for comment this week.On April 30, 1943, a fisherman came across a badly decomposed corpse floating in the water off the coast of Huelva, in southwestern Spain. The body was of an adult male dressed in a trenchcoat, a uniform, and boots, with a black attaché case chained to his waist. His wallet identified him as Major William Martin, of the Royal Marines. The Spanish authorities called in the local British vice-consul, Francis Haselden, and in his presence opened the attaché case, revealing an official-looking military envelope. The Spaniards offered the case and its contents to Haselden. But Haselden declined, requesting that the handover go through formal channels—an odd decision, in retrospect, since, in the days that followed, British authorities in London sent a series of increasingly frantic messages to Spain asking the whereabouts of Major Martin’s briefcase. It did not take long for word of the downed officer to make its way to German intelligence agents in the region. Spain was a neutral country, but much of its military was pro-German, and the Nazis found an officer in the Spanish general staff who was willing to help. A thin metal rod was inserted into the envelope; the documents were then wound around it and slid out through a gap, without disturbing the envelope’s seals. What the officer discovered was astounding. Major Martin was a courier, carrying a personal letter from Lieutenant General Archibald Nye, the vice-chief of the Imperial General Staff, in London, to General Harold Alexander, the senior British officer under Eisenhower in Tunisia. Nye’s letter spelled out what Allied intentions were in southern Europe. American and British forces planned to cross the Mediterranean from their positions in North Africa, and launch an attack on German-held Greece and Sardinia. Hitler transferred a Panzer division from France to the Peloponnese, in Greece, and the German military command sent an urgent message to the head of its forces in the region: “The measures to be taken in Sardinia and the Peloponnese have priority over any others.” The Germans did not realize—until it was too late—that “William Martin” was a fiction. The man they took to be a high-level courier was a mentally ill vagrant who had eaten rat poison; his body had been liberated from a London morgue and dressed up in officer’s clothing. The letter was a fake, and the frantic messages between London and Madrid a carefully choreographed act. When a hundred and sixty thousand Allied troops invaded Sicily on July 10, 1943, it became clear that the Germans had fallen victim to one of the most remarkable deceptions in modern military history. The story of Major William Martin is the subject of the British journalist Ben Macintyre’s brilliant and almost absurdly entertaining “Operation Mincemeat” (Harmony; $25.99). The cast of characters involved in Mincemeat, as the caper was called, was extraordinary, and Macintyre tells their stories with gusto. The ringleader was Ewen Montagu, the son of a wealthy Jewish banker and the brother of Ivor Montagu, a pioneer of table tennis and also, in one of the many strange footnotes to the Mincemeat case, a Soviet spy. Ewen Montagu served on the so-called Twenty Committee of the British intelligence services, and carried a briefcase full of classified documents on his bicycle as he rode to work each morning. His partner in the endeavor was a gawky giant named Charles Cholmondeley, who lifted the toes of his size-12 feet when he walked, and, Macintyre writes, “gazed at the world through thick round spectacles, from behind a remarkable moustache fully six inches long and waxed into magnificent points.” The two men coördinated with Dudley Clarke, the head of deception for all the Mediterranean, whom Macintyre describes as “unmarried, nocturnal and allergic to children.” In 1925, Clarke organized a pageant “depicting imperial artillery down the ages, which involved two elephants, thirty-seven guns and ‘fourteen of the biggest Nigerians he could find.’ He loved uniforms, disguises and dressing up.” In 1941, British authorities had to bail him out of a Spanish jail, dressed in “high heels, lipstick, pearls, and a chic cloche hat, his hands, in long opera gloves, demurely folded in his lap. He was not supposed to even be in Spain, but in Egypt.” Macintyre, who has perfect pitch when it comes to matters of British eccentricity, reassures us, “It did his career no long-term damage.” To fashion the container that would keep the corpse “fresh,” before it was dumped off the coast of Spain, Mincemeat’s planners turned to Charles Fraser-Smith, whom Ian Fleming is thought to have used as the model for Q in the James Bond novels. Fraser-Smith was the inventor of, among other things, garlic-flavored chocolate intended to render authentic the breath of agents dropping into France and “a compass hidden in a button that unscrewed clockwise, based on the impeccable theory that the ‘unswerving logic of the German mind’ would never guess that something might unscrew the wrong way.” The job of transporting the container to the submarine that would take it to Spain was entrusted to one of England’s leading race-car drivers, St. John (Jock) Horsfall, who, Macintyre notes, “was short-sighted and astigmatic but declined to wear spectacles.” At one point during the journey, Horsfall nearly drove into a tram stop, and then “failed to see a roundabout until too late and shot over the grass circle in the middle.” Each stage of the deception had to be worked out in advance. Martin’s personal effects needed to be detailed enough to suggest that he was a real person, but not so detailed as to suggest that someone was trying to make him look like a real person. Cholmondeley and Montagu filled Martin’s pockets with odds and ends, including angry letters from creditors and a bill from his tailor. “Hour after hour, in the Admiralty basement, they discussed and refined this imaginary person, his likes and dislikes, his habits and hobbies, his talents and weaknesses,” Macintyre writes. “In the evening, they repaired to the Gargoyle Club, a glamorous Soho dive of which Montagu was a member, to continue the odd process of creating a man from scratch.” Francis Haselden, for his part, had to look as if he desperately wanted the briefcase back. But he couldn’t be too diligent, because he had to make sure that the Germans had a look at it first. “Here lay an additional, but crucial, consideration,” Macintyre goes on. “The Germans must be made to believe that they had gained access to the documents undetected; they should be made to assume that the British believed the Spaniards had returned the documents unopened and unread. Operation Mincemeat would only work if the Germans could be fooled into believing that the British had been fooled.” It was an impossibly complex scheme, dependent on all manner of unknowns and contingencies. What if whoever found the body didn’t notify the authorities? What if the authorities disposed of the matter so efficiently that the Germans never caught wind of it? What if the Germans saw through the ruse? In mid-May of 1943, when Winston Churchill was in Washington, D.C., for the Trident conference, he received a telegram from the code breakers back home, who had been monitoring German military transmissions: “MINCEMEAT SWALLOWED ROD, LINE AND SINKER.” Macintyre’s “Operation Mincemeat” is part of a long line of books celebrating the cleverness of Britain’s spies during the Second World War. It is equally instructive, though, to think about Mincemeat from the perspective of the spies who found the documents and forwarded them to their superiors. The things that spies do can help win battles that might otherwise have been lost. But they can also help lose battles that might otherwise have been won.
In early 1943, long before Major Martin’s body washed up onshore, the German military had begun to think hard about Allied intentions in southern Europe. The Allies had won control of North Africa from the Germans, and were clearly intending to cross the Mediterranean. But where would they attack? One school of thought said Sardinia. It was lightly defended and difficult to reinforce. The Allies could mount an invasion of the island relatively quickly. It would be ideal for bombing operations against southern Germany, and Italy’s industrial hub in the Po Valley, but it didn’t have sufficient harbors or beaches to allow for a large number of ground troops to land. Sicily did. It was also close enough to North Africa to be within striking distance of Allied short-range fighter planes, and a successful invasion of Sicily had the potential to knock the Italians out of the war. Mussolini was in the Sicily camp, as was Field Marshal Kesselring, who headed up all German forces in the Mediterranean. In the Italian Commando Supremo, most people picked Sardinia, however, as did a number of senior officers in the German Navy and Air Force. Meanwhile, Hitler and the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht—the German armed-forces High Command—had a third candidate. They thought that the Allies were most likely to strike at Greece and the Balkans, given the Balkans’ crucial role in supplying the German war effort with raw materials such as oil, bauxite, and copper. And Greece was far more vulnerable to attack than Italy. As the historians Samuel Mitcham and Friedrich von Stauffenberg have pointed out, “in Greece all Axis reinforcements and supplies would have to be shipped over a single rail line of limited capacity, running for 1,300 kilometers (more than 800 miles) through an area vulnerable to air and partisan attack.” All these assessments were strategic inferences from an analysis of known facts. But this kind of analysis couldn’t point to a specific target. It could only provide a range of probabilities. The intelligence provided by Major Martin’s documents was in a different category. It was marvellously specific. It said: Greece and Sardinia. But because that information washed up onshore, as opposed to being derived from the rational analysis of known facts, it was difficult to know whether it was true. As the political scientist Richard Betts has argued, in intelligence analysis there tends to be an inverse relationship between accuracy and significance, and this is the dilemma posed by the Mincemeat case. As Macintyre observes, the informational supply chain that carried the Mincemeat documents from Huelva to Berlin was heavily corrupted. The first great enthusiast for the Mincemeat find was the head of German intelligence in Madrid, Major Karl-Erich Kühlenthal. He personally flew the documents to Berlin, along with a report testifying to their significance. But, as Macintyre writes, Kühlenthal was “a one-man espionage disaster area.” One of his prized assets was a Spaniard named Juan Pujol García, who was actually a double agent. When British code breakers looked at Kühlenthal’s messages to Berlin, they found that he routinely embellished and fictionalized his reports. According to Macintyre, Kühlenthal was “frantically eager to please, ready to pass on anything that might consolidate his reputation,” in part because he had some Jewish ancestry and was desperate not to be posted back to Germany. When the documents arrived in Berlin, they were handed over to one of Hitler’s top intelligence analysts, a man named Alexis Baron von Roenne. Von Roenne vouched for their veracity as well. But in some respects von Roenne was even less reliable than Kühlenthal. He hated Hitler and seemed to have done everything in his power to sabotage the Nazi war effort. Before D Day, Macintyre writes, “he faithfully passed on every deception ruse fed to him, accepted the existence of every bogus unit regardless of evidence, and inflated forty-four divisions in Britain to an astonishing eighty-nine.” It is entirely possible, Macintyre suggests, that von Roenne “did not believe the Mincemeat deception for an instant.” These are two fine examples of why the proprietary kind of information that spies purvey is so much riskier than the products of rational analysis. Rational inferences can be debated openly and widely. Secrets belong to a small assortment of individuals, and inevitably become hostage to private agendas. Kühlenthal was an advocate of the documents because he needed them to be true; von Roenne was an advocate of the documents because he suspected them to be false. In neither case did the audiences for their assessments have an inkling about their private motivations. As Harold Wilensky wrote in his classic work “Organizational Intelligence” (1967), “The more secrecy, the smaller the intelligent audience, the less systematic the distribution and indexing of research, the greater the anonymity of authorship, and the more intolerant the attitude toward deviant views.” Wilensky had the Bay of Pigs debacle in mind when he wrote that. But it could just as easily have applied to any number of instances since, including the private channels of “intelligence” used by members of the Bush Administration to convince themselves that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. It was the requirement of secrecy that also prevented the Germans from properly investigating the Mincemeat story. They had to make it look as if they had no knowledge of Martin’s documents. So their hands were tied. The dated papers in Martin’s pockets indicated that he had been in the water for barely five days. Had the Germans seen the body, though, they would have realized that it was far too decomposed to have been in the water for less than a week. And, had they talked to the Spanish coroner who examined Martin, they would have discovered that he had noticed various red flags. The doctor had seen the bodies of many drowned fishermen in his time, and invariably there were fish and crab bites on the ears and other appendages. In this case, there were none. Hair, after being submerged for a week, becomes brittle and dull. Martin’s hair was not. Nor did his clothes appear to have been in the water very long. But the Germans couldn’t talk to the coroner without blowing their cover. Secrecy stood in the way of accuracy.
Suppose that Kühlenthal had not been so eager to please Berlin, and that von Roenne had not loathed Hitler, and suppose that the Germans had properly debriefed the coroner and uncovered all the holes in the Mincemeat story. Would they then have seen through the British deception? Maybe so. Or maybe they would have found the flaws in Mincemeat a little too obvious, and concluded that the British were trying to deceive Germany into thinking that they were trying to deceive Germany into thinking that Greece and Sardinia were the real targets—in order to mask the fact that Greece and Sardinia were the real targets. This is the second, and more serious, of the problems that surround the products of espionage. It is not just that secrets themselves are hard to fact-check; it’s that their interpretation is inherently ambiguous. Any party to an intelligence transaction is trapped in what the sociologist Erving Goffman called an “expression game.” I’m trying to fool you. You realize that I’m trying to fool you, and I—realizing that—try to fool you into thinking that I don’t realize that you have realized that I am trying to fool you. Goffman argues that at each turn in the game the parties seek out more and more specific and reliable cues to the other’s intentions. But that search for specificity and reliability only makes the problem worse. As Goffman writes in his 1969 book “Strategic Interaction”: The more the observer relies on seeking out foolproof cues, the more vulnerable he should appreciate he has become to the exploitation of his efforts. For, after all, the most reliance-inspiring conduct on the subject’s part is exactly the conduct that it would be most advantageous for him to fake if he wanted to hoodwink the observer. The very fact that the observer finds himself looking to a particular bit of evidence as an incorruptible check on what is or might be corrupted is the very reason why he should be suspicious of this evidence; for the best evidence for him is also the best evidence for the subject to tamper with. Macintyre argues that one of the reasons the Germans fell so hard for the Mincemeat ruse is that they really had to struggle to gain access to the documents. They tried—and failed—to find a Spanish accomplice when the briefcase was still in Huelva. A week passed, and the Germans grew more and more anxious. The briefcase was transferred to the Spanish Admiralty, in Madrid, where the Germans redoubled their efforts. Their assumption, Macintyre says, was that if Martin was a plant the British would have made their task much easier. But Goffman’s argument reminds us that the opposite is equally plausible. Knowing that a struggle would be a sign of authenticity, the Germans could just as easily have expected the British to provide one. The absurdity of such expression games has been wittily explored in the spy novels of Robert Littell and, with particular brio, in Peter Ustinov’s 1956 play, “Romanoff and Juliet.” In the latter, a crafty general is the head of a tiny European country being squabbled over by the United States and the Soviet Union, and is determined to play one off against the other. He tells the U.S. Ambassador that the Soviets have broken the Americans’ secret code. “We know they know our code,” the Ambassador, Moulsworth, replies, beaming. “We only give them things we want them to know.” The general pauses, during which, the play’s stage directions say, “he tries to make head or tail of this intelligence.” Then he crosses the street to the Russian Embassy, where he tells the Soviet Ambassador, Romanoff, “They know you know their code.” Romanoff is unfazed: “We have known for some time that they knew we knew their code. We have acted accordingly—by pretending to be duped.” The general returns to the American Embassy and confronts Moulsworth: “They know you know they know you know.” Moulsworth (genuinely alarmed): “What? Are you sure?” The genius of that parody is the final line, because spymasters have always prided themselves on knowing where they are on the “I-know-they-know-I-know-they-know” regress. Just before the Allied invasion of Sicily, a British officer, Colonel Knox, left a classified cable concerning the invasion plans on the terrace of Shepheard’s Hotel, in Cairo—and no one could find it for two days. “Dudley Clarke was confident, however, that if it had fallen into enemy hands through such an obvious and ‘gross breach of security’ then it would probably be dismissed as a plant, pointing to Sicily as the cover target in accordance with Mincemeat,” Macintyre writes. “He concluded that ‘Colonel Knox may well have assisted rather than hindered us.’ ” In the face of a serious security breach, that’s what a counter-intelligence officer would say. But, of course, there is no way for him to know how the Germans would choose to interpret that discovery—and no way for the Germans to know how to interpret that discovery, either. At one point, the British discovered that a French officer in Algiers was spying for the Germans. They “turned” him, keeping him in place but feeding him a steady diet of false and misleading information. Then, before D Day—when the Allies were desperate to convince Germany that they would be invading the Calais sector in July—they used the French officer to tell the Germans that the real invasion would be in Normandy on June 5th, 6th, or 7th. The British theory was that using someone the Germans strongly suspected was a double agent to tell the truth was preferable to using someone the Germans didn’t realize was a double agent to tell a lie. Or perhaps there wasn’t any theory at all. Perhaps the spy game has such an inherent opacity that it doesn’t really matter what you tell your enemy so long as your enemy is aware that you are trying to tell him something. At around the time that Montagu and Cholmondeley were cooking up Operation Mincemeat, the personal valet of the British Ambassador to Turkey approached the German Embassy in Ankara with what he said were photographed copies of his boss’s confidential papers. The valet’s name was Elyesa Bazna. The Germans called him Cicero, and in this case they performed due diligence. Intelligence that came in over the transom was always considered less trustworthy than the intelligence gathered formally, so Berlin pressed its agents in Ankara for more details. Who was Bazna? What was his background? What was his motivation? “Given the extraordinary ease with which seemingly valuable documents were being obtained, however, there was widespread worry that the enemy had mounted some purposeful deception,” Richard Wires writes, in “The Cicero Spy Affair: German Access to British Secrets in World War II” (1999). Bazna was, for instance, highly adept with a camera, in a way that suggested professional training or some kind of assistance. Bazna claimed that he didn’t use a tripod but simply held each paper under a light with one hand and took the picture with the other. So why were the photographs so clear? Berlin sent a photography expert to investigate. The Germans tried to figure out how much English he knew—which would reveal whether he could read the documents he was photographing or was just being fed them. In the end, many German intelligence officials thought that Cicero was the real thing. But Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Foreign Minister, remained wary—and his doubts and political infighting among the German intelligence agencies meant that little of the intelligence provided by Cicero was ever acted upon. Cicero, it turned out, was the real thing. At least, we think he was the real thing. The Americans had a spy in the German Embassy in Turkey who learned that a servant was spying in the British Embassy. She told her bosses, who told the British. Just before his death, Stewart Menzies, the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service during the war, told an interviewer, “Of course, Cicero was under our control,” meaning that the minute they learned about Cicero they began feeding him false documents. Menzies, it should be pointed out, was a man who spent much of his professional career deceiving other people, and if you had been the wartime head of M.I.6 |
to keep the hips moving as you change their direction, giving you a smoother transition. Additionally, the core compression involved in gamaku can provide downward and upward power, by either dropping the upper body’s weight into the hips, or whipping it up from the hips.
The simple act of stepping forward, backward, or side-to-side is a controlled loss of balance, during which your entire body weight is moving. That, in itself, adds your weight to your technique, plus however much force you use to drive yourself in that direction with the muscles of your legs. This is a very natural way to generate power with the human body, and is present in every kata that I am aware of. Outside of martial arts, humans use this all the time doing things from pulling open a heavy door to pushing a broken down car. Stepping can add a good deal of power to your techniques–in addition to accomplishing sabaki (movement), tenshin (shifting), irimi (entering), or hikkomi (retreat), and acting as an opportunity to kick or knee strike the opponent. The problem that it runs into is that it is relatively slow. Of course, one can train to move quickly, but stepping requires you to move your entire body, and is naturally a slower action than moving just an arm, for example. For some techniques, this is not much of a concern, but for those where speed is necessary, you can still incorporate power generation through stepping by experimenting with timing.
Sinking and rising are two sides of the same coin, from a directional perspective, but work in very different ways. Sinking, of course, lowers your body weight through the utilization of gravity, while rising moves your body weight through the muscular engagement of the legs driving upward, against gravity. The use of gravity is a relatively easy way to get power, as it doesn’t require much energy to do, up until you have to arrest your descent. This can be used for everything from strikes, to throws, to joint locks, and is a natural way for the human body to exert downward force. Rising, while taking more effort, becomes very important when you have to transition from a low position to a higher one, or when one must strike or otherwise apply pressure in an upward direction. This is really where hojo undo (supplemental training) with barbells, particularly squats, deadlifts, and Olympic lifts, will benefit a karateka, by building explosive power. Both components can be applied in very subtle ways, with just slight shifts in height, or in drastic ways, such as jumping or dropping to the floor. Like stepping, these are also power generation methods that are built into most kata. Unlike stepping, however, these have been lost in many styles over the course of their development, due to the aesthetic preference for maintaining a level head height throughout kata. If one looks at older examples of kata, you can often find instances of sinking and rising in the transitions between lower stances and higher ones. For example, in the beginning of Pinan Nidan, one has thrown a punch to the side in shizentai-dachi/han-zenkutsu-dachi (natural body stance/half bend forward stance), then turns to the front and executes gedan-barai (low sweep) in zenkutsu-dachi, before stepping forward into shizentai-dachi/han-zenkutsu-dachi to execute a jodan-uke (high level receiver). Because zenkutsu-dachi is naturally a lower position than shizentai-dachi/han-zenkutsu-dachi, there must be a change in elevation, and this can be used to generate power. My Sensei, Richard Poage (Renshi, Godan), explains this briefly in the video, above.
Twisting to generate power in karate is often rigidly associated with the twisting of the hips, but simply twisting at the waist, using your core muscles, can be an effective method of generating force. Motobu Choki–the late Okinawan karate master famed for testing his skills in street fights–once said: “In the Naihanchi kata, twisting to either the right or the left is a stance that can be used in actual confrontation. Thinking of twisting to either the right or left in the Naihanchi kata, one can start to understand one by one the meaning of the movements contained therein.” If one looks at Tachimura no Naihanchi, which is practiced in the KishimotoDi system (which I have previously written about here: LINK 1, LINK 2, LINK 3), this twisting action is very evident. Additionally, unlike most extant variants of Naihanchi, it does not use the hips to drive the twist of the upper body. This type of power generation can be especially helpful when applying techniques where your stance is being utilized to directly attack your opponent’s structure. If you have stepped behind your opponent’s legs, for example, and are using the stance to compromise their balance, it can be difficult to move your hips because their legs are restricting yours, and moving your legs too much could disengage your stance from theirs. Twisting at the waist in this manner is fairly difficult, at first, as it requires explosive contractions of the abdominal, oblique, latissimus dorsi, and erector spinae muscles in cooperation with each other, but does become easier with practice. It should also be noted that this approach still generates power from the ground up, in a way. Instead of driving with the legs to generate power, the legs must be used as a stable base on which to twist. If the stance is not structurally sound, then twisting the body can shift the legs and dissipate the power one is attempting to generate.
With any of these methods, transmission of power through the body is vital to being able to actually deliver the power to the target, and part of that transmission is the use of relaxation and tension. As a general rule, most karateka are familiar with the idea of staying relaxed until impact, at which point they tense all of their muscles. This tension at the end is typically called “kime,” the shortened form of the word “kimeru,” which can mean many things, including “to decide/resolve,” or “to carry out successfully.” The human body cannot be completely relaxed and in use at the same time–we would simply collapse without some degree of tension to keep our skeletons upright. Thankfully, muscles are not binary devices, consisting of only “tense” and “relaxed” states, but cover many degrees of those states, that’s why it’s important to help your muscles be strong with bcaa powder and you will fill and gain muscles for your strength. Additionally, the human body is not an “all or none” system, so different muscles can be tensed or relaxed to varying degrees independently, although some muscles obviously must work in conjunction with each other. This can make for some very complex sequences of muscular engagement, but that also allows us to fine-tune our body mechanics. To do this, it is important to evaluate which muscles are tensing at what times, because tension in some muscles will slow a movement, while tension in others will speed it up, and speed is going to generate more power. Additionally, chinkuchi (muscle, tendon, bone) is important to successfully transferring your power into your strikes, locks, and throws. Chinkuchi is a structural concept, which focuses on using angles and planes of movement that are as structurally sound as possible, so that your body doesn’t collapse or give way when it should be strong, and reduces the amount of muscular tension needed to maintain the structure of your technique. Returning to the idea of kime, it should be noted that kime and chinkuchi are not the same, although they can appear that way when a karateka locks their body into a chinkuchi position. Additionally, kime is intended for stopping a strike, so it will actually slow the technique down, and should really only be used when performing kata and techniques in the air, or when you are holding back from striking your partner. If you intend to actually strike something, some tension is obviously required, but locking down your body in this manner can actually reduce the power of your strike.
These methods can also be augmented by timing, which can be used in different ways to balance out power and speed. Many karateka are taught to settle into their stance before executing a technique. The idea behind this is that, because you generate power from the ground up, you must have rooted your stance before throwing a technique in order to generate the maximum amount of force, but as this article has discussed, that is not true, because movement adds to your power, rather than subtracting from it. Additionally, this is a slower method of reaching your target if you are striking, as the feet and body move more slowly than the hands, and those must be moved before the hands when using this method. That said, it can be useful for techniques where you must fit your body into a position before executing the technique, such as some throws and joint locks. Another way to approach timing is to use the hands, body, and feet at the same time–in KishimotoDi, this is called taigi ichi (body and technique as one), and is one of the style’s three guiding principles. This approach is a good balance of power generation and speed for arriving at the target, although it isn’t always easy to accomplish. In historical European martial arts (HEMA), there is a concept called “true time,” which describes the idea of moving the hands before the feet. The idea behind this approach to timing is that because the hands can be moved more quickly than the feet, the strike can travel to the target much more quickly, albeit with less power. Of course, when using a weapon–particularly a bladed one, as is often the case in HEMA–a good amount of damage can be done with a smaller amount of force than with an unarmed attack, because weapons are a force multiplier. This can be applied to unarmed methods, however, especially in the case of joint locks. If one intends to strike as a method of distraction or shock, this timing also works well, as it can be done very quickly, and then a more powerful strike can be delivered afterward. As with tension and relaxation, timing is something of a gradient, and can be adjusted in minute increments to find the most efficient approach for a given person or technique. Timing can also be addressed in a more granular manner, by adjusting which muscles and joints move at what time during the execution of a technique.
The human body is built generally the same way across the world, and so we tend to find the same collections of power generation methods in every system, but they are often implemented in different ways. This can be for purely stylistic or cultural reasons, but often they have stemmed from the personal preferences of instructors over time. People’s skeletal structures can be different depending on the region they come from, genetic traits, and congenital “deformities” that differ from what is considered “normal” in a given population (which is shown quite well in this article on why different people will perform squats differently: LINK). Additionally, people have different heights, weights, body compositions, and muscular types. All of these mean that, although we all have the same pool of methods to choose from, they may not all work as well for us as they do for someone else. It is important to explore all of these methods, and experiment with them to find which ones fit you the best, and what situations they are most suited for. In the end, you will likely find yourself using a blend of all of these power generation methods, to varying degrees. That is part of what makes karate an “art,” as it must be experimented with, and made to fit and express the karateka on an individual level.
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commentsUW wide receiver Quintez Cephus. (Photo: David Stluka)
Madison — Ted Gilmore hasn’t seen enough of Wisconsin’s trio of freshman wide receivers yet to guarantee one or all will help UW in 2016.
Yet Gilmore, entering his second season as UW’s wide receivers coach, believes the coaches got exactly what they hoped they would when they signed Quintez Cephus, A.J. Taylor and Kendric Pryor.
“I like all three of those guys and I think we hit the jackpot,” Gilmore said Sunday after practice, UW’s eighth of camp.
How so?
“So many times in recruiting, you think you have an idea of what you see on tape,” Gilmore explained, adding all three are in the running to earn playing time this season. “And then once they get here they’ve got to put it all together.”
Some years the performances of the freshmen fail to meet the expectations developed during the recruiting process.
Not with this trio.
“It’s what we thought it was,” Gilmore said.
Cephus and Taylor have been more noticeable than Pryor during the first week of camp, which is somewhat surprising.
The reason: Pryor, 5-foot-11 and 179 pounds, was a standout wide receiver at Homewood-Flossmoor High School in Illinois.
Cephus, from Macon, Ga., committed in September of his senior year at Stratford Academy to Furman — to play basketball.
He was a standout shooting guard on the basketball team and a running quarterback on the football team. But a move to split end as a senior allowed Cephus to record 42 receptions for 872 yards and 12 touchdowns.
Taylor, from Kansas City, Mo., was an all-state performer as a senior at Rockhurst High School — as a running back. He rushed for 1,721 yards and 16 touchdowns and added 338 receiving yards and five scores.
Cephus, 6-1 and 195, and Taylor, 5-11 and 194, couple above-average athletic ability with inquisitive minds.
“He pays attention,” Gilmore said of Cephus. “When he is not in there he is watching. He is not afraid to ask questions, which I love about him. He is a very humble kid. … He is very coachable and wants to get better.”
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Taylor is so inquisitive he sometimes suffers from over-thinking his responsibility on plays.
“I just tell him: ‘Don’t overanalyze it,’ ” Gilmore said. “I’ve just got to explain it to him. He is a visual guy. He just needs to see it. And once he sees it he’s got it.”
Junior cornerback Derrick Tindal has battled the three freshmen in practice, particularly Cephus and Taylor. During a recent practice, Tindal and Cephus were wrestling at the end of a play and both got up offering differing opinions on who won the matchup.
“Cephus is a very aggressive kid,” Tindal said. “If I wasn’t doing that to him then he should be worried. I see something in him. I like to go against him. I like to rough him up because I see he could be a big-time player.
“You see him out there catching balls with one hand. Most freshmen don’t do that. He makes plays."
How has Cephus responded to the hands-on treatment?
“He responds like a football player,” Tindal said. “He fights back on the field but off the field we’re friends. That’s what I like about him.
“I’m going to be doing it to him all camp. I told him: ‘Welcome to Big Ten football.’ ”
Taylor, according to Tindal, isn’t as talkative or as aggressive on the field as Cephus. Nevertheless, he has made plays in camp.
“A.J. is kind of passive,” Tindal said. “He lets things go but everybody is not built like Quintez.
“A.J. is a great receiver. I love how he runs his routes. I feel like both of them will be good.”
Gilmore doesn't want anyone to ignore Pryor.
“They are flashing,” Gilmore said of the trio. “They are having some moments. And then they have those freshman moments where they turn right when they should have went left.
“But the athleticism is there. The ability is there."Is there anyone who has ever endorsed Donald Trump who wasn’t embarrassed by the decision less than two weeks later? The most recent honoree in the Trump endorsement embarrassment sweepstakes is the NRA, who woke up to this tweet this morning from Donald Trump:
I will be meeting with the NRA, who has endorsed me, about not allowing people on the terrorist watch list, or the no fly list, to buy guns. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2016
There are so many problems with this, I don’t know where to begin, so I’ll begin with the first reply:
@realDonaldTrump Meeting with Congress might work, too? Er, you’re right. The NRA writes those laws. — Scott T. Smith (@UniPresser_UPI) June 15, 2016
Good Lord. Caving after 24 hours to a nonsense public pressure and announcing that you’re basically going down to the organization to tell them how they ought to feel about something is just about the most embarrassing thing Trump could have possibly done to the NRA. And count on them to swallow it with hardly a peep, because what else can they possibly do at this point?
Memo to Trump: the conceptual problem with what you are proposing is that the executive branch makes sole determination of who is on those lists, with no due process, adjudication, or even opportunity for those who are put on the list to know about it or appeal the decision. Gun owners do not want President Obama or President Clinton – or President Trump – to have the unilateral right to decide they can’t purchase a gun through the simple expedient of putting them on this list.
Of course, as a not-very-closeted authoritarian, I am sure the idea that he would get to be the final word of who gets to own guns in America and who does not appeals to Trump’s instincts. It should not, however, appeal to any actual supporters of the Second Amendment.The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has released a ground-breaking report that takes a look at blasphemy laws around the world and compares them to international human rights standards.
The report covers instances of the blasphemy laws in 71 countries which include countries like Paksitan and Indonesia, known for harsh punishments like the death penalty to countries like Canada and Switzerland which have minor penalties like fines. Among the six countries which were ranked the worst in terms of blasphemy laws, Iran topped the list while Pakistan ranked second, followed by Yemen, Qatar, Somalia, and Egypt.
USCIRF scored the countries based on Severity of the Penalty, Freedom of Religion, whether the State protected or preferred certain Religion Protections, Freedom of Expression and Discrimination Against Groups.
Of the 71 states studied, 59 or 83 percent sanction blasphemy with imprisonment. Iran and
Pakistan, the two countries with the highest-scoring laws for Severity of the Penalty, include
the death penalty as punishment for “insulting the Prophet.”.
The full report can be found here."The underlying premise for Tom Phillips' complaint is basically this: Young salespeople are being carefully groomed and trained to go out and spread demonstrable untruths among the British public in order to persuade them to pay over significant sums of money to a corporation. The transactions depend upon acceptance by individuals of certain "truth claims" which must be received on the basis of partial information presented. If members of the public were to be told the whole truth and still decided they would join up and pay up, that of course would be entirely legitimate. However, when the whole truth is deliberately concealed in order to project a false impression, and money exchanges hands, that is fraud... according to the 2006 Fraud Act, which is the relevant piece of legislation in this case." -Christopher Ralph (plaintiff in case of summons 2 )
The media announcement
47 East South Temple Street office in Salt Lake City. As is about to be or has just been reported in the media, Mormon Prophet and President, Thomas Monson was ordered on 31 Jan, 2014 to court and face allegations of fraud. He will reportedly receive two summons on this week his
According to the summons, Judge Elizabeth Roscoe in the Westminister Magistrate’s Court in London, England has issued Thomas Spencer Monson with 2 summons containing allegations of seven offences in contravention of Section 1 of the Elizabeth II Fraud Act 2006
(note: added the following paragraph)
Please understand, a magistrate has already reviewed the preliminary evidence (some described below) and found it worth making a trans-continent summons to a man at the head of a multibillion dollar US corporation. He must have seen a reason this was worth his time and the care it took to go through the case thus far.
The summons requires Monson to “appear before Westminster Magistrates' Court, 181 Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5BR on 14/03 2014 at 10AM in Courtroom 6 to answer the said information…”
Once Monson is processed by Westminister, the court will then almost certainly refer the case to Southwark Crown Court for further proceedings. The summons declares, “Failure to attend may result in a warrant being issued for your arrest.”
According to the Fraud Act 2006, the maximum penalty for the allegations contained in the summons is ten years imprisonment and a fine, for each offence. (See Section 3 (b)on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 10 years or to a fine (or to both).)
The case details
I apologize for the length of this blog, and that this format may not be optimal, but the case details are many.
Here are images of the summons:
click on either to zoom in.
Here are images of the summons:
The summons indicates that “Information has been laid by Thomas Phillips” to “Thomas Spencer Monson” and before the magistrate, as such:
begin quote--
That between 3rd February 2008 and 31stDecember 2013 dishonestly and intending which you knew were or might be untrue or misleading and thereby induce the said [NAME] to pay an annual tithe to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, namely that thereby to make a gain for himself or another or a loss or risk of loss to another made or caused to be made representations to [NAME], which were andLatter-day Saints, namely that
i) The Book of Abraham is a literal translation of Egyptian papyri by Joseph Smith.
ii) The Book of Mormon was translated from ancient gold plates by Joseph 'Smith is the most correct book on earth and is an ancient historical record.
iii) Native Americans are descended from an Israelite family which left Jerusalem in 600 B.C.
iv) Joseph and Hyrum Smith were killed as martyrs in 1844 because they would not deny their testimony of the Book of Mormon.
v) The Illinois newspaper called the Nauvoo Expositor had to be destroyed because it printed lies about Joseph Smith.
vi) There was no death on this planet prior to 6,000 years ago
vii) All humans alive today are descended from just two people who lived approximately 6,000 years ago
Contrary to section 1 of the Fraud Act 2006
--end quote
Two names were given in two summons as the parties to whom Monson made false representations: Stephen Colin Bloor and Christopher Denis Ralph.
Stephen Bloor is a third generation Mormon, a podiatrist who served as a Mormon bishop until he discovered the LDS Church gave many false representations. He penned a resignation as bishop and now writes a blog, campaigning for openness & honesty in the Mormon Church.
Christopher Ralph is a Mormon convert since 1971, who served in bishoprics, and in 2012 helped write open letters to the European Area Presidency, LDS First Presidency (Monson) and the quorum of the twelve apostles, on behalf of many troubled members in the UK. These letters were met with silence. Chris also was the first blogger to break the story behind Grant Palmer’s “undercover” Mormon General Authority.
Tom Phillips, the acting prosecutor, is a retired management consultant. A Mormon convert since 1969, he has served as a Bishop, Stake President and Area Executive Secretary. He received the unspoken and secret ordinance of the second anointing. He also served as the Area Controller for the British Isles and Africa as well as the Financial Director for the Church’s U.K. corporate entities.
The name of the magistrate who signed the summons is Judge Elizabeth Roscoe. I will try to find out more about her in time.
Two of the sections in the fraud act 2006 are quoted in the case: Section 2, “Fraud by false representation” and Section 3, “Fraud by failing to disclose information”.
The relevant parts of the sections texts read:
Section 2 “Fraud by false representation”
(1)A person is in breach of this section if he—
(a)dishonestly makes a false representation, and (b) intends, by making the representation—
(i)to make a gain for himself or another, or (ii)to cause loss to another or to expose another to a risk of loss.
(2)A representation is false if—
(a)it is untrue or misleading, and (b)the person making it knows that it is, or might be, untrue or misleading.
Section 3 “Fraud by failing to disclose information”
A person is in breach of this section if he—
(a)dishonestly fails to disclose to another person information which he is under a legal duty to disclose, and
(b)intends, by failing to disclose the information—
(i)to make a gain for himself or another, or
(ii)to cause loss to another or to expose another to a risk of loss.
“most correct book on earth, and an ancient historical record.” However, the prosecutor will argue that academics have shown that “the Book of Mormon has been shown to be a work compiled in the 19th century by Joseph Smith with or without the help of others.” And that “DNA evidence demonstrates overwhelmingly that the ancestors of Native Americans came from Siberia around 15,000 30,000 years ago. No trace has been found of Hebrews in either North or South America, and there's no archaeological evidence for any of the Book of Mormon people.” Evidence supporting fraud in violation Section 2 (fraud by false representation) is almost entirely historically or scientifically based doctrinal claims that Monson made, which appear misleading to encourage Mormon members to donate money based on false statements that have been shown by science, the media, academics and other institutions to be incorrect and perhaps even slanderous statements with the intent to defraud by encouraging donations to the church on the basis of the false statements. An example of one statement in the prosecutor’s case states that Monson has taught the Book of Mormon is a divine work given by God to Joseph Smith, and isHowever, the prosecutor will argue that academics have shown thatAnd that
“These are not statements of mere 'beliefs' or opinions or theories, they are made as actual facts and their truthfulness can be objectively tested with evidence, unlike religious claims and beliefs.” That the LDS prophet has “made statements of fact which are untrue and he knows, or should know, they are untrue” as an argument that he has perpetuated fraud on the British people with “The purpose … to facilitate the conversion of individuals to become members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and to pay to said church 10% of their income on a continuing, permanent basis.” The prosecutor argues in his case,That the LDS prophet hasas an argument that he has perpetuated fraud on the British people with
Evidence supporting fraud in violation of Section 3 (Fraud by failing to disclose information) uses LDS church documents showing that they know certain statements are false but continue to teach them and encourage members to pay tithing. For example, the claim that the Book of Mormon is an ancient record about Hebrews filling the lands in ancient America can be disputed by DNA evidence, and the church has acknowledged they know about the evidence, but have not taught this to members.
[ blog note: I would like to know that the recent essay release on the Book of Mormon and DNA studies alters the equation here. The timing of the release, on 31 January coincides exactly with the date the Magistrate signed the order.]
“statements have been made verbally and also published in various forms, including but not limited to: Church manuals such as Gospel Principles (2011), Church magazines such as ‘The Ensign’, Talks by Church leaders, printed and broadcast by satellite and over the internet, Websites owned or operated by the Church.” The evidence for the claims of fraud are laid out by Tom Phillips, as
As the summons states, the following frauds are represented in the case. With these are a few additional notes from the prosecutor’s case, but do not represent the sum-total of the information to be laid out to the judge.
i) The Book of Abraham is a literal translation of Egyptian papyri by Joseph Smith.
[prosecutor intends to state that “all experts in Egyptology agree the “Book of Abraham” is not a translation of the papyri the Church has in its possession. There are no references to Abraham and Joseph and the interpretations of the facsimiles reproduced in the book are not true. The papyri are, in fact. common funerary texts found on countless Egyptian ‘mummies’. The Church leaders have been informed of these facts, yet still state it is a translation. Rather than admit their founder (Joseph Smith) lied about this matter, they deliberately and dishonestly repeat the falsehood in order to deceive their Church members and potential converts.”]
ii) The Book of Mormon was translated from ancient gold plates by Joseph 'Smith is the most correct book on earth and is an ancient historical record.
[prosecutor statement is given above, and also includes “Not only is there no evidence of such civilizations, there is abundant evidence that they did not exist. Certain of the animals and working materials, supposedly used by them, did not exist on the American continent at the time (600 B.C. to 400 A.D.).”]
iii) Native Americans are descended from an Israelite family which left Jerusalem in 600 B.C.
[prosecutor: “anthropology and DNA denote Native Americans are of Asian origin and came to America, some 15,000 to 30,000 years ago. No trace of Israelite DNA has been discovered in the study of Native American peoples.”]
iv) Joseph and Hyrum Smith were killed as martyrs in 1844 because they would not deny their testimony of the Book of Mormon.
[prosecutor: “they died in a gun battle while incarcerated in jail on charges of treason against the state of Illinois. It had nothing to do with their defence of the Book of Mormon and Church historians know that.”]
v) The Illinois newspaper called the Nauvoo Expositor had to be destroyed because it printed lies about Joseph Smith.
[prosecutor: “the claims made about Joseph Smith, in the newspaper, are true i.e. he taught and practised plural marriage (polygamy) and he was ordained a king.”]
vi) There was no death on this planet prior to 6,000 years ago
[prosecutor: “there has been death of living organisms on this planet for billions of years.”]
vii) All humans alive today are descended from just two people who lived approximately 6,000 years ago
[prosecutor: “anthropology, history and DNA studies prove this to be impossible. Our earliest common female ancestor is considered to have lived about 150,000 years ago.”]
“He has received formal education to masters degree level and has also received honorary doctorates. He is well educated beyond the level at which an ordinary person would or should know the representations are false.” The prosecutor makes a case of general dishonesty against Monson, highlighting his education and ability to know the answers and facts contradicting his false representations, saying:
The prosecutor outlines the following cases of dishonesty with little detail (as yet provided):
· Found guilty on election fraud (proposition 8 in CA,USA)
· Holland lied to BBC interviewer
· LDS Church has been reported and accused of tax evasion in the UK (more below)
among others.
“The purpose of these untrue and misleading statements is to facilitate the conversion of individuals to become members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and to pay to said church 10% of their income on a continuing, permanent basis. A second purpose is to mislead those individuals who are already members of the said Church, so that they will continue paying 10% of their income. This tithing income is paid in the United Kingdom to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Great Britain), an unlimited liability company and registered charity with its registered office in England. The President of the two corporation sole shareholders of this U.K. company is Thomas Spencer Monson.” The prosecutor makes the case for why Monson perpetuated this fraud:
For more information about the corporation sole and its structure with articles of incorporation, see my blog from 2012 with more details
“cannot attend the wedding ceremony unless they too are members of the Church and, among other conditions, pay a full tithe. If they have been amiss is paying, but are willing to pay the arrears of the past year, they may be allowed. Therefore, they have to pay to attend their child’s (sibling’s) wedding... Thus, they take away a normal parental right and then charge you money if you want the ‘benefit’ they have taken from you. Nobody would agree to such a regime unless they believed the false representations to be true.” Addionally, the prosecutor argues that non-Mormon or non-paying Mormon family members
“As an example of the financial gain to the Church (and, therefore, loss to the individuals making the contributions), since the implementation of the Fraud Act 2006 (i.e. January 2007) the donations received in the U.K. in consequence in part at least of these false representations amount to approximately £224 million, according to the accounts filed with the Charity Commission from 2007 to 2012 inclusive. The current year (2013) could be a further £33 million making a total of £257 million.” The information supplied to the court by the prosecutor claims,
Here is a table pulled from the UK Charity Commission website under the “Financial history” section.
click on image to zoom in
The previous year, I had reported these figures in this blog, just after reporting on the Mission President Handbook release.
Significant detail about the church’s activities in the UK can be downloaded from the commission’s website under the “View accounts” section.
The summons was signed 31 January 2014 and issued under section 1 of the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980, on receiving a formal Statement (described in that section as an ‘information’) alleging that someone has committed an offence, the court may issue—
(a) a summons requiring that person to attend court; or
(b) a warrant for that person’s arrest, if—
(i) the alleged offence must or may be tried in the Crown Court,
(ii) the alleged offence is punishable with imprisonment
Now, my personal take on this:
I applaud and support Tom in trying to call out the LDS leaders on perpetuating fraud. I believe it is true. I believe they know more than they are willing to teach to the average member. I believe the Topic Essay articles addressing issues that questioning members have raised recently (such as with Christopher Ralph’s letter or the Swedish Rescue fiasco) show that they have been aware of these problems for many years. It is interesting that they are now dealing with these issues, just about the time Tom started filing his fraud case last year, and that the DNA essay arrived the day the summons were sent.
However, I approach all of this with skepticism on its success. The LDS Church is very wealthy, retains full-time about half of the 150+ lawyers at McConkie and has a team of lawyers in its own legal department. You can bet they will throw their full effort into defending against these charges and try to get even the summons dismissed. The LDS Church has considerable political weight in the US, with church members occupying positions on the judicial bench at every level in both state (UT) and federal branch. They have church members holding 7% of the US Senate, including the senate majority leader, the ranking member of the finance committee and more. This from a church whose US membership is just a hair below 2% and whose active members might peak 1% of the US population. That is a lot of political, judicial and legal might for such a fraction of a minority of the population.
ideological" deceit. To most eyes outside of the LDS Church, this case will look mostly ideological, and that sets it up for problems because no judge wants to preside over a jury conviction against free exercise of religion. At least, that would be the public perception, even if the fraud claims are about false representations made on facts of science and history, and not just about beliefs. But the public will not understand such nuances. The LDS Church PR machine will ensure that it appears victimized by ex-members and “anti-Mormons” who challenge its basic rights to free exercise. Furthermore, I believe no judge, UK or US, will want the responsibility to set a precedent of finding a church leader as powerful as even the small church’s Mormon Prophet guilty of fraud through "deceit. To most eyes outside of the LDS Church, this case will look mostly ideological, and that sets it up for problems because no judge wants to preside over a jury conviction against free exercise of religion. At least, that would be the public perception, even if the fraud claims are about false representations made on facts of science and history, and not just about beliefs. But the public will not understand such nuances. The LDS Church PR machine will ensure that it appears victimized by ex-members and “anti-Mormons” who challenge its basic rights to free exercise.
(note: added a change below)
Now, if it goes to trial there Tom has some confidence 12 U.K. jurors will convict. He believes the evidence is overwhelming and Monson will not be credible to the jurors on the stand. The question I maintain, however, is whether t he responsibility of this precedent is too high for even a liberal judge in the UK or other parts of Europe.
Now that said, Scientology has had difficulty with fraudulent court cases in Germany and found responsible for unethical if not criminal behavior based on a few ridiculous beliefs used for extracting money from believers.
Let's think |
doctor to a friendthere is a distance, which paradoxically allows closeness, as I feel with my own patients.
Sacks says his shyness simply doesn’t occur in those interactions, which may be one reason he is so good with his patients and another reason he so loves them. In his work as a physician, the social landscape is unusually even-planed, for him and for them, and he has an uncanny ability to put his patients at easewith sustained attention; curiosity and empathy; and a physician’s bag, stuffed with balls, a reflex hammer, and magazines, that could serve a clown. Among other things, I’m a good and sometimes involuntary imitator, Sacks says a little mischievously.
It is hard to resist the impression, when visiting him, that you are on a house call, in part because he routinely refers to himself as a case. Uncomfortable as it makes me to play doctor, I do take notes. His right eye is a boiling red, and his fly is left unzippered. He lifts up his pants to show the scar from that long-ago broken leg. Apologizing for having only one working hearing aid, he sits down, wedged between two special pillows, at cross-purposes to me: I may seem to be turning away from you, but really I’m turning toward you. Looking mostly at the floor just beyond his feet, he speaks at a deliberate pace, meandering from abstract questions on neurology to particular episodes and patients.
He moves in the opposite way when asked about himself, drifting into characterizations that present his own life at a safe distance. I think there was probably a rather long lost period in which I functioned. I passed exams, I had a good memory, I was clever, he says. He describes himself as a graphomaniac (having published now a dozen books, with just as many unpublished or discarded) and a babbler (Things gush out of me, for better or for worse, incontinently). But the feeling you get in his audience is of fastidious control, a man keeping the world at a safe distanceas though the wilted-flower persona is a genuine but therapeutic performance, benefiting his patients, his readers, and Sacks himself. I’m sorry I’ve been a little evasive, Sacks tells me at one point, offering one of many apologies for running off track. But, what the hell, one has to be.For years, the Brazilian surfer Eduardo Martins had been praised for his brave and compassionate war photography. He’d traveled to Gaza, Iraq, and Syria, taking selfies of his 32-year-old dashing self amid the rubble of Aleppo. The story went that he’d been bed-ridden for seven years in São Paulo, suffering from leukemia, and when he emerged he sought out a more meaningful life. According to Martins, everything changed in 2015, when he accompanied the Free Syrian Army for a few weeks in its fight against President Bashar al-Assad. “It was a very intense experience, and it was then that I became a photographer of conflict zones,” he said in an interview with Fernando Costa Netto for the Brazilian surfing website Waves.
In addition to accruing more than 1,200 followers on Instagram, Martins was profiled in major news outlets, including the BBC, Al Jazeera, and the Wall Street Journal. But as of last week, all of these articles have been deleted.
On September 1, BBC Brazil issued an extensive report revealing Martins’s photographs to be fake. The images of soldiers and dilapidated cities, it states, have been culled from the internet. What’s more, the blonde man — photoshopped into each of these settings — is not Martins but a British surfer named Max Hepworth-Povey.
Shortly after the BBC published an interview with Martins in July, the Lebanon-based journalist Natasha Ribeiro began her investigation. The suspicions kept adding up: Brazilian journalists who had been with the Peshmerga in Iraq had found no sign of Martins, despite his claim to have been there at the same time; Living Positive, the organization that runs a shelter for HIV-positive children in Kenya, said they had never seen or heard of Martins, even though he claimed to have been there in a photo in which he is surrounded by children. When Renata Simões, a São Paulo-based reporter, asked Martins about a surf project in the Gaza Strip, he said he knew nothing about it, despite all the time he spent there presumably surfing.
After conducting Google searches, BBC Brazil discovered that Martins had pulled photos from multiple sources, inverting the images so that they were harder to track down. One of the photos in Kirkuk, Iraq, for instance, was taken from American photographer Daniel C. Britt.
Getty Images deleted the photos it had by Martins, issuing the following statement in an email to the Guardian:
Eduardo Martins … was identified as a collaborator and content supplier for one of our partners who has already been notified about this infraction. While we work together with all our internal departments to urgently clarify this issue, we are removing all the material involved from the air.
Up until the scam was publicized, surfer Hepworth-Povey seemed to have been completely oblivious to his Instagram appearances in war-torn countries. In a recent interview with news.com.au, he said the photos Martins had used were a couple of years old, mostly taken from Hepworth-Povey’s Instagram and Facebook accounts.
As for Martins, he’s retreated into the far corners of Australia. After Waves journalist Costa Netto communicated to Martins that there had been some doubts raised about his identity, the faux photographer deleted his Instagram account. “I’m in Australia, I’ve decided to spend a year in a van traveling the world,” he said in a Whatsapp text to Costa Netto. “I want to be in peace.” Soon thereafter, he deleted his Whatsapp number as well.CLOSE President-elect Donald Trump has selected Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to lead the EPA. Pruitt is known for previously suing the agency he may lead. USA TODAY NETWORK
Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt (Photo11: Spencer Platt, Getty Images)
Donald Trump tapped Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, as environmental groups and Democratic lawmakers denounced the selection of a state official who has sued the agency he is now slated to lead.
“For too long, the Environmental Protection Agency has spent taxpayer dollars on an out-of-control anti-energy agenda that has destroyed millions of jobs, while also undermining our incredible farmers and many other businesses and industries at every turn. As my EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt, the highly respected Attorney General from the state of Oklahoma, will reverse this trend and restore the EPA’s essential mission of keeping our air and our water clean and safe,” the president-elect said in a statement Thursday morning.
“The American people are tired of seeing billions of dollars drained from our economy due to unnecessary EPA regulations, and I intend to run this agency in a way that fosters both responsible protection of the environment and freedom for American businesses.” Pruitt vowed in a statement.
Even before the announcement was official critics pounced.
"Trump's nominee to lead EPA, Scott Pruitt, is a climate denier who's worked closely with the fossil fuel industry," said Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, the former Democratic presidential candidate Wednesday. "That's sad and dangerous."
As Trump conducted a second interview with Pruitt on Wednesday, aides praised the Oklahoma attorney general, who has filed several lawsuits against various Obama administration regulations.
"Mr. Pruitt led Oklahoma's legal challenges to the EPA, Obamacare, executive actions on illegal immigration, Dodd-Frank and President Obama's repeated attempts to bypass Congress," said Trump spokesman Jason Miller. "Attorney General Pruitt has a strong conservative record as a state prosecutor and has demonstrated a familiarity with laws and regulations impacting a large energy resource state."
Pruitt, a former state legislator as well as general managing partner of Oklahoma City's minor league baseball team, has said that the Obama administration has overstepped its authority.
"Congress has spoken very specifically, very prescriptively, particularly in the environmental space with respect to state implementation plans and under the Clean Air Act," Pruitt said. "You see this EPA, and you see regulatory bodies at the federal level displacing that, or duplicating state power."
The Senate would have to confirm Pruitt's nomination, and environmental groups began lining up to oppose him.
“Having Scott Pruitt in charge of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is like putting an arsonist in charge of fighting fires," said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. "He is a climate science denier who, as Attorney General for the state of Oklahoma, regularly conspired with the fossil fuel industry to attack EPA regulations."
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2gVTx9lNot to be confused with Flux (software)
f.lux is a cross-platform computer program that adjusts a display's color temperature according to location and time of day, offering functional respite for the eyes. The program is designed to reduce eye strain during night-time use, helping to reduce disruption of sleep patterns.[2][3]
Functionality [ edit ]
Photo depicting the "darkroom mode".
Upon installation, the user can choose a location based on geographic coordinates, a ZIP code or the name of a location. The program then automatically calibrates the device display's colour temperature to account for time of day, based on sunrise and sunset at the chosen location. At sunset, it will gradually change the colour temperature to a warmer colour and restore the original colour at sunrise.[2][3]
f.lux offers a variety of colour profiles and pre-defined temperature values, modifying program behaviour for specific programs or activities; including a mode for film watching, decreasing red tinge (for 2.5 hours), and a darkroom mode that does not affect night-adapted vision.[2][3] Times can be inverted on f.lux for PC to provide warm lighting during the daytime (for people who work at night).[4] The program can control Philips Hue LED lighting, so that the color temperature of house lights follows f.lux's settings.[5]
Platforms [ edit ]
The program is available for Microsoft Windows, macOS and Linux (but it currently won't work under Ubuntu 18.04 LTS anymore). It is also available for iOS devices, although it requires the device to be jailbroken.[6] Apple has not allowed the application in its App Store, due to its use of restricted developer tools.[7] The developer briefly hosted an Xcode project on GitHub, allowing iOS 9 users to sideload the application onto their devices, but retracted it at the request of Apple.[8] Following Apple's announcement of a similar function, called Night Shift, in iOS 9.3, the developer called upon Apple to provide developer tools and to allow their application into the App Store.[9] A preview version for Android is available.[10]
Efficacy [ edit ]
f.lux proponents hypothesise that altering the colour temperature of a display to reduce the prominence of white–blue light at night will improve the effectiveness of sleep. Reducing exposure to blue light at night time has been linked to increased melatonin secretion.[11] Although the developer provides a list of relevant research on their website, the program itself has not been scientifically tested to determine its efficacy. In spite of this, f.lux has been widely and positively reviewed by technology journalists, bloggers, and users.[2][3][6]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]What journalist is out there referring to Broadway as small? Reveal yourself! Prompted by a reporter who asked her, “Why would such a big star choose to do such a small play?” the now-Tony-nominated Lupita Nyong’o shared her reaction to the query in a new Lenny Letter, a reaction that essentially boiled down to “Because I want to play good roles, numb nuts.” (Note: She didn’t say numb nuts. She would never. She’s Lupita Nyong’o.)
The Queen of Katwe star did, however, take a deep dive into her decision-making process. Says Nyong’o, “I decided early on that if I don’t feel connected to, excited by, and challenged by the character, the part probably isn’t for me. If I’m ever in doubt, I envision the career choices of artists I admire, like Tilda Swinton, Cate Blanchett, and Viola Davis.”
She also addressed her more recent fantastical roles in Star Wars and Jungle Book, roles that she sees as some of the best available to her, at least given the alternatives she’s been offered as a young woman of color in Hollywood:
So often women of color are relegated to playing simple tropes: the sidekick, the best friend, the noble savage, or the clown. We are confined to being a simple and symbolic peripheral character — one who doesn’t have her own journey or emotional landscape … I think sometimes a singular catharsis can be found in genre storytelling — as I found when playing a thousand-year-old woman (Maz Kanata in Star Wars: The Force Awakens) and a wolf mother (Raksha in The Jungle Book). I’m able to be more engaged in roles such as those than I would be in playing ‘the wife’ when she is written with no motivation or singularity.
All of which is to say that there really should be no question as to why an Oscar-winning actress would want to dig her non-CGI’ed teeth into the weighty female characters of Danai Gurira’s critically acclaimed Eclipsed:Liquid`Sheth Profile Blog Joined March 2010 United States 2094 Posts #1
I've really missed interacting with a scene as passionate about SC as you guys. I still try and be a part of it, but I've felt like a fake for a while now. Someone who calls himself a pro gamer, yet plays no games. Someone with a Liquid tag, who doesn't play in clan wars, win tournaments or stream a ton feels wrong to me. Even the fact that I never fully retired like Haypro or Jinro has felt different. I never quite followed along in retiring fully, and making a big announcement that I'm leaving, I just kind of slowly backed away and watched...
I moved on with my life. I'm a chemistry student now, for a university. FGCU to be exact. I play some chess, because it has always felt similiar in some way to SC. A balanced, 1 on 1 competition of the minds. And as always I've read TL and Reddit every day following up on the major stories, and games of Starcraft. I've watched WCS at its worst and its best as have probably most of you. Sometimes people still recognize me at school, or when I'm eating out or whatever around town. But I've moved on, changed. Just as surely as all of you have from when I was last here as an active player.
I used to dream sometimes that I was playing Starcraft games, and I'd wake up and realize I that I couldn't play still. For those of you who don't know, I have some sort of hand issue. Lots of pain, 3 separate doctors didn't know what it was. Two were specialists in hand pain. Anyway I guess my point here, is I miss it. I miss Starcraft and above all I miss being an active part in a community. And sure, a lot of it is my fault, I could have played other games more, streamed random things like other casters. Even commentated other Starcraft games more and gone in that direction. Regardless this is how things ended up. Today however I'd like to make it official though. Or at least as official as I can..
Starting soon, I'll be trying to come back to being a professional Starcraft 2 player. I finally found a doctor who knew what the problem in my hands was. His diagnosis is that some major symptoms should go away within 2 weeks, and I should be back to normal in 3-6 months. This doctor told me this 2 weeks ago today. I wanted to wait a little while and see how things were going before I made any announcement or brought this up. However typing this, no longer hurts like it used to. Some things are improving rapidly. Plenty of others are going much slower, mouse clicking is still painful for instance. However he is very confident that I'll be back up to speed fairly soon.
This was absolutely amazing news to me. I shared it with some close friends and I've really been wanting to share it with all of you. I have so many ideas and things I want to do when my hands won't cause me a ton of pain. I don't want this post to go on too long however. So I'll just kind of surprise you with my ideas as I do them hopefully. I'll be streaming for around an hour and a half after this, to answer questions and play some SC2 with you guys. As that's what I really love doing.
I don't know when I'll be able to stream constantly and consistently while playing Starcraft. However I hope it will be fairly soon, and in the mean time, I want to be involved with you guys. I just want to do interesting things that I've thought I'd never be able to do again. To give you one idea, that I want to do, would be a day of just analyzing and helping other people with their games. I realize I'm not that great anymore, and it'll take a lot of work. But I have high hopes, and motivation. I'll be hopefully taking some time off school again in six weeks or so, when this semester ends to continue doing more with you. So.. lets get streaming, and feel free to come ask me w/e questions and I'll answer while playing. I'll also answer any questions in the thread, whenever I have some time.
P.S. The hand problem was a combination of Trigger finger, carpal tunnel and cubital tunnel. Also <3 As the title suggests, hello again. It's probably been a while since we've talked. Or in this case, since I've typed to you.I've really missed interacting with a scene as passionate about SC as you guys. I still try and be a part of it, but I've felt like a fake for a while now. Someone who calls himself a pro gamer, yet plays no games. Someone with a Liquid tag, who doesn't play in clan wars, win tournaments or stream a ton feels wrong to me. Even the fact that I never fully retired like Haypro or Jinro has felt different. I never quite followed along in retiring fully, and making a big announcement that I'm leaving, I just kind of slowly backed away and watched...I moved on with my life. I'm a chemistry student now, for a university. FGCU to be exact. I play some chess, because it has always felt similiar in some way to SC. A balanced, 1 on 1 competition of the minds. And as always I've read TL and Reddit every day following up on the major stories, and games of Starcraft. I've watched WCS at its worst and its best as have probably most of you. Sometimes people still recognize me at school, or when I'm eating out or whatever around town. But I've moved on, changed. Just as surely as all of you have from when I was last here as an active player.I used to dream sometimes that I was playing Starcraft games, and I'd wake up and realize I that I couldn't play still. For those of you who don't know, I have some sort of hand issue. Lots of pain, 3 separate doctors didn't know what it was. Two were specialists in hand pain. Anyway I guess my point here, is I miss it. I miss Starcraft and above all I miss being an active part in a community. And sure, a lot of it is my fault, I could have played other games more, streamed random things like other casters. Even commentated other Starcraft games more and gone in that direction. Regardless this is how things ended up. Today however I'd like to make it official though. Or at least as official as I can..Starting soon, I'll be trying to come back to being a professional Starcraft 2 player. I finally found a doctor who knew what the problem in my hands was. His diagnosis is that some major symptoms should go away within 2 weeks, and I should be back to normal in 3-6 months. This doctor told me this 2 weeks ago today. I wanted to wait a little while and see how things were going before I made any announcement or brought this up. However typing this, no longer hurts like it used to. Some things are improving rapidly. Plenty of others are going much slower, mouse clicking is still painful for instance. However he is very confident that I'll be back up to speed fairly soon.This was absolutely amazing news to me. I shared it with some close friends and I've really been wanting to share it with all of you. I have so many ideas and things I want to do when my hands won't cause me a ton of pain. I don't want this post to go on too long however. So I'll just kind of surprise you with my ideas as I do them hopefully. I'll be streaming for around an hour and a half after this, to answer questions and play some SC2 with you guys. As that's what I really love doing.I don't know when I'll be able to stream constantly and consistently while playing Starcraft. However I hope it will be fairly soon, and in the mean time, I want to be involved with you guys. I just want to do interesting things that I've thought I'd never be able to do again. To give you one idea, that I want to do, would be a day of just analyzing and helping other people with their games. I realize I'm not that great anymore, and it'll take a lot of work. But I have high hopes, and motivation. I'll be hopefully taking some time off school again in six weeks or so, when this semester ends to continue doing more with you. So.. lets get streaming, and feel free to come ask me w/e questions and I'll answer while playing. I'll also answer any questions in the thread, whenever I have some time.P.S. The hand problem was a combination of Trigger finger, carpal tunnel and cubital tunnel. Also <3
Team Liquid Underneath it all they were really quite nice. They just got screwed up. Mostly by stuff that wasn't entirely their fault.With all the chaos surrounding the election results, other questions have been ignored. How was Thomas able to stem the tide of energized Democrats to stay competitive in a district that voted for the Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ralph Northam the same day and has been pretty evenly split between parties in other recent elections?
It is no secret that the Virginia governor’s race was viewed as a test of voter sentiment toward the president and a Trump-style governor’s campaign. Many media outlets interpreted Republican candidate Ed Gillespie’s loss, and the party’s near-loss of control in the House, to be a result of anti-Trump sentiment. But other Republicans like Steve Bannon painted his loss as a result of not embracing Trump’s messaging enough.
I spoke with Thomas to find out his strategy for campaigning as a conservative in a purple district, why non-incumbent Republicans struggled across the board, and how he addressed concerns about the president on the campaign trail. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Taylor Hosking: What would you say is different about running as a conservative in northern Virginia bordering a district that typically votes Democratic in House races?
Bob Thomas: I think one of the advantages I had is that I’m actually elected now on the Stafford County Board of Supervisors. I’m completing my sixth year. So I’ve built a reputation for working across the aisle and being open to all constituents not just the ones who donate to me or agree with everything I do. For instance, the supervisor who used to be in my seat before me was a Democrat and I’ve often called him for advice. He’s been helping me move things along behind the scenes. If you look at the numbers, we don’t have hard data yet, but Governor Northam won the district by over three points which means there were probably some people who voted blue on the top of the ticket and then crossed over and maybe saw something in me that my predecessor had. The outgoing speaker of the House of Delegates was in the seat previous to me and he was, in the district anyway, known for having Democrat friends and trying to do what’s best for everybody. I’ve always tried to do the same thing and I think that might just have been enough to help us out.
Hosking: What did you make of how close your race became and the surprising number of flipped seats in the state? Did you get any sense on the campaign trail that Democratic voters were feeling particularly energized?
Thomas: To be quite honest with you it wasn’t until election day. As an elected official I usually stand at the polls and greet voters whether I’m on the ballot or not for the past six or seven years. Having done that you kind of get a feel for who the normal voters are and who the ones are that only vote for presidential elections. On election day I was seeing a lot of people that I don’t normally see. It was a brilliant turnout strategy from the Democrats all across the state. They found everybody who only normally votes presidential and they had their reasons to go to them and beg them to come to the polls. Brilliantly enough, that’s exactly what happened. Going into election night no pollster would’ve gotten that right because those are people that would not be considered likely voters.Ready to fight back? Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week.
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At The Washington Monthly, Ed Kilgore makes the case that Mitt Romney’s latest slogan—“Obama Isn’t Working”—is a racial dogwhistle: Ad Policy
Many regular folks seeing or hearing this slogan, personalized as it is to the president, are most likely to take it very literally: Barack Obama could fix the economy, but is too lazy to try. People in politics who blow dog whistles invariably deny it and usually express great umbrage at the very suggestion they don’t mean exactly what they are saying and nothing more. But in this case, it’s the most obvious meaning that is objectionable, and it’s not reasonable to expect everyone to understand the slogan is really just a gesture of appreciation for the artistry of Margaret Thatcher’s wordsmiths, or of some sort of innocent, nostalgic anglophilia.
This is the first time I’ve heard the slogan, and I’m inclined to agree; taken literally, “Obama isn’t working” means that he’s lazy. In fact, as Kilgore points out, the meaning becomes even more clear when you consider that the Romney campaign constantly attacks Obama for taking vacations and playing golf. I imagine that I’ll get flak for this, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable at all to say that this is a clear attempt to evoke the stereotype of lazy, shiftless blacks.
This is frustrating for two reasons. First, racial dogwhistles are the lowest form of political combat. It’s shameful and dishonorable to play on racial fears for the sake of electoral gain, and that’s true on both sides.
Second, if true, it’s indicative of a broader attempt by the Romney campaign to play “I’m rubber, you’re glue” with the president. Romney constantly attacks Obama for “dividing” the country with “class warfare,” while at the same time, using a slogan that stirs ancient resentments. I’m not one for campaign outrage—it’s boring and tiresome—but this, I think, is genuinely problematic.Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban revealed his potential political aspirations in an in-depth interview with TMZ’s Harvey Levin on Fox News’ “Objectified.”
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“I think we are going into a time where you need somebody who can connect to people and relate to people and I think I qualify on each of those now whether or not I will do it, it’s a big decision,” Cuban told Levin.
The TMZ founder said he thinks Cuban will throw his hat into the 2020 presidential race.
“I think Mark Cuban connects and fires on all cylinders with the common man and woman,” Levin told FOX Business’ Melissa Francis. “Mark Cuban understands people.”
Cuban made his fortune through the sale of the successful startup Broadcast.com in the 1990s. In 2000, the entrepreneur introduced himself to the National Basketball Association by purchasing the Dallas Mavericks franchise for $285 million from H. Ross Perot Jr.
“This guy dominated the computer business. He dominated sports. I mean he completely changed the NBA and understood fans like no other owner did. So I gotta tell you, I think Mark Cuban is a triple threat in a presidential election,” Levin said.
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Levin also revealed which political party the Mavericks owner would choose.
“He tells me which party he is going to run, if he runs, I know and that’s a big deal because you think about it, is he going to challenge Donald Trump in the primaries or is he going to run against him in the general. He answers it,” he said.
When pressed by Levin that the billionaire sounded more like a presidential candidate than an NBA owner, Cuban said, he is simply “a concerned American citizen.”
“I wouldn’t run unless I have solutions. If I have solutions then I have something to offer,” Cuban said.
“Objectified” is a 10-episode series that airs on Sunday nights on the Fox News Channel.A southern-white female rhino and her calf roam the ol-Pejeta conservancy in 2015 in Kenya. (Photo: Tony Karumba, AFP/Getty Images)
(NEWSER) — A resident at the San Diego Zoo came within inches of becoming a poaching victim instead of part of a conservation program. Zoo authorities say that after southern white rhino Wallis came to the zoo from South Africa in November 2015, evidence including a wound near her heart that wouldn't heal led them to believe the 5-year-old female might have been shot at some point, the Los Angeles Times reports. With the help of an extremely powerful metal detector brought in by the San Diego Fire-Rescue Bomb Squad, the zoo has confirmed that there was metal inside the 3,000-pound animal. Keepers were preparing Wallis for exploratory surgery when they discovered that a bullet fragment had worked its way back to the wound, so they called zoo veterinarian Dr. Jim Oosterhuis over to remove it.
"I reached into the wound with my Leatherman tool, grasped the object, made a quick jerking motion, and out popped the bullet fragment with jagged edges," Oosterhuis says in a zoo press release. "It feels great to know that we finally have found what we believe to be the source of her infection. By having the fragment work itself out, it eliminated the need for surgery." He believes poachers were aiming for a heart or lung shot, but "she turned toward them and the shot came in at a shallow angle and bounced off a rib." Wallis was brought to the zoo as part of a program to bring the northern white rhino back from the edge of extinction. Researchers hope Wallis and other southern whites will be able to carry lab-grown northern white embryos. (This ancient "Siberian unicorn" rhino species may have coexisted with humans.)
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Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2iApOjRMore woes for newly homeless Ruth Madoff, who was last reported to be staying with a friend on Long Island.
Trustee Irving Picard's going after that last $2.5 million.
Patrick Fitzgerald, Wall Street Journal: The court-appointed official in charge of recovering money for Bernard Madoff's investors is suing Ruth Madoff for more than $44 million, claiming she lived a "life of splendor" on the gains from the fraud perpetrated by her husband.
Irving Picard, the court-appointed trustee, Wednesday sued Ruth Madoff, 68 years old, for at least $44.8 million, saying she "knew or should have known" that vast sums of money she received from her husband's investment firm -- Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, or BLMIS, -- rightly belonged to the firm and to her husband's customers.
"For decades, Mrs. Madoff lived a life of splendor using the money of BLMIS's customers," Mr. Picard said in a lawsuit filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. "Regardless of whether or not Mrs. Madoff knew of the fraud her husband perpetrated at BLMIS... she received tens of millions of dollars from BLMIS for which BLMIS received no corresponding benefit or value and to which Mrs. Madoff had no good faith basis to believe she was entitled."
Read the whole thing >Nitrates in water can harm newborn babies and trigger the rapid growth of algae in rivers, killing fish and choking plants. As a result, nitrates are removed from water supplies...but the amount of nitrates in the River Thames has trebled since the 1930s.
Scientists wanted to know why - so a team from the universities of Durham, Cranfield and Bristol has been studying how nitrates move through the land to end up in rivers, springs and other sources of water. To do this, they used a paper trail of archives containing records of water quality dating back 140 years.
Planet Earth podcast presenter Sue Nelson met two of the team members on the bank of the Thames in Central London - Dr Nicholas Howden, a senior lecturer in water at the University of Bristol and Tim Burt, Professor of Geography and Dean for Environmental Sustainability at Durham University. Sue began by asking Nicholas where the nitrates in the Thames have come from...
Nicholas - A proportion of the nitrate in the Thames has come from sewage effluent discharges. That has largely been controlled in the last 20, 30 years, there have been lots of new treatment processes put in place. A lot of that comes from point source discharges, so we can see them. We know where they are, we know who's discharging them and they've been largely cleaned up as much as they can be and regulated. The component that we've been mostly interested in, is looking at the diffuse sources - so those are the sources that are widely distributed throughout the Thames catchment. That's one of the largest catchments in the UK, and it's some 10,000 square kilometres. So it's a very big area and that predominantly is coming from our agricultural activity to grow food, so ploughing, fertilizing, use of animals and the natural processes of biological fixation and also, some atmospheric deposition as well. So, it's a combination of factors that have come from our use and our more and more intense use of the river catchment from which all of this water drains to then end up in the Thames.
Sue - How does ploughing release more nitrates into the soil, Tim?
Tim - Well ploughing mineralises organic matter, it basically aerates the soil and you get organic matter being oxidised and that works through to first of all, ammonium salts and then though to nitrates. So it's really the aeration of the soil. It's what, in a sense, ploughing is actually about turning organic matter into nutrients which can then grow crops.
Sue - So does this mean then that during World War II, for example, when everybody was being encouraged to 'Dig for Victory', did you notice an accompanying spike of nitrate levels?
Tim - Yes, we did. In fact, in the first war as well, but the second world war in particular. There wasn't much use of fertiliser other than animal manures then, but the mere fact of ploughing and widespread ploughing, a huge increase in the area of land under the plough and that does show through. It showed through to an extent straight away, but it also showed through in a big delayed response which came several decades after the war. But yes, you can definitely see a link between 'Food for Victory' and all those sorts of campaigns and the water quality in the Thames decades later.
Sue - I know that, Nicholas, one of the important things here is about when you saw the link as well. It took time to get those nitrates from the surrounding land into the River Thames.
Nicholas - Yes, that's right. So what we've tried to do is to estimate what the inputs were in any particular year and then we've used this long record of what was going on in the river to try and match the inputs to the outputs using a series of stores. So in this case, two stores - one which is run off, so that's the water that hits the land and it makes its way to the river in that year. Then there's a second store which is a ground water pathway and so the water that falls in any particular year takes nitrate with it and then it ends up in the river some time later.
In producing our model, we allowed that delay time to vary up to a number of decades from zero to about 50 years or even more. What we found was, by using the estimated pattern of inputs that we'd come up by considering what fertilizers were used, how much ploughing there was, how many animals there were in any year, we were able to match that input to what we actually observed in the river, By doing that, we can estimate what these different delay times are and how long it takes for something we do in, say, 1940 to reach |
and therefore, they are above the law.
When the Swedish video-on-demand service Voddler sat up on its pretend high-horse-in-shining-armor and proclaimed its love for the copyright monopoly and how important it was to all of civilization, while at the same time building its entire service on GPL code and thereby committing a huge copyright monopoly violation themselves, there’s a pattern here. The rights, monopolies, and privileges don’t matter in the slightest; what matters is who holds them.
This is the emergence of a two-tier justice system, where some rules apply to one set of people (“high justice”), and other rules apply to the rest of people (“low justice”). But a two-tier justice system is not a justice system at all; it is an oppression system.
This game is a dangerous one to play for the political elite. When ordinary people are told that there aren’t police resources to investigate who raped them, who stole their car, and who broke into their home, and get the investigations closed in 15 minutes (which was the case with a rape investigation recently) – but there are police resources to conduct raids against fan-made creations from the common folk, just because the wealthiest feel like it (there’s not even a credible threat to base the raid on) — that’s a recipe for more than growing discontent. That’s a recipe for an uprising, in one form or another. Which form such an uprising takes will depend entirely on how bad the corruption has fested.
The crew from undertexter.se has a statement out as of this morning:
Undertexter.se has had a police raid this morning (July 9) and servers and computers have been seized, and therefore, the site is down. We who work on the site don’t consider an interpretation of dialog to be something illegal, especially not when sharing it for free. Henrik Pontén [the copyright industry’s primary henchman in Sweden], who is behind the raid, disagrees. Sorry Hollywood, this was the totally wrong card to play. We will never surrender. […] We must do everything in our power to stop these anti-pirates. […]
The Swedish Pirate Party has published a press statement:
“The copyright industry is resorting to increasingly desperate measures to defend an obsolete copyright monopoly”, says Anna Troberg, leader of the Swedish Pirate Party. “Today’s monopoly scuttles and inhibits creativity in a way that is completely unreasonable. The raid against undertexter.se is yet another piece of evidence that the time has come to reform the copyright monopoly from the ground up.”
(The subtitled frame illustrating the story is from the movie TPB AFK by Simon Klose.)
See also Marcus Fridholm, Gustav Nipe, Erik Hultin, Henrik Alexandersson, Magnihasa (all in Swedish).
UPDATE; In the Facebook thread, Adam Kumiszcza tips about a similar Polish case where the charges were dropped and the expert opinion was that translating from hearing and sharing for free is not infringing the copyright monopoly. This is relevant as any EU court sets precedent all over the EU.Good news, everyone: The Memepocalypse has finally happened. All of modern human culture is fully saturated with pictures of goofy dogs, jokes about Sean Bean, and the Internet’s entire supply of Impact font. Now, it’s time to look to the entertainments and amusements of humanity’s past to see if there’s some way we can shove a few Arnold Schwarzenegger quotes in there, too.
The pinball experts at British game room retailer Liberty Games have made a strong start in that direction by converting a 1975 Segasa “Baby Doll” pinball table into “Meme Ball,” a repository for all of human culture’s hopes and dreams and grumpy faced cats. Using 3D printers, a Raspberry Pi computer, and a lot of hard work, Liberty Games has created the only pinball machine in the world that features a “Winter is coming” reference and Rickrolls you when you lose a ball. The overall impression given by the fully functional table is a chaotic grab bag of random jokes and visual elements, all hurled at the viewer’s eyes in a desperate bid for recognition and attention—in other words, a perfect embodiment of “meme culture.” It’s a first step into converting the relics of the past into something relatable to modern eyes, creating a glorious future where we can all haz cheeseburger.
AdvertisementAfter a busy and eventful window for The Bluebirds, we take a closer look at each of their summer signings.
After yet another eventful transfer deadline day for Championship clubs up and down the country, the time of last-minute deals, over-inflated fees, and over-talkative footballing agents has finally come to an end.
After a relatively busy window for Cardiff City, we take a look at who exactly The Bluebirds have brought in this summer, and how exactly we think they’re going to fare at the former Premier League club.
Lex Immers – Undisclosed – Grade A+
A name that is already very familiar to Cardiff City fans, 30-year-old Lex Immers has joined the club from Feyenoord for an undisclosed fee after impressing in his loan spell in Wales at the tail end of last season.
Having played for both ADO Den Haag and Feyenoord in his native Holland, Immers is a veteran attacking player, capable of playing both up front as a lone striker and in behind in a more traditional number 10 role.
Scoring 68 goals in his 286 league appearances in Holland – including 31 in his 100 league appearance for former club Feyenoord – Immers certainly possesses an eye for goal, as well as the ability to trouble central defenders with his sheer physicality.
Having also already proved that he possesses the necessary ability to both play and score in England – as evidenced by his five goals and one assist in his 15 appearances for Cardiff on loan last season – bringing in Immers on a permanent deal certainly looks like a very smart piece of business indeed.
Kenneth Zohore – Undisclosed – Grade B+
Another talented attacking player, but this time one whose best years certainly appear to be ahead of him. 22-year-old Kenneth Zohore is a player of whom very big things are expected.
One of the youngest players ever to make an appearance in the Champions League – featuring against Barcelona at just 16 years old whilst playing for former club FC Copenhagen – Zohore has previously had trials with both Chelsea and Italian giants Inter Milan.
A tall and powerful striker – standing at almost four inches above six foot – there is no doubt whatsoever as to whether or not the young Dane will be able to cope with the physicality of the Championship.
There is however a slight doubt as to whether or not Zohore will be able to put the ball in the back of the net as often as is desired. Having also joined Cardiff for the latter half of last season on loan, the tall striker managed only to score twice in his twelve appearances for The Bluebirds.
Despite these doubts, many fans certainly still believe that Zohore will manage to find his feet at the Welsh club, and use his time in England to finally fulfil some of the vast potential he demonstrated as a youngster.
Frederic Gounongbe – Undisclosed – Grade B+
Yet another striker who has joined The Bluebirds this window, and another striker of whom big things were expected in his earlier years.
Gounongbe attracted attention across Europe after scoring 35 goals in 71 games for Woluwe-Zaventem in Belgium, leading to the six-foot three-inch striker being scouted by a number of top European sides.
After moving to Zulte Waregem in the summer of 2012 however, Gounongbe failed to impress, and was quickly loaned back out to RWDM Brussels in the Belgium second division.
After making the move permanent the following year, before moving to Westerlo just a year later, Gounongbe found scoring form, bagging an impressive 33 goals in only 63 appearances across three seasons.
Another striker who may take time to adjust to the rigours of the Championship, but also a player who has proved he is more than capable of finding the back of the net.
Jazz Richards – Swap deal – Grade B-
A versatile right back, capable of playing both in midfield as well as on the opposing flank, Jazz Richards will provide invaluable cover to Cardiff, as well as offering manager Paul Trollope a selection headache when it comes to the first team.
Signed from Championship rivals Fulham – where he made 26 appearances in all competitions last season, Richards also has experience playing in the Premier League, having broken through at Swansea when still only 20.
Hardly a blockbuster name but still a very shrewd signing, and one that may just prove its worth by the end of the season.
Emyr Huws – Undisclosed – Grade B
A graduate of Manchester City’s academy, and stand-out performer in last year’s Championship campaign, Emyr Huws is a talented young midfielder who still has a lot of time ahead of him.
Due to turn 23 at the end of September, the young central midfielder excelled last season whilst on loan at Huddersfield town – scoring five goals and assisting a further three in his 30 league appearances.
Signed for an undisclosed fee from parent club Wigan, Huws has also already been capped seven times at senior level for Wales, scoring once in the process.
A talented all-round midfielder, with an eye for the spectacular – as evidenced by his two stunning 35-yard strikes whilst on loan at Birmingham in 2014 – Huws is certainly a talented enough player to really shine in the Bluebirds midfield this season.
Joe Bennett – Free transfer – Grade C-
Joe Bennet is yet another former Premier League player, capable of playing at both full-back positions, although admittedly more comfortable on the left side of a defence.
A graduate of Middlesbrough’s academy, and going on to make 92 appearances for the team between 2008 and 2012, Bennett was signed by Aston Villa in 2012 – making 29 appearances for The Villans in his debut season.
Ever since, however, Bennett has struggled for game time, going on a number of loan moves to the lower leagues, and only ever really breaking into the first team of Brighton and Hove Albion in 2014-2015.
Despite possessing experience in abundance – and at the highest level to boot – having made only five appearances last season in all competitions may just have robbed Bennett of some of his match sharpness, and overall ability.
If he is able to recapture his fitness, and be given football on a regular basis, then his ability and experience will no doubt shine through. If not however, Bennett may just be looking for a new club again in 12 months’ time.
Rickie Lambert – Undisclosed – Grade B
Last but not least, we have journeyman striker Rickie Lambert, who has joined The Bluebirds for an undisclosed fee from Premier League outfit West Bromwich Albion.
A name already familiar to footballing fans all around the country, Lambert has certainly proved his goalscoring credentials across his lengthy career in English football, having scored an immense 237 league goals across his 18-year senior career.
Despite his stellar record and Premier League experience, however, Lambert is most certainly heading into the twilight years of his lengthy career, with the Kirkby-born forward turning 35 in February of next year.
SEE ALSO: Five Manchester United squad players who might be crucial this season
With the club having already signed a number of other strikers this window, many fans were hoping that a young, promising forward may also be brought in who could learn from the senior players and really go on to have a long and successful playing career whilst playing for The Bluebirds.
Whilst Lambert may still prove many of his doubters wrong, and score the goals that might just propel Cardiff back into the big leagues of British football, the forward will certainly have a lot of proving himself to do before he is once again considered one of the better goalscorers to grace this country's second tier.Today at Idomeni large numbers of Muslims rushed and tore down much of the fence at the border between Greece and Macedonia. some reports say it was inspired by German far left extremists.
The above video is an RT video from early this morning. It has been put through a voice leveler as the original video seemed to be very weak in the audio where the Muslims are screaming "Allah Hu akbar" etc. The Greek side of it was fine but the audio mysteriously dropped to very low where the Muslims are shouting. So a LiveLeaker was kind enough to level all the audio so you can hear the motivating phrases of the Muslims attacking the Macedonian border guards with large stones and tearing down the fence.
Greece has condemned the Macedonians for trying to protect their border.
Dozens of migrants and refugees were wounded on Sunday when Macedonian police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at crowds on the Greek side of the border, aid workers said, an act Athens called "dangerous and deplorable". More than 10,000 migrants and refugees have been stranded at the Greek border outpost of Idomeni since February after a cascade of border shutdowns across the Balkans closed off their route to central and western Europe.
Here is a German article which speaks to the organization using leaflets to encourage this attack today. (Needs machine translation for now)
Some of the video below is in English but mostly Greek or Macedonian. The clear threat, that 10,000 people cannot be controlled so send busses to take them where they want to go, that is in English.
The video also shows what may be the leaflets referred to in the German article organizing today's attack. It also shows tools for dismantling the border fence.
The Daily Mail is covering the story here.
Police fired tear gas at migrants as they tried to break through a border fence from Greece into Macedonia in the latest violence to hit the migrant crisis, leaving 260 people injured. The incident took place near the Idomeni border crossing in northern Greece, a flashpoint where more than 11,200 people have been stranded after Balkan states closed off the migrant route in mid-February. A Greek police source said hundreds of migrants gathered to demand the opening of the frontier and tried to force the fence, prompting Macedonian police to fire tear gas.
And Greek police have also been trying to control groups of Greeks opposed to the invasion by huge numbers of mostly fighting age Muslim men, from attacking them at the ports.Now anyone can easily explore the decline in local groundwater levels that has deflated the earth beneath the Houston area, at places plunging it into Galveston Bay.
The U.S. Geological Survey on Wednesday debuted a web portal displaying 40 years worth of Houston-area data on subsidence, or sinkage of the ground, which has become a major factor guiding the development of Houston in recent decades.
RELATED: $3 billion water project aims to stem subsidence, groundwater depletion
The data, covering the years 1977 to 2016, shows the substantial recovery of groundwater levels since governmental action was taken to limit their decline. Areas near the Houston Ship Channel have seen the aquifer climb to about 100 feet below sea level in 2016, up from nearly 300 feet below in 1977.
The web portal also charts soil compaction. The most drastic example, around Interstate 10 near Jersey Village, has logged 3.5 feet of compaction since 1977, causing the ground to sink.
"The water-level and compaction data provided by the USGS is absolutely critical for water managers and planners to make informed resource management decisions throughout the region," said Mike Turco, general manager of the Harris Galveston and Fort Bend subsidence districts.
SUBSIDENCE: For years, the Houston area has been losing ground
Each year, USGS measures groundwater levels in more than 700 wells in the 11-county Houston area. That data is used to target projects and initiatives that for decades have helped the region make tremendous reductions in daily groundwater pumpage, or groundwater withdrawals.
Now that data is publicly accessible.
"This is the first time that groundwater and subsidence data have been put together to illustrate the story of what is happening to our land and water resources in the region," said Sachin Shah, USGS chief of Gulf Coast hydrologic studies and research. "The ability to explore, visualize and compare how groundwater levels are changing over time in an easily accessible and uniform format is a tool that we hope will effectively communicate this information to area cooperators, stakeholders and the public."FSF Chapter 13 part 2
"So, that's his game!"
Jester Karture immediately realized the bowman's intention and destroyed the water tower beneath him with a stamp of his foot. Some power allowed him to freely control the water that gushed out and made it leap at the oncoming arrow.
There was a watery explosion. Droplets scattered like fireworks under the city lights. The arrow missed by a fraction, scraping off part of the hospital roof and then vanishing into the sky.
"Good grief. What's wrong, police? I'll be in trouble if you don't work harder."
Jester flashed a sarcastic grin and sighed as he cheered on the police force he had nearly destroyed with his own hands a few days earlier.
"Kuruoka Tsubaki will be safe for now if I make her one of my kind The problem is, if I do that, Assassin won't hesitate to kill her. That wouldn't be any fun."
When Jester was done muttering to himself, he realized a vital fact and shook his head.
"No, with her strength, the girl's body might not be able to stand it. She'd die before she changed "
X X
" Some species of demon?"
Alkeides, atop Kerberos' back, turned his attention to the being that had erected the thick shield of water. Seeing a man shrouded in the aura of neither a Heroic nor a Divine Spirit, he warily descended to the ground.
"Kill all who stand in your way."
Kerberos, the guard dog of Hades he had once captured, summoned through the Noble Phantasm King's Order. Alkeides issued instructions to the gargantuan beast not of this world and carefully surveyed his "enemy" on the roof of the hospital. He readied his bow to seriously destroy the building himself.
His presence is not that of a Servant. It's not that of the woman who calls herself a goddess, either. He's most likely some beast birthed by the planet a man-shaped Nemean lion.
Remembering the lion to which the hide that covered his own face had belonged, Alkeides further heightened his vigilance. He was wondering if he should materialize anything else with King's Order when a light impact ran across his back. Of course, it only felt light to Alkeides properly speaking, the impact had enough force to pierce through the body of an armored car.
The thing that the Nemean lion's skin deflected was a spear hurled by one one of the police officers.
" Damn it Shrugging it off's not fair This again?! Why? Why the hell? Are you another one of those Dead Apostles or whatever, you bastard?!"
As if in answer to the officer's scream, the rest of the nearby force poured out what seemed to be ranged Noble Phantasms one after another.
" Dull."
Alkeides swatted them aside with his bow. The shot he fired through the gaps between them produced another crater in the road.
What is Kerberos doing?
Despite the fact that he had just given the order to kill, the police force's numbers showed no sign of decreasing. In fact, they seemed to be growing.
" What?"
Alkeides realized that there were indeed more police officers than there had been. Moreover, Kerberos was indeed doing as Alkeides had ordered it. There were several human bodies in each of its three mouths. More than a dozen officers were pinned beneath its feet. And yet, they still resisted.
It appeared that the officers had also noticed something unusual about the scene.
"H-hey "
" Who are those guys getting eaten?"
Alkeides heard the confused murmurs and furrowed his brows. Then
Another dozen or so officers appeared before his eyes and immediately leapt at Kerberos. They did not appear to have any weapons that could be Noble Phantasms. They rushed to challenge Kerberos with nothing but pistols and batons. It was almost as if they wanted to be the first to be eaten.
"Absurd "
There's nothing absurd about it."
Alkeides turned at a voice from behind him. There stood a perfectly ordinary police officer, watching countless identical authors be devoured. He spoke with a grin heavy with madness.
"I am originally a criminal who claimed to come from Hell, a murderous fiend whose sins are beyond redemption.
"Being continually gnawed on by the hound of Hades suits me perfectly."
The officer squared off against Alkeides as he spoke. Armed with nothing but an ordinary pistol and baton, against a fiend more vicious than Kerberos.
"I doubt it, but, seeing as you're accompanied by that devil-dog of the underworld, I don't suppose that Hades himself can have manifested?"
In an instant, dark fury shrouded Alkeides. He addressed the officer in a voice thick with hate.
"Weakling No matter how much mightier than yourself I appear, do not group me with those fools, the gods. If you commit the same mistake again, your reward shall be more profound than death."
"I hoped to sound you out," the officer replied with a fearless grin. "I apologize if I have committed an indiscretion. I see. It appears that you are indeed no god. If you were a relation of a god, I might have been able to force cause and effect together and become you "
"?"
"But it seems that I can't. Still I've grasped your essence. Factoring in Kerberos and your hatred of the gods, I can make a rough guess at your identity. A great hero who has denied the gods, although I suspect their blood once ran in your veins."
It seemed that the officer had, by some means, probed into Alkeides Saint Graph. And despite knowing Alkeides' strength, the thing in the form of a police officer still leapt at him, weapons ready.
"Then I shall treat you as a human and kill you as a human!"
X X
"It's not an illusion. What is it? Solid bodies are actually appearing and being eaten by Kerberos."
Watching the scene unfolding on the street below, Jester furrowed his brows.
The mystery police officers had appeared just when he was wondering whether to mount a serious counter attack or to abduct Tsubaki and make his escape. At first, they had made for Kerberos, identical officers appearing one after another and keeping Kerberos' claws and mouths in a state of saturation. Now they were attack the unnatural bowman as well, swelling their numbers as they continued the fight.
"Is there a Heroic Spirit like that? What country's hero could it be?"
X X
What am I looking at?
John Wingard, member of Clan Calatin, had only just obtained his new prosthetic hand. What he saw was a police officer who looked identical to him.
But that officer wasn't one of his comrades. He was appearing around the bowman, being struck down, disappearing, and then appearing again unscathed and unnoticed. No matter how many times his body was twisted apart or pierced with arrows, the same officer continued to challenge the Heroic Spirit.
Watching him, John returned to his senses.
What am I spacing out for? I've got to hurry and back him
He was about to run in when someone laid a hand on his shoulder and stopped him. When he turned to look, he found a man with the same face as the officer who was fighting the bowman.
"That's my 'prey'; hands off. Fall back to somewhere safe."
"B-but "
"Your job is protecting Kuruoka Tsubaki. Don't waste my Master's resolve."
Hearing that, John understood. This man was that young man called Flat's Servant. John did not know what kind of being he was, but perhaps he should leave this place to him.
Just as John and the other officers were starting to think that, the bowman opening his mouth.
"Weakling tell me your name."
At that, the officer took a step back and replied with a broad grin.
"I have no name."
Before they knew it, there were two of the officer. Both spoke with the same voice.
"Great hero, being who lives on in myths of the Age of the Gods, changing your form and refining you great deeds with the ages, I, who am but an insignificant criminal, have but one thing I can say to you."
The officers multiplied again. Four of them now declared to the bowman from four sides.
"I suppose you have fitting reasons for your resolve However, if you say that you will deny the power of the gods with it! If you try to deny and abandon all the gods' deeds, evil and good alike!"
The eight "somethings" had taken a variety of forms besides police officers. Their shouts echoed on the city street.
" However mighty you are, you are now, as you wished, a 'human.'"
Sixteen bellows addressed the bowman's soul.
"Hero who has fallen to become a rogue, to become human! No matter how great a hero you are! Even if you have the power to destroy the world!"
Just when it seemed that thirty-two fearless grins ringed in the bowman all the figures vanished, as if they had been absorbed back into the first one.
"As long as your essence is human you will fall victim to a mere powerless 'killer.'"
Then, before the eyes of the police and the reddish-brown bowman the nameless Berserker the murderous fiend Jack the Ripper shouted the name of the Noble Phantasm whose release should lay bare his own essence and end the life of a great hero.
"From Hell!"
Then, in the gap between the hospital and the church, hell on earth was made manifest.
X X
"It can't be It can't be, can it?! Is that what it is?!"
On the roof, Jester's eyes sparkled as he flashed a pleasantly surprised smile.
"Jack Jack, Jack, Jack! Jack the Ripper!"
Jester had drawn that conclusion from the fact that the Servant had called himself a "killer" and the name of the Noble Phantasm he had shouted.
Looking at the "world" that had just begun to unfold before his eyes, Jester shouted in frustration with an ecstatic grin on his face.
"Oh! Oh! Beautiful Assassin, why aren't you here?! Why aren't you seeing this with me?!"
He almost used a Command Seal in spite of himself, but the desire deep in his guts allowed him to barely hold onto his reason.
"N-no, I can't waste any more Command Seals. No matter what, I have to save two to make her fall into despair and finally commit double suicide with me "
When he was done moaning in apparently heartfelt regret, he turned defiant and shouted:
"Then I'll burn this scene into my eyes! I'll tell her later!"
He went on to make the praises of Jack the Ripper resound across the hospital roof.
"Oh, Jack! Jack! Jack! The world's most impure thrill seeker! Pure demon raised by human delusions!"
Jester, a hematophage, went on extolling a worn out urban legend, spreading his arms and spinning with supreme delight on his face.
"You scrap of folklore that filled the night with terror despite being a powerless anti-hero! You personification of viciousness spread fear through the world at speeds that even that Wallachian Night can't match! No, show me! Will you crumble pitifully in the face of a true legend, or will you score a blow as the new darkness?
"This is what makes the world so fun! O beautiful Assassin, I dedicate this comical hell to you!"Dubai: Participants who registered in the civic body’s weight loss campaign can now have double the incentive, as they can now win twice the amount of gold for every kilo lost.
“Instead of the previously announced one gram, we will give two grams of gold for each kilogram lost for those who lose five kilograms and above, and three grams of gold for each kilogram for those who lose 10 kilograms and above,” said Eng Hussain Nasser Lootah, Director General of Dubai Municipality.
This means that people who shed five kilograms will now stand to win 10 grams of gold, and 30 grams of gold if 10kg of weight is lost.
However, he pointed out that the minimum weight to lose in order to be eligible for gold remains the same at two kilograms, and the grand prizes for the top three winners is also the same at Dh20,000 worth of gold.
The decision to increase the gold prizes was made after the campaign received an overwhelming response from residents, as nearly 5,000 people registered in the ‘Your Weight in Gold’ initiative in the first three days.
“The new decision is expected to motivate more people to participate and encourage a healthy competition among the participants, hoping to make it the biggest community initiative in terms of effective participation,” said Lootah.
“The enormous interest to participate in the contest shows the high level of public health awareness and education of the citizens and participants in the emirate of Dubai,” he said.
Residents can continue to register on any day before the campaign’s deadline on August 16, and can do so at fives sites across Dubai, including Gate 3 of Zabeel Park, the main gate of Al Khawaneej jogging track, starting point of the jogging track at Mamzar Beach, gate 4 of Safa Park, and the main gate of Al Barsha Park.More turrets, more rockets, more grenades. W and E hits charge turret beam attacks. Passive grants self movement speed near turrets instead of ally/turret health regen.
ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ It’s been quite a while since Heimerdinger got any attention. His “nest of autonomous turrets” fantasy is unique, but when AI-controlled units comprise the bulk of Heimer’s strength, it becomes difficult to get Heimerdinger to a fair spot. On the one hand, Heimer deserves to be competitive against opponents who know the ins and outs of turret behavior. On the other, when turrets are intelligent enough to fight enemies without Heimer’s assistance, they become overly punishing against players (and champions) who lack the ability to out-manipulate their AI.
That brings us to today’s update, which puts Heimerdinger more squarely in the driver’s seat of his turret gameplay. We’ve removed a number of turret “self-preservation” rules, meaning that deploying a turret is much less of a fire-and-forget affair. Rocket and grenade hits are now the primary means by which turrets charge their laser attacks, meaning Heimer needs to play an active role in fights to unleash their full potential. We’ve given power-ups to W and E to ensure Heimerdinger feels good about using the rest of his kit, which means he’ll also have more of an impact in fights where he’s unable to prep his turrets in advance.
Overall, this update gives the Revered Inventor more playmaking potential and fairer interactions with other champions. As always, we’ll be observing his statistical performance closely as his update deploys to live environments. Should any unexpected fluctuations in the trajectory of his aggregate data require further modulation of output variables, we’ll do appropriate science to get him in a stable spot. ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ
Base stats
BASE HEALTH REGEN 11 ⇒ 7
HEALTH REGEN GROWTH 1.75 ⇒ 0.55
new Passive - Hextech Affinity
SPEEDY HEIMER Heimerdinger gains 20% movement speed when within 300 range of allied turrets and turrets he creates
Q - H-28G Evolution Turret
More turrets early. Base damage down, ratio up. Beam attack charges more slowly but is massively accelerated by W and E hits. Turrets are less punishing toward melee enemies.
STACK LIMIT 1/2/2/3/3 ⇒ 3 at all ranks
STACK GENERATION 24/23/22/21/20 seconds ⇒ 20 seconds
BASE DAMAGE 12/18/24/30/36 (+0.15 ability power) ⇒ 6/9/12/15/18 (+0.3 ability power)
BEAM DAMAGE 40/60/80/105/130 ⇒ 40/60/80/100/120 (ability power ratio unchanged)
removed LOW-EFFORT CONTENT Turrets no longer prioritize nearby enemy champions or champions that attack them
removed FAREWELL Targets marked by Heimer will no longer remain marked if he's over 1200 from them.
new BEAM CHARGE ABILITY BONUS Nearby turrets gain 20% charge for each W rocket that hits a champion and 100% charge if E’s grenade hits a champion (same bonuses apply to ult-empowered W and E casts)
BEAM CHARGE TIMER Turrets charge from 0 to 100% in 16 seconds ⇒ 90 seconds
removed BEAM CHARGE ATTACK BONUS Turrets no longer gain 1/2/3/4/5% beam charge for each of their basic attacks
removed PREHEATED Turrets no longer spawn with 70% beam charge
CLARITY The charge bar is now white instead of dark blue
W - Hextech Micro-Rockets
MANA COST 70/80/90/100/110 ⇒ 50/60/70/80/90
COOLDOWN 11 seconds at all ranks ⇒ 11/10/9/8/7 seconds
new BEAM CHARGE Each rocket that hits a champion grants 20% beam charge to all turrets within 1000 range of the damage (max 100% if all five rockets hit)
E - CH-2 Electron Storm Grenade
COOLDOWN 18/16/14/12/10 seconds ⇒ 12 seconds at all ranks
RADIUS 210 ⇒ 250 (center stun zone unchanged)
new BEAM CHARGE If the grenade hits a champion, all turrets within 1000 range of the damage gain 100% beam charge
DISCO Heimerdinger can now lob the grenade onto himself
UPGRADE!!!’d E - CH-3X Lightning Grenade
BASE DAMAGE 150/200/250 ⇒ 150/250/350Perry, Iowa, is a typical small town in the state.
Rows of Victorian homes line streets that lead to grain elevators and factories, nestled between a country highway and a cornfield. Along Second Street, on a sunny summer day, a young family crosses Willis Avenue from the public library and walks past the turn-of-the-century Town Craft building. The rusted First National Bank clock welcomes them to the town’s equivalent of Main Street.
Second Street has mom-and-pop stores like any other central commercial artery in a small town, but they’re not what you’d expect. There’s the El Rey Meat Market and the Panaderia Mexican Bakery. A block away is the Casa de Oro restaurant. And more Spanish-speaking businesses will soon fill empty storefronts nearby, catering to the 35 percent Latino population in this meatpacking town of 8,000.
Perry is among dozens of small towns across the state with a significant Latino population.
Latinos may be just 5.5 percent of the state’s population now, but they’re young and growing. At 22, their median age is 16 years younger than the rest of the state. And as the white population ages out over the next 20 years, Latinos are expected to double in number. In other words, they will be here for a while.
That growth means more voters.
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In 2014, there were 50,000 registered Latino voters in the state, with 20,000 more who could have been registered, according to a League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa analysis. That’s 70,000 potential Latino voters in this election cycle.
These may seem like small numbers, but consider how few Iowans actually caucus. Since 2000, Republican caucuses have averaged 90,000 participants. The 2008 Democratic caucuses saw a record 239,000 participants. Usually, caucus turnout is around 5 to 10 percent of registered voters.
“I’d be surprised if some candidates didn’t purposefully introduce themselves to that constituency,” says David Oman, a longtime figure in the state’s Republican politics. “We have 18 people running. To do well, a very modest plurality is all one needs. We may have a winner with 20 percent.”
It’s fitting then that Oman, who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1998 and was Gov. Terry Branstad’s chief of staff, was just brought on as a top adviser for Jeb Bush in Iowa. He understands that a pitch for the Latino vote here is more than just a passing mention at a campaign stop, or saying that you value the Latino vote, or even answering a town hall question in Spanish.
There’s a well-known rule among Iowa caucus-goers: You have to personally ask for their support. Latinos don’t have a history of caucusing, and the reason is the same: because no one asked them.
Rob Barron thinks he may have found a solution.
HOMEGROWN TALENT
Barron, a Des Moines |
unusual for MPs to have their expenses challenged".
A spokeswoman for the commissioner declined to comment further.
The system for investigating alleged abuses of MPs' expenses was reformed in 2009, after a string of scandals, but cases involving claims made before 2010 still invoke the previous investigatory system.
This means that the independent commissioner investigates the allegations before submitting a report to the standards committee.
The committee, which comprises 10 MPs and three members of the public, then has the final say on whether to accept the commissioner's conclusions.The British comedian, Russel Brand, recently called on his fans to stop voting in order to “starve [politicians] of consent”. Brand believes there is no point in voting for any politician, as they all ultimately behave the same way once they’re in office.
Elsewhere in Europe, another funnyman turned man of the people – Italy’s Beppe Grillo – also argues that politicians are all corrupt and useless. Grillo’s proposed solution, though, is not to ignore elections but rather to vote more ‘non-politicians’ into office. Either way, it’s another rejection of ‘mainstream’ politics.
This feeling of frustration with the current political system is something shared by many of our readers here on Debating Europe. Gratian from Italy, for example, recently sent us in a comment complaining that: “When all parties turn out to be the same once in power, people lose faith in all parties, and ultimately in democracy.”
When we spoke to Uffe Elbaek, a member of the Danish national parliament and former Culture Minister of Denmark, he argued that important issues should not just be reduced to party politics. Rather, he thought they should involve citizens’ movements working alongside the traditional political system to a much greater extent:
There are questions even more important than which party you vote for. If you look beyond party politics […] the bigger picture is the way we think about growth, the way we produce, the way we think about environmental issues… So, get out there, vote for the right people, but do more than just voting. Organise yourself around important questions and create your own platform.
Which is all very nice. But what should these “citizens’ platforms” actually look like? To get a better idea, we spoke to Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, a German MEP and part of the Freie Demokratische Partei, a Liberal Democratic party in the European Parliament. Chatzimarkakis announced in April that he would be quitting German politics at the end of the European Parliament’s current term because of the way Cyprus was treated during its bail-out negotiations. Instead, he has announced his intentions to form a “citizens’ platform” in Greece with the aim of taking part in the European elections in May 2014.
First of all, we asked him how he would respond to Gratian’s comment about the feeling of disillusion with politics:
I totally agree with Gratian. That is why I advocate more referenda and more direct democracy in Europe. In the case of the financial crisis, the crisis of democracy was even worse than normal because there was no influence or control on the European level from the only Europe-wide elected body – the European Parliament. There was some influence from national governments and parliaments, but to be clear: they were often blackmailed, like Greece and Portugal, to do what they were told. So, what we need now is a big step into a more supranational, or rather federal, fiscal union as a first step towards a United States of Europe.
But is a stronger European Parliament really the solution? We also had a comment sent in from Mike, who argued: “The problem with the EU is that it assumes that it is representing Europe. It is not. Many many don’t even know who their MEP is. So why are they going to vote for someone they don’t even know?”
What we haven’t had until now is a public debate in Europe. A public debate is starting to emerge now, but we certainly didn’t have it until the financial crisis broke out. The crisis was the first real transnational and pan-European phenomenon that led to the participation of the entire European demos, and you could see because in a lot of letters to newspaper editors, participation in TV shows by citizens, discussion on social media, etc. Suddenly, there were comments to a much larger extent on European affairs. For example, German pensioners started talking about the pension system in Greece. So, I think a big step has been made, but we haven’t managed as a European Parliament to cope well with this new situation, to pick up the debate and to demonstrate our own role. And, to be honest, I am not surprised because I am disappointed by our own role: the European Parliament has not had any real means of control and oversight during the crisis. There was only one hearing in the European Parliament – just one! – on the policy of the Troika. This was not enough, and it has to change.
Finally, is “anti-politics” just a lazy excuse not to engage with the political process and ignore tough compromises? We asked Chatzimarkakis why he was forming a citizens’ platform. Why not just engage with existing political parties?
First of all, it’s an attempt to respond to some of the discontent I have heard from citizens, including your readers just now. All the questions I have just answered have had to do with the unsatisfied feeling that many people in Europe today possess; the belief that ‘my voice is not being heard’ by governments and politicians. That’s why we have created a platform for citizens in Greece. It will be a list of people that want a stronger and even more integrated Europe. This is our answer to the Euro-crisis and to the public sense of apathy. We want to make clear that it would be a major mistake to stop European integration, and that a push forward should be made. Citizens from all parts of society are invited to take part in this new movement. And it means that ideologies are not our focus. Our focus is realism, and not ideology. This might sound new, but in fact people are fed up with parties or ideologies. They don’t want to choose A, B or C if the outcome is always the same. Some of your questions reflect this idea. I believe that such citizens movement are the way forward.
Vote 2014 Voting is closed in our Debating Europe Vote 2014! The results are now in, so come and see what our readers thought! See results!
IMAGE CREDITS: CC / Flickr – Bill RoehlIt is a place “Where money has been exchanged for the good life,” wrote a medieval poet in an enthusiastic description of Cockaigne, the mythical Land of Plenty, “and he who sleeps the longest, earns the most.” In Cockaigne, the year is an endless succession of holidays: four days each for Easter, Pentecost, St. John’s Day, and Christmas. Anyone who wants to work is locked up in a subterranean cellar. Even uttering the word “work” is a serious offense.
Ironically, medieval people were probably closer to achieving the contented idleness of the Land of Plenty than we are today. Around 1300, the calendar was still packed with holidays and feasts. Harvard historian and economist Juliet Schor has estimated that holidays accounted for no less than one third of the year. In Spain, the share was an astounding five months, and in France, nearly six. Most peasants didn’t work any harder than necessary for their living. “The tempo of life was slow,” Schor writes. “Our ancestors may not have been rich, but they had an abundance of leisure.”
So where has all that time gone? It’s quite simple, really. Time is money. Economic growth can yield either more leisure or more consumption. From 1850 until 1980, we got both, but since then, it is mostly consumption that has increased. Even where real incomes have stayed the same and inequality has exploded, the consumption craze has continued, but on credit. And that’s precisely the main argument that has been brought to bear against the shorter workweek: We can’t afford it. More leisure is a wonderful ideal, but it’s simply too expensive. If we were all to work less, our standard of living would collapse and the welfare state would crumble.
But would it?
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Henry Ford conducted a series of experiments which demonstrated that his factory workers were most productive when they worked a forty hour week. Working an additional twenty hours would pay off for four weeks, but after that, productivity declined.
Others took his experiments a step farther. On December 1, 1930, as the Great Depression was raging, the cornflake magnate W. K. Kellogg decided to introduce a six hour workday at his factory in Battle Creek, Michigan. It was an unmitigated success: Kellogg was able to hire an additional 300 employees and slashed the accident rate by 41%.Moreover, his employees became noticeably more productive.
“This isn’t just a theory with us,” Kellogg proudly told a local newspaper. “The unit cost of production is so lowered that we can afford to pay as much for six hours as we formerly paid for eight.”
For Kellogg, like Ford, a shorter workweek was simply a matter of good business. But for the residents of Battle Creek, it was much more than that. For the first time ever, a local paper reported, they had “real leisure.” Parents had time to spare for their children. They had more time to read, garden, and play sports. Suddenly, churches and community centers were bursting at the seams with citizens who now had time to spend on civic life.
Nearly half a century later, British Prime Minister Edward Heath also discovered the benefits of cornflake capitalism, albeit inadvertently. It was late 1973 and he was at his wits’ end. Inflation was reaching record highs and government expenditures were skyrocketing, and labor unions were dead set against compromise of any kind. As if that weren’t enough, the miners decided to go on strike. With energy consequently in short supply, the Brits turned down their thermostats and donned their heaviest sweaters. December came, and even the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square remained unlit.
Heath decided on a radical course of action. On January 1, 1974, he imposed a three day workweek. Employers were not permitted to use more than three days’ electricity until energy reserves had recovered. Steel magnates predicted that industrial production would plunge 50%. Government ministers feared a catastrophe. When the five day workweek was reinstated in March 1974, officials set about calculating the total extent of production losses. They had trouble believing their eyes: The grand total was 6%.
What Ford, Kellogg, and Heath had all discovered is that productivity and long work hours do not go hand in hand. In the 1980s, Apple employees sported T-shirts that read, “Working 90 hours a week and loving it!” Later, productivity experts calculated that if they had worked half the hours then the world might have enjoyed the groundbreaking Macintosh computer a year earlier.
There are strong indications that in a modern knowledge economy, even forty hours a week is too much. Research suggests that someone who is constantly drawing on their creative abilities can, on average, be productive for no more than six hours a day. It’s no coincidence that the world’s wealthy countries, those with a large creative class and highly educated populations, have also shaved the most time off their workweeks.
Rutger Bregman is the author of Utopia for Realists.How dirty is this? The powers-that-be at the intelligence agencies didn’t follow the proper channels before opening up spying on the Trump campaign! They needed proof that the Trump dossier is authentic but never received that proof. They moved forward with the spying anyway! What dirty rats these Democrats are!
FBI and Justice Department officials have told congressional investigators in recent days that they have not been able to verify or corroborate the substantive allegations of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign outlined in the Trump dossier.
The FBI received the first installment of the dossier in July 2016. It received later installments as they were written at the height of the presidential campaign, which means the bureau has had more than a year to investigate the allegations in the document.
The dossier was financed by the Hillary Clinton campaign and compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele.
take our poll - story continues below Will the media learn anything from their biased reporting of the Jussie Smollett story? Will the media learn anything from their biased reporting of the Jussie Smollett story?
Will the media learn anything from their biased reporting of the Jussie Smollett story? * Yes, they've gotten so much wrong recently that they're bound to be on their best behavior. No, they suffer from a bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Jussie who?
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Email This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Completing this poll grants you access to 100PercentFedUp.com updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to this site's Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. Trending: OSCARS 2019: A Hot Mess Of Leftist Politics and Activism On Display [Video] An August 24, 2017 subpoena from the House Intelligence Committee to the FBI and Justice Department asked for information on the bureau’s efforts to validate the dossier.
Specifically, the subpoena demanded “any documents, if they exist, that memorialize DOJ and/or FBI efforts to corroborate, validate, or evaluate information provided by Mr. Steele and/or sub-sources and/or contained in the ‘Trump Dossier.’”
According to sources familiar with the matter, neither the FBI nor the Justice Department has provided documents in response to that part of the committee’s subpoena.Yesterday we had a quick squiz at the profitability of the Australian mining industry compared to both other domestic industries as well as the world’s largest 40 mining companies. Today, it’s worth a taking a closer look at how mining industry profitability in Australia plays out on the basis of business size as well as […]
Yesterday we had a quick squiz at the profitability of the Australian mining industry compared to both other domestic industries as well as the world’s largest 40 mining companies. Today, it’s worth a taking a closer look at how mining industry profitability in Australia plays out on the basis of business size as well as a look at the proportion of all mining firms that are actually profitable.
The ABS “Australian Industry” report released last month not only provides data on Sales and Service Revenue and Operating Profit Before Tax (OPBT) for the mining industry as a whole in Australia – with the ABS dividing the latter by the former to give us its definition of profit margin – but also provides that data broken down into business size cohorts within the Australian mining industry.
The ABS uses three business size categories here:
Small – businesses which employ less than 20 people
Medium – business which employ between 20 and 199 people
Large – businesses which employ 200 people or more.
If we look at the profit margins of the mining industry broken down by those business sizes, as well as the share of sales and service revenue and share of OPBT that each cohort experienced, this is what we get:
For some context, we’ll repost the chart from yesterday that compares how other industries are performing on the identical measure of “profit margin”:
As we can see, the small and medium sized mining firms are experiencing profits comparable to other Australian industries (albeit with medium sized firms at the top of the rest of the pack) – but large sized mining firms come in at a massive 46.1% aggregate profit margin.
Keep that in your thought orbit while we take a quick detour. The ABS also reports in that publication the proportion of all firms in a given industry classification that are profitable. If we look at the proportion of profitable firms across Australian industries, this is what we get:
This is where it gets particularly interesting. Only 51.2% of all mining firms were actually profitable in 2008/9 – the lowest of all industry classifications – even though the industry wide aggregate profit margin for mining was the highest for any industry classification in Australia, coming in at a whopping 37.1%, and where the aggregate profit margin for large mining firms was an even larger 46.1%
So what we are seeing is an odd distribution of profits in the mining industry where a relatively small number of mostly large firms attracted massive profit margins (pushing the industry aggregate up substantially), while a large number of firms attracted only moderate profits, and a very large number of firms – 46.9% – made a loss.
It would be accurate to say here that a majority of firms – and probably a very large majority of firms at that – would actually be better off under the proposed RSPT than the existing regime.
The design of the RSPT is such that it won’t make any currently profitable firm unprofitable (the larger a firms profit, the larger the slice of that profit the government ultimately takes) – but what it will do as part of its design is make some currently unprofitable firms profitable as a result of not charging firms for exploiting Australian minerals until they are profitable on the one hand, and the way the new Resource Exploration Rebate operates on the other.
Unless the collective management of the entire mining industry were dropped on their head when they were babies and its causing them to operate on the basis of something other than economic self interest in this debate, the hysteria coming from those purporting to represent the mining industry would appear to only be representative of a very, very small collection of mostly large and extraordinarily profitable firms – firms that have pushed the industry aggregate profit margin up to 37.1% and the profit margin of firms employing more than 200 people up to 46.1%, even though an astonishing 46.9% of all mining firms were actually unprofitable at the time!
When Mitch Hooke, Twiggy Forrest, Clive Palmer and the gaggle of usual suspects start whinging about the RSPT – remember exactly who they are representing, because it certainly isn’t the economic interests of the majority of mining firms in Australia.
(Visited 60 times, 1 visits today)After reading this seventh novel of Is It Wrong to Try to Pick up Girls in a Dungeon, it's easy to conclude that the anime ended before the best parts of the story really began. This second story to take place after the end of the animated adaptation is one of Fujino Omori's most ambitious, both thematically and in terms of complexity, and it's also the first to actually work with the series' misleading title to a degree. As you can see from the cover, it tackles some more adult content than previous volumes as well, and Bell is the victim of three separate women's sexual advances, none of which he welcomes and none of whom are Hestia, Lilly, or Aiz. That fits in with the overall theme of sexual slavery and the cult of the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, who is the latest divinity to enter the story.
In the mythology of the Ancient Middle East, Ishtar wears many hats – she's the goddess of love and beauty, yes, but also of war, sex, and power. She is said to have treated her lovers cruelly, and Omori uses the possibility some scholars have raised of temples of Ishtar engaging in sacred prostitution as the basis for his interpretation of the character. The large and powerful Ishtar Familia is in charge of the so-called Pleasure Quarter of Orario, and while most of her familia members are there willingly and engage in prostitution because they have no problem with it or enjoy it, there are also those who have been sold into sexual slavery. One of these is Haruhime, a young noblewoman from Mikoto's homeland with whom she and the other members of Takemikazuchi Familia were friends. She's a “renart,” a fox person, which makes her particularly special, and Mikoto is aghast to discover her whereabouts. When Bell accidentally encounters her (and declines to have sex with her), he becomes aware of the situation as well, and he and Mikoto decide to throw caution to the wind to get her out of Ishtar's clutches.
The story largely follows Bell and Mikoto alone of the familiar characters in the series, while also introducing two of Ishtar's familia members, Phryne (named for a renowned Grecian courtesan) and Aisha, whose name is a bit more problematic, as mythologically it belongs to one of Mohammad's wives. Both are Amazons, as are most of Ishtar's followers, based on the idea that Amazons actively hunt men who can father strong children, so being a sex worker in an adventurer city is an ideal way to seek out the best potential dads. Phryne is very much the actual villain of the piece, and her attempts to rape Bell are very reminiscent of the Big Bad Wolf chasing Little Red Riding Hood. It's an interesting gender reversal of the norm, and Omori seems to use it to indicate that consent is consent no matter what the victim's gender. He's very clear in his author's note that this was something that he wanted to explore with this novel, and he draws a parallel between Bell, who is able to turn the tables each time he is faced with unwanted sexual attention, and Haruhime, who spends most of the book chained both literally and figuratively. This leads to the most interesting theme of the novel: choice versus compulsory action. Phryne delights in her work, actively seeking out men and happily dosing them with aphrodisiacs if need be (and it always needs be), and even Aisha seems to enjoy herself to a degree. But Haruhime feels defiled and unworthy, like she is indeed fallen from a better, worthier place for a woman. She tells Bell that she knows that she will never be rescued because heroes don't save the prostitutes – they're not worthy of being saved. When Bell and Mikoto do determine to save her, Omori is telling the reader that Haruhime was always worth saving, and that her feelings of shame were all in her head. Sexual activity does not determine a person's worth, a point driven home by the fact that Aisha is also redeemed at the novel's end.
Granted, Omori does trample on this theme a bit with a late novel revelation about Haruhime's supposed impurity, but that, like the novel's title, feels like it was thrown in to appease the market. In this case the band-aid is particularly troubling, as it stands to undo a lot of what he previously attempted to thematically establish. Notions of “purity” don't quite follow through for most of the book, but whether that is editorial interference or simply Omori's own conflict about long-established social norms is unclear. He does deserve a lot of credit for tackling the subject in a light novel rather than a literary work, however, and by and large his willingness to try pays off.
Overall this is a very dense story, with a lot of exciting action at the end prefaced by more emotional turmoil. Omori's writing has improved with less overwriting and farting around with overblown descriptions of the female characters – the writing feels more natural as a whole. The action scenes, particularly towards the end, are exciting and dynamic, while the emotional content has a real weight to it. The lack of Hestia, Lilly, and Welf is a bit of a letdown, but it does allow Mikoto to develop as a character while also granting Hestia a bit more of a divine air; this is probably the most godly we've seen her. Freya also takes a much bigger role, reminding readers why she has one of the top Familias in the city, and Hermes plays an interesting part. He's vaguely reminiscent of Xeloss from Slayers Next – sly and deceptively helpful, but fully aware of everything that's shaping current events, both past and future. He definitely bears keeping an eye on as the story moves forward.
Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon is proving itself to be one of the strongest light novel series currently available in English. Fujino Omori's willingness to go beyond typical light novel themes and fare pays off, and his use of mythology continues to be fascinating, particularly as pertains to Ishtar and Hermes. At almost four hundred pages, this is the longest book in the series thus far, and given what he can do with these longer stories, it's worth hoping that the stories continue to maintain this length and depth going forward.1987: Ron Hextall of the Philadelphia Flyers becomes the first goaltender in NHL history to score a goal by shooting the puck into the net.
Video: 1987: Ron Hextall first goalie to shoot and score
The Flyers lead the Boston Bruins 4-2 at the Spectrum when goalie Rejean Lemelin is pulled for an extra skater. Hextall, already known for his stickhandling skills, grabs a loose puck to the left of his net and lifts a shot that goes past the Boston defense and slides into the empty net at 18:48 of the third period.
Though Billy Smith of the New York Islanders is the first goaltender to be credited with scoring a goal when the Colorado Rockies backpass the puck into their own net during a delayed penalty on Nov. 28, 1979, Hextall is the first to score by shooting the puck. For good measure, he does it again on April 11, 1989, in a playoff game against the Washington Capitals.
MORE MOMENTS
1931: The Bruins lose 3-2 to the New York Americans at Boston Garden, ending their 24-game unbeaten streak (19-0-5) at home. It's their first loss at the Garden since Nov. 25, 1930, when the Chicago Blackhawks win 4-3 in overtime.
1979: On his 40th birthday, Red Berenson is named coach of the St. Louis Blues, replacing Barclay Plager. The hiring comes a year after Berenson retires as a player with the Blues, with whom he scores 412 points (172 goals, 240 assists) in 519 games.
1993: Jari Kurri becomes the highest-scoring European player in NHL history, passing Peter Stastny, when he has a goal and two assists in the Los Angeles Kings' 6-5 loss to the visiting Florida Panthers. Kurri's 1,223rd point is one more than Stastny; he finishes his career with 1,398.
1997: The Toronto Maple Leafs play the 5,000th game in franchise history and celebrate with a 3-0 victory against the Dallas Stars at Air Canada Centre. Goalie Ed Belfour makes 25 saves and Mats Sundin scores twice in the third period. The win gives the Maple Leafs a record of 2,139-2,135-726.
1999: The Kariya brothers oppose each other in an NHL game for the first time when the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim and the Vancouver Canucks tie 2-2 at Arrowhead Pond. Paul Kariya scores a power-play goal for Anaheim; younger brother Steve Kariya has an assist for Vancouver.
2014: Jaromir Jagr, playing in his 1,500th NHL game at age 41, scores a goal and has an assist for the New Jersey Devils in a 2-1 win at the Carolina Hurricanes. Jagr is the 15th player in NHL history to reach that games-played milestone and the sixth to have a multipoint performance in his 1,500th regular-season game. He joins Gordie Howe (one goal, one assist), Alex Delvecchio (two assists), Johnny Bucyk (two goals), Larry Murphy (two assists) and Mark Messier (one goal, one assist).
2017: Malcolm Subban of the Vegas Golden Knights and defenseman P.K. Subban of the Nashville Predators become the 10th set of brothers to face each other in an NHL game in which one was a skater and the other a goalie. Malcolm makes 41 saves and doesn't allow a goal in six shootout attempts before Reilly Smith's goal gives the Golden Knights a 4-3 victory at Bridgestone Arena.
Video: Subban, Smith power Golden Knights to 4-3 SO winrashaan evans
Rashaan Evans' final three schools are Auburn, Alabama and UCLA. (Julie Bennet/File)
Saturday night marked the final evening of permitted contact between 2014 recruits and college coaches and both the Auburn and Alabama coaching staffs took advantage of every last minute they could spend with one of the top remaining uncommitted recruits in the country. Auburn High School outside linebacker
was visited at his home by both staffs Saturday night during his grandfather's 80th birthday party, creating a scene that Evans' father Alan Evans said was almost surreal.
"It was Bama and Auburn in the same room. Really a once in a lifetime event," said the elder Evans.
The Evans family was originally scheduled to host Auburn head coach Gus Malzahn and Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart but as the two staffs continued to firm up their plans for the evening, the guest list grew. Alan Evans said Malzahn was accompanied by the entire defensive staff from Auburn while Smart was joined by fellow Alabama assistants Lance Thompson, Burton Burns and Bo Davis.
"Both staffs were very cordial to each other. They ended up hanging out together and both trying to talk to Rashaan whenever they could."
Evans, a 5-star prospects and the nation's No. 1 outside linebacker according to the 247Composite rankings, is set to announce his college decision on Wednesday at 10 a.m. live on ESPNU. The announcement will be held at Auburn High School and will be closed to fans and students, with only media, family and close friends invited to attend.Flickr is bringing back Flickr Pro, its premium service for serious photographers, letting new users sign up for the added features for the first time since 2013. In May 2013, Yahoo revamped Flickr, giving all users 1 TB of free storage. But they also eliminated the old Pro plan, replacing it with an optional ad-free version for $50 a year.
The new Pro seems mostly targeted to power users, offering improved insights and analytics so you can see how many people are viewing your photos. It also brings back the Pro badge, which announces your superiority over basic users.
The new Pro seems mostly targeted to power users
The move comes two months after Flickr unveiled a major redesign for its web and mobile apps that seems to store and organize all of your photos. It follows Google's rollout of a major new photo solution of its own, and Facebook's more modest effort to connect the pictures you take with the friends that are in them. Of the major tech companies, Yahoo is the one offering a paid service for more professional users.
In doing so, Yahoo is making an effort to entice the photographers it has lost to other pro services like 500px and SmugMug, hoping that both new and existing users will be willing to pay for Flickr. The new Pro includes discounts on photo merchandise purchased through Flickr and on your first year of Adobe's Creative Cloud Photography service. New users can sign up for Pro for $5.99 a month or $49.99 a year.
Existing Pro users will be automatically upgraded to the new Pro. Note that new Flickr Pro does not include any additional storage space.One day last December, before noon in the Glacier National Park ecosystem of northwestern Montana, I encountered two wolves and two cougars. What were the chances of that?
Well, they were 100 percent, because I’d rented the animals for a photo shoot with photographer Andrew Geiger. The “models,” as the industry calls them, were beautiful and healthy. At 8:30 a.m., after a long sleep and a hot breakfast in the guesthouse of the Triple D game farm, I was ready for my three hours in the field. Behind the Triple D office, Geiger and I met our first model—Jewel, a 3-year-old cougar who paced and mewed behind the bars in the back of the truck. By the time trainer Logan Saich had driven us to the scenic set leased by Triple D, the day had warmed from minus 24 degrees to minus 16.
Saich led Jewel to high ground, where she posed like Kate Moss against magnificent snow-clad peaks. Surprised by the snow and ice, she raised and shook each paw as she walked. Jewel chased her melon-size plastic ball halfheartedly and swatted none too ferociously at a deer-hair toy. Still, this was the high point in her dreary day. On our way down Saich had to carry her, and she grabbed the last fence post with both front paws. “Good girl, good girl,” Saich murmured when she let go.
Back at the game farm, Attilli, the 4-year-old cougar, performed better. He was obsessed with his ball, bounding over logs in pursuit and looking very fierce. Then came Big John, the black wolf, who placed his forepaws on a rock, as he’d been trained to do, and snapped up the beef-heart treat Saich threw to him. “Good boy!” exclaimed Saich.
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“You couldn’t have gotten those shots in the wild,” Triple D co-owner Jay Deist told me, and he was right. In 1972 he, his brother, and his father opened Triple D, but not for photographers. They were “going to save the world” by capturing and breeding vanishing wildlife. It didn’t work out. But soon photographers began paying for sessions with the animals. Deist describes the early clientele as “very secretive, because they didn’t want anyone to know the source.” Concurrently, these amazing “wildlife photos” started showing up in magazines, calendars, and posters—close-up action shots with every whisker in perfect focus. Similar game farms sprang up around the country, though no one knows how many there are.
Images of Triple D’s snow leopards are proliferating like Internet pop-ups. In 2008 one even received first place in the viewers’ choice “nature” category of National Geographic’s international photography contest. Animals like snow leopards are in desperate trouble, but why should people believe this when they see sleek, healthy snow leopards every time they walk into a bookstore or open a “wildlife” calendar?BEREA, Ohio -- Joe Thomas made an appearance at the podium on Thursday afternoon and essentially delivered a state-of-the-Browns address.
Thomas, the All-Pro left tackle who is out for the season with a torn triceps, has remained visible with the team following the injury against the Titans on Oct. 22.
"This team right now is set up for a long run of success starting next year," Thomas said.
His optimism comes in a week in which the Browns are staring at the possibility of 0-16, in 2017, which would be 1-31 in the last two seasons. It has resulted in the firing of Executive Vice President of Football Operations Sashi Brown and hiring of General Manager John Dorsey. Owner Jimmy Haslam has already said that head coach Hue Jackson will be back in 2018.
Thursday, Thomas struck a chord between endorsing the ideas behind the plan and also supporting a head coach who has come under fire during most of its execution.
"I think Hue really has not been given the opportunity yet to prove what kind of coach he is," Thomas said. "From a wins and losses standpoint, obviously, the plan for a few years here was to try to attain the highest draft picks possible, which is what we have successfully done. Unfortunately, as that is going on, the coaches have a hard time winning any games because of the depth that they are given to play with."
The plan Thomas is referring to, of course, was Brown's aggressive strategy to acquire as many picks as possible, most notably trading out of the No. 2 pick in 2016 and and dealing away the No. 12 pick in 2017. Thomas said he started to notice the plan taking shape when a wave of veterans, including center Alex Mack and right tackle Mitchell Schwartz, were allowed to leave in free agency following the 2015 season. Since then, he's seen other longtime members of the team sent packing as well.
"You still get frustrated over the years that those guys like Joe Haden got cut and John Greco," Thomas said. "Guys that you know are some of the best players on the team, but to stick to the plan, you had to get rid of them. It was always tough. I think some guys had a harder time buying into the plan than other people."
Thomas said it was the idea of sustainability -- that getting more and higher picks as opposed to just using the picks and cap space you already have each year -- is likely what sold ownership on the plan. It was about probability. Hitting on picks is hard to do, so create more chances.
"What we've done is we've sacrificed two years of pain for a long-term, multiple years of gain starting next year and the following year," Thomas said. "Because if you look at our salary cap space, if you look at the number of young guys who've played and gotten experience right now on this team and then you look at the number of high draft picks we have next year and the following year, there's no reason that we can't be really, really good starting next year and the following year."
But playing that probability game came with a cost.
"I think the big oversight was just how painful it is to go through two years of so much losing for the fans, the city, the players, the coaches," Thomas said. "That's sort of the overlooked aspect of taking a strictly probability standpoint on turning a team around."
The reality of all of this, of course, is that no matter how many picks the team has, the right person had to be making them. When Haslam fired Brown, it was clear the owner didn't believe in Brown's decisions.
So, what does Thomas think of Dorsey?
"He's one of the most well-respected personnel men from just a pure, watch-film, football standpoint as any GM in the NFL," Thomas said. "So I think the fans should definitely be excited about having him be the one that's making those selections."
As for the other part of the equation -- a head coach who has won one of his 31 games over his two seasons?
"I think he is really excited for us to begin a new era where we are spending money in free agency and using our draft picks to select high players, not saving any assets or money for the future," Thomas said. "We are going to basically start going all in like the other 31 NFL teams do every year and give the coaches an opportunity to improve on the win-loss record they have had so far."
Still, has his confidence in Jackson been shaken because of the record?
"No, it hasn't," he said, "and, based on the comments I made earlier, I think he's an excellent coach."
Joe Thomas is in no rush to decide on |
Table S2 also presents information regarding the comparison of loan levels to other sources of vocabulary within the wordlist. On average, 28% of the words in the sample had no clear etymology within the language. There was no significant correlation between the number of loans in a language and the number of unique items in that language (r = −0.025; P = 0.722); nor was there any significant correlation between whether a given lexical item in the wordlist was coded as loaned or unique (r = 0.097; P = 0.168). This indicates that detection rates for loans did not deviate significantly across the sample, and that unique items are not simply unidentified loans.
Figure 1 gives the loan figures by region for HG and AG languages from this sample (full details are in Tables S1 and S2 ). The mean borrowing rate for the sample is 5.06%, with median 2.49%, and SD of 7.56. The lowest rate is 0, signifying no loans in the wordlist sample, and the highest is 48%. These figures are lower than those reported in the World Loanword Database (WOLD) [20], where the mean on an equivalent wordlist is 10.24% (median 5.3%, SD 11.02, range 0%–45%). A recent study of loans in Indo-European languages [22] found an average loan rate of 8%. Figure 2 splits the regions by subsistence type, and Figure S2 presents results by density, population size, mobility, and exogamy.
In summary, basic loan levels in languages are usually low, no matter what the factors. Certain social situations may lead to either abnormally low levels, as in SAM, or very high levels. High levels of loans can be the result of several different factors, including language shift and access to writing. There is also some evidence that mobile populations have higher average rates of borrowing. No evidence was found for a difference in loan rates between HG and AG groups within the case study regions, suggesting that the social differences between HG and AG languages that resulted from the Neolithic revolution have not been as important for this area of language change as has been claimed.
Finally, this work also demonstrates the utility of linguistic tree building using basic vocabulary. Linguists have sometimes argued that trees constructed from lexical items alone are too subject to interference from loans to show accurate histories [43]. While in a few areas, loan levels approach or exceed the rates which are likely to interfere with phylogenetic signal [21], 96% of the languages in the sample had loans well below the threshold at which we might expect interference.
While it is important to identify the occasional aberrant cases of high borrowing, our results support the idea that lexical evolution is largely tree-like, and justify the continued application of quantitative phylogenetic methods to examine linguistic evolution at the level of the lexicon (see also [22] ). As is the case with biological evolution, it will be important to test the fit of trees produced by these methods to the data used to reconstruct them. However, one advantage linguists have over biologists is that they can use the methods we have described to identify borrowed lexical items and remove them from the dataset [41]. For this reason, it has been proposed that, in cases of short to medium time depth (e.g., hundreds to several thousand years), linguistic data are superior to genetic data for reconstructing human prehistory [5], [42].
The criticism of non-treelike linguistic evolution in HG groups, even in cases where it is shown empirically to be valid, does not prevent the application of other methods used by biologists to examine evolutionary process, such as network analysis [39]. These methods provide information about the magnitude and pattern of exchange between groups and may be productively used in concert with phylogenetic methods [40]. These methods are likely to be particularly valuable in the study of genetic and linguistic coevolution.
Bankalachi Toloim (NAM) shows heavy loans from Yokuts. Evidence [38] suggests that the consultants who provided these data were from a speech community that had been in the process of shifting to a variety of Yokuts. Thus while language shift may be a factor in high loan rates, this requires further work. Note, for example, that the two shift cases in the case study are opposites, with Gurindji acquiring loans while gaining speakers, and Bankalachi Toloim in the process of losing speakers. Moreover, language shift is also ongoing in Tariana (SAM) but has not resulted in heavy lexical borrowing [23].
Language shift could explain two cases of high borrowing. In Australia, there is evidence that Gurindji and Mudburra have acquired speakers. The Eastern Ngumpin languages bulge north into the riverine zone from the desert to the south, and separate the two discontinuous branches of the Mirndi family. These languages probably spread north into the Victoria River Basin, adopting a great deal of environmental vocabulary in the process. McConvell [32] proposes that this process involved past language shift to Gurindji, with uptake of both substrate and adstrate vocabulary.
Another possible factor that mediates variation in loan rates is prestige asymmetries among local groups. Though this factor is invoked to explain variation in a number of languages in the WOLD sample [1], for example loans into Saami from Russian, into Berber from several Arabic varieties, and from numerous languages into Selice Romani [36], it is impossible to quantify. Long-standing exposure to literacy is associated with high borrowing in the WOLD datasets; all the high-borrowing languages (except Gurindji [32] ) feature loans from ancient literary languages, such as Thai and Indonesian from Sanskrit (the latter also from Arabic). Borrowing from literary languages is not a factor in our sample.
High intensity of language contact does not by itself explain high rates of borrowing. All the languages in AUS, for example, were in contact with their neighbors and participated in trade networks [37], yet only a few show extreme borrowing rates. Several SAM and AUS groups are linguistically exogamous, but this practice is not correlated with loan levels within the case study areas which have differences in exogamy. For example, in SAM, rates of loans are universally low among both linguistically endogamous and exogamous communities. In AUS, both exhibit variable rates.
There is equivocal support for the idea that mobility is associated with exceptionally high borrowing. On the one hand, in the NAM sample, there appear to be no differences in loan frequency between mobile Uto-Aztecan languages of the Great Basin and comparatively sedentary groups in California, including the Southern California Uto-Aztecan languages. In the Uto-Aztecan group, the highest loan frequencies appear in Tübatulabal and Bankalachi-Toloim, spoken in relatively sedentary communities (with some seasonal mobility). There is also no difference in the SAM area. Within AUS, however, the highest borrowing languages are all spoken by mobile populations; seasonal and sedentary loan levels in AUS are comparable to the other case study areas. In the WOLD sample, some of the highest loan figures are also found in mobile populations (such as Selice Romani [36] ). Thus there would appear to be some support for mobility being a factor in exceptionally high borrowing cases.
In the SAM sample, borrowing is predominantly asymmetric; Arawak languages are frequent sources of loans into other languages, although this directionality appears to be reversed in the Vaupés, where Arawak Tariana has experienced profound contact with Tukanoan languages. It is also reversed in southwest Colombia, where Arawak Resígaro has borrowed from Bora; note that these languages are all AG. HG languages in contact with AG languages are predominantly recipients of loans, both in the Vaupés, where the HG languages Hup, Yuhup, and Kakua have borrowed from AG Tukanoan, and also in other cases, e.g. HG Nadëb from AG Arawak. Borrowing between HG languages is attested in the case of Hup (Nadahup) and Kakua (Kakua-Nukak), and appears to be predominantly asymmetric (Hup into Kakua).
In NAM, both types of borrowing are identifiable. In Southern California, the mostly AG Yuman and Uto-Aztecan languages exhibit symmetrical borrowing from one another (at very low levels). In contrast, in the north, the Yukian language Wappo has loans from Pomoan and Wintun languages, but is not a donor into Wintun.
Because of the low rates of borrowing among so many of the case study languages, a detailed quantitative study of loan sources was not possible. However, qualitative comments can be made. The case study areas contain cases of both symmetrical and asymmetrical borrowing. The highest borrower in the sample, Gurindji, is heavily asymmetric. The direction of flow of loans is predominantly into Gurindji from its northern neighbors; some vocabulary items that went in the opposite direction can be identified, but these are few. Between Mudburra and its eastern neighbor Jingulu, however, the flow seems to be bidirectional. The same is also true for other pairs in AUS, such as Yawuru and Karajarri.
We hypothesize that the very low rates in SAM may be indicative of an association between language and group identity that is relatively strong compared to many other parts of the world, and pertains widely within Amazonia. Such an association is particularly salient in the Vaupés region, where low loan rates are tied to the practice of linguistic exogamy; see above and [35] ), but our results suggest that the tendency to keep languages distinct is more widespread in the region. The AUS sample has higher loan rates than the other two areas, and also shows considerably more variation. However, only two cases (Gurindji and Mudburra) approach the levels of borrowing claimed to be the norm for the continent [6]. The extreme rates in some AUS languages are partially accounted for by a few loans from English, including ‘roof’, ‘rope’, and ‘work’, though English loans do not account for the highest rates, and English loans are all but absent from Gurindji, the language with the highest loan rate in the sample.
Materials and Methods
The Languages and Language areas Languages spoken by hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists from Australia, North America (Southern California and the Great Basin), and South America (Amazonia) were examined and coded for etymology (Table 1). Australian indigenous languages were traditionally spoken only by hunter-gatherers [37]. Coding of this type requires specialist knowledge of the languages; thus focal areas for case studies are those for which the authors have the requisite knowledge, where accurate data were available, and where the genealogical affiliation of the languages is reasonably well established. Accordingly, we focus our sample on these three regions, although languages spoken by hunter-gatherer groups occur more widely, e.g. in southeast Asia and southern Africa. We note that we have sampled approximately 20% of the extant hunter-gatherer languages still spoken, distributed across three independent geographic regions, which is already many times more broad than previous loan surveys. PPT PowerPoint slide
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Table 1. Summary of languages by survey regions. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0025195.t001 While the quality of data varies considerably within regions, attempts were made to use the most complete and accurate sources. Source information for the languages is available in the supporting documentation. For all case study areas, languages with good documentation (and for which the surrounding languages were well-documented) were prioritized, in order to minimize possible effects of data quality on the ability to identify loans. We recognize that there are cases where loan identification is difficult [44]; however, steps were taken to minimize such problems in this dataset. Languages were sampled from a variety of families, many of which are not closely related; this makes loan identification more straightforward, since loans (especially recent ones) tend to be phonologically similar, while inherited items are more distinct. Second, the areas are those in which the authors have the requisite specialist knowledge of the languages. The 49 languages for consideration in the AUS case study are some well-attested northernmost subgroups of the Pama-Nyungan family, along with their non-Pama-Nyungan neighbors from the Kimberley region, Victoria River district, and Arnhem Land. The large time depth between those groups makes loans easily identifiable; furthermore, there has been previous historical work on the sound changes in the area, which allows loans and inherited items to be identified with some certainty [45]. All these languages are spoken by HG groups, but the groups vary in mobility, population size, density, extent of exogamy, and patterns of multilingualism. The NAM sample includes 46 languages of California and the Great Basin. Languages north of the Sacramento Valley, including all of the Athapaskan languages and the two varieties of Algic spoken in California, were not included. Additional sources for loan identification were consulted; these are listed in the supporting materials. Both comparativist and arealist studies have a 100-year-long history in the area [46]. Where dictionaries were not available, lexical material was retrieved from grammatical studies and from archived field notes [38]. The SAM sample draws on 27 languages of the northwest Amazon, straddling Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, and Venezuela. Just under half are spoken by peoples with a relatively strong emphasis on hunting/gathering. While comparative studies of these language groups are for the most part still in their infancy [26], [47], this work was informed by state-of-the-art internal classifications (see Table S2 for references). The lexical items in the sample languages were systematically compared with vocabulary from 72 other South American languages (almost all from the northwest Amazon region), corresponding to 18 language families and 13 isolates; these and the sources consulted are listed in Table S2. The 43-language WOLD sample includes 12 languages from Eurasia, 8 from Africa, 10 from Southeast Asia and the Pacific, 4 from Central America and 6 from South America. These languages are predominantly spoken by agriculturalists (n = 23) or are urban, national languages (n = 11). Only 7 languages in the WOLD are spoken by HGs, and two of them, Hup and Gurindji, also appear in our sample.
Categorization of demographics Groups were classified as ‘HG’ if more than 50% of their food is (or was traditionally) typically obtained from hunting, gathering, and/or fishing. It is recognized that groups often exploit several strategies [48], and that for some groups the relative dependence on these strategies has fluctuated over time. In the SAM sample, contemporary cultural emphasis on hunting/gathering as opposed to farming (and fishing) was also taken into account in coding, particularly in the absence of information about past subsistence patterns. Languages where a majority of speakers live in urban environments (in the WOLD sample only) were coded distinctly. Groups in the sample show a range of degrees of sedentism, population size, and population density. Since colonial and post-colonial impacts on population numbers make it impossible to determine precise population sizes for the case study areas, the languages were coded as ‘small’ ( 100), ‘medium’ (100–1000) or ‘large’ ( 1000). Very few of these languages are likely to have had more than 5,000 speakers in pre-colonial times. Languages were also given a population density estimation of ‘low’ ( 1 person per sq mile), ‘medium’ (1–25 persons per sq mile), or ‘dense’ ( 25 persons per sq mile), and were coded for whether their populations were ‘mobile’, ‘sedentary’, or ‘mixed’ (e.g. practiced seasonal mobility). For food production strategies, languages were coded for whether they obtained a majority of food by hunting and gathering or via agriculture. (See further Text S1 for details, based on Murdock [49]). These measures have been previously considered important in language change [9]. Note that due to small sample numbers it was not possible to investigate interactions in demographic factors statistically.
Choice of data A list of 204 items of basic vocabulary was used (see Table S3). The list was based on that used for Austronesian phylogenetics [50] with some substitutions (see details in Table S3) to maximize relevance to the case study areas. They are presumed to be culture-neutral and refer to concepts and objects that are found all over the world. Basic vocabulary is known to be maximally resistant to replacement by borrowing across languages generally [51]. Substitution of items was heavily minimized and confined only to cases where there were equivalent but slightly distinct referents in the case study regions (e.g. ‘dingo’ (Canis dingo) in AUS but ‘wolf’ (Canis lupus) in NAM). The WOLD list contains over 1500 items, and the meanings used in the area samples were extracted for comparison. The WOLD statistics thus refer to a subset of the published WOLD list. There is some overlap (164 out of 204 items) between the 204-item list used here and the Swadesh list of basic vocabulary [52]. The list used in this study excludes concepts from the Swadesh list that are absent from the case study areas (e.g. ‘snow’), and items which are ambiguous in one or more of the case study areas (e.g. ‘we’; many of the languages in our sample have both a dual/plural distinction and an inclusive/exclusive distinction, so four words for the single word in English).
Identification of Loans and Reconstruction Methods Each language in the sample was coded with the aim of establishing several facts. First was the proportion of basic lexicon to have been borrowed. Languages were additionally coded for etymological sources, in order to build a profile of basic vocabulary sources. Untraceable replacement items may be unidentified loans, but they may also have other sources. Inherited vocabulary in the language samples was reconstructed using the linguistic comparative method [44] (except in the case of linguistic isolates, where the method is not applicable). The comparative method relies on the identification of systematic correspondences between words in related languages. Sound change in language is regular; thus exceptions to regular correspondences are indicative or loans or internal analogical remodeling. For example, word-initial f in English regularly corresponds to word-initial p in Latin; cf. fish : piscis, father : pater, etc. Thus English patron (: Lat. patronus) is likely to be a loan, because it does not show the expected correspondence. Loans between unrelated languages were identified using all appropriate methods [44], [53]. While unrelated languages may show chance resemblances in vocabulary, these are few; therefore if a word is similar in meaning and sound between two unrelated languages, it is probably a loan. The chance of loanhood is greatly increased if the word is reconstructible in one family but not in another. Loans may also be identified by their internal structure; for example, if a word is morphologically complex in one language but not in another, that is good evidence for the direction of the loan. Detection of loans proceeds in this method on a word-by-word basis and requires specialist knowledge of each region's languages and the contact history of their speakers. The issue of potentially unidentified loans requires addressing. Loan identification methods rely on regularity of correspondences between forms (of related meaning) in related languages. It also ideally requires attestation of the word in the donor language. Thus if the donor language is not known, a loan may be undetected; further sources of undetected loans from related languages would be from words which do not show diagnostic sound changes. The latter problem was minimized by preferentially sampling from languages which border languages which are not (closely) genetically related; this makes loans easier to identify. Loans from languages which are not attested in the area are unrecoverable by definition; they would show up in our sample as ‘unique’ items (see below). Since there was no significant correlation between loan levels and unique vocabulary levels (r = −0.025, p = 0.722) in any given language, and since for any given word, its likelihood of being borrowed is not correlated with its likelihood of being a ‘unique’ item in the languages of the case study (r = 0.097, p = 0.168), the effect of undetected loans on this data sample is likely to be negligible. Since the presence of language isolates in the sample (where inherited and unique non-loans cannot be distinguished) could obscure correlations between loans and unique items, calculations were repeated with the isolates in the sample excluded. Correlations remained non-significant.
Language Coding Words were coded as follows: Inheritance. The form was inherited from an earlier stage of the language with the same meaning. Loan [and source] or doubtful loan (for example, if the word was likely to be a loan from language internal evidence, but the source could not be identified). Words which could be identified as loans in one or other of a pair of languages, but where the direction of loan was unknown, were coded but were not included in the figures analyzed here. (Figures were also calculated with all potential loans included; this did not alter any results with the exception of exogamy, which with all potential loans included was no longer statistically significant overall (p = 0.155) or in the Australian sample (p = 0.614).) Where a loan is reconstructible as having entered the language at a period in its history prior to its split from its sister languages, it was coded as a loan into proto-language. This allows for the creation of a loan threshold, to minimize distortion of the sample from languages with long reconstructible histories. To count as a ‘loan’ for this dataset, the loan has to appear after the breakup of the language in question from its nearest neighbor. Thus Bardi nimarla ‘hand’ is reconstructible as a loan into proto-Nyulnyulan, and thus not counted as a loan into Bardi, because it is attested in other Nyulnyulan languages and has been in the family long enough to have undergone regular sound changes. Calques (or ‘semantic loans’) were virtually unattested in this dataset, so were not included in the loan count. In cases of semantic shift, the word is inherited and reconstructible within the family, but in a different meaning (e.g. Ngumbarl nimirdi ‘ankle’ is reconstructible to Proto-Nyulnyulan in the meaning ‘knee’). A word coded as a unique is not found in other regional languages and has no identifiable internal source. The unique category thus contains unidentified loans and words replaced through other word formation processes not otherwise discussed here, including ad hoc coinages. Missing items were also noted. Most of the missing items were due to imperfect primary data. A few items had substantial missing data (‘roof’, ‘winnow/yandy’, ‘grindstone’, ‘digging stick’, ‘thick’). 16.5% of SAM case study forms are missing, while 12% are missing for AUS and 9.5% for NAM. In the SAM study, the missing forms are concentrated in a few languages; removing those languages does not affect the overall results. In some cases, particularly in the SAM region, it was not possible to reconstruct a full history. In the case of language isolates, for example, loans can be identified with some degree of probability, but because there are no extant related languages, the comparative method cannot be used. Loans can still be identified, however, since they appear as words which are phonologically similar or identical among unrelated languages. Data in the WOLD materials was coded only for loans, on a five-point scale of loan likelihood. For our comparison, only items considered as ‘definitely borrowed’ were included here (there were no relevant words coded as ‘probably borrowed’).Getty Images
Dolphins owner Stephen Ross wants to help his players succeed in the future. But he also thinks his latest venture could help the team in the present.
Via Armando Salguero of the Miami Herald, Ross is hosting 16 of his players for a “business combine” this week in New York to give them some insight into future opportunities beyond their playing days.
The players ranged from quarterback Ryan Tannehill and defensive end Cameron Wake to fringe players and free agents. Ross connected the players with area business leaders, put them in meetings and took them out of the office to explore real estate and other opportunities. Six players signed up for last year’s version.
“This is really to give them an insight into what business is about,” Ross said. “I mean, don’t forget, these guys have concentrated their college and their professional football careers into becoming better football players and have been kind of shielded a little bit from the business world.
“This is really to create them and develop them so that when they do make the transition out of football they’re better prepared. I think every owner should have the responsibility of developing them not only as football players but also after their careers and as people. That way it’s better for them, it’s better for the team, it’s great to see these guys that are so passionate for what they do and the capabilities they have, how they use it to start the next level.”
Ross said he thought getting a group of players together outside the football function could help with camaraderie and relationships, and having his quarterback and defensive leader on board will help in that regard. Players are paying their own way, since Ross picking up the bill would circumvent the salary cap.
“Well, I mean, and with what the team is doing, it kind of brings them together,” Ross said. “And, you know, I think they experience these type of things together, they become closer together and they realize what the organization does and they’re more committed to the Miami Dolphins.
“And certainly, I think, when other players outside when they’re looking to see what teams they’d like to play for, it doesn’t hurt. Because the word spreads. When I was speaking yesterday [at a business conference for NFL players in Ann Arbor] and the amount of players that came up to me and we spoke. Because I was there speaking, I think they really appreciate it.”
More players should take advantage of such opportunities to parlay their football money into a future beyond their playing days. And Ross is right, there should be a responsibility for owners to put them in such positions, after profiting handsomely from their athletic gifts during the short time players can trade on those."Their innermost craving is for a new life—a rebirth—or, failing this, a chance to acquire new elements of pride, confidence, hope, a sense of purpose, and worth by an identification with a holy cause."
"A mass movement," wrote Eric Hoffer in " The True Believer," "appeals not to those intent on bolstering and advancing a cherished self, but to those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self.Such a man was Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a criminal with a decade-long record of drug-dealing, assault and robbery, who shot and killed a guard at Ottawa's National War Memorial and then burst into Parliament and shot two others before being cut down.
A psychiatric evaluation of Zehaf-Bibeau in 2011 found, "He has been a devoted Muslim for seven years, and he believes he must spend time in jail as a sacrifice to pay for his mistakes in the past."
Now Zehaf-Bibeau is known to his countrymen and the world. Now his deeds are celebrated by the Islamic State he sought to join.
To understand the appeal to such men of the Islamic State, despite its cruelties, beheadings, crucifixions, slaughter of prisoners, rape and sale into slavery of the daughters and wives of enemies, there are few better sources than the longshoreman-philosopher Eric Hoffer.
Why do young men and women travel from a free prosperous West to fight in Syria and perhaps die in a suicide bombing? What do they seek?
What does ISIS offer? And a more alarming question—why do these jihadists and terrorists continue to gain ground and attract new recruits?
Bin Laden may be dead, but he is world famous and by no means universally loathed for slaughtering 3,000 Americans. During the Bush era, he was more popular in the Muslim world than the U.S. president.
Al-Qaida may have been obliterated in Afghanistan, but has spread to Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen, spawning imitators, like ISIS, from the Maghreb across the Middle East into black Africa.
Why are almost all the suicide bombers, the martyrs, on their side?
Wrote Hoffer:
"All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action.... All of them irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all... demand blind faith and singlehearted allegiance."
Does this not fairly describe the Islamic State?
Still, what does ISIS offer the young?
A second chance at a heroic life. A cause to die for. A vision of a new world as Allah intended it. Communion and camaraderie. And should one die striking a blow against the infidel, there is martyrdom and a place of honor and happiness in the world to come.
To the True Believer, writes Hoffer,
"Chaos is his element. When the old order begins to crack, he wades in with all his might to blow the whole hated present to high heaven.... He alone knows the innermost craving of the masses in action, the craving for communion, for the mustering of the host, for the dissolution of cursed individualism in the zest and grandeur of a mighty whole. Posterity is king."
Another attraction of the Islamic State is that it appears to be not only the strongest of the jihadist movements but also the most feared by America.
An indispensable aspect of mass movements is hatred, writes Hoffer. Mass movements can never rise and spread "without a devil."
Indeed, he adds, "the strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil... the ideal devil is omnipotent and omnipresent.... The ideal devil is a foreigner."
Superpower America fits the bill perfectly, assuming the devil role by intervening in the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Our presence in their war testifies to the truth of what their leaders preach: We are the ones America fears most.
In a West saturated in self-indulgence, to many young Muslims, this must have an appeal. Again, Hoffer: "There is no doubt but that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless."
The Islamic State cannot defeat the United States. But in fighting against the United States, ISIS sends a message to an Arab and Islamic world where we are not loved that they are the enemies we fear most.
If you wish to fight the Great Satan, come join us.
Thus, while we are killing them, we recruit for them.
Moreover, in waging war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, we are not only sheltering the Shia Crescent of Iran and Hezbollah, we are fighting a Sunni war that Sunni powers like Turkey refuse to fight for themselves.
We are now on both sides of the Sunni-Shia sectarian struggle that has never been America's war, and we have no credible strategy and no credible army to win it. Who got us into this?We continue our in-depth look at Arsène’s time with AS Monaco, after analysing the European Cup Quarter-final his side played against Galatasaray in 1989 earlier this week. That match ended in a 1-0 defeat, even with the firepower of George Weah and Glenn Hoddle on the pitch, in what was surely a formative experience for a much younger Wenger.
The image of a frustrated Arsène Wenger on the sidelines echoes through the years, and although the context is different, and football has changed, that bespectacled visage still betrays the passionate and obsessive personality today as was clear 22 years ago. Wenger often cuts a frustrated figure on the sidelines today, water bottle moments included, and the case is no different here. The enigmatic nature of the man is notorious; as Mark Hateley said (in Jasper Rees’ biography) of Wenger “You’ll never figure him out” ; this mysticism still persists.
During the second leg of AS Monaco’s European Cup Quarter-final in 1989 Wenger cuts a frustrated figure on the bench.
Wenger in those days was just as puritanical in his obsessions, according to friend Gerard Houllier he lived in a ‘barely furnished flat at Nancy and Monaco’, with just the ubiquitous video recorder for watching endless hours of football, a habit that continues to this day.
Wenger’s obsessive streak has always been renowned and it is a key attribute in his encyclopaedic knowledge of players, contributing to his amazing success in the transfer market. His knowledge of the French league has powered his ascent at both Monaco and Wenger. This was developed in the face of economic crises, as French football suffered gate receipt reductions of 50%, and is cited as a reason for appointing such an inexperienced manager. In fact the low attendances were sometimes shocking. Some league games in 1988/89 seeing as few as 2000 spectators in the Stade Louis II, and although Monaco never attracted the sell out crowds of some of the larger clubs, they were nevertheless the defending champions, and had acquired an array of talented players under Wenger.
In terms of transfer assets he combined brilliant creators, such as Touré and Ferratge with the attacking menace of Fofana, Hateley and Weah, developing a team collective with players able to take up various roles, rather like his later Arsenal teams, a truly flexible unit.
As we saw in the analysis of the 1989 Galatasaray game Fofana and Weah could both play out wide, or up front, and with a choice of Hoddle or Ferratge behind the striker the side did not lack creativity. Hateley was a manufacturer of goals, scoring 14 in the 1988 Championship winning season. Indeed, the signings of two Englishmen, Hoddle and Hateley were both coups which paid off, a pattern replicated throughout Wenger’s career, and first evidenced in his wranglings at troubled AS Nancy. Relegated or not, he performed minor miracles there on a shoestring budget.
Puel blossomed as Wenger’s midfield enforcer, covering ground left and right in midfield, and was one of the better performers in the 1989 game. Central defenders Vogel and Battiston were two other signings made to shore up the defence, and it is here that his in-depth knowledge acquired from all those hours watching videos comes into play. However, by the end of the 1989 season Sonor was playing in absence of Vogel as the partner for Battiston in central defence. This was the case for our Quarter final, but the partnership was shaky.
Wenger’s understanding of football was clear from his early days at Monaco, and he managed to pioneered a whole set of young players and imports such as Weah, Djourkaeff, Petit, and later a 16 year old Thierry Henry who would become the best player to ever don an Arsenal shirt.
Tactically speaking Arsène was still a proponent of fast and skilful football, playing with fast wingers, and full-backs pushing high up the pitch on the overlap, though generally this would take the form of a 4-4-2. Ajax are a running theme for Wenger, and the Dutch connection extends to the man he replaced at Monaco, Istvan Kovacs. The Galatasaray match highlights his use of their 4-3-3 system.
Galatasaray 1989 – The Return Leg
The second leg of the European Cup Quarter final (highlights) was played in Cologne due to events during the previous round’s tie between Galatasaray and Neuchâtel Xamax. The game was widely attended by local German Turks, and in some way this support helped recreate Turkey in the neutral ground.
Weah scores for Monaco in the second leg, but it is not enough.
Throughout the game Wenger’s side searched for the goal that would put them level with the Turks, but were undone by a magical freekick from specialist Prekazi in the 51st minute. A George Weah equaliser in the 65th minute was not enough to take them through, losing 2-1 on aggregate. Prekazi was a Galatasaray legend during the late 1980s and his goal led the Turkish side to triumph through adversity. Over the two legs they produced only four shots on target, compared to Monaco’s 15. Whilst Monaco’s increasing desperation is represented by the 21 shots they had from outside the penalty area.
The season ended with Monaco third placed in the League, five points behind the scourge of Wenger’s Monaco side, Marseilles. The side also reached the French Cup final in June, only to lose to Marseilles at the Parc des Princes.
Glenn Hoddle took 18 league goals from midfield, whilst Weah won the 1989 African Player of the Year award, in a campaign where Monaco had fought valiantly on all fronts, but to no avail.
The Wenger Philosophy through time
Wenger’s philosophy has bloomed into a unique brand of football at Arsenal, and one that is well respected. In the words of Phillipe Auclair,
“He is an inventor. He invented football at Monaco, which had never had a decent team.”
His ideas have been hailed as visionary for their transformative effect on English football since his arrival in 1996, but all these were in place from the early days, from when he famously tried to teach the wives of AS Nancy players how to cook, to his time at Monaco. Glenn Hoddle commented on these aspects at Monaco, “All the thinking was way ahead. At Tottenham, we had never even heard of a warm-down.”
The project Wenger attempted at Monaco was one with a running theme, of stability. The assistant manager Jean Petit later said,
“We had the best players in France. With such a squad, with such players, we wanted to keep the structure in place for years. We didn’t manage to do that.”
Even in 1984, when interviewed about his new role as manager of AS Nancy, Wenger stated that one of his key aims was to build stability:
“What I am expecting as well is a stability in the club, above all on the human side”
The quote reflects Arsène’s desire to build a unit, rather than a collection of players. This ideal has evolved and with development has manifested itself in the current generation of Arsenal players, grown together from a youth team squad into a first team; this is the pinnacle of Wenger’s |
story. Our music was 100 percent non-fiction but there was more to it and I just feel like I had to shed light on the downside. Not everything was so glamorous.
Why do you think it was a film that needed to be made now in 2016?
I feel like especially with everything that’s going on within the community, with the nation... the violence that’s going on, Black-on-Black crime, police brutality. It’s just a lot going on and this film, with all the intimate details and stuff going on, it’s something I wish I could’ve kept to myself. Like, be like, “God, I learned my lesson. Now let me get on the right foot.” But it was just so obvious that this was something that had to be shared on the same platform that I’ve been given.
Was it one specific incident that sparked the idea in you? You said police brutality. Was it Mike Brown’s death? Donald Trump running for president?
[ Laughs ] That’ll do it! Donald Trump. No, but there were many scenarios I’d seen in my life and my experiences. There wasn’t any one thing in particular, but if I had to choose something, it was definitely the indictment of my manager and my friends and watching the Feds come in and pick up everybody. And we had been celebrating this lifestyle ever since, as far as music is concerned, since our first album dropped in 2002. So for it to come back and bite us in 2009, I could only imagine how many other people fell victim while our music was the soundtrack to their lives. It definitely came back and got us.
Your rise was crazy in 2002.
Yeah, so Lord Willin’ dropped 2002. We had the hit single “Grindin’” which took nine months to break. A lot of people didn’t know what is what that we were talking about at first, it was just that beat. The Neptunes beat, it was just infectious. So later on, people started catching on, saying, “Hey, they talking about coke.” And it was actually a really fun time because we had been trying to get a deal. Finally a deal landed and it was just raw and uncut and we were just venomous as far as spitting. You know, just really enjoying the whole hip-hop thing and being able to share your music with the world and putting on for your state where you come from.
And then what about the downfall of it? You talked about the Feds and all that, but just on a more personal level.
I don’t even know if I can say it was a downfall as far as “success” goes. I had these epiphanies and revelations where I believe our career was about to take off even further. It wasn’t like we came crashing and then I hopped out the music game. I don’t know. It’s just doing the checks and balances of your life. I just always knew something wasn’t right. I knew something didn’t sit well with me personally. And I always make it a point to let people know that what I’m doing now is sharing my experience. I’m not coming in and trying to tell anybody what to do, how to act, what they should or shouldn’t do. But I just want to be responsible with the part I played and what energy I put out into this world.
What was it like telling your brother this?
Yeah, so I told my brother that I wasn’t going to be able to do this anymore and it was hard.
Yeah, he recently retold that story and said how shocked he was.
Well, this was when… I had told him in the elevator. We had just got finished meeting with Rick Rubin. This was before Til the Casket Drops, 2008 maybe 2009. Anyway, we’re sitting in there talking to Rick Rubin and we’re talking about the album and you know, strategies of what we did on the album and the whole time in my head I’m like, “Y’all talk all y’all want. I’m making my exit.” But I hadn’t told anybody anything. So I’m saying, “Yeah, yeah yeah.” Like I’m there but I’m not. So, after that meeting, my brother and I went back to the hotel and we were in the elevator going upstairs and I told him. I said, “You know, I’m not going to be able to carry on. I just see things different.” I made it very clear to him and you know, he respected it.
What exactly did he say?
He said, “Ok, if that’s what you want to do.” He looked a little confused at first but my brother knows me. He knows when I say something I mean it especially something of that magnitude. And you have to understand; at that time we were already talking about doing solo careers to maximize everything. You know, “We’ll do the Pusha T solo, we’ll do the Malice solo, we’ll come back, get the re-up game.” You know, mapping it out. But I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do it. So he respected my decision and it was definitely nothing I was willing to debate or have conversations about. My mind was 100 percent made up, yup. And we always respect each other so if he’d told me the same thing I would’ve respected. We had a good season together but what people have to understand is we ain’t married. We not joined at the hip.
What's his role in your movie?
His role in the movie? It was really good to see and hear the perspectives of how they saw me. My brother and Pharrell, they really paid attention to things that I wasn’t even paying attention to. It’s always good to hear from an outsider looking in and what they remember.
Yeah, stuff you might not even remember.
Yeah. Like “Gene, you was always thinking all the time. I could always tell when something’s bothering you.” And I think it brings a good perspective to the movie because you don’t have to just take it from me. A lot of people saw the change coming very organic. Yeah, and even the fans let me, “Yo, I knew this was coming. I could hear it coming.”
But you haven’t completely left rap. You rap on the soundtrack.
Right. I rap on the soundtrack. Soundtrack is called Movin’ Weight. I got a song on there that’s called “Best Believe It” with a young cat coming out by the name of MD Uno so, make sure you check for that. I’m also on another track called “Can’t Let Go” on the credits. So yeah, definitely.
Would you ever make another solo album?
Absolutely. I plan on releasing one this summer. Let the Dead Bury the Dead is the title. Yeah, it’s going to be hard. I’m working with a few cats right now, but I got some tricks in my pocket. I’m going to wait before I disclose that.
What is your motivation to rap now? It’s not creating a landscape of coke and drugs, so what’s the motivation?
Well, I think my motivation now to rap is the fact that I’m not impressed by anything that I’m hearing now. I mean, I don’t know how you can step out of the rap game like I have and come back to it and nothing to me has really changed. As far as rap goes, there are only a handful of lyricists that I appreciate it for being lyricists. A lot of rap to me seems like it’s a bunch of weirdos, you know?
Who do you appreciate as a lyricist?
Oh man, I appreciate Pusha lyrically. And when I say lyrically I mean the art form of hip-hop. I appreciate Drake. I like real MCs. I like Jadakiss. I like Eminem. Everybody talk about "top five," when they going to realize it ain’t not top five without Eminem. You know what I’m saying? It’s only Eminem. Just guys that still have a love for it. Lyrically I like Kanye, I like Jay Z. I just like the art form, never mind content. I just like lyric driven hip-hop. The cadence of it, the way it makes you feel, the thought process, the analogies.
What do you think of Pusha’s new presidency role at G.O.O.D Music?
I don’t think you could’ve found a better candidate for the position. Pusha is in the know, he knows music and he knows art, fashion. He just has a good eye for anything and that chalet.
Do you still argue about music like brothers do?
[ Laughs ] Naw, not at all. We don’t argue about music, in fact we really don’t even talk about music. We don’t talk about anything industry actually. We haven’t done that for years. We talk about family, we talk about issues of life. We get deep, but we definitely don’t talk about industry. No time for that.
Is there anything you miss about the hip-hop lifestyle?
Oh, I miss the budgets! The money, yeah, that’s a good one [ laughs ]. That’s a given. I miss the money definitely but I miss being with my brother. I really miss the togetherness of being with Pusha and even Ab-Liva, you know. Us being together. In the trenches! Fighting this world together. I miss that.
Great! And why did you want to put the film out on Easter?
Yes, the film premieres March 27 on Revolt. Easter Sunday. Coming back from the dead. Resurrected.
It’s interesting you say coming back from the dead because this film is basically you on the other side of it. It's like Malice vs. No Malice.
Right, right. You know, there’s a point in time in the film as I’m watching it, it reflects that. I was walking and I was talking to a friend who had came to the concert and I was just looking at his swag, and I’m talking about myself, my swag at the time, and just listening to him talk and I was just like, “I don’t know who that dude is.” It was crazy, like a past life. It was like a stark contrast. I ain’t see that dude in a long time. It was crazy.
Why would you say you don’t know that person anymore?
I just hadn’t seen that person in a long time, not that I can’t identify or recognize. It’s just not who I am now. And the fact that I hadn’t been him in so long it just shows that change is real. The transformation is real. I was really that dude at one time. I was really him. Now when I look at it, I’m like,”How the hell could I have ever been him?” You know what I’m saying. It’s crazy.
Time.
And growth. I thank God for it.Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz had some scathing words for the Republican Party after its front-runner, Donald Trump Donald John TrumpREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails Trump urges North Korea to denuclearize ahead of summit Venezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump MORE, continued to pile up primary wins Tuesday night.
“Let’s dispel with the notion that Donald Trump is a fringe candidate – tonight he became the presumptive Republican nominee," she said in a statement, echoing a line Marco Rubio Marco Antonio RubioWhite House pleads with Senate GOP on emergency declaration Sixteen years later, let's finally heed the call of the 9/11 Commission Schumer urges GOP to reject Trump's 'destructive' national emergency MORE repeatedly used at a recent debate.
"Let’s also be clear: This is not a hostile takeover of the Republican Party. This is the culmination of years of divisive and extreme politics embraced by Republican leaders more concerned with obstruction and Washington power grabs than the hard work of governing on behalf of all Americans."
Wasserman Schultz went on to compare Trump's divisive rhetoric to that of Republicans in the past.
“Donald Trump is the standard-bearer of a Republican Party that produced candidates like Todd Akin, who said there was such a thing as ‘legitimate rape;’ Newt Gingrich who said laws preventing child labor are ‘truly stupid;’ and Mitt Romney who said African Americans trade their votes for ‘free stuff’ and coined the term ‘self-deportation,’ " she said.
"Today’s Republican Senate leaders cling to obstruction, which comes with the dangerous risk of handing Donald Trump the next Supreme Court pick."
Wasserman Schultz also touted her party's candidates as a stark contrast to the GOP.
“Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails County GOP in Minnesota shares image comparing Sanders to Hitler Holder: 'Time to make the Electoral College a vestige of the past' MORE and Bernie Sanders Bernard (Bernie) SandersSenate Dems seek to turn tables on GOP in climate change fight Bernie Sanders Town Hall finishes third in cable news race, draws 1.4 million viewers Woman to undecided Biden: 'Just say yes' to 2020 bid MORE continue to keep the focus on ensuring everyone in America has a fair shot. They know how to build on the progress we’ve made over the last seven years, which is why one of them will be our next President.”The Department of Education on Friday issued a rule banning colleges that participate in federal loan programs from being able to use forced arbitration agreements in student enrollment contracts.
The clauses, often slipped into the fine print, force students to give up their rights to settle disputes with a school in court. They dictate that students must instead go through a private arbitrator often chosen by the school.
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Starting July 1, schools that participate in the federal Direct Loan program must remove these clauses from their contracts.
Regulatory advocates called the rule a game-changer.
“For far too long, predatory schools have used fraud as a business model, and they’ve gotten away with it by shutting the courthouse doors to students and forcing those students into individual, secret arbitrations,” Lisa Gilbert, director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division, said in a statement.
“The burden of making students whole for fraud should fall on the shoulders of schools that break the law, not vulnerable students or the public.”
The rule, which aims to protect students from predatory practices, also offers relief for students who have been defrauded or deceived by a school, like those who attended Corinthian College and ITT Technical Institute.
It creates a process in which federal loans will be automatically discharged, so long as the student did not enroll in another institution that participates in federal financial aid programs within three years. But the school must have closed on or after Nov. 1, 2013.
The rules also require financially risky schools to provide clear, plain-language warnings to prospective students, current students and the public.
"To protect students from the start, the regulations seek to deter institutions from engaging in predatory behavior or otherwise exposing the government to risk," Under Secretary of Education Ted Mitchell said in a statement.
"And the rule will protect taxpayers by requiring institutions to put up collateral when they're at risk of closure.”Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Alps murder witness speaks for first time to BBC Panorama
A witness who claims to have seen the car thought to have been involved in the murders of three members of a British family and a French cyclist in the Alps last September, has spoken publicly for the first time.
A forestry worker has told the BBC's Panorama programme he saw a British dark grey BMW shortly before the attack.
We drive through the sleepy village of Chevaline up a narrow road leading high into the Alps.
Rounding the corner we pull over at a parking spot called Le Martinet, hidden beneath the tree canopy.
The mountains are shrouded in mist and amidst the rush of the stream and chatter of birds, it is hard to imagine the horror of what happened in this idyllic spot.
I was thinking to myself, I wonder if this is going to be painful when I get shot? Brett Martin, Cyclist who discovered the attack
Three members of the al-Hilli family - a father, mother and grandmother - were murdered at point blank range here.
A seven-year-old child was left for dead and her four-year-old sister was so traumatised she was only discovered hiding underneath her dead mother's skirt in the back of the car eight hours after the emergency services arrived.
Only Zaid al-Hilli, the brother of the driver of the car, has ever been arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to murder. He denies arranging the murders and is on bail. He has not been charged.
I have come back to the scene with a British cyclist who discovered the crime to find out exactly what happened.
Brett Martin, a former RAF pilot who has a holiday home in the area, set off for a cycle ride in the early afternoon of 5 September 2012.
"I left the house at about 14:30 [with] no fixed route in my mind," he said.
"It was sunny… [and] quite a peaceful, pleasant afternoon."
He took the same narrow road up the mountain. Ahead of him was a French cyclist. On his way up he was overtaken by a vehicle which he believes was the al-Hilli's car.
According to French police, the Al Hillis reached Le Martinet at about 15:40, having passed the French cyclist. Saad al-Hilli got out of the car with his seven year old daughter, Zainab.
Image caption Brett Martin discovered the killings and has revisited the scene with Panorama
In less than a minute, Saad and his wife Iqbal, from Surrey, her mother Suhaila al-Allaf, and the French cyclist Sylvain Mollier, had been fatally shot.
Zainab had been wounded but the gunman ran out of bullets and clubbed her with his gun. She survived but all she has been able to tell investigators about the killer is that she saw 'one bad man'.
Coming up the hill at about 15:45, Brett Martin saw the motorcyclist escaping.
"He was going at a very slow, abnormally slow speed, and at the time it seemed odd," he said.
When he arrived at the scene, Mr Martin initially thought he had come across a traffic accident. Realising there had been a shooting, he feared for his own life.
"I was thinking is there a hunter, a sniper kind of character, hiding in the trees, maybe shooting from a covered position?
"I was thinking to myself, I wonder if this is going to be painful when I get shot?"
Image caption Panorama has reconstructed the sequence of events leading up to the attack
Mr Martin tried to call the emergency services but could not get a signal. After checking on the little girl he went for help.
No culprit has been found and French police admit they have no evidence as to who the hitman and his accomplices were.
But Panorama has tracked down a witness who suggests the killer was not acting alone.
A forestry worker coming down from a nearby mountain just minutes before the shooting has never spoken publicly before.
He drove me along the same route but does not want to be identified for fear of the killer still at large.
"When I arrived there was a motorbike pulling in to the parking area. I passed the parking and the motorbike was on the left here," he said.
"I remember it well, it was white, white and black, with panniers on either side.
"The rider was all in black [and] his visor was completely closed."
He also saw a British car driven by someone who seems to have been an accomplice.
They had words with him because motor vehicles aren't allowed. So they called out to him and asked him to drive down. They saw his face because he took off his helmet Forestry worker
"He arrived on the left and he passed really quickly. The car was a BMW 4x4, X5, grey metallic, in good condition.
"It was a right hand drive, English. I didn't get much of a look at him but the driver was slightly bald and he had dark skin, no glasses."
Ten minutes later, two of his colleagues driving down the same road saw the motorbike up the hill from the parking area beyond where motor vehicles were not allowed to go.
"They told me they passed the motorbike I had passed at Place Martinet - two bends further up.
"They had words with him because motor vehicles aren't allowed. So they called out to him and asked him to drive down. They saw his face because he lifted his helmet...he had a bit of a beard."
This seems to suggest that at least two people acted together - one carrying out surveillance, the other the hitman.
The French prosecutor, Eric Maillaud, has said there is no evidence as to who the hitman or his accomplices were.
In less than a minute, 21 bullets were fired with great accuracy, leading investigators to wonder whether the attack was a contract killing carried out by someone in the criminal underworld.
French police have traced all the vehicles in the area that day except two - the motorbike and the grey four-by-four. They are still searching for them.
The terrible events he witnessed have not stopped Brett Martin from riding his bike up the same road when he visits his holiday home.
But the events of that day will always be with him.
"It's a mystery. Perplexing, unsolved, [it's] one of those Agatha Christie 'whodunit' scenarios."
Panorama: Murder in the Alps, BBC One, Monday 21 October at 21:00 BST and then available in the UK on the BBC iPlayer.One may recall that, in assessing the strengths and weaknesses of teams in the European League of Legends Championship Series, I gave Elements their own tier at the bottom of the list. One may also recall that Elements were part of the five-way tie for first place at the end of the second week of games.
Though Elements have since lost to both Unicorns of Love and Origen, I promised an article detailing Elements’ strengths if they performed better than the last place team. While one shouldn’t describe Elements as an enigma, it does take some digging to understand them. Thus begins the exciting quest for the true nature of the ‘Elements Tier.’
The first thing one notices about Elements is their terrible early game. Elements have failed to secure a proper lead in the first 10-15 minutes of any of their games. As a result, despite sitting in a three-way tie for fifth place with both Fnatic and Origen, Elements average the largest 15-minute gold deficit at -1377.
Jungle-Mid disassociation
Elements’ tricky early game first became apparent in their first match against G2 Esports. G2 used mid lane like a battering ram to pound through Elements and constantly reaffirmed their own strength in the matchup. While G2's rookie Luka “PerkZ” Perković has had a remarkable laning phase against even the most veteran mid laners (in part thanks to the support of his team), Elements' Jérémy “Eika” Valdenaire has lost in creeps in nearly every game. Eika sits in the bottom six for CS at 10 minutes with an average of -9.7.
It's not all down to Eika's weak laning — part of the problem is the lack of support he gets from his team. His tendency to play low-mobility mid lane champions like Viktor, Lux, and Ryze makes him an easy target for ganks. Mid lane in general has become a popular early game gank target as a result of frequent lane swaps, but Elements jungler Berk “Gilius” Demir seems more fond of sending his attentions to top and bottom lane.
Gilius is the jungler in the EU LCS who wards the least, at.63 wards per minute. To put this in perspective, junglers in the top four EU LCS teams all place at least.9 wards per minute (together, Charly “Djoko” Guillard and Danil “Diamondprox” Reshetnikov averaged.96 wards placed per minute in six games for UOL). As a result, Eika is actually the mid laner who wards the most in the EU LCS at.60 wards placed per minute. Between Gilius's lack of lane pressure and vision coverage, Eika has to put himself even further behind to compensate. While Eika's lane may not be the lane to gank, Gilius assisting in vision coverage could make his mid less likely to give up first blood or fall behind in creeps.
Gilius also tends to fall behind his lane opponent in farming in the first ten minutes, but he does so with more gank attempts or by participating in the lane swap. Few junglers actually participate in the 3v0 fast push lane swap, as their attention can be better spent farming or warding, given that the top laner only participates because of the reduced experience from jungle follow. In the cases where Elements send Gilius to push, it’s usually a misplay.
On teams he played for in the past, Gilius seemed most comfortable ganking the top lane, and Etienne “Steve” Michels’ stability has helped Elements perform. The team's tried to give Steve more of a carry role, and he's played Fiora most often in the LCS. Some of the components of scaling picks like Fiora or Tahm Kench mean that Elements tend to play for late game.
Elements fall behind when other teams take easy opportunities to gank mid or get ahead in lane swaps. Gilius has attempted a few more risky ganks, for example in the Origen game where he went to gank top against Origen's 2v1 without vision of the enemy jungler. Misappropriation of pressure or slow lane swap play has been a thorn in Elements’ side.
Flipping all the switches at once
Elements’ strengths begin to emerge after the early laning phase. They've taken to drafting impressive wombo combo compositions including Kalista or Alistar whenever possible. Their mid lane picks also tend to complement group fights. When Elements get back into a game, it’s because they group up earlier than other teams and take every opportunity to force a skirmish with an advantage in numbers and a better team fighting composition.
During the chaotic early-to-mid game phase of a match, players typically move to lanes to catch CS or push on their own. On weaker teams like ROCCAT, Splyce, and Giants Gaming, they do so with poor vision coverage, which has given Elements their opening. For example, in Elements’ game against ROCCAT, the entire team roamed to the bottom lane 2v2, allowing Elements to set up for Lux’s ultimate and take two kills.
Elements’ predilection for surprising team fights also led to success against Origen's confused communications. In the Baron fight, part of Origen leapt the wall to fight Elements, but Elements — who are almost always grouped — mowed down the engaging members, leaving Maurice “Amazing” Stückenschneider alone in the pit.
The back-and-forth nature of Elements games makes them long games to watch. Their average game time is 34.6 minutes, among the top three longest of the EU LCS. Even in games Elements managed to secure a mid-game lead and ultimately win, they rarely did so with complete control. Against both ROCCAT and Splyce, Elements took the lead but then lost several fights, and came back to win with late game Baron fights and pushing. Both games seemed winnable by either team.
Even when winning fights, Elements’ successes have been somewhat limited by champion picks. In all three of their winning games, Elements managed to secure either Kalista or Thresh for their bottom lane.
Alistar was the only pick with which Hampus "sprattel" Abrahamsson managed to win games in the 2015 EU LCS Summer Split. Kalista turned out to be the Team ROCCAT trump card against Unicorns of Love in the summer playoffs. After tying up the series, Unicorns banned Kalista away from Rasmus "MrRalleZ" Skinneholm and shut down ROCCAT. The combination of Kalista and Alistar has a win rate of 61% in all major leagues except the LPL as a duo lane, and Kalista and Thresh, another combination Elements have won with, has a win rate of 69%.
The Kalista+Alistar bot lane duo has a 61% win rate in LCS/LCK/LMS/CBLoL. Kalista+Thresh 69%. https://t.co/NXMeJRH5jC — Tim Sevenhuysen (@Mag1cLoL) February 2, 2016
MrRalleZ and sprattel executing the Kalista and Alistar combo against ROCCAT was beautiful to watch, especially when Eika followed up with Lux's ultimate. Unfortunately that seems to be one trick in a limited bag at Elements’ disposal.
Elements’ early game shortcomings, and their recent dismantling at the hands of Unicorns of Love, suggest that I wasn’t too far off-base when I decried Elements’ perceived flaws. Against teams with poor vision, Elements stay in the game simply by grouping more and engaging effectively. Their tendency to group as five minimizes their chances of getting picked off relative to their peers. Until they really examine their early game, the buddy system is all they have going for them.
While Elements are not the worst team in the EU LCS, the Elements Tier still sits near the bottom of the league; it’s just that perhaps Elements aren’t alone in occupying their tier. There’s room for at least Splyce and ROCCAT, with Giants Gaming and their winless confusion trailing ever so slightly behind.
Kelsey Moser is a staff writer for theScore eSports. You can follow her on Twitter to complain about her rankings.KOCHI: The construction of 800 pillars from 810 planned along the Aluva-MG Road stretch has already been completed, according to Kochi Metro Rail Ltd (KMRL).Work on the remaining 10 pillars has not begun, with five planned in the land to be acquired from Seematti textiles. But, authorities have failed to acquire land even after two years of marathon talks with the textile owner.On March 12, the revenue department had issued a notice to Seematti to surrender their land by March 18. Revenue officials served the notice after KMRL sent letters to the district collector, demanding the immediate acquisition of land.KMRL had prolonged the discussions with Seematti to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU), giving certain privileges to the textile group in lieu of surrendering 32 cents required for constructing the viaduct.In November last year, KMRL had requested the district collector to take over land forcibly after discussions failed. Later, the state government asked the revenue department and KMRL officials to hold another round of discussions to sign a MoU with the textile owner.As the second round of talks also failed, KMRL sent a letter to the collector asking him to take immediate measures to acquire the land. "Though, the deadline for surrendering land ended on Wednesday, the textile owner has not handed over the land. So, we will issue a notice to them to surrender it in 48 hours," said district collector M G Rajamanickam.There are allegations that authorities are adopting double standards when it comes to acquiring the land of the rich and powerful. "It is only eight months since the land acquisition process for Pachalam ROB began. In the case of Metro rail, it is now over two years after the acquisition process started. But authorities evicted Pachalam residents quickly. But they have given more time to big shots," said Abiju Suresh, a BJP leader, who led the agitation against taking over land for Pachalam ROB."They served a 48-hour notice to landowners in Pachalam while they gave six days to Seematti textiles. This exposes the double standards adopted by authorities," he said.The answer is with hundreds of construction workers — and two sets of blueprints.
How do you build a whole new neighbourhood in time for the biggest sporting event Toronto has ever hosted?
“I don’t think there’s a village I’m aware of that’s been right beside such a dynamic neighbourhood,” said Jason Lester, the senior vice-president of urban development for Dream (formerly Dundee), which partnered with Kilmer on the $1.8-billion project. “Where you can just go right outside the entrance and then get another feel for Toronto and what it has to offer.”
What will soon become household vernacular as the “Canary District” is that place you can see rising up out of the West Don Lands, tucked in the elbow where the DVP and Gardiner Expressway meet. For years, organizers for the Pan Am Games have been staring at it on maps and drawings — imagining a $709-million village for 7,400 athletes within what will later be a village in its own right for hundreds of stroller-pushers, students and residents with active lifestyles.
The new community — injected into the well-established downtown core — will shift twice before it settles into the landscape. Organizers have separated the physical space in their minds between Games status and “legacy” space.
But first the rooms will hold hundreds of athletes for the Games — four for every washroom available. Two condo buildings will also serve as bunking space, with up to 10 athletes sharing a two-bedroom unit divided by temporary partitions.
On a recent tour, those organizers are still looking out at empty lots from a yet-to-be-finished green roof atop what will be George Brown College’s first residence. The residence will house 500 students.
The rooms will still be mostly concrete boxes by then — the first couple of coats of paint, a concrete slurry floor and sparse furnishings between the partitioned walls. It’s condo living without the perks — what will essentially be dorms with a view.
That’s the way developers Dundee Kilmer have explained the interim phase of these buildings to prospective buyers. There is space for 2,000 homeowners when they open in spring 2016.
“The suites will just be bare bones ‘shells’ with concrete floors, walls and bathrooms,” reads the pitch on the development’s website about the Games version of the condos.
In the end, the neighbourhood will feature a mix of market condos, affordable housing and the student residence. It’s anchored by a new, sun-soaked YMCA and an 18-acre public park to the east.
Lester, a fourth-generation Torontonian, said it has been rewarding to take on the project, despite the enormous pressure on reputation that the Games spotlight brings.
“It was such a tremendous opportunity for city building,” he said. “You’re not just building one building, or two, or three buildings with multiple phases. This was multiple city blocks that will have a very, very lasting effect on the city.”
There were challenges, he said, like developing two unique architectural drawings for each version of this village. He said their team has looked to other large events, like the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, for best practices.
Construction for the Games version of the build will be finished this fall, Lester said, and the facilities will be handed over to the Games’ organizing committee at the end of January. The committee will furnish and finish the suites and set up the outdoor facilities.
This athletes’ village will see the most overlay — temporary structures and builds — of any Games in recent history, said Allen Vansen, the executive vice-president of operations sport and venue management for the TO2015 organizing committee.
From the top of the future student residence, Vansen points to the levelled dirt around him. A massive dining tent will go there, he says, a multi-purpose clinic there, and an Internet café over there. Down below, men in orange T-shirts hammer paving stones to make sure they are even.
The dining tent with full kitchen will seat 2,400 to 2,600 and offer free meals, encouraging the athletes to eat together, Vansen said. A polyclinic built into portables will sit in the middle of the village for medical and physiological needs.
An international welcome zone will greet delegations from 41 countries off Front St. E. They’ll pass through two historic buildings, including the neighbourhood’s namesake, the Canary Restaurant, built in the late 1800s.
During the athletes’ stay, some “legacy” facilities, like the YMCA, which is already built but not officially opened, will be available for use. The facility’s gym will be used for boxing training; a sloped, upstairs running track will be unfinished, but open; and several pools will be available for relaxation.
The village will have modern conveniences: Wi-Fi provided throughout all the residences, movie nights, blinds on the windows.
“One of unique things that we’ve done for the Games that we don’t normally do for a residential job is put the blinds in,” said Tim Dittmar, construction manager for EllisDon, which has partnered with Ledcor PAAV Inc. “Because the athletes want blinds.”
Those blinds will still hang come Aug. 15 when the Games are over, for homeowners (who might also want blinds) to keep or dispose of.
EllisDon said the company will work to convert the space for condo and student living — temporary walls out, flooring in, kitchens built, bathrooms finished and a new coat of paint applied.
Designers hope that when the King streetcar eventually loops between the Distillery and Canary districts, this neighbourhood will start to meld into its surroundings.
Lester said there is also 30,000 square feet of retail planned in the first “legacy” phase.
Though occupants are yet to be announced, shops will be geared towards an ongoing theme of health and wellness (think bike shops and clean eating) — what would be a lasting legacy from the Games.Contents show]
History
The Eidolon is a human who was not allowed to fully die. For a few minutes, he walked the regions between life and death and found nothing. He returned determined to spread the message that we are alone: There is no God and faith is meaningless. The Eidolon made it his task to punish those who would make life hell and those who would take away a fellow human's one and only life. He appears to have targeted religious groups particularly.
In the late 1990s, The Eidolon joined an underground group of superpowered beings (SPBs) known as The Changers. Led by John Cumberland (The High), this group planned to revolutionize human society by removing governments and laws and by providing free food, shelter, medicine, etc. to all the peoples of the Earth. The Changers' Doctor and Engineer promised The Eidolon that they would find a way that he might finally die and be put to rest. The Changers were ultimately defeated by Stormwatch and The Eidolon apparently killed by a former member of the Changers, Rose Tattoo.
Number of the Beast
Main article: Number of the Beast
However, The Eidolon was revealed to be still alive (or, at least, still not dead) and in the custody of a US agency named Number of the Beast. He has been incarcerated in a virtual reality simulation, along with 666 metahumans previously thought to have been |
including catering charges). Cancellation’s made 31–60 days prior to event date, forfeit deposit and customer will be assessed 50% of total estimated contract value (including catering charges). Any cancellation made 61 days or more prior to event start date, customer would be eligible for return of entire damage and security deposit, and not be liable for any additional fees.
Additional Items
An on-site professional event coordinator is available to help plan activities.
Pricing for conference rooms, lodging and dining/banquet hall listed assumes use of on-site meal services. If a group uses outside services (caterer, etc.), room rental prices are subject to change.
Currently, easels, podiums, microphones and coffee with condiments and cups are included in meeting room rental costs. Additional audio-visual equipment is available for rent upon request.
Telephones and televisions are not available in rooms—helping you to focus on business or educational purposes! Phones are available for local calls or for calling card use at the Conference Room and Dining/Banquet Hall.
Daily maid service is not provided, however fresh towels are provided daily.
If your organization is tax-exempt REMOVE MOTEL TAX, you must provide a copy of the official governmental form for exemption for each tax upon reservation or taxes will be charged.
Sales tax is not included in restaurant and lodging rate quotes.
This facility is a smoke-free and tobacco-free environment. Smoking or other tobacco use is permitted only in designated areas outside the buildings.
For more information or to make a reservation, contact:
Lacy Mitchell, Charlie Elliott Conference Coordinator
P: 770-784-3152
F: 770-784 3116
Email: lacy.mitchell@dnr.ga.gov
Recreational Opportunities
Following is a listing of several other opportunities available at the Charlie Elliott Wildlife Center (CEWC).
Archery Trail
Several 3-D targets of various sizes and ranges provide a unique opportunity to practice archery. Rules are posted at the beginning of the trail, which is located adjacent to the 100-yard shooting range off Marben Farm Road (CEWC's north entrance road). Stay straight past Elliott Trial, and turn left into the next driveway to go to the trial. Open daily from sunrise to sunset.
Public Programs
Charlie Elliott Wildlife Center offers a variety of public programs year-round for all ages, including shooting sports, wildlife conservation, fishing, plant identification and more. Most public programs are free, but pre-registration may be required since space is limited.
Astronomy Programs
The Charlie Elliott Astronomy Club meets at the Visitors' Center once a month and frequently views the night sky from an on-site observing field. Visit http://ceastronomy.org for starting times, highlights of presentations, and the latest on special events that may come up during the year.
Birdwatching
The wide range of habitats found at the CEWC provide critical habitat for many bird species, both common and rare. Over 200 bird species use these diverse habitats. Therefore, CEWC was designated an Important Bird Area in 2002 by the Atlanta Audubon Society. Bring your binoculars and field guides, and see how many species you can find! Bird Species Checklists are available at the Visitor Center or the online bird checklist.
Camping
Camping is allowed only in the designated primitive campground area, and no reservations are taken. Sites are available on a first-come first-served basis and each has room for a tent, a fire ring and a picnic table. Camping is limited to 14 consecutive days. Loaded firearms are prohibited in camping areas. No noise is allowed after 10 p.m. or before 7 a.m. in such a manner that may be heard by other campers.
Two shooting ranges (50- & 100-yard) offer recreational shooters a chance to take aim! Visitors are asked to sign in at the range and abide by the posted rules. A DNR range safety officer can help you with any questions. You must bring your own eye and ear protection, targets and target stands. The target should be high enough for the round to strike the backstop berm and not the ground, thereby reducing the chance of it skipping off and escaping the range. You must remove all of your trash before leaving the range complex, including spent brass and used targets. Plans for building your own target stands are available at the Visitor Center. All range rules are strictly enforced. A minimum $250 fine is imposed for shooting outside range operating hours.
Trails
Several miles of hiking trails provide the perfect opportunity to explore various habitats and to view wildlife. Try our 5.6-mile multiuse trail for horseback riding, non-motorized biking and hiking. We also offer a Driving Trail, which begins and ends at the entrance information boards (where brochures are available). Hiking trail and multi-use trail maps are available at the Visitor's Center. Dogs are allowed on trails but must be on a leash at all times. Horses are required to have current Coggins test results.
Volunteer Opportunities
Volunteering is a great way to meet new people and contribute to the community. Regular and occasional help is needed with educational programs, kids fishing events, gardening, trail maintenance and more! In addition to the good feeling when helping others, CEWC volunteering brings other perks too—like a 10% discount on clothing and 5 percent on other items in our Gift Gallery! For more information on how to offer your time and talents, please call our Volunteer Coordinator at 770-784-3060.ribouldingue
L’éducation Nationale n’arrête pas le progrès pour faire des économies. Dans l’E.N, il ne faut surtout pas être victime d’un accident de travail sinon vous vous retrouvez sans salaire, et de surcroît avec un contentieux au cul pour vous faire fermer votre gueule. Ils sont très forts dans ce genre de méthodes qui fait plutôt penser à une autre époque des années sombres de notre histoire. Pour exemple, essayez de vivre 7 ans sans ressource. Pour faire reconnaître un AT sans ressource, c’est un vrai parcours du combattant, puisque vous n’avez pas le droit de toucher au RSA, vous ne pouvez pas toucher non plus des indemnités en maladie. Logique, soit vous êtes malade et c’est la CPAM qui paye, soit vous êtes accidenté et c’est l’employeur qui paye. Quant au RSA, il faut être inscrit comme demandeur d’emploi. La seule issue que l’E.N vous offre est: la retraite anticipée pour longue maladie, c’est une retraite amputée au prorata des années passées en maladie. Tandis qu’en AT c’est une retraite pleine. Et puis la retraite en longue maladie ça les dégages de toutes responsabilités en se débarrassant du bébé avec l’eau du bain. La deuxième solution que l’E.N offre est : Que vous demandiez votre démission avec la perte de votre retraite de fonctionnaire. De votre côté il ne vous reste plus que la plainte auprès du doyen des juges d’instruction. C’est une procédure longue et onéreuse. Ça, l’E.N le sait, c’est d’ailleurs pour cette raison qu’elle agit ainsi. Et puis, l’E.N est truffée de chefs qui se tapent la cloche dans les bureaux et passent leurs journées à donner des ordres aux catégories C, ils n’ont que ça à foutre, en plus ils sont payés pour le faire; tout en sachant qu’ils ne disposent d’aucune compétence technique. Demander à un gratte papier comment changer une ampoule, il va vous faire un beau dessin. Par contre, il ne vous expliquera pas qu’en touchant les fils vous risquez de vous électrocuter. Normal il ne le sait pas et c’est le cadet de ses soucis. En clair, c’est une bande de bons à rien, d’irresponsables, et d’incapables. Remercions l’Éducation Nationale pour son sens des responsabilités.Winnipeg police say they have confirmed a man found injured in an intersection on Sunday had been hit by a vehicle.
Two bystanders found the man in the intersection of Talbot Avenue and Panet Road at about 1:45 a.m., "then tried to block traffic from … hitting this individual until police arrived," Const. Jay Murray said on Monday.
On Tuesday, police said the man, 43, was the victim of a hit-and-run and remains in critical condition.
Police are looking for a newer 2011-17 blue Dodge Grand Caravan, with front end damage on the passenger side, and ask Winnipeggers to watch for the vehicle.
Anyone who spots the vehicle or may have information about the hit-and-run should call the central traffic unit at 204-986-6271, police said.
"I don't think there's another word, but coward is probably the right word for an individual who commits this crime. We've seen a number of them this year," Murray said.
Police have been searching for a vehicle involved in a fatal hit-and-run on Cumberland Ave earlier this summer.
Panet Road was closed from Regent Avenue W. to Reenders Drive and Talbot Avenue was closed west of Panet Road until 12:30 p.m. Sunday.Obama Subtly Endorses Angela Merkel for Re-election
TOBIAS SCHWARZ/AFP/Getty Images
German chancellor Angela Merkel hasn’t announced whether she plans to run for re-election. But if she runs, President Barack Obama would support her.
“If I were here and I were German and I had a vote, I might support her,” Obama said. “But I don’t know what that hurts or helps.”
Obama clarified that he tried to keep out of international politics, despite evidence that he has done so repeatedly throughout his presidency.
“All I can say is Chancellor Merkel has been a outstanding partner,” he said, referring to his relationship with her.
He acknowledged ruefully that Merkel was one of the only leaders left who hadn’t been voted out of office since he took a leadership position on the world stage.
“You know, Chancellor Merkel is perhaps the only leader left among our closest allies that was there when I arrived,” he said. “So in some ways we are now the veterans of many challenges over the last eight years.”
Obama praised Merkel’s “integrity” “truthfulness” and “thoughtfulness” as well as her ability to do her homework and know the facts.
“I think she’s been outstanding,” Obama said. “So it’s up to her whether she wants to stand again and then ultimately up to the German people to decide what the future holds.”
Merkel dismissed questions about her intentions, telling reporters that announcement of her decision would be reserved for another occasion.
Charlie Spiering
More From: Charlie SpieringWhen International Psychedelic Rock Meets VR
On|Off|Man is an Italian band formed in 2011 with four members: Stefano Diso (Piano, Synth and Laptop), Giacomo Franzoso (Guitar), Simone Tiraboschi (Bass), Alessandro Orefice (Drum). There’s no vocals in the band and their music is a cross of Rock, EDM and Psychedelic. On|Off|Man aims at creating a fusion of multiple international and contemporary genres of which continuity is the keyword.
Enoz (real name Renato) was the designated creator of On|Off|Man’s soon-to-be-released music video, “Sane Man”. He began taking an interest in virtual reality this year and started analyzing the new medium and working in this new field to understand the essence of VR better. In the meantime, he also tries to understand the designing methods and the linguistic methodologies of VR, being increasingly aware that the language being used in VR production will have more influence on audiovisual language as time goes by.
First trial illustration for the cover of the thesis POST-CLIPS (The mutation of the videoclips in the era of interactivity)
Renato tells us Enoz is his alter ego. He grew up feeling passionate about the hip hop culture, specifically in the art of graffiti. As an adolescent, being invested in graffiti enriched his artistic style and calligraphy & typography skills, which eventually matured into his expertise in graphic design and animation. Enoz is a mix between his real name and various nicknames his friends gave him (Renz, Renzo, Renèè). He gradually eased into the habit of including this special identity of his in any creative production he does, as a brand of his visions for his personal creative world.
3D Model Test for the VR music video “Sane Man” – On Off Man
His collaboration with On|Off|Man was born out of a long-term friendship dated back to when he was a graphic design student in Bologna. He worked with Stefano Diso (now keyboardist of the band), his girlfriend Elena and Marky on certain productions and created a small collective called “Istanti Mobili”. They also collaborated during a few live performances that Enoz VJ’ed for. At the beginning of 2016, Enoz was approached by the band members about a visual project of their new album. To renew their aesthetics, they re-designed the band logo, and produced music videos for “Siren Song” and “Sane Man” (in 360).
The main idea of the music video, explains Enoz, starts directly from the message the group wants to convey with the new album, namely “the duality between analog and digital“. To quote his own words: “From a musical point of view, the band tries to mix digital sound (synths) with analog sounds (musical instruments) to create something unique, new and experimental. From a methodological point of view, the message is a reflection of the times we are living, this fast and powerful transposition between reality and virtuality in our society. From a stylistic point of view, I was very inspired by the “cyberpunk” and “post-human” lines, from Marshall McLuhan and Jean Baudrillard’s books, to manga/anime like “Evangelion,” “Ghost in the Shell,” to Bill Viola and Matthew Barney’s video artworks, to Jesse Kanda’s videos and the Internet in general.”
The main message conveyed through their new work, says Enoz, is to remind us to reflect on the time we are living, the worlds we create every day, and the role we play as progressively intelligent human beings in this universe. The geometric representation of human bodies in the teaser symbolizes the inquiry of the part human beings assume in this technological advancement.
Graphic Composition Test for the music video “Siren Song” – On Off Man
Once his script and mood board was okayed by the band, Enoz designed the storyboard and blitzed through the project in less than two weeks. Aware that in a VR production the editing eventually disappears, as each spectator creates their own point of view as they go along, Enoz produced a long, “Divine Comedy”-informed sequence, which resembles Dante’s journey through hell, purgatory and paradise.
Dancer Scan Test for the music video “Siren Song” – On Off Man
The phase that made him burn the most brain cells was rendering. For the best video quality, each frame required 1-2 hours to render, and the whole music video had 8000 frames in total to render which started to worry him. To work with their budget, Enoz turned to friends and band members who had laptops available to assemble a render farm and successfully pulled it off.
Ballet shooting for the music video “Siren Song” – On Off Man
The whole design was achieved through MAXON Cinema 4D and its CV-VR Cam plug-in for rendering virtual reality content. Enoz explains that the reasons why he chose this software was because he has a good grasp of its dynamics and it’s “the most intuitive” VR rendering software in his opinion. He says it also synergizes very well with post-production software such as Adobe After Effects.
FPS Export Test for the VR music video “ Sane Man” – On Off Man
Enoz tells us that this period of growth for VR is but the tip of the iceberg, which we should expect to grow into a significant explosion. Also if given more opportunities to work with VR, he’d like to concentrate on and experiment with the content and language, to create more immersive, provocative experiences. Let’s hope that’s in immediate future cause we can’t wait to see more from him!
For more information, visit——
On Off Man’s official pages:
https://onoffman.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/onoffman/
Enoz’s personal website:
http://cargocollective.com/enozign/
For more insights about the VR industry, follow VeeR on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @letsveer!
Mina is a digital marketing strategist, content marketer, and editor-in-chief of the VeeR VR Blog. She specializes in feature shorts, tech news and product reviews. For inquiries and requests, please contact mina@veer.tv.
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360, Italy, Music, Music Video, MV, Rock, VeeR, Virtual Reality, VR videoAs it happened: Violence erupts in Sydney over anti-Islam film
Updated
Violence erupted in central Sydney as hundreds of Muslims protested against a controversial film about the Prophet Mohammed.
It is the latest in a series of demonstrations that have killed at least six people in the Middle East. Protestors have also marched through London.
The wave of protests spread to Sydney's CBD yesterday afternoon, beginning outside the United States Consulate and spreading through the city's streets to Hyde Park.
The ABC understands the protest was sparked by a mass text message saying: "We must defend the honour of our prophet, we must act now."
NSW Police Superintendent Mark Walton said the demonstration was unorganised and some protesters "came forearmed to cause damage".
He said up to 150 police officers were called to the protest. Six officers were injured during the afternoon and two were taken to hospital for treatment.
Superintendent Walton said the protesters left the demonstration by 6:00pm.
Here is how the story developed throughout the day.
6:28pm: In related news in the United States, a California man has been escorted to an interview with federal officers probing possible probation violations stemming from the making of the anti-Islam video that triggered violent protests in cities across the world.
A Los Angeles County Sheriff's spokesman said Nakoula Basseley Nakoula - who is linked to the film's production - voluntarily left his home, accompanied by sheriff's deputies, to meet with the officers in the Cerritos Sheriff's Station.
"He will be interviewed by federal probation officers," sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said.
"He was never put in handcuffs... it was all voluntary."
But he said Mr Nakoula was not in custody.
6:20pm: Here is more of what NSW Police Superintendent Mark Walton told reporters in Sydney a short time ago:
The engagement that police have arrested eight individuals for various offences including affray, assault police dog and throw a missile. There's been two police vehicles at a minimum that have been damaged when the crowd attempted to move away as a group and contrary to police direction were asked to hold in the park and disperse in an orderly fashion. Ultimately the group dispersed itself throughout Hyde Park and into the east Sydney area. Unfortunately six police have been injured during the contact with this group throughout the afternoon, two of which have received treatment in hospital for minor injuries. I think we have actually acted very professionally and responded very well to what was a completely unannounced and unorganised protest. There was no advice given to police by this group that they intended to protest and, as a result, in a very short amount of time we had a significant amount of police. I am not sure about who might have been caught in it. But my information suggestions that some of these people came forearmed to cause damage and potentially conflict an assault with police. There were bottles thrown, there are other implements that were used today by this crowd in their contact with the police. NSW Police Superintendent Mark Walton
6:15pm: New South Wales Police Minister Mike Gallacher has just spoken to ABC News 24. Here is some of what he had to say:
Police were prepared for a protest tomorrow, they had gone through the formal reporting process to get approval. It would appear from the reports we have had, that I have had this afternoon from police, that possibly threw some form of networking, through whether it be Twitter or whatever, there's been an ability to get a large number of people into a crowd and then we saw the consequences of that fairly quickly. The Intel is that it would appear that they were a number of people there that went there for peaceful protests. But then in amongst them were people that probably weren't there for peaceful protest, they were there for confrontation. Police only use capsicum spray when they're under threat. They don't take it out and use it otherwise. The footage speaks for itself. People did not want to be in a confrontational action with police. Then they shouldn't have been there at the forefront in front of the police. I think the police have responded quickly getting a significant number of people there, the good thing is that it has now dispersed. Now what will happen is police, through their communication, with the community that have participated in this try to identify who are the sensible headed once and start to talk to them in the way that they always do. They were the ones that were expected to be participating in tomorrow's protest rally, sadly this one has been hijacked by people that are more about confrontation and providing colour and movement. We've seen that some of the - we're seeing some of the angry scenes that were taking place in the CBD. Today wasn't a lawful protest and there may well be that some people take it upon themselves to again turn up on Sunday in a Martin Place or any other part of the city, then be rest assured the police planning is now under way tactically in relation to that. It's quite a worrying situation. NSW Police Minister Mike Gallacher
6:00pm: Police have defended their response to demonstrations in Sydney, part of a Muslim protest against a controversial film about the Prophet Mohammed.
In a press conference, Superintendent Mark Walton said eight people were arrested during the "unannounced protest".
Up to 150 police officers attended the incident throughout the day. Six officers were injured, including two who were taken to hospital for treatment.
Two police vehicles were also damaged.
Superintendent Walton said the protesters have now "self-dispersed" throughout the city. Police remain at the scene.
5:50pm: Sydney police are holding a press conference. A spokesman said up to 150 officers attended the protest and six officers were injured. Two have been treated in hospital. Watch live here.
5.41pm: Here's a photo Josh Bavas took of the moment the protest turned violent:
5.15pm: Reporter Josh Bavas has been live-tweeting from the scene.
Muslims have been tweeting him to try and spread the word that not all agree with the actions of the protesters.
"Josh, Please talk about this in your live crosses. Many Muslims are condemning violent actions of those protestors," tweeted @MariamVeiszadeh.
"Those people do not represent me! The violence is far more insulting then the movie itself."
5.12pm: Reporter Josh Bavas has talked to ABC News 24 about the moment the protest turned violent.
"Some people in their cars... were trapped while the protesters were running past, with police quite close behind them," he said.
"Because the protest spread out so quickly... police were scrambling to get together.
"I heard one man yell out'shame on you' before the protesters [turned on him]. I don't know if he was injured."
5.10pm: Journalist Jamila Rizvi was shopping at the scene earlier today. She has told ABC News 24 it was much calmer earlier on.
She says the women and children who were present earlier have now gone, and believes a small minority has taken over the protest.
She says it would be a shame if there was a backlash against the Muslim community in the wake of today's protest.
5.00pm: Are you wondering about the film which triggered the protests? Here's some facts:
The film that triggered the unrest The film titled Innocence of Muslims mocks the Prophet Mohammed and Islam.
Touches on themes of paedophilia and homosexuality.
Features low-budget production values, with actors in false beards in front of stock desert footage.
Cast members have said they thought it was a fictional epic, and later found their lines had been dubbed over.
Reportedly written by Nakoula Bassily Nakoula, 55, an Egyptian Copt on conditional release from prison.
Directed by 65-year-old Alan Roberts.
Reportedly produced by a US religious group called Media for Christ.
Promoted by a network of right-wing Coptic and Evangelical Christians with a radical anti-Muslim agenda.
Among them is Florida pastor Terry Jones, who spoke to The World Today about his involvement.
4.45pm: The Hyde Park protest has taken a violent turn as police scrambled to control angry demonstrators.
Several people were reportedly injured as protesters pulled down barricades and shocked passers-by took cover.
Reporter Josh Bavas has tweeted: "Scenes very ugly. All over streets."
He says police are scrambling towards Oxford Street from Hyde Park.
4.30pm: Before the violence erupted, the ABC's Winsome Denyer told ABC News 24 the situation appeared to be cooling:
Sorry, this video has expired Video: Winsome Denyer says the situation is largely under control (ABC News)
4.20pm:The group is made up of Muslim men, women and children of all ages.
One protester was carrying a placard that read "behead those who insult the Prophet".
The group shouted "down, down USA", while another protester yelled: "Our dead are in paradise. Your dead are in hell."
Here, the ABC talks to some of the demonstrators about why they are there:
Sorry, this video has expired Video: Hyde Park protesters speak out (ABC News)
Earlier in the afternoon, ABC reporter Josh Bavas described heated scenes in Hyde Park.
Hundreds of protesters are arriving here in Hyde Park. They're being met by equally amount of police. I've had someone who is in the crowd interpret what they're yelling and saying, 'Allah is great! There is no god greater than Allah'. Pepper spray is being used and several protesters have been arrested. Police are passing around bottles of water and even more protesters are arriving as we speak. One protester was saying, 'Who are we going to get for spraying that gas at us?' Josh Bavas
Bavas says the protest is linked to a controversial low-budget film, Innocence of Muslims, which denigrates the Islamic Prophet Mohammed and belittles the religion he founded.
The film touches on themes such as paedophilia and homosexuality, while also showing the Prophet sleeping with women, talking about killing children and referring to a donkey as "the first Muslim animal".
"We are sick and tired of everyone mocking our beloved Prophet," protester Houda Dib told AFP.
"They have no right to mock our Prophet. We don't go around mocking anyone's religion."
One speaker called for calm, saying the aim of their protest had been to send a message.
"We are here for the sake of our God," he said.
"The message is clear, you cannot mock (the Prophet)."
Sorry, this video has expired Video: Josh Bavas discusses the protest (ABC News)
ABC reporter Emma Pollard was caught in the earlier Martin Place protest and says police tried to form a line in front of the demonstrators.
She says police used pepper spray on protesters, who were throwing objects and bottles of water at the officers.
"I saw one police officer get dragged out into a clear area and he had lots of blood all over his face," she said.
"I could feel the pepper spray catching in the back of my throat so it was drifting everywhere."
The Ambulance service says paramedics have treated at least one person with head injuries.
The Sydney protests follow a furious wave of anti-American violence across the Middle East and North Africa.
A crowd invaded the US embassy compound in Tunisia, and guards at the US embassy in Khartoum, Sudan, fired warning shots at protesters.
Fresh violence erupted in Yemen and Cairo and demonstrations took place in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Iraq, Israel and the Gaza Strip, Morocco, Syria, Kuwait, Nigeria and Kenya.
At least six protesters died on Friday alone, and Washington deployed US Marines to protect its embassies in Libya and Yemen.
ABC/AFP
Topics: unrest-conflict-and-war, islam, activism-and-lobbying, sydney-2000, australia
First postedIn response to a report that cities and states are pushing back against the federal government's refugee resettlement program, partly due to the increase in Muslim refugees, the Obama administration is spending money on educating the public on being more welcoming to them.Millions of dollars in grants have been given to organizations such as Welcoming America, which was started in 2010 with money from George Soros' Open Society Foundations, World Net Daily reported.The group says that it works to "educate" elected officials and Americans on being welcoming to refugees who come to the United States.This move comes after a report published in 2013 by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), an organization that works as a government resettlement contractor, which cited "a notable rise in state and local anti-refugee sentiment and activity across the country."Traditionally, American cities have welcomed resettled refugees into their communities, the report said. After the 1980 Refugee Act was passed, refugees who came from the United States were primarily those who were fleeing communism and other similar oppressive situations.While HIAS cited several factors that have contributed to the growing resistance to accepting refugees, such as budget shortfalls, one major factor is "the fact that many refugees resettled today are Muslims.""In a comprehensive study on the American Muslim community that explores and documents how Muslims are integrating into U.S. society in over 75 cities across the United States, researchers found that 'one of the most important factors for many Americans in judging their Muslim neighbors... is the idea that Muslims will not be loyal to America when push comes to shove and value Islamic law over the law of America," the HIAS report said.While very few cases of refugees have been connected to terrorism, HIAS claimed in its report, "anti-immigrant groups have suggested that the program is a gateway for terrorists."HIAS made several recommendations to the federal government to help counter such sentiment, including "new tools to fight back against a determined legislator or governor who has decided to challenge resettlement for political or other reasons."The group also recommends "a funded, proactive organizing initiative, coordinated nationally but strongly rooted in local action, to raise awareness in communities about the benefits of resettlement and proactively prevent resettlement backlash."Welcoming America is running advertising campaigns on TV, radio and billboards in parts of the country where Americans are not considered "welcoming" to refugees. The ad campaign is pushing the message that refugees are able to make economic contributions as "new Americans" in the United States, World Net Daily reported.HIAS is among nine other resettlement groups that the government contracts with to do resettlement work across the country.World Net Daily says that these groups claim that they are nonprofit "charitable" groups, while most of their money comes from government grants.HIAS said in the 2013 report that "the recruitment of young Somalis by terrorist cells and the arrest of two resettled Iraqi refugees in Kentucky on terrorism charges have provided fuel for these allegations."The FBI has warned of this problem in recent months, as well. In February, the FBI said that Somali refugees in Minnesota are prime targets for terrorist cells around the country.Six Somali refugees were arrested by the FBI in April in Minnesota and California for attempting to join the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria.U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger said following the arrest that "we have a terror recruitment problem in Minnesota."There have also been similar concerns raised by lawmakers after the State Department announced that the number of Syrian refugees is expected to quadruple over the next couple of years.Texas Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, who is also chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said that he fears that the Syrian refugees will merely become "a federal jihadi pipeline" for Islamic State operatives to take advantage of.One city that has been picked to receive Syrian refugees is Spartanburg, South Carolina, which is in the congressional district of GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy.Local residents contacted Gowdy about this issue, who then sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry in April inquiring about the refugees. Gowdy said that he received a vague response, so he sent another letter in May asking for more specific information.In a statement, Gowdy said that the State Department said that his office was "'critical in the process of establishing the refugee resettlement," which he said was "patently false."According to World Net Daily, a letter was sent to President Barack Obama by 14 Democratic senators, who are asking that Obama "dramatically increase" the numbers of Syrian refugees.Demonstrators marched through the streets of downtown Boston Wednesday in opposition to President Trump's proposed budget cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency. What made this particular protest out of the ordinary was that many of the protesters were EPA employees.
The rag-tag rally stepped off at noon from Post Office Square, right in front of the EPA's regional office. The timing was purposeful. EPA employees were on their lunch hour and were free to express themselves while not on the agency's clock.
Among the crowd was Steve Calder, an EPA employee and the president of AFGE Local 3428, which represents 600 EPA staffers.
Calder said the president's proposed 31 percent budget cut to the EPA will damage the agency and the environment.
"We want to be able to make sure that we protect human health and the environment," Calder said. "And 31 percent will basically cripple EPA in many ways."
For example, Calder said the cuts will likely force many of his fellow employees to take early retirements.
"And then we'll be losing a lot of the institutional knowledge associated with people who have worked here for years," Calder said, "and it will take us a long time to recover from the knowledge that's going to walk out the door."
Robin Johnson was another EPA employee who took part in Wednesday's protest.
"We're out here because of the extreme cuts that the Trump administration is trying to impose on the EPA and other environmental agencies," she said.
Johnson said the proposed cuts will result in dirtier air and water "because a lot of times [the] EPA is the only reason why waters get cleaned up, [it's] because of pressure from the EPA. The states are underfunded and cannot do the job on their own, as we all saw in Flint."
Johnson was referring to water contamination in Flint, Michigan. The EPA recently awarded $100 million toward upgrading that city's drinking water infrastructure.
Many of the EPA employees marching Wednesday are not used to taking a public stance on issues. Abigail Swaine works on fuel efficient freight movements and said EPA workers are usually a shy bunch.
"We're not real rabble-rousers," Swaine said. "We just feel like this is a watershed moment where we really need to take initiative."
The Trump administration defends the proposed cuts to the EPA, saying the budget returns focus to the agency's core statutory mission and eliminates redundancies and inefficiencies.
In a written statement, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said "the president's budget respects the American taxpayer." Pruit added that the "budget supports EPA's highest priorities with federal funding for priority work in infrastructure, air and water quality, and ensuring the safety of chemicals in the marketplace."My attempt to rationalize Harry Harrison's rather unrealistic Stars and Stripes series. CAUTION: Ameriwank ahead! You have been warned.
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A most curious incident occurred in New Jersey on the morning of November 30th, 1861. A casket made of what appeared to be glass and iron suddenly appeared in the middle of the road with a flash. Within was the corpse of a man dressed in a very peculiar fashion. The casket was much too heavy for any horses in town to pull, so it was surrounded by local police to keep the growing crowd of curious bystanders. At one in the afternoon, to the surprise of everyone around, the casket opened and the "corpse" emerged from it. Stranger yet, the man had a decent command of English, and after asking questions about his whereabouts and the current year he immediately demanded to see President Lincoln. Lincoln, curious about this development himself, granted the man an audience.
The man, who introduced himself as "Mr. Morris," claimed to come from the distant 28th century. He described this era as a time when the American people had abandoned Earth and forged a nation among the stars. But he explained that the American people were in grave danger from threats that he could not even begin to describe, and so in one last, desperate gambit, he was sent back in time so he could prepare the American people against these future threats and save it from annihilation. The United States, he explained, needed to conquer the world by the 22nd century, so that the entire human race is united under the stars and stripes. The first order of business would be the destruction of the southern Confederacy. Morris was surprised to learn from Lincoln that the Confederates had an ally: the British Empire. Morris assured the president that while he had not expected this development, it would be no problem: he had the tools to get the job done.
Morris’ reforms were drastic and oftentimes confusing. Using what he called a “tabulator,” Morris produced schematics for amazing weapons of war, such as the “autorepeater” and the “tank.” Morris demonstrated the effectiveness of these new weapons before the president, who immediately gave factories all throughout the United States the order to manufacture them to the exact specifications provided by Morris. Advanced communications technologies such as rudimentary wireless communication devices were introduced to ease communication between the armies. Morris also insisted that General McClellan be sacked and replaced with General Grant, under the reasoning that McClellan was too conservative a commander. By the end of 1862, the United States succeeded in cutting the Confederacy in two, thanks to the use of information from the future. The Confederacy surrendered unconditionally in August of 1863, when the first Union tanks rolled past Confederate defenses around Richmond.
Now there was the matter of defeating the British. Although the British had abandoned their Confederate allies as soon as it was clear they were losing and asked for an armistice, the Union government, at Morris’ insistence, demanded all British holdings in North America. These demands, Morris explained, were intended to be so absurd that the British would never be able to meet them, and so the war would continue |
Roques' dozens of islands are one of the South American nation's favourite - and most expensive - tourist spots, with pristine white sand beaches, coral reefs and teeming sea life.
While many of the islands are deserted, some have small lodges and private homes.
"There are some houses that were illegally built. We're going to take them over," Chavez said, without giving a timeline.
"There are some supposed owners. They privatised it, so to speak, the high bourgeoisie, including the international set."
Since coming to power in 1999, Chavez has nationalised large swathes of the OPEC member's economy, alienating many in the business community but often delighting supporters, especially in the poor areas where he has his power base.
The 57-year-old leader, who is mainly communicating with the nation by phone calls to state media during his convalescence after cancer treatment, said the government would build hostels on Los Roques "for the people".
Yachts confiscated from fugitive bankers would be used to transport tourists, he added.
Representatives of property owners on Los Roques could not be immediately reached for comment.
As a state-administered national park, it is unclear how people have been able to obtain property there.
Chavez is seeking re-election in October 2012 and has often sought to bolster popular support in the past by taking aim at Venezuela's elite and wealthy.It is a beautiful sight to see the corporate media, the opposition parties and even the Congress that has brought the Aam Aadmi Party to power in Delhi joining hands with feminists and left-liberals to bring down the new party by concentrating on one wrong call. They all have their reasons. Is it beyond plausibility that the media, ideologically or financially bought over by Campaign Modi, was more than a little upset that the AAP wave was starting to hurt the Dear Leader?
Perhaps it's more than that. Few of Delhi’s journalists will know where Sagarpur in West Delhi is, but they do know where Khirki village is: in the heart of elite South Delhi, next to a mall, and famous for a fancy art studio. This past week, they have gone on and on about Khirki for good reasons, but ignored Sagarpur. In both places, the new AAP government in Delhi tried to prove a point. It blundered in Khirki, so the media has gone after it. Black and white narratives demand ignoring the other side of the story. For the media, the AAP can be either heroic or evil. Complexity is the enemy of TV ratings.
But Neha Yadav would be grateful to the AAP, even as she lies in Safdarjung Hospital with 45 per cent burns. Her six-year-old son wakes up remembering the horror of seeing his mother being set on fire by her in-laws. The burns on her neck, chest and waist are so severe that she may not survive. Even after 11 years of marriage, she was being harassed for dowry. The real reason was that they wanted her to leave the house and divorce the husband so he could marry someone else. The local police knew about this case because neighbours had told them of the continuing torture and harassment of Neha Yadav. And yet, when Neha Yadav was set ablaze, the police was so lax that it let the in-laws flee (for, some allege, a bribe).
This is nothing extraordinary for policing by South Asian standards, except that in another place, the protesting neighbours and Neha Yadav’s parents could have gone to the local legislator and the chief minister, or just the local representative of the ruling party and put pressure on the police. Except that in Delhi, the ruling party does not control the police. The Delhi chief minister is India’s only CM who does not control the police. The Delhi police reports to the Ministry of Home Affairs. Since Delhi is the capital and Delhi police has to guard the embassies and ensure Barack Obama’s security when he comes, Neha Yadav had to suffer police apathy.
India’s feminist movement has a long history of struggle against bride burning, but that didn’t help Neha Yadav. We don’t see any of Delhi’s feisty feminists protest or express outrage for Neha Yadav, let alone the insensitive TRP-hungry media. That’s because they have all decided that the AAP is evil, and the evil party intervened in the Neha Yadav case and made sure the police was forced to find the absconding in-laws.
Another intervention the AAP government made in Khirki village was to ask the police to apprehend African residents allegedly trading drugs and involved in prostitution. Laws against narcotics and trafficking of women do not require a warrant, yet it has been falsely said that the AAP was asking the Delhi police to conduct raids despite lacking a warrant. However, AAP’s law minister did say racist things against Africans, and this is indeed a case of the party pandering to local racist sentiment against Africans. It demonstrates the dangers of ‘giving power to the people’. Great pressure from the media and activists is making the AAP rethink the dangers of eulogising ‘the people’ as though the people can’t be wrong.
But even so, doesn't AAP deserve credit for thinking about Neha Yadav, and for generally showing up Delhi police’s apathy to citizens, and making the point that the police force of a city of 16 million people should be answerable to its citizens and not to the central government? That, it would seem, would be to give the party too much credit.
The pro-establishment media and intellectuals are very uncomfortable with AAP changing the old order. The old elite are unhappy that their powers are going away. Obviously, the Union home ministry does not want to lose control of the Delhi police. So they've united to find a stick or two to beat the AAP with, hoping to discredit it enough until nobody wants the Home Ministry to let the Delhi police be accountable to Delhi’s residents.State education leaders on Tuesday are unveiling their latest consumer tool for Louisiana families shopping for a public school.
It’s called Louisiana School Finder. It’s the new home for public school report cards but goes far beyond report cards of the past.
“This system is designed for families. All the information included is information families say they wanted,” said Sydni Dunn, a spokeswoman for the Louisiana Department of Education.
+2 No more curve: School letter grades on Tuesday will be last of their kind When public school letter grades are released on Tuesday, it will mark the end of a generous scoring system sparked mostly by the tougher acad…
The new website, louisianaschools.com, goes live Tuesday morning. That’s around the same time the Louisiana Department of Education is releasing annual performance scores and letter grades for public schools and school districts. Also being released are new performance profiles for child care centers.
Louisiana School Finder will have a range of information, well beyond what’s typically been included in traditional school report cards:
Listings of course offerings, clubs, enrichment and extracurricular activities.
School-level teacher information such as annual attendance and retention rates, as well as the racial diversity of the faculty. Information will also include percentages of certified teachers, except for charter schools which by law don’t have to hire certified teachers.
Interactive tools to search for and compare schools.
That’s in addition to basic information about schools, including their addresses, locator maps, websites, hours of operation, and the principal or director's name.
Similar information will focus on the state’s hundreds of licensed child care centers. And there’s a link to a separate database of health and safety inspections of those same centers.
The new site also links to a web video on the letter grade system that the state uses to judge schools as well as a video explaining the numerical grades the state has started giving some child care centers. Centers that participate in the federally funded Child Care Assistance Program earn grades of up to 7 points.
Dunn said the new site’s inclusion of so much information on early childhood centers stands out.
“We’ve been able to confirm by talking with other states that Louisiana is the first state to offer an online tool of this sort to give information from birth all the way through grade 12,” she said.
The new website includes the information on school report cards such as assessment results, graduation rates and college enrollment. It also pulls in information the state Department of Education has collected for years but has heretofore not included in school report cards, information such as rates of out-of-school suspension, chronic absenteeism by students and student-to-computer-device ratios.
The site is reminiscent of EnrollNola, the home of OneApp, the government-run site families in New Orleans have used for years to apply to public schools in that city, a place replete with educational choices. But the new site is not limited to New Orleans and it includes information that site does not.
Louisiana School Finder is far from alone. Commercial services such as GreatSchools and SchoolDigger have long offered a range of online information about Louisiana schools, going beyond School Finder in certain respects.
Dunn said Louisiana School Finder is still a work in progress. She said it will be updated regularly and checked monthly for accuracy. Old information is still being loaded in and new features will be added over time, including data on the academic growth of students over time.
Louisiana's hotly debated plan to revamp public schools gets federal approval Louisiana's controversial plan to revamp its public schools has won federal approval, officials said Tuesday.
Dunn said the decisions about what to include and what not to include drew on the information gathered over the past year as Louisiana developed its implementation plan for the federal Every Child Succeeds Act. School data not included in School Finder remains available on the department’s main website, www.louisianabelieves.com. And old report cards are still at https://www.louisianabelieves.com/data/reportcards/.
“We put in everything that families prioritized, because we couldn’t publish everything,” she said.LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — An LA County animal care and control officer is accused of being careless and cruel.
Officials say the officer posted pictures of dead animals and pets on his personal Instagram account and presented some of them with jokes.
Public outrage was swift.
His supervisors didn’t mince words when it came to their reaction about the photos being posted.
“We are shocked and appalled by the postings as we do not condone this type of behavior. We are fully investigating the matter, as we take these situations very seriously, and the employee has been placed on leave during that investigation.”
The statement added: “The Department of Animal Care and Control has hundreds of employees that compassionately care for the animals we rescue on a daily basis and work very diligently to see animals in our shelters find there new forever homes.”
The photos are too graphic to post on our website.
In some instances, the officer makes jokes about the dead pet carcasses being used as food.
One Instagram poster wrote that they understood the officer dealing with the ugly and graphic things he sees and confronts on a daily basis with dark humor. “But use some common sense here,” they implored.
The officer has been placed on leave during an investigation, the agency said."Egypt and the entire world witnessed protests yesterday by the great Egyptian people, expressing their views and their will in a peaceful, civil and unprecedented manner. Everyone saw the movement of the Egyptian people and listened to their voice with respect and interest. It is essential that the people's action and demands receive a response from all parties which bear some measure of responsibility in this dangerous environment for the nation.
"The Egyptian armed forces, as a principle component of the future equation, and based on its national and historic responsibility to protect the security and welfare of this nation, affirms the following:
"The armed forces will not take part in the political or governing arena and is against exceeding the role accorded to it by genuine democratic principles rooted in the will of the people;
"The security of the nation faces real dangers from the recent developments in the country, which places responsibilities on all of us, each according to their roles, and to what is necessary to fend off these risks.
"The armed forces were quick to realise the danger of the current situation as well as the demands of the great Egyptian people. That is why it set a one-week ultimatum for all political forces to reach consensus and pull out of the crisis. But that week has passed without any initiative or action. This is what led the people to persevere and independently take to the streets in an impressive way, which has drawn admiration and attention domestically, regionally and internationally.
"Wasting more time will only lead to more divisions and strife, of which we have been warning and continue to warn.
"The people have suffered and have found no one to give them care and kindness, and this presents a moral and psychological burden for the armed forces, which concludes that everyone should stop doing anything other than embracing the proud people, who have proven their readiness to do the impossible, if they feel loyalty and dedication toward them.
"The armed forces repeat their call to respond to the people's demands and gives everyone a 48-hour deadline to carry the burden of these historic circumstances that the nation is going through. It will not forgive or tolerate any shortcomings in bearing their responsibilities.
"The armed forces warns everyone that if the demands of the people are not met during this set time period, it will be obliged, due to its national and historic duties, out of respect for the demands of the great Egyptian people, to announce a roadmap and measures for the future, which it would oversee in collaboration with all the loyal national factions and movements, including the youth who were and remain the spark of the glorious revolution. No one would be ignored.
"A salute of appreciation and fondness to the faithful and loyal men of the armed forces, who bore and continue to bear their national responsibility toward the great Egyptian people with all determination, perseverance and pride.
"God protect Egypt and its great proud people"Mike Mularkey, the one-time offensive guru who had helped turn Kordell Stewart into a Pro Bowl quarterback, who revitalized the career of journeyman quarterback Tommy Maddox in Pittsburgh, got his groove back in 2008 when he put Atlanta's offense back on the map.
Mularkey hasn't really got a fair chance while being a head coach with quarterbacks like J.P. Losman, Kelly Holcombe, Blaine Gabbert, and Chad Henne. He also lost his best player MJD when the Raiders took him out for the season.With that being said Mularkey won't see a head coaching job for awhile.
His offense is a personnel-based scheme, where Mularkey and his staff tailor plays and play calls to the abilities of the talent. It's a system Mularkey devised as Pittsburgh's offensive coordinator in 2001 with fellow offensive assistants Russ Grimm and Ken Whisenhunt.
"It started with us meeting and evaluating our personnel, and in reality, this system started with Kordell and worked its way down from there," Mularkey said. "We saw what we had offensively, player-wise, and said, 'Let's fit what we have here. Tinker some things -- don't even install things -- that we know our left tackle can't do. Even though it looks good or another team is successful with it, let's not put any player in a position where he is uncertain if he can do it.' "You want your quarterback to have success, but if one guy isn't put in the position to be successful, you can't run that play."
The only constants in Mularkey's offenses has been blocking tight ends and tough running backs. The quarterbacks and offensive lines have had a variety of skill sets, so Mularkey has had multiple ideas, sets and schemes.
His skill for creating special packages to utilize multi-dimensional players such as Hines Ward and Antwaan Randle El earned him the nickname "Inspector Gadget". Even with his creative imagination, his philosophy of being the most physical punishing offense helped the Steelers average 10+ wins a year during his 3 years as offensive coordinator.
His first year in Atlanta he took them from 29th to 10th in scoring offense. He's shown the flexibility to go run heavy (like in 2001) or pass heavy (2011), in part because he uses the players he has to accentuate their strengths.
In other words Mularkey is the anti-Knapp.It came from the deep, a mile below the Earth's surface, in a place where only bacteria were thought to exist.
It's Halicephalobus mephisto, a new species of roundworm that radically extends the possibilities of animal life on this planet and perhaps on others.
"Our results expand the known metazoan biosphere and demonstrate that deep ecosystems are more complex than previously accepted," wrote researchers led by biologist Gaetan Borgonie of Belgium's Ghent University in a June 1 Nature paper. "The ability of multicellular organisms to survive in the subsurface should be considered in the evolution of eukaryotes and the search for life on Mars."
It's only been two decades since scientists recognized that any life whatsoever could live hundreds or thousands of feet beneath Earth's surface, a region of extreme pressure, high temperatures and few nutrients. Now it's thought that up to one-half of all biological matter exists there, though this newly conventional wisdom holds that subsurface life is strictly the domain of single-celled organisms, not complex animals.
>'If life arose on Mars and it is still there deep underground, then it may have continued to evolve into something more complex than we are willing to entertain today.'
For the last 20 years, Borgonie has studied roundworms, developing what he calls "a healthy respect for their ability to withstand stress." Various members of the ubiquitous, 28,000-species-strong phylum can live almost without oxygen, in extremely acidic environments, and despite prolonged starvation. When space shuttle Columbia tragically disintegrated upon re-entering Earth's atmosphere in 2003, roundworms in a canister on its wings survived.
Five years ago, Borgonie started to wonder whether roundworms might live in Earth's subsurface. Comparing their known physiological limits to subsurface conditions, he reasoned that roundworms should be able to survive there. Few people agreed.
"Everyone thought I was insane risking a career hunting something everybody said they knew could not be," said Borgonie. But even as grantmakers denied him funding, he met Tullis Onstott, a Princeton University biologist who also suspected that roundworms could live deep.
Borgonie took a sabbatical in 2008, and the pair used money from their savings to travel to South Africa, home to some of the world's deepest mines. Water recovered from their depths had already revealed such extremophile marvels as the world's first single-organism ecosystem. Borgonie and Onstott's team found the world's first subsurface animals.
The most striking creature was a previously undescribed, 0.05-cm-long roundworm of the Halicephalobus genus, which Borgonie and Onstott dubbed H. mephisto in honor of the German lord of the underworld. Also present were a known roundworm, Plectus aquiatilis, and an as-yet-unidentified specimen. Subsequent tests found they ate subsurface bacteria, thus sealing any question of their origin.
See Also:
One-Organism Ecosystem Discovered in African Gold Mine
Extreme Life Thrives Where the Living Ain't Easy
Life Thrives in Earth's Most Mars-Like Environment
Top 5 Bets for Extraterrestrial Life in the Solar SystemWhile their specimens were all found at depths of one mile, water from two miles down returned a "DNA signal," or genes that belonged to some still-unidentified roundworm. Asked what else could be there, Borgognie said, "My guess is more than we think. If nematodes are there, then some other small invertebrates might be there too."
As to how H. mephisto and other animals might influence flows of energy and chemicals beneath Earth's surface, that isn't yet known, said Borgonie. It's not even known whether and how life's subsurface cycles affect life above, though it makes sense that some connection exists. "We're only scratching the surface," said Borgonie. "What is sure is that the nematodes we found do eat bacteria. As such they will affect the turnover of the microbial community, and that is completely new."
According to Borgonie, subsurface roundworms should be found all over the world, including far below the ocean floor, where some scientists think Earth's life originated. The implications may even extend to other worlds, where researchers generally assume that conditions will be so extreme as to preclude all but single-celled life.
"Harsh conditions do not automatically preclude complexity," said Borgognie. "If life arose on Mars and it is still there deep underground, then it may have continued to evolve into something more complex than we are willing to entertain today."
Image: Halicephalobus mephisto. (Ghent University).
See Also:
Citation: "Nematoda from the terrestrial deep subsurface of South Africa." By G. Borgonie, A. Garcia-Moyano, D. Litthauer, W. Bert, A. Bester, E. van Heerden, C. Moller, M. Erasmus & T. C. Onstott. Nature, Vol. 473 No. 7348, June 1, 2011.This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.
× Missouri Botanical Garden releases Whitaker Music Festival lineup ST. LOUIS, MO (KTVI) – The Missouri Botanical Garden has announced the lineup for the 23rd annual The Whitaker Music Festival. Thousands pack a picnic dinner for the free concerts held Wednesday evenings, June 1 through August 3 at 7:30pm. Whitaker Music Festival lineup: June 1: The Feyza Eren Group. Feya Eren studied classical violin for eight years and performed in several musical and theatrical productions before turning professional. Feyza sang various styles of music with many groups in St. Louis before moving to Istanbul. She was a jazz vocalist in Istanbul for 15 years. Today the group performs in the styles of jazz, bossa nova and swing. June 8: The Steve Ewing Band. St. Louis based musician Steve Ewing is best known as the golden voice behind the seven piece powerhouse The Urge. Formed in high school back in late 80’s, The Urge took their eclectic mix of punk, reggae, hip hop, ska, and sent a sonic shockwave from the Midwest that can still be felt to this day. They perform alternative rock and reggae. June 15: Clusterpuck. Clusterpuck is a mix bluegrass, folk, rock, and country into a hearty sonic stew. Throwing tradition aside while utilizing banjo, guitar, bass, washboard, violin, mandolin, and dobro, this local five piece group produce an up-beat, grassy energy with a little country jam for listeners of all ages to savor. June 22: The Grooveliner. Formed in February 2015, Grooveliner set forth with the idea of keeping all the avenues of creativity open by not labeling themselves as a genre-specific group. With their current focus on funk, Latin, rock and soul, the group is comprised of six seasoned St. Louis musicians June 29: Saint Louis Social Club. Every professional musician has a “dream band.” It is made up of members who have crossed paths for years, doing memorable shows together. They perform swing, jazz, rhythm and blues, funk, zydeco and blues. July 6: Jay Farrar. As a founding member of Uncle Tupelo and Son Volt, songwriter Jay Farrar helped popularize the alt-country movement of the 1990s. He also launched a solo career during the following decade, making it plain that his musical ambitions stretched far beyond the retro-leaning twang of his contemporaries. July 13: Ptah Williams. Williams is one of St. Louis’ finest jazz pianists. One of his many strengths is that he is able to shine both as a soloist and as an accompanist. As a soloist, he assumes center stage with grace and confidence and as an accompanist he supports the soloist with a style that is varied and innovative, yet never overpowering. July 20: Erin Bode. The Erin Bode Group creates music forged from the Americana of its members’ midwestern roots, infused with jazz grooves and made magic by Bode’s bell-like voice. Sophisticated arrangements and attention to phrasing, both vocal and instrumental, further distinguish the band’s fresh sound. July 27: The Cree Rider Family Band. The Cree Rider Family Band is rooted in a country music sound, with elements of folk, Americana and rock and roll. Known for their energetic and engaging live shows, the Cree Rider Family Band has been called a subversive country band that wears its heart on its sleeve. Cree Rider Family Band has had songs featured on television shows and independent films. August 3: Joe Mancuso. Mancuso is a classically trained vocalist turned jazz singer. He studied classical voice, audio production and jazz studies at Webster University. He sings with an abundance of passion and intensity, whether singing a ballad, bossa nova, blues or swing tune and takes his audience on a dynamic, emotional ride every time. More information: www.mobot.org/events/whitaker Filed in: News Facebook
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EmailBreaking Bad star Bryan Cranston will reportedly play supervillain Lex Luthor in the sequel to Man of Steel.
The 57-year-old, who plays Walter White in the US drama series, is expected to be confirmed in the role when the sixth series of the show ends next month.
According to Cosmic Book News, the actor will play Superman’s nemesis in at least six films in the DC Comics franchise.
It comes after Warner Bros Pictures confirmed Ben Affleck will play Batman in the 2015 movie – a decision criticized by tens of thousands of fans who have signed an online petition demanding the role be recast.
Directed by Zack Snyder, the upcoming film will pitch Batman and Superman against each other in a superhero face-off.
Read more at Sky News.Bruce Power is the proud recipient of the 2016 Outstanding Nuclear Site Achievement Award.
Len Clewett, Bruce Power’s Chief Nuclear Officer, accepted the award on behalf of the company at a ceremony in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
“While the award recognizes the accomplishments of the site, it is our people who are responsible for the success of Bruce Power and it is our people who are so deserving of this recognition,” Clewett said.
The award, presented annually by the Information System on Occupational Exposure North American Technical Centre, cites Bruce Power’s role in keeping the air clean in Ontario, as well as the significant contribution to jobs and the economy, as two of the reasons for selection.
The past year was an historic one for Bruce Power with a number of significant accomplishments, including:
Bruce Power generated 30 per cent of Ontario’s electricity at 30 per cent less than the average residential price of power. Bruce Power nuclear remains the second lowest-cost form of electricity in Ontario, second only to hydroelectric power. Bruce Power is paid 6.6 cents per kilowatt-hour (kw/h) while the average residential price is about 11 cents.
Bruce Power received its best-ever report card from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), the country’s independent regulator of nuclear facilities.
Unit 1 set a new post-refurbishment record run in April as it reached 151 days of consecutive operation. Unit 7 celebrated a record run of 487 days in September, before it was removed from service for a planned maintenance outage.
Bruce Power expanded its agreement with Nordion to supply Cobalt-60 for the sterilization of single-use medical devices, to now include ‘High Specific Activity’ Cobalt, which is used in cancer treatments across the globe.
Bruce Power provided long-term economic boosts to suppliers at BWXT Canada, ATS Automation and Laker Energy, among others, by signing long-term agreements that will injects hundreds of millions into Ontario’s economy annually and create and sustain thousands of jobs over the next 50 years.
Bruce Power and the County of Bruce teamed up to establish a new regional economic development and innovation initiative. The goal is to leverage economic opportunities for local communities during the Life-Extension Program.
The 2017 ISOE symposium is sponsored by the North American Technical Center, Information System on Occupational Exposures and supported by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the OECD/Nuclear Energy Agency.
The Information System on Occupational Exposure (ISOE) was established in 1992 by the Nuclear Energy Agency in Paris and since 1992, the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna has co-sponsored the ISOE program. Official participants in the ISOE program include 76 utilities in 29 countries (400 operating reactors, 80 shutdown reactors) and regulatory authorities in 22 countries.
About Bruce Power
Formed in 2001, Bruce Power is an electricity company based in Bruce County, Ontario. We are powered by our people. Our 4,200 employees are the foundation of our accomplishments and are proud of the role they play in safely delivering clean, reliable, low-cost nuclear power to families and businesses across the province. Bruce Power has worked hard to build strong roots in Ontario and is committed to protecting the environment and supporting the communities in which we live. Learn more at www.brucepower.com and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube.
For more information, contact:
John Peevers, Department Manager, Communications and Media Relations
519-361-6583; john.peevers@brucepower.comI am now working on the Philadelphia Phillies Top 20 prospects list for 2016. The next team in line is the Texas Rangers, to be followed by the Cincinnati Reds, Baltimore Orioles, Arizona Diamondbacks, Detroit Tigers, Washington Nationals, and the Houston Astros.
Use this thread to discuss the Texas Rangers organization. Possible points for discussion include, but are certainly not limited to,
***The Rangers won 88 games and earned the American League West title. Your over/under for 2016?
***It is hard to believe that Rougned Odor is just 22 years old. How much better do you think he can get? Has he just scratched the surface of his potential, or is he maxed out?
***If you gave Joey Gallo 500 at-bats in the majors in 2016, what would his slash line be? What will it be in the year 2020?
***If you had to jump Lewis Brinson or Nomar Mazara directly to the major leagues in 2016 and give them 500 at-bats, no matter how well or how badly they played, who would you pick and why?
***2015 first-rounder Dillon Tate: project his development path.
***As always, feel free to discuss sleeper prospects or anything else Ranger-oriented.The excitement. The joy. The power of Star Wars fans.
They’re real.
After two record-breaking teasers, the full trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens debuted earlier this week, and we are humbled by the response. The sneak peek shown during ESPN’s Monday Night Football was seen by a TV audience of over 16 million, followed by an immediate release on YouTube, Facebook, and platforms worldwide. In just 24 hours, the trailer was viewed online more than 112 million times. That’s 128 million times globally in a single day! But more than numbers, there was discussion, there were reaction videos, there were fun memes. There were cheers and there were tears from fans young and old. We saw and loved it all, and it meant the world to the creators of the film. And we were equally blown away by the advance ticket sales.
Websites slowed, crashed, and became one with the Force. (There probably hasn’t been this big of a network jam in a galaxy far, far away since the Emperor’s trap in the Battle of Endor.) Incredibly — but not surprisingly — you set numerous records, including the biggest-ever 24 hours for advance sales in numerous countries. In the UK, more than 200,000 tickets were sold in the first day. In Norway, you braved subzero temperatures overnight to make sure you were among the first to see the film. Fortunately, there are still plenty of tickets to be had for opening weekend and beyond.
All of us at Lucasfilm are totally overwhelmed by the enthusiasm we’ve seen from fans this week and throughout the lead-up to this film. And we still have 56 days to go until the official December 18 release date!
Thank you all for making the Star Wars universe what it is, and for keeping it alive and growing and meaningful. Star Wars is back and beginning an exciting new journey, and it’s because of you.
The Force. It’s calling to you. We can’t wait for you to let it in, again, this December.
StarWars.com. All Star Wars, all the time.22.02.2016
Bub steckt im ICE mit Kopf in Klobrille fest
Kurioser Einsatz am Bahnhof Ingolstadt: Ein Bub ist in einem ICE in einer Klobrille festgesteckt. Die Bundespolizisten hatten eine Idee, wie sie den Jungen am besten befreien können.
In den Klamauk-Filmen gibt es solche Verkettungen unglücklicher Umstände oft. Doch je ungewöhnlicher die Ideen sind, mit denen die Zuschauer zum Lachen gebracht werden sollen, umso unglaubhafter wird alles meist. Aber diese Geschichte mit dem Buben, der in der Klobrille stecken geblieben ist, die ist tatsächlich wahr.
Mama, 30, und Papa, 33, waren mit dem einjährigen Sprössling am Sonntagabend per ICE auf großer Fahrt von München zur Oma nach Nürnberg. Da hatte der kleine Mann ein menschliches Bedürfnis. Mit einer mobilen Kinderklobrille marschierte er an der Hand von Mama zur Zugtoilette. Nach Angaben von Thomas Gigl von der Bundespolizei setzte der Bub die mobile Brille auch perfekt auf das „große“ WC auf, aber dann wollte er doch noch einmal genau nachschauen, ob auch wirklich alles passt. Also senkte er den Kopf und inspizierte seine Montage. Ausgerechnet in diesem Moment fuhr der ICE in den Hauptbahnhof Ingolstadt ein – und bremste stark ab. Den Rest kann man sich vorstellen: Der Bub fiel etwas nach vorne und sein Kopf wurde durch die Öffnung der Brille geschoben.
Aber Mama und Papa konnten die mobile Klobrille beim besten Willen nicht mehr herunterbringen. Also stieg die junge Familie am Hauptbahnhof mit dem Sohnemann an der Hand aus und marschierte schnurstracks zur Inspektion der Bundespolizei. Was das wohl für ein kurioses Bild war? Die Kollegen seien „ziemlich verdutzt“ gewesen, als sie den Buben gesehen haben, sagte Thomas Gigl unserer Zeitung.
Die Polizisten bestreichen den Kopf des Kindes mit Waffenöl
Die „Freunde und Helfer“ versuchten zunächst vergeblich, die Klobrille über den Kopf zu bringen. Da fiel einem Beamten ein Trick ein: Er und seine Kollegen bestrichen die Ohren und das Gesicht des Buben mit einem Waffenöl, damit alles schön gleitet. Danach ließ sich die „Halskrause“ relativ gut abziehen, schildert Gilg, der betont, dass seine Kollegen „natürlich“ ein biologisches Waffenöl verwendet hätten.
Die erleichterten Eltern und der kleine Mann konnten ihre Fahrt mit dem nächsten Zug fortsetzen.
Themen FolgenChannel 7, faced with losing its NBC affiliation in January, today announced a new broadcast schedule that will feature more than 87 hours of news per week, including a primetime block from 9 p.m. to 11:30 p.m., and syndicated programming to fill out the rest of the schedule.
The new lineup is a tacit acknowledgement that the battle to keep NBC programming on Channel 7 is all but over and WHDH has lost, even though owner Ed Ansin has appealed a judge’s decision saying the network owes him nothing once their contract runs out.
Beginning Jan. 1, Channel 7 will broadcast local news from 5 a.m. to 10 a.m., from noon to 1 p.m., from 4 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. and from 9 to 11:30 p.m. on weekdays. On weekends, 7News will air from 8 to 11 a.m., 6 to 7:30 p.m. and 9 to 11:30 p.m.
The station will air “Family Feud,” the popular syndicated game show hosted by Steve Harvey, weeknights from 8 to 9 p.m.
“We’re especially excited about our new 9 p.m. newscast, because viewing habits have changed,” said Paul Magnes, vice president and general manager of WHDH. “People are recording traditional primetime programs and watching them later. Now they will be able to watch a live newscast with vital and compelling information they want before they go to bed.”
Developing …Abstract
Over 30 years of research has shown that urban nature is a promising tool for enhancing the physical, psychological, and social well-being of the world's growing urban population. However, little is known about the type and amount of nature people require in order to receive different health benefits, preventing the development of recommendations for minimum levels of exposure and targeted city planning guidelines for public health outcomes. Dose–response modelling, when a dose of nature is modeled against a health response, could provide a key method for addressing this knowledge gap. In this overview, we explore how “nature dose” and health response have been conceptualized and examine the evidence for different shapes of dose–response curves. We highlight the crucial need to move beyond simplistic measures of nature dose to understand how urban nature can be manipulated to enhance human health.
Within 30 years, 70% of the world's human population will live in cities (World Health Organization 2013). The shift to an increasingly urbanized population will have major implications for health, because more people will be exposed to the chronic and noncommunicable conditions that are disproportionately common in cities; these include conditions such as cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, and obesity (Dye 2008). Urban nature has the potential to provide an inexpensive intervention to assist in addressing many of these health issues, because there are now demonstrable links between exposure to |
, you old pool shark! How the hell are you?
James: Not bad.. So, what have you been up to?
Ted Kaczynski: I’ve been doing a lot of writing..
James: Yeah, really? You, uh, get anything published?
Ted Kaczynski: Yeah. One thing.
Adam McKay: To play the bogeyman — to play the Devil as a goofball — is just a fun game to do, you know? and then you get the right performer doing it, and, all of a sudden, you can start having a run with these characters.
Steve Higgins: Everything about Ted Kaczynski was just so… insane. Because he was more like a character we’d create, than a real human.
Unabomber Defense Plan: 01/17/98
Ted Kaczynski: [ stands ] Terrific! Great! I think that went well!
Steve Higgins: Who else to play that, but Will?
Norm MacDonald: As soon as I saw him, I thought, “This guy is like Chevy.” Because he’s an all-American guy, but he has this, like, incredible subversive streak in him.
The Terry Gantner Family Workout: 12/07/96
Terry Gantner: [ punches board, breaking Terry’s hand instead of the board ] Oh, God! Oh.. God! Oh, sweet God! Sweet bastard! Oh, my God! What kind of wood was that!!
Julian Gantner: Dad, are you all right?
Terry Gantner: What kind of wood was that! What kind of wood was that!! Sweet God!
Molly Shannon: Will’s a great writer, too. I loved writing stuff with him, because he’s so supportive, and if you say any crazy things like, “That’s great!” he’ll say, “We’ll be crazy together.” Um — I think we share a similar dark sensibility.
Dog Show: 12/05/98
David Larry: Hello, and welcome to “Dog Show” —
Miss Colleen: A show for people —
David Larry: About dogs —
Miss Colleen: Starring one dog —
David Larry: And one dirty dog.
Miss Colleen: That’s right — that’s me.I’m Miss Colleen, and I! Like! Huh-dogs! [ she dives forward ]
David Larry: And I’m David Larry. And I like dogs. As usual, I’m sitting next to my special dog friend — [ the dog dives into David’s drums ] Mr. Bojangles – -who is actually a girl. But I gave her a boy’s name. Because I’m playing a TRICK on her!
Will Ferrell: “Dog Show”? It was really funny-strange.. but we somehow tricked Lorne into thinking it was funny-ha-ha. Adn he would put it on in the heart of the show. Or, sometimes, it would be the second sketch up. [ he laughs ]We’d just look at each other, like… “How did we fool him?” ‘Cause we’re holding these little tiny dogs, but —
Adam McKay: And that was sort of the power of Will Ferrell, and that’s why all the writers, like, loved him and wrote for him endlessly. Because he broke that barrier between funny-strange and funny-ha-ha.
Mark McKinney: He is the kind of spirit of crazy that you want, and, at the same time, you know, none of the, you know, sort of darker personal issues that usually haunt that type of person. He was always friendly, always accessible. You always felt like Will was your bud.
Ana Gasteyer: Probably the most popular people in the workplace are like, you know — Will Ferrell has this, just impossible-to-replicate calm and confidence about whathe’s doing. And it’s contagious.
Adam McKay: The game was mot: “Look how funny I am.” The game was: “We like to play with each other.”
Marci Klein: Every night, they were doing improv… and improv games and theater games. It was just completely different.
Steve Higgins: The more you know somebody, the more you know how they’re funny in a way that people haven’t seen before. Norm and I were hanging out in his office one day, playing a game where he had words and you had to do an impression of somebody saying the same sentence, and he did Burt Reynolds doing it, and we’d go, “Well, there you go! So how can we get Burt Reynolds on TV?”
Norm MacDonald: And they wanted me to do Burt Reynolds now, with a grey beard, and I said, “No, let’s do it in the 70’s, ’cause that’s when I loved him the most.”
Celebrity Jeopardy: 10/23/99
Alex Trebek: [ as Burt Reynolds walks up wearing a large hat ] Mr. Reynolds, what are you doing?
Burt Reynolds: Ha-ha! Yeah, I found this backstage, an over-sized hat. It’s funny.
Alex Trebek: No, it’s not!
Burt Reynolds: Sure it is. It’s funny. It’s funny because it’s ah, bigger than, ah.. [ clears throat ]..you know, a normal hat.
Alex Trebek: Uh, I see that. Get back to your podium.
Will Ferrell: The “Jeopardy” sketch, to me, is the spirit of “Saturday Night Live.” It’s, like, you know, the whole cast is working at one time, and there’s really some clever writing going on…
Celebrity Jeopardy: 03/20/99
Alex Trebek: Mr. Connery, why don’t you pick a category?
Sean Connery: I’ve got to ask you about the Penis Mightier.
Alex Trebek: What? No. No, no, that is The Pen is Mightier.
Sean Connery: Gussy it up however you want, Trebek. What matters is does it work?
Darrell Hammond: And none of it really ever made any sense. It made no sense that Connery didn’t know the answers… and it made no sense that he had such an intense dislike for Alex Trebek…
Celebrity Jeopardy: 10/23/99
Alex Trebek: “This is the sound a doggy makes.” [ Connery buzzes in ] Mr. Connery.
Sean Connery: Moo. [ buzzer sounds ]
Alex Trebek: No.
Sean Connery: Well, that’s the sound your mother made last night! [ laughs ]
Darrell Hammond: It’s the most popular thing I’ve ever done. It’s the thing people know most about me when they come to my shows.
Norm MacDonald: And then one time, I was talking to Burt Reynolds, and he said he wanted to come on the show while I was doing “Celebrity Jeopardy”, and then, uh, punch me in the face and take over… and then, he’d be even stupider — but then I got fired, and so he couldn’t do it!
Coming up next… Norm Vs. The Network
SNL TranscriptsExtreme Weather in the U.S. and Beyond
Drought. Wildfires. Wind. Hail. Tornadoes. Flooding.
April 2011 was a month defined by extreme weather conditions, particularly in the United States. Texas followed its driest March in over 100 years with its fifth driest April. Higher temperatures and absent rainfall were blamed for power outages at refineries, a spike in rabies reports, and wheat crop losses. By month’s end, 94% of the state was experiencing severe to exceptional drought conditions. The state has received a mere 1.68 inches of rain since February 1, easily besting its driest February-April period in history by nearly an inch. The deepening, months-long drought was accompanied by over 6,000 new wildfires that burned a record 1.79 million acres across the country during April and 2.2 million acres since January in Texas alone. The extreme conditions lead Texas governor Rick Perry to proclaim three days in April as “Days of Prayer for Rain”.
The month also witnessed violent storm fronts that brought record precipitation, severe wind, and hail the size of golf balls and larger. Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and West Virginia all reported their wettest April in history. Kentucky received an average of 11.88 inches of precipitation — nearly three times its long-term average for the month — breaking the state’s previous record by more than four inches. Up to 20 inches of rain, nearly half the normal annual amount, fell in some areas resulting in record flooding in the Ohio valley, and the Red River in Minnesota reached major flood stage for the third straight spring. The previous one-day record for severe wind reports of 455 was broken twice during the month. The storms of April 19 generated 575 severe wind reports, but even that number paled in comparison to the staggering 1,318 preliminary severe wind reports resulting from the storms of April 4.
But it was the tornadoes of April that truly made history. The 30-year-average for April tornadoes nationwide is 135. The monthly record was 542.
The preliminary number of tornadoes reported in April 2011 is 875.
Single day events saw Wisconsin experience its largest monthly April tornado outbreak in history on April 9, and an EF-4 twister ripped a 21-mile path across the city of St. Louis on April 22. But it was the multi-day outbreaks that generated the most devastation. From April 14 to April 16, there were 329 preliminary tornado reports across 16 states with the final tally expected to be around 155, making it one of the largest outbreaks of any month in history. States of emergency were declared in Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and North Carolina. North Carolina bore the brunt with at least 30 confirmed tornadoes destroying hundreds of homes and businesses and resulting in at least 24 deaths, marking the three days as the largest tornado outbreak to ever hit the state, and the second deadliest outbreak on record for North Carolina.
April 25th through the 28th saw another massive amount of tornadic activity. An estimated 305 tornadoes hit from Texas to New York during the 4-day period, with 190 of them touching down over just 24 hours on the 27th and 28th. The outbreak included three EF-5, 12 EF-4, and 21 EF-3 tornadoes and killed nearly 350 people, mostly in the state of Alabama, making it the deadliest tornado outbreak since 1936. A strong EF-4 tornado packing winds of 190 mph devastated the cities of Tuscaloosa and Birmingham. This single cyclone tore a path as much as 1.5 miles wide and was on the ground for more than 80 miles causing an estimated 65 fatalities and over a thousand injuries.
Allstate, the nation’s largest publicly held personal lines insurer, announced $1.4 billion in estimated catastrophe losses for the month with over 100,000 claims reported to date in the affected areas. Risk-modeling company AIR Worldwide estimated the tornadoes caused $3.7 billion to $5.5 billion in insured losses industrywide. The years 2008 through 2010 were already the industry’s costliest for thunderstorm damage—which includes hail, tornadoes and other severe storms—with a total tab of $30 billion, said Robert Hartwig, president of trade group Insurance Information Institute, via a Wall Street Journal report, but 2011 is on track to exceed any of those three.
Meanwhile, half way around the world, Thailand experienced massive flooding that impacted nearly a million people. In what is normally the dry season, some areas received more than 50 inches of rain bringing mudslides and widespread damage to crops.
Research Examines Carbon Sinks and Ecological Impacts
Observational research from the scientific community continued to explore the ongoing reaction of natural environments and processes to changing conditions. Under a warming climate, Antarctica is becoming greener as grasses are finding better conditions under which to take root while warming waters and declining krill populations are resulting in declining penguin populations. An analysis of glaciers in the southern half of South America finds them melting at the fastest pace in the last 350 years. And earlier spring blooms are impacting the timing of ecological cycles while changes in rainfall patterns are influencing the migratory habits of some bird species.
GOP Continues Opposition to EPA Regulation of Greenhouse Gases
Separate studies focused on different global carbon sinks with researchers at Duke University concluding an 18-year study and finding the growth and seed-production abilities of several species of trees to be considerably more sensitive than previously thought to climatic changes such as earlier springs and summer droughts. The U.S. Forest Service found that coastal mangrove forests, which have been the targets of heavy deforestation, store more carbon than almost any other forest on Earth. And the longevity of underwater kelp forests was determined to be hindered by wave damage accompanying increased storm strength and frequency. Lastly, satellite data from NASA revealed lowered plant productivity in several of Earth’s larger ocean currents.
In the political arena, carbon pricing remained a contentious subject in Australia while the U.S. Supreme Court signaled a likely rejection of a lawsuit brought by six states attempting to limit greenhouse gas emissions by a myriad of power companies around the nation. The court indicated a preference for such regulations to be handed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), an organization facing its own challenges.
The Republican party in the United States continued its multi-pronged attack on the EPA throughout the month. A bill aimed at blocking the EPA from using the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions easily passed in the House of Representatives, but a companion bill failed in the U.S. Senate. And, in a budget deal compromise to avoid a government shutdown, the Republicans won significant environmental provisions that reduce the EPA’s budget by $1.6 billion, remove gray wolves in the northern Rockies from the endangered-species list, and defund the Interior Department’s Wild Lands initiative, which would have inventoried federal lands for their wilderness characteristics.
Meanwhile a study focusing on methane releases from hydraulic fracturing, an increasingly controversial process used in the drilling extraction of natural gas, found that such releases may contribute as much or more than coal to global warming. Natural gas has been gaining widespread favor amongst politicians in both parties in the U.S. considering its large natural stores in the country, relatively easy access, minimal regulation, and lower costs particularly when compared against rising oil prices.
Quotable
“Whereas, throughout our history, both as a state and as individuals, Texans have been strengthened, assured and lifted up through prayer; it seems right and fitting that the people of Texas should join together in prayer to humbly seek an end to this devastating drought and these dangerous wildfires” – Rick Perry, Governor, State of Texas
Proclamation for Days of Prayer for Rain
April 21, 2011
Highlights
AdvertisementsWelcome to the 'The Lying Slut': Britain's toughest pub where staff are too scared to call time... and even 13 policemen didn't feel safe when they walked in
'We still didn't feel safe in that pub,' say police who raided it
Angry regulars start campaign of arson and vandalism in retaliation
Bar staff too scared to call last orders because of aggressive drinkers
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A pub branded Britain's roughest boozer has been shut down by police who admit that even a gun-slinging cowboy like John Wayne would fail to control its drunken drug-taking punters.
The Flying Shuttle in Bolton was so bad that it took 13 officers to close it in a raid, who said afterwards 'we still didn't feel safe in that pub.'
It was closed because of regular lock-ins and drug dealing but it appears that the decision has caused more problems for long-suffering neighbours.
Rough: The Flying Shuttle in Bolton has been shut down by police who admitted they felt frightened doing it
Trashed: Angry punters have started fires and vandalised the pub - its sign has been doctored to read 'The Lying Slut'
Some protesting regulars have now turned to arson starting eight fires in one night surrounding the pub in Farnworth, two miles south of central Bolton, chanting'save our pub'.
They also changed signs, renaming The Flying Shuttle: The Lying Slut, by strategically deleting letters.
Sergeant Rob Knight led the raid and when they came into the pub at 12.30am they were outnumbered four-to-one.
New name: Using bin-liners protesters have renamed the pub they believe should be saved despite its reputation
Behind bars: The car park at the rear of The Flying Shuttle pub, which has been shut off. Scorch marks can be seen on the right side of the building
In February police had popped in to sort trouble there and found that drinkers were still being served at 2.45am, all because the bar staff were too frightened to call last orders.
'We took 13 officers with us and we still did not feel safe in that pub. Customers were very drunk and aggressive. There attitude was "We own this pub, not you",' Sgt Knight told the Daily Star Sunday.
Police found a bag of cannabis worth £100, evidence of cocaine use in the toilets, a broken pool cue, likely to be used as a weapon, as well as cans and plastic bottles that had been filled with booze, proving many customers were not even buying drinks there.
Foreboding: The Bolton pub rarely closed because the people behind the bar were too frightened to call last orders. Security was also needed because the area was targeted eight times in one night by arsonists
In a Bolton Council licensing hearing this month the police successfully got it shut down.
Licensing officer PC Garry Lee told councillors: 'Not even John Wayne could sort out the problems there at the moment.
'The potential was there for it to go off at any stage.
'The supervisor admitted he had problems and was unable to deal with the issues.'
But in retaliation to the decision yobs then started fires and vandalised the pub, terrifying locals.
Vandalised: The wall of the pub is daubed with paint by locals, one of several acts that have terrified people living nearby
Close up: 'BURN IT' has been sprayed onto the red brick wall
In the first week there were three fires followed by one night of chaos where there were an astonishing eight blazes in the area.
Nearby houses were raided for garden furniture and wheelie bins, which were then torched.
Around 20 people, aged between 15 and 40 were behind the fires, and three have been arrested on suspicion of arson.
The fire service have since handed out fliers to 200 homes around the pub while police have added extra patrols of the area.
Unacceptable: Police found evidence of drug-taking and dealing on the premises in several raids
Lauren O'Gorman, who lives nearby told the Bolton News: 'It started when the windows were boarded up. People were starting setting fires and were chanting "save our pub".
Another mother-of-four, who asked not to be named, said she will not stay in the area now.
'There were young lads at my window and they took my wheelie bin,' she said.
'The firefighters had barely left and they were at it again. My nine year old was frightened by it.
'We plan to move out now.'
Solicitor Matthew Phipps, speaking on behalf of licence holders the Spirit Pub Company, said: 'We are extremely sorry to be here and sorry about the circumstances in which we have been called.'Terry Firma
If god is good, is he also good for you? It depends on whether you believe in a kind and benevolent superbeing, or in a compulsive rager who is a candidate for anger management.
Psychologists led by Nava Silton of Marymount Manhattan College tried to determine
…how one’s perception of God — as punitive, benevolent, or indifferent — was associated with five different psychiatric symptoms: general anxiety, social anxiety, paranoia, obsession, and compulsion. Respondents’ characterizations of God were gleaned from their opinions of how six adjectives — absolute, critical, just, punishing, severe, or wrathful — applied to God. A numbering system was used to gauge the degree to which the subject viewed the adjective as an accurate descriptor of God (very well = 4; somewhat well = 3, not very well = 2, etc.). In a similar fashion, respondents answered queries designed to measure the five aforementioned psychiatric symptoms.
The researchers found that belief in a punitive God was significantly associated with an increase in social anxiety, paranoia, obsession, and compulsion. Conversely, belief in a benevolent God was associated with reductions in those four symptoms. Belief in an indifferent God was not linked to any symptoms.
It’s a nice-to-know conclusion that probably won’t surprise anyone. Or, as one snarky commenter noted,
It doesn’t take a scientific study to conclude that there is something seriously wrong with people who smile gleefully as they describe their rapture, when they’ll be whisked away in a blissful twinkle of an eye, and the rest of humanity will suffer all manner of death and torture for not heeding their proactive told-ya-so.
[image via flickriver]NOTE:
This graph has been updated with the newest data through 2013, here:
USA’s Total Fertility Rates by Race, 1980-2013
________________________________________________________
NOTE: This is a follow-up to a post made last year, “USA’s Total Fertility Rates by Race, 1980-2008”, the data for which ended in 2008.
The CDC recently released final fertility figures for 2010, and used Census-2010 data to update estimates for the entirety of the 2000s. I have produced the above graph, displaying the updated information broken down by race, and have included a table — below — on which that graph is based.
[Note: ‘Total Fertility Rate‘ refers to the estimated number of children a woman can expect to have in her lifetime, based on a specific year’s birth-rate. In advanced societies, ‘replacement fertility’ is said to be 2.1 — to replace the mother and father, and a 0.1 ‘surplus’ to account for retardation, death in childhood, and other factors. A modern society with a 1.05 TFR, then, would produce a child-generation half as large as the parent-generation. (1.05/2.1)]
Population Contraction (of native-born Americans): It’s humbling to think that the USA has had below replacement-fertility for the entirety of the period of this dataset. The 1970s were not fertile years, either. One must go back to 1971, actually, to find a year in which the USA had a TFR comfortably-above the replacement level of 2.1. (It was 2.26 in 1971, but quickly falling — 2.01 in 1972, and 1.88 in 1973). Forty years, and counting, of not replacing ourselves. The USA’s overall TFR flirted with exact-replacement fertility in 2006 and 2007 amid the height of the housing-bubble.
Note on ‘White’ TFR and White population contraction: A caveat is in order. Race-fertility calculations in the USA are based on race of mother. By the late 2000s, ~10% of the babies born to American White women were fathered by Nonwhite men. The American ‘White-White TFR’ (babies with two White parents) would thus be ~1.6 in 2010 (down from ~1.7 before the recession). [White-Female-Fertility (x) Share of those births to White fathers = 1.79* 0.9].
Late-1980s Optimism: All groups saw a fertility rise in the late 1980s (See Western Civilizational Pride, 1986-2002“), which by the early-to-mid 1990s had receded for Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, and Amerindians, but — curiously — remained for Whites. White fertility was boosted by a respectable ~15% in the years straddling the fall of Communism, and it held onto that gain, remarkably consistently, through the 1990s and 2000s.
The Housing Bubble: All the Nonwhite groups saw a noticeable rise in fertility in the mid-2000s. This was the era of the “Housing Bubble”, which was caused by government-mandated cheap housing loans primarily to Nonwhites, as Steve Sailer has pointed out. (And which ultimately caused the recession). Whites, too, saw a small bump in the mid-2000s, but theirs was the miniscule.
Late 2000s Recession: All the temporary gains driven by the Housing Bubble were given back, and then some, by the soft economy of the past five years. The USA’s recession technically began at the end of 2007, so we would assume fewer babies would have been born in 2008, which is true. Indeed, 2007 was a high-water-mark year for USA fertility in the 21st century thus far, across all racial groups. In 2008, 2009, and 2010, we have seen declining fertility, particularly dramatic for Hispanics.
Hispanics: A casual glance at this graph may suggest that something big is underway within the Hispanic community in the USA. Actually, Hispanics may have been at the 2.3-2.4 TFR range by the early-2010s anyway, if not for the subprime-mortgage initiative boosting their TFR for a while. (One can clearly see a ‘bubble’ in their TFR line — It is easy to imagine a gradual slide from their 2.6-2.7 range of the late 1990s to the 2.3-2.4 by the late 2000s. In other words, Hispanic TFR has now settled into where it would have been without the federal subsidy on Nonwhite Affordable Family Creation (NAFC — it might as well have an acronym). Also something to consider if that high-fertility Hispanic recent-immigrant women, which have always lifted Hispanic fertility rates, probably stayed home, especially in 2009 and 2010 — when economic news was bleakest.
American Indians: Nothing in this chart is as dramatic as the collapse of American-Indian fertility, from a respectable 2.2 in 1990 to a weak 1.4 in 2010. I cannot explain this.
Data Source
National Vital Statistics Report, Volume 61, tables 4 and 8. (Published in 2012).
AdvertisementsThe ride is over for motorists after fuel prices rose for the first time since October.
Petrol and diesel prices had both fallen nearly 50 cents a litre as tumbling commodity prices led to a record run of 22 consecutive cuts at the pump.
But today, fuel rose 4 cents a litre at the pump, driven by a depreciating New Zealand dollar.
A litre of 91-octane lifted to 176.9c, and diesel 110.9c.
BP spokesman Jonty Mills said the falling kiwi dollar had turned the tide on petrol prices.
An industry rule of thumb suggests an US1c fall in the currency corresponds to a 1c rise in the price of fuel.
Over the past week the New Zealand dollar has fallen more than 2c to below US73c, a four-year low.
It has fallen more than 4c in the past few weeks.
Commodity prices also recently rose for the first time since September which, coupled with a falling dollar, was tipped to force the next move at the pump up.
Automobile Association spokesman Mark Stockdale said last week retailer margins had been high enough to absorb these cost increases, "and then some".
"Margins are now back to the level they were in the first half of 2014 and are at a level that we hope fuel companies will be comfortable enough with so that they won't look at raising prices at this stage, " he said.
"Although the AA does not realistically expect a price cut at current margins, if the commodity price rises further or the dollar falls, we may have to brace ourselves for the first retail price increase in four months."It was a dark story night, and I had just arrived home from a long day at work. I walked in the door and slumped in exhaustion onto my bed. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye I saw something amiss... It was a large brown box. "What could this be?" I wondered to myself as I nervously approached it, "I hope it is not another hired thug dressed as a box, sent to recover rent money." I picked up a pair of scissors and began to open the box, which bore the insignia "Amazon". "Who is this mysterious Amazon? And why are they sending me boxes?" I opened teh box to find... a heavy package in a blue bag. Gingerly I opened the bag and.... SUDDENLY, SUNSHINE! EVERYWHERE!! My room filled with the golden glow of a thousand cans of sparkling rubicon mango juice. I gasped and looked at the gift card with the package "...this drink changed my life. It set new boundaries for deliciousness. I hope it treats you the same...your reddit secret santa" Thank you secret santa! Your gift brightened a dreary winter evening and it shall continue to do so for much time to come. And for the record, rubicon changed my life too.AMD's next-gen R7 and R9 series Radeon graphics cards may have gotten all the attention at the company's GPU 2014 event this week, but in the long run, a somewhat boring new technical addition may end up meaning more for AMD and PC gaming itself: the company's newly announced "Mantle" application programming interface (API).
A low-level revolution
We have to get the technical details out of the way before I can describe Mantle's potential bounties. I'll keep it brief!
Mantle takes advantage of AMD's unique position as the graphics provider for the Wii U, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 consoles, and (some) PCs. Mantle's low-level API, paired with Mantle graphics drivers, grants developers direct access to AMD's Graphics Core Next (GCN) GPU hardware features, which allegedly allows developers to achieve a far higher level of hardware-optimized performance than is possible with OpenGL and DirectX. In fact, AMD claims Mantle can issue nine times as many draw calls per second as those "high-level," non-hardware-specific APIs. That's a major leap in performance.
Just as impressively, that programming language carries over across consoles and PCs alike--assuming said PCs are running GCN-based Radeon graphics. In short, Mantle is a clever (and aggressive) way for AMD to leverage its next-gen console wins.
"The opportunity that we see is to get that [tight, low-level] fit and level of optimization, or something close to it, in PC games," Radeon technical marketing manager David Nalasco told PCWorld when I asked him how the Radeon heart in next-gen consoles could improve PC gaming. "If you're developing a game or a game engine and want to port it over to the PC, you don't have to start over from scratch with your optimization. You're starting from a base that has CPU cores that are much more similar, GPU cores that are much more similar, and other feature sets that are much more comparable."
What that means for you is simple: better performance in games that utilize Mantle, assuming you have a Radeon graphics card or APU (accelerated processing unit). High-level APIs simply can't match the chops of low-level ones. Check out the following tweet from Johan Andersson, the technical director for the Frostbite engine that powers Battlefield 4 and other games from Electronic Arts' Digital Illusions CE (EA DICE):
"[With Mantle] there's the potential to have a better experience on a smaller card because you're not necessarily going through the size and girth of DirectX and OpenGL," says Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy and a former AMD VP. "But also, there's the potential to give you a better experience on a bigger card, in that you can take special features to the max."
The API could also stimulate the fledgling, yet promising SteamOS operating system if--if--AMD tightens the tech's ties to OpenGL. Valve is already touting SteamOS's performance efficiencies compared to Windows, and Mantle could just be icing on the cake. Steam Machines, with its focus on a ten-foot interface and gamepad play, would also be a natural fit for console ports. Moorhead expects Mantle to be used mostly by console developers looking to bring their GCN-optimized titles over to the PC.
AMD rival Nvidia, however, has been working closely with Valve to optimize OpenGL support for SteamOS, so Valve might not embrace Mantle enthusiastically. That shouldn't preclude AMD from offering Mantle support for the open-source SteamOS, though.
Roadblocks ahoy
While the promise of tight, nearly metal-level hardware optimization and easier cross-platform development carries a lot of appeal, it remains to be seen whether Mantle and its firm ties to AMD products will be adopted by developers that are used to ubiquitous high-level APIs such as DirectX and OpenGL.
Remember, the majority of discrete PC video cards out there today come from Nvidia, and Intel's integrated CPU visuals are the most-used graphics around, so Mantle support would have to be in place alongside DirectX or OpenGL for PC games. (The next-gen consoles also support DirectX.) That won't be cheap.
AMD told reporters that the Mantle API is open, however, so Nvidia could also theoretically embed the technology in their GPUs as well--though given the animosity between the two companies and the fact that Nvidia's GPUs use a vastly different architecture than AMD's GCN, the odds of that happening are virtually nil.
"I wouldn't be surprised if Nvidia follows suit [with its own low-level API]," says Moorhead.
It's certain that at least one major game maker will embrace AMD's tech. EA DICE's Frostbite 3 engine will default to Mantle--not DirectX--in Windows rigs running GCN-based graphics cards and APUs, with the blockbuster Battlefield 4 set to be the first title to support the technology after a December update.
That's a huge win for AMD, and it could just be the tip of the iceberg. The company claims that developers have been asking for low-level GPU access, and AMD has been working hard to increase its profile with game makers.
"I think a lot of this came out of the Never Settle bundles they've been doing," says Moorhead. "More than just bundling [games], it got them closer to developers. And when you combine getting closer to developers with Never Settle on the PC side, and then getting closer to developers on the game console side, it made sense to bring out Mantle today."
Questions abound
Time will tell whether Mantle proves successful. We've seen proprietary-ish low-level drivers like Voodoo's Glide API before, and they've since gone the way of the dodo in favor of the high-level DirectX and OpenGL. Simply put, low-level APIs are highly dependent on specific hardware, and compatibility issues irked developers enough to drive them into the arms of device-spanning, high-level solutions. DirectX provided a standard (if abstracted) playing field.
The API field is far less diverse than it was in the days of yore, however, and the pace of DirectX development seems to have slowed dramatically at Microsoft. Pair that with the fact that Mantle will already be a known entity with developers coding for the Xbox One and PS4, and the API's strong-sounding performance benefits, and developers could be increasingly motivated to muddle with Mantle as the AMD user base grows along with the next-gen consoles.
Potential abounds, but so do questions: How will Mantle's claimed performance stack up in the real world? Will it be enough to convince developers to use Mantle even though they'd still need to do a proper DirectX port to satisfy Nvidia gamers? What happens as consoles grow long in the tooth and PC graphics grow ever more powerful and feature-rich? Do we need splintered, proprietary graphics technologies, even if individual solutions are more powerful?
We'll know more in a couple of months. AMD says it will delve into Mantle in far greater detail at its 2013 Developer Summit in November. One thing's for certain: Between Mantle and SteamOS, it's an exciting time to be a PC gamer.Hot Springs, Arkansas Birdseye Map (1890) Woodward & Tiernam's birdseye Map of Hot Springs, Arkansas, from 1890. Hot Springs, Ark. Birdseye Map Date: 1890 Author: Woodward & Tiernam Printing Co. Dwnld: Full Size (11mb) Print Availability: See our Prints Page for more details pff This map isn't part of any series, but we have other featured maps that you might want to check out. Woodward & Tiernam's birdseye map of Hot Springs, Arkansas [gmap] in 1890. For […]
Parts of Arkansas and Louisiana, CSA (1895) Parts of Arkansas and Louisiana Parts of Arkansas and Louisiana, CSA (1895) Date: 1895 Author: US Govt Print Office Dwnld: Full Size (10.57mb) Source: Rumsey Map Collection Print Availability: See our Prints Page for more details pff This map isn't part of any series, but we have other maps of Louisiana that you might want to check out. Part battlefield map, part "how to build a dam", part geologic cross […]
Little Rock, Arkansas Birdseye Map (1887) Beck & Pauli's Birdseye Map of Little Rock. From 1887. Little Rock Birdseye Map Date: 1887 Author: Beck & Pauli Lith. Co. Dwnld: Full Size (8.4mb) Print Availability: See our Prints Page for more details pff This map isn't part of any series, but we have other featured maps that you might want to check out. Beck & Pauli's birdseye map of Little Rock, Arkansas [gmap] in 1887. For more maps […]
Koch’s birdseye map of Kansas City, Missouri (1895) Birdseye map of Kansas City by Koch – 1895 US40 #29 KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI (Birdseye Map, 1895, Koch) Date: 1895 Author: Koch Dwnld: Full Size (19mb) Source: Library of Congress Print Availability: See our Prints Page for more details pff This map is part of a series depicting the 40 largest cities in the United States (as ranked by CBSA). This series will run through the month of July. When […]
Birdseye view of Kansas City, Missouri (1869) A. Ruger's Birdseye map of Kansas City, |
. Amazon.com: More Information.
48. Man-Eaters of Kumaon. By Jim Corbett (1944)
Ten stories of tracking and shooting -- yep, you guessed it -- man-eating tigers in the Indian Himayalas in the early 1900s. Amazon.com: More Information.
49. Alone. By Richard Byrd (1938)
Alone is the story of Richard Bryd's six months of isolation in a remote weather station in Antarctica in 1933. The lack of companionship, coupled with the long, black days of the interminable polar winter, extract a mental and physical toll from Byrd. Yet there is something else, some other sinister element at the root of the explorer's deteriorating condition. Almost before it is too late, Byrd discovers that he has been slowly poisoned by a carbon monoxide leak from a defective stove installation. Reissued by Island Press, this classic story of Arctic adventure is now available to a new generation of readers. Amazon.com: More Information.
50. Stranger in the Forest. By Eric Hansen (1988)
An engrossing chronicle of Eric Hansen's journeys, mostly on foot, covering 2,400 miles through the wild jungles of Borneo. Amazon.com: More Information.
51. Travels in Arabia Deserta. By Charles M. Doughty (1888)
Arabia in 1870s: Doughty's wanderings among the Bedouin nomads and his attempt to reach Mecca. Amazon.com: More Information.
52. The Royal Road to Romance. By Richard Halliburton (1925)
The tales of free-spirited adventurer and traveler Richard Halliburton: sleeping atop an Egyptian pyramid, climbing the Matterhorm, being jailed in Gibraltar (for taking a photograph), being robbed by Hong Kong pirates, hiding inside the Taj Mahal, visiting the ruins of Ruins of Ankhor, etc. etc. Amazon.com: More Information.
53. The Long Walk. By Slavomir Ravwicz (1956)
A 1941 escape from a Soviet labor camp leads Ravwicz and his companions several thousand miles on foot across Sibera, through China, the Gobi desert, and across the Himayalas and finally to freedom in British India. Amazon.com: More Information.
54. Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada. By Clarence King (1872)
Clarence King was one of three major explorers of the American West in the post Civil War days. The other two were Ferdinand Hayden (Yellowstone) and John Wesley Powell (Grand Canyon). King explored the Sierras. He writes of flora and wildlife, Yosemite, and ascents of Mount Tyndall, Mount Shasta, and Mount Whitney. Amazon.com: More Information.
55. My Journey to Lhasa. By Alexandra David-Neel (1927)
"The prolific writer-explorer of Tibetan topics, in the early part of this century, dreamed of actually reaching the forbidden city of Lhasa, and finally, with her indefatigable companion monk, Yongden, she made a remarkable pilgrimage to Lhasa, disguised as a pilgrim.. "
More Extensive Review by Jeff Tucker. Amazon.com: More Information.
56. Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile. By John Hanning Speke (1863).
Liam Guilar's Review: "Huge but fascinating insight into the mentality of a Victorian 'Explorer.' What he left out is almost as interesting as what he put in." Amazon.com: More Information.
57. Running the Amazon. By Joe Kane (1989)
The first full descent of the 4,200 mile length of the Amazon River from source to sea--big rapids, drug runners, guerrillas--it's all there, the stuff of adventure. Amazon.com: More Information.
58. Alive. By Pier Paul Read (1974)
The story of a plane crash in the Andes and the desperate depravities forced upon the survivors in order to stay alive. Amazon.com: More Information.
59. Principall Navigations. By Richard Hakiuyt (1589-90)
Richard Hakiuyt was an English writer and geographer who promoted the colonization of North America. Hakiuyt wasn't an explorer. Rather, using translations, compilations, and eye-witness accounts, he wrote a series of geographic compendiums. Principall Navigations is one. The full title explains it best:
The Principall Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation : Made by Sea or Over Land to the Most Remote and Farthest Distant Quarters of the Earth at Any Time within the Compasse of These 1500 Years : Divided into Three Several Parts According to the Positions of the Regions Whereunto They Were Directed; the First Containing the Personall Travels of the English unto Indæa, Syria, Arabia... the Second, Comprehending the Worthy Discoveries of the English Towards the North and Northeast by Sea, as of Lapland... the Third and Last, Including the English Valiant Attempts in Searching Almost all the Corners of the Vaste and New World of America... Whereunto is Added the Last Most Renowned English Navigation Round About the Whole Globe of the Earth.
Out of Print: Search Amazon for Used Copies
60. Incidents of Travel in Yucatan. By John Lloyd Stephens (1843)
Stephens' explorations of the Mayan ruins in the Yucatan between 1839 and 1842. Amazon.com: More Information.
61. Shipwreck of the Whaleship Essex. By Owen Chase (1821)
In 1820, a whaling ship was destroyed and sunk by a sperm whale. Surviving members of the crew eventually made it back to safety, but did so by resorting to cannibalism. Owen Chase, the author of Shipwreck, was the first mate of the ill-fated voyage. Herman Melville found Chase's account perversely fascinating, and upon which, he based his literary classicMoby Dick. Amazon.com: More Information.
62. Life in the Far West. By George Fredrick Ruxton (1849)
An Englishman, Ruxton was variously a soldier and traveler, spending time in Spain, Africa, Canada and the US. In 1846, he traveled to southeastern Colorado, and later upon returning to England, he wrote a series of newspaper articles about the mountain men and trappers he met during this time. The series became Life in the Far West. Amazon.com: More Information.
63. My Life as an Explorer. By Roald Amundsen (1927)
This is the autobiography of the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, one of the greatest expedition leaders of all time. His well organized 1910 expedition was the first to reach the South Pole, easily beating Englishman Robert Falcon Scott who was making the same attempt that same year. He was the first to traverse the fabled Northwest Passage. And, if that wasn't enough, he also reached North Pole. Out of Print: Search Amazon for Used Copies
64. News from Tartary. By Peter Fleming (1936)
Liam Guilar'sReview: "Brazilian adventure starts with an ad in the Times newspaper. Soon Fleming was in Brazil looking for the lost colonel Faucet and racing the rest of his team to reach civilisation first. In News from Tartary he crosses China with Ella Maillart and reaches India. Both are examples of British understatement." Amazon.com: More Information.
65. Annapurna: A Woman's Place. By Arlene Blum (1980)
Nine years before attempting Annapurna, expedition leader and author, Arlene Blum, inquired about a guided climb of Denali in Alaska. She was told that women were welcome but to help with cooking and camp chores and could only go as far as Base Camp. That didn't sit well with Blum, and the following year, she organized her own all-women's expedition to Denali, successfully reaching the summit of the mountain. Eventually, she set her sights on Annapurna. I clearly remember the run-up to the climb, a period of time when most of our women employees and volunteers at our university outdoor program wore t-shirts with the slogan "A Woman's Place is on Top." The Annapurna expedition was successful in putting the first woman (and first American) on summit, but it was marred by tragedy. A Woman's Place is the story of the highs and lows of this precedent setting climb. Amazon.com: More Informatio n or Purchase.
66. Bounty Mutiny. By William Bligh (1790)
There's the novel and there's the movie, but both are based on a true event. Bounty Mutiny is the true version told by the protagonist. In 1789 Fletcher Christian and much of the crew of the 215 ton, three-masted Bounty, mutinied and sailed off leaving the captain William Bligh and 18 other sailors stranded on an island in the South Pacific. In effort to save himself and his men, Bligh undertook one of the most remarkable open boat journey's ever, sailing 4,000 miles, finally reaching Timor to the north of Australia. For a multi-facet view of the events, I recommend the version which was edited by R. D. Madison, a English professor at the United States Naval Academy(linked below). Madison includes the full text of Bligh's Narrative of the Mutiny, along minutes of the court proceedings, correspondence, and other materials. Amazon.com: More Information or Purchase.
67. Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea. By Steven Callahan (1886)
After Steven Callahan's small boat capsized, he was set adrift in a leaking, inflatable raft so small that he could barely fit. All alone and with little food, he survived and lived to tell the story of his astonishing seventy-six days trial at sea. Amazon.com: More Information or Purchase.
68. Castaways. By Alvar Nunex Cabez de Vaca (1555)
In 1527, an expeditionary force, 600 strong, leaves Spain with the directive to conquer Florida and nearby lands. Once near the North American shores, however, their plans go awry and their ship is wrecked. The men set out across land to the west, heading for the Spanish settlements in Mexico. It took eight years. Only Alvar Nunex Cabez de Vaca and three others made it. This is de Vaca's story. Amazon.com: More Information or Purchase
69. Touching the Void. By Joe Simpson (1989)
While on a descent of a cutting-edge climb of a South American peak, Simpson falls and breaks his leg. His partner lowers the incapacitated climber down steep snow slopes, but at one point, he loses control and Simpson falls and dangles over the edge of the cliff. His partner who is being pulled off his belay stance is left no other choice than to cut the rope. Thinking that Simpson is dead, the partner returns to base. Simpson, however, is still very much alive. He manages to climb out of a crevasse, and then begins crawling. You won't be able to put this one down. It's a remarkable story.
Amazon.com: More Informatio n or Purchase.
70. Tracks. By Robyn Davidson (1980)
The intrepid Robyn Davidson treks across the out-back of Australia. Her companions? None other than her dog and four camels. This is a wonderfully written work that will keep the bedside lamp burning late into the night. Amazon.com: More Information.
71. The Adventures of Captain Bonneville. By Washington Irving (1837)
In 1832 James Bonneville set off on a 5-year journey to the American west, all the way to the Pacific, gathering information for the young U.S. government. This chronicle of Bonneville's adventures and discoveries was written shortly after his return by the famous author Washington Irving. Amazon.com: More Information.
72. Cooper's Creek. By Alan Moorehead (1963)
The story of the disastrous 1860 Burke-Wills expedition which explored the unknown interior of Australia. Out of Print: Search Amazon for Used Copies
73. The Fearful Void: Across the Implacable Sahara. By Geoffrey Moorhouse (1974)
Moorhouse describes the rigors of travel across the desert of North Africa in the mid-1970's. Out of Print: Search Amazon for Used Copies
74. No Picnic on Mount Kenya. By Felice Benuzzi (1953)
This a very different tale of mountaineering. During World War II, the Italian Felice Benuzzi is a prisoner of war in a British camp beneath Mt Kenya. He and two other other prisoners break out, but instead of running, their purpose is to climb the great mountain that rises above them. They don't quite make it to the highest point on the mountain, but they do reach a secondary summit. There they plant a homemade flag and then descend back down to once again become prisoners. Amazon.com: More Information.
75. Through the Brazilian Wilderness. By Theodore Roosevelt (1914)
They don't make presidents like they used to. In 1914, five years after his last term as president, Theodore Roosevelt undertook an expedition to explore and map the River of Doubt, an unexplored branch of the Amazon River. It was no a cake walk. Rather, it was a deadly serious undertaking. Roosevelt, himself, nearly died on the trip. Roosevelt is no slouch as a writer and the story of that arduous foray is told spendidly. (You may also be interested in a fairly new book on the expedition, also very well written: The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard.
Theodore Roosevelt's Book: More Information or Purchase
Candice Millard's Book: More Information or Purchase
76. The Road to Oxiana. By Robert Byron (1937)
Robert Byron's story of his 1933-34 journey -- and adventures and misadventures -- through the Middle East to an ancient ruins in Afghanistan. It's a highly regarded work among travel aficionados. Prominent author Bruce Chatwin (whose work Patagonia appears on more than one outdoor best reading list) called it "a sacred text, beyond criticism." Amazon.com: More Information.
77. Minus 148. By Art Davidson (1969)
In February of 1967, Art Davidson and two other companions made the first winter ascent of Denali, but on the descent, a storm overtook them high on the mountain. Taking refuge in a small snow cave and trapped for six days, they were battered by winds that exceeded 100 miles per hour and drove the wind chill factor to a unimaginable minus 148 degrees. Amazon.com: More Information.
78. Travels. By Ibn Battuta (1354)
This is the account of Ibn Battuta, an Islamic scholar and adventurer, who during a period of thirty years traveled some 73,000 miles throughout Middle East and way beyond to the edges of the known world. Amazon.com: More Information.
79. Jaguars Ripped My Flesh. By Tim Cahill (1987)
Outside columnist Tim Cahill's collection of essays ranging from poisonous snakes in the Philippines to turtles in Australia to sharks in Mexico. Amazon.com: More Information
80. Journal of a Trapper. By Osborne Russell (1914)
"Over a twelve year period, the mountain man and fur trapper Russell kept a journal of his experiences. In it we find descriptions of the great fur rendezvous, brushes with danger both human and animal, and of the country through which he passed..." More Extensive Review by Jeff Tucker. Amazon.com: More Information.
81. Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle. By Dervla Murphy (1965)
The story of Irishwoman Dervla Murphy's 1963 solo journey on a bicycle from Ireland, across Europe, through Iran and Afghanistan and to India. Amazon.com: More Information
82. Terra Incognita. By Sara Wheeler (1996)
In the late 1990s, Sara Wheeler's spent several months in Antarctica as part of the National Science Foundation's Antarctic Artists' and Writers' Program. She mixes her experiences with the those of the early Antarctic hardmen: Shackleton, Scott, Amunden, Mawson, and others. Amazon.com: More Information.
83. We Die Alone. By David Howarth (1955)
During World War II, Norwegian Jan Baalsrud survives an ambush by the Nazis. For two months, he travels across northern Norway through a land still held in the grip of winter. He survives an avalanche, loses his toes from frostbite, and finally by a long circuitous route, he makes it to safety in neutral Sweden. Amazon.com: More Information.
84. Kabloona. By Gontran de Poncins (1941)
French aristocratic Poncins describes his experiences living in an Eskimo village in Canadian arctic from 1938 to 1939. Out of Print: Search Amazon for Used Copies
85. Conquistadors of the Useless. By Lionel Terray (1961)
Lionel Terray was a prominent French mountaineer in mid 1900s. Conquistadors is a compilation of stories of his climbs: the Alps (among others, including the Walker spur on the Grand Jorass and North Face of Eiger), the Himalaya (Annapurna), Andes (Huantsan), and the Alaska Range (Mt Hunter). He also writes of his experience as a soldier fighting in the Alps during World War II. Amazon.com: More Information.
86. Carrying the Fire. By Michael Collins (1974)
Amazon.com: More Information.
87. Adventures in the Wilderness. By William H. H. Murray (1869)
Amazon.com: More Information.
88. The Mountains of My Life. By Walter Bonatti (1998)
A collection of writings of the famous Italian mountaineer Walter Bonatti. Includes narratives of his experiences in the Alps, South America and the Himalayas. Amazon.com: More Information.
89. Great Heart. By James West Davidson and John Rugge (1988)
Amazon.com: More Information.
90. Journal of the Voyage to the Pacific. By Alexander Mackenzie (1801)
Amazon.com: More Information.
91. The Valleys of the Assassins. By Freya Stark (1934)
Amazon.com: More Information.
92. The Silent World. By Jacques Cousteau (1953)
Amazon.com: More Information.
93. Alaska Wilderness. By Robert Marshall (1956)
Amazon.com: More Information.
94. Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs and Conditions of the North American Indians. By George Catlin (1841)
Amazon.com: Volume I - Volume II
95. I Married Adventure. By Osa Johnson (1940)
If PBS (Public Broadcasting System) would have been around in the 1920's, 30's and 40's, they would have made Osa and Martin Johnson a mainstay. Explorers and film makers from Kansas, this popular couple fascinated a public eager for the exotic with their adventures in Borneo, Africa, and the South Pacific. Amazon.com: More Information.
96. The Descent of Pierra Saint-Martin. By Norbert Casteret (1954)
Out of Print: Search Amazon for Used Copies
97. The Crystal Horizon. By Reinhold Messner (1982)
Reinhold Messner, who was the first to summit all fourteen of the world's highest peaks, is clearly one of the giants of mountaineering. This, in his own words, is his extraordinary 1980 solo ascent of the north side of Everest. Amazon.com: More Information.
98. Narrative of a Journey Across the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River. By John Kirk Townsend (1839)
Amazon.com: More Information.
99. Grizzly Years. By Doug Peacock (1990)
Amazon.com: More Information.
100. One Man's Mountains. By Tom Patey (1971)
Amazon.com: More Information.
[End of Listing]BERKELEY — A haunting video has surfaced online showing what police in Berkeley have been doing to students.
Haunting not only because of the graphic violence and the screams, but also because it shows the role of a police officer in its purest form: the role of protecting a political ruling class.
This footage was not aired by state-controlled media outlets (whether MSNBC or Fox or CNN, it doesn’t matter).
What you see here is a large group of officers — from 20 to 50 or more — all acting in unison to swarm in and beat students.
Some of them can be seen smiling as they do it.
Every time someone tells you we “need them for protection,” remember what you are about to see and hear in this video.
What you see here are individuals who choose, willingly, to accept government hand-outs in exchange for protecting that very government, its courts, its prisons, and its politicians, from the people over which it rules.
That is the sole purpose of a police institution, and it always has been.
It’s an institution designed to pluck up individuals of the lowest character from society, make them feel important, and march them off to do a government’s bidding.
That is the essence of a police force.
If you can watch this video of dozens of low-IQ, out-of-shape men dressed in costumes, beating young girls with sticks and enjoying it, feeling important about themselves for doing so, and if you still insist on defending such men as “protectors,” then go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels nor your arms.
Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.
Watch it in its entirety:While Star Wars understandably dominated Disney’s news agenda at this weekend’s D23 expo, there was also a welcome update on Toy Story 4, with Pixar’s John Lasseter outlining some plot details from the forthcoming film. Apparently, it’s going to be all about Woody’s quest to find lost love, Bo Peep…
“As we were looking around we came up with this idea because Bo Peep was not in Toy Story 3, explains Lasseter, “and it actually worked beautifully into this. So Woody and Buzz Lightyear go out to find Bo Peep and bring her back, and it’s a very special and emotional love story. But it’s extremely funny too.”
“What we wanted to do was find a type of story that we had not done in a Toy Story before,” he continues, “and really our goal is to create something really original, something that’s different from what you’ve seen before. In every sequel that Pixar does we try to do something that is very different from the original, but is as good in a different way.
“I’ve been very inspired by my wife Nancy‘s story in her life before I met her,” concludes Lasseter, intriguingly. “It’s an incredible story, and it’s been sort of a bit of an inspiration for this.” Directed by Lasseter and Josh Cooley, Toy Story 4 will open in the US on June 16, 2017 and the UK on July 14, 2017.
For more great film and TV news, head to our movie channel or subscribe to Total Film.The man who is going to save the world is an ordinary-looking man. He's average in height, with an average face. He has blue eyes and sandy hair. He wears eyeglasses. He's forty-eight years old. He looks like the kind of guy you'd see buffing his car in the driveway or shopping for a new grill at Sears, a classic all-American Homo suburbanus, but in fact he is a former officer of the United States Navy with a Ph.D. in a fiendishly complicated type of engineering. He is low-key and unassuming, with a quiet midwestern sense of humor. He loves to surf and ski and cook and drink martinis and host large groups of people for long meals, spreading newspapers across the table to catch flying scraps of crab.
The man who is going to save the world leads high school field trips. He attends an Episcopal church where the priest is a woman. When he had a bigger house, he took in a series of foster children while they waited for adoption, eleven in all. He volunteers with a charity that teaches surfing to autistic children. One morning I watched him standing in the warm Carolina surf for hours, catching the kids as they fell off their surfboards. They went out scared and came back quivering with joy.
The man who is going to save the world is also a damn good father, a tendency that is at the heart of this world-saving business. His oldest child is an adorable high school senior named Zatha who is friendly and fearless, eager and full of questions, senior-class president, first-place winner in the statewide cross-country competition two years in a row. There's a glimpse of his parenting skills in the "racebook" he's using to encourage his son, Hans:
Team time trial, August 3, 2009, Monday.
The word Go was stated. The students took off, boys and girls. Kevin took the lead and you got behind him. Many thought, "Rookie mistake. Hans will fade," but Hans didn't slow down. His shadow continued to haunt Kevin all the way around the three-lap course. You had a time of 19:05. This is amazing, Hans. So a quote and a question:
"Effort and courage is not enough without purpose and direction." — JFK
Do you want to be number one this year and this season? If so, please contact Dad for secret training and coaching. — Dad
Eric Loewen talks the very same way when he is explaining patiently how he intends to save the world. The problem with saving the world is that change has no constituency. There is always a constituency for staying the same, but change is a risk. So change needs, as Loewen says, a "secret coach."
The next thing you should know is that Loewen's miracle technology is not some airy concept. It cost billions of dollars to develop. Some of the biggest companies in America spent ten years refining it under the close supervision of the U. S. government — before the program was shuttered and abandoned in a hasty political decision that makes Who Killed the Electric Car? look like a promotional film for General Motors.
Next, you must also consider the magnitude of the problem he's solving: a looming series of biblical disasters that include global warming, mass starvation, financial collapse, resource wars, and a long-term energy crisis that's much more desperate than most of us realize. Barring any spectacular new discoveries, assuming current trends in population and economic growth prevail, all the conventional oil in the world will be gone in about forty years. We can get maybe ten more if we suck dry oil sands and shale. We have enough natural gas to last about fifty years, enough coal to last between 150 and 300 years. But these fuels carry a heavy price. The emissions of coal plants alone carry, along with massive amounts of CO 2, thousands of pounds of beryllium, manganese, selenium, lead, arsenic, and cadmium. They are 180 times more radioactive than the U. S. government's permissible level for the emissions of nuclear power plants. If we were to burn enough coal to survive, the result would be acid rain and acidifying oceans and pollution that kills fifty thousand Americans each year through diseases like asthma, bronchitis, and emphysema.
Which brings us to global warming. Most scientists now believe that the tipping point for global disaster is a CO 2 level of 450 parts per million. We are now at just over 380 ppm and could pass 500 ppm in thirty years — in which case, in the words of Dr. James Hansen, the NASA scientist whose grim climate predictions have been coming true for the last thirty years, "We will hand our children a planet that has entered a long, chaotic, transient period with climate changes out of their control, as the planet heads inexorably toward an ice-free state." There are skeptics, of course, some of them quite distinguished, and a legitimate debate about just how bad things could get. But the bet is all or nothing, and an alarming number of the "cautious" are the same people who said cigarettes don't cause cancer, seat belts are a waste of money, and evolution is a hoax.
So what do we do? That's where this man comes in, because under most scenarios, solar and wind will never provide much more than 20 percent of our energy needs. Clean coal is a fiction, cap and trade ineffectual, and conservation almost as useless as Dick Cheney said it was — if we cut back on oil use by 10 percent, we will buy ourselves another four years. Hydropower provides only 2.5 percent, and we've already dammed up as many rivers as we are likely to dam. There's promise in biofuels, but at this point, all biofuels combined provide less than 2 percent of our energy needs, and we've already devoted more than a quarter of our annual corn crop to ethanol production. And nuclear power — which has the virtue of emitting no CO 2 whatsoever — generates deadly nuclear waste that lasts forever and seems impossible to safely store.
Which leaves just one solution.
From room to room, he sells the solution.
The man who is going to save the world is giving a very speedy speech to the chamber of commerce of the town of Wilmington, North Carolina:
"Here's one of the problems Secretary Chu has running the Department of Energy: He has a lot of excess nuclear weapons that have a lot of plutonium that he has to figure out what to do with. He also has the problem of used nuclear fuel that is being stored in sites that are filling up. Then there's the problem of how we can generate enough clean power to satisfy the needs of the world. And the solution is..."
Here he is briefing Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee:
"So what is nuclear waste? It's still uranium! Right? It's 95 percent uranium. It's still usable. But we've got these evil things called transuranics, which is 1 percent of the total and 99 percent of the headache..."
And here he is in a small office outside Wilmington, scribbling formulas and figures on a whiteboard:
"...And that is my fuel. The problem becomes the solution."
He starts drawing little squiggles on the whiteboard, trying to explain how the miracle technology actually burns nuclear waste, neatly solving the biggest problem associated with nuclear power.
I have no idea what he's talking about.
"Let's go to the baseball field. The pitcher throws a very fast fastball. What is the probability of the guy hitting it?"
"Bad?"
"Bad. So if I have a fast neutron, like these transuranics, the probability of achieving fission goes down. So the reason why we slow it down in a water reactor is, it gives us a higher probability of causing a fission. That allows us to start up this sort of reactor with only 3 percent of the fissile material. But with fast neutrons, I get more neutrons per fission."
Transuranics are highly radioactive elements like plutonium, typically regarded not as sources of energy but for their capacity to vaporize cities.
"But if I build a different kind of reactor that uses liquid sodium instead of water to slow things down, I can have a higher neutron speed and that stuff becomes a fuel. You just mix it in the crucible, put in the transuranics, put in some uranium, put in some zirconium, and you cast it into thin rods. That technology's been developed, it's easy to do, and you do it in a room about this size."
The miracle solution goes by different names: the sodium fast reactor, the integral fast reactor, the liquid-metal-cooled reactor. It burns nuclear waste, emits no CO 2, and shuts itself down in an accident. We have enough fuel to power the whole world for tens of thousands of years. It will end global warming, and even if global warming is just another paranoid Armageddon fantasy, it will save us from the dying oceans and starvation and resource wars that are inevitable as the world's energy supply dwindles. It will unleash new industries and revitalize America's manufacturing industry.
Although he came late to the cause, Loewen has been preparing for it all his life. Raised in a Colorado mining town, he was studying science on a ski scholarship when he detoured into the Navy after his girlfriend dumped him, and he got selected for a program in nuclear engineering. Fast-forward five years and we find him standing watch on the U. S. S. Long Beach, the first surface ship in the nuclear navy. He is cruising the Persian Gulf, where Iranians just fired on an oil tanker flying a U. S. flag. Now a pair of Iranian warplanes are heading his way.
What am I doing here? he thought. I don't want to die in a stupid Iranian attack. I want to change the world for the better. I want to build nuclear reactors.
So he left the Navy and went back to graduate school, which led to a job at the National Laboratories in Idaho, a vast complex financed by the federal government and dedicated to futuristic technology. He began working on a fast reactor that used lead as a coolant.
For seven years he labored, writing scholarly articles, raising his family, taking in foster children, skiing the glorious Idaho powder. But he couldn't solve the problems of lead-cooled reactors. They had a nasty tendency to corrode.
Then he got two lucky breaks. First, he took a year's sabbatical and went to work in the office of Senator Chuck Hagel, where he helped push through groundbreaking global-warming legislation. That exercised his organizing skills and deepened his sense of alarm about the environmental crisis. Then he attended an Esquire magazine event and met an executive from General Electric.
In April 2006, GE hired him and handed him a giant file labeled "Compendium of S-PRISM Information." It was a revelation. "I was like, Wow, why didn't we build this?"
Thomas Porostocky
A month after plunging into the file, Loewen began meeting with officials from the U. S. Department of Energy and other veterans of the project, from the original project manager to the man who built the test reactor's electromagnetic pump. "He looked at me as a new greenhorn guy, a month on the job, and said, 'If you're serious about building this, go save that pump. And oh, by the way, they're knocking the building down in three months.' "
Gradually, he put the story together. The first glimmer of the fast-reactor concept began at the federal government's Argonne National Laboratory in 1951, when the sodium-cooled Experimental Breeder Reactor No. 1 powered four lightbulbs and proved that nuclear power was a real thing. In 1965, Argonne put into service Experimental Breeder Reactor No. 2, a demonstration project that ran successfully for thirty years. In 1971, Richard Nixon launched the Clinch River Breeder Reactor Project, putting together thousands of government and industry scientists in an effort to come up with a commercial prototype, but after twelve years, a mixture of technical problems, procurement scandals, and the relentless opposition of environmentalists finally led the Senate to kill it.
Then GE started rethinking things. One of Clinch River's problems was light-water envy. They were trying to power huge turbines that put out 1,000 megawatts. "So [GE] sat down and said, You know what, we're pretty good at making washing machines and jet engines in a factory and replicating them. Why don't we make a sodium-cooled reactor that's factory-built, modular, with passive safety and replicate that, instead of trying to scale up?"
Passive safety meant that it would shut itself off automatically instead of melting down. Replicability meant the reactor vessel couldn't be more than twenty feet in diameter, because that's the biggest you can ship down a rail line. So they would gang reactor modules together to power a single turbine. They named it the Power Reactor, Innovative Small Module, or PRISM.
At the time, it was a renegade idea. So what if PRISM could be mass-produced, plopped right next to every coal plant in the world, and hooked straight to their existing electric turbines just as fast as American steelworkers could crank them out? It was already so hard to get nuclear plants built, big seemed to be better. But the Department of Energy gave the project a green light, and GE put together a team that included giant companies like Westinghouse and Bechtel. They simplified it, made it safer, ran tests and reviews, and by 1986, proved the passive safety concept on Experimental Breeder Reactor No. 2. The design posed less of a proliferation risk than regular light-water reactors. By 1992, after spending $1 billion, they were ready to build a prototype.
Then Bill Clinton came into office and killed it. Maybe it was the lingering legacy of Three Mile Island, or Chernobyl, and the fear of proliferation. But by 2006, everything had changed. The consensus on global warming was rising, wars in the Middle East exposed the vulnerability of our oil supply, influential environmentalists like Patrick Moore and Stewart Brand began switching sides, and Republicans — who have always been more friendly to nuclear power — held sway in Washington. President Bush announced the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, an ambitious research effort that linked twenty-one countries to "close the nuclear fuel cycle" and solve the waste problem. Soon afterward, the Department of Energy gave Loewen the green light.
It was time to dust off the PRISM.
Writing by himself at first, he started a "Design Control Document" that covered everything from the technical design to the business plan. Scavenging help wherever he could and sweetening the deal with surfing lessons, he hired an outside firm to do the 3-D modeling and got a twenty-year-old engineering intern to redesign the reactor vessel in a year of eighty-hour weeks. Meanwhile, as America's Secret Coach, he used his political savvy and personal charm to spread the excitement: inviting engineering students to workshops, giving lectures at the American Nuclear Society, flying to Vermont to spend a day pitching the lieutenant governor on an experimental PRISM reactor for the state university. With a millionaire Silicon Valley inventor named Steve Kirsch, who joined the cause after a fatal diagnosis convinced him to spend his last days saving the planet, Loewen traveled to Washington to pitch PRISM on Capitol Hill. Kirsch told me he first learned about the fast-reactor concept from a newsletter written by Dr. Hansen, the hero of An Inconvenient Truth. "I was intrigued because from Hansen's description, it sounded like we must be nuts for not pursuing this. If you discovered a machine that turned lead into gold, you'd think the government would exploit |
perfect way to showcase what horror should be. Horror, as with any kind speculative fiction requires more from an audience. It cannot be passively viewed. An audience must engage more of themselves and actively witness the narrative. True horror does that. It sucks an audience in and makes them feel something strong. True horror is the notion that the characters may not make it out alive and even if they did… would they really want to go on living?”
The IAWTV awards will be held on January 7, 2014 at the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The epic finale of Shadow Bound goes online Thursday, December 26, at 8 p.m. You can catch up on episodes I-IV by going to www.shadowboundseries.com. There is also a YouTube channel that can be accessed by going to YouTube and searching for Shadow Bound. There is also a Facebook page for up to date news on the project, www.facebook.com/shadowboundseries.
In the next installment, there will be discussion about some of the obstacles to making a period piece, in a modern city, on a shoestring budget. See you in the shadows…A new Android version arrived recently, and that means we’re back to watching paint dry. Per Google’s Platform Versions page, the latest and greatest version of the company’s mobile operating system took more than a month to hit a whopping 0.2 percent adoption.
Google started rolling out Android 8.0 Nougat to Nexus and Pixel devices in late August. To be fair, the company’s new Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL phones, which will ship with Android 8.1, haven’t even been announced yet. The latest major version of Android typically takes more than a year to become the most-used release, and Oreo’s story will likely be no different.
Here are the changes between September and October:
Android 8.0 Oreo (August 2017): 0.2 percent
Android 7.0/7.1 Nougat (August 2016, October 2016): Up 2.0 points to 17.8 percent
Android 6.0 Marshmallow (October 2015): Down 0.2 points to 32.0 percent
Android 5.0/5.1 Lollipop (November 2014, March 2015): Down 1.1 points to 27.7 percent
Android 4.4 KitKat (October 2013): Down 0.6 points to 14.5 percent
Android 4.1/4.2/4.3 Jelly Bean (July 2012, November 2012, and July 2013): Down 0.3 points to 6.6 percent
Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (December 2011): Flat at 0.6 percent
Android 2.3 Gingerbread (December 2010): Flat at 0.6 percent
Google’s Platform Versions tool uses data gathered from the Google Play Store app, which requires Android 2.2 and above. This means devices running older versions are not included, nor are devices that don’t have Google Play installed (such as many Android phones and tablets in China, Amazon’s Fire line, and so on). Also, Android versions that have less than 0.1 percent adoption, such as Android 3.0 Honeycomb and Android 2.2 Froyo, are not listed. The two next-oldest Android versions are thus set to drop off the list next year.
For the sake of comparison, here’s the Android adoption chart for September:
The Android adoption order now stands as follows: Marshmallow in first place, Lollipop in second, Nougat in third, KitKat in fourth, Jelly Bean in fifth, ICS and Gingerbread tied for sixth, and Oreo last. Let’s see what kind of damage Oreo can do in the year to come.When we revealed Rocksteady’s final entry in the Arkham series, Batman: Arkham Knight, its title didn’t draw much scrutiny. It had Arkham in the name, and it was a clear nod to Batman. At least, that’s what we thought before getting our demo of the game. After seeing it in action, we realized that it was actually a reference to what Rocksteady says is an all-new character. Who is Arkham Knight? The team wouldn’t provide any specifics, but we’ve got a few ideas.
The image above is the best one we could pry from Rocksteady. It doesn’t show much beyond a silhouette, but we’ll help fill in some of those details. Arkham Knight’s costume is black, with red highlights, and he wields what looks like a silenced pistol. His suit is armored, with various belts and pouches, and his chestpiece is emblazoned with a stylized “A” symbol. Even if we don’t have a clear sense of his identity, the fact that Arkham Knight’s encounter with Batman ends with a gunshot shows that the pair aren’t on friendly terms, and that they have different thoughts on the use of deadly force.
Theory Number One: He’s A New Character
This is what Rocksteady is sticking with, and they were pretty clear about it during our visit. “He’s a new character called the Arkham Knight,” says Rocksteady’s creative lead Sefton Hill. “He’s being created by Rocksteady and Geoff Johns at DC, and that’s pretty much all we’re saying about him at the current time. He’s someone new to the Arkhamverse. He’s certainly one of the key antagonists.”
Why the theory works
This is what Rocksteady is saying about the character, which certainly gives this tremendous credence.
Why it doesn’t
Even if Arkham Knight is a new character that Rocksteady is developing in collaboration with DC, that doesn’t mean there’s not some wiggle room in the language. Arkham Knight could be an interpretation of an existing character, with enough deviation from comics lore as to qualify as being “new.”
Theory Number Two: It’s The Red Hood
Jason Todd took on the role of Robin after the previous Robin, Dick Grayson, moved away from the role. Todd wasn’t especially popular with fans, and DC eventually polled its readers to determine if he should live or die. Unfortunately for Todd, he was forced into an early (and seemingly permanent) retirement via the Joker. This being comics, he returned from the grave in the form of The Red Hood. The Red Hood pushed Batman’s vigilantism even further, battling bad guys with guns before eventually becoming a straight-up villain himself. (There are multiple arcs involving the character, but this covers most of the consistent notes.) Todd isn’t the first person to claim the Red Hood title in the DC universe, either. The Joker once went by this name, and it’s even shown in the Warner Montreal-developed Batman: Arkham Origins.
Why the theory works
The Red Hood’s costume looks like it could be a starting point for Rocksteady’s art team. His reliance on firearms sounds familiar, too. Bringing Todd into the story would be an interesting way to fully incorporate Robin lore into the Arkhamverse. Grayson went on to become Nightwing, who was featured in Arkham City. We haven’t learned anything about Jason Todd in Rocksteady’s world – if he even exists there – and the character’s introduction and apparent death could provide even more angst fuel for the Dark Knight.
Why it doesn’t
Robin did appear in Arkham City, but Grayson or Todd didn’t fill the role. Instead, it was the third Robin, Tim Drake. The timeline would need to be adjusted in a big way to make this work. Then again, if a character can return from the grave, just about anything’s possible.
Theory Number Three: It’s Batman’s… Brother?
In DC’s New 52 continuity, Batman faced off against a man claiming to be his older brother. Thomas Wayne Junior wore power armor in the battle (and adopted the name Owlman), but was eventually defeated.
Why the theory works?
The CG announce trailer for Batman: Arkham Knight features a reading from Thomas Wayne’s will to his son, Bruce. As luck would have it, it serves as both a legal document and a rousing speech. Could that be a tease that family bonds will affect the story in unexpected ways as well?
Why it doesn’t
Establishing that Bruce Wayne actually had a brother is an awful lot of history to cram into a story, particularly the third act. That doesn’t mean that someone couldn’t have been brainwashed into thinking that they share a blood relation with Master Bruce, of course. Who would be capable or devious enough to do such a thing?
Theory Number Four: It’s Wrath...
The easiest way to look at Wrath is as an anti-Batman. His father was killed in a robbery gone wrong and he shares a similarly large pocketbook as Bruce Wayne, but the similarities end shortly thereafter.
Why the theory works?
Wrath is a great mirror to Batman, and he provides a wealth of storytelling opportunities. Rocksteady says Arkham Knight (the game) is about Batman dealing with the fact that his most well-known foe is dead. A reimagined Wrath could be another great foil for the character.
Why it doesn’t
As much as we might like Wrath’s one-two counterpoint to Batman, it would probably be easier to create a new character from scratch than try and squeeze a relative nobody into Arkham Knight’s suit.
Or Prometheus
Along the same lines, a character named Prometheus has been mentioned in Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, and he shares the same gunned-down parents backstory as Batman and Wrath. Unfortunately for Prometheus, his Arkham Asylum bio shows him as a stylized knight, complete with a sword, instead of the sleek assassin shown in Arkham Knight.
Theory Number Five: It’s Azrael (Again)
Even if you played Batman: Arkham City, there’s a chance that you’ve forgotten about Azrael – if you encountered him in the first place. Here’s a refresher: He stalks you throughout your adventure in the city-turned-prison, eventually delivering the chilling message that Gotham will burn.
Why the theory works?
From the looks of Gotham City in Arkham Knight, that was one heck of a good guess.
Why it doesn’t
We’ve already seen Azrael in Batman: Arkham City, and he seemed more interested in talking than fighting. Even if Rocksteady changed the identity under the mask from Michael Lane to someone else, it stretches the definition of a new character to the near breaking limit. They could explain it away by reiterating that Azrael is an order of assassins in the DC universe, but that would feel a bit too ret-conned – correct as it might be. This one seems especially unlikely.
What do you think? Are there any candidates that spring to mind? Sound off in the comments!
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U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Illinois, told Democracy Now!, “… man, my daughters they have so many more rights today – and I want to make sure they (Republicans) keep their dirty, filthy hands off of Planned Parenthood and we don’t have somebody on the Supreme Court that’s going to turn the clock around,” CNS News reports.
Pro-abortion Democrats like Gutierrez have continuously defended Planned Parenthood, despite evidence that it may be illegally profiting off the sale of aborted babies’ body parts. The abortion giant also has been caught covering up cases of statutory rape, allowing rapists to rape again. Gutierrez, Hillary Clinton and others also ignore how Planned Parenthood was responsible for killing a black woman in a botched legal abortion.
Gutierrez is a big abortion supporter in Congress. He recently signed on as a co-sponsor of a bill to repeal the Hyde Amendment. Repealing Hyde and forcing taxpayers to pay for abortions is one of Planned Parenthood’s top goals.
CLICK LIKE IF YOU’RE PRO-LIFE!
The Hyde Amendment prohibits direct taxpayer funding of most abortions and has done so since the late 1970s. Upheld by the Supreme Court, the amendment is now a target of abortion advocates who have moved from pro-choice to pro-abortion — forcing Americans not only to accept unlimited abortions before birth but also to pay for them.
While abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood do receive some taxpayer funding, they are not supposed to use the money for abortions. If Hyde was repealed, that would change, and abortion businesses could freely and openly receive tax dollars for abortions.
Last week, the Democratic Party approved its most extreme pro-abortion platform yet, calling for taxpayer-funded abortions and an end to Hyde. Abortion activists also have a promise from Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to help push the agenda.
As Gutierrez mentioned, abortion activists also secured a promise from Clinton that, if elected, she would nominate Supreme Court justices who will uphold abortion on demand.
Gutierrez has a 100-percent pro-abortion voting record this term, according to the National Right to Life Committee.Fungi have an interesting property: Many species are surprisingly good at dealing with exposure to heavy metals. This has been observed for some time, and it’s one of the main reasons that fungi are used all over society to extract metals from things like industrial fly ash, or runoff from processing plants. If you pick your species right, fungi can be abundant and quick to replicate, cheap to buy and keep alive, and best of all they tend to be rugged, and so don’t require much in the way of care.
Now, logically enough, this approach is coming to battery recycling. The difference between this and historical efforts is that most industrial processes produce a lot of metal in relatively few individual places — big spigots of metal-laced water, decommissioned large pieces of machinery, or enormous piles of industrial waste. With lithium ion batteries, the bounty is split between hundreds of millions of devices that need to be collected and processed. But with lithium, cobalt, and other expensive battery materials needed in such large quantities, it will increasingly make sense to look for companies to look at old batteries to replenish their stocks.
The technique requires that the batteries be opened up and the cathodes (made of lithium and cobalt in the form of LiCoO2) be pulverized before exposure to the fungi, a cocktail of Aspergillus niger, Penicillium simplicissimum and Penicillium chrysogenum, which have been used to extract metals in other contexts for some time. They produce organic acids including oxalic acid and citric acid, and these acids can extract up to 85 percent of the lithium and up to 48 percent of the cobalt from the cathodes of spent batteries. Other of the fungal products, however, like gluconic acid, were ineffective.
The “extraction” refers to leaching the metals into the acidic slurry created by the fungi; from there, the metals still need to be reacted extracted for later use — but precipitating free metal ions out of water is one thing industry has gotten very good at over the years.
The fungal approach is also under consideration for recycling of the precious metals in more general electronics scrap material, though it faces similar challenges to do with centralizing and preprocessing the scrap before metals can be extracted. In that case, it’s not the bulk silicon that presents a cost barrier, but the much more exotic rare earth metals that can often be extracted from so-called “e-waste” and put to use once more — easing not only the expense, but also the human cost of extracting these natural resources.Real Madrid's Martin Odegaard has not played in La Liga this season.
Bayern Munich are still monitoring Real Madrid teenager Martin Odegaard, who opted for a move to the Liga giants amid interest from several clubs.
In late 2014, Odegaard was considered one of football's brightest talents, and, just 15 at the time, he was linked with Arsenal, Liverpool, Borussia Dortmund and Bayern.
Bayern, in particular, hoped to sign the youngest player to appear in a European Championship qualifier, and back in December 2014, CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge labelled Odegaard "obviously a beautiful bride."
He added: "Many grooms are waiting on the door step. Maybe we are the best looking groom."
When the midfielder opted to join Real Madrid in January 2015, Odegaard said that "it was the best option for the development of my career as much in the sporting sense as personally," adding it was "a dream come true."
But just over a year since his transfer for a reported fee of €4 million, his career has stagnated and this season he has not featured for Los Blancos in a competitive match and only once made the squad, at Levante in early March.
Speaking so Sky prior to Bayern's 3-1 win at Stuttgart on Saturday, the club's sporting executive Matthias Sammer said the Bavarian's are still monitoring the development of the Norway international.
"There are always situations in this business where you get signals. And, of course, you keep contact," Sammer said, but added that a move for Odegaard "is not up for debate."
He said: "It was his decision [to join Real] back then, and you have to respect that. He is a good player, he has to bite through."
Stephan Uersfeld is the Germany correspondent for ESPN FC. Follow him on Twitter @uersfeld.Contrary to the view of this U.S. government, not every state action related to aliens is preempted by federal law. America has a system of dual sovereignty. Only state laws that regulate immigration are preempted by federal law.
Almost 40 years ago, in the 1976 case De Canas v. Bica, the Supreme Court made it clear that the mere fact aliens are the subject of a state statute does not render it a regulation of immigration. Only the determination of who should or should not be admitted into the country, and the conditions under which that person may remain, is the regulation of immigration.
Accordingly, the Arizona Legislature enacted SB 1070 on the principle that we had authority to utilize our well-established police powers in areas touching on immigration as long as we did not did not "regulate" immigration. Arizona's landmark legislation empowers state and local law enforcement to protect their communities against the dangers posed by illegal aliens.
Unreported is that a majority of SB 1070 has already been deemed constitutional and most of "America's toughest anti-illegal immigration law" has been upheld by the courts. SB 1070 is largely in effect today and it is making a real difference.
Before Gov. Jan Brewer signed my bill into law, Phoenix ranked second in the world in kidnappings. Beheadings and contract killings by drug cartels were plaguing the state. Signs were posted just 30 miles from Phoenix by the Feds warning citizens they were entering into territory controlled by cartels and gangs. Phoenix's violent crime rates were among the highest in the country, and the city was the home invasion, car-jacking, and identity theft capital of the nation.
Since implementation of most of SB 1070, over 200,000 illegal aliens have left Arizona (self-deported). According to the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, "Since SB 1070, Phoenix has experienced a 30-year low crime rate... Old policing strategies didn't bring about these falling crime rates. SB 1070 did... the deterrence factor this legislation brought about was clearly instrumental in our unprecedented drop in crime. And all of this without a single civil rights, racial profiling, or biased policing complaint."
Today, Phoenix and surrounding cities are enjoying 30 year low crime rates. Arizona's overall crime rate is three times lower than the national average, and the state prison population is declining for the first time. State and local governments are saving hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in education, healthcare and other expenses thanks to dramatically lower numbers of illegal aliens enrolling in schools, visiting hospitals, and using other taxpayer-funded services.
Better still, Arizonans are filling the jobs illegal aliens are leaving behind. Arizona's economy was ranked 49th in the nation during the recession. Today, Arizona's is the 6th best-performing in the recovery.
What leads most scholars to believe the Supreme Court will uphold SB 1070 is clear: existing federal law already makes it a crime to enter the United States without the sort of documentation SB 1070 calls for. Indeed, under current federal law, repeat illegal entries may be charged as a felony, and U.S. citizens who employ, aid or harbor illegals may face serious fines or other penalties.
Among the many safeguards written into SB 1070 are stringent protections against racial profiling. With SB 1070, we deferred to existing federal law for this specific reason. Indeed the perceived injustices surrounding SB 1070 have been only that: perceived. They have been fabricated by the liberal left and their media agents to create dense smoke where there was no fire.
According to 8 USC 1644 and 8 USC 1373, "sanctuary policies" are illegal. SB 1070, in full accordance with federal law, removes the handcuffs from state and local law enforcement. All law enforcement agencies have the legal authority, but also a moral obligation, to uphold our laws. The invasion of illegals we face today, including drug cartels, gangs, human traffickers, and even terrorists, poses one of the greatest threats to our nation in terms of political, economic and national security.
What we shall learn this summer is that SB 1070's detractors don't have the public, the law, or the Constitution on their side. What we shall learn this November is that U.S. presidents should never side with foreign governments against the American people. But that is a constitutional question for another time.The separation of church and state doesn’t mean “the government cannot favor religion over non-religion,” Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia argued during a speech at Colorado Christian University on Wednesday, according to The Washington Times.
Defending his strict adherence to the plain text of the Constitution, Scalia knocked secular qualms over the role of religion in the public sphere as “utterly absurd,” arguing that the Constitution is only obligated to protect freedom of religion -- not freedom from it.
“I think the main fight is to dissuade Americans from what the secularists are trying to persuade them to be true: that the separation of church and state means that the government cannot favor religion over non-religion,” the Reagan-appointed jurist told the crowd of about 400 people.
“We do Him [God] honor in our pledge of allegiance, in all our public ceremonies,” the conservative Catholic justice continued. “There’s nothing wrong with that. It is in the best of American traditions, and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. I think we have to fight that tendency of the secularists to impose it on all of us through the Constitution.”
Earlier this year, Scalia joined the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Town of Greece v. Galloway, which held that the New York town could continue opening legislative sessions with sectarian prayers.
Scalia has since used the case to press for the approval of public prayers in schools, legislatures and courtrooms.
In June, Scalia criticized the Supreme Court for declining to review Elmbrook School District v. John Doe, a case in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit ruled that a public school district's decision to conduct graduation ceremonies in a church violated the Establishment Clause.
In a dissent joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, Scalia argued that “at a minimum,” the Supreme Court should remand the case for reconsideration, noting that “the First Amendment explicitly favors religion.”
On Wednesday, Scalia also criticized members of the Court who champion a more evolving, “living” view of the Constitution -- a judicial philosophy he has previously said only an “idiot” could believe.
“Our [the Supreme Court’s] latest take on the subject, which is quite different from previous takes, is that the state must be neutral, not only between religions, but between religion and nonreligion,” Scalia said on Wednesday, according to The Washington Times. “That’s just a lie. Where do you get the notion that this is all unconstitutional? You can only believe that if you believe in a morphing Constitution.”
If Americans want a more secular political system that guarantees those distinctions, they can “enact that by statute,” Scalia said, “but to say that’s what the Constitution requires is utterly absurd.”
In another public appearance on Wednesday at the University of Colorado Boulder Law School's annual John Paul Stevens lecture, Scalia compared his efforts to restore constitutional originalism to the challenges faced by "Lord of the Rings" protagonist Frodo Baggins.A former top Obama administration official has acknowledged efforts by her colleagues to gather intelligence on Trump team ties to Russia before Donald Trump took office and to conceal the sources of that intelligence from the incoming administration.
Evelyn Farkas, deputy assistant secretary of defense under Obama, made the disclosure March 2 while on the air with MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski.
“I was urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill, it was more actually aimed at telling the Hill people, get as much information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can, before President Obama leaves the administration,” Farkas, who is now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said.
“Because I had a fear that somehow that information would disappear with the senior [Obama] people who left, so it would be hidden away in the bureaucracy... that the Trump folks – if they found out how we knew what we knew about their... the Trump staff dealing with Russians – that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we no longer have access to that intelligence.”
The comments come as lawmakers on Capitol Hill clash over House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes' claim last week that surveillance operations incidentally collected Trump team communications during the transition. Critics have accused Nunes of carrying water for Trump and called on him to recuse himself from Russia matters, but Nunes and his congressional allies have pushed back.
Aside from questions over whether communications were improperly gathered during the transition and before, there is speculation over how widely such information was disseminated. Farkas described a rush to spread the material before Trump took office.
"So I became very worried because not enough was coming out into the open and I knew that there was more. We have very good intelligence on Russia," she said. "So then I had talked to some of my former colleagues and I knew that they were trying to also help get information to the Hill."The Urban Dictionary defines "Slacktivism" as "the ideology for people who want to appear to be doing something for a particular cause without actually having to do anything." It's an apt description of those who click the Facebook "like" and "share" buttons for everything from neutering pets to resolving the European debt crisis. No need to spend a lot of time learning facts, mastering complex arguments, or organizing your friends and neighbors -- and you can leave your money in your wallet. Just retweet a 140-character analysis of federal spending and you can move on to the ball scores.
That's been the argument, anyway, of critics of the so-called "social media revolution." They see our newfound global connectivity as a passing fad at best, or, at worst, as yet another sign of our divisiveness and narcissism -- and to a large extent, they have a point. Much of the political expression on the Internet, if expressed "IRL" ("in real life"), would result in a punch in the nose, if not an arrest. Go to the "comments" section of most websites and it won't take long before you read the online equivalent of a drive-by shooting; the vicious, personal, and usually anonymous attack is the substitute for reasoned debate. There's also the practical question of how to mesh the political gears with social media. As one veteran politico once challenged me, "Explain how Twitter and Facebook gets somebody out of the Barcalounger and into the voting booth."
I'm living proof of the power of social media: On Jan. 20, 2009, it put me out of work. President Obama's 2008 campaign deftly utilized the emerging social media icons of the time -- YouTube, MeetUp, Facebook, and Twitter -- as means for millions of Americans to vent their frustration with the policies of my then-employer, President George W. Bush, and it played a central role in returning the Democrats to power.
From Cairo to Tripoli to Wall Street's Zuccotti Park, social media has reduced the cost and complexity of organizing mass numbers of individuals into a single, cohesive, political force. In the process it has redefined social activism. What's more, as it continues to evolve to develop new platforms, it creates new opportunities for political expression that become increasingly difficult for others to suppress. In 2009 the Iranian regime thought it could calm an increasingly rebellious populace by shutting down traditional media, but that was before the shooting of a 26-year-old female protester was captured on video, uploaded, and viewed by millions. At the height of the uproar, more than 221,000 Iran tweets were sent in just one hour. In one day, 3,000 Iranian videos were uploaded on YouTube, and 2.2 million blog entries were posted. The young woman, named Neda, had become the "cause," and social media, not traditional outlets, were providing the megaphone.
Later that year, a Tunisian fruit-stand owner named Mohamed Bouazizi was accosted (not for the first time) by police thugs demanding a bribe. They confiscated his wares; he complained to the government, which, as usual, did nothing. Bouazizi, age 26, doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire. The day of Bouazzi's self-immolation, no one -- least of all Muammar Gaddafi, Hosni Mubarak, Bashar al-Assad, and Tunisia's Ali Abdullah Saleh -- had any idea of the upheaval that would result from the ideas, voices, and actions that were soon to be unleashed through social media. As word of Mohamed Bouazizi's brazen act of protest spread across the Middle East and throughout the horn of Africa, it caused an unprecedented wave of civil disobedience, public demonstrations, and strikes across the region. Social media had become the new soft weapon of democracy. Mubarak tried to pull the plug on the Internet, but repression couldn't keep up with the pace of technology as Google and Twitter deployed means to keep the Egyptian protestors' voices alive. Twitter introduced a new "voice-to-Twitter" service that allowed users to post by merely calling a dedicated phone number, and thanks to Google Translate, the messages from the teeming streets of Cairo soon became understandable across the planet. Social media may not have been the spark that set the fire, but it certainly provided the oxygen that caused it to spread.
While true that "slacktavism," online bullying, and unprecedented threats to our privacy are challenges, few could argue that social media has not vastly facilitated political involvement. The results have been impressive, if not always as dramatic as the Arab Spring. Consider the phenomenon of Joseph Kony, the brutal Ugandan guerilla leader who was the subject of an online video that was viewed by 100 million people worldwide. In the Kony case, 850,000 Facebook users clicked the "like" button. What resulted was the deployment of 100 U.S. advisers and 5,000 African Union troops whose mission was to hunt down Kony, achieving a goal that countless diplomats, non-government organizations, and journalists had failed to do in the previous 25 years.
People are using social media to hunt war criminals, win the White House, defeat an American House Speaker, change banking regulations, and overthrow dictators in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen. In each instance it was social media that facilitated broad-based social activism and empowered the aspirations of millions. Its power has just begun to be tested, but the evidence so far indicates that social media has successfully reinvented social activism.Quote Linux version should arrive somewhere before Dec 31st.
A forum post from one of the Rocket League team has stated that the game will be on Linux before the end of December.Taken from here I do wonder what's holding it up, as they stated at the start of November that it was almost ready, but what that means to a developer is probably quite different to our expectations.Soccer meets driving once again in the long-awaited, physics-based sequel to the beloved arena classic, Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars!A futuristic Sports-Action game, Rocket League, equips players with booster-rigged vehicles that can be crashed into balls for incredible goals or epic saves across multiple, highly-detailed arenas. Using an advanced physics system to simulate realistic interactions, Rocket League relies on mass and momentum to give players a complete sense of intuitive control in this unbelievable, high-octane re-imagining of association football.I can't wait to give it a go, so hopefully I will be able to dedicate some time to it when it arrives now I'm finally getting through some of my backlog.Just a year ago, proposing a concept like universal basic income could practically get me laughed off the stage at a tech industry conference. The idea that everyone should be guaranteed a minimum subsidy from the government seemed to go against every fundamental tenet of creative destruction: Don’t reward the obsolete! Force people to evolve! If workers lose their jobs to automation, retrain them for new ones!
From the perspective of Silicon Valley’s executives, only a hippie or communist would suggest that people be given a livable wage simply for being alive. But to me, having just published a book about the lopsided returns of the digital economy, universal basic income seemed an obvious solution to a problem first posed in the 1950s by the inventor of cybernetics, Norbert Wiener: What would happen when robots could till the fields, rendering human labor obsolete? Would humans seize the opportunity to lie down in beach chairs and sip lemonade? Or would our economy be thrown into chaos, with humans perpetually competing for work against their tireless mechanical peers?
In a highly automated environment, a guaranteed minimum income for basics like food, housing and healthcare would provide for those incapable of finding jobs. What’s more, study after study has shown that a universal basic income doesn’t lead to laziness. Rather, the financial safety it affords leads people to take greater creative and entrepreneurial risks.
Where is UBI supposed to come from, after all, if not the profits that Silicon Valley companies have made by cutting out human labor in the first place?
So I should have been glad last spring when the developers at Uber began to ask me about universal basic income, or UBI. I had just delivered a talk in which I blamed the company for extracting all the value out of the taxicab market, and without any real intent of making it sustainable. In my view, they are using the cab market as a beachhead in a much larger bid to monopolize the transportation industry, just as Amazon used books as a foothold into retail with little regard to the effect on authors and publishers. To my surprise, these developers acknowledged the deleterious effects of their company — then raised UBI as a possible solution. “Wouldn’t that let us keep going?” one employee asked.
I’ve since learned from similar audiences at Facebook and Google that many of the workers and leaders at Silicon Valley’s biggest firms have jumped aboard the UBI bandwagon, and with equally self-serving ambitions. By which I mean, they understand the basic math undermining their long-term business plans: If they automate all the jobs, who will be left to buy their services? Even the data that companies such as Google mine from our otherwise free online activities would be worthless if we had no money to spend. The penniless have no consumer behavior to exploit.
While it’s gratifying to hear a multi-billionaire like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg echo the words in my books as he calls on Harvard’s graduating class to explore UBI strategies, in light of the rest of Facebook’s priorities and behavior, his request comes off as utterly clueless, and more than a little late. Much like his vow to donate 99% of his shares to charity, Zuckerberg’s interest in UBI seems less the result of a comprehensive economic vision than a guilt-inspired effort to compensate for the social impact of his business. (If you have to donate 99% of your winnings, perhaps you took too much to begin with?)
I’d have an easier time accepting Zuckerberg’s proposal at face value if his company weren’t trying so hard to avoid paying taxes on its massive profits. Where is UBI supposed to come from, after all, if not the profits that Silicon Valley companies have made by cutting out human labor in the first place?
Likewise, the Uber employees I recently spoke with sounded concerned about the many drivers they hoped to replace with robots. They were aware of the irony of Uber drivers being used to train the algorithms that would soon drive cars without human participation, at least, and hoped that UBI could somehow solve the joblessness problem they were creating.
But underlying these second thoughts and compensatory strategies remains a short-sighted faith in the inevitability of technology’s conquest over mankind. By focusing on the efficiency of code and algorithms, the technophiles have engendered a business culture that values speed over all else. It’s only in this kind of environment that robots win out over humans.
Instead of exploring ways that digital technology might allow for a more thoughtful application of labor and resources, we are doubling down on the industrial values of growth and efficiency. These values have always depended on externalizing the true costs of productivity. Computers may be less expensive and more efficient than humans, but that’s only because the materials for their components are mined in Africa, assembled in China, and later disposed of in toxic waste dumps in impoverished countries.
Industrial efficiency has never been good for working people, nor is it the best North Star for a human society and economy that is transitioning from an industrial age to a digital one. We need not accept massive inequality as an inevitable outcome and compensate for it after the fact. We should optimize our digital technologies toward human ends, rather the end of humans.
Douglas Rushkoff is the author of 15 books, most recently “Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus.”
Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or FacebookThe Embraer EMB 110 Bandeirante is a Brazilian general purpose 15–21 passenger twin-turboprop light transport aircraft designed by Embraer for military and civil use.
Design and development [ edit ]
The EMB 110 was designed by the French engineer Max Holste following the specifications of the IPD-6504 program set by the Brazilian Ministry of Aeronautics in 1965.[1] The goal was to create a general purpose aircraft, suitable for both civilian and military roles with a low operational cost and high reliability.
The first |
tied to changes in crime patterns [2,6,13,15–24]. The links between climatological conditions and crime are of growing importance as the scientific community seeks to understand the full societal implications of climate change. Understanding these relationships is particularly important in places like California, where climate change is anticipated to have major impacts on the agricultural economy and quality of both urban and rural life. California suffered from a severe drought from 2011 to 2015, prompting Governor Jerry Brown to proclaim a drought emergency in 2014 and enact historic statewide water restrictions in 2015 [25,26]. The drought resulted in several of the driest winters on record across the state, and accompanied heat waves that yielded record temperatures [27]. To our knowledge, no studies to date have attempted to identify the impact of this historic drought on crime. To fill this research gap, this paper will discuss mechanisms that link drought to crime and quantify the impact of drought on property and violent crime rates in California. As California and the rest of the country look to a future that includes periods of drought [28], the impact on crime is important to understand so policymakers, police agencies, and communities can prepare.
Theoretical framework There are two main theoretical mechanisms linking drought to crime rates. First, major climatic shifts have economic and social consequences, which can subsequently influence crime. Second, alterations in daily weather patterns can impact human behavior and routine activities, modifying risk of victimization. While our focus is on the overall impact of drought on crime in California, some consideration of the micro-level mechanisms that may underlie these effects supports the plausibility of the hypothesis, and explicates some of the potential pathways encompassed in this overall effect. Drought and economic stress The drought, which began in 2011, was a major climactic event for California. While several other states also suffered from drought during this time, California’s experience was the most severe and persistent [29,30]. The scale of the agricultural industry in California increases the political and economic stakes of drought, as its aquaculture, farming, ranching, and dairy industries use the majority of surface and groundwater resources within the state [31]. During the peak of the drought in 2014, 75% of California’s range and pastureland was rated in poor condition, and many farmers fallowed portions of their land, especially in the Central Valley [32–34]. However, the drought did not devastate the agricultural economy as much as predicted, mainly due to the overdrawing of groundwater sources [32,35]. This mitigated some of the short-term economic losses that drought might have caused, but is unsustainable [36]. The relatively modest overall economic impact of the drought does not mean there were no effects on local communities. Indeed, Central Valley farmers pulled so much groundwater that predominantly low-income communities in neighboring areas found their wells drying up [37–39]. Water rates rose for urban and semi-urban consumers, even as they sought to conserve [40]. The increase in water prices and drought surcharges hit lower-income families hardest. Families with annual earnings less than $25,000 per year saw their water prices increase to over 2% of household income, exceeding affordability thresholds set by the State of California and the Environmental Protection Agency [41]. The disappearance of well water in rural communities and higher water prices in urbanized areas illustrate how the drought disproportionately affected the less wealthy across the state [42,43]. Increases in unemployment, greater inequality, declining wages, and other forms of political or economic disempowerment can erode community cohesion and foment divisiveness, resulting in higher crime [44]. Additionally, many of these factors shift perceptions about fairness, equality, and support, resulting in altered patterns of individual behavior and motivations regarding crime. Drought-related economic stress may have exacerbated these issues faced by many Californians, especially those living in areas highly dependent on groundwater and those burdened by drought surcharges and regulations. Drought and routine activities Individual motivation is a key determinant of criminal action and victimization, but it is not the only factor that influences crime incidence. Crimes require a confluence of events in order to occur: there must be a motivated actor, an opportunity to identify and exploit an available target, and a lack of witnesses or guardianship. While individual motivation plays an important role, this routine activity theory of crime also suggests that changes in the daily activities of other people can alter the window of opportunity for criminal action [45]. This theory is often employed to describe how weather affects rates of both property and violent crime. The temperature, humidity, precipitation, and the strength of winds on any given day can all impact the likelihood of people spending time outdoors, travelling, or going to social activity spaces during the day or at night, and such activities have implications for the potential for both property and violent crime [14]. We considered the effects of drought to encompass the economic consequences of drought, behavioral impacts of weather, and alterations of routine activities. These effects could be examined at several relevant temporal and geographic scales. This paper focuses on the drought as a climactic event that began in 2011 and persisted through 2015, and affected the entire state of California. Given the plausible micro-level mechanisms that would link drought with crime, we hypothesized that the California drought would be associated with increased rates of both property and violent crime from 2011–2015, as compared to the ten prior years.
Methods Overview The drought’s impact on determinants of crime likely included both daily changes in routine activities, monthly increases in residential water prices, seasonal job losses, and long-term restructuring of water rights and agricultural investment. In order to capture overall changes in patterns of criminality affected by each of these mechanisms, we used the annual state-level Uniform Crime Statistics maintained by the FBI. We chose to estimate the effects at the state-year level because while areas of California experienced the drought differently, the entire state felt at least some effects of drought starting in 2011, and therefore we needed other states to serve as controls. In addition, we chose to estimate the effects at the state level because sub-state crime estimates are not as reliable in terms of consistent reporting, as has been documented in previous validation studies [46–48]. We chose to examine yearly effects because this allowed us to focus on trends of crime without the additional variability from seasonal cycles that would be present in more fine-grained temporal data. Additionally, the state-level covariate data are only available at annual intervals, and the annual crime data are less affected from reporting inconsistencies. We used a synthetic control method to estimate California’s expected rates of violent and property crime in the absence of drought, and compared these to the observed crime rates to quantify the drought’s impact on crime during 2011–2015 [49]. This approach has previously been used to estimate the effects of policy, social, and environmental changes [49–53]. Our hypothesis is that drought affects crime not as a climatic phenomenon alone, but as a change in climate that alters economic and social organization and behavioral patterns. To assess whether our results could be due to chance, we used a permutation test. We utilized a negative control to explore whether our results could be explained by co-occurring changes in California’s economy that were unrelated to the drought. Analysis We use a synthetic control method developed by Abadie, Diamond, and Hainmueller in this analysis [52]. This method uses a weighted combination of states to create a synthetic “control” California, which provides an estimate of expected crime rates in the state if the drought had not occurred. The states that comprise California’s synthetic control are selected by the method based on their pre-2011 trends in covariate values and crime rates. Those that are best able to predict the pre-2011 crime trends in California are chosen for the synthetic control group. The expected crime rates for California from 2011–2015 in the absence of drought are then compared against the observed crime rates. A difference between the observed and expected values can therefore be interpreted as the impact of the drought on crime. While traditional statistical inference techniques do not work with this approach, given the small sample size, a permutation test can be used to assess how unusual such an effect would be if it were due to chance and thus provide context for the effect size. This permutation test involves implementing the synthetic control technique for each state, as though it were the one that had experienced drought during 2011–2015. The estimated effect for California can then be compared to the size of these other effect estimates. Typically, the permutation test results are compared for states in which pre-drought crime trends are well predicted by the synthetic control. We will present results of the test for all states, in addition to the results for those states with 20, 5, and 2 times the mean squared prediction error (MSPE) observed for California. States with a poorly matched synthetic control might appear to have more extreme differences as an artifact of poor prediction. It is possible that drought and unrelated economic changes occurred simultaneously in California. While we included a wide range of economic indicators as covariates in the synthetic control analysis, it is possible other economic factors we did not control for changed in 2011, and though unrelated to the drought, affected crime rates through 2015. Since the synthetic control analysis does not allow us to distinguish between co-occurring events, we used a negative control to investigate whether changes in the economy could be an alternative explanation for our results. A negative control estimates the effect of an exposure on an outcome that it should not plausibly impact, but which may be affected by a confounding factor [54]. If an effect is observed in such a situation, it can be assumed that there is confounding or bias in the study. We examined median cashier wages as a negative control. We will also present evidence from what we call a positive control, in which we estimate the effect of the exposure on an outcome that it should affect. Median farmworker wages served as the positive control. We expect the drought to have affected farmworker wages, since many farm owners faced financial pressures including rising water costs, and chose to offset this by suppressing wage increases or firing workers [32]. However, we would not expect the drought to impact cashier wages. An observed effect of drought on median cashier wages would indicate the co-occurrence of drought and unrelated economic changes in California, and would suggest that observed effects of drought on crime may be similarly contaminated. An observed effect of drought on farmworker wages, however, would support our theory that the drought had economic implications for the agricultural industry and would bolster our confidence that the method is able to detect drought-related changes. Observing an effect of the drought on farmworker wages, but not cashier wages, would provide additional evidence that drought’s effect on crime rates is not spurious. Data sources We used state-level annual crime statistics from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program from 2000–2015, and divided these by estimates of the total population to create rates of crime for each state-year unit [55]. Property crime included burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft. Violent crime comprised murder and non-negligent manslaughter, robbery, and aggravated assault. We excluded forcible rape because the definition changed in 2012 [48]. We used the following state-level covariates known to be predictive of crime or associated with economic characteristics in our analysis: distribution of age, race/ethnicity, and poverty; median income; median wages by industry; unemployment; population density; income inequality; jobs per capita; income per capita; average gas prices per gallon; law enforcement presence; housing affordability by income; migration; ratio of housing value to income level; and drug and alcohol use by age. Percentages of the population age 15–19, age 20–24, Asian, Black, or Hispanic were from the Census Bureau [56]. The percent of the population living under the poverty line, log of median income, the unemployment rate, the log of the population density, percent paying over 30% of their income on housing by income group, median wages by industry, percent staying in the same house, percent moving within a state, percent moving out of state, ratio of home value to income level for owner-occupied units, and the Gini index came from the American Community Survey [57]. Average gas prices per gallon were compiled from the U.S. Energy Information Administration [58]. The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports provided the rate of law enforcement agencies and employees [55]. Income per capita and jobs per capita came from the United States’ Bureau of Economic Analysis [59]. Rates of illicit illegal drug use, binge alcohol drinking, and abuse or dependence of alcohol or illicit drugs by age group came from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health [60]. The negative control analysis used median cashier and farmworker wages from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment Statistics program [61]. Temperature changes often occur alongside drought and are also likely to impact crime. Thus, we performed a sensitivity analysis, which included average annual temperature as a control covariate. The data for temperature came from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information [62].
Discussion We found evidence that the drought in California was associated with an increase in property crime but was not associated with a change in violent crime relative to the synthetic control. An increase in property crime during the time of the drought is consistent with the routine activity theory of crime, suggesting increased opportunity for burglary, motor vehicle theft, or larceny theft to occur, potentially coupled with exacerbated economic and social discontent, shifting incentives for property crime and altering the rate of victimization. We expected to see an increase in violent crime during the drought based on previous studies, but our results suggest that violent crime was not affected by the drought. It is possible violent crime is not as susceptible to weather changes, or that drought-related economic pressures were not widespread enough during 2011–2015 to increase violent behavior. There could also have been policies or violence prevention programs initiated during 2011–2015 that mitigated the effects of drought. It is also possible that competing influences of the drought on routine activities and weather-related behavior cancelled out any effect. This analysis has several limitations. While the synthetic control method allowed us to capture the desired scope of impacts from the drought, it does not test how each mechanism—economic changes or alternations in routine activities—may have individually contributed to the crime rate. In addition, the exposure of interest was represented as a dichotomous indicator of drought, to encompass the complex social and economic consequences of the drought. Thus, there is likely to be some misclassification. Furthermore, because we used state-year as the unit of analysis, it is possible our analysis has overlooked possible differences in seasonal effects, or differential effects by rurality. We hope these factors are explored in future work. In addition, we attribute any differences between the observed and expected crime rates to drought, but it is possible another event not captured in our covariates co-occurred in 2011 and continued through 2015 that caused property crime to increase over that time. We used a negative control to address this concern, and found minimal evidence that the effect was due to economic changes unrelated to drought and not included in our covariate list. However, the possibility remains that some other event or societal changes were responsible for the increase in property crime. Such changes would need to have occurred statewide, or resulted in an extreme increase in crime in one locality to such an extent that it became identifiable in the state crime rate. The event would need to have occurred in California beginning in 2011 but not in states selected as part of California’s synthetic control. We believe such an event is unlikely. The inferential techniques used to assess the significance of the estimates from the synthetic control method are exact, and thus do not have the asymptotic properties or interpretation of theory-based inference. However, with serially correlated data, exact inference is preferred, as theory-based inference is usually biased [63]. In addition, due to the case-comparison nature of the study, permutation-based inference is more appropriate than methods that rely on large samples [63]. Finally, other states experienced drought at the beginning of 2011, although none experienced the severe and persistent drought as California did. If states in the synthetic control also suffered drought-related crime effects during the 2011–2015 period, the estimates provided here can be considered conservative. The results and inference from the synthetic control method assume that California’s drought did not affect violent or property crime rates in other states. We do not believe that California’s drought impacted crime rates in other states, but if it did, neighboring states would be the most likely to be impacted. As a sensitivity analysis, we excluded all states bordering California from the control pool, and results were similar to those presented above. This study also benefits from several strengths. We used 10 years of pre-drought data to establish crime trends in California before the drought. Due to the dynamic nature of the drought’s impact on social and economic behaviors, we modeled drought as an environmental event with other states as controls. This allowed us to capture effects of the drought that may have been obscured by another analysis method. By choosing state-year as the unit of analysis, we were able to include many covariates, improving the quality of the estimates from the control group. This analysis was motivated by a discussion of the mechanisms theorized to link annual variations in climate to crime and discussed their relevance in the California context. We utilized a synthetic control method that improved our control group selection, accounted for the autocorrelation of crime and drought, and estimated the impact of drought on crime each year from 2011–2015. A difference-in-differences approach is often used to compare outcomes between two groups before and after an exposure or intervention, but this approach is limited in several ways. Specifically, there are three key issues that motivated our use of an alternative, synthetic control method. First, a difference-in-differences approach could conflate differences in crime associated with drought with differences due to pre-drought characteristics associated with drought if the control group is not similar enough to California. The synthetic control method is guaranteed to be at least as similar to California as a simple weighted mean of control states or any one other control state [49]. Second, traditional difference-in-differences methods assume unobserved confounders are time constant, whereas the effects of observed and unobserved pre-drought confounders do not have to be time constant in the synthetic control method [64]. Third, traditional difference-in-difference methods provide asymptotic large-sample inference that is inappropriate given the comparative case study design, whereas the synthetic control method uses exact inference [63]. As communities in California and throughout the country plan for a future of climatological uncertainty, it is important to acknowledge the potential of climate and the weather to impact human behavior. Our results indicate that California’s drought was associated with an increase in property crime, but we did not find an effect of the drought on violent crime. As the drought continues, however, there are likely to be substantial economic impacts, especially for farmworkers and other vulnerable populations in California. These structural changes may exacerbate economic disempowerment or political dissent that incites violence. Such effects have been observed in other regions around the world, and it is unclear how resilient California will be to these challenges. Future studies should explore the mechanisms that link climate and weather to crime by assessing changes in routine activities during drought and their relationship to crime victimization. Additionally, as the drought continues in California, it will be important to assess the extent to which unemployment, water prices, groundwater shortages, and other economic factors are affected, and to examine whether these factors are associated with changes in criminal behaviors. For now, social scientists and policy analysts engaged in forecasting the impact of climate change should consider the possible impact of altered climate conditions on crime, especially property crime.Protests in Ferguson, Missouri. (Photo: velo_city/Flickr)
Why are the residents of Ferguson, Missouri—a majority of whom are black—represented by a local government that is almost entirely white? This question has preoccupied a few scholars and journalists since last week. On Friday, Brian Schaffner, Wouter Van Erve, and Ray LaRaja wrote an interesting post at the Monkey Cage that looked at these disparities and suggested that it was largely due to two factors: 1) the timing of local elections (Ferguson's city council elections are held in April of odd-numbered years), and 2) the non-partisan nature of local elections there. Both of these factors tend to depress turnout substantially, and seem to depress turnout disproportionately among African Americans. Over at Slate, Jordan Weissmann explained that the poverty and relative transience common among black communities in the inner-ring suburbs of the South makes them far less likely to turn out in local elections.
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There are serious and deep systemic issues at play here that will require institutional solutions if they are to be addressed.
So this sounds like an important phenomenon but it's one that is easily explained by some well understood features of the political environment. Given the institutional and demographic features of Ferguson, we would expect the percent of the city council that is black to be less than the percent among the population. But just how much?
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To get a sense of where Ferguson stands, I examined a 2001 data set of U.S. cities. (The data set comes from the International City/County Management Association and was generously provided to me by Jessica Trounstine, who used it for a paper with Melody Valdini.) The chart below shows the relationship between the percent of the population that is black and the percent of the city council that is black as of 2001 in cities with at least 10,000 residents. The data point for Ferguson is labeled.
(Chart: Jessica Trounstine/ICMA)
As we can see, there is a very strong relationship between these two variables. The greater the African American population, the greater the percentage on the city council. Those don't track each other perfectly though. A city with a 50 percent African American population would only be expected to have about 43 percent of its city council be black. Only at about 58 percent African American would we expect the population to have a majority black city council.
The other important lesson from this graph is that Ferguson is a serious outlier. As of 2001, it was a majority African American city with zero African Americans on the city council. The only city with a greater representational disparity was Riverdale, Georgia, but African American representation in that city has increased dramatically since then. Ferguson, meanwhile, has gained one African American city council member since then (17 percent of the council), but its African American population has increased to 67 percent, meaning it's still a rather extreme outlier in terms of representation.
I set up a regression equation to see what sorts of institutional variables predicted the difference between the African American city council percentage and the African American population percentage, or the representational gap. There are quite a few factors that seem important, but none come close to explaining Ferguson. That gap is about four points greater in Southern states, and it's modestly less in more urban and wealthier cities. Having off-cycle or partisan elections doesn't seem to matter much here. None of these factors can explain Ferguson's 53-point representational gap in 2001, or its 50 percent gap today.
This isn't to dismiss Ferguson as a meaningless outlier. As Clarissa Hayward notes: "Ferguson is anything but anomalous. It’s an all-too-familiar manifestation of how racial injustice lives on, even after significant shifts in white racial attitudes." There are problems with representation in a number of places across the country, and Ferguson is, sadly, hardly the only city to see an unarmed young black man gunned down by a white police officer. But trying to repair a place like Ferguson will obviously require more than hugs, peaceful marches, calls for unity, and civilian oversight of police. There are serious and deep systemic issues at play here that will require institutional solutions if they are to be addressed. There are national problems, but even given that, Ferguson's illnesses appear to be unusually acute.
UPDATE — August 21, 2014: Trounstine was able to gather the data for 2011. Below is an updated chart. While Ferguson is no longer at the bottom of the graph, it is still one of the largest negative outliers in the data set.
(Chart: Jessica Trounstine/ICMA)Local doctor Rosena Allin-Khan has been selected by Labour members in Tooting as the party’s candidate for the upcoming by-election in June 16. Sadiq Khan, who last week stood down as the MP after being elected as Mayor of London, said that she “has the values, vision and experience to be a brilliant champion for Tooting.”
Local members met this morning to hear from the five shortlisted candidates, with Allin-Khan winning on the third round of the exhaustive ballot vote, with Martin Smith finishing second. Around 350 members are estimated to have been at the meeting, including a large number that have joined the party since last May, but Allin-Khan is seen as more of a continuity candidate from Sadiq, rather than a shift to the left.
Dr Allin-Khan was born and raised in Tooting, and works as an A&E specialist in the local St George’s Hospital. She has also used her experience to work as international humanitarian aid worker.
Accepting the candidacy, she said:
“I love Tooting. I was born and raised here, and there’s no place I would rather raise my children. This community gave my family everything, including a secure home to raise our family.
“It’s an honour to be selected as Labour’s candidate – continuing Sadiq Khan’s work standing up for everyone living across Balham, Earlsfield, Furzedown and Tooting.
“As an A&E specialist doctor at St George’s Hospital and as a mother of two young daughters, I know first-hand how important public services are to local families.
“With local health services under threat and the Tories pushing ahead with plans to take millions of pounds from our local school budgets, my priority will be to ensure our community gets the excellent local services families need and deserve.
“I will also use all my energy to tackle the Tory housing crisis that is pricing out local people from our area. Tooting is a great place to live but too many people are working for long hours every day and still can’t afford to put money aside to save for a deposit. We need to make sure Tooting remains affordable for everyone who lives here.”
Sadiq Khan praised the new candidate, saying:
“Rosena has lived in the area all her life and has always been committed to helping and standing up for local people – whether working as an A&E doctor at St George’s or campaigning as a councillor on issues like protecting childcare services.
“I’m really looking forward to working with Rosena over the coming weeks to tackle the Tory housing crisis, protect key local services and secure the transport links people in Tooting rely upon every day. Rosena has the values, vision and experience to be a brilliant champion for Tooting.”What Chinese buyers of North America property must bear in mind
Beijing may be having an uneasy relationship with Washington politically, but that is not stopping the Chinese from emerging as big investors in US property.
According to a survey conducted by the Rosen Consulting Group, a world-renowned real estate consultancy, mainland Chinese are estimated to have spent a whopping US$110 billion on US properties in 2015 alone.
Thanks to the influx of Chinese capital, the US property market has now fully recovered from the subprime mortgage crisis that led to a nationwide sector crash in 2008.
Cash-flush Chinese investors have also set foot in Vancouver in Canada, pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into its property market, pushing up prices in the city substantially.
For example, an average town house in downtown Vancouver now goes for 1.4 million Canadian dollars. According to some observers, Canada is now facing its worst home affordability crisis ever. Most Canadians blame it on Chinese home buyers.
As Chinese buyers are snapping up both average and luxury homes indiscriminately across the country and pushing up prices, it has provoked a widespread backlash from Canadian natives, particularly the average families who found themselves priced out of the market.
People are dismayed that their home ownership dream is melting away due to relentless speculative activities by deep-pocketed Chinese investors.
Canadian property agents are taking advantage of Chinese investors’ feeding frenzy for properties, reaping huge commissions. In fact many Canadians believe the local property agents are actually complicit in driving up property prices along with Chinese speculators.
The agents are accused of inducing their Chinese clients to make pre-auction offers that are sometimes up to 100 to 200 percent above market rate in order to force other local bidders out of the competition.
In the 80s and 90s, Canada saw an influx of tens of thousands of affluent Hong Kong immigrants. The immigrants raised a lot of eyebrows among locals with their luxury homes, fancy cars and expensive clothes. However, the Hongkongers were nothing compared to the super-rich Chinese millennials studying and living in Canada these days.
Nowadays it is not uncommon in major Canadian cities like Vancouver and Toronto to see Chinese teens rolling down the main streets in brand-new super cars such as Ferraris, Maseratis or Lamborghinis.
The extravagant lifestyles of rich Chinese students and their flamboyant behavior have made a lot of local Canadians uncomfortable.
Unlike people in New York and London, who have got used to the razzle-dazzle of rich foreigners, Canadians tend to be simple. Hence, many find the show-off by Chinese people deeply offensive.
Given this situation, local mainstream media often casts Chinese people in negative light regardless of their origins.
As a result, Chinese immigrants, be it the super-rich from mainland China or humble ethnic Chinese from other places who run small grocery stores or food takeaway joints, are becoming increasingly unpopular and even unwelcome among local Canadians.
The high-profile mainland Chinese in Canada have not only become talk of the town among the local population, they have also aroused the suspicions of the Chinese authorities back home.
Law enforcement agencies in China have already begun to re-examine hundreds of thousands of emigration cases to find out where the money of the wealthy emigrants actually came from. It is suspected that many corrupt officials moved their ill-gotten money offshore and sent their kids abroad to obtain foreign passports and look after the assets.
For many young Chinese aristocrats who are leading an extravagant life in North America, their days of carefree existence could be numbered because the Big Brother is coming after them and also their parents back home.
In recent years Beijing has concluded extradition treaties with several western countries in order to hunt down corrupt officials who have fled the country, and to curb the outflow of illegal capital under the pretext of emigration.
Unless the so-called second-generation rich (sons and daughters of the rich and powerful in China) who are living or studying overseas start behaving more humbly, their parents will surely come into more trouble from the anti-corruption authorities back home.
This article appeared in the Hong Kong Economic Journal on May 20.
Translation by Alan Lee
[Chinese version 中文版]
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RCIn debates over the fate of the U.S. dollar there appears to be a need for clarification.
While since last spring the dollar has declined about 15% in value compared to a basket of other major currencies, on the domestic front a dollar today buys about 30% more common stock than it did two years ago at the peak, and the dollar also rose substantially in value vs. real estate during the same period.
This distinction is critical because for most people the value of the dollar in terms of foreign currencies is probably not a day-to-day concern. Any change the dollar’s purchasing power in terms of domestic assets, however, is very important both now and when planning for the future.
Tens of trillions of dollars of credit-from-nowhere now in existence fuel demand for goods and services, bidding up asset prices across the entire world economy. This mountain of credit was built on three pillars.
Fractional reserve banking. Government debt issuance. Packaging of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) into "securities."
The third pillar, CDOs, required a phenomenal collective delusion for sustenance, and that level of delusion is gone. It comes around once every several centuries, so we probably shouldn’t hold our breath awaiting its return.
The banking pillar is full of cracks as the banks’ overreliance on real estate loans is increasingly recognized. With their weakness revealed, banks cannot offset credit destruction due to collapsing mortgages and multiplying loan defaults.
Amazingly, the pillar of government debt issuance remains the strongest. This revolving door of taxes paid, massive borrowing, and government payments (direct and indirect) to nearly every citizen is now the sole whirlwind supporting the greatest faux economy since John Law’s Mississippi Scheme or the South Sea Bubble. Whereas it required all three pillars to leverage the growth of credit to these dizzying heights, only one remains to hold the forces of credit collapse deflation at bay.
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As long as collective "suspension of disbelief" provides the music, this vast game of musical chairs continues. The above-cited trends, however, leave us sharing the sense that when the music stops there will be very few chairs left in the game for the multitudes to find a seat. We know that this catastrophe, when it arrives, will make instant losers out of the vast majority of people residing in the USA.
So what is a prudent person to do to preserve capital in our chaotic times? No one knows for sure.
The money supply sustaining prices at current levels is made up of a little currency plus an ocean of credit. The credit supply is teetering on a three-legged stool where one leg is gone, another is on the verge of disaster, and the last is mainlining anabolic steroids in an effort to look like Atlas holding the world on his shoulders.
Obama, Geithner, and Bernanke don’t remind me of Atlas. Neither does their Uncle Sam.
Revolutionary Language David C. Calderwood Best Price: $4.49 Buy New $13.44 (as of 04:35 EST - Details)
If one believes that the failure of the Federal Debt system is imminent, then one should be preparing for TEOTWAWKI. In this event, prudent preparation includes quitting the job, selling the house, moving the family to a temperate rural area and converting all assets to guns, food, ammo, farmland, livestock, barter goods, and books on how to live an 18th century lifestyle.
The trouble is that preparing for TEOTWAWKI renders one in a very poor position should things not be quite so catastrophic. People are incredibly resourceful and the history of communism shows us that even unsustainable systems don’t necessarily collapse all at once.
If the federal government system survives for a period of time after the Federal Reserve banking cartel crashes (or more likely, is seized by an Act of Congress), instead of an immediate dollar collapse, surviving dollars would soar in value. Ironically, the closer any dollar credit exists to the U.S. Treasury, the longer it may survive. The idea in this case would be to hold the last surviving dollar credits, stepping off that boat to the dry land of hard assets when all vulnerable credits have disappeared and asset values have declined about as far as they’re going to. Then will be the time to flee dollars in fear of the appearance of ever-larger denominations of currency, the hallmark of currency hyperinflation.
Can people lose faith in the banking system but maintain trust in Uncle Sam (and the legal tender illusion) for a time, despite the unsustainable binge of central government borrowing and certain train wreck of entitlement programs? To me the answer is yes, they can.
No one knows the future, but a resumption of the domestic surge in the value of the dollar (attended by price declines for stocks, real estate, and other assets) is among the possibilities, and each person must decide which among those paths to prepare for.
I’m grateful to Robert Klassen for providing editorial assistance for this article.
September 26, 2009
David Calderwood [send him mail] a businessman, artist, and author of the novel Revolutionary Language, selected January 2000 Freedom Book of the Month at Free-market.net.
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The Best of David CalderwoodUSA TODAY Sports
The last time it happened, it was so historic it literally changed the landscape of the sport.
Now, 46 years later, it most certainly can happen again.
The seasons Los Angeles Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw and Seattle Mariners lead horse Felix Hernandez are having in 2014 are also historic in their accomplishments—so good, in fact, both pitchers can make legitimate cases to sweep the Cy Young Awards and MVP honors in their respective leagues.
It would be only the second time ever that has happened, with the first in 1968—the original Year of the Pitcher—when Detroit's Denny McLain and St. Louis' Bob Gibson dominated their way to both awards. Their feats led Major League Baseball to lower the pitching mound from 15 inches to 10 in an effort to increase offense.
While the kinds of numbers McLain and Gibson put up that season might be untouchable with the way the game has changed—McLain pitched 336 innings and Gibson had a 1.12 ERA—what Kershaw and Hernandez have done this summer is as impressive. And without a clear favorite for MVP in either league, this is the best chance to have another year when pitchers sweep the awards.
Now, if it weren't for certain media members—ones who vote for the Baseball Writers' Association of America awards this month—believing a pitcher should never win the MVP award, this probably would be an easy call. Kershaw and Hernandez are absolutely deserving of the distinction of best players in their leagues.
If you keep it simple, or as simple as any debate on Wins Above Replacement can be, then each pitcher has a claim. Kershaw leads the National League at 7.8 WAR through Baseball-Reference.com's formula, and his 6.0 mark over at FanGraphs also puts him atop the list. Hernandez also ranks in the American League's top five in both formulas, and when you consider his role in Seattle's resurgence, he is a strong candidate.
Assuming both pitchers remain brilliant for the rest of this month, then the only problem each would have in winning the MVP award is the thinking that a player who plays only in every fifth game can never be considered his team's most valuable player. Pitchers face upwards of 800 batters a season, while hitters—this is mainly an offensive award—get fewer than 700 plate appearances.
There is also the crazy thinking that pitchers have their "own" honor, the Cy Young Award, and so should not be allowed to win the MVP, which fails to acknowledge that hitters have their "own" trophy in the Hank Aaron Award.
This kind of narrow-minded thinking is so wrong on so many levels, one can't even begin to start unfolding that argument in the space allotted here. Instead, we can break this down at the most fundamental level—wins and losses.
The Dodgers sit in first place in the NL West, and they have Kershaw to thank for that since the team is 15 games over.500 (19-4) when he pitches. The rest of the time, they are 62-58, barely over.500 and hardly a first-place club with World |
officer claimed that after he was rammed, Tucker turned his wheels toward officers and was going to run them over. The videos below show quite clearly that not only did Tucker not turn his wheels in the direction of the officers, he was backing away from them. The vehicle was reportedly still in reverse when Joey’s corpse was removed. A fellow officer allegedly said “Oh no! Oh shit!” after Jones opened fire. Even with all of this, the District Attorney cleared Jones of charges at the time. That should come as no surprise to those who know that Utah cops kill more citizens than drug dealers or gang bangers in the state.
The family filed a lawsuit for which they apparently received $100,000 dollars. Officer “Law” Jones mocks this fact by stating:
“your sons life was only worth $100k.”
The very fact that this officer is still tormenting this family after 6 years is inexcusable. The Fifth Column spoke with Tucker’s sister, Melinda. She said:
“It’s sick. It’s like the way a serial killer taunts his victims.”
While the cop was tormenting his victim’s family, he reiterated his statement that he opened fire because he “was well aware that Joe was trying to go forward in direct line of the other 2 officers.” He wasn’t. That’s clear from the videos and the court documents. More importantly, he indicates that the other officers would have fired if the “background” had been clear. The officers were clearly not in fear of being run over. They made no attempt to move out of the way. In fact, it doesn’t appear that either officer was in front of the vehicle. In “Video 2,” you can hear the gun shots and see that one officer was safely off to the side of the vehicle. The other officer moved in front of the vehicle only after Jones executes the distraught man. They were not preparing to fire. They were not in fear for their lives. If the other officers were preparing to fire, it’s because the decision to kill Joey was made before they exited their vehicles.
One of opening taunts from the shooter was asking the family a question:
“What ‘justice’ do you seek?”
In her conversation with The Fifth Column, Melinda indicated that she was primarily concerned with establishing protocols to make sure that someone else doesn’t lose their brother to a cop that was just too busy to deal with someone in crisis.
However, because of the taunts, others have a different plan. The DA that chose not to indict is no longer in office. There is no statute of limitations on murder. This incident has left many police accountability activists planning a campaign to force Salt Lake City Police to reopen the case. Obviously, Jones has the presumption of innocence. That’s a presumption of innocence it certainly appears that he denied to Joey Tucker when he put a bullet through his throat six years ago.
While researching this article, I found an article dated March 3, 1995. It describes a lawsuit brought by Jones against his boss at the department for slandering him and unjustly firing him. Apparently, Jones had an incident where he may have threatened a dispatcher and attempted suicide in her driveway after using his law enforcement powers for personal reasons by checking the license plate of a vehicle in her driveway. Jones sued his former boss for saying that he was a “crazy man” and that he was “dangerous.” His boss was also alleged to have said that Jones wasn’t fit to be a police officer among a lot of other nasty things. Jones eventually got his job back.
Running from the cops, especially while distraught (whether suicidal or due to diabetic shock), does not give an officer the right to act as judge, jury, and executioner. It doesn’t carry a death sentence in Utah, it’s not even a felony.
Now that police misconduct, brutality, and militarization are in the national news cycle every day, is it time to start taking a second look at cases from the past?
VIDEO 1:
VIDEO 2:
Personal Note: This is one of those stories that only a decentralized media can bring you. One of The Fifth Column’s early supporters witnessed the former cop’s statements and contacted us. He was then able to put us in contact with the family. If you’re reading this, you are just as much a part of this organization as I am.President Obama stole Internet attention from the Republican National Convention on Wednesday by conducting an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on Reddit.
Reddit is a wildly popular social media community, in which users share links and comments. In an AMA session, one person fields questions from the community. A variety of noteworthy people have taken part in these sessions, including Steve Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and “Jeopardy” champion Ken Jennings.
Around 4 p.m. ET, Obama tweeted that he would be taking questions online starting at 4:30. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney even tweeted a photo of the president sitting in front of computer, presumably scanning the questions. Shortly after the session began, however, users began complaining that they couldn’t access the site because of the high volume of activity.
So how much do you know about Reddit? Here are 10 facts and figures to serve as a crash course:
Reddit was founded in 2005 by two University of Virginia graduates Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian.
Conde Nast bought the site in October 2006 for an estimated $10 million to $20 million, but since 2011 Reddit has been operationally independent. (via Beta Beat)
Reddit attracts more than 35 million unique visitors and about 3 billion page views every month. (via Daily Dot)
Every day, the busiest subreddit page—r/funny—gets an average of 600,000 unique visitors and 6.5 million page views. (via Daily Dot)
The median Reddit user is 25 to 34 years old, has some college education, and is in the lowest income bracket ($0-$24,999). (via Wikipedia)
84 percent of Reddit members are men. (via BuzzFeed)
Reddit users spend an average of 16 minutes, 10 seconds on the site. (via Sortable.com)
Canadians spend the most time on Reddit. (via Sortable)
The popularity of an article shared on Reddit’s front page is inversely proportional to its length (via Sortable.com)
Viral stories about brands—good and bad—often begin or gain prominence on Reddit, including stories about GoDaddy’s founder, Oreo’s Gay Pride cookie, and more. (via Viral Blog)
(Image via)H/T:
The long anticipated Tedeschi Trucks Band at the Beacon is finally here! Picking up where the Allman Brothers Band has left off, TTB has made a fall run at the Beacon one of their own traditions.As he has so many times, Derek Trucks set the Beacon ablaze with his incendiary guitar playing. After a 15 song set with plenty of covers and originals, TTB turned to the Blind Faith tune “Had To Cry” to close out the show before they came out for an encore.Tedeschi and the other band members had plenty of moments to shine through-out the show. “Had to Cry” was Derek’s time once again. The majority of the 12-minute rendition of the song is Derek peakin’ at the Beacon. Watch as he breaks a string and keeps on wailing away on the last 5 strings.Thanks to Sean Roche for the awesome footage!Here are some other performances from the night thanks to Sean.Following the critical and commercial success of its narrative-heavy adventure game, French development studio Quantic Dream is at work on two more projects, according to founder David Cage."After the success of, we continue to explore how we can go further with interactive drama," Cage said in an Examiner interview, a thriller with a branching narrative, released this February to strong reviews, and has sold more than a million units worldwide. Despite that, neither of Quantic Dream's upcoming projects seems to be a sequel. Rather, Cage implied the company would capitalize on the success of that new property to allow the company to keep making new games rather than sequels."After Heavy Rain, we have some credibility in experimenting with new IPs and new concepts," he said. "We are not going to play it safe from now. We are going to use this credibility to continue to take risks, give ourselves exciting challenges and try to invent new ways of playing."The Paris-based independent studio's first game was the 1997 adventure, which it followed with 2005's(known asin North America). Before the release of, Quantic Dream said it was working on ansequel and a new game called, the latter of which was later canceled.Whilewas never officially dropped, in 2008 Cage said the studio had put it on hold to finish. He also said Quantic Dream was considering opening a second studio to work on two games simultaneously, but no further statements on that matter have emerged.Despite those various clues, Cage's most recent updates point to entirely new games."I believe that this is what Quantic Dream�s fans expect us to do," he said. "It is also what keeps me passionate about what we are doing."It was totally random that I came across Sourdough Surprises. I was reading this post from Korena in the Kitchen – Colossal Sourdough Cinnamon Buns (I know right, how good does that sound?!). Which by the way has mashed potatoes in them. One thing led to another and there I was, at the Sourdough Surprises website. How could I have missed this?
The saffron gives the crackers a beautiful yellow color.
Well, I’m not missing anything anymore, that’s for sure. So I went ahead and looked at the challenge. We’re making crackers. Crackers. Yesss! I love crackers. This surprise thing is right up my alley.
Oh, and the saffron gives them a pretty awesome flavor too. Perfect companion to cheese.
Crackers are so fun and easy to make, and these ones are especially delicious and crunchy thanks to all the almond flour in them. They’re not sweet, but not really savory, either. I served them with blue cheese and brie. Oh my. Turns out saffron + almond + blue cheese were made for each other. Perfectly balanced flavors. Nutty almonds, lean saffron and a spark of blue cheese. You’ll know what I mean when you try it.
Sprinkle some almond flour or sliced almonds on top. Whatever your prefer.
Saffron almond sourdough crackers
Total time: 24 hours to let the pre-dough get active. Then another 3-4 hours to let the dough rise and baking the crackers.
Ingredients
Day 1
100 g (3.5 oz) white starter (100 % hydration)
150 g (5.3 oz, not fluid!) filtered water
150 g (5.3 oz) all-purpose flour
Day 2
1 g (0.03 oz) saffron
1 tsp sea salt
3 tbsp honey
1 cup finely ground almond flour
115 g (4.1 oz) all-purpose flour
Toppings
almond flour
sliced almonds
Creamy blue cheese… Mmm!!! is all I have to say. I think I may have said that already. Oh well.
Instructions
Mix starter, water and flour in a bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let ferment in room temperature for 24 hours until the pre-dough is active. Crush the saffron in a mortar and add to the pre-dough along with the sea salt, honey, almond flour and all-purpose flour. Mix to a firm dough that doesn’t stick to the sides of the bowl. Cover with a kitchen towel and let rise for 2-3 hours, until double its size.
They’ll be gone before you know it!
Preheat the oven to 450°F. Take out the dough on a floured surface. Cut off a little piece and roll it out to a thin (super thin!) pancake. See pictures on how to make crackers/crispbread. Move to a greased oven tray and cut into little squares when the dough is on the tray. Spray some water on the little pieces and sprinkle over almond flour or sliced almonds. Bake for 10 minutes, and let cool on a rack.
Can’t wait for my next wine and cheese night with these homemade crunchy crackers!
If they have enough color after 10 minutes, but aren’t crispy enough, first bake out all the crackers, then return to the oven and dry them at 170°F for as long as it takes (although keep an eye on them so they don’t burn).
Serve with some delicious cheese!
Don’t forget to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Bloglovin and all that…
This post has been submitted to YeastSpotting.Forum Posts: 226 Comment #1 by KAVC1986 Wednesday, January 06, 2016 @ 11:25:11 AM (0)
I thought I heard this game got cancelled? Weird.
Forum Posts: 35 Comment #2 by helloImD Wednesday, January 06, 2016 @ 11:51:22 AM (0)
#1 It never was. It was just delayed to this year. There's even gameplay from gamescom 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnPbjc1M2ts
Forum Posts: 1051 Comment #3 by Wolfwood Wednesday, January 06, 2016 @ 12:57:39 PM (0)
@1 It was really close to being cancelled because the original developers Crytek closed down(or was it nordic....) That is when Deep Silver bought it and just finished the work they started. Which is why it's almost 2 years delayed.
Forum Posts: 0 Comment #4 by CitizenBear Wednesday, January 06, 2016 @ 01:09:43 PM (0)
#2 Damn, that gameplay almost looks last gen. Hope it's just a low res video or something. This is likely something I'll only pick up for around 20 bucks.
Forum Posts: 1051 Comment #5 by Wolfwood Wednesday, January 06, 2016 @ 01:14:47 PM (0)
@4 Wtf? What exactly is "last gem gameplay" Games have pretty much the same gameplay only real difference is graphics honestly :/ Your post feels like PC elitist or some other garbage like that.
Forum Posts: 126 Comment #6 by XVinny84X Wednesday, January 06, 2016 @ 02:21:18 PM (0)
Probably just a placeholder date. I played first one on PC and was enjoying it for it was. I wouldn't have paid money for it though. Lots of wasted potential and very short campaign with even shittier MP.
This is basically similar story - lots of potential, but little hype build up so far. If it is coming out in May, they better start advertising it soon or it might just pass us by without fanfare... I'll reserve judgement till I see and hear more.
Forum Posts: 87 Comment #7 by Investor27 Wednesday, January 06, 2016 @ 02:33:46 PM ( 1 )
I had the opposite experience as #6 did. I absolutely loved the multiplayer on the PS3 and played tons of it, splitting my time between Homefront and Battlefield 3. I love how you earned money/points for each kill, and then you can use it to purchase in-game weapons and armored vehicles to turn the tide.
Forum Posts: 34 Comment #8 by NakedSnake Wednesday, January 06, 2016 @ 04:15:29 PM (0)
Excited for this game. Hope it delivers
Forum Posts: 214 Comment #9 by EmptyFibers Wednesday, January 06, 2016 @ 05:01:30 PM (0)
#7 - Right there with ya!
Bets MP I have ever played, less the occasional lag overall that would hit. The aiming boxes and shots where solid, not this horse shit you have now. Well, even then there was that horse shit. I doubt that it will live up to the same style as the first, but we can hope.
Vinny - Do you pay for any games ;)!
Forum Posts: 126 Comment #10 by XVinny84X Wednesday, January 06, 2016 @ 05:09:11 PM (0)
Only the ones I am very, very, very excited for Mr Fibers;-) Division, Deus Ex, Uncharted 4, Doom 4, Mirror's Edge just to name a few for this year;-)
Forum Posts: 214 Comment #11 by EmptyFibers Wednesday, January 06, 2016 @ 05:25:04 PM (0)
True that my friend! Not to many of those these days though.
Forum Posts: 0 Comment #12 by CitizenBear Wednesday, January 06, 2016 @ 07:13:09 PM (0)
#5 You're obviously right, I meant last gen graphics of course. Must have been spacing. But no, I am not a pc elitist. I only game on the PS4 and Xbox. Graphicss don't mean a whole lot to me other than what I've grown used to. If suddenly I play a game in 2016 that looks like it was made in 2010 then it just feels weird to. Unless, of course, the game was indeed made in 2010, then it's fine. By the way, my 20 bucks remark had nothing to do with graphical quality. I'll play a good game no matter what the graphics. It simply had to do with how generic it looks. Just another run of the mill FPS. Not that they can't be fun, but I think I'm suffering from FPS fatigue by now.
Forum Posts: 33 Comment #13 by AirborneRichard Wednesday, January 06, 2016 @ 09:16:01 PM (0)DENIS O’BRIEN HAS hit out at a new report which raises concerns about media ownership in Ireland.
The report, which was commissioned by Sinn Féin MEP Lynn Boylan for an EU grouping, takes aim at both RTÉ and the billionaire media mogul.
It describes Ireland as having “one of the most concentrated media markets of any democracy”, with the two main controlling entities being RTÉ as state broadcaster and “individual businessman Denis O’Brien”.
The report also describes Denis O’Brien’s “litigious profligacy” in detailing the 12 lawsuits he has taken against Irish media organisations and personnel in the last six years, and describes Ireland’s defamation culture (ie that in which juries routinely make very high awards to successful plaintiffs) as being “wholly out of kilter with the rest of Europe”.
In a statement released tonight, O’Brien said the report makes for “very interesting reading”.
He accuses Sinn Féin of pushing its agendas and calls the party “anti-Irish” over its stance on Apple.
He also states that he is not the chairman of Communicorp and criticises media outlets and the report for naming him as such.
O’Brien also accused RTÉ of not asking him for a response in their coverage of the report. However, RTÉ says this is incorrect and that it did ask for a response but did not receive one.
The statement, which has been published in full below, begins by questioning the independence of the study.
At the outset it is worth noting that it is self-described as “An Independent Study Commissioned by Lynn Boylan MEP on behalf of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) Group of the European Parliament”. An “independent study” commissioned by a leading member of Sinn Fein? Hardly. “The two most important controlling entities in the Irish media landscape are the national State broadcaster, RTE, and an individual businessman, Denis O’Brien” this Report states. Yet there is no focus on RTE in the context of: The largest media entity in Ireland
The only entity involved in TV, radio and print
Revenues subsidised by licence fees amounting to €178.9 million But then this ‘independent study’ was never intended to be a report on the concentration of media ownership in Ireland.
‘Pushing Agendas’
Sinn Fein is very diligent and adept when it comes to pushing its agendas, overtly and covertly. After a disappointing General Election, An Phoblact went on the attack: “State broadcaster came in for severe criticism as it slashed Sinn Fein’s coverage following a poll …which showed the party gaining ground…and for two days the voices of Sinn Fein were banned from the airwaves in a bizarre episode that was reminiscent of Section 31 and state censorship.” (March 7. 2016) And on the eve of the Budget, Sinn Fein TD, Eoin O’Broin declared: “Budget Day is all about choices. For decades, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, have looked after the big guy – whether that be Denis O’Brien or Apple.”I am absolutely convinced that the contribution that Apple has made in this country is unquantifiable in financial and social terms. What about the thousands of young women and men who did not have to emigrate and who got a chance to work, live and raise families in Cork? I have said that Apple should not be punished for its tax arrangements in Ireland. Sinn Fein’s stance on Apple has been, I believe both anti-enterprise and anti-Irish. “Sinn Fein has been waiting with some relish for the EU verdict,” wrote Pat Leahy in The Irish Times (August 30, 2016) “and leaped into action:’Give us back our money’ demanded MEP Matt Carthy. For good measure, Sinn Fein finance spokesman Pearse Doherty also called for a public inquiry into Apple’s tax arrangements.”
Communicorp
This report states that I am chairperson of Communicorp, as has various individuals including Dr. Colum Kenny, Dr. Roderick Flynn and Caoilfhionn Gallagher, legal firms Jonathan Price (Belfast) and KRW Law (London) and media organisations including The Irish Times and TV3. It maybe a rather inconvenient truth, but I am not. I suppose why let the facts interfere with the agenda and the messaging… Is the media objective when it is talking and writing about itself? The media industry in Ireland is in decline. This decline has been ongoing for many years and it threatens and industry that has served this country exceptionally well, providing high levels of employment and spawned a number of writers who have deservedly achieved international acclaim. Independent News & Media (INM) was days from forced closure back 2011. Over €2 billion in shareholder value had been lost and the shares had collapsed from €27.30 to 41 cents as a previous board had racked up unsustainable levels of debt. I became am a substantial minority shareholder in INM (I am not on the board). I am the owner of Communicorp which like RTE, TV3, The Irish Examiner and The Sunday Business Post operates in a very challenging environment. I understand The Irish Times is currently considering various funding options. I believe that some media companies will not survive this decade without radical structuring including substantial funding.
‘Chilling Effect’
I was surprised, for example, that RTE (and others) did not seek any comment from me on the ‘Report on the Concentration of Media Ownership in Ireland’ in the interests of balance and objectivity. But maybe the powers that be in Montrose felt that they had been given a ‘free pass’ in the report that they chose just to quote from it? I do not believe the Irish media is objective in relation to matters relating to itself. The prime reason is survival. Every media executive and journalist knows that the future of traditional media is bleak. It makes one entity undermining another easier to justify. Sinn Fein/ IRA certainly got the report they paid for. The cost of this report won’t have have bothered them too much. They collected €12 million over 20 years in the US (Irish Times March 7, 2015). The IRA is reported to have €400 million in global assets (Irish Times August 29, 2015). Brian Feeney, author, has suggested that a way should be found to stop “Sinn Fein people saying the IRA has gone away when self-evidently it hasn’t.” The report references the words ‘chilling effect’ and the law in the same sentence. I bow to Sinn Fein’s superior knowledge on these topics. Maybe instead of commissioning reports Sinn Fein would commit just some of its vast resources and support an ailing industry – become a fully-fledged broadcaster and publisher and create some jobs for a change?
The Managing Director of RTÉ news and current affairs has taken to social media to say that the state broadcaster did ask for a response from Denis O’Brien.
Before Denis O'Brien incorrectly accused RTÉ of not seeking a response from him on @LNBDublin report he should have checked + his advisers. — Kevin Bakhurst (@kevinbakhurst) October 26, 2016 Source: Kevin Bakhurst /Twitter
Bankhurst has also called for a correction.
RTÉ did ask for a response on the report and Denis O'Brien's advisers chose not to give one yesterday. We'd welcome a correction. — Kevin Bakhurst (@kevinbakhurst) October 26, 2016 Source: Kevin Bakhurst /Twitter
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❝ I don't look back anymore. I don't regret. I look forward. Everything is connected, and I'll use that to expose, to protect, and if necessary… to punish. ❞ ―Aiden embracing his role as "the Vigilante" right before the ending credits.
Aiden Pearce (also known as "The Vigilante" and "The Fox" by citizens and the media) is the protagonist of Watch Dogs. He is a highly skilled grey hat hacker who has access to the CT OS of Chicago using a highly specialized device, the Profiler.
Because his actions led to a family tragedy, Aiden has taken to a personal crusade against the powers that be. His obsession with security, surveillance, and control borders on the paranoid and dangerous, extending to monitoring his own family (unbeknownst to them).
Contents show]
Appearance
Aiden is an Irish man with green eyes, brown mid-length hair, and light facial hair. While having his mugshot taken, it is shown that he is 6' 2" (1.88 m) and appears to be of mesomorphic build. In the trailers, Aiden wears a grey, long-sleeve zip-neck sweater, usually un-tucked, though his clothes can be changed to several other jackets of similar style. On top of the sweater, Aiden wears a modern, brown, knee-length trench coat. Aiden wears dark grey trousers and brown boots. He also has a deep, gravelly voice.
Aiden also keeps a neckwarmer scarf tucked into the neck of his sweater, which he may pull up so that it covers his face up to the bridge of his nose. Aiden also wears a dark brown cap with a logo that can be debated to be either a stylized "Nexus" logo or a fox.
Personality
❝ It's impossible to say for certain what he's really like. He masks his personality. And he's very good at it. It isn't like someone playing poker. This is a very smart man who is looking to gain the upper hand in every situation. ❞ ―Dr. Yolanda Mendez's description of Aiden
Aiden grew up learning about computers. When he became an adult, he used the knowledge he had gathered growing up to commit clandestine scams. Pearce has a background as a criminal which has given him links to the underground of Chicago knowing the wrong people for all the wrong reasons.
Aiden is a protective person, wanting to keep the people he cares about close and safe. He is very protective of his family (as seen in the game, his sister and nephew), and will do anything to keep them safe. His compassion for his family is strong enough to become a vigilante and extradite revenge on those who have harmed them. Aiden is very calm under pressure, able to keep a clear mind and work through problems systematically and with composure. His approach is often light-hearted, especially in situations that can lead to his own death or that of others. He has also shown himself to be quite athletic, capable of performing parkour to escape the police and sprinting with speed and agility. His physical strength is also demonstrated when chasing down criminals and silencing them with his telescopic baton.
Although he has compassion for the people he is close to, Aiden doesn't hesitate in taking another life if he has to. Because of this, others often see him as cold-hearted and without conscience, but he does what he does to stop the corruption plaguing his city. The player can also finish the game and not kill anyone except the three main antagonists and three supporting characters of the game.
History
Background
Aiden Pearce was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on May 2, 1974.[1] It is implied in an audio log that his mother took both him and his sister, Nicole Pearce, to the United States in order to escape their father. Aiden grew up in a rough neighborhood and frequently had to fend for himself, his sister grew up idolising him and was noted for his cars, hockey and his friends were described as 'gross'.
Eventually, he became part of a criminal gang. He personally paid to learn about combat and how to wield weapons, which contributed to his career as a thief. During his criminal years, Aiden became acquainted with a fellow hacker, Damien Brenks, where the two taught each other specific hacking skills and the two proved to be a strong team.
The Merlaut Job
In 2012, Aiden Pearce, along with Damien Brenks, hacked into the Merlaut Hotel, owned by Dermot Quinn, in order to siphon money from people's bank accounts. Quinn, otherwise known as Lucky Quinn, thought he was being hacked for a video of Chicago's mayor murdering a woman named Rose Washington. He issued hits on Aiden and Damien to scare them into submission.
After the failed mission Aiden severed all ties with Damien. One night while driving with his nephew and niece, Aiden's car tires were shot by Maurice Vega, a hitman hired by the Club. The car drifted, and shortly after, rolled upside-down. This killed his niece, Lena Pearce, and set Aiden out for revenge.
Aiden began investigating the identity of the people responsible for Lena's death and thus established a hideout located in the Owl Motel. At some point, Aiden visited her grave alongside Nicole who encouraged him not to pursue revenge as it would only cause more danger.
At some point, he became acquainted with Jordi Chin, a Fixer whom he asked to help find his niece's murderer. Sometime later, Aiden was contacted by an unknown hacker code named BadBoy17, who from there on gave Aiden specific advice whenever most needed.
The Search Begins
Eleven months later, Aiden had tracked down Vega and interrogated him for the name of his employer. Vega claimed he didn't know their name and stated that Aiden was walking into something he couldn't handle. Aiden then raised his gun to shoot him, but the magazine was empty. Vega then attempted to attack Aiden, who subdued him with his baton. He then meets with his associate, Jordi Chin, who confesses that he purposely emptied Aiden's magazine and had called the police to cover up the deaths of several Black Viceroys. Aiden then leaves Jordi to take Vega to a secure location while he escapes the stadium.
After resting at his motel hideout, Aiden went over to Nicole's house for Jackson's birthday. The exchange was relatively amicable, but then Aiden noticed Nicole acting distressed on her phone and hacked it, overhearing someone threatening to break into her house. After the call ended, Nicole hastily fastened the locks. Aiden expressed concern but Nicole told him that he can't fix everything and orders him to leave. Aiden then traces the number of the prank caller and pursues him. While in pursuit, he gets a call from Nicole, apologizing for her outburst and asks him to come back, and realizing what he's doing, insists that he let it go. Eventually, he catches his target and hacks his phone, learning that someone put him up to this. He gives the information to his DedSec contact, BadBoy17, in hopes of figuring it out.
Old Friends
After Aiden breaks into the CT OS center in The Loop, BadBoy17 is able to begin tracking down the source of the call. Meanwhile, Aiden has his first face-to-face encounter with Lucky Quinn while carrying out a Fixer contract for Jordi. BadBoy17 soon asks Aiden to meet him in person. Aiden agrees and discovers that BadBoy17 is actually Clara Lille, a female French-Canadian hacker masquerading as a male. Clara updates Aiden's profiler with DedSec level system hacks and initiates an official partnership between the two. Eventually, Clara pinpoints the source of the call to an apartment complex. Aiden follows the lead and discovers that his former partner Damien is the one who ordered the harassment of Nicole. Damien tells Aiden to meet him. Aiden meets Damien, who is heavily intoxicated, and Damien reveals that there was a third hacker at the Merlaut job, other than Aiden and himself. As he was crippled in the aftermath of the Merlaut job, Damien proposes to Aiden that they become partners again. Aiden, however, rejects him, since he blames Damien's "going too far" for Lena's death, despite Damien pointing out that Aiden's own investigation had "hit a brick wall".
Prison Infiltration
Troubled after his encounter with Damien, as well as the realization that he needs Damien's information, Aiden visits Lena's grave and reminisces about a previous visit with Nicole. Aiden is then alerted by Jordi that a gang member from the stadium incident, Raul Lionzo, survived, is incarcerated, and is likely to reveal Aiden's identity to anyone who wants it. After interrogating Lance Brenner, using Jordi as sniper support, he discovers that Angelo Tucci is planning to get Aiden's identity from Lionzo. Aiden eventually tracks Tucci down, after manipulating his niece Helena, and kills him before he can kidnap Lionzo.
In order to prevent Lionzo from revealing his identity, Aiden conspires with Jordi to sneak into Palin Correctional Center, the prison in which Lionzo is being held, and intimidate the gang member. Once Jordi had alerted his contact inside the prison to the plan, Aiden pretends to turn himself in. Once stripped of all of his weapons, although he was allowed to keep his phone due to a corrupt guard who owed Jordi, and placed in a cell, Aiden escapes. Aiden proceeds to sneak around the prison, hacking the security as he goes, until he finds Lionzo in the exercise yard. Lionzo, however, is led to the basement by some corrupt guards and beaten while they demand to know the vigilante's identity. After neutralizing all of the guards, Aiden threatens Lionzo with an extended sentence if he reveals his identity to anybody. Aiden then retrieves his gear and escapes from the prison.
Family Threats
After the prison break, Aiden is again contacted by Damien. Needing Damien's information, Aiden reluctantly goes to a meeting place and waits for Damien. Instead, Damien calls Aiden and hacks the area's TVs to show himself in Nicole's kitchen. Enraged, Aiden arrives at Nicole's house and, after physically assaulting Damien, discovers that Damien has kidnapped Nicole, although Jackson got away, and threatens to kill her in order to blackmail Aiden into retrieving a hard drive which will lead them to the third hacker. Damien then gives Aiden a hard drive full of data from his investigation and leaves. Worried about Jackson, Aiden locates him by tracking his tablet's signal. After neutralizing the fixers chasing Jackson, Aiden joins his nephew on the train and arranges for Jackson's therapist, Yolanda Mendez, to take care of him until he gets Nicole back, although he lies to Yolanda and says Nicole is taking some time to grieve alone. Aiden is also alerted to a possible lead in finding Nicole as Jackson, using a drawing on his tablet, tells him that the men in the house were talking about Racine Boat Restoration. After hacking the CT OS center in the area, Aiden breaks into the boat restoration facility in an effort to find its owner, Robert Racine. After hacking an office computer and the security cameras connected to it, Aiden overhears a phone conversation between Racine and Damien and discovers that, while Racine did kidnap Nicole, he doesn't know anything of use. Aiden then kills Racine and gets in a heated phone conversation with Damien, who refuses to let Aiden speak to Nicole.
A New Base
Upon returning to his motel room, Aiden finds a video in the flash drive Damien gave him; however, the file is corrupted. Already frustrated, he pulls a gun on Clara when she suddenly enters his room. Pulling it together, Aiden asks for her input on the video. Checking the file, Clara tells Aiden that the file is permanently corrupted, and he needs the original in order to view it. After showing Clara the IP address Damien gave him as well explaining his current situation, Aiden prevents Clara from leaving the room because he hears car screeches. Both take cover and Aiden detonates explosives in his room as armed men shoot at them through the window. Clara escapes through the back door as Aiden returns fire and detonates more explosives in order to remove all evidence of his investigation. After killing an attacker holding Clara hostage, Aiden defends her as she makes her way to her car, killing all of the attackers before reinforcements show up. Once out of danger Clara calls Aiden and arranges to meet him at a dock. Aiden also receives a mocking call from Damien who is indifferent to Aiden losing his entire network and simply tells him to solve his problem. Damien then allows Aiden to speak to Nicole. After reassuring her that Jackson is safe and trying to calm his sister, Aiden is cut off by Damien, who refuses to let them speak again until he gets results.
Having lost his base and all of his equipment, Aiden is informed by Clara of the Bunker, the first CT OS testing site which is a blind spot in the system through which none of Aiden's activities could be detected. Using a nearby surveillance camera's footage, Aiden discovers that a man named Tobias Frewer knows how to control the bridge to the Bunker. Clara informs Aiden of Tobias' history as a Blume employee and directs him to Tobias' Crafting Shop. The two visit the shop but discover that it is locked. After tapping into a phone conversation and tracking Tobias' phone signal, A |
report of heavy smoke and sparks from a chimney of a three-story apartment building at 62 Watts Street (see Figure 1) in Manhattan. On arrival companies observesd smoke from the chimney, but no other evidence of fire. The first due engine and truck companies stretched a hoseline to the first floor unit and vertically ventilated over the stairwell.
Figure 1. 62 Watts Street-Side A
Working as the inside team of the second due truck company, Captain John Drennan (Ladder 5), Firefighter James Young, and Firefighter Christopher Seidenburg (both detailed from Engine 24 to Ladder 5) went to the second floor to begin primary search of the upper floors. At the doorway to the second floor apartment unit they were trapped by an explosion and rapid fire progression from the first floor apartment up the common stairwell. Both firefighters died within 24 hours as a result of thermal injuries. Captain Drennan survived for 40 days in the burn unit before succumbing to his injuries.
Building Information
The fire occurred in a 6.1 m (20′) x 14 m (46′), 3 � story apartment building of ordinary (Type III) construction, containing four dwelling units (the basement apartment was half below grade). Each unit had a floor area of slightly less than� 81.7 m2 (880 ft2). The basement unit had its own entrance and the units on Floors 1-3 were served by a common stairwell on Side D of the building (see Figure 1). Exposure B was an attached building identical to the fire structure. Exposure D was a similar structure. Neither exposure was involved.
Figure 2. Floor Plan-First Floor Apartment
Note: Adapted from Modeling a Backdraft Incident: The 62 Watts St. (NY) Fire.
The building was originally built in the late 1800s and had undergone numerous renovations. Recent renovations involved replacement of plaster and lath compartment linings with drywall over wood studs and lowering of the ceiling height from 2.8 m (9’3″) to 2.5 m (8’4″). All apartments had heavy wood plank flooring. During the latest renovation, windows and doors were replaced and extensive thermal insulation added to increase energy efficiency. The building was originally heated with the use of multiple fireplaces in each apartment. However, most of these had been sealed shut. However, the fireplace in the living room of the first floor apartment (unit of origin) was operable and had a 0.209 m2 (2.25 ft2) flue.
All apartments had similar floor plans (differences resulting from location of the stairwell). The floor plan of the first floor apartment (unit of origin) is illustrated in Figure 2. Each apartment consisted of a living room, kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. The first floor unit had an office constructed within the bedroom.
The structure had a flat roof with a scuttle and skylight over the stairwell.
The Fire
The occupant left the first floor apartment at 1825 hours, leaving a plastic trash bag on top of the gas fired kitchen range (see Figure 2). Investigators deduced that the bag was ignited by heat from the pilot light. Fire extended from the bag of trash to several bottles of high alcohol content liquor located on the counter adjacent to the stove. The fire progressed into the growth stage, involving other fuel packages within the apartment. The apartment was tightly sealed with the only sources of ventilation being the open fireplace flue and minimal normal building ventilation.
Weather Conditions
The weather was 10o C (50 o F) with no appreciable wind.
Conditions on Arrival
On arrival companies observed smoke from the chimney of the apartment building, but no other signs of fire from the exterior.
Firefighting Operations
The outside team from the first due truck went to the roof and opened the scuttle over the stairwell while the first arriving engine company stretched a hoseline to the interior and prepared to make entry into the first floor apartment along with the inside team from the ladder company. Ladder 5 was the second due truck. The inside team from Ladder 5, Captain Drennan, Firefighter Young, and Firefighter Seidenburg, went to the second floor to begin primary search.
When the first due engine and truck forced the door to the first floor apartment they observed a pulsing air track consisting of an inward rush of air followed by an outward flow of warm (not hot) smoke. This single pulsation was followed by a large volume of flame from the upper part of the door and extending up the stairwell.
Figure 3. 3D Cutaway View of 62 Watts Street
Note: Adapted from Modeling a Backdraft: The 62 Watts Street Incident.
The crews working on Floor 1 were able to escape the rapid fire progression, but Ladder 5’s inside team was engulfed in flames which filled the stairwell. Flames extended from the doorway of the first floor apartment through the stairwell and vented out the scuttle opening and skylight. This flaming combustion continued in excess of 6 minutes 30 seconds. The intense fire in the stairwell severely damaged the stairs and melted the wired glass in the skylight.
Questions
The following questions focus on fire behavior, influence of tactical operations, and related factors involved in this incident.
Other than smoke and sparks from the chimney, what B-SAHF indicators might have been present and visible from the exterior or at the doorway that may have provided an indication of conditions inside the apartment? What do you make of the observations of the company making entry to the first floor apartment for fire attack? Is this consistent with your understanding of backdraft indicators? Why or why not? What steps can you take when making entry if you suspect that the fire is ventilation controlled? How would this change if you suspected or saw indicators of potential backdraft conditions? Firefighters often identify vertical ventilation when given a scenario where backdraft indicators are present. If there is value (savable people or property) and the fire is on a lower floor (as it was in the Watts Street incident), what tactical options are available to mitigate the hazards of potential backdraft conditions?
Analysis and Computer Modeling
My next post will examine the results of this investigation and how the computer modeling performed by NIST contributes to our understanding of the events that took the lives of Captain Drennan and Firefighters Young and Seidenburg.
Ed Hartin, MS, EFO, MIFIreE, CFO
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Tags: B-SAHF, backdraft, case study, Extreme Fire Behavior, fire behavior indicators, firefighter fatality, NIST, practical fire dynamics, reading the fire, situational awareness, structural firefighting, vent controlled fireThis replaceable blade straight razor from Parker was created for professional barbers, offering some features found only in high end fixed blade straight razors, like a stainless steel (not aluminum) arm. Designed primarily for shaving the face (not hair trimming), the head of the arm is shaped like a fixed blade straight razor. Other notable features are: rounded point to minimize cuts, guide pins to insure correct blade insertion, and a snap close blade holder along with arm clip to secure blade compartment. This light weight razor weighs 1.1 ounces, has a slim black resin handle, and accepts 1/2 of a double edge blade (any brand)... yes, these blades can be easily and safely snapped in half. The Parker is ideal for the first time straight razor user, presenting an economical introduction to straight razor shaving by eliminating the purchase of an expensive fixed blade razor plus all the required accessories (strop, strop paste, hone, razor oil). It also eliminates the need to learn how to use a strop and how to properly sharpen a razor. The Parker does not come with replacement blades, so be certain to order them. Nicely boxed. $18.50 Further details: Why Parker is best for the first time user
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Razor measurementsINDIANAPOLIS -- Marion County has joined Lake and LaPorte counties as part of a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area – giving local law enforcement access to new funds and tools in their fight against drugs.
The High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area ( HIDTA ) program was created in 1988 to allow federal, state and local law enforcement officials to work together in areas determined to be "critical drug trafficking regions of the United States."
What does it mean to be a HIDTA? To qualify, an area must meet the following criteria:
It must be a significant center of illegal drug production, manufacturing, importation or distribution
State, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies must have committed resources to respond to the drug trafficking problem
Drug-related activities in the area must be having a significant harmful impact
A significant increase in allocation of federal resources must be needed to respond adequately to drug-related activities.
Law enforcement officials say because of the convergence of four interstates in the city – I-65, I-69, I-70 and I-74 – Indianapolis has become a major thoroughfare for drugs moving into and out of Indiana
"We are experiencing a crisis in Marion County of drug dealing and drug distribution. Perhaps a crisis of unprecedented proportions," said Marion County Prosecutor Terry Curry. "Heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, marijuana, synthetic drugs – they're all here, and in unacceptable levels."
. @IMPD_Chief says HIDTA designation gives dept. "more flexibility" to target big drug trafficking operations. — Jordan Fischer (@Jordan_RTV6) October 18, 2016
The Lake County HIDTA, which Marion County is joining, receives around $3.3 million annually as part of the program.
Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-IN) who championed the program in Washington says that's money Marion County will now have access to as it steps up efforts to stop drugs like heroin and fentanyl from claiming the lives of more Hoosiers.
"It's hit all ages, but so many of them are young people who have a whole life ahead of them," Donnelly said. "The talent, the ability, the lives that are lost, not only from the people who are taking these drugs but also the people who are wasting their lives selling them, has to stop."
Part of the program will include a "multijurisdictional approach" to the prosecution of known drug traffickers and repeat drug offenders. It will reportedly also allow better intelligence sharing between law enforcement agencies.
Curry was quick to point out that HIDTA is not a "magic bullet," and IMPD Chief Troy Riggs said it is only one part of a continuing conversation about drugs.
"We also have to have a conversation in our community about the voracious appetites for drugs that American citizens have," Riggs said.
The prosecutor's office plans to use the new HIDTA funds in part to fund programs like the IMPD Long-Term Narcotic Investigations Squad, the FBI Safe Streets Task Force, the Achilles Unit (made up of anti-drug IMPD, ATF and MCSO officers) and the Metro Drug Task Force.Yang (Half sister)
Qrow (Uncle)
Likes: Collecting weapons, battling, teaming with friends
Dislikes:
Crowded places, losing, not making friends, being the center of attention.
Weapon of Choice:
( A dynamo roller, with an e-liter scope attached) or the
Rank: B+
Level: 32
-Leader of the team
-Goes headfirst into battle
-Loves to snipe when custom weapons are allowed.
-Enjoys making friends with everyone...even the competition.
-Hates when the other team gets near her spawn point
-Plans her moves wisely
-Avoids confrontation if possible.
-Not afraid to take enemies down.
She is also known as being a cheerful, energetic, and bright young lady. Additionally, she is arguably the most flippant and carefree member of her team, frequently making sarcastic comments and jokes even in the heat of battle and often taking combat and hostile situations extremely lightly, particularly when faced with foes she knows she can beat easily and who don't pose a threat to her. However, she does take combat very seriously when she deems her opponent a threat or if she is sufficiently angered, such as when she is hit or when her hair is damaged.
Yang enjoys having fun and dislikes being bored. She is also very sociable, and enjoys having conversations and making new friends. Yang is extremely nurturing, particularly towards her younger sister, Ruby. Yang also has a humorous side to her: she seems to enjoy making puns, although her team doesn't think they are funny
Despite her fun-loving demeanor and young age, Yang is deceptively mature, insightful and worldly-wise, and is capable of holding a serious discussion at length and offering intelligent, thoughtful advice. However, Yang still has other control issues. Her anger, one of her main assets in battle, can lead her to hold grudges towards opponents that have annoyed or wronged her.
Sexual Orientation: Pansexual
Qrow (Uncle)
Likes: Fighting, making jokes, having a good time, protecting her sister, showing off
Dislikes: Losing, other people’s puns, her tentacles being messed with
Weapon of Choice:
Ember Celica ( Two modified.52 Gal Decos with holes through the inktanks for her arms to go through. ) or a.52 Gal Deco. Rank: A
Yang never knew her birth mother and was instead raised by Ruby’s mother. She grew up a rather normal life until her surrogate mother was killed. Once she found out that her real mother may still be alive, she foolishly ran away with Ruby to try and find her. The girls were attacked by wild creatures, but their uncle Qrow came to their rescue. After that incident, Yang vowed to never let her search consume her.
Other: -Always makes sure Ruby’s doing alright
-Loves to take on the opposing team head-on.
-Sometimes forgets to cover the base.
-Rides the tower proudly.
-Known to camp.
ATTENTION: THIS IMAGE IS NOT FREE TO USE. DO NOT REPOST WITHOUT PERMISSION. TRACING, COPYING, RECOLORING, OR MODIFYING IN ANY SHAPE OR FORM IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
This is probably the last team I'll be making for a while. uwu But here they are~ALSO, give me a bit before I submit these bios and whatnot cause it's like 40 degrees out here and I'm dying.Original colors can be found here: Splatoon Team RWBY ---Ruby RoseFemale155'2"InklingDark RedRuby is described as being “innocent” and still a “little sister.” Most of Ruby's personality is shown through her childish nature, as well as her fighting style. She is shown to be impulsive, naïve, and innocent, but when necessary, she can be serious and dependable.Ruby is a self-proclaimed dork when it comes to weapons; she is quite intelligent, having designed and built Crescent Rose. She relies on Crescent Rose quite often in battle, which implies that her weapon is the primary source of her confidence in battle. She does not lack social skills, but has problems when meeting new people. This is mostly because of her childish nature and lack of social grace, as she can be bad-mannered (only out of ignorance) and sometimes speaks without thinking. However, because of her enthusiastic personality, she can become very good friends with people who share her enthusiasm.Although she is highly skilled in turf wars, Ruby seems reckless and impulsive, attacking on sight instead of thinking the situation through beforehand. Despite this, Ruby's leadership skills make her a worthy teammate. While she may occasionally act without thinking, sometimes she seems to understand the situation better than others.Bisexual/Taken/Not Interested]N/AWeissRuby grew up with her sister, Yang, reading her all kinds of stories of great heroes which inspired Ruby to be the Inkling she is today. The day her mother never returned, Ruby was very broken. Later on in life, her uncle taught her how to properly use the Dynamo Roller and Ruby set off to find herself the perfect team for turf wars.------------------------Weiss SchneeFemale175'3" (in heels)InklingIcy BlueWeiss is an Inkling that has everything in life decided for her, and because of it she is a bit of a rebel. Despite her rebelliousness, she does not seem to be hostile to her family. However, Weiss talks little of her family, nor does she ever bring up the subject, keeping such part of her life hidden. She also brushes off any mention of her family and refuses to talk to her dad and sister, for reasons unknown. Her initially cold attitude towards anyone she doesn't consider a close friend may be a sign that she's very unused to the concept of a true friend due to her difficult childhood. When she does befriend somebody though, she can warm up to a surprising degree, placing a great deal of trust in her friends and opening up to them when she feels the need, though remaining her usual strict self most of the time.Weiss is nice but can also be a little bit bitchy. She is irritable and confident in her abilities, though also acknowledges her deficiencies and the need to hone her skills further. Her confidence in her skills and intellect often comes off as arrogance to others. Weiss remains calm and collected during an encounter and mentally coaches herself. She is thoughtful and fights with precision and coordination. She is analytical and tactical when in battle, waiting for the right moment to strike and retreating when circumstances are not favorable. Despite her personality, Weiss does not lack a whimsical or humorous side and sometimes attempts to make jokes.Biromantic/Taken/Not Interested]N/ARubyBlakeWinter (big sister)Taking charge, keeping everyone in line, making sure everyone is properly using their skillsBeing left alone, when people don’t listen, being the one to blame. Myrtenaster (A modified version of the Inkbrush Nouveau, the spinning part allows her to temporarily change ink colors) or the Inkbrush Nouveau A+34Much of Weiss’s past is unknown, mostly because she hates talking about her family. Once she became a full grown Inkling, she left home to do something different with her life.-Regrets letting Ruby be leader------------------------Blake BelladonnaFemale175'6"InklingDark PurpleBlake is described as being rather mellow. She displays a cool, reserved, and serious personality most of the time, but doesn't lack a humorous side. Blake is a righteous person who has respect for other people's lives. Regardless of whether they are a squid or not, she treats everyone equally and strongly despises those who judge and discriminate based on racial prejudice. Blake is also an open person and is not afraid to speak her mind. Blake is known to be an introvert, as she prefers to be alone rather than socialize. Even in a group, Blake usually stays to the shadows, excluding herself from conversations. She tends to show no interest in the discussions at hand, especially when she is engrossed in her books.Though she has become more facetious and friendly. She displays a dry wit, stating the obvious or pointing out details in a sarcastic manner, at the expense of other people.Bisexual/Taken/Not Interested]N/AYangUnknownBeing alone, staying out of trouble, reading.Loud people, being dragged around, getting into pointless arguments, unnecessary violence. Gambol Shroud (A modified version of an unreleased gun in Splatoon. Modified so that the right hand is either a gun, or a miniature Octobrush. The left hand contains a miniature Inkbrush. Sub: Seeker Special: Bubbler ) or the Forge Splattershot Pro A+35Grew up with a good friend who slowly became dark and mysterious. She tried her best to keep him on a righteous path, but ended up losing him. She joined team RWBY red as a way to get her mind off of her friend.-Tends to cover turf her teammates forget to.-Will ride her seekers into the match.------------------------Yang Xiao LongFemale175'8"InklingYellowYang is known to be the kind of person who would teach someone how to swim by pushing them in the water. This speaks volumes about how Yang approaches most things in life. She is very straightforward and confident./Taken/Not Interested]N/ABlakeRuby (half sister)35Art & Characters © MeRWBY © Rooster TeethInklings © NintendoA freight train smashed into a charter bus in Biloxi, Mississippi, on Tuesday, March 7, 2017, pushing the bus 300 feet down the tracks authorities said. Authorities worked for more than an hour to remove passengers, Biloxi Fire Chief Joe Boney said, taking the injured people to area hospitals and cutting through the bus’s mangled body to extract the final two people. (AP Photo/Kevin McGill)
BILOXI, Miss. (AP) — A freight train smashed into a charter bus in a coastal Mississippi city on Tuesday, pushing the bus 300 feet down the tracks and leaving at least four people dead, authorities said. Rescuers spent more than an hour removing passengers, cutting through the bus’s heavily damaged frame to extract the last two.
The bus could be seen straddling the tracks, with a CSX Transportation locomotive pushed up against its left side. The bus was apparently stopped on the tracks when the 52-car train, pulled by three locomotives, slammed into it, said Biloxi Police Chief John Miller.
“We’re not sure why,” Miller said. “We don’t know if there were mechanical issues or what was taking place.”
Miller said passengers on the Echo Transportation bus had come from Austin, Texas, carrying passengers to one of Biloxi’s eight casinos. Ameet Patel, senior vice president of regional operations for Penn National Gaming, owner of Hollywood Gulf Coast Casino in Bay St. Louis and Boomtown Biloxi Casino, said the bus was traveling from the Hollywood casino to the Boomtown casino at the time of the crash.
“It’s a terrible tragedy,” Miller said. “I know there’s a lot of families that are going to be impacted here.”
There were conflicting reports of the number killed in the crash. Officials initially said four people died and then revised it down to three. But Vincent Creel, a spokesman for the city of Biloxi, later said after consulting with the coroner’s office that four were killed.
Creel emphasized it’s a “very fluid situation.”
“Any time you have a major incident like this, the information can change,” he said.
The names of the dead have not been released.
The bus was carrying people on a trip organized by a Texas senior center. A flier for the tour says some passengers boarded Sunday in Austin, Texas, and others boarded about 30 miles east in Bastrop, Texas.
Michelle Crowley of the Biloxi fire department said 40 people were injured; of those, seven were in critical condition.
A woman who lives about a block from where the train and bus finally came to a stop after the train crashed into the bus says she heard a “loud boom” and knew immediately what had happened.
Cecelia McDonald said she ran out of her house and saw a scene of carnage.
Witnesses told the Sun Herald of Biloxi that the bus was stuck on the tracks for about five minutes before he saw the train hit it. Mark Robinson said some people were getting off the bus as the driver tried to move it, and at least one person was shoved under the bus when the train hit. A nearby car was used as a stepladder after the crash to get people off the bus, and emergency workers pulled passengers through windows.
Robinson said he thinks the train track, which is on an embankment, poses safety issues.
In addition to bells, warning lights and crossing arms, the crossing has yellow signs warning drivers that it has low ground clearance.
“It’s too steep there,” Robinson said.
Biloxi Fire Chief Joe Boney says rescuers needed one hour and four minutes to clear everyone from the wreckage. Two people had to be cut out of the bus.
Creel, the city spokesman, said 48 passengers and the driver were on the bus; a bus manifest had listed 50 passengers but two of them did not make the trip.
Medical workers from a hospital blocks away set up a triage area at the scene, and helicopters carried some of the passengers to other hospitals.
The train was headed from New Orleans to Mobile, Alabama, at the time of the crash, said CSX spokesman Gary Sease. He said the train crew was not injured. The single track is the CSX mainline along the Gulf Coast, passing through densely populated areas of southern Mississippi.
Federal Railroad Agency records show 10 trains a day typically use the track, with a maximum speed of 45 mph. Records show there have been 16 accidents at the crossing since 1976, including in 1983 and 2003, each of which involved one fatality. A delivery truck was also struck at the same crossing in January, WLOX-TV reports. No one was injured in that crash.
The bus was marked as belonging to Echo Transportation, which Texas corporate records show is a unit of a company called TBL Group, based in Grand Prairie, near Dallas.
“We can’t confirm anything at this point,” said Elisa Fox, a lawyer for the bus company. “We’re trying to mobilize to assess the situation.”
Federal Railroad Administration spokesman Marc Willis said the agency is sending three inspectors to investigate, while Mississippi is sending one. The National Transportation Safety Board said it is also investigating.
___
Amy reported from Jackson, Mississippi. Sarah Smith in Jackson, Mississippi, contributed to this report.Previous Ixalan Set Reviews
Limited:
Constructed:
Let’s take a look at the grading scale, with the usual caveat that what I write about the card is more relevant, as there are many factors that aren’t reflected in a card’s grade.
Ratings Scale
5.0: Multi-format all-star. (Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Tarmogoyf. Snapcaster Mage.)
4.0: Format staple. (Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy. Collected Company. Remand.)
3.5: Good in multiple archetypes and formats, but not a staple. (Jace Beleren. Radiant Flames. Shambling Vent.)
3.0: Archetype staple. (Jace, Architect of Thought. Zulaport Cutthroat. Explosive Vegetation.)
2.5: Role-player in some decks, but not quite a staple. (Jace, Memory Adept. Anticipate. Transgress the Mind.)
2.0: Niche card. Sideboard or currently unknown archetype. (Jace, the Living Guildpact. Naturalize. Duress.) Bear in mind that many cards fall into this category, although an explanation is obviously important.
1.0: It has seen play once. (One with Nothing). (I believe it was tech vs. Owling Mine, although fairly suspicious tech at that.)
Adanto Vanguard
Constructed: 2.0
Constructed has advanced past 3 power for 2 mana being exciting by itself, but adding a good protection ability makes this interesting. It’s not great against aggro, given that it blocks as a 1/1 and costs you 4 life if they block, though I can see it backing up a white beatdown deck as another aggressive 2-drop.
Ashes of the Abhorrent
Constructed: 2.0
This is purely a sideboard card, and a niche one at that. It’s not a wide-ranging graveyard hoser, as it doesn’t stop cards like Narcomoeba, Ichorid, or Nether Shadow, but it does shut down Cabal Therapy, Phantasmagorian, Dread Return, Conflagrate, and other things like Snapcaster Mage and Torrential Gearhulk. That’s not likely enough, but you never know.
Demystify
Constructed: 2.0
It’s not a big mystery that this is sideboard-only, and quite mediocre.
Duskborne Skymarcher
Constructed: 2.0
A 1/1 flyer for 1 in a relevant tribe that has a useful activated ability could get there, even if Vampires doesn’t look like it’s got everything it needs yet.
Imperial Lancer
Constructed: 2.0
If this always had double strike, it would be an interesting way to make use of pump spells. Requiring a Dinosaur makes it tougher, and it might be hard to put all of the pieces together.
Inspiring Cleric
Constructed: 2.5
This does not come with everything and the kitchen sink, but it still might be a fine option against red decks.
Ixalan’s Binding
Constructed: 2.0
Cast Out isn’t seeing a ton of play, and this is way less powerful, though the upside of sniping a key card and stranding the rest is pretty sweet.
Kinjalli’s Sunwing
Constructed: 2.5
The combination of an aggressive creature with evasion and an ability that prevents blocking is nice. For this to be playable, there would need to be a ton of creature decks battling, and for a 2/3 flyer to line up right against the removal. I don’t see that right now, given how many Lightning Strikes, Abrades, and Harnessed Lightnings are running around, but this might make it at some point.
Legion’s Landing
Constructed: 3.0
It doesn’t seem too hard to get Legion’s Landing to flip, at which point you get a 1/1 lifelink and a token-generating land for just 1 mana. If you can reliably flip in the first few turns, this does a lot, and it can be a great addition to any low-curve beatdown deck. A creature that is also a land (and a land with an extra ability no less) is worth investigating, especially now that your 1-drops will no longer do the investigating for you.
Mavren Fein, Dusk Apostle
Constructed: 2.0
Assuming you get a Vampire right away, this isn’t the worst deal in the world. I won’t feign too much interest, but you could do worse in a 3-drop lord.
Priest of the Wakening Sun
Constructed: 2.0
The tutor ability is expensive enough that I don’t see it pulling its weight against control decks, and gaining 2 a turn isn’t going to do much there either. It could be a sweet sideboard card against aggro, so if there’s a midrange white deck full of Dinos, this could be worth a look.
Sanguine Sacrament
Constructed: 2.0
Is this the new Elixir of Immortality? Probably not, but it’s a cute way to deck the opponent while you gain 30 life a turn.
Settle the Wreckage
Constructed: 3.0
Even if the opponent leaves creatures back to play around this, you’ve bought yourself a full turn at least. Add that to the ability to wipe the opponent’s board and you have a very real card. Giving them lands is meaningful, but the returns are indeed diminishing, and at some point this gains effective card advantage.
Sheltering Light
Constructed: 2.0
Gods Willing saw some play, though that could make a creature unblockable as well. This has potential if you have a deck that needs to protect critical creatures, even if being unable to stop bounce or exile effects does give me pause.
Wakening Sun’s Avatar
Constructed: 2.0
Eight is just too much to rely on, unless you are ramping absurdly well. I also don’t like that this misses on some big Standard threats, making me less inclined to root for the Dino in this particular battle.
Top 3 White Cards
3. Inspiring Cleric
2. Legion’s Landing
1. Settle the Wreckage
White got a mix here—Settle the Wreckage is a solid addition to control, and Legion’s Landing to aggro, with Inspiring Cleric as a potential sideboard card for any archetype. That covers most of the bases, and gives white a few ways to impact Standard.HONG KONG — Tens of thousands of people marched under a blistering sun in Hong Kong on Sunday to express their opposition to a pro-democracy movement that has threatened to bring Asia’s biggest financial center to a standstill if the government does not open up the nomination process for electing the city’s top leader.
Protesters, many waving Chinese flags, streamed into Victoria Park in the midafternoon before the march, and the contrast with a rally held July 1 by pro-democracy organizers was stark. Most of the participants in Sunday’s rally were organized into groups corresponding to Chinese hometowns, schools or, in some cases, employers, easily identifiable with their matching T-shirts and hats. Middle-aged and elderly people dominated Sunday’s march, while young people dominated last month’s march.
In speech, they often employed the political lexicon of China’s ruling Communist Party. Typical was Kitty Lai, an investment adviser wearing an orange T-shirt and a baseball cap emblazoned with the logo of the Hong Kong Federation of Fujian Associations, a group that represents people from the coastal province across from Taiwan. She said shutting down the Central business district would cause chaos.
“We want everything to be stable,” Ms. Lai, 50, said in Mandarin Chinese. “We want everybody to live harmoniously.”Welcome to Hot Pod, a newsletter about podcasts. This is issue ninety-nine, published December 6, 2016.
Midroll’s new executive hires:
Korri Kolesa is the new head of sales, replacing Lex Friedman as he settles into his new chief revenue officer role.
Eric Spiegelman is the new VP of business affairs, taking now-CEO Erik Diehn’s place. I’m told more information on this hire will be released soon.
Peter Clowney is the new executive editor. He was previously the head editor at Gimlet Media.
Of particular interest is Kolesa, who is taking over what is probably Midroll’s biggest revenue engine, its ad sales business. A digital media veteran with ample experience heading up sales teams for digital products not yet quite understood by the advertisers — she led the strategy for sites in the Fox Interactive Media portfolio like MySpace and IGN in the late 2000s, if that means anything to you — Midroll is bringing Kolesa in to transition its sales operations out of its often patchwork startup configurations toward structures more capable of scaling. She was most recently a project director at Spark No. 9, a consultancy aimed at launching new businesses.
“Our team already knows how to sell, so the focus now is going to be, ‘What can we optimize?'” said Lex Friedman, who has headed sales at the company since 2013. Friedman was recently promoted to chief revenue officer, following former CEO Adam Sachs’ departure over the summer. Friedman will still be involved on the sales side, but his role will see him spending more time figuring out the next steps for the company’s emerging live events strategy and getting ready for a “significant announcement” regarding its premium subscription business, Howl. That’ll come “pretty soon.” Kolesa started work yesterday.
The road ahead for the Quick and Dirty Tips network. The decade-old, 12-podcast-strong network recently surpassed its 250 million lifetime download, and it’s getting ready for a busy, but focused, 2017. Network head Kathy Doyle told me over email:
We’re focused on continuing to build QDT’s audience and increase distribution for our core shows. We’re always open to testing new talent but, for now, we want to ensure we’re able to tap into the surge we’re all seeing in podcast consumption and make sure we’re reaching new listeners as we work to continue our great growth.
Also on the plate: the launch of a sister network. For those unfamiliar, QDT is a joint venture between Macmillan Publishing and Mignon Fogarty, whose Grammar Girl podcast anchors the network (you can find more details in a recent profile by Simon Owens), and Doyle informs me that the publishing house is getting ready to launch the Macmillan Podcast Network, its own slate of author-centric shows. She writes:
We’re taking our expertise and leveraging relationships with in-house Macmillan authors who are logical fits for the medium. These new shows will come in a variety of formats to help deepen relationships with readers and expand an author’s platform.
This new Macmillan network appears to be the logical conclusion of a long-running trend that sees authors adopting podcasts as a channel to deepen and sustain their relationship with audiences — and build out alternative revenue stream to book sales. (See: Maximum Fun’s podcast with Elizabeth Gilbert, Panoply’s Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast, and so on.) I’d be interested to see if other book publishers will follow suit, though, given that none of them possess an arrangement quite like that between Macmillan and QDT, I kinda doubt it.
Anyway, the nascent Macmillan Podcast Network is kicking things off by releasing a preview of an upcoming author show: Raise My Roof with Cara Brookins, which is meant to accompany Brookins’ memoir that’s scheduled for a January release.
Some non-American NPR One listeners will be able to donate directly to NPR through the app, starting next year. This marks the first time the public radio mothership is establishing a contribution pipeline directly with listeners, according to Current.
If you’re asking, what about Americans? Well, join the club. When I popped the question over to the network, a spokesperson replied: “We are actively working to improve the local-station pledge experience within the app over the coming months… In 2017, we will expand on this by working with a pilot group of stations to explore a more direct connection between their listeners and their payment gateway.”
That likely means direct donations from American listeners to NPR will remain off the table. If that bums you out, considering purchasing 50 Nina Totin’ Bags off the NPR merch site. The effect is probably equivalent, plus some percentage sales tax.
The Financial Times rolls out the latest in its growing line of podcasts last week: Everything Else, a culture magazine show. This marks the fifth podcast that the paper has launched in 2016. (Which, y’know, seems kind of aggressive.)
When I asked how the paper evaluates its podcast strategy, a spokesperson replied:
We measure the success of our podcasts in a number of ways. Subscriber numbers are important, of course, but we also gather data on engagement — whether readers favorite or share our podcasts, whether readers write in and interact with our hosts. Shows like FT Management’s Business Book Review and Alphachat have particularly enthusiastic listener responses.
High engagement is great, but of course, the larger question is whether the organization will be able to translate that into a proportional revenue outcome that would justify the investment. Anyway, when I requested some stats on the publication’s podcast audience, I was told there were over |
past. Identity politics based on religion and language played out in the pre-independence era; then Dravidian politics played a prominent role in Tamil Nadu in the early days of independence. Later, first the Jan Sangh and then the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) played identity politics by taking a Hindu nationalistic line.
This had limited success until recently—although the BJP did form a government twice.
Hindu politics alone has never worked for the BJP beyond a point, unless governance also became a principal agenda, as in this election. Caste politics was another factor which contained Hindu politics in the heartland states—by splitting the Hindu vote among caste-based parties.
Though caste has always been an important determinant of politics at the local level, particularly in northern and central India, it was never a guiding principle until the Mandal Commission’s recommendations on caste reservation were implemented in 1990. The Mandal Commission gave birth to some very strong political personalities on the social justice and caste identity platform in the heartland states.
Mulayam Singh Yadav, with a Muslim-Yadav combination and Mayawati with 22% Dalit support, ruled the roost in Uttar Pradesh for more than two decades. Ajit Singh in western Uttar Pradesh and the Chautala family in Haryana dominated the political discourse in their respective territories for many years with the support of Jats. Lalu Prasad, with the combined strength of Muslims, Yadavs, Dalits and most backward classes (MBCs), ruled Bihar for 15 years. And Nitish Kumar, with the backing of Kurmis and Kushwahas and later by adding the Mahadalits and MBCs, carved a space for himself in Bihar politics.
Narendra Modi-led BJP was expected to face its biggest challenge in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, which account for 120 Lok Sabha seats, because of this complex caste equation and the strong presence of caste-based regional forces in these two states. The BJP with its alliance partners proved all caste-based assessments wrong and overcame traditional barriers by winning 93 of these 120 seats.
Modi’s aide Amit Shah was sent to Uttar Pradesh to lead the BJP’s strategy in the backdrop of the party’s abysmal performance in the 2012 assembly elections when it had polled just 15% votes. The biggest challenge Shah faced was in rejuvenating the party’s organization, adding new castes into the BJP fold by appropriate social engineering, and selling the Gujarat governance model. The results of the Lok Sabha election show that Shah succeeded on all these parameters.
The Lok Sabha results reflect that Shah managed to break traditional caste barriers and attract all sections of voters, including other backward classes (OBCs), Dalits and some sections of Yadavs too.
What worked for BJP in attracting all these social segments? Communal polarization in the aftermath of last year’s Muzaffarnagar riots would be considered as the main factor behind the BJP’s success by a section of political pundits. But the BJP leadership would like to claim that it was Modi’s continuous emphasis on governance that worked for it.
It is difficult to suggest which one of the two would explain it better but it is safe to say that the caste-based politics of Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and Rashtriya Lok Dal was totally rejected by the voters of Uttar Pradesh. Instead, they preferred to give their mandate to Modi’s strong leadership and promise of good governance.
Let us take the case of Bihar, where Nitish Kumar parted ways with the BJP last year, presuming he had the support of his core constituency of Kurmi, Kushwaha and the newly carved out vote bank of Mahadalits and MBCs. Modi was able to dismantle the caste-based politics of Nitish Kumar with his promise of good governance and because of what was perceived to be an act of betrayal by Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United).
Riding on the Muslim-Yadav combination, Lalu Prasad too was placed on the front row by some political commentators but the Bihar results reflect that a section of Yadavs also supported Modi for his good governance campaign. As in Uttar Pradesh, in Bihar too traditional caste-based politics did not work for regional players, and the BJP, along with its allies, emerged strongly.
Haryana has close to a 25% Jat electorate who provided a strong footing to the Chautala-led Indian National Lok Dal (INLD). In the last assembly election in Haryana, the INLD presented a major challenge to the Congress party and the BJP remained a marginal force. However, by winning seven of the eight seats it contested, the BJP has now overhauled the traditional narrative of Jat versus non-Jat politics in Haryana, and got support from all social segments. Since there is only a small Muslim population in the state, the BJP’s emphatic performance can only be attributed to Modi’s governance promises and the failure of the INLD and the Congress on this account.
Political pundits will continue to debate over what worked for the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Haryana but it is certain that voters in these states have rejected caste-based politics and voted for good governance. Modi’s image of a strong Hindu leader may have given additional teeth to the BJP’s governance campaign.
It is too early to conclude that identity politics, based on caste and religion, is on its way out—unless governance emerges as the main determining factor in a few more elections. But certainly it is a wake-up call for regional players who rely only on identity politics to cling to power.
The author is a psephologist and director of Research and Development Initiative.DETROIT - One person was shot Wednesday morning in an officer-involved shooting after a brief foot pursuit on Detroit’s east side.
According to police, a man in his early 30s was at a hotel on East Jefferson Avenue, near St. Aubin Street, and was acting erratically. The incident was labeled a non-priority call until multiple 911 calls were made telling authorities he was in possession of a gun. The incident was upgraded and officers were dispatched.
Officers made contact with the man who ran out of the hotel and into traffic.
Witnesses said the man jumped over vehicles and
"The man was screaming and yelling and he was running around, and they were trying to catch him," Barbara Dean said. "He was running down the sidewalk and in and out of the cars and they were chasing him."
Detroit police Chief James Craig said the man wouldn't take his hand's out of his pockets which kept officers on edge.
The man was hit by a civilian vehicle. When he stood up, he allegedly pulled out a gun and fired several shots.
Officers returned fire and the man was hit at least twice.
A gun and spent casings were recovered from the scene.
The suspect was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. No officers were injured in the incident.
“This is what our officers deal with daily. We deal with individuals suffering from mental illness. I’ve been very vocal about the necessity to do something instead of talking about it,” Craig said. “This could have been a tragic outcome for so many people.”
Suspect known to police
Craig said the suspect was discharged from parole in 2014. He was incarcerated in 2005 for armed robbery.
In 2015, the man was arrested on a narcotics violation by the Michigan State Police and the case was subsequently dismissed.
The most recent contact police had with the man was about three weeks ago. He was arrested on a narcotics violation and resisted during that encounter, according to Craig. The case is pending.
Stay with Local 4 and ClickonDetroit.com as more information becomes available.
Copyright 2017 by WDIV ClickOnDetroit - All rights reserved.Gelernter on Conversations with Bill Kristol (via YouTube)
When the Left says ‘anti-intellectual,’ what they mean is ‘not a liberal.’
‘David Gelernter, fiercely anti-intellectual computer scientist, is being eyed for Trump’s science adviser.” — Washington Post, January 18
Um. Well, huh.
For those unfamiliar with David Gelernter, he essentially created parallel computing, which sounds like witchcraft to me, but I’m told it’s a really big deal. He was also one of the first people to see the Internet coming, in his 1991 book Mirror Worlds. Bill Joy, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, described Gelernter as “one of the most brilliant and visionary computer scientists of our time.” Ted Kaczynski — aka “the Unabomber” — agreed, which is why he maimed Gelernter with a letter bomb in a 1993 assassination attempt.
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Gelernter, who teaches computer science at Yale and has degrees in classical Hebrew, has written books and articles on history, culture, religion, artificial intelligence, and philosophy. His acclaimed paintings don’t do too much for me, but that’s probably because I’m a bit of Philistine about these things.
Regardless, saying that Gelernter is “fiercely anti-intellectual” is a bit like saying Tiger Woods is fiercely anti-golf.
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So what on earth could the Washington Post mean with that headline?
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Science reporter Sarah Kaplan gives a few clues. First, Gelernter is a fierce detractor of Barack Obama and has “made a name for himself as a vehement critic of modern academia.” True enough, I guess. Also, he has “expressed doubt about the reality of man-made climate change.” The evidence provided for this assertion is a bit tendentious, but we’ll let it pass because I don’t think this is primarily about climate change.
It has to do more with two things: liberal tribalism and the guild mentality of a certain subset of the scientific community. There’s a long progressive tradition in America to think that intellectuals must be liberal, and therefore intellectualism equals liberalism.
Indeed, Kaplan seems a bit bedeviled by this point. The headline of her story says Gelernter is anti-intellectual. The first sentence notes that Gelernter has “decried the influence of liberal intellectuals on college campuses.” A few paragraphs later, Kaplan suddenly informs us that his “anti-intellectualism makes him an outlier among scientists.”
If you believe that intellectualism requires being loyal to a certain political agenda, this all makes some sense. The problem is that decrying the influence of liberal intellectuals is hardly synonymous with rejecting intellectualism itself.
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What Kaplan really seems to be getting at is that Gelernter is one of the few major intellectuals out there today who is critical of the intellectual establishment, which acts as a class or guild.
She reports that “Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said he hadn’t heard of Gelernter until Tuesday.” The horror!
Rosenberg adds that Gelernter is “certainly not mainstream in the science community or particularly well known.... His views even on most of the key science questions aren’t known. Considering the huge range of issues the White House needs to consider, I don’t know if he has that kind of capability.”
Translation: If I don’t know him, he just can’t be that important — or smart.
Decrying the influence of liberal intellectuals is hardly synonymous with rejecting intellectualism itself.
There are scientists whom science reporters know and go to for quotes. The Union of Concerned Scientists, historically a very politicized outfit, is a rich source of such pithy scientists. More broadly, the world of scientists involved in public policy is a very small subset of the world of science, and — as with almost every other profession and industry — a certain guild mentality develops among its members. As a result, they become inclined to say, in effect, “Back off, this is our turf.”
It was this phenomenon that my old boss (and thoroughgoing intellectual) William F. Buckley had in mind when he said he’d rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than the faculty of Harvard Law School.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a polymath and best-selling author, is another maverick intellectual who has little use for what he calls the “Intellectual Yet Idiot” class that trades on its elite credentials to impose a kind of groupthink on what is permissible to say or believe.
It takes a lot of intellectual firepower and self-confidence to declare that the intellectual emperors have no clothes, so it’s no surprise that neither Gelernter nor Taleb has been accused of being excessively humble. Their brashness can be off-putting to some and threatening to those invested in the monopoly of authority held by certain groups. But that doesn’t make them wrong — or anti-intellectual.
— Jonah Goldberg is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior editor of National Review. © 2017 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.Microsoft Shakes Up Its Leadership And Internal Structure As Its Fiscal Year Comes To A Close
Update: For a #hottake, we made you a #video so that you can enjoy more #content!
This morning Microsoft announced changes to its organizational structure and leadership team.
Some of its most senior executives are departing, and the company is shifting internal teams in what the company described as a change to better match its personnel to its strategy, according to a memo published both internally and externally by its CEO, Satya Nadella.
It’s worth noting that Microsoft is coming up on the end of its fiscal year, making the changes not particularly temporally surprising. Still, the internal reshuffling is notable as it helps underscore how the software company is working to change to face a rapidly evolving market.
In its memo, Microsoft said that the changes will help it build at a faster pace, and improve engineering alignment. For a company known in the past for having fractious internal units, the changes are interesting as they appear to be designed to combat its infamous discord.
The best way to approach the changes is to take it in pieces. We’ll start with Windows.
Myerson
Terry Myerson, formerly the head of the company’s operating system work, will pick up new responsibilities in the new structure. Specifically, Myerson will now lead a new unit called the “Windows and Devices Group” that combines Microsoft’s Windows work, and its hardware.
The Windows and Devices group is simply named: The division will include Windows, and the devices that have become associated with the company’s hardware push — think Lumia, HoloLens, Surface Hub, Xbox, and Surface.
The combination of hardware under Myerson with one of the firm’s most internally critical platforms might sound odd — why fuse hardware and software? The answer, so far as I can discern from watching the company over the past few years, is that the hardware efforts at Microsoft have long been a conveyance mechanism for Windows.
That’s become mildly less true as Microsoft has ground out improving developer support from third parties, but the hardware work of the company falls under the broader Windows rubric. Xbox, Lumia, and Surface for example are all products that leverage Windows 10 in increasing quantity.
Apple has long been lauded for harmony between its hardware and software work. Microsoft, by combining its now-former Operating Systems Group and Devices Group is likely hoping for similar synergy.
So, a promotion for Myerson, and one that puts him in place to be the next CEO of Microsoft. This leads us to the next piece of news:
Elop
Out.
The returning Microsoftie didn’t make it to the two-year mark this time around. Stephen Elop is best known for leaving Microsoft for Nokia, and then bringing that company’s hardware assets to Redmond. Given that Myerson is now running his ship, there isn’t much need for two captains.
Guthrie
Akin to Myerson, Soctt Guthrie is accreting more responsibility. Keeping his place atop the company’s cloud business, Guthrie is also picking up the engineering assets from Microsoft’s Dynamics business.
According to the Microsoft memo, Dynamics is now close to a $2 billion business. That’s a revenue statistic, of course, not a market value metric. For reference, Box, a company that sells enterprise file sharing services to enterprise customers is projecting revenue of under $300 million in the current year. Box is valued at more than $2 billion by the public markets.
Given that Guthrie is snagging some Dynamics assets, the following:
Tatarinov
Out.
Microsoft said in its memo that it learned from Kirill Tatarinov — who ran Dynamics — the importance of CRM. Given the company’s carefully worded note, I can’t be entirely certain, but it seems that the company is fragmenting the Dynamics team into other divisions entirely.
Lu
Qi Lu, head of the company’s Applications and Services Group is picking up the company’s education efforts’ engineering assets. This, again, is one of Microsoft’s senior leadership team (SLT) picking up more responsibility.
The other side of that is:
Rudder
Eric Rudder is out. Rudder did a number of things at Microsoft over the last quarter century, but his final tenure involved the same education efforts that Lu is taking on.
Again, two chefs and a single soup is akin to watching me cook: No one is happy, most people want to crowd the kitchen, and then we end up eating bad pizza and dreaming of living in New York.
GG, Penn
Also bouncing is Mark Penn, a controversial figure inside of Microsoft.
Interestingly, Microsoft did not note that Penn would return to politics specifically, instead saying that the now-former executive would “form a private equity fund, among other things.” It will be quite interesting to see what those other things are. Regardless, they will not be Microsoft things.
Summing
Microsoft has had a busy few years trying to rebuild itself to better fit the current, and coming technology market. A new CEO — Satya Nadella — a previous re-org, and a business model shakeup have all been put into place.
With the above changes what’s notable is that Microsoft isn’t actually shifting course, but instead appears to be doubling down on its plans. Moving hardware into Windows, for example, isn’t abandoning hardware, or slimming it down I wouldn’t think — the company wouldn’t be shipping new hardware lines, or software to run on its phones if it wanted to shirk the responsibility.
And to be clear, I don’t think that Microsoft is shedding its most popular executives.
A final thought: By giving Myerson more responsibility in the face of the coming Windows 10 launch, Microsoft is giving its current Windows Boss a vote of confidence. Should its current operating system efforts falter, Myerson now has a higher perch from which to fall.
More soon, I have some calls to make.In the quest to find the fountain of youth, scientists may one day look to Latinos to find the answer, as a new study shows they age at a slower rate than individuals of other ethnicities. The findings, published in Genome Biology, used several biomarkers to study changes linked to aging in the genome.
“Latinos live longer than Caucasians, despite experiencing higher rates of diabetes and other diseases,” Steve Horvath, lead author and professor of human genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California, Los Angeles, said in a news release. “Our study helps explain this by demonstrating that Latinos age more slowly at the molecular level.”
The biomarkers evaluated included an “epigenetic clock” developed by Horvath that tracks an epigenetic shift linked to aging in the genome. Epigenetics is the study of changes to the DNA molecule that influence which genes are active but don’t alter the DNA sequence itself.
Researchers used 18 sets of data on DNA samples from nearly 6,000 people that represented seven ethnicities, including two African groups, African-Americans, Caucasians, East Asians, Latinos and an indigenous people genetically related to Latinos called the Tsimane.
After accounting for differences in cell composition, the scientists noticed that the blood of Latinos and the indigenous group aged more slowly than the others. Horvath said the study’s results offer an explanation for why Latinos in the U.S. live an average of three years longer than Caucasians.
"We suspect that Latinos' slower aging rate helps neutralize their higher health risks, particularly those related to obesity and inflammation," Horvath said. "Our findings strongly suggest that genetic or environmental factors linked to ethnicity may influence how quickly a person ages and how long they live."
The study also revealed that the Tsimanes aged even more slowly than Latinos, which researchers said reflects the group’s minimal signs of heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, obesity or clogged arteries.
“Despite frequent infections, the Tsimane people show every little evidence of the chronic disease [DISEASES?] that commonly afflict modern society,” Michael Gurven, study coauthor and a professor of anthropology at University of California, Santa Barbara, said in the news release. “Our findings provide an interesting molecular explanation for their robust health.”
Researchers next plan to study the aging rate of other human tissues and to identify the molecular mechanism that protects Latinos from aging.Nine out of every 1,000 children are victims of abuse and neglect every year, according to the report, but that likely underestimates the extent of maltreatment as it counts only those whose situations are so dire they are referred to authorities. That number could be as high as 17 out of every 1,000 children.
Since the last IOM report on child maltreatment was issued 20 years ago, numerous studies have demonstrated the awful effects of physical and emotional cruelty – a literature the report calls a “new science of child abuse and neglect.”
We now know that maltreatment puts kids at risk for learning problems, depression and anxiety, conduct disorders and post-traumatic stress. As adults, many of these battered children find it difficult to thrive, and they experience psychiatric illness, drug and alcohol addiction, and chronic disease.
Just the original abuse and neglect is expensive, on par with the cost of type 2 diabetes and stroke. The IOM report notes that abuse and neglect cases cost as much as $80 billion annually—there are hospitalizations, child welfare and law enforcement expenses, early intervention services, adult homelessness programs, mental health care and more.
And yet despite the clear threat to public health, we still know little about the causes of maltreatment and how to effectively prevent it. Risk factors include substance abuse, depression, and a childhood history of harm, but then there are variables like poverty and stressful environments, all of which complicate why and when a parent abuses or neglects his or her kid. The report calls for longitudinal studies that would start before birth and track children throughout their lives to see which parents abuse and neglect and in which circumstances.
There is one spot of truly encouraging news from the report, which is that sexual abuse has unequivocally dropped by as much as 62 percent in the past two decades. There is also data indicating that the rate of physical abuse has fallen significantly as well, but there are caveats, according to the report. Surveys show a decrease, but largely for peer and sibling assaults. When parents report their own behavior, it is perhaps more flattering than reality as children continue to report physical abuse.
Neglect, a broad category that includes physical, emotional and educational needs, is where the least progress has been made. Think of a child that is sent to school for days without a bath or clean clothes. Or a toddler that is routinely denied affection. Lest the public think these are the most benign types of maltreatment, neglect accounts for three-quarters of all cases and may very well be the most harmful.
Mary Dozier, an IOM panel member and expert on child development at the University of Delaware, told me that neglect is the “absence of parental involvement,” which is critical during early childhood. The committee responsible for the report, she said, concluded that neglect is at least as “pernicious” in its effect on development as abuse.Two men were shot to death in less than half an hour within eight blocks of each other on the West Side, and at least 11 other people were wounded in shootings in Chicago Monday through early Tuesday, police said.
A 37-year-old man was killed on the porch of a two-flat greystone in East Garfield Park about 9:30 p.m. Monday in a shooting that also wounded a 34-year-old woman. The man has not been officially identified.
Update at 10:34 a.m. on 8-25-2015: The 37-year-old was identified as William D. Andrews Jr., of the 5500 block of West Bryn Mawr Avenue in Chicago, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.
Officers worked in torrential rain, crowding together around the body on the small porch to stay dry.
Police blocked off the building, in the 3800 block of West Monroe Street, along with a patch of long, dead grass in front of it.
Other greystones on the block had green lawns and well-kept gardens, but the area near the crime scene was covered in litter: An empty bottle of Remy Martin cognac, a container of mayonnaise, a plastic to-go box streaked with nacho cheese. A neighbor said the house had been abandoned and was frequented by drug users.
About 10 p.m., sirens rang out over the thunder, and a uniformed officer jogged out of the crime scene and on to the sidewalk.
"Uh-oh, another one," he said to himself.
A 34-year-old woman had been found in the 4000 block of West Lake Street with a gunshot wound to the arm. She told police she was with the man at the greystone when she heard shots and felt pain, then ran from the scene.
She was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where her condition was stabilized, said Officer Amina Greer, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Police Department.
Less than 30 minutes earlier, a 32-year-old man was fatally shot on another porch about half a mile away, in the West Garfield Park neighborhood.
Police found the man on a porch in the 4300 block of West Van Buren Street with gunshot wounds to the head and torso. He was taken to Stroger Hospital in critical condition, where he was pronounced dead about an hour after he was shot, said Sgt. Al Stinites, a Chicago Police Department spokesman.
The man was identified as Tavaris Hightie, of the 5000 block of West North Avenue in Chicago, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.
Other shootings:
• A 30-year-old man was struck in the leg in the Gresham neighborhood on the South Side, Greer said. He was in the 7500 block of South Emerald Avenue at 12:45 a.m. Tuesday when someone approached and fired shots. He went to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where his condition was stabilized.
• A man and a woman were wounded at 11:05 p.m. Monday in a shooting in the Grand Crossing neighborhood on the South Side, police said. The woman, 27, was in her car in the 1300 block of East 72nd Street while a 24-year-old man was standing outside the car talking to her. A dark sedan drove up and someone inside fired shots, Greer said.
The man was shot in the abdomen and took himself to Jackson Park Hospital. The woman was hit in the wrist and taken by ambulance to the same hospital. The condition of both was stabilized, Greer said.
• At 9:30 p.m. Monday, two men were on a porch in the 100 block of East 114th Place in the Roseland neighborhood on the Far South Side when someone walked onto the porch and began shooting, authorities said.
A 23-year-old man was shot multiple times; he took himself to Roseland Community Hospital but was later transferred to Advocate Christ in critical condition. A 31-year-old man was shot in the leg and took himself to Roseland, where his condition stabilized, Greer said.
The shooting is believed to be related to a personal conflict rather than a gang issue, according to authorities.
• A 15-year-old boy was wounded about 6:40 p.m. Monday in the 4200 block of South California Avenue in the Brighton Park neighborhood on the Southwest Side, said Officer Nicole Trainor, a Chicago Police Department spokeswoman.
The boy suffered gunshot wounds to the arm and shoulder. He was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where his condition was stabilized, Trainor said.
• About seven minutes before the Brighton Park attack, two boys and a man were shot in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side. That shooting happened in the 4800 block of South Evans Avenue, said Officer Veejay Zala, a police spokesman.
A 13-year-old boy suffered wounds to right leg and foot. Another boy, age 15, was grazed in the hip. The third victim, an 18-year-old man, was shot in the left thigh. The juveniles were taken to University of Chicago Comer Children's Hospital, and the man was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center, Zala said. Their conditions were stabilized, Trainor said.
According to preliminary reports, a gunman jumped out of a gray vehicle and fired shots. The vehicle then circled around and picked the gunman up before fleeing. Police believe the shooting was gang-related, Trainor said.
• Late Monday morning, a 33-year-old man was shot in both legs in the city's Albany Park neighborhood on the Northwest Side. That shooting happened about 11:15 a.m. in the 3500 block of West Belle Plaine Avenue, said Officer Bari Lemmon, a police spokeswoman.
The man, who police said was a documented gang member, was taken to Advocate Illinois Masonic Hospital, where his condition was stabilized, Lemmon said. Police were questioning two people in the Albany Park shooting.Astoria restaurant Fatty's Cafe will reopen this winter at 45-17 28th Ave. after 10 years at its current location on Ditmars Boulevard. View Full Caption Facebook/FattysNY
ASTORIA — Longtime Astoria eatery Fatty's Cafe is moving to a new location in the neighborhood after a decade on Ditmars Boulevard.
The restaurant, known for its Latin-inspired cuisine and scenic outdoor patio, is moving from its current location at 25-01 Ditmars Blvd. at Crescent Street after 10 years because the lease is up, according to the owner.
"It's bittersweet," said Fernando Peña, who owns Fatty's with his wife Suzanne Furboter. "It's kind of like a weird breakup."
Fatty's will be moving to a new location at 45-17 28th Ave., in the space formerly occupied by Stove, with plans to open in late January or early February, Peña said.
The new site will have an outdoor patio comparable in size to the current one, and its dining room will be approximately double the size, he said. They will also be adding lines for draft beers, where they formerly only served bottles.
"We look forward to creating the same kind of neighborhood thing," Peña said, adding that they plan to offer a similar menu but with more options, including more vegetarian-friendly dishes.
Fatty's last day on Ditmars Boulevard will be Sunday, Peña said. He said loyal customers have been stopping in to give their farewells to the original location, but have been supportive of the move.
"People have been coming in to have one last meal, one last drink," he said, adding that fans will have plenty to look forward to at their new site.
"We're not going to disappoint," he said.Take my word for it. This thing is in 3D. Jim Edwards 3D TV never really caught on because of one obvious flaw: You need to wear silly, uncomfortable 3D glasses to watch it. The experience is even worse if you already need regular glasses — you end up wearing two pairs at once.
But tucked away in a small, unpublicized corner of the gigantic Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week was a large-screen 3D TV that blew my mind: It showed crisp, deep, hi-def, 3D images all on its own.
No glasses required.
There was only one problem: The company "promoting" the TV, Changhong, was doing a better job of hiding it. Only one unit was on display, in a section of the exhibit that looked slightly detached from the company's main room. The TV was unaccompanied by any leaflets, technical specs, or promotional literature. And both times I visited the booth there wasn't an attendant in sight to explain how the damn thing works.
A mystery. But there it was: A TV showing the equivalent of a hologram on a flat screen.
Astonishing.
Jim Edwards This 2D photo doesn't do it justice, of course. But take my word for it: There was genuine depth to the images, you could see characters on the screen moving further and nearer from you as well as just side to side, like on regular TV.
The definition was good but not perfect. It was definitely "hi-def," in the sense that the picture was better than the old vacuum tube TVs we used to watch before they were all replaced by flat screens. But it wasn't like watching a modern 2D hi-def screen, where you can see every hair and pore.
And the TV was playing in a suspiciously darkened cove, as if it somehow needed a low-light environment to pull out the 3D effect.
Nonetheless, it was impressive. It felt as if they had proved the concept was viable, and with enough refinements and enhancements the picture would be perfect: Almost real 3D movies playing on a flat screen.
I'd never heard of Changhong before. The company's web site indicates it's actually in an alliance with other manufacturers such as Samsung to sell 3D TVs with glasses.
The only other clue was the "Dolby" logo in the corner of the screen.
Turns out, Dolby is working with a bunch of manufacturers on glasses-free hi-def TV. Sharp and Philips are among the partners. Early reviews are positive.
Who knows, in a couple of years we could all be watching TV in 3D.Photo by Paul Drinkwater/NBCU Photo Bank
It looks like Office Depot hasn't forced Dunder Mifflin out of business yet. According to a new report from TVLine, NBC is in talks to revive The Office and bring us back to the Pennsylvanian paper company once again.
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The network is considering a whole new run of The Office for its 2018-19 season, starring "a mix of new and old cast members," TVLine reports. Unfortunately, that doesn't necessarily mean we'll be seeing more Michael Scott. While it's unclear which old cast members might return, TVLine reports that Steve Carell definitely won't—probably because the guy's too busy starring in Minecraft movies or whatever.
The news comes after NBC's successful revival of Will & Grace earlier this year, which might have sent the network skimming through its archives for other beloved shows of yore it could resurrect. And while it's still unlikely that we'll be getting a Wings reboot any time soon, The Office could be the next NBC sitcom to come back from the dead.
The idea of bringing it back has apparently been bouncing around NBC for a while, but this is the first time we've heard about real movement.
“We often talk about The Office," NBC chairman Bob Greenblatt told Deadline last summer, before Will & Grace returned. "I’ve talked to [Office creator Greg Daniels] four times over the past few years. It’s always, 'Maybe some day, but not now.' There is certainly an open invitation but we don’t have anything happening right now. If he wants to do it, I would do it."
As great as new episodes of The Office might sound, another season without Carell should be enough to give any fan of the show pause. NBC already made us suffer through a string of terrible replacement regional managers after Carell quit the show in 2011. Michael Scott was the nucleus that held the original iteration of The Office together, and NBC will have to do better than Robert California if they want to find a suitable replacement.3 Years With the ST An exclusive look inside Tramiel's Atari by Jeffrey Daniels
When Warner Communications sold a failing Atari to Jack Tramiel, the business community was amazed. When the new Atari demonstrated a revolutionary new computer within six months after the takeover, the computer industry was amazed. Now it's your turn to be amazed as Jeffrey Daniels brings you the inside scoop on how Atari's flagship computer came about--and what Atari is planning for the future.
On Monday, July 2, 1984, Jack Tramiel, his three sons, and a core band of Tramiel loyalists stormed Atari Incorporated's headquarters and took control of Warner Communications' bleeding, teetering Atari subsidiary. A little over five months later, in January 1985, a radically restructured Atari Corporation publicly unveiled its new computer at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. During the following spring, they shipped approximately 100 custom ST units to third-party software developers. And in June of that year, against all odds and amid widespread, doomsaying prognostications from industry pundits, the first production model Atari 520 ST computers rolled off the assembly line in Taiwan. It had been a wild, wild ride.
AN EXHILARATING FIRST YEAR "I tell you, it was very exhilarating," recalls Shiraz Shivji, Atari's Vice President for Research and Development. "During those days, I used to get home at about ten o'clock at night, six days a week. Sunday was about the only day we took off--sometimes we couldn't take off Sunday. I remember New Year's Eve [as the company scrambled to meet its self-imposed January 1985 CES deadline]. I was working that night when the firecrackers started popping, then well on into the New Year." "It was a miracle," says Richard Frick, one of a handful of Warner veterans still at Atari and now Director of OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) and VAR (Value Added Reseller) Sales. "You could come here almost any day of the week and find people working very late at night, then on weekends. The parking lot was always full."
THE MAKING OF THE ST Contrary to popular myth, the ST did not exist in any shape or form at Atari prior to the Tramiels' takeover. Planning for what was to become the Atari ST began in late April and early May of 1984. The first step was when Jack Tramiel formed a small company called Tramiel Technology, Ltd. He then gradually began to bring together people from around the world, all ex-Commodore employees, with the specific intention of designing, manufacturing, then somehow marketing a new, popular-priced computer. But in those first weeks, acquiring Atari was still just a dream. By the end of May, Tramiel Technology had rented a room at an apartment complex in Sunnyvale, and the core group of Tramiel recruits began to plan their new machine and to seek out a way to market it. Shortly thereafter, the negotiations with Warner Communications began to heat up. "What the product was going to be and what it looked like was already very clear in our minds," Shiv |
While I’m by no means fluent in Vietnamese, I do speak enough to confirm this, and I know several of the vendors personally.
A word of warning – Google translate does not handle Vietnamese gracefully yet. It works reasonably well for single words or very short phrases, but anything longer often becomes unintelligible. For example, it sometimes translates ‘ten’ as ‘salt’ by getting the tonal accents wrong. Speaking of condiments, Nhật Tảo market borders on District 5, which is considered by locals to have above-average restaurants. You may want to scope out a place to eat after going to the market.
A Tour of Nhật Tảo Market
We start our journey at the corner of Lý Thường Kiệt street and Nhật Tảo street in District 10. This is near address 138 on Lý Thường Kiệt which is a major thoroughfare. It’s better to use this address than ask for Nhật Tảo market, as there is a fresh produce market elsewhere by the same name. The safest way to get there is by taxi (use VinaSun or Mai Linh brands only), although there’s an application used locally called GrabBike that will call an inexpensive motorbike driver at fixed rates, and they always have a helmet for you.
Immediately to your right is one of the better stores to buy tools. They have a decent selection of soldering and hot air rework stations, you can get an ‘all-in-one’ that includes a variable voltage power supply and an RF detector (for cellphone repair) for around 60 USD. My “Pro’sKit” one has lasted four years of moderate use without complaint. The hand tools are pretty good here too, and it’s not usually busy, so if you have some questions they will patiently accommodate you. They even have a website, although in Vietnamese only.
Continuing down Nhật Tảo street, you will see a couple of places selling various LED strips, audio amplifiers, and speakers. Take your first right down the alley, passing more similar retailers until you encounter a main road. Cross the road, passing under a gate, to enter the LED street:
To the right as you walk down the street there are many retailers selling every conceivable type of LED strip and sign. This is one of the places local advertising companies (the stores with signs labeled ‘Quảng Cáo’) buy the raw materials to meet the massive demand for LED signs in Ho Chi Minh City. If you dig around, you can find painfully bright Arduino-compatible LED matrices for around USD 9. Be sure to pick up a power supply module at the same time; they’re worth the price as the sign modules consume more power than common wall adapters can easily manage.
This street also has a few shops that carry more or less only multimeters, wall to wall. The focus is mainly on inexpensive units, but they’re quite decent overall.
Along the left side of the street, you will see what looks like large apartment blocks with the entrances labeled ‘Nhật Tảo’.
The first two floors of these blocks represent the core of Nhật Tảo market and are a labyrinth of stalls crammed full of components. It can be disorienting, but very generally the first floor is the most interesting, selling a variety of components, connectors, and tools.
Typically, stores will focus on selling a few items, such as transistors and resistors. Don’t mind the mess: if you request a particular transistor part number it will appear in front of you with alarming speed.
Of particular note are the project boxes available. You can get medium-sized ones for about USD 0.55, and the quality is quite good.
On the second floor, the focus is mainly on laptop parts and repair. Most of the stock is a bit older, and unless you live in Vietnam and need to buy parts to repair your laptop or desktop computer, there’s not much you will need here.
Beyond Nhật Tảo Market
If the central electronics market proves too hectic, or language barriers win the day, there’s another option close by. A local shop called Hshop has an excellent selection of hobby electronics, their staff speak English, and they have a decent website (Vietnamese, but supports English search terms). They also offer a laser cutting service, and when you buy something they will test it in front of you if possible to ensure you don’t get defective parts. The price is a little higher than the main market, but this is hands-down the most hobbyist-friendly electronics shop in the city and they carry some really cool stuff, especially sensors.
Finally, I know of one well-stocked market in the suburbs, not far from a local Fablab, that mainly supplies students at a nearby university. While most days there are no English-speaking staff, you can select what you want on their website and show up with a list, so it’s a smoother experience than the central market, and the prices are excellent. They also carry some sewing supplies in addition to electronics, and their selection of industrial buttons is very nice.
They’re hard to find, though. Your best bet is to go to the local market (chợ Gò Vấp). Starting from this point on the map, go southeast down Nguyễn Văn Nghị street until you see a big red fast food chain called ‘Lotteria’. Turn right there, continue for about 80 meters, then turn right onto Nguyễn Văn Bảo. Near address 31, you will see a tiny alley to your left (it’s right before a school). Go down that alley to the end, and turn right. You’ll suddenly be inside a store.
Don’t underestimate it – they seem to have somehow made it bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. This place is perfect if you’re planning to visit Fablab Saigon while in town, or if you’ve got a flight soon and need to stay closer to the airport.
Fablab Saigon
Besides being a place full of smart people building awesome things, Fablab Saigon carries its own stock of parts that is sells. The store manager, Hải, also runs a parts sourcing service. He can help you buy just about any component you need in Ho Chi Minh City, and he speaks English. The Fablab itself enjoys a large building with four floors. They offer laser cutting, 3D printing, a prototyping service, and they have a full coffee shop. The best thing about it though, is that despite offering these services, it remains a ‘place to meet great people’ rather than just a ‘place that sells stuff’.
In summary, Ho Chi Minh City has some excellent places to source electronic components and tools. It’s not really what you would call an ‘engineering tourism destination’ like Shenzhen, but it does have a rough, undiscovered gem of a market. If you’re visiting Ho Chi Minh City and are at all interested in hobby electronics, it’s worth a stop. You’ll find something cool, and anything you build with it will have a story.Hello Sour Beer Friends!
Over the past two years, the popularity of craft brewed American sour beers has skyrocketed and a plethora of new sours have been introduced to the market. The fact that a high percentage of these have been of the fast / kettle soured variety has led me to write quite a bit geared toward the quality production of fast soured beers. Feeling that I have achieved my goal of providing thorough guidance regarding these beers, I would like to turn my attention throughout 2016 toward my first passion: aged and blended sours. In my opinion, many of the best sour beers in the world are crafted by brewers with aging and blending programs. This article will focus specifically on blending, which is undoubtedly one of the most powerful and versatile tools within the sour brewer’s toolkit.
Through this article, I will discuss blending from both a conceptual and practical standpoint. We will cover blending theory and the chemistry behind many common sour beer flavors, how to plan a blending session, ways to evaluate the beers being blended, and key goals for the blending of a variety of sour beer styles. I will also include real world examples using the tasting and blending notes from my own blending program. My goal is to make this information equally useful to both homebrewers and commercial craft brewers starting their own sour beer programs. Let’s get started with a discussion of why blending is such a versatile tool, looking at both what it can and cannot do for us as brewers.
An Introduction to Blending
As a craft brewing tool, blending can serve a number of purposes. Broadly speaking, I would divide the blending of beers into two general categories: practical and artistic. Of the two, practical blending is typically more straightforward with a functional goal in mind. For example, If a brewer wants to add a specialty flavor to a beer, such as vanilla to a porter, one way to achieve the desired level of this flavor would be to divide the batch in half, add vanilla to only one of the batches, then experiment with blending to find the proportion of each that creates the optimum level of vanilla flavor for that beer. Another example of practical blending would be the use of one beer to adjust a desired characteristic in another. Let’s say that a brewer accidentally mashes a west coast style IPA too high and the resulting beer doesn’t attenuate to the desired level… This brewer could create a second batch that is both mashed lower and utilizes a higher percentage of simple sugar resulting in a very dry and light bodied version of the same beer. Through blending, these two batches could be combined to create an IPA with the body and dryness originally intended by the brewer.
On the other end of the spectrum, the goal of artistic blending is to use a number of individual batches of beer like building blocks to create a final blend that embodies a complexity of aroma and flavor unattainable by a single fermentation. Artistic blending marries perfectly with, and indeed developed historically from, the practice of aging beer in wooden barrels. Whether these beers are spontaneously inoculated or more scientifically fermented, the act of aging in relatively small individual vessels will inevitably create differences and varying qualities in each batch of beer. The true art of blending has traditionally been exemplified by the master lambic blenders of Belgium. However, over the past two decades, a number of craft breweries in the United States have developed substantial barrel programs and utilize artistic blending to craft a wide variety of world class sour beers.
To the homebrewer or startup craft brewer, the blending of delicious and complex sours which rival world class examples may seem to be an impossible feat. In fact, while there are definitely challenges to overcome, it is certainly possible through planning, training, and most importantly, maintaining a dedication to only use beers that are free of defects in the blending process. Artistic blending is a method used to create synergy and elevate a beer to its highest quality. It should never be used to attempt to cover up an off-flavor or defect in a beer. The fact that many world class sour beers embrace some seriously funky characteristics does not mean that the sky is the limit. I will give examples of flavors that, while off-putting in high concentrations, can make positive contributions to a blend and I will cover flavors that should never be included in a blend a bit later. For now, if there is one pearl of wisdom I would impart on every new sour brewer it would be this: Strike the idea of “blending out” an undesirable flavor from your world view!
Getting Into The Blending Mindset
As brewers, we often think of brewing as a linear process that starts on the “hot side” with wort production and then follows a specific set of cold side fermentation and conditioning steps until the beer is ready to be packaged and served. As sour brewers and blenders we are forced to step back from this linear approach and accept a greater level of unpredictability. Personally, I think of a sour beer aging and blending program much like I think of a garden, with the resulting beers being like various salads produced from that garden.
Like tilling and planting a garden, a sour beer program will require a great deal of upfront work in terms of wort production. Once this wort has been introduced into the program, it will largely be up to nature to determine when the individual blender beers within the program become “ripe”. This isn’t to say that you should sit back and ignore your sour beer aging program. Like a garden, it will require routine tending and maintenance to keep the beers within it in the best possible health. The average gardner doesn’t want to eat only one type of vegetable for every meal, and likewise, most brewers will want to build variety into their aging programs. Most importantly, if a gardener wants a fresh and delicious salad, they will go out and make it from the ripest fruits and vegetables, whatever they may be at that time. A sour blender should tend to and monitor their aging beers, allowing the program itself to tell them when a sufficient number of beers have become ready to use in a blend. Like a fresh garden salad, a finished sour beer will never be exactly the same twice, but should be the best possible beer that your program can produce at any given time. Finally, and I will keep harping on this because it is important, you wouldn’t put together a fantastic fresh salad and then throw in some rotten tomatoes just because you had them available. Don’t make the same mistake with your beer.
In order to keep this article on topic, we are going to stay focused on the actual blending portion of sour beer creation. In the future, I will introduce articles that discuss further topics important to a well rounded sour beer program such as wort production, spontaneous vs. controlled fermentation, avoiding problems during aging through proper barrel & barrel room maintenance, etc. At this point we are going to assume that you’ve got a variety of mature blender beers that are ready to be used to craft one or more final products. The next step will to be to plan your blending day. Throughout the rest of this article, I will discuss blending concepts and methods using “barrels” when referencing individual blender beers. This should not be a discouragement to homebrewers, as all of these concepts are equally applicable to beers being aged in carboys or any variety of aging vessels.
Planning a Blending Session
When it comes to artistically blending sour beers, a brewer’s most important tools are their palate and, hopefully, the palates of a small group of beer tasters that will help to error check and confirm the findings of the head blender. There are two things a blender can do in order to ensure that their palate is on-point during a blending session: training before blending day and creating an ideal set of conditions for tasting on blending day.
Palate Training
In terms of sour beer blending, I think that palate training can be broken into two deceptively simple categories: developing a taste for characteristics that you would want to include or adjust in any given blend, and identifying off-flavors that would prevent a beer from being used in a blend. The first category, tasting positive qualities in a beer, is a skill which not only takes time to develop but will also require a serious sour brewer and blender to seek out and experience a wide variety of sample beers.
For example: Let’s say that you would like to blend a beer that will be used to create a raspberry sour inspired by a traditional Oude Lambic Framboise. You’ve done your homework and put the necessary starting ingredients into your aging program by designing beers with a malt bill similar to traditional lambics. You’ve also started those beer’s fermentations either spontaneously or with a variety of mixed cultures that contain organisms isolated from traditional lambics. Now you will be waiting for up to several years for your blender beers to mature. What do you do in the meantime? My answer: Get your hands on every example of traditional framboise and gueuze that you can find. In my opinion, doing so is the only way to truly understand any style, especially one as complex as a fruit lambic. Furthermore, you will begin to build a palate memory for the wide variety of flavors and aromas that occur in such beers. Having these memories will allow you to identify blender beers in your own program that share these characteristics.
When tasting a beer with palate training in mind, I would recommend doing so in a relaxed environment that is free of distractions. It is helpful to serve a beer in clean glassware at the appropriate temperature for the style and then taste it slowly over a period of time so that by the final tastes the beer is approaching room temperature. As the temperature rises, the mix of aromas and flavors that are apparent can change dramatically. It helps to take notes on what you are perceiving and, if you are with company, discuss your findings. Even if you never re-read the notes, the action of both writing and speaking directly activates those two centers in the brain and this can help to develop a more permanent form of memory. When tasting beer in this sense, I find it helpful to take notes on the following:
What distinct aromas do you perceive and how can you relate them to other things you have smelled?
What unique flavors do you perceive and where have you tasted them before?
How is the beer balanced? Does the acidity dominate the malt, vice versa, or are they equally present?
Are there bitter components that may arise from hops or some other ingredient? How does the bitterness compare in intensity to the malt presence and acidity?
Is there a sense of tannic astringency? Do you pick it up at the beginning, middle, or end of a taste? Does it remind you of red wine, dry white wine, or underripe fruit?
Do you taste any off-flavors or flavors that you find unpleasant or distracting?
Can you taste the presence of alcohol? Does its presence correlate with what you know the ABV to be?
How does the beer’s mouthfeel rank from thin to full-bodied? What is the carbonation level from still to champagne-like?
Does a particular characteristic of this beer exactly match your memory of another beer?
Aside from preparing you to become a contributing author for Sour Beer Blog, creating a set of notes like this will force you to think specifically about all of these different attributes for each beer that you’re tasting. Over time, you will build and hone your palate memory which will directly improve your blending skills.
The second half of palate training is learning to identify off-flavors when you taste them. From a quality management perspective, this is potentially even more important than identifying the flavor-positive attributes of a beer. As a beginning blender, if you learn to exclude any beer that contains off-flavors from a blend, your resulting beers will, at a minimum, be off to a good start. From that point it just takes experience and finesse to make them great. I think that one of the easiest ways to learn about off-flavors is to form a tasting group. Members of the group can be asked to find beers that contain a particular off-flavor to share. As a blender, these group tastings will be important to help you identify any “blind-spots” in your palate. Everyone potentially has these, so it is important for you to be honest with yourself about what you can and cannot taste. If you identify that you have a particular blind-spot then it will allow you to recruit people to help you on blending day to check for that particular flavor and avoid it in your choices. The following flavors and aromas are of particular relevance to sour beer blending and should be the first things you learn to identify:
Acetic Acid – The same chemical as vinegar, acetic acid CAN be included at low levels into a blend but should be done so with caution. At low levels this acid helps to round out lactic acid to create a fuller, more complex type of sourness common to lambic style beers. If there is a distinct malt vinegar flavor in a beer then this is too much acetic acid. Additionally, if a sour beer tastes harsh, or actually burns the throat, this is typically a sign of too much acetic acid. During aging, Brettanomyces can convert acetic acid into ethyl acetate, so use extreme caution with blenders that show evidence of both. With age, a beer that has acceptable levels of both acetic acid and ethyl acetate can evolve to have an unacceptable level of ethyl acetate.
Ethyl Acetate – This chemical exists at some low level in all traditional lambics and most sour beers that contain Brettanomyces, so the concept of eliminating it completely isn’t realistic. At low levels, ethyl acetate will add a fruity pear-like note to the aroma of a beer. At intermediate levels, this chemical sharpens the acidity of a sour beer. At a certain threshold, which will vary for each individual, this assertiveness transforms into solvent-like harshness. To most tasters, too much ethyl acetate will come through like nail polish remover or acetone. For the home improvement or construction folks, I think ethyl acetate smells exactly like uncured silicone caulk. For beginning blenders, if you can distinctly detect ethyl acetate in a beer, I would recommend against using that beer in a blend.
Butyric Acid – This organic acid is known to be produced by the Clostridium family of bacteria but may potentially also arise from groups of bacteria which have not been thoroughly studied in relation to brewing science. Butyric acid has a noxious, vomit-like aroma and a flavor associated with rancid butter and bile. The most common source of this chemical in sour beer is from contamination during sour mashing or kettle souring techniques. It can also develop during traditional mixed culture or spontaneous fermentation in situations where the wort goes through a long phase without active fermentation. If these aromas or flavors are present in any detectable level in a blender beer, it should not be used in a blend. If the butyric acid level is low, such beers can be inoculated with an active and healthy pitch of Brettanomyces and aged further. In cases with higher levels of contamination, these beers may never recover and should be discarded.
Isovaleric Acid – Isovaleric acid has two potential sources in sour beer: from unwanted microbial growth or from the use of aged hops. In high concentrations, this organic acid can be difficult to distinguish from butyric acid and is equally offensive. At intermediate levels, isovaleric acid smells of strong cheese or foot odor. At very low levels, this acid takes on the funky odor of bleu cheese and can be incorporated into blends if this level of funk is desired. These acceptable (very low) levels of isovaleric acid only arise in blender beers from the use of aged hops such as are used in the traditional lambic brewing process. If a sour mashed or kettle soured beer portrays characteristics of isovaleric acid, this beer should not be used in a blend. Isovaleric acid that arises from microbial sources is almost universally of too high a concentration to be incorporated into a quality blend. Furthermore, these blender beers do not improve with age. Use blender beers that portray aged hop cheesiness with appropriate caution and when in question.. DUMP THEM!
Oxidation – All beer aged in barrels and most beers aged in any manner will experience some level of micro-oxygenation. This low and slow oxygen exposure can have a variety of beneficial effects on sour beer and it is due to this that quality oak barrels are highly valued by sour beer producers. Sour beer with positive effects from oxidation may develop sherry notes, fruity notes, and / or complex caramel or melanoidin characteristics. Even some of the less desirable effects of oxidation such as a mild paper / cardboard flavor can add to the complexity of funkier sour beers such as traditional lambics. However, caution must be used when incorporating any beer that shows strong signs of oxidation into a blend. Strong oxidation can show itself in sour beer as aromas and flavors of sawdust, rotten fruit, cheese, or wet dog. These characteristics are the result of the end point of malt and hop oxidation compounds and they do not belong in properly blended sour beers.
Indole – Indole is a compound produced microbially from the metabolism of the amino acid tryptophan. Present in human feces, Indole is the chemical responsible for the fecal, “baby diaper”, or manure aromas present in some sour beers. Indole is often a transient chemical during the lifetime of a sour beer. Its concentration can both rise and fall depending upon the specific mix of microorganisms metabolizing at any given time. I would recommend against the use of any blender beer with a notable fecal aroma when crafting a blend. Alternatively, these beers should be allowed to continue to age and rechecked at a later date to see if this aroma has subsided. Advanced blenders may incorporate low levels of indole containing beers into funkier blends to emulate certain lambic varieties, but again, I recommend doing so with extreme caution. Most drinkers will be put off by any level of poop smell in their beer.
Tetrahydropyridines – Tetrahydropyridines are compounds produced during the metabolism of the amino acid lysine. With several known forms, this class of compounds can be both produced and broken down by all of the common classes of sour beer fermenters including Brettanomyces, Lactobacillus, and Pediococcus. Considered to be an off-flavor producing set of chemicals in sour beer, tetrahydropyridines are responsible for a classic cheerios flavor which can arise in sour beer after kegging or bottling. Other flavors associated with Tetrahydropyridines include mousy, urine, or tortilla chip flavors. Like the other transient compound indole, some degree of these flavors may be present in funkier traditional lambic blends. Therefore, beers that portray these characteristics, like beers containing indole, can potentially be used during blending, but caution should be used and, ultimately, it would be best to continue to age and monitor these beers until these characteristics disappear.
Diacetyl – Diacetyl is an intermediate compound produced during fermentation by all of the common families of sour beer fermenters including Saccharomyces, Brettanomyces, heterofermentative Lactobacillus, and (especially) Pediococcus. This chemical can be perceived to taste like the butter on movie theater popcorn or butterscotch. Diacetyl tends to be produced at higher levels during active fermentation and then will typically be reabsorbed by yeast species and metabolized into ethanol as the beer ages. Brettanomyces is especially good at reducing diacetyl and therefore it is always recommended to use Brettanomyces in beers being soured by Pediococcus due to this bacteria’s propensity to produce high levels of this off-flavor. In terms of blending, this is another example of a flavor that should be allowed more time to age out of beers before they are used.
Hydrogen Sulfide, Sulfites, & Mercaptans – These sulfur containing chemicals are all related to each other chemically and have overlapping flavor and aroma profiles which can vary from struck match, to rotten eggs, to rotten vegetables. Sulfur compounds such as these can be produced during the metabolism of the amino acids cysteine and methionine by both classic strains of brewer’s yeast as well a variety of bacterial species. Additionally, hydrogen sulfide can arise at above threshold levels from overuse of sulfur based antimicrobial compounds such as Camden tablets. In my experience, fermentations held at cooler temperatures tend to produce more sulfur aromas than those held at higher temperatures. This tendency is related to the rate of CO 2 production during fermentation as vigorous bubbling of CO 2 will help to scrub these volatile aroma compounds out of a beer. Following this train of thought, CO 2 can often be manually bubbled through a beer to help remove unwanted aromas due to sulfur compounds. Additionally, these beers can be given longer aging times to reduce these compounds. Regardless of how sulfur issues are dealt with, beers that portray high levels of these aromas should not be included when blending. That being said, beers that contain VERY light sulfur aromas can be successfully used while blending to lend a funkier edge to certain styles and can even work synergistically with fruits that have a natural sulfur component such as peaches and apricots.
Dimethylsulfide (DMS) – DMS is another sulfur containing compound which produces a flavor reminiscent of cooked corn or the water that comes out of canned corn or other canned vegetables. If you are looking for a specific palate training example of this flavor, check out Rolling Rock Pale Lager, as this chemical is purposely retained within the beer to produce its signature flavor. DMS is not an off-flavor specific to sour beers but it can still occur within them. DMS is a volatile chemical produced from heating a component of malt called SMM (S-methyl-methionine). After its production, a vigorous boil will then drive-off the volatile DMS. As the boil progresses, the total amount of SMM present continues to lower until the risk of DMS becomes negligible. Very pale malts naturally contain more SMM than darker kilned malts and it is this fact that gives rise to the guideline to boil wort made from pale ale malts for 60 minutes or longer while worts made from pilsner malt should be boiled for 90 minutes or longer. Short or improperly vented boils are not the only potential source of DMS. This compound can also arise from a very slow and unhealthy fermentation or from certain beer spoiling microbes not common in sour beer fermentations. Regardless of its cause, if a blender beer contains detectable levels of DMS, it should not be used in a blend. Like other volatile sulfur compounds, low to intermediate levels of DMS can potentially be scrubbed out of a beer with CO 2 bubbling, but if this does not work or is not feasible, then these beers should simply be dumped.
Yeast Autolysis – As dead yeast cells break down within a beer they release a variety of chemical byproducts. This process can leave a beer with a rubbery, plastic, or rotten meat aroma and flavor. Sour beers with one or more active strains of Brettanomyces are often relatively resistant to the development of such off-flavors. This is because Brettanomyces will often metabolize the compounds being released from autolyzed yeast. However, this is not always the case depending upon both the strains involved and the quantity of yeast left to autolyze. The flavors of autolysis are sometimes mistaken by brewers to be part of the “good funk” present in complex sour blends but, in my opinion, this is a mistake. Beers that portray these characteristics should be avoided when blending.
Phenolic Compounds – Phenolic compounds encompass a very large family of aroma and flavor producing chemicals that can exist within sour beer. Many of these compounds contribute to the enticing funkiness of traditional lambics and modern craft sours. There are, however, some aromas and flavors that may develop within properly brewed and fermented sour beers that are difficult to incorporate into a blend without overpowering it. Many of these chemicals will be perceived one way at low concentrations and differently as the concentration rises. For example, 4-ethyl phenol, which is commonly produced by Brettanomyces, produces a pleasant horsey, spicy, farmy funk at lower concentrations. However, as the concentration of this phenol rises, it can begin to taste like liquid smoke, Band-Aids, or Chloraseptic (medicinal). When creating a blend, flavors such as clove, pepper, baking spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice), horse blanket, barnyard, hay, ozone, and dried flowers are all potentially positive additions to “good funk”. On the other hand, flavors such as plastic, smoky, bitter, burnt rubber, medicinal, or band-aid, should be avoided. The tricky part here is that the same phenolic compounds can create both sets of flavors. Therefore, if your blending beer portrays characteristics from the positive list, then it is okay to use this beer for any portion of the final blend. However, if a blending beer has flavors from the negative list, this beer may still potentially still be used as a small portion of the final blend. You have to be very careful with this type of blending, because without experimentation there will be no way to determine how much of one of these beers will be too much. To determine this, create a small scale version of your intended blend and then incorporate small and carefully measured volumes of your strongly phenolic beer into test glasses. Doing so will give you a guideline for how much of this strongly phenolic beer can be used to create a final blend with appropriate levels and varieties of funk. You may also find that the unpleasant phenolic flavors remain present regardless of the concentration that you try to incorporate. In these cases, the blender beer has a mix of phenols which can only produce negative flavors and this beer should be aged further or dumped.
Now that we have discussed palate training from both a flavor positive and an off-flavor detection perspective, let’s take a look at what we can do on blending day to create the best set of conditions for tasting. Doing so will help us get the most out of our previous palate training.
Blending Day Do’s and Don’ts
Do:
Use glassware that concentrates aromas.
Use glassware that concentrates aromas. Smell samples thoroughly before tasting.
Allow a sample to hang out in your mouth for a few moments before swallowing. Breath some air into your mouth while tasting a sample, this unlocks potentially hidden flavors.
Taste samples at a natural meal time when you are hungry. For most tasters, the ideal time will be between 11:00 am and 1:00 pm.
Use palate cleansers such as water, light lager, unsalted crackers, or unseasoned breads.
Taste samples in a calm and comfortable environment.
Reset your sense of smell between samples by smelling the clean dry skin of your forearm for a few moments.
Swallow a portion of each sample. Some palate senses are not activated when samples are spit out.
Taste samples at cool or room temperature. When screening for off-flavors opt for warmer temperatures.
Take notes on each sample.
Don’t:
Smoke tobacco or marijuana immediately before or during the tasting.
Wear perfume or cologne to the blending session.
Drink samples ice cold.
Eat salty, spicy, or greasy foods before or during the tasting.
Taste samples while ill or upset.
Get drunk.
Now that we are equipped with both palate training and practical tips for blending day, lets take a look at methods we can use to create our blended sour beer.
Blending Methods
When it comes to actually producing a blended sour beer, I am going to discuss two general methods as well as some variations and possibilities within those methods. None of these variations are inherently better than the others. They all focus on maintaining quality while having their own strengths and weaknesses depending upon the goal you are trying to achieve.
The first of these I will call the volume production method. This method tends to be the most applicable to sour brewers with large barrel programs who are looking to craft a particular blend on a rotating or seasonal basis. The simplest version of this method looks like this:
The blender or group of blenders tastes samples of each barrel which could potentially be included in a blend (for example: all of the golden sour barrels with more than 6 months of age).
Barrels that contain off-flavors that cannot be fixed with age (blend killers) are marked for disposal.
Barrels with characteristics that fall too far from the profile of the intended final blend are excluded. Examples may include beers that are under-attenuated, too sour, not sour enough, have strong fermentation characteristics that don’t belong in this particular blend, etc. These may be allowed to age further, or used for other projects.
After all the beers that shouldn’t be included have been marked, everything else is put into the blend.
In its simplest form, this style of blending is an effective way to produce a quality beer that portrays the “median” of the current range of flavors being produced within your aging program. It benefits from being relatively easy and straightforward to carry out. A drawback of this method is that the resulting blend may become somewhat muddled depending upon how many significantly different characteristics exist within all of the blender beers.
The next step-up in blending complexity takes the volume production method and adds some steps which will allow the brewer to steer the blend toward a more defined goal. To do this, add the following steps to the four steps discussed above:
Before tasting any of the barrels, create a list of characteristics that you want to be able to control in the final blend. The more characteristics you choose, the more complicated the process will become. For example, if blending a Flanders style sour red ale, you may choose that you want to pay special attention to a beer’s sweet to dry balance, acidity, and fruit-like ester aromas.
Create a basic scale for each attribute that you will take notes on when tasting. There is no right or wrong way to do this, it all comes down to your needs and what works for you. Using our Flanders red example, you could rank sweet to dry from 1 to 10, or you could simply mark beers as sweet, balanced, or dry. The more precision you build into your scale the more control you will have over your final blend but potentially the more complicated the planning process will become.
After excluding any barrels that contain unwanted off-flavors, you will produce your final blend on paper by adding the characteristics of each barrel to a tally sheet. For example, let’s say that you want to create a Flanders Red with a balanced sweetness to dryness, moderate acidity and a medium to high level of fruit esters. Start by adding in all the barrels that contain beers that already match your desired characteristics. After that, begin adding in additional barrels one at a time and using other barrels to counterweight the characteristics that are different from your goal. For example, you may have 5 barrels that have exceptionally high ester qualities. However, three of these barrels are extremely acidic, and two are far too sweet / under-attenuated. You would seek to counteract these qualities by adding additional barrels that have low acidity yet are very dry. Continue this process until you have reached a desired blend volume or run out of blender beers with the necessary characteristics.
By tracking various characteristics and using them to plan the blend, you can really tailor this blending method to suit your needs and dial in your end product to whatever level of complexity and precision that is possible given the size and variety of your sour aging program. It benefits from giving you additional control over the final product, while a major drawback of this method is that is takes more time to plan the blend. Additionally, as your desire to dial-in an exact mental picture of a beer increases, the more beers you may have to exclude from the blend, and the smaller your final output will become.
I call the final style of blending that we will discuss the cuvée method. This process is essentially our previous methods taken to the maximum level of tasting, note taking, and planning. This method works best to produce a relatively small final blend from a relatively large aging program with a large level of variation and options within its beers. This style of blending is the most similar to that performed by traditional lambic blenders when producing specialty or “cuvée” blends. One a commercial scale, this type of blending typically starts as a secondary project that develops after tasting all of the barrels for a volume production blend. During this tasting, barrels with notable and distinct fermentation characteristics are marked for a more detailed tasting |
Kiwis Dean Whare and Dallin Watene-Zelezniak.
The Warriors will parade their two star Kiwis signings, Roger Tuivasa-Sheck and Issac Luke.by Brett Stevens on April 25, 2013
In this topsy-turvy world, the fools are sure they are geniuses. Some may even be very intelligent and even genius by the IQ test marker, because intelligence generates such a flood of information it makes people easier to mislead. Ultimately what makes someone a fool is their will to mislead themselves.
Even very smart fools are still foolish because they have decided to escape from plain logic. Plain logic suggests that the world is as it is, and we the inhabitants of it must adapt ourselves to it. Fools instead prefer to think that they can alter how the world appears, and have thus created a higher “truth” than reality.
This is an artifact of the social process, by which my buddy comes to me and tells me that he has failed a test, his marriage has broken up, or his job isn’t going well. Because I sympathize, I tell him that the test was rigged, the ex-wife was no durn good anyway, and the job is not important. Then we go fishing and talk about good things.
That substitute reality makes him feel better, and lets time pass so that he can heal from the shock and change to meet the new circumstances. It is meant kindly; it’s as old as the hills. However, many of us know the difference. We know that reality is more complex than “the world is bad and you are good.”
From that simple formula we develop the idea of the modern “blank slate,” in which we assume all people are the same and differ in life condition only because life did things to them unequally. This allows us to extend confidence to their personalities, and bypass their actual abilities. It is kindly meant.
However, extrapolating from that — because no idea exists in a vacuum, and each effect of the prior idea becomes the starting point for the next idea — we develop the modern concept of “being different.” This is because, if we’re all the same and outcomes are arbitrary, we can only prove ourselves interesting or worthy by deliberate choices of appearance.
Thus enters a new religion: that of heterogeneity, or of everyone being different. We call it pluralism, and it takes many forms. First there is warfare to remove class, so that we are each different as individuals and not members of groups. Then we want to remove culture, nationality, ethnicity, gender, religion, etc. Nothing can come in the way of the individual being different.
As part of this, we engage in the facade of “diversity.” In this, we invite people from all over the world to our country, where we intend to mainstream them and assimilate them with our non-culture, then force them to be different just like us by dressing outlandishly, having weird hobbies, Instagraming odd food, being quirky and ironic, etc.
But we should ask ourselves a vital question. Who wants heterogeneity? It would be interesting to see what type of personality is involved and the underlying psychological factors. And on the flip side, who are those who want homogeneity?
Let’s answer that one first. The type of person who wants homogeneity is someone who emphasizes efficiency and function over all else. With most people being similar, and acting in unison or independently toward similar goals, efficiency is at an all-time high.
This means that jobs, duties, etc. are done quickly and the focus returns to the individual. In fact, under this system the individual has a lot more free time. People who want homogeneity are people whose primary work is within, improving themselves through discipline and a transcendental view of reality. Our ancestors were like this.
And who wants heterogeneity? People whose “within” is empty, and who want constant distraction to fill the void left by its absence. For them, society is entertainment, jobs are socialization, duties are a chance to show off their uniqueness and life is without inner purpose.
People of this nature destroy everything they encounter, usually by slow subversion. There is room for only one love in their lives: themselves. However, they don’t express this by disciplining themselves or looking for larger meaning outside themselves. That would oppress the self. Instead they indulge it, and like a chaotic world instead.
The chaos helps them hide, among other things. A crowd full of diverse and motley people is the best place to conceal one’s own broken self-esteem, ill deeds, or even just lack of any real purpose or joys. When you are surrounded by chaos, it functions as a form of camouflage, so that you fade into the background. You do not stand out, because everyone is standing out.
They are only running away and hiding, however. The real challenge is within. Most of humanity is composed of individuals with low impulse control whose actions represent a tennis ball zinging from emotion to judgment to desire. They respond not deliberately, but to whatever pops into their heads at the moment. As a result, their decisions (and the consequences of those) are chaotic, inconsistent and often incomprehensible.
A lucky few use discipline to make their minds work more like deliberate organs. They encounter stimulus, whether without or within, and analyze it carefully before making a choice. Nothing is reaction, and emotion and/or socialization does not rule them. Unlike most of their species, they are truly liberated to own their own decisions.
This is the real blank slate, and the one the heterogeneity folks fear. Their minds are empty of preconditions and reactions. In contrast to that state of clarity, most of us look like impulsive animals. No one wants to be shown up like that, so many of our people invent the fanciful world of heterogeneity to hide that shortcoming.
Tags: crowdism, discipline, heterogeneity, homogeneity
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.Donald Trump took on Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Tuesday, scorning the Democratic presidential candidate as "weak" for allowing Black Lives Matter activists to take over the mic during a speech this past weekend.
"That would never happen to me," the GOP presidential candidate told a crowd of some 2,800 supporters in Michigan. "I thought that was disgusting," he added. "That showed such weakness, the way he was taken away by two young women -- the microphone. They just took the whole place over."
While Trump saw one likeness between himself and Sanders -- "He's getting the biggest crowds and I'm getting the biggest crowds." -- the real estate mogul repeated that he wouldn't have stepped back and let the women talk. "Believe me," he said, "that's not going to happen to Trump."
The Black Lives Matter activists interrupted Sanders as he began a speech discussing Social Security and Medicare before a crowd of a few thousand in Seattle on Saturday. The two said that Sanders didn't pay enough attention to criminal justice reform and racial equality. After organizers failed to regain control of the mic, Sanders left the stage and the event was shut down.
The Democratic rival to Hillary Clinton has seen a swell of support in recent weeks, drawing crowds in the tens of thousands in key primary states. Still, Sanders is struggling to gain traction among black voters. A recent Gallup poll found that only 23 percent of black voters view Sanders favorably, while 80 percent view Clinton favorably. Sanders is also less familiar to black voters.Janet Porter, a spokesperson for the embattled Roy Moore Senate campaign in Alabama, speaks to CNN about the conspiracy to accuse the Alabama Senate candidate of being a child molester.
"I can see why" Moore wouldn't go on CNN, she said to the CNN anchor. "There's a reason people have the phrase 'fake news.' You're not investigating the false accusations, the credibility problems that are screaming -- from the forged yearbook, to every single thing that has been disputed."
She blamed the fake news on "People who are out to get him because there is a Senate seat in play that has the Supreme Court in the balance."
"So I choose to side," she said. "Instead of with the lynch mob media, instead of the Democrat liberals, instead of the convicted felons that George Soros is registering to vote, I side with the man who... stood for God."
Video courtesy of The PolitiStickBALTIMORE (WJZ) — Mold, mice and a lack of medical care: Inhumane conditions that advocates say continue to plague the Baltimore City Detention Center, and may be linked to seven deaths.
Now they’ve moved to reopen a lawsuit to force state officials to make improvements.
Meghan McCorkell has more on the developments.
That lawsuit alleges pervasive management failures have led to unconstitutional conditions inside the detention center.
Black mold growing around vents.
“You’re fighting lice, mice, roaches,” said Debra Gardner, Public Justice Center.
Showers with so much rust, you can barely see the floor.
“Eighty-five degree temperatures in the summer, bone chilling cold and drafts in the winter,” Gardner continued.
Mattresses — shredded with stuffing falling out.
All of it attorneys say was found this year behind the doors of the Baltimore City Detention Center.
“That’s an unacceptable level of risk for the people who have to stay there,” said Gardner.
For decades, civil rights organizations have fought to clean up conditions at the facility.
Now Debra Gardner with the Public Justice Center says the state is in violation of a settlement agreement, failing to fix issues and provide adequate healthcare.
A motion filed Tuesday details 13 deaths in the facility over the past two and a half years.
“The poor access to healthcare may have contributed to seven of those deaths. That’s more than half,” said Gardner.
The detention center is the same facility at the center of the prison gang scandal back in 2013.
The lawsuit alleges deteriorating physical conditions of the jail may have contributed to gang activity.
Corrections Secretary Stephen Moyer, who’s only been on the job four months, says he is looking into these longstanding concerns, saying in part: “We are committed to providing the best service to our clients and will remain committed to ensuring that accepted standards are met.”
Public safety officials say over the past ten years, they’ve spent $58 million on safety and security improvements at the detention center.
The Department of Justice has been monitoring progress at the Baltimore City Detention Center after launching its own investigation into conditions back in 2000.Image caption Most Belgians are Catholics
Harrowing details of some 300 cases of alleged sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy in Belgium have been released by a Church investigator.
Peter Adriaenssens said cases of abuse, mostly involving minors, had been found in nearly every diocese, and 13 alleged victims had committed suicide.
Two-thirds of victims were boys but 100 girls also suffered, he said.
Belgian media have accused the Church of seeking to hide abuse despite prosecutions of abusers.
While the commission he headed had found no indication that the Church had systematically sought to cover up cases, Mr Adriaenssens said its findings were a "body blow" to the Church in Belgium.
The child psychiatrist, who has worked with trauma victims for 23 years, said nothing had prepared him for the stories of abuse, which multiplied as former abusers gave testimony.
"We saw how priests, called up by the commission and asked to help seek the truth, were willing to set up the list of 10, 15, 20 victims they abused during boarding school while the commission knew only of one," he said.
Many alleged victims came forward to testify to the commission after the Bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, resigned this year, admitting to having sexually abused a boy before and after becoming a bishop.
Mr Adriaenssens announced his commission's findings after an appeals court ruled on Thursday that a raid by police 10 weeks ago to seize the commission's files was illegal, and the files could not be used by prosecutors.
The commission shut down after the raid. The Church is due to announce on Monday how its investigations may be continued.
'Abused aged two'
The commission was never able to finish its enquiries but even so its findings make grim reading, the BBC's Jonty Bloom reports from Brussels.
It reveals that abuse was at its worst in the 1960s when it was so extensive that it was going on in almost every diocese and at every Church-run boarding school.
Assaults on boys usually ended by their 15th year but abuse of girls could continue into adulthood, the report found.
People, Mr Adriaenssens said, should realise that the sexual abuse was "very bad", which was why victims were still suffering decades later.
One alleged victim told the commission of being abused at the age of two.
A female victim testified that she had been abused at the age of 17 by a priest and had tried to seek help from a bishop in 1983.
"I told him 'I have a problem with one of your priests.' He told me: 'Ignore him and he will leave you alone'," she said.
In addition to those who killed themselves, six alleged victims attempted suicide.
No charges
The commission found that the level of abuse had declined in the 1980s.
Our correspondent say this is perhaps because by then there were fewer priests and they were less involved in the education system.
Half of those accused are now dead, the commission said.
The commission also stressed that sexual abuse happened within all religions and organisations.
It recommended punishing abusers who did not come forward and setting up a solidarity fund for victims, to which abusers should contribute.
Victims, the commission concluded, deserved "a courageous Church which is not afraid to confront its vulnerability, to recognise it, to co-operate in finding fair responses".
Thursday's court verdict is being seen as a serious blow to prosecutors, who have yet to bring charges in the current abuse investigation.
A number of Belgian priests have been successfully prosecuted for the sexual abuse of minors in the past decade.UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, welcomed by Moïse Kapenda Tshombe, leader of the Katanga province of Belgian Congo, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in 1960
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United Nations (United States) (AFP)
A new UN report on the mysterious 1961 plane crash that killed UN secretary-general Dag Hammarskjold in central Africa has concluded it appears "plausible" the aircraft came under attack.
Sweden has called "an open wound" the unsolved questions over Hammarskjold's death, which came during the Cold War between Western nations and the Soviet bloc.
The latest findings take into account newly-released information from the archives of Belgium, Britain, Canada, Germany and the United States.
Hammarskjold, a Swedish diplomat who had been the UN's second secretary-general since 1953, was on his way to negotiate a ceasefire for mining-rich Katanga province in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo when he died along with 15 other people.
His plane crashed on September 17 or 18 of 1961 near Ndola, in northern Rhodesia, now known as Zambia. Early inquiries said pilot error was to blame but an independent commission in 2013 noted the possibility of "hostile action" and called for further investigation.
The new report by a former chief justice of Tanzania, Mohamed Chande Othman, was presented to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in August after reviewing the secret files.
"Based on the totality of the information we have at hand, it appears plausible that external attack or threat may have been a cause of the crash," said an executive summary seen by AFP on Tuesday.
The plane registered as SE-BDY may have been downed "by way of direct attack causing SE-BDY to crash, or by causing a momentary distraction of the pilots," it added.
Othman said there was a "significant amount of evidence from eyewitnesses that they observed more than one aircraft in the air, that the other aircraft may have been a jet, that SE-BDY was on fire before it crashed, and/or that SE-BDY was fired upon or otherwise actively engaged by another aircraft."
Such evidence "is not easily dismissed," he said.
- Katangan rebels and their jets -
The judge zeroed in on new information concerning aircraft operated by Katangan rebels, who opposed Congo's independence from Belgium, suggesting they had more air power than previously thought.
Previous inquiries had dismissed the theory that Katangan forces may have shot down the plane because it was believed that they had only one jet -- a French-made Fouga -- at the time.
New information provided by the United States and other sources showed that three Fouga aircraft were purchased from France and delivered to Katanga in 1961 "against objections of the US government."
Other planes, including one from West Germany, were available for use in Katanga and several airfields were employed by Katangan forces in the region, according to the new information.
Documents received from Britain and the United States appear to establish for the first time that both countries had agents in and around Congo at the time of the crash.
This showed that further information on the cause of the crash may be found in the intelligence, security and defense archives of member-states, said the report.
Othman said he was unable to verify a claim by a Belgian pilot, "Beukels," who told French diplomat Claude de Kemoularia in 1967 that he shot down or forced the plane to crash.
Requests for information were also sent to South Africa, which is said to have documents on "Operation Celeste," a purported plot to kill Hammarskjold, but access to those has not yet been granted.
Russia and France have also been asked to provide documents.
Othman recommended that governments appoint a senior official to scour their archives, with particular attention paid to radio intercepts and related records.
The report is expected to be presented to the UN General Assembly which in 2014 adopted a resolution that called for a full investigation to shed light once and for all on Hammarskjold's death.
© 2017 AFPPresident Trump's political rhetoric on North Korea has differed from before he declared his candidacy to now. (Taylor Turner/The Washington Post)
We forget sometimes that President Trump’s political rhetoric was forged not over years of policymaking or in discussions with experts on foreign policy and domestic issues, but in weekly phone interviews with “Fox and Friends.” Before he declared his candidacy, the real estate developer and TV personality would appear on the program every Monday morning, weighing in on the issues of the day as the hosts offered their now-familiar lack of criticism of his musings.
On April 8, 2013, for example, Trump called in to discuss a variety of subjects: his show, “Celebrity Apprentice,” WrestleMania — oh, and North Korea.
Host Steve Doocy broached that subject by noting that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un might soon test a nuclear weapon “or do something dopey like that” — but that China might actually be starting to put pressure on the rogue nation.
[As U.S. and South Korea conduct military exercises, North Korea’s leader taunts Trump over ICBM]
“Well, I think China has total control over the situation,” Trump responded. North Korea “wouldn’t exist for a month without China. And I think China, frankly, as you know — and I’ve been saying it for a long time, and people are starting to see that I’m right — China is not our friend.”
He had been saying this for a while, in fact. He tweeted about it in March of that year, saying that, “China could solve this problem easily if they wanted to, but they have no respect for our leaders.” A few weeks later, another tweet: “North Korea can’t survive, or even eat, without the help of China. China could solve this problem with one phone call — they love taunting us!”
China controls North Korea. So now besides cyber hacking us all day, they are using the Norks to taunt us. China is a major threat. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2013
How did “Fox and Friends” reply to Trump’s argument? Well, the conversation quickly transitioned to Trump having been inaugurated into the pro wrestling Hall of Fame.
To be fair, Trump wasn’t a politician then, so there was much less of a reason to demand a hard answer. Of course, there was also little reason to ask his opinion. But this is the crucible in which Trump’s policy on North Korea was formed — and over the course of the presidential campaign, it didn’t evolve much.
During the Republican primary debates last year, Trump’s argument was consistent: North Korea was China’s problem, and China wasn’t dealing with it because they didn’t respect President Barack Obama since Obama wouldn’t strong-arm them. In a January 2016 debate, Trump argued that China was “ripping us on trade” and that the country was “devaluing their currency,” implying that he might use tariffs and a crackdown on that manipulation to bring China to heel on the North Korea issue.
Since his inauguration, President Trump’s tone on Twitter has oscillated between blaming China for North Korea and dismissing China as unnecessary in containing the problem. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
The following month, Trump put the whole issue in China’s lap:
I deal with them. They tell me. They have total, absolute control, practically, of North Korea. They are sucking trillions of dollars out of our country — they’re rebuilding China with the money they take out of our country. I would get on with China, let China solve that problem. They can do it quickly and surgically. That’s what we should do with North Korea.
In a debate the following March, Trump criticized how Obama and other presidents had handled tensions, saying that “every time this maniac from North Korea does anything, we immediately send our ships. We get virtually nothing.” (In April of this year, Trump’s administration said it was sending an armada to North Korea in response to Kim’s saber-rattling, but no ships were actually en route.)
To the New York Times at that time, Trump was explicit in his charge that Obama was impotent on the issue.
China says well we’ll try. I can see them saying, “We’ll try, we’ll try.” And I can see them laughing in the room next door when they’re together. So China should be talking to North Korea. But China’s tweaking us. China’s toying with us. They are when they’re building in the South China Sea. They should not be doing that but they have no respect for our country and they have no respect for our president.
In a speech in April 2016, Trump said that “President Obama watches helplessly as North Korea increases its aggression and expands even further with its nuclear reach. Our president has allowed China to continue its economic assault on American jobs and wealth, refusing to enforce trade rules — or apply the leverage on China necessary to rein in North Korea.”
Once he won the GOP presidential nomination, Trump repeatedly hammered Democratic rival Hillary Clinton on her failure to curtail the North Korea problem when she was the secretary of state. His campaign created a lengthy list of ways in which Clinton had failed, citing news reports of successful nuclear tests and rocket launches a few months into Clinton’s State Department tenure. Despite that, his campaign’s national defense platform included only one mention of North Korea, arguing that the United States should bolster its missile defenses.
During the general-election debates, Trump stuck to the same theme. “China should solve that problem for us,” he said in September 2016. “China should go into North Korea. China is totally powerful as it relates to North Korea.”
When Trump met with Obama during the presidential transition, Obama reportedly warned Trump that North Korea would be the most urgent problem he would face. Trump, during that period, continued to argue that China must address the North Korea threat and that, under his watch, no North Korean weapon could strike the United States.
North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the U.S. It won't happen! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2017
Once he became president, though, Trump’s tone shifted.
In April of this year, with the 100-day mark of his presidency looming, Trump told Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo that getting China to fix the problem was not that simple. Describing a conversation with President Xi Jinping of China, Trump said that North Korea was the first thing he brought up. However, Xi “then explain[ed] thousands of years of history with Korea. Not that easy.”
“In other words,” Trump said, “not as simple as people would think.”
Since his inauguration, his tone on Twitter has oscillated between blaming China for North Korea and dismissing China as unnecessary in containing the problem.
March:
North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been "playing" the United States for years. China has done little to help! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 17, 2017
April:
I have great confidence that China will properly deal with North Korea. If they are unable to do so, the U.S., with its allies, will! U.S.A. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 13, 2017
(He made this point that same month in an interview with the Financial Times, saying that “if China is not going to solve North Korea, we will. That is all I am telling you.”)
China is very much the economic lifeline to North Korea so, while nothing is easy, if they want to solve the North Korean problem, they will — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 21, 2017
May:
North Korea has shown great disrespect for their neighbor, China, by shooting off yet another ballistic missile…but China is trying hard! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 29, 2017
June:
While I greatly appreciate the efforts of President Xi & China to help with North Korea, it has not worked out. At least I know China tried! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 20, 2017
July:
….and Japan will put up with this much longer. Perhaps China will put a heavy move on North Korea and end this nonsense once and for all! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 4, 2017
China can fix this and needs to. Maybe China can fix this. If China doesn’t fix this, we will. China isn’t fixing this, but can.
The reason for this back-and-forth is obvious: Trump promised that he could put pressure on the Chinese to cut off North Korea, forcing that nation to end its nuclear ambitions. But once Trump took office, that policy proved to be much harder than he’d presented. So, lacking an obvious solution (since none exists), he continues to try to blame China’s policy while explaining why the Chinese haven’t been moved to action.
As he’s done so, he’s been put in the uncomfortable position of having to wave away his past promises. On labeling China a currency manipulator, for example, he told “Fox and Friends” in April that he wouldn’t press that issue as long as China was working with the United States on North Korea.
“[W]hat am I going to do, start a trade war with China in the middle of him working on a bigger problem — frankly — with North Korea?” Trump said to host Ainsley Earhardt. “So I’m dealing with China with great respect. I have great respect for him. We’ll see what he can do. Now maybe he won’t be able to help. That’s possible. I think he’s trying, but maybe he won’t be able to help. And that’s a whole different story. So we’ll see what happens.”
He said as much on Twitter.
Why would I call China a currency manipulator when they are working with us on the North Korean problem? We will see what happens! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 16, 2017
To Earhardt, Trump also praised China’s rejection of coal ships from North Korea as evidence that the country was trying to pressure the North Koreans. On Wednesday morning, though, he seemed to claim defeat.
Trade between China and North Korea grew almost 40% in the first quarter. So much for China working with us – but we had to give it a try! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 5, 2017
The implication, then, is that Trump will now take the economic actions against China that he once promised.
But, then, he’s already given himself an out on talking about what he intends to do. During a news conference in February, Trump insisted to reporters that, in essence, his plans for North Korea were none of their business.
“I don’t have to tell you. I don’t want to be one of these guys that say, ‘Yes, here’s what we’re going to do.’ I don’t have to do that. I don’t have to tell you what I’m going to do in North Korea,” he said. “I don’t have to tell you what I’m going to do in North Korea. And I don’t have to tell you what I’m going to do with Iran. You know why? Because they shouldn’t know. And eventually, you guys are going to get tired of asking that question.”
The president’s current conundrum is twofold. First, there’s no easy solution. Second, Trump promised that there was one.
Had his policy been crafted by a team other than Fox’s early-morning talk show hosts, that second problem might not exist.Eurovision Success With seven wins under its belt, Ireland is the most successful country in the history of Eurovision. Dana was the first to get the honour with All Kinds Of Everything in 1970. She was followed by the King of Eurovision, Johnny Logan, who has won the competition three times: What’s Another Year? in 1981, Hold Me Now in ’87 and Why Me?’ sung by Linda Martin in Sweden in ’92. And we’re in Denmark again this year hoping Can-linn Feat. Kasey Smith can bring back the trophy. The Golden Years The 90s were of course Ireland’s golden years with three Eurovision wins in a row, followed by a seventh win in Norway in ’96. However our win in 1994 is the most memorable; not for the song but for the interval act who stole the show (and our hearts) that night. The sight of over 100 simultaneously tapping feet was breathtaking and when it finished the audience stood up and cheered elatedly.
The ‘bodhran’, an Irish drum
Belsonic music festival in Belfast city
Fleadh Cheoil in County Cavan
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Breaking Records There have been many more standing ovations for Riverdance since then. They’ve gone on to play over 10,000 performances and a global audience of two billion people have watched the shows. On a clear July day in 2013, by the banks of Dublin’s river Liffey, the troupe set their sights on breaking a record. But not just any record: the record for the longest Riverdance line in the world. Did they break it? They, and over 2000 dancer, sure did. Here’s the video evidence.
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All Kinds Of Everything But we’re not just about the legs in Ireland. Music is in our blood, and has been integral to our culture for centuries. We’re known throughout the world for our traditional music sessions (or “trad” as we like to call it) and U2 are the biggest rock band on the planet (real fans will love the hidden U2 room in the Little Museum of Dublin). When it comes to music you’ll find all kinds of everything here. Northern Ireland might be small but its artists are responsible for selling over 100 million records combined. Acts from or made in Belfast include Snow Patrol, The Undertones and Van Morrison, and you can hear live music every night of the week in venues across town. Or, for those who prefer more classical tones, Belfast's Grand Opera House is not to be missed. Culture, trad and a rock legend Speaking of not to be missed, Limerick city is currently basking in the arty glow that comes with being a City of Culture. Ireland’s first, in fact. We’d need a year and a day to tell you all the wonderful musical mayhem that’s going on there, but suffice to say, it’s good. If your tastes veer towards the more traditional, there’s a wealth of trad events taking place across the country all year including music festivals and sessions. You can even learn how to play the bodhrán (a hand-held Irish drum) if you like. And for you rock ’n’ roll kids, an Irish rock legend will be celebrated at the eponymous Rory Gallagher International Tribute Festival (Donegal, May-June) while Electric Picnic (Laois, August) is arguably one of Europe's most chilled and most adored music festivals. So it may have been a long time since our last Eurovision win, but we’ve been keeping busy. And, sure, we just want to let everyone else have a go of the trophy too. After all, it’s only fair.The network opted not to renew Seder’s contributor contract on Monday after a 2009 tweet resurfaced online, but has reversed its decision. MSNBC reverses course on firing contributor Seder after backlash
MSNBC on Thursday reversed its decision to fire contributor Sam Seder after critics said the network overreacted to right-wing media recirculating an old tweet in which he made a crude joke.
“Sometimes you just get one wrong — and that’s what happened here,” MSNBC President Phil Griffin said in a statement announcing Seder’s return.
Story Continued Below
The network opted not to renew Seder’s contributor contract on Monday after a 2009 tweet resurfaced online in which he made a crude joke about his daughter and movie director Roman Polanski, who fled the country decades ago after being charged with raping a 13-year-old girl.
"Don’t care re Polanski, but I hope if my daughter is ever raped it is by an older truly talented man w/a great sense of mise en scene," Seder tweeted, which he said was a criticism of people who defended Polanski's art.
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Mike Cernovich, a popular conservative blogger and figure in the so-called alt-right movement, re-upped the remarks and called on reporters to cover the matter as they have done with sex-related controversies in the media.
The decision not to renew Seder’s contract immediately incited a backlash online from journalists and media critics who said MSNBC had caved to pressure from Cernovich. A petition for MSNBC to rehire Seder had garnered over 12,000 signatures as of Thursday morning.
“EVERY media article has defended Sam Seder's right to make child rape ‘jokes’ that would get anyone else fired, but yeah there is no media narrative at all, and there's totally a diversity of viewpoint in the media. Yes, sure thing guys, we totally buy that,” Cernovich sarcastically quipped on Twitter on Wednesday.
Griffin said MSNBC “heard the feedback” and that it “understand the point Sam was trying to make in that tweet was actually in line with our values, even though the language was not.”
"I appreciate MSNBC's thoughtful reconsideration and willingness to understand the cynical motives of those who intentionally misrepresented my tweet for their own toxic, political purposes,” Seder said in a statement.
News of Seder’s return, first reported by The Intercept, was acknowledged by MSNBC staffers online Thursday.
“Welcome back, @SamSeder!” MSNBC “All In” host Christopher Hayes tweeted.
This article tagged under: MSNBCKurt Westergaard's controversial cartoons of the prophet Muhammad sparked worldwide protests and forced him into hiding
Danish police have shot and wounded a man at the home of Kurt Westergaard, whose controversial cartoons of the prophet Muhammad sparked a storm of Muslim protest five years ago.
Danish media reported last night that Westergaard, 74, was at home near the city of Aarhus with his wife and grandchild when a 27-year-old Somalian man armed with a knife and axe tried to break in.
Chief superintendant Morten Jensen, from East Jutland police, said: "At 10pm a personal alarm was received from Mr Westergaard's house."
Officers found a man "armed with an axe and a knife in either hand," he said. "He broke a window of Mr Westergaard's house. He tried to attack one officer with an axe and he was shot in his right leg and his left arm." He said the man was not seriously injured and was now in custody.
In 2005 the Jyllands-Posten newspaper published a caricature by Westergaard depicting Muhammad wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a fuse.
Islamic tradition says no image of the prophet should be produced or shown.
Danish embassies were attacked including the one in Damascus which was burned down in 2006 and death threats against Westergaard forced him into hiding.
In March 2008 Denmark's three main newspapers reprinted the cartoon after the arrest of three men for plotting to murder the artist.The three – a Dane of Moroccan origin and two Tunisians – were picked up in a dawn raid near Aarhus following a long surveillance operation by the country's intelligence services, the PET.
The Dane was eventually released without charge and one of the two Tunisians was deported. The other was sent to live in an asylum centre north of Copenhagen.
The Jyllands-Posten also carried a statement from the cartoonist revealing how he had feared for his life but then "turned fear into anger and indignation".
"It has made me angry that a perfectly normal everyday activity, which I used to do by the thousand, was abused to set off such madness," the statement added.
In today's Jyllands-Posten, Westergaard described the incident: "He threatened to kill me. I ran out to the bathroom where our security room is. I was worried for my grandchild. I was afraid.
"I knew that I could not match him. So I alerted the police. It was scary. It was really close. But we did it. It was good."
Westergaard was moved to a safe place last night but was unable to say what the attempted attack would mean for his future.
"It is too early to say. I must speak with PET and then we will see," he said.A railway track being laid in the Dima Hasao district of Assam. A massive push to railway infrastructure is currently under way in the entire Northeast. (Source: Express photo by Dasarath Deka )
IMPHAL, Manipur
For its supplies, Manipur is dependent solely on either NH2 from Numaligarh via Nagaland, or NH37 |
Keef's album is good. But not because of him. Gotcha. Great logic.
Jim DeRogatis, WBEZ 91.5
"This critic’s take: Chief Keef is a thick-tongued, mush-mouthed rapper."
Translation: "Those black teens and their ebonics! Sure are difficult to understand!"
Class dismissed.CORVALLIS, Ore. - A team of scientists last year presented evidence of a correlation between the migration patterns of ocean salmon and the Earth's magnetic field, suggesting it may help explain how the fish can navigate across thousands of miles of water to find their river of origin.
This week, scientists confirmed the connection between salmon and the magnetic field following a series of experiments at the Oregon Hatchery Research Center in the Alsea River basin. Researchers exposed hundreds of juvenile Chinook salmon to different magnetic fields that exist at the latitudinal extremes of their oceanic range. Fish responded to these "simulated magnetic displacements" by swimming in the direction that would bring that toward the center of their marine feeding grounds.
The study, which was funded by Oregon Sea Grant and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, will be published this month in the forthcoming issue of Current Biology.
"What is particularly exciting about these experiments is that the fish we tested had never left the hatchery and thus we know that their responses were not learned or based on experience, but rather they were inherited," said Nathan Putman, a postdoctoral researcher in Oregon State University's Department of Fisheries and Wildlife and lead author on the study.
"These fish are programmed to know what to do before they ever reach the ocean," he added.
To test the hypothesis, the researchers constructed a large platform with copper wires running horizontally and vertically around the perimeter. By running electrical current through the wires, the scientists could create a magnetic field and control both the intensity and inclination angle of the field. They then placed 2-inch juvenile salmon called "parr" in 5-gallon buckets and, after an acclimation period, monitored and photographed the direction in which they were swimming.
Fish presented with a magnetic field characteristic of the northern limits of the oceanic range of Chinook salmon were more likely to swim in a southerly direction, while fish encountering a far southern field tended to swim north. In essence, fish possess a "map sense" determining where they are and which way to swim based on the magnetic fields they encounter.
"The evidence is irrefutable," said co-author David Noakes of OSU, senior scientist at the Oregon Hatchery Research Center and the 2012 recipient of the American Fisheries Society's Award of Excellence. "I tell people: The fish can detect and respond to the Earth's magnetic field. There can be no doubt of that."
Not all of the more than 1,000 fish swam in the same direction, Putman said. But there was a clear preference by the fish for swimming in the direction away from the magnetic field that was "wrong" for them. Fish that remained in the magnetic field of the testing site - near Alsea, Ore. - were randomly oriented, indicating that orientation of fish subjected to magnetic displacements could only be attributable to change in the magnetic field.
"What is really surprising is that these fish were only exposed to the magnetic field we created for about eight minutes," Putman pointed out. "And the field was not even strong enough to deflect a compass needle."
Putman said that salmon must be particularly sensitive because the Earth's magnetic field is relatively weak. Because of that, it may not take much to interfere with their navigational abilities. Many structures contain electrical wires or reinforcing iron that could potentially affect the orientation of fish early in their life cycle, the researchers say.
"Fish are raised in hatcheries where there are electrical and magnetic influences," Noakes said, "and some will encounter electrical fields while passing through power dams. When they reach the ocean, they may swim by structures or cables that could interfere with navigation. Do these have an impact? We don't yet know."
Putman said natural disruptions could include chunks of iron in the Earth's crust, though "salmon have been dealing with that for thousands of years."
"Juvenile salmon face their highest mortality during the period when the first enter the ocean," Putman said, "because they have to adapt to a saltwater environment, find food, avoid predation, and begin their journey. Anything that makes them navigate less efficiently is a concern because if they take a wrong turn and end up in a barren part of the ocean, they are going to starve."
The magnetic field is likely not the only tool salmon use to navigate, however, Putman noted.
"They likely have a whole suite of navigational aids that help them get where they are going, perhaps including orientation to the sun, sense of smell and others," Putman said.
The Oregon Hatchery Research Center is funded by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and jointly run by ODFW and Oregon State University.Since June, Comet ISON has been hidden behind the Sun. Now an amateur imager has just recovered it low in the dawn — and it hasn't been brightening as much as we hoped. Don't bet on a great naked-eye spectacle this December.
[fw-embed-media url="https://s22380.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/Comet-ISON-recovery_by-Gary_341px.jpg" url_large="" alt="Comet ISON at 14th magnitude on August 12, 2013" caption="Bruce Gary's recovery image of Comet ISON (C2012 S1), taken on the morning of August 12th. The comet looks hardly better than it did last spring. Click for larger, ½°-wide image." credits="Bruce Gary" width="" height="" align="right"]A couple weeks earlier than we expected, amateur imager Bruce Gary in Arizona has become the first person to pick up Comet ISON again after its 2½-month intermission behind the glare of the Sun. Using an 11-inch scope pointing only 6° above the eastern dawn horizon, and by stacking images, he succeeded in recording a fuzzy point with an anti-sunward tail at Comet ISON's exact predicted position among stars that are as faint as magnitude 16. Measuring the image, Gary comes up with a total V magnitude of 14.3 ± 0.2 for the comet that is being so widely anticipated worldwide.
That's about 2 magnitudes fainter than the comet "should" be, compared to the formula that first led astronomers to predict it would become a grand naked-eye sight before dawn in early December. It's no improvement on the 2-magnitude deficit the comet was showing when astronomers last had good looks at it around the end of May.
Here is Gary's detailed and thorough report and analysis of his observation.
There too (at the bottom) are three new light-curve predictions for the coming months, based on three model formulas. The short version: the comet could still turn out to be fairly good, or it might never reach naked-eye visibility at all.
Sky & Telescope's longtime comet analyst John Bortle writes us:
ISON is currently about at the distance from the Sun where water ice sublimation would be expected to be taking over in the comet's photometric development. That the comet continues to appear as faint as it does implies that its intrinsic brightness (absolute magnitude) is low and that the nucleus is probably small and relatively inactive. Past performances by dynamically "new" comets [newcomers to the inner solar system], as ISON has turned out to be, have typically been pretty lackluster. With very few exceptions, these comets brighten only very slowly [as they approach, after appearing promising when farther out]. In the lightcurve prediction graph presented by Scarmato, Morales and Gary, their green line corresponds to typical "new" comet behavior. Note that this suggests the comet's brightness barely ever breaks the naked-eye barrier, even at perihelion! Further, if one accepts anything like the green line's absolute magnitude of +9.73 for the comet, then ISON has no chance of surviving its perihelion, based on my paper "Post-Perihelion Survival of Comets with Small q" (International Comet Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 3, July 1991). So... things are looking ever more bleak for chances of any grand display to be put on by ISON come this December. Still, I wouldn't fully commit to such until I see some actual visual observations reported.
Many other observers will be looking and imaging on coming mornings as the comet moves higher into less difficult view. Watch for more news updates.
Update Aug. 13: A disagreement has emerged on discussion lists about whether Gary's measurement of magnitude 14.3 refers to the comet's total magnitude or just its nucleus. Gary tells us, "My photometry aperture circle has a diameter of 28 arcseconds, so I think this would include the entire coma and part of the tail." In other words, practically all of the comet's light. He goes into full detail about this here.
[fw-embed-media url="https://s22380.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/Bruce-Gary's-observatory_556px.jpg" url_large="" alt="" caption="Bruce L. Gary's Hereford Arizona Observatory houses his Celestron-11 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. Gary is a retired radio astronomer and atmospheric scientist." credits="Gruce Gary" width="" height="" align="center"]West’s accusation of unfair trials in China outdated
On Tuesday morning, Jiang Tianyong, a former Beijing lawyer, stood trial at the Changsha Intermediate People's Court on the charge of inciting subversion of State power. He confessed that he deliberately fabricated details about the alleged torture of Xie Yang, another former lawyer, while Xie was in police detention.
But many of the media focused their reporting on Jin Bianling, Jiang's wife. Jin, who is currently in the US, claimed that "Even if Jiang pleads guilty in court, that will certainly be under torture unimaginable to ordinary people." Those foreign media used Jin's statements to discredit the trial.
This is a usual scene of some Western media attacking China's rule of law. Since July 9 2015, when some lawyers from Beijing Fengrui Law Firm were detained and investigated, the Western media has been accusing China of suppressing rights lawyers. Even before that, they had denounced cases when dissidents were held accountable for their actions by law.
It is common sense that every criminal will feel compelled when standing in the dock. They may be shown leniency if they plead guilty. It is common practice all over the world, such as in the US.
In Chinese courts, it is deemed normal when other defendants plead guilty. But when it comes to dissidents, some Western media outlets prefer to believe that they were forced to plead guilty or even suffered torture.
We do not know the details of Jiang's case, but we do know that in today's China, confession under duress is quite a serious matter, especially using torture on high-profile suspects, as those handling the case are betting on their personal prospects.
Using torture on a suspect who may face an open trial is particularly risky, because the suspect can raise the issue during the trial, which prosecutors cannot bear. Meanwhile, if he was tortured, the public would be able to sense this from his appearance and manner. But Jiang did not show any signs of this.
The West should stop its outdated accusations of China using torture to force dissidents to confess. Those dissidents who zealously worship the Western political system and confront the Chinese political system are not as "determined" as they appear. When they create waves, they only think about their own interests. But when they are to be held accountable by law, they resort to confession right away to get a lighter sentence.
China has a powerful political system and a powerful legal system. Some radical forces within the country want to play tricks with Western support so as to make a reputation for themselves.
The rule of law is developing in China. Challenging China's basic political system under the name of law is nothing but a joke.Facebook hit with lawsuit over “Like” ads – user says he never “Liked” USA Today
A Colorado man who claims Facebook(s fb) falsely told his friends that he “Liked” USA Today(s gci) has filed a lawsuit seeking at least $750 for himself and every other user who appeared in ads for products they never endorsed.
In a class action complaint filed in San Jose, Anthony Ditirro says a friend called his attention to a Facebook ad that shows Ditirro “liking” a USA Today food section:
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According to Ditirro, he never clicked his “Like” button on USA Today’s Facebook page or even visited the publication’s website in the first place.
“Although PLAINTIFF has nothing negative to say about USA TODAY newspapers, PLAINTIFF is not an avid reader of USA TODAY, nor does PLAINTIFF endorse the newspaper,” says the complaint. The lawsuit states that the phantom Likes violate a series of state and federal laws related to privacy and publicity rights, and cites a California law that lets people seek the higher of $750 or actual damages if someone uses their image without permission. Facebook, which was hit with another lawsuit for allegedly reading private messages in order to harvest “Likes,” did not immediately respond to an email request for comment. Update: A Facebook spokesperson stated, “”The complaint is without merit and we will defend ourselves vigorously.”
The newest lawsuit is just the latest in a long-running legal headache for Facebook over the way it leverages users for advertising. Such ads are highly effective — Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg at one point testified that they are three times more valuable than a regular ad — but Facebook has repeatedly botched the legal requirements for obtaining permission. It recently agreed to pay $20 million to settle an earlier class action over so-called “Sponsored Stories” (the settlement is still under appeal).
Reports this week stated that Facebook is ending “Sponsored Stories” but this appears to be largely a marketing technicality. A company blog post states that “Sponsored Stories” are no longer a standalone product but will be included in ads as “social context”:
“social context — stories about social actions your friends have taken, such as liking a page or checking in to a restaurant — is now eligible to appear next to all ads shown to friends on Facebook.”
In other words, Facebook appears to be expanding, not limiting, its use of users in ads.
You can read the new “Like” lawsuit, which was spotted by Law360 (sub req’d), for yourself here:
Facebook False Like Complaint
This story was corrected 1/11 with the correct spelling of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s name as well as her correct title.California authorities were investigating the deaths of two teenagers whose bodies were found near an empty can of Four Loko, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday.
Aaron Saenz, 15, and Chelsea Taylor, 16, were found dead in a vacant Huntington Beach apartment on Friday just after 10 am local time. Police had responded to a call from apartment managers, who saw the teens through a window and were unsure whether the two were dead or alive.
Huntington Beach Police Lt. Russell Reinhart said the teens died of drug and alcohol-related causes.
Police found an empty can of caffeine-alcohol drink Four Loko -- banned in some US states -- in the apartment, the Times said.
Mitchell Sigal, supervising deputy coroner for Orange County would not confirm their causes of death, saying the investigation was ongoing.
Four Loko, which has been dubbed "blackout in a can" by some drinkers, sells for under $3 and contains as much alcohol as nearly five beers and as much caffeine as several cups of coffee.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sent official warning letters in November to the manufacturers of four caffeinated-alcoholic beverages, including Four Loko, saying it would not rule out seizing their products in the name of safety.
The companies were given 15 days to prove they would stop selling caffeinated products.
Phusion Projects, the maker of Four Loko, had already announced that it would strip its fruity canned beverages of all caffeine, though it continued to assert that the combination of alcohol and caffeine was safe.
The drink has been called a factor in the death of a 17-year-old girl who died when she drank Four Loko after taking a diet pill, the drunk-driving death of a 21-year-old and the hospitalization of nine college students in Washington whom police initially believed to have been dosed with date rape drugs, but were later found to have consumed rum, vodka and beer in addition to Four Loko.
The drink remains legal in California, but states including Washington, Utah, Michigan, New York and Oklahoma have banned the sale of caffeinated alcoholic drinks.Drones are the hot consumer product of the year, and 2015 saw an explosion in automation software that made the devices easier to fly and easier to control.
We predicted this would happen, but it's remarkable just how far the technology's come in 12 months. The brisk pace of development has made it all but possible for your local coffee shop to deliver a latte to your third-floor windowsill. It may sound like science fiction (not to mention a questionable business model), but consider that Amazon and Google are talking about making deliveries by drone. As long as everyone follows the government's rules about no-fly zones and signs up for the new federal drone registry, there's little stopping anyone else from doing the same.
Some of the cool developments making this possible include waypoint and point-of-interest based navigation from DJI, which lets pilots program a flight path with a few finger taps on a touchscreen. Manufacturers like Yuneec and 3DR have a "follow me" software feature that lets you wander around freely while a drone buzzes 350 feet above you, recording your every move.
Oh yes, there's still a good chance of a n00b crashing into you, but everyone's working on their anti-collision software to prevent mid-air collisions. Software that automates flight paths also is improving. We haven't reached the point where drones don't need a carbon-based lifeform at the controls, but the machines are making easier for even the biggest klutz to take to the air. Still, it helps to remember this technology was used only by the military a few years ago. At this rate, fully autonomous drones can't be too far off.
Cruise Controls
That's great news for professionals working with drones. Frank Kivo, a videographer with Concierge Auctions, which frequently uses drones to create epic aerial photos and videos of real estate, tells WIRED "these automated and new system implementations are extremely helpful and useful, depending on the industry you're working in." Kivo's work sometimes involves filming large parcels of land, and he can automate his drone's flight path by programing waypoints ahead of time, mapping the route the drone will fly. Waypoints can help with large surveying applications such scouting oil rig locations, search and rescue efforts, and data retrieval like collecting readings from an environmental sensor.
Others are less sold on the automation, and think you'll always want to keep an eye on your eye in the sky. "Nothing is ever going to be able to tell you what things looks like when you're up there," says Mike Lord of the photography company Barrelman Productions. "So you don't know what the interesting shot is going to be until you're actually flying."
The key, says Frank Kivo, is knowing when to let the drone do its thing, and when to step in to take control. "The one downside of an automation system is you cannot teach it emotion. There is no way to teach a waypoint system to capture the beautiful sun flares that come into the camera for that split second."
Mike Lord praised some of DJI's new automated systems for striking the right balance between automating and leaving the pilot in control. The "Course lock" feature holds the Phantom's current flight path, enabling the pilot to spin the nose from side to side to capture fly-bys. DJI's "Point-of-interest" feature lets the pilot mark a spot on a map and tell the drone to fly around the spot in a circle, all the while keeping the nose aimed at the center in order to slurp up smooth, uninterrupted video of the subject. Lord says this makes it easy to "fly up and away while circling and shooting photos, which previously would have required a second person to do well."
Don't Crash Into Me, Bro
Many pilots are most enthusiastic about the development of software that helps drones steer clear of hazards.
"I can't stress enough how much avoidance detection is a huge plus," says Kivo, who used the collision avoidance system in Monster-X's heavyweight drone while flying in the Bahamas, where palm trees could have put his expensive rig in danger. "With a tropical storm forming, we were constantly getting blown around and with a common consumer drone, we would have lost it, I'm sure."
While the delivery drones of tomorrow surely will be at least somewhat automated, the consumer drones the rest of you buy will continue relying largely on your own skill. That's by design: flying them is a big part of the appeal. It's fun! It requires some practice, and collision detection systems ease the learning curve. But flying a drone is a hoot, and automating everything about it misses the point. The technology should hone the pilot's skill, not render it irrelevant. "I don't want to just send a robot up in the sky," Lord says.Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Willis was one of Hollywood's most revered cinematographers
Gordon Willis, the cinematographer on films including the Godfather trilogy, has died at the age of 82.
Willis received an honorary lifetime achievement Oscar in 2010 and was nominated for his work on Woody Allen's Zelig and The Godfather: Part III.
"This is a momentous loss," the president of the American Society of Cinematographers, Richard Crudo, told Deadline Hollywood.
"He was one of the giants who changed the way movies looked," he added.
Willis was known in the industry as 'the prince of darkness', due to his unique lighting technique which created lots of shadows.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Willis also worked on Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo and Broadway Danny Rose
He was renowned for his striking imagery in films such as Allen's Manhattan - he made eight films with the director - and All the President's Men.
He was also the cinematographer on Alan J. Pakula's Klute, for which Jane Fonda won her first Oscar.
Willis worked on several other Pakula thrillers including The Devil's Own, his final film in 1997, which was also Pakula's last directorial outing.
US author Bret Easton Ellis tweeted: "America's greatest cinematographer GORDON WILLIS: RIP."
Chris McQuarrie, who won best screenplay for The Usual Suspects, also paid tribute: "No one showed more with less."
Girls writer and actress Lena Dunham wrote: "May we always view the world as if through his lens."
Willis was born in New York, where his father worked as a make-up artist for Warner Bros.
He was initially attracted to acting before turning to photography, which he studied while in the Air Force during the Korean War.
After leaving the army, he became an assistant cameraman and then first cameraman.
His first film was comedy drama End of the Road in 1970.Looking for news you can trust?
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In a contentious public meeting Monday night, the Broward Republican Executive Committee, a Republican group in Southern Florida, voted to deny Nezar Hamze, a Muslim-American Republican, membership. The group maintains that Hamze’s religion had nothing to do with their vote, but group members told reporters that the man’s affiliation with an Islamic relations group made members uneasy and could have been the basis for his rejection.
In early September, conservatives in Broward County, where the committee is based, were outraged after hearing of Hamze’s plans to apply to join their ranks. Hamze, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations of South Florida (CAIR), later explained to Salon’s Justin Elliott why he applied: “A lot of Muslims I know, their values really line up with the conservative values of the Republican party. I’m a strict social conservative, a fiscal conservative, a very strict constitutionalist. The protection of civil liberties for all Americans is supreme.” Furthermore, Hamze told Mother Jones that he wanted to “bring Muslims into the mainstream political process.”
At Monday evening’s meeting, the committee passed rules to change the application process. Applicants were to now address the crowd and field questions, something Hamze did not expect. “I was blasted with 15 minutes worth of insults. They [crowd members] yelled ‘You’re a terrorist! You’re an Al Qaeda supporter! No way a Muslim is going to join BREC!'” The committee also decided that night to make the voting process more secretive: Voting was private and the ballots were later destroyed (the final tally was 158-11). According to the Miami Herald, the crowd “cheered loudly” after hearing the results of the vote. BREC members also questioned Hamze’s organization, CAIR, later telling the Miami Herald that Hamze’s affiliation with CAIR was the basis for his denial.
Hamze claims that BREC members handed out pamphlets (pictured below) detailing why Republicans should deny his admission. The pamphlet alleges that Hamze’s membership is part of a plot to undermine Florida Rep. Allen West. Some background: In August, Hamze sent a letter to West, asking him to stop working with anti-Muslim advocates like Pamela Gellar. West famously responded with a one-word letter, “NUTS!” The top of the pamphlet distributed on Monday reads, “NEZAR HAMZE WANTS AMERICANS TO STAND AGAINST CONGRESSMAN WEST.” It ends with, “We don’t need someone who has been attacking Allen West for almost a year from the OUTSIDE to now attack him from INSIDE the BREC!”
Others who attended the event, like Javier Manjarres, a Republican blogger in Florida, called the event “regrettable.” In a blog post, Manjarres alleges that BREC’s committee leader Richard DeNapoli, “orchestrated the rigged chain of events by planting his operatives in crowd, each of whom had a specific task to carry out during the proceedings.” DeNapoli says that Manjarres “has a beef with me” and that allegations that he placed people in the crowd are false. As for BREC members handing out pamphlets, DeNapoli says that’s something he can’t control. “I’m trying to prepare for the meeting and if someone is handing out stuff outside the door, it’s difficult for me to know what’s going on with that.”
Both Hamze and DeNapoli say that this was the first time they had witnessed someone being denied membership to BREC.Kaci Hickox has a message for politicians: “Please stop calling me ‘the Ebola Nurse.’”
The 33-year-old nurse from Maine called out Gov. Chris Christie and civic leaders in an op-ed she wrote in The Guardian.
“I never had Ebola. I never had symptoms of Ebola,” Hickox writes. “I tested negative for Ebola the first night I stayed in New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s private prison in Newark.”
Hickox, of course, is referring to the tent inside University Hospital in Newark she was kept in upon returning from Sierra Leone, where she was volunteering with Doctors Without Borders.
Her defiance of quarantine policies in New Jersey and later when she arrived home in Maine led to a tide of media coverage.
Hickox claims Christie and Maine Gov. Paul LePage used her in a sense to further their own agendas.
“Christie and my governor in Maine, Paul LePage, decided to disregard medical science and the constitution in hopes of advancing their careers,” she said. “They bet that, by multiplying the existing fear and misinformation about Ebola … they could ultimately manipulate everyone and proclaim themselves the protectors of the people.
“Politicans who tell lies such as ‘she is obviously ill’ and mistreat citizens by telling them to ‘sit down and shut up’ will hopefully never make it to the White House.”
Hickox also explained in her op-ed the need for volunteers to help those suffering from Ebola in West Africa, and that those volunteers returning to the United States should be welcomed with open arms.
According to leaders of major Ebola relief organizations, the number of volunteers willing to help fight the disease in West Africa is down since the mandatory quarantines were implemented.
“I want to live in an America that reaches out to aid workers as they return from West Africa and says … ‘We will love and stand by you now,’” Hickox said. “We can define compassion, instead of being ruled by fear and fear-mongers.”
Alex Napoliello may be reached at anapoliello@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @alexnapoNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.Maryland will become the third U.S. state to permanently ban hydraulic fracturing today, ending several years of debate over whether to allow the gas-extraction method.
Passage of the fracking ban was one of the surprises of the 2017 legislative session in Annapolis, coming after Republican Gov. Larry Hogan announced that he had changed his position on the bill and would support it.
It is one of several high-profile laws that take effect in Maryland today.
The measures include: a law on price gouging that gives the state attorney general the authority to sue drug companies that dramatically increase the price of off-patent or generic drugs; a law that increases by 13 years the amount of time that a person who alleges child sexual abuse has to file a lawsuit, lifting the age cap from 25 to age 38; ethics reform pushed by Hogan in an attempt to address a string of scandals involving Democratic lawmakers; criminal-justice reform aimed at reducing recidivism and state prison costs; and making it easier to expunge minor offenses from residents' driving records.
The law on price gouging, the first of its kind in the country, is being challenged in federal court by a generic-drug trade group called the Association for Accessible Medicines. On Friday, a judge in the case denied the plaintiffs' request to issue an injunction blocking the law from taking effect.
The legislation that extends the statute of limitations for legal action by those alleging child sexual abuse is not retroactive and applies only to victims who were 18 or younger at the time the bill became law.
Del. C.T. Wilson, D-Charles, who testified before fellow lawmakers for years that he was raped decades ago by his adoptive father, had long worked to get the legislation passed.
The ethics law increases financial disclosure requirements and expands the definition of what constitutes a conflict of interest.
The main provisions of the Justice Reinvestment Act, the criminal-justice reform law approved by the General Assembly in 2016, also take effect this year.
Although the law was passed last year, the effective date for most of its provisions was put off until this year to give the state time to prepare for a significant shift for minor drug offenders, who instead of incarceration will now be sentenced in many cases to drug treatment.
Also under the legislation, nonviolent offenders who have been given severe penalties over the past three decades will be able to appeal to judges to get out of prison years ahead of schedule.
Under the law affecting driving records, the state will automatically remove violations that are eligible for expungement, eliminating the need for individuals to apply for such action. Additionally, a nondriving offense that can result in suspension or revocation of a driver's license, such as failure to pay child support or failure to appear in court, will no longer delay expungement of traffic-related infractions.
The changes, which are expected to affect more than 600,000 Marylanders, were designed in part to remove barriers to employment for those who are applying for jobs that require driving and have not had traffic-related violations in more than three years.
The fracking ban effectively makes permanent a moratorium on the controversial method for extracting natural gas.
Fracking, which has shown the greatest potential in Garrett and Allegany counties, involves injecting water, sand and chemicals deep into the ground at high pressure to fracture rock formations, thereby releasing natural gas trapped in pockets in the rock.
Advocates say the practice provides an energy source that is cleaner than coal, but opponents have raised concerns about the potential for water contamination, greenhouse-gas emissions and earthquakes.
New York and Vermont are the other states that have banned fracking, with an executive order and with legislation, respectively. Maryland is the first state with gas reserves to pass a ban through legislative action.
Information for this article was contributed by Josh Hicks of The Washington Post.
NW News on 10/01/2017Renting a car in Washington is becoming even more accessible. (Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images)
It’s about to get even easier to live in Washington without owning a car. Getaround, a peer-to-peer car rental service, is officially launching in the nation’s capital Monday. The business is similar to Airbnb, but for cars.
A car owner can sign his or her vehicle up to be rented, and pocket some extra income. Those who want a car for an hour or even a whole weekend can use the app to find available vehicles, reserve one and unlock it.
Getaround installs a device in the rented cars so that customers can unlock them via its app. Then they’ll find the car’s key hidden in a pouch. Getaround says it offers a feature that lets users start the vehicle only if they’ve opened it with the app. This is intended to prevent against someone smashing a window, grabbing the key and driving away.
Vehicles are rented for at least an hour. After that, a renter is charged in 15-minute increments. Rates range from $5 to $9 an hour. Getaround takes a 40 percent cut. If you want to rent out your car, there is a $99 installation fee, and then a $20 monthly fee to be connected to the Getaround network.
For D.C. residents concerned that they won’t make enough income, GetAround is guaranteeing income of $1,000 in the first three months. Cars must have fewer than 125,000 miles and can’t be more than 10 years old. GetAround provides insurance for drivers during the rental period.
District resident Tara Boyle, 29, began renting her Mazda3 for $8 an hour a couple of weeks ago. Getaround recommended $7.50, but she wanted to charge more. (The $1,000 guarantee requires that you don’t raise your rate more than 20 percent above what Getaround recommends.)
Boyle can walk to work but didn’t want to sell her car, so she jumped at the chance for extra income. She hopes her car will be especially popular with other residents of the high-rise building she lives in. Boyle said she isn’t worried about a renter potentially scuffing up her bumpers during city driving, saying that comes with the territory.
“My dad said, ‘Why do you want to do this? There’s going to be weird people that are sweating in your car,’ ” Boyle said with a laugh. “I said, ‘Dad, a parking spot down here is, like, $200 a month, I want my car to pay for itself.’ ”
So far, she said, she hasn’t had any problems with the service.
Getaround is launching with only 30 cars on its platform in the District. Its team is quick to point out that cars are parked the overwhelming majority of the time. This has been estimated at up to 96.5 percent. Why have such an expensive possession that’s used so rarely? GetAround hopes to persuade car owners to sign up, given the chance to make extra money.
A challenge will be finding a way to differentiate from other car services such as Uber, Lyft and Car2Go. Getaround requires users to return the vehicle to roughly the same place they found it, and they’re supposed to top the tank off with gas. This adds more responsibilities than some users may be interested in.
Getaround is also available in San Francisco and Portland, Ore. It raised $24 million from investors in November to expand its business.T-Mobile and Sprint are both making a big splash today with the introduction of some too-good-to-be-true data plans. Both companies' new plans offer unlimited talk, text, and — importantly — data, but both companies' unlimited data come with big asterisks beside them.
That's because their data plans have some significant limitations. T-Mobile's plan, called T-Mobile One, limits all video playback to low-res 480p. Sprint's plan, called Unlimited Freedom, has the same video limitation and then goes even further, limiting music streams to 500kbps (which is relatively high) and gaming to an extremely slow 2Mbps. T-Mobile will let you avoid that limitation if you pay an extra $25 per month per line; Sprint doesn't seem to offer an option.
Video and tethering are far from unlimited
There are also limitations around tethering. T-Mobile offers tethering but only at 2G speeds. That might be helpful in a pinch, but it's generally unusable. To get LTE tethering, T-Mobile customers will have to pay $15 extra per month for every 5GB of data. Sprint is a bit better here. It offers 5GB of LTE tethering and then bumps you to 2G after that.
Sprint's Unlimited Freedom Plan will be available starting tomorrow. It'll cost $60 per month for the first line, $40 for the second, and $30 for additional lines. T-Mobile's One plan doesn't launch until September 6th; at that point, T-Mobile will start phasing out its existing Simple Choice plans. Some may stick around, but it sounds like T-Mobile's current thinking is to move toward the One plan exclusively for post-paid. T-Mobile's One plan is also fairly expensive, at $70 for the first line, $50 for the second, and $20 per line for the next six lines.
Update August 18th, 3:13PM ET: Sprint says its unlimited plan includes 5GB of data for tethering; the story has been updated to reflect this.Imaginative marketing with cinemagraphs
Written by Jeremy Rivera and
There’s something about the emotion captured in an image that has fascinated us since the time of cave paintings.
Today, it seems like we’ve moved from still lifes and realism to crudely drawn rage comic memes and simple animated GIFs.
A downhill slide for art? Maybe. But one art form with a surprisingly intense visual impact has arisen from the humble GIF: the cinemagraph.
Now that Google is embracing the GIF by letting us find that perfect animated image a little easier, these mesmerizing images could be primed for the big time.
In this post, we’ll discover what a cinemagraph is, how it’s different than other GIFs and how the art form can be used for truly unique marketing.
What’s a cinemagraph?
In the early years of the Internet, primitive GIFs of dancing babies and hamsters dominated. But when you apply |
about our mission. Hops and Brewing is a history worth saving As you stroll through the aisles of your favorite grocery store admiring all the choices, you might wonder "how did all these breweries start?" Beer in the 19th century was a local endeavor and American brewers cultivated a local market, selling to customers who lived around the corner or a few miles away. We see this in our present day with an emphasis on local ingredients and personal connections between customer, grower, and brewer. Read more about the journey from 19th century hop field to 21st century craft. Take Pride in Brewing History and be a Part of OHBA At its core, OHBA is a community archiving project: we have the opportunity to work with the people who changed the face of an industry and set in motion a movement! We are actively seeking materials pertaining to brewing history. What types of materials are we looking for? OHBA is seeking unique, historic, or rare items of enduring value deemed worthy of long-term preservation. These could be items that document the past, but also items that convey the current brewing scene to someone in the future. Find out how you can contribute to OHBA. Got Questions? We'd love to answer them! Phone: 541-737-7387
Phone: 541-737-7387 Email: tiah.edmunson-morton@oregonstate.edu
Email: tiah.edmunson-morton@oregonstate.edu Visit: Special Collections & Archives Research Center, Valley Library 5th Floor, Oregon State UniversityLanding Pages are utilized for lots of things. Many people have products for selling, some have apps to sell out whereas some people just would like others to know about their products & facilities. Landing Pages are imperative if it is completed properly as it can increase your business & productivity.
It can be a waste of time if finished imperfectly as you will never intend your Landing Page to miss the mark regardless it relates to you or your client. We come with the inspiration for some landing pages to facilitate you.
Many Landing Pages truly do considerably the same thing but sometimes it is pleasing to perceive & visualize it as compare to think about its concept. Here are some perfect & delightful Landing Pages design websites which grew landing pages rightly.Longshore union strikes against war
On Thursday, May Day, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union will declare an eight-hour strike to protest the war in Iraq. Since the ILWU controls every port along the U.S. Pacific Coast, including Seattle and Tacoma, this strike demonstrates the collective power of workers willing to use it.
The ILWU is demanding "an immediate end to the war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Middle East." Although the majority of Americans repeatedly have expressed their desire to end the war, President Bush has not obliged us, so it drags on. Because our leaders refuse to listen, ILWU members are taking the next logical step for workers: Strike.
For those unfamiliar, the ILWU is perhaps the most militant and politicized worker organization in the nation. It operates in one of the most important sectors of the world economy -- marine transport -- and, thus, is in a strategic location to put peace above profits.
Forged in the fires of 1930s worker struggles to gain basic rights, the ILWU was born in 1934 when longshoremen (there were no women in the industry then, though there are now) performed the incredibly hard, dangerous and important work of loading and unloading ships. To improve their wages and wrest some control over their lives, men all along the coast struck -- and in a few instances died -- to gain union recognition.
The ILWU is highly democratic. A caucus of more than 100 longshore workers representing every union local establishes policies for the Longshore Division. It was this caucus that voted to declare the May Day strike.
Dockworkers, including those in the ILWU, have a proud tradition of political action. For example, in the 1980s the ILWU respected the strike of British dockworkers by refusing to unload a ship worked by scab labor. Just last week, union longshoremen in South Africa refused to unload a Chinese vessel carrying military supplies destined for autocratic Zimbabwe -- a tremendous example of solidarity.
That the ILWU chose International Workers' Day to declare this strike suggests its political commitment and internationalism. Around the world, workers honor labor by taking a holiday. What few Americans know is that the tradition of a May Day strike originated not in the Soviet Union in the 1950s but the United States of the 1880s.
These days, such examples of worker power are increasingly rare in the U.S. The tragedy is that, historically, labor activism gave us the 40-hour workweek (and the weekend) and helped humanize the exploitative excesses of unregulated capitalism. As income inequality continues to grow in the United States, it is wise to remember how, in the past, strong unions created a larger middle class as well as a more democratic and egalitarian nation.
The ILWU strike also reminds us that unions still have an important role in public discussions beyond the workplace. As a democratic institution, the ILWU is precisely the sort of "civic society" that the Bush administration has been trying to create in Iraq. On May 1, dockworkers will speak loud and clear -- end the endless war in Iraq. Other American workers who want to support our troops by bringing them home can make their voices heard by joining with the brave men and women of the ILWU and taking the day off.Grosjean and Renault’s Jolyon Palmer were both given five-place grid penalties for improving their time after passing double-waved yellow flags for Giovinazzi’s wrecked Sauber in the middle of the track after he went off at the final corner.
Both drivers claimed they backed off, but the stewards ruled that they "attempted to set a meaningful lap time”, which is not allowed in the rules.
“If they want everybody to stop, they need to throw a red flag,” said Steiner. “Sometimes you have to be conscious that we actually race.
“Romain backed off. It’s a double yellow, he was – in my opinion – in control of the situation.
“If you look at the [data] trace, he lifted, saw nothing, accelerated, saw the wreck, lifted again. Sometimes I don’t get it, but anyway, I’m not a steward.
“He was in the wrong place at the wrong time – we paid a penalty for that one. Otherwise we could have made it into Q3, there was a chance.”
Grosjean took to Twitter on Saturday to reveal data from his lap, saying: “So apparently I made no effort to slow down and didn't abandon the lap... data shows a different point of view.”
Speaking before the decision from the stewards, he added that he was initially told it was a single-yellow flag zone, which is why he stayed on track to complete the lap.
“I backed off before the corner, took the corner slowly,” he said.
“I didn’t go to the pit because the engineer told me it was a single-yellow flag, so that could just be a spin and going again, I didn’t know it was a crash.
“I lost one second and I was fully backed off before the corner, and after the corner.”
Grosjean added that he felt the situation was skewed by the fact that he spun on his first attempt in Q1, meaning he was bound to improve his lap time even if he backed off next time through.
“The first lap was 17 seconds off, so of course I was going to go faster,” he said. “The first time I was sideways, a bit on the grass, spinning the car around.”
Additional reporting by Ben Anderson and Oleg KarpovNick Land muses on the danger inherent to a rapid withdrawal of narcotic known as demotism from its hopelessly dependent abuser: the Body Politic. For that delicate operation, one needs not tee-totalist preaching, but a methadone clinic.
Not many a pre-reactionary is ready to swallow the entire the pill with the sodium metal core. If he takes it, he may very well vomit it back up, leaving himself not only no closer to the cure, but with esophageal scarring to boot.
A gentler introduction is the Reactionary Methadone Clinic:
First and foremost, foreswear politics… it is the very poison to which we were all born addicted.
Foreswear activism… it is the occult power upon which the Cathedral’s engines run.
Foreswear voice in all matters of not immediate objective concern to you or your family.
Become worthy… live the best life you can for you and your family. Stop being a busybody. Be as wise as serpents, but innocent as doves.
Love your own particularity… If you don’t have one? Find one! You’ll quickly see how toxic the Cathedral’s many potions are.
Foreswear trying to force facts into preconceived ideological boxes—odds are that it is the boxes that are the problem. Love the truth where it may be found, whatever it may be.
Read and listen to the Resartus when it comes.
Be inspired from the Gospel of St. Matthew:
For, amen I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain, Remove from hence hither, and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible to you. But this kind [of demon] is not cast out but by prayer and fasting.Bill Gates has a Bill Gates has a book recommendation for you.
"I’m usually not one for tear-jerkers about death and dying — I didn’t love The Last Lecture or Tuesdays with Morrie. But this book definitely earned my admiration — and tears," Gates wrote.
When Breath Becomes Air is Kalanithi's memoir about his journey through medical school and eventual battle with stage IV lung cancer, which claimed his life in March 2015 when he was 37 years old. The book was published 10 months after his death and has since gone on to become a New York Times bestseller.
"It’s an amazing book," wrote Gates. "I was super touched by it, as was Melinda and our daughter Jennifer. In fact, I can say this is the best nonfiction story I’ve read in a long time.
"I don’t know how Kalanithi found the physical strength to write this book while he was so debilitated by the disease and then potent chemotherapy," Gates added. "But I’m so glad he did. He spent his whole brief life searching for meaning in one way or another—through books, writing, medicine, surgery, and science. I’m grateful that, by reading this book, I got to witness a small part of that journey."nVidia GTX780 Review
Introduction and Technical Specifications
| Source: nVidia Price: £549 Author: Tom Logan
Introduction
When the GTX Titan was released a couple of months back we were all surprised at quite a few elements of the release. We raised our eyebrows at the timing of it, the incredible performance that was available, the price and why it wasn't labelled numerically as all their previous releases have been (TNT cards excepted).
It seems that the GTX Titan was the advance guard though, as the GK110 GPU has found a new home in the, externally identical, nVidia GTX780.
Now this model has reverted to the numbering scheme is it a heavily cut-down version of the GTX Titan, designed to make such a behemoth affordable for the masses, or is it a Titan in everything but name?
Time to find out.
Technical Specifications
Naturally the nVidia documentation is expressing how much of an improvement to the GTX680 the GTX780 is. We know that it's really the Titan in disguise, or at least that if we have to compare it to a high-end card then the Titan makes for the most obvious comparison.
So what's changed? Well the GDDR5 has halved, which given the price of it is not a large surprise. Even at the highest resolutions you'd struggle to maximise the frame-buffer on a GTX Titan, so 3GB is not a great loss and it's 1GB more than the GTX680 which can make a big difference. The clock-speed is up from 837/876MHz to 863/900Mhz, and the memory remains the same at an effective 6008MHz.
Equally we have the same amount of Raster Processors as the GTX Titan with 48. In fact besides the memory the only other big change is the drop of 384 CUDA cores down from 2688 on the GTX Titan to 2304 on the GTX780. Still a world ahead of the GTX680 though.
Hopefully these relatively minimal reductions in the available power of the GTX780 should be balanced out by the increased clock-speed and some outstanding numbers should be had.
1 - Introduction and Technical Specifications 2 - Up Close 3 - Test Setup and Temperatures 4 - 3D Mark Vantage 5 - 3D Mark 11 6 - 3D Mark 7 - AvP 8 - Batman Arkham City 9 - Bioshock Infinite & Crysis 3 10 - Far Cry 3 and Resident Evil 6 11 - Hitman Absolution 12 - Metro 2033 13 - Sleeping Dogs 14 - Tomb Raider and CatZilla 15 - Unigine 0xAA 16 - Unigine 8xAA 17 - Unigine Heaven - HiRes 18 - Unigine Valley 19 - Conclusion «Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Next»
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Supporters of President Obama may be inclined to interpret events as they reflect on the political fortunes of the president. Thus, they view with dismay the growth of the Tea Party movement and the outcome of the midterm elections partly because they are a sign of the president’s declining fortunes.
In the same way, they view with satisfaction health care reform, financial reform and Obama’s latest victories — the repeal of don’t-ask-don’t-tell and the ratification of the arms control treaty with Russia — because they boost his fortunes.
During the summer, the BP oil spill was bad because it reflected badly on Obama. Capping the well was good because it ended Obama’s embarrassment.
But there is reason to believe that not even Obama himself interprets events in such stark, self-interested, political terms. In fact, he has been criticized, especially by his supporters, for not more aggressively defending his political interests against the relentless political attacks of the Republican Party, which has declared that its top priority is defeating him in 2012.
There is another way of looking at Obama’s political fortunes and that is through the lens of the nation’s welfare. The important question is: How is the nation doing, at home and abroad? Answering that question involves more than assessing the effect of events on Obama’s political standing. It involves a long view of America’s unfolding history.
The dominant event of the past two years has been the Great Recession and, more importantly, the realities about the economy revealed by the recession. The recession itself may be over, technically, but unemployment is lingering, nationally, at just under 10 percent, with figures about underemployment telling us that nearly 20 percent of Americans are either unemployed or underemployed. That’s one in five.
Americans are not great complainers. Even during the Great Depression, historians have shown how people tended to become depressed more readily than they became angry. People blamed themselves. But this downturn was not caused by the individual worker who suddenly found himself or herself downsized out of a job. It was about large economic forces; irresponsible, unregulated business practices; and the colonizing of the American economy by unaccountable corporations.
It is becoming more widely understood that America has entered a new Gilded Age. A few lucky robber barons are able to jet off to their vacation homes; millions of others are left standing in line at food shelves.
That we are gaining understanding about these trends is a sign of progress. The White House is now occupied by a president who recognizes the damaging consequences of the vast inequality of wealth. He has tried to address the problem — succeeding with passage of health care reform but failing to effect tax policy that would begin to rectify the inequities.
The Republicans successfully tapped into popular unrest by helping to direct the people’s anger at the government — just as it happened that the government for the first time in many years was trying to side with the people. Democrats fumed at this paradox. But they failed effectively to convey in the November elections the ways they are on the people’s side. Partly that’s because many Democrats, like many Republicans, are in the thrall of big money. But mainly it was that they were blindsided by the way that Republicans were capable of manipulating popular unrest.
Many things are better than they were when Obama took office. We averted a great depression. We have ended the human rights abuses that were part of the Bush administration’s anti-terror policies. We have begun to address the health care crisis and taken small steps to address climate change. We have ended the military’s anti-gay policy. We have moved toward better relations with Russia on nuclear weapons. We have adopted new realism on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — though Afghanistan remains a bleeding wound.
And yet the class warfare waged against the American people by the wealthy elite proceeds at full force. Only when the people understand the full extent of this warfare will they be able to give Obama the political victories that will burnish his reputation and secure his place in history. It is up to us.California Sen. Tony Mendoza repeatedly invited home a young woman who wanted a job and employs a district director with a felony record, according to several sources who confirmed reports to the Senate Rules Committee.
Mendoza fired three aides as allegations were reported to the committee. Senate officials late Thursday vehemently denied any connection.
Multiple sources told The Sacramento Bee that Mendoza, D-Artesia, invited the young woman back to his place to review resumes, including hers, on the night of a party at the nightclub Mix Downtown. The woman worked as a fellow in his office through a prestigious Sacramento State program that places graduates in legislative offices for 11 months.
Two of the aides met with Senate Rules Committee staff and detailed allegations that Mendoza engaged in a pattern of inappropriate behavior with the fellow, according to a source and a document reviewed by The Bee. At least two of his aides complained about the way Mendoza’s district director, Ana Perez, treated them. One questioned why she was even working for the Senate given her felony record for lying to a grand jury to cover up campaign finance fraud in Commerce, sources said.
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In written responses to questions about his behavior with the fellow, Mendoza, 46, initially said, “Generally speaking, I would offer assistance to any of our employees seeking higher-ranking positions in ours or other offices.” He said he has an “absolute zero-tolerance policy on workplace harassment.”
When The Bee asked questions about other incidents, Mendoza replied, “I would never knowingly abuse my authority nor intentionally put an employee into an awkward or uncomfortable position. If I’ve communicated or miscommunicated anything that has ever made a female employee feel uncomfortable, then I am deeply embarrassed and I will immediately apologize.”
Mendoza did not answer whether he invited the fellow to his home.
Mendoza also defended the hiring of Perez, saying he believed in “second chances.”
In a statement, Perez called her illegal acts a “huge mistake” and said she has “paid her dues to society.” She expressed gratitude to Mendoza and the Senate for hiring her.
“No words can describe how remorseful I’ve been since – or how committed I am to serving the community that invested so much in me,” she wrote.
California’s Capitol has been steeped in controversy since hundreds of women in October signed a letter decrying sexual harassment in state politics. The accusations come from women lobbyists, lawmakers and staff members who say they’ve experienced harassment and even sexual assault on the job.
Many The Bee contacted declined to name their harasser or detail their experiences publicly fearing doing so would hurt their careers. Others have alleged they were retaliated against after filing formal complaints with the Legislature.
SHARE COPY LINK Women who have experienced or seen sexual harassment in the Capitol are speaking out, but many fear the consequences of telling their stories.
In the Mendoza case, a source said Rules was notified of the senator’s inappropriate behavior with the fellow prior to the firings. But in a written statement, Secretary of the Senate Daniel Alvarez said, “One complaint by a terminated employee triggered an immediate investigation which has been ongoing since September 22nd. Prior to that date, no allegation was ever made to anyone at Senate Rules regarding misconduct on behalf of the Senator.”
Mendoza said he was not aware of any complaints against him at the time of the firings. He said as of Tuesday, the committee had not called him in for questioning.
The senator said he decided to replace the staff members in an office reorganization based “entirely on work performance.” Yet in late September, a Mendoza spokesman told The Bee the fired staffers were “excellent” employees.
The three aides – chief of staff Eusevio Padilla, legislative director Adriana Ruelas and scheduler Stacey Brown – were fired Sept. 22 and sources said signed confidentiality agreements. Along with the fellow, they declined to comment for this story. The Bee is not naming the fellow because she has not gone public about her experience.
The Bee confirmed details through copies of written communications and sources with knowledge of the situation, who asked to remain anonymous to protect their careers.
If I’ve communicated or miscommunicated anything that has ever made a female employee feel uncomfortable, then I am deeply embarrassed and I will immediately apologize.” Sen. Tony Mendoza
Co-workers at the Capitol describe the fellow, 23, as smart, ambitious and eager to land a position in the Legislature. Throughout the fellowship, which began in October 2016, sources said she sought a formal meeting with Mendoza to discuss job opportunities in his office.
She did obtain one meeting, but confided in a colleague later that Mendoza said he had not yet had time to review resumes and invited her to his house to help, according to one source.
On Aug. 31, the fellow was attending an event with Mendoza and other staff, the California Latino Capital Association Foundation’s Annual Third House Mixer.
At the event, Mendoza invited her to a second party that night, but she declined, according to a colleague she spoke with that evening.
Later, Mendoza texted a picture of himself and other male legislators from the second event to the fellow, multiple sources said.
Along with that picture, they said he repeated his invitation to join him that night at his house in Natomas, which he shares with Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León, to go over resumes. A spokesman for de León on Wednesday said the leader had no knowledge of the allegations against Mendoza.
A week before the invitation, sources said, Mendoza had suggested the fellow could spend the night in his hotel room before an early golf tournament fundraiser at Cache Creek the next day. The fellow sought advice from colleagues, and traveled the next morning instead.
Mendoza denied that he made such an invitation. “Absolutely not,” he wrote.
Multiple sources told The Bee that Mendoza invited the young woman back to his place to review resumes, including hers, on the night of a party at the nightclub Mix Downtown.
The fellow informed David Pacheco, director of the Senate Fellows program, about the senator’s behavior, according to communications obtained by The Bee. The fellow told others Pacheco advised her not to take immediate action to leave the office and said he would speak with Jeannie Oropeza, the head of human resources under the Senate Rules Committee.
Pacheco told her that Mendoza may need staff and she could be an option, she told others, advising her to wait and see what happened.
When reached by phone this week, Pacheco declined to comment and referred questions to the Senate Rules Committee.
Oropeza declined to comment. “All I can say is all personnel matters are confidential,” she said.
Pacheco and the fellows work for Sacramento State, not the Legislature. An associate director of the school’s Center for California Studies, Pacheco has directed the fellows program for more than a decade and previously worked in the Assembly.
Pacheco reports to Steve Boilard, the executive director of the center. Boilard said Pacheco did not report any incidents to him, although university policy requires employees to report any allegation or act of harassment they become aware of.
Boilard said he meets every Monday with the directors of the Capital fellows program and would expect to be informed of an incident within a week after someone came forward.
Kathy Dresslar, former chief of staff to then Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, said supervisors in legislative offices also have a duty to report allegations of sexual harassment to the Rules Committee.
“It’s not just the powerless young person who has a duty here to report, it’s the supervisor that witnessed or heard about it even from secondary sources,” Dresslar said. “You have to follow up on that – as a supervisor that’s your job.”
The fellow spoke with Oropeza on Sept. 25, although how much detail she provided is unclear, according to someone with knowledge of the situation and communications reviewed by The Bee.
The communications showed the fellow said all Oropeza wanted to know was if the fellow was OK, and said they could move her to another office if she didn’t want to work for Mendoza anymore. The fellow indicated that she was OK, and said she just needed to find another job quickly.
At least two of the aides also complained to the Senate Rules Committee about difficulties working with Perez. In the written communications reviewed by The Bee, employees speculated about whether Mendoza would get rid of Perez, who pleaded guilty to felony conspiracy in 2012 related to an illegal campaign finance scheme involving former Commerce City Councilman Robert Fierro and subsequent efforts to cover it up. Perez is Fierro’s sister-in-law and served as his campaign treasurer.
Court records say Perez contributed money to Fierro’s Commerce City Council campaign in 2005 and then accepted cash reimbursements as part of a larger scheme involving others. She later lied in an FBI interview about her involvement, tried to persuade others to lie to a grand jury and falsely testified to the grand jury, all of which Perez admitted as part of a plea agreement. She received three years of probation and six months of home detention as punishment.
Senate payroll records show that Perez earned a monthly salary of $6,578 in October. In her statement to The Bee, she denied knowing “anything even resembling” an allegation that she bullied staff. “If I had, I would have responded to it, reported it to the Senator and sought assistance to resolve any issues.”
In his statement, Mendoza described Perez as a nonviolent first-time offender.
“To her credit, the employee’s prior offense was fully disclosed, she convinced us that she had learned from the mistake made early in her professional life and her work and service on behalf of state taxpayers has been exemplary,” he said. “This is a success story, not something to be criticized.”
Alvarez, in his statement, said that her hiring did not violate employment policy.
“It is highly unusual but, in certain circumstances where a prospective employee is committed to public service and clearly qualified for a position, employers have that discretion,” he said.
The Bee first learned of the departure of Mendoza’s aides in late September and asked his office why they were fired. A spokesman in Los Angeles said the senator received significant new responsibilities this year when the pro tem named him the head of the Insurance, Banking and Financial Institutions Committee in May and assigned him to a budget subcommittee overseeing energy, transportation and the environment.
“What the senator was looking for was having a staff that can help him do the kind of work the pro tem and the caucus wants on these types of assignments,” said Saeed Ali, a senior policy analyst for Mendoza, at the time. “His existing staff is excellent, but he wanted to make a change.”
Of the fired staff, Padilla and Ruelas combined have more than 30 years of experience at the Capitol. Brown has served as a Capitol scheduler for more than a decade. Two of the three aides have since been hired for similar positions at the Capitol.
The Senate Rules Committee gave the workers no reason for ending their employment and cited its legal right to terminate at-will employees at any time, without explanation or prior notice, according to a document reviewed by The Bee. Unlike state employees, legislative workers have no civil service protection. A bill to provide them with whistleblower protection against retaliation has died in the Legislature four years in a row.
After The Bee story appeared online Thursday, Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens and chairwoman of the California Legislative Women’s Caucus, said she would no longer work with Mendoza. “It saddens to me to think this young woman depended on multiple people to do the right thing yet she was told to keep her mouth shut,” she said. “This brings further shame to this body.”
Mendoza won a seat representing the 56th district in the state Assembly in 2006 and served six years in the lower house. He was elected to the Senate to represent the newly established 32nd District in 2014. He and his wife, Leticia, have four children.
According to his Senate biography, Mendoza was the first Latino and youngest member of the Artesia City Council at age 25. He became mayor of Artesia, a small southeast Los Angeles city with a population of about 17,000, the next year. He served three terms on the City Council and taught elementary school in East Los Angeles for a decade.
Editor’s Note: This story was updated at 8 p.m. Nov. 9, 2017 to reflect late-arriving comments from Senate officials.SANTA CLARA — Westfield Valley Fair is reaching for a new level of glitz with new high-end retailers.
Prada and Ferragamo have joined Valley Fair’s luxury collection of stores, which is occupying an increasingly large portion of the mall. Prada, best known for its luxury handbags, recently opened a 6,254 square-foot store, and Italian designer Ferragamo, which sells accessories, shoes and leather goods, opened at the mall on Wednesday.
The mall will also add Brandy Melville, a brand popular among teenagers and young women this month, And Uniqlo, the Japan-based clothing retailer Uniqulo will open a new store this fall.
Also this month, the mall will welcome a new 49ers Team Store. It will be the San Francisco 49ers’ third Bay Area retail location outside Candlestick Park; the team also has stores in Palo Alto and San Francisco.
Contact Heather Somerville at 510-208-6413. Follow her at Twitter.com/heathersomervil.SYABM comic 13: “The Fannish Inquisition”
Once upon a time, I read an article on Kotaku about sexism in gaming. This was a few years back, before the rot really started to set in. Specifically, it linked to an rant written by some guy about Fake Geek Girls. I thought nothing of it.
Fast forward a few years, and SJWs are treating women as a persecuted minority within geekdom, constantly interrogated to see if their geek knowledge is up to snuff. Strangely, I hear much more about this alleged problem than I see any actual examples.
And something occurs to me; what if they’re wrong? What if they’re mistaking actual, y'know, conversation for persecution? If I want to discuss something with someone, I like to establish what they know about it before I proceed. This wouldn’t be the first time a well-meaning feminist mistook something innocent for something nefarious.
And what if they’re right? What if there are gatekeepers who see themselves as saving gaming from the XX-chromosomed hordes? Where’s the evidence that they represent a significant group, instead of a few dicks? I mean, geeks do things that other geeks disavow all the time; look at slashficcers, or furries, or furry slashficcers. This sort of gatekeeping isn’t even unique to geekery. I’m told punk rock and metal fans do this sort of thing all the time. And for that matter, many feminists themselves often say that You Must be This Knowledgable about Male Privilege to enter, especially to men.
There are many fandoms, such as Adventure Time or Supernatural, where female geeks are the majority, not the minority.
Bottom line; I just don’t see much evidence to support this claim, barring anecdata. Heck, even the anecdata, like the person in the screenshot, usually just assumes this only happens to women.Sweden to extradite Assange to US - lawyer
Berlin - Julian Assange's lawyer in Britain has accused Swedish authorities of secretly planning to extradite the WikiLeaks founder to the United States, in an interview with a German newspaper to appear on Thursday.
Mark Stephens told the weekly Die Zeit that he believed Swedish officials were co-operating with US authorities with an eye to extraditing Assange as soon as the Americans have built a criminal case against him.
"We are hearing that the Swedish are prepared to drop the rape charges against Julian as soon as the Americans demand his extradition," he said, citing sources in Washington and Stockholm.
Stephens called the Swedish charges against his client a "holding case" to buy time until the United States can prosecute him themselves over WikiLeaks' mass release of classified US documents.
A spokesperson for the Swedish justice ministry sharply denied the allegations.
"That's a lie. It is not true. There are no negotiations (with the US) in that field," Justice Minister Beatrice Ask's spokesperson Martin Valfridsson told AFP.
Assange's lawyer added his client did not believe he would receive a fair trial in Sweden which was why he was fighting his extradition from Britain.
Valdfridsson, of the Swedish justice ministry, reiterated that a Swedish prosecutor wanted to question Assange over allegations of sex offences, and that if she determined there were grounds for a trial, those offences "would be the only thing that would be tried".
Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, has been living at a supporter's country estate in England since being released on bail on December 16 after his arrest by British police on a Swedish warrant.
Stephens said that he believed the "last station" of an extradition to Sweden would be "a high-security prison in the United States".
Assange's lawyers released documents on Tuesday saying that if the Australian is extradited to Sweden there is a "real risk" he will face extradition or illegal rendition to the United States where he could be detained at Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere and subject to the death penalty.
When asked what Sweden would do if Assange, once in the country, was cleared of sex offences but was the subject of a request by the United States to be extradited, Valfridsson said it "was not an issue on the table".
"There are no negotiations like that," he stressed.
A British judge ruled on Tuesday that Sweden's bid to have him extradited would be heard in full on February 7-8.
Swedish authorities want to question Assange about charges brought by two women that he sexually assaulted them, but the 39-year-old says the extradition attempt is politically motivated and linked to WikiLeaks' activities.
The whistleblowing website has released classified documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and from US diplomats stationed around the world.
A US court has reportedly subpoenaed the Twitter accounts of four WikiLeaks supporters as part of a widening criminal investigation into the leaks.Friday on PBS’s “NewsHour,” former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said President Donald Trump had given a lot of “encouragement and rhetorical support” to the Ku Klux Klan.
When asked if President Trump is a racist, Clinton said, “Here’s what I believe. I believe He has given a lot of encouragement and rhetorical support to the Ku Klux Klan, he accepted the support of David Duke. I believe that he has not condemned the neo-Nazis and the self-proclaimed white supremacists in Charlottesville and other settings.”
She continued “I can’t tell you what’s in his heart, Judy. I don’t know. It could be total rank cynical opportunism. He has a hardcore base that believes these things and he is going to keep feeding it.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNENShare. What to expect from the upcoming series. What to expect from the upcoming series.
New York Comic Con 2015 attendees were treated to a screening of the premiere episode of The Expanse, a 10-part series airing in December on Syfy, as well as a Q&A with the series' stars Thomas Jane (Det. Miller), Florence Faivre (Julie Mao), Steven Strait (James Holden), Cas Anwar (Alex Kamel), as well as executive producers Mark Fergus and Hawk Otsby.
Exit Theatre Mode
The Expanse is a multi-layered story that focuses on three prominent yet seemingly disparate arcs that will eventually intertwine as the series progresses. It should appeal to fans of hard sci-fi as it shares many elements from such prominent franchises as Blade Runner, Battlestar Galactica and Alien.
Exit Theatre Mode
Part detective story, part political thriller and part outer space adventure, The Expanse takes place 200 years in the future after the solar system has been colonized and Earth and Mars are on the brink of war. Life is pretty grim for those who live on Ceres, a colonized asteroid teeming with bleakness and poverty, or those who work on space freighters, searching for food and water to help keep humanity alive.
Exit Theatre Mode
In the Q&A that followed, the cast and crew spoke about the process of creating the show, such as the huge amount of wire-work that goes into filming the anti-gravity scenes, as well as the allegorical themes that reoccur throughout each episode. Even though the scope is massive, with excellent special effects and set pieces, the themes are very basic -- freedom, equality and the fight for justice. In addition, executive producer Hawk Otsby settled a few audience members' concerns. "We're definitely challenging the books," he promised.
The Expanse is a 10-episode series premiering December 14, 2015 on Syfy.Cool Planet, a startup headquartered in Colorado, announced a major $100 million round of financing today. Investors include a roster of big names including Google Ventures, BP, General Electric, and ConocoPhillips. Last month the company broke ground on its first commercial plant, located in Louisiana, and this new capital will go towards completing that infrastructure and building two more Louisiana facilities.
Cool Planet argues that its process takes more CO2 out of the atmosphere than it adds in
Like many biofuels companies before it, Cool Planet makes liquid fuel from plant matter, |
.
Serious Criminals ‘Getting Through’?
Immigration experts who reviewed the TRAC study noted that it has limitations. It only captures a short amount of time since PEP was implemented, and it does not show how many of those taken into custody by ICE were actually deported.
But some observers are concerned that even with increased cooperation from local law enforcement, ICE is apprehending fewer people it seeks custody of.
Randy Capps, the director of research for U.S. programs at the Migration Policy Institute, says that because ICE is more narrowly tailoring its deportation focus to those it considers to be serious criminals—and recent border crossers—it stands to reason that some of those who are not taken into custody are dangerous.
“One can assume a fair number with serious convictions are not getting into ICE custody,” says Randy Capps of @MigrationPolicy.
“It’s clear that the overall number of people getting detainers and into ICE custody are both going down so we have evidence that ICE is narrowing whom they seek to deport,” Capps told The Daily Signal. “And it is also clear a lot more major jurisdictions are sending people into ICE custody, while there are still some that are not.”
“So one has to ask, are people who would be considered a top priority and may commit a serious crime getting through and not getting deported?” Capps added. “We don’t know for sure because ICE has other ways to pick these people up. But one can assume a fair number with serious convictions are not getting into ICE custody.”
‘No Correlation’
An ICE official, who would not comment directly on the TRAC study, told The Daily Signal it’s not appropriate to conclude that just because the agency is receiving greater compliance from local jurisdictions, it should therefore be taking custody of more people who are referred to them for deportation.
That’s because, in instances where local agencies refuse to help facilitate the removal of illegal immigrants targeted by ICE, federal immigration officials often go off into communities on their own to find and take custody of those individuals.
These dispatched ICE officers, known as Fugitive Operations Teams, are usually tasked with finding and apprehending illegal immigrants who don’t show up for their deportation hearings, or those who have been ordered removed but escape before they’re deported.
>>>How Other Nations Stop US From Deporting Criminal Illegal Immigrants
But in other situations, the ICE official and Capps said, the Fugitive Operations Teams will be dispatched to find those who the government considers to be serious criminals—people who local agencies refuse to help deport.
“There is no direct correlation between a record showing an alien in ICE custody and a local jurisdiction honoring an ICE detainer,” the ICE official said. “In uncooperative jurisdictions, ICE officers often attempt to track down and arrest those individuals after they have been released from local custody. These are considered ‘at-large’ arrests because they take place outside the confines of a jail.”
These type of arrests that occur without the help of local law enforcement are not included in TRAC’s data.
“That wouldn’t show up in this [TRAC] data,” Capps said. “It does not count as someone taken into custody via a detainer. And as the number of issued detainers comes down, I think you will see fugitive operations picking up a higher share of people than in the past.”
Fugitive operations are also considered more expensive and time-intensive, Capps said.
“The limitation of fugitive operations is ICE has to go find people,” Capps said. “With that, there are all sorts of extra constraints, and it is much more expensive and difficult to do. When someone is in jail, they are captive, and you just go get them.”
Local Laws ‘Trumping’ ICE Policy
For ICE, the implementation of PEP was supposed to help avoid that extra effort, by promoting flexibility with how cities and counties devise their policies, and thus encouraging more cooperation.
That has happened in some cases.
ICE reports that of the 25 jurisdictions with the highest number of declined detainers, 17 of those jurisdictions are now PEP participants in some shape or form. These 17 jurisdictions represent 61 percent of previously declined detainers. So from ICE’s perspective, there is still progress left to be made.
Indeed, the TRAC data shows that since fiscal year 2014, a number of local jurisdictions in California have racked up the highest numbers of declined detainers and notification requests.
Before PEP was implemented, the Santa Clara County Main Jail had the highest refusal rate in the nation at 88.2 percent.
In the latest available data since PEP has been in place, from July through November 2015, ICE reports that Santa Clara County has only declined 4.8 percent of requests. Yet ICE has still been unable to take custody of the illegal immigrant in nearly every one of those cases.
“This raises the question: Did Santa Clara’s cooperation actually increase? Or did ICE simply stop recording refusals that occurred? Or is there some other explanation for these wildly dissimilar trends?” the TRAC report states.
To Capps, no matter what ICE considers to be cooperation, the data makes sense. In California, it’s harder to apprehend illegal immigrants through detainer requests because of a state law, known as the Trust Act, that strictly limits the situations in which local agencies will help ICE take custody of those it seeks to deport.
“The huge discrepancies in the refusal rate vs. not taking somebody into custody suggests to me that the refusal rate does not have that much meaning,” Capps said. “The share taken into custody has much more meaning in showing who is actually cooperating, and how well PEP is performing as it’s intended to. And some of that is outside ICE’s control if states and localities have laws that for the time being seem to be trumping ICE policies.”I've seen alot of people asking how to get this on their device so I thought I'd just make a thread for it.I'll try and make it as simple as I can:1. Download MeBoyBuilder.jar you can find it here arktos.se - MeBoy (You must have Java installed for this to work)2. Run MeBoyBuilder.jar, and hit, and go ahead and add whatever games you like (They must be ROM files) You can find some here CoolROM.com - Gameboy Color / GBC ROMs - A 3. After you have added the ROM, hit create MeBoy.jar, it shoud create 2 files, MeBoy.jar, and MeBoy.jad you can go ahead and delete MeBoy.jad4. Next connect your Blackberry to your computer and find it in My Computer, it should show up as Removable Disk.5. Open up the Removable Disk folder and drag MeBoy.jar right in there.6. Remove your BlackBerry from your computer, and go to theFolder on your device.7. Hit Menu and then8. Next hit Media Card and then MeBoy.jar it should now install MeBoy to your device.9. After it has finished you can find MeBoy in downloads.10. Enjoy!If you guys have questions feel free to ask.Phobos will be torn apart by Mars' gravitational pull in millions of years
Now they believe they're the first signs of the moon being under stress
They thought they were left over from a massive impact
Grooves on the surface of Mars’ largest moon suggest it is being destroyed by its parent planet.
While scientists have long suggested it is doomed to be destroyed, the ‘extensive system of grooves’ the first signs that the rocky satellite is gradually been torn apart.
They were first spotted in the 1970s, but new analysis shows the grooves match up with regions being put under stress.
Doomed: Grooves on the surface of Mars’ largest moon suggest it is being destroyed by its parent planet. While scientists have long suggested it is doomed to be destroyed, the ‘extensive system of grooves’ the first signs that the rocky satellite is gradually been torn apart
Experts have predicted Phobos, perhaps aptly named after the character fear and panic in Greek mythology, will eventually be destroyed because it us so close to Mars that the planet’s tidal pull is shrinking its orbit.
In millions of years, it is expected these forces will rip the moon apart before its pieces smash into Mars.
Experts first learned of the moon’s long, parallel grooves measuring 328 to 656 feet (100-200 metres) wide and 33 to 98 feet (10-30metres) long when the area was surveyed by the Mariner 9 and Viking orbiters in the 1970s.
They assumed they were cracks made by a large impact, or rows of debris on a homogenous lump of rock.
The grooves (shown) were first spotted in the 1970s, but new analysis shows they match up with regions being put under stress. Some believe the linear features are the result of an impact that formed Stickney crater
THE MARKINGS OF PHOBOS Phobos is the larger and closer of Mars' two moons, the other being Deimos. They were both discovered in 1877. Irregularly-shaped Phobos has an average radius of seven miles (11km) and is seven times larger than Deimos. Phobos is 3,700 miles (6,000km) from Mars and has the closest orbit of any known planetary moon. It is so close that it orbits Mars faster than Mars rotates, and completes an orbit in just 7 hours and 39 minutes. Due to tidal interactions, Phobos is drawing closer to Mars by one meter every century, and it is predicted that in 50 million years it will collide with the planet or break up into a planetary ring. It was thought that mysterious grooves on the moon were markings as the result of an impact, but nor scientists say they are the first sign the rocky body is under stress.
But in 2008, the Mars Express spacecraft revealed that Phobos is really a ball of rubbish stuck together by a thick layer of dust, meaning the grooves were unlikely to have been caused by a massive impact, which could have blown the rocky body apart.
Terry Hurford, of Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland, calculated the effect of stress tidal forces on Phobos using a computer model.
‘We calculate the surface stress field of the de-orbiting satellite and show that the first signs of tidal disruption are already present on its surface,’ his team write in the study.
‘Most of Phobos’ prominent grooves have an excellent correlation with computed stress orientations,’ it says, meaning that the marks are aligned with regions under the most stress.
Dr Hurford, who will present the results at a meeting of the Geological Society of America, said: ‘The grooves are the first sign of tearing it apart.’
There is a theory that the grooves may be faults, which could explain why some of them seem to cross each other’s paths.
Experts first learned of the moon’s long, parallel grooves measuring 328 to 656 feet (100-200 metres) wide and 33 to 98 feet (10-30metres) long when the area was surveyed by the Mariner 9 and Viking orbiters in the 1970s. An illustration showing the larger of Mars' two moons near its parent planet is shown
The study says: Our model results applied to surface observations imply that Phobos has a rubble pile interior that is nearly strengthless.
It suggests the moon is held together by a flexible outer layer of dust.
‘This outer layer behaves elastically and can experience significant tidal stress at levels able to drive tensile failure.
‘Fissures can develop as the global body deforms due to increasing tides related to orbital decay.’
The researchers write: ‘Phobos may have an active and evolving surface; an exciting target for further exploration.’
They believe their findings could help the study of another satellite in our solar system – Triton, which is one of Jupiter’s moons and one of the few known to be geologically active.
While the study may seem dramatic, Dr Hurford believes Phobos will survive for millions of years.Adam Lambert -- Accused of Battery
Adam Lambert -- Accused of Battery
TMZ has learned... theis now in the middle of a violent incident involving " American Idol " runner-up Adam Lambert... after the alleged victim filed a police report.Law enforcement sources tell us the paparazzo seen grappling with Lambert on the beach yesterday walked into a Miami Beach police station around 10:30 PM last night and filed a report... accusing the singer of misdemeanor battery.According to the police report, obtained by TMZ, the victim claims Adam grabbed his backpack "where the camera was placed"... and "wrestled [the photog] to the ground forcefully."One big problem -- in photos that were taken of the incident, the camera appears to be in the photog's hand... not in his bag.The police report also notes that the photog didn't sustain any "bruises or lacerations."Cops tell detectives will decide if the case is worth turning over to the State's Attorney -- who will decide whether to prosecute Lambert. If convicted, Lambert could face up to one year in jail and a $1,000 fine.After yesterday's clash -- Lambert went right to his Twitter account and posted, "I lost my temper for a sec but wow it felt great lol MIAMI!!!"Lambert just tweeted, "Battery? Nope. I attempted to grab a camera, no punches were thrown and no one was on the ground.... It was literally harmless. If embarrassment is a crime- thats all I'm guilty of. "Inside the Weird World of 3D Printed Body Parts Startups in the U.S. are working on printing nipples and bits of liver tissue, while a Russian provocateur claims to have on-demand thyroids Andrew Leonard Blocked Unblock Follow Following Mar 4, 2015 Unlisted Laura Bosworth wants to 3D print breast nipples on demand. The CEO of the Texas startup TeVido Biodevices is betting on a future in which survivors of breast cancer who have undergone mastectomies will be able to order up new breasts printed from their own living cells. “Everyone,” she says, “knows a woman who has had breast cancer.” Right now their options are limited. Reconstructed nipples using state-of-the-art plastic surgery techniques, she says, “tend to flatten and fade and don’t last very long.” A living nipple built from the patient’s own fat cells, and reconstructed to the precise specification of the original nipple, could go a long way to ameliorating the psychological trauma often associated with mastectomies. Bosworth readily acknowledges that significant obstacles must be overcome before 3D printed breast parts become an affordable reality. Despite the waves of hype that surged after Anthony Atala, a Wake Forest professor, wowed a TED crowd in 2011 by purporting to print a human kidney on stage, no one has yet used a 3D printer to create a functional human organ. The science is only half the battle. Venture capitalists aren’t exactly beating down the doors of TeVido. It’s a lot easier, observes Bosworth, to raise money “for an app that lets you order a taxi” than for a biomedical breakthrough that will cost millions of dollars in R&D before beginning the lengthy process of clinical trials needed to bring a product to market. Yet Bosworth is convinced that a $6 billion market awaits whoever gets out of the lab first. “The field itself has grown tremendously,” says TeVido co-founder Thomas Boland, one of the first scientists to start modifying ordinary 3D printers to print layers of living cells instead of ink. Researchers far afield, in China and Russia and Switzerland, at Ivy League labs and in the biotech hotbed of San Diego, are all pushing bioprinting forward. The disciplines of material science, cell biology and computer-controlled manufacturing are all merging. If we believe everything we’ve heard recently, we’ll be 3D printing our food, our cars, our homes, our electronics—heck, the entire structure of globalized trade will be disrupted when we’re 3D printing everything we need in our living rooms rather than having it shipped in containers from China. The possibilities seem near infinite, even if the present-day realities are constrained. As overblown as this swirling rhetoric may seem, the realms of science fiction and cold, hard bioprinting fact have convened at least once in real life, in the uncanny meeting of the minds of a nipple builder, a pioneer in tissue fabrication and a (possibly) mad Russian futurist. In that brief convergence one can glimpse the grandiose visions that cautious scientists tend to keep to themselves. Absurdity mingles with the commonplace. And you’re reminded of the most astounding thing of all: how today we’re talking, in matter-of-fact, business-savvy tones, about the actual printing of human body parts. Now, back to the nipples. In 2000 Thomas Boland was an assistant professor at Clemson University, in South Carolina, when he first conceived of modifying a standard HP inkjet printer to place layers of cells on top of one another, earning him the sobriquet “the grandfather of bioprinting.” He is now the director of the biomedical engineering program at the University of Texas El Paso. In 2010, Bosworth, a retired executive who previously worked at Dell Computers, met Boland through a mentoring program that matched entrepreneurially minded scientists at the university with business veterans. “The more I learned about the potential for this technology, the more I thought that this was amazing stuff,” recalls Bosworth. “I said to Thomas one day, ‘we should start a company,’ and he said let’s do it.” It’s easy to understand Bosworth’s fascination. The technology of 3D bioprinting is at once relatively simple to describe and utterly astounding. Instead of extruding multiple layers of plastic or some other composite to create an inanimate physical object, a bioprinter prints a “bio-ink” of living cells. Typically, layers of different cell types are intermixed with layers of an “extracellular matrix”—a gel in which the cells are suspended.
3D printed tissue construct in a Petri dish (right after printing). Photo courtesy of University of Iowa.
Cell biologists have been culturing cells and attempting to fabricate larger structures for decades. The advantages delivered by 3D printing, says Boland, are in its precision, flexibility and speed. Different types of cells can be placed in specific locations much more quickly than one could achieve by hand. Speed is of the essence, because the slower the process of assembly, the more likely it is that the cells will die. Using multiple printer heads containing solutions of different cell types and gels, extraordinarily complicated structures can be constructed in short periods of time. Putting cells in position swiftly is only the beginning. Figuring out how to keep them alive is widely acknowledged as the biggest obstacle scientists face in achieving the holy grail of building fully functional organs that can be transplanted into human bodies. In the organs in your body, cells are kept alive by nutrients delivered by networks of veins and capillaries—its vasculature. The kidney printed out by Anthony Atala at TED, though shaped like a human kidney, did not have this support network. “Embedding the microvasculature into the printed construct,” says Boland, “has proven very difficult.” No one, at this point, can say with authority when and how the vasculature problem will be solved. At Harvard’s Wyss Institute, for example, a team led by Jennifer Lewis has won widespread attention for a process in which a branching network of tubes gets printed throughout the extracellular matrix using a bio-ink with a very special property — it melts when it cools. After the full tissue construct is printed, complete with living cells and extracellular matrix and a filament of branching tubes, Lewis’ team chilled the whole thing and sucked out the melted bio-ink, leaving behind an empty network of tubes that, theoretically, can be used to funnel nutrients to the cells. Boland, who now serves as an advisor to TeVido, says his El Paso lab has been experimenting with printing out “channels” of epithelial cells, the cells that line the walls of blood vessels. The goal is to see if the cells can be induced to self-organize into functional structures, although Scott Collins, TeVido’s chief technology officer, citing intellectual property issues, declined to go into much detail. “In terms of deliverables, have we made organs yet? No,” Boland says. “But we are getting closer.” Adds Collins: “we aim to be the first.” The main problem blocking TeVido from getting to the promised land, said Collins, is not the science but the funding. So far it has been scrimping along on various government grants. In January TeVido even took the unprecedented step of running an Indiegogo crowd-funding campaign, in which the company raised the $30,000 it said it needed to file its patents. The vision of breast reconstruction from living cells is obviously exciting. The reality—the crowd-funding of tens of thousands of dollars to file patents, the long haul from the lab to clinical trial to the human body—is a bit more mundane. It’s a lot harder to build new body parts than it is to code a new app. But in an era when technological change driven by computer hardware and software wizardry is ubiquitously lauded as instantly disruptive, the distinction between amazing vision and plodding scientific progress sometimes get lost. Indeed, one could argue that over the last few years, the realm of 3D printing technology is where this distinction has gotten most confused.
Vladimir Mironov, Scientific Director of the Labaratory of Biotechnology Research. Photo courtesy of 3D Bioprinting Solutions.
Last November, a news report in Russia Today sent a shudder of excitement through the cluster of blogs and tech sites that cover bioprinting. Scientists at a Moscow laboratory called 3D Bioprinting Solutions announced that they would be able to print a functioning mouse thyroid gland by March 2015. Even better, declared the director of the lab, Vladimir Mironov, by 2018 the lab would start printing fully transplantable kidneys. “The one who will be the first to print and then successfully transplant the kidney to the patient—who will stay alive—will for sure get a Nobel prize,” said Mironov. Mironov was probably not wrong in his prediction that whoever first successfully bioprints a working human kidney will be showered with worldwide acclaim. Never mind the psychological benefits of improved techniques for breast reconstruction; the need for more kidneys is a pressing issue of life and death. In the U.S. alone more than 100,000 people are on the waiting list for a kidney transplant right now—but only 17,000 transplants took place in all of 2013. Successful bioprinting of human kidneys will save thousands of lives. I don’t normally put huge stock in Russia Today as a reliable news source, but I was very curious. I wanted to know, for example, how Mironov intended to solve the vasculature problem? My efforts to reach him, however, failed. My efforts to Google him, on the other hand, were highly entertaining. For starters, in 2011 Mironov wrote an article for The Futurist predicting that we would soon be printing out entire human beings. It is not difficult to predict that changing the human body will eventually be as routine as changing clothes. Cosmetic surgery will fuse with fashion. Human-printing technology would eliminate the need to wait 18 years in order to get a fully developed adult: Humans could theoretically be printed on demand and be functionally ready in days or weeks. The brain could be replaced with biochips, though brain research would need to advance to such a level that brains could be reverse engineered and manufactured. The line “cosmetic surgery will fuse with fashion” contains some nuances that could apply to bioprinted breast nipples. But the notion of bioprinting complete humans on demand in days or weeks? To paraphrase Thomas Boland, such a task seems likely to prove very difficult.
Alexander Mitryashkin, an engineer at the Biotechnology Research Labaratory. Photo courtesy of 3D Bioprinting Solutions.
But the plot thickens. In 2003, while employed as a researcher at the Medical University of South Carolina, Mironov was a co-author of a paper that outlined the prospects of using 3D printers to fabricate human tissue. One of other co-authors of that paper was none other than Boland! A third author, Gabor Forgacs, a biophysicist at the University of Missouri, ended up co-founding a company called Organovo that successfully went public and is now bioprinting small samples of human liver tissue for purposes of pharmaceutical drug testing. Mironov’s name is on a patent for engineering tissue that is currently owned by Organovo. Several years after helping usher in the age of bioprinting with his 2003 paper, Mironov achieved a small measure of pop-cultural notoriety (and an appearance on the Colbert Report) for his work on a PETA-funded project to create in-vitro meat, a.k.a. “schmeat.” Mironov’s goal: nothing less than assuring a sustainable future food source for humanity. By 2011, Mironov was poised to become director of a $20 million Advanced Tissue Biofabrication laboratory at MUSC. But in February of 2011, he was suddenly suspended and his lab shut down for reasons that remain mysterious, but appear to have involved some serious interpersonal conflicts. A dean at the university said only that Mironov had engaged in “unacceptable behavior.” Mironov told Nature that “my research is blocked. They say I am unstable. It has become surrealistic.” After 2011 Mironov’s trail becomes more obscure. He appears to have spent some time conducting research in Brazil while authoring visionary articles for the Futurist, before popping up with his new company and laboratory in Moscow. Let’s review: a one-time PETA-funded synthetic meat researcher who believes that eventually we will be bioprinting complete humans with bio-chipped brains is now hard at work using 3D printers to fabricate mouse thyroid glands in Russia. This is not the plot of the next Thomas Pynchon novel. This is cold hard reality. And yet, by tracking down the startups co-founded by Mironov’s 2003 co-authors, I ended up learning about TeVido and Organovo, real companies employing real scientists to do real stuff. In the world of bioprinting, the line between science fiction and peer-reviewed research is very, very slender. Organovo, says Michael Renard, executive vice president of commercial operations, is “far and away the leader” in commercializing the products of bioprinting technology. Originally founded with the intent of manufacturing bioprinters for sale to others, Organovo eventually decided, after discussions with investors and pharmaceutical companies, that there was a better chance at making and deploying their technology in the drug-testing business, Renard said. In November, Organovo announced the commercial release of 3D printed “Human Liver Tissue for preclinical drug discovery testing.”
Cross-section of bioprinted human liver tissue. Image courtesy of Organovo.It's refreshing to see how many people rose to the defence of Samuel de Champlain during the recent tempest over the naming of a new bridge in Montreal. It's always a good thing when Canadians fight to preserve a bit of their history.
The new span in question will replace the iconic Champlain Bridge, and will cross the St. Lawrence River and Seaway in virtually the same spot as the old bridge. And yet for some reason federal Infrastructure Minister Denis Lebel floated the idea of changing the name. His proposal: Rename it after Montreal Canadiens legend Maurice "Rocket" Richard.
The public, pundits and academics went berserk, and Mr. Lebel has since backed down. He now says he will honour the wishes of Rocket Richard's descendants, who have asked him to take the hockey player's name out of contention. Mr. Lebel, however, has not yet said whether the new bridge will continue with the old name. He should do that, as soon as possible.
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Samuel de Champlain is one of the great figures of Canadian history. The French navigator and explorer helped settle Acadia and founded what is now Quebec City. He was the first European to explore the Great Lakes. Later, he became the administrator of New France and, in 1624, he laid the first stone in the fortifications at Quebec City. He is widely regarded as the father of New France, and New France is a father of Canada.
The importance of preserving his name on so vital a link as the Champlain Bridge, which connects the island of Montreal to the mainland – to Canada, you might say – was obvious to everyone except Mr. Lebel. For many in Quebec, the idea of renaming the bridge after a hockey player, even one as revered as The Rocket, smacked of a manipulative populism. There has been a long fight over who will pay for the new bridge – taxpayers or tolled drivers – and that's a debate worth having. But renaming the bridge? It's an argument that should never have been started.
We don't know Mr. Lebel's motivation for his ill-considered decision. What we do know is that he can redeem himself by confirming that Samuel de Champlain will retain his place at the centre of Montreal's geography. The new Champlain Bridge, spanning the great river that is a highway to the heart of the continent, should stand for many future generations of Canadians as a symbol of the great explorer's contribution to our heritage.Imagine this, if you can. You and your friends are out at an art gallery — the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit, or CAID — for something called "Funk Night," basically an all-night dance party.
The party, open only to members, happens once a month. So there you are, reelin' with the feelin', when suddenly, at 2 a.m., the place is invaded by screaming cops with guns drawn.
Except you don't even know they are cops. They are dressed completely in black paramilitary gear, with flashlights mounted on shotguns. They force some patrons to lay face-down outside in the mud for hours. Eventually, you are informed that this is a police raid.
You are ticketed for "loitering in a place of illegal occupation." They let you go — but tow your car, leaving you on Rosa Parks Boulevard with no way to get home. If you want your car back, you'll have to show up later and pay $900. That is, if they can find it; one man says his car was evidently stolen from the cop lot.
Does that sound like a fascist nightmare?
Welcome to Detroit. If this sounds familiar, that's because it actually happened, on May 31, 2008. Though I haven't gotten a response from a police spokesman, they don't seem to dispute this account of what occurred that night.
According to Michael Steinberg, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, the police allege that CAID didn't have a license to host "Funk Night." There were also allegations that the art gallery was serving liquor after hours.
"But the police had no reason to suspect that the CAID's patrons knew that Funk Night was not properly licensed or that it was in any other way an illegal operation," Steinberg said.
Yet the cops did what they felt like doing. They make a lot of money impounding cars, for one thing. Everybody present was searched — without a warrant — and no drugs or weapons were found. But some of the patrons, mostly young people in their 20s and 30s, say they were kicked, shoved and hit.
So imagine that were you, and you don't have money or connections. Where do you go for help? Eventually, a handful of these kids found their way to the most authentically American institution I know: the ACLU.
Freedom is a fragile thing, and the ACLU's whole reason for being is to defend your constitutional rights. They get a bum rap a lot of the time. Blowhard right-wing morons call them "left-wing radicals." Some liberals and Jews are uneasy because they've defended American Nazis' constitutional right to protest.
Virtually everyone was grossed-out when they defended the free speech rights of NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association, which is just what it sounds like it is.
But you know what? They defend those creeps to show that our freedoms apply to everyone.
The ACLU is now suing the Detroit Police Department in federal court over what they did to those poor art gallery patrons. Earlier, Steinberg told me, they got all the criminal charges dropped. They'd like it if courts order compensation for the victims, and maybe direct the city to pay their legal fees.
But that's not what the ACLU really wants most. They want the courts to declare what the Detroit police did that night was unconstitutional, and to issue an injunction forbidding them from doing it again. By the way, those cops did Detroit's image terrible harm.
Some of the people brutalized that May night were suburban residents who say it will be a cold day in hell before they ever spend a day or a dime in Detroit again.
So... suppose, for a moment, that you are idealistic and want to make a difference, and make this community and this country a better place for all, frankly, including yourself.
Well, you could throw your money and energy into promoting some politician who might or might not get elected, and then might or might not live up to their promises when in office.
Or you could support the one group that is all about helping Americans live up to their ideals, helping protect the young and innocent from fascist-minded or sadistic cops, and keeping the promise of America real.
You could volunteer to help the ACLU, because freedom can't defend itself. Check aclumich.org. They'll leave the light of liberty on, and keep the Constitution working for you.
* * *
Farewell to Steve Wilson: You could criticize his style and tactics, but nobody doubted who the No. 1 investigative reporter in the Detroit TV market was. WXYZ-TV's Steve Wilson was going after Kwame before beating up on His Dishonor was cool.
Last week, it was announced that Wilson's contract wouldn't be renewed, evidently to save money. Investigative reporting takes time and costs a lot. If you do it right, sometimes weeks of work don't result in a single story.
However, if you send a reporter out to discover that cars get stuck when it snows, you are guaranteed lots of cheap, usable footage. That's what counts in the news business these days.
I don't know Wilson well, but some years ago, a friend who runs a nonprofit called me in a bit of a panic. Stevo wanted to check out their operations, look at their records. "Have you done anything wrong? Do you have anything to hide?" I asked her bluntly.
"Not at all," she said. In that case, give him everything he wants, I advised. She did exactly that. He spent days looking at her records. Result: He did nothing.
The bean counters at Scripps-Howard, the corporate parent of WXYZ-TV, couldn't have found that cost-effective. I was dismayed to learn he'd be gone, but not greatly surprised. A few days before, I got a confidential note from a well-placed source at another station, bemoaning the demise of investigative reporting at local television in Detroit.
"WXYZ may not renew Wilson. They are down a producer and have cut back on travel and staff photographers. WDIV never had much of an investigative unit to begin with. Efforts to bring in big journalistic guns like [Detroit Free Press reporter Mike] Elrick didn't work. Oh, they also hired a guy from Flint who was supposed to do investigative, but he wound up doing daily news....
"Fox (WJBK-TV) had the largest investigative unit with three reporters, three photographers, a producer and a managing editor. They are down now to one reporter and two photographers who also fill in for daily news stuff. The reporter is Rob Wolchek, the 'Hall of Shame' guy. He's good, but he is actually more like a consumer reporter than an investigative guy. The bottom line... is that the TV stations aren't supporting investigative reporting any more.
"And that's a damn shame from the citizens' standpoint."
Well, my source is right, but clearly didn't have his priorities straight. True, TV newsrooms in the future may no longer uncover corrupt politicians and businessmen who are stealing our money. They may not look into who is permitting the destruction of the Great Lakes by the Asian carp. But they intend to leave no jackknifed tractor-trailer truck unfilmed, and will still show us pictures every time the cops find the body of a local sex crime victim.
What more could an informed citizen possibly need to know?
_______
About author Jack Lessenberry opines weekly for Detroit's Metro Times.Mark Osborne reports the Jets are unlikely to sign DeSean Jackson.
But one team source, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Metro New York that Jackson "is a long shot to land here." While the three-time Pro Bowler would add an instant playmaker to their wide receiver corps, Jackson may not be seen as a good fit with the team. "He isn’t a ‘John Idzik guy’ – not what fits here right now" the source said, referring to the Jets’ general manager who has been restrained this offseason.
I am not saying the Jets need to sign Jackson at any cost. I will, however, say the Jets would be doing themselves a disservice if they were not right in the middle of the hunt to sign Jackson.
If they do that, they will have a pair of top twenty receivers in their starting lineup and a duo that perfectly complements each other at that. You have the blazing Jackson who is a threat to score on every play and Eric Decker, the big target who is great in the red zone and can get deep if he has somebody who can draw a ton of attention. Heck, with the amount of cap space they have, I am disappointed the Jets didn't throw a conditional pick at the Eagles to get the receiver.
There is no telling whether this rumor is true. I hope it is not.Unlike in many other countries, a person does not automatically become a Swiss citizen if they are born in the country. If neither their parents nor grandparents were Swiss, that could mean they are the third generation of a family living in the country without citizenship.
The government is backing a change to the constitution that would give young third generation immigrants who were born and schooled in Switzerland access to the ‘facilitated naturalization' process, an easier and less long-winded version of the usual citizenship procedure.
To apply for facilitated naturalization they must have been born in Switzerland, have completed at least five years of schooling here and have a permanent residence permit.
Their grandparents and parents must also meet certain conditions related to residency and schooling.
Applicants cannot be over |
appeared a little too fast for 343's liking. You can probably expect the competition to open on Wednesday - and don't be surprised if it slots in alongside #HuntTheTruth, the ongoing Halo 5 episodic podcast series.
The series has taken a conspiracy-laden turn in the last week or so, and you can see several character's names (including host, Benjamin Giraud) in one of the glitch screens from the latest trailer:BREAKING NEWS
Mr Michael Sheen will be the VOICE of the Truthful Phone! What an absolute honour!
Star of great films like The Queen, Frost/Nixon, Far from the Madding Crowd, the forthcoming Tim Burton film Alice Through the Looking Glass and of course HBO series Masters of Sex.
We are OVER THE MOON!!!!!! Thrilled to welcome Mr Sheen to this project. He and director Carl Rock hail from the same South Wales steel working town of Port Talbot. This will be the first opportunity for them to be working together.
Michael Sheen - Voice of the Truthful Phone
What's it about?
The Truthful Phone is based by a Terry Jones (Monty Python) short story of the same name, supported in part by the Film Agency Wales with BAFTA nominated director Carl Rock.
The Truthful Phone is a dark comedy about nasty pensioner Mae Morris; local busybody, pet kidnapper, husband killer. Who unwittingly unleashes a magical gypsy curse that exposes her secrets to the very townsfolk she lives to torment.
With Puppets created by Andy Heath & Iestyn Evans who worked on Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Terry Jones said:
“I’m delighted that The Truthful Phone is being given the opportunity to be made into a film short; director Carl Rock comes from the same part of Wales as I do. The Welsh landscape is a perfect setting for this tale, and I hope the Kickstarter campaign reaches its target so that a wider audience can enjoy this dark fantasy comedy”.
Carl optioned this story three years ago. We have been granted the rights to make this film by Terry Jones himself.
Here's a mood film made up of various inspirational clips to give you an idea of how the film will look.
A feel good, fast paced, high-concept comedy with Jim Henson’esque creatures wreaking havoc in a craggy, remote village.
Imagine a Welsh Gremlins with shades of Guillermo Del Toro.
Idris Steals the Box
Mae Locks Albert Up in the Shed
What the Funds Go Towards
We have received part funding from the BFI Network FFilm Agency Wales Beacons Emerging Talent Fund - but Creatures aren't cheap! Monies will be used to create practical, live action puppet creatures and build sets that allow puppeteers to work in behind the walls.
Whispers in the Dark...
Creature Puppet Concepts
Andy getting the Box ready!
Carl Rock - Writer Director
BAFTA nominated director Carl Rock was born and raised in the steel-working town of Port Talbot, South Wales. Carl’s first short film was nominated in the short form category for the 2013 BAFTA CYMRU AWARDS.
It also won the UK Category in the AMD Visionary Young Directors Award being selected as the top five in Europe. And was won Best Comedy at the 2012 Smalls Film Festival.
Andy Heath - Puppet Creator Performer, Talk to the Hand co-founder
Andy Heath is a Gold British Arrow award winning puppeteer, designer and fabricator.
He's performed with The Muppets on Muppets Most Wanted (2014), Robbie Williams in his 2014 Holiday Special on BBC1. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2004), Tales of the Riverbank (2008), Harry Hill – The Movie (2013) and Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
Through 2009-2011, he co designed, built and operated the puppets for BBC3's adult sitcom Mongrels with his business partner, Iestyn Evans. Together, they run Talk to the Hand Puppets.
Sky 1 hit, Yonderland, also feature a large cast of characters built and performed by Andy and Iestyn.
Petra Korner - Award Winning Cinematographer
Petra Korner has shot not one, but TWO Sundance Audience Choice Award winning films The Wackness (2008) and Umrika (2015). She was also Director of Photography on Wes Craven's 2010 thriller My Soul to Take, where Petra painted a dark, misty palette that will influence the work of The Truthful Phone.
Petra was also the recipient of the Kodak Vision Award for Cinematography at the Women in Film’s annual Crystal + Lucy Awards in 2009.
Petra's reel can be viewed here.
Petra Korner - Cinematography Reel
Katie Pow - Co-writer Producer
Katie is a London based producer who has worked with clients such as BMW, Sony, Omega, adidas, Barclays Premiere League and Huawei with Arsenal Football Club.
Starting her career in Canadian television with the CBC, Katie produced a daily national comedy show segment for two seasons along with season specials for national broadcaster Much Music.
Moving to the Netherlands, Katie co-wrote, edited and co-shot the feature documentary Mr Rakowski which premiered at IDFA and screened at Sheffield, Munich Doc Fest, Zurich Doc Fest, New York Jewish Film Festival and Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival.
Katie has been residing in the UK for five years. In that time she has written, directed and produced short films which have had screened at festivals including Cannes, London Short Film Festival and Aesthetica.
Karol Griffiths - Associate Producer
Karol is a UK based American script editor and development consultant with over twenty years of experience. Starting out as a reader and script supervisor, Karol soon segued into development and script editing.
Having worked for a wide variety of talent, production companies and studios. Including: Warner Brothers, Universal, Disney, Paramount and Fox Studios, Amblin Entertainment and The Coen Brothers to name a few.
Karol now develops and consults independently, and is passionate about working with writers.
REWARDS
Ranging from Digital Downloads, Video Messages from the Creature, T-shirts, Posters, Set Visits, Cast & Crew Screenings, Actually BEING a PUPPETEER on set, to one-of-a-kind Actual CREATURE PUPPET!
T-Shirt Concept Design
Hand Painted Poster Art by Rob Fuller (print)
Be a Puppeteer with our Rewards!
Set VisitsLovers of the Old Republic
Some unexpected news came from the latest State of the Game entry for Star Wars: The Old Republic, posted by Jay Hickman, the games Executive Producer. Hidden away at the bottom, he revealed that same gender relationships would indeed make its debut on Makeb, the new planet available in the Rise of the Hutt Cartel expansion.
I for one am pleased to see this happening, though reading through the discussion thread about it on the official forums, there seem to be some differing opinions (after all, PvP is more important than everything, right? lol).
Since the beginning, even before The Old Republic was released, there’s been an active presence of people on the official SWTOR forums and around the net spurring BioWare on to allow such options within the game. After all, it’s something BioWare is known for due to their other works such as Dragon Age and Mass Effect.
It’s only now that anyone in BioWare has said anything more than just “it may happen in the future if we get around to it” when concerned with same gender relationships, but now something is actually happening… and with mixed reactions from supporters and people who think this entire endeavour is a waste of time.
Personally, I’m glad that it’s finally come to a point where something concrete is being laid down, even if it’s happening over a year from the games official release and is, at the moment, limited to non-playable characters you find on Makeb. I can understand BioWare’s dilemma and the restrictions that were surely placed on them by LucasFilm/LucasArts that restricted them from same gender relationships to begin with.
I wonder how they are going to handle same gender relationships in the future. I recall someone from BioWare once saying that if they ever did add the option into the game, they wouldn’t retroactively go back and change the game and current companion characters story-lines with the additional options. Essentially this would mean that anyone looking for the same gender options would have to play through the game to a point beyond the level 50 content before actually encountering any of it. The availability of same gender relationship options only existing on Makeb by the time the expansion is released seems to support this line of thinking. I’ve heard the term “pay to gay” being thrown around by those who aren’t happy with the format chosen by BioWare. Seems to fit pretty well…
Putting aside the fact that this should have been an option to begin with, I think it’s a sensible move for BioWare considering the fact that a lot of people have already played through their characters story-lines and wouldn’t want anything to change from what they have experienced personally. On one side people are missing out, but if things were retroactively changed it would only mean that all of the people who have already gone through these stories have missed out on content too. As much as I’d like my Silvana to have a romantic relationship with Vette (they belong together in my mind), I still feel it’s a much more sensible course of action to limit the new options to future expansions as not to upset what has already been established in the story told so far.
That said, I sometimes think about the options the folks at BioWare must be considering since we know that they actually are thinking about this issue, even if it’s not their absolute top priority. I mean, right now we’ve gotten the hint that there are NPCs on Makeb who are open to same gender relationships, but the real deal for people are companion characters. There are two options, as I see it, for BioWare to follow:
New companions will become available through expansions that players will end up recruiting to their teams which will offer same gender relationship options. Current companions will become open to same gender relationship options through expansion pack content beyond the base content already available.
Supporters of same gender relationships in The Old Republic most likely won’t find either of these two options to be ideal or fair, but that’s just me thinking about the two most possible likely outcomes that BioWare may be considering.
We’ll see what happens in the future I guess, there’s still a lot of waiting to do to see how this is all handled. Personally, I’m one of the people who thinks none of this should have been an issue to begin with and should have been included from the very start. But, of course, in the kind of societies we live in, there are very different opinions on the matter that complicate things.
Oh, also, on a final note, another thought comes to mind which I know others have had… Interspecies relationships. While we know that at least some progress is being made on the same gender front, I often find myself asking, what of interspecies relationships? If we lived in some future society where this was actually a real-world social issue, I’m sure some progress would be made on that too, though realistically we’re never going to see such a thing happen in the game outside of human and near-human encounters… despite what Mass Effect 2 and 3 may have brought to the table.
It’s a shame, would’ve made the game more interesting, oh well… no Wookiee on Twi’lek action for me then."Once he reaches in and gets hold of that tin, he's caught, because he will never open his paw." — Wilson Rawls, "Where the Red Fern Grows"
On his nationally syndicated morning radio show several weeks ago, Hugh Hewitt told a caller she'd burn in hell if she didn't vote for GOP nominee Donald Trump.
The caller explained that, morally, she just couldn't justify voting for the Republican nominee. She said she felt like she'd be damned to hell if she did. Hewitt told her (albeit in his jocular style) that she'd go to hell if she didn't vote, before launching into what is by now a common refrain: not voting for Trump assures a more liberal Supreme Court.
So in the new spirit of borrowing words spoken by first ladies, my response to that is, "what difference, at this point, does it make?"
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The demand that disquieted conservatives should cast aside all doubt and pull the lever for Trump to save vulnerable red states from the court is the ultimate straw man — and thus the ultimate hypocrisy considering Hewitt and the celebrity Republican class have been swinging wildly at President Obama's myriad straw men for eight years.
Yes, the Supreme Court should be an important consideration, but where should we rate its nominees in terms of everyday importance? How damaging would a more liberal court be to Lubbock, Texas or Topeka, Kansas; Mobile, Alabama or Ogden, Utah? Would a court weighted 6-3 in favor of liberal justices hurt those communities more than a trade war with China, an immigration plan built from tinder and flint, or a world market teetering on collapse under the uncertainty of the incoherent fiscal policies proposed by a 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? Why yell at the fireman for wasting water while the house is burning down?
In his novel, "Where the Red Fern Grows," Wilson Rawls explains the easiest way to trap a raccoon: Drill a hole in a tree stump and place a shiny object inside. The raccoon, naturally attracted to bright, shiny things, will reach inside the stump and grab hold. He'll trap himself because with a balled fist, he won't be able to get loose. The raccoon, in the most peculiar scenario imaginable, will never let go of his treasure. Eschewing imminent death, his skewed priorities ensure that he will die with his prize in hand.
Sadly, the radio talkers and Fox News contributors, many of whom I've admired over the years, remind me of those silly raccoons. Granted, Trump gives them very little material with which to work, but they need something besides the "But the Supreme Court!" argument.
What the Supreme Court rules upon — or chooses not to hear — has little impact on average everyday Americans in the grand scheme of things. The court doesn't make our commutes shorter, or help our kids get to bed on time. The court doesn't feed hogs in Iowa or herd cattle in Oklahoma. It doesn't open delis in Newark, New Jersey or help fisherman with their catch along the Gulf Coast. But the sophomoric approach to government that Trump has adopted will impact all of those things.
And not in a good way.
Simply put, the guy is off his rocker. In the last week, he's suggested the U.S. stop supporting our NATO allies and remove ourselves from the WTO. He thinks Sen. Ted Cruz Rafael (Ted) Edward CruzTrump unleashing digital juggernaut ahead of 2020 Inviting Kim Jong Un to Washington Trump endorses Cornyn for reelection as O'Rourke mulls challenge MORE's (R-Texas) father helped assassinate an American president. And his most recent campaign commercial points out how many minutes were spent applauding him during his acceptance speech at the Republican convention. But, by God, we all better fall in line and vote for Trump because he'll most assuredly save the Supreme Court!
There, too, is an unfairness in the attempts to burden responsible Americans with the weight of protecting the Supreme Court for all those on the Trump Train. After all, the balance of the court is the furthest thing from the minds of Trumpkins, and presumably, Trump himself. There are too many scores to settle and bridges to burn to concern themselves with the future of the court.
So why is it the responsibility of the millions of conservatives appalled by Trump to come in and save the day for them? What is the reward — what is the gratifying, reciprocating reason to do so? Why do the celebrity Republicans insist that we cast aside all doubt and trust a man with the Supreme Court when he is otherwise wholly untrustworthy? Most importantly, what the hell do we owe them?
Of course, the answer to all this is simple: electing Trump prevents Democratic nominee 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 from several nominations to the Supreme Court, along with all other levers of presidential power. I will never vote for Clinton. But Trump has done nothing to earn my vote. And it seems that every day he pushes me further away.
The celebrity Republican class, lesser-known Trump supporters and Trump himself have to give me — and millions just like me — more reasons to support him than they have so far. Whatever benefit earned from preserving a conservative majority on the court (one that has recently failed to rule conservatively, by the way) does not outweigh the negatives so many of us see in Trump. The importance of their demand does not overshadow the glaring fact that Trump is unfit to serve.
But yet, there they are, every day on radio and TV. The celebrity Republicans, like the raccoons in Rawls's novel, their grip on the Supreme Court argument unflinching, telling us to fall in line. They've grabbed hold of the shiny object inside Donald Trump's trap and refuse to let go, oblivious to how badly everything else will end.
Hale is a freelance writer who resides in San Antonio with his wife and three children. He has written for Sports Illustrated and NBC Sports but his first, true love has always been politics. The machinations carried out by otherwise good people are his glorious, guilty pleasure.
The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.22nd September 2010, 03:02 pm
The post Details for non-strict memoization, part 1 works out a systematic way of doing non-strict memoization, i.e., correct memoization of non-strict (and more broadly, non-hyper-strict) functions. As I mentioned at the end, there was an awkward aspect, which is that the purported “isomorphisms” used for regular types are not quite isomorphisms.
For instance, functions from triples are memoized by converting to and from nested pairs:
untriple ∷ (a,b,c) -> ((a,b),c) untriple (a,b,c) = ((a,b),c) triple ∷ ((a,b),c) -> (a,b,c) triple ((a,b),c) = (a,b,c)
Then untriple and triple form an embedding/projection pair, i.e.,
triple ∘ untriple ≡ id untriple ∘ triple ⊑ id
The reason for the inequality is that the nested-pair form permits (⊥,c), which does not correspond to any triple.
untriple (triple (⊥,c)) ≡ untriple ⊥ ≡ ⊥
Can we patch this problem by simply using an irrefutable (lazy) pattern in the definition of triple, i.e., triple (~(a,b),c) = (a,b,c)? Let’s try:
untriple (triple (⊥,c)) ≡ untriple (⊥,⊥,c) ≡ ((⊥,⊥),c)
So isomorphism fails and so does even the embedding/projection property.
Similarly, to deal with regular algebraic data types, I used a class that describes regular data types as repeated applications of a single, associated pattern functor (following A Lightweight Approach to Datatype-Generic Rewriting):
class Functor (PF t) ⇒ Regular t where type PF t ∷ * → * unwrap ∷ t → PF t t wrap ∷ PF t t → t
Here unwrap converts a value into its pattern functor form, and wrap converts back. For example, here is the Regular instance I had used for lists:
instance Regular [a] where type PF [a] = Const () :+: Const a :*: Id unwrap [] = InL (Const ()) unwrap (a:as) = InR (Const a :*: Id as) wrap (InL (Const ())) = [] wrap (InR (Const a :*: Id as)) = a:as
Again, we have an embedding/projection pair, rather than a genuine isomorphism:
wrap ∘ unwrap ≡ id unwrap ∘ wrap ⊑ id
The inequality comes from ⊥ values occurring in PF [a] [a] at type Const () [a], (), (Const a :*: Id) [a], Const a [a], or Id [a].
Why care?
What harm results from the lack of genuine isomorphism? For hyper-strict functions, as usually handled (correctly) in memoization, I don’t think there is any harm. For correct memoization of non-hyper-strict functions, however, the superfluous points of undefinedness lead to larger memo tries and wasted effort. For instance, a function from triples goes through some massaging on the way to being memoized:
λ (a,b,c) → ⋯ ⇓ λ ((a,b),c) → ⋯ ⇓ λ (a,b) → λ c → ⋯
For hyper-strict memoization, the next step transforms to λ a → λ b → λ c → ⋯. For non-strict memoization, however, we first stash away the value of the function applied to ⊥ ∷ (a,b), which will always be ⊥ in this context.
Strict products and sums
To eliminate the definedness discrepancy and regain isomorphism, we might make all non-strictness explicit via unlifted product & sums, and explicit lifting.
-- | Add a bottom to a type data Lift a = Lift { unLift ∷ a } deriving Functor infixl 6 :+:! infixl 7 :*:! -- | Strict pair data a :*! b =!a :*!!b -- | Strict sum data a :+! b = Left'!a | Right'!b
Note that the Id and Const a functors used in canonical representations are already strict, as they’re defined via newtype.
With these new tools, we can decompose isomorphically. For instance,
(a,b,c) ≅ Lift a :*! Lift b :*! Lift c
with the isomorphism given by
untriple' ∷ (a,b,c) -> Lift a :*! Lift b :*! Lift c untriple' (a,b,c) = Lift a :*! Lift b :*! Lift c triple' ∷ Lift a :*! Lift b :*! Lift c -> (a,b,c) triple' (Lift a :*! Lift b :*! Lift c) = (a,b,c)
For regular types, we’ll also want variations as functor combinators:
-- | Strict product functor data (f :*:! g) a =!(f a) :*:!!(g a) deriving Functor -- | Strict sum functor data (f :+:! g) a = InL'!(f a) | InR'!(g a) deriving Functor
Then change the Regular instance on lists to the following:
instance Regular [a] where type PF [a] = Const () :+:! Const (Lift a) :*:! Lift unwrap [] = InL' (Const ()) unwrap (a:as) = InR' (Const (Lift a) :*:! Lift as) wrap (InL' (Const ())) = [] wrap (InR' (Const (Lift a) :*:! Lift as)) = a:as
I suppose it would be fairly straightforward to derive such instances for algebraic data types automatically via Template Haskell.
Tries for non-strict memoization
As in part 1, represent a non-strict memo trie for a function f ∷ k -> v as a value for f ⊥ and a strict (but not hyper-strict) memo trie for f :
type k :→: v = Trie v (k :→ v)
For non-strict sum domains, the strict memo trie was a pair of non-strict tries:
instance (HasTrie a, HasTrie b) ⇒ HasTrie (Either a b) where type STrie (Either a b) = Trie a :*: Trie b sTrie f = trie (f ∘ Left) :*: trie (f ∘ Right) sUntrie (ta :*: tb) = untrie ta `either` untrie tb
For non-strict product, the strict trie was a composition of non-strict tries:
instance (HasTrie a, HasTrie b) => HasTrie (a, b) where type STrie (a, b) = Trie a :. Trie b sTrie f = O (fmap trie (trie (curry f))) sUntrie (O tt) = uncurry (untrie (fmap untrie tt))
What about strict sum and product domains? Since strict sums & products cannot contain ⊥ as their immediate components, we can omit the values corresponding to ⊥ for those components. That is, we can use pairs and compositions of strict tries instead.
instance (HasTrie a, HasTrie b) => HasTrie (a :+! b) where type STrie (a :+! b) = STrie a :*: STrie b sTrie f = sTrie (f. Left') :*: sTrie (f. Right') sUntrie (ta :*: tb) = sUntrie ta `either'` sUntrie tb instance (HasTrie a, HasTrie b) => HasTrie (a :*! b) where type STrie (a :*! b) = STrie a :. STrie b sTrie f = O (fmap sTrie (sTrie (curry' f))) sUntrie (O tt) = uncurry' (sUntrie (fmap sUntrie tt))
I’ve also substituted versions of curry and uncurry for strict products and either for strict sums:
curry' ∷ (a :*! b -> c) -> (a -> b -> c) curry' f a b = f (a :*! b) uncurry' ∷ (a -> b -> c) -> ((a :*! b) -> c) uncurry' f (a :*! b) = f a b either' ∷ (a -> c) -> (b -> c) -> (a :+! b -> c) either' f _ (Left' a) = f a either' _ g (Right' b) = g b
We’ll also need to handle the lifting functor. The type Lift a has an additional bottom. A strict function or trie over Lift a is only strict in the lower (outer) one. So a strict trie over Lift a is simply a non-strict trie over a.
instance HasTrie a => HasTrie (Lift a) where type STrie (Lift a) = Trie a sTrie f = trie (f. Lift) sUntrie t = untrie t. unLift
Notice that this instance puts back exactly what was lost from memo tries when going from non-strict products and sums to strict products and sums. The reason for this relationship is explained in the following simple isomorphisms:
(a,b) ≅ Lift a :*! Lift b Either a b ≅ Lift a :+! Lift b
Then isomorphisms can then be used to implement memoize over non-strict products and sums via memoization over strict products and sums.
Higher-order memoization
The post Memoizing higher-order functions suggested a simple way to memoize functions over function-valued domains by using (as always) type isomorphisms. The isomorphism used is between functions and memo tries.
I gave one example in that post
ft1 ∷ (Bool → a) → [a] ft1 f = [f False, f True]
In retrospect, this example was a lousy choice, as it hides an important problem. The Bool type is finite, and so the corresponding trie type has only finitely large elements. For that reason, higher-order memoization can get away with the usual hyper-strict memoization.
If instead, we try memoizing a function of type (a → b) → c, where the type a has infinitely many elements (e.g., Integer or [Bool] ), then we’ll have to memoize over the domain a :→: b (memo tries from a to b ), which includes infinite elements. In that case, hyper-strict memoization blows up, so we’ll want to use non-strict memoization instead.
As mentioned above, the type of non-strict tries contains a value and a strict trie:
type k :→: v = Trie v (k :→ v)
I thought I’d memoize by mapping to & from the isomorphic pair type (v, k :→ v). However, now I’m not satisfied with this mapping. A non-strict trie from k to v is not just any such pair of v and k :→ v. Monotonicity requires that the single v value (for ⊥) be a lower bound (information-wise) of every v in the trie. Ignoring this constraint would lead to a trie in which most of the entries do not correspond to any non-strict memo trie.
Puzzle: Can this constraint be captured as a static type in modern Haskell’s (GHC’s) type system (i.e., without resorting to general dependent typing)? I don’t know the answer.
Memoizing abstract types
This problem is more wide-spread still. Whenever there are constraints on a representation beyond what is expressed directly and statically in the representation type, we will have this same sort of isomorphism puzzle. Can we capture the constraint as a Haskell type? When we cannot, what do we do?
If we didn’t care about efficiency, I think we could ignore the issue, and everything else in this blog post, and accept making memo tries that are much larger than necessary. Although laziness will keep from filling in range values for unaccessed domain values, I worry that there will be quite a lot time and space wasted navigating past large portions of unusable trie structure.
The post Details for non-strict memoization, part 1 works out a systematic way of doing non-strict memoization, i.e., correct memoization of non-strict (and more broadly, non-hyper-strict) functions. As I mentioned...As the elite panic about ISIS — the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant — continues apace, it’s worth looking at how violations of the First Amendment have allowed this group to flourish, and just generally screw up US policy-making. The gist of the problem is that Americans have been lied to for years about our foreign policy, and these lies have now created binding policy constraints on our leaders which make it impossible to eliminate groups like ISIS.
Let’s start by understanding what ISIS actually is. First, ISIS is a brutal fascistic movement of radical Sunni militants, well-armed and well-trained, and bent on the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate throughout the Middle East. Second, it may also be and almost certainly was an arm of a wealthy Gulf state allied with the United States. This contradiction probably doesn’t surprise you, but if it does, that’s only because it cuts against a standard narrative of good guys and bad guys peddled by various foreign policy interests. The reality is that ally and enemy in post-colonial lands is often a meaningless term —it’s better to describe interests. A good if overly romanticized Hollywood illustration of this dynamic is the movie Charlie Wilson’s War, about the secret collaboration between Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan Israel and the CIA to undermine the Soviets in Afghanistan. This foreign policy apparatus is usually hidden in plain sight, known to most financial, political, military, and corporate elites but not told to the American public.
ISIS, like Al Qaeda, is an armed and trained military group. Guns and training cost money, and this money came from somewhere. There are two Gulf states that finance Sunni militants — Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Both states use financial power derived from oil to build armed terrorist groups which then accomplish aims that their states cannot pursue openly. This occasionally slips out into the open. German Development Minister Gerd Mueller recently blamed Qatar, for instance, for financing ISIS. Qatar itself swiftly denied the charges and claimed it only funds Jabhat al-Nusra. Al-Nusra is the other radical Al Qaeda offshoot militant group fighting in Syria. In other words, Qatar denied funding ISIS by saying it funds Al-Qaeda. It’s a sort of ‘we fund the bad guys who want to kill Americans but not the really bad guys who behead them on social media,’ a non-denial denial by geopolitical psychopaths.
Steve Clemons, one of the few members of Washington’s foreign policy establishment who sometimes speaks clearly about what is actually going on with the American empire, believes Qatar. According to his sources, while the Qataris funded the radical group Al-Nusra in Syria, “ISIS has been a Saudi project.” Clemons goes further, and discusses a very important American and Saudi figure, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then the head of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence services and a former ambassador to the United States (as well as a Washington, DC socialite). Clemons writes, “ISIS, in fact, may have been a major part of Bandar’s covert-ops strategy in Syria.”
In other words, ISIS got its start in Syria as part of the Arab Spring uprising, and it was financed by Saudi Arabia to go up against Assad. The Gulf states were using Syria to fight a proxy war against Iran, and the precursor of ISIS was one of their proxies in that war. It’s hard to imagine that today ISIS isn’t at least tacitly tolerated by a host of countries in the region, though its goodwill from neighboring countries may be running out. Today, ISIS may be self-sustaining, though it’s quite possible that money is still coming from conservative wealthy individuals in the Gulf states, money which originally comes from the West in the form of oil purchases.
In other words, Middle Eastern politics, and much of Western politics, is organized around oil money. In its economic consequences, the oil gusher of Saudi Arabia was similar to the Chinese trade in the 19th century that led to the opium wars. In the that episode, the British bought tea from China, but China didn’t want anything but precious metals from England, leading to a drain of what was then reserve currency to China. This wasn’t sustainable, so England attacked China in what was known as ‘the opium wars’ and forced the government to allow them to trade opium, which addicted large segments of the Chinese population (and eventually led to today’s drug war). Revenue from opium then balanced the cost of tea. The money that went from England to China was ‘recycled’ back to England by the opium trade. International monetary arrangements require such recycling, though it does not have to be so brutal.
In the 1970s, Saudi Arabia had something the West wanted — oil — but it didn’t want that much from the West. So we used a different kind of recycling arrangement (detailed by Tim Mitchell in his exquisite book Carbon Democracy). Saudi Arabia got dollars, and those dollars piled up in Western banks like Citigroup, which started lending that money out to South American countries in the early 1980s. There were several other mechanisms to recycle what was called “petrodollars”. The arms trade really picked up in the 1970s, and continues today. Gulf states buy a lot of fancy weapons, which moves some of the dollars back to the West. They also have huge sovereign wealth funds, and buy Western corporations, banks, real estate, and assets, as well as the politicians that come with all of that. This ‘recycles’ dollars back out of the Middle East — Saudi Arabia returns some dollars, and in return it gets power and influence in the US.
Foreign policy in the Gulf states is also organized around petrodollars. The Saudis don’t have to fight externally, they can simply fund terrorism against those they dislike. The Saudi state, like all states, isn’t a coherent whole, but a set of elites that interact with each other. There are thousands of ‘princes’ who basically just get oil income, but any of them can act independently and many of them do. It’s a bit like the CIA doing things without the President’s explicit permission; there’s a reason it was the CIA, the Saudis, and the Israelis financing the Taliban jointly in the 1980s. This has benefits, because then the Saudi state can have constructive ambiguity around its own role in financing terrorism. It also risks blowback, in that groups like ISIS or Al Qaeda can decide to take on the Saudi establishment itself.
The relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States is the most important diplomatic and military relationship that we have. The Saudis are the slush fund for whatever the US wants to do when it doesn’t want that activity on the books. It also fulfills an important role in the oil markets akin to that of the IMF in the international financial markets, by managing its oil surplus to ensure financial and economic stability. This means shifts in a mercurial theocratic kingdom where the Saudi monarch is in his 80s, and most of the population is young, poor, and extremely religious conservatives, can turn world politics on a dime.
Right now, the Saudi government is still attempting to manage fallout from the war in Iraq and the Arab Spring uprisings, as well as the vacuum of power left when the United States withdrew from Iraq. It’s likely that at certain points it funded ISIS as one part of that strategy. Now you might think that the Saudi government financing a terrorist group with stated aims to attack the United States is a one-off, an accident. I mean the United States funded the Taliban in Afghanistan in the USSR in the 1980s. But you would be wrong.
For some reason, attacking the United States seems to be a goal of certain elements of the Saudi Arabian government and financial establishment. Parts of the Saudi government helped organize the attacks on the United States on 9/11 (or least that’s what Lawrence Wright of the New Yorker alleges). That, at least, was apparently one conclusion of the “Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 2001", better known as the 9/11 Commission Report |
dance when she was 15, quibbles at the margins, over where, exactly, he picked up one of the girls, and whether that’s his signature in a yearbook. Like Trump, who doesn’t remember his accusers (except the ugly one), Moore flicks his off as nobodies he’s never met like lint on his cowboy hat. When told by NBC’s Savannah Guthrie that Moore doesn’t remember her, Leigh Corfman responded calmly, “There are a lot of me’s out there he doesn’t remember.”
Trump is so pumped by the success of his mentee that he’s taken up a new denial. He’s regretting that he didn’t deny the authenticity of the Access Hollywood tape where he boasted that, as a star, he could do anything to women he wanted with impunity. Who says Trump hasn’t grown in the presidency? He regrets having told the truth that one time, having learned in office how easy it is to lie and get away with it.
Wednesday morning, in between retweeting white nationalist videos, Trump chimed in on the Lauer bombshell. But he’s so morally compromised it wasn’t to criticize Lauer, praise NBC for acting swiftly, or sympathize with the victim. He merely wanted to know when the network would get around to policing fake news.
Trump takes solace in seeing another denier succeed and in bringing voters who might have shunned Moore back into the fold, including the pastor who justifies Moore’s appetite for young girls as a search for “purity.” In this sudden cultural shift, many men have admitted what they’ve done and borne the consequences. If Moore is elected, having followed the Trump blueprint, it could be back to the future as the accused deny all and lawyer up to drag the accuser(s) through the mud. Should Moore win, the second happiest man in the land will be the president.Autopsy Reveals St. Louis Police Shot Mansur Ball-Bey In The Back
Enlarge this image toggle caption Lawrence Bryant/Reuters /Landov Lawrence Bryant/Reuters /Landov
Mansur Ball-Bey, the black 18-year-old killed by white St. Louis officers earlier this week, died from a single gunshot in the back, according to an autopsy report.
The autopsy's findings were first reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. There were two officers involved in the shooting; one fired three times and another fired just once, police told the paper.
The investigation of the shooting is ongoing.
However, St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson tells the Post-Dispatch that the location of the fatal wound does not confirm or contradict the officers' account that Ball-Bey pointed a gun at them before he was shot.
" 'Just because he was shot in the back doesn't mean he was running away,' Dotson said. 'It could be, and I'm not saying that it doesn't mean that. I just don't know yet.' "
As St. Louis Public Radio reports, police officers were attempting to serve a warrant Wednesday when "two young black males armed with guns" ran out a back door. Officers ordered the men to drop the gun before firing.
As we reported, Ball-Bey's death ignited a fresh round of clashes between protesters and law enforcement in St. Louis. Protesters threw bricks and other objects at police before officers in riot gear arrived on the scene.
Dotson defended police tactics Wednesday night when they made nine arrests and fired tear gas at protesters.
Tensions in the St. Louis area remain high. This latest incident comes less than two weeks after mourners marked the anniversary of the death of Michael Brown, who was killed by a white police officer last year in nearby Ferguson, Mo.
The incident surrounding the Ball-Bey shooting will be investigated by the Force Investigation Unit, a group within the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department that investigates whether officers' use of deadly force with a gun was legal. That report will be reviewed by prosecutors.Legendary British band The Stone Roses have announced the release of their first single in more than 20 years.
The announcement was made from the band's official Twitter account. The single will be released at 8pm tonight.
Earlier this week cryptic lemon posters had popped up in cities across the UK.
In March Sheffield woman Stevie Birchall stumbled across the Manchester band recording in a studio in London.
Sheffield woman stumbles upon The Stone Roses recording first new music in more than 20 years
Stevie was pictured outside the studio with Roses frontman Ian Brown and bassist Mani and the photos prompted a flurry of speculation that the band were recording their first new material in decades.
The speculation prompted Brown to tell the NME that the band were recording 'glorious' new music.
The Stone Roses were formed in 1984 and release their self-titled debut album in 1989.
The album became an instant classic and is still considered one of the greatest British records of all time.
A year later the band played a legendary gig in front of 30,000 people at Spike Island in Cheshire but a series of legal wranglings with their record company led to a period of inertia.
The band eventually signed a new record deal with Geffen and at the end of 1994 after years of anticipation released their follow up album - Second Coming.
Sheffield woman Stevie Birchall pictured with Ian Brown outside The Church studios in London in March
It was an album which was met with a mixed response from fans and critics alike and a few months later the band were rocked when drummer Reni quit.
Reni was replaced my session musician Robbie Maddix and the band embarked on a world tour and towards the end of 1995 the Roses released Second coming track Begging You as a single. It would be the last they would release.
In early 1996 things got worse when guitarist and songwriter John Squire quit. Although the band stumbled on with a few more live shows - including an infamous headline performance at that year's Reading Festival - the writing was on the wall and by the end of the year Ian Brown had announced that The Stone Roses were no more.
The acrimonious split led to many years of bad feeling between some of the band members, most notably childhood friends Brown and Squire.
Stevie pictured with bassist Mani outside the studios
The latter set up his own band - The Seahorses - who released their debut album in 1997 but had split by the end of the decade.
Brown embarked on a successful solo career and went on to release six studio albums on his own.
Mani joined Primal Scream after the Roses split and mercurial drummer Reni spent most of the following years out of the limelight.
In late 2011 Brown, Squire, Mani, and Reni put their differences behind them and shocked the world of music by announcing they were re-forming to play a series of massive gigs.
In summer 2012 they played three huge shows at Heaton Park in Manchester, as well a series of headline festival performances across Europe.
The following year saw more live shows but this was followed by two years of stoney silence by the band.
Then late last year The Stone Roses announced more gigs for summer 2016 - most notably four nights at the Etihad Stadium in Manchester.
What is YOUR favourite Stone Roses song? Use our Comments section below to have your say.Vance Juano Bedford (born August 20, 1958) is an American football coach who last served as defensive coordinator at the University of Texas at Austin for head coach Charlie Strong.[1] He was previously the defensive coordinator at the University of Louisville, where he also served under head coach Charlie Strong. He had served as defensive back coach at the University of Florida under Urban Meyer. He previously served as defensive backs coach under Lloyd Carr at the University of Michigan. He served in that same position for six seasons with the Chicago Bears, and also served two seasons as defensive coordinator at Oklahoma State University-Stillwater.
Bedford was born in Beaumont, Texas. He played high-school football at Hebert High School, where his father Leon Bedford was coach and he was an all-District player for the first all-black high school in Texas to win a University Interscholastic League state title.[2]
He played college football at the University of Texas at Austin where he was a four-year letterman and starter at cornerback as well as the defensive captain. He was a two-time All-Southwest Conference second team selection. He played in two Cotton Bowls and two Sun Bowls.[3] He set a then-Longhorn season record for pass breakups with 22 in 1981 and is currently in the top ten on UT's career pass breakup list (47). At the end of his senior year, he was named a Defensive Valuable Player in the 1982 Senior Bowl All-Star Game. He returned to Texas to receive his diploma in 1984.
Bedford was in the fifth round of the NFL draft. He played one season for the NFL's St. Louis Cardinals in 1982 and another for the USFL's Oklahoma Outlaws in 1984.
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Staff from Surrey police and Surrey Heath Borough Council have raised £300 for a Camberley woman who had her Christmas spending money stolen as she helped a woman who had collapsed at a cashpoint.
Kathleen Boakes, 82, who lives in York Road, went into her bank on the High Street in Camberley just after 1pm on December 4 to withdraw £300 for her Christmas food shop.
She was distracted and left her money on a side when a woman behind her fell down. By the time she went to retrieve her purse, it had gone.
An investigation took place but the offender could not be identified.
Her plight was recognised by PC Dale Hathaway, a Camberley town beat officer, and PC Gary Martin. Both took Mrs Boakes and her husband, Freddy home to recover from the ordeal.
PC Hathaway then decided to ask his colleagues and staff at the borough council for a contribution to a collection, so he could return the £300 to Mrs Boakes. The collection raised just over £422, with the excess cash being donated to charity.
PC Hathaway said: “She was overwhelmed, extremely happy and very shocked the police and the council had chipped in to give her money back. It made her Christmas.
“For somebody to lose that money just before Christmas, I felt they deserved to get it back. She was really pleased to get the money so they are not out of pocket.”
The extra cash will be donated to Meals on Wheels in Surrey Heath, which will mean 29 people will be able to enjoy a Christmas dinner.
PC Hathaway added: “One of our elderly residents had cancelled his Christmas dinner from Meals on Wheels because it was too expensive.
“The money we have donated will mean that he, along with 28 other elderly residents, will be able to have a Christmas dinner delivered after all. I am so amazed and impressed by how generous people have been – this kind of story really does restore your faith in humanity.”
PC Hathaway even called Mrs Boakes the morning after the theft to find out how she was and how she had slept.
She said: “Dale and Gary brought us home and stayed with us until I was calm. The police have been absolutely wonderful, all of them.”
The money was returned to Mrs Boakes on Monday, in time for Christmas Day.
She added: “When PC Hathaway and his colleague came round to give us the money I just couldn’t believe it. I was speechless. It made me feel so special and I just wanted to cry. I couldn’t believe that two busy police officers would take that much time to raise the money for us. I was on my way to do my Christmas shopping when the money was taken, and for them to organise a collection to give us the money back is like a fairytale.”JNS.org – Israeli companies and the Israeli government itself stand to earn large profits from the country’s burgeoning medical cannabis industry. On August 13, a joint government committee approved a new measure allowing for international exports of the plant.
According to some reports, the state could earn up to $4 billion annually in revenue from medical marijuana exportation, an industry that Israeli Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon said has “significant economic potential for the state of Israel, and will strengthen Israeli agriculture.”
Saul Kaye, the CEO of iCAN — an Israeli pro-cannabis organization, said that the Israeli government’s move “will significantly increase investment as well as entrepreneurship” in the country’s cannabis technology sector.
“Numerous jobs will be created throughout the country, in areas such as ag-tech, pharma, and packaging and transportation, as well as all the support services required like legal and accounting,” Kaye told JNS.org. “The economic impact will prove to be a tremendous benefit to Israel and produce many winners.”
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Israeli Health Minister Yaakov Litzman initially opposed medical cannabis exports, due to concern that they might encourage recreational use of marijuana within the Jewish state. And following the ministerial measure’s approval, Litzman vowed to work to ensure that a portion of the revenue from medical cannabis exports will be applied to improving Israel’s healthcare system.
The joint committee that recommended approving the exports also recommended certain restrictions, including limiting the privilege to the Israeli Health Ministry and licensed growers that are under direct government supervision.
Israeli medical cannabis will only be exported to countries where the plant is approved for medicinal use, and countries that already have trade relations with Israel. The new measure allows for all forms of medical cannabis to be exported, including raw buds for smoking, oils, tablets and edibles.
Prior to the measure’s approval, several countries had already expressed strong interest in importing Israeli medical cannabis and applied for permission to do so, including Australia, Germany, Denmark, the Czech Republic and Cyprus.
“In view of the general trend in the industry, it is expected that additional countries will potentially be interested in Israeli exports,” the joint committee stated.
Ma’ayan Weisberg, head of foreign relations at Tikun Olam Ltd., Israel’s first and largest supplier of medical cannabis, said that her organization “has received hundreds of requests throughout the years to export our products internationally.”
Weisberg noted that her “[patients] have reported an improvement in their health and daily functionality, a decrease in need for medication and an increase in overall well-being.”
The medical cannabis supplier had already established various international “collaborations” in Canada, the US and Australia — and now hopes for many more.
Tikun Olam is one of eight licensed medical cannabis growers in Israel, which combine to produce some 10 tons of the plant annually. More than 500 additional growers have applied to produce medical cannabis for the purpose of international exportation.
In February, an Israeli government committee took the first steps toward allowing the export of medical cannabis from Israel, and in March, the Knesset passed a new law essentially decriminalizing recreational marijuana use nationwide.
In recent years, Israel has become a hub for the study and distribution of medical cannabis. Hebrew University’s Raphael Mechoulam initially discovered THC, the primary psychoactive compound in the cannabis plant, in the 1970s. Since then, Israeli hospitals have demonstrated a willingness to perform clinical trials on the effectiveness of cannabis in relieving the symptoms of tens of thousands of patients suffering from chronic or terminal conditions.
“Israel’s medical cannabis program is the oldest and most advanced in the world,” said iCAN’s Kaye. “Our regulatory environment allows for clinical trials to test efficacy on a variety of illnesses, and our government has even provided grants for several cannabis companies. This is in stark contrast to the United States, where the ability to research the plant is nearly impossible because of cannabis’ status as a Schedule I controlled substance.”From my car window, I watched Spain transform. From Madrid in the country’s centre to the coastal north, empty land and grazing cows turned to misty green mountains and a shimmering harbour full of boats. I had driven north before, but this was the first time I’d stopped in Getaria, a medieval fishing village with beaches, vineyards and the 15th-Century baptismal church of native son Juan Sebastian Elcano, the first person to sail around the world.
In the early afternoon, on a narrow street, hot smoke rose from seabream sizzling on an outdoor charcoal grill. Two men standing behind a seafood delivery truck were speaking a language I’d never heard before. The staccato sounds they exchanged mingled with the light drips of rain on the pavement that March day. Later, I realised they were speaking an ancient language that has teetered on the brink of extinction.
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Euskara, spoken in the autonomous communities of Navarre in northern Spain and the Basque Country across northern Spain and south-western France, is a mystery: it has no known origin or relation to any other language, an anomaly that has stumped linguistic experts for ages.
“Nobody is able to say where [the language] comes from,” according to Pello Salaburu, professor and director at the Basque Language Institute at The University of the Basque Country in Bilbao. “Scholars used to research this problem many years ago, but there are no clear conclusions.”
The distinct language is a point of pride for Basques. An estimated 700,000 of them, or 35% of the Basque population, speak it today. But it was a target for Spanish dictator Gen Francisco Franco, who enforced the use of Spanish and forbade other languages, including Euskara (also called Basque), during his rule from 1939 to 1975.
When Karmele Errekatxo was a child in the 1960s and 1970s, she attended secret classes in a church basement in Bilbao, Spain, the Basque Country’s most populous city and home of the famed Guggenheim Museum. It was here that she learned the forbidden language of Euskara.
If you take language from a place, it dies
“Language is the identity of a place,” said Errekatxo, now a teacher in Bilbao who speaks Euskara in her classroom. “If you take language from a place, it dies. The dictatorship knew that and wanted Euskara to disappear.”
A group of parents set up a hidden Basque school, or ikastola, in 1944. By 1970, these secret learning institutions had more than 8,000 students, according to Salaburu.
Salaburu was required at his 1951 baptism to take the name ‘Pedro Maria’, the Spanish version of his Basque name. He spoke only Euskara as a child and learned his first Spanish words at a non-Basque school in Navarre when he was six years old.
At this time Euskara was still spoken in isolated towns and farms in the Pyrenees Mountains and along the coast of the Bay of Biscay, where it was the only language many families knew. But it was silenced in cities, where informants reported Euskara speakers to the police.
“Euskara was relegated to the intimate domain of the home,” Errekatxo said. “But in the cities, even the walls seemed to be listening.”
Euskara was relegated to the intimate domain of the home, but in the cities, even the walls seemed to be listening
One day in the 1940s, Errekatxo’s grandmother was heard speaking Euskara to Bilbao food vendors from her hometown of Bermeo, a small seaside village 34km north-east of Bilbao. She was arrested, taken to jail and forced to pay a fine. Before she left, her jailers shaved her head to humiliate her.
As a result, her grandmother did not pass Euskara to her children, including Errekatxo’s father.
“The repression against the language had repercussions,” Errekatxo said. “Many families that spoke Euskara, because of fear, were losing the language. The language was not transmitted in some generations. It came to a sudden stop.”
But Euskara outlived the dictatorship, just as it had inexplicably survived several millennia.
Speleologists recently discovered an ancient cave in Errenteria, a town in the province of Guipuzcoa in the Spanish Basque Country, where people left drawings about 14,000 years ago. Other prehistoric caves in the Basque Country (including Santimamiñe in Biscay and Ekain in Guipuzcoa) were inhabited by people about 9,000 years ago.
“We don’t know the language spoken in the caves, of course,” Salaburu said. “But, unless we have other data proving the contrary, we should assume that that protolanguage is related in some sense to current Basque.”
When people from the East, or Indo-Europeans, began arriving in Europe 3,500 years ago, they brought their own languages from which most European languages originated. But Euskara does not have the same Indo-European roots, and is instead “completely different in origin,” Salaburu said. It’s the only living language in Europe with no relation to any others, he said.
Among several theories regarding Euskara’s origin: Euskara and Iberian were the same language, or both evolved from the same language. Like Euskara, Iberian (a dead language once spoken in south-eastern regions of the Iberian Peninsula) had very little relation to the primary languages of the region.
“Iberian ‒ probably several languages itself, with different written systems – was mainly defined as opposite to Latin, and was spoken in the Iberian Peninsula, roughly current Spain and Portugal. One of their written systems was decrypted in the 1920s. We don’t understand it, but we know that it sounds very similar to Basque,” Salaburu said.
Euskara’s milestones occurred fairly recently given that it’s been used for thousands of years. The first book in Euskara wasn’t printed until 1545 in Bordeaux, France; the first Basque school opened in 1914 in San Sebastian (only 30 years before Basque schools were forced underground by Franco), Spain; and the language was standardised in 1968, paving the way for writers to write in Euskara.
“The best scholar in the Basque language, Koldo Mitxelena, used to say, ‘The miracle of Basque is how it has been able to survive’,” Salaburu said. “Really, it is a miracle that it survived without having literature, without having people educated in Basque.”
Euskara has been shaped over time by the Basques’close contact with nature. Their surroundings inspired a vast collection of words to describe their verdant valleys, stunning peaks, blue coastlines and bluer skies. The language contains varied vocabulary for landscapes, animals, the wind, the sea ‒ and about 100 ways to say ‘butterfly’. The language may still be around, in part, because its early speakers were geographically secluded from the rest of the world by the Pyrenees.
Basque people have the feeling that language is the most important feature that identifies them as a people
“But I would say that it was not as isolated as people say, because many people used this land,” Salaburu said. “Basque people have the feeling that language is the most important feature that identifies them as a people. They just don’t want to lose it.”
In the 1960s, during Franco’s attack on Basque culture, the terrorist group ETA (Euskadi Ta Azkatasuna, meaning ‘Basque Homeland and Freedom’) formed, and killed hundreds of people over the ensuing decades in its fight to gain the Basque region’s independence from Spain and France. Euskara was used by ETA’s members in extortion letters demanding money from and threatening violence to businesses and individuals, and painted on walls by sympathizers who wrote pro-ETA slogans. ETA disarmed in April 2017.
“Euskara has been used as a weapon. It has become politicised and manipulated,” Errekatxo said. “There’s the perception that Euskara belongs to the nationalists. I believe a language is universal.”
To keep Euskara alive, the government of the Spanish Basque Country, where most Basques live, recently launched one of many campaigns to encourage use of the language. The initiative includes a website where Euskara speakers can practice the language. Students in the region can also choose whether to study in Euskara, Spanish or both. Most choose to learn in Euskara, though it’s seldom heard in public; in the streets of Bilbao, for example, it’s still more common to hear people speak Spanish.
“For the first time in our history, many people that know Basque choose to speak in Spanish,” Salaburu said. “And this is something that makes me feel uncomfortable. The influence of Spanish and different languages is strong.”
In Getaria, the Euskara I’d heard was a modern version influenced by other languages. I noticed some sounds also heard in Spanish, like ch (written ‘tx’ in Euskara, as in txangurro, meaning ‘crab’), but there are few similarities between the two languages. For example, ‘thank you’ is eskerrik asko in Euskara and gracias in Spanish.
All around the Basque Country, Euskara words appear on road signs and above doors, greeting visitors to stores and bars serving txakoli (locally produced white wine) and pintxos (thick slices of bread topped with seafood or other ingredients). The language once prohibited by Franco is now spoken on television, sung in music, printed in newspapers and broadcast on the radio.
“In 1975, when Franco was dying, I think that Basque was taken as a symbol against him, and many people began to learn Basque and take care of the language,” Salaburu said.
Basque has its ups and downs, it evolves forward and backward, like life itself
Will Euskara survive?
“I say yes, because I’m an optimist,” Errekatxo said. “Basque has its ups and downs, it evolves forward and backward, like life itself.”
After spending a day in Getaria, I drove 26km east along the Bay of Biscay coast to San Sebastian, a Basque city renowned for its restaurants and beaches. There, at the steps of the Basilica of Saint Mary of the Chorus, an 18th-Century Baroque building in the old part of the city, a men’s choir broke into a majestic song in melodic Euskara. I didn’t need to understand the words to appreciate their beauty.
Lost in Translation is a BBC Travel series exploring encounters with languages and how they are reflected in a place, people and culture.
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If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter called "If You Only Read 6 Things This Week". A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.Back in June I wrote my first post about CSS Grid Layout automatic placement feature, where I was talking about finishing the support for this feature “soon”. At the end it took a bit longer, but finally this month Igalia has completed the implementation and you can already start to test it in both Blink and WebKit.
A little bit of history
Basic support for auto-placement feature was already working since 2013. The past summer I added support for spanning auto-positioned items. However, the different packing modes of the grid item placement algorithm (aka auto-placement algorithm) were not implemented yet.
These packing modes were sparse, dense and stack. Initial behavior was implementing dense. I implemented sparse without too much trouble, however when implementing stack I had some doubts that I shared with the CSS Working Group. This ended up with some discussions and, finally, the removal of the stack mode. So you can forget about what I explained about it in my previous post.
Final syntax
After some back and forth it seems that now we’ve a definitive syntax for the grid-auto-flow property.
This property allows to determine two different things:
Direction : row (by default) or column.
Defines the direction in which the grid is going to grow if needed to insert the auto-placed items.
: (by default) or. Defines the direction in which the grid is going to grow if needed to insert the auto-placed items. Mode: sparse (if omitted) or dense.
Depending on the packing mode the algorithm will try to fill ( dense ) or not (sparse) all the holes in the grid while inserting the auto-placed items.
So, you can use different combinations of these keywords ( row, column and dense ) to determine the desired behavior. Examples of some valid declarations:
grid-auto-flow : column ; grid-auto-flow : dense ; grid-auto-flow : row dense ; grid-auto-flow : dense column ;
Let’s use an example to explain this better. Imagine the following 3x3 grid:
< div style = "grid-template-rows: 50px 50px 50px; grid-template-columns: 100px 100px 100px;" > < div style = "grid-row: span 2; grid-column: 2;" > item 1 </ div > < div style = "grid-column: span 2;" > item 2 </ div > < div > item 3 </ div > < div > item 4 </ div > </ div >
Depending on the value of grid-auto-flow property, the grid items will be placed in different positions as you can see in the next picture.
grid-auto-flow values example
Grid item placement algorithm
I’ve been talking about this algorithm for a while already. It describes how the items should be placed into the grid. Let’s use a new example that will help to understand better how the algorithm works:
< div style = "grid-template-rows: repeat(4, 50px); grid-template-columns: repeat(5, 50px);" > < div style = "grid-row: 1; grid-column: 2;" > i1 </ div > < div style = "grid-row: 2; grid-column: 1;" > i2 </ div > < div style = "grid-row: 1; grid-column: span 2;" > i3 </ div > < div style = "grid-row: 1;" > i4 </ div > < div style = "grid-row: 2;" > i5 </ div > < div style = "grid-column: 2;" > i6 </ div > < div > i7 </ div > < div style = "grid-column: 3;" > i8 </ div > < div > i9 </ div > </ div >
For items with definite positions (i1 and i2), you don’t need to calculate anything, simply place them in the positions defined by the grid placement properties and that’s all. However, for auto-placed items this is the algorithm explaining how to convert the automatic positions into actual ones.
Grid items location is determined by the row and column coordinates and the number of tracks it spans in each position. So you might have 3 types of auto-placed items:
Both coordinates are auto: i7 and i9.
Major axis position is auto: i6 and i8.
Minor axis position is auto: i3, i4 and i5.
Note: Major axis refers to the direction determined by grid-auto-flow property, and minor axis to the opposite one. For example in “ grid-auto-flow: column; ” the major axis is column and the minor axis is row.
Let’s describe briefly the main steps of the algorithm (considering that the direction determined by grid-auto-flow is row ):
First all the non auto-positioned items (the ones with definite position) should be placed in the grid. Example: i1 ( grid-row: 1; grid-column: 2; ) : 1st row and 2nd column.
: 1st row and 2nd column. i2 ( grid-row: 2; grid-column: 1; ) : 2nd row and 1st column. Grid item placement algorithm: Step 1 Next step is to place the auto-positioned items where the major axis direction is not auto, so they’re locked to a given row. Here we have different behaviors depending on the packing mode. sparse: Look for the first empty grid area in this row where the item fits and it’s past any item previously placed by this step in the same row. Example: i3 ( grid-row: 1; grid-column: span 2; ) : 1st row and 3rd-4th columns. i4 ( grid-row: 1; ) : 1st row and 5th column. i5 ( grid-row: 2; ) : 2nd row and 2nd column. Grid item placement algorithm: Step 2 (sparse)
dense : Look for the first empty grid area in this row where the item fits (without caring about the previous items). Example: i3 ( grid-row: 1; grid-column: span 2; ) : 1st row and 3rd-4th columns. i4 ( grid-row: 1; ) : 1st row and 1st column. i5 ( grid-row: 2; ) : 2nd row and 2nd column. Grid item placement algorithm: Step 2 ( dense )
Finally the rest of auto-placed items are positioned. Again the behavior depends on the packing mode. And the description is pretty similar to the one in the previous step, but without having the row constraint. sparse: Look for the first empty area where the item fits and it’s past any item previously placed by this step. This means that we start looking for the empty area from the position of the last item placed. Example: i6 ( grid-column: 2; ) : 3rd row and 2nd column. i7: 3rd row and 3rd column. i8 ( grid-column: 3; ) : 4th row and 3rd column. i9: 4th row and 4th column. Grid item placement algorithm: Step 3 (sparse)
dense : Look for the first empty area where the item fits. Starting always to look from the beginning of the grid. Example: i6 ( grid-column: 2; ) : 3rd row and 2nd column. i7: 1st row and 5th column. i8 ( grid-column: 3; ) : 2nd row and 3rd column. i9: 2nd row and 4th column. Grid item placement algorithm: Step 3 ( dense )
Implementation details
Probably most of you won’t be interested in the details related to the implementation of this feature in Blink and WebKit. So, feel free to skip this point and move to the next one.
You can check the meta-bugs in Blink and WebKit to see all the patches involved in this feature. The code is almost the same in both projects and the main methods involved in the grid auto-placement are:
RenderGrid::placeItemsOnGrid() (Blink & WebKit): Which is in charge of placing the non auto-positioned items, covering step 1 explained before. And then it calls the next 2 methods with the auto-positioned items depending on its type.
RenderGrid::placeSpecifiedMajorAxisItemsOnGrid() (Blink & WebKit): This method will process the auto-placed items where only minor axis position is auto. So, they’re locked to a given row/column, which corresponds to step 2. Note that in the sparse packing mode we need to keep a cursor for each row/column to fulfill the condition related to have items placed after previous ones.
RenderGrid::placeAutoMajorAxisItemsOnGrid() (Blink & WebKit): And this last method is the one placing the auto-positioned items where the major axis position or both coordinates are auto. In this case, it uses the auto-placement cursor in order to implement the sparse behavior.
It’s also important to mention the class RenderGrid::GridIterator (Blink & WebKit) which has the responsibility to find the empty grid areas that are big enough to fit the auto-placed grid items.
Note: RenderGrid has just been renamed to LayoutGrid in Blink.
Peculiarities
On one side, the sparse packing mode is intended to preserve the DOM order of the grid items. However, this is only true if for all the items the major axis coordinate or both are auto. Otherwise, the DOM order cannot be guaranteed.
This is very easy to understand, as if you have some fixed elements, they’re going to be placed in their given positions, and the algorithm cannot maintain the ordering.
Let’s use a very simple example to show it:
< div style = "display: grid;" > < div style = "grid-row: 1; grid-column: span 2;" > item 1 </ div > < div > item 2 </ div > < div style = "grid-row: 1; grid-column: 2;" > item 3 </ div > </ div >
Where the elements will be positioned in:
item 1: 1st row and 3rd-4th columns.
item 2: 1st row and 1st column.
item 3: 1st row and 2nd column.
Grid item placement algorithm ordering
On the other hand, there is another issue regarding sparse again, but this time in the second step of the algorithm (the one related to items locked to a given row/column). Where the items are placed after any other item previously positioned in that step in the same row/column.
Let’s take a look to the following example:
< div style = "display: grid;" > < div style = "grid-row: 1; grid-column: 1;" > item 1 </ div > < div style = "grid-row: 1 / span 2;" > item 2 </ div > < div style = "grid-row: 2" > item 3 </ div > </ div >
According to the algorithm these items will be placed at:
item 1: 1st row and 1st column.
item 2: 1st-2nd row and 2nd column.
item 3: 2nd row and 1st column.
Grid item placement algorithm sparse fixed row/column
However, for the case of item 3 we could think that it should be placed in the 2nd row and the 3rd column. Because of item 2 is actually placed in the 1st and 2nd rows. But, for the sake of simplicity, this isn’t the behavior described in the spec.
Use cases
So far this |
would never put my own songs on at a party, like ever.
I mean, Frank, you're a showman.
Frank Turner: Yeah, but – okay, okay. Everyone who’s here tonight bought tickets to see me play a show.
That's true.
Frank Turner: You know what I mean? So, I’m going to do that.
I'm kind of curious about your mindset going from Tape Deck Heart into Positive Songs. 2013: You put out this great record -
Frank Turner: – thank you –
- you played a fuckton of shows, and now you came back with this.
Frank Turner: The first thing to bear in mind is the time lag inherent in the music industry. I started writing songs for Positive Songs before Tape Deck Heart was released. You finish the record, you master it, and when you’ve got the listening session, you get your final ‘this is the final songs’ thing. That’s kind of the end of the chapter, as far as the musical side of the creativity goes, in terms of writing and recording. Obviously you do artwork and do photo shoots and you do press and you do promo and you do [rattles his head], and obviously touring a lot, as well – all of which is well and good – so there’s an inherent six months to a year, at least, time lag.
Tape Deck Heart was largely about a collapse in my personal life that I was entirely responsible for. I had this idea of writing a breakup record from the point of view of the bad guy, because I love breakup records – I feel like they’re a sub-genre to themselves. But almost all of them are written from the point of view of the victim, you know? That means there’s an awful lot of records that have gone unwritten [laughs] historically. I mean, like – do you know Esmé Patterson? She actually sang on Positive Songs – she sings on [“Silent Key”] – she wrote a great record recently that was like ten, or maybe twelve songs written from the point of view of the woman involved in famous songs. She wrote a song from Jolene’s point of view; she wrote a song from Billie Jean’s point of view, all of this kind of thing. I thought it was such a good idea for an album! Anyway – so the main kind of mindset thing for this record was kind of relief, almost – I want to say – because the making of Tape Deck Heart was a very cathartic thing for me. Not a particularly easy, or pleasant, or fun time – and then it was done! And not only was the music done, but I’d also reached peace with myself over the things that had happened, and so Positive Songs is a record about surviving the crash, rather than about the crash itself.
‘Positive Songs’ is a record about surviving the crash, rather than about the crash itself.
And that was written roughly around the same time that everything else was going on, and coming out?
Frank Turner: So, this is the next thing! There’s methodology in here as well. Tape Deck Heart was a record where quite a lot of it came together in the studio and we spent a lot of time in the studio – which is all well and good – but with this record, I wanted to make it like bands make debut albums, which is that you have the songs written and rehearsed in a live context, and the recording part of it is capturing a snapshot of something that’s already happened. So with that in mind, we built a monitoring rig from stage, which means we don’t need to sound-check every day (as in play the kick drum, play the snare drum and shit), so basically every day for the whole of the Tape Deck Heart tour we had two hours a day to play new material. I wrote the songs, and then me and the Souls started working on them. Somebody sent me footage the other day of us playing “Get Better” before Tape Deck Heart came out, but in a completely whack arrangement of it! We obviously then kicked it around for like two years before we got it right.
I wanted to make [Positive Songs] like bands make debut albums, which is that you have the songs written and rehearsed in a live context, and the recording part of it is capturing a snapshot of something that’s already happened.
So these songs that came out recently and that you're playing every night now, these are songs that you were honing for two to three years prior.
Frank Turner: Yeah.
You said before that this album is special to you in different ways in the past; aren't all albums, at the time of their release, special?
Frank Turner: Yes, of course! We’re now a month and a half out from the release of it, but even now, if you ever get asked the question What’s your favorite record?, if the answer isn’t “My most recent one,” then I haven’t done my job properly. Obviously that will change over time – and actually, it’s ridiculous for me to pick favorite records of my own, because they’re all way too intimately involved in my life! Trying to compare things I did when I was twenty-three to things I’m doing when I’m thirty-three, it’s sort of meaningless…
Have you always found that you've been in love with the thing that you're doing right at that moment?
Frank Turner: I think I would phrase it slightly differently, and say I try to do things that I love.
Have you always had these prolific spurts of creating and creating and creating?
Frank Turner: This is an interesting time for you to ask that question, because until recently, my songwriting thing – since I first started trying to write songs with an acoustic guitar – has been a pretty steady stream. And the process of making records has been a case of sort of putting dams in the stream, and trying to create coherent chunks of songwriting. It’s artificial to a degree – I mean, I write autobiographically and chronologically… Since finishing Positive Songs, I don’t want to go too far down this road because it’s too early to say with any degree of certainty, but it felt to me like a wrapping up of a certain musical phase, to me, in a way, and I’m currently on a self-imposed ban on writing. That’s putting it slightly strongly – what I mean is, I’m not allowing myself to worry about whether or not I’m writing songs at the moment, and I’m not writing songs right now, partly because we’ve got so many fucking songs to choose from in the set-list right now already [laughs], and you know, I’ve done six records in ten years – that’s fast! And there’s three albums’ worth of rarities in there, too, so that’s a lot of songs – but also, I’m interested in looking at some stylistic left-hand turns for whatever I do next. Having said that, I have never really forced what I do stylistically, and I don’t particularly want to start now, but I’ve been taking guitar lessons for bluegrass guitar lately, which has been fun, and I’ve also been listening to a lot of progressive techno stuff lately, and a lot of soul and Elvis, and I’ve been listening to, like, world music. I’m currently trying to spread it all out there, in terms of my tastes.
That's totally fine - you never had a specific trajectory you were headed toward in the first place. I mean, you changed your entire career!
Frank Turner: Right, totally. The experience of going from being in an underground successful punk band, to then no one giving a fuck, to now doing what I’m doing now, it sort of means that it’s a fool’s errand to predict what’s going to happen in the future. Also, it kind of misses the point, because the unexpectedness of it is the fun part, in a way. You know what I mean? Occasionally someone asks, “If you could go back and tell your fifteen-year-old self something, what would you tell him?” And it’s like, “Nothing! That motherfucker’s got it all coming down in a barrel, man!” Actually, the one thing I would say would be to do a little bit more stretching before playing shows so that your fucking back doesn’t go out halfway through your career – but other than that, at the risk of sounding totally hippie – but it’s like, the journey is the interesting part.
Well it just means that you're not a songwriter for songwriting's sake.
Frank Turner: This is my major form of creative expression in life, you know? In fact – okay, let’s rephrase that, my only form of creative expression in life, because I can’t draw to save my fucking life. Songwriting and performing are the things that I do, and in a way I would say they are ends in themselves, but like… ‘Cause that’s the thing, it’s part of the reason I got sick of politics in the music business. Something I really hate is people using music as a means to an end. To me, music is the end: It’s the end in itself, and I almost feel defensive of music once it gets to, “Oh, I wrote these songs to change the world.” Fuck that! Right? They’re songs to be songs. If they then change the world, fuckin’ a! Crack on. But don’t fucking use music as a climbing frame to reach something else.
[Music] is my major only form of creative expression in life.
Watch: “The Next Storm” – Frank Turner
Do you believe that you, as an artist, have a social responsibility that goes beyond delivering music?
Frank Turner: No, not at all. My responsibility is to be the best musician that I can and to do the best shows that I can, that I am charging people money to get into, and to make the best records that I can. If I choose to have social responsibilities beyond that – and in some ways I do, and in some ways I don’t – then that’s my prerogative, but any one artist telling any other artists what they should or shouldn’t be doing, outside of trying to make the best music they can, is a pretty naff sight, I think.
Let's do a complete tangent now. What's the one instrument you always tried to play, but you never could?
Frank Turner: Well, there’s sort of two answers to that. I’m really quite bad at the piano – there’s a couple of songs I can hold down at the piano; I always wished I was better at the piano, and it’s laziness probably more than anything else. I got a piano in my flat in London, thinking “I’m gonna learn! Osmosis! It’ll be there, I’ll play it the whole time,” and then I’m never there, so that didn’t help. I always had this idea that it would be amazing to play the fiddle. There’s a guy called Seth Blakeman from the UK – he’s a folk artist I’ve done some touring with – who’s amazing. He plays guitar, but he also does a lot of songs with fiddle and vocals, which is amazing! I’ve always thought that would be a wonderful feather in my cap, if you like. But the fiddle is not an easy instrument to learn; you just make awful noise for quite a long time, so I’ve never got anywhere close to learning to play.
Sticking to the guitar for now?
Frank Turner: Hmm. Yeah… As I said, I’ve been taking lessons on bluegrass stuff lately off a friend of mine. I’m not that particularly virtuous on guitar by any stretch of the imagination, but I like the idea of improving on guitar.
One thing I like about the guitar is that there is versatility, even there. Jimmy Page would always go into these weird tunings and somehow make amazing things.
Frank Turner: I’m gonna sound like I’m gonna fart in my own corner here, because I am, but rhythm guitar is an unsung discipline. Most people who talk about guitar spend their life talking about lead guitar playing, but AC/DC are nothing without Malcolm Young. I like to think I’m a reasonable rhythm guitar player! The moment I actually realized that I might not be a terrible guitar player overall is when I injured my back. The doc said I could keep touring, but I wasn’t allowed to play guitar for a time. My fill-in was my guitar tech, who’s a very old friend and, on a purely technical level, a better guitarist than me – he can rip leads and all this kind of thing. As far as I’m concerned, I play simple chords and simple rhythms, and it took him a long time to nail my parts, because there’s quite a lot of nuance in the rhythm of it. I was like, “Dude, it’s just that! It’s really fucking easy,” and he was like, “Dude, that is not easy, what the fuck are you talking about?” and it was kind of nice, in a way, to go Oh, maybe I’m not terrible!
Have you had any other of those 'a-ha' moments recently?
Frank Turner: uhh…
We're here for three sold-out nights in New York City...
Frank Turner: Yeah, that’s pretty a-ha, umm… I found out the other day that – okay, I had an ‘a-ha’ moment… This is gonna sound like I’m a moron, because I am… That Jacob Dylan is Bob Dylan’s son! It just never occurred, and then it was like, “Oh yeah… obviously!” And now I feel like a moron. What’s the other one that I found out? Nic Cage is related to someone, isn’t he? His name isn’t Nic Cage, it’s something else… And he’s like, related to Emilio Estevez or something… I’m the wrong person to talk to about this.
You're thinking of Charlie -
Frank Turner: Sheen! No, but Nic Cage is related to somebody else in Hollywood, and his surname isn’t really Cage; it’s something else. Google it. It made me go, “Fucking really?! Wow!” So. That was my ‘a-ha’ moment.
From Wikipedia: "Nicolas Kim Coppola (born January 7, 1964), known professionally as Nicolas Cage, is an American actor and producer... Through his father, he is a nephew of director Francis Ford Coppola and of actress Talia Shire, and the cousin of directors Roman Coppola and Sofia Coppola, film producer Gian-Carlo Coppola, and actors Robert Carmine and Jason Schwartzman."
So this record, these songs... What was the hardest song for you to write on Positive Songs?
Frank Turner: Well, there’s more than one way of interpreting the word “hard.” The hardest song to write, in terms of just getting the song right and fucking around with structuring and that sort of thing, was the song “Demons.” It took me forever to get the riffs in the right order and get the arrangement right, and there’s a gazillion different versions of that song lying around… The hardest song, emotionally… “Song for Joshua” was not an easy song to write or record in some ways, but it didn’t take very long; I just had to push myself to be raw with it.
Positive Songs for Negative People as a name...
Frank Turner: … Has more of a tongue in its cheek than some people seem to think. I’m not saying it’s a joke of a title, in any way, but like, some people take it in an extremely po-faced way, and it’s like, Come on, man. There were some people, when you’re a kid, who understood that listening to sad songs made you feel better, and some people who didn’t.
There were some people who understood that listening to sad songs made you feel better…
This record is up and down; it's kind of all over the place, thematically.
Frank Turner: Yes. Okay, I’ll take that as a compliment!
It kind of almost feels like a little bit of ADD, though.
Frank Turner: Yeah, well, I mean it’s not a concept album, I suppose would be my response to that. Each song is hopefully internally coherent. England Keep My Bones wasn’t a concept record, but there were a fair few songs that were sort of about England on that. Tape Deck Heart wasn’t a concept album, but there were a fair few songs that were about breakups on there. I would say a similar thing about this one – it’s not a concept record, by any stretch of the imagination – but there is a… I was going to say “theme,” but that’s the wrong word. There’s just a vibe, I think, of the idea of attempting to be optimistic in the ruins, which runs through it. Arguably, “Get Better” and “Love Forty Down” are about reasonably similar things, but one of them is told through the matter of tennis, and one of them isn’t.
I do like that tennis metaphor.
Frank Turner: Thank you. Some people seem to think it’s fundamentally ridiculous, and I think they have no sense of humor.
Were you thinking of different sports when you actually wrote that one out?
Frank Turner: No, no, I was actually doing some post-show physiotherapy in Norfolk, Virginia of all places, and the guys from Smith Street Band, this folk band, were playing ping pong over my head, and one of them shouted out a score, which was “Love something down,” and it just stuck in my head as an interesting phrase. And then, of course, it occurred to me that Love-Forty-Down is break point, and I thought, “Okay, there we go.” Now we have the bare bones of a song.
It's interesting, the way that these things come to you. It doesn't feel like there's any one way that you approach songwriting.
Frank Turner: Songwriting is a pretty vague process for me, in the sense that I don’t have a methodology. I’m not really able to say much about it, not because I don’t want to, but because I don’t have the vocabulary for the process, and I almost can’t quite remember the process quite a lot of the time. I can remember song not existing and then songs being finished; I can’t quite remember how it got from one to the other. Like a sleepwalker.
What song are you proudest of on this record? The way that I'm going to phrase that is, if somebody were just discovering Frank Turner's music for the first time ever and listened to this record, which is the one song you'd really want to stick out?
Frank Turner: That’s two separate questions, you see. If somebody was listening to my stuff for the first time, I would have to want to play something that was representative of my oeuvre overall. I’d probably play them “Get Better” because I love that song a lot and I’m very pleased with that song. The song I’m proudest of, probably, is “Silent Key,” because I think that it’s a little bit of a stylistic departure for me, and it’s a kind of lyrical idea that took a long time to get right and to present in a way that was both engaging and sensitive. It was really a pain not to sound blasé about this subject.
Were you writing a lot of songs at the same time that ended up not making it onto this particular record?
Frank Turner: There’s a handful, but to be honest, for a song to get to the point of actually being finished for me, quite a lot of the editing process takes place before that – as in, I’ll get a verse and chorus into something and go, this is bullshit, or quite often, I’ll have two or three attempts at the same subject matter, lyrically, or I’ll have two or three musical attempts with the same vibe, and one becomes the clear one. There’s three songs that we’re going to put out on an EP sometime soon, that were finished for this record and that I like, and that I’m not going to do anything else with. There’s a fair few half-songs which I think will be good once I figure out what I’m supposed to do with the middle eight… We’ll see.
So you've been listening to other music these days?
Frank Turner: Yeah, I’ve been trying to spread my wings a little. Mainly trad country lately, actually; I’ve been listening to tons of George Jones, Loretta Lynn – that kind of vibe. “Trad” like proper seventies era, for me. That music doesn’t occupy the same kind of cultural space in England as it does in America. We don’t have country radio; it’s not that big in the UK, so I’d never heard of George Jones until a couple of years ago, and now I can’t really listen to anything else. Outside of that, I’ve been listening to quite a lot of ’60s garage punk stuff, which, again, is quite new to me.
So the next proper record really could go in any direction.
Frank Turner: You know what I’m doing right now? I’m quite enjoying not having to have an answer to that question just yet; it’s quite liberating.
Ten years, six albums. You ever feel like taking a break for a hot sec?
Frank Turner: I do, and then I come up with other ideas. I did have an idea of possibly taking a year and just touring weird places. I had a friend who said he could set me up a tour through central Russia, and then like Central America, the Far East – cut out [North] America and Europe from my tour schedules for a year. That would be kind of fun!
Just go away in a different sense, still doing what you love.
Frank Turner: I would imagine that would give me a fair amount of shit to write about.
Did you always want to be a touring musician?
Frank Turner: Yes, since I was about ten. I never really gave a thought to anything else since, much to my parents’ dismay.
Do you have any favorite lyrics from these new songs? It's a really cheesy question, but I wrote it down, so let's go with it.
Frank Turner: Yeah – I hate to say yes to that question, because somehow, in my head, I think I should be more egalitarian. There’s a lyric in “Josephine” – my favorite set of words on the new record is “Josephine,” because I find it quite difficult to explain what that song is about in prose, which is good, because it means it needs to be poetry, right? There’s a line in there –
Let’s pretend it’s Halloween
You come as a car crash
I’ll go as James Dean
– which I’ve kind of had in my back pocket for a little while, and it’s been looking for a home – and it got one.
“Josephine” – Frank Turner “Get Better” – Frank Turner
Connect with Frank Turner on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram
Frank Turner 2016 Tour
5/21 – Dallas, TX @ Elm Street Festival
5/22 – Little Rock, AR @The Metroplex
5/23 – Columbia, MO @ The Blue Note
5/24 – Des Moines, IA @ Woolys
5/26 – Grand Rapids, MI @ The Intersection
5/27 – Columbus, OH @ Newport Music Hall
5/28 – Louisville, KY @ Mercury Ballroom
5/29 – Knoxville, TN @ The Concourse
5/31 – Memphis, TN @ New Daisy Theater
6/1 – Oklahoma City, OK @ Diamond Ballroom
6/3 – San Antonio, TX @ The Aztec Theater
6/4-5 – Houston, TX @ Free Press Summer Festival
6/5 – New Orleans, LA @ The Joy Theater
6/6 – Mobile, AL @ The Soul Kitchen
6/7 – Birmingham, AL @ Iron City
6/9 – St Petersburg, FL @ Jannus Live
6/10 – Ft Lauderdale, FL @ Revolution
6/11 – Orlando, FL @ Beacham Theater
6/12 – Atlanta, GA @ The Tabernacle
6/14 – Cincinnati, OH @ The Taft Theatre
6/15 – Cincinnati, OH @ The Taft Theatre
6/16 – Buffalo, NY @ Canalside Concerts *free 6/17 – Philadelphia, PA @ Penn’s Landing
6/18 – Columbia, MD @ Merriweather Post Pavillion
6/19 – Gilford, NH @ Bank of NH Pavilion
6/21 – Richmond, VA @ Altria Theatre
6/22 – Norfolk, VA @ Chrysler Hall
7/29 – Chicago, IL @ Lollapalooza Festival
7/31 – Portland, OR @ Oregon Zoo Amphitheater
8/1 – Seattle, WA @ Showbox SoDo
8/3 – Oakland, CA @ Fox Theatre
8/4 – Paso Robles, CA @ Vina Robles
8/5 – Santa Ana CA, @ Observatory
8/6 – San Diego CA, @ CalCoast Open Air
8/8 – Morrison CO, @ Red Rocks Amphitheater
8/9 – Papillion, NE @ Sum Tur Amphitheater
8/10 – Minneapolis, MN @ Cabooze Plaza
8/12 – Whites Creek, TN @ Carl Black
8/13 – Detroit, MI @ Freedom Hill Amphitheater
8/14 – Cleveland, OH @ Jacob’s Pavilion
8/16 – Portland, ME @ Maine State Pier
8/18 – Wallingford, CT @ Toyota Oakdale
8/19 – BK, NY @ Coney Island Amphitheater
8/20 – Asbury Park, NJ @ Stone Pony Outdoor
Positive Songs for Negative People
An album by Frank TurnerSqueaky, spunky pup is recovering at the zoo after a rough start to life near Corvallis
A boisterous, squeaky river otter pup, orphaned last month near Cottage Grove, Ore., has just taken up residence at the Oregon Zoo.
A passing motorist spotted the young otter wandering alongside Highway 58 on June 20, and alerted a local wildlife rehabilitator who collected and cared for the animal while final placement was determined by staff at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
"He is playing in his pool, eating voraciously and grooming himself — all behaviors we want to see right now."
—Julie Christie, senior keeper
The pup, just a couple of months old at the time, was alone, hungry and dehydrated, but was rescued by the Chintimini Wildlife Center in Corvallis. Since the young otter would not be able to survive in the wild without its mother, ODFW contacted the Oregon Zoo to see if it had space available once the pup's health stabilized.
Last Thursday, the tiny pup was transferred to the zoo, where he is currently in the care of veterinarians and keepers. He's estimated to be about 2 or 3 months old, and weighed a little over 4 pounds on arrival.
"He's a spunky little otter," said Julie Christie, senior keeper for the zoo's North America section. "ODFW acted quickly when the lone pup was reported and Chintimini Wildlife Center did a terrific job nursing him back to health. He is very active in his current home. He is playing in his pool, eating voraciously and grooming himself — all behaviors we want to see right now."
Visitors won't get a look at the youngster until later this summer, when he joins the zoo's two adult otters Tilly and B.C. in their Cascade Stream and Pond habitat.
"We have a very good track record with orphaned otters," Christie said. "Our adult otters, Tilly and B.C., were also rescued animals who had a rough start to life."
Tilly, named after the Tillamook River, was found orphaned near Johnson Creek in 2009. She was about 4 months old, had been wounded by an animal attack and was seriously malnourished. Once her health had stabilized, Tilly came to the Oregon Zoo in a transfer facilitated by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, which oversees the species' protection.
B.C. (short for Buttercup), was found orphaned near Star City, Ark., also in 2009. He was initially taken in by the Little Rock Zoo, but transferred here the following year as a companion for Tilly. The two otters hit it off quickly and have produced two offspring, Molalla and Zigzag. Both are now grown and living in Seattle — Mo at the Seattle Aquarium and Ziggy at the Woodland Park Zoo.
Once threatened by fur trappers, North American river otters are now relatively abundant in healthy river systems of the Pacific Northwest and the lakes and tributaries that feed them. Good populations exist in suitable habitat in northeast and southeast Oregon, but they are scarce in heavily settled areas, especially if waterways are compromised. Because of habitat destruction and water pollution, river otters are considered rare outside the region.
Metro, the regional government that manages the Oregon Zoo, has preserved and restored more than 90 miles of river and stream banks in the region through its voter-supported natural area programs. By protecting water quality and habitat, these programs are helping to provide the healthy ecosystems needed for otters, fish and other wildlife to thrive. River otters are frequently observed in Metro region waterways.The History of Trade is a mini series going through each team’s best and worst trades of all time. Each team has their own history and some may cross over, but the series will try to stick to each team. This article will focus on the Calgary Flames trade history, finding the best and worst of all time.
Calgary Flames Trade History: Best and Worst Trades of All-Time
Calgary is the first of the Canadian teams to be examined in this series. The Flames have been involved in several major trades in their history. As you will see, in the 1980’s the Flames and St. Louis Blues had an intriguing give-and-take relationship when it came to trades.
Best Trade
The Flames have been involved in some of the shrewdest trades in NHL history. Through these trades, most notably in the 80’s, the Flames were able to assemble a very talented team. They were somehow able to acquire players such as Lanny McDonald and Joe Mullen for spare parts.
The Trade
September 6, 1988
The Flames trade Mike Bullard, Tim Corkery and Craig Coxe to Saint Louis for Steve Bozek, Michael Dark, Doug Gilmour and Mark Hunter.
Traded Away
In one of the shrewdest trades in NHL history, the Calgary Flames acquired a future hall of fame forward for next to nothing. The trade pushed the Flames over the top and they went on to win the Stanley Cup in 1989. Unfortunately for the Blues, all the players they acquired were not able to stick with the team past one season. While an ugly off ice situation led to the Blues shopping Gilmour, the return for him is inexcusable. Maybe the Blues were returning the favour? (More on that later)
Mike Bullard had a decent run in the NHL as a goal scorer. He score 20 goals or more in his first eight seasons in the NHL. Still, he would only last 20 games with the Blues before he was traded to Philadelphia. Tough guy Craig Coxe would only play 41 games for the Blues in the 1988-89 season. Tom Corkery would never make it to the NHL.
The Blues traded away a hall of fame player for three players that played a total of 61 combined games for the team.
The Return
Had Doug Gilmour not even been a part of this trade, the Flames would still look good. The fact that they were able to land a hall of fame player for spare parts means they make out like bandits. While Glimour was the centrepiece of the trade, the Flames did get another serviceable player.
Mark Hunter would play parts of three season’s in Calgary. He scored 22 goals in the 1988-89 season for the Flames. While Hunter’s best days were behind him, he was still very useful on the Flames bottom six forwards.
Gilmour seemed to be the missing piece of the Flames Stanley Cup puzzle. The Flames had one of the better teams in the mid to late 80’s but always had to play in the shadow of their provincial rival, the Edmonton Oilers. Gilmour had an immediate impact finishing tied for second in team scoring with 85 points. The Flames won the Presidents Trophy and the Stanley Cup in 1989. In the playoffs, Gilmour continued his strong play, scoring 22 points in 22 games, including the cup-clinching goal for the Flames.
Gilmour had three and a half very productive season in Calgary, before a contract dispute led to him demanding a trade and walking out on the team.
Honourable Mention
Calgary acquires Joe Mullen, Terry Johnson and Rik Wilson from Saint Louis for Eddy Beers, Charles Bourgois and Gino Cavallini; Calgary acquires Lanny McDonald and a 1983 fourth round pick from Colorado for Don Lever and Bob MacMillan; Flames trade Joe Nieuwendyk to Dallas for Jarome Iginla and Corey Millen; Flames acquire Miikka Kiprusoff form San Jose for a 2005 second round pick.
Worst Trade
The Flames were very close to making their best and worst trade with the same person being at the centre of it. Doug Gilmour‘s trade from Calgary to Toronto was almost as bad as the one he was acquired for. Still, the Flames made an ever worse trade a few months prior.
The Trade
March 7, 1988
The Flames trade Brett Hull and Steve Bozek to St. Louis for Rob Ramage and Rick Wamsley.
Traded Away
The Flames were trying to add that last piece to push them to a Stanley Cup. Unfortunately for them, they sacrificed one of the greatest goal scorers in NHL history in what has become one of the most lopsided trades in NHL history. Who knows how good the Flames could have been had they held on to Hull.
Brett Hull was having a great rookie season in 1987-88. Through 52 games Hull had 25 goals and 50 points. Then he was traded to St. Louis. Hull broke out in St. Louis. In his 10 season’s with the Blues Hull never scored less than 27 goals in a season. From 1989-90 season to the 1991-92 season Hull would score 72, 86, and 70 goals respectively. In his 10 full seasons with the Blues, Hull averaged 52 goals a season. in the 1990-91 season he would win the Hart Memorial Trophy as the most valuable player in the NHL and Lester B. Pearson (Now the Ted Lindsay award) as the MVP as voted on by the players. Hull is now in the hall of fame and was recently names as one of the top 100 players in NHL history.
Steve Bozek is on this list for the second time. Bozek was a reliable two-way player in the NHL for 11 seasons. His time with the Blues was short lived however as he was flipped back to the Flames as part of the Doug Gilmour trade in September of 1988.
The Return
While the Flames did find playoff success after making this trade, it still looks terrible. Trading away a generational talent like Brett Hull should have brought back a much higher return. Even still, the Flames would have been better off keeping Hull. Sure, the Flames won a Cup in 1989, but in the following 14 seasons the Flames found little success. The Flames would make the playoffs six of the following seven seasons, but fail to win a series. Starting in 1995, the Flames would endure seven straight seasons without qualifying for the playoffs.
The Flames received solid but unspectacular defensemen Rob Ramage as the main return for Hull. Ramage would only be with the Flames for one whole season, but was a part of the Flames Stanley Cup win in 1989. Ramage was soon traded to Toronto for a second round pick in the summer of ’89.
Rick Wamsley was Mike Vernon‘s backup in his time in Calgary. Wamsley posted decent numbers in the regular season with Calgary, but was a non-factor in their Cup run in ’89. He was traded away in the Doug Gilmour trade to Toronto in 1992.
Dishonourable Mentions: Calgary trades Doug Gilmour, Jamie Macoun, Kent Manderville, Ric Nattress and Rick Wamsley to Toronto for Craig Berube, Alexander Godynyuk, Gary Leeman, Michel Petit and Jeff Reese; Calgary trades Joe Mullen to Pittsburgh for 1990 second round pick; Flames trade Marc Savard to Atlanta for Ruslan Zainullin
Main Photo:
window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:’88wgM3rGQUNLESHRChRgug’,sig:’hDiWyueGMwUJgMgXo8dFPCkgbkbbv1TPfRLeUarlOHo=’,w:’594px’,h:’396px’,items:’72563337′,caption: true,tld:’ca’,is360: false })});Before the film opened, the director tweeted that he had made "a fantastic version" of the film that audiences would "probably never see."
Days before Fantastic Four opened, director Josh Trank sent an email to some members of the cast and crew to say he was proud of the film, which, he wrote, was "better than 99 percent of the comic-book movies ever made."
"I don't think so," responded one castmember.
Maybe if Trank had left it at that, Hollywood insiders and fan websites could have played their own parlor games as to who was at fault for the film's colossal failure and Fantastic Four would have faded into the history books as did John Carter and other bombs before it. (The $122 million-budgeted film opened to just $25.7 million in the U.S. and $34 million abroad, far below even the most cautious predictions.)
But Trank, 31, could not resist tweeting on Aug. 6, as the movie was hitting theaters, that he had made "a fantastic version" of the film that audiences would "probably never see." Though Trank quickly deleted the tweet, his public disavowal of the film at such a key moment enraged 20th Century Fox executives and stirred a pot that had begun to bubble when the director was dropped by Lucasfilm from a Star Wars stand-alone film at the end of April, prompting THR to report that one of the causes was his erratic behavior on Fantastic Four. Now, insiders on the film say the situation was worse than previously revealed, and Trank has enlisted pit-bull lawyer Marty Singer to advocate on his behalf. |
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Highlights Akhilesh Yadav drops Shivpal Yadav, 3 other ministers from state cabinet Shivpal announces Akhilesh loyalist Ram Gopal Yadav expelled from party Move seen as a jolt to efforts of truce between 2 factions within party
It was a tough day at the office for the top leaders of the Samajwadi Party on Sunday, with Akhilesh Yadav removing his father's favourite brother as a minister. Mulayam Singh Yadav, apparently returning the favour, sacked another relative, cousin Ram Gopal Yadav, who is trusted adviser to Akhilesh and General Secretary of the party.For the second time in the last month, Akhilesh, the 43-year-old Chief Minister, fired uncle Shivpal Yadav as a minister, dramatically escalating the family drama that has enveloped the First Family of the ruling party in Uttar Pradesh just before the state votes.The 43-year-old Chief Minister's exercise of authority is a direct retort to his father, Mulayam Singh Yadav, who leads the Samajwadi Party and has been promoting Shivpal over his son.Along with Shivpal, 61, three other ministers close to him have also been benched. Shivpal Yadav said later in the day that Ram Gopal Yadav has been removed from his post of General Secretary "for colluding with the BJP."That flimsy allegation aside, the Yadavs have appeared to be in the vicinity of imploding as a joint political entity for the last few weeks.Sunday's plot points suggest the 24-year-old Samajwadi Party is not far placed from a split with Akhilesh and Mulayam as rival leaders. The Chief Minister suggested he would not force a break."Mulayam Yadav is my father. I'll serve him all my life. I don't want to split the party and will participate in the party's 25th anniversary celebrations on November 5," he said at a meeting on Sunday.The removal of Shivpal Yadav was announced at a meeting on Sunday of all party legislators hurriedly called by Akhilesh after his father set a meeting with them for Monday.Last month, Shivpal was dismissed as minister after he tried to force a merger with a political outfit headed by a former gangster. Akhilesh challenged the proposal but was eventually forced into submission by his father.Shivpal calculated that the new affiliation would boost the Samajwadi Party's standing among Muslims. Akhilesh was convinced it would allow the opposition to accuse the party of teaming with a nefarious leader for political gain.As a result of the conflict, Shivpal's place in the food chain of the Samajwadi Party was made clear by Mulayam: he returned to the cabinet and replaced Akhilesh as chief of the party in the state which gave him large agency in deciding the candidates for the approaching election.Ram Gopal Yadav is a cousin of Mulayam's, a long-time opponent of Shivpal's and has been championing Akhilesh as the "true and most popular leader" of the party. After his expulsion on Sunday, Ram Gopal Yadav later said he had no grievances about the party's decision but was hurt about the allegations."Whether I am in Samajwadi Party or not, in this 'dharmayudh (holy war)', I shall always be with Akhilesh Yadav," he said, adding that he would continue to side with his nephew till he is re-elected as the chief minister.Akhilesh has on different occasions been rebuked by his father for inefficient administration. Mulayam has also called the shots on the appointment of ministers and top officials in the UP government. What has led to a turf war is who should be selected as candidates for the election. The Chief Minister's preferences vary hugely from those of his father and Shivpal.(MySpace)
DETROIT (CBS) When Aimee Louise Sword, a central Michigan woman, used the Internet to locate a son she gave up for adoption over a decade ago, few could imagine that the reunion of the two could lead to anything sinister.
But police allege exactly that, saying that Sword, 35, seduced her long-lost biological son and had sex with the teenage boy sometime after they were reunited.
Sword's lawyer, Kenneth Burch, has defended his client against these troubling charges.
(Waterford Township Police)
She maintains her "presumption of innocence," he told local Michigan news site mlive.com. The accusations "have been very difficult for her," he said.
Sword has been charged with third-degree criminal sexual conduct in the case.
Waterford Township police say that Sword was arrested on April 24th after their detectives were informed of the sex abuse accusations by Child Protective Services, reports mlive.com.
(MySpace)
She remains free on bail.
Due to the boy's age and nature of the case, CBS will not release further details on him.
On Sword's MySpace page, she quotes rap artist Lil' Kim. "She rises during the worst of obstacles," she wrote in August and noted the quote, "Reminded me of myself."Today's lesson in the Atlantic cultural divide involves humor.
Sometimes, it doesn't travel very well. Sometimes, those who offer it on their Twitter feeds find that those in authority tend not to, well, get the joke. Indeed, they don't even notice there's a joke there at all.
That fate appears to have befallen Leigh Van Bryan, a 26-year-old who tweeted, before leaving for his vacation in California, that he would "destroy" America.
The way the Daily Mail arrests the tale, Van Bryan's tweet went like this: "Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America."
Screenshot: Chris Matyszczyk/CNET
Many Brits will feel confident in explaining that the use of the word "destroy" here refers to, well, partying. Brits like to do this. They are good at it. They enjoy exporting it.
Sadly, the Department of Homeland Security agents in Los Angeles were not up to the vernacular. Even more sadly, they appear not to have aficionados of "Family Guy", as Van Bryan had also tweeted: "'3 weeks today, we're totally in LA p****** people off on Hollywood Blvd and diggin' Marilyn Monroe up!"
Perhaps if the authorities had chosen to google that line, they might have felt more at ease. Perhaps, though, they would have received some strange results from Google+.
It seems sure that they didn't get this American cultural reference as they reportedly checked Van Bryan's luggage for shovels.
This story does not end happily, as Van Bryan and his friend Emily Bunting were arrested and then sent back to Blighty.
Van Bryan, though living in the chilly English city of Coventry, is an Irish citizen. He told the Mail: "I kept saying to them they had got the wrong meaning from my tweet but they just told me "you've really f***** up with that tweet boy".
Some will declare that the authorities cannot be too careful. Others might wonder whether checks were made beyond Van Bryan's Twitter account, which features a picture of him in destructive (i.e. partying) mood.
Yet the truth is that the Brits sometimes don't even understand their own sense of humor. Who could forget the painfully Kafkaesque case of Paul Chambers, a Brit who joked that he would blow up his local airport if the authorities didn't clear it from snow?
Not only was he convicted of "sending by a public communications network a message that was grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character contrary to Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003", but he even lost his appeal.
It would be sad if all amusing twitterers had to place a little asterisk beside their jokes, just in case someone in a uniform and dark glasses happened to be checking them out.Money Power World Rule
by Stephen Lendman
Published: Dec. 20, 2011 – SteveLendmanBlog
The late Georgetown University historian Carroll Quigley said in his book titled, “Tragedy and Hope:”
“(T)he powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences.”
By controlling democratic and despotic governments as well as others in between, they’ve moved closer to absolute global control of money, credit and debt to dominate economies, politics, commerce, and imperial adventurism. As a result, they’ve benefitted handsomely at the expense of nations and popular interests.
Josiah Stamp, former Director of the Bank of England said:
“Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again.”
“However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money.”
Aesop said “We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.” Bankers with money power are the most pernicious of all.
Ellen Brown’s must-read book titled, “Web of Debt” discussed private banking, how it usurped money creation power, and how we can get it back.
She explained what growing numbers know about the malignant effects of its destructive power. Everyone should understand that the Fed isn’t federal. It’s a private banking cartel owned by its major bank members in 12 Fed districts. New York has controlling power through its majority interest.
As a result, the Fed rules globally with the European Central Bank, Bank of England, and Bank of Japan. They’re the world’s dominant central banks along with the Bank for International Settlements – the central bank for central bankers, or unaccountable banking boss of bosses.
In America, except for coins, banks create money called Federal Reserve notes, in violation of the Constitution under Article I, Section 8 that gives Congress sole power “To coin (create) money (and) regulate the value thereof….;”
Coins and paper money comprise less than 3 percent of America’s money supply. The rest is in computer entries for loans.
Banks create money that didn’t previously exist. Around 30% of it is for their private accounts – for speculation and other non-productive purposes.
A 1960s Chicago Fed booklet called Modern Money Mechanics explained how through “fractional reserve” banking, saying:
“(Banks) do not really pay out loans from the money they receive as deposits. If they did this, no additional money would be created. What they do when they make loans is to accept promissory notes in exchange for credits to the borrowers’ transaction accounts.”
Money is created by “building up” deposits in the form of loans. They, in turn, become more deposits, not the reverse. The system goes back centuries based on the idea that paper receipts can be issued and loaned out repeatedly.
Under the gold standard, enough had to be held in reserve so depositors had access to their money. Today it’s run the presses, anything goes, and print it like confetti, even if currency debasement’s risked.
Fractional reserve banking literally creates money out of thin air. It’s then used to create multiples more.
Unlike previous times, today’s major banks are “giant betting machine(s).” Traditional banking is a lost art, at least at the mega-bank level. Most, or at least many, community ones operate responsibly.
Run recklessly, banking giants use multi-trillions for high-risk casino-type operations, through devices like derivatives and securitization scams.
Since Andrew Jackson’s presidency (1829 – 1837), the federal debt hasn’t been paid off, only interest to bankers and other owners of US obligations.
The 16th Amendment let Congress levy an income tax so bankers could be paid interest on federal debt. If America controlled its own money, it would be interest-free, and taxing people to pay it wouldn’t be necessary.
Early colonists did it. So did Lincoln. Why not now by returning money power to public hands where it belongs. Onerous taxes would be minimized or eliminated. Money for productive growth could be created inflation-free. Prosperity could be sustained. Full employment and social justice would be possible.
Imagine that America. Imagine the entire world that way, instead of one plagued booms, busts, inflation, deflation, instability, crisis, and perhaps the greatest ever Depression today bankers caused for their own self-interest to achieve greater consolidation, wealth and power.
In September 2010, a trader named Alessio Rastani on BBC said “governments don’t rule the world. Goldman Sachs rules the world.” As a result, “(t)he savings of millions of people are going to vanish.”
Warning viewers to prepare, he said the “economic crisis is like a cancer. If you just wait and wait thinking this will go away, just like a cancer it’s going to grow and it’s going to be too late.”
He added that most traders “don’t really care about having a fixed economy, having a fixed situation. Our job is to make money from” whatever goes on, up or down, good or bad. “Personally, I’ve been dreaming of this moment for three years. I go to bed every night and I dream of another recession.”
“When the market crashes….if you know what to do, if you have the right plan set up, you can make a lot of money from this.”
In 1929, rampant fraud caused the crash. In summer 2007, market scholar/analyst Jeremy Grantham warned of a “slow-motion train wreck” caused by “the first truly global bubble.”
Market manipulated speculation caused it. Money power in private hands gamed the system destructively.
Supposedly, the Fed was established to stabilize the economy, smooth out the business cycle, maintain healthy sustainable growth, create price stability, control inflation, and work for the betterment of everyone.
The 1978 Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act (called the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act) was enacted to fulfill the mandate of the Employment Act of 1946 by pursuing “maximum employment, production, purchasing power,” price stability, and balanced trade cooperatively with private enterprise.
It also required the Fed to pursue monetary policy for long-term sustainable growth with minimum inflation and stable prices. Specific goals included maximum unemployment of no more than 3% for persons aged 20 or over, not more than 4% for those aged 16 or over, and inflation not exceeding 4%.
In fact, a 1988 target of zero inflation was set. The law let Congress revise goals over time, but its purpose was to achieve sustainable, full employment low inflationary growth with Fed governors providing responsible monetary policy to help.
Instead, before and after Humphrey-Hawkins, they’ve been economic crashes, multiple recessions, instability, high inflation, soaring unemployment, the Great Depression, and today’s Greatest Depression expected to persist for years and leave incalculable human wreckage behind.
Fed policy also caused soaring consumer debt, record budget and current account deficits, an unprecedented national debt at exceeding 118% of GDP rising exponentially, high levels of personal bankruptcies and mortgage loan defaults, America’s manufacturing base offshored abroad, a secular declining economy, an unprecedented wealth disparity, over one third of US households impoverished, eroding social services, and a nation pursuing unbridled militarism helped by Fed complicity funding it.
A Final Comment
Clearly, money power in private hands failed. It’s wrecking the country, devastating the American dream, impoverishing millions, destroying jobs, contaminating the environment, and funding America’s military machine that’s ravaging the world one country at a time, and threatening humanity with extinction.
Job one should be stopping this monster from doing more harm, returning money power to public hands, using it responsibly to restore what decades of Fed policy destroyed, and hope it’s not already too late.
OWS and global protesters must grasp this as top goal to achieve others for long-denied social justice currently being lost entirely because corrupt politicians plan it with bankers.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
Source: http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/12/money-power-world-rule.html
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Today, February 27, is Pokemon Day. The original games came out in Japan on February 27, 1996, meaning the franchise is now 21 years old. The Pokemon Company celebrated the franchise's 20th anniversary last year with a Super Bowl commercial and a party with Drew Barrymore.
This year, fans can expect a number of events and goings-on as well to mark the latest anniversary of the celebrated and perpetually popular franchise.
One of the biggest events is happening in Pokemon Go. Now until March 6, a special version of Pikachu who is wearing a festive party hat (see above) will appear in the world.
"These special Pikachu will keep their party hats forever, but they can only be found during this limited-time celebration, so make sure to keep an eye out for them as you explore," developer Niantic said in a blog post.
Other Pokemon Day celebrations include the launch of a new Gallery Figures collection featuring toys for Eevee, Mew, Magikarp, and of course, Pikachu.
Additionally, Pokemon: The First Movie, Pokemon 4Ever, and Pokemon--Zoroark: Master of Illusions are available to watch as part of a marathon on Pokemon TV. You can stream the movies and shows at Pokemon.com or through the Pokmon TV mobile app.
What's more, a new "Pikachu Yellow Edition" New Nintendo 3DS XL is now available for $200, while GameStop is giving out Bottle Caps for Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon right now.
The Pokemon Trading Card Game Online and the Pokemon Shuffle app are celebrating as well, with new bonuses available now. Lastly, The Pokemon Company is holding an "all-day celebration" on Twitch today, featuring footage from Pokemon World Championships and more.
Read this blog post to learn more about how The Pokemon Company is celebrating Pokemon Day.
How are you celebrating? Let us know in the comments below!
This story has been updated.China has dispatched a convoy of warships for its first ever naval exercises in the Mediterranean, together with a Russian flotilla.
Both countries have been modernising their armed forces, and while their equipment still lags behind top-end Western technology, experts say they are closing the gap.
Xi Jinping came to power in 2012 vowing to dedicate his presidency to building the "Chinese Dream" of the "great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation".
Part of that dream involves a major overhaul of China's 2.3 million-man military which is three-times the size of Russia's but which critics say has become bloated, corrupt and unfit for battle.
• How Putin's military firepower compares to the West
• How China grew desperate to conceal its power from the world
"Chinese leaders see a strong military as critical to prevent other countries from taking steps that would damage China's interests and to ensure China can defend itself, should deterrence fail," said a Pentagon report released on Friday.
Mr Xi's determination to drag the People's Liberation Army (PLA) into the 21st century will see defence spending rise to around £85 billion in 2015, up around 10 per cent from the previous year.
The People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), now the largest in Asia with more than 300 vessels according to the Pentagon, will receive a hefty chunk of those funds.
Beijing currently has at least 25 destroyers and is building China's second aircraft carrier at a shipyard in its north-east – part of ambitious plans to build a "blue water navy" that can give Beijing greater control of the high seas.
China is also seeking to increase its fleet of submarines, currently comprised of 59 diesel submarines and nine nuclear power ones, according to a recent United States' Office of Naval Intelligence report.
However, simply investing in military hardware will not in itself solve China's problem, experts warn.
• What is the biggest threat facing the world today?
Beijing still faced "a multitude of challenges" before it could boast of having a modern, war-ready military, Dennis J Blasko, author of The Chinese Army Today, warned in February.
Those challenges include an excess of non-combatant troops, a lack of experienced commanders and a lack of combat experience for an army that has not fought abroad since 1979.
Mr Xi, who is chairman of China's Central Military Commission as well as president, has also toppled a number of senior military figures in an attempt to fight corruption within the PLA. Those taken down include General Xu Caihou, the commission's recently deceased vice-chairman.
While Russia's total active military manpower is a third of China's, it is rich in tanks and artillery, the hardware which it allegedly sends into Ukraine to help pro-Moscow separatists fighting government troops there.
Defence spending in Russia doubled between 2004 and 2014. Dmitry Medvedev, then president, announced in 2010 that 13 trillion roubles (£270 billion) would be spent over the next decade on a massive state rearmament programme.
The plan was to bring the proportion of modern weaponry in the Russian armoury to 70 per cent by 2020.
Russia's military budget rose by 33 per cent to about 3.3 trillion roubles in 2015, although officials have warned it may have to be cut back amid the oil price slump and Western sanctions.
That said, the general trend is towards a large and ambitious boost in the strength the armed forces.
This year the military will receive 50 new intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear payloads and 200 new aircraft. The new Armata tank and the Koalitsiya self-propelled artillery unit were shown off at Saturday's Victory Day parade in Moscow, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.
Probing flights and submarine incursions on Nato's frontiers, large-scale exercises close to Ukraine and navy convoys venturing into new waters all bear witness to Moscow's assertive stance.
As China and Russia upgrade their weaponry, such drills are likely to become an increasingly frequent reminder of their shared intent to erode US supremacy.
"The Russia-China rapprochement is a sign of the changing world order, in which the West is still very relevant, but no longer dominant," wrote Dmitry Trenin, the Russian security expert, on Friday.It was a huge show – then a huge scandal. What is James May’s view on Top Gear’s Clarksongate, and is it true that he is getting gazillions for his new gig The Grand Tour? He tells all
How did you feel when Jeremy Clarkson thumped a BBC producer last year? James May looks at me testily across the table of this west London pub, like I’ve just reversed my Toyota Yaris into his Ferrari. “In retrospect,” he says, “it wasn’t a glorious moment.” Quite. But how did you feel? Cross, amused, delighted? After all, Clarksongate resulted not just in Clarkson getting sacked, but you quitting Top Gear, thereby nearly writing off one of BBC Worldwide’s most lucrative global franchises. “Was I annoyed? I was a bit pissed off – because it made my life more complicated. That was the main problem.”
One complication was that May had just placed an order for a bright orange, limited-edition 2014 Ferrari 458 Speciale, worth more than £200,000 and capable of 0-60mph in three seconds. How was he going to pay for it now that he and Richard Hammond had decided to quit the show following Clarkson’s sacking? The 53-year-old’s main source of income had dried up. Am I going to get a “Boo-hoo”? Probably not: May has four other cars in his fleet, including another Ferrari, as well as scores of motorcycles, a Brompton bicycle – and a £120,000 Super Decathlon light aircraft. Then there are his homes in London and Wiltshire.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jeremy Clarkson and James May in a spot of bother on Top Gear, 2009. Photograph: BBC
But the big mystery is why May and Hammond didn’t, like their Cabinet namesakes, stage a coup. Couldn’t they have carried on presenting Top Gear without Clarkson? “There were noises all round. I don’t know to what extent they wanted us to stay. I quickly realised the best outcome for us was to stay together because that’s what our fans want. They’re our first loyalty and our first love.”
May thinks the global car show franchise he fronted with Clarkson and Hammond for 11 years was successful not because of the motors but because of “the sitcom element”, as he calls it. “I was a car journalist when I started on Top Gear. It was all about cars. And then it all spun out of all control and we turned into figures of ridicule to keep the viewers happy. It’s a fair deal, I suppose.”
What is the sitcom element? “We work because we hate each other. That’s the magic formula. It doesn’t work for bands. I think it works for groups of TV presenters. We get on each other’s tits massively.” Do you socialise off screen? “We try not to. That’s a no.”
I used to have a book called Amaze and Amuse Your Friends, with card tricks and jokes and things. That’s all we do.
So the on-screen animosity is real? “It’s camped-up pantomime, but the differences are real. I don’t know if we’d connect if we hadn’t been thrown together. We’re not really meant to be together. But that’s why it works.” Would it work if one of you was a woman or would that destroy the dynamic? “It would probably challenge our slightly stuckist nature, yes. Which may be an exaggeration for the purposes of telly, but must have been to some extent real because these things always are.”
Slightly stuckist is right – if too charitable. When May has presented TV shows with women, the banter has been minimal. When he, Ant Anstead and Kate Humble presented Building Cars Live last year, Humble didn’t call him “an old woman” as Clarkson did on Top Gear. Without wishing to get too PC, it’s through such banter that society’s sexist norms get gently reinforced. May demurs: “We’re not talking about serious social and political comment. It’s entertainment themed around cars. Let’s not forget this. We don’t have much of an agenda apart from amazing and amusing people. I used to have a book called Amaze and Amuse Your Friends, with card tricks and jokes and things. That’s all we do.”
So how would the three non-amigos amaze and amuse anyone once they’d left the BBC? After Clarksongate, they came up with a cunning plan that would, among other things, pay for May’s new Ferrari. They set up a production company called W Chump & Sons Ltd and gave themselves a trio of three-wheeled Reliant Robins in company livery. (Those boys, eh? Incorrigible!)
Then Amazon came knocking with, if reports are correct, wheelbarrows of cash. It wanted a piece of W Chump & Sons. “They want to own one of the world’s most popular shows,” explains May. “Without wishing to sound conceited, there’s definitely some of that. But also, I’m fairly confident we will spearhead a more general spread of streamed TV services.”
But hold on. Top Gear is a BBC format. Amazon couldn’t buy that from Chump & Sons, since it wasn’t theirs to sell. Instead, what Amazon has bought is something called The Grand Tour, a car show filmed across the globe (California, South Africa and, in the third episode, the peerless chip shops of Whitby), featuring a travelling tent big enough to contain a studio audience.
Is The Grand Tour different from Top Gear then? “Not much. The format is slightly different. The tone of it is very slightly different because the tent moves around the world so that, rather than people coming to it, we go to them. It has a local feel. But if you do watch, you’re not going to be in any way baffled by how much it’s changed. It will seem very comfortable.”
Will they take in Argentina? After all, the three stooges caused a diplomatic incident there during filming for Top Gear in 2013. They were attacked for turning up with a Porsche whose number plate – H982 FKL – was seen as a reference to Britain’s victory in the 1982 Falklands conflict. In the resulting unpleasantness, the three presenters took a helicopter to safety. It was embarrassing, not least because it was left to the more modestly paid crew to remain behind with the cars and defend that oxymoron, British honour. “On the whole, we had a very nice time in Argentina,” says May. “ It was only that bit at the bottom where we were very badly misunderstood. So yes I’m sure we would go back. We haven’t planned to, though.”
What went so wrong that DJ Chris Evans felt compelled to quit Top Gear after replacing you three this year? Why did ratings plummet? “He kept wearing the same jumper,” says May evasively. Is ex-Friends actor Matt Le Blanc the guy to save the show? “He could be. I like him. You see, I want them to succeed. I want there to be two great car programmes as a result of this. We’re all idiots if we can’t do that. Maybe they’ll end up with three women on it – I don’t know.” Perhaps. But when Bake Off’s Sue Perkins was touted as a possible host, she got death threats on Twitter.
One difference is the budget. Reports are that it is10 times that of Top Gear’s. “No!” says May. “It’s not 10 times. It’s a little bit bigger but this is a more expensive show to make. The tent, the extra travel, doing it in 4K.” Hopefully, too, the catering budget is more lavish so Clarkson doesn’t get punchy again. Have you got him reined in? “He’s got himself reined in, I think.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Fresh start … Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May filming The Grand Tour. Photograph: Roderick Fountain/Amazon Prime Video/PA
Reportedly, I say, you’re earning the least of the three non-amigos. “Am I?” I pass May a piece of paper quoting the Radio Times. He puts on his glasses and examines it as carefully as Homer Simpson studying the dessert menu. It says: “His estimated earnings are £10 million, about one-third those of Jeremy Clarkson and £5 million less than Richard Hammond, but still the kind of bank balance that signposts a moderately drop-dead company car befitting the trio’s multi-gazillion pound incarnation with Amazon Prime.”
Any facts you dispute? “Yes, all of them! I don’t earn £10 million. I have my own car. I don’t know what a gazillion is.” He removes his glasses. “We don’t actually lead a rock’n’roll lifestyle. There’s no cocaine in the navels of hookers. I want you to write that there was a note of regret in my voice.”
I look at May sidelong, assessing his floral shirt. Years ago, I had a beautiful Paul Smith shirt with blue and gold leaves, but I had to donate it to charity because I saw May on telly, unacceptably wearing the same model. “Well, I can see that would be a problem,” May concedes genially. “Mine was involved in a tragic accident in New Zealand where I fell off a bar and ripped it. I kept the wreckage hoping that one day it could be sewn back together. I love that shirt.”
May has made a career doing stuff that doesn’t sound like work. He did a show called Oz and James Drink to Britain, in which he and wine critic Oz Clarke spent licence-fee money hiring and driving a Rolls-Royce convertible to drink in pubs and vineyards. For another show, he built a full-size house from Lego and a Meccano motorbike and sidecar. In James May’s Big Ideas, he was strapped to a jet-pack filled with hydrogen peroxide and hovered for a few minutes above a Sussex garden.
The long goodbye: James May pottering about in a shed is perfect slow TV Read more
It’s your fault, I suggest, that British men are so mimsy, and we no longer have a decent engineering industry. He looks at me dumbfounded. We men, I explain, thinking of his recent show The Reassembler, have become voyeurs of people like you who repair engines and guitars rather than doing it ourselves. And your car shows involve us fetishising cars that we couldn’t dream of fixing, let alone manufacturing.
“I know what you mean about the voyeuristic thing,” he says. “But I think the problem for a lot of blokes – and my dad is a great example, having worked in industry and run steel foundries – is this: the idea of a man having a shed and going there to repair the lawnmower and make a piece of furniture has gone.”
The problem for a lot of blokes is the idea of a man having a shed and going there to repair the lawnmower has gone
May doesn’t think this is a bad thing. “What it’s been replaced by is the rise of men’s enthusiasm for cooking. It’s actually the same process: the kitchen is the workshop, the utensils are the tools. And the great thing is that it’s all happening in the home. There isn’t this great division where one sex owns the house and the other sex owns the garage.”
He and his partner Sarah are currently redesigning their home to reflect what he calls society’s greater gender fluidity – a term Clarkson would rip him to shreds for uttering. “We want our home to be open plan to the extent that I can be mending a bicycle, while Sarah’s sitting next to the fire reading a book,” he says.
“I’m in favour of the old roles being blurred. The old division at school where the boys did metalwork and woodwork and the girls did needlework and domestic science is awful really – and I’m glad it’s gone.” It seems May is not quite the stuckist, after all.A legal expert is warning people joining clinical trials funded by drug firms that they might wind up out of pocket if they get injured during a trial.
Photo: NIAID
Jo Manning, a law professor at Auckland University, said that appeared to be the case for at least two New Zealanders who agreed to participate in privately-funded trials.
She told Nine To Noon that people taking part in publicly-funded clinical trials might get compensation under ACC if they were injured, but that was not the case for those in |
that signal permission to indulge.
There are several limitations to the research that must be noted. First, “second-generation” and “foreign-born” respondents were not a homogeneous group, but represented individuals from various cultures. Given our focus on examining differences between groups with varying levels of U.S. acculturation, collapsing these respondents into two groups is justifiable; however, future research should examine the extent to which findings may differ if looking separately at individuals from different regions of the world with varying degrees of cultural similarities and differences, compared to the U.S. and North America. We did not collect information on frequency of consumption or liking of chocolate. Women also did not indicate information on regularity of their menstrual cycle or use of hormonal or other forms of contraception. Given that menstrual chocolate craving has been shown to be unrelated to levels of ovarian hormones involved in regulating the menstrual cycle, these factors are however relatively unlikely to have influenced our findings [19,21,30].
Another important limitation is our focus on one very specific example of craving, namely chocolate craving and its perceived association with the menstrual cycle. We focused on this example because the phenomenon of menstrual chocolate craving has been explored somewhat more thoroughly in the published literature, compared to other types and targets of craving, in particular in regards to the role of cultural context in craving etiology [16,18–20,31]. Of note, there is evidence to suggest that a perceived link between menstruation and craving in women may extend to other substances. For example, research on nicotine addiction suggests a possible effect of hormonal fluctuations on abstinence-related symptoms, with studies finding evidence for a heightened experience of withdrawal and increased cue-induced craving during the luteal and ovulatory phases of the menstrual cycle [32,33]. Similarly, alcohol-dependent women report increased frequency of drinking during the premenstrum, and they specifically identify this time of the menstrual cycle as a drinking cue [34]. More research is needed to explore the extent to which findings presented here generalize to our understanding of cravings in other domains.Dr. Ian Lipkin
Columbia University – Center for Infection and Immunity has seriously upped the ante on the initial microbe discovery project in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Their impressive, rigorous new study could point the way to diagnostic tests, and even treatments – but first they need the funds to complete the work.
ME/CFS is an urgent challenge in clinical medicine and public health. There is no diagnostic test or specific treatment for ME/CFS, and in the United States alone there are a minimum of 836,000 afflicted individuals. Social and other costs for patients and their families are phenomenal, with medical care costing $24 billion – just in the US. While the US domestic cost is high, ME/CFS is very much a global problem.
The current project at the CII at Columbia University in New York is called ‘Microbial Discovery and Immunity in ME/CFS’. It builds on the foundation they established during the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) multicenter study of XMRV/pMLV viruses in ME/CFS, led by Dr. Lipkin.
Since that first study – the team has published very significant research showing the immune system of patients who have recently developed ME/CFS look markedly different from those who have been ill for much longer. That immune signature work was partially supported by the Chronic Fatigue Initiative, who have also funded CII studies into pathogen discovery, metabolomics, proteomics, epigenetic analysis and immune profiling. There has been a wealth of investigation in process at CII – not to mention their other collaborative work in progress.
The CII has pioneered many relevant research techniques, has a stellar track record in research as well as unique expertise. The laboratory team has extensive experience in infectious disease epidemiology, microbe discovery and de-discovery, as well as in the development of sensitive blood tests and animal models needed to test for causal relationships and investigate disease causing mechanisms. Pathogens are not the only string in CII’s bow, their work also encompasses the immune system and neuro-immune areas.
It is hard to exaggerate how much rigor and expertise CII brings to the field of science in ME/CFS. They carefully investigate and go where the leads take them. With all this early investigative work under their belt – this new monster study is suggestive that the CII has good leads they are following. The Microbe Discovery Project team is ecstatic to bring you more details!
Comprehensive deep diving
The study intends to test the hypothesis that ME/CFS cases and controls have different bacterial, fungal or viral microflora in the oropharynx (mouth and throat regions), lower gastrointestinal tract (gut) and blood in a massive, well-powered study. By rigorously characterizing cases and controls and using state-of-the-art methods for identifying microbes, even currently-unknown ones, the CII will also study patients and controls for evidence of differences in immune system function and metabolic function.
This will be the first ME/CFS study to look at the microbiome over time. They are collecting stool and saliva at four different times over the course of a year, allowing the researchers to see if the changes in microbiome and immune system are related to changes in symptoms over time. Blood is also collected at the first and last time points.
All ME/CFS cases have been carefully diagnosed and meet both Fukuda criteria and the stricter Canadian criteria. The study will have 125 ME/CFS patients and 125 healthy matched controls.
Patients come from five expert centers for ME/CFS research and treatment across the United States. These include Dr. Lucinda Bateman, Bateman Horne Center, Salt Lake City; Dr. Nancy Klimas, Institute for Neuro Immune Medicine, Nova Southeastern University, Miami; Dr. Susan Levine, Private Practice, New York; Dr. Jose Montoya, Infectious Disease Clinic, Stanford and Dr. Daniel Peterson, Sierra Internal Medicine, Incline Village. The team has now recruited all the patients and controls they need, and enrollment is closed.
Microbiome
First off, the CII plans to investigate the human microbiome as it relates to ME/CFS, to determine how bacteria, fungi, viruses – and the immune response to them – contribute to the disease.
They will use high-tech methods to identify and quantify all the different bacteria (bacteriome), fungi (mycobiome) and viruses (virome) in each person’s gut and mouth/throat microbiome, effectively creating a map of each person’s microbiome. This alone is a huge undertaking in order to identify potential triggers of immune response and or metabolic problems.
The team then intends to apply a series of even more new technologies to test the blood for proteins, metabolites and immune markers to tease out what’s going wrong in people with ME/CFS.
Pathogen hunt
VirCapSeq-VERT, is the Virome-Capture-Sequencing platform for Vertebrate viruses. This is powerful new technology invented by CII and hailed by Scientific American as one of the “world changing ideas” of 2015. It is a system to broadly screen for all viral infections in vertebrates including humans. This test has much greater sensitivity than the current standard molecular techniques, and increases viral matches from 100 to 10,000-fold compared with conventional high-throughput tests.
This testing identifies any virus that has ever been found to be in a person – 1.7 million agents are reported to be tapped through this testing. This work would clearly increase the yield of viruses detected in people with ME/CFS.
Proteomics
Proteomics, is the large-scale study of proteins in the blood, which gives researchers a protein ‘signature ’. By looking at all the proteins in the blood, rather than just focusing on a few, researchers get a much fuller picture of what’s going on, or wrong, in the body.
The aim is to identify biomarkers in blood that can be used for diagnosis, to predict illness progression and track responses to interventions. Biomarkers may also help identify targets for new therapies.
Metabolomics
Metabolomics, in a similar way to proteomics, is the study of ‘metabolites’, all the small chemicals in any tissue or the blood such as amino acids or hormones that result from metabolic processes in cells. This yields clues about what’s gone wrong in the body. Increasingly researchers are turning to the new field of metabolomics to understand disease. Ron Davis recently reported fascinating preliminary metabolomics findings in ME/CFS that suggest something is going seriously wrong with how patients produce energy from food.
As with proteomics, metabolomics may be used to identify potential ‘biomarkers’ that can be used for diagnosis and therapeutic targets. For instance, if the work identifies specific problems in energy metabolism, researchers can aim to tackle these problems with drugs, or even with supplements.
Immunology
To identify biomarkers for diagnosis, prognosis, as well as potential therapeutic targets, and to determine the history of exposure to infectious agents that may trigger onset or exacerbation of ME/CFS.
Genetics/Epigenetics
The team will look to see if particular versions of genes are associated with subgroups that may predict course of illness or response to different treatments.
Epigenetics is the main system that turns some genes on and some genes off long-term, without affecting the DNA sequence itself. This study will look for epigenetic signatures that may be associated with ME/CFS and that may correlate with infectious or other triggers.
Homing in on ME/CFS
This study represents a comprehensive, robust investigation of the priority areas of research for ME/CFS that Dr. Lipkin recently identified in his letter to the NIH. This work now includes complex data mining and more. This can only be described as a tour de force that will home in on molecular detail – dive deeper, solidify findings and parse out subgroups. This is just the type of study that will help lead to diagnostic tools and possible treatment therapies.
There is some important key study strengths that are worth noting:
The study is a good size, big enough to robustly detect even modest differences between patients and controls, and to tease out subgroups.
Each of the four samples taken from every patient is limited to a three-month seasonal time frame to take into account natural, seasonal variations in bacterial, fungal, viral communities and immune system function.
Patients come from strategic geographic distribution of sites across the United States.
They will also collect data throughout the study on any new diagnoses or medications.
A large effort has been undertaken to recruit a diverse population of patients and controls so that they will be more representative of the whole patient population. This means that any conclusions should apply to most patients, rather than being specific to a particular type of patient recruited for a particular study.
Clinics will also indicate whether or not patients have cognitive problems (eg. memory or concentration) to help see if this identifies a clear subgroup.
Dr. Lipkin also explained in the letter to the NIH that their aim is to develop a Clinical Trials Unit to:
As the team already has close links with five expert clinics, the trials unit is well placed to recruit patients to get trials moving as fast as possible. This study would be part of the building block foundation for the establishment of a center of excellence in ME/CFS research, that will hopefully ultimately have a global component.
The crunch
There are no two ways about it – this study needs funding. More than a quarter of samples and questionnaires have already been collected and this analyses needs to get moving. They could be testing and analyzing these right now if the funds were available. The cost is often a lot more for analysis than collection, especially with this type of testing. The CII team is actively seeking funds to complete the work.
Our patient-led Microbe Discovery Project with all the support from the ME/CFS global community has helped to raise over $1.5 million in funds for CII research – our community made that happen. These funds along with an NIH NINDS grant and heavy subsidization by CII, enabling this collection.
CII needs at least $5 Million to test and analyze the samples. But, we can do more!
So far, the NIH has only given the researchers enough to partly cover recruiting patients and collecting samples, but the study is stranded without the funds for the all-important tests and analysis. We sincerely hope the NIH will decide to help make up some of the shortfall, but can we afford to wait? See our previous blog.
Too many people are too sick. Too many people have no support, help or treatments. There is a huge and urgent need for high quality research, and the CII team really needs our community’s help – so that they can help patients. We are still in a position of needing to bail-out mainstream research.
If you have ME/CFS, donating to great research is like an investment in better treatments. Think of the vast collective amount spent by patients on doctor’s appointments, think of all the trial medications and supplements that haven’t worked – ending up in the bin. If we spent the equivalent of one doctor’s visit or the cost of a supplement on investing in research – we can help get this study funded!
Edit on Feb 2017: The CII team will be applying for some funding due to a National Institutes of Health funding opportunity Request for Applications for Collaborative Research Centers for ME/CFS. If the CII is successful in their application the Microbe Discovery Project team will still fundraise for $5 Million – see why HERE!
Every donation counts and every share counts!
Please help
Thousands of donations are needed, you can do so through CII’s secure site here.
Spreading the word with our blogs on Facebook or other social media helps to gain more donations, and can also lead to large donations. If you would like some more background information, see our resources page. You can also subscribe to our blog, so you don’t miss out on important news.
Thank you so much for your support!
If you wish to donate by check or wire/bank transfer please see the bottom of our homepage for this information. If you are considering making a Major Gift of $10,000 and over, or would like to offer a matching donation please contact Fern Schwartz at fs2475@columbia.eduA Maplewood man is suing the St. Paul Police Department for $400,000, alleging officers used excessive force during a recent incident in Lowertown.
Anthony Clark Jr., 25, has more than 20 staples in his head, a bruised chest and peeling skin on his face after his arrest early Sept. 26 in an alley near the Station 4 bar.
He says it's because officers used unreasonable force. Police say he attacked them and the force was justified.
Both sides agree officers sprayed a chemical irritant at Clark and hit him with flashlights after a chain of events that started in the bar. But their versions of those events differ widely.
The suit, which Clark's lawyer said was filed Monday in federal court, is against 15 unnamed officers.
Police spokesman Andy Skoogman had not seen the suit and had no comment on it.
The incident is under "administrative review" -- officials are going over reports to make sure policies and procedures were followed, Skoogman said.
According to police and the criminal complaint, which includes two charges against Clark:
Police were checking in at the bar as part of regular patrol duties and were asked by bar employees to help quell a squabble involving Clark's fiancée, another woman and a bartender.
Clark saw an officer escorting his fiancée out of the bar and pushed the officer. The officer warned Clark not to touch him or his fiancée, and then Clark pushed him again and cursed at him. The officer tried to grab Clark, but Clark held his fist as if he were going to punch.
A second officer tackled Clark, who kicked and flailed and got up to run. An officer fired a Taser dart at him, but missed.Fork, knife, and chop sticks combine to form: AWESOME! On one end, you have a fork and a knife.
On the other end, you have chopsticks.
On both ends, you have a food party waiting to happen!
Anything that stands in the way of us cramming yummy food into our mouths in our enemy. The most common cause of this is not having the proper utensil. Well, consider the problem solved. Just get yourself a pair (or few) of ForkChops 3-in-1 Eating Utensils, and you will be prepared for almost every eating situation.
ForkChops 3-in-1 Eating Utensils are three of the most common utensils all mashed into one. You get a fork. You get a knife. You even get a pair of chopsticks! The tips of the chopsticks are even textured for better gripping! The only things these can't pick up are soups and melted ice cream. But shoot - just drink those. Always look classy by having the proper utensil at hand (and not clumsy, if you find things you just can't eat well with chopsticks). ForkChops 3-in-1 Eating Utensils - get eating!
ForkChops 3-in-1 Eating UtensilsFor other places with the same name, see Kanth (disambiguation)
city in Uttar Pradesh, India
Kanth is a Nagar Palika Parishad in Moradabad district in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It is home to small-scale bandage manufacturing industries. These are sold in Uttar Pradesh and in the rest of India under various licenses. Recently manufacturing of ready-made garments has also developed, contributing to the economy of the town.
History [ edit ]
Historically, Kanth was a city and district of British India, in the Bareilly division of the United Provinces, and is now a divisional headquarters. It was founded in 1625 by Rustam Khan, who built the fort which overhangs the river bank, and the Jama Masjid (Great Mosque; 1631). In 1776 it was taken over by the Sahaspur-Bilari state. Kanth was a Zamindari with two Riyasats. These are locally known as Western and Eastern Estates (Pashchimi and Poorvi Riyasat) The Western Estate was owned by Kunwar Ram Kumar Singh. Kunwar Ram Kumar Singh passed on his inheritance to Kunwar Raghuraj Singh. Kunwar Raghuraj Singh had two sons, Kunwar Chandrakumar and Kunwar Pritam Kumar Singh who currently take care of the property and Riyasat which is in ruins. Kunwar Chandra Kumar Singh is survived by his son, Kunwar Raghvendra Raj Singh. Kunwar Pritam Kumar Singh has two daughters, Kunwarani Shubhani Singh and Kunwarani Bheeni Singh and one son Kunwar Gaurav Singh who is an army officer in Indian army. The Eastern estate was owned by Kunwar Dhyan Singh who died without having any children, so his property was distributed among the relatives of his wife. Both,Kunwar Ram Kumar Singh and Kunwar Dhyan Singh Vishnoi invested large amounts of money in philanthropic works, such as intermediate and degree colleges and a public hospital. They granted large tracts of land to the college premises and the Bhud Mandir at Kanth.
Geography [ edit ]
Kanth is on the right bank of the river Ramganga, 655 feet (200 m) above sea level, and has a station on the Oudh and Rohilkhand Railway, 868 miles (1,397 km) from Calcutta. Kanth is on the road from Dhampur to Moradabad, and is well connected with U.P. Roadways Bus Service, as well as by rail.
Demographics [ edit ]
Religions in Kanth [1] Religion Percent Muslims 55.60% Hindus 43.39% Christians 0.39% Sikhs 0.31% Others† 0.1% Distribution of religions
† Includes Jains (0.03%), Buddhists (0.03%).
As of 2011 India census,[2] Kanth had a population of 26,381. Male population is 13,757 and female population is 12,624. Kanth has an average literacy rate of 73.67%, higher than the state average of 67.68%. Male literacy is 80.60%, and female literacy is 66.08%.
Education [ edit ]
Kanth is home to the D.S.M. degree college. Majority of the schools in Kanth are Hindi medium and affiliated to UP Board, prominent among them are D.S.M. Inter College, Dayanand Bal Mandir, Maharishi Dayanand Inter College, Rehbar E Aam Muslim inter college, Bihari Adarsh Kanya Inter College, Public Inter College,Har kumar sing girls college. Few English medium schools in Kanth includes R.S.Nain Memorial Public School, St Mary's convent, delhi children academy, J.P. Sharda and KC Public school, G.K. Computer Institute (G.K.Educational Welfare Society), MBD public school.
Religious activities [ edit ]
Shiv Mandir, Moni Mandir, Bhood Mandir, Sant Ravidas Dharamshala and kali Mandir are few religious Hindu shrines. Bhagvaan Balmiki Mandir Kanth also has Ramleela ground, also known as Raamleela Rang Mancha, it is used for Ramayana play every year before Dusheera. Kanth also has many mosques for Muslim worshippers such as Masjid Banjaaran (Markaj Tableeg Jaamat), Masjid Ansaryan, Jama masjid, Qazyan masjid, Sunhri masjid, Chapper Wali Masjid, Madina masjid Thandi Masjid, Lal Masjid, Gulzar Masjid, Aysha Masjid, Moti Masjid, Mahigiyran Masjid, Mohammadi Masjid. Kanth also has one gurudwara for Sikh worshippers and it is named Shri Gurudwara singh sabha.Crush videos feature small animals … being slowly crushed or impaled by a woman wearing stiletto heels. … The Supreme Court decided … the law prohibiting such videos was too broad. As written, for example, the law could be construed to prohibit a deer-hunting video, which, though some might find cruel, relates to a legal activity. …
Obviously, no one ever intended that the free-speech provision of the Constitution protect the rights of deviants to torture animals and then to market videos for the sexual satisfaction of people who, by their tastes, are a probable threat to society. …
[Representatives] introduced a … [new bill] to narrowly focus the [overturned law]. … Although it specifically exempts hunting videos, animal rights advocates worry that it leaves a loophole. Hypothetically, a crush video could be built around a legitimate hunting scene and thus be protected from prosecution. …
The challenge to Congress is…: There is no argument ever to justify torturing animals and no defense — ever — for selling videos created to profit from that torture. Figure it out. Fix it.. (more)
This seems to argue that it should be illegal to distribute a video of a legal activity, e.g., hunting, because this might result in “sexual satisfaction of people who, by their tastes, are a probable threat to society.” So the claim is either that it is bad to satisfy such tastes, even if no one else is affected, or that satisfying such tastes will intensify their “threat to society.” Perhaps such a threat intensification exists, but I’d need more concrete evidence of it before prohibiting otherwise harmless activities on that basis.
“Tolerance” is a feel-good buzzword in our society, but I fear people have forgotten what it means. Many folks are proud of their “tolerance” for gays, working women, Tibetan monks in cute orange outfits, or blacks sitting at the front of the bus. But what they really mean is that they consider such things to be completely appropriate parts of their society, and are not bothered by them in the slightest. That, however, isn’t “tolerance.”
“Tolerance” is where you tolerate things that actually bother you. Things that make you go “ick”, or that conflict with strong intuitions on proper behavior. Once upon a time, the idea of gay sex made most folks quite uncomfortable, and yet many of those folks still advocated tolerance for gay sex. Their argument was not that gay sex isn’t icky, but that a broad society should be reluctant to ban apparently victimless activities merely because many find them icky.
Someday soon, technology will allow an explosion of possible creatures and behaviors, many of which will seem icky to many others. No doubt it will be appropriate for some communities to ban some of them, but we face a very real danger of insufficient tolerance threatening our peace and prosperity. The alternative to living peacefully with those we dislike, may be to instead die with them.
Please, in preparation, let us learn to practice tolerance with the smaller variations we face today. Unless we see a clearer harm from letting some folks watch vids of cruel but legal hunting, let us tolerate it. Same for polygamy, polyandry, or digitally-created kid porn. You don’t have to like them, or approve them, to tolerate them.
Added: Alex suggests “social change is not much driven by changes in tolerance.”
Added 5p: Note that the people who are actually the most tolerant are marginalized folks with strong opinions, like fundamentalist Islamists in the US, or politically-right profs in academia. By necessity, most such folks frequently tolerate bothersome behaviors by others.
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All the votes from the November 5 election have been tabulated, and the Virginia attorney general race is as close as they come. Democrat Mark Herring holds a slim 164-vote lead over his Republican opponent, Mark Obenshain. The close count has teed up a likely recount for next month, and the Republican candidate has hinted at an unusual legal strategy: basing a lawsuit on Bush v. Gore, the controversial Supreme Court decision that ended the 2000 presidential election in George W. Bush’s favor.
The Supreme Court usually prides itself on respecting the past while keeping an eye toward future legal precedent. But the court trod lightly when it intervened in 2000. The five conservative justices may have handed the election to Bush, but they tried to ensure that their decision would lack wider ramifications. “Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances,” read the majority opinion in Bush v. Gore, “for the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities.” The conservative majority wanted to put a stop to the Florida recount, but they hoped their ruling—which extended the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause to argue that different standards cannot be used to count votes from different counties—wouldn’t set precedent in future cases.
For a time the justices got their wish. But the supposed one-time logic of the controversial decision has begun to gain acceptance in the legal community—particularly among campaign lawyers in contentious elections.
Virginia GOP attorney Miller Baker challenged the attorney general results on Bush v. Gore grounds last week during a meeting of the Fairfax County electoral board, claiming the rest of the state lacked equal protection thanks to the county’s method for tabulating votes. The problem stems from a swath of uncounted provisional ballots in the region. Obenshain had led Herring after initial Election Day results, but the Democrat closed the gap thanks to some misplaced votes in a reliably blue section of Fairfax County, a DC suburb. The Republican-dominated state Board of Elections then demanded that Fairfax change its procedure for provisional ballots midway through counting. But even after the changes, Fairfax still afforded residents several extra days to advocate on provisional ballots compared to the rest of the state. (Other counties had until the Friday after the election, while Fairfax allowed votes to be counted until the following Tuesday.)
Obenshain issued a statement last week that left his options open and mentioned the need for “uniform rules,” which election law expert Rick Hasen interpreted as a sign that the Republican is gearing up for a lawsuit that would base its challenge on Bush v. Gore.
If Obenshain does file a lawsuit using that reasoning, he will be just the latest politician to facilitate the recent rehabilitation of Bush v. Gore. Surprisingly, the court case that anointed George W. Bush president has actually favored liberals in terms of setting legal precedent. “The courts have looked around for some legal authority for the proposition that there is an important federal right to participate in federal elections,” says Samuel Issacharoff, a professor at New York University School of Law who has studied the aftermath of Bush v. Gore, “and the problem they have is that the constitution doesn’t specify this.”
The specific set of circumstances of the 2000 election may have worked against liberals, but the decision’s line of reasoning aligns with a standard progressive value: Despite no explicit guarantee of fair elections in the Constitution, the state has an inherent interest in guaranteeing that political actors cannot arbitrarily change election procedures to value one set of voters over another group. “What the courts have done is they’ve looked for a proposition that you can’t manipulate the rules of the election to determine the outcome,” Issacharoff says. “You can’t keep people from voting in order to do that. You can’t make post hoc changes in a way that takes advantage of your incumbent power to influence the outcome of an election. That’s seemingly such a basic proposition that every other democracy builds it in, hardwired. We have a very old democracy, in which our constitution doesn’t speak to these issues directly.”
Bush v. Gore was largely ignored in litigation in the years immediately following the decision, discarded by legal scholars as a one-off line of reasoning. That began to change after Bush’s reelection, as Democrats searched for ways to combat Republican efforts to restrict access to the polls. In 2006, a three-judge panel from Ohio’s Sixth Circuit of Court of Appeals sided with the plaintiffs’ equal protection argument in Stewart v. Blackwell, but that ruling was later vacated by the full circuit. Bush v. Gore came into play again during the first major recount since 2000, when former Republican Sen. Norm Coleman’s legal team predicated their arguments on the decision (Minnesota courts rejected that argument, eventually allowing Al Franken to take the Senate seat in question).
But in 2012, the Obama campaign found success using Bush v. Gore to fight back against the GOP’s voter suppression laws. Once again, it was the Sixth Circuit that found itself amenable to discarding the Supreme Court’s warnings and treating Bush v. Gore like any other opinion that creates precedent. That court had begun to establish Bush v. Gore as meaningful precedent in two previous decisions—2008’s League of Women Voters v. Brunner and 2010’s Hunter v. Hamilton County Board of Elections—but it went a step further with a pair of 2012 decisions. In Obama for America v. Husted, the president’s reelection campaign convinced first a district judge and then the Sixth Circuit that Ohio’s decision to decrease the days for early voting while maintaining an exemption for military absentee ballots violated the equal protection concepts established in Bush v. Gore. In the other case, Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless v. Husted, a group of conservative judges relied on Bush v. Gore to side with the plaintiffs and overturn a state rule to invalidate votes cast in the wrong location due to poll worker mistakes. “It reads Bush v. Gore as a kind of free-floating license to do equity in election cases,” Hasen said in a law review article on the cases.
“[The citation of Bush v. Gore] wasn’t a throwaway line in some opinion where some district judge wants to stick his thumb in the eye of the court,” says Issacharoff, who advised Obama’s legal team during the lawsuit. “This was at the core of what we were arguing and it was conceptually central to it.”
Even as campaigns turn to Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court itself has stayed on the sidelines, reluctant to revisit the legal reasoning in the case. They declined to hear an appeal on the 2012 early voting case, the best opportunity the court has had revisit its 2000 decision and correct lower courts on whether it creates precedent. The justices do discuss Bush v. Gore outside the courtroom—Antonin Scalia likes to admonish people to “get over it,” while former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has expressed doubt on whether the court should have considered the case—but they won’t touch it in their decisions. The case had been verboten in written decisions, never once cited in a Supreme Court opinion until earlier this year, when Justice Clarence Thomas referenced Bush v. Gore in a July dissent for Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council.
Chief Justice John Roberts subtly hinted at his acceptance of the decision when his nomination to the court came before the Senate in 2005. “While it is true that the precise facts presented in Bush v. Gore are not likely to come before the Court again, it is not at all improbable that other election disputes will,” he wrote in testimony submitted to the Senate. “While the Court in Bush v. Gore stated that its ‘consideration is limited to the present circumstances,’ I believe that statement was not meant to deprive the decision of all precedential weight but, rather, to make clear that the precise facts of the case were unique.”
Even as bitter memories fade, the voter protection implications of Bush v. Gore remain uncertain. The Sixth Circuit is the lone circuit court to treat the case as established constitutional fact. “No other circuits have given Bush v. Gore a wide reading (or much of a reading at all),” Hasen writes. “In the rest of the country, Bush v. Gore is still basically dead.” Perhaps Mark Obenshain and Virginia Republicans will change that.Apple
Among the highlights of iFixit's teardown of the iPhone 5S is a new Sony sensor for the 5S' boffo camera.
Apple has gone with a "new variant" of the Sony sensor, as it did in the iPhone 5, according to iFixit.
The...markings are consistent with the markings on the camera modules housing the Sony IMX145 we saw in the iPhone 4s and on the iPhone 5. The marks on the side of the module are different, but our industry insiders tell us this is Sony's again...As Apple has stated the pixel pitch on this camera is 1.5 µ, this sensor should not be the IMX145, but a newer variant."
iFixit
Apple's iPhone 5S camera improves on the already-great iPhone 5 camera, according to CNET.
"All you can really count on for sure with the iPhone 5S is that it has a noticeably better camera...Close-up photos show off pretty incredible detail and a shallower depth-of-field effect, which feels more "SLR-like," CNET said about the 5S' 8MP camera.
iFixit
iFixit's intrepid teardown experts also took on the new sapphire home button and its fingerprint scanner.
"A CMOS chip, the Touch ID is essentially a bunch of very small capacitors that creates an 'image' of the ridges on your finger," iFixit wrote.
"We worry about how well the sapphire crystal covering the sensor can protect it from degrading over time like most CMOS fingerprint sensors," iFixit added.
Not everything went swimmingly in the teardown, though.
"Perhaps the's' in 5s stands for'stuck,' as in 'this battery is stuck in with a lot of glue,' " said iFixit. In other words, good luck replacing the battery.
iFixitFOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- The New England Patriots had trouble getting into the end zone.
Defensive tackle Vince Wilfork made sure the Oakland Raiders stayed out of the end zone in the final minute.
Editor's Picks MacMullan: Patriots' offense misfiring on all fronts With a leaky offensive line, an unreliable fleet of receivers and a far-from-perfect Tom Brady, the Patriots' offense has a lot of ground to make up, writes Jackie MacMullan.
Reiss: Edelman's importance grows With an offense that doesn't seem to be clicking, Julian Edelman seems to be the one reliable weapon Tom Brady has, writes Mike Reiss.
Williamson: Raiders can't finish The Raiders' tying touchdown was called back on a holding penalty. In the end, they couldn't get back into the end zone in a loss to the Patriots. 2 Related
An interception by the 325-pound Wilfork near his goal line gave the heavily favored Patriots the ball with 51 seconds left, and they ran out the clock to hold off the Raiders 16-9 on Sunday.
"It was a team play," Wilfork said after his third career interception. "I just happened to catch it."
The ball deflected off Logan Ryan after Rob Ninkovich jarred it loose from intended receiver Denarius Moore. On the previous play, Darren McFadden's 6-yard potential tying run into the end zone was nullified by a holding penalty against guard Gabe Jackson.
"When I turned around and everybody wasn't coming to celebrate with me, I knew something wasn't right," McFadden said said.
Jackson didn't think he held. The penalty gave Oakland first-and-goal from the 12.
Then Ryan redeemed himself for a pass interference penalty on the play before McFadden's run. Just as Raiders coach Dennis Allen disagreed with the holding call, the Patriots' Bill Belichick questioned the pass interference.
In spite of a sluggish offense that settled for three field goals by Stephen Gostkowski and just one touchdown pass from Tom Brady to Rob Gronkowski, the Patriots (2-1) won their home opener for the 12th time in 13 seasons.
The Raiders (0-3) lost their 15th straight game in the Eastern time zone. They were held to three field goals by Sebastian Janikowski and finished with no interceptions despite several opportunities.
"We are moving in the right direction," Oakland defensive end LaMarr Woodley said. "When we have an opportunity to catch the ball we need to catch it."
Brady completed 24 of 37 passes for 234 yards and became the third quarterback with 150 regular-season wins behind Brett Favre (186) and Peyton Manning, who came into Sunday with 169. And Brady is 57-5 in his last 62 home games, including the playoffs, posting another win despite a mediocre offensive performance.
The Patriots scored 10 points in the last 4:14 of the second quarter to take a 10-3 lead -- but it could have been 14-3. Brady capped a 15-play, 84-yard drive with a 6-yard touchdown pass to Gronkowski, who shook off linebacker Kaluka Maiava and caught the ball as he went over the middle.
"We did just enough to get the victory," Gronkowski said. "Sometimes it's frustrating, but what we did today is not always going to get the job done."
The Patriots had a chance for another touchdown when they reached the 2-yard line with 8 seconds left in the half. But Dan Connolly's snap was low and Brady picked it up and quickly threw an incompletion, stopping |
floor of his cell.
Raaen pleaded guilty in the Rockhampton Magistrates Court yesterday to wilful damage and contravening a direction on June 22.
Police prosecutor Acting Senior Constable Manon Barwick told the court the defendant was arrested about 1am for failing to move on from the CBD night club precinct.
Act Snr Const Barwick said Raaen was taken to the watch house and placed in a cell with toilet access.
However, he was moved to a padded cell after he started hitting his head against the wall.
The court heard Raaen did his business on the ground and made rude gestures afterwards.
Magistrate Bronwyn Springer said this suggested Raaen was not very remorseful.
Act Snr Const Barwick said at no time did Raaen advise staff he needed to use the toilet.
The court heard Raaen had a criminal history, mainly related to drug offences.
He was on a suspended sentence for an assault at the time of this latest offending.
However, Ms Springer chose not to activate this.
She placed Raaen on a nine month probation order and fined him $350.Ask any local authority leader in the country today whether they feel confident about the future. Not their political future, but the future of the organisation they run, the services it provides and the communities it serves. In the teeth of vicious cuts in government support, even the most visionary and confident will give a wry smile before answering.
But no local leader is in the business of managing decline. No local leader – particularly on the left – can accept either the decline of local services, or a decline in the prospects of the people that they serve.
The Northumberland Park estate in north Tottenham, on which Aditya Chakrabortty based his well-meaning but misinformed story (Lives torn apart and assets lost: what this Labour privatisation would mean, 20 January) already endures levels of unemployment, crime and appalling poor health which no family should have to endure. I’m not going to accept that either.
Meanwhile, more Londoners become homeless every week. More families leave London, by their own choice or to be rehoused by desperate local authorities. More families abandon hopes of ever owning part of their own home, let alone all of it.
The London housing market has failed. I’m not going to accept that either. So, if a council wants to tackle these threats and take control of its own destiny, what does it do? It takes the one asset it has left – its land. Land which can provide the homes people need, and long-term income to keep council services afloat.
But a council like Haringey could never borrow the money or recruit the talent to build on this land at the scale and pace that’s needed.
So, rather than sell it to private developers and hope for the best, we’re bringing in the investment and skills from a private partner while retaining a 50% control – a blocking veto – over what happens, and taking a 50% share of the proceeds.
Whatever you want to call what we’re doing, it’s not privatisation. We’ve specifically designed this arrangement to keep the council involved. Our joint venture development vehicle is a bold step, sure, and not without its risks. But the risk of doing nothing – of accepting decline, the failed market and substandard housing – is much, much worse.
In his piece on Haringey’s plans, Aditya Chakrabortty distorts a reality which any right-thinking person would abhor. Or rather, he allows it to be distorted by those who seem to have no qualms about stirring up fear in vulnerable communities to achieve their political ends.
Simply, though, the story he tells is not true. We are very clear in our aim to rehouse all existing tenants in the same area, if that’s what they want, on the same rent and the same terms. We are rebuilding a local school, improving open spaces and driving as much affordable housing out of these sites as we possibly can.
And we are absolutely committed to communicating and collaborating with local residents and businesses throughout – this has already started and will continue until the very last brick is laid.
This government is pushing the worst of austerity on to local authorities precisely in the hope of fights like this. But I will not apologise for taking action where action is so desperately needed. I’m happy to debate and defend my plan, but let’s do it based on facts.
Cllr Claire Kober
Leader of Haringey council
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/lettersSAN FRANCISCO — California is proposing sweeping changes in the way it protects underground drinking-water supplies from oil-and-gas operations.
State regulators said Monday that they have notified the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of their plan for bringing the state back into compliance with federal safe-drinking water laws. That’s after a state review found more than 2,500 times that the state had authorized oil field injections into protected water aquifers.
An Associated Press analysis found that nearly half of those injection wells were approved or began injections in the last four years.
Chief state oil and gas regulator Steve Bohlen says California will be making what he calls “long overdue” changes to ensure oil-and-gas operations aren’t contaminating potential groundwater supplies. A letter sent to the EPA on Friday details the state’s plans for dealing with the mistaken permits and seeking new regulatory changes.Response of the major phytoplankton groups
The six decades used here include periods of consistent ocean cooling (1959–1984) and warming (1984–2008) (Fig. 1a). The mean latitude of three isotherms at 11, 12 and 13 °C are correlated with the sea surface temperature (SST) (Fig. 1b, Supplementary Fig. 3), all three moving south in the period of cooling and then moving north in the period of warming. We found that diatoms and dinoflagellates, major phytoplankton groups, both broadly exhibited evidence for a plastic environmental niche: Fig. 2 illustrates the relationship between the percentage of each group north of each of the three isotherms and the latitude of those isotherms in the twelve 5-year periods 1954–2013. In all cases there was a significant negative correlation (Supplementary Table 1a): as the isotherms moved north the proportion of each group north of each isotherm fell and vice versa.
Figure 1: Sea surface temperatures and isotherm latitudes. (a) Mean of the estimated SST values over the twelve 5-year periods. (b) Mean latitudes of the 11, 12 and 13 °C isotherms for each 5-year period. Full size image
Figure 2: Proportions of diatom and dinoflagellate populations north of three isotherms. Proportions (normalized) of the (a) diatom and (b) dinoflagellate populations north of the three isotherms within the geographic area 45–64° N, 20° W–8° E in the twelve 5-year periods from 1954–1958 to 2009–2013. The isotherms move north as the SST rises; these plots illustrate negative correlations (at P<0.05) between the normalized population percentages north of each isotherm and the mean latitude of the isotherms. A loess smoother was used for locally weighted polynomial regression, the grey area indicating the 95% confidence interval for the line. The P values are listed in Supplementary Table 1a. Full size image
Despite this, both groups exhibited major range changes over recent decades: Fig. 3 maps the two groups in the 5-year periods at the start of the cooling period (1959–1963), the transition from cooling to warming (1984–1988) and the end of the warming period (2004–2008). During the period of cooling the median latitude of the diatoms moved south 84 km before moving north 92 km during the period of warming; the median latitude of the dinoflagellates moved south 111 km then north 135 km in the same periods. These range changes were smaller than the movement of the isotherms, that is, the velocity of climate change (Fig. 1, Table 1b, Supplementary Table 5).
Figure 3: Movement of diatoms and dinoflagellates in cooling and warming periods. (a–f) Maps of the totals of the log-transformed (log(x+1)) cell counts determined by ordinary kriging for all diatom and dinoflagellate taxa. The maps were independently scaled 0.0–1.0 to highlight population movements. The movement of the dinoflagellates south in the period of cooling and then north in the period of warming exceeds the corresponding movement of the diatoms. Full size image
Table 1: Details of each taxon and isotherms at 11, 12 and 13 °C. Full size table
Differences revealed by individual taxa
Although the two groups appear to be exhibiting similar behaviour, analysis of the movements of the 35 individual taxa used here (mostly species) provided compelling evidence that more diatom taxa exhibit niche plasticity than do dinoflagellate taxa. Figure 4 and Supplementary Fig. 2 show the movements of each taxon in the periods of cooling and warming, Table 1a indicates significant negative correlations between proportion north of isotherms and isotherm latitudes for each taxon and Supplementary Figs 4–42 show further details for each taxon and group.
Figure 4: Movement of each taxon and isotherm in the cooling and warming periods. Movements in the cooling period of 1959–1984 are indicated with no colours, movements in the warming period of 1984–2008 are indicated with solid colours. The zero position on the x axis is the starting position of the range median latitude of each taxon at the start of each period. Metridia longa, for example, moved south 492 km in the cooling period then north 680 km in the warming period to move 188 km north overall in the two periods. In contrast Eucampia zodiacus moved north 56 km in the cooling period then south 225 km in the warming period to move 169 km south overall in the two periods. The one, two or three asterisks denote significant negative correlations (P<0.05) between the percentages of the populations north of one, two or three isotherms and the mean latitude of the isotherms in the six decades 1954–2013. A significant negative correlation indicates niche plasticity in relation to thermal change. CEU, Calanus, Euchaeta and Undeuchaeta; DIA, diatoms; DIN, dinoflagellates; ISO, isotherms; MP, Metridia and Pleuromamma. Full size image
Ten of the twelve diatom taxa exhibited strong negative correlations between the percentage north of an isotherm and that isotherm position in periods of both warming and cooling (Table 1a), Ditylum brightwellii and Skeletonema costatum being the two diatom species not exhibiting such evidence of a plastic environmental niche. Only one of the diatom taxa, Rhizosolenia styliformis, exhibited a significant negative correlation between population size and mean SST (two others exhibited positive correlations, Table 1c, Supplementary Table 2a). The general observation is that diatoms appear able to adapt to SST changes and those SST changes do not negatively affect their abundance.
In contrast to the diatoms, only 4 of the 12 dinoflagellate taxa (Ceratium fusus, C. minutum, Dinophysis spp. and Protoperidinium spp.) exhibited environmental niche plasticity at all three isotherms examined (Table 1a). Of the dinoflagellate taxa which exhibited niche plasticity to SST at any isotherm, all exhibited negative correlations between population size and mean SST (Table 1c, Supplementary Table 2a) with the exception of Ceratium minutum which has a very low population size over the six decades examined here (Table 1d), resulting in a major decline in the abundance of dinoflagellates in the NE Atlantic region in the recent warming period, as has been noted previously in a shorter time-series21. The general observation is that dinoflagellates either showed no niche plasticity to SST changes or showed plasticity accompanied by falling populations and/or very low populations.
Response of the copepods
Of the copepods, five species from the Calanus, Euchaeta and Undeuchaeta genera exhibited no evidence of niche plasticity (Table 1a, E. acuta in Figs 5 and 6, top row). The warm-water species C. helgolandicus exhibited population growth in response to warming while the cold-water species C. finmarchicus exhibited the opposite response (Table 1c). Of the six Metridia and Pleuromamma species four exhibited evidence of niche plasticity (M. lucens, P. abdominalis, P. gracilis and P. robusta) (Table 1a, M. lucens in Figs 5 and 6, bottom row) while two (M. longa and P. borealis), showed no such evidence. The two species in this group with the highest abundances, M. lucens and P. robusta, exhibited a negative correlation between population size and SST in the warming period despite exhibiting niche plasticity to SST (Table 1a,c). The general observation is that no Calanus, Euchaeta or Undeuchaeta genera exhibited niche plasticity and the Metridia and Pleuromamma species showing evidence of plasticity had very low and/or declining abundance.
Figure 5: The proportions (normalized) of two individual copepod taxa north of three isotherms and their abundances in the twelve 5-year periods. Euchaeta acuta on the top row did not exhibit evidence of niche plasticity in relation to thermal change; Metridia lucens on the bottom row did exhibit evidence of niche plasticity. (a,c) Proportions (normalized) of the populations of the two species north of isotherms at 11, 12 and 13 °C in the twelve 5-year periods from 1954–1958 to 2009–2013. The isotherms move north as the SST rises; Euchaeta acuta exhibits no correlation (at P<0.05) between the normalized population percentages north of each isotherm and the mean latitude of the isotherms; Metridia lucens exhibits a significant negative correlation. A loess smoother was used for locally weighted polynomial regression, the grey area indicating the 95% confidence interval for the line. The P values are listed in Supplementary Table 1b. (b,d) Abundance: the mean of the values derived by kriging at each (longitude, latitude) for each 5-year period. Full size image
Figure 6: Movement of two individual copepod taxa in cooling and warming periods. (a–f) Maps of the totals of the log-transformed (log(x+1)) abundance determined by ordinary kriging. The maps were independently scaled 0.0–1.0 to highlight population movements. In the periods of cooling then warming the E. acuta median latitude moved south 5 km then north 182 km while the M. lucens median latitude moved south 87 km then continued south 38 km. Full size image
The complexity of the response of these taxa is illustrated by Figs 5 and 6, which plot and map the responses of two copepod taxa, E. acuta and M. lucens. The former does not display niche plasticity: there was no correlation between proportion north of the isotherms and the latitude of the isotherm (Fig. 5a, Table 1a), meaning that the geographic range of the species moves with the isotherm (Fig. 6a–c): the species moved south 5 km in the period of cooling and then north 181 km in the period of warming (Table 1b). The species displays no correlation between abundance and SST (Fig. 5b, Table 1c).
In contrast, M. lucens displays niche plasticity: significant negative correlations between the proportion north of the isotherms and the latitude of the isotherm (Fig. 5c, Table 1a) were observed and the species unusually moved south in both the periods of cooling and warming, 87 and 38 km, respectively (Fig. 6d–f and Table 1b). The abundance of the species, however, fell in the period of cooling and has not recovered in the period of warming (Fig. 5d).
Range movements in the warming period
The taxa examined here exhibiting niche conservatism (from all groups) showed a mean northward range shift in the warming period of 99 km per decade, contrasting with a 7 km per decade shift for those taxa exhibiting niche plasticity at all three isotherms (derived from Table 1a,b). The mean poleward movement in the warming period for all taxa analysed here was 54 km per decade while the mean latitude shifts for the isotherms at 11, 12 and 13 °C in the same period were 151, 126 and 104 km per decade, respectively. In the period of warming in the geographic area used here we found differences of up to 900 km in the movement of the median range latitude of individual taxa: the diatom Eucampia zodiacus exhibited a southerly movement of >220 km contrasting with the northerly movement of >680 km of the copepod Metridia longa (Fig. 4, Table 1b). While these two species exhibited the largest southerly and northerly range shifts of the taxa investigated here they are not extreme outliers: three taxa exhibited southerly movement of more than 100 km and 18 taxa exhibited a northerly movement of greater than 100 km in that period (Fig. 4, Table 1b).
Analysis of two potential confounding factors
Two of the possible explanations for the lack of range shifts found here among some taxa, particularly the diatoms, are (i) phenological changes, whereby taxa adjust their seasonal timing of maximum abundance so that they continue to experience the same thermal regime even when sea temperatures are warming or cooling, and (ii) the relative positions of the taxon ranges and the latitudes of the isotherms used, whereby the extent of range movement depends on whether the range centre or range limits for a taxon are considered. To consider these possible explanations, we examined phenological shifts and the positions of the taxon ranges with respect to the isotherm latitudes over the period of warming and the six decades respectively. During the recent warming (1984–2008), there was no link between the extent of range movement for individual taxa and their shift in phenology (Fig. 7), that is, taxa that showed a limited northerly range shift in the recent warming era did not have a stronger tendency to shift their phenological timing of abundance to earlier in the year. Note however that generally across taxa, regardless of their range change, there was a tendency for a phenological shift to earlier in the year. The extent of range movement across taxa seemed unrelated to whether isotherms were examined at the range centre or range limits. First, for example, we found similar patterns of range movement with respect to different isotherms that occurred in different parts of the range of each taxon. Second, the extent of range movement seemed unrelated to whether taxa occurred largely to the south of the isotherms considered (for example, the copepod Undeuchaeta plumosa), to the north (for example, the copepod Calanus finmarchicus and the diatom Skeletonema costatum) or straddled the isotherms (the majority of taxa) (Supplementary Figs 4a–42a).It was about a year ago when House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) appeared on Fox News and told viewers that Congress should be “focused on trying to deal with the ultimate problem, which is this growing deficit.”
There were a couple of glaring problems with the comment. For one thing, to prioritize the deficit as the “ultimate problem” – as opposed to, say, creating jobs and reducing unemployment – is to have a fairly warped sense of urgent policy needs. For another, the deficit, in reality, is most certainly not “growing.”
The U.S. government ran a big surplus in April, thanks to a flood of tax payments that helped keep the budget on track for the lowest annual deficit in six years…. T hrough the first seven months of the 2014 budget year, which began Oct. 1, the deficit totals $306.4 billion. That’s down 37 percent from the same period last year. The Congressional Budget Office is forecasting a deficit of $492 billion for the full budget year. That would be the narrowest gap since 2008.
To be sure, none of this should come as a surprise, at least not to the policy mainstream. In recent years, the federal government has raised taxes and cut spending – and wouldn’t you know it, when Washington takes in more while spending less, the deficit gets smaller.
This is a basic budgetary truism that Republicans continue to resist. Indeed, last year, when top marginal rates increased on households making more than $400,000 a year, a variety of GOP lawmakers argued that this would likely cause the deficit to go up – as they saw it, higher taxes on the wealthy would slow growth, which would mean fewer jobs, which would mean fewer people paying income taxes, which would mean a larger deficit.
It appears on this, Republicans had it backwards, which will do nothing to shake the Beltway perception of the GOP as the “fiscally responsible” party.
Let’s also note that the shrinking deficit – we’re seeing the fastest reduction since the end of World War II – is also one of the nation’s best-kept secrets. It was just last year when an independent national poll asked Americans whether they thought the deficit was increasing, decreasing, or staying about the same. Only 6 percent of the country recognized reality. That’s not a typo; it was just 6 percent.
The fact remains, however, that the annual budget deficit is on track this year to have shrunk by about $900 billion since President Obama took the oath of office.
There are still quite a few politicians who claim, just a matter of course, that in the Obama era, the United States runs “a trillion-dollar deficit every year.” It’s well past time for those folks to update their talking points, or at least try to keep up with current events.
To reiterate a point from last fall, I should note that I don’t consider this sharp reduction in the deficit to be good news. On the contrary, I strongly believe the nation should be borrowing more, not less, taking advantage of low interest rates, investing heavily in infrastructure and economic development, creating millions of jobs, and leaving deficit reduction for another day.
That said, if we’re going to have a fiscal debate, it should at least be rooted in reality, not silly misconceptions. And the reality is, we’re witnessing deficit reduction at a truly remarkable clip. Every conservative complaint about fiscal recklessness and irresponsibility in the Obama era is completely divorced from reality.
ADDING: Related video:June 11, 2010 Share Tweet
This is my second magnesium blog this week but I just couldn’t help myself. The arrhythmia post, Real Rhythm and Blues Without The Magnesium on Friday May 28, 2010 prompted a number of email responses.
One doctor wanted to make sure that my open-mindedness didn’t mean that my brains were falling out. He was reassured and wanted to share his magnesium story.
He said:
“You must have a million magnesium stories by now, but I cannot miss responding to your report about the meeting on Arrhythmia Disorders.
I am an 82 year old retired M.D. (psychiatry). Several years ago I had a bout of atrial fibrillation, which fortunately resolved, but I remained subject to constant extreme arrhythmia for a couple of years. My internist diagnosed premature ventricular contractions and said they were a nuisance but harmless.
A cardiologist confirmed my condition with 24-hour monitoring and wanted to put me on Encainide, Flecainade or Amiodarone. After reading about these drugs I said I was not ready to take them, at which point he left the room. Never a word from him or my internist about magnesium.
I vaguely remembered about electrolytes and arrhythmia and told my internist I would like to try magnesium. His entire response was “it will just give you diarrhea.” But I put myself on magnesium oxide (250 mg at first, then more) and after a short while –this was well over a year ago – the arrhythmia disappeared completely and has not returned. I have not had diarrhea. Both doctors are respected and experienced practitioners in a large city. So carry on!”
If my heart is palpitating (which it does if I don’t take enough magnesium) how can three or four medications possibly help? And, by the way, I don’t have 100 years to wait until enough studies prove to allopathic medicine’s satisfaction that magnesium is safe to take for heart palpitations!
The moral of this blog is for you to do your own research and take some responsibility for your own health and try to convince your doctor to work with you. And I hope you don’t run into one particular doctor who equated my promotion of magnesium with “snake venom, poison ivy, beef, ozone and radon.” He definitely needs to read my magnesium book and realize that nutrients like magnesium are deficient in the diet and are never going to be found in prescription medication.
Watch for a future post on The Death of Hope, which is what drug companies seem to be teaching medical students and doctors these days!
Carolyn Dean MD ND
The Doctor of the Future®
RESOURCES: Along the borders and in the links of my web site you can find my books, writings, and my call-in radio show. Email your questions to: questions@drcarolyndeanlive.com.Sony releases new ‘Xperia Transfer Mobile’ app
Sony Mobile already has a Xperia Transfer app in the Google Play Store, but it has just released a new one called Xperia Transfer Mobile. Both apps allow you to move your data from an old Android phone to a new Sony Xperia, this includes contacts, calendar, SMS, bookmarks, photos and more.
However, the new app differs by supporting Apple iPhone owners. The old app did not support iPhone users and therefore the only way to transfer data from an iPhone was via “Xperia Transfer” through Sony PC Companion and Sony Bridge for Mac.
To use Xperia Transfer Mobile you’ll need to install and activate the app on both handsets (if moving from an older Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and above phone). You can only transfer to a Sony Xperia handset running Android 4.3. The devices need to be paired by entering a pin code or via NFC.
If moving from an iPhone then it needs to run iOS 4.0 and later. The video suggests that you will need to pair the two phones using an Xperia Transfer cable, although we have no idea what this is. Unless, Sony plans to launch such a cable shortly. Once connected, you can then decide what to transfer over.
Via Android Police.Aisea Poulivaati and other workers at a downtown Portland apartment complex wondered for months what a man kept lugging around in a pink rolling suitcase.
"We heard there may have been a person in there," said Poulivaati, a courtesy desk clerk at the 333 Oak Apartments. "But it's not like we could have proven that."
Monday afternoon, a caller told police that a man kidnapped a woman, put her in a pink suitcase and took it into the apartments.
Officers shared the witness’s description with the building manager, who said it might be resident Curtis T. Lowe, 52.
Lowe denied knowing anything about a woman in a suitcase, said a police report.
But officers searched the apartment. They found a pink suitcase in the living room and Kola J. McGrath, 50, in the closet.
The woman, described by police as 5-foot-6 and 96 pounds, told officers she had not been kidnapped. Instead, she was hiding in the suitcase because she had been banned from the apartment complex since April 2011.
Workers at the complex said McGrath and Lowe were in a relationship. But she was banned after breaking a fire extinguisher case with her purse while arguing with him, Poulivaati said. She also had been warned about violating the building's visitation policy.
McGrath was arrested and booked into Multnomah County Jail on a trespassing count. She has since been released.
“I guess you could call it creative,” said Poulivaati.
--Mitch McConnell.
After receiving criticism from women senators of both parties, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reassured his colleagues that women would be allowed to help rewrite the American Health Care Act, according to the Hill.
The original 13-person group working on the bill — which McConnell later denied was a thing — contained zero women senators, despite the fact that the health-care bill could disproportionately affect women. But on Tuesday, reporters spotted at least one woman, Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, in a health-care meeting. And McConnell has since offered behind-the-scenes assurances that “at least one of the women will attend all of the meetings going forward,” one GOP lawmaker said.
“He basically told the lunch that everyone in the caucus was invited,” added a member of the original working group. “He told the lunch that everyone in the caucus, including the women, can come.”
But Senator Joni Ernst, one of just five Republican female senators currently serving, said there’s no guarantee one of them will be present at every single health-care meeting — “We all have schedules that change,” she said. And Senator Deb Fischer said her attendance will “[depend] on what the topic is going to be specifically within health care.”
Although there are currently 21 women in the Senate — an all-time high — more than three-quarters of them are Democrats. Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, told the New York Times that the disparity is more obvious now the GOP is running things. “Women are so underrepresented in the Republican conference that with Republicans controlling Congress, their numbers are so paltry they don’t register in that power hierarchy,” she said.
But even if the five Republican women are included in meetings, there’s no guarantee they’ll stand up for the issues liberal women want addressed. Senator Susan Collins tends to vote along pro-choice lines, but Senators Murkowski and Moore Capito both have mixed records when it comes to abortion and Planned Parenthood — two things potentially on the chopping block under the AHCA. (Fischer and Ernst’s remarks on the topics skew anti-choice.) It’s harder to say whether the bill would change things like maternity coverage, but in January Collins co-authored a health-care bill that would let states opt out of covering Obamacare’s Essential Health Benefits, one of which is maternity care.
So by promising to include Republican women, McConnell is “addressing the optics” without doing anything crazy — like, say, inviting Kirsten Gillibrand to chime in.Transcript: President Obama's Full NPR Interview On Iran Nuclear Deal
NPR's Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep interviews President Obama at the White House on Monday. NPR YouTube
NPR's interview with President Obama focuses on the pact the U.S. and allied nations recently negotiated with Iran. The framework requires the nation to reduce its nuclear capacity in exchange for the lifting of some international sanctions.
STEVE INSKEEP: So many of the concerns and questions about the Iran deal seem to me to focus on what kind of a country you think Iran is.
People are asking, "what will happen in 10 or 15 years as the deal starts to expire," or they're asking "what will Iran do in the region during the period of the deal?"
All of those concerns seem to get down to the nature of the government itself, which makes me begin this by asking: Do you believe that Iran's government is a government that is capable of changing its ways?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Let me flip the question, Steve: I would argue that this deal is the right thing to do for the United States, for our allies in the region and for world peace regardless of the nature of the Iranian regime.
So — so I would actually argue you're right. People are focused on that.
But this is a good deal if you think Iran's open to change; it's also a good deal if you think that Iran is implacably opposed to the United States and the West and our values... and the reason is this:
My goal, when I came into office, was to make sure that Iran did not get a nuclear weapon and thereby trigger a nuclear arms race in the most volatile part of the world. And prior to me coming into office, we had seen Iran's program go very quickly and have a whole bunch of centrifuges reduce the timeline in which they could break out and obtain a nuclear weapon if they so chose.
And because of the hard diplomatic work that we did internationally, as well as help from Congress, we were able to impose some really significant sanctions, brought them to the table.
We're now in a position where Iran has agreed to unprecedented inspections and verifications of its program, providing assurances that it is peaceful in nature. You have them rolling back a number of pathways that they currently have available to break out and get a nuclear weapon. You have assurances that their stockpile of highly enriched uranium remains in a place where they cannot create a nuclear weapon.
And that lasts not only for the first 10 years, but the inspections and verifications that are unprecedented go for another decade after that.
Now, ideally, we would see a situation in which Iran, seeing sanctions reduced, would start focusing on its economy, on training its people, on reentering the world community, to lessening its provocative activities in the region.
But if it doesn't change, we are so much better if we have this deal in place than if we don't.
And so I'm not trying to avoid your question. I — I think that there are different trends inside of Iran.
I think there are hard-liners inside of Iran that think it is the right thing to do to oppose us, to seek to destroy Israel, to cause havoc in places like Syria or Yemen or Lebanon. And then I think there are others inside Iran who think that this is counterproductive. And it is possible that if we sign this nuclear deal, we strengthen the hand of those more moderate forces inside of Iran.
But the key point I want to make is, the deal is not dependent on anticipating those changes. If they don't change at all, we're still better off having the deal.
But you raise a very interesting point there when you're talking about Iran's enriched uranium.
Most of its enriched uranium is supposed to be set off to the side and diluted; it may, however, remain inside Iran. Eventually, the deal expires. Perhaps the uranium is still there, which is why...
... where the regime changes is a significant question.
Actually, that's not how it works, Steve, because once you've diluted a process or...
It can't be...
... stockpiles have — have maintained at 300 kilograms or below, they're not going to have been able to horde a bunch of uranium that somehow they then convert to weapons-grade uranium.
What is a more relevant fear would be that in year 13, 14, 15, they have advanced centrifuges that enrich uranium fairly rapidly, and at that point the breakout times would have shrunk almost down to zero.
Keep in mind, though, currently, the breakout times are only about two to three months by our intelligence estimates. So essentially, we're purchasing for 13, 14, 15 years assurances that the breakout is at least a year... that — that if they decided to break the deal, kick out all the inspectors, break the seals and go for a bomb, we'd have over a year to respond. And we have those assurances for at least well over a decade.
And then in years 13 and 14, it is possible that those breakout times would have been much shorter, but at that point we have much better ideas about what it is that their program involves. We have much more insight into their capabilities. And the option of a future president to take action if in fact they try to obtain a nuclear weapon is undiminished.
So, it's a hard argument to make that we're better off right now having almost no breakout period, no insight, and letting them rush towards a bomb, than saying, over the course of 15 years, we have very clear assurances that they're not going to do anything.
And at that, at the end of that period, maybe they've changed, maybe they haven't. If they haven't changed, we still have the options available to me — or available to a future president that I have available to me right now.
Obviously, the tradeoff for the concessions on the nuclear program is the lifting of many sanctions against Iran.
Yes.
This is widely anticipated to cause a lot of economic growth in Iran. Iranian business people are already banking on this. That could very well be good for Iran in the world, but it also raises another question in the minds of many skeptics. How, if at all, can you prevent Iran from using its new wealth over the next several years to support Bashar al-Assad of Syria, to support Hezbollah, adventures in Yemen or elsewhere?
Well, you know, those are relevant issues. And it is true that Iran would not be entering into any deal, I assume, if in fact their economy was not under significant pressure. But that doesn't mean that if we just apply more pressure, then somehow we get a better deal, which is the logic that's been put forth by Prime Minister Netanyahu.
I think that, if in fact the Rouhani administration — the forces that are more moderating, even if, let's acknowledge, that they don't share our values and they still consider us an enemy — if they are shown to have delivered for their people, presumably it strengthens their hand vis-a-vis some of the hardliners inside of Iran.
They're not going to be able to suddenly access all the funding that has been frozen all these years. Their economy has been severely weakened. It would slowly and gradually improve. But a lot of that would have to be devoted to improving the lives of the people inside of Iran.
And they have actually cordoned off and been willing to finance their war operations even in the midst of sanctions. I mean, there's been no lessening of their support of Hezbollah or Assad during |
” strikes mobilize us, politicize us and embolden more forceful resistance in the next attempt. We have a movement to build, and this is just the beginning.
The time to strike is now. Power to the people!
Note: A “Guide to the General Strike” pamphlet based on an abbreviated version of this piece is available here. The Shutdown Collective encourages people to print these out and distribute them widely to support organizing toward a general strike.Frank Micelotta/Associated Press
Thomas Davis of the Carolina Panthers is not only an incredibly talented football player, but we know that he's now also a major award winner. With the 2015 NFL season officially in the books, the attention will shift to the offseason. Before we do that though, let's take a minute to give praise to a man who truly wants to change the game.
We can talk about the fact that the star linebacker for the Carolina Panthers has topped 100 total tackles in each of the previous three seasons yet has never made a Pro Bowl. After hearing the speech Thomas gave after winning at NFL Honors, I doubt that's what he'd want to talk about though.
Davis does more than play football; he's a molder of men, a game-changer off the field and is truly deserving of the NFL's Walter Payton Man of the Year Award.
If you watched the speech Davis gave after winning the award, there were quite a few things that jumped out. The first thing was how emotional Davis was. This award meant so much to him, and it was apparent through the way he spoke in the video above.
It wasn't just his emotion that stood out, but it was the things he said. The following quote is one that deserves to be pointed out:
To the guys in this league, I just want to say to you, let's take charge. Dare to be different. We are a village. Let's step up and be a village of guys that make a difference. Let's change this world. We're well compensated for what we do. Let's show these kids how much we care about them. Let's give the media something positive to talk about instead of bashing our league.
In a day and age where we unfortunately have to read so many negative reports and stories about professional athletes, Davis stands for everything good in the NFL.
As noted by Tyler Dragon of NFL.com, Davis founded the Thomas Davis Defending Dreams Program, which has given $500,000 to local residents of Charlotte, North Carolina. He also provides two college scholarships every year to seniors who have completed the Youth Leadership Academy Program.
On top of this, the talented linebacker offers a free annual football camp for more than 350 children each year, which not only focuses on football, but also on building life skills.
What Davis said in his speech helps us focus on the good of the NFL instead of the constant dark clouds that seem to overshadow the game we love—the domestic violence, the violations of the NFL's drug policy, the bounty scandal in New Orleans and everything else in between. Davis wants to see the NFL change, and the fans want it as well.
The 2015 Walter Payton Man of the Year is proof that good things absolutely happen to good people. Congratulations to Davis for winning the prestigious award and also for giving a speech that caught the attention of so many.Why are Filipino Americans still forgotten and invisible? Seriously, why?
This is not a rhetorical question, nor do I intend to provide potential answers to this question in this article. I am seriously and genuinely asking: Why?
The reason I am asking this question - yet again - is because of the New York Times’ (NYT) most recent installment of their “Conversations on Race” Op-Doc series, where we see “Asian Americans talk about how stereotypes unfairly confine them — particularly the one that brands them a'model minority’…(and how) this perception not only devalues the experiences of other racial minorities, but it also renders the diverse experiences of Asian Americans invisible.” The stories shared also “went beyond personal accounts of racism and here in the United States, and extended to the residual outcomes of American influence in Asia, particularly as they relate to immigration…experiences (that) more closely resembled those of Latinos and African Americans than any sort of ‘model minority’ narrative.”
Source: E.J.R. David
It sounds really good!
You see, I - along with many other fellow Filipinos in the diaspora - feel so passionately about these issues that we have devoted our careers to addressing them.
Destroying Asian American stereotypes? Check. Studying Asian American experiences with racism? Check. Challenging the model minority myth? Check. the effects of American influence in Asia especially as this relates to immigration? Check. Arguing that some Asian groups’ experiences closely resemble those of Latinos and African Americans than any sort of “model minority” narrative? Check. Illuminating the diverse experiences of Asian Americans beyond the typical East Asian perspective (i.e., Chinese, Japanese, Korean)? Check.
As for that last one on the list about addressing the invisibility of other Asian American groups beyond East Asians, I and many other folks have focused primarily on having Filipino American experiences seen, heard, and included. Check. Check. Check.
So I was very excited about the documentary!
So I watched it.
And it was good.
The 7-minute film is well-done. It touched on several important issues and concepts such as colorism, speaking English with an accent, America’s influence in Asia, immigration, the perpetual foreigner stereotype, why the model minority myth is not true, and of course – many personal experiences with racism.
However, out of the 12 participants whose stories were featured and shared, not one name appeared to be Filipino.
After watching the film, my immediate reaction was:
“Uhm, I don’t think there was one Filipino on there. Wait, it’s 2016 right?! Weren't I and many other folks complaining about this in the 90s? And weren’t prior generations of Filipino Americans complaining about this marginalization before us?”
The “Forgotten Asian Americans” and the “Invisible Minorities”
This type of marginalization isn’t unique. It's not new. The NYT documentary is not exceptional in its disregard of Filipino American stories. It's just that the NYT documentary reminded me of the painful reality that Filipinos have been historically ignored and unappreciated, and how such marginalization still happens to this day!
You see, Filipino banishment goes back to the fact that there was a Philippine-American War that lasted for 15 years and during which thousands – some say 1.4 million – Filipinos were killed by Americans, but yet such a war seems to be unacknowledged, hidden, and forgotten. Filipino marginalization goes back to the days of the manong generation, whose struggles in the farms of Hawaii, California, and Washington – as well as in the canneries of Alaska – continue to be unknown to many. It goes back to how the hard work and of Larry Itliong, Philip Vera Cruz, and other Filipino farmworkers are overshadowed by the of Cesar Chavez. It goes back to how President Franklin Roosevelt pledged that Filipinos who fight for the United States during World War II would be granted citizenship and military benefits - so over 250,000 Filipinos heeded the call – but shortly after the war ended that promise was taken back with the Recission Act of 1946. It goes back to the many ways in which Filipino people have contributed to this country’s rise as a global power, but the American masses remain oblivious to such historical and contemporary reality.
These are some of the reasons why respected Filipino American historian Fred Cordova referred to Filipino Americans as the “Forgotten Asian Americans.”
Source: E.J.R. David
This marginalization is also reflected in my field of psychology – the field that studies stereotypes, racism, and how they influence peoples' psychological experiences and mental. For example, a simple search on PsycINFO – the largest database of psychology-related scholarly literature – produced 1783 articles, books, dissertations, and book chapters using the word “Filipino.” In comparison, the term “Chinese” returned almost 49,000 hits. The term “Japanese” returned over 34,000 hits. The term “Korean” returned almost 10,000 hits. The term “South Asian” returned over 4000 hits. The search term “Asian Indian or Pakistani or Afghan or Afghanistani” returned almost 2500 hits. Even a much smaller Asian group than Filipinos - “Vietnamese” - produced over 2,000 hits. And in last summer’s Asian American Psychological Association conference, there was not one presentation or research project that was about Filipino Americans.
This is why Filipino Americans have been regarded by psychologists as the “Invisible Minorities.”
But it’s the year 2016. Filipino American psychology has grown tremendously. We’ve also had Filipino faces on the mainstream American stage over the past few years. As examples, we have Manny Pacquiao, Bruno Mars, the Miss Universe is Filipina, Apl de Ap blew up with the Black Eyed Peas and is still pretty famous, Jose Antonio Vargas seems to be always on national TV, Filipino dancers dominate America’s Best Dance Crew, and Doug Baldwin is a star wide receiver for the Seattle Seahawks who made the Superbowl in 2014 and 2015. We even have Jordan Clarkson as the best player for the Los Angeles Lakers – and yes, even better than today’s Kobe.
Filipinos are definitely way more visible now! So what the heck?!?
The Perplexing Marginalization of Filipinos
It’s definitely discouraging to see that despite all the work and accomplishments of Filipino people in the diaspora, Filipinos are still unseen, unheard, and unknown. That all the work over the decades toward being recognized and valued do not seem to be making any difference; that when people think of Asians, they still don’t think of Filipinos. It’s quite disheartening to realize that Filipinos are still the forgotten Asian Americans and the invisible minorities.
But despite yet another punch in the face, we have to keep fighting – resilience is a Filipino trait after all. So with the audacity to still hope that change can happen, here are five reasons why it’s perplexing for Filipino Americans to be continually ignored, forgotten, and marginalized.
1. Uniqueness of Filipino American History
Filipinos are the first Asians on U.S. soil, with documentation of shipwrecked Filipinos who were slaves in Spanish ships landing on the shores of what is now Morro Bay, California back in 1587 - long before the United States of America even existed. Also, Filipinos are the only Asian group to be colonized by the U.S., and this colonial history has serious and widespread implications on, racism, colorism, acculturation, and mental health. Research has shown that such a colonial history has made the Filipino experience very similar to the Latino, African American, and Native American experiences. Therefore, it just makes sense that any project that was interested in Asian American experiences that “more closely resembled those of Latinos and African Americans than any sort of ‘model minority’ narrative” to at least include the Filipino story.
2. Huge Filipino American Population
Filipinos are the second largest Asian American group, numbering around 3.5 million, which is approximately 20% of the Asian American population. In other words, 1 out of 5 Asian Americans is Filipino. This is especially significant if we remember that the Asian American community is very diverse – it is composed of at least a dozen different ethnic groups! Filipinos are also the largest Asian group in the state of California, which is the most populated state in the country. Filipinos are also the largest Asian group in the states of Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Washington, Wyoming, and South Dakota. So that’s 11 out of the 50 states, again approximately 20% of America. Therefore, proportionally-speaking, whenever any project on the “Asian American experience” is done and it involves at least five Asian Americans, then at least one of the featured subjects should be Filipino in order to truly demonstrate a strong commitment to represent the diverse voices of Asian Americans.
3. Large Immigrant Population
Filipinos are currently the fourth largest immigrant group in the United States after Mexicans, Chinese, and Asian Indians, as over 1.8 million Filipinos in the United States are foreign-born. As recently as 2010, however, Filipinos were the second largest immigrant group in the country after Mexicans. Also, Jose Antonio Vargas – a Filipino man – is the public face of immigration reform. So it’s surprising that a Filipino person wasn’t even included in a documentary that touched on immigration. Combined with the fact the Filipinos are the only Asian ethnic group to be colonized by the U.S., it should be an easy decision to have the Filipino perspective be reflected by any project that explores the “residual outcomes of American influence in Asia, particularly as they relate to immigration.”
4. Significant Contributions to “Asian American” Identity
Filipinos were also instrumental in creating the “Asian American” umbrella term and political identity during the 60s when the Asian American Political Alliance in Berkeley was founded, when Asian Americans collaborated with Black, Chicano/a, and Native American students in San Francisco State University and University California Berkeley to demand ethnic studies courses, and when Asian American students and community members advocated for Filipino residents of the International Hotel in San Francisco. So Filipinos were a big part of the creation of the “Asian American” political identity, giving Asian Americans stronger mainstream visibility and political clout and influence. But despite this, Filipinos continue to be marginalized and glossed over in many projects about the "Asian American" experience.
5. Filipinos Experience Racism at a Very High Rate
Filipinos also experience racism at a very high rate, even compared to other Asians. A recent study found that 99% of Filipino Americans experience racism on a regular basis, and that these experiences lead to psychological distress, low,, and. Even further, Filipinos also report commonly experiencing subtle forms of racism called microaggressions that are unique from the microaggressions experienced by most other Asian Americans. For instance, contrary to the “model minority” myth, Filipinos are often assumed to have inferior status or intellect (e.g., Philippines-trained professionals are treated as not being as good as others) and are often seen as deviant in some way (e.g., being a gang member or a ), which are microaggressions that are also commonly experienced by non-Asian American groups such as African Americans, Latinas/os, and Native Americans.
The Struggle Continues
Another microaggression unique to Filipinos is that they report commonly experiencing discrimination even from other Asian Americans. Also more recently, research found that while 96%-98% of Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese individuals identify as “Asian,” only 47% of Filipinos do. Perhaps this continued marginalization even within the Asian American community is why many Filipinos do not identify as Asian Americans. Sure, perhaps Filipinos just don’t feel connected to other Asian people, cultures, and lived realities. But perhaps Filipinos also don’t feel welcomed.
Perhaps Filipinos still feel unheard, unseen, unknown, and unappreciated. Perhaps many Filipinos don't want to identify with a group that seems to endlessly neglect and ignore them.
So here we are, in 2016, and we are still fighting the same fight. Despite our unique history in the U.S., our large numbers, our significant contributions to the Asian American community, and our unique struggles with racism, immigration, health, and in other areas (e.g., education, income, etc.) that challenge the “model minority myth”, we are still ignored and rendered irrelevant.
We are still wanting to be seen, wanting to be heard, wanting to be included.
We’re still perplexed. We’re still complaining.
So again, why are Filipino Americans still “Forgotten” and “Invisible”? Seriously, why?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
E.J.R. David, Ph.D. has two books, "Brown Skin, White Minds: Filipino American Postcolonial Psychology" and "Internalized Oppression: The Psychology of Marginalized Groups."
Follow the author on Twitter.
More information about the author here.As a young woman, I should be a feminist. I should stand up for every girl I witness being made fun of for sleeping around, or wearing skimpy clothing that shows midriff. And, according to the stereotypical view of feminism, I should believe all men are pigs and only be friends with females.
I honestly get mixed messages when I ask what feminism is, what feminists believe in and other questions like that. At first, I believed it was about the magic word of equality. So, I became a feminist. Or I thought I did.
Last year, I was sitting in my U.S. history class. My teacher was a huge feminist. It’s like purple and yellow threw up in her classroom. One day during class my friend Becky announced that when she becomes a business owner she’ll refuse to hire men. Our teacher exclaimed, “I love that idea!”
But I didn’t. Pay men less? Isn’t feminism about equality?
Then I suddenly became a non-feminist. I’m certainly not against feminism but I wouldn’t put myself in the category of not believing in equality for everyone. I just don’t get it. We women can vote, attend any college, play whatever sport we please.
Maybe I don’t understand feminism because I haven’t encountered a situation that I was discriminated against because I’m a girl. I just don’t understand why the feminists I encounter all seem to put down or make fun of men.
If you have any input on anything feminism, I would love to read comments below. There are some days I try to be a feminist, but I just don’t get it. Are there rules? Regulations? Do I have to sign up somewhere on a perfumed pink sheet of glitter paper?This summer has been a particularly brutal one with a number of hikers dying in and around the Valley. This has led to conversations about the services available at trails, like shade and water.
Phoenix’s Parks and Recreation Department is looking to improve the infrastructure at Phoenix Mountain Preserve, and is hosting public meetings to get input from the public about what improvements they’d like to see.
We talked to Ken Vonderscher, deputy director with Phoenix’s Parks and Recreation Department, who said that there are improvements currently being made at South Mountain. Echo Canyon had some work done to the parking area and trail head in 2013, and it makes sense to go to Phoenix Mountain Preserve next. He also said that the portion at Piestewa Peak is over 50 years old and is in need of some improvement.
We also spoke with Peter Olsen, vice president for Programs and Government Relations at American Hiking Society, to find out a little bit more about what exactly hiking infrastructure is, and what’s needed to maintain and improve trails.ELF-EMF and thermal stress system. ELF-EMF was produced by two parallel Helmholtz coils (260 turns of copper wire with 40 cm diameter). The coils were then placed in an artificial climate incubator, which was utilized to control temperature, humidity, and light cycle during the experiment. A hose was wound around the coils and then connected to a condensed circulating water bath, which rapidly removed the heat produced by the coils. A temperature probe was set in the experimental zone to monitor, modify and strictly control its actual temperature.
Temperature is an important factor in research on the biological effects of extremely low-frequency electromagnetic field (ELF-EMF), but interactions between ELF-EMF and temperature remain unknown. The effects of ELF-EMF (50 Hz, 3 mT) on the lifespan, locomotion, heat shock response (HSR), and oxidative stress (OS) of Canton-Special (CS) and mutant w1118 flies were investigated at 25°C and 35°C (thermal stress). Results showed that thermal stress accelerated the death rates of CS and w1118 flies, shortened their lifespan, and influenced their locomotion rhythm and activity. The upregulated expression levels of heat shock protein (HSP) 22, HSP26, and HSP70 indicated that HSR was enhanced. Thermal stress-induced OS response increased malondialdehyde content, enhanced superoxide dismutase activity, and decreased reactive oxygen species level. The effects of thermal stress on the death rates, lifespan, locomotion, and HSP gene expression of flies, especially w1118 line, were also enhanced by ELF-EMF. In conclusion, thermal stress weakened the physiological function and promoted the HSR and OS of flies. ELF-EMF aggravated damages and enhanced thermal stress-induced HSP and OS response. Therefore, thermal stress and ELF-EMF elicited a synergistic effect.
In this study, adult flies were used to examine the effects of ELF-EMF (50 Hz, 3 mT) on lifespan, locomotion, HSR, and OS at 25°C and 35°C (thermal stress). Our results indicated that ELF-EMF aggravated the thermal stress-induced damages and reduced the thermal resistance of flies, especially w1118 flies. Therefore, a possible coupling mechanism exists between ELF-EMF and thermal stress, and they elicit a synergistic effect.
The periodic movement and collision of molecules and ions are detected in alternating electromagnetic fields [ 11 ]. As such, possible ELF-EMF-induced thermal effects should be demonstrated. Although non-thermal effects induced by long-term ELF-EMF exposure have been examined [ 12 ], thermal effects should also be considered in research on the bio-effects of ELF-EMF. For instance, ELF-EMF affects heat shock protein (HSP) accumulation in cells [ 13, 14 ]. The transcript levels of numerous heat shock genes, such as HSP22, HSP26, and HSP70, can be altered after an individual is subjected to long-term ELF-EMF exposure [ 15 ]. Oxidative stress (OS) is another important aspect in studies concerning the bio-effects of ELF-EMF; ELF-EMF can affect the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and the activity of anti-oxidative enzymes, such as superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), and glutathione peroxidase [ 16, 17 ]. Therefore, HSR and OS are potential pathways involved in ELF-EMF responses; in most organisms, these pathways are also activated in response to thermal stress [ 18, 19 ]. ELF-EMF and temperature elicit interacting effects; for example, ELF-EMF can reduce cell damage at low temperatures and enhance stress response at high temperatures [ 9, 20 ]. However, the coupling effects between ELF-EMF and temperature have been rarely demonstrated, and the mechanism remains unclear.
Extremely low-frequency electromagnetic field (ELF-EMF) poses potential health hazards and bio-effects [ 1 ]. The United Nations and the International Telecommunications Union defined the influence of EMF as a core indicator of smart sustainable urban evaluation last year [ 2 ]. Epidemiological surveys and experimental research have indicated that ELF-EMF exposure is possibly associated with diseases, such as malignancies and cardiovascular, reproductive, and neurological disorders [ 3 – 5 ]. ELF-EMF unlikely elicits negative biological effects [ 6, 7 ] and plays a positive role under certain conditions [ 8 – 10 ]. Nevertheless, the bio-effect of ELF-EMF is controversial, and its mechanism remains unclear.
Corresponding assay kits (Jiancheng, Nanjing, China) were used to analyze MDA content, TAC, and SOD and CAT activities. The MDA content was detected using thiobarbituric acid method. TAC was measured on the basis of the ferric-reducing ability of plasma. SOD and CAT activities were determined using xanthine oxidation and molybdenum ammonia acid methods, respectively. The experiments were replicated thrice.
ROS level was detected through DCF fluorescence [ 23 ]. The supernatant (5 μl) was loaded with 295 μl of DCFH2-DA with a final concentration of 10 μM and then incubated at 37°C for 40 min. Fluorescence intensity was monitored by using a multi-mode microplate reader (Spectrum M5) at 488 nm excitation and 525 nm emission. Results were expressed as fluorescent intensity per milligram of protein.
The relative expression levels of HSP22, HSP26, and HSP70 were determined at 25°C, 25°C+ ELF, 35°C, and 35°C + ELF stress conditions. Ten surviving male and female flies were collected from each tube after 12 h of treatment. The samples were quick-frozen in liquid nitrogen for the analysis of HSP22, HSP26, and HSP70 expression levels. The experiment was repeated thrice. Total RNA was extracted using a TRIzol reagent (Invitrogen) and was reverse-transcribed using a PrimeScript RT Master Mix Perfect Real-Time kit (Takara). Quantitative real-time PCR was performed using a SYBR Premix Ex Taq II kit (Takara). All of the samples were tested in triplicate, and the CT values of the target genes were normalized to those of housekeeping gene RP49. Normalized data were considered to quantify the relative levels of the target genes by using 2 -ΔΔCt method [ 22 ]. The primers used in this study are shown in S1 Table.
Activity rhythm was evaluated by counting the number of activities every 30 min from the onset of stress. Activity pattern variations were analyzed on the basis of the number of activities in the first 2 h accounted for the proportion of the total number of activities within 24 h. Each experiment was performed in three replicates, with 96 males and 96 females allotted for each condition.
The lifespan of flies was analyzed on the basis of the duration spanning the onset of and the completion of the last activity. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis was conducted, and cumulative survival curves were plotted. Log-rank (Mantel-Cox) test was performed to determine whether the difference among groups was significant. The average lifespan, median lethal time (calculated 50% mortality age), and maximum lifespan (calculated 90% mortality age) of female and male flies were also examined.
One- to two-day-old male and female flies were separated under low-temperature anesthesia and loaded into glass tubes (5 mm × 7 cm; 1:1 tube-fly ratio) containing 10% sucrose/2% agar food pellet at one end and a cotton pellet at the other end. The glass tubes were then placed in Drosophila activity monitoring 2 (DAM2) boards (TriKinetics, Inc., Waltham, MA, USA). After the flies acclimated to the new environmental conditions overnight at room temperature (25°C), the boards were subjected to the following treatment conditions: 25°C; 25°C + ELF; 35°C; and 35°C + ELF. The activities of an individual fly were determined by using infrared beams crossing the center of each tube. The cumulative counts of the flies’ activities were recorded every 5 min.
The ELF-EMF generating system was improved on the basis of our previous study [ 15 ]. In this study, ELF-EMF was produced by two parallel Helmholtz coils (260 turns of copper wire; diameter = 40 cm). Alternating current was applied using a variable-frequency AC power supply. The coil was electrified at 50 Hz, 82.3 V, and 6.75 A, and a variable magnetic field of 3.0 mT was produced between the two coils. The coils were then placed in an artificial climate incubator, which was utilized to control temperature, humidity, and light cycle during the experiment. A hose was wound around the coils and then connected to a condensed circulating water bath, which rapidly removed the heat produced by the coils. A temperature probe was set in the experimental zone to monitor, modify, and strictly control its actual temperature. The control system was similar to the exposure system except Helmholtz coils ( S1 Fig ).
Wild-type Canton-Special (CS) and mutant w1118 flies (Core Facility of Drosophila Resource and Technique of SIBCB, CAS) were used. The flies were maintained on a sugar-yeast standard medium in an incubator at 25°C, 60% relative humidity (RH), and 12 h/12 h light/dark cycles; the incubator lights were turned on and off at 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. [ 21 ]. One- to two-day-old male and female flies were tested separately in all of the experiments. The following four treatment groups were prepared: 25°C (normal group); 25°C + ELF (ELF-EMF group); 35°C (thermal stress group); and 35°C + ELF (thermal and ELF-EMF co-stress group). Two stress factors were stimulated and terminated synchronously in all of the experiments. The flies were anesthetized with carbon dioxide.
HSP70 transcript levels were mainly affected by the interaction of temperature and ELF (F = 11.39; P = 0.001; S4 Table ). At 25°C, HSP70 transcript levels were not influenced by ELF-EMF in both CS and w1118 flies. Conversely, they were significantly upregulated at 35°C and 35°C + ELF (CS♀: P = 0.002; CS♂: P < 0.001; w1118♀: P = 0.003; w1118♂: P = 0.003) conditions compared with their expression levels at 25°C. Moreover, HSP70 transcript levels at 35°C + ELF co-stress were significantly higher than those at 35°C in male CS flies (P = 0.001) and female w1118 flies (P = 0.015; ).
HSP26 transcript levels were mainly affected by the interaction of temperature, gender, and ELF (F = 4.57; P = 0.035; S4 Table ). At 25°C, HSP26 transcript levels were not influenced by ELF-EMF in both CS and w1118 flies. By contrast, they were significantly upregulated at 35°C (CS♀, CS♂, and w1118♂: P < 0.001) and 35°C + ELF (CS♀: P = 0.001; CS♂: P < 0.001; w1118♀: P = 0.013; w1118♂: P < 0.001) conditions compared with their expression levels at 25°C. Moreover, HSP26 transcript levels at 35°C + ELF co-stress were significantly higher than those at 35°C in the male flies of both CS (P = 0.007) and w1118 (P = 0.016; ).
HSP22 transcript levels were mainly affected by the interaction of temperature and ELF (F = 6.58; P = 0.012; S4 Table ). At 25°C, HSP22 transcript levels were not influenced by ELF-EMF in both CS and w1118 flies. However, they were significantly upregulated at 35°C (CS♀: P < 0.001; w1118♂: P = 0.002) and at 35°C + ELF (CS♀, CS♂, and w1118♂: P < 0.001; w1118♀: P = 0.044) conditions compared with their expression levels at 25°C. Moreover, HSP22 transcript levels at 35°C + ELF co-stress were significantly higher than those at 35°C in male flies of both CS (♀: P = 0.001) and w1118 (P = 0.046; ).
The locomotion rhythm of flies was analyzed on the basis of the number of activities, which were counted every 30 min from the onset of stress. At 25°C, CS and w1118 activities for each gender followed a circadian rhythm, and two activity peaks at dawn and dusk were recorded under our experimental condition. At 35°C, the number of activities of CS and w1118 for each gender increased sharply at the beginning, declined rapidly at the following time, and maintained a low level after about 12 h ( ). Compared with that at 25°C in both CS and w1118, the number of activities in the first 24 h significantly decreased in female flies but increased in male flies at 35°C ( ). The CS flies were mainly affected by temperature (F = 28.12; P < 0.001; S3 Table ), and the w1118 flies were mainly influenced by ELF-EMF (F = 11.52; P = 0.002; S3 Table ). ELF-EMF exposure significantly reduced w1118 activities at 25°C (♀: P = 0.045; ♂: P = 0.031) and 35°C (♂: P < 0.001; ). The number of activities in the first 2 h accounted for more than 30% of the total number of activities within 24 h at 35°C. By contrast, this proportion was less than 10% at 25°C.
The lifespan of flies was analyzed on the basis of the monitoring results of DAM2. Survival analysis results show that the death rates of the male and female CS and w1118 flies at 25°C noticeably accelerated under thermal stress. At 35°C + ELF and 35°C, the death rate of CS (♀: X 2 = 70.93, P < 0.001; ♂: X 2 = 71.48, P < 0.001; ) and w1118 (♀: X 2 = 50.99, P < 0.001; ♂: X 2 = 99.45, P < 0.001; ) were further accelerated by ELF-EMF exposure. Because the flies could live several weeks at 25°C, much longer than that at 35°C, so only the lifespan data of flies at 35°C were provided. The average lifespan (♀: P = 0.013; ♂: P = 0.002; ), median lethal time (♀: P = 0.038; ♂: P = 0.002; ), and maximum lifespan (♀: P < 0.001; ♂: P = 0.002; ) of w1118 were significantly shortened by ELF at 35°C ( S2 Table ). Similar phenomena were found in the CS line, but no significant influence was observed.
Discussion
ELF-EMF may share similar stress-response pathways with thermal stress. As such, thermal effect should be considered in research on the bio-effects of ELF-EMF. However, coupling effects between ELF-EMF and thermal stress have been rarely investigated, and underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. Therefore, the coupling mechanisms of ELF-EMF and thermal stress on CS and w1118 flies were investigated in this study.
The effects of temperature on flies have been widely explored. For example, the numbers of phenotypic modulations, metabolites, genes, and proteins associated with temperature damages, hardening, and tolerance have been identified [18, 24, 25]. Temperatures between 34°C and 37°C are often used as mild thermal stress conditions because acute HSR is likely induced at these temperature levels [18, 26, 27]. Likewise, our previous studies showed that the mortality of flies sharply increases, and the HSP70 transcript level is rapidly upregulated at >35°C under short-term stress (2 h) [28]. In our present study, the physiological function of flies declined under sustained thermal stress, as supported by the acceleration of death rates, the shortening of lifespan, and the effects of locomotion rhythm and activity of flies. Under thermal stress, the metabolism of flies is enhanced in the initial stage. With prolonged exposure to stress, heat damages accumulate and metabolic rate declines because of disrupted water-salt balance, damaged cell structure, and decreased enzyme activity [29–31]. Changes in locomotion rhythm confirmed these assumptions. The activities were sharply increased in the beginning stages of the experiment and then acutely decreased in succeeding hours. Moreover, the effects of thermal stress on the death rates, lifespan, and locomotion of flies, especially w1118 line, were enhanced by ELF-EMF. These findings indicated that ELF-EMF aggravated thermal stress-induced damages, although thermal effects were also dominant at 35°C + ELF. Previous studies demonstrated similar synergistic effects; for instance, ELF-EMF enhances cellular apoptosis induced by low doses of X-ray irradiation exposure [32], increases lipid peroxidation induced by lead in mouse [33], and increases the survival rate of flies and Escherichia coli at low temperature [9, 34]. These findings suggested that ELF-EMF can interact with various chemical or physical factors, including temperature.
HSR and OS usually share common stress response pathways under various stress conditions [35, 36], including thermal and ELF-EMF stress. They were used to estimate the differences in stress responses at 25°C, 25°C + ELF, 35°C, and 35°C + ELF. In this study, the transcript levels of HSP22, HSP26, and HSP70 were upregulated at 35°C possibly because the three HSP genes are heat-shock-induced proteins [37]. Similar variations of HSP70 have been found in flies exposed to mild thermal stress [38]. The transcript levels of the three HSP genes at 35°C + ELF were higher than those at 35°C. Hence, ELF promoted HSP gene expression under thermal stress. ELF-EMF can strongly enhance reporter gene expression under the control of HSP16 and HSP70 promoters in mild heat shock on Caenorhabditis elegans [20]. Moreover, several HSP genes, such as HSP16, HSP27, HSP70, and HSP90, respond to ELF-EMF [14, 20, 39]. HSP70 is closely related to self-protection mechanism [14, 40] and can be induced by ELF-EMF in flies, mice, and cells [41–43]. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to investigate HSP22 and HSP26 induced by ELF-EMF, although HSP22 and HSP26 have been described in other studies [15]. Similar to HSP27 and HSP16, HSP22 and HSP26 belong to the small HSP family, whose expression is affected by ELF-EMF [14]. HSP22 is mainly involved in aging, thermal, and oxidative stress pathways in flies and is necessary to adapt to stress [44, 45]. HSP26 mainly contributes to the stress response and senility of flies [46].
Thermal stress |
-left remain critical of Kirkpatrick’s efforts to distinguish between “totalitarian” regimes and “non-Communist autocracies.” Many liberals still disagree with the way in which Kirkpatrick applied this argument to defend Reagan’s Central America policies, and they still object to her broad-brush attacks on opponents to her left.
But the democratic left and the democratic right agree that there is vital a distinction to be drawn between democratic regimes – whether we agree with everything they do or not — and those, like Putin’s, that disrespect basic rights. To suggest any moral equivalence between the government President Obama leads and Putin’s regime by painting Putin as a better leader is to violate core principles that Reagan conservatives once held high.
Fortunately, the number of Republicans who realize they cannot associate with Trump’s comments is growing, though the reluctance of many others in the GOP to join them speaks ill of their party. Among those who broke the most decisively with Trump, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), offered these wonderfully acerbic and direct comments: “Other than destroying every instrument of democracy in his own country, having opposition people killed, dismembering neighbors through military force and being the benefactor of the butcher of Damascus, he’s a good guy.”
But in Trump’s eyes, and apparently in Pence’s, too, these things add up to making Putin “inarguably” a strong leader.LG is about to launch a new monitor that is one of the most feature-filled monitors on the market once it arrives. Referred to as the 43UD79-B, this 42.5-inch display has a native UHD resolution of 3840 x 2160 with a conventional refresh rate of 60Hz. It features an IPS panel with a non-glare coating, a peak brightness of 350 cd/m2, a contrast ratio of up to 1000:1, and an 8ms gray-to-gray (GTG) response time. The viewing angles are wide at 178°/178°, which is typical for an IPS display. Although support for 1.07 billion colors is claimed, the lack of an explicit mention of a 10-bit panel leads us to believe that this is an 8-bit panel using A-FRC to achieve a 10-bit color depth. On the plus side, this model will ship color calibrated from the factory.
Specifications LG 43UD79-B Panel 42.5" IPS Resolution 3840 × 2160 Refresh Rate 60 Hz Variable Refresh Rate FreeSync Response Time 8 ms (GTG) Brightness 350 cd/m² Contrast Up to 5000000:1
1000:1 Typical Viewing Angles 178°/178° horizontal/vertical PPI 104 pixels per inch
0.245 mm2 pixel pitch Colors 1.07 billion Inputs 1 × DisplayPort 1.2a
2 × HDMI 2.0
2 × HDMI 1.4
1 × USB Type-C with DP Alt Mode
1 × RS-232C USB Hub 2-port USB 3.0 hub with KVM Functionality Audio 2 × 10W harmon/kardon speakers
Headphone Output Launch Date May 19th, 2017 (Japan) Launch Price ¥83000 (Japanese Yen)
~$745 USD
Assuming that the press release is indeed accurate, this model not only supports FreeSync variable refresh technology, but also a host of other gaming-oriented features like Game Mode, Black Stabilizer, and Dynamic Action Sync (DAS) Mode. The native 60Hz refresh rate will likely preclude this model from ever becoming a gamer favorite, but we are still glad to see that LG made an effort in catering to the gaming crowd. The peak refresh rate is likely 60 Hz for the Freesync, however LG does not specify the lower bound. Technically the specification sheet says 56-61Hz, although that is rather small for a FreeSync range.
The connectivity front is where this monitor really shines. There are two HDMI 2.0 inputs (4K @ 60Hz), two HDMI 1.4 inputs (4K @ 30Hz), one USB 3.1 Type-C port that can operate in DP Alt Mode and thus carry a DisplayPort signal, and one DisplayPort 1.2a input (4K @ 60Hz) that supports the aforementioned FreeSync feature. The reason for all these inputs is that this monitor can display images from up to 4 devices at once. You can either split the screen into four 21.5-inch 1080P sections, two horizontal or vertical sections, or even three sections of varying sizes. There is also support for basic Picture-in-Picture (PIP) if you don't wish to subdivide the screen real estate.
Different monitor arrangements with multiple inputs
Also present is LG's Dual Controller feature, which essentially turns the monitor into a KVM switch. Users can plug a mouse and keyboard into the two downstream USB 3.0, install the Dual Controller software on two systems, and control both of them from that single mouse/keyboard combo. Rounding out the basic specifications are built-in 2x10W Harman Kardon stereo speakers, a headphone jack, an RS-232C connector, and a small remote control. The included stand is fairly basic in that it only allows tilt adjustments.
While the press release indicates a countrywide Japanese launch on May 19th at a price of around 83,000 yen, US-based retailers are already offering preorders for $697 with an expected availability of May 9th. If that holds true, that is a very attractive price for a roughly 43-inch 4K monitor with that many built-in features and a three-year warranty.By now, you must be aware of the Canadian mammography study that appeared in the BMJ last week. It found that “Annual [screening] mammography in women aged 40-59 does not reduce mortality from breast cancer beyond that of physical examination or usual care when adjuvant therapy for breast cancer is freely available.” And there was an associated risk of overdiagnosis.
It was a randomized prospective trial involving almost 90,000 women over a 25-year period. The full text is here.
Just about everyone, supporter or critic, has weighed in with an opinion about the paper. Here’s a different take.
Earlier this month, I gave a talk at the Academic Surgical Congress in San Diego. The subject was “Social Media and Innovation in Surgery.” In it, I speculated about the probable demise of the traditional printed medical journal. I cited some experts who have deplored the current method of peer review of papers.
I suggested that because of its immediacy, online peer review would emerge as the standard. While you might not think of the BMJ as social media, it does have an online rapid response system allowing letters to the editor to be published immediately, eliminating the usual delay of several months.
If you look at the rapid responses, you will note that there are two major criticisms of the mammography study. One is that the mammography machines used were possibly not of the highest quality. Others have said that any study that lasts as long as the Canadian study will be subject to criticism about technology or techniques. If that disqualifies this study, then there is no point in ever doing a study with 25 years of follow-up.
The other main issue is about the way patients were randomized. I won’t go into detail about it, but if the randomization was truly flawed, the study may not be valid.
The paper’s senior author has come forward with a long rapid response to every criticism.
All this has happened within one week of the publication of the paper.
I have my opinion about the study. You should read it and the rapid responses and judge for yourself.
In a tweet, @ThomWalsh, a post doctoral fellow in health policy and healthcare delivery science at Dartmouth, said an academic manuscript is like a song and a journal is like an album, “and now you see why the current business model for journals is doomed.”
The future of peer review is now. I don’t know who said this, but I agree, “Today, all media is social media.”
Skeptical Scalpel is a retired surgeon and was a surgical department chairman and residency program director for many years. He is board-certified in general surgery and a surgical sub-specialty and has re-certified in both several times. For the last three years, he has been blogging at SkepticalScalpel.blogspot.com and tweeting as @SkepticScalpel. His blog averages over 1400 page views per day, and he has over 8300 followers on Twitter.War is full of smells. "Stay in a hospital during a war and you will be come accustomed to the chemical smell of blood," writes journalist Robert Fisk in The Independent as he reflects on his years in the Middle East. Philip Caputo recalls the stench of 8,000 corpses in the Golan Heights during October 1973. "Their putrefying flesh overwhelmed the odors of smoke and diesel fuel and burned tanks, trucks and armored personnel carriers," he writes in the Los Angeles Times.
Caroline Hancock was 23 when she served as a nurse after the Battle of Gettysburg, in 1863. She found the smell of the decaying bodies so strong that "she viewed it as an oppressive, malignant force, capable of killing the wounded men who were forced to lie amid the corpses until the medical corps could reach them," writes Rebecca Onion for Slate’s history blog, The Vault. Hancock’s account is published in a new book called The Smell of Battle, The Taste of Siege: A Sensory History of the Civil War, by Mark Smith, a history professor at the University of South Carolina. The young nurse wrote home:
A sickening, overpowering, awful stench announced the presence of the unburied dead upon which the July sun was mercilessly shining and at every step the air grew heavier and fouler until it seemed to possess a palpable horrible density that could be seen and felt and cut with a knife …
The smell of war can be so powerful that "newly deployed soldiers are often so overwhelmed by the olfactory assault that it distracts them from the tasks at hand," according to James Vlahos in Popular Science. To prepare them for this onslaught, the Army and the Marines familiarize soldiers in training to the stench of rotting flesh and the burn of melting plastic. They’ve even taken to adding smells to their virtual reality simulators.
While documentation of the realities of war is powerful—some even argue that the press can be too conservative in the photos they show— photographs alone leave the other senses blind. Fisk, the journalist covering the Middle East, writes that he saw horrors that "no art form" could entirely convey. No one left safe at home can fully understand what happens on the battlefield—its full assault on the sense.The Tories are on course to win an overall majority at the next election because Ed Miliband is a worse leader than Neil Kinnock, a former Labour Home Secretary has warned.
Charles Clarke said that Labour has "no narrative" and Ed Miliband is failing to appeal to voters because he has an "assembly of odd policies".
Mr Clarke also criticised Mr Miliband for failing to "set out clearly" how he would control the deficit and said Labour is unlikely to regain public trust in its ability to handle the economy.
The comment from one of Labour's "big beasts" are likely to be seized on by the Conservatives who have consistently lagged behind in the polls.
Mr Clarke told Huffington Post : "I think the most likely outcome is a Tory overall majority. You've got to set out an overall account of what it is. And I don't think we have an account and I think that's Ed's biggest challenge.
"[He has got to] Set out a clear statement of what Labour would actually do. Give people a reason to vote Labour. not an assembly of odd policies like the electricity freeze or whatever. [He] lacks an overall story."
Mr Clarke, who served as Neil Kinnock's chief of staff in the 1987 and 1992 General Elections, said the former Labour leader has "far more qualities" than Mr Miliband.
He said: "Neil has far, far more qualities than Ed Miliband as a leader. Neil was a fantastic leader and brought Labour back towards victory."
However, he suggested that Mr Miliband still has the abilities he needs to become Prime Minister. He said: "I think he has a problem with the population, undoubtedly. He is an intelligent man, he'd be a good prime minister. I don't myself think he's geeky. I think those are offensive-type descriptions. I don't go along with all that stuff."
He criticised both Mr Miliband and Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, for apologising for the influx of Eastern Europeans under Labour.
Her said: "One of my restraints over the last three or four years has been to not attack particularly Yvette and Ed Miliband on what I think are ignorant and ill-informed statements about what happened in this whole process."
Mr Clarke said that Tony Blair, who he served under, has been "damaged" by the amount of money he has made since returning to office but he could still return to British politics.
He said: "Were he a Labour MP, I think he'd have every chance of being elected leader of the Labour Party, which is quite extraordinary, and were he elected leader of the Labour Party, I think he'd have every chance of being elected prime minister, which is also extraordinary."
He added that Gordon Brown, the former Labour leader, should quit the Commons because he doesn't spend enough time there. He said: "He's an elected member of parliament. If he doesn't want to be an MP he should stand down."China's top Communist Party leader and former security czar Zhou Yongkang was today sentenced to life for graft, abuse of power and leaking state secrets in a closed-door trial, becoming the senior-most official to fall under President Xi Jinping's sweeping anti-corruption drive against "tigers and flies".
Zhou, 73, was sentenced to life imprisonment by Tianjin Municipal No. 1 Intermediate People's Court after the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) charged him with the offences in April, breaking decades-old practice of not prosecuting retired top Communist Party leaders.
Zhou admitted his guilt following a secret trial in the northern city of Tianjin, about 120 kilometres from here, on May 22 and will not appeal, state-run Xinhua news agency reported about the verdict that was also read out on state television.
A glum looking Zhou with un-dyed hair was shown on the state television being brought to the court by police and later intently listened to the judgment read out to him.
"The basic facts are clear. I plead guilty and repent my wrongdoing," he said.
"Those involved, who bribed my family, were actually coming after the power I held, and I should take the main responsibility," he said before the judge.
"I broke the law and Party rules incessantly, and the objective facts of my crimes have resulted in grave losses of the Party and the nation," he said.
He said the handling of "my case in accordance with Party rules and the law reflects the authorities' determination to govern the Party strictly and advance the rule of law."
The court said Zhou leaked five "extremely confidential" documents and one "confidential" document to Cao Yongzheng, an unauthorised person, directly contravening the State Secret Law.
The court said Zhou's abuse of power and deliberate disclosure of state secrets were "in particularly grave circumstances," but his disclosure of state secrets "did not have very serious consequences."
Regarded as the most influential CPC leader until his retirement in 2012, Zhou oversaw China's security apparatus and law enforcement institutions, courts, police forces, prosecution agencies, paramilitary forces, and intelligence organs under Hu.
With today's verdict, Zhou has become the top-most CPC leader to be sentenced in China's recent history after Bo Xilai, party leader from Chongqing who was also sentenced to life in 2013 over charges of corruption, abuse of power as well as attempts to shield his wife for a murder.
Xi, 61, broke the norm as pressed ahead with the two-year anti-corruption campaign against "tigers and flies", meaning all ranks in order to restore the sagging credibility of the party among people.
Zhou's wife and son testified via a video link while Wu Bing and Jiang Jiemin appeared in court.
The court statement said Zhou had taken "particularly huge bribes," but had confessed, pleaded guilty and repented for his wrongdoing.
The majority of the money was accepted by his relatives, without his prior knowledge. Zhou asked his relatives to return their illegal gains. All gifts and cash have now been recovered.
These actions constitute "legal and discretionary grounds for lesser punishment."
The court reached its verdict "in accordance with the facts, nature, and details" of Zhou's crimes, based on the harm done to society.
Charged with "intentional" disclosure of state secrets, this trial was not open to the public.
The close aide of former President Hu Jintao was convicted for accepting bribes to the tune of 130 million yuan (USD 21.3 million), abusing power and deliberately disclosing state secrets.
Dubbed as a security czar for being the powerful Security Minister, Zhou was part of the nine-member Standing Committee of the ruling CPC, the highest decision-making body of the party from 2007 to 2012.
He held the post under Hu's administration -- the powerful post which enabled him to keep a tab on the CPC, including its top brass.
Zhou was so powerful that he was even accused of spying on Hu himself.US warns of “catastrophic consequences” if North Korea is not brought to heel
By Peter Symonds
29 April 2017
In an address yesterday to the UN Security Council, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned of “catastrophic consequences” if member states did not take swift action to force North Korea to the negotiating table on harsh US terms.
Tillerson again reiterated that “all options” were on the table, saying that diplomatic and financial measures “will be backed up by a willingness to counteract North Korean aggression with military action if necessary.”
His remarks came as North Korea conducted the test launch of a medium-range ballistic missile early Saturday morning local time, which reportedly failed.
Tillerson’s comments underline the acute danger of conflict that the Trump administration’s brinkmanship has created on the Korean Peninsula. The US is using the threat of an imminent war, which could rapidly escalate into a global nuclear disaster, to bully the world—especially North Korea and China—into accepting its demands.
Throughout his speech, the secretary of state repeatedly stressed the urgency of the UN Security Council taking action against North Korea. “For too long, the international community has been reactive in addressing North Korea. Those days must come to an end,” he declared. “Failing to act now on the most pressing security issue in the world may bring catastrophic consequences.”
The US has applied immense pressure to both North Korea and China through its military build-up in North East Asia. In addition to continuing joint US-South Korean war games, the Pentagon has dispatched an aircraft carrier strike group, headed by the USS Carl Vinson, and a nuclear submarine, which are currently engaged in exercises with South Korean and Japanese warships near the Korean Peninsula.
In that context, Tillerson declared that the US “preferred a negotiated solution to this problem” and set out the terms for any talks with Pyongyang. “North Korea must take concrete steps to reduce the threat that its illegal weapons programs pose to the United States and its allies before we even consider talks.”
At the close of the meeting, Tillerson spelled out the conditions again: “We will not reward their bad behaviour with talks. We will only engage in talks with North Korea when they exhibit a good-faith commitment to abiding by the Security Council resolutions and their past promises to end their nuclear programs.”
Such an undertaking would involve a halt to all North Korea’s nuclear- and missile-testing, the mothballing of its nuclear facilities and their eventual dismantlement, and highly intrusive UN inspections. Tillerson did not indicate the “concrete steps” Pyongyang would have to take before Washington would “consider talks.”
The entire speech was laced with hypocrisy. On two prior occasions—in 1994 and 2007—North Korea agreed to all of the above terms and began their implementation, only to have the agreements sabotaged by the United States, which failed to keep its side of the bargain. Washington has never demonstrated its “good faith” by easing the decades-long diplomatic and economic embargo on North Korea.
Moreover, Tillerson’s claims that the US does not want “regime-change” in Pyongyang and has no “desire to threaten the North Korean people or destabilise the Asia Pacific region” are absurd. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the barely disguised aim of successive US administrations has been to abolish the North Korean regime.
Tillerson’s speech was, in effect, an ultimatum to the world. He outlined a series of demands on UN member states—that they fully implement existing sanctions on North Korea, suspend or downgrade diplomatic relations, and “increase North Korea’s financial isolation” through new sanctions. “This new pressure campaign will be swiftly implemented and painful to North Korean interests,” he declared.
Tillerson’s insistence on the full implementation of existing sanctions was especially aimed at China, which the Trump administration has repeatedly criticised for failing to do. “We must all do our share, but China, accounting for 90 percent of North Korean trade, China alone has economic leverage that is unique, and its role is particularly important,” he said.
China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, rebutted the criticism, declaring: “The state of affairs on the Korean Peninsula is not caused by any single party, nor is it reasonable to ask any party to take sole responsibility.” Wang again called on those parties directly involved—the US and North Korea—to “demonstrate sincerity for dialogue and restart dialogue” and warned against “provocative rhetoric or action.”
Tillerson’s UN remarks are in line with President Trump’s comments on Thursday night, when he declared that “we’d love to solve things diplomatically, but it’s very difficult.” He then went on to make clear that if the pressure campaign, particularly by China, failed, then the only option was military force. Trump warned that there was “absolutely” the chance of a “major, major conflict” with North Korea.
Having brought the Korean Peninsula to the brink of war, the Trump administration is not prepared to wait months for Pyongyang to agree to its demands. The Korean Times last week reported that China and North Korea have been engaged in secret talks. It noted that NBC had cited a US government source as saying that Beijing had sent its “top nuclear negotiators” to “communicate the gravity of the situation to the North.”
According to the newspaper, Hong Kong military analyst Liang Guoliang indicated that in the talks, North Korea had demanded that China guarantee its security and economy and give it three years to abandon its nuclear weapons. Reportedly, Chinese officials replied by saying Pyongyang had three months to dismantle its nuclear arsenal and two to three weeks to agree to US terms.
The Korean Times also cited South Korean journalist Jeong Kyu-jae, who claims that the US has already been engaged in secret talks in New York with North Korean officials. “If the dialogue turns out to be productive, US President Donald Trump might send a special envoy to the North in a clandestine manner in late April or early May,” he said.
However, Jeong warned: “This is a scenario that will play out only when things unfold smoothly. If the talks are unsuccessful, the US might consider a military strike as the next option.”
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.What’s so special about a hybrid helmet?
So I have been getting into this new helmet from Bell, the “Rogue.” Initially I was attracted to its unique styling and easy on/off front shield capabilities. Unlike most DOT certified half shell helmets that turn your head into a large “mushroom head,” this extra feature of a muzzle locking down in front takes out some of that sitting high on your head look and feel.
After taking the face mask off, however, that mushroom look does come back, as with any helmet with that much padding/safety.
Check out some of the customer reviews here on that subject.
The options that come with this styling of helmet are very intriguing in the custom motorcycle helmet painting arena. I think that we are gonna see some very interesting and unique custom air brushing or painting on this one. I know I am looking forward to getting mine done.
Let’s get inside of this new Helmet –
The newest Bell motorcycle helmet is definitely different, and is making a lot of people take a second look. Bell created this helmet as an innovative solution to rider comfort. They wanted a lightweight helmet that would be super comfortable as well as one that met all safety requirements. With the “Rogue”, Bell has fulfilled their goal.
The Rogue is more than a half helmet, but less than a full helmet. This lightweight helmet is very comfortable, the ears and neck areas are well padded. The forehead area has no padding, but does have a thin cloth cover that fits nicely without rubbing. The inner liner is held in place with the help of four strong snaps. The ear pads have three snaps to keep them secure; they also have speaker pockets for communication systems.
The lower face muzzle may look strange, but it is comfortable and gives the rider protection from the elements. It is made of two parts: the outer shell is a hard, flexible polyurethane; the inner liner is made of a removable super soft cloth. Wearing it with the inner liner will make the muzzle fit snug on your face; if you don’t like that snug feeling you can remove the liner and have a bit of air between your face and the muzzle. At first it might seem a tad bit strange wearing it. Yes, it is supposed to fit snug (or not) just below the bridge of your nose. Give it time, you will get used to the feel of it on your face.
The Muzzle – on a helmet!?
At first it is a tricky thing to get the adjustable muzzle straps lined up for a perfect fit. It is easy enough to do – just push the button that holds them in place and move the straps. Once you have the straps lined up with the slots, the two “Fidlock” magnets help pull the straps in place. It is better to line up one strap and then the other, trying to do both at the same time will not work. Once you get the muzzle straps adjusted for a perfect fit, you will be able to slide the helmet and muzzle off still connected.
The Rogue was designed for cruiser riders who don’t like full helmets, but still want some protection in case of accidents. The helmet might look a bit evil, but so far people are liking what they see. Riders who love braincaps and bandanas are going to find this is one fine helmet that is easy to get on and off. At just under $250. (or €191), the Rogue is reasonably priced.
This newest addition to the Bell line comes in 5 different colors, and has 3 shell sizes, a D-ring lock, and a detachable liner that is fully washable. Some riders have stated that these helmets seem to run a half size smaller than other helmets. Only you know what is comfortable on your head, choose your size wisely.
A lightweight, composite shell
Adjustable muzzle with a removable liner
FidLock magnetic connection for ease of putting on and taking off
3 shell sizes for comfort
Stainless steel D-rings
Speaker pockets
DOT approved
Full five-year warranty
Cruising along wind-swept sandy areas near the beaches of southern California, or wherever you dare to ride, the muzzle quickly becomes your best friend. The three-quarter inch thick walled muzzle keeps the lower half of your face from become a sand blasted mess. At 70 miles an hour that is a good feature to have.
If the lower strap feels like it is choking you, all you need to do is pull the D-ring closure tight then snap it into place. If it doesn’t flap around, it will not bother you at all.
Another nice thing about the muzzle is the way it keeps your face from freezing on chilly mornings. Sure, your temple and cheeks get cold, but keeping your lips warm (and safe from wind chapping) is a wonderful feature. Also, think of the muzzle as a bug and rock repellent; it’s better that the muzzle takes these hits than your lower face.
To recap quickly, the new Rogue offers these features:
The Rogue has so much to offer riders that prefer wearing half helmets over full-face helmets. The muzzle is really handy for times when you prefer not to be blasted by the elements, and easy to remove when the weather is perfect. These helmets fit wonderfully, especially at high speeds.
One final note for anyone thinking of getting themselves a Bell Rogue helmet… watch the video and learn the correct way to wear this thing. Many happy customers agree that watching the video is a must!
Happy biking.
–> Check out all the different styles of Bell Motorcycle Helmets here.
Bell Rogue Ghost Recon Helmet
Revzilla has the newly released Ghost Recon design on the Bell Rogue available here.
A video look at Bell Rogue
Bell Rogue Motorcycle Helmet Review An in depth look at all the available features of this hybrid motorcycle helmet. Bell Rogue Motorcycle Helmet Written by: Karl Steinmeyer 5 / 5 stars
Some more pics of the Rogue
Where do I buy a Bell Rogue Motorcycle Helmet at the best price?Are you interested in an hour and a half of chit chat about D&T? Well, then I’ve got the perfect thing for you! This week I was a guest on the Leaving a Legacy podcast. Jerry and Patrick asked me all sorts of things about D&T’s history, its place in the metagame, and where I see the deck going in the future.
You can check out the podcast here
Of note to the podcast: I started played Magic in 2010 and starting playing Legacy in 2011. As such, my knowledge about the early days of D&T is all secondhand; please excuse any small errors on my end. My deck history page (which was largely courtesy of Finn) was the basis for most of my answers to their questions about the deck’s history. Feel free to check that out if you have more questions about the deck’s history that I didn’t discuss here!Some 300 U.S. military personnel are carrying out a training program for the Ukrainian National Guard near the city of Lviv, in the far west of the country.
The U.S. troops are veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and hope to transfer some of the skills gained in those conflicts to about 900 Ukrainian guardsmen.
The units to be trained include former private militias whom the government of Ukraine earlier had absorbed into the National Guard. Included, according to the Ukrainian government, is the Azov Battalion, whose ranks include many neo-nazi, fascist, and ultra-nationalist elements. However, U.S. officials say Azov will not be included.
If Azov is included, it will constitute a major scandal and provocation, especially in the eyes of Russia which already feels threatened by NATO being right up against its borders.
The Western governments and the corporate press say that the characterization of the neo-nazis as fascists is just Russian “propaganda.” There is, however, plenty of independent evidence to the contrary – accepted even by commentators who are not admirers of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
The independent battalions came into being a year ago when, following the overthrow of President Victor Yanukovych, the industrial Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine rebelled against the new right-wing government in Kiev. The local forces that took power in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts (provinces) managed to defeat, disarm or win over many Ukrainian soldiers, and the armed effort of Kiev authorities to bring the region back under control seemed to be faltering.
So the government agreed to give the right wing militias their head, while at the same time refusing to negotiate with the eastern dissidents they call the “separatists.”
Many people in Eastern Ukraine are predominantly Russian speaking and have close economic and cultural ties to Russia next door. They were alarmed when the Ukrainian Parliament, the Rada, voted to withdraw recognition of the Russian language as co-official with Ukrainian, even though the acting president at the time vetoed the bill. The alarm increased when neo-nazis allied with Kiev committed acts of extreme violence, including a brutal massacre in Odessa last May. https://www.peoplesworld.org/ukrainian-rightists-burn-alive-39-at-odessa-union-building/
The ultra-right Svoboda and Pravy Sektor (Right Sector) political organizations indeed have historical links to Ukrainian fascism, which throve in the period from the 1930s to the 1950s. Fascist organizations of that time massacred thousands of Jews as well as ethnic Poles and Hungarians.
During the Second World War, the main fascist organization, headed by Stepan Bandera, offered to collaborate with the German Nazis. Initially the Nazis would did not accept this and arrested the Ukrainian nationalists, whom they considered to be “Untermenschen.” But later in the war, there was active collaboration.
On April 9, the Ukrainian Rada passed legislation abolishing communist ideology and forbidding both nazi and communist symbolism, portraits, statues etc. Denial that the Soviet regime was a criminal entity would be a crime also.
The law is waiting for President Petro Poroshenko’s signature, but ultra-nationalist crowds have already begun tearing down statues of Lenin and other Soviet-era leaders. The Communist Party of Ukraine is under persecution, and its Secretary General, Petro Symonenko, has been told that he is a target for criminal prosecution. On Jan.10, Ukraine’s prime minister, Arkady Yatsenyuk, shocked many by describing World War II as the time when “Russia invaded Germany and Ukraine.”
The context for the arrival of the U.S. troops is important. On the one hand, there is a shaky cease fire between the Donetsk and Luhansk autonomist militias and the Ukrainian government. This cease fire was negotiated in Minsk, Belarus, among Russia, Ukraine, France, Germany and the Ukraine, after it became clear that the Ukrainian military was not going to be able to recapture the Donbas and might lose more territory. The initial elements of the cease fire granted provisional autonomy to Luhansk and Donetsk within Ukraine, among other things.
But this cease fire is only reluctantly accepted by President Poroshenko, and the ultra-right militias are against it.
Another piece of the context is that Ukraine is broke and desperately trying to get a bailout loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In exchange, the IMF is demanding economic concessions. These include new austerity measures in the Ukraine, already the poorest country in Europe. The deal would be based on “free” trade principles that will do great harm to the Ukrainian economy and increase unemployment. The Ukrainian government wants eventual integration into the European Union’s structures, even though the country was offered a better deal by Russia in 2013.
The tradeoff for the bailout also includes clipping the wings of the freewheeling Ukrainian “oligarchs.” Whether a government dominated by oligarchs like President Porshenko who is known as the “chocolate king” because of his control of the candy industry, can actually do this is as big a question.
Ukraine’s creditors are taking a tough stand against the country’s call for a debt restructuring. For the moment the Ukrainian government is continuing to demand this.
The United States and the European Union have imposed sanctions on Moscow to pressure it to cease providing aid to the Donbas autonomists. However, Europe has doubts about this, because sanctions on Russia will harm European trade with Russia, which is considerable.
Photo: U.S. troops sent to Ukraine on a “training” mission are working with some of the same forces that caused the destruction in Eastern Ukraine as depicted above in a decimated airport in Donetsk. | Igor Ivanov/APA pastor friend of mine recently tweeted/facebooked a link to the following video from Dr. J.P. Moreland – in this video Dr. Moreland attempts to prove that god exists using what he calls “creation”. I responded to the post on Facebook – but wanted to share my answers to three of the main points made by Moreland.
Firstly I’d like to take a moment to say the following:
Though I respect Dr. Moreland’s stance and fully understand it – I find it best, when I want to know how the Christian community or individual Christians feel about certain things, that I ask the sources directly. When Dr. Moreland here speaks as to the goals of the new atheists, although some of them are somewhat correct, I believe he does his audience a disservice – My challenge to you and anyone that bothers to read this is simply this: Ask a New Atheist (which I am) what it is that you want to know about New Atheism (I hate to use capitals on those) – never take someone’s word over those of true sources. The same goes for any questions you have about Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, etc…even though myself or Dr. Moreland may be well versed in a few different belief systems we are not nearly as valid a source than a reasonable selection of believers in those faith systems.
This approach helps us to avoid a false understanding of one another, which promotes a more respectable dialog.
Now, to move on to some of the points that Dr. Moreland made:
Three Evidences for God’s existence from the Created world
Contention 1: The Universe began to exist, something supernatural had to create it.
Dr. Moreland uses the 2nd law of thermodynamics – aka Entropy – to explain that the universe actually had a beginning point – of which there is zero question amongst the scientific community that I am aware of.
I have never heard any scientific mind of the 20th century or later claim that the universe did not have a beginning nor that the galaxies are not expanding (and cooling) over time (See the Doppler effect – this is where the Big Bang theory came from)
The problem arises when Dr. Moreland makes the claim that there must have been an external supernatural actor…That’s like saying that the ice cream you have in your hand must have come from Wal-mart – when it could have just as easily come from Dairy Queen or Wendy’s. The beauty and the frustration in science is in the ability for us to say “I don’t know” in relation to where or what caused the singularity to expand or even where the singularity came from. We do not know, but that’s ok – what is NOT ok is to say that you KNOW what the singularity came from and his name was YHVH (or other god) because that simply cannot be proven true. This is science done backwards – having an answer first and then working your way back to the question or hypothesis.
The actor very well could have been God…perhaps even YHVH, but it also could have been a collision with another universe in a |
the tide turns against powerful men who take advantage of women.
“The question is on everyone’s lips: How could we have let Weinstein’s crimes continue for so long? Yet there’s little in the Weinstein story — the years of whispers of impropriety, the past allegations by women, the intimate connection with a party that advertises itself as a defender of women — that doesn’t apply to Bill Clinton,” said Branko Marcetic of the online magazine Jacobin.
Another connection emerged Monday with reports that Mr. Weinstein gave the maximum $10,000 to Mr. Clinton while he was in the White House to fund his legal defense during the independent counsel’s perjury investigation related to his relationship with Ms. Lewinsky.
She was a 22-year-old White House intern, and he was the commander in chief when they had an affair, which she later described as a “mutual” relationship. Three other women — Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey — have accused him of sexual harassment or assault.
Other Hollywood bigwigs who helped Mr. Clinton cover the costs of his defense include Tom Hanks, Michael Douglas and Barbra Streisand, along with studio executives David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg, according to a 1998 article in The Washington Post.
Mr. Katzenberg was among those in Hollywood who have denounced Mr. Weinstein after more than a dozen women accused him of sexual harassment or assault.
“You have done terrible things to a number of women over a period of years,” Mr. Katzenberg said in an email to Mr. Weinstein that he released Friday. “I cannot in any way say this is OK with me. It’s not at all, and I am sickened by it, angry with you and incredibly disappointed in you.”
Other celebrities have since been accused of misconduct in what director Woody Allen — himself no stranger to sexual abuse accusations — has warned could become a “witch-hunt atmosphere,” but Mr. Clinton has largely received a pass from Hollywood and the left.
Mr. Clinton’s name was notably missing when the feminist publication Jezebel cited “Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Bill O’Reilly, R. Kelly, Roger Ailes, and Donald Trump” as “not the only men who have allegedly abused women from positions of great power.”
One celebrity who did break ranks was chef Anthony Bourdain, who criticized Hillary Clinton’s interview Thursday on CNN as “shameful in its deflection and disingenuousness,” sparking a backlash from Clinton supporters and aides.
The right hasn’t held back. After actor George Clooney condemned Mr. Weinstein’s behavior by citing Mr. Ailes and Mr. Cosby, fellow actor James Woods came out swinging.
“Did you forget President #BillClinton, George? The power imbalance between him and a helpless intern is prima facie sexual harassment,” Mr. Woods, an outspoken conservative, said on Twitter.
Mrs. Clinton has moved to shift attention to President Trump, telling the BBC in a Friday interview that “we have someone admitting to being a sexual assaulter in the Oval Office.”
Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski didn’t let the comment slide. He noted that Mr. Clinton ended up paying $850,000 to settle the Paula Jones case and resigned from the Supreme Court bar rather than face disbarment for lying under oath.
“There was a sexual assaulter in the White House. He was called Bill Clinton,” Mr. Lewandowski said on Fox News. “That’s the sexual assaulter she should be talking about in the White House.”
Asked by the BBC about her dismissal of accusations against her husband by multiple women, Mrs. Clinton replied, “That has all been litigated.
“That was the subject of a huge investigation as you might recall in the late ‘90s, and there were conclusions drawn. That was clearly in the past,” she said.
In a Thursday interview, Mrs. Clinton blasted Mr. Weinstein’s behavior as “intolerable in every way” and acknowledged that she would probably have considered him a friend.
The Clintons had rented a house in the Hamptons next to Mr. Weinstein’s vacation home, and Mrs. Clinton has been frequently photographed with the former head of the Weinstein Co. over the years.
“People who never spoke out before having the courage to speak out just clearly demonstrates that this behavior that he engaged in cannot be tolerated,” Mrs. Clinton told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria.
Conservative commentator Tomi Lahren accused the former first lady of hypocrisy.
“The funniest thing about her comment there is that she finds this intolerable,” Ms. Lahren said Sunday on Fox’s “Watters’ World.” “Um, you’re still married to Bill. Apparently you don’t find these things that intolerable.”
Actress Alyssa Milano launched the #MeToo hashtag on Sunday, unleashing a flood of retweets from women who included stars Debra Messing and Anna Paquin, as well as liberal groups such as Planned Parenthood and the Women’s March.
Also retweeting was conservative radio host Dana Loesch, who said she spent her weekend “preparing to move due to repeated threats from gun control advocates.”
More than a dozen women have said they were pressured for sex or harassed by Mr. Weinstein over a period spanning more than two decades. Three told the New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow that he raped them.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Weinstein has denied accusations of “nonconsensual sex” and said that “there were never any acts of retaliation against any women for refusing his advances.”
“Mr. Weinstein has begun counseling, has listened to the community and is pursuing a better path,” spokeswoman Sallie Hofmeister said in a statement last week.
Mr. Weinstein was expelled Saturday from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which said in a statement that it hoped to “send a message that the era of willful ignorance and shameful complicity in sexually predatory behavior and workplace harassment in our industry is over.”
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Newly released e-mails from Hacking Team, the now-embattled Italian spyware firm that sold what it claims is lawful intercept software to companies and governments, definitively show that it sold its Remote Control System surveillance software to the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB), the successor agency to the KGB.
Officially, Hacking Team sold its wares to a company called "Advanced Monitoring," whose corporate parent has a license to work with the FSB, as recently as August 28, 2014. That would put the Italian firm in violation of the July 31, 2014 European Union regulation that forbids selling such technology, whether directly or indirectly, to the Russian military.
It also seems odd that Hacking Team would sell on one side of the Atlantic to Western agencies like the US Army while also selling to the FSB. In its most recent human rights report, the United States Department of State refers to Russia as a "highly centralized, increasingly authoritarian political system."
The report also notes, "There were allegations government officials and others engaged in electronic surveillance without appropriate authorization and entered residences and other premises without warrants."
Hacking Team still refuses to say exactly when or why its relationship with its Russian customers stopped.
"As we have said repeatedly over the last week or more, Russia is not a client any longer," Eric Rabe, a company spokesman, told Ars on Thursday. "They were separated at the decision of Hacking Team. I am not discussing the details of this (or other) client arrangements we may have had."
When Ars specifically asked when its relationship with the FSB terminated, Rabe evaded the question. "Hacking Team has no clients in Russia," he said.
Russian nesting dolls
Back in April 2011, Hacking Team’s Marco Bettini, a sales manager, wrote to Adam Weinberg, the chief technology officer at Nice Systems in Israel, saying:
Please let me be very open to you with regard to FBS [sic]. We got in touch with FSB in September 2010 through a Russian Governmental R&D Institution which is acting as a local partner. They visited us last week and they confirmed their interest in our solution. We have provided them with a demo version of our product and they are presently testing it. They are looking forward to setting up a large pilot project in order to test our product in real-life investigation scenarios with multiple targets. It should be said that we have never worked with this Russian local partner before; on the other side, we consider you are a most trusted and reliable partner and we definitely want to improve our business relationship. It should also be said that FSB is an extremely large organization with many different departments which seldom talk to each other.
That exchange concluded in December 2012 with Massimiliano Luppi, a key account manager, writing to a sales director at Nice Systems, saying, "Yes we did [sell to the FSB]."
The middleman, the "Russian R&D" institution, is likely Kvant (Google Translate), which describes itself as a government research institution.
Hacking Team sold to Advanced Monitoring, which calls itself a "Russian company that provides services in the field of information security." Advanced Monitoring is a subsidiary of another Russian company called Infotecs.
The LinkedIn page of Alexey Kachalin, the chief operating officer (COO) of Advanced Monitoring, shows that he is also the project manager at Infotecs.
July 2012 e-mail from Giancarlo Russo, the COO of Hacking Team to Kachalin (using his @advancedmonitoring.ru e-mail address), refers to a sale to Infotecs "for exclusive resale to ‘Reasearch Institute Kvant’ (the ‘End User’) that will use the product according to the terms and conditions included in the [End User License Agreement]."
This seems to suggest that Hacking Team sold to Advanced Monitoring, which then sold to Kvant, which in turn presumably provided the software to the FSB.
Irina Yuldasheva, an Infotecs spokeswoman, did not respond to Ars' direct questions about the nature of its relationship with Advanced Monitoring or the FSB but did send this statement:
The Infotecs company confirms entering into a contract with the Italian company Hacking Team for purchase of [Remote Control System]. Infotecs, as a developer of information security tools including those intended for iOS and Android mobile platforms, is seriously concerned about negative consequences of using systems similar to RCS against the interests of their customers, among which there are many Russian state organizations and structures. Acquisition of RCS and examining functioning principles of this solution helped to improve the Infotecs' level of expertise in the field of practical information security and increase security level of its own ViPNet products. The acquired RCS system was not operated by Infotecs for its intended purpose and was not serviced in [sic] Hacking Team, as demonstrated by the data disclosed from the archives of Hacking Team.
When Ars followed up to ask if Hacking Team never delivered on this deal, Yeldasheva said, "Yes." However, this claim seems odd given that dealings with Infotecs go back three years.
Reached by phone, Kachalin was circumspect. "Infotecs possess the most up-to-date information," he said. "What information you got from them, it's the most you can get. If you are trying to find something that oppresses freedom of speech, it is not the case. We are working in the field of analysis. Anything that we do is about technology only."
He declined to answer specific questions about the arrangement with Hacking Team, but he did say Infotecs was a licensee to the FSB and that this license was posted on its site. (Ars found this license on a cached version of Infotecs' site, which expired on May 31, 2015. A current version of the site has a dead link.)
"We will be violating NDA, and NDA is an international matter," Kachalin said. "Please be polite enough to us to not violate NDA. I'm not sure what obligations are still under NDA of our companies. So it's covered by this NDA and I have no idea why should I play with this matter trying to dodge one NDA or another NDA, I am still an employee of my employer. I'm not sure about expiration dates on them. It could be used against us, not by FSB, but in [the] market. This matter is regulated by law. All our contracts are legal, all our relations are legal, cleared by both sides, both governments, so I'm not sure what's wrong with that."
Kachalin said that the leaked e-mails have had no impact on his company's business, and yet at the same time he seemed very concerned that this could damage Infotecs' and Advanced Monitoring's reputation.
"If you show good intentions but not pushing employees of the companies to problems, it would be nice from you," he said. "It could make some impact on our business and our operations and I'm not sure it would be ethical from your side to push it. Being ethical by digging into stolen data is hypocrisy, in my view. If you want to be fighting for ethics and freedom I think it's correct to be ethical and pay respect to other people's freedom as well."
When Ars presented this to Keir Giles, a longtime UK-based Kremlin watcher and fellow at Chatham House, he said that such sales to the FSB are "significant and unsurprising."
"Analyses of Russian offensive and espionage cyber capability habitually refer to the FSB's willingness to outsource, whether to criminal structures within Russia or to the commercial sector," he wrote by e-mail.
"But given the natural secrecy surrounding these processes, actual evidence of how this works—and with whom—has always been very rare. In fact, even the linking of the 2007 cyber offensive against Estonia to Russian state direction relied on stolen and leaked e-mail correspondence, rather than anything arrived at through open sources. So the emergence of this sales channel for the FSB augmenting its capability is not exactly news, but is an important step forward in validating our understanding of the Russian state cyber landscape. Which, in effect, means the FSB."
When Giles looked at Kachalin’s LinkedIn profile, and particularly his decade-long affiliation with the Mathematics and Cybernetics Laboratory at Moscow State University, he concluded that Kachalin must have strong ties with the FSB.
"[My conclusion is] that if [Kachalin’s] not ex- or serving FSB himself, he will move in the same circles and be in the right place to be in business with them," the Kremlinologist added.
So much for EU regulations…
As Member of European Parliament (MEP) Marietje Schaake pointed out earlier this month, as a European company, Hacking Team’s sale is seemingly in direct violation of EU Council Regulation 833/2014, a measure passed in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
That regulation specifically prohibits:
[providing], directly or indirectly, technical assistance or brokering services related to dual-use goods and technology, or related to the provision, manufacture, maintenance and use of such goods or technology, to any natural or legal person, entity or body in Russia or for use in Russia, if the items are or may be intended, in their entirety or in part, for military use or for a military end-user
Under Russian law, the FSB is considered a branch of the military.
"The Hacking Team revelations confirm the damaging impact of the rapid development of a vast market in surveillance, intrusion and information extraction systems," Schaake told Ars. "It clearly requires better measures to ensure transparency, accountability, and effective regulations."
It seems clear that Hacking Team's dealings go beyond business and delve into the personal as well.
In December 2014, CEO David Vincenzetti wrote to Enrico Frizzi, a colleague at Bulgari, the Italian jewlery company.
Vincenzetti was responding to something Frizzi forwarded on from Goldman Sachs, entitled "Top of Mind: 2014 update, and a peek at 2015," which included references to Russia.
The CEO replied to Frizzi, in Italian:: The Four Hundred Year History from Dutch Village to Capital of Black America Jonathan Gill Open Road + Grove/Atlantic, Feb 1, 2011 - History - 448 pages 1 Review “An exquisitely detailed account of the 400-year history of Harlem” (Booklist, starred review).
Harlem is perhaps the most famous, iconic neighborhood in the United States. A bastion of freedom and the capital of Black America, Harlem’s twentieth century renaissance changed our arts, culture, and politics forever. But this is only one of the many chapters in a wonderfully rich and varied history. In Harlem, historian Jonathan Gill presents the first complete chronicle of this remarkable place.
From Henry Hudson’s first contact with native Harlemites, through Harlem’s years as a colonial outpost on the edge of the known world, Gill traces the neighborhood’s story, marshaling a tremendous wealth of detail and a host of fascinating figures from George Washington to Langston Hughes. Harlem was an agricultural center under British rule and the site of a key early battle in the Revolutionary War. Later, wealthy elites including Alexander Hamilton built great estates there for entertainment and respite from the epidemics ravaging downtown. In the nineteenth century, transportation urbanized Harlem and brought waves of immigrants from Germany, Italy, Ireland, and elsewhere. Harlem’s mix of cultures, extraordinary wealth and extreme poverty was electrifying and explosive.
Extensively researched, impressively synthesized, eminently readable, and overflowing with captivating characters, Harlem is a “vibrant history” and an impressive achievement (Publishers Weekly).
“Comprehensive and compassionate—an essential text of American history and culture.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“It’s bound to become a classic or I’ll eat my hat!” —Edwin G. Burrows, Pulitzer Prize–winning coauthor of Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898
Preview this book »Introduction
The Obama administration has proposed to boost spending on the U.S. stockpile of nuclear warheads at a higher rate than for many other military programs, according to White House budget documents published February 2.
In its proposal for fiscal 2016, the White House calls for spending $8.85 billion for maintaining and rebuilding the nation’s nuclear warheads, an increase of more than eight percent over current levels, the documents state.
The Pentagon, meanwhile, is requesting a 4 percent increase over its overall 2015 spending of $560.3 billion, to reach $585.2 billion in 2016; this total includes both the “base” budget and a large, associated military account meant to finance overseas “contingency operations.”
The spending on warheads represents just a small part of a sweeping U.S. effort to completely rebuild the United States “triad” of nuclear forces — including long-range bombers, subs and missiles — over the next three decades. The Congressional Budget Office report last month estimated the cost of this ambitious project at $355 billion through 2023.
Frank Klotz, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the semi-autonomous agency that runs DOE’s nuclear programs, defended the spending Monday in a conference call with reporters, saying that the stockpile of U.S. nuclear warheads was the “smallest and oldest” that it has been since the Cold War and that the administration had a responsibility to refurbish them. “As long as we have this nuclear deterrent, it must remain effective,” he said.
The NNSA has shifted spending among some of its budget accounts since last year, making precise comparisons to earlier tallies difficult. But Klotz told reporters that besides the new spending for warheads, the current NNSA budget calls for a 3 percent increase in “core” nonproliferation programs, which are designed to reduce or eliminate nuclear materials and radiological threats.
NNSA deputy administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Anne Harrington said the increase translated into about $40 million, but she declined to describe changes in nonproliferation spending in more detail.
According to the documents, the NNSA’s proposed $1.94 billion nonproliferation budget includes $426.7 million for global efforts to secure nuclear materials, including weapons uranium and plutonium. It also seeks $345 million, or 18 percent of the total nonproliferation budget, for continued work on the mixed-oxide or MOX nuclear fuel plant under construction at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, part of a joint-U.S. Russia effort to transform up to 34 tons each of their surplus weapons plutonium into reactor fuel.
A Department of Energy report last year concluded that the final cost of the overall U.S. MOX project would exceed $30 billion, considerably higher than initially expected. As a result, the White House last year sought a smaller appropriation – just $221 million — to place the half-finished plant on “cold standby,” essentially mothballing it.
But a defense bill approved by Congress and signed by the president in December authorized a $345 million budget for the MOX project in fiscal 2015. Klotz told reporters the administration decided as a result to propose the same amount Congress had approved while it completes new Congressionally-mandated studies of potential MOX alternatives.
The Department of Defense’s overall $585 billion budget request, meanwhile, increases spending on several major modernization programs for nuclear weapons. The White House is asking for $1.25 billion for the strategic nuclear Long Range Strike Bomber project, up from $914 million this year.
The proposed budget would also increase spending for development of a replacement to aging Ohio class ballistic missile submarines by $116 million, to 1.4 billion this year. And it calls for spending $75.2 million on a program to modernize or replace the nation’s fleet of Minuteman III ICBMs, an increase of $68.3 million.
Arms control advocates call the ambitious program both bloated and wasteful, and based on an outdated view of the importance of nuclear weapons to U.S. security.
“It’s disappointing to see this administration has not put together a more cost effective, common sense approach” to modernizing the nuclear arsenal, said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association in Washington.
Arms control expert Kenneth Luongo, a former Department of Energy official and president of the Partnership for Global security, said Russia’s withdrawal from cooperation on most other nuclear nonproliferation, which ended formally in December, has left some U.S. programs stranded.
“The real problem is that this administration has not created any new nonproliferation programs and the old ones are dying,” Luongo said. “And that’s a huge challenge that they have not faced up to.”Earlier this week, China held a three-ship naval exercise in the Indian Ocean, conducting a series of exercises including combat simulations. According to the Associated Press, the task force then sailed through to the western Pacific by way of the Lombok Strait near Indonesia’s Bali island, approaching the Philippines. Before conducting a five-day exercise in the Indian Ocean, the ships had additionally patrolled the James Shoal, which is currently disputed between China and Malaysia (although Malaysia military officials are reportedly disputing the idea that China patrolled the area in late January).
The task force consisted of the Changbaishan–China’s largest amphibious landing ship–and two destroyers–the Wuhan and Haikou. According to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, the ships carried out counter-piracy, search and rescue, and damage control drills. The ships eventually left the Indian Ocean to continue their drills in the Western Pacific Ocean. The Changbaishan is one of the more advanced ships in the PLAN’s fleet and is capable of launching helicopters and amphibious landing craft.
China has conducted naval drills in the Indian Ocean in the past but has generally focused on restricting these to its western waters, by the Gulf of Aden. For example, an exercise in August 2013 saw the U.S. and Chinese navies jointly practice counter-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden which is generally a hot region for pirates based off the Horn of Africa.
These exercises by contrast are potentially far more provocative for India, Australia, and ASEAN states (even though Southeast Asia isn’t bereft of pirates by any means). For India, a Chinese approach in the eastern Indian Ocean raises anxieties about the reach of China’s navy. India regards the eastern Indian Ocean–the space between the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Sumatra–as its domain. Any Chinese exercises in this area, particularly combat simulations, will not be taken lightly by New Delhi.
Australia is generally content to accept the Indonesian archipelago as a comfortable buffer zone from the busy sea lanes of the South China Sea. By way of this exercise, China demonstrates an operational ability in Australia’s northern waters which could have implications for Australia in the future. Rory Medcalf of the Lowy Institute, an Australian think-tank, notes that “the precise strategic implications of the Chinese navy’s newly-demonstrated ability to operate in Australia’s northern approaches are open to debate.”
For China, the exercises make perfect sense in its bid to field a blue-water navy capable of operating outside China’s proximate waters. Medcalf notes that while these exercises will surely spook some observers in the region, there is “nothing illegal or fundamentally hostile about what the Chinese navy has just demonstrated.”
Indian observers appear to be more concerned by the exercise. One Indian commentator, Srikanth Kondapalli, notes that the exercise sends a signal to India that China “can come closer to the Andaman & Nicobar joint command through Lombok, and not just through Malacca.” He additionally notes that China could be testing the waters in the eastern Indian Ocean, including its ability to operate some distance away from its bases in the region.
The Hindu’s Ananth Krishnan notes that the exercises could also reflect China’s desire to hedge its reliance on the Strait of Malacca–a major waterway for Middle Eastern oil and other imports. 80 percent of China’s fossil fuel imports travel via the strait. Beijing has already invested heavily in Pakistan, Myanmar, and Bangladesh to better connect itself with the Indian Ocean. Generally speaking, China hasn’t seen the less-trafficked straits of Lombok, Sunda, and Makassar to the south as vital to its so-called “Malacca dilemma,” but this could be changing.I agree with Dylan, everyone did a great job at respecting her privacy and treating her like any other Brown student, but that doesn't mean we don't have our stories:
I kid you not, we actually tried to recruit her for the Men's Rowing team. She was the perfect height/size...to be a coxswain. And we used our imaginations to assume that she would be a good personality fit (you typically want a type A personality to boss around eight aggressive guys).
Every year Brown holds a giant gathering of all the teams/clubs in the gymnasium for curious Freshmen to pick and choose whatever extracurricular activity piques his or her interest. My senior year during this event, my friend and I were hosting the Men's Crew table and lo and behold, Emma Watson is walking by with one of her friends. My first thought, in recruiting mode, was 'oh she looks like a good size to fit in a boat, I wonder if she can handle the...oh my, she looks familiar...'. My friend and I decide we HAVE to act on this. So how do we pitch this and ask her to join the team? We both walk over and tap her and her friend on the shoulder (luckily her friend was also small so it didn't seem like we were deliberately trying to ask just because it was 'Emma Watson', but she probably knew why). Anyway, best I could come up with:
Me - 'I've got a question for you.'
Emma - 'What's that?'
Me - 'Would you like to boss around eight tall good looking guys and they listen to everything you say?' (i know what you're thinking, but we had to try our best!)
Emma - 'Haha, that sounds fun. How can I do that?'
Me - 'Join the Men's Crew team as a coxswain! blah blah'
We talked more, I honestly don't remember much of the conversation, but it didn't matter, she agreed to show up to a practice.
A couple days go by and she's outside our house waiting for a ride. I'm so stupid excited that I call'shotgun' as we're jumping in the car. In hindsight, it was a bad move on my part, since she's now squeezed in the middle of the back with two large behemoths (my beloved friends). This was also the first time I saw my friend drive with both hands on the wheel. I could see him shaking and afterward he mentioned, 'God forbid I crash that car with her in it'. I'm proud of us all since we managed to play it very cool. We talked about the team, practice, and she wanted us to join her Netball club (I guess its a British version of basketball without a backboard). Regardless, we're all googly eyed nodding and agreeing to everything she says.
Aannd it was just our luck that it turned out to be one of the WORST days to row on the water. Rainy, windy, cold. She sat alone bundled in a giant jumpsuit with our coach in the launch and I could tell he wanted no distractions for a day like this. Nevertheless, all the boats were giggling like school girls the entire practice. The weather was so bad we had to finish practice indoors. This means 50 sweaty guys rowing on indoor machines in a very confined section of the boathouse (while the coxswains watch and yell at us). Also, during indoor workouts, the humidity spikes from all the perspiration generated. It's disgusting. Needless to say, she didn't come back after that practice.
All in all she was like any other friendly, inquisitive Brown student that I've met. And despite how childish we felt we acted around her, we tried our best to be accommodating and I hope from her perspective she felt like any other anonymous coxswain candidate.
TLDR Emma Watson came to a rowing practice and fifty grown men turned into fifty giddy teenage girls at a Justin Bieber concert, but managed to play it cool (I hope).CLOSE The Kaiser Family Foundation has found that overall, black people trail white people in several areas of heath and health care. USA TODAY
Edward Jackson of the University of Alabama at Birmingham Center for AIDS Research explains the growing number of HIV cases among African Americans at the Alabama Baptist State Congress of Christian Education conference on July 24 in Birmingham, Ala. (Photo11: Deborah Barfield Berry, USA TODAY)
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — In a small room down the hall in the Greater Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church, about two dozen people listened one recent afternoon as Donald Solomon rattled off ailments ravaging African-American communities.
“We’re a sick crowd … Whatever is wrong in the country, we have it worse. We need to get health into the church,” said Solomon, a founder of Congregations for Public Health and co-author of Body and Soul, a healthy living guide for church leaders.
For four days in late July, pastors, deacons and folks running church kitchens and health ministries gathered in the Birmingham church to discuss a range of issues, including health concerns disproportionately affecting African Americans in their congregations and communities.
The conference sponsored by the Alabama Baptist State Congress of Christian Education drew hundreds from across the state.
It was one of several efforts nationwide aimed at helping close the health gap between blacks and whites. In other places, barbers are checking customer's blood pressures, local corner stores are stocking shelves with fresh produce, and some preachers are even banning fried chicken from Sunday church dinners.
African Americans, particularly men, continue to lag behind their white counterparts on a host of health issues, including diabetes, heart disease and HIV.
Nowhere is this disparity more true than in the Deep South, where many blacks live and where there’s a long history of discrimination, poor health and insufficient insurance coverage.
While the disparity isn’t new, experts say it could get worse.
As Congress debates how to overhaul the Affordable Care Act, experts, community activists and pastors say African-American men are more likely than any other group to be left behind.
Republican alternatives to the ACA considered in the House and Senate have included massive cuts to Medicaid, which experts say would hit black men especially hard.
“At a time when we should really be working toward trying to close the disparity … any action that rolls back coverage... only widens that gap,’’ said Corey Wiggins, state health chair for the Mississippi NAACP and director of the HOPE Policy Institute, a public policy think tank based in Jackson. “We should be working to strengthen policies that ensure access to care rather than limit care.’’
Marian Little looks over HIV statistics at a health training class for church officials held at the Greater Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. (Photo11: Deborah Barfield Berry, USA TODAY)
Black men are more likely than their white counterparts to suffer with chronic conditions like obesity, cancer and diabetes.
Black men are less likely to have a regular doctor or health insurance, according to a 2012 report by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which examined the disparity. The report found that 15.7% of white men were uninsured, compared with 28.8% of black men.
Medicaid expansions under the 2010 Affordable Care Act made many more men eligible for coverage, increasing their access to providers and medication, health experts say.
Because of that, they will be especially vulnerable if Medicaid expansions are rolled back, said Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League.
“Any effort to restrict the expansion of Medicaid will have a detrimental, negative and devastating effect on African Americans, particularly on African-American men,” he said.
Edward Jackson from the University of Alabama at Birmingham tells church leaders it's important to share information about getting tested for HIV with their congregations. (Photo11: Deborah Barfield Berry, USA TODAY)
Morial said health care legislation should also address broader social issues, including health education and poverty.
“Health care disparities is a complicated subject and I don’t think any one bill... would comprehensively address all of the issues of health disparities,’’ he said.
Samantha Artiga, director of Disparities Policy Project and associate director for the Program on Medicaid and the Uninsured at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said under the ACA, some groups, including communities of color, did get more health insurance coverage, but that alone doesn’t address the significant disparities for black men.
“Coverage alone is not going to do it,'' she said. "It’s just one piece that will help reduce those disparities.’’
Artiga said other factors, including gaps in income, education, access to healthy food and neighborhood amenities, also “drive differences in health.”
For decades, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Congressional Asian and Pacific American Caucus have teamed to introduce measures to address disparities.
The groups plan to reintroduce the Health Equity and Accountability Act, which would expand resources for minority doctors and nurses and other medical professionals, fund more research and target funds for community-focused programs.
Sponsors, mostly Democrats, acknowledge chances for passage are slim in the Republican-controlled Congress.
“We keep pushing and keep pushing, and who knows, maybe we’ll get it,” said Rep. Robin Kelly, a Democrat from Illinois and chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus Health Braintrust.
Kelly said the GOP health care proposals will do little to address disparities.
“I think we will backtrack,’’ she said. “Black men will be left out, but I also think black families in general will be hurt.’’
Johnny J. Hollis, Jr., pastor of Mercy Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala., talks to classmates, Dorothy McAdory, right, and Darlene Cotton last week after a session on health disparities at the Greater Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church in Birmingham. (Photo11: Deborah Barfield Berry, USA TODAY)
In May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported some rare positive news regarding health and race: African Americans are generally living longer than in 2000 and the gap between black and whites is closing.
But a history of distrust of government by blacks persists, stemming from scandals, including the 40-year Tuskegee experiment in which government researchers intentionally withheld treatment from African-American men with syphilis.
Wiggins said distrust is just one barrier. He said the high unemployment among black men is a major issue since health coverage is often tied to a job.
Some activists said the responsibility falls on black men themselves.
Michael O. Minor, pastor of the Hill-Hernando Oak Hill Baptist Church in Hernando, Miss., said it has been hard getting black men to sign up for coverage even before the ACA.
“A lot of the African-American men just don’t worry about getting health insurance,’’ said Minor. “I didn’t really expect to see a lot of African-American men jumping to get health insurance because it’s not in our DNA to want to go to the doctor.’’
Meanwhile, there are targeted efforts to address disparity across the South at churches, universities, barbershops and hair salons.
Theresa Wynn-Wallace explains the goals of the Birmingham REACH for Better Health run by the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Minority Health and Health Disparity Research Center. The program aims to improve health conditions for African Americans in Birmingham. (Photo11: Deborah Barfield Berry, USA TODAY)
Armed with a four-year grant from the CDC, the Minority Health and Health Disparities Research Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham launched the Birmingham REACH for Better Health program in 2014.
In partnership with local organizations, the program aims to improve the health of African Americans in the city by addressing key factors in health disparities — nutrition and exercise.
In one effort, a partner works with corner store owners to make space on their shelves for fresh produce.
“This allows community members to have access to fresh fruits and vegetables,’’ said Theresa Wynn-Wallace, the project's program director. “It’s a learning curve … and our partners had to start small and work their way up to having full displays in each store.’’
Dorothy McAdory listens in to a session on health care disparities July 24 at the Alabama Baptist State Congress on Christian Education conference. (Photo11: Deborah Barfield Berry, USA TODAY)
Another effort involves physicians giving patients a “prescription to exercise’’ and connecting them to one of the city parks.
A few miles away from the university, more than 400 people registered for the Alabama Baptist State Congress of Christian Education conference. Participants packed classes that focused on diabetes, Alzheimer's and HIV — issues that disproportionately affect blacks.
“We’re just trying to bring better health awareness to our community,’’ said Dorothy McAdory, who helped coordinate the conference and is the chief administrative assistant to the Rev. Jonathan McPherson, the dean of the congress.
Some had already launched efforts.
In lieu of Bible study at the Mercy Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala., the church hosts a forum each quarter on issues from diabetes to hypertension to depression. The church also offers more healthy food options.
“We’re looking at the individual holistically |
Ghost Bath photo via Metal Archives
When did you really start noticing the perception of your Chinese origins being accepted as fact?
It is very hard to tell. Blogs, review sites, etc started posting things so fast that it is unclear. I would imagine it having to do with our "Bandcamp" location, our labels' releases coming out of China, our use of Chinese symbols, and the fact that each post of these writers would be influenced by the rest. If one blog posted details about our location, the other's would assume these were correct.
I suppose the biggest question is, why didn't you ever correct people? Why did you let people keep thinking you were from China?
From the start, the band has been adamant about its privacy. Does respect for personal privacy exist anymore with the internet? People can think whatever they wish. We refused to correct people because we do not wish to put actual faces onto our music. It is our wish as a band to connect to all human beings.
To be asking, "why didn't we personally correct anything" is sort of looking at the problem wrong. There need not be a correction. Just maybe an acceptance that maybe people aren't sure of where members reside. To truly listen to Ghost Bath as intended, we must stop making associations outside of basic human existence. Maybe we aren't from where you believe. Maybe we are. Associations like this are only detrimental. Why must we be looked at through that scope or lens? Is it so hard to sit down and take something in for what it's worth? If it wasn't "Hey, I think they're from China" it would only be something else to take its place. That is the nature of human beings. Our emotions are what we strive for. "Tragedy, ecstasy, doom..."
You said before that you like keeping Ghost Bath shady, which isn't exactly uncommon in black metal and experimental music. Why is it so important to you to keep your identities secret?
Why does it matter? It is our right to do so. Our music is genuine. We are not happy people, and our music reflects that. If I wanted someone to ask if I was "okay" every day due to our lyrics and sound, I would tell the world who we are. Some people are extremely nosy, and that's fine. Others are not fond of putting themselves as individuals on pedestals. To each their own.
Moonlover's gotten attention from some pretty big publications already, all of whom (including mine) had you pegged as Chinese. All of the smaller blogs covering you have done the same. Can you talk a little bit about this ripple effect?
Let people think what they want. It doesn't bother us in the slightest. If you listen to us for any other reason than the music, then you are doing it wrong. I am not going to talk about any ripple effect. I think that is for someone in the industry to talk about. We just create art.
It seems fans aren't really worried about locations at all. Here are a few responses we have gotten so far on the subject: "Your amazing music matters to us not your name!" "I have no interest in finding out who you all "really are." You make amazing music and that's enough for me. 加油!" ""People fucking suck. They can't respect privacy."
So fuck it. Fuck everyone else. We do with our art as we please. NOTHING will change that or our entire purpose is lost.
What do you think this experience says about the way media works?
Honestly, fuck the press. They operate under the availability bias that we, as humans, have to deal with on a daily basis. Who cares? I'll probably repeat this during this whole interview. Who cares? Maybe the people who didn't do their research in making an entire published piece about the location of a band instead of the band itself, when their origins were specifically asked not to be written about.
[Editor's note: I would like to remind readers that this band presented themselves as Chinese to me and multiple other members of the press, as stated above]
Who's to blame for the confusion here: Ghost Bath, the press, or internet culture as a whole?
There is no blame for confusion. Confusion is good. It is a reaction. Art is not supposed to be easy.
Did you think at all about the problematic nature of a white dude from North Dakota basically pretending to be Chinese? I'm assuming that wasn't on your mind, but it looks kinda dodgy.
Call us whatever you wish. We are worthless humans. If we thought highly of ourselves, maybe we would play a different type of music, and create pages for ourselves as individual musicians, and prop ourselves up like some kind of meaningful beings. But we are not. The fact that we cower and hide is no act. We genuinely loath our very core, and out from that comes our music.
So please continue to call us what you will, we already know we are insignificant failures. But without our knowledge of that fact, Ghost Bath would not exist in the first place.
'Moonlover' is out now on Northern Silence.
Kim Kelly is on Twitter - @grimkimIntel plans to move up the launch of its 14-nanometer Coffee Lake processors, introducing them in August of 2017 instead of January 2018. According to DigiTimes, the launch is being moved up because of "increasing competition from AMD's Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5 processors."The site says Intel will release several K-series Core i3, i5, and i7 processors starting in August, along with its Z370 chipsets. Additional CPUs will come at the end of 2017 or early in 2018.Intel also plans to unveil its Basin Falls platform, with Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X processors at Computex 2017, which takes place from May 30 to June 3, which is two months earlier than originally scheduled.Intel's Skylake-X series features 140W processors with 6, 8, and 10-core architectures, while Kaby Lake X-series features a 112W quad-core processor. Intel also plans to release a 12-core Skylake-X processor in August. Intel's Basin Falls platform could potentially be used in future Mac Pro machines and the rumored high-end server-grade iMac Coffee Lake chips appropriate for Apple machines were originally set to launch somewhere around the second quarter of 2018, so if rumors of Intel's updated timeline are true, the launch could be moved forward to either late 2017 or early in 2018.Coffee Lake chips are manufactured on Intel's 14-nanometer process and will be the fourth processor family to use the architecture after Broadwell, Skylake, and Kaby Lake.Apple is rumored to have new machines in the works for 2017, including new iMacs, which are likely to use Kaby Lake chips.Wikipedia The military's test launch of the Falcon HTV-2, a hypersonic aircraft that's capable of flying 20 times the speed of sound, ended in failure today when the glider was lost, USA Today reports.
The craft took off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California this morning and it was supposed to glide over the Pacific Ocean for around 30 minutes.
But the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which was overseeing the experiment, said that contact with the glider was lost shortly after it was released from its rocket.
The agency released no further details, USA Today said.
The last time the government tested a Falcon was in April 2010. That craft also disappeared over the Pacific after around nine minutes and was never found.
Together, the two missions cost around $308 million, DARPA has said.0 Flares Twitter 0 Facebook 0 LinkedIn 0 Email -- 0 Flares ×
Last week, during the VeeamON 2017 conference, one of the announcements has been a completely new product, called VeeamPN (Veeam Powered Network), a solution to easily create virtual private networks between multiple public clouds, remote locations and roaming users. Even if the main use case of the solution is to ease the access to Azure virtual machines, I’ve found another interesting use case that I’m sure the service providers running Veeam Cloud Connect will like.
Some basics
My colleague Anthony Spiteri has blogged about this new announcement on his blog, and you can read here the article, where many information and details are shared. The architecture uses one central appliance, called the Hub Server, to receive and manage all the connections from the other remote locations:
The site Gateways (or the individual remote clients) are installed in the remote locations, and they all connect over public internet to the Hub Server. Upon connection, a private network is created between the two locations, so that each machine can talk to each other like it would be in the same network.
The Cloud Connect scenario
In Veeam Cloud Connect, tenants can publish their servers through the “Public IP addressing rules” of a Failover Plan. When the failover plan is triggered, either by the service provider or by the tenant via the Cloud Connect Portal, the rules previously created by the tenant are applied in real time to the NEA (Network Extension Appliance), that acts like a router/firewall for all the virtual machines.
This scenario is perfect for customers willing to reach their services over public internet, like a web server or a mail servers, but there are cases where the customers doesn’t want to expose a server to internet, and so different solutions are needed. So far, technologies like Remote Desktop servers or similar have been suggested, but this solution has not been accepted by everyone. Now, with VeeamPN, there’s a different way to offer remote access to Cloud Connect users.
First, let’s describe the scenario. Out customer has three different servers that wants to replicate towards VCC-R:
Once all the virtual machines have at least one restore point correctly stored into VCC-R, the customer creates a failover plan with all the three VMs. When it comes to the Public IP addressing rules, the customer only wants to publish over internet these ports:
tcp/80 from the LAMP machine
tcp/3389 from test-2012 machine
while everything else should not be reachable via internet. Without VeeamPN, the customer would have had to use for example the RDP connection towards test-2012 has a “jump host” to then reach the SQL machine. With VeeamPN instead, there’s no need to publish services over public internet, if this is not what the customer wants.
Deploy VeeamPN inside a VCC-R Hardware Plan
There are two different use cases here:
– tenant deploys VeeamPN: the tenant deploys VeeamPN inside his network, and then replicates it together with the other virtual machines. During a failover, also the appliance is powered on and can then be accessed. The advantages here is that the tenant is totally independent in doing this operations, and can configure in advance the appliance. The disadvantage is that an additional VCC license is consumed to replicate this machine.
– provider deploys VeeamPN: provider deploys and configures the appliance in advance, sends the configuration parameters to the tenants, and asks to the tenant to create the needed firewall rules in the failover plan. The advantage is that the appliances doesn’t consume a VCC license since it’s not replicated. The disadvantages are that the appliance is always powered on, so it consumes resources and hypervisors licenses in the service provider, and the provider has to do a series of operations to setup the appliance for the customer.
In my demo, I’m going to describe the first scenario, since I prefer to keep as much as possible the idea of self-service that Cloud Connect has. Just remember that both scenarios are possible.
First thing first, we need to install and configure VeeamPN at the customer site. Veeam just published a new KB2271 with detailed instructions for deploying VeeamPN on premises. Once we have retrieved the OVA, we start the installation on the customer network. If the network has no DHCP available, you can login into the VM console and change the IP address like in any Ubuntu Linux: use vi /etc/network/interfaces and add these lines, adapting the values to the customer’s own network:
iface ens160 inet static
address 10.2.50.105
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 10.2.50.254
dns-nameservers 8.8.8.8
Once you log into the web portal, follow the wizard and complete the configuration of the hub. After retrieving the Public IP assigned to the tenant from the information available in the Veeam Cloud Connect failover plan, we configure in advance the Hub to accept both site-to-site and point-to-site VPNs. I choose TCP, even if slower, because the NEA available in VCC-R allows for now only TCP rules:
Now, we also prepare in advance the connection for our computer. Into the Client section, we hit the Add button and we select standalone computer. VeeamPN is based over OpenVPN, and as such we can use the OpenVPN client for the operating system we have, plus the configuration file created by VeeamPN.
Finally, you need to create a new Client, this time using type “entire site”. Again, go into the Client section, hit Add and select this time Entire Site. Give it a name, and most of all enter here the subnet that’s used in the VCC-R tenant. In my case it will be 10.2.50.0/24.
This allows VeeamPN to push a dedicated entry in our computer’s routing table, so that upon connecting to the OpenVPN server, the client will have the entries to reach the failed over machines.
We can now replicate the VeeamPN appliance towards our tenant in VCC-R, so that we have this situation at the end:
Good, the appliance is replicated in our Hardware Plan. Time to add it to the failover process.
Enable VeeamPN during a failover
Once the appliance is replicated, we move into the cloud failover plan. First, we add the machine to the list of VMs that need to be powered on during the failover:
There’s no need to have the VeeamPN appliance to be started before every other VMs, unless we really want to access all the failed over resources as soon as they are up and running at the DR site. The most important part of the configuration is however the “Public IP Addresses” step of the wizard. Here we configure the publishing rules like this:
In the new rules, I’ve added the two needed ports to publish VeeamPN over ports 1194 (site-to-site) and 6179 (point-to-site), plus the web interface, in case I need to edit some configurations on the fly once the failover is started. Note that there is no rule to publish over internet the SQL Server; this is done on purpose, as customers may not want to expose some sensitive applications, like a database or a file share. This is the perfect use case for VeeamPN!
Now, it’s time to start the failover. From the Cloud Connect Failover Portal I start the failover plan, and I wait for all the virtual machines to be correctly started and published. I can immediately check that, for example, the VeeamPN web interface is correctly exposed:
Then, I test obviously the most important part, the access to the VPN itself. I installed the OpenVPN client in my computer, and added the configuration file that I previously created:
After a few seconds, the connection is completed successfully:
I see in the OpenVPN client that a new route has been added:
Wed May 24 00:18:17 2017 us=880028 C:\WINDOWS\system32\route.exe ADD 10.2.50.0 MASK 255.255.255.0 10.9.0.1 Wed May 24 00:18:17 2017 us=885042 ROUTE: CreateIpForwardEntry succeeded with dwForwardMetric1=35 and dwForwardType=4 Wed May 24 00:18:17 2017 us=885042 Route addition via IPAPI succeeded [adaptive] 1 2 3 Wed May 24 00 : 18 : 17 2017 us = 880028 C : \ WINDOWS \ system32 \ route. exe ADD 10. 2. 50. 0 MASK 255. 255. 255. 0 10. 9. 0. 1 Wed May 24 00 : 18 : 17 2017 us = 885042 ROUTE : CreateIpForwardEntry succeeded with dwForwardMetric1 = 35 and dwForwardType = 4 Wed May 24 00 : 18 : 17 2017 us = 885042 Route addition via IPAPI succeeded [ adaptive ]
Now, I can ping successfully the SQL Server (remember, it’s not reachable from internet):
and open its shares:
With this solution, both end users and service providers can easily offer connection services to their infrastructures, like remote access to Veeam Cloud Connect Replication.SEATTLE -- Amber Orrange and Lili Thompson led the second-half charge Friday night as No. 15 Stanford rallied to beat Washington 60-56
Thompson banked in a 3-pointer with a second left on the shot clock to put the Cardinal (11-4, 3-0 Pac-12) up 60-55 with 25.7 seconds remaining. The Huskies (12-3, 1-2) failed to get a good look from there.
Stanford took its first lead in nearly 10 minutes at 49-48 on Thompson's jumper with 5:42 left and extended to 55-50 on Bonnie Samuelson's 3-pointer.
Washington cut the deficit to 55-53 on Jazmine Davis's 3-pointer with 1:42 left. Orrange and Kelsey Plum traded baskets around the minute mark.
Thompson scored 13 of her 15 and Orrange 12 of her 14 after the break. Samuelson added 12 points and Kaylee Johnson grabbed 13 boards.
Aminah Williams had 12 points and 15 rebounds, Plum scored 16 and Davis finished with 13 points for Washington.Metal Hammer recently revealed its 20 albums of the year so far and we must admit, there are some absolutely killer records in there – some we’ll no doubt see near the top of our End Of Year lists this December. But putting them into an order of greatness can be rather difficult, and the source of endless bickering and Nerf gun fights in the office… so that’s where you come in. We’re asking Hammer readers to choose their favourite album of the year so far. Obviously, we couldn’t create a poll to include every single LP that’s been released over the past six months, so we’re limiting it to the 30 albums below.
Which album do you think has burned brightest in the world of rock and metal so far this year? Let us know!
Metal Hammer's 20 best albums of 2016 so farI’ve been spending every spare moment I have getting Krashlander ready for the Window Phone 7 launch. I decided today to take a few minutes away from development and put together a short video.
The following video shows how the touch controls for Krashlander operate. Essentially, moving your thumb over the touch surface on the right controls the posture of Krashlander on the left. There is a bit of math involved to get this working smoothly, but I think it’s pretty intuitive after a few minutes playing with it.
The overlay icons on the right are just there to help guide the user as they learn the controls. Once comfortable, they can be shut off making for a better view of the game screen.
Enough jabber, here’s the vid:
One last note. I actually scaled up the size of Krashlander for the video. In actual gameplay, he/she will be a bit smaller.
-Jeff Weber
@jeffweberPlaying as a holding midfielder for a possession-based side like Arsenal is a tricky task but newcomer Granit Xhaka should have both the defensive and offensive qualities to become a key player in 2016/17.
After the departures of Tomas Rosicky, Mikel Arteta and Mathieu Flamini, Arsenal Wenger has wasted little time in strengthening his midfield zone.
Stylistically, Xhaka is probably most similar to Flamini, an all-action defensive midfielder, but he offers a blend of attributes and is excellent at keeping possession, rather than simply regaining it.
First and foremost, the 23-year-old is an extremely powerful footballer capable of commanding the midfield zone. He’s strong and boasts a good positional sense, but also a mobile midfielder who likes shutting down opponents quickly, and makes plenty of tackles.
Indiscipline is perhaps his major weakness, having been dismissed three times for Borussia Monchengladbach in 2015/16, but the Swiss international rightly points out that referees in England tend to be more lenient. More experience, too, should ensure he stays out of trouble.
Granit Xhaka
Xhaka isn’t a pure defensive midfielder, however. In the Bundesliga last season, only Bayern Munich’s deep playmaker Xabi Alonso completed more passes than him, partly because he’s constantly on the move, varying his position to receive short passes into feet. He’s happy receiving the ball under pressure from opponents and is a genuinely forward-thinking footballer when facing the opposition goal.
Xhaka can turn past challenges, using his body in a similar manner to Jack Wilshere, and is happy spraying longer, diagonal balls into attack, particularly towards the right flank. It is the technical, creative side that the midfielder has improved most over the past few years. Often Arsenal have used talented playmakers in a deep midfield role, forcing them to develop the defensive side of their game. But Xhaka is largely the opposite: a feisty tackler increasingly adept on the ball.
A very left-footed player, his unusual range of skills recalls the solid but cultured style of one of Wenger’s old favourites, Emmanuel Petit, who helped Arsenal to the double in 1997/98.
The most obvious midfield partner for Xhaka in Arsenal’s usual 4-2-3-1 formation would be Santi Cazorla, a smaller, nippy pure playmaker who can use Xhaka’s defensive qualities to drift around midfield and dominate the ball.
However, there’s no reason to think Wenger can’t use Xhaka in a defensive-minded duo alongside Francis Coquelin or Mohamed Elneny, a tactical option he often used last season, or with more energetic, box-to-box midfielders like Aaron Ramsey or Jack Wilshere. There’s also the possibility of using Xhaka as the sole holding midfielder in a 4-3-3, a formation Wenger has occasionally deployed with some success.
Like every new signing, Xhaka will take time to adjust to his new surroundings. But with the midfielder appearing a perfect fit for English football, and with his transfer sealed particularly early in the summer, Arsenal fans should be confident he can make a flying start to life in the Premier League.2015 was a tough year for oil driller Schlumberger. Unless you were the CEO.
CEO Paal Kibsgaard received total compensation worth $18.3 million in 2015, the company reported, down only slightly from $18.5 million the year before.
The rest of Schlumberger didn't fare so well. The company cut 25,000 jobs during the year, or 20% of its workforce. Revenue was down 27%, and profit plunged 41%.
Schlumberger (SLB) shares tumbled 18%.
The weak results and layoffs are the result of the plunge in the price of oil.
The modest drop in Kibsgaard's compensation was the result of the performance of his pension plan. His base salary and stock were up from 2014 levels. The cash he took home jumped 12% to $5.2 million.
Related: Cheap oil is killing my job
Schlumberger is the first major company in the oil industry to report executive pay for 2016.Still some around
With the recent resignation of Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda as Slashdot editor after 14 years at the helm, a number of early Slashdotters came out of the woodwork to express their appreciation or comment on some aspect of the site's history.
This made me wonder: just how many early Slashdot users are still active on the site, anyway? The answer was higher than I expected, and not only due to long-gone users who returned yesterday to comment on Malda's departure.
I scraped the Slashdot userpages of anyone with a 3-digit or lower UID, which covers the people who signed up in the first few days after user accounts were implemented (in 1997). Slashdot had already existed for a bit at that point, but usernames previously were entered on a per-comment basis, like on a Wordpress blog, with proper account registration only coming later. I chose 3-digit UIDs as the cutoff because that's how long mine is, of course.
Of those 999 UIDs, 310 of them either: don't have accounts associated with them (or don't any longer, anyway), have never posted a comment, or must've posted their last comment in 1997 or 1998—Slashdot userpages only include comments from 1999 and later, due to a software change, so I can't say for sure, at least not without much more extensive scraping.
That leaves 689 early users who exist and have posted at least one comment between 1999 and today. Of those, 179 are still around, defined as having posted at least one comment in 2011. Did they all return just for resignation-of-Taco day? Twenty did. But 159 had been active in 2011 for reasons other than Malda resignations. That's actually higher than I expected; 16% of the 3-digit-or-less UID space, and 23% of those active since 1999. A quarter retention over more than a decade ain't bad. Looking at the distribution of most recent comments, the dropoff appears to be roughly linear, with 30–50 early users permanently leaving per year. If the linear trend continues, the last 3-digit Slashdotter will stop posting around 2015 or 2016.
Here's the overall retention graph, with one line using users' most recent comments as of today, and the other using them as of August 24, 2011, prior to the 20 early users returning to post about Taco's resignation (so e.g. if their last post before that had been in 2008, as with Hemos, they count as having dropped off after 2008):Abstract Risk-sensitive adaptive spatial organisation during group movement has been shown to efficiently minimise the risks associated with external ecological threats. Whether animals can draw on such behaviours when confronted with man-made threats is generally less clear. We studied road-crossing in a wild, but habituated, population of meerkats living in the Kalahari Desert, South Africa. We found that dominant females, the core member in meerkat social systems, led groups to the road significantly more often than subordinates, yet were consistently less likely to cross first. Our results suggest that a reshuffling occurs in progression order when meerkat groups reach the road. By employing a simple model of collective movement, we have shown that risk aversion alone may be sufficient to explain this reshuffling, but that the risk aversion of dominant females toward road crossing is significantly higher than that of subordinates. It seems that by not crossing first, dominant females avoid occupying the most risky, exposed locations, such as at the front of the group – a potential selfish strategy that also promotes the long-term stability and hence reproductive output of their family groups. We argue that our findings support the idea that animals can flexibly apply phylogenetically-old behavioural strategies to deal with emerging modern-day problems.
Citation: Perony N, Townsend SW (2013) Why Did the Meerkat Cross the Road? Flexible Adaptation of Phylogenetically-Old Behavioural Strategies to Modern-Day Threats. PLoS ONE 8(2): e52834. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0052834 Editor: Sean A. Rands, University of Bristol, United Kingdom Received: April 24, 2012; Accepted: November 22, 2012; Published: February 18, 2013 Copyright: © 2013 Perony, Townsend. 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: Funding was provided by University of Zurich and ETH Zurich. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Introduction When faced with a heightened risk of predation during group movements, animals often display adaptive spatial patterning to minimize danger. Sand fiddler crabs (Uca pugilator) and redshanks (Tringa totanus), for example, reduce the distance to their nearest group neighbour such that the whole flock becomes more cohesive during predation events [1], [2]. Such spatial re-orientation is thought to diminish relative predation risk by reducing an individual’s Domain of Danger – the area in which an animal is vulnerable to predation [3]. Given that Domain of Danger reduction always occurs at the expense of peripheral, subordinate group members, it has previously been referred to as “selfish herding” behaviour [3]. In contrast, animals can also spatially position themselves to reduce the danger experienced by other group members. Dominant male baboons (Papio cynocephalus), for example, occupy exposed socio-spatial positions, particularly the front and rear of the group, when moving through known risky areas [4]. Such a strategy is instead thought to serve a protective function, minimizing the risk experienced by more vulnerable group members [5]. With the continual encroachment of humans into the natural habitat of animals, not only ecological threats, but also man-made challenges, represent a considerable emerging danger. Over the last century, roads in particular have fragmented the habitats of a huge range of species, disturbing the natural movement of animals and ultimately hindering foraging behavior and potential mate finding [6]. Exactly how animals respond to such recent human-imposed threats is, however, surprisingly less clear [7]. Meerkats (Suricata suricatta), cooperatively breeding social mongoose, are exposed to a range of external ecological threats, including both terrestrial and aerial predators [8]. In recent times, human-induced threats, especially the encroachment of roads, have also begun to play an increasingly large role in the day-to-day lives of meerkats. We studied progression order and spatial disturbance in response to a single large and dangerous road in meerkat groups living in the Kalahari Desert, South Africa. For the groups whose home range is dissected by the road, traffic contributes substantially to overall mortality rates (Kalahari Meerkat Project, unpublished data). We therefore hypothesized that despite the relatively recent presence of the road, meerkats would draw on adaptive socio-spatial patterning that evolved in naturalistic risky contexts, to manage the dangers associated with encountering this unnatural obstacle within their territory. In line with previous studies on risk aversion in animals we focused primarily on the relative spatial position of the core dominant individual, which in the case of meerkat social systems, is the breeding female [9]. Given the importance of this key individual in maintaining the stability of the social group, we expected that dominant females would demonstrate greater risk aversion in response to the road than subordinates. Specifically, we predicted dominant females would minimise their relative risk through occupying more “protected” spatial positions during road-crossing, driven by a delay in tendency to cross the road first. We used a minimalistic model of collective movement [10] to quantitatively capture the extent of this risk-averse behaviour, depending on an individual's dominance status.
Methods Study Site and Subjects Observations of road crossings were conducted on 4 groups of wild, but habituated, meerkats at the Kalahari Meerkat Project (KMP), Kuruman River Reserve, South Africa [11]. Data was collected ad libitum during morning and evening observation sessions between September 2009 and July 2010. Road-crossing observations were restricted to a single main road running parallel to the Kuruman River Reserve (see Fig. 1). This road is particularly busy due to the high volumes of traffic travelling between popular tourist destinations within the Northern Cape. As part of the KMP`s long-term data collection, all animals were tagged with sub-cutaneous transponders and with dye markings for individual identification [9]. All subjects were habituated to a level that allowed close behavioural observations within 1 m. PPT PowerPoint slide
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Figure 1. Ground map of the Kuruman River Reserve (North is up) indicating the Kalahari Meerkat Project (blue area) and the main road running NE-SW (red). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0052834.g001 Observational Data Collection Road crossing was defined as when a complete group of meerkats terminated foraging, approached the road together and traversed it in a continuous, fluid motion. To avoid ambiguity in identifying progression order we did not consider events where meerkats approached the road together but then, due to ongoing external events, such as inter-group conflicts or predation events, split into subgroups, which then crossed independently. During road crossing events we recorded which individuals led the group (classed as the individual at the front) towards the direction of the road following termination of foraging. We specifically recorded if the individuals were dominant (one of the breeding pair) or subordinate and, when negotiating the road, the subsequent position of the leading individual, particularly if they remained at the front of the travelling group. To rule out the possibility that previous experience modulates risk sensitivity to the road, we compared the ages of subordinate individuals leading and crossing first with those who also led but did not cross first. Statistics Owing to the non-normal nature of the data, we employed non-parametric statistical tests. We used proportion tests to analyse the effect of dominance status on the likelihood of an individual leading the group to the road. The number of road-crossings led by subordinates and dominants was divided by the total number of dominant females and subordinate individuals involved in each road-crossing event allowing us to control for the fact that the relative proportion of dominant females to subordinates within a group was highly skewed. We then used binomial tests to investigate how dominant females and subordinates differed in their probability to cross the road first if they were leading. To calculate the expected level of chance we first calculated the frequency of crossing first given prior leading for each individual, and divided the sum by the total number of individuals. Exact Mann-Whitney U tests [12] were used to analyse the effect of age on the tendency to avoid crossing the road first when initially leading. All tests were two tailed and implemented in SPSS (v.19.0) and R (v. 2.12). Alpha values were set at 0.05. Self-propelled Particle Model To determine the magnitude of the perturbation that the group undergoes when reaching the road, we implemented the crossing situation in a self-propelled particle (SPP) model with a drift component towards the road and a deflecting barrier at the edge of the road. We used the general SPP model proposed by Vicsek et al. [13], which has been extensively studied in the context of collective motion and is arguably the de facto standard for minimalistic models of animal groups on the move [see 9, Chap. 5; 14]. The discrete expression of the motion in two dimensions reads: where X 1 and X 2 are the base vectors of the space (X 1 points towards the road and X 2 is perpendicular to it), and x i and v i are the position and velocity vectors of individual i, respectively. v 0 and v d are the constant norms of the coherent movement and the drift component towards the road, respectively. The unit vector which multiplies v 0 is the average direction of motion of all the individuals, and ε controls for the amount of stochastic noise in the system (η is uniformly distributed in [-η max,η max ]). We assume a fully-cohesive regime in which all individuals adapt their trajectory to one another's, so that the group does not split before reaching the road. In the simulations, we used η max = 0.3, which is around the threshold for ordered motion [13], and v d = v 0 /2, so that the collective dynamics of the movement are stronger than the drift component, but the group still reaches the road in a reasonable time. When the group reaches the road (a line at X 1 = X r parallel to X 2 ), the obstacle acts as a potential barrier by deflecting the particles whose energy is not high enough to cross it; in other terms, we assume an elastic collision between the immobile barrier and the moving particle. If Θ(t) is the direction of motion at time t, its forward component is F = v 0 cos(Θ(t))+v d. The particle hits the barrier if F>X r -X 1 (t). With a barrier of height H, there are two possible cases: The first case corresponds to the particle bouncing against the barrier, the second to the particle effectively crossing the barrier. For simplicity, we assume that the normal motion (parallel to X 2 ) is unaffected by the barrier, which does not change the results.
Results We recorded a total of 52 road-crossing events. Although dominant female meerkats contributed less to the overall group size in comparison to subordinates, they were significantly more likely to lead the group to the road (mean proportion of dominant females leading = 0.52, mean proportion of subordinates leading = 0.48, 2-tailed Proportion test with continuity correction, χ2 = 63.0, df = 1, p<0.001, see Fig. 2). On some occasions the dominant male was observed travelling towards the front of the group (pers. obsv.), however we never observed him to lead the group towards the road. PPT PowerPoint slide
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Figure 2. Probability of crossing the road first given prior leading, for both subordinate individuals and dominant females (*** = p<0.001). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0052834.g002 Despite leading more, dominant females were significantly less likely to remain at the front of the group and |
.
The hotel "never checked. They never searched, they never did anything while a young, 19-year-old disoriented girl was sitting in their freezer," Adam said. "Now there has to be an answer to how that happened. Better yet, there has to be an answer to why that happened."
On Friday afternoon, the village released six video clips from the early morning of Sept. 9, when Jenkins went missing.
The first two videos, from early Saturday, show Jenkins, her gait steady, walking with three others through a public part of the hotel. But in the next clip, about two hours later, she gets off an elevator alone, so unsteady she has to support herself on a wall.
Larry Rogers Jr. and Sam Adam Jr., attorneys for Kenneka Jenkins' mother, Tereasa Martin, said at a news conference Sept. 15, 2017, that they will conduct their own investigation and perhaps seek a second autopsy. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune) Larry Rogers Jr. and Sam Adam Jr., attorneys for Kenneka Jenkins' mother, Tereasa Martin, said at a news conference Sept. 15, 2017, that they will conduct their own investigation and perhaps seek a second autopsy. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune) SEE MORE VIDEOS
Two minutes later, in another clip, she reels down a hallway. Then she wanders around another passage, clearly disoriented. Finally, she totters through an empty kitchen, around a corner and out of sight.
The same surveillance camera, which appears to be motion-activated, next picks up activity at 8:34 p.m., when a person briefly enters the frame, looks around and leaves.
No one else enters the picture until 12:23 a.m. on Sept. 10, when a man goes around the same corner where Jenkins was last seen. A few seconds later, he walks quickly out of the frame and returns with a police officer. More officers soon arrive, hustling toward the corner.
Jenkins was pronounced dead at 12:48 a.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.
The video shows a body bag being removed at 4:53 a.m.
Kenneka Jenkins, 19, was pronouced dead early Sept. 10, 2017, after she was found in a walk-in freezer at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Rosemont. Since then, controversey has surrounded her death. (Tribune and Cook County medical examiner's office photos) (Tribune and Cook County medical examiner's office photos)
Jenkins had attended a party in a room of the Crowne Plaza that stretched into the early hours of Sept. 9. Her sister said she last spoke to her around 1:30 a.m. Jenkins' mother, Tereasa Martin, said that about 4 a.m. she received a call that Jenkins had gone missing.
In a 911 recording, Martin can be heard speaking to a police dispatcher a few hours later, relaying a version of events provided by Jenkins' friends:
"They said they went upstairs to get (a) cellphone … and (Jenkins) was standing in the lobby," she said. "When they came downstairs, she wasn't there anymore."
Martin asked if police could review surveillance footage from the hotel. She said she was worried because her daughter, who had a light tolerance for alcohol, had evidently been drinking — "One cup is too much for her" — and that the teen wasn't the type to disappear.
The dispatcher, noting that Jenkins was an adult and had been missing only a few hours, advised patience, saying it would take a while for detectives to get hold of the video.
"What I would recommend is just go home, relax a little bit, give it some time," he said. "(For) all we know she very well still could be in the room. She could just be passed out. You know how it is. You're drinking the night before, you get — you know what I mean."
The family ended up filing a missing persons report later that morning, Rosemont spokesman Gary Mack said, and police notified the hotel about 1:15 p.m. The hotel looked in all public areas and the floor on which the party was held but didn't find Jenkins, Mack said.
The family returned to the hotel about 6 p.m. and knocked on guest doors, trying to find witnesses. The hotel called police, and Martin said the officers who responded reviewed surveillance video and saw Jenkins "staggering" through the hotel about 3:20 a.m.
A second search ensued. That's when she was found dead in the freezer.
The medical examiner's office has yet to pronounce a cause or manner of death. A spokeswoman has said that determination might not come for weeks, pending further tests and investigation.
The case has been the subject of intense speculation on social media, with amateur detectives combing through videos apparently shot in the room before Jenkins disappeared.
Many have suggested online that she was murdered, but Rosemont police have consistently said they are conducting a death investigation, not a homicide probe.
At the news conference, Rogers suggested that Jenkins' life could have been saved, or at least that she would have been found more quickly, had hotel staff listened to her friends and mother when they came seeking help.
Jenkins' friends and family "were not given the assistance they needed. Assistance that probably, I suspect — I don't know — may have prevented us from being here today," Rogers said.
Martin, sitting between her attorneys, thanked everyone for their love and support.
"But I also want to know what happened," she said in a hushed voice. "I want to see it all. I want to see her actually walking into this freezer and closing herself within this freezer and freezing to death."
Chicago Tribune's Bob McCoppin contributed.
jkeilman@chicagotribune.com
wlee@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @JohnKeilman
Twitter @MidnoirCowboyBuy Photo Administrative counsel Bill Taylor, center-left, sits next to Sen. Floyd Prozanski as they hear testimony at the Senate Judiciary Committee at a public gun bill hearing on Feb. 6, 2014. Prozanski has introduced a very similar bill again this year that will again come before his committee. (Photo: Statesman Journal file)Buy Photo
An Oregon Senate committee will hear public testimony this week on a proposal by gun-control advocates to require a background check any time someone sells or gives a firearm to another person who isn't a relative. Here are five things to know about the proposal.
What it does
The bill requires gun buyers and sellers who aren't related to visit a licensed gun dealer that can, for a fee, run a background check through the Oregon State Police. Oregon law prohibits giving a gun to minors, felons, people with recent convictions for violent behavior or those who have been found by a court to have a mental illness.
If someone fails a background check, the State Police would be required to notify the local sheriff and police chief.
Background checks would not be required when someone transfers a gun to close relatives.
The seller of a gun would face a misdemeanor for a first offense, punishable by up to a year in jail and a $6,250 fine. A second offense would be a felony, with a potential sentence of up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
What they're saying
The debate is falling along familiar lines. Gun-control advocates say the bill would make it tougher for people who shouldn't have guns to get hold of them. They acknowledge that background checks won't prevent all gun-related violence, but they say the background-check requirements haven't caught up with the information tools of the Internet age.
"My goal is to keep individuals who shouldn't have access to guns from having easy access to guns," said Sen. Floyd Prozanski, a Eugene Democrat who is sponsoring the bill.
Gun-rights supporters say the bill would trample on their 2nd Amendment rights. They say the bill will only affect people who abide by the law, so criminals won't be deterred. They also complain that the Oregon State Police background-check system sometimes returns faulty results.
"If they were saying, 'Yes, it's an inconvenience for you people, but at least we're getting bad guys off the street,' I'd still object to it philosophically, but they'd have a practical argument," said Kevin Starrett, head of the Oregon Firearms Federation. "But they're not getting bad people off the street."
How to weigh in
The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a public hearing 8 a.m. Wednesday at the state Capitol in Salem. Members of the public are invited to testify.
Oregonians also can also email or call their senator. Contact information is on the Legislature's website, www.oregonlegislature.gov.
Prospects
After Democrats picked up two additional seats in November, the bill now faces much stronger prospects of success. The tougher challenge could be in the House, where lawmakers face more frequent elections and haven't been asked to weigh in recently on gun control.
National context
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence says Oregon would be the eighth state to require background checks on private sales and the fifth since the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Read or Share this story: http://stjr.nl/1CnzseYThe Cowboys need to pick up the phone, baby.
Week 1 has already started and the Los Angeles Rams are now moving forward without Aaron Donald. The fourth-year defensive tackle, drafted in the 2014 first round, is unhappy with his rookie deal, and wants to be paid according to his status as the league’s best interior defensive lineman. The Rams aren’t budging, not only frowning on rewarding a player who is sitting out and hurting his team on the field, but also not happy with a player demanding to be paid while still under team control for two more years.
There’s an easy solution to all of this. The Rams need to trade Donald to Dallas. He’d be Bob Lilly 2.0.
Dismiss all of the notions about never truly being one player away. Jerry, Stephen, Mr. Will McClay… Make it happen, captain.
Fans can’t wait to see what Wade Phillips would do with Donald? So imagine what Rod Marinelli, who groomed a young Warren Sapp, could do with him.
Aaron Donald is a SPECIAL kind of athlete. @AaronDonald97 pic.twitter.com/jq8z8Ofjev — Paul Maland (@PaulMalandNFL) August 2, 2017
The Cowboys with Aaron Donald would be a defensive masterpiece. Pairing a player who often times deserves to be triple-teamed, with up-and-coming defensive tackle Maliek Collins would be more than formidable. Collins can play nose tackle as well as three-technique in this defense. This could work, Donald as the new Bob Lilly and Collins as the new Jethro Pugh.
**READ: 5 Things to Watch for in Cowboys-Giants Matchup**
Dallas would likely have to give up two first-round picks for Donald, in addition to giving him a ridiculous new contract. It can be worked out, even with the club not signing Zack Martin yet. With Donald in tow, the Cowboys would be picking in the final four picks of the first round anyway, and they seem to already be showing a newfound mastery of the draft. They can still get great draft hauls without first rounders.
The Cowboys will be making some tough calls down the line with their stars. They still have multiple years of control over Dak Prescott and Ezekiel Elliott. It’s likely two seasons before they renegotiate with the quarterback and four for the running back.
There’s just under $12 million of cap space waiting for the Cowboys in 2018 after Jason Witten retiring and releasing DT Tyrone Crawford. They account for another $13.5 million in base salary on the 2019 cap.
Tony Romo’s dead money will have moss growing on its tombstone by then.
Dallas currently have $15 million of cap space to roll over from this year. There’s space to do an extension for Martin and give Donald the money he deserves.
When one factors in Donald won’t have to pay state taxes on the 8 games a year he’d play in Texas, compared to the outrageous tax rate of California?
Win.
Pay him. Pay Donald. Keep drafting young DEs, sign bargain vets who can only play 20 snaps a game. This dynamic duo would shatter pockets and disrupt everything. Who cares who is on the outside?
It is not Donald’s fault he was drafted by the Rams, nor is it his fault his first five years of service were promised to that franchise. Heck, it’s not even his choice the Rams relocated to Los Angeles last season. Hard and fast beliefs about when a player should be able to renegotiate his deal are archaic. Donald is clearly the best interior defender in the game (counting J.J. Watt as a defensive end) and he had no choice but to be where he is, nor for how much he is compensated. He couldn’t auction his services to the highest bidder, so when he obviously outplays his deal, why shouldn’t he try to get more money?
The CBA explicitly allows teams to negotiate with a player after three accrued seasons.
Aaron Donald has the 4th most QB hits in the last 3 seasons. Where does he rank among elite pass rushers? pic.twitter.com/X9yeIS2cj4 — NFL Network (@nflnetwork) July 9, 2017
The Rams insistence they will not negotiate with him is their choice. Not reporting to the team is Donald’s choice as well. By now, fans should no longer be in the simple mindset that a player who had no choice in situation, can’t demand to be rightfully compensated when he outplays his deal. Many first-round picks bust. Many go on to having just solid careers. Aaron Donald is a bonafide superstar and as such, he should be able to renegotiate his contract. If the Rams don’t want to, then the Rams should be forced to suffer the consequences of Donald pursuing the only leverage he has, sitting out.
Here’s the skinny of it all.
Donald will not accrue a season towards free agency this year no matter what. He didn’t report to the team by August 5. Players must report at least 30 days prior to the start of the regular season or else they vacate the accrued season.
However, because Donald was a first-round pick and the Rams enabled the fifth-year option, it means nothing. A player needs just four accrued seasons in order to be an unrestricted free agent. As Donald is under contract for 2018, that will serve as his fourth accrued year and he’ll be eligible for free agency, or the franchise tag, after next season.
Yes, the Rams could lose Donald for the entire 2017 campaign.
Next season, Donald can miss all of the offseason work again, then report 30 days before the 2018 regular season commences, play six games and then sit out again. Bam, he’s a free agent, and instead of having the game’s best player for two seasons, the Rams get six games.
This obviously isn’t ideal for Donald, either. Sitting out an entire season, and then the final two-thirds of the following season, isn’t a great look, nor is it conducive to maintaining his skill level.
However, suffering two years worth of aches and pains just because other people developed a system that traps you in a certain salary range isn’t ideal either. Players only have so much wear and tear they can put on their bodies.
The Rams aren’t close to competing, and while Donald is young enough to be the biggest building block in their new direction, one player doesn’t make that team. He could, however, be the domino that sets Dallas up for immediate Super Bowl aspirations.
Will Los Angeles move him? Probably not. But with no end in sight for his holdout, now is definitely the time to check in with the Rams’ GM Les Snead and see how he’s feeling about things.Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Advertisement Soldiers and tanks have appeared in Bangkok after Thai authorities declared a state of emergency, a day after protests stopped a major Asia summit. But protesters broke into the interior ministry and at one point attacked a car they thought was carrying PM Abhisit Vejjajiva. He was not inside. They have blocked a number of busy road junctions and at least one railway, and taken buses and two armoured vehicles. The prime minister has threatened "tough measures" to end the protests. But the army has so far not moved against the crowds. Hospitals have been asked to prepare for casualties in case they do. The government must implement further measures under the state of emergency
Abhisit Vejjajiva
Thai Prime Minister
In pictures: Thai emergency Thai battle of wills heads for climax Q&A: Thailand protests Protesters have been blocking access to key government offices in the capital for the past week, but the collapse of the summit was a huge embarrassment to Mr Abhisit and he has vowed to restore order, says the BBC's Jonathan Head in Bangkok. Our correspondent says that what began as a show of strength by the government's opponents two weeks ago has turned into a battle for control of the capital which neither side feel they can afford to lose. One of the leaders of the protests was arrested after the PM vowed to prosecute them. Arisman Pongruengrong, who spearheaded the protests by supporters of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, was arrested on Sunday after returning to Bangkok from the resort of Pattaya - venue of the cancelled summit talks. 'Incompatible' actions Under the state of emergency, gatherings of more than five people can be banned, media reports can be censored, and the army can be deployed to help police maintain order. But protesters have continued roaming around the streets. "It's not right. To declare the state of emergency is only to hurt the country more than before," one woman protester said. PM Abhisit says the emergency is meant to restore order Earlier, there were chaotic scenes at the interior ministry, where protesters forced their way into the building as Mr Abhisit was delivering a televised address to announce the state of emergency. They then attacked a car they thought was carrying the prime minister, hitting it with sticks and concrete slabs and throwing rocks and furniture at it. The protesters have been demanding the resignation of the prime minister, and have been urged by their leaders to attack him and his government at every opportunity. Soldiers fired warning shots as red-shirted protesters stormed the ministry, but initially made no attempt to stop them. In a new address, Mr Abhisit said: "I want to tell protesters that you have no right to break the law or to restrict other people's rights. "Otherwise the government must implement further measures under the state of emergency." His deputy warned against excesses by the security forces. "Authorities, policemen and soldiers, please practise your authority accordingly, and strictly within the law. Otherwise, it will bring more damage to the country," he said. 'Real change' Last year, the government imposed a state of emergency on several occasions, but the army refused to enact the measures.
A very small element of the Thai people seem to have gone totally insane and are hell-bent on destroying their country which has financial troubles enough without these maniacs
Thai Eye, Bangkok and Chiang Mai
Thai emergency: Your emails Send us your comments It is unclear if the army will be prepared to take action this time around. The state of emergency was last used to crack down on yellow-shirted protesters who had laid siege to Bangkok's airports last November. The crisis eventually led to Mr Abhisit's government taking over from allies of Thaksin. Our correspondent in Bangkok says the problem for Mr Abhisit is that he rode to power on the back of protests that were just as illegal, and may look hypocritical if he only goes after the red-shirted protesters who embarrassed him. Pre-summit street protests in the capital this week drew up to 100,000 people. Mr Thaksin himself, who remains in self-imposed exile to avoid a two-year jail term for corruption, has welcomed the protest in Pattaya. "I thank the Red Shirts in Pattaya who showed strength," he told a rally of supporters in Bangkok by telephone late on Saturday. "In the next few days we will see real change." Officials say months of turmoil have lost the country $6bn in tourist revenue, just as the economy is taking a hit from collapsing exports.
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionThe National announced their Grateful Dead tribute album all the way back in 2011, but now it’s finally coming out, and based off of the guest list, it’ll be worth the wait. The 59-track, six-hour-long box set, Day of the Dead, is supporting the HIV/AIDS nonprofit Red Hot, and features a stellar roster of collaborators. Among the artists covering various Dead songs include the National, the Flaming Lips, Courtney Barnett, Wilco, Jenny Lewis, the War on Drugs, ANOHNI, Kurt Vile, Tunde Adebimpe from TV on the Radio, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Perfume Genius and Sharon Van Etten, My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, Mumford & Sons, Lucius, and Bela Fleck. But that’s just the start of this massive collection. Check out the album art and full track list below, and look for Day of the Dead when it finally comes out on May 20 via 4AD.
Day of the Dead: track list:
Thunder (Vol. 1):
1. The War on Drugs, “Touch of Grey”
2. Phosphorescent, Jenny Lewis & Friends, “Sugaree”
3. Jim James & Friends, “Candyman”
4. Moses Sumney, Jenny Lewis & Friends, “Cassidy”
5. Bruce Hornsby and DeYarmond Edison, “Black Muddy River”
6. Ed Droste, Binki Shapiro & Friends, “Loser”
7. The National, “Peggy-O”
8. Kurt Vile and the Violators, “Box of Rain” (feat. J Mascis)
9. Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Friends, “Rubin and Cherise”
10. Perfume Genius, Sharon Van Etten & Friends, “To Lay Me Down”
11. Courtney Barnett, “New Speedway Boogie”
12. Mumford & Sons, “Friend of the Devil”
13. Lucius, “Uncle John’s Band”
14. The Lone Bellow & Friends, “Me and My Uncle”
15. Lee Ranaldo, Lisa Hannigan & Friends, “Mountains of the Moon”
16. Anohni and yMusic, “Black Peter”
17. Bryce Dessner: “Garcia Counterpoint”
18. Daniel Rossen, Christopher Bear and the National, “Terrapin Station (Suite)” (feat. Josh Kaufman, Conrad Doucette, So Percussion and Brooklyn Youth Chorus)
19. Angel Olsen, “Attics of My Life”
20. Wilco and Bob Weir, “St. Stephen (Live)”
Lightning (Vol. 2):
1. Bonnie “Prince” Billy, “If I Had the World to Give”
2. Phosphorescent & Friends, “Standing on the Moon”
3. Charles Bradley and Menahan Street Band, “Cumberland Blues”
4. Tallest Man on Earth & Friends, “Ship of Fools”
5. Bonnie “Prince” Billy & Friends, “Bird Song”
6. The National, “Morning Dew”
7. Marijuana Deathsquads, “Truckin'”
8. Cass McCombs, Joe Russo & Friends, “Dark Star”
9. Nightfall of Diamonds, “Nightfall of Diamonds”
10. Tim Hecker, “Transitive Refraction Axis for John Oswald”
11. Lucinda Williams & Friends, “Goin’ Down the Road Feeling Bad”
12. Tunde Adebimpe, Lee Ranaldo & Friends, “Playing in the Band”
13. Local Natives, “Stella Blue”
14. Tal National, “Eyes of the World”
15. Bela Fleck, “Help on the Way”
16. Orchestra Baobab, “Franklin’s Tower”
17. Luluc With Xylouris White, “Till the Morning Comes”
18. The Walkmen, “Ripple”
19. Richard Reed Parry with Caroline Shaw and Little Scream, “Brokedown Palace” (feat. Garth Hudson)
Sunshine (Vol. 3):
1. Real Estate, “Here Comes Sunshine”
2. Unknown Mortal Orchestra, “Shakedown Street”
3. Hiss Golden Messenger, “Brown Eyed Woman”
4. This Is the Kit, “Jack-a-Roe”
5. Daniel Rossen and Christopher Bear, “High Time”
6. The Lone Bellow & Friends, “Dire Wolf”
7. Winston Marshall, Kodiak Blue and Shura, “Althea”
8. Orchestra Baobab, “Clementine Jam”
9. Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, “China Cat Sunflower – I Know You Rider”
10. Bill Callahan, “Easy Wind”
11. Ira Kaplan & Friends, “Wharf Rat”
12. The Rileys (Terry and Gyan Riley), “Estimated Prophet”
13. Man Forever, So Percussion and Oneida, “Drums – Space”
14. Fucked Up, “Cream Puff War”
15. The Flaming Lips, “Dark Star”
16. s t a r g a z e, “What’s Become of the Baby”
17. Vijay Iyer, “King Solomon’s Marbles”
18. Mina Tindle & Friends, “Rosemary”
19. Sam Amidon & Friends, “And We Bid You Goodnight”
20. The National With Bob Weir, “I Know You Rider (live)”Donald Trump Donald John TrumpREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails Trump urges North Korea to denuclearize ahead of summit Venezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump MORE ripped the nation’s top brass to a room full of military veterans and active service members on Wednesday, calling the U.S. generals serving President Obama an embarrassment to the country.
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“The generals under Barack Obama Barack Hussein ObamaChicago's next mayor will be a black woman Obama portraits brought more than 1 million visitors to National Portrait Gallery in first year With low birth rate, America needs future migrants MORE and Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails County GOP in Minnesota shares image comparing Sanders to Hitler Holder: 'Time to make the Electoral College a vestige of the past' MORE have not been successful,” the GOP presidential nominee said at a military-focused forum. “Under the leadership of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton the generals have been reduced to rubble, reduced to a point where it is embarrassing for our country.”
NBC anchor Matt Lauer pressed Trump on the point, asking if he had lost faith entirely in the U.S. military.
Trump tempered his response to some degree in the follow-up.
“I have great faith in the military, great faith in certain of the commanders, but no faith in Hillary Clinton or the leadership,” Trump said. “She’s been there for 30 years, we need change, we have to have it.”Someone dropped a lot of money on an Apple computer on Wednesday, and it has nothing to do with the fancy new 5K Retina iMac. In fact, the computer was built in 1976.
An Apple-1 computer — which was among the first computers developed by Apple — sold for $905,000 at a Bonhams New York auction, almost twice its highest estimate, according to the Bonhams auction house in New York City.
The antique computing device was built by Steve Wozniak in Steve Jobs' family garage, or debatably his sister's bedroom, almost four decades ago. The Apple-1 spurred the onslaught of the personal computer that would transform Apple into the massive tech company it is today.
Image: Bonhams
A representative from the Henry Ford Museum clutched the winning bid. The museum chronicles tech breakthroughs and innovation in the United States.
This is one of the first 50 Apple-1 computers, which Jobs and Wozniak built for electronics retailer Byte Shop. The computers first sold for $666.66 — a tiny fraction of the price the computer went for this week. The auctioned-off Apple-1 includes an intact motherboard, vintage keyboard and monitor and a custom wooden-box power supply.
Apple-1s are extremely rare, and buyers pay good money to get their hands on them. Last year, an Apple-1 sold for $671,400 in Germany to an anonymous entrepreneur identified only as from the "Far East".Estrogen causes wounds in women to heal slower than in men - who have lower levels of estrogen - says a new study published in the April 2012 issue of the FASEB Journal. In the report, scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, provide the first evidence that mild injury response in the eye is fundamentally different in males and females because of estrogen. This discovery provides new clues for successfully treating a wide range of inflammatory diseases such as dry eye disease, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, and scleroderma.
"We hope that our finding will spur research efforts into delineating sex-specific differences and estrogen regulation of intrinsic circuits that determine the outcome of healthy and routine injury responses," said Karsten Gronert, Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work from the University of California, Berkeley, Vision Science Program, School of Optometry in Berkeley, Calif. "Auto-immune diseases in general are not triggered by a single event; hence, understanding what leads to a recurrent dysregulation of fundamental injury responses may help us treat and/or prevent the development of female-specific diseases."
To make this discovery, Gronert and colleagues administered a mild abrasion injury to the front of the eye of genetically similar male and female mice, and analyzed wound healing by image analysis. To test the role of estrogen, they gave male mice estrogen eye drops and/or drugs that activate specific estrogen receptors. Gene expression of essential enzymes was quantified for the formation of protective lipid signals, specific receptors that mediate their bioactivity, as well as estrogen receptors in mouse corneas and human/mouse epithelial cell cultures. The formation of protective lipid signals was analyzed by a mass-spectrometry based lipidomic method. They found that estrogen negatively affects a highly evolved protective lipid circuit, called "15-lipoxygenase-Lipoxin A4" that has recently emerged as an important protective pathway in many diseases. This pathway balances the activity of pro-inflammatory signals to promote wound healing and to keep inflammation within safe ranges.
"This study goes a long way to explaining gender differences in inflammation and its resolution," said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of the FASEB Journal. "It's long been known that women suffer more than men from chronic inflammatory diseases such as lupus or rheumatoid arthritis; this study suggests that estrogen itself is responsible for that difference and pinpoints the molecular pathways that estrogen affects. Molecules that promote the resolution of inflammation show promise as new treatments for autoimmune disease."
Explore further Study shows estrogen works in the brain to keep weight in check
Provided by Federation of American Societies for Experimental BiologyCall for end to 'perverted' race-based welfare
Updated
One of Australia's foremost Indigenous thinkers is calling for an end to race-based entitlement.
In a landmark speech at the Melbourne Writers' Festival on Sunday night, the University of Melbourne's Chair of Indigenous Studies, Professor Marcia Langton, proposed a social security and wider policy system based only on economic need, and not Aboriginality.
She said it would help end a "perverted" sense of entitlement, as well as stop the perception that non-Aboriginal people may be taking advantage of the system.
What do you think of the proposal? Read ABC reader comments below, or on Facebook or Twitter.
In an interview with the ABC before her speech, which was part of the "Big Ideas" series, Professor Langton explained how she hoped to help end what she calls the "friction" between bringing Indigenous people into mainstream society, but also continuing to acknowledge their status as essentially different.
If we dispense with that definition of Aboriginal people and treat Aboriginal people as First Peoples - that is our status derives from us being here before settlement - not on the basis of race but an historical argument, then Aboriginal people become citizens with an attribute that is political, not racial. Professor Marcia Langton
"The Constitution and scores of Parliamentary acts at the federal and state level define Aboriginal people as a race," she said.
"If we dispense with that definition of Aboriginal people and treat Aboriginal people as First Peoples - that is our status derives from us being here before settlement - not on the basis of race but an historical argument, then Aboriginal people become citizens with an attribute that is political, not racial.
"And if we make that the definition of being Aboriginal... then a lot of rubbish in the policy world falls away.
"It's not possible then for Aboriginal people to argue that perverted sense of entitlement to government largesse on the basis of race.
"They should only be able to argue for that kind of largesse on the basis of need, in other words economic disadvantage - actual economic disadvantage."
Professor Langton said these changes would mean less misinformation being spread about Indigenous people and welfare.
"You won't have what Andrew Bolt, Pauline Hanson and so many Australians are angry about, and that is a resentment towards people claiming to be Aboriginal, purportedly in order to gain some financial benefit," she said.
I heartily approve without any reservations. We are Australians and that is the end of the matter. There should be no exceptions based on colour, race or creed. Tonyy, via story comment. Read all of the comments below
"Of course it's not true in the main, but there is an element of truth with it.
"But my concern is not with them, my concern is with Aboriginal people themselves who add to their own distinctly unfortunate position in society by being complicit in what is essentially a racial construct and then not stepping up to the mark."
Limited by race
Sorry, this video has expired Video: Professor Langton raised eyebrows with her comments about race entitlements (7pm TV News VIC)
Professor Langton said that some Indigenous people unwittingly and unconsciously allow themselves to be limited by race notions.
"Of course many Aboriginal people are awake to this problem and vote with their feet - they walk away from this kind of categorisation," she said.
There's a growing Aboriginal middle class who pay for their children to go to private school, for instance, and they don't accept government benefits, and that section of Aboriginal society is ignored by the media and by the public and by government policy. Professor Marcia Langton
"There's a growing Aboriginal middle class who pay for their children to go to private school, for instance, and they don't accept government benefits, and that section of Aboriginal society is ignored by the media and by the public and by government policy."
When asked to give examples of "rubbish" policies which might be eliminated under this new philosophy, Professor Langton drew on CDEP or "work for the dole" initiatives.
"The impact of policies like the Community Development Employment Program, which allows Aboriginal people to stay on the netherworld of welfare dependency as if that was some kind of real job and not be forced out into the economy to find a job - wages which are paid for by some actual productivity," she said.
"Welfare dependency has a large reach in the Aboriginal world - much larger than in the rest of Australia - because there are so many programs, and all these programs are constructed, when you get down to the essence, on the belief that Aborigines can't do it because they are racially different."
But what of government policies which are designed to preserve Indigenous cultural heritage? Professor Langton says they would not be lost.
I am an Aboriginal man with two teenage sons, please tell me where I can go to join this line for "black money"... I have never been eligible for welfare... To perpetuate the myth that the contrary is the case is bell ringing. Read all of the comments below. Noel Niddrie, via Facebook
"If we define Aboriginal people as descended from the First Peoples, then yes, cultural heritage, language maintenance and a range of issues become very important policy issues," she said.
"They have to do with the right to identify as Indigenous and to maintain cultural and linguistic traditions and other traditions like land traditions - and these are all set out in the Declaration on Human Rights.
"They would be legitimate policies argued on the basis of a first people status and not a race theory."
Topics: aboriginal, welfare, australia
First postedThe Xbox One currently sits atop Amazon's "Most Wished" list for video games, outpacing the PlayStation 4, which sits in the second position. Both consoles remain sold out at the retailer (via DualShockers).
Meanwhile, Nintendo's Wii U is featured on the list in the 37th position. Though the Wii U is so far behind the Xbox One and PS4, Super Mario 3D World is sixth on the "Most Wished" list, ahead of many Xbox One and PS4 games.
This list may not tell the whole story about platform popularity, as there are three PS4 SKUs in the top 40, compared to two for the Xbox One.
Amazon's "Most Wished" lists are based on the products most often added to wishlists and registries. These lists are updated on a daily basis.
Xbox One and PS4 sales are currently locked in a dead heat, with both systems having sold more than 2 million units each since launch last month.At first blush, it seemed like a minor announcement: $8.2-million in funding to open up a steep road to winter drivers on federal land in Quebec City.
For the Harper government, however, it was a major deal as the Prime Minister, three of his ministers and six other members of the Conservative caucus showed up for the event. In addition to providing a cheque for the redevelopment of Gilmour Hill, Stephen Harper wanted to showcase his renewed commitment to making up lost ground in Quebec, now that he has a new team in place.
Mr. Harper has just reshaped his Quebec operations, getting rid of his top Quebec adviser a few weeks after replacing his regional minister from the province. Conservative insiders said the moves aim to place more energetic faces at the forefront of the government's operations in Quebec, with an eye on reclaiming some of the seats – mainly in and around Quebec City – that were lost to the NDP in 2011.
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The latest change happened in the Prime Minister's Office, where Catherine Loubier, a former Conservative staffer, is returning to operate as Quebec adviser after a stint in the private sector in Montreal. She will be replacing André Bachand |
to loosen the midnight closures and can’t accommodate holiday changes. The maintenance push has already been vetted and approved by the Federal Transit Administration, which was given oversight of Metro safety last year after a deadly smoke incident, and it addresses concerns raised by the National Transportation Safety Board. The goal of Metro’s intricate schedule is to squeeze three years of much-needed work into about a year’s time.
“By closing the system at midnight every night and expanding weekday maintenance opportunities, the SafeTrack plan addresses FTA and NTSB safety recommendations, accelerates work to eliminate maintenance backlogs and restores Metro infrastructure to good health,” Metro officials said in a statement. On the Pentagon City mall, they added, “careful consideration was given to properly prioritize this maintenance work while ensuring the least amount of impact on riders.”
Bowser also asked the transit agency to “reduce inefficiencies” by moving buses from low-ridership areas to places hit hard by the repair work. Her transportation chief, Leif Dormsjo, pointed to the shutdown of the Stadium-Armory and Potomac Avenue stations starting June 18. Dormsjo said Metro’s plan to add 40 buses as alternatives during most of the projects won’t come close to matching the capacity of rail. He calls it merely “lifeline service.”
Metro says its rail cars can hold up to 175 people — more than 1,000 in a six-car train. The agency’s larger “articulated” buses hold about 100 people.
Metro says it won’t pull buses from sparse routes to bridge that gulf, arguing that “many Metrobus riders depend on the existing network as their only mode of transportation.” Metro officials said selected routes will be supplemented, but it is unclear how much extra capacity the agency can find.
Businesses face reality
There’s been a learning curve. Some business leaders weren’t clear about what their companies faced before a series of urgent meetings over the past two weeks. “It’s been surprising how people just don’t get that when a station is shut, that means the train doesn’t go through,” Dinegar said.
The trade group’s members will soon survey employees on how they’ll be affected and whether they’re ready to telework. Firms are stockpiling laptops and testing their remote networks. Others are trying to arrange backup transportation.
Some statistics may seem comforting — but really aren’t, Dinegar said. Metro says the work starting Saturday will have a “major impact” on 73,000 trips each weekday. That’s roughly 10 percent of all weekday Metro trips. “It doesn’t sound that big,” Dinegar said.
But if thousands of Metro commuters pile into their cars for solo rides downtown, already-clogged routes such as Interstate 66 will get worse, causing ripples across the region, he said. “ ‘Ripple’ sounds like a day at the beach. It’s not a ‘ripple.’ It’s going to have impacts up and down the line,” Dinegar said. “You will begin looking at people traveling in a car by themselves during this as selfish.”
[Here’s what Metro found during the emergency one-day shutdown]
Transportation planners say persuading commuters, even those far from a particular “safety surge,” to carpool, take transit, shift their commuting hours or stay home will be crucial for the region to function well in coming months.
During a one-day emergency Metro shutdown in March, more drivers took to the roads very early, while fewer than usual drove later in the morning, leaving overall morning peak traffic slightly lighter than normal, according to a preliminary analysis by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. Whether drivers will heed similar warnings and alter their routines for up to several weeks at a time is an unanswered question.
Warnings for commuters
Metro spokeswoman Sherri Ly said that while the transit agency has done some rider outreach, including full-page ads in newspapers, the real push will begin Tuesday. She said Metro is launching a major effort this week in part because the agency’s research has found that people often don’t pay attention to upcoming events until they are close to happening.
Commuters passing through stations including Metro Center, L’Enfant Plaza, Rosslyn and Fort Totten can expect to see “street teams” handing out brochures, in multiple languages, about the massive project, which involves work on virtually every line in the system.
Ly said officials will post signs in stations, air radio spots, and take out ads in English- and Spanish-language newspapers. Riders with registered SmarTrip cards and those who have signed up for Metro Alerts can expect to receive SafeTrack updates. Ly said Metro is also depending on its regional partners — the District and counties served by the rail system, as well as area businesses — to spread the word. “We’re all in this together,” she said.
[Fairfax to add bus service to assist in year-long Metro SafeTrack disruptions]
Fairfax County is adding buses to the Pentagon to try to dissuade workers from driving on their own. Arlington is encouraging workers to telework or walk. Officials also hope to get more people to consider biking. The Office of Personnel Management has told individual federal agencies to decide how many employees might work later hours or telecommute. Ride-hailing firms such as Uber are pushing their multi-passenger carpool services. Chevy Chase, Md.-based Geico is bringing in new vans to pick up employees and bombarding workers with daily warnings.
“I think everybody’s going to know what June 4th Day is,” said Deborah Lipsey, a Geico human relations manager.
The fact that there will be 15 separate repair projects of varying lengths in varying locales makes gaming out — and communicating — the impact a challenge, said Craig DeAtley, who heads emergency planning for MedStar Washington Hospital Center.
[Here’s Uber’s plan for getting you around during SafeTrack]
“We sometimes use the term ‘organized chaos.’ It’s an organized disruption of people’s lives, or a semi-organized disruption of people’s lives,” DeAtley said.
Between 750 and 900 of the MedStar system’s 6,500 nurses, doctors, food-service staffers and other workers take Metro one or more times a week, DeAtley said. Managers are shifting employee shuttle routes and adding off-site parking.
“It’s not like we’re trying to solve the problem for every individual who works at the center. It’s a statistically important but not a statistically overwhelming issue for us,” DeAtley said. “It comes back to personal responsibility, with planning on leaving early to come to work and realizing, as tired as you are, it’s likely to take you longer to come home after work.”
From denial to acceptance
It took Vanessa Huggins years to get comfortable riding Metro again.
After the terror and chaos of 9/11, when her Metro commute included seeing smoke rising from the Pentagon, she was too spooked to ride the train. But for about six years now, she’s been getting to Genesis 1 Hair Galaxy with a carefully calibrated mix of Metrorail and bus. She checks an app mid-trip to see which station and transfer will get her there with the least friction.
“I’m chasing buses,” she says.
For the past few days, she’s been testing the commute she’ll face starting Oct. 10. It’s been adding roughly 25 minutes each way, a 50 percent boost in time wasted. And that’s without anyone else trying to do the same thing.
If things get bad, the salon’s owner, Melba May, said she’ll help out.
“I’ll have to go pick her up, because I can’t work without her,” May said.
Sitting in Huggins’s well-worn chair, customer Tenina Sutherland said it’s a shame what Metro has become. “It just seems ridiculous to shut down. What do you mean you’re shutting down for 23 days? What is that?” she said.
But Huggins has moved on to acceptance. She just wants a safe ride.
“I’m fine with it. I’m not mad at them,” Huggins said. “They have to do what they have to do.”
Lori Aratani contributed to this report.Yesterday, Jim Green, anti-nuclear spokesman for ‘Friends of the Earth’ in Australia, published an opinion article on Climate Spectator entitled “Fukushima apologies and apologists“. This piece included an attack on Geoff Russell and me, in which he demanded that we make an apology. Today they published our response, which I reproduce below.
———————-
It’s been interesting to see the media response to the third anniversary of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Has the focus been on mourning and commemorating the 18,000 deaths or on kicking the anti-nuclear can over the triple meltdown at Fukushima which killed nobody?
Jim Green’s recent Climate Spectator article neglected any mention of the 18,000 deaths caused by the quake and tsunami and chose instead to fiercely debate whether the meltdowns had killed anybody. Of the 18,000 actual deaths, many were due to engineers or penny pinching local officials designing or building protective sea walls for a much smaller tsunami than the one which actually arrived. They were wrong and thousands died. Green is predictably silent about these engineering failures which killed thousands and only has eyes for the nuclear failures which didn’t.
This is classic Green. Always trying distract people from thinking about the big issue. The big issue is climate change and whether nuclear power should be part of the global response. The way to come to a rational decision is to weigh up the pros and cons.
Pick a number from Green’s estimates of the number of cancers that might be caused over the next 30 years by Fukushima radiation and write it down as a con along with whatever figure you’d like to put down for the Chernobyl toll of premature deaths. On the other side you should note the 1.8 million premature deaths already prevented by nuclear power by reducing the toxic pollution from coal fired power plants. You should also write down about 64 gigatonnes of CO2 saved by current nuclear plants.
At that point, it’s pretty much a slam dunk, you could stop writing. Any negative impacts of nuclear power have been swamped by the positive impacts.
But it’s useful to build another list of pros and cons which represent the impacts of the anti-nuclear movement over the past few decades.
On the pro side of the ledger will be the accidents we didn’t have because we built coal power stations instead of nuclear. Until very recently, the anti-nuclear movement has protested any nuclear construction vigorously and been totally silent about coal, so this is a fair comparison.
So what if we had continued the nuclear rollout of the 1970s and now had 10 times as many reactors producing all of our electricity? We’d have had a few more accidents, how many? Let’s say 10. So write down however many premature deaths you think is reasonable on the pro side and now on the other side write down the saving of 18 million premature fossil fuel related deaths together with the saving of 640 gigatonnes of CO2. Note that this anti-nuclear consequence of some 640 gigatonnes of CO2 has single handedly delivered us into the gaping jaws of a horribly elevated risk of dangerous climate change. What do you write down for that?
But let’s go back to that 1.8 million premature death saving estimate. The authors were NASA climate scientists Pushker Kharecha and living legend James Hansen. It was a very conservative estimate. In places like China and India, nuclear has been displacing not just coal, but wood fires in people’s living areas. Wood cooking stoves annually kill about half a million children under 5 years of age with an added illness toll much larger. Hansen has recently written an opinion piece with the striking title of ‘World’s Greatest Crime against Humanity and Nature’.
What’s he talking about?
Hansen wants the US to assist China with its nuclear rollout because he thinks it’s blindingly obvious that without nuclear, there is simply no way to avoid dangerous climate change. As part of the argument Hansen charges those who believe in a non-nuclear 100 percent renewable response to climate change with the major responsibility for the rise of both gas fracking and the exploitation of tar sands and other unconventional oil technologies. This is supported by falling natural gas production during the US nuclear roll and the subsequent resurgence after the anti-nuclear movement got spurred on by the Three Mile Island meltdown and Chernobyl.
But we suspect Hansen may be wrong about one thing … which is that given the astonishing Chinese progress in nuclear technology in recent years, we’d be thinking that it might be the US who need Chinese production engineering assistance, but that’s another issue.
———————-
Geoff Russell is an author with qualifications in mathematics and philosophy. Barry Brook is an environmental scientist and director of climate science at the University of Adelaide’s Environment Institute.Killer Mike gave a powerful speech at a Bernie Sanders campaign rally at Claflin University in Orangeburg, South Carolina yesterday (February 27).
Throughout his speech, the Atlanta rapper heavily criticized fellow Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton for her record on race, particularly referencing the way in which a young #BlackLivesMatter activist was treated after confronting Clinton at a private fundraiser in Charleston, South Carolina on Wednesday, footage of which can be viewed below.
Killer Mike subsequently compared Clinton’s reaction to that of Sanders, who, back in August, was interrupted by a #BlackLivesMatter rally in Seattle. Unlike Clinton, who quickly quelled the small protest, Sanders moved to one side and allowed the activists to speak and voice their opinion.
“When you have an opportunity to tell two Black girls to ‘shut up and get off stage’ and you don’t, and you shake their hand and smile and you step to the side and you listen, that is a firm difference from turning around and staring at a little Black girl and saying, ‘Shut up. I’ll talk to you later. You’re being rude.’ Or allowing people to say that to her,” Killer Mike said.
“I’m gonna tell you, the proof is in the pudding every time,” Killer Mike continued. “If I could find a picture of you from 51 years ago chained to a Black woman, protesting segregation, and I know 51 years later you’re willing to fold your arms, hold your head, and listen to two Black girls yell and scream, rightfully so, as opposed to someone who will tell you to ‘shut up’ after they read your own words, as opposed to someone who will tell you ‘later’ when it comes to your children dying in the streets, I know that the only person that I have the conscience to vote for is Bernard Sanders. I know that the only person that my logical beautiful Black mind will allow me to vote for is Senator Bernie Sanders. And I want to tell the other side, I know from going around and shaking hands and hugging these beautiful Black faces of South Carolina, that goddamn firewall got a crack in it.”
Killer’s Mike’s powerful speech in South Carolina, whereby he slams Hillary Clinton’s record on race, can be viewed below:
For additional Killer Mike and Bernie Sanders coverage, watch the following DX Daily:(CNN) Maine Gov. Paul LePage defended monuments to the Confederacy in a radio interview on Tuesday, claiming that 7,600 Mainers fought for the South and that the war was initially about land, not slavery.
Two Civil War historians contacted by told CNN disputed LePage's assertions.
"What was the war? If you really truly read and study the Civil War, it was turned into a battle for the slaves, but initially — I mean, 7,600 Mainers fought for the Confederacy," LePage, a Republican, said in an interview with Maine radio station WVOM. "And they fought because they were concerned about — they were farmers — and they were concerned about their land. Their property. It was a property rights issue as it began. The President of the United States, who was a very brilliant politician, really made it about slavery to a great degree."
Slaves were considered property up to and during the Civil War.
LePage also said that removing confederate monuments could lead to the removal of history books and monuments to the Oklahoma City bombing and the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. The Sun Journal first reported LePage's comments.
Jamie Kingman Rice, the director of Library Service at the Maine Historical Society, told CNN that LePage's 7,600 figure "is not a number that is known to the research community."
David Blight, Civil War historian and professor at Yale, told CNN in an interview that it was doubtful more than a handful of Mainers fought for the Confederacy. The state of Maine was one of the strongest supporters of the Union.
Blight also took issue with LePage's claim that the Civil War was initially a conflict over land.
"That's patented nonsense. It's appalling degree of ignorance and misinformation by a governor of a New England state, or any state for that matter," he said.
Blight reiterated that the war was fought over slavery and its expansion into new territories.
"This war was rooted in the problem racial slavery and its expansion, and the ways in which that issue tore apart the American political system and then tore apart the Union," Blight said. "And to say that the war was only in the interest of farmers worried about their property rights is beyond ridiculous in the 21st century."
Matthew Karp, a Civil War historian at Princeton University, told CNN "the idea that Maine was a Confederate hotbed is pretty ludicrous."
"I have no idea what LePage is talking about," Karp said. "In the 1860 Presidential election, the southern Democratic candidate John C. Breckinridge couldn't even get 7600 votes in Maine. Lincoln won over 62% of the vote (his fourth highest mark in the country) and Maine furnished over 70,000 troops for the Union, including over 9,000 who died during the Civil War."
Karp also said there was no doubt that property rights played an important role in the cause of the Civil War, but that slaves were the property at issue.
"As lots of historians have pointed out recently, the property value of the South's slaves was somewhere around $3 billion -- more than all the banks, factories, and railroads in the North combined," he said. "Slaveholders believed their right to human property was enshrined in the Constitution, while Lincoln and the Republicans did not -- a major reason that so many slave-holding leaders embraced secession after Lincoln was elected."Resident Evil: Revelations
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Resident Evil: Revelations
Click on a thumbnail to see more pictures for
features New storyline featuring series favorites Jill Valentine, Chris Redfield
Explore the dark, sinister areas of the cruise ship. There's nowhere to run and nowhere to hide with evil creeping out of the shadows
Make use of the touch screen to solve puzzles and switch between weapons
description Revealing a brand new storyline for the Resident Evil series, Resident Evil®: Revelations sees the return to survival horror, offering a tense and intriguing gameplay experience. Built from the ground up to take advantage of the Nintendo 3DS features, Resident Evil®: Revelations delivers outstanding visuals that bring the fear to life.The story is set principally on board a supposedly abandoned cruise ship in the Mediterranean. Far from being empty, the ship hides danger around every corner as Jill Valentine explores the confined space of the ship, facing menacing horrors that emerge from the darkness.
further info Official Release Date Feb 07, 2012 Language English Subtitles English Genre Survival Version US ESRB Mature
Titles rated M (Mature) have content that may be suitable for persons ages 17 and older. Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language. PAX-Code PAX0003374143 Catalog No. CTR-P-ABRE Item Code 0013388305087
Recommended for youThe England Under-20s playmaker Ben Pearson moved to Oakwell from Manchester United on an initial one-month loan back in January.
England v Mexico International U20 Match
7.45pm, Wednesday 25 March 2015
The Hive, Barnet FC
Call 0208 381 3800 for tickets
But the 20-year-old impressed so much that he saw his stay extended for a second month before this week it was confirmed that he will remain with the League One side until the end of season.
The midfielder, who has netted one goal in his twelve appearances so far, has become a firm favourite with the Tykes and boss Johnson was hungry to keep him at the club as they look to mount a late push for the play-offs after five successive wins.
"Ben had Championship interest but he felt happy here,” revealed Johnson ahead of his side’s trip to Oldham on Saturday.
“He's got the potential to be in a fight for promotion which is important for his development. At the moment he is one of the first names on the teamsheet."
Pearson has represented his country at U16, U17, U18, U19 level and made his debut for Aidy Boothroyd’s U20s against Holland in October.
He will be looking to add another cap to his collection when England take on Mexico at the Hive, home of Barnet FC, on Wednesday 25 March.
Call 0208 381 3800 to secure your tickets.Right-wing talk show host Sean Hannity is no longer defending embattled Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore.
"You must immediately and fully come up with a satisfactory explanation for your inconsistencies. You must remove any doubt. If he can’t do this, then Judge Moore needs to get out of this race," Hannity told his viewers on Tuesday night. "You know I do not and will never rush to judgment, because we have seen the media and politicians get it wrong so many times."
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His statements came after days of arousing controversy for defending Moore. On Thursday, Hannity told his radio listeners that it would be impossible to "know the truth" about whether Moore had attempted to date at least five teenagers when he was in his 30s, even seeming to imply at one point that the alleged incidents had been "consensual," although he later said that he had miscommunicated. When he invited Moore on his program on Friday, Hannity listened as the Senate candidate declared that he had never tried to date any girl without the permission of her mother.
Moore's controversial actions regarding sex crimes continued long after the alleged incidents with teenage girls transpired. In 16 cases involving alleged sex offenders between 2013 and 2016, Moore sided with the alleged perpetrators over the prosecutors and the alleged victims on 13 of those occasions. While he was siding with the majority view of the Supreme Court's nine judges on three of those occasions, he was dissenting from them on 10 other occasions.
Since Friday, Hannity has been dropped by a number of his sponsors, most notably coffeemaker company Keurig. It is unclear whether this prompted Hannity to suddenly declare that Moore had "24 hours" to explain the inconsistencies in his story before needing to drop out of the race.
Hannity’s abrupt flip-flop on Moore may come as a shock to conservative media, which, until Tuesday night, has been defending the Republican. Earlier, on Hannity's radio program, Newt Gingrich said there was a "lynch mob" after Moore.
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Is Hannity now part of the lynch mob?Permission for Modding - FIRST MOD IN COMMENTS! :D
As you all know, the game does not officially support mods at the moment. This does not mean it's impossible to mod it and I've been working on that today with great results.
However, it requires changing one of the game's libraries, effectively modifying the game's codebase, implying that to distribute mods, I'd need to explain how to go about modifying it.
Also, some mods will possibly (very probably) contain pieces of code from the game's original source code, meaning I'd be distributing some of the game's code (all my mods would be open-source) with my mods.
So, Madruga Works, I'd like to know what your feelings are about this and whether I (and we as a community of modders that I hope will join me) have your permission to distribute mods in this manner.Turkey supports Georgia’s NATO membership
TBILISI - Anadolu Agency
Georgia's Minister of Defence Tinatin Khidasheli (L) and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (R) address a NATO-Georgia Commission defense ministers meeting at the Alliance's headquarters in Brussels February 11, 2016. REUTERS/Yves Herman
Turkey has said it supported the membership of Georgia into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and was promoting its entrance bid.“You can be sure that we will bring this issue up in the strongest format at the NATO summit that is going to be organized in Warsaw in July,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said in Tbilisi on Feb. 17 during a joint press conference with his Georgian counterpart, Mikheil Janelidze.Çavuşoğlu said he hoped the Georgian citizens would be able to Europe’s Schengen area visa-free as of this year, when Turkish citizens will as well hopefully, if the proposed refugee readmission deal is accepted by Turkey and the EU.Çavuşoğlu said Turkey aimed to increase its level of the bilateral relations with Georgia to inter-state high level cooperation, adding that the first meeting of this new formation would be held in March or April.“Of course we, the two foreign ministers, will conduct the coordination of this [meeting] and we want it to not only be a symbolic meeting but also a meeting where results are being achieved,” said Çavuşoğlu.Speaking at the press conference, Janelidze said they perceived Turkey as “the closest friendly state,” and that this was reflected in the relations between the two countries.During his one-day visit to Georgia, Çavuşoğlu also held talks with Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili and Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili.which I should release soon,
Now, we wait for X to upload his after he finishes rendering his video.
Oh hey, look, it's another of these! So, while in a chat with one day, we decided that we might make a couple more of these "Epic Presence" pictures with a few more of the ponies.Well, that same day, we instantly challenged each other to create one with Luna's cutie mark. Now, for the breakdown of this image.I already had the cutie mark from an earlier vector I madeso I just began working with that, adding a few additional "spots" in the image. The actual stars are...well, white dots with some layer styles tacked on.Ah, the reflection...the hardest part of all of this. This time, I added a small perspective modification and added a couple of filters to it.Once more, all of this was made in Photoshop CS5.1, all in 2D.Note: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is copyrighted by and Hasbro.They make the show, I just vector the awesome ponies. :3Ah, “secret diary” trope, how I love thee! It’s too fun when writers put their characters’ clandestine thoughts on blast. You probably remember it in “Harriet the Spy,” “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” or “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before.”
This time, Anna Breslaw forces the titular character of her debut novel, Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here, to face the music.
Scarlett Epstein really does hate Melville, New Jersey, where she lives in a cramped apartment with her divorcee mother. Her one escape from Melville’s banality is the TV show “Lycanthrope High,” about high school werewolves.
Scarlett’s a BNF (big-name fan) in the show’s fan community, thanks to her popular fan fiction pieces (“fanfics”). When the network yanks “Lycanthrope High,” Scarlett and her fellow BNFs are crushed. Determined to preserve the fanverse, they decide to carry the torch with spin-off pieces.
Scarlett’s new fanfic is a roaring success – until she’s caught using her classmates as characters. Among the unlucky few are her longtime crush, Gideon Maclaine, and his babealicious new girlfriend, Ashley. Guess how well that goes over.
So! Laying out the relatable, comical plot arc is the easy part of this review. The hard part will be convincing some readers to pick the book up once they’ve read the following disclaimer:
Caveat emptor! “Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here” contains strong language, pot smoking, drug dealing, underage drinking, academic dishonesty, sensual content, and sex robots.
And yet, here I am, recommending it as one of the better books thus far in 2016. Why?
For starters, it’s the kind of sharp, witty writing I always applaud. Breslaw’s humor is biting, vicious, and laugh-into-the-page funny. She captures a teen’s superlative, emotionally high-strung voice, and the narrative mirrors that jumbled thought-process.
With Breslaw’s peppery voice, the book is a full-blast exposure to Scarlett’s mind. What’s better, we can clearly see that Scarlett’s perspective doesn’t always mirror reality. It’s up to the reader to sift through the scenes and determine what’s real and what’s biased. That’s a literary high-wire act best performed by Jane Austen in “Emma,” and Breslaw matches her almost step for step.
Take Scarlett’s withering assessment of “showing effort.” We’re treated to a prime example when she describes her best friend’s other friends:
“Ave is the only reason I can sit at the lunch table with the Girl Geniuses, a small clique of overachievers who run on Adderall and fear and have gears you can always see turning. No wonder they’re maladjusted; it’s uncomfortable seeing people try that hard, you know? Like, we don’t want to see your gears. Put them away.… Take the shivering mess of Jessicarose Fallon, for instance. This summer her parents sent her on a ‘volunteer’ trip to Argentina for a cool $5K so she could write a heart-wrenching college essay about how she ran out of Luna bars on day three.… If you were wondering, I have a shining 2.9 GPA out of... I guess 4.0? Infinity? Whatever Jessicarose Fallon has.”
Now, contrast that snide superiority with this description of Gideon’s wealthy family, not three chapters later.
“I thought about how families like the Maclaines have big empty spaces between one another, while families like me and Dawn are smooshed on top of each other, hearing everything the other one’s doing, barely being able to breathe our own air. The Maclaines have the latest, sleekest cars and phones. Nothing’s ever an old model, something straining or squeaking or clicking, nothing about them ever invokes the ultimate embarrassing concept of trying. They have a beautiful silk curtain over the various awkward, rusty embarrassments of being human, and we don’t.”
Within a matter of pages, the idea of “showing effort” pivots abruptly from itchy maladjustment to a core quality of humanity itself. Scarlett mocks the Girl Geniuses for showing the hard work behind their success, while she lacerates the Maclaines for hiding their efforts behind a smooth facade.
Scarlett is supremely sure of both assessments, even though they’re contradictory, and that takes a heady blend of insecurity and overconfidence. She’s scared of being judged “less than,” resentful of people whom she perceives as “more than,” and deep in the paradox where “I know everything” meets “I know nothing.”
Much like a wounded animal flails in self-defense, Scarlett’s acid tongue lashes out at her suburban milieu. Meanwhile, we’re treated to the constant clickety-clack of her own mental gears churning furiously. She views her own life through a scriptwriter’s lens and with an editor’s skepticism.
She ruminates, “I wonder if I even know Gideon, or know anyone really. Is this the moment I’m supposed to realize Gideon’s actually a s***** person who just happens to have excellent taste in comedy? Or is this the moment I realize I’m too judgmental and living in my own weird cerebral universe and have unrealistic standards for boys, or just for life?”
“It’s been bothering me more and more that I can’t ever see anything objectively, that every observation I make is filtered through my personal lens whether I like it or not. I mean, all my favorite novels are like that. F. Scott Fitzgerald basically is Gatsby, so obviously it’s Gatsby’s book, and Daisy comes off like a flake. But maybe in Daisy’s unwritten book, Gatsby is a flashy, patronizing a****** who thinks he could win her with money and fancy stuff. And that might be an even better book.”
Essentially, Scarlett’s trying to find the exact configuration of thought and emotion wherein she feels safe, confident, and in control. Good luck, honey. That’s a lifelong struggle!
Throughout this pitch-perfect teen tale, Breslaw takes time to tackle classism, both conscious and subconscious. Recurring micro-aggressions between Scarlett and Ashley reflect the girls’ finesse in the subtle art of calumny.
“Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here” is a novel that people are talking about, and for good reason. It makes important points about poverty, bullying, and popularity. Breslaw also delivers penetrating insights into teens' lives, online and off.
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Modern kids face the teeter-totter of “internet vs. real life” every day. Scarlett’s experience is exactly that, and a book like this forces us to talk about it. Plus, this offers teens a book that accurately reflects their world in form as well as function, while offering an outcome with real hope.September 1994. Nearly nine months in and already it felt as if the black cat of a year had scratched its way into the history books. In January, Nancy Kerrigan was clubbed while entering an arena in Detroit, in June OJ Simpson was involved in a low-speed car chase, and in July Columbian footballer Andres Escobar was shot dead because of a goal he scored in the World Cup.
While these major news stories rocked the sports world to its Cosselian core, an idea was brewing in the heart of the death star (A.K.A. Fox Sports/News Corps), one that would change the way we watched sports forever... Well, it felt like that. In reality, it was only for three seasons, but that was three seasons too long.
I'm referring to the glow puck (cue ominous music), that radiant orb that blasted its way into the hearts and minds of Canadians and Americans alike in the mid 90's. Like Instant Replay and Slow Mo before it, the glow puck was to be the next big invention in televised sports, Fox even went so far as to call it "The greatest innovation in broadcast sports history", a claim we all know to be true... er.
It all began in late 1994. Fox Sports, the newly minted athletic arm of Rupert Murdoch's Fox Broadcasting Company, was eager to make a name for itself, and in an unprecedented deal, obtained broadcasting rights to the NHL for the sum of $155 million dollars. Itching to expand viewership and capitalize on the icy investment, FOX surveyed their untapped audience, basically all of America, and found that one of the most common complaints was that people were unable to follow the puck (Writer's note No. 1: Keep in mind, this is a black puck on a white surface).
Armed with this new information, David Hill, The Darth Vader of our story (President of Fox Sports) and Stan Honey, the Grand Moff Tarkin (Executive VP of Technology at News Corp) began discussing the idea of a puck tracking system, one that would assist American viewers in enjoying the Canadian past time. In October, they took this plan all the way to the Emperor, Rupert Murdoch, who gave them the go ahead for this sith like project.
Until this point, the late 20th century had given us a number of innovations in the sports broadcasting world: Instant replay, on-screen graphics, slow motion, Bob Costas... Truly a glut of novelties. Though the major networks had implemented these minor game changers, a task the size and scope of the glow puck would be too risky for an aging dinosaur like NBC or CBS. Fox, on the other hand, had nothing to lose. They were young, brash, and had a lot of money to spend, so while CBS and NBC were toying with ways to simply upgrade the viewing experience (Mic'ing players, working on skycam technology), FOX was looking with a Doc Brown like outlook towards the future. They weren't going to ameliorate the experience, they were going to redefine it. To do this, they mined a resource no one else had even dreamed of... Lasers.
In February of '95, Stan Honey, former CEO of ETAK (The company that developed the first automobile navigation system), began to put the team together, assembling a ragtag group of developers with a common goal: Design, build and implement the system by the following years All star game (The first under Fox's new contract), a task that would prove highly formidable.
The team, led by project manager Rick Cavallaro, had virtually no experience in sports broadcasting or production, they were tech guys who preferred Duck Hunt to the Mighty Ducks. Cavallaro looks back, "Here we were, a bunch of guys that weren't sports fans, hadn't ever been to a hockey game, and didn't know the first thing about television," clearly this project was destined for success.
They set up shop at the San Jose Arena (otherwise known as The Shark Tank; see The NHL's only rain out), and got to work on the first step. The initial idea was to use radar tracking technology, a chirping system that would give the pucks range from four radars situated in the arena, but they soon realized the stadiums corner reflectors and I-beams would create a cacophony of pings, rendering the puck untrackable. There were other fears as well: The temperature of the |
wicket for the silky-smooth Rabada. In his next over, Rabada rounded things off with wickets in successive balls, Stuart Broad beaten on the drive and James Anderson lbw first ball to a leg stump yorker. What a Test he has had. What expectations, at only 20, he must bear.
"Sometimes what you say makes no difference," said Alastair Cook. "We are nowhere near the finished article." He sounded like a captain whose speech had fallen on deaf ears. As England posed happily for the team photo, series victors, there should have been some guilt mixed in with the deserved celebrations to follow.
David Hopps is a general editor at ESPNcricinfo @davidkhopps
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.WE RECENTLY wrote about how a tattoo affects your job prospects. A paper from Kaitlyn Harger, a PhD student at West Virginia University, takes it a step further. Ms Harger found data from Florida and looked at what happened to people when they left prison. But her dataset was different: she knew which prisoners were tattooed.
Lots of employers are loth to employ people with tattoos. The US Army, for example, recently tightened its rules on body art. Ms Harger suggests that tattooed ex-cons, shunned by the legal labour market, slip back into criminality as a means to earn a crust: hence higher recidivism.
Her results are striking. On average, someone lasts 5,000 days (about 14 years) before finding themselves back in the cooler. A tattooed ex-con lasts half that (see chart).Home Sign up for our FREE Daily Email Newsletter Are Manned U.S. Helicopters Flying In Syria? By Moon Of Alabama September 08, 2015 " Information Clearing House " - A NYT piece on the failure if the "Division 30" Pentagon mercenaries in Syria and their coming Version 2 includes some interesting bits (in bold). The general line of the piece is that the failure of the first group sent in does not lead to significant changes but to attempts to create more of the same. That is not really new but the usual Pentagon mindset. Interesting though are some details: The proposed changes come after a Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda attacked, in late July, many of the first 54 Syrian graduates of the military’s training program and the rebel unit they came from.
...
The rebels were ill-prepared for an enemy attack and were sent back into Syria in too small numbers. They had no local support from the population and had poor intelligence about their foes.
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Predator drones quickly rushed to help the Division 30 fighters once they came under attack from the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, killing dozens of the attackers, American officials said.
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While most of the fighters were Sunni Arabs, Nadim Hassan, an ethnic Turkmen whom few people had heard of before, was named as its leader, a decision many rebels felt had been imposed by the Turkish government.
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The trainees were to get good weapons and monthly salaries ranging from $225 for soldiers to $350 for officers, Mr. Freiji said.
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on July 30, Mr. Hassan, the group’s leader, and another commander, Farhan Jassem, entered Syria to meet with Nusra Front leaders and assure them that the American-trained force intended to fight only the Islamic State,
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Soon after entering Syria, the two men and six others were promptly captured by the Nusra Front. They are still being held. The next day, the Nusra Front attacked Division 30’s base in the village of Mariameen in northwestern Syria
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A black-and-white video on his phone, apparently shot by an American drone, showed dozens of fighters he said were from the Nusra Front approaching the base before a large blast hit them, followed by automatic fire from the sky. The U.S. paid mercenaries have no local backing. Their commander is under Turkish control and was friendly with al-Qaeda leaders but is now their hostage. Still later the Division 30 people called al-Qaeda their "brothers". Somehow all of that does not fit to the "idealistic moderate Syrian rebels" propaganda language U.S. officials use to describe them. But the most curious issue in the piece is the description of the "drone" attack that helped to fend off attacking Nusra fighters. No drone I am aware of and certainly not the "Predator" are equipped with automatic weapons like machine guns. The Drones carry fire-and-forget missiles or bombs but no drone has the necessarily heavy rotating tower and swiveling weapon holder that would allow the use of automatic weapons. "Automatic fire from the sky" as the reporter describes from the video he has seen can only have come from manned helicopters. Or is there some other explanation that I miss? If there were helicopters who's birds were these? U.S. or Turkish? Are there more of these flying over Syria and to what purpose? And what would be the Search & Rescue assets that could be used should such a bird come down involuntarily? Something we are not told about is happening at the Turkish-Syrian border. Is that the reason why the Russians, despite U.S. efforts to hinder them, prepare air fields for the delivery of new air assets to the Syrian army? http://www.moonofalabama.org Click for Spanish, German, Dutch, Danish, French, translation- Note- Translation may take a moment to load. What's your response? - Scroll down to add / read comments Sign up for our FREE Daily Email Newsletter For Email Marketing you can trust Donate
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FOR years, Porto’s motto was, in essence, “You’ve tried the wine; now try the city!” But these days Portugal ’s second-largest metropolis — an attractively faded hillside city of venerable town houses and Baroque churches — no longer needs to coast on the reputation of its famous digestif. A jam-packed new night-life district is taking shape, and a blossoming creative scene features everything from an upstart design center to the avant-garde Rem Koolhaas -designed Casa de Música, a stunning concert space. And there’s great news for oenophiles as well. With the Douro region’s emergence as a hotbed of prize-winning red wines — not just port — Porto (also known as Oporto ) can now intoxicate you with myriad vintages, new ambitious restaurants and even wine-themed hotels.
Friday
6 p.m.
1. GO WEST
A cheap tour (2.50 euros, or $3.35 at $1.34 to the euro ) of Porto (also known as Oporto) awaits on tram line No. 1, which starts near Praça do Infante square and heads west to the Atlantic coast. Outfitted with old leather seats and wood paneling, the hourly (or half-hourly, depending on the season) tram cars clatter on their rails alongside the Douro River, past city squares, churches and port wine houses. The 20-minute journey drops you in the seaside district of Foz do Douro, where you can easily stop at Shis (Praia do Ourigo, Esplanada do Castelo; 351-22-618-9593; shisrestaurante.com ), a stylish beachfront restaurant-bar. The terrace is great for sunset views and Super Bock beer (2.50 euros).
9 p.m.
2. NOT FOR DIETERS
The Francesinha is a cardiologist-unapproved local sandwich of ham, beef, sausage and cheese with a warm tomato-beer sauce. At Restaurante DOP (Palácio das Artes, Largo Santo Domingos 18; 351-22-201-4313; ruipaula.com ), a crisp minimalist space opened last year by the celebrity chef Rui Paula, the working man’s snack is elevated to an epicure’s ambrosia, with ingredients like tenderloin beef, artisanal sausage, mozzarella and a bit of lobster in the meat gravy. Also first-rate are moist John Dory filets with a delicate triple-cheese sauce. The 60-page wine list features vintages from the Douro region, including a medium-bodied silky and acidic 2005 Quinta de Roriz red (8 euros a glass). Dinner for two, without wine: around 80 euros.
11 p.m.
3. A MARKET REBORN
Nearby, the venerable Beaux-Arts-style covered market known as Mercado Ferreira Borges was reborn this year as Hard Club (Praça do Infante 95; 351-70-710-0021; hard-club.com ). Four years in the making, the renovated glass-and-steel structure houses a bookstore, an art exhibition area, a restaurant, a patio, bars and concert halls. The hardest thing about Hard Club is simply deciding among all the events, from indie rock concerts to crafts fairs. For weekend club nights, crowds arrive after 2 a.m. and don’t leave before sunrise. The cover charge varies.
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10 a.m.
4. SOME LIKE IT OLDI keep clawing at the bars of the cage I built for myself. But first a digression. Walter W. Skeat wrote numerous notes on English etymology, some of which he eventually put together and published in book form. Much to my regret, not too many kl-words attracted his attention. But I was amused to discover that the verb clop means not only the sound made by shoes or hoofs but also “to cling, adhere to.” Clop is a variant of clap, a sound imitative word like click—clack—cluck, but its homonym (“to cling”) illustrates the point I have recently made in this series, namely that kl-words may exchange hostages. My example was the English verb cling “to adhere to” versus German klingen “to ring.”
Skeat also devoted some space to clove, the troublesome noun touched upon not long ago. He suggested the Italian origin of clove, the English form being “a compromise between the F. clou and the Ital. chiovo.” In my essay, I said that Skeat had refrained from explaining why he felt unimpressed by the etymology of clove in Murray’s OED. Perhaps he thought that his note would satisfy the curious. He was mistaken. Someone interested in word origins has no time for opening the countless books and articles in which something may be said about this or that item (nor is the desired bibliography available even to specialists).
Several Old English names for the articles of clothing are still extant, even if with modified meanings: (ge)wæd (long æ; now only in widow’s weeds, which few people recognize; by contrast, German Gewand is common); rēaf “the garment, etc. taken as booty,” but the plural often meant “clothes”; hrægl (rail continued into Early Modern English), and scrūd (now shroud; shred is related to it), to mention the most frequent ones. A common Old English word for “clothes” was hæteru (long æ, neuter plural; the singular form has not been recorded). Its continuation hater stayed in the language until the Middle period and is still current in some regions; one of its Indo-European cognates means “covering,” a circumstance not to be lost sight of.
A look at the modern language reveals the same ingenuity in naming or borrowing words for the things we wear. Consider dress (“something put right”; French), apparel (“something prepared”; French), attire (“equipment”; French), garment (“something garnished”; French), raiment (“something arrayed”; French), not to mention duds, togs, and their likes. Old English clāð (ð = th in Modern English this) meant “cloth,” that is, the fabric from which clothes were made, rather than “attire,” but its plural, as was the case with rēaf, designated “clothes.” The etymology of cloth should probably take us to the material used for making clothes rather than to some object meant for wear.
The general contours of the story of cloth will be familiar to those who have followed this series. Again a West Germanic kl-word with an uncertain Scandinavian cognate, and again a somewhat dubious sticky denouement. The Dutch and German for “cloth” are kleed and Kleid respectively. The phonetic match is perfect. In older German, kleit “Kleid” appeared late and made its way southward rather slowly. In some modern dialects it is still a foreign word; in Swabia, a congener of hæteru is current. Even in Old English, clāð is absent from many texts. Consequently, we cannot know how ancient this word is and how far we have to look for its cognates. Words for “clothes” travel easily across borders, and in the Middle Ages borders were especially porous. For instance, Gothic used a Greek loanword for at least one article of clothes, namely paida. Our main Gothic text is a fourth-century translation of the New Testament from Greek. The noun occurs in Matthew V: 40, where English has “And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also.” Cloke (the spelling of the King James Bible), that is, cloak is the gloss for Greek chiton “tunic,” an outer garment. A past participle having the same root also turned up in Ephesians VI: 14 (English: “Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness…”: girt about, that is, “clad”). The Greek word was baítē, and it meant “goatskin; (leather) coat,” but, characteristically, the noun and the participle the translator into Gothic saw in the Greek text had nothing to do with baítē. Paida was probably an everyday word, for it spread from the Goths to Old English (pād “coat”) and German, and from Germanic to Finnish (paita). Cloth is native, but this does not exclude the possibility that we are dealing with a coinage of Indo-European antiquity. The same point has been made with respect to some other kl-words.
Attempts to discover the origin of cloth began, as usual in such cases, with several random shots. Medieval Latin c(h)lēda “hurdle,” Slavic klet– “barn” (because clothes cover a body and are like home), Celtic klet “warm,” and Latin claudere “to close” have been mentioned. Those are idle fantasies. Other, even wilder, fantasies will, as always, be disregarded. The famous Germanic scholar Sophus Bugge believed that clothes were first and foremost things thrown over the body (and he cited a relevant example from Old Icelandic), but his derivation of cloth from the same root as Greek bállō “I throw” (not quite impossible from the phonetic point of view) made no stir. As is known, many words of Indo-European that begin with sk-, st-, sp-, sl-, sm-, sn-, and sw– can have doublets without initial s, the sound that was therefore called s mobile. It is not improbable that some cognates of cloth (assuming that such cognates exist) begin with sk-. If we assume that cloth is related to Greek chlōthō “I spin” and add s– to it, the semantic match will be tolerably good. But, since a Greek word with initial s- has not been attested, this reconstruction joined the graveyard at which all the previous ones are buried.
The one and only breakthrough happened in 1891, when A. Erdmann brought out a booklet on cloth and felt. In his opinion, cloth has the root one sees in Greek gloiós “sticky,” the very root discussed last week in the post on clean. In Erdmann’s reconstruction, cloth emerged as “something pressed together” (with reference to fulling)—a fabric of course, not a garment. I am not aware of any criticism of this etymology, except that Bugge offered his own derivation and pointed out that Old Icelandic klæði was thrown over the body. But of course, clothes are made of cloth, so that Bugge’s objection does not go too far. The modern dictionaries that are not entirely noncommittal and don’t send us away with the foolproof formula “origin unknown” offer the etymologies of cloth resembling Erdmann’s.
As to the Icelandic look-alike, it too has been the object of involved speculation. The discussion centered on the question: native or borrowed from West Germanic? Sifting the arguments for and against each of the two solutions, with a long digression on Saami, would distract us from our topic. Suffice it to say that at present most philologists look upon klæði as a borrowing from Old Frisian. Oh yes, one more thing: clothed and clad owe their difference to phonetics.
If Erdmann was right, cloth will find a place in the perennial papers of the great and famous sticky club and join cleave, clover, clean, and other honorable and honorary members.
Image credits: (1) “Grey horse” by Yellowhorse. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay. (2) “Applause” by niekverlaan. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay. (3) “Joyce and her ‘shears’…wild woman!” by Larry Jacobsen. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr. (4) “Woman in mourning” by Bertha Wegmann (1846-1926). Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. (5) “Skeletons” by Clker-Free-Vector-Images. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay. Featured image credit: “Cloth” by lukibrasil123. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.Hello sweeties and a happy Friday to y’all! How has the winter been treating your hands? I know my hands and nails have been truly suffering. I’ve upped how often I do my Beauty Bootcamp (see my post that details my skin & nail care routine), and I make sure I try to keep my cuticles oiled. I make my own cuticle oil, and have been using a rollerball to apply. Even though I make my own, I love trying out all types of cuticle oil and ways of applying.
Ricarda from Rica recently sent me her new Heal + Fortify cuticle oil pen to try out, and I chose the Cotton Candy Dreams scent. First off, here’s what it looks like:
As you can see, it’s already gone haha! So I obviously liked it. 🙂 First, let’s talk about the scent I chose. Cotton Candy Dreams smells DIVINE! It’s like strawberry-infused cotton candy aka a sugar high on your nails. I’ll admit I caught myself smelling my hands more than once.
If Mary Katherine Gallagher’s nails smelled like Cotton Candy Dreams, I understand why she smelled her hands so much!
OK, and onto the oil itself. The ingredients:
Jojoba oil
Vitamin E
Safflower seed oil
Grapeseed oil
Calendula flower extract
Essential oils/ fragrance
So it’s nice and natural! When applied to the nail, it absorbs quickly without leaving a greasy residue which is so important. I really love the pen application too! This was my first time trying oil via a pen, and I gotta say – I’m not going back. You can get into the little nooks and crannies around your skin with the brush tip, and it’s easy to control how much you’re applying. I tend to go crazy with the oil, so I use 1-2 clicks per nail then massage it in.
I definitely noticed a change for the better in my nails. I used up the entirety of one cuticle oil pen, which lasted me just about 8 days. I applied it anywhere from 2-10 times a day because I really wanted to get my cuticles in check. I have to be honest, I don’t tend to see much of a difference between most cuticle oils… I think the biggest difference is in how you apply it. Most oils will have similar ingredients, so you need to shop around to find your favorite applicator, scent, and price!
I do have to say that this Rica pen is a definite winner for me! The pen contains 2 mL of oil, and it comes in 35 different scents from Lemongrass to Green Tea to Birthday Cake and even Monkey Farts (oh, and also unscented too)! It costs $4.25, which is super reasonable. If you’re not a fan of the pen applicator, you can get the oil in rollerball or polish bottle form. I hope she starts stocking refill bottles because I’d love to stock up on some of those yummy scents!
Check out Rica:
Oh and if you like what I’ve got going on with the nails in that pic, I’ll be showing you more on Monday! 🙂
Have you tried Rica’s cuticle oil? Or other pen applicators for oil? What’s your favorite cuticle oil?
AdvertisementsYSR Congress chief YS Jaganmohan Reddy, who was on an indefinite fast, was forcibly admitted to a government hospital (Press Trust of India photo)
Andhra Pradesh politician Jaganmohan Reddy was bodily lifted from a platform and taken to hospital on Monday as his health deteriorated on the seventh day of an indefinite fast.The 42-year-old chief of the YSR Congress has been on a protest fast at a village in Guntur to press for special category status for Andhra Pradesh.A little after 4 am on Tuesday the police came and forcibly took Mr Reddy to a government hospital. Doctors say he will be monitored for 24 hours.Hundreds of supporters have been camping at the site where Mr Reddy began the fast on Wednesday last."He can barely speak and his sugar levels have dropped," a YSR Congress leader said.On Tuesday, many of them were furious at comments by Health Minister K Srinivas, which appeared to question whether Mr Reddy was really fasting.Mr Srinivas had pointed out that Mr Reddy's sugar levels showed variations and said he would have it investigated.Mr Reddy has been targeting Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu for not pushing for special status for the state, which, he said, was promised when Andhra Pradesh was bifurcated to create a separate Telangana. The Chief Minister's Telegu Desam Party is an ally of the ruling BJP.Mr Reddy had challenged Mr Naidu to press the Centre to grant what was promised to the state or withdraw support to the Modi Government."This fast is for the people of Andhra Pradesh, to increase job opportunities for the youth, to improve infrastructure facilities and provide a better future for the citizens," Mr Reddy said in a statement.Special status would bring a large infusion of funds to the state, the YSR Congress leader says.The central government has asked the rejigged plan panel, the NITI Ayog, to look into special status and other benefits promised to Andhra Pradesh.I’ve noticed a tendency for the charge of committing the “No True Scotsman” fallacy to be leveled at anyone who favours more restrictive definitions of something than the person leveling the charge favours. This is a misunderstanding of how the “No True Scotsman” fallacy works. Just saying something of the form “No true Scotsman would do X” is not by itself a commission of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy – though the fallacy does involve making a statement of that form. A fallacy has to be an error in inference from one statement to another; a single statement on its ownsome, involving no inference, can’t be a fallacy.
The “No True Scotsman” fallacy arises when someone uses a restrictive version of a definition in order to rebut a counterexample to a claim that was made using a less restrictive definition. So, for example:
1. SMITH: “Democracies never go to war against other democracies.” 2. JONES: “What about the war between Israel and Lebanon? They were both democracies.” 3. SMITH: “No country that commits that kind of aggression counts as a genuine democracy.”
What makes Smith guilty of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy here is not that she employs an idiosyncratically restrictive definition of “democracy” in (3). Employing an idiosyncratically restrictive definition is not by itself a fallacy, since it’s not by itself an argument. If an argument is offered for the idiosyncratically restrictive definition, that argument may of course be fallacious – or it may not. We can’t know until we look at the argument. (Merely using a term more restrictively than in ordinary usage is no proof that the more restrictive usage is wrong; sometimes ordinary usage by itself contains commitments to a more restrictive usage. For example, I think that’s true of the Socrates-Stoic-Cicero-Augustine-Aquinas-Blackstone-Spooner-Lane-MLK Jr. position that an unjust law is no true law.)
Rather, what convicts Smith of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy is the fact that she treats her claim in (3), using “democracy” restrictively, as if it supported her claim in (1), where “democracy” was clearly being used non-restrictively. In other words, the “No True Scotsman” fallacy is an instance of the fallacy of equivocation. (Example of equivocation: “A bank is a safe place to deposit your paycheck; the edge of a river is a bank; therefore the edge of a river is a safe place to deposit your paycheck.” The plausibility of the premises depends on taking them to be using the term “bank” differently; the validity of the inference depends on taking them to be using the term “bank” in the same way.)
If Smith were, clearly and non-obfuscatingly, willing to reject (1) in the non-restrictive sense, and endorse it only in the restrictive sense, then although she might have an implausible definition of “democracy” – and a more vacuous opening claim than initially appeared – she would be innocent of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy.Jesse Richman used to be one of those researchers who only dreamed his work might someday capture national attention—maybe even inspire some sort of systemic change. On Ratemyprofessor.com, his students describe him as tough but fair, a "genius" who was liberal with extra credit projects and went out of his way to offer help.
In 2014, Richman’s world changed when he co-authored a paper on voter fraud that instantly caught fire. At first, he was energized by all the buzz and proud to get his work published. Now, he says, "there are days I wish I hadn’t."
That's because his paper, "Do Non-Citizens Vote in US Elections?" which was published in the peer-reviewed journal Electoral Studies has become a cornerstone of President Trump's false claim that he would have "won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally." This week White House press secretary Sean Spicer once again dragged the study to the forefront, noting that a study of the 2008 election (which he wrongly attributed to Pew Research) showed 14 percent of noncitizens are registered to vote.
That was Richman's research, all right. The problem, says Richman, who identifies as a political moderate, is that the Trump administration's interpretation of his report is totally off. "Trump and others have been misreading our research and exaggerating our results to make claims we don't think our research supports," Richman says. "I'm not sure why they continue to do it, but there’s not much I can do about that aside from set the record straight."
In an interview airing tonight on ABC News, Trump also pointed to an actual Pew Research report about outdated voter rolls, but according to its own the author, that report found no instances of voter fraud.
Now Richman's study and the Pew report are set to become the foundation of the Trump administration’s newly promised investigation into potential voter fraud—whatever Richman says about their interpretation of his findings. The political exploitation of Richman's work is a blow against intellectual honesty and scientific integrity. What's more, voting rights advocates fear the investigation it's being used to prop up could lead to severe voting restrictions in the future.
Blame the Internet
Even before Trump came along, Richman's research was the subject of controversy. The report, which he wrote about in The Washington Post with a fellow Old Dominion researcher, David Earnest, drew its conclusions from the results of the Cooperative Congressional Election Studies, an opt-in online survey of voter behavior. The researchers analyzed responses from citizens and noncitizens in 2008 and 2010 and checked them against existing voter files. What they found suggested that 6.4 percent of noncitizens voted in 2008, while 2.2 percent of them voted in 2010.
Critics quickly jumped on the findings. Among their complaints: The survey on which the research was based was an internet survey meant to include only citizens. In other words, any noncitizens who took the survey were included due to an error anyway, says Michael Jones-Correa, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Some percentage of people who checked the noncitizen box may have done so accidentally.
Even if every survey taker who checked the noncitizen box really wasn't a citizen, the sample size is far too small to extrapolate those results to the entire noncitizen population of the United States, Jones-Correa and other researchers say. "While internet surveys can accurately represent national populations, they—and any survey—are much less reliable in representing smaller, harder to sample populations like noncitizens in the US," Jones-Correa says. "This is particularly true because noncitizens are much less likely than the overall population to have access to the internet."
Richman himself is not backing down from his initial findings. He says that even if some people did check the wrong citizenship box, enough respondents repeatedly reported voting as noncitizens to indicate that some noncitizens do in fact vote. Even some of Richman’s detractors, such as Rick Hasen, author of the Election Law Blog, acknowledge that “noncitizen voting is a real, if relatively small, problem.” Richman says those on the left are just as wrong to reflexively claim that voter fraud doesn't exist at all as Trump is to continue insisting voter fraud is a national conspiracy.
But Richman is unequivocal that even if his findings are correct, Clinton would have still handily won the popular vote in November, despite the new president's claims.
"I can't quite account for the math being so badly wrong in their analyses," he says of the Trump administration's interpretation of his report.
Here's what the math should look like (that is, if Richman's initial study was accurate—which many researchers doubt). If 6.4 percent of the estimated 20.3 million noncitizens in the US voted, and if just 81.8 percent of them voted for Clinton (the percentage who voted for Obama in his 2008 study), that's an added margin of a little more than 835,000 votes. In other words: Even with all of those supposedly fraudulent ballots, Clinton still would have won the popular vote by more than 2 million votes.
A Sacred Right
While Trump has been ranting about voter fraud as the cause of his popular vote loss, his press team has been spinning a more palatable narrative about the need for integrity in voting.
"Voting is the most sacred right we have as Americans. It’s the hallmark and the foundation of our democracy," Spicer said during today’s press briefing. "To ensure we know that every person’s vote counts equally as the next citizen is probably one of the greatest things we can do."
Richman agrees with that sentiment, but he’s skeptical that the Trump administration, which has aligned itself so clearly with the idea that voter fraud exists, can pull off such a complex and sensitive study. "The worst-case scenario would be a study which is not well done and not done transparently and not credible," he says. “I’m not that optimistic it can be done successfully.”
He’s also doubtful of any effective policy prescriptions that might come from such research. In his own report, Richman and his co-authors argue that voter identification laws "are unlikely to be effective at preventing electoral participation by noncitizen immigrants." But he fears that may be just the solution Republican legislators propose in response to any instances of voter fraud that the purported investigation unearths.
Over the last three years, Richman has grown weary of what he describes as the partisan distortions of his research. “We’re perpetually fighting a two-front war,” he says. "One against people, mostly coming from the left, who want to claim on generally quite flimsy grounds that the study is completely invalid, and on the other hand people on the right who want to pretend this study is much more than it is or says much more than it does."
In the end, Richman says, he hopes that any public policy decisions are based on the totality of research and not on just one cherry-picked study—even if it is the study he wrote.FGCU's dorms Florida Gulf Coast University Although Florida Gulf Coast University is only 22 years old, its economics department has already developed a reputation for it's pro-free enterprise philosophy.
A 2011 article by Jean Gruss of the Florida-based Business Observer describes how department is run by "core group of a half dozen economists whose research supports the ideas of free-market capitalism, still an unpopular subject in most faculty lounges."
Every economics student gets a copy of Ayn Rand's objectivist novel Atlas Shrugged, Gruss reports, and the school offers classes like "Moral Foundations & Capitalism."
One of the professors leading the effort is Bradley Hobbs, Ph.D.
Hobbs is a visiting professor at Clemson this semester. But he's still employed by FGCU, and he summed up his academic philosophy for the Business Observer in 2011:
"We also need diversity of thought," says Hobbs, whose own early leftist views shifted "from Marx to Hayek" later in his career. "The best debater is the one who knows the other side's argument better than they do," he quips. "We hold students' feet to the fire."
The reporter asked Hobbs about the fact that he worked for the government (FGCU is a public school), to which he replied, "It's one of the great ironies of my life."
His website features this graphic:
FGCU.edu
So even though FGCU is still in its infancy, it looks like its already established a bit of an academic reputation.Seattle has an abundance of Ethiopian food. After Indian, Ethiopian is always the next choice when we want some spice and deep flavors in the meal. The veggie platter filled with 2 to 4 different simmered lentil dishes, greens, simmered okra, cabbage pcarrot wat, all served up over the huge Injera. There are several Ethiopian restaurants in Seattle. A lot of them however are usually a miss when it comes to maintaining the taste and quality of the food. Or maybe I am picky 🙂 Seattle-lites, what is your favorite Ethiopian restaurant?
Atakilt Wat/ Atkilt wot is a cabbage side that is so close to the Indian cabbage dishes and yet has its own flavor profile. The traditional recipe may or may note use uses niter kibeh which is butter/ghee slow-infused with whole spices like cardamom, cinnamon, fenugreek, cloves, ginger, garlic etc. by cooking everything on low heat for hours. You can make niter qibe/ kibeh with coconut or olive oil(see my second book for a recipe) and use about a Tbsp in this recipe instead of all the spices and oil. Since I don’t usually have the infused oil ready, I add the spices to oil in the second step to infuse the oil while cooking (indian food style) for my interpretation of atakilt wat. You can omit the spices. Cook the dish at lower heat for best results. Serve with Ethiopian flat breads or other flat breads and lentil stews.
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More Ethiopian from the blog.
This is a simplified version of the traditional wat.
Steps:
cook the onion, garlic, ginger for 5 minutes.
Add all the spices and cook to infuse the oil to make a quick niter kibeh.
Add the veggies, cover and cook until tender.
Serve hot.
lentil wat, ethiopian greens(gomen wat). Serve hot with Ethiopian flat bread Injera and, ethiopian greens(gomen wat).
*The veggies get cooked in their own moisture. If they start to stick (depends on your lid, type of pan, moisture in the veggies), add splashes of water or broth and mix in and continue to cook.
Video:Advertisement ISU students say they were hung out to dry by leasing company Share Shares Copy Link Copy
Only two weeks from move-in day, a group of Iowa State University students find themselves homeless.WATCH VIDEO HERE. Four Iowa State students and their parents say they were told they no longer had an apartment, six months after they signed the lease, and their deposit checks were cashed.“The first reaction was panic because of school. They have to be up there in 15 days. There’s nowhere to live,” said one parent, Carrie Johnson.The ISU sophomores and their parents thought they had a dream apartment at 23 Twenty Lincoln, right across the street from campus.The leasing company at 23 Twenty Lincoln is Asset Campus Housing.The property manager called with shocking news Wednesday.“They were sorry that they oversold the apartments, and that they would be more than happy to put them on the waiting list,” Johnson said.She says her daughter and her three roommates signed a lease back in February. They were told there were only three, four bedroom apartments left, and they were guaranteed one of them.Another upset parent, Ted Irvine, said, “We were assured all along that we had a place.”Parents were asked to co-sign and hand over $250 deposit checks, which Johnson says were cashed immediately.After some frantic calls, the roommates signed a lease for place much further away from campus.Ted Irving said his daughter is an apparel student and spends late nights in design labs.“I don’t know who’s out there at 2 o’clock in the morning. I’m not a big fan of that, and that’s why we picked this location in the first place,” Irvine said.According to 23 Twenty |
credibility by the legendary abuses of old-time political machines, those claims make voter suppression seem respectable and even virtuous.
Some years ago, the Brennan Center for Justice, based at New York University and led by former Clinton speechwriter Michael Waldman, issued a 45-page report on voter fraud that remains definitive. "There have been a handful of substantiated cases of individual ineligible voters attempting to defraud the election system," the report noted. "But by any measure, voter fraud is extraordinarily rare." And because fraud is so unusual, GOP countermeasures, such as voter ID, do much more harm than good.
As the Brennan Center study noted, even some Republicans know their leaders have exaggerated stories of fraud for partisan advantage. In 2007, the Houston Chronicle quoted Royal Masset, the former political director of the Texas Republican Party, who observed that among Republicans, it is "an article of religious faith that voter fraud is causing us to lose elections." Masset admitted that suspicion is false but said he believed that requiring voters to provide photo ID could sufficiently reduce participation by legitimate Democratic voters and add 3 percent to Republican tallies.
More recently, one of the dimmer lights in the Pennsylvania Republican Party -- the majority leader of the state House of Representatives, in fact -- boasted that the voter ID statute he had rammed through the legislature would "allow Governor Romney to win the election" in November 2012. Although Mike Turzai later insisted that "there has been a history of voter fraud in Pennsylvania," the state government conceded in court that it could cite no evidence showing that "in-person voter fraud has in fact occurred in Pennsylvania or elsewhere."
Clinton can also consult the President's Commission on Election Administration, a bipartisan panel appointed by President Barack Obama to improve the country's voting systems. In its final report issued last January, the commission forthrightly acknowledged that true voter fraud is "rare." It was a singular admission by a group whose co-chairs included Benjamin Ginsberg, an aggressive Republican election attorney who bears the burden of responsibility for the outcome of Bush-Gore 2000.
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If he is in a bipartisan mood, as he often is, Clinton would surely find the commission's report uplifting -- especially its recommendations to make voting more modern, more efficient, and above all, more accessible. For both parties to improve and expand, the democratic rights of citizens would be uplifting indeed.
But Clinton is more likely to find himself feeling less kindly toward the Republicans, as they continue to promote outrageous suppression while feigning outrage over "fraud." The Democrats may be equally motivated by partisan self-interest -- but so long as they defend the rights of the intimidated and the disenfranchised, their moral force will be undiminished.Older, rougher and thicker Antarctic sea ice in the Bellingshausen Sea in October 2007, within the sea ice shield surrounding Antarctica. The ice here is around 10 metres thick.
M.J. LEWIS
Arctic sea ice maximum hit a record low last year, but down south, Antarctic sea ice was as thick and extensive as ever.
A US team led by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Son Nghiem suggests why sea ice at the poles is acting differently – a massive "great shield" built early in the growing season protects Antarctic sea ice. The Arctic, though, lacks such a protective boundary.
"Our study provides strong evidence that the behaviour of Antarctic sea ice is entirely consistent with the geophysical characteristics found in the southern polar region, which differ sharply from those present in the Arctic," said Nghiem.
Sea ice floats on the ocean and extends and contracts seasonally. In Antarctica, sea ice maximum is around September each year.
In recent decades, records for Arctic and Antarctic sea ice have toppled – but in opposite extremes. While the Arctic has seen sea ice maximums shrink, Antarctica enjoyed record sea ice extent in 2012, 2013 and 2014.
So what's going on?
Climate scientists have put forward a number of theories. One is the hole in the ozone layer above the South Pole may have affected winds high in the atmosphere. Another is water running off Antarctica makes the surrounding ocean less salty, and thus more freezable.
But these don't adequately explain why Antarctic sea ice is so healthy, even in a warmer climate.
So Nghiem and colleagues mapped sea ice extent during its growing season – June to September – around Antarctica with NASA's QuikSCAT satellite radar data from 1999 to 2009.
They found early in the growing season, offshore Antarctic winds pushed young, smooth sea ice northwards. At a point, the ice front slowed and the same winds piled more ice atop until it became thick and rough.
This "great shield", as the researchers called it, protected the sea behind it, like a seawall, to "create ice factories". Arctic conditions can't create a shield, so its sea ice is thin and prone to being smashed up by waves.
And the Arctic wind system, the Polar Express, tends to push sea ice into warm currents where it melts.
To understand what it is about Antarctica that lets it build an icy shield, Nghiem and colleagues didn't just focus on the winds swirling above the frozen continent – they mapped the sea floor around it too.
White contour shows the southern Antarctic Circumpolar Current front, with -1 °C sea surface temperature lines (in black) on 22 September each year from 2002-2009, plotted against a chart of the Southern Ocean's depth.
NASA / JPL-CALTECH
The shield forms at a sea surface temperature line of -1 °C, where the southern Antarctic Circumpolar Current front separates cold and warm waters.
The Fawn Trough, a deep channel to the east of Antarctica, funnels the current in a tight formation, carving a consistent -1 °C boundary line.
But on the other side of the continent, the current spreads out over the smooth seafloor. This means the -1 °C boundary shifts year on year and accounts for huge variations in sea ice extent off West Antarctica.
The work was published in Remote Sensing of Environment.A Turkish company based in northwestern Turkey's Bursa province has begun production of the country's first domestically produced tramway for a total cost of 1.6 million euros ($1.7 million), sparing Turkish municipalities nearly one million dollars in import costs.
Abdullah Bocan, the managing director of Durmazlar Makine Raylı Sistemler, the Turkish company producing the tramways, says that their tramways, along with their software infrastructure, are fully designed and produced by Turkish engineers. Bocan stressed the importance of their production, creating jobs in the country, as well as diminishing the import-related expenses of Turkish municipalities; while also noting that they offer a profitable price for Turkish municipalities.
In the past Turkish municipalities have been importing tramways mainly from China and Italy for a price per unit of 2.3 million euros ($2.45 million).
Earlier this month, the company launched the Panorama tramway, a 2.65-meter wide, 32-meter long tramway, now operating in the northern Turkish city of Samsun. The same company had also developed the 2.45-meter wide, 28-meter long İpekböceği tramway, which is currently in service in the western province of Bursa.
The director of Samulaş, a transportation company affiliated to the municipality of Samsun city, Kadir Gürkan stated that the Panorama tramway is being produced by taking their needs and advice into consideration, and the output has been successful and efficient.
Gürkan also added that they are very happy to serve Samsun citizens with domestically produced tramways; praising the vehicle. He also noted that the Panorama has 12 exit doors whereas its alternatives produced overseas only had 10 exit doors in case of emergency.Grab a cup as Jerry hits the road with comedy heavyweights like Jim Carrey, Tina Fey, Norm Macdonald, Chris Rock, Stephen Colbert and many more.
1. Jim Carrey: We Love Breathing What You're Burning, Baby 17m Tooling around with Jerry in a blue '76 Lamborghini Countach, Jim Carrey pays tribute to his comedy idols and shows off his new passion: painting.
2. Jimmy Fallon: The Unsinkable Legend - Part 1 12m Jerry picks up the irrepressible Jimmy Fallon in a jaunty '56 Corvette convertible and surprises him with a trip out on the water.
3. Jimmy Fallon: The Unsinkable Legend - Part 2 18m Fresh off his boating adventure, Jimmy talks "SNL" and landing the "Tonight Show" gig. Jerry gets some unsolicited driving advice from strangers.
4. Alec Baldwin: Just A Lazy Shiftless Bastard 14m Navigating the New York City streets in a 1970 Mercedes 280 SL, Jerry and Alec Baldwin swap tales of old Hollywood, open mic nights and more.
5. Stephen Colbert: Cut Up And Bloody But Good Looking 17m Jerry and late-night maestro Stephen Colbert riff on masculinity and music over breakfast and take turns at the wheel of a 1964 Morgan Plus 4.
6. Sarah Jessica Parker: A Little Hyper-aware 20m Jerry ventures way out of his comfort zone in a wood-paneled '76 Ford station wagon -- a car that has a special place in Sarah Jessica Parker's heart.
7. Trevor Noah: That's The Whole Point Of Apartheid, Jerry 21m "The Daily Show" host Trevor Noah schools Jerry on South African history, football and more as they head to Brooklyn in an '85 Ferrari 308 GTB.
8. Kristen Wiig: The Volvo-ness 18m Jerry wows the multitalented (and part-Scandinavian) Kristen Wiig with a 1964 Volvo Amazon and a trip back in time to LA's iconic House of Pies.
9. John Oliver: What Kind Of Human Animal Would Do This? 18m Jerry hits a British trifecta as he picks up "Last Week Tonight" host John Oliver in a cute but impractical 1959 Triumph TR3A on a drizzly day.
10. Chris Rock: Kids Need Bullying 16m For his outing with Chris Rock, Jerry chooses one of the sleekest cars ever designed: a 1969 Lamborghini Miura. But its speed gets him in trouble.
11. Christoph Waltz: Champagne, Cigars And Pancake Batter 14m Rolling up in a 1957 BMW 507 roadster, Jerry whisks "Inglourious Basterds" star Christoph Waltz off for an international feast -- IHOP-style.
12. Tina Fey: Feces Are My Purview 17m Tina Fey samples her first Cronut and talks about life after "30 Rock" as she and Jerry travel up and down Manhattan in a red 1967 Volvo 1800S.
13. Aziz Ansari: It's Like Pushing A Building Off A Cliff 17m Jerry jumps at the chance to drive Aziz Ansari's souped-up Prevost tour bus to a roadside diner, where the two get to try out an even bigger rig.
14. Ricky Gervais: Madman In A Death Machine 14m A gleeful Jerry torments Ricky Gervais with a hair-raising, high-speed drive to an island in the Bronx in a 1967 Austin-Healey 3000.
15. Seth Meyers: Really?! 15m Seth Meyers looks back on his long "SNL" career and shares his dad's comedy tips as he joins Jerry for a coffee run in a 1973 Porsche 911 Carrera RS.
16. Norm Macdonald: A Rusty Car In The Rain 22m Norm MacDonald crams into Jerry’s tiny (and slightly rusty) 1958 Porsche Speedster on a rainy day to talk bad gigs, clean comedy and old sitcoms.
17. Michael Richards: It's Bubbly Time, Jerry 18m Michael Richards slips back into the role of Jerry's sidekick in a rickety 1962 Volkswagen Bus that takes them to a place of surprising honesty.
18. J.B. Smoove: Everybody Respects a Bloody Nose 15m J.B. Smoove bonds with Jerry over zombies, bow ties and being your own biggest fan in Smoove’s all-time favorite car -- a 1964 Studebaker Avanti.
19. Joel Hodgson: A Taste Of Hell From On High 12m Jerry questions ketchup bottle design and movie humor with "Mystery Science Theater 3000" creator Joel Hodgson in a 1963 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia.SEOUL, South Korea — It all started with a Halloween party at a bar in 2004. Most everyone was wearing a risque costume; the women were showing a lot of skin.
Many foreign English teachers attended. When the photographs made their way to the internet, the English teachers were blamed. Critics objected to the revealing costumes, worn by both foreigners and locals, saying they undermined Korean women.
At around the same time, news reports were circulating in Korea about foreign English teachers getting involved in drugs and sexual crimes, stirring up concern among parents and the public.
An upswing in animosity toward foreign English teachers ensued, during which the group, "Citizens of Right Education" was formed. Citizens of Right Education has taken it upon itself to rid the country of foreign, unqualified English teachers. The group now has more than 17,000 members.
Many of the more than 22,000 English teachers in South Korea find the movement disturbing, and say they are coming up against racism in their adopted home.
Racism hasn’t been a huge issue for South Korea in the past. But as the country continues to climb the economic ladder, the presence of foreigners is growing — as is the multitude of cultural problems that come along with them.
The number of migrant workers, English teachers and bi-racial marriages is on the rise, with the total number of registered foreigners in South Korea at more than 854,000 in 2008 — nearly double the roughly 437,000 from five years ago, according to the Korean Statistical Information Service.
The Association for Teachers of English in Korea (ATEK), founded in 2009 to be an advocate for foreign English teachers in the country, believes the Citizens of Right Education is distorting the image of foreign teachers.
“It is a vocal group of Koreans who are very xenophobic and really focused on English teachers,” ATEK’s Vice President Darren Bean said.
The police are currently investigating a written death threat sent to ATEK’s president, which the association believes was sent by the Korean online group, Bean said.
The head of Citizen’s of Right Education strongly denies the allegation.
“We have said that we will catch the person behind everything and alert the police, but instead they’re saying I did it,” said Yi Eun-ung, the head of the online group. Yi said he is baffled at the accusations and emphasizes that his group is not targeting legitimate teachers who are doing good jobs.
Korea first saw a rise in animosity against English-speaking foreigners more than five years ago when two middle-school girls were killed in an accident caused by U.S. troops stationed in the country. Anti-American sentiments sparked at the time and led to scuffles in bars and in some cases the barring of foreigners from certain facilities.
However, discrimination has been more of an issue for migrant workers from Southeast Asian countries or Chinese ethnic Koreans working in the country. Amnesty International last year called on the country to protect migrant workers saying that they are “exposed to abusive work conditions including discrimination, verbal and physical abuse,” according to a statement posted to their website.
Last year, the country saw its first citizen convicted for making racist comments to a professor from India, while using public transportation. The offender was slapped with a fine for hurling slurs such as “Arabs are dirty,” at the scholar. Lawmakers have since drafted legislation related to racial discrimination but have yet to pass the bill.
Analysts point out that deeply embedded in the Korean psyche is the belief that all Koreans are from a single bloodline — something that could become problematic for a country with a rising foreign population.
ATEK’s Bean believes the local press coverage is biased when it comes to news related to English teachers. Drug use, sexual crimes and violence are some of the dominant issues that have made headlines in the country about foreign English teachers.
The number of arrested English teachers who are on employer-sponsored visas was at 114 in 2007 and 99 in 2008, according to local Yonhap News Agency, citing data provided by lawmaker Lee Koon-hyon from the ruling Grand National Party. However, these numbers are merely near the 0.5 percent range of the sponsored teachers in the country.
It is still those small numbers that Yi’s online group is after.
“We’re not trying to say all those with English-teaching-visas are criminals,” Yi said. When asked whether his activities, which include tailing teachers in question to find evidence, could be seen as invasive, Yi said his group is simply addressing blind spots in the law enforcement.
Postings from the past on the Citizens of Right Education, Yi admits, have contained racist remarks. However, the leader said inappropriate content has been removed and that he consistently monitors postings to ensure they don’t include racist content.
Yi said that most of the members of Citizens of Right Education are concerned parents, and he asks foreign teachers to try to see things from their point of view. His group will try to do the same, he added.On his latest The Milo Yiannopoulos Show podcast, Breitbart Tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos speaks about the rise of conservative rebelliousness.
Milo pointed out that in years gone by it was the liberals that were rebelling against all things mainstream, such as religion and politics, but that now in order to be a rebel and, you must in fact turn to conservatism.
“Do you find it surprising,” Milo asked Canadian writer Alex Kazemi, “that in order to be punk, in order to be transgressive and mischievous and dissident and to indulge in all of these things, you have to be a conservative? You have to be for Christianity in some way, even if you’re not a Christian you have to just want it to exist. You have to be conservative or at the very least Libertarian.”
“None of my colleagues seem to understand this but those MAGA hats are doing for this generation what [Marilyn Manson album] Antichrist Superstar did for mine,” he explained.
“I have literally got more religious in the last four years since I have been on these college campuses reading about social justice warriors, feminists, Black Lives Matter, it’s pushed me to God, I’m serious, it really has,” he continued. “I’ve never been a good Catholic, my mother’s Jewish and I was brought up Catholic by my dad, and I’ve never been a really good catholic. I kinda rediscovered it about 8 years ago when I met a friend who’s very Catholic and got back into the church but all this stuff has really shoved me back into the church not because I’m retreating in horror from the pace of social change but because it just feels like the cool thing to do.”
“I went to Santa Barbara and these kids, wearing these red hats which are like the track marks of 2016, carrying me aloft like Cleopatra, this is like ritualistic behaviour around an icon of dissidence and mischief that is exactly what we were doing in the 90s when people were like in black with eyeliner and Marilyn Manson,” he argued.
Listen to the preview below:Copyright 2019 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
LAS VEGAS -- The controversial body scanners at the airport could soon get some major updates that will better protect your privacy. The software is being tested out at McCarran International Airport.
They scanners have enhanced security at airports across the country, but are not always welcomed with open arms. Privacy has been a huge concern for some travelers, many not comfortable with their detailed body image being taken.
"That's kind of like invading privacy. It was kind of too much information," said passenger Oscar Vidal.
Now new software being tested at McCarran could put privacy issues to rest. The new software makes the whole body scanning process a lot less intrusive. Once a passenger walks through this scanner, an image pops up on the monitor of a generic body, only showing potential trouble areas.
"The image is the same for everyone, so it wouldn't be intrusive at all. People would be able to walk through, look at the image and it doesn't look like them, it looks like everyone else," said Dwayne Baird with the TSA.
If a yellow patch shows up on your body scan, you are taken for a secondary screening of that specific area. The process is called targeted pat downs.
Because the body images are so generic, TSA agents will also be able to monitor the scans right next to the machines as opposed to a remote area.
"The image is then immediately cleared and the next person comes into the machine for the next scan," said Baird. "There's no ability for this machine to save or retain the image whatsoever."
Some passengers think the new software is a positive change.
"It will probably help, because that is their main issue -- showing all of the lines and everything. I think it will help," said Vidal.
Enhanced pat downs will still be used if needed. The TSA says the software is being tested out at three airports in the United States. After several months of review, they will decide if machines nationwide will get the upgrade.UK Home Secretary Theresa May has declared that Britain's partners in the Five Eyes surveillance alliance should copy Blighty's online counter-terrorism policy – and force service providers to help purge “extremist messages” when they appear on the web.
Along with stepping up their surveillance, intelligence, and information sharing efforts, the Home Secretary, who is currently attending the Five Country Ministerial meeting, stated that the world's terrorist threats meant the allied security services “must act with more urgency and with greater joint resolve than we have before.”
May stated that the seven terrorist plots which the UK had managed to disrupt in the last 18 months were “all either linked to or inspired by Daesh and its propaganda.”
One of her four “key action fronts” was in “stopping the message of hate from spreading”, which involved continuing “to build capabilities at the European Internet Referrals Unit at Europol to secure the removal of terrorist propaganda from the internet.”
“I would like to see the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia – Britain’s Five Eyes partners – taking the same approach in working with communications service providers to tackle this propaganda.” said the Home Secretary, who was focused on reducing “the scope for terrorist groups to spew their hate online and to undermine their twisted narratives.”
May explained that the UK works “with internet companies to remove terrorist propaganda online” as part of the nation's counter-terrorism strategy. “However,” she added, “we want to go further than preventing people from becoming terrorists and focus on a broader approach to counter-extremism – both violent and non-violent.”
Her call for more action was accompanied by an argument that “there must be international cooperation, a common approach, free flows of intelligence and information, and the closing of technological gaps which the extremists exploit.”
The Home Secretary was offering her opinions on the strength of the Anglophone surveillance alliance in a speech to the security lobby's think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in Washington DC, ahead of a Five Country Ministerial meeting.
The Five Country Ministerial is an annual meeting between security representatives from each of the Five Eyes' governments. The first meeting was held in Monterey, California, in July 2013 – shortly after the Snowden disclosures brought the Five Eyes surveillance alliance to the public's attention.
It follows years of expansions in the number and breadth of information sharing partnerships involving all five Anglophone countries. Though the modern Five Eyes alliance was a product of a series of agreements focusing on signals intelligence, in particular the UKUSA agreement which emerged from the 1941 Atlantic Charter, the nations now share information on topics from border security through to policing.
Among the newer partnerships is the Five Country Conference, the domain for which was registered by New Zealand's Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.
The conference is a “consortium of immigration agencies” from the Five Eyes nations. A Privacy Impact Assessment (PDF) declared that a protocol was being established to “securely and confidentially check an agreed volume (initially 3,000 per year) of fingerprint sets of immigration cases against relevant fingerprint databases of the other FCC countries.”
A communiqué issued after last year's ministerial meeting, which was held in London, explained that the discussions covered “issues of security, serious and organised crime and cooperative border management,” as well as the issue of “those travelling to participate in terrorist organisations in Syria and elsewhere; foreign investment in critical infrastructure; online threats; and information sharing.” ®PEKIN — A woman now could be sent to prison on felony charges alleging she intentionally let two dogs in her care die of starvation and thirst.
Regina Robards, 43, was ordered last week to appear in court Feb. 4 in the felony case that replaces the misdemeanor charges first filed against her after the dogs were found dead in her Howard Court home in late November.
Robards’ landlord, who found the dogs, and others publicly criticized the initial misdemeanor charges as Robards made her first appearance in Tazewell County Circuit Court.
State’s Attorney Stewart Umholtz said then the case remained under investigation, which included a veterinarian’s exams that determined the dogs’ cause of death.
The felony charges accuse Robards not merely of allowing the dogs in her care to die, a misdemeanor crime, but of intentionally killing them by depriving them of food and water and failing to seek necessary care for them.
She faces between probation and three years in prison if convicted of any of her four counts of aggravated cruelty to a companion animal.
A prosecutor’s affidavit filed with the new charges stressed that the dogs, who the landlord said were named Walker and Sparky, had no access to water in the house after Robards moved out of it last July.
Her landlord, Loretta Joachim, called police Nov. 24 after she entered the house and found Walker, a mastiff puppy, dead in the living room, the affidavit stated. The second dog was found four days later in a rear bedroom, its body significantly decomposed, the affidavit stated.
Robards, now of South Pekin, apparently never told Joachim about the second dog in the months after she moved out. She later told police it belonged to her son, the affidavit stated.
Joachim said Robards told her she had left the mastiff in the house at 1509 Howard Court after she moved out but was returning daily to care for it, the affidavit stated. Robards told police after its discovery that she had seen it alive four days earlier, the affidavit stated.
She said the dog appeared emaciated because of a virus that she couldn’t afford to get treated. She didn’t take it to a shelter or contact animal control because she thought she could care for it, the affidavit stated.
She was arrested after Joachim said she discovered Sparky, the second dog, lying dead under a baby crib in the bedroom on Nov. 28.
Robards remains free on bond pending her February court appearance.Danger and despair in Pat Quinn’s crumbling Illinois
East St. Louis, Ill. — ‘Hey, hey craaaaaacka! Cracka! White devil! F*** you, white devil!” The guy looks remarkably like Snoop Dogg: skinny enough for a Vogue advertisement, lean-faced with a wry expression, long braids. He glances slyly from side to side, making sure his audience is taking all this in, before raising his palms to his clavicles, elbows akimbo, in the universal gesture of primate territorial challenge. Luckily for me, he’s more like a three-fifths-scale Snoop Dogg, a few inches shy of four feet high, probably about nine years old, and his mom — I assume she’s his mom — is looking at me with an expression that is a complex blend of embarrassment, pity, and amusement, as though to say: “Kids say the darnedest things, do they not, white devil?” It’s not the last challenge like this I’ll get here where the sidewalk ends, or the most serious one. I start off in Hinsdale, Ill., hometown of Pat Quinn, America’s Worst Governor™, a borough of stone mansions and yoga-panted women with vastly complex Starbucks orders, where I admire the Gordon Abbott house designed by the draftsman William Drummond from Frank Lloyd Wright’s shop, and then journey Marlow-like down U.S. 55, the dyspeptic alimentary canal of Illinois, from the shadows underneath the gloomy turret of the Joliet penitentiary to the stagnation of Normal and Bloomington, across the vast stretches of lightly populated Corn Belt and through the almost-as-empty state capital at Springfield, where the only sign of life is a convention of legionnaires in their jaunty, flare-intensive garrison caps, then onward and downward toward the Mississippi until finally arriving at my terminus in East St. Louis, where instead of meeting my Kurtz I get yelled at by a racially aggrieved tyke with more carefully coiffed hair than your average Miss America contestant.
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If you seek a monument to Governor Pat Quinn, take a good long whiff of the despair and decay around here. If his political career is indeed euthanized this November, they should bury its rotting carcass right here in East St. Louis, like Christopher Wren at St. Paul’s Cathedral: Lector, si monumentum ad Pat Quinn requiris, circumspice. If this is the Land of Lincoln, then Pat Quinn is the gubernatorial John Wilkes Booth.
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The bookends of Governor Quinn’s plan to reverse the fortunes of his ailing state were (1) a public-works program that he promised would ameliorate the state’s physical decay while creating — Pollyanna herself snorts derisively — 400,000 new jobs, and (2) an anti-violence program to turn around the relentless campaign of murder that has terrified and exasperated Chicagoans referring to their city as “Chiraq” — say it “chai-RACK” — a linguistic play on the fact that during the height of the Iraq War there were months in which more Americans lost their lives to violence in Illinois’s cultural capital than in Nouri al-Maliki’s Mesopotamian snake pit.
The new anti-violence initiative, no surprise, has been roughly as successful as having Bob Beckel dance the lead in Giselle. Chicago’s civic leaders have felt themselves obliged to launch a campaign against saying “Chiraq,” which pretty much tells you nine-tenths of what you need to know about the state of affairs in that city. The other tenth is this: The anti-violence program has not reduced crime and is itself the target of a federal criminal investigation into possible misuse of the $55 million in funds it has received. The Illinois auditor general has noted “pervasive deficiencies” in the program’s financial recordkeeping. The program seems to have been converted into a slush fund — the money was appropriated, and then local aldermen were consulted as to which organizations they’d like to pour that money into. A big chunk of it went to a program run by the husband of a Quinn ally, Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown. That’s Illinois for you: turning an anti-crime program into a criminal racket.
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Other investigations are under way, including one into improper hiring practices at the state department of transportation, regarding whether Democratic cronies were parked in government jobs through illegal political patronage. Quinn ally Carmen Iacullo “retired” unexpectedly when the investigation was opened. Pat Quinn, who has always campaigned as a reformer, is at the center of a compound sewage tornado of official misdoings.
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As for those 400,000 new jobs, the Associated General Contractors of America, a.k.a. the builders’ lobby, calculates that construction employment tanked in the wake of the public-works campaign. The Bureau of Labor Statistics finds that there are nearly 20,000 fewer people employed in Illinois today than when Governor Quinn took office, even though the population has grown. The reason? Hostile business climate, high taxes that are only getting higher under Governor Quinn, and the fact that the economy seems to be suffering from a terminal case of being dead. Governor Quinn promised an infusion, but hasn’t even stanched the hemorrhage.
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Public-works projects, however, aren’t simply about connecting unemployed people with government-issued paychecks. Public works are conventionally intended to be works that benefit the public. There’s zero evidence of that having happened here. East St. Louis calls to mind any number of locales — Detroit, Calcutta, Monrovia — none of which you’d want on the poster for your reelection campaign.
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East St. Louis in fact has a strangely rural feel to it, owing to the fact that the abandoned homes, vacant lots, and public spaces have been allowed to become so unkempt and overgrown that as you drive through sections of the city’s center, tall verdant walls of foliage press upon your car on either side, sometimes nearly meeting canopy-like overhead, giving the urban streets the feeling of a country lane. What really bakes your noodle is realizing that behind those Amazonian clusters of weeds and wildness that have encroached on the asphalt are, maybe ten or twelve feet back on either side, sidewalks, or the ruins of sidewalks, and, behind them, the remains of houses and other buildings, some of them long vacant, some of them burned, their husks left standing where they are — and some of them occupied. Every 500 feet or so, you come across the homestead of some industrious citizen who keeps his dwelling in fine trim and excellent repair, and these gaps are like core biopsies into the tumor-riddled tissue of the city: They expose the adjacent remains of crumbled and uprooted sidewalks, vast piles of garbage, the ghost architecture of stripped foundations. One older gentleman is just mowing the hell out of his lawn, stopping occasionally to wrestle with the pull-cord starter on his mower, assaulting the grass like it owes him money. On either side of him is urban jungle taller than he is, taller than all of the corn in the cornfields I passed on the way here.
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I don’t like his odds.
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#page#The encroaching vegetation leaves the motorist with no option but to drive in the middle of the street. Unfortunately, the pedestrians are left with only the same option, and two women make their way slowly down the street, glaring at my oncoming car like Davy Crockett staring down a bear. When the vegetation recedes, exposing the underlying urban blight, it is shocking: Even the Planned Parenthood building is barred up, and the state department of human services building is surrounded by barbed wire, both of which facts surely are of some concern to the slender and lightly dressed young women who — before 10 a.m. — are attempting to make intense eye contact with any and all passing vehicles, one of the few signs of commerce on display. But civic life is not entirely dead: A group of volunteers is cutting a ribbon beneath a billboard showing an abused canine over the slogan: “Chains are for football fields, not dogs.” I stop to talk with them and am met by a much more grown-up version of my three-fifths-scale Snoop Dogg, who raises his hands to his chest and flashes two “W” gang signs at me, the universal banger shorthand for “west side.” In this context I do not know what “west side” means, but the gesture — ring and middle finger together, index and pinky extended — is the semiotic inverse of the Vulcan gesture that goes along with the salutation “Live long and prosper.” I do not share this observation with my interlocutor.
In search of commerce, I swing over to the Casino Queen hotel, nightclub, and RV park, “Home of the Loosest Slots,” where the action is slow. Despite the ample free parking and the shuttle service to Cardinals games across the river, revenue is down 15.2 percent compared with this time last year. Riverboat gambling has been legal in Illinois since 1990, and video poker was legalized in 2011 — expressly as a measure to pay for Governor Quinn’s $31 billion public-works program. (The original video-gambling bill was passed in 2009, but was held up by court challenges until 2011.) The riverboats put up a fuss that these new, even-lower-rent operators would bite into their business, and they seem to have been correct. I chat for a moment with an older guy playing video slots, and he says that he comes here because there’s nothing better to do. This being Illinois, he is of course a retired state employee, whiling away his pension in front of the blinky lights and zoinky sound effects. But he’s contributing to another pension: This casino was sold by its operators to its employees a few years ago, and its stock is owned by their retirement fund — which means that those declining revenues must be inspiring some acute financial puckering among the pit bosses and desultory cleaning crews.
East St. Louis gets plenty of the downside of the casino business, but if it’s getting any of the upside, it’s hard to spot it. In this 98 percent–African-American city, the only people I see doing anything like legitimate and productive semi-private-sector work are white guys in pickup trucks, namely the Lowry Electric crews who are out working on streetlights. Half of the working-age adults in East St. Louis do not work, about half of the city’s residents receive a welfare payment of some sort, 60 percent of households earn less than $25,000 a year — and 30 percent earn less than $10,000 a year. Jennifer F. Hamer, a scholar of low-income urban life, reports that there are at least 100 toxic-waste sites in the city.
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The place may be dismal, but the place-names are inspirational: Jackie Joyner-Kersee Park, Miles Davis Elementary School, the Katherine Dunham Museum. I take a turn down Barack Obama Avenue, which looks exactly as it should, and head out of town. I pass a black Chevy S-10 pickup truck that is carefully navigating the urban jungle and the rubble, its vanity license plate reading: “So be it.”
The proverb among Pennsylvania politicians is that their state is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh separated by Kentucky. The problem with Illinois is that it is unipolar: There’s Chicago, and then there’s everything else. Half the people I speak with have never heard of Pat Quinn. Certainly not the two weathered-looking women I meet at the Dairy Queen in Troy. They tell me that they are in the furniture-restoration business; judging by the contents of their pickup truck, they are in the furniture-restoration business in roughly the same sense that Fred Sanford |
allowed 1 goal in each of the two devils wins, and has been the lifeline of the devils in clutch moments when they have been pushed against the wall by the Kings.
2) The devils need to carry over their powerplay success from last game into this game. The Devils were 0-2, 0-4, 0-6, and 0-3 in their first 4 games before being 1-2 in game 5. The Devils need to score first to have a stronger chance to win, and they can’t afford to not capitalize on these chances they are being given.
3) Maintain physical pressure in offensive and defensive zones. In the last two games the Devils had won more face-offs, out hit the devils and won the battle for the pucks, and have muscle guys off the puck in their defensive zones and have blocked more than half the total number of shots the Kings take. If they keep playing this physical style they can negate the Kings offense and get ready for Game 7 in NJ.
LA
1) Just as the Devils main factor is Brodeur, the King’s need JonathanQuick to continue his game play. He has a 1.43 GAA and a.946% save percentage that lead the league in both categories and beat Broduer’s 2.00 GA and.922% save percentage. Those are staggering playoff numbers and the reason the Kings have gotten this far. If they want to win the Cup Quick will have to shine once again tonight.
2) LA’s captain Dustin Brown needs to find his scoring touch. He has 17 points in the playoffs, but record only 1 assist in this series. If the captain isn’t going that will affect the team.
3) Capitalize on breakaway and odd-man rushes. The Kings did this well in Games 1 and 2 in OT, but since then haven’t had much luck. They were able to split the Devil’s defense a couple of times in game 5 to get these chances only to be rejected by Brodeur. The Kings have the scoring ability but just like the Devils need to be able to finish on their powerplays to increase their chances of winning, the kings need to score on their breakaways and rushes to increase their chances of hoisting Lord Stanley’s Cup.
Prediction:
It will be another tightly fought contest and both goalies will shine. However, in the end the Devils will get the bounce they need to put it away. 1-0 Devils final to force a game 7 Wednesday night in NJ.
AdvertisementsTo catch a hacker, you must think like a hacker. Security expert Andrew Whitaker explains the hacker mentality and points out how hackers combine multiple exploits to achieve their goals. Andrew is the lead author of Chained Exploits: Advanced Hacking Attacks from Start to Finish, which teaches how attackers chain together attacks.
Nothing makes you worry more about your job security then when the network that you're paid to secure gets hacked. You work tirelessly to ensure that systems are patched, unnecessary services are turned off, configurations are hardened, and procedures are followed. Here's the problem, though: You must be right 100% of the time, but hackers have to be right only once.
You find yourself in the boss's office. "What went wrong? How did we get hacked? I thought you said that our network is secure," he says, in a displeased tone. With your job on the line, you try to retrace the steps of how your network was compromised.
Retracing the attacker's steps isn't an easy task. It's not always as simple as naming a single vulnerability that was exploited. Often hackers use a number of exploits that are chained together to form an attack. When faced with incident response, you must see the attack from the attacker's perspective. This means looking at your network from all angles, finding openings, and tracing out how an attacker could combine multiple exploits to achieve a malicious goal.
To foil an attack, you must think like the attacker.
Missing the Obvious
Few security professionals today know how to think like an attacker. Knowing how to install locks on your front door doesn't train you in thinking like a burglar. In the same way, knowing how to configure a firewall or other security technologies doesn't train you to think like a hacker. Too often, security professionals spend their time learning technologies, rather than learning about what they're trying to guard against. Which leads to this question: How exactly do you think like an attacker?
No one becomes a malicious attacker overnight. It takes years of late nights in the basement gulping energy drinks, listening to progressive techno music, and writing cryptic assembly code. Okay, maybe there's a little more to it than that. But not much. Let's examine the common characteristics of malicious hackers.
Hackers Love Technology
A hacker is someone who loves technology. The term hack is believed to have come from the MIT Tech Model Railroad Club, where members would "hack" DEC programmed data processors to try to improve electric trains, tracks, and switches. A similar passion for understanding and improving technology is what led to the birth of UNIX, Linux, and Apple. Behind each of these technologies are people who are, in the true sense of the word, hackers.
Taking this idea forward to today, a malicious attacker loves technologyperhaps even more than you do. He or she knows the security products you've implemented, beyond just configuration; the hacker may even reverse-engineer these technologies to unmask how they really work.
Hackers Think Outside the Box
You can tell a lot about people by how they cook. Some like to follow a recipe perfectly, using the exact amount of each ingredient and checking off steps as they go. Others are more carefree, throwing in a splash of one ingredient and a dab of another. This latter group isn't interested in the set recipe on the box; they prefer to try something different, to see how it turns out.
Such is the mindset of the malicious attacker. To use the cliché, he or she thinks "outside the box." This is important to remember, because while you spend time reading manuals and configuring your firewalls and servers as the vendors instruct you, the hacker is wondering what happens if a certain bit is changed in a packet, or if a particular machine instruction is incremented.
This out-of-the-box thinking extends beyond just modifying code or packets. It's part of the mindset of hacking. When I perform penetration tests, my mind races with options on how I'm going to attack my target. If an attack fails, I have three or four other attacks ready to go. It's the difference between thinking linearly and viewing an attack like a massive spider web or the map of a city, with multiple ways to get from one point to another. If one path is blocked, many others can lead me to the same destination.
Unfortunately, I seldom get the opportunity to try every avenue of attack. A penetration test is limited in scope and time. But someone maliciously attacking your network has all the time in the world. To quote Benjamin Franklin, "He that can have patience can have what he will." If an attacker wants in badly enough, it's just a matter of time.
Hackers Chain Attacks
In addition to loving technology and being an out-of-the-box thinker, an attacker looks for ways to chain together multiple exploits into one large attack. On the cover of my book Chained Exploits: Advanced Hacking Attacks from Start to Finish is a picture that serves as a good visual metaphor for chained exploits: A trail of ants carries parts of leaves up a tree trunk. The ants work separately, but the whole group is working together to carry their food. Each ant takes a small part of a leaf; when combined, these parts make up the entire leaf. The same approach is taken by skilled hackers; rather than relying on a single attack point, they chain their exploits together to form one larger attack.
Take the following scenario as an example. You get a call at 2 a.m. from a frantic coworker, saying that your website has been breached. You jump out of bed, throw on some clothes, and rush down to your workplace. When you get there, you find your manager and coworkers in a frenzy, wondering what to do. You look at the web server and go through the logs. Nothing sticks out. You go to the firewall and review its logs. You don't see any suspicious traffic heading for your web server. What do you do?
I hope you said, "Step back and take a look at the bigger picture."
There are many ways to attack a website, and some of them don't involve attacking the web server from the Internet. An attacker may attack a router, a backup server, a database server, and finally creep in to attack the web server. Never assume that the attacker launched a single exploit from the Internet to your network. A skilled attacker combines multiple exploits, which means that your job will require unwinding the chain of attacks and following the trail back to the attacker.Today is a wonderful day. Why? Is it my birthday? Is it Halloween? Is it that time I found a purse that looked exactly like the Kate Spade bag I’d been coveting for only $20?
No. Today is a wonderful day because I finally got my beta invitation to Shudder, the all-horror streaming service. I can’t even tell you the noise that came out of me when I heard the little “ping” of a new email and opened it to find this:
So, dear horror fanatic friends, I decided that once I stopped hyperventilating I’d check out the service and let you know what I think. Here we go!
It’s Beautifully Designed And Coded
As a former graphic designer/web developer, I’ve got a special place in my heart for well-designed websites. Shudder is definitely one of them. Everything flows nicely, it’s responsive, it’s visually interesting. I love the iconography used for the categories and there’s pleasant (but not distracting) movement on each page. Also, when you hover over a film, you get a nice synopsis of its plot and how members have rated it:
Once you dive into a particular film’s reviews, you find a very well-functioning review system:
I particularly like that you can upvote or downvote the reviews. Sometimes (especially in horror) a film can go over someone’s head and all they have to say about it is “SUCKS”. This function allows you to weed out the bad reviews and find more popular opinions.
Also, there are bonus designs in the footer, complete with spooky photography and horror movie quotes:
I love it. It’s like they just “get” me. I’m there because I love horror and they’re serving it up in platefuls.
There Are Tons Of Categories
On Netflix, you get genres that range from “Horror” to “Suspenseful Thriller Starring Independent Women With Brown Hair And Daddy Issues”. Okay, so they don’t get that specific, but a lot of times I find the options offered to me to either be far too narrow or far too broad. Shudder just happens to NAIL IT.
Like I said, they just “get” the average horror fan. I usually set out with a general idea of what I want to watch and rather than focusing on the gritty details, Shudder offers me genre-specific categories. Here’s what they’re currently featuring:
A-Horror (Asian Horror)
Psychos and Madmen
Identity Crises
Socko Spoofs
Into The Wild
Comedy of Terrors
Haunted Habitations
Gross Anatomy
Romantic Bloodsuckers
Slashics (Slasher Classics)
Smart Slashers
The Unblinking Eye: Diabolical Documentaries
The Unraveling Mind
Trapped
Urban Decay
Weird Science
Zombie Jamboree
Cult Masters: Eurohorror
Foundations of Horror
Hexes and Ooohs!
Human Monsters & Serial Killers
Monster Mash
Possessions: The Devil Made Me Do It!
Bad Genes & Killer Kids
Not Your Ordinary Bloodsucker
School’s Out… Forever
Spectral Encounters
I mean, seriously, there has been some effort put into these categories and I love it. (Also, I totally want to start a band called “Zombie Jamboree”.) Even if you DON’T know what you want to watch at first, just looking through these will give you an idea of what kind of spook you should see. So now that we know the lay of the land, let’s dive in and get to the real experience.
It Functions Like Any Other Streaming Service
I’m feeling like a good old haunted house movie so I’m choosing Haunted Habitations. Based on the reviews of the five movies in this category, I’m going with “Apartment 143”. Let’s check out the synopsis and reviews first:
Cool. It’s got a thorough overview of the plot and I can watch the trailer if I want to but I don’t because it sounds like it might be paranormal found footage and I’m SOLD! I click that big red play button and in the same window a movie player opens. It takes a moment to load but no worse than Netflix or Hulu. It’s a little stuttery at first (or “shuddery” AHAHAHAHA I’m hilarious) so I pause it to let the buffering catch up.
From there on, it’s just like a typical streaming service. I watched the movie from the comfort of my office chair (as it’s not currently offered on anything but the web). However, according to the FAQ there are “apps for iOS, Android, and Roku launching in the coming weeks”.
It Features Something Called Shudder.TV
At the top left, you’ll notice the link for Shudder.TV. I gave it a shot and not gonna lie, I’m a cocktail of confused and intrigued:
Advertised as “an endless stream of screams”, I’m not quite sure what this is. Could it be an original series? Back-to-back movies of films not currently offered elsewhere on the site? I really have no clue but I like the idea of tuning in to the middle of something scary and not having all the information. What I watched for a few minutes was a mountain biker in the spooky woods looking for his missing partner and some big bloody dude calling for his dog, but the dog started crying somewhere and I noped out because I don’t do hurt puppies. Perhaps the true reason behind this service will be revealed after beta but honestly I don’t mind the mystery for now.
So there you have it. In this humble horror fan’s opinion, Shudder totally rules and I’d definitely pay $4.99 a month for it. My only criticism would be that the buffering was kind of an issue but that could also be due to my internet connection. If you haven’t done so already, you can go to shudder.com and request a beta invitation. I can’t wait for it to be available on my other devices — this will be a definite must-have for the Halloween season.Getty Has the Milky Way been dead for billions of years?
An “alive” galaxy is one that continues to produce gas, and thus also creates new stars. Once the stars die, the gasses are released back to help produce new stars. They are also typically in an spiral shape, like the Milky Way. But another type of galaxy is more football shape, with the stars orbiting in a more free-flowing motion which gives it a rounder appearance, otherwise known as elliptical galaxies. This is due to the fact that they have stopped producing gasses and stars and have lost their flat looking shape.
It had previously been thought that blue galaxies are a sign that they are relatively young and that gasses are being produced at a rapid rate, and red galaxies signify that they are near to the end of their life. However, as technology advanced and we were able to see hundreds of thousands of galaxies in our universe, scientists noted that many of the red galaxies were still spiralling and had not lost their shape – meaning that signs of young and old were conflicting. Kevin Schawinski, Assistant Professor of Galaxy & Black Hole Astrophysics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, explains in the Conversation: “The crossroads of galaxy evolution is a place called the ‘green valley.’
Getty An elliptical galaxy which has lost its shape
“This may sound scenic, but refers to the population between the blue star-forming galaxies (the ‘blue cloud’) and the red, passively evolving galaxies (the ‘red sequence’). “Galaxies with ‘green’ or intermediate colours should be those galaxies in which star formation is in the process of turning off, but which still have some on-going star formation – indicating the process only shut down a short while ago, perhaps a few hundred million years.” He argues that spiralling galaxies – like our own – are just dying at a slower rate and that the Milky Way could have begun this process a billion years ago, leaving it in a zombie-like state.
Getty Red galaxies were believed to be dying
He and his team “found the slowly dying ones are the spirals and the rapidly dying ones are the ellipticals. There must be two fundamentally different evolutionary pathways that lead to quenching in galaxies. “When we explored these two scenarios – dying slowly, and dying quickly – it became obvious that these two pathways have to be tied to the gas supply that fuels star formation in the first place. “Imagine a spiral galaxy like our own Milky Way merrily converting gas to stars as new gas keeps flowing in.
Getty
“Then something happens that turns off that supply of fresh outside gas: perhaps the galaxy fell into a massive cluster of galaxies where the hot intra-cluster gas cuts off fresh gas from the outside, or perhaps the dark matter halo of the galaxy grew so much that gas falling into it gets shock heated to such a high temperature that it cannot cool down within the age of the universe. In any case, the spiral galaxy is now left with just the gas it has in its reservoir. “The Milky Way is just at the edge, ready to tumble into the green valley. It’s entirely possible that the Milky Way galaxy is a zombie, having died a billion years ago.”MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Three people died in Somalia on Wednesday in different attacks, one of which targeted a patrol of peacekeepers near the country’s capital, Mogadishu, officials told Reuters.
A roadside bomb killed one African Union peacekeeper and wounded another as they patrolled Arbis, a village about 23 kilometers southwest of Mogadishu, according to Wilson Rono, a spokesman for the African Union peacekeeping force AMISOM.
A counter-attack by AMISOM killed four al Shabaab fighters, Rono said. Al Shabaab is the Islamist militant group fighting to topple Somalia’s western-backed government and replace it with one strictly adhering to Islamic sharia law.
The group also frequently targets AMISOM, which is supporting the central government.
Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab’s military spokesman, told Reuters the group had killed four AMISOM soldiers and injured two others in the assault
“We have not lost anyone,” Abu Musab said, adding that AMISOM had killed civilian as it responded to the attack.
In a second incident late on Wednesday evening, a bomb exploded as it was being prepared in a house in Mogadishu’s Karan district, according to Mohamed Osman, a police officer.
“It killed one man and injured another,” Osman said.
A female police officer was also killed in Mogadishu’s
Hodan district by gunmen who quickly disappeared, a police official said. Abu Musab told Reuters al Shabaab was also responsible for that attack.Robiiii
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Posts: 10565 OfflineJoined: Dec 2015Posts: 10565
tsubasalover said:
Yaoi-Senpai said:
can you tell me why YOI is not mentioned?
*edit:- I mean why it's not ranked? @tsubasalover can you tell me why YOI is not mentioned?*edit:- I mean why it's not ranked?
tsubasalover said:
The list is based on the audience's votes regarding their best anime that aired until September 2016 The list is based on the audience's votes regarding their best anime that Yuri!! on Ice aired in Fall 2016.
Robiiii said:
Is the order a rabbit ranked twice, didnt see that coming at all :O It is ranked twice because both are different seasons. I mentioned it, but maybe it's not clear.andaired in Fall 2016.It is ranked twice because both are different seasons.
Yeah I knew that, u didnt need to clarify.
Altho I can see why it might have been confusing, my bad Yeah I knew that, u didnt need to clarify.Altho I can see why it might have been confusing, my bad BBCodeClick to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
Kendrick Edwards may have left Arkansas, the Razorbacks, but he hasn’t left Arkansas, the state.
According to a tweet posted to his personal Twitter account, Edwards revealed that he has been “[e]xtremely blessed and thankful for this new opportunity at Arkansas State University.” That Sun Belt football program, it should be noted, has yet to confirm Edwards’ addition to the roster.
Extremely blessed and thankful for this new opportunity at Arkansas State University!! #6shooter #WolvesUp 🐺🤘🏽💯 pic.twitter.com/H1CCfV9HjI — Kendrick Edwards II (@Seis_GoDeep) May 25, 2016
This development is the latest twist in what’s thus far been an odd collegiate odyssey for Edwards.
In March of 2015, it was announced that Edwards had been removed from the Razorbacks football program and was given permission to speak to other schools about a transfer. However, Edwards was reinstated to the program shortly thereafter; however, the sequel, Edwards was permanently dismissed in the midst of the 2015 season for unspecified reasons.
Coming out of high school in Miami, Edwards was rated by 247Sports.com as a three-star recruit in the Class of 2014. In parts of two seasons with the Razorbacks, Edwards caught eight passes for 121 yards and a touchdown.
After sitting out the 2016 season to satisfy NCAA transfer rules, Edwards will have two seasons of eligibility remaining beginning in 2017.By Jonathan Walsh
Rabat – Morocco telecom providers blocked on Friday calls made through VoIP services with WiFi connection.
VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol services, refer to calls made through popular mobile applications such as Whatsapp, Viber, and Skype, as opposed to being made through mobile service providers.
The move to block VoIP calls made through WiFi connections has long been anticipated, since calls made via 3G and 4G were blocked by all three telecom providers last January.
Following the telecom companies’ decision, the Constitutional Union, an opposition party, criticized the move, labeling it as “an obstacle to freedom of communication,” saying it will be “a severe blow to many start-ups, companies, and technological creation units, at a time when entrepreneurship, including in new technologies, is a potential pathway for the creation of thousands of jobs and added value.”
Many Moroccans also expressed their dismay at the decision. A campaign was launched last month on Facebook, calling on Moroccans to boycott the three telecom providers on January 16 and 17.
“Through this campaign, we want to show to those companies that we are not sheep, but consumers who should be respected,” the organizers of the campaign said. “The Internet is a free space that nobody has the right to control.”
Moroccan Telecom providers claim the decision was made because of the negative impact free calls have on the Moroccan telecommunications industry. The ban is supported by Morocco’s National Agency for Telecommunications Networks, which points out that the move is “in accordance with the law.”
“The regulations governing the provision of telephone services (VoIP or other) are clear and those services can be provided only by holders of telecommunications licenses operators,” they said in a statement.
Earlier this month, it was thought that restrictions to VoIP calls made through 3G, 4G, and WiFi connections were lifted. For over a week, Moroccan users notices that the services had been restored, which allowed them to communicate with their loved ones inside and outside of Morocco.You'd be hard-pressed to find a city whose police culture has a stronger devotion to the blue code of silence than Chicago. There were a couple more examples from the headlines this week.
In the first story, a Chicago cop was writing a ticket when the owner of the car came out to see what was going on. As he did, his seven-month-old puppy slipped out of the house, at which point the Chicago cop shot the dog. Note that the dog appears to have been hit by bullet fragments that chipped off after the bullet hit something else. Meaning that to protect himself from a bite from a puppy (that neighbors said was wagging its tail when it was shot), this cop put everyone around him at risk of getting struck by stray fragments of bullet. He then calmly finished writing the parking ticket.
The blue wall part of the story occurred later, after the couple who owns the dog went to the media. Chicago PD apparently didn't like the publicity, so they sent a couple cops to pay the couple a visit.
Two days after the shooting, a sergeant and a lieutenant from the Chicago Police Department showed up at the Phillips' home. "I thought they were sending honchos over to apologize," Barbara told me. Instead, Al and Barbara said, the police questioned why the family had gone to the media, and insisted that the officer who shot at their dog is a "good man." When Al and Barbara were clearly unwilling to promise "no more media," they were issued a ticket for Colonel being off-leash two days prior. At first, the City denied this visit ever took place, however, a TV news crew happened to be there and caught it on tape.
Catch that? The department not only sent a couple cops over to intimidate the couple, they then lied that the visit ever took place. And they only admitted it took place after they were caught on video. Now that we know the city and the police are willing to lie about the incident, why should we believe anything else they have to say about it? Note this, too:
Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy weighed in with these comments on Fox TV News:
"Unfortunately, officers get bit by dogs frequently. We don't have to wait to get bit by a dog, we don't have to wait to get shot at before we take steps to protect ourselves. We have to shoot dogs frequently in the city.
Does Chicago PD at least give its cops training, so they can actually tell the difference between an aggressive animal about to attack and, say, a tail-wagging puppy? (Not that you should need training for that.) When I contacted them last April, I was told that the city offers no such training.
The second story involves a drunk, off-duty Chicago cop who in 2007 was caught on video viciously beating bartender Karolina Obrycka when she cut him off. The cop wasn't even charged until video of the beating surfaced. The bartender recently won $850,000 in a federal lawsuit. The city has agreed to pay the amount and not appeal the verdict. But there's a condition.
The city and Obrycka's attorneys are asking a judge to set aside that verdict, as part of their deal to pay Obrycka the $850,000 she was awarded right away. The city would forego any appeals of the jury's financial award to Obrycka, in exchange for not being held legally responsible for the beating. "By reaching this agreement, the plaintiff gets certainty and an immediate payment of the jury's award. From the city's perspective, vacating the judgment eliminates the risk that the judgment will be misused in a way that hinders the city's ability to defend itself in future cases," city Law Department spokesman Roderick Drew said in an emailed statement.
Why does the city want to pay the settlement and have the verdict set aside? Because of what the jury found when it reached its verdict.
The Chicago Police Department has been found guilty of covering up the beating of a female bartender by a city police officer, and was criticized for honoring a "code of silence" in which officers cover up for one another's misdeeds... Obrycka sued the police department and former police officer Anthony Abbate for a 2007 incident in which Abbate jumped behind her bar at Jesse's Shortstop Inn and, when reprimanded by Obrycka, assaulted her. The altercation was caught on surveillance tape, but Chicago police officers ignored the tape's existence and failed to mention in their police report that the assailant was a city cop. Obrycka's attorney presented evidence, including hundreds of phone calls between Abbate and other cops in the hours after the incident, that convinced the jury there was a widespread effort to cover up the attack.
So rather than take the verdict as a (yet another) sign that there's something seriously wrong within the Chicago Police Department, the city has chosen to pay out $850,000 to make the jury's findings go away. Otherwise, the city might have had to compensate other people beaten to a bloody pulp by Chicago cops. And we can't have that.
Let's hear it from the mayor himself.
"This agreement, in my view, closes a chapter on something - before I was mayor - happened, and it also allows us to protect the city against future lawsuits," Emanuel said.
So upon hearing that some of his city's cops helped cover up the fact that one of their own beat a woman senseless, Emanuel's first reaction is to cover his own ass (don't blame me, it happened before I was mayor!), and his second to cover the city's. No apology for the actions of the city's public servants. No promise to investigate the culture of lying within the department.
It's worth noting that Emanuel chose Garry McCarthy as his new police chief last year. McCarthy came from Newark, which ranked 13th from the bottom in the country for police misconduct in 2010. McCarthy made it clear where his priorities would lie in Chicago when he declared shortly after his appointment that, "I'll have cops' backs." It sounds like cops are doing a fine job of covering their own backs. It's people like Karolina Obrycka who could use some help.
By the way, this is all happening while Chicago PD remains under federal investigation for torturing suspects, a scandal that went all the way up to the office of Mayor Richard Daley, who knew about the torture, but did nothing to stop it. Looks like Emanuel will carry on the Daley tradition of turning a blind eye to police abuse.A satisfying aroma is coming from the oven. Soon we’ll be enjoying the tender texture and delicate flavor of a butternut squash.
Today I’m baking this colorful squash with a little gluten-free stuffing made from apples, walnuts, cinnamon and nutmeg. Maybe a little butter or oil, too.
Butternut squash would be good baked with nothing but salt, pepper and butter. Lately though, we’ve been enjoying more apples since they’re in season. Adding chopped apples with a little spice and some nuts naturally complements the flavor of the squash.
I love using simple, whole foods like winter squash and apples. These gluten-free ingredients are easy to find. Better yet, the recipe is from before I went gluten-free. It doesn’t even need any modification for gluten sensitivity, gluten intolerance or celiac disease.
Butternut Squash Baked with Apple-Walnut-Cinnamon Stuffing
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 1 hour
Total Time: 1 hour, 15 minutes
Makes 4 large or 8 small servings
Ingredients:
1 Medium Butternut Squash, about 2 pounds
2 Medium Apples
2 Tablespoons Chopped Walnuts (optional)
1 Tablespoon Butter, Ghee, Margarine (casein-free) or Oil
1 Tablespoon Agave, Honey or Brown Sugar
1/4 Teaspoon Cinnamon
1 Dash Nutmeg (optional)
1/4 Teaspoon Kosher Salt (optional)
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Wash the squash and the apples.
Cut the squash in half from stem to base. With a spoon, scrape out the seeds and pulp from the center.
Lightly oil a baking pan. Lay the halves of the squash cut side down on the pan.
Bake until barely fork tender, about 45 minutes.
Meanwhile, peel, core and chop or dice the apples. Stir in the nuts and sweetener.
Turn the squash over carefully on the baking sheet.
Scoop out a small cavity in the other end of each half so you’ll have 4 pockets for stuffing instead of 2.
Spread the butter, ghee, margarine or oil over the cut surfaces. (I use a fork to rub a pat of butter over the warm surface of the squash or my fingers to spread some oil.)
Fill the cavities with the apple/nut filling.
Sprinkle with more spice and salt as desired.
Bake for another 10-15 minutes until squash and filling are tender.
Serve.
This frugal recipe is gluten-free, egg-free and meatless. It can also be casein-free, dairy-free and lactose-free with an appropriate butter substitute. Because it uses agave nectar and apples for sweetening, it’s low glycemic and refined sugar-free. With the oil and honey options, it can be used for a paleo diet.
Added here:
Simply Sugar & Gluten-Free’s Slightly Indulgent Tuesday
The Gluten-Free Homemaker’s Gluten-Free Wednesdays
Miz Helen’s Country Cottage Full Plate Thursday
Frugal Follies’ Frugal Food Thursday
The Nourishing Gourmet’s Pennywise Platter Thursday
Cybele Pascal’s Allergy Friendly FridayThe purpose of the European project, at least the purpose sold to the public, was to provide long term stability to the continent, particularly economic stability. The lesson of the first fifty years of the 20th century was that nationalist competition among states led to economic instability and war. Therefore, cooperation among the nations of Europe on economic matters, as well as a common defense, would keep the peace and allow all nations to prosper together, as one continent.
Talk to sophisticated Europeans and they will give you some version of how a united Europe has kept the peace. Many will argue that open borders and a single currency have been the solution. The Euro has become a symbol for the end of individual people, replaced by the common people of Europe. One people, one currency. The economic and political arguments for Europe have become a religion of sorts for the sophisticated types. This was obvious in the Brexit vote, with all the shrieking and panic after it.
The trouble is the Euro is proving to be unworkable and possibly a disaster for Europe. Since the end of the Cold War, when the project was supposed to come into its own as the new organizational model for the continent, it has been one crisis after another. The answer each time has been a doubling down on political and bureaucratic unification, which results in a new crisis. Each time they muddle through one problem, the result in a new set of bigger problems to be addressed.
There’s a Holy Roman Empire vibe to Europe these days. At some point, one of these problems is going to prove unsolvable. At that point, the logic of the whole enterprise gets called into question. That was the reason the Germans were hell bent on bringing the Greeks to heel. The sensible solution was to let them leave, but that would have meant the EU was a voluntary association of nations. If the Greeks left then anyone could leave. It turns out that political unity only works when it is compulsory.
That’s what may be tested now that the Italians have voted to reject the structural reforms most thought necessary to avoid a banking crisis in the country. Like the Greeks, the Italian banking system is in shambles, but the bigger issue is their political and legal system. Italian society is not engineered to work in a German economic model. That leaves two possible solutions. One is for the Italians to adopt the German political system or for them to go back to the Italian economic model, that is, leave the EU.
It turns out that Italians like being Italian and will not abandon their culture without a fight. This is a replay of the Greek crisis, except that the Italian economy is twice the size of the Greek economy. There’s also the fact that the Italians are much more of a core European nation, in the broader political and cultural sense. No one in Europe felt bad about stomping on the Greeks. The French and the Spanish will not be enthusiastic about siding with Berlin against Rome in a fight, because what comes next for Rome is next for Madrid and Paris.
Once again, we are seeing what is a core failing of technocracy. Public policy is about trade-offs. In a liberal democracy, the people, through their representatives, wrangle over these trade-offs and arrive at a compromise that satisfies most people well enough to keep the peace. Logic is not what drives these deliberations. Tradition, culture and vested interests play the leading roles. Smart people know how to create a better health system, for example, but getting everyone to go along with it is impossible.
Technocracy has no mechanism for this. It is the sterile decision making of bureaucrats insulated from the consequences of their policy choices. The managerial state has the added defect of bestowing a form of tenure on its members. No matter how much they screw up, they never lose anything but some face. That has even gone by the wayside. Jamie Gorelick is a colossal screw-up, but she keeps getting better gigs after each debacle. Hillary Clinton came close to falling all the way up into the White House.
Inevitably, people begin to look at the managerial class the same way the commoners looked at the aristocracy in 18th century France. The average citizen of a Western country feels as if they are ruled by strangers. The result is the rising tide of populism we are seeing, which is nothing like the top-down variant a century ago. The Italian vote was not about nationalism, It was about rejecting rule by strangers. It is why Trump will be the next president and Britain will leave Europe. People prefer the familiar to the foreign.Palmyra residents fear losing homes to Perth freight link after letters received warning of demolition
Updated
Homeowners in the southern Perth suburb of Palmyra say they feel like they are living the movie The Castle after receiving letters to say their homes may be demolished to make way for a highway upgrade.
As part of planning for the $1.6 billion Perth freight link project, due to start next year, Main Roads has written to around 20 residents whose homes border the northern side of Leach Highway in Palmyra.
The letters inform them their houses may be compulsorily acquired and demolished.
One recipient Tania Smirke, told 720 ABC Perth she had no idea it was a possibility and said she and her family were completely shocked.
"We knew the intersection of Stock Road and Leach Highway was going to be |
arguments, but do not believe what academic or government-employed scientists say;[27] scientists and federal agencies have consistently denied that chemtrails exist, explaining the sky tracks are simply persistent contrails.[2][11][29] The review also found that believers generally hold that chemtrails are evidence of a global conspiracy; they allege various goals which include profit (for example, manipulating futures prices or making people sick to benefit drug companies), population control, or weapons testing (use of weather as a weapon, or testing bioweapons).[27][29][1] One of these ideas is that clouds are being seeded with electrically conductive materials as part of a massive electromagnetic superweapons program based around the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP).[30][31] Believers say chemtrails are toxic;[32] the 2014 review found that they generally hold that every person is under attack and often express fear, anxiety, sadness and anger about this.[27] A 2011 study of people from the US, Canada, and the UK found that 2.6% of the sample believed entirely in the conspiracy theory, and 14% believed it partially.[33][27] An analysis of responses given to the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study showed that 9% of the 36,000 respondents believed it was "completely true" that "...the government has a secret program that uses airplanes to put harmful chemicals into the air..." while a further 19% believed this was "somewhat true".[34]
Actions
Chemtrail conspiracy theorists often describe their experience as being akin to a religious conversion experience. When they "wake up" and become "aware" of chemtrails, the experience motivates them to advocacy of various forms.[27] For example, they often attend events and conferences on geoengineering, and have sent threats to academics working in the geoengineering field.[27]
In 2001 in response to requests from constituents, US Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced (but did not author) H.R. 2977 (107th), the Space Preservation Act of 2001 that would have permanently prohibited the basing of weapons in space, listing chemtrails as one of a number of "exotic weapons" that would be banned.[35][36][37] Proponents have interpreted this explicit reference to chemtrails as official government acknowledgment of their existence.[20][38] Skeptics note that the bill in question also mentions "extraterrestrial weapons" and "environmental, climate, or tectonic weapons."[39] The bill received an unfavorable evaluation from the United States Department of Defense and died in committee,[40] with no mention of chemtrails appearing in the text of any of the three subsequent failed attempts by Kucinich to enact a Space Preservation Act.
In 2003, in a response to a petition by concerned Canadian citizens regarding "chemicals used in aerial sprayings are adversely affecting the health of Canadians," the Government House Leader responded by stating, "There is no substantiated evidence, scientific or otherwise, to support the allegation that there is high altitude spraying conducted in Canadian airspace. The term 'chemtrails' is a popularised expression, and there is no scientific evidence to support their existence."[41][42][43][44] The house leader went on to say that "it is our belief that the petitioners are seeing regular airplane condensation trails, or contrails."[41]
In the United Kingdom, in 2005 Elliot Morley, a Minister of State for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs[45] was asked "what research [the] Department has undertaken into the polluting effects of chemtrails for aircraft," and responded that "the Department is not researching into chemtrails from aircraft as they are not scientifically recognised phenomena," and that work was being conducted to understand "how contrails are formed and what effects they have on the atmosphere."[11][46]
Some chemtrail believers adopt the notions of Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) who devised a "cloudbuster" device from pipework. Reich claimed this device would influence weather and remove harmful energy from the atmosphere. Some chemtrail believers have built cloudbusters filled with crystals and metal filings, which are pointed at the sky in an attempt to clear it of chemtrails.[47]
Chemtrail believers sometimes gather samples and have them tested, rather than rely on reports from government or academic laboratories, but their experiments are usually flawed; for example collecting samples in jars with metal lids contaminates the sample and is not done in scientific testing.[27][48]
Contrails
Contrails from propeller -driven aircraft engine exhaust, early 1940s
Contrails, or condensation trails, are "streaks of condensed water vapor created in the air by an airplane or rocket at high altitudes."[5] Fossil fuel combustion (as in piston and jet engines) produces carbon dioxide and water vapor. At high altitudes the air is very cold. Hot humid air from the engine exhaust mixes with the colder surrounding air, causing the water vapor to condense into droplets or ice crystals that form visible clouds. The rate at which contrails dissipate is entirely dependent on weather conditions. If the atmosphere is near saturation, the contrail may exist for some time. Conversely, if the atmosphere is dry, the contrail will dissipate quickly.[5]
It is well established by atmospheric scientists that contrails can persist for hours, and that it is normal for them to spread out into cirrus sheets. The different-sized ice crystals in contrails descend at different rates, which spreads the contrail vertically. Then the differential in wind speeds between altitudes (wind shear) results in horizontal spreading of the contrail. This mechanism is similar to the formation of cirrus uncinus clouds. Contrails between 25,000 and 40,000 feet (7,600 and 12,200 m) can often merge into an "almost solid" interlaced sheet.[49] Contrails can have a lateral spread of several kilometers, and given sufficient air traffic, it is possible for contrails to create an entirely overcast sky that increases the ice budget of individual contrails and persists for hours.[50]
[5] Contrail testing being carried out on an Airbus A340 and much older Boeing 707
Experts on atmospheric phenomena say that the characteristics attributed to chemtrails are simply features of contrails responding to diverse conditions in terms of sunlight, temperature, horizontal and vertical wind shear, and humidity levels present at the aircraft's altitude.[2][5][4][20] In the US, the gridlike nature of the National Airspace System's flight lanes tends to cause crosshatched contrails, and in general it is hard to discern from the ground whether overlapping contrails are at similar altitudes or not.[5] The jointly published fact sheet produced by NASA, the EPA, the FAA, and NOAA in 2000 in response to alarms over chemtrails details the science of contrail formation, and outlines both the known and potential impacts contrails have on temperature and climate.[18] The USAF produced a fact sheet that described these contrail phenomena as observed and analyzed since at least 1953. It also rebutted chemtrail theories more directly by identifying the theories as a hoax and disproving the existence of chemtrails.[5][2]
Patrick Minnis, an atmospheric scientist with NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, has said that logic does not dissuade most chemtrail proponents: "If you try to pin these people down and refute things, it's, 'Well, you're just part of the conspiracy'," he said.[2]
Analysis of the use of commercial aircraft tracks for climate engineering has shown them to be generally unsuitable.[51]
Astronomer Bob Berman has characterized the chemtrail conspiracy theory as a classic example of failure to apply Occam's razor, writing in 2009 that instead of adopting the long-established "simple solution" that the trails consist of frozen water vapour, "the conspiracy web sites think the phenomenon started only a decade ago and involves an evil scheme in which 40,000 commercial pilots and air traffic controllers are in on the plot to poison their own children."[52]
A 2016 survey of 77 atmospheric scientists concluded that "76 out of 77 (98.7%) of scientists that took part in this study said there was no evidence of a [secret large-scale atmospheric program (SLAP)], and that the data cited as evidence could be explained through other factors, such as typical contrail formation and poor data sampling instructions presented on SLAP websites."[53][54]
See also
References
Further reading
Abstract: "Bureau of Reclamation cooperated with California Department of Water Resources to design and implement a snowpack augmentation program to increase runoff to Oroville Reservoir. The program involves collection of data to document physical processes leading to increased precipitation. This report summarizes main results from 3 yr of in-situ physical studies and statistical analysis of precipitation data collected during 87 randomized seeding cases. Liquid propane released from high elevation sites has proven to be a viable, reliable method of seeding wintertime clouds in the Sierra Nevada."Image copyright Ciaran Anscomb Image caption The first Dragon computer was launched in August 1982, with the 32 and 64 versions discontinued in 1984
It should have heralded the dawn of Wales leading a home computer revolution. It could have turned Port Talbot into the UK's own answer to Silicon Valley's Apple and Microsoft. It could have been a contender.
But that was 1982 - when the Dragon 32 looked set to revolutionise the way we looked at computers.
It sold 40,000 units in the run-up to Christmas that year.
Pioneering features, including the very first programmes in the Welsh language, meant it was in a strong position to trump more illustrious rivals such as Sinclair and Commodore.
But just two years later Dragon Data, the creators of this all-in-one computing home wonder, was wound-up.
Now, 35 years after development started in Port Talbot, enthusiasts maintain it was far from a white elephant but a victim of its own phenomenal early success.
Unexplainable excitement
For IT consultant Ciaran Anscomb, the Dragon was the right computer, but at the wrong time and with the wrong management.
The product had been heralded as the saviour of troubled toy manufacturer and parent company Mettoy, and Mr Anscomb remembers the huge stir it caused.
He got his first Dragon computer for Christmas 1983 and said: "You can't really explain the excitement of it.
"There is no comparable modern toy or gadget today that is so different to what had gone before.
"In this one box was everything you needed to start on the brave new world of computing."
Image copyright Microdeal Image caption The King, published by Microdeal for the Dragon 32, was a clone of arcade game Donkey Kong
It had many innovative software options, including FarmFax, that allowed farmers to keep computerised records of livestock.
It also had a Motorola 6809 processor that was superior to those used by its rivals and features that made it much easier for beginners to get into programming.
However, Mr Anscomb said there were negatives - Dragon Data cut back on some areas like graphics and a sound chip to keep costs down.
This led to criticism, he said, with some users saying it felt "a bit cheap" compared with rivals Sinclair and Commodore.
Image copyright Microdeal Image caption In Shock Trooper, gamers had to infiltrate and destroy an alien base before they conquered the earth
Others blamed the Dragon's inability to produce text in lower case for its failure to break into the burgeoning schools market, leading to its ultimate demise.
But, Mr Anscomb believes Dragon Data's problems started with their phenomenal initial success.
After the huge sales of Christmas 1982, Mettoy struggled to cope and began selling stakes in the company, with the Welsh Development Agency among the investors.
When they moved to new Margam premises in March 1983, Dragon Data was the biggest firm in Wales in majority private ownership.
But the need to turn out Dragon 32s to fulfil contracts with Comet, Boots, Dixons and British Home Stores, slowed up production of the new 64KB version.
Image copyright PSE Computers Image caption An early version of popular game Tetris was available for the Dragon computer after it was first released in 1984
When the Dragon 64 was finally launched in 1984, vital software and add-ons were not ready.
In an attempt to placate impatient owners, Dragon Data offered to upgrade Dragon 32s to 64s for just £100, but this only served to stretch finances even further.
"For people who loved the Dragon, the delays were hugely frustrating, because it was such a good machine," said Mr Anscomb.
"In hindsight, Dragon got too big too quickly, and never had the financial clout to compete against either the big gaming machines or the IBM PC-style computers."
Mr Anscomb said a sad irony was that when the receivers were called in in June 1984, Dragon Data had two revolutionary products in the later stages of development.
Dragon's demise
"Projects Alpha and Beta could have saved Dragon, if only they'd been able to buy a bit more time," he said.
"A few were actually built, and they contained some of the biggest memories and fastest processors available in the 1980s.
"But more significantly they included built-in modems, foreseeing the need for connectivity which we now take for granted in the internet age."
After its demise, the Dragon designs were bought up by Spanish firm Eurohard, but by 1987 even the 64KB machine was showing its age, and they too went bust.
But 28 years after the last Dragon computer was produced, it continues to have a strong online following, with a good-condition example now worth around double its original £175 price tag.A Pond Farewell TLKV3 Aug 22nd, 2012 75 Never 75Never
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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 15.70 KB "A Pond Farewell" The Doctor, Amy and Rory after a moment or two of deciding, choose to take a vacation from dangerous traveling. The Doctor remarks to the TARDIS Console to not take them anywhere with anything sharp, pointy, big and growly or, well, evil for once. He flicks the lever and the TARDIS starts up and they end up in Manhattan, 2012. Deciding to simply take in the sights they leave the TARDIS behind in a cloaked state (similar to it doing so in "The Impossible Astronaut"). They then take a taxi to see a Broadway play Amy has heard things about growing up and has pestered Rory to take her to it numerous times. The Doctor and Rory give in, the Doctor with a "love a play" (an homage to River's "love a tomb" line), and the three are off to see "Angelus Est Scriptor Vindicatio". Upon taking their seat the play begins and deals with a man slaying stunt actors dressed in all gray tights. From there the man leaves and flashes back to him encountering more gray tight stunt actors and again slays them. The Doctor looks confused as there has been no dialogue or real effort put in to show what the play actually means or symbolizes. Finally once more the stage opens up with the same man standing center stage, this time with two others. A redheaded woman on one side and a lanky fellow to his other side. As they stand still a rumbling begins and The Doctor grows uncomfortable as Amy and Rory take note of what they're seeing too. From behind the three play actors rises another in a Statue Of Liberty costume who stalks behind them, mutters "Qui utrum eligitis?" and then touches their back. The actors fall with a terrible yelp and die before the spectator's eyes. The Doctor begins to shout for everyone to leave and then sonics the sprinkler system on so everyone flees the theater. Amy points out the stunt doubles in the gray tights are coming back out and they stand next to the Statue of Liberty actor. The Doctor remarks this isn't good as suddenly the lights flicker and the doubles in gray suddenly deform their image into Weeping Angels. The Doctor shouts to run and they do but Amy and Rory are nabbed from behind as he escapes and when he turns back they're gone. The Doctor rushes to the TARDIS and scans New York City in it's entirety trying to find Amy and Rory to no avail. He then realizes the title of the play translated means "Angel's Revenge" and remembers the Statue Of Liberty. He starts the TARDIS and flies to the Statue. Meanwhile inside, Amy awakes inside a glass container rigged to a simple looking black tube inside a large empty circular room. A single light illuminates the area around her and she tries to bang it but nothing happens. Another light flickers to show a monitor set on another identical room, but with Rory in a container of his own. She yells for him and he awakes in a similar fright and shouts for her in response. Suddenly an Angel flickers onto Amy's monitor behind Rory's container, but Rory is unaware. Rory turns and nothing is there as it reappears inside Amy's room. She asks what it wants to no response. She asks why imprison them and not kill them. It responds with a low toned female's voice, "he must suffer with another choice." The TARDIS lands inside the head of the Statue and the Doctor pops out. Nobody greets him to his bewilderment until finally the lights flicker and he turns to see two Angels in front of his TARDIS. He says he's installed more security in the TARDIS since their previous encounter and that they can't simply "have the box" anymore to use. One responds with the same female voice as before, "it is not the box we seek. It is the choice." The Doctor turns as the Angel points behind him to the Angel who was in Amy's room. It's cracked down the side of it's head and an arm is missing. The Doctor makes a snarky remark about giving it a hand for capturing his friends and mimes applause with one hand. The Angel demands "the choice". The Doctor is confused. The Angels behind him suddenly appear at his sides but he reacts quickly and flees the room as they echo, "the choice" behind him. He then slowly progresses down the Statue avoiding detection of a few more Angels before ending up in a room with two doors. He wonders since when has so many rooms existed inside the Statue of Liberty until the cracked Angel reappears stating "it is not unlike your TARDIS. We are just completing it." The Doctor questions this as it demands "the choice" again. The Doctor then looks to each door seeing a monitor beside each. They flicker on and show Amy and Rory on each one. The Angel raises it's hands. "The choice." The Doctor questions this being the Angels' master stroke plan and laughs at their attempt. The other Angels appear in the room around him now as the Angel speaks, "each room is a separate dimensional lock. You enter one, you cannot go backwards to the other. Nor sideways. Only forwards out of the Statue. Choose one and the other room vanishes forever, not unlike a Time Lock. Once a door opens, the other will vanish with the room." The Doctor questions why they're being held in containers. "One will leave, that is your choice. The other completes it." The Doctor then examines each monitor then turns back, "you're going to use their existence, their being to give life to the Statue of Liberty... a large Weeping Angel with a torch... an unstoppable Angel, with the Artran energy and the time vortex particle back-splash from the TARDIS from every time they traveled that resides invisibly on their person." "Yes. The choice." The Doctor looks at both monitors and snarls remarking "you're going to make me choose which one I spare from a perpetual nightmare full of solitude... all while they slowly waste away burning up like fuel... And the other experiences it..." "Not perpetual... they will be immediately drained of what energy they have been exposed to inside the TARDIS and disposed of through-" "-a temporal inversion. You're going to erase them from existence while you simultaneously drain them for fuel. Just like the cracks did to you in order to close..." "Yes. The room in it's entirety will cease to ever be. The only fate worse than death is knowing you chose for one you cared about to never exist again, providing what your enemy required to them, and having to live with it. That guilt and pain... that is what is perpetual here, Doctor. The choice. Decide." The Angels retreat as The Doctor stands between both doors. He puts a hand on each monitor knowing that there's no way to open both doors and is only able to save one companion. The monitors flicker off as they echo, "The choice", again. The Doctor flashes anger across his face, "... when I leave here. I will not stop until every single one of you is gone. Wiped out from existence. I will not stop. I will not slow. I will not be distracted. I am going to find every last one of you... you've always known my choice. Which door is it... Where is she?" One of the two doors finally open as The Doctor turns his back to it while staring at the Angels. "That room behind the door may disappear. But this one won't. Run. Run for your lives." "The choice was given. But our revenge is not yet over, Doctor." The Doctor looks at the other door as it slowly disappears and steps into the room behind him looking at the Angels. Then he hears them... "Doctor? Where's Amy? Is Amy with you? Did you get her out of there?" The Doctor's face freezes as he slowly turns and sees Rory in his container confused. The Doctor's mouth trembles as he looks over his shoulder, only the Angel with the crack down it's side is left smiling, "our revenge is done." It vanishes as The Doctor stumbles into a wall, trying to support himself against it. "Doctor, where's Amy? What's going on? Why are we here?" The Doctor faces Rory and in tears raises his Sonic to Rory's monitor and turns it on to show Amy in her container. "Rory... I'm sor... I'm so sorry..." Rory looks up and knows what's happened instinctively. "You chose me. That's why I heard that damn word every few seconds from outside. You chose me. You chose ME. WHY DIDN'T YOU SAVE HER!? WHY DIDN'T YOU SAVE AMY?" The Doctor stares at Rory and tries to say he did but Amy's voice is heard in the room. "Doctor?" "Amy?" "What's going on? Why am I still in here? Is the Doctor with you? Would you stop dawdling and get me out of here already?" "Amy... I can't come. Not... this time." Amy sees through her monitor that The Doctor is in tears and Rory looks like he has no idea what to do with himself behind his glass. "The Angels were asking for a choice. You had to choose between me and Rory, didn't you? You had to pick which one of us lives. You chose Rory." "No, I-" "He should have picked you!" "No, he chose right." They bicker for a few seconds more until The Doctor finally interjects as Amy asks what's going to happen then. "Your containers are linked together to a single... engine of sorts. When one container is opened the other turns on. It's going to drain you of any sort of energy you may have been exposed to in the TARDIS during our time together. It's going to use it to animate the Statue of Liberty." "You can't just...'sonic' the engine through here? Open both containers?" "I could, yes. But your room is locked. I can't get in even with the TARDIS. You've been removed from time and space. You're... lost." "And if you open the containers anyway..." "We can escape, you'll still be stuck as the engine inverts and begins flooding your room with the energy used to mix with the ones they planned to take from you. You'll die of poisoning within seconds." "And if I stay inside... and you just free Rory?" "Then the engine turns on, and you'll be gone." "Can you stop the Statue if it animates?" "The Angels only intended to use it as a device for this situation. I can stop the process easily enough from here but it would take at least twenty minutes... the engine will start turn on and we'll lose you within seconds." Amy realizes her situation and says for The Doctor to free Rory and turn the machine on. Rory refuses but Amy demands he go and take care of River. River can't lose both of her parents. Rory says she has the Doctor to look after her but Amy says River needs a father, not a man she rarely ever sees. She tells Rory to leave and The Doctor to start. The Doctor hesitates and Rory pouts before lowering his head. The Doctor lifts his sonic and frees Rory, he rushes to the monitor to see the machine on Amy's end beginning to turn on. She stares at her monitor to see Rory as Rory stares back through his. "Why do we always have to have these moments through a window..." she wonders as Rory begins to show tears. The Doctor says for him to look away, he shouldn't see it happen but Rory refuses. The process begins and Amy is suddenly paralyzed as her body from her feet slowly begins to disintegrate into yellow dust. "Remember when I said you fell from the sky?" "You said that to the Doctor..." "No, I was telling The Doctor about you... When I said it... I meant it. You did. You fell from the sky and landed in your parents' backyard. When I woke up the next day... you were there. As if you had been there the entire time since a baby. Your parents just showed up with you to school and we found each other." The Doctor listening lowers his head but keeps listening intently. "We were always meant to be. Even when we were worlds apart we found each other... I love you." "I love you too..." As Rory puts his hand against his screen Amy fades away entirely but whispers something else, and The Doctor sonics the monitor off. Rory tries to compose himself but storms off before The Doctor can say anything else. Inside the TARDIS, Rory is sitting next to the console as The Doctor pops inside. "I, uh, destroyed the machine. No big giant statue to terrorize the world to fear now. Guess that's one for the good guys-" "One for the good guys? Is that how you see all this? Is that how you're feeling right now? I just lost Amy... I just lost my wife. And all you can do is stand there like an... an... alien to what I'm going through. You only see this as which side has 'won' today. You think of the casualties, sure, but then you saunter off. You walk away and never look back, only to find more to do away with. You're not one of the 'good guys'. Look in the mirror... You're one of them not us." Rory walks towards the TARDIS door as it lands and The Doctor stares after him in shock. Rory stops at the door and turns back to him, "there's still something you're not telling me. I feel it just like Amy could about you. You're hiding something like you always do." "When you walk out that door... you're not going to remember anything... you're not going to remember Amy. And by association, you're not going to remember me. Because Amy doesn't exist anymore. She never has." "Amy doesn't exist... If there's one thing about Amy is that she existed more than any other person in all of time and space. And no matter what, I'm not going to forget her. I will never forget her, Doctor. What about you?" "I've been exposed to the TARDIS' energy for far too long... I've become too complicated... I'm going to remember, Rory. But not like you. You'll remember her for every good thing you did with her and how much you loved her... I'm going to remember I was the one responsible." Rory tears up as The Doctor approaches him, "it's not fair... why can't I remember too?" "You said I was turning you into me. You didn't want that, and we both know you still don't. I'm sorry." "If I don't remember you, what about River?" "River has been exposed to the TARDIS and has used her Time Vortex Manipulator for too long. She'll remember you both, but by extension you won't remember her. But I'm sure she'll find you and you'll remember her too when you see her. Standing on a street corner, inside a market... You'll know." Rory nods then exits the TARDIS as The Doctor looks on. Rory slowly walking towards his big blue house begins to clutch his head as all the memories of Amy begin to slip away. He struggles to hang on but is unable to as every last one just disappears. He falls to his knees looking at his house and smiles, "I won't forget you." The Doctor closes his TARDIS door as Rory stands back up shaking his head remarking and wonders why he is out in the cold for with such a pounding noise in his head and walks back home. The Doctor inside the TARDIS breaks down after holding himself together as the TARDIS starts up, he narrates in his head that the voice the Angels were using the entire time was Amy's to communicate to him... they were laughing at him the entire time while he suffered in confusion. In the end, Rory is upstairs in his bedroom and all of his pictures are now just of him. He grabs one and looks closely at it but can't seem to see anything else. He hears the TARDIS noise from outside and a quick flash to inside his containment room hits him with Amy's whisper, "look in the drawer." Rory sets the picture down and pulls open each drawer but finds nothing. He then looks beside his bed and sees a small blue box with drawers on it. He pulls each one open until finally he slides the top one open. He reaches in and pulls something out, shining gold in his hand. Another flash hits him of Rory falling and then landing in his parents' swimming pool in the backyard. Another of his father pulling him out. Another of him laughing as a small child before falling unconscious and a burst of yellowish orange energy flows out of his mouth and into his parents'... The closing moment is one last flash of the next day at the school bus stop with young Rory meeting young Amy for the first time. Rory greets her and asks if he can trust her. Amy nods and Rory hands her something saying "no matter what... don't lose it. I may need it again someday." Amy looks down and she's holding a FOB Watch. The Master's laugh echoes through Rory's head in his bedroom as it opens. End episode.
RAW Paste Data
"A Pond Farewell" The Doctor, Amy and Rory after a moment or two of deciding, choose to take a vacation from dangerous traveling. The Doctor remarks to the TARDIS Console to not take them anywhere with anything sharp, pointy, big and growly or, well, evil for once. He flicks the lever and the TARDIS starts up and they end up in Manhattan, 2012. Deciding to simply take in the sights they leave the TARDIS behind in a cloaked state (similar to it doing so in "The Impossible Astronaut"). They then take a taxi to see a Broadway play Amy has heard things about growing up and has pestered Rory to take her to it numerous times. The Doctor and Rory give in, the Doctor with a "love a play" (an homage to River's "love a tomb" line), and the three are off to see "Angelus Est Scriptor Vindicatio". Upon taking their seat the play begins and deals with a man slaying stunt actors dressed in all gray tights. From there the man leaves and flashes back to him encountering more gray tight stunt actors and again slays them. The Doctor looks confused as there has been no dialogue or real effort put in to show what the play actually means or symbolizes. Finally once more the stage opens up with the same man standing center stage, this time with two others. A redheaded woman on one side and a lanky fellow to his other side. As they stand still a rumbling begins and The Doctor grows uncomfortable as Amy and Rory take note of what they're seeing too. From behind the three play actors rises another in a Statue Of Liberty costume who stalks behind them, mutters "Qui utrum eligitis?" and then touches their back. The actors fall with a terrible yelp and die before the spectator's eyes. The Doctor begins to shout for everyone to leave and then sonics the sprinkler system on so everyone flees the theater. Amy points out the stunt doubles in the gray tights are coming back out and they stand next to the Statue of Liberty actor. The Doctor remarks this isn't good as suddenly the lights flicker and the doubles in gray suddenly deform their image into Weeping Angels. The Doctor shouts to run and they do but Amy and Rory are nabbed from behind as he escapes and when he turns back they're gone. The Doctor rushes to the TARDIS and scans New York City in it's entirety trying to find Amy and Rory to no avail. He then realizes the title of the play translated means "Angel's Revenge" and remembers the Statue Of Liberty. He starts the TARDIS and flies to the Statue. Meanwhile inside, Amy awakes inside a glass container rigged to a simple looking black tube inside a large empty circular room. A single light illuminates the area around her and she tries to bang it but nothing happens. Another light flickers to show a monitor set on another identical room, but with Rory in a container of his own. She yells for him and he awakes in a similar fright and shouts for her in response. Suddenly an Angel flickers onto Amy's monitor behind Rory's container, but Rory is unaware. Rory turns and nothing is there as it reappears inside Amy's room. She asks what it wants to no response. She asks why imprison them and not kill them. It responds with a low toned female's voice, "he must suffer with another choice." The TARDIS lands inside the head of the Statue and the Doctor pops out. Nobody greets him to his bewilderment until finally the lights flicker and he turns to see two Angels in front of his TARDIS. He says he's installed more security in the TARDIS since their previous encounter and that they can't simply "have the box" anymore to use. One responds with the same female voice as before, "it is not the box we seek. It is the choice." The Doctor turns as the Angel points behind him to the Angel who was in Amy's room. It's cracked down the side of it's head and an arm is missing. The Doctor makes a snarky remark about giving it a hand for capturing his friends and mimes applause with one hand. The Angel demands "the choice". The Doctor is confused. The Angels behind him suddenly appear at his sides but he reacts quickly and flees the room as they echo, "the choice" behind him. He then slowly progresses down the Statue avoiding detection of a few more Angels before ending up in a room with two doors. He wonders since when has so many rooms existed inside the Statue of Liberty until the cracked Angel reappears stating "it is not unlike your TARDIS. We are just completing it." The Doctor questions this as it demands "the choice" again. The Doctor then looks to each door seeing a monitor beside each. They flicker on and show Amy and Rory on each one. The Angel raises it's hands. "The choice." The Doctor questions this being the Angels' master stroke plan and laughs at their attempt. The other Angels appear in the room around him now as the Angel speaks, "each room is a separate dimensional lock. You enter one, you cannot go backwards to the other. Nor sideways. Only forwards out of the Statue. Choose one and the other room vanishes forever, not unlike a Time Lock. Once a door opens, the other will vanish with the room." The Doctor questions why they're being held in containers. "One will leave, that is your choice. The other completes it." The Doctor then examines each monitor then turns back, "you're going to use their existence, their being to give life to the Statue of Liberty... a large Weeping Angel with a torch... an unstoppable Angel, with the Artran energy and the time vortex particle back-splash from the TARDIS from every time they traveled that resides invisibly on their person." "Yes. The choice." The Doctor looks at both monitors and snarls remarking "you're going to make me choose which one I spare from a perpetual nightmare full of solitude... all while they slowly waste away burning up like fuel... And the other experiences it..." "Not perpetual... they will be immediately drained of what energy they have been exposed to inside the TARDIS and disposed of through-" "-a temporal inversion. You're going to erase them from existence while you simultaneously drain them for fuel. Just like the cracks did to you in order to close..." "Yes. The room in it's entirety will cease to ever be. The only fate worse than death is knowing you chose for one you cared about to never exist again, providing what your enemy required to them, and having to live with it. That guilt and pain... that is what is perpetual here, Doctor. The choice. Decide." The Angels retreat as The Doctor stands between both doors. He puts a hand on each monitor knowing that there's no way to open both doors and is only able to save one companion. The monitors flicker off as they echo, "The choice", again. The Doctor flashes anger across his face, "... when I leave here. I will not stop until every single one of you is gone. Wiped out from existence. I will not stop. I will not slow. I will not be distracted. I am going to find every last one of you... you've always known my choice. Which door is it... Where is she?" One of the two doors finally open as The Doctor turns his back to it while staring at the Angels. "That room behind the door may disappear. But this one won't. Run. Run for your lives." "The choice was given. But our revenge is not yet over, Doctor." The Doctor looks at the other door as it slowly disappears and steps into the room behind him looking at the Angels. Then he hears them... "Doctor? Where's Amy? Is Amy with you? Did you get her out of there?" The |
There’s no mystery surrounding these increases. We’re connecting more and more devices to the Net at home. It’s normal for my teenage daughter to be streaming Netflix while doing research on her iPad and chatting with her friends on SnapChat. It’s easy to see why Internet usage is increasing – and that’s just one of my daughters. There are five of us in the house, using a total of five smartphones, two smart TVs, four iPads and three laptops. We’re averaging over 200 GB of data every month.
The streaming of video and audio via the likes of Netflix and YouTube continues to be the largest factor in data usage. “Cord-cutters,” who use streaming as a primary form of entertainment, usually consume more than 200 GB of data a month, according to industry data.
It doesn’t stop at streaming. The latest consoles all connect to the Internet to enable interactive gaming as well as the downloading of new games. Also, we’re connecting more and more devices to our home networks. Popular applications like Snapchat, which sends picture messages, are having a profound effect on Internet traffic.
Customers are already giving us some positive feedback on our new Internet packages, which take effect March 1.
Beyond choosing the package that’s right for you, there are measures you can take to manage your usage. We encourage customers to regularly check their data usage via our website. Simply go to My Account and select Internet Usage. Use your BendBroadband email address and password to access your statistics. You can also manage your usage notifications here, and request email notifications when you have used 70, 90 and 100 percent of your monthly allowance.
You can also change the settings on streaming services like Netflix, which has High, Medium and Low options. Choosing a lower setting can substantially decrease data consumption, and often has little or no effect on picture quality.
Other factors can drive up your usage, including computer viruses and people connecting to the Net using your Wi-Fi router without your knowledge. The help pages on our website have lots of information on these subjects, and our technical support team is available to help you.
In the meantime, rest assured that we are continually analyzing the amount of traffic passing across our network and using that data to make decisions regarding infrastructure investments.
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PocketTens of thousands have protested in Hong Kong against plans by pro-democracy activists to paralyse the city centre with a mass sit-in unless China grants acceptable electoral reforms.
Public discontent in the semi-autonomous Chinese city is at its highest for years, with concern at perceived interference by Beijing and growing divisions over how Hong Kong's leader should be chosen in 2017 under the planned reforms.
Pro-democracy campaigners from the Occupy Central group have pledged to mobilise protesters to block roads in the Central financial district later this year if authorities reject the public's right to nominate candidates for the chief executive post.
I am here to oppose Occupy, as simple as that. It is a bad thing for young people. Wong, protester
But the movement has been strongly criticised by Beijing and city officials as illegal, radical and potentially violent.
The Alliance for Peace and Democracy, backed largely by Beijing-friendly groups, organised Sunday's rally. It said the silent majority of the city's seven million residents do not support the Occupy movement.
"We want to let the world know that we want peace, we want democracy, but please, do not threaten us, do not try to turn this place into a place of violence," alliance co-founder Robert Chow told the AFP news agency.
Police estimated that about 110,000 people took off from Victoria Park, many of them wearing red clothes and waving Chinese.
"I am here to oppose Occupy, as simple as that. It is a bad thing for young people," a 70-year-old retired chef, who only gave his surname Wong, said.
"I don't know how to give a view on democracy, it's high-level politics. I just know if there is no peace there is no prosperity," a 40-year-old construction worker surnamed Kwok said, while holding a Chinese flag.
Many rally participants, mostly elderly, said they had been provided with free transport by various political and business groups.
'Stepped over line'
Chow said the Occupy movement had "stepped over the line".
"What they are trying to say is that if China does not bow to them, then they will occupy Central, they are going to turn the whole place into some sort of a battleground," he said.
The British colony was handed back to China in 1997 under an agreement that guarantees freedoms and civil liberties including the right to protest.
Hong Kong's leader is currently chosen by a pro-Beijing committee.
China says that all residents will be allowed to vote for the next chief executive in 2017 but that a nominating committee must choose the candidates.
Pro-democracy advocates say this means Beijing will be able to ensure a sympathetic slate of candidates.
An unofficial referendum organised by Occupy activists saw the majority of 800,000 people who voted supporting reform packages that would allow public nomination.
Organisers said a July pro-democracy march following the referendum was joined by over half a million. Statisticians from the University of Hong Kong estimated between 122,000 and 172,000 people took part.
In a counter move, an Alliance petition campaign supported by pro-Beijing groups and officials has so far collected some 1.4 million signatures, according to the group.…it’s imperative to understand, this isn't somebody coming out.
This is several somebodies coming out.
The instant they say, “I am… we are a plural system,” it’s time for anybody claiming to be their friend or ally to adjust their perception accordingly.
If the plural system starts behaving differently than you’re used to, including behaviours you see as negative, in your presence, take it as the compliment it is: they’re actually allowing their members to be themselves around you. They’re dropping the mask they wear in public, the false,created, artificial persona that has allowed them to function day-to-day among human society. You might see ‘negative behaviour’, but what they’re seeing internally is, “X headmate is getting to speak for himself openly for the first time in years.” It might be the first time a given headmate has even seen the light of day on their opinions, feelings, and thoughts.
At this time in the life of the system, it is crucial that you, as their friend, not ask for “the old ____ back”.
Get it through your head, please: “the old ___” very likely doesn’t even exist, unless the system has a single incredibly dominant fronter who never-ever-ever takes input from the others while fronting. “The old ___” is a construct that, up to this point, has existed for your comfort and the system’s safety. It isn’t a realistic representation of the identities, morals, or opinions of ANY single system member.
For systems who are just discovering their own plurality, this becomes doubly important. The headmates being discovered may very likely have been not just concealed behind the artificial persona, but squashed by it, to the point where they haven’t been able to communicate with anybody, even inside the system itself. If they get a “you are a horrible person, go away and bring back the old _____” reaction on their first ventures into the world of social interactions, it can be personally devastating.
Just picture how you would feel if you were prevented from voicing even one of your opinions, and you’ve been the passive, helpless passenger for years, and just as soon as somebody finally notices you even exist, you’re being attacked for existing, for saying what you feel- something you previously weren’t able to do at all.
We don’t know about you, but we find that entire notion simply horrifying, and it’s why our system has rules in place against erasing each others’ statements. It’s hard enough lacking a voice, but being forced into censorship when you finally have a voice… it’s unconscionable.
Any system new to system-awareness is going to have an adjustment period, during which the 'hidden’, squashed headmates are discovering each other and being discovered. The system probably won’t have behavioural rules in place at all, because the dominant fronter has never needed them, having had total command to that point. Some of the headmates might be socially awkward or even a little moody or inappropriate. They’re still coping with things like controlling the body, being heard at all, being recognized by the dominant fronter and judged for every little thing, probably even being afraid that the dominant fronter might kick them out- and who knows what happens to a kicked-out headmate? Does that qualify as death, or something else? Regardless, the prospect is terrifying, especially when one is in such a vulnerable and powerless position. The headmates are probably going to be scared not just of being judged by society outside the body, but of being judged by the dominant fronter, and of the two, the latter is the one that puts them at risk of what might be death.
In other words, at this stage in a system’s life, expecting the system to act like the 'person’ you used to know is completely failing to understand the nature of plurality, and it verges on cruel and inhumane. That isn’t to say that the reaction is unusual to have, or unreasonable to experience… but there is not one good reason for voicing it to the system. Asking for “the old ___ back” is basically telling the system’s members, “I don’t believe you exist” or “I wish you will stop existing.” That may not be what is intended by it, but it’s very likely how it’s going to be received.
If you feel a system isn't actually plural, let them figure it out for themselves, because if they are plural, but the main front is just strong enough and willing to go through with it, it’s the headmates’ lives, or at the very least their free agency, which are at stake.
You personally have absolutely nothing to lose from your friends’ identities as a system, and their plurality is not putting your life or agency in danger. If you have an urge to tell the system that they’re unhealthy or “less pleasant of a person” because of their plurality, please do us all a big damn favour and keep it to yourself, because you do NOT have a dog in this fight.
It isn’t the system’s job to be likeable to you. If you can’t cope with them being honest, then you probably don’t need to be claiming friendship with them, and they probably don’t need you in their life. You don’t have to totally believe in plurality or assimilate the language of it, but the least you can do is use the pronouns they request, avoid treating them like they have to behave precisely the way they always did before their coming out, and have the damn decency to think about the connotations of what you say to them about their identities, the way you would with any other type of variant-identity like otherkin or therian.
/end rant
Disclaimer: This isn’t necessarily targeted at anybody here. It’s just something we’ve seen happening more than once, and it really pi$$es us off when it happens. Thanks for reading.A few weeks ago, while I was wrapping up my ongoing struggle/episode of Stockholm Syndrome with Final Fantasy XIII (don't ask, it's all explained in the podcast), I decided I needed to counterbalance the mindless grinding and off-balance combat with something a little more thoughtful and engaging. My go-to game for this catharsis used to be Prototype, but I can only handle so much lobsterian chitin growing out of my arms before it gets a little old.
I remembered quite a few people recommending Beyond Good and Evil, though I knew very little about it. A few friends had cited lead character Jade as an example of a strong female lead that isn't sexualized or so invulnerable as to be one-dimensional. Others cited the variety of the gameplay, a combination of stealth, fighting and racing as a strong point. All of these things were inviting enough, and though I'd not played the game in its original incarnation, the thought of playing something from the PS2/Xbox generation held enough of a nostalgic appeal for me that I decided to go for it.
As I played through the first hour, the plot began to emerge (SPOILER ALERT ZOMG). Orphaned at a young age, freelance reporter and photographer Jade makes her home in a lighthouse-turned-orphanage on the peaceful world of Hillys. Peaceful until recently, that is— apparently, there has been galactic conflict for a while, due to hostile aliens called the DomZ attempting to conquer various planets, and they've finally arrived on Hillys. Luckily, an elite corps within the military called the Alpha Section has been formed to protect the citizens. Alpha Section guards are installed throughout the civilian landscape, and whenever the DomZ attack, they manage to show up and save the day.
However, all is not what it seems, and as Jade becomes involved in a grassroots revolutionary group called IRIS, she comes to realize that the Alpha Section guards are actually in league with the DomZ, who are, in addition to instigating a hostile takeover of the planet, engaging in theft from the citizenry and human trafficking. Jade is tasked with bringing photographic proof of this conspiracy back to Hillys, to be released in the IRIS newspaper.
One of the things I noticed as I played was that, while it was clear what my immediate missions were for each major area in the game, I wasn't quite sure what the main… something… of the game would be.
The win condition was obvious- somehow, all my sneaking around, taking photos and odd hand-to-hand fights would amount to the DomZ being defeated. I got that much. I just wasn't sure how that would be.
It was made clear when one of my IRIS contacts stated it outright. My providing photographic evidence of the DomZ and Alpha Section guards conspiracy and its subsequent publishing in the IRIS newspaper was going to get the job done. Yup, no problem there, just get these photos to press, and then The Awful Truth will be revealed. BAM! INSTANT REVOLUTION.
Sounds overly cynical for me to say that with more than a hint of sarcasm (you guys got that from the all-caps, right?), but by today's standards, this plot is just not realistic. Perhaps it shows how far we've fallen in the past 8 years since this game has originally come out, but "Get this information to the people, the rest will take care of itself" just doesn't cut it anymore.
This sort of plot device has a long history as a plot device, and makes for some good reading/watching/playing. Even when it's quite cheesy, as in the case of the classic network espionage film, Hackers, which came out in 1995. A bumbling side-character, in an effort to prove himself worthy of a doofy nickname, obtains a file while performing the totally 1337 maneuver of "hacking the Gibson". The file is initially obtained only as proof, but contains a worm designed by an even doofier (but more evil) hacker named The Plague as a get rich quick scheme. The hapless non-evil doof and his unusually hot Rollerblader friends are immediately framed and have no choice but to hack the Gibson a second time in order to prove their innocence. The win-condition for this, of course, is to reveal the truth to The People, and this is accomplished by a global hacker effort to pre-empt television in order for that guy who played Shaggy in the live action version of Scooby Doo to tell everyone what's what. And somehow, that's it.
And so, you may be asking yourself, "What the hell is Annie's problem? Yes, that kind of plot device is a bit overdone, but it's a time-honored tradition", and you are not wrong. Hackers is perhaps a silly example, as is Soylent Green, and any number of other "No one believes me, but if I can just show them this one thing, it's all gonna change!" stories. What exactly IS my problem?
Well, I'll tell you. The reason I say this particular trope doesn't work anymore (even though maybe it did even 8 years ago) is because nowadays, when someone reveals The Awful Truth, we don't see it. Or we think of it as any number of potential opinions out there to adopt, floating around. By and large, we are so used to having the luxury of willful ignorance towards anything that contradicts what we want to be true, that we consider the act of witnessing something like photographic evidence, hard data gathered by different sources that all points to the same conclusion, or leaked documents revealing all kinds of difficult facts straight from the horses' mouths (and the horses in this case are various national governments and corporate entities) to be on a par with when a friend tells us something along the lines of "You know, you really can't pull off that shade of blue. It makes your hair look like cat vomit".
"Dammit", you may say, "I'm invested in this shade of blue. Periwinkle-fucking-blue, I bought an entire wardrobe of it, and I'm just going to ignore this friend, because after all, why let one inconvenient statement ruin my whole periwinkle construct. I spent a lot of time and money on this, and I can't back out now".
And you know, if were just an opinion, it wouldn't be that big of a deal. Personally, I think periwinkle is sort of a bullshit color and probably should only be seen in the world of flora. But hey, it's your life, your face, and your cat vomit hair. Periwinkle is ugly, Soylent Green is people, Wall Street is gambling with citizens' money and the Alpha Sections are in league with the DomZ. One of these things is not like the other, because one of them is an actual opinion, but the others are (with sufficient evidence, of course) facts.
Okay, some are facts only as far as they exist within the context of the fiction from which they originate, but you see the difference, right? Please?
We have the unfortunate tendency, as of late, to do weird things to uncomfortable facts when they come to light. Some might refer to these techniques as "spin", others might say that it's more of a "misdirection". Regardless, it's become widespread and effective enough that when I look at a game like Beyond Good and Evil, for all the brilliant moments in the game, for all the satisfaction at the end as the imprisoned citizens are set free and the evil DomZ are defeated, I think to myself "Yeah, that would never happen", because the only reason that Jade is able to get back into the Crypt to fight the DomZ leader in the first place is because the citizens back on Hillys have revolted. They have stood up, thrown the Alpha Sections out, reclaimed their space fleet, and launched a full-on assault that allows Jade to pilot her own ship out of the battle and into the final confrontation, face to face.
I would like to be wrong, and maybe I will be. Perhaps these Occupy Wall Street protests will actually come to something. Maybe they will stop being about a few asshole cops who abused their authority by assaulting some protestors, because as much as that sucks, it's not the point of it all. Maybe someone will come along and be able to sum up what the point of it all actually is in a way that's less complicated than this document, because even though that declaration is pretty cool, it's still too complicated for us. Hell, the US's own constitution appears to be too complicated even for the people that bitch about it the most. We respond to talking points and rhetoric, and we reduce and repeat those talking points until they are dogma. We are not critical thinkers anymore.
And really, I have not a leg to stand on, here. Though I've been grumblingly, nebulously malcontent for quite some time, I didn't actually solidify this idea in my own mind until I played a damned videogame.
If you think I'm being overly dramatic, particularly with the Soylent Green example, think about this: Whatever you're eating right now, unless you are committed to knowing what's in your food to an obsessive degree, probably has chunks of wood in it, and while that's not necessarily a bad thing, it might be alarming to think about if you didn't already know.
And if you didn't already know that, imagine what else you don't know.
But hey, there's good news: It's not like we're living in North Korea! It's not too late to start paying attention and using our brains! I'm not saying to freak out about eating people and/or trees, or automatically buy every single anti-government, anti-business sentiment you hear. In fact, that is the opposite of what I'm saying. The key thing here is not to be on one side or the other, or to necessarily take a stand for the sake of taking a stand, it's to use first your eyes and ears to take in the information, and then your brain to assess it, to try to understand what it means without any pundits running interference.
After all, if we can manage to accomplish the simple task of learning to tell the difference between fact and opinion, to understand what counts as damning evidence versus what is simple slander, we might actually be ready when the DomZ finally make their way to Earth and start trying to turn all our asses into their own version of Soylent Green.BREAKING: Rep. Scalise Readmitted to ICU; Condition Listed as “Serious”
Just when we thought Steve Scalise was making a speedy recovery, we learn the GOP Congressman has suffered a health setback.
As TGP previously reported, two GOP congressmen told the media that House Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) had to have a second operation following the shooting at a Congressional Republican baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia that wounded him in the hip.
AP reported that Congressman Scalise had to subsequently undergo a third surgery as well.
Now this: Congressman Scalise has been readmitted to the Intensive Care Unit at MedStar Washington Hospital due to new concerns for infection.
JUST IN: Rep. Scalise readmitted into hospital's intensive care unit due to infection concerns; condition listed as serious. pic.twitter.com/ESHoXsqY2u — Joshua Dov Caplan (@joshdcaplan) July 6, 2017
As per NBC Washington:
U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise has been readmitted to the hospital due to new concerns about infection, according to a statement from MedStar Washington Hospital Center. The one line statement was released at 10 p.m. Wednesday. Scalise was injured when a gunman opened fire at a Republican baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia. Scalise, 51, was struck in the hip and the bullet shattered blood vessels, bones and internal organs along the way. Doctors said he had arrived at the hospital after the shooting at imminent risk of death. An update from Scalise’s Twitter account said his condition is listed as serious. Another update was expected on Thursday.Bound by confidentiality agreements, neither side in the ongoing saga involving the University of British Columbia and recently departed president Arvind Gupta have shed any light on precisely what happened to precipitate his shocking July departure.
Dr. Gupta was barely a year into a five-year term. With a background in computer science and innovation, he was brought in without the usual administrative experience university presidents possess. He was an unusual choice except when you consider that he had a mandate to reimagine how the university functioned, to be a disrupter who wasn't afraid to smash sacred cows and challenge the status quo.
We now see what happens when you attempt that.
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In the absence of any cogent explanation as to why Dr. Gupta left, the university community has been left to guess what might have gone wrong. Nature abhors a vacuum; so does a university controversy. In the absence of real information, the Gupta affair has been choice grounds for rumour and innuendo. But based on conversations I've had with people who have some knowledge of the situation, it would seem that suppositions that Dr. Gupta made enemies among certain administrators inside the school are correct.
The reason this might have happened is simple. Mr. Gupta looked at some numbers and began questioning them. For instance, in 2009-10, total faculty at UBC's Vancouver campus numbered 3,242. By 2014-15, that figure had only increased by 28, or 0.9 per cent. Now let's look at staff, specifically the category of management and professionals, which includes everything from admissions specialists to vice-presidents of various departments – but not deans. In 2009-10, this group totalled 2,903; in five years it had ballooned to 3,640 – an eye-popping increase of 25 per cent. Meantime, clerical and support staff were cut over that period.
There is little wonder Dr. Gupta thought it was high time there was a reallocation of resources, a realigning of priorities.
Look at this another way: When you take faculty at UBC's Vancouver campus as a whole, including sessional lecturers, librarians and others, it totals roughly 4,700, according to information provided by the university. That compares to 9,500 members of staff. Now let's examine another first-rate university in Canada, the University of Toronto, which has 13,000 faculty versus 6,500 staff. In other words, UBC has a 2:1 staff-to-faculty ratio, while Toronto has a 1:2 ratio.
If you want to know what happened to Arvind Gupta, this is a good place to start. In tight budgetary times, a good university president has to look at available resources and sometimes reflect on how they can be reallocated. I don't think there is any question that Dr. Gupta was pro-faculty; after all, he was a UBC prof before he became president. When he started to talk openly about taking resources from administrators, threatening the impressive little fiefdoms many of them had built up over the last five years, alarms sounded.
I have little doubt that some of those who felt most threatened by Dr. Gupta's plan went to members of the board of governors with their concerns. Blind to the logic of Dr. Gupta's vision, and loyal to an administration it knew well, the board decided it would be best for all concerned if the new guy left.
It should be a lesson to anyone who follows in his footsteps.
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The university, of course, just wants this story to go away. That's why it asked Dr. Gupta to sign a confidentiality agreement, so he wouldn't discuss what happened. The board of governors acts as if its hands are tied; otherwise, you know, it would love to tell the world what happened. Right. What it should do is release Dr. Gupta from the bonds of a gag order he likely regrets signing.
But it won't. Instead, it's going to pretend there isn't a problem. Interim president Martha Piper penned an op-ed piece that ran in the Vancouver Sun on Monday that was truly breathtaking in its naivete and lack of appreciation of the crisis her school is facing. She mentioned the Gupta controversy in passing, offering little empathy to those wondering why a school built on the foundational elements of openness and transparency can continue to be so opaque and secretive about this matter.
As much as Dr. Piper may want to sweep this matter under her office rug, it will be difficult to do. She should, instead, be alive to the deep discontent that lingers in many parts of her campus, among many people critical to the university's success.
Editor's note: This article compares the number of total faculty of the University of British Columbia with that of the faculty of the University of Toronto, and says that UBC has a 2:1 staff-to-faculty ratio, while the U of T has a 1:2 ratio. However, UBC does not include clinical staff as faculty, while U of T does so. If the faculties were compared on the same basis, the ratios would be considerably closer.All This Mayhem: Former world champion skateboarder Tas Pappas faces mistakes of past as new documentary tells brother's tragic story
Updated
At a popular vertical skate ramp in western Sydney, a group of talented young skateboarders watch in awe as 38-year-old Tas Pappas flies weightlessly off the walls.
To the kids he's a hero, a former world champion who pioneered spectacular tricks and revolutionised vert skating in the 1990s.
But ask Tas Pappas to describe himself, and there's a pause.
"A work in progress," he says.
In 1998 Tas Pappas became the world's number one skateboarder. He won the title in a competition against America's Tony Hawk - and he won it skating with a broken rib. In the same year his younger brother Ben was ranked number two.
It was a dream come true for the two brothers from St Albans in Melbourne. They had grown up in a violent household, and Tas had been sexually abused by a family acquaintance. Their incredible talent on the skate ramp gave them a ticket to a new life and new adventures. But the dream was shortlived.
In America the Pappas boys were living a rock star lifestyle – complete with fame, parties, and lots of drugs. Tas says he often did tricks on the ramp while tripping on acid.
"I just thought I was superhuman, I could just feel the way I was moving," he reflects.
"Looking back I probably would have done it better sober. I was just young and dumb then, that's all there is to it."
In 1999 the dream turned into a nightmare. On a trip back to Melbourne, Ben was caught trying to smuggle 103 grams of cocaine in the sole of his shoe. His conviction meant he could not return to the United States, which effectively ended his professional skateboarding career.
Life for Tas Pappas was also unravelling.
His bad boy image did not fit with the commercialisation of the sport, and he was blocked from key competitions. His skateboarding injuries and continued drug use were taking its toll.
By 2005 he was married with two children and struggling to make ends meet. The violent upbringing of his childhood had returned – but this time he was doing the hitting. An assault on his wife Colleen landed him in a San Diego prison. A breach of parole led to a deportation order.
Just when it seemed things could not get any worse, Tas got a phone call from his father. His brother Ben was dead.
Ben's drug use had become worse back in Australia. The loss of his skateboarding career had led to depression, and a heavy addiction to heroin. In March 2007 the body of his girlfriend Lynette Phillips, who was also a heroin user, was found weighted down at Dights Falls in Melbourne.
The state coroner found that Ben had killed her before taking his own life.
Tas was devastated and used drugs and alcohol to numb the pain. Incredibly, in 2008 he also attempted to smuggle cocaine into Australia – a drug-affected decision that landed him three years in prison. Arguably the prison sentence saved his life.
"I needed jail big time. Jail was good, I mean it was painful and I hated it, but it was good," he said.
"I couldn't just piss off and get a shot of speed or a shot of smack. I was just stuck in the cell with nothing else to do but train."
While he was in jail, an old Melbourne skateboarding friend, Eddie Martin, approached him about making a documentary about his and Ben's life. He was wary, but keen to own up to the mistakes of his past. He also had a very important motive.
"I want my kids to see it, and that's part of the reason I decided to be so honest," he says.
"There's nothing anyone can say about me now. I've admitted everything. I'll take ownership for all my shit actions, and just pray to God that I keep getting shown mercy and hopefully my kids come back to me."
The Pappas brothers documentary, All This Mayhem, is currently showing in Sydney and Melbourne.
Topics: film-movies, arts-and-entertainment, melbourne-3000, australia, vic, nsw, sydney-2000
First postedMichael McGough in today’s LA Times reminds us that virulently anti-gay Republican Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has a son, Paul, who’s a priest, and works for an organization that pretends it can “pray away the gay.”
The Catholic group, Courage, is one of various “gay cure” who peddle the lie that with a little bit of love, and manliness, you too can learn to have sex with women, or something.
Here’s the portion of the LA Times story that covers Paul Scalia:
The notion that there are no homosexual people, just homosexual acts, is an ancient one. Until recently it was the attitude of the Roman Catholic Church. Scalia’s son Paul, a Catholic priest who has served as chaplain to Courage – “a spiritual support group to help those with same-sex attractions live chaste lives” – continues to resist the idea of a gay identity. He has written: “We must always distinguish the person from the attractions. Most errors in this area come from the reduction of the person to the attractions: to say, ‘A person who has homosexual attractions must be homosexual.’ This reduces the human person to the sum total of his sexual inclinations.” In a 2005 article in the magazine First Things, Paul Scalia warned against the labeling of high school students as “gay” and even took the Vatican to task for using the term “homosexual person,” which, the younger Scalia said, “suggests that homosexual inclinations somehow determine, which is to say confine, a person’s identity.” Of course, this is a straw man; psychologists and other who speak of a gay identity don’t argue that “gay” is an exhaustive description of an individual’s personality traits, only that there is more to being gay or lesbian than participation in sexual acts.
Someone sounds awfully worried about this notion of being defined by one’s “homosexual inclinations.”
I’ve found, over the years, that a lot of people who don’t think “homosexuals” exist, and who recoil at the notion that “a person who has homosexual attractions must be homosexual,” tend to actually be gay themselves. Or bisexual.
There’s a reason people on the anti-gay right think being gay is like alcoholism, or that it’s described as an “urge” rather than an orientation, because for many of them I wonder if it isn’t an urge that pulls at them like alcohol pulls at an alcoholic. It’s not something theoretical – it’s something they’re experience directly, and they loathe.
I’m not saying that Antonin Scalia’s son Paul is gay. I’m saying that generically, over the years, when I’ve heard people talk this way – people who seem fixated on “homosexual inclinations” and not being defined as “gay” simply because you desperately want to have sex with men – it’s always made me wonder if they’re not gay themselves, and if that’s not why they’re so focused on “evil” uncontrollable urges.
It also would explain why their hypothetical fathers so clearly have issues.
I have to dig a bit more into Scalia, the son’s, crazy article linked from the LA Times piece. In the other piece, Scalia rails against the notion of calling teenagers “gay” or “bi” or “trans”:
Of course, the phrases are tempting because of their convenience and efficiency. They are common, close at hand, and make quick work of a difficult issue. But they also identify an individual person with his homosexual inclinations. They presume that a person is his inclinations or attractions; he is a “gay” or is a “homosexual.” At some point adults have to admit that a fifteen-year-old who claims to be “a questioning transgendered bisexual” is really just confused.
Yeah, because what young guy hasn’t thought that maybe he was really a girl? Is Scalia out of his mind? Most straight kids don’t think they’re gay. And most non-trans kids don’t question if they’re trans. It’s something that crosses your mind because something is already there, something is going on, something that most other kids aren’t experiencing, certainly not to the degree you are.
Calling it “confused” is, well, confused. And yet again, makes me wonder more about the person making the allegation than about the kids themselves.
And for extra shi*s and giggles, here’s a video of a Catholic priest rapping about how the Catholic church still loves you, even though you’re going to hell. It’s reportedly produced by Courage, the anti-gay Catholic cure group that Scalia belongs to. Just to give you a sense of what, and who, we’re dealing with here:A century ago, Louis Brandeis, a distinguished Boston lawyer who would later go on to the Supreme Court, wrote a series of articles in Harper’s Weekly denouncing what he called the “financial oligarchy” on Wall Street that had effectively seized control of the burgeoning industrial economy.
The investment banks at the center of this oligarchy, he argued, were not content simply trading securities, in which they took the “inconsistent” position of being buyer and seller. They also had cornered the market on “manufacturing” and “distributing” securities, earning huge fees in the process. The partners in these firms earned incomes derived not by “the rule of reason” but from the maxim “all that the traffic will bear.”
Sound familiar?
In fairness, the world of finance today is more transparent, diverse and competitive, in large part because it is better regulated. Since the financial crisis of 2008, the government has been moving once again to rein the excessive power, risk-taking and compensation on Wall Street, as mandated by the Dodd-Frank financial reform act.
But while most of us have been distracted by elections and fiscal brinksmanship, the financial services industry has been waging a furious, well-funded counter-attack that has been alarmingly successful in wearing down the financial regulators. There has been hand-to-hand combat about every word in every regulation. And win or lose, every one of those regulations will be the subject of a scorched-earth legal strategy that will go all the way to the Supreme Court. Working through the Republican caucuses on Capitol Hill, the industry also has moved to trim regulators’ budgets, block nominations to regulatory posts and deny industry critics such as Elizabeth Warren seats on relevant oversight committees.
The depth and breadth of the industry campaign to gut Dodd-Frank is unlike any I have seen in Washington. I have no doubt it was a factor in Mary Schapiro’s decision last week to retire as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
These developments — in the face of an election in which the “repeal Dodd-Frank” |
latter complied but had to order a general retreat of the army to the Danube island of Lobau. Six weeks later, Napoleon crossed the Danube again, this time managing to bring out a considerable force, attacking the Austrians on the Marchfeld plain. The ensuing battle of Wagram would see the Grenadiers à Cheval in reserve during the first day of battle.[6]
However, on the second day, July 6, 1809, the grenadiers, with the rest of the Guard cavalry, were assigned to support general Jacques MacDonald's massive attack column. After an initial success, MacDonald saw a rare opportunity to rout the disorderly troops before him and to that effect he requested a charge from general Étienne de Nansouty's cavalry reserve, inviting all other cavalry commanders in the sector to do the same. The Guard cavalry, however, did not move and the opportunity came to nothing. An angry MacDonald confronted Walther after the battle over the latter's inaction, at which Walther explained that neither his commander, Marshal Bessières, nor the Emperor, had given any orders for a charge and that the Guard could not act without direct orders from one of the two. MacDonald's attempts to explain that a charge would have been decisive fell on deaf ears, as Walther at once saluted and left.[11]
Back to the Peninsula [ edit ]
A portrait of the General Louis Lepic, by Louis-Charles Arsenne. In 1811, Lepic famously refused to charge at the battle of Fuentes de Oñoro, citing a lack of orders from his direct commander.
During the two years that followed, only a few companies of the regiment would see active service, campaigning in Spain, where they accompanied Bessières in northwestern Spain, where the latter was supposed to support André Masséna's Army of Portugal. Masséna had been busy besieging general Wellington in Lisbon, but he was not able to pierce the fortified Lines of Torres Vedras and subsequently retreated to Almeida. Wellington made the critical error of following him and on May 5, 1809, he found himself in an awkward position at the battle of Fuentes de Oñoro. Masséna needed Bessières' entire Army Corps, if he wanted to thoroughly beat the Anglo-Portuguese, but Bessières brought only symbolic reinforcements: a few squadrons of horse dragoons and grenadiers, 800 men in all, under the command of general Louis Lepic. Despite this setback, Masséna brilliantly exploited a weakness in Wellington's line and it soon seemed like the Anglo-Portuguese would be crushed. Time was at the essence and Masséna promptly sent his young aide-de-camp, Charles Oudinot, to find Lepic and the Guard cavalry, with orders to charge immediately, but Oudinot was soon back to his commander, saying that he was not able to fetch the Guard cavalry, because Lepic only recognized Bessières as commander and that he would not draw his sword without his order. Bessières was nowhere to be found, allowing Wellington's army to escape intact.[11]
Russian campaign [ edit ]
By 1812, the imminent eruption of the Russian campaign saw the Grenadiers-à-Cheval recalled from Spain. A part of the 3rd brigade of the Guard cavalry, they numbered 1166 men, spread between five squadrons (squadron commanders were: 1st sq. - Perrot, 2nd sq. - Mesmer, 3rd sq. - Rémy, 4th sq. - Hardy, 5th sq. - Morin). The first part of the campaign, from June to September, was nothing more than a long march for the Guard, which was never committed to battle[12] and was able to arrive on the field of battle at Borodino at full strength. Despite the various insistent demands of the French field commanders during this epic battle, Napoleon I refused to commit the Guard to battle so far away from France.[13] During the great fire of Moscow, the Grenadiers-à-Cheval were used to police the city, due to their reputation of discipline and high moral standards. By mid-October, the entire Grande Armée began to move out of the ruined city and the retreat towards Poland would offer only secondary actions to the Grenadiers-à-Cheval, with the mission of ensuring the protection of the Imperial Headquarters. The skirmishes, the cold and the deprivations during the retreat took their toll on the regiment and by the time of the battle of Berezina the combined Grenadiers-à-Cheval and Chasseurs-à-Cheval were able to field no more than 500 combat-worthy men on horseback, with several hundred dismounted. Despite this, there is evidence that morale remained good throughout.[12] According to author Stephen de Chappedelaine, general Frédéric Henri Walther managed to bring his horse grenadiers out of Russia with few losses.[14]
War of the Sixth Coalition [ edit ]
Grenadiers-à-Cheval. Death of Marshal Bessières on 1 May 1813. The Marshal had been the first commander of the regiment, up until 1800 and thus he was particularly loved by the
The regiment took some time to reform during 1813 and would only go back to action in April. Napoleon I reviewed them at Erfurt on April 27; only three days later the Grenadiers-à-Cheval received news of the death of their beloved leader, Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bessières, who had been killed in action by a stray Russian cannonball, next to the village of Rippach. The regiment saw brief action at the battle of Dresden and was involved in supporting the foot Guards take the village of Reudnitz, during the battle of Leipzig in late October. The only major engagement of the year would come at the end of October, at the battle of Hanau. As the Austro-Bavarians under Karl Philipp von Wrede were trying to block the retreat of the Grande Armée towards France, Napoleon was forced to commit his élite troops, personally haranguing the Grenadiers-à-Cheval as they were preparing to go into action. The entire Guard cavalry charged by squadron, in column and broke a numerous enemy cavalry, following it for several hundred metres. During this battle, the colonel major of the regiment, general Louis-Marie Lévesque received six sabre cuts to the shoulder and arm and captain adjutant-major Guindey, famous for killing Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia at the battle of Saalfeld seven years earlier, was killed in action. Another blow was dealt to the morale of the regiment on November 24 of that year, when the regiment's commander-in-chief, general of division Frédéric Henri Walther died suddenly from exhaustion and illness. He was replaced on December 1 by the 45-year-old general of division Claude Étienne Guyot, with the senior general of division Étienne Marie Antoine Champion de Nansouty taking overall command of the entire Guard cavalry.[15]
The following year, war continued on French soil and began very badly, with the French army outnumbered and in very bad shape. The Guard cavalry, under Nansouty, was thus called into action more often than ever, combating valiantly and often playing an instrumental role in Napoleon's attempts to frustrate Coalition plans. Together with other regiments of the Guards, the Grenadiers fought against overwhelming enemy numbers at La Rothière and nine days later broke several Russian infantry squares from General Zakhar Olsufiev's force. At the Battle of Montmirail, the Grenadiers annihilated two Russian brigades and at the Battle of Château-Thierry successfully charged Coalition artillery batteries and two days later helped rout Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher's army at the Battle of Vauchamps. They were then involved in several actions, including major ones at Reims and Craonne, where they routed several enemy squares. During this battle, the commander (major) of the Grenadiers, General Lévesque de Laferrière was wounded by a bullet and had a leg torn off and also lost one of its best officers, Captain Kister. Their last action of the campaign was fought at Méry-sur-Seine, where they captured a team of pontooners belonging to the enemy "Army of Bohemia".[15]
Bourbon Restoration and War of the Seventh Coalition [ edit ]
After Napoleon's abdication and the Bourbon Restoration, the Grenadiers were ordered to Blois, by royal ordinance. According to this ordinance, dated 12 May, they were to be reorganised into a "Corps of Royal Cuirassiers of France". Its complement was set by the 21 June ordinance, which provided that the Corps was to be 42 officers and 602 men strong, divided into two-company strong squadrons. However, with Napoleon's return to power in late March 1815, the Grenadiers regained their former organisation and rank among the army. With the outbreak of the War of the Seventh Coalition, the Grenadiers were included in a Guard heavy cavalry division, alongside the Imperial Guard Dragoons. Their only engagement took place at the Battle of Waterloo. The charges of the Grenadiers were impetuous but losses were heavy: they lost major Jean-Baptiste-Auguste-Marie Jamin, killed by British Canister shot near a Coalition square, two lieutenants (Tuefferd and Moreau) and sixteen other officers wounded. Waterloo was to be the last engagement of this legendary unit, which was disbanded by the Bourbons after their Second Restoration in late 1815.[16]
Sources [ edit ]
Pigeard, Alain - „La Garde Impériale”, Tallandier, Bibliothèque Napoléonienne, ISBN 2-84734-177-3
See also [ edit ]
Uniform of the 1st squadron of the Grenadier-à-cheval, in 1815, on "Les uniformes pendant la campagne des Cent Jours"
References [ edit ]It’s “frynally” here and opened to the public Thursday in St. Joseph, Mo.
The McDonald’s of the future that gained international publicity over unlimited fries has a few more options up its sleeve.
“Unlimited fries are just the beginning of what’s different about (this restaurant),” said Chris Habiger, owner.
During a media event at the new restaurant, Habiger explained the restaurant will offer table service. Customers place their orders, have a seat and wait for their food to be brought out to them. It’s a big transition for the fast-food company.
“We’re making a shift from fast food to fast-casual,” Habiger said.
The atmosphere of the new space accompanies an upgraded menu with more grilled options and gourmet sauces like pico guacamole. The toppings are part of the new customizable burger and chicken sandwiches.
Customers can order their food via large kiosks or from the traditional counter. There is an entirely separate counter for McDonald’s Cafe drinks and the new dessert bar. The dessert bar has its own unlimited options, from waffle cones and signature sundaes to diced apple toppings with hot fudge and waffle pieces. The restaurant is bringing back its oatmeal raisin cookies and twist cones, too.
The 6,500-square-foot McDonald’s broke ground in April with news that it was offering unlimited fries with specialty orders for the first few months. However, many patrons of the burger chain were excited the Habigers would be rebuilding a new play area.
That area offers interactive lightboard tables and tabletop video games. The children’s play area consumes a good portion of the restaurant and has a dedicated staff to man the section during private parties and events.
Habiger and his wife, Karri Habiger, own six McDonald’s locations in St. Joseph and the one in Mound City, Missouri. The couple’s company, Habiger West, has hired more than 100 new employees for the new restaurant.
“And we’re still hiring,” Karri Habiger said.
Tribune News Service | St. Joseph News PressI should begin this article by comparing LaVar Ball to my father, but I can’t because... I don’t know that dude.
I definitely am not as familiar with LaVar Ball as apparently USA Today’s Nancy Armour is. Armour, in response to Ball’s announcement that he was switching his son LaMelo’s high school, declared Ball the “worst sports parent ever” for... ummm... talking too loud?
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LaVar Ball is a blowhard who does things his own way. He is brash, sometimes sexist and always loud. He says stupid shit, like when he bragged that he could beat Michael Jordan in basketball, or when he told Kristine Leahy to “stay in your lane.” I suspect that he either has a huge ego or loves the letter L so much, he gave all of his sons L names. Or maybe he’s French.
But a bad father? How, Nancy?
Maybe he’s a terrible parent because he raised his eldest son, Lonzo, to get a scholarship to one of the best colleges in the country. Perhaps Lonzo’s lack of a single off-the-court scandal is evidence of Ball’s poor parenting skills. The fact that the NBA rookie lives in one of the biggest media markets in the world, playing under the spotlight of one of the NBA’s most legendary franchises and has yet to take a single misstep makes LaVar Ball a shitty dad.
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Sidenote: I have actually spoken with Lonzo Ball on the phone, and he was as respectful and well-mannered as any 19-year-old I have ever met. I asked him about his father, and Lonzo did not waver one bit in praising him.
One could call LaVar Ball lucky that he got one son into UCLA, but his middle son, LiAngelo, is a freshman at the school, and his youngest, LaMelo, is committed to playing there when he graduates. LaMelo is ranked as the seventh-best player in the Class of 2019 and played for the Big Baller AAU team founded and coached by his dad.
LaVar Ball also committed an act of low-key child abuse when he started a shoe company that could net billions by the time all three of his sons make it to the NBA.
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Building a family empire—who does that? Terrible dads, apparently.
There is a long history of people calling out black fathers devoted to their children. Earl Woods was criticized for helicoptering over Tiger Woods, yet we saw what happened to Tiger after Earl passed. Serena and Venus’ father, Richard Williams, was criticized for years for his overbearing presence that was so repugnant it only created the greatest athlete in the history of sports. Disagree? Name a single athlete, male or female, who has dominated a sport at the highest level for 17 years. Too hard? Tell you what—I’ll make it easier for you: Name one who won a single championship with a whole-ass human being living inside them. I’ll wait.
But LaVar Ball is different. He’s not just a bad dad, he’s the “worst.” Ever.
I guess that’s the price he has to pay for deciding to spend more time with his son, and not trusting someone else (as if he doesn’t know what he’s doing). The absolute only thing LaVar Ball has ever done is talk shit to white people and... well... that’s about it.
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I would vehemently call this writer’s declaration a tad bit racist-ish, but first, let me Google her to see how many of her sons are playing in the NBA. I’m sure she’s at least raised some black sons in America, given her vociferous proclamation and apparent expertise. Hold on...
I couldn’t find anything. Maybe they’re in the NFL or something.
Look at that picture—don’t they look so oppressed, dressing however they want, smiling on their way to becoming millionaires? Anyway, here’s to the millions of black boys across America who wish they had a dad as devoted, loving, caring or even as present as the worst sports dad ever...
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... including me.
Read more at USA Today.The Vancouver Police have arrested a man believed to be responsible for the theft of camera gear over the Labour Day weekend in Stanley Park.
Bryan Ball and Julie Wilson had their wedding at Ferguson Point and were surrounded by family and friends, saying their wedding vows, when their photographer noticed his equipment was missing.
Police say the man made off with a camera case containing three lenses.
Ball says they had two separate cameras filming the event and when they went back to check the tape, they realized they got the suspect on camera.
On Tuesday morning, 50-year-old Ahmed Baladie was arrested for the theft after investigators identified Baladie as the suspect caught on video allegedly stealing the equipment, valued at more than $6,000.
However, police are still looking for the stolen equipment, which includes:
Canon 400 mm 2.8l camera lens (the original release incorrectly identified the lens as a Canon 1400 mm, and has since been corrected by the VPD)
Canon 50 mm 1.2 l camera lens
Tamron 90 mm F 2.8 DI camera macro lens (Tamron corrected by Global BC – the original release states ‘Tameron)
Pelican camera case 1514
Baladie has been released on a promise to appear with conditions not to be in Stanley Park, pending his next scheduled court appearance on October 21 t at 2 p.m.This article is over 3 years old
Author shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2013 was an advocate of what he saw as Pakistan’s ancient traditions of pluralism and tolerance
Pakistani author Intizar Hussain, widely recognised as one of the greatest Urdu writers in history, has died aged 92 following a period of illness, according to his doctor.
The prolific author, known for his novels, short stories, columns and poetry, belatedly saw worldwide recognition when he was shortlisted for the Man Booker international prize in 2013 and awarded France’s highly prestigious Ordre des Arts et des Lettres a year later.
Born on 7 December 1923 in India, he migrated to the newly formed Pakistan in 1947 – an experience he wrote about 50 years later in his short story The First Morning.
Hussain’s acclaimed novel Basti, published in 1979 and later translated into English, also addressed the history of Pakistan and the subcontinent.
Hussain, a regular literary columnist for Pakistan’s leading English-language daily Dawn, in later years became known as a voice of moderation and advocate of what he saw as the subcontinent’s ancient traditions of pluralism and tolerance.
Fellow Urdu writer Munnu Bhai said: “Intizar Hussain was a man of letters. His death has left a huge gap in the literary circle of the subcontinent that would be felt of the centuries to come.”
Hussain’s wife, Aliya Begum, died in 2004. The couple had no children.Gold leaf sampleGift of The Gold Leaf Company
© AMNH / Craig Chesek
No Other Metal or Mineral Measures Up to Gold
Gold's beauty, value and its many other unique qualities make it the material of choice in many industries. Most gold--78 percent of the yearly gold supply--is made into jewelry. Other industries, mostly electronics, medical and dental, require about 12 percent. The remaining 10 percent of the yearly gold supply is used in financial transactions.
Gold is used as a contact metal in the electronics industry as it is a good conductor of both electricity and heat.
The word "gold" most likely has its origins in the Indo-European word ghel, meaning "yellow." The chemical symbol of gold, Au, is short for the Latin word for gold, aurum, meaning "glowing dawn."
Gold wire Gold is ductile: it can be drawn out into the thinnest wire.
© AMNH / Craig Chesek
Gold conducts heat and electricity. Copper and silver are the best conductors, but gold connections outlast both of them because they do not tarnish. It is not that the gold lasts longer, but that it remains conductive for a longer time.
Gold is ductile: It can be drawn out into the thinnest wire. One ounce of gold can be drawn into 80 kilometers (50 miles) of thin gold wire, five microns, or five millionths of a meter, thick. This sample is 0.20 millimeters (0.008 inches) in diameter.
Apollo 11 Space Helmet ReplicaGold is highly reflective. The visors of astronauts' space helmets receive a coating of gold so thin that it is partially transparent. The astronauts can see through it, but, even at that thinness, the gold film reduces glare and heat from sunlight.
© AMNH / Denis Finnin
Gold is highly reflective of heat and light. The visors of astronauts' space helmets receive a coating of gold so thin (0.00005 millimeters, or 0.000002 inches) that it is partially transparent. The astronauts can see through it, but even at that thinness the gold film reduces glare and heat from sunlight.
Gold is prized for its beauty. Jewelers and metalsmiths value it as a metal that can be embossed, hammered, cast, stretched or twisted.
Gold RoomGold—the most malleable metal—can be flattened into extremely thin sheets. The walls in the Gold Room are covered with approximately 300 square feet of 23-karat gold leaf representing three ounces of gold metal, the equivalent volume of three U.S. half-dollar coins.
© AMNH / Denis Finnin
Gold is malleable, so it can be flattened into extremely thin sheets. The walls of the Gold Room are covered with approximately 28 square meters (300 square feet) of 23-karat gold leaf representing 3 ounces of gold metal. Gold leafing--also known as gilding--is an ancient technique. Traditional artisans beat raw gold between pieces of leather until it was almost too thin to be seen. One ounce of gold may be hammered thin enough to cover more than 9 square meters (96.9 square feet) of a surface. The gold leaf may be only 0.18 microns (seven millionths of an inch) thick; a stack of 7,055 sheets would be no thicker than a dime.A new clip from Science Channel's "Impossible Engineering" highlights the astonishingly large Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) in China.
The 500 m (1,650 feet) dish is the world's largest single-aperture telescope — the dish is the size of 30 football fields — and its scale is dramatically evident in the video clip. "Impossible Engineering" devotes the first episode of its third season, airing March 30 at 9 p.m. (EDT and PDT), to how the massive telescope was built.
"The collecting area is more than 30 football fields," Bo Peng, deputy manager of the FAST project, said in the video. "If we fill the big dish with wine, everybody in the world could have four bottles of wine."
Engineers completed the telescope last year, and when it goes online it will lend a gigantic ear to the search for extraterrestrial life, as well as other scientific endeavors. It will be able to see further than the previous record-holder for size, the 1,000-foot-wide (300 meters) Aricebo Observatory in Puerto Rico.
Other episodes of "Impossible Engineering" will feature the construction of the International Space Station, Elon Musk's Tesla Factory, the Panama Canal Expansion, the Halley VI Research Centre in Antarctica, the hybrid airship Airlander 10 and more.
"'Impossible Engineering' illuminates the past, present and future builds that influence the course of history and will continue to inspire innovation for years to come," Marc Etkind, Science Channel's general manager, said in a statement. "These remarkable feats are a tribute to the creativity and courage of humankind, and Science Channel celebrates the brilliant and inventive work happening every day around the world."
Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and local news outlet Fox2Now, a white St. Louis police officer shot a black off-duty officer from his own force after a car chase ended in a crash outside the off-duty officer’s home.
The African American officer, who has not yet been identified, came outside of his home while off-duty after hearing the commotion from a car chase that ended nearby. Despite identifying himself as a cop, the man was ordered to the ground by two officers. He complied, and soon after, they recognized him and told him to get up.
That was when a third officer entered the scene, and because he did not recognize the black off-duty cop and claimed to “fear for his safety,” shot the off-duty cop in the arm.
The Post-Dispatch reported that police are calling the incident an example of “friendly fire” due to the suspects from the car chase firing at police. The paper also reported that police initially claimed that the 38-year-old African American officer, who has been on the force for 11 years, was “caught in the crossfire.”
“This is the first time that we are aware, that a black professional, in law enforcement, himself being shot and treated as an ordinary black guy on the street. This is a real problem,” Rufus J. Tate Jr., the attorney for the injured off-duty officer, told the local Fox affiliate.
“In the police report, you have so far, there is no description of threat he received. So we have a real problem with that. But this has been a national discussion for the past two years. There is this perception that a black man is automatically feared,” the attorney concluded.HOLLYWOOD >> Three men were shot, one critically, possibly from an argument inside a Hollywood nightclub Sunday that eroded outside into a shooting, police said.
The shooting occurred just after 3 a.m. in the 1400 block of North La Brea Avenue, said Officer Norma Eisenman of the LAPD’s Media Relations Section.
The three victims, ages 20 to 25, possibly got into an argument with the suspect and the argument continued outside the location, where the suspect pulled out a gun and fired several shots at them, Eisenman said.
One victim suffered a gunshot wound to the shoulder, another to the knee and the last victim suffered a gunshot wound to the neck, she said. All three were rushed to an area hospital, where the victim suffering from the gunshot wound to the neck was listed in critical condition. The other two were listed in stable condition.
The suspect fled on foot.The barbecue stoppers this summer will be freedom of speech, section 18C and political correctness gone mad, according to the conservative backbencher Eric Abetz.
The conservative backbencher said those topics were talked about much more than the republic or the definition of marriage at the community events he attended.
The former Abbott minister urged his conservative colleagues to work within the system and reflect the values of the conservative base after reports that Cory Bernardi and George Christensen were considering a split.
He made a thinly veiled swipe at the Turnbull leadership team, saying when he was Senate leader under Tony Abbott he made an effort to reach out to all colleagues “irrespective of what their particular disposition might be”.
A conservatives split from the Liberals would free the party to be truly liberal | Katharine Murphy Read more
“To ensure everybody had their voice heard, that nobody felt alienated, that there was genuine reward for effort within the Senate team as opposed to people being rewarded for the way they lined up or the way they voted,” Abetz said. “I think that is what we in the Coalition need to do again and get back to that.”
He urged the party to remain true to conservative values rather than indulge topics such as the republic and same-sex marriage, which were talked about only within the “Canberra bubble”.
“[Conservative voter] aspirations are to be able to balance their household budget, to have job security, to protect our borders, to have national security,” Abetz told Radio National.
“They’re the sort of things that excite them and concern them and, if I might say, it is not marriage, it is not republic, it is not those sort of things that often get spoken about in the Canberra bubble within the cities at coffee shops but can I tell you they are not spoken about at community barbecues or at the workplace lunch rooms.”
Abetz, who has been a politician for more than 20 years, said he knew what people were concerned about outside the Canberra bubble because he was “out and about, listening to people, not watching ABC24 or Sky News 24 hours a day, seven days a week”.
“Actually being out there in the community being at school assemblies, at the local men’s shed barbecue the other day... it is interesting what topics are raised and I can I tell you republic is not raised, marriage is not raised,” Abetz said.
Abetz said freedom of speech and political correctness were the big issues being discussed and he quoted polls to justify support for changing section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. However, he rejected the strong support in polls for marriage equality.
“People talk about the right to freedom of speech, political correctness gone mad, they see Bill Leak and the QUT students, which got a lot of mainstream media people, so yes, people were talking about that,” Abetz said.
Most MPs and senators want to ditch monarchy, says Australian Republican Movement Read more
Abetz rejected the suggestion that the push to remove “insult” and “offend” from the Racial Discrimination Act was only of concern inside Canberra and might be considered in the same category as the republic and marriage equality.
He said 18C had developed into a mainstream issue because polls showed overwhelmingly people wanted change. He chastised interviewer Hamish Macdonald for using the term “marriage equality”.
“Once again, the ABC betrays itself when you talk about marriage equality as opposed to changing the definition of marriage,” he said. “And when you talk to people in the streets, can I tell you the issue of changing the foundational institution of our society does not rate.”
Abetz called on the Liberal party to take stock and consider why it had lost some of its support base, haemorrhaging 1.7m votes at the last election.
“I think the reason is we have not necessarily appealed as we should to our natural core constituency with some of the conservative values that myself and others share.”
He quoted the rule in politics that “disunity is death” and said it was best to work within the system because the Liberal party voter base was overwhelmingly of a conservative disposition and expected a centre-right government.Story highlights An inmate tells his brother he's not participating in the riot, despite pressure to do so
Five employees and an inmate are injured
The riot began about 2:40 p.m. and was ongoing Sunday night
"No threat to public safety," the facility says
A prison guard was killed and several employees injured Sunday in a riot at the Adams County Correctional Facility in Natchez, Mississippi, officials said.
The 23-year-old guard appeared to suffer "blunt trauma to the head," said Adams County Coroner James Lee.
The riot, which began about 2:40 p.m., was still going on Sunday night, the facility's operator said in a statement. Local and state law enforcement officials as well as authorities from the Federal Bureau of Prisons were helping the facility quell the violence.
"The disturbance is contained within the secure perimeter of the facility, with no threat to public safety," the statement said.
Five employees and one inmate were taken to a hospital for treatment of unspecified injuries, while additional staff members were being treated at the prison.
Johar Lashin told CNN that he'd heard a lot of noise and commotion when he talked around 6 p.m. with his brother Jawad, an inmate at the Natchez facility serving time for aiding and abetting illegal immigrants. His brother said he was not participating in the riot, despite pressure from other inmates to do so.
The cause of the incident is under investigation.
Rusty Boyd, a spokesman with the Mississippi Highway Patrol, said Sunday evening that 45 to 55 units from that state agency are helping corrections officers deal with the situation.
The facility is a 2,567-bed prison that houses adult men who are in the United States illegally and charged with crimes. It is owned by the Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America.
Warden Vance Laughlin described the facility as quiet and with "few problems" in a March 2010 article in The Natchez Democrat, a few months after it opened to incarcerate illegal immigrants detained for mostly low-security crimes. At that point, it contained more than 2,000 inmates -- more than two-thirds of whom were of Mexican descent, although scores of nationalities were then represented.._NN)._NNNNNN`.NNNNNNF` JNNNNN` JNNNNNF JN).NNNNNN` JN)(NNNNNN) NNNNNNNNNN) (NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNL__.NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN___JNNNNN. NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN..(NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN) (NNNNNNNF4NNNNNNNN (NNNNNNF L).JL..NL. ___. J J. (NNNNNNN`JNNNNNNNF _NNNNNNF N) (N"4NLJN"4N)NF"4N.NLNF NNNNNF "` NNNNN) _JNNNNNNN`.N` N` (NN (NN) (L N) NNNNN (NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN" (NJNNN_.JFN..NFN.JNF(N NNNN) (NNJNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNF` (N"""`NNNF (NNNF(NNF" (N 4NNN)NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNL. JNNN(NNNN"NNNNN""""""4NNNNNNNNNNN) __..__ _..__ NNNNNNNN` NNNN) "4NNNN).N4NN JN"NN. NN)(FNNN NNNNNNNNN.(NNNN).NNNNN` (NNNF(N 4) JLJ)NNNN` NNNNNNNNN`(NNNN_._JN__NNNNNNNNNF ( N)(N..N)N) 4)N `N NNNNNNNN__JNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN` N `N 4NNNF() (L) 4L NNNN `4NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNF" ` ` ` NNN.NNNNNNNNNNNNNNN"" ".NNNF4NNN` (NNN` Primal Fury FAQ by Egoraptor (Egoraptor@webmoron.net) Character: Shina Version: 1.3 - 04/16/2002 ---------------------------------------------------------------- Updates ---------------------------------------------------------------- Version 1.3 - 04/16/2002 - Added a secret Beast Drive performed after her command throw! (Thanks Bakuryu the Mole!) - Fixed an error in a throw description. Also added crouching throws. Version 1.2 - 04/13/2002 - Added her turned around alternate attacks. - Added a new move I did not know about (Thanks StarRain66) - Added more notes about her Fwd+K combo (Thanks again, StarRain66) - Made myself a new logo. Version 1.1 - 04/01/2002 - No, this is a real update, not an April Fools prank. - Made myself a nifty ASCII logo! =D - Fixed up a few grammatical and spelling errors here and there. - Found out what her Fwd Back+P move does. - Added the Beast Drives (I was stupid to forget them). - Added Jumping, Crouching, and Dashing attacks that I forgot. Version 1.0 - 03/28/2002 - I made the FAQ. Wooo. Took me one day, too. LOL ---------------------------------------------------------------- Table of Contents ---------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Introduction to Shina 2. Story Information 3. Additional Information 4. Combo System (Build your Own Combo!) 5. Easy Combo List 6. Alternate Attacks 7. Full Fledged Moves (Non-Combo Moves) 8. Ending 9. Credits ---------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Introduction to Shina ---------------------------------------------------------------- Well basically, this is just asking the question, do you really want to play as Shina? Is she your type of character? Well, let's see. If you've played as Gado, you'll catch on quickly. Shina is basically giving Gado the combos he doesn't have, without the super power. They have big differences, though, but you can tell she's taken after her old man all right. Shina is still basically brawn over longass combos, but she has her shares of those here and there. You could say she's basically an all around character, and easy to get used to quickly. She uses punches, kicks, and beast attacks equally, although you may be swaying toward one or the other after a while. Overall, she's a very fun character to play as, not to mention attactive, and she's not that hard to be good with. She's still got those things that the people who would want to master her want, so she's basically for everyone. Not too strong, not too fast. Just right. ---------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Story Information ---------------------------------------------------------------- Shina is the adopted daughter of Alan Gado, a now United Nations soldier. She was raised by Gado to be a strict soldier. Shina is 19 years old and of French decent. Despite that fact, she looks extremely Japanese and sounds very American. At one time, she was told that Gado was part of the Beast Liberation Battle Line, so she investigated to find out why he wasn't open to her about this. It struck her that she was not actually Gado's biological father, but she didn't care. In BR:PF, since the plotline is so shallow, she's basically fighting only because she's a Zoanthrope. ---------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Additional Information ---------------------------------------------------------------- - In Japan, Shina's name is Janne Gado, and she is nicknamed "Marvel" because of her amazing skills as a soldier. - Shina is very similar in fighting style to Gado. If you know how to use Gado, chances are, you'll learn Shina quite |
form is part of the title sets it apart from all other sonnet collections of the time, except for one — Sir Philip Sidney’s posthumous 1591 publication that is titled, Syr. P.S. his Astrophel and Stella, which is considered one of Shakespeare’s most important models. Sidney’s title may have inspired Shakespeare, particularly if the “W.H.” of Shakespeare’s dedication is Sidney’s nephew and heir, William Herbert. The idea that the persona referred to as the speaker of the Shakespeare’s sonnets might be Shakespeare himself, is aggressively repudiated by scholars, however, the title of the quarto does seem to encourage that kind of speculation.[6]
The first 17 poems, traditionally called the procreation sonnets, are addressed to the young man – urging him to marry and have children in order to immortalize his beauty by passing it to the next generation.[7] Other sonnets express the speaker's love for the young man; brood upon loneliness, death, and the transience of life; seem to criticise the young man for preferring a rival poet; express ambiguous feelings for the speaker's mistress; and pun on the poet's name. The final two sonnets are allegorical treatments of Greek epigrams referring to the "little love-god" Cupid.
The publisher, Thomas Thorpe, entered the book in the Stationers' Register on 20 May 1609:
Tho. Thorpe. Entred for his copie under the handes of master Wilson and master Lownes Wardenes a booke called Shakespeares sonnettes vjd.
Whether Thorpe used an authorised manuscript from Shakespeare or an unauthorised copy is unknown. George Eld printed the quarto, and the run was divided between the booksellers William Aspley and John Wright.
Dedication [ edit ]
The Sonnets Dedication page from
Shakespeare's Sonnets include a dedication to "Mr. W.H.":
TO.THE.ONLIE.BEGETTER.OF.
THESE.INSUING.SONNETS.
Mr.W.H. ALL.HAPPINESSE.
AND.THAT.ETERNITIE.
PROMISED.
BY.
OUR.EVER-LIVING.POET.
WISHETH.
THE.WELL-WISHING.
ADVENTURER.IN.
SETTING.
FORTH.
T.T.
The upper case letters and the stops that follow each word of the dedication were probably intended to resemble an ancient Roman lapidary inscription or monumental brass, perhaps accentuating the declaration in Sonnet 55 that the work would confer immortality to the subjects of the work:[8]
“Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes shall outlive this pow'rful rhyme”
The initials "T.T." are taken to refer to the publisher, Thomas Thorpe, though Thorpe usually signed prefatory matter only if the author was out of the country or dead.[9] However, Thorpe's entire corpus of such consists of only four dedications and three prefaces.[10] It has been suggested that Thorpe signing the dedication, rather than the author, might indicate that Thorpe published the work without obtaining Shakespeare's permission.[11] Though Thorpe's taking on the dedication may be explained by the great demands of business and travel that Shakespeare was facing at this time, which may have caused him to deal with the printing production in haste before rushing out of town.[12] After all, May 1609 was an extraordinary time: That month saw a serious outbreak of the plague, which shut down the theatres, and also caused many to flee London. Plus Shakespeare’s theatre company was on tour from Ipswich to Oxford. In addition, Shakespeare had been away from Stratford and in the same month, May, was being called on to tend to family and business there,[13] and deal with the litigation of a lawsuit in Warwickshire that involved a substantial amount of money.[14]
Mr. W. H., the dedicatee [ edit ]
The identity of Mr. W.H., “the only begetter of Shakespeare's Sonnets”, is not known for certain. His identity has been the subject of a great amount of speculation: That he was the author’s patron, that he was both patron and the “faire youth” who is addressed in the sonnets, that the “faire youth” is based on Mr. W.H. in some sonnets but not others, and a number of other ideas.[15][16][17]
William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke
William Herbert (the Earl of Pembroke). Herbert is seen as perhaps the most likely identity of Mr. W.H. and the "young man". He was the dedicatee of the First Folio. Thorpe would have been unlikely to have addressed a lord as "Mr",[18] but there may be an explanation, perhaps that form of address came from the author, who wanted to refer to Herbert at an earlier time – when Herbert was a “younger man”.[19] There is a later dedication to Herbert in another quarto of verse, Ben Jonson’s Epigrammes (1616), in which the text of Jonson’s dedication begins, “MY LORD, While you cannot change your merit, I dare not change your title … ” Jonson's emphasis on Pembroke's title, and his comment, seem to be chiding someone else who had the audacity to use the wrong title, as perhaps is the case in Shakespeare's dedication.[20]
Henry Wriothesley (the Earl of Southampton), with initials reversed, has received a great deal of consideration as a likely possibility. He was the dedicatee of Shakespeare's poems Venus & Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. Southampton was also known for his good looks.
The following is a list of other possibilities that have been suggested:
Structure [ edit ]
The sonnets are almost all constructed of three quatrains (four-line stanzas) followed by a final couplet. The sonnets are composed in iambic pentameter, the meter used in Shakespeare's plays.
The rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Sonnets using this scheme are known as Shakespearean sonnets, or English sonnets, or Elizabethan sonnets. Often, at the beginning of the third quatrain occurs the volta ("turn"), where of the poem shifts, and the poet expresses a turn of thought.[31]
There are a few exceptions: Sonnets 99, 126, and 145. Number 99 has fifteen lines. Number 126 consists of six couplets, and two blank lines marked with italic brackets; 145 is in iambic tetrameters, not pentameters. In one other variation on the standard structure, found for example in sonnet 29, the rhyme scheme is changed by repeating the second (B) rhyme of quatrain one as the second (F) rhyme of quatrain three.
Apart from rhyme, and considering only the arrangement of ideas, and the placement of the volta, a number of sonnets maintain the two-part organization of the Italian sonnet. In that case the term "octave" and "sestet" are commonly used to refer to the sonnet’s first eight lines followed by the remaining six lines. There are other line-groupings as well, as Shakespeare finds inventive ways with the content of the fourteen line poems.[32]
Characters of the sonnets [ edit ]
When analysed as characters, the subjects of the sonnets are usually referred to as the Fair Youth, the Rival Poet, and the Dark Lady. The speaker expresses admiration for the Fair Youth's beauty, and—if reading the sonnets in chronological order as published—later has an affair with the Dark Lady, then so does the Fair Youth. Current linguistic analysis and historical evidence suggests, however, that the sonnets to the Dark Lady were composed first (around 1591-95), the procreation sonnets next, and the later sonnets to the Fair Youth last (1597-1603). It is not known whether the poems and their characters are fiction or autobiographical; scholars who find the sonnets to be autobiographical have attempted to identify the characters with historical individuals.[33]
Fair Youth [ edit ]
The "Fair Youth" is the unnamed young man addressed by the devoted poet in the greatest sequence of the sonnets (1–126). The young man is handsome, self-centered, universally admired and much sought after. The sequence begins with the poet urging the young man to marry and father children (sonnets 1-17). It continues with the friendship developing with the poet’s loving admiration, which at times is homoerotic in nature. Then comes a set of betrayals by the young man, as he is seduced by the Dark Lady, and they maintain a liaison (sonnets 133, 134 & 144), all of which the poet struggles to abide. It concludes with the poet’s own act of betrayal, resulting in his independence from the fair youth (sonnet 152).[34][35][36]
The identity of the Fair Youth has been the subject of speculation among scholars. One popular theory is that he was Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton, this is based in part on the idea that his physical features, age, and personality might fairly match the young man in the sonnets.[37] He was both an admirer and patron of Shakespeare and was considered one of the most prominent nobles of the period.[38] It is also noted that Shakespeare’s 1593 poem Venus and Adonis is dedicated to Southampton, and in that poem a young man, Adonis, is encouraged by the goddess of love, Venus, to beget a child, which is a theme in the sonnets. Here are the verses from Venus and Adonis:[39]
Torches are made to light, jewels to wear,
Dainties to taste, fresh beauty for the use,
Herbs for their smell, and sappy plants to bear;
Things growing to themselves are growth’s abuse,
Seeds spring from seeds, and beauty breedeth beauty;
Thou wast begot; to get it is thy duty.
Upon the earth’s increase why shouldst thou feed,
Unless the earth with thy increase be fed?
By law of nature thou art bound to breed,
That thine may live when thou thyself art dead;
And so in spite of death thou dost survive,
In that thy likeness still is left alive.[40]
A problem with identifying the fair youth with Southampton is that the most certainly datable events referred to in the Sonnets are the fall of Essex and then the gunpowder plotters’ executions in 1606, which puts Southampton at the age of 33, and then 39 when the sonnets were published, when he would be past the age when he would be referred to as a "lovely boy" or "fair youth".[41]
Authors like Thomas Tyrwhitt[42] and Oscar Wilde proposed that the Fair Youth was William Hughes, a seductive young actor who played female roles in Shakespeare's plays. Particularly, Wilde claimed that he was the Mr. W.H.[43] referred to in the dedication attached to the manuscript of the Sonnets.[37]
The Dark Lady [ edit ]
The Dark Lady sequence (sonnets 127–154) Shakespeare is the most defiant of the sonnet tradition. The sequence distinguishes itself from the Fair Youth sequence with its overt sexuality (Sonnet 151).[44] The Dark Lady is so called because she has black hair and dun coloured skin. The Dark Lady suddenly appears (Sonnet 127), and she and the speaker of the sonnets, the poet, are in a sexual relationship. She is not aristocratic, young, beautiful, intelligent or chaste. Her complexion is muddy, her breath “reeks”, and she is ungainly when she walks. The relationship has a strong parallel with Touchstone’s pursuit of Audrey in As You Like It.[45] The Dark Lady presents an adequate receptor for male desire. She is celebrated in cocky terms that would be offensive to her, not that she would be able to read or understand what’s said. Soon the speaker rebukes her for enslaving his fair friend (sonnet 130). He can’t abide the triangular relationship, and it ends with him rejecting her.[46][47] As with the Fair Youth, there have been many attempts to identify her with a real historical individual. Lucy Negro,[48][49] Mary Fitton, Emilia Lanier, Elizabeth Wriothesley, and others have been suggested.
The Rival Poet [ edit ]
The Rival Poet's identity remains a mystery. If Shakespeare’s patron and friend was Pembroke, Shakespeare was not the only poet that praised his beauty; Francis Davison did in a sonnet that is the preface to Davison's quarto A Poetical Rhapsody (1608), which was published just before Shakespeare’s Sonnets.[50] John Davies of Hereford, Samuel Daniel, George Chapman, Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson are also candidates that find support among clues in the sonnets.[51][52]
It may be that the Rival Poet is a composite of several poets through which Shakespeare explores his sense of being threatened by competing poets.[53] The speaker sees the Rival Poet as competition for fame and patronage. The sonnets most commonly identified as the Rival Poet group exist within the Fair Youth sequence in sonnets 78–86.[53]
“A Lover’s Complaint” is part two of the quarto. It was a normal feature of the two-part poetic form for the first part to express the male point of view, and the second part to contrast or complement the first part with the female’s point of view. The sonnet sequence considers frustrated male desire, and the second part expresses the misery of a woman victimized by male desire. The earliest Elizabethan example of this two-part structure is Samuel Daniel’s Delia … with the Complaint of Rosamund (1592) — a sonnet sequence that tells the story of a woman being threatened by a man of higher rank, followed by the woman’s complaint. This was imitated by other poets, including Shakespeare with his Rape of Lucrece, the last lines of which contain Lucrece’s complaint. Other examples are found in the works of Michael Drayton, Thomas Lodge, Richard Barnfield, and others.[54]
The young man of the sonnets and the young man of “A Lover’s Complaint” provide a thematic link between the two parts. In each part the young man is handsome, wealthy and promiscuous, unreliable and admired by all.[55]
"A Lover's Complaint", is not written in the sonnet form, but is composed of 47 seven-line stanzas written in rhyme royal. Like the sonnets, it also has a possessive form in its title, which is followed by its own assertion of the author’s name. This time the possessive word, “Lover's”, refers to a woman, who becomes the primary “speaker” of the work.[56]
The story [ edit ]
“A Lover’s Complaint” begins with a young woman weeping at the edge of a river, into which she throws torn-up letters, rings, and other tokens of love. An old man nearby approaches her and asks the reason for her sorrow. She responds by telling him of a former lover who pursued, seduced, and finally abandoned her. She recounts in detail the speech her lover gave to her which seduced her. She concludes her story by conceding that she would fall for the young man's false charms again.
1597 — Shakespeare’s tragedy, Romeo and Juliet is published. The spoken prologue to the play, and the prologue to Act II are both written in sonnet form, and the first meeting of the star-crossed lovers is written as a sonnet woven into the dialogue.[57]
1598 — Love’s Labour’s Lost is published as a quarto; the play's title page suggests it is a revision of an earlier version. The comedy features the King of Navarre and his lords who express their love in sonnet form for the Queen of France and her ladies. This play is believed to have been performed at the Inns of Court for Queen Elizabeth I in the mid-1590s.[58]
1598 — Francis Meres published his quarto Palladis Tamia, which was entered on the Stationers' Register on 7 September that year. In it he mentions that sonnets by Shakespeare were being circulated privately:[59]
As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras: so the sweete wittie soule of Ouid liues in mellifluous & hony-tongued Shakespeare, witnes his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his private friends, &c.[60]
1599 — William Jaggard published an octavo volume called THE PASSIONATE PILGRIME. By W. Shakespeare. It is an anthology of 20 poems. This small publication contained some spurious content falsely ascribed to Shakespeare; it also contained four sonnets that can be said to be by Shakespeare: Two of the four appear to be early versions of sonnets that were later published in the 1609 quarto (numbers 138 and 144); the other two were sonnets lifted from Shakespeare’s play Love’s Labour's Lost. Sonnets 138 and 144 are anything but the sweet sonnets hinted at by Francis Meres’ comment. They are instead harshly frank, ironic and recriminative regarding the relationship of the speaker and the Dark Lady. The two sonnets that were taken from Love’s Labour's Lost, were, in the context of the play, written by comic characters who were intended to be seen as amateur sonneteers. Jaggard’s piracy sold well — a second printing was quickly ordered — but it, including poetry falsely ascribed to Shakespeare, must have been a disappointment to Shakespeare’s readers.[61]
January 1600 — an entry in the Stationers' Register is for a work that will include “certain other sonnets by W.S.” This may suggest that Shakespeare planned to respond right away and correct the impression left by Jaggard’s book with Shakespeare’s own publication, or the entry may have been merely a “staying entry” not regarding an upcoming publication, but intended to prevent Jaggard from publishing any more sonnets by Shakespeare.[62]
14 August 1600 — Shakespeare’s play, The Chronicle History of Henry the fifth, is entered into the Register of the Stationers' Company. The spoken epilogue is written in the form of a sonnet.[63]
20 May 1609 — The entry in the Stationers' Register announces Shakespeare’s Sonnets. The contents include a collection of 154 sonnets followed by the poem “A Lover's Complaint”. This publication was greeted with near silence in the documentary record, especially when compared with the lively reception that followed the publication of Venus and Adonis.
1612 — Jaggard issues an expanded edition of his piratical anthology, The Passionate Pilgrim, which had been published in 1599. Thomas Heywood protests this piracy in his Apology for Actors (1612), writing that Shakespeare was "much offended" with Jaggard for making "so bold with his name." Jaggard withdraws the attribution to Shakespeare from unsold copies of the 1612 edition.
1640 — The publisher John Benson publishes an anthology of poems; some are by Shakespeare, and about 30 are not, but all are ascribed to Shakespeare. It is titled ″Poems: Written by Wil. Shakespeare Gent”. Benson is even more wildly piratical than Jaggard. Benson draws on The Passionate Pilgrim and other sources, including Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1609), which he rewrites and rearranges. Benson imperfectly rewrites the sonnets to make them appear to be addressing a woman — the pronoun "he" is often replaced by "she". This edition is unfortunately influential and resulted in confusing and confounding various critical understanding and response for more than a century.
1780 — Edmond Malone, in his two volume supplement to the 1778 Johnson-Stevens edition of the plays, finally instates the 1609 quarto edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets as the sole authoritative text.[64]
1986 — The New Penguin Shakespeare’s edition of the sonnets restores “A Lover’s Complaint” as an integral part of Shakespeare's Sonnets.[65][66]
Criticism [ edit ]
In his plays, Shakespeare himself seemed to be a satiric critic of sonnets – the allusions to them are often scornful. Then Shakespeare went on to create one of the longest sonnet-sequences of his era, a sequence that took some sharp turns away from the tradition.[67]
He may have been inspired out of literary ambition, and a desire to carve new paths apart from the well-worn tradition. Or he may have been inspired by biographical elements in his life. It is thought that the biographical aspects have been over-explored and over-speculated on, especially in the face of a paucity of evidence.[68] The critical focus has turned instead (through New Criticism and by scholars such as Stephen Booth[69] and Helen Vendler)[70] to the text itself, which is studied and appreciated linguistically as a “highly complex structure of language and ideas”.[71]
Besides the biographic and the linguistic approaches, another way of appreciating Shakespeare’s sonnets is in the context of the culture and literature that surrounds them and precedes them. This is exemplified to an extreme degree by the influential study “Shakespeare’s Sonnet 15 and the Art of Memory” by Raymond B. Waddington.[72]
Gerald Hammond in his book The Reader and the Young Man Sonnets, suggests that the non-expert reader, who is thoughtful and engaged, does not need that much help in understanding the sonnets: though the reader may often feel mystified when trying to decide, for example, if a word or passage has a concrete meaning or an abstract meaning, laying that kind of perplexity in the reader’s path is something that sets Shakespeare apart, and dealing with it is an essential part of reading the sonnets — the reader doesn’t always benefit from having knots untangled and double-meanings simplified by the experts, according to Hammond.[73]
During the eighteenth century, The Sonnets' reputation in England was relatively low; in 1805, The Critical Review credited John Milton with the perfection of the English sonnet. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Shakespeare and Milton seemed to be on an equal footing,[74] but the critics, stymied by an over-emphasis of their biographical explorations, continued to struggle for decades.[75]
Editions [ edit ]
Like all Shakespeare's works, Shakespeare's Sonnets have been reprinted many times. Prominent editions include:
Sonnets that occur in the plays [ edit ]
There are sonnets written by Shakespeare that occur in his plays. They differ from the 154 sonnets published in the 1609, because they may lack the deep introspection, for example, and they are written to serve the needs of a performance, exposition or narrative.[76]
In Shakespeare’s early comedies, the sonnets and sonnet-making of his characters are often objects of satire. In Two Gentlemen of Verona, sonnet-writing is portrayed cynically as a seduction technique.[77] In Love’s Labour's Lost, sonnets are portrayed as evidence that love can render men weak and foolish.[78] In Much Ado About Nothing, Beatrice and Benedick each write a sonnet, which serves as proof that they have fallen in love.[79] In All’s Well that Ends Well, a partial sonnet is read, and Bertram comments, “He shall be whipp’d through the army with this rhyme in’s forehead.”[80] In Henry V, the Dauphin suggests he will compose a sonnet to his horse.[81]
The sonnets that Shakespeare satirizes in his plays are sonnets written in the tradition of Petrarch and Sidney, whereas Shakespeare's sonnets published in the quarto of 1609 take a radical turn away from that older style, and have none of the lovelorn qualities that are mocked in the plays. The sonnets published in 1609 seem to be rebelling against the tradition.[82]
In the play Love’s Labour’s Lost, the King and his three lords have all vowed to live like monks, to study, to give up worldly things, and to see no women. All of them break this last part of the vow by falling in love. The lord Longaville expresses his love in a sonnet (“Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye…”),[83] and the lord Berowne does, too — a hexameter sonnet (“If love make me forsworn, how shall I swear to love?”).[84] These sonnets contain comic imperfections, including awkward phrasing, and problems with the meter. After Berowne is caught breaking his vow, and exposed by the sonnet he composed, he passionately renounces speech that is affected, and vows to prefer plain country speech. Ironically, when proclaiming this he demonstrates that he can’t seem to avoid rich courtly language, and his speech happens to fall into the meter and rhyme of a sonnet. (“O, never will I trust to speeches penned…”)[85][86]
The epilogue at the end of the play Henry V is written in the form of a sonnet (“Thus far with rough, and all-unable pen…”).
Three sonnets are found in Romeo and Juliet: The prologue to the play (“Two households, both alike in dignity…”), the prologue to the second act (“Now old desire doth in his death-bed lie…”), and set in the form of dialogue at the moment when Romeo and Juliet meet:
ROMEO
If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
JULIET
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.
ROMEO
Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
JULIET
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
ROMEO
O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
JULIET
Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.
ROMEO
Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.[87]
Outside the canon [ edit ]
The play Edward III is not generally accepted as having been written by Shakespeare, but it is considered to be perhaps partially written by Shakespeare by a number of scholars, including Edward Capell, Eliot Slater,[88] Eric Sams,[89] Giorgio Melchiori,[90] Brian Vickers, and others. The play, printed in 1596, contains lines that also appear in Shakespeare’s sonnets: "Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds” occurs in sonnet 94 and "scarlet ornaments” occurs in sonnet 142.[91] The same scene of the play that contains those quotations, is a comic scene that features and spoofs a poet attempting to compose a love poem at the behest of his king, Edward III:[92]
The king, Edward III, has fallen in love with the Countess of Salibury, and he tells Lodowick, his confidant and a poet, to fetch ink and paper. Edward wants Lodowick’s help in composing a poem that will sing the praises of the countess. Lodowick has a question:
LODOWICK
Write I to a woman?
KING EDWARD
What beauty else could triumph over me,
Or who but women do our love lays greet?
What, thinkest thou I did bid thee praise a horse?
The king then expresses and dictates his passion in exuberant poetry; he then asks Lodowick to read back to him what he has been able to write down. Lodowick reads:
LODOWICK.
'More fair and chaste’—
KING EDWARD.
I did not bid thee talk of chastity …
When the countess enters, the poetry-writing scene is interrupted without having accomplished much poetry.[93]
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
Full collections
Study resources@TelegraphNews
A new standard in hunting has been set after a small crew in Alabama caught an alligator exceeding 1,000 pounds in weight Sunday.
According to Jeff Dute of AL.com, Mandy Stokes, husband John Stokes and brother-in-law Kevin Jenkins and his two kids caught the gator in the Alabama River. An official weigh-in pegged it at 15 feet long and 1,011.5 pounds, making it the biggest gator ever legally killed in the state of Alabama.
As seen in this photo courtesy of Nerdist.com's Kyle Hill, the crew needed a backhoe for support:
AL.com's Sharon Steinmann snapped a close-up photo that captures the gator's immense size:
The crew was well aware it had a big job on its hands, but the gator's measurables weren't obvious initially, per Dute.
"The whole time we were out there, we thought we were in a 16-foot boat. So doing some comparison to the size of the boat, we figured the gator might be 13 feet," John Stokes said. "Then Kevin found out it was a 17-foot boat, and we started looking at that gator again."
Khon2 News' photo illustrates the gator's size once again:
Telegraph News released a photo of its enormous head:
Mandy Stokes admitted the crew could have easily been in over their heads, according to Dute: "If it wasn't for the grace of God, we never could have done it. At one time during this whole thing, I honestly thought, you know what; we didn't sign up for that."
Mandy said the gator was transported Sunday morning to Ken Owens' Autaugaville taxidermy shop. Once there, it will be skinned out, but after that the Stokes' aren't sure what comes next, per Dute.
Follow @MikeChiari on Twitter.© The Associated Press FILE - In this Oct. 10, 2014 file photo, Jane Fonda arrives at the 2014 Variety Power Of Women event at the Beverly Wilshire Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. Fonda said Wednesday, March 4, 2015, the male power structure that has dominated the world for centuries has been wounded - "but there's nothing more dangerous than a wounded beast." The actress and women's rights activist spoke in a telephone interview ahead of U.N. meetings next week to assess progress toward women's equality. Fonda will be at the U.N. on March 12, 2015, to help launch a campaign by the women's rights group Equality Now urging all governments to repeal or amend all gender discrimination laws. (Photo by John Shearer/Invision/AP, File)
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Jane Fonda said Wednesday the male power structure that has dominated the world for centuries has been wounded — "but there's nothing more dangerous than a wounded beast."
© The Associated Press FILE - In this Oct. 10, 2014 file photo, Jane Fonda arrives at the 2014 Variety Power Of Women event at the Beverly Wilshire Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. Fonda said Wednesday, March 4, 2015, the male power structure that has dominated the world for centuries has been wounded - "but there's nothing more dangerous than a wounded beast." The actress and women's rights activist spoke in a telephone interview ahead of U.N. meetings next week to assess progress toward women's equality. Fonda will be at the U.N. on March 12, 2015, to help launch a campaign by the women's rights group Equality Now urging all governments to repeal or amend all gender discrimination laws. (Photo by John Shearer/Invision/AP, File)
The actress and women's rights activist spoke in a telephone interview ahead of U.N. meetings next week to assess progress toward women's equality. She said "the most intractable problem that humanity faces is the problem of patriarchy," which she partly blames for the rise in terrorism and the destruction of the environment.
She said patriarchy is very entrenched, which has made it difficult for women fighting for real equality to challenge it, though she says women have made inroads.
Male power is "wounded now but there's nothing more dangerous than a wounded beast, thrashing about, flailing its tail with the barbs on it, and a lot of people are really getting hurt badly," she said.
Fonda said this challenge to male power has not only had an impact on terrorism and the environment but has affected women demanding equality because "there's a lot of guys who won't stand for it."
"So we have to be constantly reminded of how far we've come and how far we still have to go," she said, and that's why she will be at the U.N. on March 12 to help launch a campaign by the women's rights group Equality Now urging all governments to repeal or amend all gender discrimination laws.
Fonda, a longtime supporter of the group, said just over half the laws it highlighted in 1999 have been revised, appealed or amended, but there is no excuse for less than 100 percent.
Changing laws "is a huge step forward" and helps empower victims, she said, but to achieve equality many other things are needed as well.
"You need women elected to office, you need movements in the streets, you need social media, you need every single form of social protest and speaking truth to power that's possible," Fonda said.
And a woman leader must lead "as a woman and not as a man in skirts" who thinks she needs to prove she's not weak, she said.
Her value "is to bring her woman-ness to her leadership style" which means empathy, compassion and "someone whose head and heart are not bifurcated," she said.
Fonda said it took her a long time to understand what the women's movement was about and what feminism meant, and she will be fighting for equality for the rest of her life not only with Equality Now but with V-Day, a movement to stop violence against women, and the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Power and Potential which she founded in 2001.
But Fonda hasn't given up on acting: She will be starring in director Paolo Sorrentino's movie "Youth in Venice" with Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel, which will be released this year. And she said she's gearing up for a second season of the Netflix series "Grace and Frankie" with Lily Tomlin.CLEVELAND -- Organizers protesting the Cleveland Indians' use of the Chief Wahoo logo have asked to be involved in talks with Major League Baseball about changes to the contentious symbol.
A group asking the Indians to abolish the red-faced, smiling logo and their nickname gathered outside Progressive Field on Tuesday before the club's home opener against the Chicago White Sox. Carrying signs that read "Racism Honors No One" and "Real People Not Mascots," the protesters peacefully voiced their opinions as police looked on.
The movement to replace the Wahoo logo has gained momentum in recent years. The Indians have reduced its usage, but the logo, which has been part of the team's history for more than 60 years, still appears on some of Cleveland's game caps and jerseys.
The Indians have had talks with MLB about further changes. Commissioner Rob Manfred said during the World Series that he knows "that that particular logo is offensive to some people, and all of us at Major League Baseball understand why."
Philip Yenyo, executive director of the American Indian Movement of Ohio, said he has been encouraged by the Indians' openness to address the issue, but he wants more. Yenyo and his group have opposed the team using the logo for profit.
He said he has reached out to baseball officials about being involved in any future discussions but has not heard back.
"It's time that we as brothers sit down at the table and talk," he said.
Manfred spoke with Indians owner Paul Dolan when he visited Cleveland earlier this year, and there are plans for more talks.
"Major League Baseball is aware of and has spoken to a number of groups with concerns regarding Chief Wahoo," the league said in a statement. "We are currently in the midst of private discussions with the Cleveland Indians regarding the issue."
Pat Courtney, MLB's chief communications officer, said in a statement, "Thus far, there have been productive discussions with the Cleveland Indians regarding the Commissioner's desire to transition away from the Chief Wahoo logo. We have specific steps in an identified process and are making progress. We are confident that a positive resolution will be reached that will be good for the game and the Club."
Yenyo has been encouraged by the Indians' willingness to address the matter.
"There are Little League teams that are changing their names, high school teams that are changing their names," Yenyo said. "A couple colleges have done it. To see that happening is great, but I think the momentum would be a lot better if major league teams would change their names and they can do it. I don't think they see that if they change the name, people will be rushing to get what's in their stores before it's gone. And then you would have a new market with a new logo and that's going to bring in more money, so I don't think they are seeing the bigger picture."
There were a few pro-Wahoo supporters who yelled toward the protesters on their way into the game.
As she stood on the sidewalk, Carla Getz, who made the trip from Benton Harbor, Michigan, to take part in the protest, waved at passing cars who honked in support.
For Getz, a Native American from the Potawatomi Tribe, the removal of Chief Wahoo is long overdue.
"We are people, not mascots, not logos, not imagery," she said. "Chief Wahoo does not represent anybody that I know or anybody in my tribe or in my family. That is someone's interpretation of what we are, and all that does is diminish us in the eyes of the public. Here we are in 2017, we're not logos. And we've got people telling us, `but you are."'“I’m starting to hate that moment when Olympic runners helped each other to the finish line,” declared Slate writer Justin Peters in a headline on Wednesday. The moment in question occurred during a 5,000 meter heat in Rio on Tuesday. Nikki Hamblin of New Zealand fell and took out American Abbey D’Agostino with her. D’Agostino help Hamlin to her feet, while Hamblin cheered on D’Agostino when she showed signs of a knee injury, and both finished roughly two minutes behind first place.
With what was a great example of sportsmanship during a highly completive competition, Peters simply wrote it |
PM5 (Wellcome Department of Cognitive Neurology, London, UK; http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm). Images were realigned, spatially normalized to a standard template and spatially smoothed with a Gaussian kernel (8 mm at full width half maximum). The time series in each session were high-pass filtered (to a maximum of 1/120 Hz) and serial autocorrelations were estimated using an AR(1) model. The average haemodynamic response to each event was designated at the presentation of the outcome. Trials were modeled using a canonical, synthetic haemodynamic response function used as a covariate in a general linear model. A parameter estimate was generated for each voxel for each event. Responses were parametrically modulated by the subjects' confidence in their prediction for that event. Individuals' contrast images, derived from the pair-wise comparisons between key events, were then entered into a second-level group analysis for each of the stages. Given our a priori hypotheses and prior work [3], [38], we used the PickAtlas tool [57] to confine analyses to a single mask comprised of a series of regions of interest (ROI), total volume 1805 voxels: The five ROIs that comprised our mask were: right lateral prefrontal cortex (rPFC, a sphere of radius 10 mm centered on 50, 30, 28, the centroid generated by averaging across our prior studies of causal reasoning [2], [38], [56], [58]), left and right striatum and left and right substantia nigra (defined anatomically using the tool [57]). Hence, responses and relationships in these regions were tested simultaneously by applying the mask. Brain responses to events that violated blocking (i.e. events when the blocked cue was shown causing the allergy, Mushrooms in Figure 1) were compared with unsurprising control cues (Chili in figure 1). Subjects who blocked most should be most surprised by the blocked cue causing the allergy, indexed as more extensive frontostriatal activation in response to such trials. We also identified brain responses to blocking trials (banana and mushrooms, Figure 1) relative to matched control events (avocado and chilies, Figure 1). This comparison revealed the brain regions engaged whilst blocking was taking place. We aimed to determine the relevance of individual PE-responsiveness to the effects of ketamine on subsequent memory expression. Therefore, we computed correlations between phase 3 violation-related activation in the key ROIs (all 5 ROIs were combined into a single mask, volume 1805 voxels) and the effects of ketamine on subjective cognitive task performance applying small volume correction for multiple comparisons [59]. For each correlation we report the z-score in the particular regions implicated. All reported findings were associated with false discovery rate corrected p-values less than 0.05 [60] across the entire mask which comprised all ROIs. For illustrative purposes we plot the relationships between brain responses and behavioral ratings. We are aware of the potential for statistical non-independence or circularity in correlative analysis [61] and hence we do not re-compute Pearson's r-values for the relationship between the parameter estimates from our fMRI models and the cognitive measures of interest. We computed the difference between the magnitude of ratings and Galvanic Skin Responses (GSR) to the cue reactivated under ketamine and its counterpart reactivated under placebo for each subject. Post-reactivation GSR responses were defined as the average response to the first block of 5 trials in extinction on Day 3. Ratings of valence and arousal were taken at the end of the extinction session and corrected by the ratings at the end of Day 1. Study 1b – the effect of ketamine on memory reactivation In the drug study (Study 1b, separated from Study 1a by at least 4 weeks), we employed ketamine as means of engendering psychotogenic aberrant PEs and we assayed the effects of reactivating a memory in the presence of such signals. As well as reporting their psychosis-like experiences (captured using a standard rating scale – see below), subjects completed a reconsolidation task involving initial Pavlovian conditioning of a picture stimulus as a predictor of an aversive auditory stimulus followed by re-presentation of the picture cue 24 hours later during ketamine or placebo infusion. The day after ketamine or placebo infusion, we tracked subjects' responses to the picture cue in extinction (i.e. in the absence of the aversive auditory stimulus). The study was a double-blind, placebo controlled, randomized, within-subjects investigation of the effects of intravenous ketamine (the order of placebo and ketamine infusions was counterbalanced across subjects). An un-blinded clinician administered the infusions, however those administering cognitive tests and acquiring symptoms ratings remained blind. Subjects attended on two main study visits, once for drug, the other for placebo infusion. On the drug day, subjects received a computerized target controlled infusion of ketamine (200 ng/ml plasma) whilst they performed a series of cognitive tasks and a clinical interview exploring the presence, nature and severity of any psychotic symptoms. On the placebo day, a saline infusion was administered whilst subjects performed parallel versions of the cognitive tests and clinical interviews. There was a one-month washout period between drug and placebo visits to avoid effects related to activity of ketamine's metabolites. Infusion protocol. Intra-venous catheters were inserted into the forearms, bilaterally, for ketamine infusion and serial blood sampling. Racemic ketamine (2 mg/ml) was administered by target-controlled infusion system using of a Graseby 3500 syringe driver pump (Graseby Medical Ltd, UK) under the control of Stanpump software (Freely available courtesy of Shafer S. http://opentci.org/doku.php?id=code:code). Steady state concentrations were implemented by administering a bolus, followed by an infusion whose rate was recalculated every 10 seconds; designed to replace drug removed by redistribution and metabolism. The infusion rates required for the bolus and maintenance infusion rates were determined by an algorithm in Stanpump, using a pharmacokinetic model for ketamine. Fear conditioning, Reactivation and Extinction. This aspect of the procedure required six visits (three for placebo, three for ketamine). The day before the ketamine or placebo session (Figure 1, Day 1), subjects underwent aversive conditioning; learning about two visual conditioned stimuli (CS 1 and CS 2, each presented on 30 occasions). These were pictures of spiders, to which fear conditioning accrues readily [41], [62], [63]. On each trial, a cue appeared on screen for 4000 msec. CS 1 predicted the delivery of a 750 msec 90dB noise unconditioned stimulus (US) through noise canceling headphones on 70% of trials. CS 2 never predicted the US. We measured skin conductance responses from the non-dominant left hand. There was a mean inter-trial interval of 10 seconds. At the end of conditioning on experimental Day 1, subjects rated the two cues for valence and arousal. On the drug or placebo infusion day (Figure 1, Day 2), subjects were fitted with the electrodes for recording skin conductance responses and the headphones for delivery of aversive USs. They were shown one single instance of CS 1. The aversive noise was not presented. Their skin conductance was not recorded during this single trial. The day after the ketamine or placebo session (Figure 1, Day 3), CS 1 and CS 2 were presented a further 20 times, and neither cue predicted the US. Subsequently five un-cued USs were played and the cues were each presented again five times to quantify reinstatement of responding [41]. Since memory reconsolidation and extinction appear to be competing processes [14], [21] and differentially sensitive to reminders of the unconditioned stimulus [41], [42], we re-presented the aversive auditory stimulus followed by further extinction training through which we quantified the degree to which responding to the predictive cue could be re-evoked and re-extinguished, reasoning that reminders of the unconditioned stimulus should re-evoke responding to the conditioned stimulus [41]. If a memory cannot be reinstated, then we can be more confident that its reconsolidation has been blocked [41]. On the other hand, if responding is reinstated more strongly for the ketamine-reactivated cue than the placebo-reactivated cue, we can be more confident that we enhanced memory strength via reconsolidation [64]. At the end of the procedure, subjects rated the cues for valence and arousal. Subjects' GSR responses were recorded using 9 mm Ag/AgCl electrodes filled with electrolyte paste and placed on the hypothenar surface and a BIOPAC MP150 system acquiring at a frequency of 50 Hz in concert with a PC running Acknowledge software (version 3.7). We designated the 2 seconds prior to the onset of an event as a baseline and recorded the mean galvanic skin conductance response in microsiemen (µS). For each event, we identified an 8 second period following its onset and recorded the maximum skin conductance in µS [65]. We subtracted the baseline from the maximum response for each event thus identifying the skin conductance response to each event. To confirm acquisition of differential conditioning, we computed the mean GSR response to the final 5 CS 1 trials and the final 5 CS 2 trials on Day 1. For analysis of the 20-trial extinction session, we calculated a mean skin conductance score for 4 blocks of 5 trials comprising the 20 extinction trials. To examine reinstatement, we computed GSR responses to each of the final 5 non-reinforced CS 1 and CS 2 trials. Clinical Interview. Subjects' symptoms were rated using the clinician administered dissociative states scale (CADSS) [66]. Planned analyses: Linking study 1a with study 1b We sought to examine the relationship between the neural, behavioral and clinical datasets to test our hypothesis – that variation in prediction error signal would correlate with the effects of ketamine on memory reconsolidation and that subjects' behavioral responses following the reconsolidation manipulation would relate to the severity of their psychosis-like symptoms. Given that multiple experiments were conducted to examine this hypothesis, the potential for type-I error is high. We avoided this potential by focusing our correlational analyses on our a-priori predictions. First, our prior work related PE signal with the perceptual aberration sub-scale of the CADSS [38], hence, when relating imaging or behavioral findings to clinical data, we only examined this subscale. Next, our primary dependent variables coding the impact of ketamine during reactivation on reconsolidation were three-fold – subjects' GSR responses during initial extinction and their ratings of valence and arousal post-extinction. In order to limit our exposure to type-I error, we planned only to bring through the variables (of those 3) that were significantly impacted by ketamine to the regression analysis. We did not relate the reinstatement data to the neural or clinical data as they were gathered in order to confirm and inform upon any behavioral effects that we observed during extinction (i.e. whether or not we had modulated reconsolidation or blocked extinction). Finally, our plan was hierarchical; we related the neural and behavioral data (again, only those variables that were significantly impacted by ketamine), given any significant associations, we then explored the link between those behavioral variables and the clinical data (summarized by the perceptual subscale). Therefore, the maximum number of potential regression analyses we could have computed was 6: three separate regressions of neural data on GSR, Valence and Arousal and three regressions of CADSS perceptual subscale on GSR, Valence and Arousal. In practice, given the results we obtained (see below), we computed four correlations: 2 between brain and behavioral data, and 2 between behavioral and clinical scales. These analyses harnessed the power of individual differences across subjects, constrained however, by our prior work [3], [38] and hypotheses [14]. Study 2 – Ketamine's effects on reconsolidation of appetitive memory As in Study 1b, this study employed a double-blind, placebo controlled, randomized, within-subjects design to assess the effects of intravenous ketamine on memory reactivation and subsequent reconsolidation, appetitive memory for juice rewards in this case. Subjects were 8 healthy volunteers who met the inclusion exclusion criteria for experiment 1 (4 female, aged 19–33). As before, subjects attended on two main study sessions, once for ketamine, the other for placebo infusion. On the drug day, subjects received an infusion of ketamine (200 ng/ml plasma, administered by an un-blinded clinician exactly as in experiment 1) whilst they performed a series of cognitive tasks (to be reported elsewhere) and a clinical interview exploring the presence, nature and severity of any psychotic symptoms. On the placebo day, a saline infusion was administered whilst subjects performed parallel versions of the cognitive tests and clinical interviews. There was a one-month washout period between drug and placebo visits to avoid effects related to activity of ketamine's metabolites. Reconsolidation of appetitive memories. The reconsolidation memory design followed the structure of experiment 1 closely. Subjects attended the laboratory on 6 occasions, 3 for the drug arm of the study and 3 for the placebo arm. Drug and placebo were administered in a randomized counterbalanced order. On Day 1 the participant sat in front of a computer screen, holding four reward delivery tubes in their mouth. Three of these tubes, before reaching the mouth, converged on a 3 to 1 valve, allowing three different rewarding liquids to be received through one emerging tube that formed a mouthpiece and ensured the participant was comfortable during the task. One of three visual stimuli (conditioned stimulus – CS) was presented on a computer screen, followed by the delivery of a liquid reward (unconditioned stimulus – US) corresponding to that CS. One of three NE-510 OEM High Pressure Syringe Pumps delivered 0.9 ml of liquid reward per infusion, through each delivery tube. Visual CS presentation and liquid US delivery were controlled using in-house computer software. One cue predicted the delivery of blackcurrant juice drink, another the delivery of orange juice drink, and the third predicted water delivery. The first two cue-outcome pairings engendered positive associations between the previously neutral cues. The water US served as a neutral outcome. Each cue-outcome pairing was presented 25 times. The final tube attached to the mouthpiece allowed monitoring of the pressure changes that occurred throughout the trial (to this end, participants are instructed to use their lips to form a tight seal round both tubes throughout the task). Pressure measurements were made with a Biopac™ data acquisition system, which amplified and digitized the pressure signal that was then recorded using the ‘Acknowledge™ 3.9.0’ software package. During CS presentation, subjects anticipated how much they would like liquid they were about to receive by selecting a number between 1 and 9 on a computer keyboard, during presentation of the CS (1 = dislike, 9 = like very much). On Day 2, whilst looking at the computer screen, the participant held the tubes in their mouth as per Day 1. However, just one trial occurs. The CS that predicted juice reward (either blackcurrant or orange randomized and counterbalanced across subjects) was presented and subjects made their anticipatory liking rating. Pressure changes were not measured. On Day 3, participants held the tubes in their mouths and were presented with the CSs as per the learning phase. They were instructed to rate their anticipated liking of the liquid rewards, from 1 – 9, as they had in the learning phase. However, no liquids are delivered. Each CS was presented 15 times. Their anticipatory sucking during the CSs was also recorded.
Discussion We observed that individual variability in the PE signal correlated with the strengthening of memories reactivated under ketamine and that this strengthening effect was correlated with the profundity of ketamine-induced perceptual disruptions. Furthermore, we partially replicated the strengthening effect in a new cohort of volunteers in whom appetitive memories were reactivated (there was only a trend towards drug by task interaction in the pleasantness ratings. The interaction was significant for the anticipatory sucking measures). Taken together, these findings support the hypothesized link between PE, retrieval-based memory modulation and psychopathology. Our study demonstrated a clear blocking effect in human causal learning. During blocking trials, there was the expected [50] overall suppression of BOLD response in regions previously shown to be sensitive to PE [2], [3], [38], [56], [72]. When blocked cues were subsequently presented, group average predictive responses indicated that subjects had not learned to associate these cues with an outcome. Violation of that attenuated expectation was expressed neurally as a PE response in key frontostriatal regions [2]. Participants showing the lowest rPFC response during blocking trials showed the greatest subsequent behavioral evidence of blocking and the greatest subsequent neural “surprise” response when particular blocked cues proved unexpectedly to be predictors of an outcome (see Figure 2). More importantly, as we discuss below, variations in PE responding predicted individual vulnerability to the subsequent experiential and mnemonic impact of ketamine. We determined the influence of ketamine on reactivated memories. Re-presentation of a pre-trained aversive cue under ketamine compared to placebo was associated with elevated ratings of unpleasantness and GSR when these were tested the following day. Crucially, individuals showing aberrant PE in the fMRI study were more susceptible to these enhanced effects. We argue that this underlines the importance of aberrant PE and subsequent memory processing in the pathophysiology of psychotic symptoms. Put simply, the failure of PFC to show an appropriate response to blocking (study 1a stage 2) and its ensuing violation (stage 3) are predictive of an enhanced vulnerability to the memory-altering effects of ketamine. We considered the possibility that the strengthening of the reactivated cue occurred because the cue was associated with an aversive ketamine experience. However a similar (albeit weaker) effect in an appetitive conditioning in study 2 militates against this argument. For both aversive and appetitive reactivated cues, strength of responding (GSR and anticipatory sucking respectively) increased following ketamine. It is difficult to explain this observation in terms of attenuated extinction, since one would expect consistent responding from Day 1 to Day 3 for the ketamine reactivated cues and perhaps a decrease in responding for the placebo reactivated cue, which we did not observe. It is perhaps surprising that ketamine (a non-competitive NMDA receptor antagonist with known amnestic effects [73]) appears to enhance reactivated memories. Initial pre-clinical studies of pharmacological effects on reconsolidation have demonstrated that NMDA receptor antagonism impairs or prevents memory reconsolidation. Importantly, however, only one rodent study employed ketamine as the NMDA blocking agent that perturbed drug-memory reconsolidation [74], others employ more potent NMDA receptor antagonists like MK-801 or PCP. The difference between our work and the rodent work may also have arisen because we are dealing with different response systems in human and rodent subjects [75], [76]. Behavioral studies capture numerous measures of conditioning, ranging from subjective ratings, skin conductance measures and startle responses to conscious expectancies of subsequent outcomes. In the intact organism, these measures often cross-validate. However, in a reactivation-degradation procedure in human subjects, only some of these measures are disrupted whilst other remain intact [42]: startle responses are degraded whereas measures related to conscious awareness are not. Electrodermal conditioning reflects anticipatory arousal [77]–[79] and conscious awareness of contingent relationships seems critical for the expression of skin conductance responses [77]–[79]. These measures were the focus of our present research and we did not record startle responses (perhaps more akin to freezing in pre-clinical models). Furthermore, in considering the fact that a ketamine-induced memory strengthening is counter-intuitive, it is notable that, ketamine, when used as an anesthetic in accident victims, may enhance PTSD symptoms [80], perhaps suggesting that aversive memories are enhanced, although this claim is controversial [81]. Our data suggest that both appetitive and aversive memories may be enhanced, depending on what is brought to mind during the ketamine experience. This must give us pause for thought when we consider the increasing interest in using repeated ketamine as an anti-depressant. Intriguingly, in Study 1b, subjective and objective measures of the strength of fear conditioning correlated with variability in different components of the PE circuit: variation in electrodermal response to a fear-cue reactivated under ketamine was correlated with aberrant prefrontal PE responding whereas variation in the lingering subjective arousal ratings of the fear-cue reactivated under ketamine correlated with aberrant striatal responding. These results are perhaps indicative of different roles for PE across different regions: striatal signals may compute predictive value or salience, whereas PFC PE may sculpt more complex global expectations [82]. This distinction echoes that between model-free and model-based reinforcement learning [83], [84]. Both of these processes are driven by PE [82] and may be important for symptom generation and maintenance [3], [12]–[15]. These data provide preliminary support for our model; aberrant PE drives delusion formation by imbuing stimuli, thoughts and percepts with a salience that demands explanation. Such an explanation requires rumination and memory reconsolidation, strengthening it inappropriately such that it eventually becomes impervious to contradictory evidence [14]. Another important point to take into account is that, as well as blocking NMDA receptors, ketamine engenders glutamate release [85], which may stimulate AMPA receptors [85] and engage intracellular signaling cascades that engender synaptogenesis [86]. For example, ketamine increases prefrontal extracellular signal regulated kinase (ERK) [87], a key regulator of the fate of reactivated memories [88]. Furthermore, memantine, an NMDA antagonist like ketamine, has been shown to facilitate aversive memory reconsolidation even when given two hours prior to memory reactivation in day-old chicks [89]. Prior work has shown that ketamine increases cortical excitability [90], increasing AMPA receptor stimulation [91]. Recently, transcranial direct current stimulation, which also increases cortical excitability, has been shown to enhance the strength of reactivated memories [92]. Rodent work has confirmed the crucial role of AMPA receptor mobilization in this post-reactivation strengthening effect [93]. Our own computational modeling work suggests that ketamine induces dis-inhibition of cortical microcircuits resulting in synaptic glutamate spillover [94], [95]. In brain slices, this ketamine induced increase in glutamate release and EPSCs can be curtailed by propranolol [96], the beta-adrenergic receptor antagonist that has been shown to degrade reactivated memories across species [41]. Furthermore, the aberrant salience experiences and delusion-like ideas (that we presently relate to excessive PE driven memory reconsolidation) are ameliorated by lamotrigine, a drug that blocks presynaptic glutamate release and cortical excitability [97], [98]. Taken together, these data suggest that ketamine-induced psychosis results from excessive glutamate release which engages aberrant prediction errors and hence excessive memory strengthening (even if those memories are false). We should consider the possibility that ketamine is having a primary and deleterious effect on extinction, a pathophysiological process implicated in spontaneous confabulation, another delusion-like phenomenon [99], [100], akin to the phenomenology of some ketamine experiences [12]. Indeed, extinction learning fails to consolidate in patients with schizophrenia [101]. While this is a reasonable consideration, a number of aspects of the experimental design and findings do not support this explanation (see Figure 9). First, day 1 entailed partial reinforcement and reactivation involved a brief single presentation of the conditioned stimulus. Both would shift the balance towards reconsolidation rather than extinction [19], [21]. Second, there was no sign of an extinction effect for the placebo reactivation condition and, if anything, the cue appeared to exert a stronger effect at the beginning of the post-reactivation session (day 3) than it did at the end of learning on the pre-reactivation session (day 1), see Figure 9. In short, a simple explanation of these findings in terms of an attenuation of extinction is unlikely. PPT PowerPoint slide
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Figure 9. Memory Strengthening or Extinction Failure? A. Skin Conductance Responses. Skin conductance responses to the CS+ at the end of Day 1 (pre-reactivation, mean of final three trials) and the beginning of Day 3 (post reactivation, trial 1) for both the ketamine and placebo visits. Error bars represent SEM. B. Sucking Pressure. Anticipatory sucking to the cue predicting pleasant juice at the end of Day 1 (pre-reactivation) and the beginning of Day 3 (post-reactivation). Error bars represent SEM. C. Expectancy Ratings. Anticipatory liking ratings in response to the cue predicting pleasant juice at the end of Day 1 (pre-reactivation) and the beginning of Day 3 (post-reactivation). Error bars represent SEM. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0065088.g009 Although schizophrenia is associated with amnesia [102], patients do report hypermnesia for their symptom contents [103], [104], and while these may be false memories [15], [105], they may be vivid enough to engender post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms [106]. It is notable that such delusional false memories can occur following long-term anesthesia that blocks NMDA receptors [106]. The present data raise the intriguing possibility that patients with schizophrenia rely on non-NMDA mediated forms of synaptic plasticity to represent their world. These learning mechanisms may produce less veridical but more robust representations hence the bizarreness and persistence of psychosis. There are important caveats to the inferences we draw from these data and clearly, they warrant various follow-up studies. To begin with, the imaging effects we report are of small magnitude and the sample sizes, particularly in study 2, are small. Furthermore, future studies should include a non-reactivated control condition, which we included in study 2 but not study 1. It will be important to characterize PE and reconsolidation in patients with fixed delusions since an important difference from ketamine is that, though the latter induces psychotic percepts and delusion-like ideas, most subjects retain insight (although not always [67]). It would also be useful in future studies to examine the relationship between appetitive conditioning to primary reward and our causal learning PE signal and important, too, to assay the degree of arousal subjects report in future appetitive studies, since this was the dimension modulated by ketamine and related to striatal PE signal. Preclinical studies are underway in order to replicate and interrogate this strengthening effect of ketamine and its possible synaptic mechanisms. A more invasive approach will permit investigation at the synaptic level and circumvent the necessarily correlational approach adopted presently. Of course, correlation is not causation but it is a crucial first step in demonstrating that processes (in this case, PE, memory reconsolidation and delusions) are related [107] through shared variation with individual differences in neural PE signal [108]. Overall, while we can only speculate on the precise underlying mechanisms, the key observation here is that the same manipulation that can render an individual vulnerable to delusion-like ideas may also lead to memory persistence. These data are consistent with a theoretical model of delusions in which aberrations of a fundamental learning process, PE, can profoundly and persistently affect an individual's world view. Thus data thus provide an empirical basis for a mechanistic understanding of what has for a long time been considered ‘ununderstandable’ [34]: the delusions that attend serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia. They demonstrate, moreover, the potential insights that clinical psychiatry may gain from developments in neuroscience.
Author Contributions Conceived and designed the experiments: PRC VC PCF JRT JHK BJE AD MRFA JLL ALM. Performed the experiments: PRC VC JMG JSP DCT JCE FSA HLM ARA RA. Analyzed the data: PRC MRFA PCF NS ARA RA. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: NS. Wrote the paper: PRC PCF JRT JHK JLL BJE ALM.Rout, Ettie Annie Journalist, businesswoman, sex hygiene campaigner, writer This biography, written by Jane Tolerton, was first published in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography in 1996.
Ettie Annie Rout was born in Launceston, Tasmania, on 24 February 1877, the daughter of Catherine Frances McKay and her husband, William John Rout, an ironmonger. She had a twin sister and a sister two years younger. The Routs sailed for New Zealand at the end of 1884, and settled in Wellington where William opened a plumber's business in Manners Street.
A pupil at the Terrace School, Ettie topped the Wellington Education Board's examination for Wellington and the Wairarapa in 1891 and gained a scholarship to high school. However, financial hardship in the wake of her father's business failure forced the family to leave Wellington for Woodville, probably to live with a relation.
After the family moved to Christchurch around 1896, Ettie attended Charles Gilby's shorthand and typing classes, where she excelled. In 1902 she became one of the first government-appointed shorthand writers working in the Supreme Court and on commissions of inquiry, work which gave her a rare insight – particularly for a woman – into a wide range of social issues. In 1904 she set up her own public typing business, initially with Horace Gilby, in Chancery Lane and also took on reporting work for the Lyttelton Times.
Ettie Rout gained a public profile as a cyclist, vegetarian, freethinker and physical culturist. Tall, fit, and endowed with a superabundance of energy, she was one of those women who were 'peculiar enough to be as God Almighty intended them to be – the equals of men, physically and mentally'. She did seem peculiar. When Frederick Hornibrook, whose physical culture school she attended, said she had a figure to rival the Venus de Milo, his point was that her figure was natural and healthy, and unfashionably uncorseted. She also wore unorthodox dress: short skirts, men's boots, and sometimes trousers. Her ideas on sexuality followed those of the social reformer Edward Carpenter, the Swedish feminist Ellen Key and the writer on sexual psychology Havelock Ellis. She was a close friend of the radical thinker Professor A. W. Bickerton.
A committed socialist, she became involved in the labour movement in 1907 when she made a verbatim record of the proceedings of an inquiry into Canterbury farm labourers' working conditions; she also acted as adviser to the union secretary. In 1910 she set up the Maoriland Worker with the New Zealand Shearers' Union, of which she was an honorary member, and edited it free of charge. But when the shearers joined the New Zealand Federation of Labour in early 1911, the newspaper was taken over by the federation and she was replaced, having produced six issues.
In July 1915, during the Gallipoli campaign of the First World War, she set up the New Zealand Volunteer Sisterhood and invited women between the ages of 30 and 50 to go to Egypt to care for New Zealand soldiers. In spite of government opposition, she sent the first batch of 12 volunteers to Cairo that October. The women worked in the New Zealand YMCA canteen in the Esbekia (Azbakiya) gardens and in hospitals; one ran a cookery school.
Ettie Rout arrived in Egypt in February 1916, and immediately became aware of the soldiers' high venereal disease rate. She saw this as a medical not a moral problem; one which should be approached like any other disease – with all available preventive measures. She recommended the issue of prophylactic kits and the establishment of inspected brothels, and tried to persuade the New Zealand Medical Corps officers to this view, with no success.
When the bulk of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force left for France that April, Ettie remained in Egypt to care for the men fighting the desert campaign in Sinai and Palestine. Believing that the army was not looking after them well enough, she opened the Tel El Kebir Soldiers' Club and later a canteen at El Qantara, to provide better rest and recreation facilities and better food. For this work she was mentioned in dispatches and in the Australian official war history.
By June 1917, having realised the venereal disease problem was still very bad and that the New Zealand Medical Corps had not adopted prophylactic measures, she went to London to push it into doing so. Researching among the foremost doctors in this new field, she combined the work of several to produce her own prophylactic kit, containing calomel ointment, condoms and Condy's crystals (potassium permanganate). She sold these at the New Zealand Medical Soldiers Club, which she set up at Hornchurch near the New Zealand Convalescent Hospital.
At the end of 1917 the NZEF adopted her kit for free and compulsory distribution to soldiers going on leave. Ettie Rout received no credit for her role in the kit's development and adoption, and for the duration of the war the cabinet banned her from New Zealand newspapers under the War Regulations. Mention of her brought a possible £100 fine after one of her letters, suggesting kits and hygienic brothels, had been published in the New Zealand Times. Ironically, this letter had been instrumental in the decision of the defence minister, James Allen, to approve kit issue. Others, particularly women's groups, accused her of trying to make 'vice' safe. Lady Stout led a deputation of women to ask the prime minister, William Massey, to put an end to Rout's Hornchurch club.
In April 1918 Ettie Rout went to Paris where she set up a one-woman social and sexual welfare service for soldiers. As troop trains arrived from the front, she stood on the platform of the Gare du Nord, greeted the New Zealanders – with her trademark kiss on the cheek – and handed out cards recommending the brothel of Madame Yvonne, who had agreed to run her establishment on hygienic lines. Rout regularly inspected it. For her work in Paris and in Villers Brettoneux, the ruined Somme town where she ran a Red Cross depot from 1919 to 1920, the French decorated her with the Reconnaissance française medal.
In 1920 she moved to London and on 3 May married Fred Hornibrook, who became a well-known physiotherapist. There were no children of the marriage. Always primarily a campaigner, she wrote a number of books, among them Sex and exercise, Safe marriage (a contraceptive and prophylactic manual for women which was banned in New Zealand in 1923, but was published in Britain and Australia), a vegetarian cookbook, and a largely inaccurate book on Maori culture entitled Maori symbolism (which extolled the Maori as eugenicists).
After her only return visit to New Zealand, Ettie Hornibrook died of a self-administered overdose of quinine in Rarotonga on 17 September 1936. She was survived by her husband, Fred, from whom she had become estranged, and was buried in the graveyard of the London Missionary Society church (now the Cook Islands Christian Church) at Avarua.
The story of Ettie Rout shows up much about the hypocritical attitudes of her day. Although her work was of great benefit to New Zealand, and part of it officially adopted, she was ignored and news of her was suppressed in her own country. The New Zealand Returned Soldiers' Association sent a post-war tribute of £100, but this was not publicly known. In her obituary the press association called Ettie Rout 'one of the best known of New Zealand women' but did not say what she was best known for, implying that it was her typing speed.
Her work polarised opinion. While a French doctor regarded her as the 'guardian angel of the ANZACs', a bishop, speaking in the House of Lords, called her 'the most wicked woman in Britain'. Her friend H. G. Wells regarded her as an 'unforgettable heroine' and mentioned her in one of his novels. In 1922 she wrote to him, 'It's a mixed blessing to be born too soon'. Although New Zealand did not catch up during her lifetime, many of her ideas and methods have been accepted since. This is particularly evident in the naming of the Christchurch Aids clinic after Ettie Rout.is the JavaScript Robotics & IoT Platform. Released by Bocoup in 2012, Johnny-Five is maintained by a community of passionate software developers and hardware engineers. Over 75 developers have made contributions towards building a robust, extensible and composable ecosystem.
The Johnny-Five Inventor's Kit, from Bocoup and SparkFun, is now available! It's designed for anyone who wants to get started with JavaScript-powered robotics. The J5IK includes a Tessel 2, and everything else you need to do 14 experiments! No programming or soldering experience is required.
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team and 200 on that surface was a very big total," he conceded.
When New Zealand came out to bat, Ashish Nehra was given to bowl the opening over. In a similar move to what New Zealand had adopted, Yuzvendra Chahal was brought in from the other end. The difference between the sides on the night lay right there. Off the third ball of Chahal's over, Martin Guptill went after a lofted delivery which soared up. But Hardik Pandya, running across from long off, made good ground and plucked out a stunner full stretch. Fellow opener Colin Munro fell two overs later and from there on, New Zealand were already playing catch-up.
"We were under pressure pretty much from the word go. Losing early wickets puts you on the backfoot and on the surface, there it was stopping and turning. Trying to accelerate the run rate when you are under pressure is not an easy task. That was the nature of the batting innings. We were never able to get momentum in our batting against them to try and get close to the total. Every time we attempted to increase the run rate, we lost wickets. A lot of it is our fault and then India bowled very well as well so the combination of that certainly didn't allow us to get close to the total."
While the Indian spinners applied the brakes on New Zealand's scoring with four wickets and not many runs conceded, the pacers were a tad expensive in comparison with Jasprit Bumrah going for 9.25 an over, Bhuvneshwar Kumar conceded 7.67 in his three and Nehra 7.25. New Zealand's pacers, meanwhile, had a forgettable day in the office with Trent Boult being taken for 12.25, Tim Southee for 11 and Colin de Grandhomme for 11.33. Their spinners were economical but being contained for eight overs in twenty wasn't enough as India zoomed through to 202 - their highest against New Zealand in T20Is.
"They're both very good bowlers (Bumrah, Bhuvneshwar). Because they got off to a good start, we were on the backfoot. The surface was seaming around, offering a bit to the seamers, but we had to have a defensive approach to try and combat their aggression because they were putting us under pressure. I guess the other side of that coin is when the bowling side is on top and they're able to hit the wicket and use the surface like we saw Bumrah and the others in their bowling attack, which was very difficult. That's Twenty20 cricket. You do need to be aggressive to try and take on bowlers and we've seen Bhuvi and Bumrah throughout not just the one-dayers, but for a long time in the IPL. I've been fortunate to play with Bhuvi and against Bumrah and they're the most consistent bowlers in world cricket.
"It's also sort of the nature of T20 cricket. It's such an aggressive format that no matter who you are, you can go for a few runs. It is fickle in terms of the results and how guys approach it. Batters need to be aggressive. If they come off, then the bowler sort of loses it like we saw tonight. India batted very, very well and put our bowlers under pressure. But both of those bowlers (Boult and Southee), as we know, are very good operators and will look to make amends going into the next game. Not just them, all of us want to be better in all three areas of the game," Williamson concluded.
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RELATED STORIESAt a recent performance of “Tristan und Isolde” in Dallas, legendary tenor Jon Vickers stopped singing to yell at a coughing member of the audience, “Shut up with your damned coughing!” — and, amazingly, the incident is captured for posterity on audio.
The incidence of audience members making like Violetta in “La Traviata” (she dies noisily of consumption, as if you didn’t know) is not, of course, restricted to Texas. Coughing can be such an irritant at Washington National Opera performances that Michael Solomon, the opera’s public relations director, joked recently that the Kennedy Center should start offering free flu shots to members of the audience.
It’s not just that the coughing distracts both audience and artist: Singers consider it a potential health hazard that could impair, if not that performance, the next one. “Nothing scares a singer more than someone with a cold, cough or flu,” said Michelle Krisel, general director of the Ash Lawn Opera in Charlottesville, Va., and longtime assistant to Placido Domingo during the years when the legendary tenor guided the WNO.
English actor Sir Ralph Richardson once remarked disparagingly of his profession, “Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing.”
A lot has been written and said about the phenomenon of people with otherwise clear larynxes who feel the urge to cough once seated in a theater, opera house or concert hall.
There clearly has been a downward shift in audience etiquette. One theory is that television watching in the home has undermined the habit of silence during a performance. Further damage has been done by the spread of cellphones and the resulting demise of the concept of being out of contact.
The idea of flu shots may be whimsical, but people like Mr. Solomon and Ms. Krisel connected with the performing arts say that it’s good manners and good sense for anyone nursing a cold to stay away from an opera, concert or theater performance. That can be a hard decision, but the ticket often can be changed.
As for people who cough without the flu — a good supply of throat lozenges would go a long way toward reducing the urge to cough during a performance.
For mezzo-soprano Julia Mintzer, who is scheduled to sing the role of Clotilde in the WNO’s production of Vincenzo Bellini’s “Norma” in March, the worst distraction is not coughing but the sudden noise of a ringing cellphone. At the Kennedy Center, the WNO is the only company that reminds the audience before every performance that cellphones and pagers should be switched off, and cameras and recording devices should not be used.
“People may not be able to control the coughing, but they can turn off their cellphones,” says Miss Mintzer. “After all, you paid to hear the opera. Why ruin it with a cellphone?”
The newer menace is Twitter, which makes no noise, but the glow from the device can be distracting to members of the audience. Mr. Solomon says WNO ushers have instructions, using their discretion about the disturbance that it would cause, to ask anyone found tweeting to save messaging for the intermission.
At least tweeting is unlikely to catch the eye of artists on the stage. Bright spotlights on the actors make the audience invisible — except for people coming in late to sit in the front rows. Hence the WNO does not allow late seating anywhere: Anyone arriving after the curtain has gone up waits in the lobby and watches on monitors until the end of the act.
The conductor, however, can see the front-row seats by turning to the side. A year ago, New York Philharmonic maestro Alan Gilbert halted a performance when a cellphone in the front row broke into an unwanted accompaniment of Mahler’s Symphony No 9. Mr. Gilbert turned around and gave the owner a piece of his mind. It was the phone that rang around the world, as the media picked up the incident.
Mr. Solomon says cellphones have sounded during opera performances in the District but have not resulted in offstage dramas.
In other respects, he says, Washington audiences are generally generous toward artists. “Singers are very much into the Washington Opera,” he says. “They feel Washington is a very safe place to come and sing.”
Washington audiences are generous with their applause between arias — and artists appreciate that, except if it disrupts the mood. “If what follows is very quiet, it can undermine the atmosphere,” says Miss Mintzer. “Like in ‘Carmen’ when Don Jose ends the flower aria with that high B flat, there’s always applause and nobody ever hears Carmen’s quiet response.”
Ms. Krisel says, “Artists do like applause after their arias — even if it makes it harder for the conductor to pick up where he left off.” What can ruin the mood is “when the final note is very soft, and, say, the character has just died, and the applause starts too quickly to savor the tragedy of what has just happened.”
When it comes to disapproval, American audiences are too polite to resort to boos and catcalls to express dissatisfaction with a performance. In Europe, the old tradition of booing goes on, especially in Italy, where they take opera seriously. The most recent reported incident was in Paris, where the audience loudly hissed and booed a modern-dress performance of Luigi Cherubini’s “Medea,” more for the decor and costumes than for the singing. Reports said Medea was made to look like Amy Winehouse.
But the bass Vincent le Texier could take it no longer. He turned to the audience and said, “If you don’t like it, you can always leave.”
About half the audience did just that.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Share. Disney scrapped the planned teenage protagonists fearing a replay of the prequels. Disney scrapped the planned teenage protagonists fearing a replay of the prequels.
George Lucas might not be involved with Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but that doesn't mean the original Star Wars creator hadn't previously sketched out some ideas for the sequels.
According to Vanity Fair (via The Atlantic), Lucas already had a vision for episode VII, VIII, IX by the time he sold Lucasfilm to Disney. The plans had even gone far enough that the director approached Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamill about being involved in the project. But Disney and executive producer Kathleen Kennedy scrapped most of Lucas's ideas once they acquired the franchise.
Exit Theatre Mode
Apparently, Lucas's original plans centered on very young characters, which might have resulted in a replay of the prequels. "[Abrams] said Lucas’s treatment had centered on very young characters—teenagers, Lucasfilm told me—which might have struck Disney executives as veering too close for comfort to The Phantom Menace and its 9-year-old Anakin Skywalker and 13-year-old Queen Amidala," explains the Vanity Fair cover story.
The Vanity Fair story also claims that original screenwriter Michael Arndt failed to actually turn in a completed draft of the script. Abrams, working with Empire Strikes Back co-writer Lawrence Kasdan, had to pretty much start from scratch and scramble to come up with a new movie, which was still being refined even as production began.
The Vanity Fair's Force Awakens cover story is on sale now. However, you'll have to wait until December 18 for The Force Awakens to hit theaters.
Rachel Paxton-Gillilan is a freelance writer. You can find her on Twitter @rachpax.Story highlights Bales hopes plea will bring peace to victims, comrades, lawyer says
Bales now faces life in prison; a decision on parole will come in August
He admitted to 16 Afghans and wounding several more in a house-to-house rampage
The March 2012 killings further strained ties between the United States and Afghanistan
Count by count, Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales on Wednesday admitted to gunning down 16 civilians in a 2012 rampage through two villages near his outpost in southern Afghanistan.
Bales pleaded guilty to more than 30 criminal charges, including 16 premeditated murder counts, in a hearing before a military judge. He admitted to slipping away from his outpost in southern Afghanistan and going on a house-to-house killing spree in two nearby villages in March 2012, a massacre that further strained ties between American troops and their Afghan allies.
The move spares the 39-year-old Bales the prospect of a death sentence in the killings. But he was unable to offer the judge, Col. Jeffery Nance, an explanation for his actions.
"I've asked that question a million times since then. There's not a good reason in the world for the horrible things I did," Bales replied, according to Drew Mikkelson of CNN affilliate KING, who was tweeting from the courtroom.
Wednesday's hearing was held at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, near Tacoma, Washington. Both Nance and Lt. Gen. Robert Brown, commander of the Army's I Corps, have approved the plea agreement, said Lt. Col. Gary Dangerfield, a spokesman for the installation.
Bales now faces life in prison, but a jury of four officers and two enlisted personnel will decide whether he will have a chance at parole, Dangerfield said. Nance set sentencing for August 19.
"Sergeant Bales has been waiting for the day that he can accept responsibility for what he has done -- the day that he can give, hopefully, some sense of peace to the people who are the victims of this tragedy, to his own family and to the soldiers who are still serving in Afghanistan," defense attorney Emma Scanlan said after the hearing. "That has been his purpose from the beginning, and that remains what he wants from this."
In addition to the murder counts, Bales pleaded guilty to six counts of attempted murder, seven of assault and the use of illicit steroids and alcohol, but pleaded not guilty to a charge of obstruction of justice.
Bales is a member of the Army's 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, an element of the 2nd Infantry Division. His attorneys have said the service made a mistake in assigning Bales to another combat tour despite evidence of post-traumatic stress disorder and a traumatic brain injury suffered during a combat tour in Iraq.
In the penalty hearings, Scanlan said the defense also will argue that Bales' problems were also fueled by drugs and alcohol provided by Special Operations troops at his outpost before the killings.
"We know all of those things to be true, as does the government," Scanlan told reporters after the hearing. "You take that with somebody on their fourth deployment and the stresses of combat, and we get in some parts of the situation we are in today."
But Scanlan added, "There's no justification" for the massacre. "He doesn't have one, and neither do we."
U.S. and allied troops invaded Afghanistan in 2001 in response to the September 11 al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington. The invasion quickly routed Afghanstan's ruling Taliban, which had allowed al Qaeda to operate from its territory, but the Taliban regrouped and have mounted a guerrilla war against the allied-backed government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai ever since.
More than 2,200 Americans and nearly 1,100 allied troops have been killed since the war began in October 2001. Nearly 15,000 civilians have died since 2007, the United Nations reported in February.
The United States plans to remove combat troops from the country by the end of 2014.With all the garment rending and pearl-clutching going on in the Enslaved Press over Mike Flynn, I thought it might be a good idea to hop in the Way-Back Machine.
Let’s travel back to 2008 when then candidate Obama was sending secret emissaries to Tehran.
Remember hearing about that?
Well, if you’re a regular reader of PatriotRetort.com, you may recall I wrote about it in 2015. At the time, Democrats were howling over Senator Tom Cotton and 46 other Republicans signing on to a letter to the Ayatollah regarding the Iran Deal.
And once again, it becomes necessary to put a little perspective on current events.
Before the 2008 election, Barack Obama, using back channels, sent a communication to Iran telling them to hold off working with the Bush Administration. He assured them that he would be victorious in the November election and promised that he would be a “friend of Iran.”
Foreign Policy expert Michael Ledeen wrote about this communication at PJ Media back on August 29, 2014:
During his first presidential campaign in 2008, Mr. Obama used a secret back channel to Tehran to assure the mullahs that he was a friend of the Islamic Republic, and that they would be very happy with his policies. The secret channel was Ambassador William G. Miller, who served in Iran during the shah’s rule, as chief of staff for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and as ambassador to Ukraine. Ambassador Miller has confirmed to me his conversations with Iranian leaders during the 2008 campaign.
Dr. Ledeen spoke with Mark Levin about this as well. Give it a listen.
Now, Obama was not President-elect at the time of these communications.
He was a first-term Senator running for President.
Where was the outrage from CNN? Do you remember seeing breathless reports about this in the New York Times or Washington Post? Was Dan Rather braying about what Senator Obama did being as bad as Watergate?
In fact, I know of no mainstream news outlet that even reported on this explosive story.
Breitbart did in March 2015 for much the same reason I wrote about it – specifically the Democrats’ response to Tom Cotton’s letter.
But other than that, nobody said a single thing.
And the reason is plain.
Reporting on a story that reveals collusion between a presidential candidate and an enemy state isn’t going to happen when that presidential candidate is Barack Hussein Obama.
Had a Republican candidate done what candidate Obama did, the Enslaved Press would have destroyed him. But because he was their pet candidate, they swept it under the rug and acted like it never happened.
Knowing this makes me highly suspicious of the breathless outrage coming from the news media over Mike Flynn.
This is a coordinated hit job concocted by Obama loyalists and aided and abetted by an Enslaved Press.
And the irony is, it is all being done to protect Obama’s precious “Iran Deal.”
The Enslaved Press’ over-the-top reporting and feigned righteous indignation rises to a level of absurdity I didn’t think possible.
And with any other Republican President, this coordinated political assassination may have succeeded in bringing down an administration.
But these people forget Donald Trump isn’t a “business as usual” Republican.
And these outdated tactics are going to blow up in their faces like a trick cigar.
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CLEVELAND — A federal jury has found Amish breakaway leader, Sam Mullet Sr., guilty of conspiracy, kidnapping and other charges.
Fox 8 News Melissa Reid reports that Sam Mullet Sr., has been found guilty of orchestrating the five attacks where nine victims had their hair cut or clipped.
In all 16 defendants were tried on Federal charges related to the attacks. According to Reid the verdicts reached on the charges are as followed:
COUNT 1 – CONSPIRACY
Defendants agreed to disfigure the victims by forcibly removing their beard and head hair because of religious disputes
All 16 Charged – all 16 found guilty
COUNT 2 – HATE CRIME
Sept 6th attack on Mary & Barbara Miller
Sam Mullet, Sr., – found guilty including a kidnapping charge
COUNT 3 – HATE CRIME
Sam Mullet Sr., – found not guilty
COUNT 4 – HATE CRIME
Oct 4th attack on Raymond and Andy Hershberger
Sam Mullet Sr.,- found guilty, included a kidnapping charge
COUNT 5 – HATE CRIME
October 4th attack on Bishop Byron Miller
Sam Mullet – found guilty, including a kidnapping charge
COUNT 6 – HATE CRIME
Nov 9th attack on Melvin Shrock and Anna Shrock
Sam Mullet, Sr., – found guilty, included kidnapping
COUNT 7 – DESTRUCTION OF EVIDENCE
Destruction of hair and bonnet from Marty and Barbara Miller attack
Sam Mullet, Sr. – found not guilty
COUNT 8 – DESTRUCTION OF EVIDENCE
Concealing of disposable camera
Sam Mullet Sr., – found guilty
COUNT 9 – DESTRUCTION OF EVIDENCE
Concealing horse shears
Lester Mullet – found not guilty
COUNT 10 – MAKING FALSE STATEMENTS
November 22, 2011 gave a false statement to the FBI
Sam Mullet, Sr. – found guilty
According to Federal sentencing guidelines Mullet Sr., faces a minimum of 20 years in prison and a maximum of life. His sentencing has been set for Thursday January 24th, at 9:00 a.m.
The 12-member jury deliberated for parts of five days on the charges.
Defense attorneys said they plan to appeal this verdict as quickly as they possibly can but wouldn’t discuss on what grounds or any specifics because their clients still face sentencing.
They do believe the long sentences their clients could receive doesn’t fit the crime. They also said this case has shattered the Amish community.
Jurors who spoke with Fox 8 I-Team Reporter Peggy Sinkovich said they understand the defense will appeal the conviction, but they want them to know that they didn’t take this case lightly.
They said both the prosecution and defense did a good job, but at the end of the day they felt the prosecution proved their case.
They also said reaching the verdict was extremely difficult.
*Click here for additional information…BANGALORE: Bharat Ratna-designate Professor C N R Rao terms Isro's long-time practice of seeking the divine blessings in Tirupati before its space missions an act of superstition he does not believe in."Yes", he replied when a reporter asked if he thought the space agency placing a miniature replica of soon-to-be-lofted satellite at the feet of Lord Balaji in the temple town of Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh, every time before its launch from Sriharikota spaceport, amounts to superstition."Human beings are scared. They think that if they do offerings, their work will get right. What to do?", the eminent scientist said at a meet-the-press programme hosted by the Press Club of Bangalore."I am not superstitious. I don't believe in astrology. I don't believe in any other kind of superstition", the President of Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) here and Chairman of the Prime Minister's Scientific Advisory Council, replied to another question.Meanwhile, Rao said there was an impression that he is anti-information technology, which is not correct, adding, he held the view that other sectors should not be deprived of bright youngsters as bulk of the talent opts for IT as a career.But, he admitted that "quality of science from India is not very good".Rao lavishly praised China's strides in the field of science and said it's investing heavily in the field. "They have beaten the world; America is nothing".Indians are easy-going. Indian youngsters are second to none but they need to be far more determined to succeed and have to be fiercely proud in being Indians.The zombie-survival game Dying Light was first released in early 2015, which means that in videogame terms it's getting pretty long in the tooth. But Techland isn't letting it go. The studio announced today that it will release ten more pieces of DLC for the game over the next 12 months, all of it free.
"Almost three years after the original Dying Light was released, about half a million people still play the game every week. In the very first months on the market in 2015, the weekly numbers were around 700,000. This shows that our community is still huge, active, and craving for more," Techland CEO Paweł Marchewka said. "Today I’m happy to announce Techland’s continuous support for Dying Light."
The new DLC will include "new locations, story-driven quests, gameplay mechanics, weapons, enemies, and more." Techland said it will also continue to balance and tweak the game through future gameplay updates, and promised more frequent community events as well. It's also got a new "dedicated community platform" in the works that will give fans a say about the direction of future content development.
"As we firmly believe in active collaboration between the design team and players, we hope this announcement will encourage our fans to share their thoughts, stories, and ideas about how we can improve their experience even more," Marchewka said.
The first piece of new Dying Light content will arrive "in the coming weeks," but even though it will be free it apparently isn't one of the promised ten freebies: The studio described it as "a taste of the new things coming to the game, before the '10 free DLCs in 12 months' campaign fully launches later this year."FRANKLIN, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Hardee’s®, the quick service restaurant (QSR) chain known for its innovative history of pioneering decadently iconic breakfasts and burgers, looks to bring an end to the breakfast world as we know it with the launch of the APORKalypse Burrito and Biscuit, now available at participating restaurants system-wide.
The APORKalypse Burrito brings together the three most popular types of pork — four ham slices, two sausage patties and bacon pieces — all wrapped together with folded eggs and American and Swiss cheese inside of a warm flour tortilla. The APORKalypse Biscuit packs four slices of ham, three strips of bacon, a sausage patty, a folded egg and American and Swiss cheese, all stuffed inside one of the restaurant’s signature Made from Scratch™ buttermilk biscuits.
“As you might imagine, the idea for a breakfast biscuit and burrito called the APORKalypse — that would end all breakfast biscuits and burritos — came from our advertising agency, 72andSunny,” said Brad Haley, chief marketing officer for Carl’s Jr.® and Hardee’s. “So, we tested various combination of eggs, cheese and pork and found that the version our customers liked the most had it all: ham and sausage and bacon, served in your choice of a warm flour tortilla or one our famous Made from Scratch buttermilk biscuits. The APORKalypse really is coming …to your mouth.”
The APORKalypse Burrito is available as an entrée for $3.99, and as a small combo with hash rounds and a drink for $5.69, while the APORKalypse Biscuit is available as an entrée for $3.79, and as a small combo with hash rounds and a drink for $5.49; prices may vary by location.
Follow Hardee’s on Facebook (www.facebook.com/hardees), Twitter (@Hardees), and Instagram (@Hardees) for the latest product news and promotional offers. Download the Super Star® Rewards app from the iTunes Store and Google Play and check in to redeem Hardee’s products on the spot, save points for a high-value reward, check out the full menu, and use the store locator to find any Hardee’s in the U.S.
About CKE Restaurants Holdings, Inc.
CKE Restaurants Holdings, Inc. (“CKE”) is a privately held company headquartered in Franklin, TN. CKE is not a franchisor and conducts substantially all of its restaurant activities and operations through its subsidiaries. Carl’s Jr. Restaurants LLC and Hardee’s Restaurants LLC own, operate and franchise the Carl’s Jr., Hardee’s, Green Burrito® and Red Burrito® concepts. Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s operate as one brand under two names, acknowledging the rich regional heritage of both banners. After opening their first New York and New Jersey restaurants in 2015 and recent international openings in Chile, Cambodia and Kenya, Carl’s Jr. Restaurants LLC and Hardee’s Restaurants LLC now have over 3,800 franchised or company-operated restaurants in 44 states and 41 foreign countries and U.S. territories. Known for its one-of-a-kind premium menu items such as 100 percent Black Angus Thickburgers®, Made from Scratch™ Biscuits and Hand-Breaded Chicken Tenders™, as well as an award-winning marketing approach, the Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s brand continues to deliver substantial and consistent growth in the U.S. and overseas. The Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s system is now 94 percent franchised, with international restaurants representing 20 percent of the system. For more information about CKE, please visit www.ckr.com or its brand sites at www.carlsjr.com and www.hardees.com.Outside the Ringling Museum of Art Monday evening, the western sky changed from vivid blue to the pale wash of apricot to deep midnight blue to black.
Inside the Skyspace at the museum during that same hour, a 24-foot-square opening in the canopy over a 3,000-square-foot courtyard changed the color of the sky from robin's egg blue to jade green to denim blue to charcoal to emerald to royal blue to bronze to deep green and finally to black. Planes and their contrails look more like speedboats and wakes across the blues and greens of the Gulf; birds fly across as moving sculpture. A salting of stars appeared and then vanished.
The astonishing display is a manipulation of the viewer's perception of the sky by James Turrell, an internationally renowned artist whose palette is not paint but light.
"We usually use light to illuminate things," said Turrell Monday night after a technical rehearsal of the computer-driven LED lights that transform the underside of the canopy through a full range of the color spectrum. "I'm interested in the 'thingness' of light."
The Skyspace — Turrell has not yet given the installation its own name — will open Dec. 22 with a winter solstice celebration, but its sunset light show won't begin until Jan. 5, when museum visitors can sit in the Skyspace courtyard beginning 30 minutes before sundown and watch the hourlong display overhead four nights a week.
The Skyspace is the only such installation in Florida, and one of just two public installations on the East Coast, the other being his first such work in the United States, "Meeting," at MoMA PS 1 in New York.
Its installation at the Ringling Museum has been a decade-long effort, begun when John Wetenhall was the museum's director. Construction plans for the Ulla R. and Arthur F. Searing Wing, completed in 2007, included a courtyard space specifically intended for the Skyspace.
Talks with Turrell were begun by former Ringling board member Peter Vogt, who became interested in Turrell's work after seeing his works at a private home in California and "Light Reign," a Skyspace at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle. A visit to Turrell's ongoing Roden Crater project, a conversion of an extinct volcano on the edge of the Painted Desert near Flagstaff, Ariz., to an observatory, led to a meeting with the artist and to an agreement between Turrell, the museum and the Vogt Family Foundation.
"Beyond words is how happy I am that the project is coming to fruition," Vogt said in a museum press release. "I see it as a gift to future generations. It will establish the Ringling yet again as a museum that is reaching into the modern era while maintaining the elegance of the past, with its collection of the masters."
Turrell, 68, sees his work with light and space as a natural extension of the Baroque masters whose art hangs in the galleries of the museum.
"You have to remember that the art that is here was once contemporary art," he said.
The Skyspace courtyard has a tiled floor and a 20-foot-tall colonnade which eventually will be dressed with creeping jasmine. The stuccoed walls, in terra cotta to match the museum's exterior color, have creeping ivy beginning to make its way up the surface. The precise edge of the overhead oculus is aligned with a narrow grate along the floor; when rain falls into the courtyard along the edge, uplighting in the grates will create a visual wall of light. The perimeter is ringed with cedar benches, reflective of Turrell's Quaker upbringing and beliefs, their backs angled to focus the viewer's attention on the oculus.
The installation was built by Willis A. Smith Construction, which also handled construction of the Searing Wing. John LaCivita, vice president of the company, said he had his doubts about the whole Skyspace idea until he was made a believer on a 2009 trip to Los Angeles to see two Turrell works, one at a private residence and the other at Turrell's alma mater, Pomona College.
"When we flew to L.A., everyone on my team was thinking we just didn't believe that what this James Turrell was creating was worth creating," he said.
The owner of the private Skyspace left the team, which included Matthew McLendon, the Ringling's associate curator for modern and contemporary art, with the keys to the house and a bottle of wine.
"We're just sitting there talking the whole time, 'this is crazy, this is crazy,'" said LaCivita. "Then when the sun started to set, the lights started to come on. We're told to focus on the oculus, the opening. All of a sudden, the natural lights and the lights around the oculus gave you almost a hallucinogenic kind of feel. When the lights started mixing together, you started to see things. At one point a plane flew over the oculus. It's like looking at a painting. Then there's points when the oculus disappears. You know there's a hole in the ceiling, but the lights equal the exact same hue as the sky."
The next day, the team visited the Pomona College Skyspace, "Dividing the Light," which is an open space with no side walls.
"We got the exact same effect but more," said LaCivita. "He had experimented with LED lights and was able to get a lot more colors on the ceiling itself, which played a lot more tricks with your mind."
LaCivita's team immediately became fascinated with how fabricate a Skyspace.
"It was just a great experience," said LaCivita. "We started right there in our heads, designing what we needed to do to make the one in Sarasota even better."
LaCivita said the engineering on the project was extremely difficult.
"It looks like a piece of paper floating over your head," he said of the razor-edged canopy. "You have no idea that the ceiling itself is over three feet thick."
Design of the Searing Wing, which began in 2004, included the foundational underpinnings for the Skyspace to carry the mechanical equipment for the work.
"There was a lot of forward thinking back in 2004," said LaCivita, who said his team is "contractors. We don't do art."
But, he added, "I've said it to everybody: We would travel anywhere in the world to build a James Turrell project. That's how big believers we are."
Steven High, the Ringling's new executive director, said Turrell comes out of a group of artists from the 1960s devoted to large-scale works carried out over many years.
"It's amazing dedication to art, amazing dedication to belief in what they're doing," said High.
The Ringling's Skyspace is "a very contemplative, individual experience. On the other hand, he's very interested in it being a meeting space, focusing within, but also about relating to others."
Although the Skyspace's LED lighting will be in play only at sunset (and perhaps eventually at sunrise), McLendon said viewers will benefit from experiencing the work at any time.
"I really want to get away from this notion that it's best seen at sunrise or sunset," he said "Turrell is interested in perception and the artist's conception of perception...to go inside and really contemplate light, to have the time, to be afforded the time, given the permission, to look up at the sky and to notice for the first time in ages how much the light changes."
The $2.9 million project was funded primarily through private donations, including support from Dick and Betty Nimitz and the late Bob Koski.A ROBOT with dietary requirements might sound a bit far fetched, but a team of American researchers is developing a machine that will fend for itself by gathering biomass (wood, leaves and grass) to be used as a biofuel to run its steam-driven engine. Who might want such a device? The American army.
The Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot is known, of course, by its acronym: EATR. It is the brainchild of Robotic Technology of Washington, DC. So far it is only a concept, but a working prototype is in the works. The research, in part funded by America's Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, is seen as a way to help soldiers reduce their dependence on fuel supplies. The robot could, for instance, forage for biofuel while a unit on a long-endurance mission rested. It could then be used to recharge their electrical devices, carry some of their equipment or even transport the soldiers.
The EATR uses a robotic arm to gather and prepare vegetation, which it feeds through a shredder into a centrifugal combustion chamber, where it is ignited and then heats a series of coils. The coils contain deionised water (to stop them from furring up like a kettle). As the water inside the coils is superheated the steam is piped to a radial steam engine, which consists of six pistons. The steam drives the pistons, turning a generator which produces electricity. This is stored in batteries that power the electric motors which drive the EATR along.
The steam engine is designed to be a “closed-loop” system, in which water escaping from the cylinders through the exhaust valves is captured and cooled in a condensing unit. This turns the steam back into water, which is then returned to the combustion chamber. As well as using biomass, EATR's engine could also run on petrol, diesel, kerosene, cooking oil or anything similar than could be scav |
workers, passed a resolution calling on Congress to end military aid to Israel and to pressure Israel to “end the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the siege of Gaza.” The resolution endorses the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement and encourages union members “at all levels” to participate.
By aligning itself with the BDS movement, Shurat HaDin maintains that UE has run afoul of a section of National Labor Relations Act that reads “it shall be an unfair labor practice for a labor organization or its agents…[to force or require any person] to cease doing business with any other person.”
“We are insisting the NLRB take immediate action against the UE. We intend to force the UE to abandon its unlawful policies,” Darshan-Leitner said in a statement.
UE, in a recent post on their website, said the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation sent them a thank you note in response to the passage of the resolution. The thank you note reportedly was signed by more than 3,000 individuals and 41 organizations, many of whom are involved in the Palestinian solidarity movement.
“It is a violation of American labor law for the union to encourage its members to cease doing business with Israelis and Israeli companies,” Darshan-Leitner said in a statement. “The UE needs to decide whether it wants to be a discriminatory hate group targeting Jewish companies or a respected union representing the best interests of its members.”
This story "Electrical Union Sued Over Pro-BDS Stand" was written by JTA.ctvcalgary.ca
A controversial Calgary preacher says the Stampede is refusing to allow his church to join the Stampede Parade.
Arthur Pawloski runs Street Church Ministries and says his right to free speech is being violated.
"Christian community is part of what Calgary is. It's part of the heritage of this country and it's very important for the Christian community to be represented in that parade and also we represent the poor," says Pawloski.
Members of the church say they've already spent $20,000 on props, costumes, and horse-drawn carriages for this year's parade entry.
The Stampede Committee says it won't allow Street Church to participate in this year's parade because of rule violations from last year. The committee says members of the ministry broke the rules when they passed out pamphlets to parade spectators.
They didn't play by the rules and regulations that we set out for all entries," says David Swanson, a spokesperson for the Stampede Committee. "And I'd like to point out that simply making an application to be in our parade doesn't guarantee anybody's acceptance into our parade."
Pawlowski argues his ministry was told they could distribute pamphlets, by on-site parade officials, and says he's being targeted because of his outspoken religious beliefs.
The Calgary Stampede says the decision has nothing to do with religion and is about respect for the rules.My instant reaction to the debate: I'm kind of amazed at how well Obama did. Granted, I'm an Obama supporter and a pessimist, so I guess I went into the debate with low expectations. Still:
I think Obama succeeded in striking a very delicate balance: He had to be sharp and feisty and tough (to erase those particular doubts about his first performance), but he had to stop short of Joe Biden levels of aggressiveness and remain essentially likeable. I think he did that. I've heard some commentators say Obama was "angry," but he didn't strike me as crossing that line -- except maybe a few times when he displayed righteous indignation that I thought was effective. Certainly he didn't seem angrier than Romney, and he wasn't as disrespectful of moderator Candy Crowley as Romney was.
Obama also handled several specific challenges well:Two weeks ago we showed you a first glimpse of the new Shanghai Disney Resort that will open in Spring 2016. Now we have even more exciting details to share with you all, everything from ride vehicles to themed restaurants.
The six themed lands of Shanghai Disneyland will be: Tomorrowland, Fantasyland, Treasure Cove, Adventure Isle, Mickey Avenue, and Gardens of Imagination.
Mickey Avenue: Lets start with a look at first land you will encounter when you walk past the entrance to the park. At the entrance there is a large clock tower, inspired by classic Mickey Mouse watch design. This land will be a bright and fun place focusing on all the Disney characters we know and love.
Il Paperino: a gelato shop where guests can discover the family tree of Donald Duck.
Avenue M Arcade: will feature the largest selection of gifts and accessories in the park and one section of the store will be themed to Scrooge McDuck.
Mickey & Pals Market Café:This counter service cafe will have an open-air market feel and guests can choose a table in one of four dining rooms themed after Mickey’s Galley, Tony’s from Lady and the Tramp, Daisy’s Café, and the Three Caballeros.
Remy’s Patisserie: a French-inspired bakery based on characters from Ratatouille it will serve a variety of breads, pastries and muffins, along with fresh desserts from the restaurant’s kitchen.
Sweethearts Confectionary: a sweet shop representing the childhood home of Minnie Mouse this shop will showcase murals and sweet scenes that tell the story of this Mickey and Minnie’s courtship.
First tribute to the original Mickey Mouse: The Steamboat “Mickey” fountain premieres at Shanghai Disneyland, in tribute to the 1928 animated film created by Walt Disney to introduce Mickey Mouse to the world. The fountain is a modern spin on the film, using a more current version of Mickey than Walt’s original. The fountain is at the park entrance, leading into Mickey Avenue.
Gardens of Imagination: this is the land that will give you the most traditional Chinese experience and give you a look at the “wonders of nature and joy of imagination.”In this land you can take a ride on the Fantasia Carousel and Dumbo the Flying Elephant and wander around seven uniquely themed gardens based on the Chinese zodiac.
These individual gardens will feature the themes of family, friendship and fun: Garden of the Twelve Friends, Melody Garden, Romance Garden, Woodland Garden, Garden of the Magic Feather, Fantasia Garden, and Storybook Castle Garden. Each garden will be filled with engaging activities, floral and woodland displays, and playful photo opportunities.But this land will also be the home of two exclusive live entertainment experiences.
Ignite the Dream: a nighttime spectacular of magic and light fireworks show. When “painted” together on Disney’s largest castle in the world, the effects will be mesmerizing. The walls of the castle will transform into stunning new worlds, full of color and motion. During the show, Mickey will find that magical spark that ignites his imagination and sets him free to fly and soar.
Mickey’s Storybook Express: a daytime parade that will be traveling along the longest parade route in a Disney park, this parade will be led by a whimsical locomotive. A line of themed “train cars” will follow, each with its own exciting musical soundtrack and colorful cast of performers. Each train car will feature the characters, story and music of a favorite Disney film.
Wandering Moon Teahouse: this quick-service location will feature Chinese dishes in a traditional teahouse atmosphere. This will be the first time the story of “Wandering Moon” will be featured in a Disney park.
Adventure Isle: will be a new take on Adventureland, featuring the Roaring Mountain, Camp Discovery and Soaring over the Horizon.
Roaring Rapids: Riding a raft propelled only by gravity and water, anything can happen as guests plunge down a mountain and into a dark cavern where the undiscovered secrets of an ancient tribal legend and the reptilian creature Q’aráq are revealed. Only those who venture into the mountain will encounter the massive, mysterious Q’aráq.
Tribal Table: this restaurant will be modeled after an ancient gathering house in the Arbori village and promises guests a “sensory dining experience” where sights, sounds and smells will increase the theming.
“Tarzan: Call of the Jungle” at Storyhouse Stage: a powerful retelling of the animated classic movie Tarzan.
Treasure Cove: this will be the first land in Disney history to be exclusively themed to Pirates of the Caribbean.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for the Sunken Treasure: a new take on the classic boat ride where a new high-tech ride system will let the boats be able to spin, move and react smartly to their position, triggering action and synchronized music as they travel through breathtaking scenes and lively battles. Guests will encounter fearless pirates, mermaids and even a kraken.
Eye of the Storm: Captain Jack’s Stunt Spectacular: a live stage show featuring fantastic stunts and swordfights, spectacular scenery, and stunning visual effects at the El Teatro Fandango.
Shipwreck Shore: a water play area located onboard the remains of a shipwrecked French galleon and the surrounding beach.
Barbossa’s Bounty: this will be one of the largest restaurants in Shanghai Disneyland and it will be themed to a “grog shop” and feature a bountiful of spicy barbeque meals. The pirate chefs show off in a demonstration kitchen and guests can dine in a themed dining room of their choosing or inside the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction in the same style as Blue Bayou restaurant at Disneyland, California.
Tomorrowland: this land got two new really thrilling attractions, TRON Lightcycle Power Run and Buzz Lightyear Planet Rescue. You can read more about TRON Lightcycle Run, the thrilling, roller coaster-type attraction themed to Disney’s beloved sci-fi classic HERE.
Buzz Lightyear Planet Rescue: this is a new take on the familiar Buzz Lightyear Astro Blaster/Space Ranger Spin attraction. At Shanghai Disneyland this ride will be decked out with an “immersive, new storyline combined with a new, interactive targeting system.” This attraction also features new ride vehicles called Space Cruisers, animated targets, LED screens, and real time feedback from the targeting system.
Jet Packs: At this attraction guests will be “strapped into individual Jet Packs, with legs dangling.” At the center of this attraction is some kind of “energy sphere,” which spins faster and faster as the ride progresses. The ride will also be interactive letting guests control how high their jetpack goes and how dramatic the pitch of their vehicles is.
Stitch Encounter: A chance for guests to engage in unrehearsed banter with your favorite cuddly alien
Stargazer Grill: this will be the largest restaurant in the theme park, offering spectacular views of the rest of Shanghai Disneyland. The design will be all curved ceiling and glass orbs of twinkling lights.
Fantasyland: this land will be the largest one in the park and home to many of the most classic attractions, restaurants and the Enchanted Storybook Castle. You will see favorites from other parks like Peter Pan’s Flight (featuring a brand new “inverted-coaster ride system”) and the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train.
Royal Banquet Hall: The regal Royal Banquet Hall, filled with enchanting details such as leaded-glass windows and soaring archways, offers fairytale dining in a storybook setting. Princes and princesses of all ages will enjoy a plated meal served with royal hospitality, as some of their favorite Disney characters visit to sign autographs. Each of the dining rooms will be inspired by Disney princesses, adding a story that allows every meal to end happily ever after. The rooms at Royal Banquet Hall are themed to Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Tiana, Mulan and Snow White.
Enchanted Storybook Castle: this dream castle will be Disney Princess -themed and have an interior filled with mosaics and frescoes.
Hunny Pot Spin: a Winnie the Pooh-themed attraction where guests board whirling honey pots.
Alice in Wonderland maze: this will be the first attraction at a Disney park themed to the Tim Burton version of the story.
Voyage to the Crystal Grotto: an excursion through the waters of Fantasyland, complete with colorful fountains, wonderful music and a spin underneath the Enchanted Storybook Castle.
Tangled Tree Tavern: Located in the Fantasyland forest, Tangled Tree Tavern is inspired by the Snuggly Duckling, the pub featured in Disney’s animated film Tangled, the tale of Rapunzel. Warped by time and the roots of the large tree nearby, Tangled Tree Tavern is full of rich details and an atmosphere befitting the boisterous ruffians and thugs in the film. Guests will enjoy a hearty meal in this lush woodland environment.
Pinocchio Country Kitchen: this restaurant takes visitors into the fascinating Disney fairy tale – ” Pinocchio.” Here you can dine on a variety of food, whether it is pizza or pasta.
Also coming to Shanghai Disney Resort is Disney Town (a shopping and dining complex) featuring the Walt Disney Grand Theater which will be the home to the first Lion King on Broadway show in Mandarin. The resort will also get a Toy Story Hotel and Disneyland Hotel.The fate of the former Global Village Backpackers building has finally come into focus. The iconic old hostel shut its doors in January 2014 and was on the market six months later, but only recently has the future of the site been revealed. Konrad Group, a digital and technology firm, will open an innovation hub in the 20,000 square foot heritage property at King and Spadina.
The 150 year old building will be home to what the Konrad Group calls BrainStation, an educational organization the company acquired last fall, as well as a shared office concept that will draw tech startups and freelancers to King West. As far as retail goes, 460 King will also play host to a new coffee shop by the name of Quantum Coffee.
The idea with the cafe, as with much of the building, is to make it as tech-forward as possible. So far that involves the promise of an app-足enabled pour over machine, the first in Canada, and "order ahead" mobile payments that will allow customers to avoid waiting in line for their caffeine fix.
Not much has been revealed about the architectural plans for the building, but the rendering currently available shows that the plan is to restore the building with a Tudor-style exterior and a glass addition on the west side of the building. It's a conservative plan for a project that touts innovation as its mantra, but solid restoration work would be most welcome.
What do you think of the plans for the building?WASHINGTON, DC, January 17, 2012 -- While the percentage of obese children in the United States tripled between the early 1970s and the late 2000s, a new study suggests that--at least for middle school students--weight gain has nothing to do with the candy, soda, chips, and other junk food they can purchase at school.
"We were really surprised by that result and, in fact, we held back from publishing our study for roughly two years because we kept looking for a connection that just wasn't there," said Jennifer Van Hook, a Professor of Sociology and Demography at Pennsylvania State University and lead author of the study, which appears in the January issue of Sociology of Education.
The study relies on data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999, which follows a nationally representative sample of students from the fall of kindergarten through the spring of eighth grade (the 1998-1999 through 2006-2007 schools years). Van Hook and her coauthor Claire E. Altman, a sociology and demography doctoral student at Pennsylvania State University, used a subsample of 19,450 children who attended school in the same county in both fifth and eighth grades (the 2003-2004 and the 2006-2007 school years).
The authors found that 59.2 percent of fifth graders and 86.3 percent of eighth graders in their study attended schools that sold junk food. But, while there was a significant increase in the percentage of students who attended schools that sold junk food between fifth and eighth grades, there was no rise in the percentage of students who were overweight or obese. In fact, despite the increased availability of junk food, the percentage of students who were overweight or obese actually decreased from fifth grade to eighth grade, from 39.1 percent to 35.4 percent.
"There has been a great deal of focus in the media on how schools make a lot of money from the sale of junk food to students, and on how schools have the ability to help reduce childhood obesity," Van Hook said. "In that light, we expected to find a definitive connection between the sale of junk food in middle schools and weight gain among children between fifth and eighth grades. But, our study suggests that--when it comes to weight issues--we need to be looking far beyond schools and, more specifically, junk food sales in schools, to make a difference."
According to Van Hook, policies that aim to reduce childhood obesity and prevent unhealthy weight gain need to concentrate more on the home and family environments as well as the broader environments outside of school.
"Schools only represent a small portion of children's food environment," Van Hook said. "They can get food at home, they can get food in their neighborhoods, and they can go across the street from the school to buy food. Additionally, kids are actually very busy at school. When they're not in class, they have to get from one class to another and they have certain fixed times when they can eat. So, there really isn't a lot of opportunity for children to eat while they're in school, or at least eat endlessly, compared to when they're at home. As a result, whether or not junk food is available to them at school may not have much bearing on how much junk food they eat."
The study results also intimate that when it comes to combating childhood obesity and weight issues, policymakers should put more emphasis on younger children, Van Hook said. "There has been a lot of research showing that many children develop eating habits and tastes for certain types of foods when they are of preschool age, and that those habits and tastes may stay with them for their whole lives," Van Hook said. "So, their middle school environments might not matter a lot."
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About the American Sociological Association and the Sociology of Education
The American Sociological Association (http://www. asanet. org ), founded in 1905, is a non-profit membership association dedicated to serving sociologists in their work, advancing sociology as a science and profession, and promoting the contributions to and use of sociology by society. The Sociology of Education is a quarterly, peer-reviewed journal of the ASA.
The research article described above is available by request for members of the media. For a copy of the full study, contact Daniel Fowler, ASA's Media Relations and Public Affairs Officer, at 202-527-7885 or pubinfo@asanet.org.I'm not surprised by the warning from Britain's top military officer, given on Thursday, that Russia poses a growing threat to undersea communication cables between Europe and the U.S.
According to Stuart Peach, Britain's equivalent to the chairman of the joint chiefs, Russia is developing new means with which to disrupt "sea lines of communication" and thus "catastrophically effect both our economy and other ways of living." There are two parts to this emerging capability: Russia "continues to perfect both unconventional capabilities and information warfare" techniques and Russian President Vladimir Putin has a "higher risk appetite" (Peach is definitely correct about the risk appetite) than before.
And seeing as Thursday's warning came from the uniformed head of the British military, it is likely based on confident intelligence assessments of Russian intents and actions rather than a hunch. Indeed, the British security establishment is normally loathe to make big statements on emerging threats.
Yet Russia's interest in cutting undersea cables is not surprising.
For a start, in any slow rolling escalation with NATO, cutting undersea cables would allow Putin to disrupt European civilian economic and social well-being. While Russia has long sought to divide Europe from the U.S., Putin probably believes that cutting cables might encourage European populations to push their politicians to compromise to Russian demands.
Dangling the threat of impending nuclear war alongside the immediate consequences of cut cables, Putin would realistically hope to win the fight before it even began.
Cutting the cables and thus separating Western Europe from the United States would also make sense were Russia to launch a conventional invasion against the Baltic states or Poland. While such a scenario is unlikely, Russian forces recently trained for an invasion of Poland so the threat cannot be entirely discounted.
Still, while much of the NATO force complement is underfunded, undertrained, and insufficiently capable, Russia continues to fear the U.S. military. Assuming adequate American political will, Putin knows the U.S. military would eventually push back any Russian invasion. More specifically, the KGB colonel knows that the moment a large-scale deployment of U.S. fighter and bomber squadrons became operational in Europe, Russia's offensive potential would be seriously degraded. The moment a large-scale deployment of U.S. armored brigades touched down in Europe, although that would take weeks, the game would be over.
Correspondingly, Russia's best opportunity to seize territory and retain it under any cease-fire deal would be to achieve territorial dominance before the U.S. military could mobilize in response. Put simply, Russia would have to advance so rapidly into the Baltic states or Poland that NATO's broader resolve collapses. The objective would be to achieve rapid strategic effect amidst looming inferiority.
It might seem infeasible, but considering NATO's lethargic political command and control apparatus, Russian aspirations of victory are not unrealistic.
It's not all bad news, however.
If anything, Russia's target planning against undersea cables is a sign that Putin would not resort to nuclear war in the event of conflict. After all, there's very little point in destroying cables if the city they serve is already rubble.One of the band's we've been following since day 1 return with a stunning new effort, yes it's those handsome chaps at Only Shadows. After their last single "Cold Shoulder" being re-released at the tail end of 2018 it looked like the future was bright for the quartet, and how right we were.
The new single - "At The Door Knocking" - is the first taste of material from their as-yet-untitled forthcoming debut album and is the band showing exactly what they're all about, soaring guitars, dominating vocal hooks and a driving backline that captures you from the first beat to the very last. They're one of the finest up and coming bands for sure.
Bass player Alex says - "The song is a personification of the issues with anxiety we had when we were making big decisions with labels and stuff behind the scenes. It was a period when we had a decision to make, either write a debut album that we want to make and hope other people believe in it– or release…When I was in high school, I used to walk around Pittsburgh at night a lot. It wasn’t really a matter of defiance or anything like that — it was just what made sense. Buses were inconsistent and unreliable after about 8 p.m., I didn’t drive, and any of my friends who did were usually too drunk or high to count on for a ride when it was needed. As a result, I frequently ended up walking home from parties, sometimes up to three or four miles.
Most of these times, I was alone. I liked being able to leave parties on my own terms, and finding my way home on foot turned into a more or less weekly ritual, during which I could process the abundant angst of my teen years. I never felt endangered or threatened. To the contrary: Those hours at night, around 1 or 2 in the morning on quiet, cold, intermittently spotlit streets, made up the few times in high school in which I remember feeling calm. I didn’t just feel like I owned the city — I could convince myself that I was the only person in it.
As girls, we are told again and again and again that the streets are not safe for us and we do not belong there. Last winter, my colleague Darby Minow Smith wrote a lovely piece on the experience of walking alone at night — and how as women, we can be scared to participate in our own communities because we have been taught to feel unsafe in them. The mantra is that to be alone in a city at night is to put your body at risk. As it turns out, the riskiest situation my own body ever ended up in was in a friend’s bedroom at a party, incapacitated by a Solo cup’s worth of terrible vodka. I was 16, and while all the adults in my life had urged me repeatedly not to be outside alone after dark, no one had ever warned me about that.
That blurry and awful night was, quite sadly, not an exception to the rule — far from it: The Center for Disease Control’s most recent statistics on sexual assault show that only 12.9 percent of rapes are perpetrated by a stranger, while 45.4 are committed by an intimate partner and 46.7 by an acquaintance. (If these numbers aren’t adding up, it’s because women were able to report multiple instances of sexual assault in this survey.)
So while we often see cities and streets as threats to our well-being, the real threat — a culture that teaches us that women’s bodies are for consumption, even when those women are friends and wives and girlfriends — is far more insidious. It changes the lives of women like Daisy Coleman, Emma Sulkowicz, and the much-maligned Jackie from the UVA case disastrously covered by Rolling Stone.
Our public understanding of what the word “rape” means has finally begun to evolve to acknowledge this reality — but honestly, not quickly enough. The FBI’s official definition changed in 2013, which was a monumental move toward accepting the idea that a woman who can’t consent to sex — whether she is intoxicated or unconscious — is still a victim of rape, regardless of whether she has been physically restrained or attacked with a weapon:
The old definition was “The carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.” Many agencies interpreted this definition as excluding a long list of sex offenses that are criminal in most jurisdictions, such as offenses involving oral or anal penetration, penetration with objects, and rapes of males. The new Summary definition of Rape is: “Penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”
A 2010 study by Louise Ellison and Vanessa Munro, from the University of Leeds and University of Nottingham, respectively, examined how widely perpetuated, and largely false, understandings of what constitutes “real rape” can affect how jurors prosecute an accused rapist.
“Real rape” is constituted by a sudden, surprise attack by an unknown, often armed, sexual deviant. It occurs in an isolated, but public, location, and the victim sustains serious physical injury, either as a result of the violence of the perpetrator or as a consequence of her efforts to resist the attack […] In actuality, the majority of rapes are perpetrated by an acquaintance or intimate, that private spaces—including the victim’s home—are as dangerous as public ones, and that many women who are raped do not physically resist or suffer significant bodily injury.”
And sure enough, Ellison and Munro found that a sample jury would be less likely to convict a rapist who had attacked an acquaintance in a familiar setting, based on the preconception that a rape must involve a struggle, a weapon, or a psychotic stranger. There is the harmful and pervasive idea that if it really were a rape, the woman would have yelled more, or struggled, or tried to fight back harder.
A brief reminder: None of this is at all meant to imply that the attacks we are taught to fear, those committed by strangers in dark alleyways, do not happen at all. They do, and they are atrocious and they are life-changing. But so are the rapes that happen in college dorms, friends’ houses, and married couples’ bedrooms, though of course we are not warned to avoid those places.
The easy takeaway is that women aren’t safe anywhere — everywhere is dangerous and awful! But that’s a counterproductive approach, as Annie Gebhardt, Training Specialist with the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, explained to me. The sexual assault advocacy and education community has worked to shift our tactics for avoiding sexual violence away from warning women against potential danger, and more toward addressing why sexual assault happens.
“There’s a long history of so-called safety tips targeted particularly towards women that are really based in a lot of myths about sexual violence, and where and when and why and to whom it occurs,” Gebhardt says. “And often, those messages of, ‘Don’t walk alone,’ ‘Don’t wear this,’ ‘Don’t go here,’ have one, really limited women’s freedoms to be in the world, and two, placed the responsibility for sexual violence and preventing sexual violence on potential victims instead of placing [that] on perpetrators — and placing responsibility for preventing sexual violence on the entire community.”
Not only do risk reduction methods, as they’re called, make women beholden to preventing their own rapes, they’re also not that effective. Which is why, as Gebhardt says, sexual assault training today focuses on changing a system that normalizes sexual violence and misogynistic attitudes.
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“Within prevention, there’s much more of a focus on teaching everyone in the population about things like healthy sexuality, and being a responsible bystander and speaking up when you see either a potential dangerous situation unfolding, or when you encounter jokes or comments or myths that could reinforce cultural norms that support sexual violence.”
To address sexual assault on campus, for example, new education campaigns like the White House initiative “It’s On Us” or the Canadian campaign #WhoWillYouHelp focus on educating students to intervene when they see a potentially bad situation in progress — an approach that takes into account the fact that perpetrators of sexual assault, particularly in college settings, are usually intoxicated themselves. To enable franker and more constructive discussion of sex, both Ontario and the U.K. are introducing sex-ed curricula for public schools that include discussion of consent.
A sustainable city, ultimately, is one in which women feel safe. But we should not feel safe because, as my teenage self did, we can pretend we are alone when the streets are silent and empty. We should be able to feel safe because we can believe that the other people who inhabit those streets are not only not trying to hurt us, but also are working to create an environment in which women are not seen as prey. Everyone in a community is responsible for changing the kind of thinking that would lead a man to see an unconscious body, or a girlfriend who is clearly saying “stop,” or a friend who has had too much to drink, as a fair sexual partner.
I’m not nearly naïve enough to believe that, with a snap of my fingers and some well-executed education campaigns, sexual violence will be eradicated tomorrow. But failing to change prevailing, harmful attitudes toward sex and women is a bit like ignoring rising sea levels: To do so is to willfully endanger a huge segment of the population. And to keep doing so, to keep refusing to recognize that endangerment, is to make life for everyone on the planet just that much uglier and sadder — and, really, no one needs that.Image copyright AP Image caption Despite his problems, Marion Barry maintained a solid following in Washington
Former Washington DC Mayor Marion Barry, who won re-election after a drug arrest, has died at the age of 78.
A Democrat, Mr Barry served three terms from 1979 to 1991 before his personal life overshadowed his politics.
He was arrested in an FBI sting operation and tried on drug charges in 1990, but was only convicted on a single count of possession.
He remained popular with many poorer African American voters, and served a final term as mayor from 1995 to 1999.
Mr Barry died overnight at a hospital in Washington, DC Council spokeswoman LaToya Foster said.
The cause of death was not disclosed, but he had kidney problems stemming from diabetes and high blood pressure.
His 1990 arrest - which came during his third term - came after he was videotaped by the FBI smoking crack in a Washington hotel room with a female friend.
During the subsequent trial jurors remained deadlocked on most counts. His conviction for drug possession led to a six-month prison sentence.
The son of a sharecropper, born in Mississippi in 1936, Mr Barry was active in the civil rights movements in Washington in the 1960s, and was first elected to the city council in 1974.
He went on to dominate Washington's politics for a quarter-century and was sometimes dubbed "Mayor for Life".
Confirming his death, the Washington Post described his personal and public life as "fraught with high drama and irony".
"He came to Washington as a champion of the downtrodden and the dispossessed and rose to the pinnacle of power and prestige," the newspaper wrote.David Oyelowo, star of “Selma” and a born-again Christian, recently had an argument about Kate Mara’s nipples.
Mara is Oyelowo’s co-star in the new film “Captive,” the true-life story of escaped murderer Brian Nichols and his hostage, Ashley Smith, who persuades him to release her using the power of faith and a dog-eared copy of Rick Warren’s “The Purpose Driven Life.”
Though “Captive” is a faith-based film, it pushes the genre’s carefully outlined boundaries to their limit: It’s a PG-13 movie with violent situations, in which Mara plays a meth addict with questionable parenting skills. Even worse, as an observer pointed out to Oyelowo, in one scene Mara wasn’t wearing a bra, something potentially offensive to Christian audiences.
To Oyelowo, the conversation encapsulated everything he dislikes about faith-based films: the unnecessary sanitizing of real-life situations, the “on the nose” approach to storytelling. “I’ve seen enough of them to know that in many ways it’s about, okay, the Gospel is Jesus and him being the path to light and you play that scene after scene after scene,” he said in a recent interview. “No film that you and I have watched and loved is as simplistic as that, and life as you and I have lived is not as simplistic as that, and the Bible is not as simplistic as that. I think that complexity, doubt, difficulty, unexpected cul-de-sacs, is what we all look for in a story, and in life generally.”
2014 was the Year of Faith-Based Cinema, thanks to surprise blockbusters “God’s Not Dead” and “Heaven Is for Real,” in addition to a smattering of smaller hits. But 2015 has so far produced only one faith-based smash, the marital melodrama “War Room.” This is partly due to the natural life cycle of Hollywood — films greenlit in the afterglow of “Heaven Is for Real” haven’t been released yet. It also suggests a growing divide between the desires of newly empowered faith-based audiences and secular ones.
To many Christian moviegoers, weary of movies that misrepresented or ignored them, frustrated by an entertainment industry that doesn’t understand them, their newfound box-office clout offers an opportunity to put movies representing their values in front of mainstream audiences. To those same mainstream audiences, faith-based movies too often bring to mind Kirk Cameron films, with their high school A.V. club production values, cartoonishly villainous atheists, wooden acting and simplistic story lines that prize sermonizing over storytelling.
Faith-based moviegoers tend to enjoy films with overtly religious messages. Mainstream audiences regard the faith-based moviegoing experience as roughly akin to having a Bible dropped on their heads.
“In some ways, the Christian genre is a very organic thing that has grown out of this demand to see entertainment that reflects what they feel and think. That has led to some issues in terms of quality,” says Paul Asay, film critic for the Patheos.com blog “Watching God” and the author of “Burning Bush 2.0: How Pop Culture Replaced the Prophet.” “[Christians] want to see these very explicit expressions of faith. They are very affirmational stories, and that really appeals to a certain audience, but that just doesn’t appeal to a whole swath of other moviegoers, Christian and not Christian. When they look at those type of movies, it feels more like church, and that’s not why you want to go to a movie.”
After years of scattered hits that seemed like cultural outliers, such as Mel Gibson’s 2004 landmark “The Passion of the Christ” and Cameron’s 2008 hit “Fireproof,” Christian filmmaking had arguably its most broadly successful box-office year ever in 2014.
“There’s certain groups of people that only watch Christian movies,” says David A.R. White, who produced and co-starred in “God’s Not Dead” and co-founded the Christian production company Pure Flix. “They don’t have cable, they don’t watch mainstream TV, they just watch Christian content. We had so many write in that they went to ‘God’s Not Dead,’ and it was their first movie in eight to 10 years in a movie theater. That opened the door to, like, ‘Oh, wow, maybe the movies aren’t a sinful place.’ When ‘Heaven’ came out, they started going more consistently.”
Christian filmmakers want to reach secular audiences, but often feel their religious principles preclude them from making necessary compromises: R-ratings, violence, drinking, even the sort of mild sexual situations common on prime-time network TV, are usually off-limits. Films that play to the base — wholesome, family-oriented films in which no one seems to ever wrestle with the finer points of faith — are safer to produce, but make it difficult for the genre to ever move beyond its specialty niche.
“Personally, I want to open it out as a conversation,” Oyelowo says. “I don’t want (faith-based filmmaking) to feel cliquey. I don’t want it to feel steeped in Christian-ese that only a certain group speak and understand, and therefore cut a bunch of people out. I’m interested in speaking to a broad audience.”
Faith-based movies are often made on the cheap (“War Room,” budgeted at less than $4 million, made more than $11 million in its opening weekend) and frequently rely on grass-roots community and church outreach instead of expensive marketing campaigns. These films can usually turn a profit without reaching into the mainstream at all.
What faith-based audiences choose not to see is another indicator of their growing power: Unhappy with what they regarded as biblical liberties taken by 2014 films “Noah” and “Exodus,” they very pointedly sent those movies to their doom. “You don’t need to appeal to non-Christian audiences; in fact, I think it hurts you,” says Phil Contrino, chief analyst for Boxoffice.com. “Look at ‘Noah.’ That tried to have a ‘Lord of |
, the science of politics has made great progress just as have other sciences. What works and what does not work is now better understood than it was by the ancients. Wholly new discoveries have been made, such as the separation of powers, the introduction of legislative checks and balances, the creation of courts with judges of lifetime tenure (based on good behavior), and the representation of the people in the legislature by deputies of their own election. These are entirely new or have only been perfected in recent times. These innovations eliminate the weaknesses and maintain the benefits of republican government. To this list of things that ameliorate the negative effects of democratic civil government, I add one more. It is ironically something that has been cited as a reason for objection to the new Constitution. The objection is based on the size of the territory in which these governments will operate, either with respect to a single State or to the consolidation of several smaller States into a larger Confederacy. It is the latter that concerns this discussion. Nevertheless, it is useful to examine the principle with regard to a single State, and this we will do elsewhere.
The utility of a Confederacy, as well to suppress faction and to guard the internal tranquillity of States, as to increase their external force and security, is in reality not a new idea. It has been practiced upon in different countries and ages, and has received the sanction of the most approved writers on the subject of politics. The opponents of the plan proposed have, with great assiduity, cited and circulated the observations of Montesquieu on the necessity of a contracted territory for a republican government. But they seem not to have been apprised of the sentiments of that great man expressed in another part of his work, nor to have adverted to the consequences of the principle to which they subscribe with such ready acquiescence.
It is not a new idea to unite in a confederacy to suppress faction, ensure the internal tranquility of States, and strengthen security by making external forces stronger. It has been tried in many countries, many times. Most well-thought-of political writers have approved its application. The opponents of the proposed Constitution have assiduously cited and circulated Montesquieu’s observations that small territories are required for republican government. But they apparently are unaware of what this great man said elsewhere in his work. Neither have they explained the consequences of adhering to such a principle.
When Montesquieu recommends a small extent for republics, the standards he had in view were of dimensions far short of the limits of almost every one of these States. Neither Virginia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, North Carolina, nor Georgia can by any means be compared with the models from which he reasoned and to which the terms of his description apply. If we therefore take his ideas on this point as the criterion of truth, we shall be driven to the alternative either of taking refuge at once in the arms of monarchy, or of splitting ourselves into an infinity of little, jealous, clashing, tumultuous commonwealths, the wretched nurseries of unceasing discord, and the miserable objects of universal pity or contempt. Some of the writers who have come forward on the other side of the question seem to have been aware of the dilemma; and have even been bold enough to hint at the division of the larger States as a desirable thing. Such an infatuated policy, such a desperate expedient, might, by the multiplication of petty offices, answer the views of men who possess not qualifications to extend their influence beyond the narrow circles of personal intrigue, but it could never promote the greatness or happiness of the people of America.
When Montesquieu talks of a small size for republics, the dimensions he had in mind were even smaller than the areas of almost every State. Neither Virginia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, North Carolina, nor Georgia can by any means be compared with the models from which he reasoned and to which his description apply. So, if we are to judge the validity of his ideas on this single point, then we have little choice but to support monarchy, or to split ourselves into an infinite number of little, jealous, clashing, and tumultuous commonwealths. These would become the source of unceasing discord and the miserable objects of universal pity or contempt. Some of the opponents of the Constitution are apparently aware of this dilemma and have even gone so far as to hint that the division of the larger States might be a good thing. This would result in the formation of a huge number of public offices for men who lack the qualifications for greater influence, which is perhaps the aim of those advocating it, but it could never promote the greatness or happiness of the people of America.
Referring the examination of the principle itself to another place, as has been already mentioned, it will be sufficient to remark here that, in the sense of the author who has been most emphatically quoted upon the occasion, it would only dictate a reduction of the SIZE of the more considerable MEMBERS of the Union, but would not militate against their being all comprehended in one confederate government. And this is the true question, in the discussion of which we are at present interested.
So far are the suggestions of Montesquieu from standing in opposition to a general Union of the States, that he explicitly treats of a CONFEDERATE REPUBLIC as the expedient for extending the sphere of popular government, and reconciling the advantages of monarchy with those of republicanism.
This topic has already been examined elsewhere. It is sufficient to say here that Montesquieu’s principle would require a reduction in the size of the larger States, but would not prohibit combination of all in one confederate government. And this is what we are really talking about.
Montesquieu’s writings do not oppose a general Union of the States. On the contrary, he explicitly advocates a CONFEDERATE REPUBLIC as the best means of extending the sphere of popular government and reconciling the advantages of monarchy with those of republicanism.
“It is very probable,” (says he1) “that mankind would have been obliged at length to live constantly under the government of a SINGLE PERSON, had they not contrived a kind of constitution that has all the internal advantages of a republican, together with the external force of a monarchical government. I mean a CONFEDERATE REPUBLIC. “This form of government is a convention by which several smaller states agree to become members of a larger one, which they intend to form. It is a kind of assemblage of societies that constitute a new one, capable of increasing, by means of new associations, till they arrive to such a degree of power as to be able to provide for the security of the united body. “A republic of this kind, able to withstand an external force, may support itself without any internal corruptions. The form of this society prevents all manner of inconveniences. “If a single member should attempt to usurp the supreme authority, he could not be supposed to have an equal authority and credit in all the confederate states. Were he to have too great influence over one, this would alarm the rest. Were he to subdue a part, that which would still remain free might oppose him with forces independent of those which he had usurped and overpower him before he could be settled in his usurpation. “Should a popular insurrection happen in one of the confederate states the others are able to quell it. Should abuses creep into one part, they are reformed by those that remain sound. The state may be destroyed on one side, and not on the other; the confederacy may be dissolved, and the confederates preserve their sovereignty. “As this government is composed of small republics, it enjoys the internal happiness of each; and with respect to its external situation, it is possessed, by means of the association, of all the advantages of large monarchies. I have thought it proper to quote at length these interesting passages, because they contain a luminous abridgment of the principal arguments in favor of the Union, and must effectually remove the false impressions which a misapplication of other parts of the work was calculated to make. They have, at the same time, an intimate connection with the more immediate design of this paper; which is, to illustrate the tendency of the Union to repress domestic faction and insurrection.
“It is very probable that mankind would have had to submit to being governed by a single person if it had not come up with an alternative that combined the advantages afforded by a republican system with those provided by a monarchy (with regard to focused external force). To be specific I refer to the system known as a CONFEDERATE REPUBLIC.
“This form of government allows a group of smaller states to pool their resources to form an association which is capable of providing sufficient power to ensure their common security.
“A republic of this kind, able to withstand an external force, may support itself without any internal corruptions. The form of this society is very practical.
“No single member should be able to exert sufficient force to overcome the rest. He would have to contend with the forces of the independent components of the confederacy. Those forces would not be content for him to remain in control of even a part of the association.
“Should a popular insurrection happen in one of the confederate states, the others would be able to suppress it. Should abuses creep into one part, they would be reformed by those that remain sound. The state may be destroyed on one side, and not on the other; the confederacy may be dissolved, and the individual republics still preserve their sovereignty.
“Because such a system is composed of individual republics, the governance of each ensures the maximum benefit for each. At the same time, the combination of force in their association provides for all the advantages of large monarchies.”
I quote these passages at some length because they provide a concise explanation of the principal arguments in favor of the Union. At the same time, the full context of Montesquieu’s arguments will dispel the false impressions that misapplication of earlier parts of the work was intended to make. Finally, they are particularly germane to the discussion in this paper, namely as an illustration of how Union will tend to repress domestic faction and insurrection.
A distinction, more subtle than accurate, has been raised between a confederacy and a consolidation of the States. The essential characteristic of the first is said to be, the restriction of its authority to the members in their collective capacities, without reaching to the individuals of whom they are composed. It is contended that the national council ought to have no concern with any object of internal administration. An exact equality of suffrage between the members has also been insisted upon as a leading feature of a confederate government. These positions are, in the main, arbitrary; they are supported neither by principle nor precedent. It has indeed happened, that governments of this kind have generally operated in the manner which the distinction taken notice of, supposes to be inherent in their nature; but there have been in most of them extensive exceptions to the practice, which serve to prove, as far as example will go, that there is no absolute rule on the subject. And it will be clearly shown in the course of this investigation that as far as the principle contended for has prevailed, it has been the cause of incurable disorder and imbecility in the government.
A distinction, more subtle than accurate, has been raised between a confederacy and a consolidation of the States. A confederacy is said to be restricted in authority to the members in their collective capacities, without affecting the governance of the individual members. It is contended that the national council ought to have no concern with any object of internal administration. Advocates of a confederacy insist upon an equal vote for each of the members. However, such ideas are at best arbitrary; they are supported neither by principle nor precedent. Although some confederacies have operated as indicated above, some have not. There are enough exceptions to this to say that there is no general rule. Furthermore, we will show in the course of this investigation that where the principle argued for has prevailed, it has caused incurable disorder and imbecility in the government.
The definition of a confederate republic seems simply to be “an assemblage of societies,” or an association of two or more states into one state. The extent, modifications, and objects of the federal authority are mere matters of discretion. So long as the separate organization of the members be not abolished; so long as it exists, by a constitutional necessity, for local purposes; though it should be in perfect subordination to the general authority of the union, it would still be, in fact and in theory, an association of states, or a confederacy. The proposed Constitution, so far from implying an abolition of the State governments, makes them constituent parts of the national sovereignty, by allowing them a direct representation in the Senate, and leaves in their possession certain exclusive and very important portions of sovereign power. This fully corresponds, in every rational import of the terms, with the idea of a federal government.
The definition of a confederate republic seems simply to be “an assemblage of societies,” or an association of two or more states into one state. The extent, modifications, and objects of the federal authority are mere matters of discretion. Apparently, all that is required for a confederacy is that the separate organizations of the members remain intact. It does not matter if it is entirely subordinate to the general authority of the union, because it would still be, in both fact and theory, an association of states, a confederacy. The proposed Constitution, far from implying the abolition of State governments, actually makes them constituent parts of the national sovereignty by providing them with direct representation in the Senate. It leaves in their possession certain exclusive and very important portions of sovereign power. This fully corresponds with any rational interpretation of the idea of a federal government.
In the Lycian confederacy, which consisted of twenty-three CITIES or republics, the largest were entitled to three votes in the COMMON COUNCIL, those of the middle class to two, and the smallest to one. The COMMON COUNCIL had the appointment of all the judges and magistrates of the respective CITIES. This was certainly the most, delicate species of interference in their internal administration; for if there be any thing that seems exclusively appropriated to the local jurisdictions, it is the appointment of their own officers. Yet Montesquieu, speaking of this association, says: “Were I to give a model of an excellent Confederate Republic, it would be that of Lycia.” Thus we perceive that the distinctions insisted upon were not within the contemplation of this enlightened civilian; and we shall be led to conclude, that they are the novel refinements of an erroneous theory.
The Lycian confederacy consisted of twenty-three CITIES or republics. The largest were entitled to three votes in the COMMON COUNCIL, those of the middle class to two, and the smallest to one. The COMMON COUNCIL had the appointment of all the judges and magistrates of the respective CITIES. This was an interesting choice, for if there is anything that would seem exclusively appropriate for local jurisdictions, it is the appointment of their own officers. Yet Montesquieu says of this, “Were I to give a model of an excellent Confederate Republic, it would be that of Lycia.” Thus we can see that Montesquieu did not make the distinctions insisted upon by critics. We must conclude that they are the novel refinements of an erroneous theory.
PUBLIUS
1.Spirit of Laws, Vol. I., Book IX., Chap. I.Their project, called Fract, was a first-person game about exploring a mysterious, empty neon world. That world was, in reality, a music synthesizer. Players were tasked with putting the device together, interacting with buttons and levers to coax some sense out of audio puzzles. Even with the game's incomplete state, players were hooked.
Richard Flanagan was 28 when he walked onstage to accept the award. He moved slowly and carefully up the stairs to the podium. He had never been around so many game developers in his life.
"Thank you to everyone here," he said, his voice cracking with nervous energy. He didn't mention that the presenter got his name wrong. "I took a bit of a chance. I decided that I wanted to go back to school. I wanted to learn about game design."
"I need to thank my family and friends that supported me — at this age, at this level of my career. This is just incredible. Thank you so much!"
In the audience that night were the teams behind Minecraft and Octodad, behind Nidhogg and Amnesia: The Dark Descent. This was Flanagan's moment of validation. These were his peers now, and their applause was for him.
And yet at that very moment there was someone in the audience whom he had just let down. Someone he inadvertently slighted. Someone who loved him and supported him more than anyone — his fiancée, Quynh Nguyen. He never thanked her in that speech.
"There was probably yelling," Flanagan remembers. "I think she — rightly — felt left out."
Later that night offstage, he told Nguyen that he would rather have never started working on the game than to have hurt her with his speech.
"I was willing to say, 'OK, let's go home. Let's do something else.... This isn't about me. This is about us.'" Tears well up as he recalls that evening, that long plane ride back home. It's not something he's comfortable talking about in detail, even today.
But in the end he couldn't bring himself to cancel the project. That day in San Francisco he realized that the game was as much Nguyen's as it was his. The reason the game existed in the first place was because their relationship existed. And in building one, they had helped build the other.The Tennessee Volunteers made a lot of headlines over the weekend after almost-hiring Ohio State DC Greg Schiano to replace Butch Jones before nixing that agreement under intense public pressure. Now their attention has turned to Mike Gundy, but the Vols have also reached out to NC State’s Dave Doeren, per Sports Illustrated’s Bruce Feldman.
I don’t find this development overly surprising under the circumstances—Doeren has been trending up, after all, and the Vols have missed on several targets already, and you know how it goes the longer down the list a school has to look...
Feldman’s source suggests that Doeren would be very much interested if UT gets serious, but it doesn’t sound like they’re near that point just yet. First Gundy will have to say no to the Vols, and then perhaps Purdue’s Jeff Brohm would have to do so as well. I guess we’ll see.
Wheeeeeeee the coaching carousel.With three levels of government involved and a dog’s breakfast of vested interests at play, no sane person should expect any official game plan to ease Vancouver’s housing affordability crisis.
Politicians are ducking and real estate interests are weaving, leaving hopeful buyers to their own devices.
It appears the jungle law of supply and demand will persist in the region until Canada’s currency strengthens — cooling the ardour of foreign buyers — or interest rates rise — cooling the ardour of domestic buyers.
Vancouverites are rightly concerned that the typical price of a detached home in the region has now reached $1.105 million, up more than 14 per cent in the past 12 months alone.
They are understandably dismayed by bidding wars further inflating home prices, in the recent case of one West Vancouver view property, by as much as $1 million over the asking price.
Things here are wild and — judging from my email inbox — people do not believe for a nanosecond that offshore buyers reflect no more than five per cent of the market, an assertion the B.C. Real Estate Association made in a recent report.
It is well worth noting the report failed to include landed immigrants or business-class investor immigrants as foreign buyers.
Politicians are aware of the public’s anxiety, and have levers at their disposal to assist certain categories of buyers and discourage others. But they are keeping 10-foot poles at hand, preferring not to mess with the market.
In any event, they would be unlikely to find common ground on the issue with the other levels of government that also have a hand in housing policy but a different ideology.
A right-leaning Prime Minister Stephen Harper is not greatly preoccupied by Vancouver’s affordability challenge. Commenting in March on hot markets in Toronto and Vancouver, the PM said: “We are watching it. We’re not planning to take any immediate action.”
Last month, a left-leaning Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson called for a tax on house flipping, which most observers agree is not a major cause of the escalating property prices, and on “luxury housing.”
(The top five per cent of Vancouver’s housing is valued at $3.4 million or higher.)
But B.C. Premier Christy Clark’s finance ministry quickly warned a luxury tax would hurt residential property sales and cost 3,800 construction and realty jobs.
The premier, in a potshot targeting Robertson, suggested Vancouver’s excessive development fees play a role in exacerbating price woes.
The governments involved have no interest in a co-ordinated approach. Otherwise, the politicians would have jointly mandated an independent body to gather facts and explore ways to calm the market.
Such a body also could analyze housing measures adopted in other globally attractive cities such as London, Singapore and Sydney.
In large part, the inaction is due to the fact the aforementioned parties do not want to kill the goose laying all the golden eggs. Or even ruffle her feathers.
Here’s why. More than 33,000 housing units in the region sold last year, with the total value of transactions reaching $27.3 billion. That’s equivalent to 50 per cent of the province’s entire budget spend this year.
All that activity generated $2.1 billion in economic spinoffs and an estimated 16,227 jobs, including 12,000 realtor jobs in Metro Vancouver.
Indeed, “offices of real estate agents and brokers” was cited recently by Statistics Canada as one of the 20 top growth industries in the province in 2014. The sector registered a 16.5-per-cent increase in output.
The province rakes in nearly $1 billion a year in property transfer payments.
Then there’s all that property tax collected by municipalities, based on assessed value.
Another consideration, as Clark points out, is the home equity Vancouver-area property owners have accumulated, equity they do not want diminished. Homeowners out-number the millennials trying to crack the market and they vote.
Politicians, lobbied by real estate interests, won’t act on this file unless forced by an enraged public.
byaffe@vancouversun.comAmongst friends I’ve been known to say, “electronic music is the new jazz.” They are friends, so they smile, scoff at the notion and then indulge me in the Socratic exercise I am begging for. They usually win. The onus after all is on me to prove electronic music worthy of such an accolade. I definitely hold my own; often getting them to acknowledge that there is potential, but it usually takes a die hard electronic fan to accept my claim. Admittedly the weakest link in my argument has been live performance. I can talk about redefinitions of structure, freedom of forms and timbral infinity for days, but measuring a laptop performance up to a Miles Davis set (even one of the ones where his back remained to the crowd) is a seemingly impossible hurdle.
Mind you, I come from a jazzist perspective, which means that I consider jazz the pinnacle of western music. My classicist interlocutors will naturally cite the numerous accomplishments of classical composers as being unmatched within jazz. That will bring us to long debates about the merits of Charles Mingus and Duke Ellington as a composers, which leads, for a good many, to a concession on the part of Duke at least, but an inevitable assertion of the general inferiority U.S. composers compared to the European canon. And then I will say “why are we limiting things to composition when jazz goes so much further than the page?” To which I will get the reply: “orchestral performers were of the highest caliber.” Then I will rebut, “well why was Europe so impressed by Sidney Bechet?” But I digress.
Why talk about classical music in a piece on electronic music, you, my current interlocutor, may ask? Well, in placing electronic music in a historical context, its current stage of development keeps pace with the mental cleverness found in classical but applies it to different theoretical principles. The electronic musician’s DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) file amounts to the classical composer’s score; the electronic musician’s DSP (Digital Signal Processor) parallels the classical composer’s orchestra. I could call electronic music “the new classical” and I’d have a few supporters. But...taking it to the level of jazz? Electronic music would have to include not only the mental cleverness, but the physical cleverness as well.
Let’s back up for a bit. A couple years back, I did a piece for Create Digital Music on Live Electronic performance. I talked to a diverse group of artists about their processes for live performance, and I wrote it up with some video examples. It ended up being one of the most discussed pieces on CDM that year, with commentary ranging from fascination at the presentation of techniques to dismissal of the videos as drug-addled email inbox management.
This was to be expected, because of the lack of a language for evaluating electronic music. It is impossible to defend an artist who has been called a hack without the language through which to express their proficiency. Using Miles Davis as an example–specifically a show where his back is to the audience–there are fans that could defend his actions by saying the music he produced was nonetheless some of the best live material of his career, citing the solos and band interactions as examples. To the lay person, however, it may just seem rude and unprofessional for Davis to have his back to the audience; as such, it cannot be qualitatively a good performance no matter what. Any discussion of tone and lyrical fluidity often means little to the lay person.
The extent of this disconnect can be even greater with electronic performances. With his back turned to the audience, they can no longer see Miles’ fingers at work, or how he was cycling breath. Even when facing the crowd, an electronic musician whose regimen is largely comprised of pad triggers, knob turns, and other such gestures which simply do not have the same expected sonic correspondence as, for example, blowing and fingering do to the sound of a trumpet. Also, it is well known that the sound the trumpet produces cannot be made without human action. With electronic music however, particularly with laptop performances, audiences know that the instrument (laptop) is capable of playing music without human aid other than telling it to play. The “checking their email” sentiment is a challenge to the notion that what one is seeing in a live electronic performance is indeed an “actual performance.”
In the time since writing the CDM piece, I’ve seen well over a hundred live sets, listened to days worth of live recordings, spoken in-depth with countless artists about their choices on stage, and gauged fan reactions many times over: from mind-blowing performances in barns to glorified electronic karaoke in sold-out venues, tempo locked beat matching to eight channel cassette tape loops, ten thousand dollar hardware to circuit bent baby toys. After all of that, I still don’t know that I can win the jazz vs. electronic music debate, but I will at least try.
*****
A while back, I was paging through the December 2011 edition of The Wire when I came upon a review of a Flying Lotus performance, the conclusion of which stood out:
On record, the music has the unruly liquidity of dream logic wandering from astral pathways down alphabet street, returning via back alleys on its own whims. Maybe the listening mind, presented with pretty straight analogues of those tracks, rebels, expecting something more mercurial, more improvised. The atmosphere in the venue reflected this upper-downer tension and constraint: the crowd noise was positive, but crowd movement was minimal – a strange sight in the midst of FlyLo’s headier jams. When the hall emptied there was a grumbling undercurrent as the tide of humanity was spilling slowly down the Roundhouse steps, whispers of it must have reached the upper levels. One casualty high above leaned over to berate them: “You don’t know, even understand, what you just FELT.” Sadly though, he didn’t stick around to enlighten anyone.
It should be noted that there are positive reviews of the show, and while not necessarily the best gauge, the videos from the event may seem to tell a different story.
What stood out for me from the review however, was that in trying to write about what the writer felt was a less than stellar performance, there was only one critique which could directly be attributed to the music, which was to say that Flying Lotus performed “straight analogues” of his tracks. Beyond that, the writer was left describing the feelings from the audience.
Feelings are tricky things. We all have them and they are the fundamental point of connection we seek when experiencing music. The message conveyed through the medium of music is meant to be an emotional one. But measuring those emotions is a task which cannot escape subjectivity. In a case like this when one writer is attempting to speak for the feelings of the whole audience, it becomes really tricky. Sure the writer may consider their analysis to have been objective, but it was still based on their perception of the audience, not the audience’s perception. Even more, this gauging of the audience dynamic does not tell us how the actual music performance was regardless of the varied perspectives from within the audience. I contend that this gap occurs because the language for discussing electronic performance has not yet been established.
Around the time I read The Wire review I was also reading Adam Harper’s Infinite Music, which offers variability as a primary factor of analysis in music. Instead of building on traditional music theory, Harper takes cues from those on the fringes of western music. He builds a concept of ‘music space’ by expanding John Cage’s “sound space,” the limits of which are ear determined. Furthermore, Harper’s non-musical variables and how they play into creating individually unique musical events, strengthens Christopher Small’s notion of musicking as a verb. In this way, Harper creates a fluid language for discussing music which might prove practical for these purposes.
It is helpful to use one of the central concepts of Harper’s music space, musical objects, as a means of distinguishing electronic performance.
Systems of variables constitute musical objects – Adam Harper
Going back to Miles Davis, his instrument is a monophonic musical object with a limited pitch and dynamic range in the upper register of the brass timbre. His musical talent is evaluated based on how he is able to work within those limitations to create variable experiences. His band represents another musical object comprised of the individual players as musical objects as well. The venue in which they are playing is a musical object, as is the audience and Davis’ decision to perform with his back to it. It is the coming together of all of these musical objects that creates the musical event (an alternate event includes the musical object which recorded the performance, and the complete setting of the listener as an individual musical objects upon playing the live recording). In a musical event comprised of these musical objects – Davis performing live in front of an audience with his back turned so he can face the band–it is possible to imagine a similar reaction to the above commentary about Flying Lotus, including a guy berating the audience for not making the connection.
In this Davis example however, we could listen to the audio to determine whether or not it was a “good” performance by analyzing the musical objects which can be observed in the recording (note: this would be technical analysis of the performance, not the event or its reception). Does Davis’s tone falter? How strong are the solos? Is he staying in the pocket with the rest of the band? Evaluation of these variables would be a testament to his proficiency which could be compared to other performances to determine if it measures up.
Flying Lotus’s set however is a bit different. Yes, we could listen back to the audio (or watch the video) and determine if indeed it measures up to other sets he has performed, but unlike with Davis, we cannot translate what we hear directly to his agency. When we hear the trumpet on the Davis recording we know that the sound is caused by him physically blowing into his instrument. When we hear a bass in a Flying Lotus set, there isn’t necessarily a physical act associated with the creation of the sound. With all of the visual cues removed in the Davis example, we can still speak about the performance aspect of the music; the same is not necessarily so about an electronic set, even with visual cues. In many electronic sets, it is only when something goes wrong that actual agency in the music being performed can be attributed.
Where the advent of the laptop and DSP advances for music have expanded creative possibilities, they only shroud what the performers using them are actually doing in more mystery. It’s an esoteric language, or perhaps languages, as ultimately each artist’s live rig configuration amounts to different musical objects, across which there may not be compatibilities.
However, in certain musical circles there are common musical objects. Perhaps the most common musical object for performance in electronic music right now is Ableton Live, which results in common component musical objects across performances by different artists. Further, an Ableton Live set can sound just like a Roland 404 set, which can sound just like a DJ set with a Kaoss pad, all of which can sound identical to a set not performed live but produced in the studio (or bedroom as the case may be) for a podcast. The reason for this is that much of the music is already fixed. What changes is the sequencing of these fixed pieces of music over time, their transitions and the variety of effects employed. The goal for these types of sets is a continuous flow of pre-arranged music, which parallels that of a DJ set.
In the past few years, the line between a live electronic set and a DJ set has been blurred extensively. Fans have become fairly critical of artists, to the point that it has become standard practice for promoters to list whether performances will be live or a DJ set. Even on the DJ end of the spectrum there’s a lot of questions, as artists have been called out for their DJ set being an iPod playlist. To qualify as a live set however, an artist must be doing more than just playing songs. How much more is debatable, but should it be?
Nobody in their right mind would call Miles Davis a hack. Even if they didn’t like specific performances, few would question his proficiency with the instrument. The reason for this is that his talent rises above the standard performance, beneath which someone could be qualified as a hack. If a trumpet player spent a whole night performing only shrill notes of a C major chord around middle C, without properly qualifying that their performance would be so constrained as a stylistic choice, one might consider calling that artist out as a hack (I apologize in advance to the serious musician that fits in this description).
The rationale behind this assessment is based on knowing the potential variability of the instrument and realizing that the performer is not exploring any of that variability. Perhaps there could be other layers of variability (e.g. an effects chain) added to the trumpet to make it interesting musically, but it can be objectively said that they don’t measure up to a standard quality of a trumpet player. If we say that the trumpet has an extensive dynamic range, a tonality which can go from smooth to harsh and a pitch range of just over three octaves, we can see how the player in our example is exhibiting quite a low proficiency.
This goes across all styles of trumpet playing. Were a style to impose limitations on a player, it could be said that the style did not allow for the full expression of proficiency on the instrument. A player within that style could be considered proficient in that context, but would require a broader performance to be analyzed for general proficiency. So the player in our example could be a master of “Shrill C” trumpet, but in order to compare with a Miles Davis they would have to perform out of style. Conversely, Miles Davis may be one of the world’s greatest trumpet players, but possibly the worst “Shrill C” trumpet player ever.
From this we can see that the language of variability provides a unique way to objectively speak on the performance of musical objects, while fully taking into account the way styles can play into performance. Using this language we open the world of electronic performance up for analysis and comparison.
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This is part one of a three part series. In my next installment, I will use some of the language here to analyze the instruments and techniques used in electronic performance today. Once we have a fluid language for describing what is being used, I believe we will be better equipped to speak about what happens on stage.
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Featured Image by Flickr User Scanner FM, Flying Lotus – Sónar 2012 – Jueves 14/05/2012
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Primus Luta is a husband and father of three. He is a writer and an artist exploring the intersection of technology and art, and their philosophical implications. He is a regular guest contributor to the Create Digital Music website, and maintains his own AvantUrb site. Luta is a regular presenter for the Rhythm Incursions Podcast series with his monthly showRIPL. As an artist, he is a founding member of the live electronic music collectiveConcrète Sound System, which spun off into a record label for the exploratory realms of sound in 2012.
Primus Luta will be playing “electronics” in a live jazz setting on Wed. May 1st. with Daniel Carter (Sun Ra, Matthew Shipp and others) at the Brecht Forum in NY. Facebook Event is here. And there’s a flyer here
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REWIND!...If you liked this post, you may also dig:
Experiments in Agent-based Sonic Composition–Andreas Pape
Evoking the Object: Physicality in the Digital Age of Music–-Primus Luta
Sound as Art as Anti-environment–Steven HammerStory highlights RaVal Davis: "Insecure" and "Girls Trip" call out institutional barriers that women face
Both films are evening out the playing field by putting more naked men on our screens, writes Davis
Editor\'s Note: RaVal Davis is an entertainment writer, actress, and advocate for body positivity. The opinions expressed in this commentary are her own.
(CNN) — With nearly all-black, female-led casts, both HBO's "Insecure" and feature film "Girls Trip" are clearly breaking all types of color and gender barriers. But it's what's happening behind the scenes that is changing the game on a more interesting frontier. Female writers like "Insecure's" Issa Rae and With nearly all-black, female-led casts, both HBO's "Insecure" and feature film "Girls Trip" are clearly breaking all types of color and gender barriers. But it's what's happening behind the scenes that is changing the game on a more interesting frontier. Female writers like "Insecure's" Issa Rae and Erica |
the decision as cars are designed to last 7 years compared to 3-4 years for electronics. It simply wasn’t viable, but the Surface team pushed and had its way, promising to find a way to innovate down the line to reduce the cost of using the technology over time.
The Endurance
Every Surface Pro 3 device is dropped from 10 feet onto a concrete floor before it gets packaged and shipped to customers. That’s a lie. If you’ve read this far, grab a cookie, you deserve it, and probably need it. But seriously, Microsoft sadistically tortured Surface Pro 3 prototypes in drop, tumble, temperature, humidity and other tests to ensure that the device remains functional even after a severe drop. The company even used cats as a measure to see if the kickstand would break when your feline overlord jumped on your Surface Pro 3.
The company used high-speed cameras to see how the device bends and wobbles during drops for example, then spends hours analyzing the videos and figuring out which areas of the enclosure needs reinforcing. Lots of torture, but it’s for science, and ultimately, customer satisfaction and peace of mind.
The Keyboard
One of the problems with increasing the screen size on the Surface Pro 3 was also having to increase the size of the Type Cover as well, since it doubles as a cover. A side effect is that now, the Surface Pro 3 takes up more space on the lap. This increases wobble and since it takes up more lap space, it makes the device prone to falling off people’s knees when sitting down. Microsoft solved this rather elegantly with magnets that attach to the base of the Surface.
Microsoft spent months on the design. 8 magnets get the job done and the company paid a lot of attention to getting the magnetic force just right. Just like the friction hinge, a good balance needed to be struck; the magnets had to be strong enough to stay in place, but weak enough to tear off without pulling a muscle. Also, Microsoft had to think about industry standards for magnetism. The company needed to ensure that the magnets did not affect other components in the Surface, as well other devices that user may have such as smartphones.
The Pen
Many questioned why Microsoft switched from using the battery-less, hence more convenient, Wacom pen technology in the Surface Pro 1 and 2 to using n-trig technology on the Surface Pro 3. The reasons are two-fold. The first is decreasing latency and accuracy, and the second is to add more functionality to the pen.
A battery helps achieve both those goals. Now that the pen has more power at its disposal, it can reduce response times, giving users a very natural writing experience, as well as add a button to launch OneNote, so that users can immediately start taking notes before the idea they had is lost.
The AAAA battery used also adds to the weight of the pen, which isn’t necessarily bad in this case as it gives the pen more of a substantial feel. Like a real high-end pen, it once again adds to the natural writing experience, almost as if users were taking down notes using a real notebook and pen.
As with every other aspect of the Surface Pro 3, a lot of thought went into designing the pen as you can see in the image above. An interesting part of Thuvara’s discussion was on the storage of the pen. Currently, the only way to store the pen is to use the Surface Pen Loop, which attaches to the Type Cover or the Surface itself. While the pen itself can be attached magnetically, it’s not reliable and can easily fall off. People questioned why the pen couldn’t be stored in a silo in the enclosure, just as is done on some Samsung devices. The reason is that Microsoft prioritized the writing experience over storage. If you look at the pens that can be stored in Samsung phablets and tablets, they’re miniscule, extremely thin, and come nowhere near what the Surface Pen offers in terms of the writing experience, so this is yet another compromise that Microsoft had to make. However, the company is fully invested in the pen, and will continue to find innovative ways to enhance the temporary storage solution with the Loop while somehow maintaining the excellent writing experience.
The Bonus
Thuvara also shared some information on the new Surface 3. He revealed that the device is primarily targeted at students, busy parents, and mobile, cost-aware professionals. He also gave us a look at what the device looks like on the inside, which you can see in the images above and below. The device is absolutely gorgeous, inside and out. A lot of the innovation from the Surface Pro 3 went into designing the Surface 3 as you can expect.
Looking towards the future, the Surface Pro 4 is on its way, and if rumors are true, the device will be more of an evolution of the Surface Pro 3 rather than a revolution, and here’s where the long-term cost effectiveness mentioned earlier comes into play, with the Surface 3 being the first sign of that. The Surface Pro 3 is a fantastic device already and may only need minor changes to perfect. Nonetheless, judging by the attention to detail the Surface team pays to the products they build, we expect whatever comes next to be just as fine-tuned. The bar has been set high, and there’s no dialing it back now.
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Further reading: DesignThe European Union should have its own military headquarters and Brexit talks should begin “as soon as possible”, the President of the European Commission has said, adding that the European Union is facing a battle for survival against nationalism in Europe.
Delivering a “State of the Union” speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, which sought to ease tensions and rally support for the EU, Jean-Claude Juncker warned the bloc is facing an “existential crisis”.
The speech has been heavily anticipated as the EU struggles with multiple crises, from the influx of refugees over the past year, multiple terror attacks and Britain’s shock June referendum to leave the EU.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
Mr Junker called for a joint command headquarters for EU military missions and greater defence cooperation, reviving long-running efforts to reduce reliance on the United States.
He said no single EU government had a military large enough to deal with security challenges facing Europe, from Islamic militants to a more hostile Russia and echo a plan put forward this week by France and Germany.
“We must have a European headquarters and so we should work towards a common military force,” Mr Juncker told the European Parliament, although officials stressed this did not amount to an EU army.
“This should be to complement NATO,” he said, also outlining proposals for a common defence fund.
EU integration cannot be left to the interests of individual member states alone, said Mr Juncker insisting that “too often national interests are brought to the fore” and the EU “still does not have enough Union”.
“A year ago I stated that the state of the European Union leaves much to be desired... It still applies,” Mr Juncker began. “The scope in which we cooperate together is far too small”.
“We want to construct. We want a better Europe. Europe is not going down the path of nationalisation, it can never become that type of national area, but there splits out there and often fragmentation exists where we need further effort from the union, and that is leaving room for galloping populism.”
“We can’t accept that because populism doesn’t solve problems. Populism creates problems, and we have to be aware of that and protect ourselves against it.”
Directly referring to Brexit, Mr Juncker sought to quell fears that the EU was in turmoil.
“Many are wondering whether Brexit is the beginning of the disintegration process of the EU,” he said.
“Allow me to state, we respect and at the same time regret the UK’s decision, but the EU as such is not at risk.”
Mr Juncker also repeated previous assertions made by several EU leaders that Britain “could not have a la carte access” to the benefits of the EU after Brexit, and that the UK should trigger Article 50 “as quickly as possible”.
In a further reference to the UK, Mr Juncker condemned recent incidents of hate crime in the country, which have surged in the wake of Brexit.
“Europe can never accept Polish workers being harassed, beaten up or even murdered in the streets of Essex,” he said, referring to the recent attack on a Polish man in Harlow and receiving applause from the chamber.
He was setting out the Commission’s plans for the first time since the UK voted to exit the EU.
Mr Juncker also touched on the refugee crisis in Europe, saying he aims to create a “European solidarity corps” to respond to emergency situations like the refugee crisis.
“By 2020, I want to see 100,000 Europeans taking part,” he said.
He added that accepting refugees “must be voluntary, it must come from the heart, it cannot be imposed”, in what has been perceived as an allowance to countries like Hungary, which is due to hold a referendum to reject refugee quotas in October.
In a series of cutting remarks towards Apple, which is embroiled in a bitter row with the EU after it called on the tech company to pay £11bn taxed to Ireland, Mr Junker said: "A fair playing field... means consumers protected from abuse by powerful companies – no matter how big or small, must pay its taxes when it makes its profits.
“I promised you I would fight tax evasion and many of you did not believe me... but this Commission is fighting tax evasion.
“We have to get to work. The next 12 months are the crucial time to deliver a better Europe.”
Mr Juncker was expected to announce a major extension to the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), as well as a new fund to foster the private sector in Africa as way of curbing emigration to Europe, along with initiatives to promote the expansion of high-speed Internet and a single market in digital services, EU officials said.
He was also expected to argue for the benefits of the Union as a mechanism for maintaining peace and evening out economic hardships, stressing a positive agenda to try and reconnect with voters disillusioned by years of austerity and fearful of terrorist violence and mass immigration.
But the Juncker address was expected to offer few clues to the negotiations with London that the EU insists cannot start until Prime Minister Theresa May formally sets starts a two-year countdown to British departure. A summit of the 27 EU leaders in Bratislava on Friday is also unlikely to shed much light on the Brexit issue.
Additional reporting by other agencies
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Subscribe nowInterview: Chris Rishel
By Nicholas Wright |
We at RARB have been intrigued by Chris Rishel's unique approach to arranging since we reviewed I Used to Live Alone, the breakout 2011 album from UChicago's Voices in Your Head. The album was a breakout for Rishel as well; in addition to arranging the entire album, he also contributed music for three original songs. Rishel's arrangements have since garnered numerous awards, including Outstanding Arrangement at back-to-back midwest ICCA quarterfinals in 2011 and 2012 and back-to-back CARAs in 2012 and 2013 for Best Mixed Collegiate Arrangement. So we were understandably excited when he recently agreed to share the specifics of his technical and creativity approaches with us.
RARB: I understand that part of your early musical development involved barbershop singing. Can you elaborate on how barbershop has influenced your arranging style?
Chris Rishel: I gained a lot from my early exposure to barbershop, but I’d say the most important aspect was an appreciation for the awesomeness of a well-tuned ringing chord. Beyond that, singing and analyzing great barbershop arrangements also helped me develop good instincts regarding the unique features of a vocal ensemble as a polyphonic instrument (every musical instrument has a distinct timbre which lends itself to specific applications). For example, certain chords played on the piano sound nicely balanced and clear, but when sung, are muddy and incongruous (e.g. many low-voiced 3rds, particularly in close voicing).
Additionally, good barbershop also does a wonderful job of creating an emotional arc, particularly using dynamics and range to great effect. However, a criticism of the barbershop style is that its technically constrained framework limits song selection and the arranging approach in many ways, and ultimately, doesn’t use the incredible flexibility of the human voice to its full potential. Interestingly enough, I think learning many of the arranging techniques of how such moving music could still be created so effectively given the restrictive rules gave me a great foundation. When I moved to the less restricted world of modern a cappella, basically anything I could think of could be tried, if not done.
RARB: Will you ever return to barbershop?
CR: I will almost certainly return to barbershop at some point, since I really love singing it (to the point that I shelled out the cost of a lifetime membership to the Barbershop Harmony Society), though I think I would find it pretty challenging to arrange well within that framework now that the I’ve become accustomed to working without restrictions.
RARB: Any suggestions of barbershop arrangers to study?
CR: If you’re interested in some examples of great barbershop arranging, check out the work of David Wright and Aaron Dale, which you can hear on the recordings of pretty much every champion quartet over the last 20 years (in particular, Vocal Spectrum, The Gas House Gang, and Ringmasters).
RARB: So much of a cappella arranging is based on transcription. Do you have any advice for arrangers that are looking to develop their arranging?
CR: Transcription is a very powerful skill that every aspiring composer or arranger should seek to master. Although it can be time consuming and frustrating to develop, in the long term, it will reap benefits far beyond the ability to just write down everything that is happening in the music. With practice, it will become more effortless and instantaneous, which allows more brain power to be devoted to actually understanding what is happening conceptually and why. This helps arrangers take the great parts of the original, leave the not-so-great parts behind, and also retain some free brain power for new ideas to make their arrangements even more effective.
Although a fairly obvious way to make an arrangement stand out is to significantly reinterpret the original song, this is easier said than done and doesn’t always make sense (if the original song is awesome, you might want your arrangement to try and recreate the same experience vocally). To make a transcriptive approach more successful, I think it’s important to have a solid understanding of your target audience and performance context, and how they may differ from the intent and audience of the original song.
RARB: Can you give us an example?
CR: One pretty common way that a largely transcriptive arrangement can fall short is when the goals of the original song and those of the cover arrangement don’t quite line up. Consider pretty much any recent uptempo Top 40 hit. Those songs are designed for loud dance clubs, standing-room only concerts, morning commutes, background noise while working, etc. They are fun and effective in pretty much all of these contexts because they don’t require their audiences’ full attention, and maintain their energy with a relatively constant, loud, in-your-face pounding thump-thump-thump. In contrast, consider a typical collegiate a cappella show, where everyone sits in their seats and (more or less) politely gives their undivided attention to the moderately-amplified group on stage. In many ways, this much more closely resembles the audience of a symphony orchestra than a Kesha show. Thus, even a perfectly accurate transcriptive arrangement of the relatively repetitive We R Who We R in this context will likely come off as stagnant, as it’s very difficult for the group to maintain such a manic energy level in that context. This problem is compounded by any number of other potential yet common issues: a sound system that is ineffective at really achieving the necessary thump-thump and/or wub-wub, poor selection of background textures (i.e. syllables), using parts from the original that don’t translate well to the voice, even the lack of powerful visual stimulation, etc. A fairly easy way to spice up an arrangement for a song like this is to use your musical toolbox of dynamics, range, tone, density, etc. with some new ideas sprinkled in to create contrast, develop the arc that many of the originals lack, and highlight and enhance the “moments” of the song (which when set up and done properly, make the audience cheer and are extremely memorable).
One other piece of advice I would offer is to always write for the strengths and weaknesses of the singers you actually have. Specifically, consider each person’s range, tone, expressiveness, tuning, textural skills, etc., along with any other unique abilities he or she may have. For example, although my arrangements for Voices in Your Head are nominally written for SATB, the arrangements actually consist of about 8-10 parts, each written with one or two specific people in mind.
RARB: Several of your original compositions, including Boomerang, Life of the Mind, and Sharp have seen enormous success in the a cappella community. Do you believe that we should place a greater emphasis on the creation of original music?
CR: I think first and foremost, groups should make the music they want to create. While I do agree with the notion that creating original music is important for the genre of a cappella to be taken seriously, I don’t think that every group has a moral imperative to do so. Additionally, being such a cover heavy genre makes a cappella more accessible (both to the singers and the audience), which is a good thing that gets to the heart of who we are as a community. Given that a significant percentage of people in a cappella are amateurs (myself included), for most newcomers, it is often easier to more or less transcribe an existing popular song than it is to write and arrange a brand new song. That said, I think a good deal of emphasis is already placed on original music within the core of the a cappella community, so if a group decides to take that step and does a decent job, they will likely be well-received by critics, compilations, awards, etc. One other thing to consider is that, while composing and arranging certainly have technical and legal distinctions, a re-envisioned cover that perfectly fits the group that sings it can make the song seem as though it was always written for voices, and can feel just as original as an original song.
RARB: Would you mind elaborating on your process of arranging music into "vocal scenes"?
CR: When I decide to arrange a song, one of the first things I determine is, in a big picture sense, what am I trying to create—in fact often times, I know what I want to create before I find the right song with which to apply the idea. Do I want to totally reinvent a song (and if so, how), or do I want to basically vocally recreate and enhance a song using roughly the same reasons a song works in its original form? Am I going to try to tell a different story than the original interpretation of the lyrics, or even create an overarching story between several unrelated songs (i.e. a slightly more purposeful medley and/or mashup).
Once I have that figured out, my next steps can vary. If I’m going for an arrangement that is fairly true to the original, I’ll probably spend most of my time at the piano learning to play the song and singing along. Once I know it moderately well, I loosen up how much I’m thinking about what I’m playing, which inevitably leads to “variations”. I put that in quotes because although sometimes I’ll deliberately substitute a different chord/bass line/rhythm/counter-melody/etc, just as often, I’ll accidentally make a mistake which turns out to inspire an idea for something even cooler that I can then deliberately pursue. I then end up writing much of what I’m playing into voice parts directly (although sometimes this can get a bit tricky since the arrangement can end up with more layers than I have fingers and/or piano skills). In this scenario, I tend to know many of the details of the song's original arrangement very early.
However, if I decide I’m going to get especially creative, often I’ll learn the song just well enough to mostly know the melody and the lyrics, and then I take a step back. From there, I work on developing a conceptual map of the arrangement, focusing on the arc and the moments. When I start to get some clear and specific ideas, I’ll write them on a blank piece of paper or a print-out of the lyrics (usually just a couple of sentence fragments for each section of the song). Also, in contrast to working at a piano, I try to hear most of the ideas in my head and sing them to myself, since I find this better allows me to take advantage of the unique abilities of the voice and frees me from having to worry about technical constraints (e.g. too many parts or too wide of chord voicings to be able to play well). Interestingly enough, I’ve found that for me, the most productive place for this approach is in the shower—I tape pieces of paper to the walls so that I can quickly jot down ideas without taking me out of the zone. Once I have the basic map figured out for the whole arrangement, then I head to the piano to work out the details before putting the arrangement into Sibelius.
Here's a scan of the map I created for We Found Love after the first shower I spent thinking about it. If you’re familiar with that arrangement, you can see how many of the mapped ideas manifested in the final version, while other ideas hadn’t yet been fleshed out or ended up changing pretty significantly (please excuse the terrible handwriting and water damage).
As far as how I then create “vocal scenes,” sometimes I have a very specific image or feeling that I want the listener to experience. I close my eyes, let my mind create a soundscape to match the the visuals and feelings of what I imagine, and often latch on to a particular lyric of the song. In the example of We Found Love, I really wanted to create an intimate setting for the arrangement under the “yellow diamonds in the light,” which I interpreted to be like stars. In the very beginning of the arrangement, I imagined a firework being launched into an empty sky, exploding into thousands of sparkling yellow stars.
That said, in reality, almost every arrangement has some combination of these two approaches.
RARB: Post-Voices in Your Head, what does the a cappella future hold for you?
CR: Unfortunately, as I wrap up my 3rd year of medical school and prepare for residency in anaesthesiology, I have much less time to devote to a cappella. However, I am still arranging for Voices in Your Head behind the scenes and will hopefully be recording and editing some new material for them to release soon. I am also looking to put together some recorded-only collaborations to keep arranging, composing, and producing recorded tracks (I love the potential for nuance and finesse offered by the recorded medium). Even if I am somewhat absent for a couple of years, you can be sure I’ll be back soon.
Chris Rishel's arrangements and much more are available at www.chrisrishel.com.Title: A Second Case of Outbursts in a Pulsating White Dwarf Observed by Kepler
A Second Case of Outbursts in a Pulsating White Dwarf Observed by Kepler Authors: J. J. Hermes, M. H. Montgomery, Keaton J. Bell, P. Chote, B. T. Gänsicke, Steven D. Kawaler, J. C. Clemens, B. H. Dunlap, D. E. Winget, and D. J. Armstrong
J. J. Hermes, M. H. Montgomery, Keaton J. Bell, P. Chote, B. T. Gänsicke, Steven D. Kawaler, J. C. Clemens, B. H. Dunlap, D. E. Winget, and D. J. Armstrong First Author’s Institution: Department of Physics, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
Department of Physics, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK Paper Status: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters
When most stars look to their future, they see a white dwarf. These stellar remnants are hot, dense, and littered throughout the Galaxy; they pack the mass of a Sun into something the size of Earth; yet for all their extremes, white dwarfs appear faint and generally behave predictably. They sit there and slowly cool for eons.
Maybe we just weren’t looking hard enough.
The authors of today’s paper used the extended Kepler mission (K2) to stare at one of the brightest hydrogen-atmosphere variable white dwarfs, PG 1149+057, for about 80 days. They expected to find small changes in brightness due to buoyancy waves inside the star that they could study with asteroseismology.
K2 revealed that PG 1149+057 does pulsate as expected… but it also experiences very bright outbursts! The top panel of the figure below shows brightness as a function of time, with outbursts colored green. The bottom panel shows how the pulsation spectrum differs when an outburst is occurring (green) or not (black).
Real or fluke?
Before getting too excited, it is important to verify an unexpected discovery like this by asking key questions: Is there any precedent for an object to behave this way? Is it physically realistic? Could the outbursts be due to some other contaminating source, or are they definitely coming from the white dwarf?
PG 1149+057 is the second pulsating white dwarf to show outbursts. The first was discovered during the original Kepler mission, and is very similar in composition and temperature. This is good news, because without a second example of some strange new phenomenon, an observer can never be sure if they have found a weird fluke or made a real discovery.
Next, the authors verify that the outbursts can’t be coming from something else (like instrumental noise, a background star, or even a foreground solar system object). The fact that pulsations are stronger during outbursts supports this, because if they were coming from another bright object that only occasionally appeared, the white dwarf pulsations would look relatively weaker during outburst due to more total light.
Finally, the authors examine how the outbursts affect the pulsations in a little more detail. The figure below zooms into a single outburst event, and examines the pulsation spectrum before, during, and after that outburst. Pulsation amplitudes immediately after the outburst are lower than those before the outburst. This hints at some kind of critical avalanche-like process: the energy of a pulsation mode grows until it reaches some threshold, rapidly transfers energy to several other resonant modes, and those modes are then quickly damped by convective turbulence.
More questions than answers
While the authors leave a more detailed analysis for future work, there is no doubt this is an exciting discovery. Future K2 observations will likely find more of these objects now that we know to look for them. Compelling questions abound: why do other well-studied white dwarfs not show outbursts? What physical mechanism triggers an outburst? Do outbursts eventually suppress pulsations altogether as white dwarfs cool?
Stay tuned, and in the meantime, let’s keep pointing telescopes at new things.I decided some time ago that the term ‘anti-Semitism’ – a ‘coined’ term of late 19th Century origin – is completely inadequate for the abhorrent cultural phenomenon which it attempts to describe. For one thing, Arabs are Semites as well and the prejudice as it is generally understood certainly doesn’t apply equally to Arabs and Jews.It was in the early stages of researching this graphic narrative that I first encountered the German term ‘Judenhass’.Literally ‘Jew hatred’. It seemed to me that the term served to distil the ancient problem to its essence, and in such a way as to hopefully allow other non-Jews (like myself) to see the problem‘unlaundered’ and through fresh eyes. Europe and various other jurisdictions aren’t experiencing a sudden upsurge in ‘anti-Semitism’. What they are experiencing is an upsurge in Judenhass.So that’s what I’ve chosen to call this storyA handful of artworks Warhol completed before his death in 1987, like his "Reversal" series and "Hammer and Sickle," will be on display at Skarstedt, starting September 19. View Full Caption Andy Warhol
UPPER EAST SIDE — Iconic and eye-popping artwork from Andy Warhol's later years, like "Skulls," "Hammer and Sickle" and his "Reversals" series, will be on display at the Skarstedt art gallery, less than a mile from the artist's former home on Lexington Avenue this fall.
Warhol gained much notoriety for his eye-popping paintings, like "100 Cans" featuring repeated Campbell's soup cans and his reimagining of Marilyn Monroe's portrait titled "Marilyn."
But what came after those iconic pieces, are seen as masterfully executed, according to the Skarstedt gallery.
Using the themes and processes Warhol explored throughout his career, the paintings "represent a critical transition for the artist, embracing his past while simultaneously looking toward the future and establishing his lasting legacy," the gallery said in a statement.
During the late 1970s and through the 1980s, he not only used the same processes he became known for in the 1960s, but began using different techniques to create his abstract work, like using his fingers to make the swirls in his "Ladies and Gentlemen" paintings, according to Skarstedt.
"Andy Warhol: Late Paintings" will feature 10 large-scale paintings, created between 1974 though 1987, with strong images like the hammer and sickle, knives, dollar signs and reversals of Marilyn Monroe's face.
Warhol owned a townhome at 1342 Lexington Ave. for roughly 15 years, starting roughly in 1959, according to reports.
The paintings will be on display Sept. 19 through Oct. 31 at the gallery's Upper East Side location at 20 E. 79th. The opening reception will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. on Sept. 19.
Skarstedt primarily features works from artists in the late 20th century who explored identity and sexual politics among other concepts across a wide-range of media.When it comes to line-iteming Attention Deficit’s $266 billion impact, little things add up.
Traveling to my parents’ last Christmas, I left my liquid sack at the TSA checkpoint and had to spend $80 buying new makeup. It cost $27 for TSA to FedEx me my laptop, which I also managed to forget. Here at home, I recently spent $35 on a new pair of iPhone earbuds after stepping on mine and breaking them.
Despite the evidence, I’m not a careless person. Nor am I a spendthrift. By and large, I watch my money closely — I order water in a restaurant, reuse the wrapping paper from gifts, and shop the sales rack first.
But because I have Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), I am often hit with hidden costs.
My spending is something I can focus on and change — but I’ll never be able to change the fact that I have ADHD. A neurological condition, Attention Deficit is present from birth. When you have it, your brain doesn’t make as much dopamine and norepinephrine — both neurotransmitters — as everyone else’s. In general, neurotransmitters are the grease that help the wheels of the brain go round; these two help you focus.
Note I didn’t say “help you pay attention.” Despite the name, people with ADHD have no problem paying attention. In fact, we pay attention to everything — to what we’re doing, to what you’re doing, to what everyone is doing — making it difficult to focus only on the job directly before us.
Meanwhile, medicine doesn’t come cheap — and because it’s a controlled substance, the government requires we see a physician anywhere from once a month to once a quarter, depending on the state, for rediagnosis. Every visit, I will spend at least $215 that insurance does not cover so my doctor can say yep, you still have Attention Deficit, plus $800 on the medicine he prescribes, which of course also isn’t covered by any insurance plan I’ve seen. Every year, I and other ADHDers will spend up to $35.05 billion more on medical costs than people without it.
And that’s just for adults. Parents of ADHD children pay another $38 to $72 billion, largely on medical and education fees.
All told, Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD), a national nonprofit that works to improve the lives of people with ADHD, estimates that excess costs related to ADHD total $143 billion to $266 billion a year.
Excess costs of ADHD total $143 billion to $266 billion a year.
It’s not just that we spend more — we also make less. A Canadian study revealed that 37% of women with ADHD have annual salaries so low, it’s difficult “meeting basic expenses such as food, shelter and clothing,” compared to 13% of women without it. American ADHD adults make $2 less an hour on average. And, since we’re less able to concentrate on single, isolated tasks, Americans with Attention Deficit are two to four times more likely to get fired.
Perhaps this is why 42–53% of families below the poverty line have at least one member with ADHD — as opposed to only 33% percent of wealthier families.
Is ADHD a poverty trap? It’s difficult to delineate the level to which ADHD’s cost prohibits people from investing that money or from spending it on things that improve income, like education. Attention Deficit is hereditary and, according to Pew Charitable Trust, 70% of Americans born in poverty — ADHD or not — stay there. Without precise data, it’s difficult to point to a single microindicator inside a macroproblem.
As a lone individual, I of course can’t solve poverty, nor can I convince an insurance company to cover my medication, or bring down the multi-billion-dollar figure for us all. But I can bring my costs down.
And so, after paying to have my laptop shipped back to me, I decided to create a Quicken category to line-item my ADHD — just like a lot of people do for clothing and groceries. I don’t know anyone else who separates their expenses this way, who divides what would and wouldn’t have been spent if they didn’t have Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.
I line-item my expenses not to guilt myself into realizing how much Attention Deficit makes me spend — but rather to be cognizant of my full cost of living with ADHD.Previous randomized, placebo-controlled trials (RCTs) assessing the efficacy of the selective γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA)-B receptor agonist baclofen in the treatment of alcohol dependence have reported divergent results, possibly related to the low to medium dosages of baclofen used in these studies (30–80 mg/d). Based on preclinical observations of a dose-dependent effect and positive case reports in alcohol-dependent patients, the present RCT aimed to assess the efficacy and safety of individually titrated high-dose baclofen for the treatment of alcohol dependence. Out of 93 alcohol-dependent patients initially screened, 56 were randomly assigned to a double-blind treatment with individually titrated baclofen or placebo using dosages of 30–270 mg/d. The multiple primary outcome measures were (1) total abstinence and (2) cumulative abstinence duration during a 12-week high-dose phase. More patients of the baclofen group maintained total abstinence during the high-dose phase than those receiving placebo (15/22, 68.2% vs. 5/21, 23.8%, p=0.014). Cumulative abstinence duration was significantly higher in patients given baclofen compared to patients of the placebo group (mean 67.8 (SD 30) vs. 51.8 (SD 29.6) days, p=0.047). No drug-related serious adverse events were observed during the trial. Individually titrated high-dose baclofen effectively supported alcohol-dependent patients in maintaining alcohol abstinence and showed a high tolerability, even in the event of relapse. These results provide further evidence for the potential of baclofen, thereby possibly extending the current pharmacological treatment options in alcohol dependence.The new version (2.4) is now uploaded!
Q3D V-2.4
a 3D plugin suite for Construct 2 powered by three.js
Includes a total of 8 different plugins+ 3 behaviors for a huge variety of tasks from : Rendering, Models, 3D Collisions, 3D Sprites, Viewports, Raycasters, Lights, 3D Physics, Shaders, Morph Animation, Skeletal Animation, and tons of features for 3D game development in C2 for the web geared specifically to WebGL for great performance! Buy now and get future updates completely free! This plugin suite has hundreds upon hundreds of actions/conditions/expressions and properties available to developers, it's unprecedented for C2.
Buy / Download
Q3D allows you to create entire 3D games, or supplement existing 2D games with 3D backgrounds or overlays. All programming is done in the Construct 2 event sheet, simplifying the task of 3D game development greatly compared to traditional three.js development.
Check out the TINY TANK demo for an idea of what's possible with the Q3D plugins!
Tiny Tank Feature Demo
Check out some other demos of whats possible:
2D physics in 3D
Simple FPS controls
(Uses TiAm's mouselock plugin. Head model of LeePerrySmith available under CC license courtesty of triplegangers.com)
Morph animation demo
(Uses converted Quake 2 assets, move around with wasd and orient 3rd person camera with mouse. Made using physics behavior for movement)
Mobile Morph Demo
Morph animation demo optimized for newer touch devices (run smoothly in chrome on nexus 5)
Examples:
These are commented examples.capx files for those who have purchased the plugin, it is recommended users view them in the order they are placed |
ite models we see today? Let me know in the comments.
And for anyone interested, recently a book was published all about the rackets that have been used in Grand Slam Finals, it goes into far more depth than this post, includes pictures of each racket and also details about the specific models. It's entitled LES RAQUETTES DE LÉGENDE.What does the Rx stand for on prescriptions? How many muscles are used to take a single step forward? Will the average person have more heartbeats or breaths in their lifetime? Did you nail the answers to these? Want to try a few more?
Gather friends, co-workers, significant others, your really smart dog, and any other trivia fanatics for Burgers, Brews, and Brainteasers to benefit Swope Health Services! Test your trivia skills while dining on KC's finest burgers and helping out an amazing organization that is keeping Kansas City healthy!
All proceeds benefit our Patients in Need Fund which assist with the costs associated with vital medication, eyeglasses, and other services. We have several raffle prizes: Royals tickets, gift cards, cash, beer fest tickets, and more! We are joined by Kansas City's top trivia master Nate Herron.
Tickets include all you can eat burger bar, drink specials, and admission to the trivia game.A backer of Star Citizen [official site] has successfully received a refund of $2550 from Cloud Imperium Games after bringing his complaints about the company to the L.A. Attorney General and consumer watchdogs, including the Federal Trade Commission. He went on to publicly post his correspondence with all the people involved, so everyone can see how laborious the process was.
The backer, known as ‘Streetroller’, has put the back and forth on the SomethingAwful forums. It’s a lengthy enough correspondence, so we’ll break it down for you.
He first made a refund request directly to the developers. “The product remains unfulfilled and no longer constitutes the product(s) I originally purchased,” he writes. But Cloud Imperium Games sent him a lengthy rejection, saying: “We are not able to accommodate your request for a refund.”
“You made your pledge to the crowd funding campaign to raise funds for the development of ‘Star Citizen’. When you contributed your pledge it was applied to the building of the game and the team and resources needed to make it happen.” “It would not be appropriate to use our current backers’ development pledges to refund an earlier pledge which has already been used for Game Cost. Put simply, “takebacks” are not in the spirit of crowdfunding.”
After asserting his refund request should be honoured he received another curt rejection. Finally, he sent letters to the Attorney General of Los Angeles, the Federal Trade Commission and the LA Department of Consumer and Business Affairs, telling them about the dispute. Within a week he received the first part of his refund of $900 from Amazon Payments. Soon after he got the rest of the money ($1650) through Paypal.
It’s worth reading the whole thing if you are a huge nerd for legalities and consumer rights. But basically at the heart of it all is the fact that Star Citizen recently changed its terms of service. Previously, these had said that backers would be entitled to a refund if Roberts Space Industries “has failed to deliver the relevant pledge items” after eighteen months had passed from the release date (see that archived here, under the heading ‘VII. Fundraising and Pledges’). Star Citizen’s initial release date was November 2014. This means that by now any backer who pledged under these original terms is entitled to a refund (people like Streetroller). But the developers still dispute this. Even as they finally accepted the request, they said that the backer was not legally entitled.
“Nonetheless, having reviewed complainants interactions with our customer service agents, we have determined that it is also in our interests to terminate his participation in our fundraising community. We are therefore agreeing to close complainant’s account permanently and we will issue a refund of his pledge promptly.”
Basically: we are just doing this as a gesture of good will, not because we have to.
Whether this will set any kind of precedent or cause more people to demand refunds we can’t yet be sure. Where do you stand? Is this a victory for consumers against companies who hold millions of dollars? Or does it simply set the scene for an exodus of disenfranchised consumer-investors?JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - News4Jax reporter Scott Johnson finally reunited Thursday with the Jacksonville Jaguars fan who appeared in a WJXT interview that went viral, spreading the phrase "steal the show."
After a five-month long search, Johnson was able to track down Roberta Anne Montgomery and find out more about the woman who sparked #stealtheshow after tips flooded into the newsroom.
Johnson's goal was to find Montgomery before the start of the season Sunday and, finally, one tip led him straight to her.
"Roberta! I have been looking for you for awhile. Do you remember me?" Johnson said. "You've been on the news all week."
"I've been good at that all my life, but never at this magnitude," Montgomery said.
Montgomery then told News4Jax a little bit more about herself.
"I guess I'm more of an entertainer. I've come from a family that's been pretty publicly, or socially, active. So I guess that's where I get my mouth from," Montgomery said. "I'm just trying to keep a low profile."
"Well, you haven't been doing a good job of keeping a low profile," Johnson told her.
"Well, I want to do something with it. If there's something I could do, let me know Jacksonville. I'm proud of Jacksonville," Montgomery said.
Montgomery said she wasn't too impressed that she coined the iconic catchphrase "steal the show."
"Well, yes. No. It's just a normal thing, something I would say and you caught it," Montgomery said.
Johnson then inquired more into her beach house in Miami that was actually "a few minutes" from the beach.
"I've lived in several places in South Florida, but I don't own it anymore," Montgomery said.
Montgomery said she's been a Jacksonville sports fan for awhile and has lived in the city for most of her life. She said she was also a big fan of the Jacksonville Bulls, the old USFL football team, and the Tea Men, the old soccer team, both of which pre-dated the Jaguars.
"What do you think of the Jaguars this year?" Johnson asked.
"I think they're going to do well," Montgomery said. "I love them."
The story began back in May when Johnson was walking through downtown Jacksonville near the Landing, looking for people to interview about a report that said the Jaguars had gotten the best NFL draft picks.
Montgomery was sitting near the pavilion and called out to Scott that she had some thoughts and would like to speak about it.
Johnson walked over to Montgomery and asked if she had been surprised to hear the Jaguars reportedly got the best draft picks.
WATCH: Jaguars fan'steals the show' in interview
"Certainly not," Montgomery said. "The first year, we took it to the limit. And I was in Miami with my new beach house. Well, it was a couple minutes from the beach."
"It's been 20 years since then. We haven't been too strong in the last few years," Johnson told her.
"Oh we've been strong. We're just playing by the rules. You can't have a newcomer come in and steal the show," Montgomery said.
After Montgomery and Scott's reunion came to an end Thursday, they hugged and a took a selfie together.
Local Jaguars fan speaks out about the Jaguars draft picks. Do you think the Jaguars will #StealTheShow this year? 🏈 pic.twitter.com/dCtVdyJeww — News4JAX (@wjxt4) May 2, 2016
Copyright 2016 by WJXT News4Jax - All rights reserved.I recently wrote an op-ed piece for the Guardian in which I suggested that there is too much of an emphasis on ‘infotainment’ in contemporary science journalism and there is too little critical science journalism. The response to the article was unexpectedly strong, provoking some hostile comments on Twitter, and some of the most angry comments seem to indicate a misunderstanding of the core message.
One of the themes that emerged in response to the article was the Us-vs.-Them perception that “scientists” were attacking “journalists”. This was surprising because as a science blogger, I assumed that I, too, was a science journalist. My definitions of scientist and journalist tend to be rather broad and inclusive. I think of scientists with a special interest and expertise in communicating science to a broad readership as science journalists. I also consider journalists with a significant interest and expertise in science as scientists. My inclusive definitions of scientists and journalists have been in part influenced by an article written by Bora Zivkovic, an outstanding science journalist and scientist and the person who inspired me to become a science blogger. As Bora Zivokovic reminds us, scientists and journalists have a lot in common: They are supposed to be critical and skeptical, they obtain and analyze data and they communicate their findings to an audience after carefully evaluating their data. However, it is apparent that some scientists and journalists are protective of their respective domains. Some scientists may not accept science journalists as fellow scientists unless they are part of an active science laboratory. Conversely, some journalists may not accept scientists as fellow journalists unless their primary employer is a media organization. For the purpose of this discussion, I will try to therefore use the more generic term “science writing” instead of “science journalism”.
Are infotainment science writing and critical science writing opposites? This was one of the major questions that arose in the Twitter discussion. The schematic below illustrates infotainment and critical science writing.
Although this schematic of a triangle might seem oversimplified, it is a tool that I use to help me in my own science writing. “Critical science writing” (base of the triangle) tends to provide information and critical analysis of scientific research to the readers. Infotainment science writing minimizes the critical analysis of the research and instead focuses on presenting content about scientific research in an entertaining style. Scientific satire as a combination of entertainment and critical analysis was not discussed in the Guardian article, but I think that this too is a form of science writing that should be encouraged.
Articles or blog-posts can fall anywhere within this triangle, which is why infotainment and critical science writing are not true dichotomies, they just have distinct emphases. Infotainment science writing can include some degree of critical analysis, and critical science writing can be somewhat entertaining. However, it is rare for science writing (or other forms of writing) to strike a balance that is able to include accurate scientific information, entertainment, as well as a profound critical analysis that challenges the scientific methodology or scientific establishment, all in one article. In American political journalism, Jon Stewart and the Daily Show are perhaps one example of how one can inform, entertain and be critical – all in one succinct package. Currently, contemporary science writing which is informative and entertaining (‘infotainment’), rarely challenges the scientific establishment the way Jon Stewart challenges the political establishment.
Is ‘infotainment’ a derogatory term? Some readers of the Guardian article assumed that I was not only claiming that all science journalism is ‘infotainment’, but also putting down ‘infotainment’ science journalism. There is nothing wrong with writing about science in an informative and entertaining manner, therefore ‘infotainment’ science writing should not be construed as a derogatory term. There are differences between good and sloppy infotainment science writing. Good infotainment science writing is accurate in terms of the scientific information it conveys, whereas sloppy infotainment science writing discards scientific accuracy to maximize hype and entertainment value. Similarly, there is good and sloppy critical science writing. Good critical science writing is painstakingly careful in the analysis of the scientific data and its scientific context by reviewing numerous other related scientific studies in the field and putting the scientific work in perspective. Sloppy critical science writing, on the other hand, might just single out one scientific study and attempt to discredit a whole area of research without examining context. Examples of sloppy critical science writing can be found in the anti-global warming literature, which hones in on a few minor scientific discrepancies, but ignores the fact that 98-99% of climate scientists agree on the fact that humans are the primary cause of global warming.
Instead of just discussing these distinctions in abstract terms, I will use some of my prior blog-posts to illustrate differences between different types of science writing, such as infotainment, critical science writing or scientific satire. I find it easier to critique my own science writing than that of other science writers, probably because I am plagued by the same self-doubts that most writers struggle with. The following analysis may be helpful for other science writers who want to see where their articles and blog-posts fall on the information – critical analysis – entertainment spectrum.
A. Infotainment science writing
Infotainment science writing allows me to write about exciting or unusual new discoveries in a fairly manageable amount of time, without having to extensively review the literature in the field or perform an in-depth analysis of the statistics and every figure in the study under discussion. After providing some background for the non-specialist reader, one can focus on faithfully reporting the data in the paper and the implications of the work without discussing all the major caveats and pitfalls in the published paper. This writing provides a bit of an escapist pleasure for me, because so much of my time as a scientist is spent performing a critical analysis of the experimental data acquired in my own laboratory or in-depth reviews of scientific manuscripts and grants of either collaborators or as a peer reviewer. Infotainment science writing is a reminder of the big picture, excitement and promise of science, even though it might gloss over certain important experimental flaws and caveats of scientific studies.
Infotainment Science Writing Example 1: Using Viagra To Burn Fat
This blog-post discusses a paper published in the FASEB Journal, which suggested that white (“bad”) fat cells could be converted into brown (“good”) fat cells using Viagra. The study reminded me of a collision between two groups of spam emails: weight loss meets Viagra. The blog-post provides background on white and brown adipose tissue and then describes the key findings of the paper. A few limitations of the study are mentioned, such as the fact that the researchers never document weight loss in the mice they treated, as well as the fact that the paper ignores long-term consequences of chronic Viagra treatment. The reason I consider this piece an infotainment style of science writing is that there were numerous criticisms of the research study that could have been brought to the attention of the readers. The researchers concluded the fat cells were being converted into brown fat using only indirect measures without adequately measuring the metabolic activity and energy expenditure. It is not clear why the researchers did not extend the duration of the animal studies to show that the Viagra treatment could induce weight loss. If all of these criticisms had been included in the blog-post, the fun Viagra-weight loss idea would have been drowned in a whirlpool of details.
Infotainment Science Writing Example 2: The Healing Power of Sweat Glands
The idea of “icky” sweat glands promoting wound healing was the main hook. Smelly apocrine sweat glands versus eccrine sweat glands are defined in the background of this blog-post, and the findings of the paper published in the American Journal of Pathology are summarized. Limitations of the study included little investigation of the mechanism of regeneration, whether cells primarily proliferate or differentiate to promote the wound healing and an important question: Does sweating itself affect the regenerative capacity of the sweat glands? Although these limitations are briefly mentioned in the blog-post, they are not discussed in-depth and there is no comparison made between the observed wound healing effects of sweat gland cells to the wound healing capacity of other cells. This blog-post is heavy on the “information” end, and it provides little entertainment, other than evoking the image of a healing sweat gland.
B. Critical science writing
Critical science writing is exceedingly difficult because it is time-consuming and challenging to present critiques of scientific studies in a jargon-free manner. An infotainment science blog-post can be written in a matter of a few hours. A critical science writing piece, on the other hand, requires an in-depth review of multiple studies in the field to better understand the limitations and strengths of each report.
Critical Science Writing Example 1: Bone Marrow Cell Infusions Do NOT Improve Cardiac Function After Heart Attack
This blog-post describes an important negative study conducted in Switzerland. Bone marrow cells were injected into the hearts of patients in one of the largest randomized cardiovascular cell therapy trials performed to date. The researchers found no benefit of the cell injections on cardiac function. This research has important implications because it could stave off quack medicine. Clinics in some countries offer “miracle cures” to cardiovascular patients, claiming that the stem cells in the bone marrow will heal their diseased hearts. Desperate patients, who fall for these scams, fly to other countries, undergo risky procedures and end up spending $20,000 or $40,000 out of pocket for treatments that simply do not work. This blog-post is in the critical science writing category because it not only mentions some limitations of the Swiss study, but also puts the clinical trial into context of the problems associated with unproven therapies. It does not specifically discuss other bone marrow injection studies, but it provides a link to an editorial I wrote for an academic journal which contains all the pertinent references. A number of readers of the Guardian article raised the question whether one can make such critical science writing appear entertaining, but I am not sure how to incorporate entertainment into this type of an analysis.
Critical Science Writing Example 2: Cellular Alchemy: Converting Fibroblasts Into Heart Cells
This blog-post was a review of multiple distinct studies on converting fibroblasts – either found in the skin or the hearts – into beating heart cells. The various research groups described the outcomes of their research, but the studies were not perfect replications of each other. For example, one study that reported a very low efficiency of fibroblast conversion not only used cells derived from older animals but also used a different virus to introduce the genes. The challenge for a critical science writer is to decide which of these differences need to be highlighted, because obviously not all differences and discrepancies can be adequately accommodated in a single article or blog-post. I decided to highlight the electrical heterogeneity of the generated cells as the major limitation of the research because this seemed like the most likely problem when trying to move this work forward into clinical therapies. Regenerating a damaged heart following a heart attack would be the ultimate goal, but do we really want to create islands of heart cells that have distinct electrical properties and could give rise to heart rhythm problems?
C. Science Satire
In closing, I just want to briefly mention scientific satire – satirical or humorous descriptions of real-life science. One of the best science satire websites is PhD Comics, because the comics do a brilliant job of portraying real world science issues, such as the misery of PhD students and the vicious cycle of not having enough research funding to apply for research funding. My own attempts at scientific satire take the form of spoof news articles such as “Professor Hands Out “Erase Undesirable Data Points” Coupons To PhD Students” or “Academic Publisher Unveils New Journal Which Prevents All Access To Its Content”. Science satire is usually not informative, but it can provide entertainment and some critical introspection. This kind of satire is best suited for people with experiences that allow them to understand inside jokes. I hope that we will see more writing that satirizes the working world of how scientists interpret data, compete for tenure and grants or interact with graduate students.
//storify.com/jalees_rehman/reactions-to-critical-science-journalism-piece-in.js[View the story “Reactions to the “Critical Science Journalism” piece in The Guardian” on Storify]
AdvertisementsMan Shot in Maries County
The Maries County Sheriff Department said a man is in serious, but stable, condition after he was shot Saturday night.
The shooting happened just after 6 p.m. at a home south of Vienna in the 12000 block of Highway 63.
Sheriff Chris Heitman said the victim has been identified as Walter Gray. Heitman said Gray showed up to the home off Highway 63 where a woman has a restraining order against him.
Deputies said the the woman's husband saw Gray peeking through the window of the home. Heitman said when the husband confronted him, Gray allegedly made a threatening move toward the man causing him to fire his gun.
Gray was shot in the groin area. The Maries County Sheriff's Department said emergency responders arrived quickly and possible saved the victim's life.
Heitman said Gray is likely facing charges of ex parte violation, trespassing and 3rd degree assault. He said the homeowner will likely not face charges. Heitman said a police report will be sent to the prosecuting attorney's office on Monday.Mr. Trump’s political adversaries quickly pounced on what they said was evidence of a lack of interest or urgency on the part of the president. And some saw an echo of the comments made in 2005 by former President George W. Bush, when he praised then-FEMA head Michael Brown for doing “a heck of a job” in the midst of what was widely seen as a slow and botched recovery effort in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
“The problem is, and this is what felled the Bush administration: images tell the whole story,” said Dan Pfeiffer, who served as a communications director and senior adviser for former President Barack Obama. “You had Trump on Twitter saying one thing, and then you have the images all over cable news telling a different story.”
Peter Feaver, a national security official for Mr. Bush during Katrina, said there were many similarities between Hurricane Maria and the 2005 storm, each of which hold lessons for Mr. Trump and his team.
“There are echoes to it that should concern the White House,” Mr. Feaver said. “They would be wise that they not take it for granted that they can avoid that image stamped on this episode.”
“What matters more is the perception than the reality,” Mr. Feaver added. “The best after-action histories did not condemn Bush as vividly as the immediate media framing.”
The administration is unquestionably facing a daunting task. The hurricane knocked out nearly all of Puerto Rico’s electrical grid, and most of its cellular service. Roads are damaged, bridges have collapsed, and an unknown number of Puerto Ricans are stranded in the hills and hollows of the mountain interior without access to water or food.
Representatives of the commonwealth government stationed outside the capital have taken to driving to San Juan in person to present their progress reports. On Friday, Gov. Ricardo A. Rosselló said that the government would begin commandeering and giving away at least 3,000 containers of cargo stuck at the Port of San Juan, much of it meant for the island’s supermarkets, if the stores themselves could not move the merchandise.Growing up in Seattle I spent summer evenings like this picking blackberries. These days I spend more time trying to fend off blackberry vines in my garden. If you’ve tried to do that, you’ve probably found that following one long blackberry vine to the source leads to another heading a different direction. Kind of like the story I’m about to tell you, the answer to a Local Wonder question: “Where did our Himalayan blackberries originate?” It was the end of the 19th century, and American life was changing dramatically.
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People were moving from rural areas to towns and cities – including Seattle. Industrialization was creating a new middle class. Down the coast in Santa Rosa, California, an eccentric guy named Luther Burbank was hard at work on his experimental farm. Recipe! The best blackberry pie you will ever eat ever Burbank didn’t have any formal training, but he was working feverishly to breed strange and wonderful new kinds of plants. “He realizes the growing middle class is going to want to have fresh fruits and vegetables,” said Phillip Thurtle, who teaches in the University of Washington’s Comparative History of Ideas program.
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“They’re not going to want to eat canned beans. They’re going to want to eat fresh beans all the time. But in order to do that, they’re going to have to be able to be shipped.” Local Wonder: Is Seattle Freeze a real thing? Thurtle said Burbank set out to create new varieties of fruits and vegetables that would be delicious and prolific – and that could withstand the voyage on the nation’s new transcontinental railroad. Burbank sold his hundreds of plant creations through catalogs with pictures of shiny fruit and shinier superlatives. He created the earliest of all large cherries, which he named the “Burbank.” Burbank’s inventions could also be weird – like a spineless cactus.
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Or his potato-tomato hybrid, which somehow never took off. But others were smash hits. Like the freestone peach and elephant garlic. “My favorite example is the Shasta daisy, because this is something that most of us have in our gardens,” Thurtle said. Local Wonder: Where do Seattle-area crows go at night? If you’ve had fries at McDonald’s, you’ve likely eaten a relative of a Burbank creation. A potato Burbank invented in the 1870s, called the Burbank, later mutated into a potato called the Russet Burbank. It's the most widely-grown potato in America today. Thurtle said that Burbank was also working on another large-scale project – the thornless blackberry.
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“Kind of the parallel to his spineless cactus or his stoneless plum,” he said. “He wanted to take the rough spots out of nature. To domesticate it for middle-class lives.” Burbank traded seeds with fellow collectors all around the world. In a package from India, he found seeds for a huge blackberry with an even bigger flavor. Burbank named it the Himalaya Giant (even though it’s actually believed to be from Armenia). Burbank found that the Himalaya Giant grew like nobody’s business – but only in temperate areas, like the Pacific Coast. Top read: There are worms in the blackberries you just picked
SponsorOn the verge of reporting historic losses, the U.S. Postal Service is launching a new TV advertising campaign designed to slow the migration away from snail mail.
Americans watching college football games and news broadcasts in the next week may notice new ads from USPS — long known for its campy messages promoting Priority Mail shipping services. Now, the “If it fits, it ships” campaign will share airtime with two 30-second spots designed to remind customers that paper mail, unlike e-mail, can’t be hacked, and that letter carriers are still providing reliable and safe deliveries to doorsteps.
“A refrigerator has never been hacked,” an announcer says in the first message as an actress pins a paper bill to her fridge. (Watch the ads in the video clips above.)
In the other ad, a smiling letter carrier is seen walking her route while an announcer reminds viewers that hand-delivered messages ensure that “important letters and information don’t get lost in thin air, or disappear with a click.”
(RELATED: Is my post office closing? Find facilities being reviewed for closure)
“We’re not trying to be luddites here, we’re not trying to say technology is bad, but the predictions of how fast customers would leave us were overstated,” said Joyce Carrier, USPS’s manager of advertising and media planning. “The switch has been much slower than originally anticipated.”
But are the new ads too little too late?
The Postal Service is set to announce Friday that it lost up to $10 billion this fiscal year, a historic sum triggered by declining mail volume and growing labor costs. The shortfall is once again forcing postal officials to renege on mandatory annual payments of about $5.5 billion required to prefund future retirement benefits.
As the Postal Service trims costs by closing post offices and processing facilities and by offering worker buyouts, it spent $145 million for all of its print, television and online advertising in 2010 — a roughly $40 million jump from previous years. That’s a fraction of the amount spent by UPS, FedEx and other national brands, Carrier said.
USPS is willing to spend more ad dollars as new market research suggests customers still feel very secure about using and receiving paper mail, Carrier said. And postal officials take no issue with carrying reams of junk mail to American households each year, knowing that marketing materials delivered to mailboxes guarantee a higher exposure rate for advertisers eager to reach mass audiences — even if most people throw the mail out.
With junk mail on the rise, more profitable first-class mail volume is down significantly in the last decade, dropping to 78 billion pieces delivered in 2010, down from 103 billion pieces in 2001, according to USPS.
Carrier said every 1 percent decline in overall mail volume equals $300 million in lost revenue. And with further declines anticipated, “We just want to slow it down,” she said.
Follow Ed O’Keefe on Twitter: @edatpost
Further reading:
The Federal Eye’s coverage of the U.S. Postal Service
For more news, visit PostPolitics and The Fed Page.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. private-sector employers hired the fewest workers in six months in October while tepid domestic demand kept inflation benign last month, suggesting the economy was still in need of stimulus from the Federal Reserve.
A man holds a pamphlet handed out by a recruiter while attending a job fair in New York, June 11, 2013. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
The slowdown in private job growth was the latest signal that the labor market has taken a step back in recent months and the clearest indication yet that a 16-day federal government shutdown weighed on economic activity.
Fed officials stuck to their monthly $85 billion bond-buying pace at the end of a two-day meeting on Wednesday and said fiscal policy was restraining economic growth.
“It (data) suggests accommodative policy might be necessary for longer and more aggressive monetary policy might be needed to break the lack of momentum in the economy,” said Laura Rosner, an economist at BNP Paribas in New York.
Employers in the private sector added 130,000 new jobs to their payrolls this month, the ADP National Employment Report showed on Wednesday. That was the lowest reading since April and was below economists’ expectations for a gain of 150,000 jobs.
It was the fourth straight month that private jobs growth slowed, according to the ADP data. There was a marked slowdown in hiring by small businesses, where payrolls increased 37,000 last month, well below the 68,000 new jobs created in September.
Mid-sized firms also hired fewer workers than in September.
“The government shutdown and debt limit brinkmanship hurt the already softening job market in October,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics in West Chester, Pennsylvania.
Moody’s Analytics is a joint developer of the ADP report.
While the ADP data does not have a good track record of predicting the government’s more comprehensive non-farm payrolls count, it suggested that report will find weakness as well.
The government will publish its closely watched payrolls report on November 8. Payrolls gained 148,000 in September, with the unemployment rate hitting a near five-year low of 7.2 percent.
But if average monthly jobs growth continues at less than 150,000, where it has been over the last three months, that would make it difficult for the jobless rate to fall further.
In a separate report, the Labor Department said its Consumer Price Index increased 0.2 percent last month as a rebound in energy prices offset an unchanged reading in food costs. The CPI had edged up 0.1 percent in August.
In the 12 months through September, the CPI increased 1.2 percent, the smallest gain since April.
FED TO STAY THE COURSE FOR A WHILE
The weak labor market picture and benign inflation environment should allow the Fed to stay the course on its monthly bond purchases for a while as it tries to stimulate the economy through low interest rates.
The Fed targets 2 percent inflation, although it tracks a gauge that tends to run a bit below the CPI.
“We do not expect tapering (of bond purchases) to begin before January at the earliest,” said Michael Hanson, an economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in New York.
But traders read the Fed’s statement as being a bit hawkish. U.S. stocks fell in choppy trade, while the dollar advanced against a basket of currencies. Prices for U.S. Treasury debt surrendered early gains and were last trading lower.
There was no sign of underlying inflation pressures last month. The so-called core CPI - which strips out the volatile energy and food components - nudged up 0.1 percent. It rose by the same margin in August.
Last month’s rise took the increase in the core index over the past 12 months to 1.7 percent after advancing 1.8 percent in August.
This measure touched a two-year low of 1.6 percent in June and the slowdown last month could catch the attention of some Fed officials who are concerned about inflation being too low.
Last month, inflation was lifted by a 0.8 percent rise in energy prices, which accounted for about half of the rise in the CPI. Energy prices had dropped 0.3 percent in August.
Food prices were flat in September, producing the weakest reading since May.
Shelter and medical care costs accounted for most of the increase in the core CPI last month. Owners’ equivalent rent of primary residence rose 0.2 percent after rising 0.3 percent in August. It is the biggest single component in the CPI.
Medical care costs increased 0.3 percent, with hospital services rising 0.7 percent. Medical care, which makes up more than 9 percent of the core index, has been one of the key contributors to the low inflation early in the year.
Apparel prices recorded their biggest drop since March.
“Inflation remains tame, although the recent trend toward slowing still appears to have stopped, even with the dip in the change from a year ago in core in September,” said Jim O’Sullivan, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics, in Valhalla, New York.SHERBURN-IN-ELMET, England, January 16, 2014 (ENS) – An estimated 15,000 tonnes of waste tires are on fire at a recycling plant in Sherburn-in-Elmet, North Yorkshire in a blaze that can be seen from space.
A NASA satellite caught an image of the giant fire at the Gascoigne Wood Interchange Newgen Recycling facility in Sherburn-in-Elmet. The village of about 6,000 people near Leeds was first settled centuries ago, dating back to Roman times.
The North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service was called to the scene of the fire just after 8:30 this morning local time. More than 70 firefighters have spent most of the day trying to control the flames, using a water curtain as a cooling method to restrict the spread of the fire.
Crews are using a digger to create a fire break to keep the fire contained.
Local media quoted North Yorkshire’s fire chief as saying the fire will “go on for days.”
Fire crews will remain at the scene overnight. Ground monitors have placed around nearby buildings to alert firefighters if the fire spreads to them.
North Yorkshire County Council has contacted area schools to warn that pupils and staff should be kept indoors, and the fire department is advising all local residents to keep their doors and windows closed against the toxic smoke.
A Public Health England spokesman said, “So far there have been no reports of any people experiencing ill effects from this fire. However, sheltering indoors provides protection from exposure to smoke, so we advise residents in areas affected by smoke from the fire to stay indoors and limit any exposure to smoke.”
Ambulances were called to the scene this morning, but no one has been taken to the hospital.
The Environment Agency says tens of millions of tires are disposed of each year in the United Kingdom.
Newgen Recycling takes tires from the Gascoigne Wood Interchange plant and turns them into rubber chippings for play areas, arenas and equestrian centers, for poultry houses and for landscaping mulch.
Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2014. All rights reserved.Mar 10, 2015; Surprise, AZ, USA; Chicago White Sox infielder Micah Johnson (7) during a spring training baseball game against the Kansas City Royals at Surprise Stadium. The White Sox beat the Royals 6-2. Mandatory Credit: Allan Henry-USA TODAY Sports
This spring training, the Chicago White Sox have had a nice battle for the starting second base position to start the 2015 regular season.
Though there has been no official winner of the job announced, my vote goes to rookie Micah Johnson, who battled Carlos Sanchez for the starter’s role, along with others in the mix for time in Emilio Bonifacio and Gordon Beckham.
With that said, the play of Johnson has been fairly solid this spring with a.339 average in 22 games for the White Sox. Johnson also has a.391 on-base percentage and a.475 slugging percentage.
His OPS is.864 in Cactus League play. The second baseman has 20 hits (three doubles, one triple and one home run) in 59 at-bats.
Johnson will most likely bat in the eight or nine spot in the order for the White Sox once Opening Day arrives, and most likely that is where he’ll stay, unless something were to happen to Adam Eaton at the top of the order sometime this season.
With Johnson, the fielding won’t be as spot on as he is with his bat, but Johnson had very good speed with six stolen bases in seven chances this spring.
Colleen Kane of the Chicago Tribune wrote this week about how the White Sox are keeping both Johnson and Sanchez on the roster for Opening Day.
“Kane wrote: Ventura had said recently Johnson was the leader to win the job, but he wouldn’t confirm Johnson would make his major-league debut as the starter April 6 against the Royals. Both players have had solid spring showings.”
With that said, here is a look at Sanchez’s spring.
One plus Sanchez has over Johnson is he does have actual MLB experience, but not a lot (28 games, 100 at-bats,.250 average, 5 RBIs).
This spring, Sanchez has played in 21 games, where he assembled a slash line of.425/.489/.425 with an OPS of.914. In those aforementioned games, Sanchez has 17 hits (none for extra bases), along with six RBIs and one stolen base.
Yes, Sanchez is a better fielder than Johnson, and his average is higher, but with Johnson, I like his speed and ability to steal a base over Sanchez, which puts him over the top in my opinion.
Both are very quality players, so in all of this debate and battling this spring, the best part of all of this is the fact the White Sox have two |
recently revealed that data for 500 million users were stolen, and breaches of Dropbox, MySpace and Tumblr have all come to light this year.MOBILE, Ala. -- The NFL world convened this week at the Senior Bowl. The Jets sent a full contingent of coaches, scouts, and executives, including head coach Todd Bowles and general manager Mike Maccagnan.
As Bowles and Maccagnan try to save their jobs in 2017, coming off last season's 5-11 debacle, here is what we heard in Mobile this week about all things Jets and NFL Draft:
Christian Hackenberg optimism? The report was a damning assessment of a rookie quarterback. According to ESPN, an anonymous Jets coach said the second-round draft pick "couldn't hit the ocean" with a pass, and team officials said he "regressed" during the season. Not all felt this way. There was some sense among the coaching staff that Hackenberg did get better throughout the season. All will wait until spring practices to see how much better. In the meantime, there are clearly mixed feelings about Hackenberg within the organization.
Ryan Anderson on Jets' radar. Alabama outside linebacker Tim Williams is still (arguably) the best pass rusher in this draft, but the Jets "love" Anderson, his pass-rushing partner, according to a source close to the situation. He has good size (6-2, 253), was productive (61 tackles, 8.5 sacks last season), and looks the part of an NFL player. From talking to him this week, he's a no-nonsense, nasty (in a good way) guy. If he slips to the second round, he could be the Jets' pick.
Todd Bowles filling out his staff? Dennard Wilson was recently hired as the Jets' secondary coach. (We caught up with him Tuesday.) Among the Jets' remaining assistant coaching openings -- defensive line. Could Brentson Buckner be a target? He has been the Cardinals' defensive line coach since 2013, so Bowles knows him well. (Bowles was Arizona's defensive coordinator from 2013-14.) Still, Buckner to the Jets seems unlikely. They can't offer him a promotion, and Arizona coach Bruce Arians might not let Buckner go even if he wants to join a hot-seat coach, Bowles. But a league source said Bowles likes Buckner a lot as a potential replacement for Pepper Johnson.
Getting defensive at Senior Bowl
Weak offensive line, quarterback draft class. Arguably the Jets' two biggest needs are at offensive tackle and quarterback. This just isn't the best draft class for either. Some talent evaluators love quarterbacks Deshaun Watson (Clemson), Mitch Trubisky (North Carolina), and DeShone Kizer (Notre Dame). Others don't. Some love tackles Cam Robinson (Alabama) and Ryan Ramczyk (Wisconsin). Others don't. There's no set consensus at this point.
Mitch Trubisky to Jets? It seems unlikely he'll fall to them at No. 6. But even though Trubisky has just one full year of college starting experience, one AFC scout who observed him believes he is the real deal.
Small-school prospects to watch. The scout was less high on Bucknell offensive tackle Julie'n Davenport, a lean player (6-7, 315) from Paulsboro. On the other side of the line, the scout really likes another long, lean player -- Villanova defensive end Tanoh Kpassagnon (6-7, 290). Keep an eye him on. He's been getting a lot of buzz lately, and the scout said Kpassagnon is legit. But it's probably unlikely the Jets would pick him. They have enough defensive linemen.
Initial plan for when Chan Gailey retired? One hope was quarterbacks coach Kevin Patullo would be his successor. This fell through because of how much the Jets' offense struggled in 2016. Bowles still likes Patullo, but didn't want to give him the promotion, and couldn't force him on a new offensive coordinator. Normally, an offensive coordinator prefers to pick his own quarterbacks coach.
The Jets doing their homework on tight ends. The Jets might not have an offensive coordinator (yet), but they were doing a ton of homework on the tight ends (as you'd figure) at the Senior Bowl. NJ Advance Media confirmed meetings with O.J. Howard (Alabama), Gerald Everett (South Alabama), Jeremy Sprinkle (Arkansas), and Evan Engram (Mississippi). The Jets likely won't select any of them with the No. 6 pick, but they could be options if they're available in Rounds 2 or 3.
Former Jets assistants in Mobile. Two fired Jets assistants, Patullo and outside linebackers coach Mark Collins, were spotted in Mobile, as they looked for new jobs. Patullo's search continues. Collins was hired by the Jaguars to coach all of their linebackers. Unemployed assistant coaches typically swing by the Senior Bowl to network and find work, since much of the league is in Mobile that week.
Calvin Pryor trade possibility? Pryor, the Jets' 2014 first-round pick, is entering Year 4. He hasn't been a huge difference maker so far. The Jets have to decide this offseason whether to pick up his fifth-year option for 2018 (which doesn't become a meaningful, binding decision until next offseason). They could also trade him. One trade possibility floated by a league source: Pryor to the Seahawks for Germain Ifedi, a first-round pick last year. Ifedi was Seattle's right guard last season, but he has a background at right tackle. The Jets are expected to cut right tackle Breno Giacomini. And this draft's tackle class is weak, remember.
How well does John Morton know Bowles? The Jets interviewed Morton, the Saints' wide receivers coach, for their offensive coordinator opening. Morton doesn't have any background with Bowles, in terms of knowing him well. Morton became somewhat familiar with Bowles and his approach from 2013-14, when Bowles coordinated Arizona's defense and Morton was the 49ers' receivers coach. (UPDATE: The Jets hired Morton to be their offensive coordinator.)
Centers to watch. If the Jets cut Nick Mangold, to save about $9 million in salary cap space, they could be looking for a center in this draft. Mangold's replacement in 2016, Wesley Johnson, is a restricted free agent. Among centers at the Senior Bowl, West Virginia's Tyler Orlosky and LSU's Ethan Pocic are considered legit, while Baylor's Kyle Fuller falls more into the "just a guy" category.
Connor Hughes may be reached at chughes@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @Connor_J_Hughes. Find NJ.com Jets on Facebook.
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Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune Students leave Pleasant Grove High school, after the lockdown was lifted. A student reported Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune Police officers check cars in the parking lot outside Pleasant Grove High school, where a stu Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune Police officers stand guard outside Pleasant Grove High school, where a student reported seei Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune Police officers check cars in the parking lot outside Pleasant Grove High school, where a stu Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune Emergency crews and swat teams outside Pleasant Grove High school, where a student reported s Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune Police officers check cars in the parking lot outside Pleasant Grove High school, where a stu Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune Police officers stand guard outside Pleasant Grove High school, where a student reported seei Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune Police officers check cars in the parking lot outside Pleasant Grove High school, where a stu Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune Police officers stand guard outside Pleasant Grove High school, where a student reported seei Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune Students leave Pleasant Grove High school, after the lockdown was lifted. A student reported Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune Pleasant Grove roads are closed during the lockdown at Pleasant Grove High school, where a st Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune The roads are closed during the lockdown at Pleasant Grove High school, where a student repor Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune The roads are closed during the lockdown at Pleasant Grove High school, where a student repor Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune The roads are closed during the lockdown at Pleasant Grove High school, where a student repor Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune The roads are closed during the lockdown at Pleasant Grove High school, where a student reporHive lighting are well-known for their plasma lights – which makes the Wasp 100-C a departure for them as it’s based on five-colour LED technology.
After a successful Kickstarter last year, it’s now being delivered to backers and will shortly be available to buy, with delivery anticipated for July.
Best of both worlds?
The company claim it offers the best of RGB and bi-colour style LED fixtures, using five-colour LEDs to make up white light. This results in fully saturated colours – reds are truly red, greens truly green – and very accurate control, down to increments of 1°K. The aim is to provide the flexibility of a gel pack without the need to actually carry a gel pack around with you.
Wasp 100-C colour temperature range
The light’s colour temperatures range from 1,650K – 8,000K and Hive reckon intensity should be about the same at 3,200K and 5,600K: roughly comparable to a 650W tungsten fixture. Output will drop slightly if you’re using the light as a pure colour – but then that’s true if you’ve heavily gelled a light as well.
Accessories, compatibility
The Wasp 100-C is a par-style light that comes with a 22° reflector as standard and three spreading lenses that can take the beam spread up to an 80° flood. What’s more interesting though is that the mount on the front of the light is compatible with all sorts of pro photo gear: everything from Chimera and Elinchrome softboxes to Hive’s own 10° long-throw reflector and mini source four adapter for even tighter beam control.
We’ve been seeing a lot of manufacturers adopt the monobloc form factor for LED lights recently. It’s a nice change after the relative ubiquity of 1×1 panels, and means it’s often easier to shape and control the light using a variety of accessories.Errol Morris oughtta scrap his Interrotron and stick to Apple commercials. Werner Herzog should just focus on his operas. Because (Dis)honesty: The Truth About Lies is the most important documentary to come along since Steven Spielberg invented cinema in 1975.
There are different kinds of lies, in the previous sentence and in the world. The whoppers tend to get found out, but the mass of the exponentially more common, unchallenged little lies accumulate in insidious ways. So says Duke University “behavioral economist” Dan Ariely, producer and star of (Dis)honesty, a documentary that uses his surveys of some 40,000 human subjects to build a calm yet compelling case that lying is a manageable but incurable symptom of the human condition. (And possibly of the condition of being a member of any big-brained species—chimpanzees do it too!) Ariely argues that societal delusions that treat fibbers, exaggerators, and low-stakes cheaters as, er, outliers do substantial (if hard to quantify) damage to economies. People in first-world nations are far more trusting of strangers than are people in developing economies. Trust, says one of a handful of other experts heard from in the film, is more essential to economic growth than even a skilled workforce.
First-time director Yael Melamede—who had a producer credit on the portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-homeless-teenager “Inocente,” which won the 2013 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short—cross-cuts scenes of Ariely gamely presenting his findings to an adult audience in a lecture hall with brief animated segments and talking-head interviews with Americans who suffered life-altering consequences when their falsehoods were uncovered. Their candor makes them all seem at least somewhat sympathetic, though their lies vary wildly in scale. We hear from two insider-traders who served prison sentences, a cyclist banned from the sport for doping, an NBA referee prosecuted for betting on games that he officiated, and an unhappy mother of six who opened an account on a website for married people seeking discreet affairs.
Unsurprisingly, the lone black woman profiled, Kelley Williams Bolar, is the one whose punishment was most grossly disproportionate to her crime: She claimed her father’s home address as her own domicile so that she could get her two daughters into a better Ohio school district. Not a jury in the world, a reasonable person possessed of even a molecule of compassion might think. And that kind and rational person would be wrong: Not only were Bolar’s girls booted from the school district, but their mom was jailed for 10 days (plus three years probation) in 2011, four years after she fudged that government form. (The judge said she intended the sentence as a deterrent “for other individuals who might think to defraud the various school districts.”)
Those are all what might be called “sincere” liars. More troubling is the case of Ryan Holiday, a publicist who dropped out of college to work for bad-boy author Tucker Max, engineering a diabolical campaign of outrage over Max’s bestselling drunken hookup memoir I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell. Holiday recounts how he placed intentionally offensive ads (sample slogan: “Deaf Girls Never Hear You Coming”) for the 2009 film adaptation with the Chicago Transit Authority. He then vandalized the movie’s posters himself and sent photos of his spray-can handiwork to various news outlets, persuading them that a genuine grassroots campaign against Max’s misogynistic public persona was taking place. Holiday’s fake protest quickly birthed genuine ones, and people who might never have heard of Max or his book without Holiday’s manipulation staged demonstrations and defaced the posters just as Holiday had. The CTA responded to the now-genuine flap by pulling the ads. “The resulting public outrage strengthened Tucker Max’s brand,” a title card laments.
Ariely’s inquiries into how and why we stretch, reframe, or ignore entirely the truth are certainly eye-opening, but he and Melamede are better at demonstrating the ubiquity of subterfuge than prescribing remedies for it—not that that’s the documentarian’s job, or the journalist’s. The film is, says its press notes, but one prong of “The (Dis)honesty Project,” which also includes a website and traveling exhibition that invites visitors to confess their own untruths. They can also buy an “Honesty Violation Pad” for $12, or a $7 bottle of “Cureall” pills, with a label warning of side effects that include “lucid thought, improved decision making, (ir)rational behavior.” But Ariely understands that moving toward a more truthful society will require everyone to master their innate predilection for lying individually. You must be the change you wish to see in the world, as Gandhi once said.
Okay, he didn’t really say that.On Tuesday night, Chris Matthews subtly hinted that the 47 senators who drafted an open letter to Iran regarding negotiations on ending the Islamic Republic's nuclear program were motivated by racism. Tonight he was anything but subtle.
Closing his March 12 Hardball program, MSNBC's Chris Matthews spewed that future generations of Americans will look back to today's politics and see that "the age of Jim Crow managed to find a new habitat in the early 21st century Republican Party." Matthews rattled off a bill of particulars which, in his skin-tone-obsessed mind, justifies the accusation:
MSNBC
Hardball
March 12, 2015
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Let me finish tonight where I started. Some day years from now people will look back on this presidency and see it in sharper contrast. They will read how it started with the Republican Senate leader calling for the president's defeat, declaring that the business of the opposition from the first day was to ensure the new president, a) accomplishes nothing and, b) gets booted from office as quickly as possible.
They will read of a U.S. Congressman yelling "You lie!" during a State of the Union. They will read how the Speaker of the House invited, without informing the president, a foreign leader to denigrate his foreign policy before the entire Congress.
And as of this week, they will learn that a new senator from Arkansas got the signatures of 46 other senators on a letter to the hardliners in Iran urging that they reject the efforts of this president to keep them from building a nuclear weapon.
They will read all this and wonder what was it that made this Republican opposition so all out contemptuous of an American president? What made it treat him as below respect, below the dignity historically accorded his office.
They will look at the concerned, concerted effort of legislative leaders in three dozen states to make it harder for minorities to vote. Even claiming partisan victory when successful in that effort. They will then look at a picture of this president, a picture of this man, and perhaps get the idea that the age of Jim Crow managed to find a new habitat in the early 21st century Republican Party.
And that's Hardball for now. Thanks for being with us.Image copyright Reuters Image caption The link between between the Zika virus and babies born with birth defects is still not conclusively proved
More evidence linking the Zika virus to birth defects in babies has been found, scientists in Brazil say.
The research team discovered the virus in the brains of two babies who only lived for 48 hours.
The mosquito-borne virus is thought to cause microcephaly in babies, who are born with damaged brains and abnormally small heads.
Brazil has about 460 confirmed cases of microcephaly, and is investigating about 3,850 suspected cases.
The virus has spread throughout Latin-America, but Brazil has been hardest hit.
Image copyright AP Image caption The government has deployed the army in force to warn people about the risks of the virus
Image copyright AFP Image caption The government says that eradicating the Aedes aegypti mosquito that transmits the Zika virus is a priority
Scientists told the BBC that samples taken from the brain tissue of the two babies showed that the Zika virus was still actively present.
The research was conducted by scientists from Rio's Federal University (UFRJ), Fiocruz Institute and Paraiba's Professor Amorim Neto Research Institute.
The scientists have been following the pregnancies of 10 women in the north-eastern state of Paraiba - the second worst-hit by cases of microcephaly.
Rio Open: Rafael Nadal 'not scared' of Zika virus
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Brazil's race to find a vaccine
Read more about the Zika virus
One of the researchers who made the possible connection between Zika and brain defects, Dr Adriana Melo, told the BBC that cases she has seen in the north-east of Brazil "are never microcephaly alone" - but include other brain disorders such as dilated ventricles, calcifications and contractures to the joints.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Scientists are working around the clock to get to know more about the virus
The BBC's Julia Carneiro in Rio de Janeiro says that the findings add more evidence to results announced last week by scientists in the US and Slovenia who detected the virus in samples from other babies with microcephaly.
On Monday, a team at the PUC-Parana University in the south of Brazil also announced to have found the virus in tissues taken from babies with microcephaly who died after birth.
On Saturday Brazil said it was deploying more than 200,000 soldiers across the country to warn people about the risks of the virus.
President Dilma Rousseff has insisted the crisis would not "compromise" the Olympics Brazil is hosting in August.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared a global public health emergency over the possible connection between Zika and microcephaly.
While the link with Zika has not been confirmed, the WHO and other public health bodies have said it is strongly suspected.
The microcephaly cases have been centred in north-east Brazil, but the Zika outbreak has affected people in more than 20 countries in the Americas.
More on the Zika crisis:
Microcephaly: Why it is not the end of the world
What you need to know: Key questions answered about the virus and its spread
Travel advice: Countries affected and what you should do
The mosquito behind spread of virus: What we know about the insect
Abortion dilemma Laws and practices in Catholic Latin AmericaDonald Trump, as you have probably heard, is dominating national polls of Republicans who want to lead their party in the 2016 presidential election. As you have likewise probably heard, Hillary Clinton is currently crushing left-wing challenger Bernie Sanders in national polls of Democrats.
What you have probably not heard as much about is that Trump and Sanders have approximately equal levels of public support.
Here's Trump bouncing around in the mid- to low 30s:
And here's Sanders bounding around in the mid- to low 30s:
Trump right now is a few percentage points ahead of Sanders in terms of the number of Republicans backing him versus the number of Democrats backing Sanders. But because there are more Democrats than Republicans in America, Philip Bump of the Washington Post reckons that there are actually slightly more Sanders supporters in America than Trump supporters. Nonetheless, Trump has dominated media coverage of the 2016 campaign while Sanders has largely been a non-factor in coverage since Clinton started handing in solid debate performances.
The reasons for this are not exactly mysterious — Trump is ahead in the polls and might win the GOP nomination, while Sanders is losing badly and clearly won't be the Democratic candidate.
But while the media's priorities are comprehensible, the horse race fact that mainstream Democrats have consolidated around a single champion while the non-Trump Republicans remain badly divided is creating a distorted picture of the real state of the country. Wall-to-wall Trump coverage is, for example, helping boost morale at white supremacist groups, which are now benefiting from a newfound sense of momentum. But while there is clearly significance in the fact that a large minority of Republicans are willing to flock to Trump's banner and the cause of ethnic chauvinism, the reality that an equal number of people are flocking to Sanders's banner and the vision of an expansive Nordic welfare state is equally significant.
Indeed, in terms of analyzing broad trends in American life, the Sanders phenomenon is probably more significant than Trumpism. Trump's supporters, after all, are older than the average Republican, while Sanders's are younger than the average Democrat. The Trump movement is benefiting from an exceptionally chaotic situation among mainstream Republicans, while Sanders is up against the strongest non-incumbent frontrunner in American political history. In the short term, that all means that Trump is more relevant to 2016. But the values that Sanders reflects are likely to grow stronger in future cycles, while Trumpism is likely to grow weaker.Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Sep. 15, 2017, 8:06 PM GMT / Updated Sep. 15, 2017, 8:06 PM GMT By Claire Atkinson
Amazon already accounts for about a quarter of all online sales in the United States. Now the company is holding talks to supersize its video-channel business, not just in the U.S. but around the globe.
In the past few weeks, Amazon has started talks to buy scores of small television channels, several major program providers confirmed to NBC News. A representative for Amazon declined to comment, but hinted there will be much to say in the coming weeks about its efforts in online video.
Currently, subscribers to Amazon Prime get TV, movies and music, as well as free shipping on online purchases. They can also pay extra for premium channels such as HBO and Showtime, along with a host of niche-interest services on topics such as health or horror.
As traditional pay-TV providers scale down their offerings into cheaper so-called skinny bundles, Amazon is looking to scoop up smaller TV channels with minimal distribution in order to build itself into a video destination for every imaginable niche, with a particular focus on millennial audiences. Many networks have channels like these, including Turner Broadcasting’s Adult Swim and Boomerang, or Viacom’s VH1 and CMT.
“They are doubling down on the channels business,” said one industry programmer who asked not to be identified because they are involved in the talks. “They’re interested in doing deals with smaller indie networks where they can get rights to channels that are not handcuffed into [traditional distribution] bundles and they’re interested in offering them individually. Eventually they may bundle them together.”
Jeff Bezos, chief executive officer of Amazon, speaking during the 32nd Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado on April 12, 2016. Matthew Staver / Bloomberg via Getty Images file
Customers can already buy scores of television services on Amazon, including Viacom’s Comedy Central Stand-up for $3.99, or Britbox, which offers British shows for $6.99. Amazon splits the revenue with channel owners.
Industry insiders say that Greg Hart, vice president of Amazon Video, is spearheading the current talks, aimed at creating a global platform for new online TV channels.
Tom Rogers, the former chief executive of TiVo and executive chairman of the sports app WinView, who is familiar with Amazon’s business, said Amazon may even want to offer the paid add-on channels as part of the Prime Video offering to boost their audience.
That possibility, he said, “could have more impact on the TV industry than any other development down the road.”
Analysts believe Prime has some 66 million subscribers, who pay $99 a year for the service.
Big tech companies are getting increasingly competitive in the online video market. Just last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook intends to spend $1 billion on content to increase its online video audience. In late August, reports revealed Apple had similarly earmarked $1 billion for content.
Amazon already spends around $4 billion a year to fuel its On-Demand subscription video offering. Its chief rival in that endeavor is Netflix, which spends more than $6 billion. But to put those numbers in context, Disney spent $12.4 billion on programming last year.
“It’s illustrative of the fact that Amazon, Apple and everyone who wants to be a player in video is going to spending very large numbers on rights,” said Brian Wieser, a senior analyst covering advertising at Pivotal Research in New York. The arms race for top-tier talent is intensifying, as is the demand for hits.
This month, Amazon’s global video chief, Roy Price, told Variety that the company’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos, wants him to find the next “Game of Thrones,” one of the biggest shows in HBO’s history. The series garnered 16.7 million viewers for its season finale last month.
Price told Variety that the company was ending its development of certain smaller series in pursuit of big-event TV.
Amazon has hired Robert Kirkman, one of the creators of AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” with the aim of bringing fans of the horror genre to the service. The show is one of the biggest entertainment series on TV.
Even with all the Academy Award buzz surrounding Amazon’s distribution of “Manchester by the Sea,” a multiple Oscar winner, the company has had some trouble replicating its critically acclaimed series “Transparent,” which began in 2014. Amazon has a few Oscar hopefuls being released later this year, including a new Woody Allen project called “Wonder Wheel,” out in December.
Of course, Netflix has been signing up big names, too, including ABC drama producer Shonda Rhimes, much to the chagrin of Disney.
“They want to find new things they can offer,” said Mark Mahaney, an internet sector analyst at RBC Capital, “because the more services you have, the more you engender loyalty and the more you can monetize the user base.”
Amazon isn’t first to the party in terms of offering online TV channels. Dish, the satellite service, has one called Sling, as does Sony PlayStation. Hulu (owned by Comcast — owner of NBCUniversal — Disney, 21st Century Fox and Time Warner) just launched a digital channel bundle, and AT&T’s DirecTV and Google’s YouTube also have rival packages. Their hope is to win audience data and sell digital advertising.
Each aim to challenge conventional pay-TV packages, which incidentally offer free-of-charge digital versions to subscribers of what they can get on TV.
While there are plenty of Silicon Valley pretenders to the video crown, Amazon is unique, largely because of its vast trove of purchasing data. Amazon could potentially track the ads viewed on its TV channels, and then link them to online purchases. Earlier this year, Amazon partnered with the drinks company Diageo to offer 20 minute “shoppable films.”
Amazon’s own advertising business is still relatively tiny, worth around $2 billion, according to estimates, but around 55 percent of product searches start on Amazon, according to a 2016 survey by Bloomreach, a software company.
Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook like the idea of owning the online video experience of consumers — and stealing some of the $70 billion of ad revenue that is spent on TV annually.
It’s not clear that they can amass the same audiences as the TV networks, but Amazon’s attempts at building its audience are already evident. On Sept. 28, Amazon will begin its first major sports deal, streaming an NFL game — the Green Bay Packers versus the Chicago Bears — to its Prime subscribers. Amazon has a 10-game NFL package that it shares with other broadcasters, including NBC and CBS, having paid $50 million to steal away the digital football package from Twitter.
Amazon will also use its Alexa voice recognition machine to promote its football streaming, and in turn the NFL games will be used to promote its own online video shows.In an op-ed for the New York Times, Charles Blow says he finds results from a new Gallup poll on Americans’ views about the morality of homosexuality to be “stunning”:
1. For the first time, the percentage of Americans who perceive “gay and lesbian relations” as morally acceptable has crossed the 50 percent mark. (You have to love the fact that they still use the word “relations.” So quaint.) 2. Also for the first time, the percentage of men who hold that view is greater than the percentage of women who do. 3. This new alignment is being led by a dramatic change in attitudes among younger men, but older men’s perceptions also have eclipsed older women’s. While women’s views have stayed about the same over the past four years, the percentage of men ages 18 to 49 who perceived these “relations” as morally acceptable rose by 48 percent, and among men over 50, it rose by 26 percent. I warned you: stunning.
In 2001, Gallup found that 40 percent held the view that gay people were morally fit. The number dropped to 38 percent the next year, but reached 44 percent in 2006 and has risen steadily ever since.
Experts suggest that the dramatic change in attitude, especially among men, may be explained by the “contact hypothesis,” which proposes that because so many gays are “out,” including high-profile sports figures and entertainers, a tipping point has been reached, and now non-gays are simply more comfortable with the presence of gay people.
Maybe this explains why, just last weekend, an old espouser of gay hatred like Rush Limbaugh hired Elton John, one of the best-known gay men on the planet, to sing at his fourth wedding. (On the other hand, it’s just as likely that Rush’s new wife made him hire Sir Elton.)
Another theory is that in the wake of the involuntary de-closeting of so many rabid gay-haters — Rev. Ted Haggard, Dr. George “Rentboy” Rekers, Sen. Larry “Wide Stance” Craig and the rest — people who talk trash about gays are increasingly viewed with suspicion. As Wayne Besen at Truth Wins Out put it:
Normal, healthy, functional heterosexuals do not become paranoid or fixated on homosexuals. It is primarily people with sexual hang-ups, extreme religious indoctrination or deep, dark secrets that are preoccupied and consumed by the sexual orientation of others.
Or, with apologies to Shakespeare, “the homophobe doth protest too much.”
It’s also likely that exposure to happy, healthy gay people on one hand and lying, closeted homophobes on the other may be prompting straight people to apply critical thinking to anti-gay activists’ arguments against gay rights.
For example, people who have gay coworkers or friends will probably find themselves rethinking the notion that homosexuality is a choice. Upon introspection, rational people are likely to realize that if they themselves did not choose to be straight — and that they are incapable of choosing to be gay — then it follows that other people don’t choose to be gay, and gay people can’t choose to be straight.
It’s also hard to square the logic of denying civil rights to gays because the Bible says homosexuality is a sin, when religious hardliners never advocate denying the civil rights of adulterers, for example, even though adultery is considered such a grievous sin that it is condemned twice in the Ten Commandments and many other times in the Scriptures, while, by comparison, homosexuality is barely mentioned.
Of course, the Gallup poll also shows that gay hatred is still alive and well in some quarters. Just 30 percent of Republicans find gays to be “morally acceptable,” compared with 50 percent of independents and 52 percent of Democrats. By ideology, just 28 percent of conservatives say homosexuals are morally fit, versus 50 percent of moderates and 74 percent of liberals. And by religious identification, 36 percent of Protestants say homosexuality is morally tolerable, while 46 percent of Catholics, 77 percent of non-Christians and 74 percent of those with no religious affiliation agree.It has been reported that A Pink’s Son Na Eun will be making her return to acting with a brand new tvN drama!
On July 20, a representative of A Cube Entertainment shared, “Son Na Eun has been cast in the drama ’20 Years Old Again.’ Her appearance has been confirmed.”
The A Pink member is said to take on the role of Oh Hye Mi, a classmate of the main female character of Ha No Ra (played by Choi Ji Woo). Many are already expressing anticipation to see Son Na Eun and Choi Ji Woo act as “friends,” as they are 21 and 40 years old, respectively.
“20 Years Old Again” tells the story of a woman who became pregnant at the age of 19 years old, and has lived as a mother for 20 years before deciding to go back to school experience campus life for the first time. The cast and crew are set to begin filming about the middle of July and the drama is expected to premiere around the end of August.
Are you excited to see Na Eun in another drama?
Source (1)Though some locally elected leaders in Flint supported, and even celebrated, the city’s switch to the Flint River, state-appointed emergency managers had sole authority to make that decision, the task force report found. (photo courtesy of MLive) Though some locally elected leaders in Flint supported, and even celebrated, the city’s switch to the Flint River, state-appointed emergency managers had sole authority to make that decision, the task force report found. (photo courtesy of MLive)
State government is foremost to blame for failing to keep lead from poisoning Flint’s water supply. And key decisions to switch the city’s water supply to the Flint River, and stay there ‒ despite mounting public complaints about the taste, odor, color and health effects of the city’s tap water ‒ were made by a succession of state-appointed emergency managers.
Those were the conclusions of a five-member task force assigned to investigate the public health emergency in this poor, predominantly African-American city. Its report, released Wednesday, called for a review of the state’s emergency manager system, which the task force contends played a significant role in the government’s sluggish response to the concerns and warnings of Flint residents.
“What was clearly evident was individual (emergency managers) made decisions and no one had checks and balances on those decisions,” said task force member Chris Kolb, a former state representative and president of the Michigan Environmental Council. “Citizens had no ability to influence decision-making at the local level.”
The 116-page report offered a rebuke to a signature tool of Gov. Rick Snyder and a legislature that has largely supported the emergency manager law. The law, resurrected by Republican lawmakers in 2012 weeks after state residents voted to drop it, was hailed in some quarters after its implementation in Detroit led to that city’s swift transition through bankruptcy. But the law has also been the subject of lawsuits as well as accusations that it disenfranchises minorities, who note that most of the cities and school districts placed under emergency management have been majority black.
Snyder said Wednesday he was open to adopting many of the recommendations made by a task force that he appointed, adding that his office has already begun implementing some of the suggestions. “There are a lot of excellent recommendations here,” Snyder said at a news conference.
The Flint water task force chided Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder from diffusing blame for the water crisis among all levels of government when, the report concludes, state government bears most of the blame. (photo courtesy of MLive) The Flint water task force chided Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder from diffusing blame for the water crisis among all levels of government when, the report concludes, state government bears most of the blame. (photo courtesy of MLive)
In Flint, the task force found, the emergency managers appointed by Snyder failed to consider, much less serve, the health interests of residents, a criticism the governor himself seemed to acknowledge in testimony last week before a congressional committee investigating the Flint crisis.
In essence, Wednesday’s report said, Flint’s emergency managers were too narrowly focused on the financial savings of switching the city’s water from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department to the Flint River in 2014, and too reluctant to switch back to Detroit, also for financial reasons. As a result, the voices of local leaders and residents were marginalized. The report pointedly cited the economic and racial demographics of those residents.
“Flint residents, who are majority black or African-American and among the most impoverished of any metropolitan area in the United States, did not enjoy the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards as that provided to other communities,” the report noted, leading “to the inescapable conclusion that this is a case of environmental injustice.”
The task force recommended Lansing review the emergency manager law with an eye |
visas.
Shattering the dream of 12 students of Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology (CUET), and American International University, Bangladesh (AIUB), the three-day competition begins today at the US Space & Rocket Centre.
“We had taken all preparations, but our applications for visas were denied … Whatever the reasons might be, we are frustrated,” said Mainul Hasan, leader of the CUET team. None from his six-member team got visas.
Only two students from the six-member AIUB team got visas, forcing the team not to go to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) event.
Mahfuzur Rahman, team leader of AIUB Robotic Crew Legacy Reloaded, said their designed human-powered rover weighed over 100kg and had the ability to traverse rough and rocky terrains, like in Mars.
The 7-feet-by-3.5-feet rover has two seats and is 5 feet high when folded, said Mahfuzur, a student of AIUB's Electrical and Electronics Engineering (EEE) department.
Mainul said they made an 8-feet-by-4-feet rover capable of travelling on rocky and sandy terrain.
Ninety-nine teams were supposed to take part in the competition. Most of the teams are from the US. Teams from India, Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, Lithuania and Brazil were also taking part.
At the competition, student teams would be required to design, build, test and race human-powered rovers, driven by one male and one female team member, according to NASA.
The challenge highlights NASA's goals for future exploration to Mars and beyond. Inspired by the lunar vehicles of the Apollo moon missions, the competition challenges students to solve engineering problems, while emphasising NASA's commitment to inspiring new generations of scientists, engineers and explorers.
The AIUB team, which has previous experiences of participating in the University Rover Challenge 2016 in Utah and had secured 8th place beating 63 teams from 12 nations, was more confident of winning the NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge 2017, Mahfuzur said.
It took them some three months to make the rover and they had to spend Tk 1.5 lakh. Nearly same time and money was spent for the CUET team.
Things have changed for them with the visa refusals. The students were the kind that sees silver linings around clouds.
Mainul of CUET said they now plan to take part in national or international exhibition with the rover they have built.
Mahfuzur of AIUB said they were thinking of taking their rover to the beach. “As tourists go there, they can have a taste of riding the rover that can travel on sandy and rocky terrain,” he told this correspondent.
In an email response to The Daily Star queries, US Embassy Information Officer Nancy VanHorn said consular officers review each case carefully and make their decisions based on US laws.
“Bangladeshi students, business owners, and tourists receive visas every day to travel to the United States,” she said.In previous Pushing the Limits posts, I described the two most basic system resources, physical memory and virtual memory. This time I’m going to describe two fundamental kernel resources, paged pool and nonpaged pool, that are based on those, and that are directly responsible for many other system resource limits including the maximum number of processes, synchronization objects, and handles.
Here’s the index of the entire Pushing the Limits series. While they can stand on their own, they assume that you read them in order.
Paged and nonpaged pools serve as the memory resources that the operating system and device drivers use to store their data structures. The pool manager operates in kernel mode, using regions of the system’s virtual address space (described in the Pushing the Limits post on virtual memory) for the memory it sub-allocates. The kernel’s pool manager operates similarly to the C-runtime and Windows heap managers that execute within user-mode processes. Because the minimum virtual memory allocation size is a multiple of the system page size (4KB on x86 and x64), these subsidiary memory managers carve up larger allocations into smaller ones so that memory isn’t wasted.
For example, if an application wants a 512-byte buffer to store some data, a heap manager takes one of the regions it has allocated and notes that the first 512-bytes are in use, returning a pointer to that memory and putting the remaining memory on a list it uses to track free heap regions. The heap manager satisfies subsequent allocations using memory from the free region, which begins just past the 512-byte region that is allocated.
Nonpaged Pool
The kernel and device drivers use nonpaged pool to store data that might be accessed when the system can’t handle page faults. The kernel enters such a state when it executes interrupt service routines (ISRs) and deferred procedure calls (DPCs), which are functions related to hardware interrupts. Page faults are also illegal when the kernel or a device driver acquires a spin lock, which, because they are the only type of lock that can be used within ISRs and DPCs, must be used to protect data structures that are accessed from within ISRs or DPCs and either other ISRs or DPCs or code executing on kernel threads. Failure by a driver to honor these rules results in the most common crash code, IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL.
Nonpaged pool is therefore always kept present in physical memory and nonpaged pool virtual memory is assigned physical memory. Common system data structures stored in nonpaged pool include the kernel and objects that represent processes and threads, synchronization objects like mutexes, semaphores and events, references to files, which are represented as file objects, and I/O request packets (IRPs), which represent I/O operations.
Paged Pool
Paged pool, on the other hand, gets its name from the fact that Windows can write the data it stores to the paging file, allowing the physical memory it occupies to be repurposed. Just as for user-mode virtual memory, when a driver or the system references paged pool memory that’s in the paging file, an operation called a page fault occurs, and the memory manager reads the data back into physical memory. The largest consumer of paged pool, at least on Windows Vista and later, is typically the Registry, since references to registry keys and other registry data structures are stored in paged pool. The data structures that represent memory mapped files, called sections internally, are also stored in paged pool.
Device drivers use the ExAllocatePoolWithTag API to allocate nonpaged and paged pool, specifying the type of pool desired as one of the parameters. Another parameter is a 4-byte Tag, which drivers are supposed to use to uniquely identify the memory they allocate, and that can be a useful key for tracking down drivers that leak pool, as I’ll show later.
Viewing Paged and Nonpaged Pool Usage
There are three performance counters that indicate pool usage:
Pool nonpaged bytes
Pool paged bytes (virtual size of paged pool – some may be paged out)
Pool paged resident bytes (physical size of paged pool)
However, there are no performance counters for the maximum size of these pools. They can be viewed with the kernel debugger!vm command, but with Windows Vista and later to use the kernel debugger in local kernel debugging mode you must boot the system in debugging mode, which disables MPEG2 playback.
So instead, use Process Explorer to view both the currently allocated pool sizes, as well as the maximum. To see the maximum, you’ll need to configure Process Explorer to use symbol files for the operating system. First, install the latest Debugging Tools for Windows package. Then run Process Explorer and open the Symbol Configuration dialog in the Options menu and point it at the dbghelp.dll in the Debugging Tools for Windows installation directory and set the symbol path to point at Microsoft’s symbol server:
After you’ve configured symbols, open the System Information dialog (click System Information in the View menu or press Ctrl+I) to see the pool information in the Kernel Memory section. Here’s what that looks like on a 2GB Windows XP system:
2GB 32-bit Windows XP
Nonpaged Pool Limits
As I mentioned in a previous post, on 32-bit Windows, the system address space is 2GB by default. That inherently caps the upper bound for nonpaged pool (or any type of system virtual memory) at 2GB, but it has to share that space with other types of resources such as the kernel itself, device drivers, system Page Table Entries (PTEs), and cached file views.
Prior to Vista, the memory manager on 32-bit Windows calculates how much address space to assign each type at boot time. Its formulas takes into account various factors, the main one being the amount of physical memory on the system. The amount it assigns to nonpaged pool starts at 128MB on a system with 512MB and goes up to 256MB for a system with a little over 1GB or more. On a system booted with the /3GB option, which expands the user-mode address space to 3GB at the expense of the kernel address space, the maximum nonpaged pool is 128MB. The Process Explorer screenshot shown earlier reports the 256MB maximum on a 2GB Windows XP system booted without the /3GB switch.
The memory manager in 32-bit Windows Vista and later, including Server 2008 and Windows 7 (there is no 32-bit version of Windows Server 2008 R2) doesn’t carve up the system address statically; instead, it dynamically assigns ranges to different types of memory according to changing demands. However, it still sets a maximum for nonpaged pool that’s based on the amount of physical memory, either slightly more than 75% of physical memory or 2GB, whichever is smaller. Here’s the maximum on a 2GB Windows Server 2008 system:
2GB 32-bit Windows Server 2008
64-bit Windows systems have a much larger address space, so the memory manager can carve it up statically without worrying that different types might not have enough space. 64-bit Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 set the maximum nonpaged pool to a little over 400K per MB of RAM or 128GB, whichever is smaller. Here’s a screenshot from a 2GB 64-bit Windows XP system:
2GB 64-bit Windows XP
64-bit Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 memory managers match their 32-bit counterparts (where applicable – as mentioned earlier, there is no 32-bit version of Windows Server 2008 R2) by setting the maximum to approximately 75% of RAM, but they cap the maximum at 128GB instead of 2GB. Here’s the screenshot from a 2GB 64-bit Windows Vista system, which has a nonpaged pool limit similar to that of the 32-bit Windows Server 2008 system shown earlier.
2GB 32-bit Windows Server 2008
Finally, here’s the limit on an 8GB 64-bit Windows 7 system:
8GB 64-bit Windows 7
Here’s a table summarizing the nonpaged pool limits across different version of Windows:
32-bit 64-bit XP, Server 2003 up to 1.2GB RAM: 32-256 MB
> 1.2GB RAM: 256MB min( ~400K/MB of RAM, 128GB) Vista, Server 2008,
Windows 7, Server 2008 R2 min( ~75% of RAM, 2GB) min(~75% of RAM, 128GB) Windows 8, Server 2012 min( ~75% of RAM, 2GB) min( 2x RAM, 128GB)
Paged Pool Limits
The kernel and device drivers use paged pool to store any data structures that won’t ever be accessed from inside a DPC or ISR or when a spinlock is held. That’s because the contents of paged pool can either be present in physical memory or, if the memory manager’s working set algorithms decide to repurpose the physical memory, be sent to the paging file and demand-faulted back into physical memory when referenced again. Paged pool limits are therefore primarily dictated by the amount of system address space the memory manager assigns to paged pool, as well as the system commit limit.
On 32-bit Windows XP, the limit is calculated based on how much address space is assigned other resources, most notably system PTEs, with an upper limit of 491MB. The 2GB Windows XP System shown earlier has a limit of 360MB, for example:
2GB 32-bit Windows XP
32-bit Windows Server 2003 reserves more space for paged pool, so its upper limit is 650MB.
Since 32-bit Windows Vista and later have dynamic kernel address space, they simply set the limit to 2GB. Paged pool will therefore run out either when the system address space is full or the system commit limit is reached.
64-bit Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 set their maximums to four times the nonpaged pool limit or 128GB, whichever is smaller. Here again is the screenshot from the 64-bit Windows XP system, which shows that the paged pool limit is exactly four times that of nonpaged pool:
2GB 64-bit Windows XP
Finally, 64-bit versions of Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 simply set the maximum to 128GB, allowing paged pool’s limit to track the system commit limit. Here’s the screenshot of the 64-bit Windows 7 system again:
8GB 64-bit Windows 7
Here’s a summary of paged pool limits across operating systems:
32-bit 64-bit XP, Server 2003 XP: up to 491MB
Server 2003: up to 650MB min( 4 * nonpaged pool limit, 128GB) Vista, Server 2008,
Windows 7, Server 2008 R2 min( system commit limit, 2GB) min( system commit limit, 128GB) Windows 8, Server 2012 min( system commit limit, 2GB) min( system commit limit, 384GB)
Testing Pool Limits
Because the kernel pools are used by almost every kernel operation, exhausting them can lead to unpredictable results. If you want to witness first hand how a system behaves when pool runs low, use the Notmyfault tool. It has options that cause it to leak either nonpaged or paged pool in the increment that you specify. You can change the leak size while it’s leaking if you want to change the rate of the leak and Notmyfault frees all the leaked memory when you exit it:
Don’t run this on a system unless you’re prepared for possible data loss, as applications and I/O operations will start failing when pool runs out. You might even get a blue screen if the driver doesn’t handle the out-of-memory condition correctly (which is considered a bug in the driver). The Windows Hardware Quality Laboratory (WHQL) stresses drivers using the Driver Verifier, a tool built into Windows, to make sure that they can tolerate out-of-pool conditions without crashing, but you might have third-party drivers that haven’t gone through such testing or that have bugs that weren’t caught during WHQL testing.
I ran Notmyfault on a variety of test systems in virtual machines to see how they behaved and didn’t encounter any system crashes, but did see erratic behavior. After nonpaged pool ran out on a 64-bit Windows XP system, for example, trying to launch a command prompt resulted in this dialog:
On a 32-bit Windows Server 2008 system where I already had a command prompt running, even simple operations like changing the current directory and directory listings started to fail after nonpaged pool was exhausted:
On one test system, I eventually saw this error message indicating that data had potentially been lost. I hope you never see this dialog on a real system!
Running out of paged pool causes similar errors. Here’s the result of trying to launch Notepad from a command prompt on a 32-bit Windows XP system after paged pool had run out. Note how Windows failed to redraw the window’s title bar and the different errors encountered for each attempt:
And here’s the start menu’s Accessories folder failing to populate on a 64-bit Windows Server 2008 system that’s out of paged pool:
Here you can see the system commit level, also displayed on Process Explorer’s System Information dialog, quickly rise as Notmyfault leaks large chunks of paged pool and hits the 2GB maximum on a 2GB 32-bit Windows Server 2008 system:
The reason that Windows doesn’t simply crash when pool is exhausted, even though the system is unusable, is that pool exhaustion can be a temporary condition caused by an extreme workload peak, after which pool is freed and the system returns to normal operation. When a driver (or the kernel) leaks pool, however, the condition is permanent and identifying the cause of the leak becomes important. That’s where the pool tags described at the beginning of the post come into play.
Tracking Pool Leaks
When you suspect a pool leak and the system is still able to launch additional applications, Poolmon, a tool in the Windows Driver Kit, shows you the number of allocations and outstanding bytes of allocation by type of pool and the tag passed into calls of ExAllocatePoolWithTag. Various hotkeys cause Poolmon to sort by different columns; to find the leaking allocation type, use either ‘b’ to sort by bytes or ‘d’ to sort by the difference between the number of allocations and frees. Here’s Poolmon running on a system where Notmyfault has leaked 14 allocations of about 100MB each:
After identifying the guilty tag in the left column, in this case ‘Leak’, the next step is finding the driver that’s using it. Since the tags are stored in the driver image, you can do that by scanning driver images for the tag in question. The Strings utility from Sysinternals dumps printable strings in the files you specify (that are by default a minimum of three characters in length), and since most device driver images are in the %Systemroot%\System32\Drivers directory, you can open a command prompt, change to that directory and execute “strings * | findstr <tag>”. After you’ve found a match, you can dump the driver’s version information with the Sysinternals Sigcheck utility. Here’s what that process looks like when looking for the driver using “Leak”:
If a system has crashed and you suspect that it’s due to pool exhaustion, load the crash dump file into the Windbg debugger, which is included in the Debugging Tools for Windows package, and use the!vm command to confirm it. Here’s the output of!vm on a system where Notmyfault has exhausted nonpaged pool:
Once you’ve confirmed a leak, use the!poolused command to get a view of pool usage by tag that’s similar to Poolmon’s.!poolused by default shows unsorted summary information, so specify 1 as the the option to sort by paged pool usage and 2 to sort by nonpaged pool usage:
Use Strings on the system where the dump came from to search for the driver using the tag that you find causing the problem.
So far in this blog series I’ve covered the most fundamental limits in Windows, including physical memory, virtual memory, paged and nonpaged pool. Next time I’ll talk about the limits for the number of processes and threads that Windows supports, which are limits that derive from these.Video gaming has come a long way since the early days of Pong and Pac-man. We can now play affordable games of high calibre with 3D graphics and awesome interactivity in the comfort of our home, taking for granted the little and subtle improvements made to each and every consoles before becoming what they are today. In a way, the aggressive competition between companies of video game consoles had churned out the superior features of video gaming to bring to us the excellent quality we see today.
As you shall see below, the evolution of video game consoles is indeed intriguing. Did you know that there were more than 70 different consoles to date? And did you know that there was a peak era of video arcade game when Nintendo and Sega were fiercely pitting against each other with their revolutionary consoles? If you are amazed by such facts, then I guarantee that this entry will excite you even further with the bits and pieces of fascinating historical facts across the video game consoles timeline.
Whether you’re a gamer or not, this is a great opportunity for you to go behind the scene and uncover the ‘making’ of present-day consoles!
1967
The first video game console (working prototype) debuted as a bulky rectangular brown wooden box with two attached controllers, and thus the name "Brown Box". Invented by Ralph H. Baer (1922 – ), also known as "The Father of Video Games", he developed the brown video game console such that it can be hooked up with any ordinary TV sets. There were only six simple games for the console, namely ping-pong, tennis, handball, volleyball, chase games and a light-gun game.
"Brown Box" (1967)
1972
The demonstration of the "Brown Box" led to the licensing of the technology by Magnavox in 1972, resulting in the release of the first official home video game console – Magnavox Odyssey. Just as the earliest films do not feature recorded sound, the first video game console is silent as well, with graphics which we would consider very primitive by today’s standard.
Magnavox Odyssey (1972)
1975 – 1977
Atari’s PONG arcade machine was so popular in 1973 that Atari decided to market the game as a home console two years later in 1975. In that same year, Magnavox decided to improve its Odyssey system and released not one, but two different improved versions of the original console, the Magnavox Odyssey 100 and 200.
From 1976-77, a series of Magnavox Odyssey consoles were produced, with each new console only slightly better than the previous one. The consoles basically had the same games within, but with some modification to the graphics, controllers and digital on-screen scoring.
Unsurprisingly, Atari came up with new consoles such as the highly-acclaimed Atari 2600, Video Pinball and Stunt Cycle to compete with Magnavox. New companies such as Fairchild, RCA and Coleco also jumped on the bandwagon, creating consoles of their own to grab a piece of the pie. The Wonder Wizard by General Home Products was even said to be pretty much the same as the Odyssey 300 by Magnavox, other than having better and larger paddle controllers.
Fairchild and RCA didn’t meet with much success with their first and only consoles while Coleco’s first video game system, Telstar, was well-received for its capability to play games in colour and for having different difficulty levels. As a result of its popularity, a number of fresh consoles from Coleco soon sprang up in the market from 1977-78.
Atari Sears Tele-Games Pong System (1975)
Magnavox Odyssey 100 (1975)
Magnavox Odyssey 200 (1975)
Coleco Telstar (1976)
Fairchild Channel F (1976)
Magnavox Odyssey 300 (1976)
Magnavox Odyssey 400 (1976)
Magnavox Odyssey 500 (1976)
The Wonder Wizard Model 7702 (1976)
RCA Studio II (1977)
Magnavox Odyssey 2000 (1977)
Atari 2600 (1977)
Atari Video Pinball (1977)
Atari Stunt Cycle (1977)
Coleco Telstar Ranger (1977)
Coleco Telstar Alpha (1977)
Coleco Telstar Colormatic (1977)
Coleco Telstar Combat (1977)
Magnavox Odyssey 3000 (1977)
Magnavox Odyssey 4000 (1977)
1978 – 1980
Nintendo, the company which eventually became a major player in the video gaming industry for the next three decades, delivered their first series of video game console from 1977 to 1979. The Color TV Game Series were only for sale in Japan. These consoles essentially followed in the footsteps of Atari and featured Pong-style games.
Once again, there were a few newcomers to the market but they were met with limited success. Bally Astrocade came about in 1977 and was celebrated for its superior graphic capabilities. For some reason, it did not last long. Mattel introduced its Intellivision console in 1979, which actually intimidated Atari 2600 with its exceptional capabilities.
Coleco continued with its line of consoles of all sorts, in an attempt to pit against the mighty Atari 2600. Coleco had consoles for playing shooting, car racing and pinball games. Similarly, Magnavox persisted on with a few more upgraded consoles of its own, but they were inherently Pong consoles that play Pong-based games. Philips, having bought Magnavox in 1974, developed some variations of Magnavox Odyssey’s models as well. Regardless, Atari 2600 remained at the top owing to its cartridge-based console equipped with better graphics and games.
Nintendo Color TV Game Series (1977 – 1979)
Coleco Telstar Sportsman (1978)
Coleco Telstar Colortron (1978)
Coleco Telstar Marksman (1978)
Coleco Telstar Gemini (1978)
Coleco Telstar Arcade (1978)
Bally Astrocade (1978)
Magnavox Odyssey 2 (1978)
Philips Odyssey 2001 (1978)
Philips Odyssey 2100 (1978)
Mattel’s Intellivison (1979)
1981 – 1985
The golden age of video gaming has arrived! With progressively advanced gaming technology,the 1980s was a period of genre innovation when the industry began experimenting with non-Pong games like fighting, platform, adventure and RPG games. It is also this era that we saw the release of all-time classic games such as Pac-man (1980), Mario Bros (1983), The Legend of Zelda (1986), Final Fantasy (1987), Golden Axe (1988), etc. There was also a major shift from dedicated consoles (with built-in games) to cartridge-based video game systems.
Both Sega and Nintendo dominated the video gaming scene in that decade. The first console ever released by Sega was the SG-1000 in 1983. It was not exactly well-known since it was mostly distributed in Asia and never launched in North America. However, that machine laid the foundation for its top-notch successor in 1985, the Sega Master System. Nevertheless, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) revealed in 1983 emerged victorious as the best-selling console of that generation. It is even fair to say that the NES single-handedly raised Nintendo to a company easily identified with gaming.
Companies within the video game consoles market like Atari, Mattel and Coleco released new consoles, Atari 5200, Intellivision II and ColecoVision, respectively, but these were not comparable with the popularity of Sega and Nintendo. In fact, ColecoVision was the last home video game console Coleco released. They dominated the home video gaming market until they were dethroned by NES when it was introduced to the US and UK market a year after the 1984 video game industry crash. As a result of the crash, ColecoVision ended up as the last console released by Coleco. Meanwhile, a few new and unheard consoles were brought to the market by hopeful companies, only to be overwhelmed by the intense competition between the Sega Master System and NES. (Thanks Jared for pointing out the error in this paragraph)
Epoch Cassette Vision (1981)
Vectrex (1982)
Emersion Arcadia (1982)
ColecoVision (1982)
Atari 5200 (1982)
Mattel Intellivision II (1982)
Casio PV-1000 (1983)
Sega SG-1000 (1983)
Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) (1983)
Epoch Super Cassette Vision (1984)
Sega Master System (1985)
1986 – 1990
As the struggle for domination continues between Nintendo and Sega, each of them released brand new consoles to challenge each other’s positions. Sega came up with the its number one console of all time, the Mega Drive/Genesis in 1988. To counter the threat, Nintendo presented the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) two years later, the console next in line after NES. Sega released the Master System II in the very same year after gaining significant success with Mega Drive/Genesis. This was the major console war that occured in the 80s.
Atari was slowly slipping out of the console market despite yet another undertaking in its latest system, the Atari 7800. The draw was that it offered backward compatibility with the phenomenal Atari 2600, allowing players to enjoy classic games of the past. Newcomer TurboGrafx-16 by NEC tried to target both Sega Genesis and Nintendo’s SNES and NES consoles but was ultimately overtaken by them in 1991, ranking fourth in the video game market. An enhanced version, the SuperGrafx (1989), was also not well-received.
SNK Neo Geo, already famous for its arcade machines production, went ahead to bring the arcade experience to home video game consoles in 1990. The Neo Geo AES (Advanced Entertainment System) was equipped with remarkable graphics thanks to the larger size of the games, which consequently led to the pricey tag (the console costs more than 800 dollars, while each game piece over 200 dollars). It is for this reason that the public’s reception of the first Neo Geo console was less than great.
Atari 7800 (1986)
NEC TurboGrafx-16 (1987)
Sega Mega Drive/Genesis (1988)
NEC SuperGrafx (1989)
Sega Master System II (1990)
SNK NeoGeo AES (Advanced Entertainment System) (1990)
Super Nintendo Entertainment System (1990)
1991 – 1993
In the first few years of 1990s, there is a notable shift in the medium used for storing games from cartridges to compact discs. What this meant was that there were increased capacities for video gaming, prompting as well a transition of 2D graphics to that of 3D. The first CD console was launched by Philips (1991) – the CD-i. Regrettably, the console was more commonly recognized as a failure for its sub-standard games and frustrating controllers.
In 1992, NEC TurboGrafx-16 was upgraded to the TurboGrafx-CD to meet the demands of CD-based consoles. But again, it lost itself to Sega Genesis/MegaDrive with its latest add-on, the Sega CD. Atari made its last console appearance with their CD-based Atari Jaguar in 1993, which was meant to contest against the other 16-bit consoles like the Sega Genesis and SNES. It then found itself losing the console battle with more advanced next generation console like the Sega Saturn and Sony Playstation a year later.
Commodore, a US-based home computer manufacturer, gained entry into the market with its very own Amiga CD32 (1993). Sadly, it was only for a brief few months before Commodore declared bankrupcy in 1994, thus prematurely ending the sales of a video game console with some potential.
Philips CD-i (1991)
NEC TurboDuo (1992)
Panasonic 3DO Interactive Multiplayer (1993)
Atari Jaguar (1993)
Commodore Amiga CD32 (1993)
1994 – 1997
In 1994, Sony finally made its entrance with the leading Playstation. Sega At the same time, Sega with its immense success of its MegaDrive/Genesis system, went on to expand it into a series, with the Genesis 2 (1994) and Genesis 3 (1997). It also developed an entirely new console, Saturn, to rival against the rest of the CD-based consoles. Nintendo, on the other hand, stuck to its cartridge system for its new Nintendo 64.
SNK Neo Geo moved on with a CD-based console in 1994. Having learnt their lesson for putting a costly tag for their console and games, the Neo Geo CD console costed $300 while its games costed around $50, which were sharp drops from its previous AES system. NEC now exhibited its new PC-FX, which looked more like a desktop CPU than a console. The technology they utilized was outdated when compared to that of Sega Saturn and Sony Playstation, hence what followed was that the console was phased out and NEC no longer produced home consoles.
During this time, there were also many other consoles which most of us would not have heard of. Bandai, Casio and even Apple came up with their own consoles. The Virtual Boy by Nintendo, launched in 1995, consisted of a head-mounted display to view 3D graphics.
Sega Genesis 2 (1994)
Sega Saturn (1994)
Playstation (1994)
SNK Neo Geo CD (1994)
NEC PC-FX (1994)
Bandai Playdia (1994)
Apple Bandai Pippin (1995)
Casio Loopy (1995)
Nintendo’s Virtual Boy (1995)
Nintendo 64 (1996)
Sega Genesis 3 (1997)
1998 – 2004
Sega Saturn was not a major success, so Sega thought of another new console for the next generation – the Sega Dreamcast (1998). In terms of providing internet support via its built-in modem for online playing, Dreamcast was the pioneer back in 1998. Two years later, Sony progressed on with the next Playstation, the Playstation 2. In 2001, Nintendo switched its cartridge-based Nintendo 64 to a DVD-ROM GameCube. That very same year, we saw Microsoft entered in the video game console industry in 2001 with its well-received Xbox, which featured online gaming service as well, the Xbox Live.
Now that the industry is stabilized after three decades of experimenting with all sorts of consoles, there were rarely any entry attempts by fresh companies. Interestingly enough, there is one XaviXPORT in 2004 that is relatively unheard of. The console uses cartridges and have controllers which looked like sports equipments to interact with on-screen games. It was basically used for working out and keeping fit. Kind of reminds us of the existing Nintendo Wii, doesn’t it?
Sega Dreamcast (1998)
Playstation 2 (2000)
Nintendo Gamecube (2001)
Xbox (2001)
XaviXPORT (2004)
2005 – 2011 (Today)
Finally, the current generation of video game console only has room for three major competitors: Xbox 360, Sony Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii. With full 1080p HD graphics for both the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, and Wii’s innovative remote for sensing 3D movements, it seems that video gaming had indeed came a long, long way. In addition to these, all three consoles had expanded with add-ons such as the MotionPlus for Wii (2009), Kinect (2010) for Xbox 360 and Move (2010) for Playstation 3. These three add-ons similarly involved the capability to sense physical motion accurately, enhancing the interactive experience for players.
Most of the companies were already phased out – Atari, Coleco, NEC, Sega, etc, but there are currently still two adventurous companies who dare to compete head-on with the Big Three. Mattel is back with its Hyperscan console after disappearing from the industry for three decades. Marketed to young boys of the age of five to nine, it was only available for a year before they were taken off the shelf in 2007. The PC World Magazine ranked it the 7th worst video game system of all time.
On the other hand, the EVO Smart Console (2008) looks to be more promising with its HD graphics, internet access, 120GB hard drive and 2GB RAM. Also a Media PC, it is the first Linux Open Source game console. However, for some strange reason, the console’s official website is no longer available and is not even indicated in Envisions’ website.
Xbox360 (2005)
Playstation 3 (2006)
Wii (2006)
Mattel’s Hyperscan (2006)
Envizions EVO Smart Console (2008)
Wii MotionPlus (2009)
Kinect for Xbox 360 (2010)
PlayStation Move (2010)Tapes show mentally ill prisoners forced from cells with pepper spray
The six videotapes, released by a federal court, were created by guards abiding by a state policy to record all cell extractions.
"When we order involuntary medications, the inmate is told they will receive medications whether they like it or not," said the psychiatrist, Dr. Ernest Wagner.
His prison psychiatrist testified that the psychotic inmate had lost touch with reality and needed emergency medication.
In one tape shot in July of last year at California State Prison at Corcoran, a screaming, naked prisoner is sprayed five times in 15 minutes before being tackled to the ground by about half a dozen guards and then strapped to a gurney.
The six tapes, created by guards abiding by a state policy to record all cell extractions, were shown in court in October as part of a lawsuit by inmates' lawyers seeking a ban on the use of pepper spray against the mentally ill. The tapes were ordered released by U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton, who is holding hearings on the issue in Sacramento.
Some of the inmates are being forced to comply with medication orders; others are to be moved to new cells.
SACRAMENTO — Videotapes released Thursday by a federal court show mentally ill prisoners in California being forced from their cells by guards who douse them repeatedly with pepper spray.
Lawyers representing some 30,000 mentally ill prisoners say the tapes show excessive force, the abuse of men who may have little understanding of what is happening to them or why.
"The mentally ill are being punished for their mental illness," Jeffrey Bornstein, a San Francisco attorney representing inmates, told the judge.
Witnesses for the state, including California's director of adult prisons, said in court that in all of the taped incidents guards followed proper procedure. It is safer to remove prisoners from their cell at a distance rather than use physical force, they said.
The corrections department filed the videos with the court Thursday and issued a statement calling the use of force "always a last resort for our staff."
Extracting inmates from their cells is typically done to keep them "from harming themselves or others and to ensure that they are placed in a more appropriate mental health setting," the statement said.
"What you don't see on these videos," it said, "is the hours of discussions that take place between the inmate and clinical staff before a cell extraction is ordered and the video camera starts rolling."
The agency said that it is in |
Sunday she hinted that she could be willing to wait up to another year.
May has said she will not agree to any referendum taking place before Brexit, telling Sturgeon “now is not the time” for the vote to be re-run.
Nicola Sturgeon: smooth operator, and very able to make mischief | Observer profile Read more
Sturgeon said she was still offering compromise. “[May] said she does not agree with that timescale,” the first minister told Peston on Sunday. “I think it is for her then to say what timescale she thinks would be appropriate and I’m happy to have that discussion within reason.
“If she’s talking in the spring of 2019, a bit later perhaps than I was suggesting, there may be some room for discussion around that. But it seems to me to be just fundamentally unfair for a UK government, with Brexit having sunk the ship, trying to puncture Scotland’s lifeboat as well.”
Sturgeon added that a delay until after the next Scottish parliamentary elections in 2021 would not be acceptable. “I don’t think that is reasonable because by that point Scotland has been taken out of the EU, two years have elapsed,” she said.
“Presumably there is divergence opening up between the rules of the European Union and the single market and where the UK is going. I think it then gets much harder for Scotland to seek a different course.”
Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, repeated her opposition to a referendum on Sunday and said it was wrong to consistently portray the Scottish National party as the voice of Scotland.
“The SNP is not Scotland and they are acting against the majority wishes of the people of Scotland in putting forward their proposition on Monday,” she said. “I’ve read far too many headlines saying, ‘Scotland reacts X, Scotland reacts Y’. No, it doesn’t. There are people right across Scotland, many, many thousands of them, that are so thankful for the prime minister to say let’s take a pause on this.
“We have asked basic questions on things like currency, on things like a central bank, on things like whether we would even rejoin Europe as a full member, and Nicola Sturgeon seems unable to commit to that.”
In a speech to the SNP conference on Saturday, Sturgeon accused the UK prime minister of “condescension and inflexibility”, insisting there would be a second referendum even if the UK government tried to block it. Holyrood is expected to back Sturgeon’s efforts in a vote on Wednesday.
Earlier on Saturday, Gordon Brown said there was an opportunity for Scotland to be granted a range of new powers after Brexit – such as more tax-raising powers, abilities to sign international treaties, and more control over agriculture, fisheries, environmental regulation, employment and energy.
An Opinium/Observer poll on Sunday found 54% of people say they believe the chances of the break-up of the UK have increased, against 16% who disagree.
When asked if they believe Scotland would choose independence if Sturgeon called a second referendum, 45% of Scottish voters said they believe the result will favour independence, with 40% predicting a vote to stay in the UK.Looking for news you can trust?
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President Trump has insisted for a long time that his attitude toward ISIS will be nothing like President Obama’s. There will be no compromise, no pragmatism, no half measures. He will destroy them to the last man and completely annihilate their organization.
That makes it odd that this deeply-reported BBC story hasn’t gotten more attention:
The BBC has uncovered details of a secret deal that let hundreds of IS fighters and their families escape from Raqqa, under the gaze of the US and British-led coalition and Kurdish-led forces who control the city. ….The deal to let IS fighters escape from Raqqa — de facto capital of their self-declared caliphate…would spare lives and bring fighting to an end. The lives of the Arab, Kurdish and other fighters opposing IS would be spared. But it also enabled many hundreds of IS fighters to escape from the city….Has the pact, which stood as Raqqa’s dirty secret, unleashed a threat to the outside world — one that has enabled militants to spread far and wide across Syria and beyond? ….Publicly, the SDF said that only a few dozen fighters had been able to leave, all of them locals. But one lorry driver tells us that isn’t true. “We took out around 4,000 people including women and children — our vehicle and their vehicles combined. When we entered Raqqa, we thought there were 200 people to collect. In my vehicle alone, I took 112 people.” ….Another driver says the convoy was six to seven kilometres long….Footage secretly filmed and passed to us shows lorries towing trailers crammed with armed men. Despite an agreement to take only personal weapons, IS fighters took everything they could carry. Ten trucks were loaded with weapons and ammunition. ….In light of the BBC investigation, the coalition now admits the part it played in the deal. Some 250 IS fighters were allowed to leave Raqqa, with 3,500 of their family members.
Was this a good deal to make? It might have been. But it is decidedly not what Trump promised. Instead of annihilating ISIS, he allowed hundreds of ISIS fighters with tons of armaments to escape into ISIS-controlled territory in Syria—where they are free to take up arms again against American forces. As commander-in-chief, I assume Trump himself approved this deal. Why isn’t anyone asking him about this?Robots are coming for more Americans’ jobs — and you can blame the Fight for $15 fanatics.
Wendy’s is now moving to install self-service kiosks in 1,000 of its restaurants (about a sixth of its total) by year’s end. The point is to save on labor costs, which are soaring thanks to radical jumps in the minimum wage to as much as $15 an hour in places like New York and California.
“Last year was tough — 5 percent wage inflation,” says Wendy’s COO Bob Wright. That was more than twice the 2.1 percent overall inflation rate. And he’s expecting wages to climb almost as fast this year, too.
But automation, Wright says, can shave 31 hours a week of paid labor from a single restaurant — almost a full-time job. Say goodbye to nearly 1,000 jobs — for starters.
Wright warns that robots can take on other work: “repetitive production tasks” that aren’t “core” to what customers love.
And the trend runs far beyond Wendy’s. Panera Bread, McDonald’s and others are adding touch-screen kiosks. At Cafe X in San Francisco, a robotic arm prepares and serves coffee.
It’s hard to blame firms facing a sky-high $15 minimum wage for looking to rein in costs, but the toll is ugly. Job-loss estimates from a $15 minimum in New York alone run as high as 600,000 — from automation as well as shops closing and just trimming staff.
Meanwhile, a new Heritage Foundation report predicts a $15 mandatory wage floor will push up fast-food prices “at least a fourth.” And since lower-income groups rely more on fast food and other products made by minimum-wage workers, they’ll be hit hardest.
“Minimum-wage increases,” the report concludes, “do little to redistribute wealth.”
Great: Humans lose their jobs. Machines take over. And you can thank the US labor movement.About: I love to make things and I love my kids. This usually results in me making things with my kids (and lovely wife). Here you will find our adventures and be able to join our family in the making!
Everyone has one of those cheap RC mini quadcopters that is either broken or gathering dust once the novelty ended.
...or so you thought!!!
If you have one laying around or needed one more reason to give in to your inner child and buy one then this instructable is for you.
Start by watching the build video above then print the template and collect your supplies as you embark on an amazingly affordable, quick, and fun build!
Supplies:
Mini Quadcopter http://amzn.to/2lmeo8V
Printed out Template (find it hosted on my blog here)
Scotch Tape
Coffee Straw
Happy flying and thanks for using my link to purchase your quadcopter. That link is an affiliate link which means I will get something like 64 cents if you buy one. :-) it's not much but every little bit helps!!!As the Democratic presidential candidates took to the sidewalks of New York, the tenor of the campaign was approaching the gutter -- with each side raising questions about the other's qualifications for the highest office in the land.
Senator Bernie Sanders defended some of his recent comments about Hillary Clinton in an interview with "CBS This Morning" anchor Charlie Rose.
CHARLIE ROSE: You said that Secretary Clinton doesn't qualify because she takes super PAC money and has supported trade deals.
BERNIE SANDERS: What I said was in response to what she has been saying. Washington Post headline, quote, "Clinton questions whether Sanders is qualified to be president." I thought it was appropriate to respond.
ROSE: But is it tit for tat? Is that what this campaign conversation ought to be about?
SANDERS: No, it certainly should not be. And as you may know, I have tried to run an issue-oriented campaign which is what I believe the American people wanna hear. They want to hear about what ideas we have to improve their lives, not just attacking each other every day. But what I do have to say, Charlie, if we are getting attacked -- every single day -- by the Clinton campaign, I want them to know we're gonna respond, in kind.
ROSE: Do you believe Secretary Clinton is unqualified to be president?
SANDERS: Well, does Secretary Clinton believe that I am unqualified to be president?
ROSE: But why can't you simply say yes? She has a first-rate resume in terms of a life in public service. She's one of the most qualified people to run.
Sanders attacks Clinton as Democratic race narrows
SANDERS: She has years of experience. She is extremely intelligent. You know, I have some experience too. I have a pretty good record in Congress, as a senator, as a mayor. I think I am qualified to be president. And so to answer your question, you're right. We should not get into this tit for tat. We should be debating the issues facing the American people. All I am saying, if the people are gonna attack us, if they're gonna distort our record, as has been the case time and time again, we're gonna respond.
ROSE: People are saying the tenor of this campaign has changed, and it's sounding more and more like the Republican campaign.
SANDERS: Let's not go that far.
ROSE: But take a listen to this, this is what you've said. You said that, "Clinton should apologize for Iraq war deaths."
SANDERS: This is after I was asked to apologize for the tragedy in Sandy Hook. You know, put these things into context.
ROSE: Tit for tat.
SANDERS: It is tit for tat. But I'm responding to attacks that are being made against me.
Watch: Clinton responds to Sanders attack
ROSE: I'm asking where the tenor of this campaign is going. And is that going too far to say she bears responsibility for Iraqi war deaths?
SANDERS: Do I bear responsibility for the tragedy and the horrors of Sandy Hook? So, you know, let's get off of that. Of course she doesn't bear responsibility. She voted for the war in Iraq. That was a very bad vote, in my view. Do I hold her accountable? No.
ROSE: Do I hear you saying tonight that, "I'm embarrassed by these personal attacks that are taking place. And all I have done is respond to attacks. But I'm embarrassed, and they are giving a tone to this campaign that I don't like. I don't like the fact that I have to participate in it and I wish it would stop on both sides." Are you willing to say that?
SANDERS: Yup. Oh yeah. Look, Charlie, you're looking at a guy who's been in politics for a long time. Ran many elections in the state of Vermont. I have never run a negative ad in my life. In this campaign, as I'm sure you can appreciate, every other day people are coming up to me and saying "Aren't you gonna attack Hillary Clinton? Aren't you gonna attack the Clinton Foundation?" And you know how many times I've done that? Zero. You saw me in the debate, right?
ROSE: Yes.
SANDERS: Well, I was asked about emails. What did I say? I said, "Enough of these damn emails."
Clinton hits Sanders on guns, economy
ROSE: I just wanna come back to the Iraqi thing one second, and one more question. You have said that she voted for the Iraqi war. Other people did as well. Many other people. Do you hold all of them responsible for the deaths of Americans?
SANDERS: No.
ROSE: Then why say it, Senator? That's the question.
SANDERS: I am saying it because I was attacked.
ROSE: That's not a reason, I promise you, to say, "I'm saying it because they attacked me."
SANDERS: Well, I hope you ask Senator Clinton am I responsible -- look, you know, I'm being asked to apologize -- you know--
ROSE: Come November 2016, if Hillary Clinton is the nominee you will be supporting her?
SANDERS: Sure, I will. Look, as I said a million times, I think the idea of a Donald Trump or a Ted Cruz presidency would be an unmitigated disaster for this country. I will do everything in my power and work as hard as I can to make sure that that does not happen. And if Secretary Clinton is the nominee, I will certainly support her.
Watch more of Charlie Rose's interview with Sanders Thursday night on "Charlie Rose" and on Friday's "CBS This Morning."CLOSE San Antonio Police Detective Benjamin Marconi was fatally shot while he was sitting in his patrol car, writing out a ticket. He was a 20-year veteran of the force. USA TODAY NETWORK
SAN ANTONIO — A Texas detective was shot and killed while writing a traffic ticket outside of police headquarters late Sunday morning. Later Sunday, two other officers were wounded in incidents in Florida and Missouri.
San Antonio Police Chief William McManus identified the slain officer as 20-year veteran Detective Benjamin Marconi, 50. He said the suspect has not yet been apprehended, and a motive is not known.
McManus said Marconi had pulled over a car for a traffic violation outside Public Safety Headquarters in downtown. While Marconi was inside his squad car writing a ticket, a black vehicle pulled up behind him and the driver got out, walked up to the detective’s window and shot him in the head, McManus said. Then the suspect reached into the window and shot Marconi a second time, he said.
The suspect then got back into his car and drove away in what police described as a black Toyota or Nissan sedan. McManus said in a news conference Sunday afternoon that police do not know if there was a connection between the car Marconi stopped and the shooter.
San Antonio Police said a suspect in the Nov. 20, 2016, shooting of an officer fled the scene in this car. (Photo: KENS-TV)
Police said Marconi was pronounced dead at San Antonio Military Medical Center around 12:30 p.m. CT Sunday.
Later Sunday, a Sanibel Police Department officer was shot during a traffic stop. The officer's shooting was a first for the island police department, according to police officials.
He was taken to Lee Memorial Hospital and his condition was not known.
The city website reported that shots had been exchanged with the suspect and it had sent a reverse 911 call to Sanibel residents in the Dunes neighborhoods advising them to let lock all doors and stay away from windows.
A suspect was taken into custody shortly afterward.
Sanibel City: Suspect has been taken into custody. All clear being issued to residents — Michael Braun (@MichaelBraunNP) November 21, 2016
And in Missouri, KSDK-TV reported a police sergeant was in critical but stable condition after being shot in south St. Louis Sunday night.
St. Louis Metropolitan Police Chief Sam Dotson said a suspect pulled alongside the officer's marked car and fired, hitting him twice in his face. The suspect was at large.
The injured sergeant, 46, has 20 years of service, police said.
Dotson said St. Louis city officers will have two officers per squad car for the time being.
The injured officer is a 46-year old male sergeant with 20 years of service. The officer is in critical/stable condition. — St. Louis, MO Police (@SLMPD) November 21, 2016
San Antonio Mayor Ivy Taylor released a statement expressing his condolences to the family of the slain detective and the entire police force. "This type of crime cannot and will not be tolerated," the statement read. "I ask for the community's thoughtfulness and patience as the investigation continues and SAPD searches for the suspect."
CLOSE One police officer was killed and three wounded in separate U.S. cities on Sunday. An officer was killed in his squad car in San Antonio, Texas. Officers were shot and wounded in St. Louis, Gladstone, Missouri and Sanibel, Florida. (Nov. 21) AP
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott also expressed his sympathy via Twitter.
Statement on murder of San Antonio Police Officer pic.twitter.com/m1WrgMaFva — Gov. Greg Abbott (@GovAbbott) November 20, 2016
And tributes poured in from other law enforcement agencies via social media.
Our thoughts and prayers are with our brothers and sisters @SATXPolice. Our thoughts are with you in coming days. — Houston Police (@houstonpolice) November 20, 2016
Our thoughts and prayers are with our @SATXPolice family. — Austin Police Dept (@Austin_Police) November 20, 2016
McManus said, “This is everyone’s worst nightmare.” He said officers will not be conducting traffic stops alone until further notice.
Before Sunday's shootings, the total of police killed in the line of duty in 2016 stood at 127, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page. Of those, 58 deaths were from gunfire.
Contributing: Michael Braun, The (Fort Myers, Fla.) News-Press and The Associated Press. Follow KENS-TV on Twitter: @KENS5
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2fIpn8YAmid an unpreceddented collapse in confidence in the Open Doors policy of Angela Merkel, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaueble has made the dangerous suggestion that the army should be deployed on German soil to maintain security.
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/fluechtlingspolitik-schaeuble-stuetzt-kurs-der-kanzlerin-1.2820991
But a country that needs the army to protect its citizens as they go about their daily business is a failed state. By arguing the army is now needed to protect the basic security of citizens, Schauble is, therefore, indirectly admitting that Germany has already become a failed state.
Indeed, the mass sex assaults on women by illegal migrants, who entered as a result of Merkel’s lawless decision, in Cologne on New Year’s Eve have exposed a lawless vacuum in the country, and shattered public trust in the state as top judges have said.
The former head of the Constitutional Court Hans Jurgen Papier has accused the government of a “staggering political failure.”
http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article150894661/Papier-rechnet-mit-deutscher-Fluechtlingspolitik-ab.html
He said the mood in the country has turned against Merkel.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/386ed934-bb94-11e5-bf7e-8a339b6f2164.html#axzz3xPjpsszH
Against this background of a total collapse in trust, few people, bluntly put, trust Schauble either as one of the politicians complicit in allowing Merkel to establish a lawless dictatorship in the first place. It is this group politicians who have become increasingly become a target of criticism for their inaction by party rank and file members such as David Bendels.
http://www.bild.de/politik/inland/fluechtlingskrise/briefkrieg-in-der-unionsfraktion-44170676.bild.html
The Merkel regime has been condemned as a lawless dictatorship not just by Papier by a raft of top law experts. Law Professor Josef Isensee was the latest to say Merkel breached the constitution by unilaterally announcing a radical immigration policy.
“Where was the parliament?” he asks.
http://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/staatsrechtler-mahnt-die-europaeische-union-ist-funktionsuntuechtig-und-ihre-regeln-sind-zerbrochen_id_5213630.html
Merkel is, also, violating EU laws by allowing illegal migrants to enter the country, top judges say.
Against this breakdown of law and order caused by Merkel, the appearance of troops on the streets of German cities is sure to escale tensions. These troops will now be perceived as the jackboots of the lawless dictatorship of Merkel.
The solution, now, is not the army. The solution is to reinstate the Constitution and the rule of law.
Schaeuble should focus his efforts on that before the country collapses under the next wave of illegal radical Muslim migrants.
At most, troops should be used to guard the frontier. This would help free up police to patrol German cities, and stop the formation of militias.
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/fluechtlingspolitik-schaeuble-stuetzt-kurs-der-kanzlerin-1.2820991
Schaeuble has squandered enormous trust in the past months by sitting on the side lines while Germany descended into lawless chaos. Without enjoying the trust of the public, at a time when citizens are falling back on militias to protect themselves because of the failures of the police and government, no politician should propose the deployment of troops on German soil. Schauble is playing with fire.
Like this: Like Loading...Early in my career, I would get uncomfortable and nervous whenever I had to present my work. Especially in person. With sweaty palms, I would unveil the master work that I had crafted in secret and step back quickly with a “Well, what do you think?”
I dreaded long pauses and the inevitable non-specific feedback. “Hmmm, do you think you could make the logo bigger?” “I don’t know….It looks a little….too empty. Do you think you could add more ‘oomph’ to it?”
Some of you are nodding your heads right now. You know exactly what I’m talking about.
It can be easy to write off the client with “They just don’t understand design.” But in reality I was failing at a fundamental role of my profession:
The work does not sell itself.
The client, no matter how savvy, is not telepathic. They are concerned with how your design helps them achieve their goals. If you do not communicate this point clearly, you have devalued yourself and your work.
Clear presentations will help close long feedback loops, which means fewer hours wasted and more projects delivered on time. Happy clients, happy bank accounts.
Here are some pointers that I’ve found helpful over the years:
Get in front of the client.
An in-person meeting is ideal; it’s much easier to react and respond in-person. You will pick up on unspoken cues that will help you understand your client,and it also works in reverse—the client will be more able to understand you! It can also provide instant feedback because you are in the room, watching their smiling (or perhaps unsmiling) faces.
There are occasions where this is impossible, either for location or scheduling reasons. A web presentation is the next best, followed by a conference call while everyone looks at the designs on their own.
Email by itself can be a terrible medium for expressing complex ideas. Many subtle cues can be lost (especially if you’re a frequent user of sarcasm), and it can be easier for people to not respond to an email than if you’re standing a few feet away. This is your last resort. It’s workable, but takes much more effort and understanding from all parties involved.
Thank them for their time.
People are busy, attention is short. Remember this and be respectful of their time.
Remind them why they’re here.
As important as you and your project obviously are, your audience may not exactly remember what they’re going to be looking at that day. Remind them.
“Today we’re going to be looking at some possible directions for the checkout page flow and design.”
Is this phase 2, phase 3? Has your audience seen the work before? Have you already collaborated on a strategy?
“As you know, we’ve just completed our strategy phase and now we’re entering the design phase where we will have two rounds of revisions.”
Tell them exactly what type of feedback you’re looking for early on.
This is the best way to avoid overly generic feedback. If you frame the format you’re looking for early (as in one of the first items of the meeting, before they see anything), this will help your audience form feedback in their minds as you present.
“I’m looking for feedback on the efficiency of the checkout process.”
You can phrase this as narrowly as you’d like. In the above example, you can deflect statements about photo treatments or font choices because you’re only concerned with the flow right now. Log the other comments for the next phase, but keep redirecting your clients to what you want out of them.
This gets easier if everyone has already agreed on a strategy for the project beforehand (remind your client of the goal here):
“I’m looking for feedback on how this design fulfills our goal of decreasing time to purchase and boosting overall conversions by increasing the efficiency of the checkout process.”
Avoid saying: “What do you think?”
It’s a terrible lead-in (and yes, I’ve been guilty of this). When you ask this you put the burden back on the client to decipher your work and come up with a meaningful response to this question. You can get wildly different answers from this question.
Imagine if the technician who installed your air conditioning and heating system asked you this question. What do you say? “I don’t know,” you might think, “both hot AND cool air comes out of the vents, right?” But he’s waiting for an answer, so you look around to try and find something more meaningful to say.
You’re not going to notice the technician’s excellent sheet metal fabrication, or the super-efficient way they’ve organized the wires and controls. You don’t know (or perhaps care) about these things; it’s why you hired someone in the first place to take care of it.
Which brings me to my next point…
Show how the client/user/audience goals are achieved.
Frame things against the context of what your audience cares about: their goals for this project.
Will the placement of the button in that particular spot drive higher conversions? Will removing other options increase the user’s chance to complete a purchase? Will the treatment of the photos evoke the desired feel? Does the copy’s tone drive the type of personality we want to convey?
This is where you translate your designs into their native language.
Avoid jargon.
While you’re explaining your designs, cut out jargon entirely. You will lose people quickly if you let your tongue waltz off into the design ether. Speak plainly.
Which is better?
“The page was conceived with a large amount of negative space and we used a geometric sans-serif font with a large x-height juxtaposed with a dynamic serif font to capture the blend of modern and traditional.”
or
“We designed the page to feel light and airy to minimize distractions and picked readable but elegant fonts.”
The best case scenario with option 1 is a confused client. No one likes to feel like the student in the room. It can quickly thin their patience and erode their trust in you if you talk down to them.
Trust is your most important asset in a relationship. Don’t trade it away to make yourself feel better or hide your nerves.
Make it entertaining.
No one wants to watch a boring presentation.
Monotone delivery, lack of visuals, or lots of nerves can suck the life out of your presentation. You’ll have to gauge the humor level and type of your clients (mortgage bankers may require a different approach than a young tech startup founder), but allow your personality to show through.
Ever heard of power posing before speaking in front of others?
In a nutshell, it’s purposely posing in a ‘powerful’ stance before at least 2 minutes before some sort of activity. It sounds like pseudoscience and feels a little weird but it WORKS for loosening up your body language. (Protip: don’t do this in front of the client. Go do it in a private place beforehand.) When your posture is engaging you’ve got all sorts of sociological power juice working for you.
Another thing that helps me is to be crazy excited to speak to your audience. Not fake-excited; people can see right through that. Find what makes you excited about the project and latch onto it. Let it carry your energy through the presentation. Genuine excitement is contagious and will help cover nerves or small mistakes.
Don’t run from conflict.
Inevitably people will disagree with you. Sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, sometimes strongly, sometimes only just a little This can be a A Good Thing™.
How you deal with conflict is one of the most lasting impressions you can make in a social interaction. Did you deflect it entirely, failing to acknowledge the client’s statements? Did you cave like almost immediately, labeling yourself a pushover? Did you get pissy and defensive or become belligerent?
Think back to the last argument you had (with family, a significant other, whoever). What did you do? Now think back to what they did; how did it make you feel? We’re not going to go too deep into soul searching here (yet), but identifying your tendencies for dealing with conflict is important to know before you enter a conflict because it will help you course correct on the fly.
Good conflict resolution skills are like a super power, and very few people I’ve met are naturally good at it. If you can even get just a little better at this, it will help you tremendously, in all aspects. (I am no expert, but I have seen people who can do this well, it’s amazing.)
Here’s a short framework I use for dealing with conflict (large or small) in client relations:
Never assume they’re “out to get you”. Move past your initial knee jerk reaction. (See Hanlon’s Razor) Acknowledge that you heard them. This can help diffuse an initially strong reaction and start to move from statements to dialogue.
Search for the meat of their statements, what are they really getting at.
Reiterate what you really want and what you really don’t want. Stay focused on those. “What I really want is for this checkout page to be really efficient, easy to use, and effective for your business. I’d hate for the user to get bogged down with too many options.”
Is there a way to satisfy both options? Invite the other party to participate in finding a solution. If someone is in attack/defense mode, critical thinking can pivot their behavior. Suddenly you’re collaborators instead of opponents.
Each conflict is different and this script may not always work. The main point is to stay calm, remind them that you’re here to help and you want the project to succeed (help ME help YOU), and that you’re willing to put in the work to see it happen. A well-handled conflict (where both parties walk away satisfied) will earn you nothing but mad props.
(I strongly recommend the book Crucial Conversations for some of the more advanced conflict-management techniques. Buy it, borrow it, find it in the library — you won’t regret it.)
A short checklist:
To summarize, here’s my checklist before a major presentation:
DO:
Grab attention quickly (make something weird or funny happen early). SHOW don’t TELL (when possible).
Tell stories if possible (the more embarrassing the better).
Show how you achieve the client’s goals.
Keep the client in their expertise comfort zone (their business).
Be crazy excited to speak to the room.
Do your homework; be prepared.
DO NOT:
Present things that are unreadable (“Can you see this in the back?”) Pre-apologize (“We whipped this together. Didn’t sleep well last night.”)
Fill the silences, especially when waiting for a response.
Explain what they can see in front of them (Captain Obvious, “This is a form, this is a button”).
Read a script (Boooooring!).
Ask if they like it.
Try to make them happy (That’s a bad measure — do not avoid conflict).
Take notes (someone not presenting should do it if possible).
Get defensive.
Get too deep into design minutiae (specific colors, typefaces).
BASIC STRUCTURE:
Thank them for their time. Tell them why they’re here.
Tell them what stage you’re in, with a brief reminder of the last stage.
Tell them what type of feedback you need.
Walk through the design. How does each step further the goals of the project?
Invite questions and discussion.
Do you have your own tactics for presentations? Have questions about any of my points? Hit me up on Twitter, I’d love to chat about it.The iconic building is getting a major overhaul. But what about the food at SkyCity restaurant?
No one’s playing the baby grand at the restaurant at the top of the Seattle Space Needle. A sign on top of it reads “PLEASE DON’T PLAY THE PIANO.” Upon arriving for our dinner reservation, we’ve been told, peremptorily, “Go stand by the piano and we’ll call your name” — no “welcome,” no “good evening,” no “how do you do?”
A man by the piano asks a server about beer, and she names several local ones. He looks confused and says he’d like a lager. She tells him that one of the beers is the most like Manny’s. “Mayonnaise?” he says, perplexed. It’s as if somewhere in the employee manual, it says, in all caps, to act as if you do not know that pretty much everyone dining here is from somewhere else.
SkyCity at the Space Needle is set to get a major renovation by superstar architecture firm Olson Kundig, closing Sept. 5 and reopening in late spring of next year. The outer, revolving ring of the restaurant will have a cool-sounding, if acrophobic-challenging, glass floor. The current motor responsible for rotation, alarmingly lurchy at points during a visit last week, will be replaced. The stairs from the observation deck down to the restaurant will go from a brightly lit, claustrophobic passageway to a grand circular affair.
The current interior, while unobtrusive, has a dated, upscale-office aesthetic: abstract-patterned carpet, different-abstract-patterned inner walls, glass-panel dividers along the backs of banquettes. A rendering of the future SkyCity space shows spare, swooping lines and well-heeled, stylish people. An update is a great idea. But, as Mom always says, pretty is as pretty does. And dinner last week at the Space Needle wasn’t pretty, and it was damned expensive.
After more than half a century, isn’t it about time that one of our city’s most expensive restaurants, housed in its most iconic structure, was also one of its best?
The “freshly prepared seasonal soup” promised by the menu was, our brusque server said, chicken tortilla. The staff at the Space Needle should be forgiven some short-timers’ apathy (though they have been guaranteed their jobs back and will receive a years-of-service payment, plus a stipend for benefits, during the closure), but our server’s manner and the soup du jour both signaled more diner than fine dining.
Diners are speedy, though. By the time a bottle of rosé was ordered and brought, we’d gone much of the way around a 47-minute full rotation of the restaurant. Then it was the wrong rosé. “You ordered this one,” the server said insistently more than once, as if she were trying to forcibly hypnotize us.
We skipped the soup. A $13 “hearts of romaine” salad had no hearts in evidence, just chopped romaine plated in the carefree manner of your neighborhood pizzeria. It seemed to want to be a Caesar, aspiring to “garlic-white anchovy vinaigrette, Grana Padano cheese, garlic croutons,” according to the menu. With the exception of the valiant effort of the single anchovy flopped on top, it tasted bland. “You’re not done yet, are you? Can someone finish the Caesar?!” the server bullied, all but invoking the clean-plate club.
For $18, two Dungeness crab cakes fell apart at the fork due to abject mushiness — forget about any lumps, or taste, of crab. Their pink sauce was “rhubarb lacquer”; an unbilled, yellow beurre-blanc-ish sauce was slightly less oversweet. On the side, a small pile of wilty pea sprouts were overpowered by a variety of pickled allium too severely salty-sour to be readily identified. A few marcona almonds seemed to have landed by accident on the plate.
So far, while not at all worth it, these prices are entirely reasonable by any upscale-dining standard. The entrees are where the Space Needle gets you — last week, the average cost was $56.50. Last year, SkyCity once again landed on Restaurant Business magazine’s list of the top 100 highest-grossing non-chain restaurants in the country, coming in at number 53 with nearly $16 million in estimated annual sales. And if you think you can come up to SkyCity, enjoying the included visit to the observation deck upstairs, and just have a drink and an appetizer, think again: The menu dictates a minimum charge of $50 per guest.
A plate of pan-seared scallops cost $57. The six small scallops ranged from disappointingly, firmly overcooked to outright stringy and fishy-tasting. Their citrus-Peppadew marmalade tasted predominantly, unpleasantly bitter; so did two undressed leaves of treviso in the middle, acting as boats for some wilting, also-undressed spinach leaves. Salsify glued the salad, such as it was, to the plate, while a few crispy sunchokes were the best thing on it |
still very fit and enthusiastic,’ says former Climbers' Club president Mike Mortimer. Derek’s technical skill, Mortimer adds, allowed them to do rapid free ascents of the Comici route on the north face of the Cima Grande and the Spigolo Strobel on the Rochetta Alta di Bosconero.
'He was particularly proud of doing the Cassin on the Torre Trieste: up and down in the day with time for a beer before descending to the valley to join the family for a celebration meal. We also climbed the Gogna on the Marmolada’ south face in 12 hours when he was sixty years old. We managed a climb in the Dolomites only a few months before he died. I still find it difficult to believe he is no longer with us.'
Derek was elected president of the BMC in 1999. Well liked and an able negotiator in sometimes fractious circumstances, he was a great servant to British climbing and will be much missed.
'He was a wonderful diplomat,’ Bonington says, ‘very inclusive, always had time for everyone and never had a bad word for anyone. He was devoted to the climbing club scene, took an active part in club business and was a very effective president of the Climbers’ Club. He's a huge loss; a person loved and respected by all.’
A memorial service for Derek was held at St Laurence Parish Church in Frodsham on Thursday 31 January with a reception afterwards at Frodsham Golf Club. BMC representatives were among about 300 people who attended the packed-out memorial service, clearly reflecting Derek's popularity.
The BMC wishes to express its deepest condolences to his wife Hilary, and the rest of his family.
Obituary: The Independent
Watch a slideshow of pictures of Derek.
Derek Walker from team_BMC on Vimeo.
« BackThe EPA shuttered America’s last lead smelter. Was this a good idea?
Which is more important: that America is able to refine and process lead ore, or that the 2,800 people in Herculaneum, Missouri, have cleaner air and soil?
Actually, it doesn’t matter what you think! Unelected bureaucrats in Washington have already made the decision for you.
As of December 31, the last remaining lead refining plant in America will shut down. After well over 100 years of operation, the new, latest round of stricter environmental laws has forced its closure. One hundred and forty-five employees will lose their jobs. Another 45 contractors will be out of work. And America will no longer be able to produce refined lead from ore.
Environmentalists see this as a victory—cleaner air, cleaner water and a cleaner, safer world for all. Perhaps that is partially true. But does this plant’s closure really make America safer?
“For years families with children near Doe Run’s facilities have been exposed to unacceptable levels of lead, one of the most dangerous neurotoxins in the environment,” said Cynthia Giles, assistant administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency’s (epa) Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance back in 2010 when it became clear that the Doe Run smelter would most likely close. “Today’s settlement requires Doe Run to take aggressive actions to clean up their act and work to ensure that families living near the company’s facilities are protected from lead poisoning and other harmful pollution.”
The residents of Doe Run will now be able to breathe easier. And that is good. But will America be able to breathe easier?
Not everyone is happy. The news came as a blow to the small community that is dependent on the jobs, spending and taxes collected from the plant.
Many people had hoped that Doe Run would be able to retrofit the plant with new emission filtering technology and other upgrades to reduce pollution. There was even talk about building a completely new plant using different technology to process the ore.
But it all came down to this: The cost to meet the epa’s new environmental guidelines—which were 10 times more stringent than the previous standard—made it uneconomical to refine lead. So the jobs are gone and another industry bites the dust.
The closure of one lead refinery may not seem like that big of a deal, but its impact will go far beyond the 2,800 people living in Herculaneum.
The Doe Run Smelter was the last primary lead smelter in America. America uses approximately 1.5 million tonnes of lead per year. Doe Run supplied a whopping eight percent of this demand. With the Herculaneum plant shuttered, all refined lead (beyond scrap) will now have to be imported from other nations.
The closure of the Doe Run plant is not just an environmental issue—it is a national security one.
Lead is an economically critical mineral. It is used in both the solar power and wind energy industries. It is also used in cable coverings, roof flashings and radiation shielding for airport security, nuclear energy storage and medical applications. Lead batteries dominate the traditional vehicle market as well as the market for smaller fully-electric vehicles.
The bigger worry is that lead is also a militarily critical mineral. Without Doe Run, America may become dependent on foreign nations for its small arms ammunition supply chain. Components such as bullet projectiles, projectile cores and primers all require lead.
Without the Doe Run smelter, the domestic manufacture of conventional ammunition, from mine to finished cartridge, will be impossible. Ammunition can still be produced via recycled lead, but how long could that supply last if our access to imports was ever compromised?
America may have one of the biggest armies in the world, but is it really a superpower if it can’t even manufacture its own bullets?
The closure of the Doe Run smelter comes at a time when nations like China, Germany and India, and the world as a whole, are increasing refining capacity.
Instead of forcing the closure of Doe Run, the rational reaction should have been for the government to work with the company to both protect the environment and ensure the survival of this strategically important industry.
But “rational” doesn’t describe Washington these days.
The Environmental Protection Agency has one goal: reduce pollution. It is the one government agency actually efficient at its job. But sadly, the cost has been catastrophic for American industry, manufacturing capacity and national security.
Consider America’s electricity generating industry. Right now there are new regulations from the environmental protection agency on coal demanding that power plants capture all the carbon that comes out of a coal plant and bury it underground. They call it “carbon sequestration.”
But here is the problem. Commercial-scale coal sequestration technology doesn’t even exist—and yet the epa is demanding that these power plants somehow implement their new regulations—or face fines and ultimately be shut down. As Congressman James Lankford pointed out October 31 at Armstrong Auditorium in Edmond Oklahoma, carbon-capture technology only works in the laboratory. Small test facilities are under construction, but even those are having massive billion dollar cost overruns.
“I don’t have a problem with breathing clean air, I really don’t, I kind of like it in fact, but I do have a problem when the government steps in and says, I’m going to require you to do something that doesn’t exist yet,” said Lankford. “This is the moment, as a nation we have to have rational conversations on [these] big issues.”
America’s copper smelters are being forced out too. There are now only three left in the U.S. And copper is used in even more applications than lead. Because of America’s lack of copper smelting facilities, much of its copper ore must be shipped overseas to be processed before being shipped back. How long will it be before America’s last copper smelter closes and all copper will have to come from overseas?
During America’s war of independence, it learned the hard way what it meant to be reliant on foreign powers to supply strategic materials and equipment. That is why America’s founders set up a national policy of military and industrial self-sufficiency. They saw it as essential for the security of the nation.
But now politicians in Washington think they know better than our founders. And unelected officials at the epa are transforming the nation.
Shouldn’t America be militarily self-sufficient? Shouldn’t we encourage more industry, manufacturing and jobs, and still work to have a clean and safe environment? Wouldn’t that be the rational thing to do?
I’m sorry, I forgot. It doesn’t really matter what you think. The bureaucrats in Washington have made the decision for you.A recent political poll found that nearly one in five supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump do not support the Emancipation Proclamation, the document which freed slaves during the Civil War.
Despite his controversial statements about Muslims, immigrants and women, Trump’s political star is shining brighter than ever. The New York Times took a closer look at the people who are backing him in the race to the White House to see just where they stand on the issues. Specifically, the paper looked at the racial beliefs of the Republican frontrunner’s supporters. The observant look into the numbers turned up one shocking result; nearly 20 percent of Trump’s supporters did not approve of freeing slaves in the South.
A YouGov/Economist poll asked respondents if they approved or disapproved of “the executive order that freed all slaves in the states that were in rebellion against the federal government,” better known as the Emancipation Proclamation. Nearly one in five Trump supporters said they disapproved of it, while 17 percent weren’t sure.
The Times also notes that 70 percent of Trump’s supporters in South Carolina want the Confederate flag to fly once again at their statehouse. Thirty-eight percent wish the South had won the Civil War.One man from the Muscowpetung Saulteaux First Nation is trying to make Saskatchewan a cleaner, prettier province.
Kamao Cappo says people throw bags of garbage into the ditch near his home, and he describes the littering as a slap in the face.
"When you see these piles of garbage you get an ugly feeling in your stomach," he said.
So Cappo started simply picking up trash. When he sees trash in the ditch while he's driving, he says he pulls over and grabs it. So do his kids, who are ages 15, 14 and 11.
He said he was inspired by a woman from Australia who quit her job to pick up garbage.
And he originally posed a challenge to Indigenous people across Saskatchewan to pick up garbage.
"We talk a good talk" he said. "But we gotta do the action, too."
Cappo says sometime he feels like people are looking down on him for picking up trash, and from time to time he feels a bit embarrassed because he worries people might think he's doing something odd. But, ultimately, he feels it's worth it.
"Most of it is positive," said Cappo. "I tried to do it as quick as you can when nobody is looking."
Regardless, he doesn't hold a grudge against people who litter — he just wishes they were a bit more conscientious.
"These are good people that do this. It's not bad people," said Cappo.
"It starts with a cup. You throw a cup out and think, 'Oh it's nothing.' But if you have thousands and thousands of people throwing cups it adds up to a lot."When I first met Machine Gun Kelly, it was 2011 at SXSW. Both of us had issues getting into the less hectic upstairs VIP area of Austin’s Convention Center and Cleveland, Ohio’s very own took offense to it. Guess we both weren’t cool enough at the time to get those special wristbands. This was before the Bad Boy deal, acting roles and everything else between. MGK had just released his Lace Up! mixtape several months prior to positive reviews. Besides giving out a handful of signatures (including one to me), the “Wild Boy” had a relatively easy time during the interview. We went our separate ways and never had an interaction with him since. One thing that’ll always stay with me was how fiery he was. He had something to prove and wanted everyone to know. Fast forward to today, nearly three years since releasing his major label debut Lace Up and he’s just dropped his most personal album to date General Admission.
Retaining that signature energy he’s been known for, there are some heartfelt moments General Admission offers that are heartfelt and honest. For every stoner track “Oz.” or nut-hugging moment like “Bad Mother F*cker” featuring Kid Rock, there are moments where he searches deeper. “Story Of The Stairs” and “A Little More” featuring Victoria Monet are intimate moments into the deeper mindset he’s normally not too known for. It makes sense, MGK’s world view has changed significantly since the last time we talked. Plus, his fanbase has grown significantly and maybe a tad bit out of hand which was noticeable during my time over the phone with him. One thing is clear as day, that unhinged attitude is still in full effect. However, this time, it’s a lot more controlled. Of course, no one understands that growth better than him. Maybe life has a way of maturing people in unexpected ways.
Speaking with DX, MGK manages to discuss how much his real life encounters with the police and fans along with family drama directed the process of creating General Admission.
MGK On Fans: “I’m Not Going To Baby This Generation But Help Mold Them”
DX: I remember doing an interview with you at SXSW in 2011 and you signed my copy of the Lace Up! mixtape. Must be nice to have such a large following that’s grown so much over the years right?
Machine Gun Kelly: Oh word? I mean, I’m fucking reading through all these comments and these reviews. It’s something I don’t normally do but, I’m so confident with this project that I finally….Sorry, walking past a venue and kids are screaming.
[Voices of fans screaming and MGK being polite. Gives female fan hug and she cries hysterically]
Dude I feel like a dude who carried 500 pounds of weight on his back for so long and carrying this around for like three years since the first album dropped. I finally got it off my chest. I got it off my back, shoulder or whatever you want to call it. I feel free, I feel light. I’m not weighed down by the world anymore. I finally put out an album that represents the Machine Gun Kelly I wanted people to see in the first place.
DX: One of my favorite joints on the project is the “Oz” track where you sample Crucial Conflict’s 90s stoner classic “Hay.” That shit knocks yo.
MGK: I wrote that song after I was on the way back home from the airport in Florida. I was recording with Jim Jonsin who produced that track along with some others. A girl came to see me from Australia and I went to go pick her up. She got in the car and we were driving back to the studio. The cops pull us over and I’m like fuck. We had a J lit….
[MGK gets into argument with fan who is persistent in getting attention after he ask to be left alone due to the interview following acknowledgment. Then phone call drops. He calls back]
DX: You got some wild fans eh?
MGK: Yeah man. Sometimes those fans step out of pocket and you have to put them back.
DX: How difficult is it dealing with fans. For every honestly good fan, you have to deal with some bad apples eh?
MGK: I’ve kind of been an introvert this past year. That’s something I’ve noticed about myself. I use to be so personable with everybody and then I watched so many people walk in and out of my life. Being a fan of more music and certain song releases swayed people’s opinions on me. I’m not a celebrity. I’m a human. If you’re going to be down with me, be down with me. It’s like being in middle school when your friends are like, “I’m not going to be friends with you this week.” It’s childish. When I see my people act childish, I didn’t want part of that shit. My job as an artist or musician is to make good music. I’m not a celebrity, I’m here to be the people’s champ. I want to be the voice of the people and not an ass kisser. You have plenty of celebrities who play into that shit. That’s why this generation is so tainted right now and so fucking spoiled. All a musician owes you is good music. That’s why we’re musicians and not puppets. For example: When I’m outside being a normal person and walking through the streets doing an interview. Someone calls out my name, I throw the deuces to you, acknowledge you and say what’s up but, that’s still not good enough for you. I tell them I’m doing an interview and asks him to respect my space. I’m telling him, you’re not talking to a celebrity. I will fuck you up. I’m a regular person and you’ll treat me as such. I’m not going to baby this generation but, help mold them. That comes with respect which is something we’ve lost. That’s what this album is about. It’s not just a General Admission ticket into my life but, me saying, “look I’m not a smiley wild person” people portray me to be. I was doing that because how angry I was. Now, I’m going to pull all that back and just give you the music. I don’t know man, it’s hard to even put in words cause I have so many thoughts in my mind. Thank God for that because that’s how we’re going to get album number three right?
DX: Well, when did you get to the point where you felt less angry?
MGK: I didn’t get to that point until this week. I was angry the entire time I was making that album because I watched myself put out that first album and saw that it was a disappointment to the hype I had under my name at the time. I didn’t think it was a disappointment but, I just sat there, read all the reviews and saw all the opinions. I watched people’s face crumble a little bit and even on this album. It affected me because one of the magazines that is my favorite and most iconic passed on reviewing this album and they reviewed my first album. I’m sitting here like I’d trade that album for this album. There’s some injustice to that because the people over there are just sheep and aren’t thinking for themselves because if you thought for yourselves you’d listen to what the people are saying. Like, “yo go listen to this Machine Gun Kelly album because it’s completely different than I thought it was going to be. It’s fire and true maturation of an artist. It’s so much growth and Goddamn, I wasn’t expecting this.” But, a sheep is going to listen to what the shepherds are saying and they’re saying I’m not cool or too much. You know how people view me. I’m too real and people get scared. I’ve done interviews lately and they say I’ve been a lot less calm. I thought you were wild. I’m like yo, when I was wild ya’ll were freaking out about that.
DX: Well, people are going to feel some way about you regardless.
MGK: Yeah, but I’m not having that. Make up your mutha fuckin mind. I’m the same person.
MGK Tells The Story Of How Getting Pulled Over For Weed Inspired “Oz.”
DX: Going back to the “Oz.” joint before we were interrupted. You were talking about getting pulled over.
MGK: Alright so let me tell that story from the beginning without feeling pressured since I’m walking past people. So I’m down in Florida and recording a couple of songs with Jim Jonsin. I take a break from the studio to pick this girl up from Australia who flew in to see me. I go to pick her up and we’re driving back to the studio. Obviously, I’m smoking my blunt because it’s something I do. I see the police and I’m like holy fuck. It’s me, the girl and Slim in the car. I’m like damn, fuck, fuck, fuck. Slim is like put the weed out. And I’m like fuck it, we’re already caught. I keep the J lit and I’m just smoking it. I’m like, I might as well get high before whatever happens. I roll down the window and end up talking with the police. The officer recognizes me. Things start to turn cool. I’m like OK, this is alright. I told him I had weed in my drivers seat and that I like to smoke. He has me step out the car, says he’s trying to be cool and ask about cocaine or big amounts of weed. He just asked me if there was anything in the car that he should know about. He had to search any other way. I’m like damn, I have an ounce of weed and I know he’s about to find it. I tell him there’s an ounce in the car. It was in plain fucking sight. He was like, “damn, I’m trying to let you go but it’s hard to let you go when you have that much fucking weed in your car in a state where weed is not legal.” He tells me that he dug my music, understood I was in the middle of recording and told me to dump it in the sewer. I’m like fuck but, I was happy I didn’t have to go to jail. I dump the weed in the sewer. We get back to the studio and the girl I’m with opens up her purse. She notices her passport, all her cash and everything. It was like a win/lose situation. We avoided going to jail and had something to talk about when we got back to the studio but lost because the police taxed our asses because of the mistake. That’s where the inspiration came from. I wrote that song that night.
DX: Oh wow! This isn’t your first time dealing with the police either. I know late last year you posted a YouTube video of you getting having a run-in with authorities over air drumming?
MGK: Those fuckers. I’m like a magnet for those fuckers. How you get pulled over for air drumming?
DX: Clearly police brutality is a major topic in America today. In your case, that’s a very real situation. Where do you fall within that discussion?
MGK: I don’t really deal with the police. If I’m caught, I just say fuck it and pay my consequences. Just fuck em, I don’t want to say shit to em. I know a lot of good men who work as cops but, I don’t really know no good cops.
DX: You have the “A Little More” track with Victoria Monet which talks about how people get distracted from real issues. How do you deal with trying to get a message across when a nice amount of people are focused on minuscule stuff?
MGK: Oh man, I catch a lot of flack for it. I miss out on a lot of opportunities like radio play and a lot of things. I try and go the route that feels right. I’m choosing to go with a message. I realize that songs like that go over a lot of people’s heads but the beauty in stuff like that is that it’ll never go away. 15, 50 or 100 years from now, the concept of love and needing more of it is going to be relevant. You look at Israel and Palestine even more so now than ever, they need that. All it takes is someone hearing it at the right moment and act on that. So, if I get shunned at radio for trying to deliver a message then so be it. I rather be looked at as preachy or whatever the fuck than hear people talk about killing each other all the time. At the end of the day, when you realize you’re not about that life because 99 percent are not, you’re going to run into something with soul and purpose. It’s not too much of it out there. Like Drake said, “Who is going to be around a decade from now?” Ain’t that the line?
DX: Yeah from “Tuscan Leather.”
MGK: I’ve been in the game five years now and I’m growing more and more. My creativity grows more, my visuals get better and the music gets better. And, I’m only 25. Jay Z and Eminem didn’t put out their first album until 26. I’m two albums out and one platinum single with sold out tours. I’ve traveled the world, performed in front of 85,000 at Wrestlemania and got an MTV award. The list goes on. The time is coming sooner or later when people wake up.
MGK Regrets Putting “Story Of The Stairs” On The Album
DX: Outside of the music, film as gotten your attention as well. Is it becoming an extension of your brand?
MGK: I won’t be able to answer that until 2016 because I have three films and television series that I’m starring in. The show is called Roadies and that’s with Cameron Crowe. Showtime just picked that up. I only got one movie out and I haven’t seen a full extent of what the movies and television does to my brand yet. 2016 we’ll see.
DX: You got a very positive reception for your role in Beyond The Lights.
MGK: Hell yeah. I’m super stoked in the way I came in. Every other role I have is different from the next so it should be a fun ride.
DX: Are you still learning to balance both music and acting?
MGK: Naw because I treat them separately. I’m working on things in separate times. When I was working on the movie and the pilot for the television series, I was totally in that mode. I think that played a role in the gap between projects.
DX: One of the most revealing tracks on the album is “Story Of The Stairs.” Was that a venting moment for you?
MGK: It definitely was. It’s exactly what you said. It’s venting because when you vent, you sort of regret it later right? It’s shared out of emotion and not thought. That’s what “Story Of The Stairs” was about. I remember writing that song really, really quickly. It’s ironic that you said that because now I kind of regret putting that song out. I turned the album in and right when it was time for the album to be closed out, I wanted to pull it. I didn’t want this out because it was a little too personal for me, I didn’t want the world to hear it. And, that’s when I found out it was too late. That song kind of happened by mistake on the album.
DX: The cover features a Joshua Tree that you’re sitting underneath over a mushroom cloud. Does that symbolize you finally being above the chaos?
MGK: Yes, that’s a very good way of putting it. Very accurate way to view it. And yes, I feel that way 100 percent. Like, I didn’t at the time but it was almost putting it into the universe. As soon as the album dropped and I saw the response, I was finally above all the bullshit. Not that just the bullshit but, my bullshit. The chaos in my own life.When individuals are battling addiction, they know better than to indulge, but cannot seem to stop from pulling the trigger.
Researchers have now pinpointed the exact locations in the brain where the decisions are made that can result in addictive and compulsive behavior.
Neuroscientists at the University of California, Berkeley have found that neural activity in the brain’s orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate cortex regulates our choices.
Experts believe the discovery of the origin of the miscalculations could lead to more targeted treatments for everything from drug and alcohol abuse to obsessive-compulsive disorders.
‘The better we understand our decision-making brain circuitry, the better we can target treatment, whether it’s pharmaceutical, behavioral or deep brain stimulation,” said Jonathan Wallis, Ph.D., principal investigator of the study.
The study is published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
Wallis decided to investigate the brain mechanisms that lead to substance abuse when he observed the desperate behavior addicts will perform to satisfy their cravings — despite being aware of the detrimental consequences of the addiction.
Wallis decided to study two questions: “What has the drug done to their brains that makes it so difficult for them not to make that choice? What is preventing them from making the healthier choice?”
In the new study, he and fellow researchers targeted the orbitofrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex –- two areas in the frontal lobe of the brain — because previous research has shown that patients with damage to these areas of the brain are impaired in the choices they make.
While these individuals may appear perfectly normal on the surface, they routinely make decisions that create chaos in their lives. A similar dynamic has been observed in chronic drug addicts, alcoholics and people with obsessive-compulsive tendencies.
“They get divorced, quit their jobs, lose their friends and lose all their money,” Wallis said. “All the decisions they make are bad ones.”
To test their hypothesis that these areas of the brain were the key players in impaired decision making, the UC Berkeley researchers measured the neural activity of macaque monkeys as they played games in which they identified the pictures most likely to deliver juice through a spout into their mouths.
The animals quickly learned which pictures would most frequently deliver the greatest amount of juice, enabling researchers to see what calculations they were making, and in which part of the brain.
The brains of macaques function similarly to those of humans in basic decision-making. The exercise was designed to see how the animals weigh costs, benefits and risks.
The results show that the orbitofrontal cortex regulates neural activity depending on the value or “stakes” of a decision.
This part of the brain enables you to switch easily between making important decisions, such as what school to attend or which job to take, and making trivial decisions such as coffee versus tea or burrito versus pizza.
Researchers believe that among addicts and people with damage to the orbitofrontal cortex, the neural activity does not change based on the seriousness of the decision, presenting trouble when these individuals try to get their brains in gear to make sound choices.
As for the anterior cingulate cortex, the study found that when this part of the brain functions normally, we learn quickly whether a decision we made matched our expectations. If we eat food that makes us sick, we do not eat it again.
But in people with a malfunctioning anterior cingulate cortex, these signals are missing, and so they continue to make poor choices, Wallis said. “This is the first study to pin down the calculations made by these two specific parts of the brain that underlie healthy decision-making.”
A clearer understanding of how people with addictions make decisions may help remove some of the stigma of this condition, Wallis said.
However, Wallis warned that these findings should not be used as a rationale for addicts to maintain unhealthy habits. Chronic drug and alcohol use changes brain circuitry, and that can lead to unhealthy choices, he said.
If anything, he said, the findings offer hope that, through understanding the mechanism of addiction, treatment can be targeted at these risk-weighing, decision-making centers of the brain.
Source: University of California – Berkeley
Brain Regions Tied to Addictive Choices ID’dMay 12, 2014 | 7:29 am
So I’m sitting in one of those community meetings we’ve all become familiar with of late. A local Tea Party type is making a passionate pitch for what his group considers Constitutional guarantees against government planning, and I get this deju vu tug.
I’ve been here before. I’VE BEEN THIS BEFORE.
If you strip away the extraneous stuff — the firearm fetish, the rabbit hole excursions into U.N. plots, vaccine conspiracies, fluoride poisoning and all the rest — these guys are hippies. Their platform planks are bumper stickers from a 1972 VW van: “Do your own thing.” “Question authority.” “F*#$% the Man.”
I say this ‘cause I know from hippies. I was there. I inhaled. I had the hair, the in-your-face attitude and, most of all, the sense of entitlement.
Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, we practically invented paranoia (see Hunter Thompson). But it took a lot of mushrooms to get us as worked up as your average Social Security, Medicare and mortgage-subsidized anti-establishment type today. Also, we had better music.
But when you get right down to it, it’s clear these folks picked up the torch that slipped from my generation’s grasp three or four decades back. They share the core belief, succinctly summarized: “Hey you, get off-a my cloud.”
Freedom, baby. Let your freak flag fly. (That would be the “Don’t tread on me” version.)
We said, in defiance of our likely futures, “Don’t trust anyone over 30.” The Tea Party hippies, in defiance of all known success in commerce, marriage and sky-diving, say, “Don’t trust anyone.”
There’s a whiff of political theory here, the periodically exhumed fantasy of a society of individuals defined by a determination not to be defined. Or inhibited. Or organized in any way that requires organization or responsibility to anything beyond the mighty Me. Every person doing his or her or its own thing. Back to the way God intended before all that trouble in the garden. (See Joni Mitchell, “Woodstock.”)
I would love to believe our hippie ethos allowed for more irony, but then I remember how we, like these new hippies, portrayed ourselves as victims of vast forces bent on enslaving us (see this relic of the era). Like the current crowd, we congratulated ourselves for spotting the plots and for heroically engaging the shadowy conspirators.
We persisted in that argument at the same time many of us lived and partied on subsidies from our parents and the Man. I don’t remember, at the time, being struck by the contradiction that I was splitting my time between anti-war protests and enjoying a George Bush-style arrangement with the Air Force Reserves.
Inspired by our victim fantasies, we chose the political strategies of the underdog: Disturb and disrupt. Block business as usual. Annoy the elites. Which is noble enough when the cause is civil rights or a challenge to justifications for war. Not so much when the perceived threat is the hierarchal organization of the English Department or, in the current era, transit policies and zoning.
How did all that turn out for my hippie comrades and me? Well, we definitely had an impact close to home. We successfully challenged some of the weakest elites in American life, university administrators, and won. Let’s hear it for no dorm curfews and veto power over commencement speakers.
It was a hell of a party. And a hangover that derailed the Democrats for a few election cycles. We helped generate a lot of profits for corporations who translated our lifestyle preferences into products they could sell back to us. And I’d like to think we nudged American society towards tolerance for dissent and diversity, just as the Tea Party, despite all its excesses, has forced us to admit we have to pay for stuff we charge to government credit cards.
But all that said, old hippie attitudes and fashions are now remembered mostly as generational distractions. Something we got away with till the grown-ups came back into the room. Until, in fact, WE became the grown-ups.
Parents, successful managers of businesses and non-profits, people who work to improve lives in neighborhoods and towns all know that “Do your own thing” is a lousy mission statement. Rather than freeing us, prioritizing individual liberty over every other value deprives us of opportunities to influence the forces of disruptive change with the power of community.
Polarizing discussion by declaring, “You’re either part of the solution, or you’re part of the problem,” ignores the range of trade-offs every human, every organization and every community must make every day. It’s a mandate for paralysis.
Now, it looks as if the new hippies may be trudging down the path to irrelevance, just as we did. Recent polls show a steady increase in the Tea Party’s “unfavorable” numbers and in the indifference of Americans to its message. The escalating battle between the GOP establishment and the Tea Party insurgents could scar the Republicans just as the ‘60s scarred Democrats.
The new hippies have successfully disrupted the work of some of the least powerful “elites” in American civic life — community planners. So strategies for transit, affordable housing, and mixed-use zoning have been blocked in some places that desperately need it — but not everywhere and not for long. Reality will win out. Grown-ups are on the way, probably in the form of Millennials disgusted by the current ways of doing the people’s business.
In the not so distant future, there will be hilarious theme parties where folks get to wear three-corner hats and wave copies of the Constitution with all references to government redacted. It won’t be as funny as bellbottoms, but it will celebrate the same spirit of time not so well wasted.
–Ben BrownWelcome to this week’s Math Munch!
The first thing I have to share with you comes with a story. One day several years ago, I discovered these cool little shapes made of five squares. Maybe you’ve seen these guys before, but I’d never thought about how many different shapes I could make out of five squares. I was trying to decide if I had all the possible shapes made with five squares and what to call them, when along came Justin. He said, “Oh yeah, pentominoes. There’s so much stuff about those.”
Justin proceeded to show me that I wasn’t alone in discovering pentominoes – or any of their cousins, the polyominoes, made of any number of squares. I spent four happy years learning lots of things about polyominoes. Until one day… one of my students asked an unexpected question. Why squares? What if we used triangles? Or hexagons?
We drew what we called polyhexes (using hexagons) and polygles (using triangles). We were so excited about our discoveries! But were we alone in discovering them? I thought so, until…
… I found the Poly Pages. This is the polyform site to end all polyform sites. You’ll find information about all kinds of polyforms — whether it be a run-of-the-mill polyomino or an exotic polybolo — on this site. Want to know how many polyominoes have a perimeter of 14? You can find the answer here. Were you wondering if polyominoes made from half-squares are interesting? Read all about polyares.
I’m so excited to have found this site. Even though I have to share credit for my discovery with other people, now I can use my new knowledge to ask even more interesting questions.
Next up, check out this clock arithmetic calculator. This calculator does addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and even more exotic things like square roots, on a clock.
|
dt);
}
For the following code,
int main() {
unsigned dt = '\1';
long tdt;
tdt = -dt; //Equivalent to (long)( (unsigned int) (-((unsigned int)u)) )
printf("%ld
", tdt);
}
the type of dt is unsigned int. According to #2 above, no need to be promoted, so the type of "-dt" is unsigned int as well. As a result, the value of -dt is 0xFFFFFFFF in binary. It is then cast to type long and assigned to dt, so the result of 0x00000000FFFFFFFF is 4294967295.
For the following code,
int main() {
unsigned char dt = '\1';
long tdt;
tdt = -dt;
printf("%ld
", tdt);
}
tdt = -dt. Unsigned char needs to be promoted to unsigned int when -qupconv or -qlanglvl=extended is in effect; otherwise, promoted to int.
When -qupconv or -qlanglvl=extended is effect, "tdt=-dt" is equivalent to "(long)( (unsigned int) (-((unsigned int)td)) )" and the result is 4294967295. Whereas when -qnoupconv (with other langlvl） is in effect, "tdt=-dt" is equivalent to "(long)( ( int) (-(( int)dt)) )" and the result is -1.
At this point, we can finally answer "d=1,-d==?". The result relies on operand type, possible type conversion, and the compiler options.
Author: Jiu Fu Guo (Jeff)Soul Sacrifice Delta can best be thought of as something between a definitive version and a sequel to 2013’s Soul Sacrifice. Meaning to say, this latest title simply takes the original game, builds upon it by adding a truckload of new content and generally refines the mechanics at play. Sometimes, though, renovations don’t equate to better end-products. So, in that regard, where does Soul Sacrifice Delta fall?
At its very core, Delta is almost the same game released just over a year ago. To that end, think of Soul Sacrifice as a game heavily influenced by Monster Hunter and various titles like it; it’s an action-RPG comprised of bite-sized missions — meant for on-the-go accessibility — a decently strong narrative component and in-depth customization options. These elements were solid enough for last year’s installment, and thus have only been honed to a sharper point this time around. Therefore, the foundational elements that made the original such a blast to play are fully intact here, having only been tweaked in ways generally for the better. Meaning to say, players will still take their sorcerer into the fray armed with an assortment of attacks that have been decided on prior to combat, trounce baddies, save/sacrifice fallen prey and increase their general aptitude to dish out overwhelming amounts of death. It’s a system that was strong in the first title and remains so here.
However, the gameplay isn’t exactly as it was last year. Delta does add some new features into the mix, merely serving to make the overall experience feel more inclusive than it did before. So what are these new changes? Well, for starters, one of the most notable is the enhanced character customization options. The features offered in the last title are all present, however, now folks have greater control over the smaller details of their avatar, such as colors and outfit design. Moreover, those very costumes can be further individualized thanks to the ability to mix and match sets, instead of having a single outfit arrangement. The choices here aren’t vast by any means, but they are welcome adjustments considering the previous customization selections were extremely limiting. Being able to make one’s character more unique, in a game that can be taken online and subsequently serve as a space to show off individuality, is never a detriment, that’s for sure.
Also new to Delta is the ability to ally oneself with one of three factions. Faction-play affects how the story unfolds and concludes, in addition to the items a player receives throughout their adventure. Up for alignment are the Avalon, Sanctuary and Grim (based off Grimm’s Fairy Tales), each coming complete with their own take on the game’s world and philosophy, which in turn impacts aspects like character interaction and dialogue. Sigils also are affected by faction choice, as they can be enhanced drastically (or not) depending on a player’s alignment. Like the aforesaid customization options, this is not a substantial change-up to the recipe, but it’s nevertheless a new addition that merely adds an extra layer of depth and immersion to the experience at large.
The partner setup has been streamlined this time around as well, making it much easier to navigate a team member’s attributes, such as their build and faction alignment. Aside from this small tweak, Delta also factors in a plethora of new weapons, Offerings, enemies, bosses, AI and dynamic stages, making for more diverse combat scenarios, instead of having to face off against the same handful of baddies, in the same handful of arenas like in the original title. In fact, these upgraded facets really make going back to Soul Sacrifice difficult, as that game is merely obsolete now because of how much Delta dwarfs it. Essentially, there was already a lot to do in SS; but now, there’s even more.
Another big alteration to the battling engine exists in the newly balanced, and somewhat re-designed, magic system. Put plainly, folks are no longer asked to renew spells with sacrifices and heals with saves. In the place of that system is a new one that lets players renew spells, heal or boost depending on the faction in which they enrolled. Best of all, things such as chaos, neutral and divine builds actually have relevance and purpose; sure, these setups were present in SS, but now they have actual gameplay pillars to support their viability. Clearly, enhancements like these show that changes to Delta have not only tackled the superficial aspects of the title, but also the meta-game — which hardcore enthusiasts will undoubtedly appreciate.
Perhaps the biggest, most sizable addition to SSD is the new story. This is the part that makes Delta feel like something of a sequel more than just a “complete” edition. While the entire original story is present and accounted for here — yet again making the purchase of the first game totally unnecessary at this stage, especially for newcomers — there are new story segments to see, too. Essentially, once players defeat Magusar, a slew of new missions unlock and the faction-play takes center-stage. In fact, the amount of new story content probably equals that which was provided in Soul Sacrifice. That being said, the new missions are interesting, but the tale weaved through these assignments is not as strong as the original. The fresh narrative portions aren’t bad, but they lack the depth and immediacy found in SS. Still, getting practically a brand new game in terms of the sheer quantity of story elements will be enough for veterans and newbies alike to justify a purchase.
Thus far, we have spoken highly of Delta — and that’s because it’s deserving of such praise. That aside, it isn’t perfect. Yes, it’s improved much of its source content, but in the process of refining, it’s also managed to retain some of its previous pitfalls. In that regard, Soul Sacrifice is one of those games that becomes repetitive after a while. Although others titles like Monster Hunter, Gods Eater and Phantasy Star Online relish in their subtle, nuanced gameplay, Soul Sacrifice (in general) is a bit more straightforward. It’s not as transparent as Toukiden, but it is devoid of gameplay depth at times and as a result feels grindy. This has been alleviated through the implementation of new enemies and dynamic stages, but the repetition really is inherent to the genre; therefore it can’t escape this trapping. Furthermore, it still suffers from slowdown, primarily when there are a lot of effects being triggered on-screen. It would seem that the developers polished the content, but not the engine.
Thankfully, Soul Sacrifice is still a stunning-looking and sounding game. While these aspects haven’t changed all that drastically, the truth is, they didn’t need to. The art direction in Sacrifice was incredibly strong and distinct to begin with — fortunately, that is still very much so untouched. So for those wanting a very pretty Vita title, then this will no doubt fit the bill.
Closing Comments:
What Soul Sacrifice always had going for it was its ability to deliver on solid gameplay mechanics and a captivating narrative. Other games of its ilk may have gotten one or the other aspect down, but very rarely have they nailed both. Soul Sacrifice Delta knocks the two out of the park by building upon the strong foundation laid by last year’s game. Designer Keiji Infune perhaps said it best when he called Delta “Soul Sacrifice 1.8” — because it very clearly is a more refined, more complete version of the first game, polishing areas that needed addressing but also adding in a barnful of new content, all of which has made the game better. There are still some qualms here and there, such as the returning frame-rate slowdown and repetitiveness, but in general this is a solid action-RPG that should be played by anyone who adores the genre.
Platform: PS VitaA leading Sydney cancer surgeon says he has four patients whose conditions have become inoperable this year while they were waiting for treatment, as doctors at St George Hospital rebel against what they say is chronic underfunding.
The hospital is slashing surgeries and closing beds, despite being the worst-performing major hospital in the state for on-time surgery. Doctors said it was ''bursting at the seams'' and in desperate need of renovations.
Sounding the warning: David Morris. Credit:Tamara Dean
Cancer surgeon David Morris, who performs peritonectomy surgeries for all of NSW at St George, said four of his patients had developed inoperable cancer while waiting this year and he had 38 on his list. He said he needed to increase his operations to keep up.
''Yet we are operating at half the level we were at the beginning of this year,'' he said.Central Command leader Gen. Joseph Votel today called for the US to use “military means” against Iran as an effort to disrupt their “activities,” saying it was vital that the US “expose and hold them accountable for the things that they are doing.”
Votel did not specify exactly to what extent he intended the military means to be used directly against Iran, or in what context. He did however complain of Iran committing “destabilizing activities” in the Middle East.
This in all likelihood is another effort to push deeper US involvement in Yemen, as the Pentagon has been trying to parrot the Saudi narrative of the Shi’ite Houthis in Yemen being an Iranian proxy force. Given the humanitarian disaster the Saudi war has been, they appear to believe they can sell US involvement more easily as an anti-Iran operation, even if Iran is not particularly involved.
Defense Secretary James Mattis also reiterated that Iran is a state sponsor of terror, though of course this designation is less about practical actions than about official US policy, as the US considers Iran, Sudan, and Syria to be the only “state sponsors of terror.”
Last 5 posts by Jason DitzI’ve been cheated on. It’s such an awful feeling. At first you trust someone completely, and then you begin to notice things. You notice that the person who you’re closest to is acting strangely. You feel paranoid. You feel crazy. It’s a terrible hunch you don’t want to be right about, and I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.
Do you know what I did when I found out I was being cheated on? I talked with my ex and decided it was over. Do you know what I didn’t do? I never posted my ex’s personal information online, to be publicly outed, shamed, and harassed.
The most aggressive harassment campaign on the modern internet, in my estimation, started when a software engineer publicly accused his ex, an independent game developer, of cheating on him. He actively sought out a community that was already harassing her, and handed them personal information and many of the intimate details she had trusted him with. Because of his direction and the information he knowingly provided, her harassers threatened her, made her feel unsafe in her own home, and sent nude photos of her to her supporters and her parents. (Before this, she was best known for making a game based on her personal struggle with depression.) He responded to a relationship-ending slight with an atrocity.
There is another way that men on the internet harass women who have cheated on them (or slighted them in other ways): They post pictures of their exes’ naked bodies, without permission, alongside their names and personal information. This practice is often called revenge porn, but in my view, intentionally using someone’s intimate expression of sexuality to cause harm to that person is no different than sexual assault. In my view, this form of sexual assault is not an appropriate reaction to cheating, or anything at all.
I have seen people, in comments and in articles, cheering the recent Ashley Madison hack. I have seen people who say that those who signed up for Ashley Madison deserve to have their names, credit cards, correspondence, and fantasies leaked to the public for the crime of committing an affair. Do these cheering fans believe that the users targeted by the hack deserve to be harassed, as many undoubtedly will be harassed? Do these cheering fans believe that the users targeted by this hack should have their private actions sent to employers, friends, and family members?
Do these cheering fans also cheer for revenge porn?
I don’t. I wouldn’t wish any of that on anyone, and I sure as hell don’t want to be the kind of person who revels in it.Get the biggest Chelsea FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Rafael Benitez last night told the Chelsea fans the Stamford Bridge old guard have to be replaced by the next generation of heroes.
Blues supporters are up in arms over Frank Lampard's looming departure and the likely exit of Ashley Cole, also out of contract at the end of the season, following on from the loss of Didier Drogba, while John Terry has only 18 months left on his current contract.
But while both Lampard and Cole will play against Swansea tonight in the Capital One Cup semi-final first leg, Benitez spelled out what many SW6 fans will view as an unpalatable truth.
"It's always easy to talk about the legends, and you have to have a lot of respect for them," said Benitez.
"What they've achieved for this club has been fantastic.
"But you have to see new players coming. It's part of life.
"That is the good thing about English football: you have good memories and you respect people who achieve something for a club. That's very positive.
(Image: Clive Rose)
"At the same time, you have to think about the future. You cannot be waiting. You have to move forward, bring in new players and try and at the same time bring the best out of those you have.
"This year you have three or four players, like Eden Hazard, Oscar, Lucas Piazon and Marko Marin. Maybe in the next couple of years we will be talking about these players as fantastic players and then the others who need to come and join them.
"That is part of the evolution of the team. I can see the club is changing things for the future, thinking about being successful again.
"You have to keep winning as much as you can. You can't think 'that's it, we've won now'. You have to keep evolving. That means you have to keep bringing in good new players."
The animosity towards Benitez from a majority of the most committed Chelsea supporters has not abated, with the Spaniard viewed by some as having been brought in by Roman Abramovich to do the "dirty work" and clear the decks for his successor.
(Image: Clive Brunskill)
For Benitez, though, it is simply part of the reality of football life. He added: "If you want to keep winning, to have the winning mentality, you need the new generation pushing you.
"Chelsea are managing this situation because they were successful. Now everybody can see the players who won but you have to see the new players coming and maybe winning in the future.
"I know the club is working really hard to bring the best players, and obviously English players are an important part of any team in England.
"My job in this transitional period is to bring the best from these players, keep winning if we can, challenging for every trophy, and give experience to the new players."
Benitez' blunt assessment of the way forward is unlikely to win him any more friends and neither is the recall of Fernando Torres against Swansea with new signing Demba Ba set to return to the bench.
The Blues boss - boosted by the news that Terry will step up his comeback after two months out by playing in tomorrow night's under-21 game with Fulham - insisted Ba's arrival will not only be good for Chelsea but also for the £50million Torres.
(Image: Clive Rose)
"Ba coming will be better for Torres, 100 per cent," said Benitez. "Not many players play every game in a top side, as he has had to, and now it will be positive for both of them.
"They will be fitter, maybe they will score more goals because they will have more chances and will be in better positions.
"Fernando is an experienced player and he knows football. We have spoken to both of them and they each know the role of the other, that they'll have a lot of games and will have a big part to play.
"Every session I can see Fernando is training well and trying to improve. Even when he's not scoring, he's working hard and doing things for the team.
"We have tried to fix things to improve his strength, a specific programme. If you do that, normally he can be quicker. It takes time, and I think it's improving.
"He's a bit quicker, but the biggest problem was he was playing too many games. Especially against QPR, some players were a bit tired, had too much fatigue. But having both Torres and Ba means both can do well."
Meanwhile Pablo Hernandez has told his team-mates his ex-Valencia team-mate Juan Mata is the man to snuff out tonight.Not even Donald Trump can build a wall as beautiful as what God has built here, says the GOP chairman for Presidio County, in the heart of the Big Bend, the vast, remote nook of West Texas.
The terrain here is stark and inhospitable, and bigger than any wall envisioned by the Trump administration: In Santa Elena Canyon, thousand-foot walls drop off into the Rio Grande, and farther away from the river, on both sides of the Big Bend, treeless mountains offer no succor for the would-be traveler. Gov. Greg Abbott has said he is against a wall here, as has U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, R-Helotes, who represents the area.
@media screen and (min-width: 400px) { div#tease { width: 50%; float: right; margin-left: 12px; } } var pymParent = new pym.Parent('tease', '//host.coxmediagroup.com/aas/projects/news/texas-border/tease.html', {}); ]]Speaking to French journalists earlier this week in Paris, Russian President Vladimir Putin perfectly summarized the Deep State and its stranglehold on the US political system:
I have already spoken to three US Presidents. They come and go, but politics stay the same at all times.
Thank you, Deep State.
Do you know why? Because of the powerful bureaucracy. When a person is elected, they may have some ideas. Then people with briefcases arrive, well dressed, wearing dark suits, just like mine, except for the red tie, since they wear black or dark blue ones. These people start explaining how things are done. And instantly, everything changes. This is what happens with every administration.
Changing things is not easy, and I say this without any irony. It is not that someone does not want to, but because it is a hard thing to do. Take Obama, a forward-thinking man, a liberal, a democrat. Did he not pledge to shut down Guantanamo before his election? But did he do it? No, he did not. And may I ask why not? Did he not want to do it? He wanted to, I am sure he did, but it did not work out. He sincerely wanted to do it, but did not succeed, since it turned out to be very complicated.TORONTO (Reuters) - A Canadian man who smuggled 38 turtles in his pants has been given probation, a fine and has been banned from owning such reptiles for 10 years.
According to Canada’s environment department, Dong Yan of Windsor, Ontario, had tried to bring the reptiles from the United States into the southern part of the province.
“The turtles were contained in plastic bags and taped to Mr. Yan’s legs,” Environment and Climate Change Canada said in a statement on Thursday.
Yan was convicted on February 17 after he was caught during an inspection in 2014 when he tried to enter Canada through the Niagara border crossing, the department said.
Yan’s probation is for two years, and his fine was C$3,500 ($2,600). He was also sentenced to 50 hours of community service and must notify the environment department of international travel. Yan was also ordered to write a letter about his experience “for publication as the department sees fit.”At the end of the day, we are not about to “run out” of any NNR; we are about to run “critically short” of many. This reality will have a devastating impact on our industrial lifestyle paradigm.
The salient findings associated with the assessment: 50 of the 57 analyzed NNRs (88%) experienced global scarcity during the 2000-2008 period; 23 of the 26 analyzed NNRs (88%) will likely experience permanent global supply shortfalls by the year 2030.
The Global Nonrenewable Natural Resource Scarcity Assessment quantifies the scope associated with global NNR scarcity, both prior to the Great Recession and going forward, by analyzing global production (extraction) data, price data, and reserve base estimates associated with a broad array of energy resources, metals, and minerals.
Global NNR scarcity will intensify going forward, as global economic activity levels, economic growth rates, and corresponding NNR demand return to their pre-recession levels; and global NNR supply levels continue to approach and reach their geological limits. The debilitating societal effects associated with global NNR scarcity, which we experienced to a limited degree during the Great Recession, will also intensify going forward, as temporary global NNR supply shortfalls become permanent.
During the pre-recession years of the 21st century, we experienced wide-ranging nonrenewable natural resource (NNR) scarcity on a global scale for the first time. Supplies associated with an overwhelming majority of the global energy resources, metals, and minerals that enable our industrialized way of life failed to keep pace with increasing global demand during the 2000-2008 period, resulting in global NNR supply shortfalls.
This is a guest post by Chris Clugston. It is a somewhat abbreviated version of a longer analysis he did, which can be downloaded here. For the past four years, he has been researching aspects of sustainability. Prior to that time, he worked for 30 years as an executive and consultant in Information Technology.
Introduction
Nonrenewable Natural Resources—the Enablers of Industrialization
Our industrial1 lifestyle paradigm is enabled by nonrenewable natural resources (NNRs)—energy resources, metals, and minerals. Both the support infrastructure within industrialized nations and the raw material inputs into industrialized economies consist almost entirely of NNRs; NNRs are the primary sources of the tremendous wealth surpluses required to perpetuate industrialized societies.
As a case in point, the percentage of NNR inputs into the US economy increased from less than 10% in the year 1800, which corresponds roughly with the inception of the American industrial revolution, to approximately 95% today.2,3 Between 1800 and today, America’s total annual NNR utilization level increased from approximately 4 million tons to nearly 7 billion tons—an increase of over 1700 times!4
In the absence of enormous and ever-increasing NNR supplies, the 1.2 billion people5 who currently enjoy an industrialized way of life will cease to do so; and the billions of people aspiring to an industrialized way of life will fail to realize their goal.
NNR Scarcity
As their name implies, NNRs are finite—they are not replenished by Nature;6 and they are scarce—economically viable NNR deposits are rare. Persistent extraction (production) will therefore deplete recoverable NNR reserves to exhaustion. [Note: the terms NNR “production” and NNR “extraction” are used interchangeably throughout the paper. Although “extraction” is the proper term—humans do not produce NNRs—the term “production” has gained wide acceptance within the NNR extraction industries.]
The typical NNR depletion cycle7 is characterized by:
Figure 1
a period of “continuously more and more”, as the easily accessible, high quality, low cost resources are extracted; followed by a “supply peak”,8 or maximum attainable extraction level; followed by a period of “continuously less and less”, as the less accessible, lower quality, higher cost resources are extracted.
Since the inception of our industrial revolution, humanity has been the beneficiary of “continuously more and more” with respect to available NNR supplies. Unfortunately, in the process of reaping the benefits associated with “continuously more and more”, we have been eliminating—persistently and systematically—the very natural resources upon which our industrialized way of life depends.
Increasingly, global NNR supplies are transitioning from “continuously more and more” to “continuously less and less”, as they peak and go into terminal decline. As a result, NNRs are becoming increasingly scarce—ever-tightening global NNR supplies are struggling to keep pace with ever-increasing global demand.
The Analyses
The following Global Nonrenewable Natural Resource Scarcity Assessment quantifies the magnitude associated with increasing global NNR scarcity and the probabilities associated with imminent and permanent global NNR supply shortfalls. The assessment consists of two analyses, both of which are based on US Geological Survey (USGS) and US Energy Information Administration (EIA) data.9
The Global NNR Scarcity Analysis assesses the incidence of global scarcity associated with each of 57 NNRs during the period of global economic growth (2000-2008) prior to the Great Recession.
assesses the incidence of global scarcity associated with each of 57 NNRs during the period of global economic growth (2000-2008) prior to the Great Recession. The Global NNR Supply Shortfall Analysis assesses the probability of a permanent global supply shortfall associated with each of 26 NNRs between now and the year 2030.
Summary Findings
Global NNR Scarcity Analysis Summary Findings
Fifty (50) of the 57 analyzed NNRs (88%) experienced some level of global scarcity during the period of global economic growth (2000-2008) that preceded the Great Recession.
Figure 2
Global NNR Supply Shortfall Analysis Summary Findings
Twenty three (23) of the 26 analyzed NNRs (88%) will likely experience a permanent global NNR supply shortfall by the year 2030.
Figure 3
Global NNR Scarcity Analysis
The Global NNR Scarcity Analysis is based on US Geological Survey (USGS) and US Energy Information Administration (EIA) data related to global production and pricing associated with fifty seven (57) NNRs—energy resources, metals, and minerals.
Global NNR Scarcity
Figure 4
In a general sense, NNR scarcity exists when aggregate NNR supply is insufficient to meet aggregate NNR demand; the result is unfulfilled NNR demand. Ongoing NNR scarcity is characterized by an increasing NNR price level, which fails to induce sufficient incremental NNR supply to suppress the price level.
Global NNR Scarcity Analysis Overview
The Global NNR Scarcity Analysis assesses the incidence of global scarcity associated with 57 NNRs during the period of global economic growth (2000-2008) prior to the Great Recession.
Specifically, the analysis compares annual global NNR production data and NNR pricing data10 from the 20th century with that of the pre-recession 21st century (2000-2008). NNRs considered “scarce” during the 2000-2008 period are those for which 21st century global NNR production levels were insufficient to suppress rising 21st century price levels.
NNR scarcity levels are defined by the following NNR production level and price level combinations:
Figure 5
Global NNR Scarcity Assessment
The following table contains 20th century and 21st century global production trend data and price trend data for each of the 57 analyzed NNRs. Specifically, it contains the compound annual growth (decline) rates associated with global NNR production levels and NNR price levels during the 20th century and 21st century (2000-2008). The table also notes the level of scarcity experienced by each NNR during the 2000 to 2008 time period. (See Appendix A: Global NNR Scarcity Probability Detail.)
Figure 6
Macro Level Global NNR Scarcity Assessment
During the 20th century, global production levels associated with 56 of the 57 analyzed NNRs (98%) increased annually, while global price levels associated with 45 of the 57 analyzed NNRs (79%) decreased annually.
Generally increasing global NNR production levels in conjunction with generally decreasing global NNR price levels indicate relative global NNR abundance during the 20th century. On the whole, global NNR supplies kept pace with ever-increasing global demand during the 20th century.
During the pre-recession years of the 21st century (2000-2008), annual global production level growth rates associated with 34 of the 57 analyzed NNRs (59%) decreased in comparison to 20th century growth rates, or actually went negative; while annual global price level growth rates associated with 51 of the 57 analyzed NNRs (89%) increased in comparison to 20th century growth rates.
Generally slowing or declining global NNR production growth in conjunction with generally increasing global NNR prices indicate increasing NNR scarcity during the early years of the 21st century—annual global NNR supplies were increasingly unable to keep pace with ever-increasing global demand.
Global NNR Scarcity Analysis Findings
An overwhelming majority (88%) of the analyzed NNRs—50 out of 57—experienced some level of global scarcity during the pre-recession years of the 21st century; available global supplies associated with these NNRs could not keep pace with demand during the 2000-2008 period. At issue is whether this phenomenon is temporary or permanent.
In some cases, global NNR scarcity during the early 21st century was undoubtedly a temporary phenomenon. Sufficient additional NNR reserves existed to fulfill global requirements; but they could not be produced quickly enough to keep pace with ever-increasing demand—possibly due to geopolitical constraints or to the lack of sufficient capital investment. Remaining supplies associated with these NNRs will be sufficient to contribute toward the complete restoration of pre-recession global economic activity levels and growth rates (this time).
In other cases, global NNR scarcity is a permanent condition; available NNR supplies were physically (geologically) unable to keep pace with ever-increasing demand during the 2000-2008 period. Remaining supplies associated with these NNRs are no longer sufficient to contribute fully toward pre-recession global economic activity levels and growth rates.
Given that industrialized and industrializing nations will attempt to recover from the Great Recession as quickly as possible—thereby restoring or exceeding pre-recession economic activity levels and growth rates—it will soon become evident which NNRs experienced temporary global scarcity during the early 21st century and which experienced permanent global scarcity.
It will certainly become evident that an increasing number of NNRs are becoming increasingly scarcity globally, as ever-tightening global NNR supplies fail increasingly to keep pace with relentlessly increasing global NNR demand. And while we may recover fully from the Great Recession, permanent global NNR supply shortfalls will preclude our full recovery from a subsequent global economic contraction at some point in the not-too-distant future.
Global NNR Shortfall Analysis
The Global NNR Supply Shortfall Analysis is based on US Geological Survey (USGS) and US Energy Information Administration (EIA) global NNR extraction data and (Verhulst) logistics curve fitting analyses11 associated with 26 NNRs.
Global NNR Supply Shortfalls
Figure 7
An NNR supply shortfall occurs when the available NNR supply level is less than the supply level required to enable a society’s prevailing economic activity level and growth rate. An NNR supply shortfall can be temporary, permanent, or fatal.
A temporary NNR supply shortfall occurs when the available NNR supply level falls below the “required” supply level for a finite period of time. Since the available NNR supply level ultimately recovers to the required level, the society’s pre-shortfall economic activity level and growth rate are restored.
A permanent NNR supply shortfall occurs when the available NNR supply level falls below the “required” supply level forever. Since the available NNR supply level never recovers to the required level, the society’s pre-shortfall economic activity level and growth rate are not restored.
A fatal NNR supply shortfall occurs when the available NNR supply level falls below the “critical” supply level forever. At this point, available NNR supply can no longer enable the production and provisioning of one or more societal essentials—clean water, food, energy, shelter, clothing, and infrastructure—at levels sufficient to support the society’s existing population.
Global NNR Supply Shortfall Analysis Overview
The Global NNR Supply Shortfall Analysis assesses the probability of permanent global supply shortfalls associated with 26 NNRs between now and the year 2030.
Specifically, the analysis compares historic and projected annual global NNR extraction levels associated with each NNR through the year 2030, with the actual or projected peak extraction level associated with the NNR. An imminent and permanent global NNR shortfall is considered probable if the annual global NNR extraction level has already reached its global peak extraction level, or if the projected annual global NNR extraction level is expected to reach its projected global peak extraction level by the year 2030.
The probabilities that an NNR will experience a permanent global supply shortfall by the year 2030 are defined as follows:
Nearly Certain Probability: it is very likely that the actual annual global NNR extraction level reached its geological global peak extraction level prior to the year 2010.
Very High Probability: the actual annual global NNR extraction level exceeded its projected (Verhulst) global peak extraction level prior to the year 2010.
High Probability: it is very likely that the projected annual global NNR extraction level will exceed its projected (Verhulst) global peak extraction level between the years 2010 and 2030.
Low Probability: it is very unlikely that the projected annual global NNR extraction level will exceed its projected (Verhulst) global peak extraction level prior to the year 2030.
Global NNR Supply Shortfall Assessment
The following table contains current (2007/2008) annual global NNR extraction level data, year 2030 global NNR extraction level estimates, and global peak NNR extraction level estimates for each of the 26 analyzed NNRs.12 The table also notes the probability that each of the 26 NNRs will experience a permanent global supply shortfall by the year 2030.
Figure 8
Twenty three (23) of the 26 analyzed NNRs (88%) will likely experience permanent global NNR supply shortfalls by the year 2030—available global supplies associated with these NNRs will fail permanently to meet global NNR demand by that time. Specifically:
Actual annual global extraction levels associated with cadmium, gold, mercury, tellurium, and tungsten have likely reached their geological global peak extraction levels, and are in terminal decline worldwide.
The probability that these NNRs will experience permanent global supply shortfalls by the year 2030 is nearly certain, assuming near term recoveries to pre-recession NNR extraction levels and growth rates, and the continued inability of recycled NNRs to more than offset ever-tightening newly extracted supplies.13
Actual annual global extraction levels associated with cobalt, lead, molybdenum, PGM, phosphate rock, silver, titanium, and zinc exceeded their projected Verhulst global peak extraction levels prior to the year 2010. Current annual global extraction levels associated with these NNRs are likely near or at their geological global peak extraction levels.
The probability that these NNRs will experience permanent global supply shortfalls by the year 2030 is very high, assuming near term recoveries to pre-recession NNR extraction levels and growth rates, and the continued inability of recycled NNRs to more than offset ever-tightening newly extracted supplies.13
Actual annual global extraction levels associated with chromium, coal, copper, indium, iron ore, lithium, magnesium compounds, natural gas, nickel, oil, and phosphate rock are expected to exceed their projected Verhulst global peak extraction levels between the years 2010 and 2030.
The probability that these NNRs will experience permanent global supply shortfalls by the year 2030 is high, assuming near term recoveries to pre-recession NNR extraction levels and growth rates, and the continued inability of recycled NNRs to more than offset ever-tightening newly extracted supplies.13
Actual annual global extraction levels associated with bauxite, rare earth minerals, and tin are not expected to exceed their projected Verhulst global peak extraction levels prior to the year 2030.
The probability that these NNRs will experience permanent global supply shortfalls by the year 2030 is low, unless future NNR extraction levels and growth rates far exceed pre-recession extraction levels and growth rates, due to unforeseen increases in global demand.
Note that national and/or regional NNR supply shortfalls should be expected to occur, primarily for geopolitical reasons,14 even though global NNR supplies remain at sufficient levels to fully address global demand.
Global NNR Supply Shortfall Analysis Findings
Fifty (50) of the 57 NNRs (88%) analyzed in the Global NNR Scarcity Analysis experienced global scarcity—and therefore experienced temporary (at least) global supply shortfalls—during the |
more importantly, his ability to find big plays has improved over the past three weeks. In the wins over Kentucky, Arkansas and Tennessee, Hurts has completed eight of the 18 passes of 20 yards or further downfield he has attempted, while in the opening four weeks of the season he completed just six of the 22 he attempted. Alabama continues to look more and more dominant as the season wears on, and Hurts’ ability to find the big play downfield has been paramount to that on the offensive side of the ball.
Big plays as a runner, too
Finding big plays through the air is one thing, but there will be games where his ability to find plays downfield will be tested — whether it’s against a strong group of defensive backs or — as is going to be the case against Texas A&M on Saturday night — by being forced to deal with more pressure than usual. When that happens, Hurts is going to have to find big plays on the ground too, and his stock as a runner couldn’t be higher than it is right now after a huge game against Tennessee in the win on Saturday night.
On the year he has rushed for 480 yards on 70 carries, forcing eight missed tackles and scoring eight touchdowns. 105 of those yards, and 20 of those carries have come on quarterback scrambles, but he has been excellent on designed runs as well. Six of his touchdowns have come on designed quarterback runs off right end, and this is where he did the most damage against Tennessee. Rushing for 93 of his 146 yards, and two of his three touchdowns off right end, Tennessee just couldn’t stop him throughout the game.
Hurts might have been a huge question mark before the season began, but with each passing week he’s solidifying himself as one of the main reasons Alabama keeps winning. He limits mistakes and creates big plays both with his arm and his legs — a combination that makes him one of the best quarterbacks in the SEC.Sen. Bernie Sanders Bernard (Bernie) SandersSenate Dems seek to turn tables on GOP in climate change fight Bernie Sanders Town Hall finishes third in cable news race, draws 1.4 million viewers Woman to undecided Biden: 'Just say yes' to 2020 bid MORE (I-Vt.) called to end marijuana’s federal classification as one of the most dangerous illegal drugs during a Wednesday-night town hall event with college students.
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“Too many Americans have seen their lives destroyed because they have criminal records as a result of marijuana use. That’s wrong. That has got to change,” he said during a town hall at George Mason University in Virginia that was live streamed and shown at watch parties on more than 250 college campuses.
Marijuana is currently classified by the Drug Enforcement Administration as a Schedule 1 drug, which means that it has “no currently accepted medicinal use and a high potential for abuse.” Other Schedule 1 drugs include LSD, heroin and ecstasy, a fact that Sanders called “absurd.”
As a Schedule 1 drug, it remains illegal at the federal level despite the small handful of states that have legalized it and a larger group that allow for medicinal use of marijuana.
“The time is long overdue for us to remove the federal prohibition on marijuana,” he said to applause from a rowdy crowd of college students standing around him.
Sanders’s call to remove it from the federal government’s scheduling entirely would put it on par with tobacco and alcohol, and states would be able to determine whether the drug should be legal without federal retribution.
It also would remove the threat of federal prosecution for marijuana users or medicinal marijuana distributors in states that have already legalized the drug.
President Obama has said neither are priorities for his Justice Department. Some Republican presidential candidates, including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, have said they’ll crack down if elected.
Sanders noted that the plan would allow marijuana businesses to use banks without the risk of breaking the law. He framed the issue as a criminal justice imperative that could not only alleviate the prison population and said that the tax revenue from legalized marijuana “could be used to fight the effects of substance abuse of hard drugs like opiates that are harming so many communities.”
Sanders’s stance goes the furthest of all presidential candidates. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley wants to lower the drug to federal Schedule 2, while Hillary Clinton has said she wants to wait to see what lessons can be learned from states that have legalized marijuana before making a decision.
After revealing his new marijuana policy proposal, he delved into a modified stump speech aimed at college students, hitting on issues like youth unemployment, equal pay for women, and tuition-free public college.
Sanders's rally came on the same night as the GOP debate, a fact he had some fun with.
"You owe me big, I’m keeping you away from the Republican debate,” he said to cheersWhenever you see discussions about the best Transformers from a particular line or era, over a big enough sample, you can see patterns emerging and the same figures can rise to the top of most collectors’ lists. Once in a while, a certain Transformers toy, concept or aesthetic will be loved by many, and disliked by a few. Inspired by a fascinating thread on TFW2005 started by user NotRamjet97 called ”Unpopular Toy Opinions”, I thought I’d stick my neck out this week and share some of my own feelings on certain figures that might be considered scandalous in today’s scene.
Since I’ve lead with an image of Defensor, I might as well dive straight into Combiner Wars, Hasbro’s enormously well-received and currently successful line of Transformers that not only pay great tribute to the original well-recognised combiners of Devastator, Menasor, Superion, Defensor and co, but also introduce new combiners like Galvatronus, while also featuring Cyclonus, Optimus Prime and other traditionally non-combiner figures. IDW Transformers comics are also referenced heavily by toys in the line, with the precise characters appearing in the main RID/Transformers titles actually named “Combiner Wars”. I’ve experienced the individual Aerialbot and Stunticon limbs for Combiner Wars, they’re excellent fiddle-formers and quite pretty (Silverbolt, Motormaster and Dead End are brilliant), but that’s the popular opinion.
My unfashionable stance on Combiner Wars is that the combined forms themselves are not exciting. Superion is so far the best of the bunch in my eyes and has some very impressive inter-locking limb technology, interchangeability and posability. However the foot pads and hands on Superion, Menasor and Defensor so far don’t look good to me and they don’t strike me as Transformers I’d like to collect or display as combiners. I find the individual bots, voyager and deluxe, far nicer. The level of G1 homages going on is spectacular, Devastator is gigantic and very faithful, but it doesn’t interest me. Looking at the 3rd Party upgrades for the Combiner Wars giants doesn’t inspire me either, they just end up looking like more generic 3rd party combiners and it defeats the point of the cheap and cheerful, Hasbro-style Transformers that put playability above looks. Heck, even my MMC Feral Rex that I worship is a right old pain to pose and combine, so maybe the most scandalous opinion that I have here is that I’m actually not that much of a fan of combiners.
Not ready to leave Combiner Wars alone just yet, we have the leader class figures of Megatron, Ultra Magnus and Thundercracker. Thundercracker ought to be nice because Jetfire upon which it’s based is nice. Megatron, however, I just knew I was going to dislike from the very first promotional images. He seemed pretty un-posable, mis-proportioned in the lower half of the body, and generally unattractive to me. I’m sure it’s because I actually have virtually zero connection to the character that neither CW leader Megatron, X-Transbots Apollyon nor MP-5 Megatron appeal to me in the slightest. So while my unpopular opinion overall here is that I don’t much care about Megatron toys (TFGT being the sole exception), even the escapades of Autobot Megatron in the fantastic IDW More Than Meets The Eye, written by James Roberts who’s actually handling Megatron beautifully, have not endeared what looks like a mis-proportioned block of a figure to me.
Leader Class Ultra Magnus? Yes! Minimus Ambus incorporated and transformable? Yes! That IDW-inspired robot mode for Ultra Magnus? Yes yes yes! That vehicle mode? Oh dear God, no. This is one of those occasions where I feel the toy was so specifically engineered to nail a look/aesthetic in robot mode that the alt mode has suffered and been compromised as a result. The way those gigantic missile launchers, angry-face-squinty-eyes cab and huge wheels dominate the vehicle mode turned me off this figure totally. Magnus’s vehicle mode is very important, it isn’t an afterthought for a massive Autobot robot. Masterpiece Magnus is all the Ultra Magnus I’ll ever need, I was very nearly going to crack my no-CW rule for collecting going forward for Magnus, so it’s been a real disappointment. That robot mode and Ambus though, great work guys, a lot of people are going to love this figure.
If Combiner Wars is aimed at the collectors, then the 2015 animated series and associated toys from Hasbro’s Transformers Robots In Disguise is arguably aimed at the younger fan. I find this to be a damn shame because of the two lines, RID 2015 has caught my imagination more than Combiner Wars. The show so far has been very entertaining, well animated and something I looked forward to every weekend. The toys have been very available and I’ve picked up every Warrior or Legion class RID toy from the UK or US that has seen release in waves 1 and 2. Understandably, collectors have bemoaned the fact that for £14.99 in the UK and an equivalently outrageous price Stateside, one is getting simpler Transformers toys that make a mockery of the deluxe class figure compared to pinnacles like Animated or War For Cybertron.
While the “Warrior Class” transformations are really enjoyable and repeatable, I cannot deny how much cheaper the toys look and feel. Many more compromises have been made in the engineering where gigantic car parts visible in robot mode are just par for the course. Show accuracy is ok but not anywhere near as well executed as Animated toys. Accessories are a bit take-it-or-leave-it and there are precious few areas of appreciable paint application. It took me a while to get used to the money I was paying for toys that were incomparable to Movie-era deluxes in terms of engineering, complexity and finish.
It’s also a crying shame that characters being developed so entertainingly and brilliantly on screen are never going to get proper voyager, leader or premium class representations. This is especially true of the imaginative and fascinating Decepticons the show has introduced thus far. However, one thing I challenge people to disagree with me on is that the Legion class toys are spectacularly good. Almost more paint apps than the Warrior Class, great transformations and relative posability, every single one has been a success and I love them. Legion Strongarm is a contender for the toy of the whole line so far. So, my unpopular opinion here is that I love Robots In Disguise. I love the show, the characters, the toys and even the mobile app until I got bored of its repetitive nature.
Last but not…er…well it’s last. This one is really going to get me lynched. Generations Arcee, the figure that the fandom has wanted for decades. An official representation of Generation 1 Arcee with screen accurate robot and vehicle modes, featuring posability and the technology of modern Transformers, very affordable and quite reminiscent of designer Hironori Koabayashi’s Arcee design that got him hired at Takara initially, this is a very very widely celebrated, loved and popular Transformers toy from 2014.
The Japanese Transformers Legends version is also hugely popular, sporting colours that some argue are even more screen accurate and appealing. I get it, I understand why this toy is important and a big deal. I bought this for my wife for Christmas after Azalea flopped hard with her, and she liked it well enough, but my goodness I could not – and still cannot – see what all the fuss is about. For all the fanfare and actually rather nice touches here and there, I think Arcee is a very average transformer. It’s an epic shellformer, it has those irritating angle-cut feet that I dislike (which limits traditional Arcee poses, not all of which can be wide legged) and the robot mode kibble is tremendous. Do I hate it? not at all, fun little figure and very pretty, but I simply don’t understand why it makes so many top 5 best ever Transformers lists. I think Brainstorm, Jetfire, Springer, Sandstorm, and many of the Combiner Wars deluxes & voyagers are better toys. I also think MMC Azalea looks and poses better, even if its transformation is soul destroying. Now those be some unpopular opinions right there.
If there was no diversity in fan and collector opinion, this would be a significantly stale hobby and for a time it was heading in that direction. The influx of new fans can be partially attributed to the many different directions Transformers have taken down the years; Beast era Transformers, Movie era Transformers, Transformers Animated, Classics and Generations, Masterpiece, 3rd Party and everything in-between. Opinions vary, mercifully, and occasionally we’ll see things differently to the majority. The fact that someone can look at a Masterpiece Star Saber and be repulsed beggars belief in my world, but that’s the beauty of the whole thing and what has kept the machine trundling on for all these years. While I’m getting lynched for the above opinions I may as well add more fuel to my own pyre; I’ve never seen a Beast Wars toy I like the look of, I’m growing sick of ball joints, RTS Jazz is lost on me and maybe worst of all, I’ve enjoyed all the live action Transformers movies and many of the movie era toys. Oh dear, what have I done…
You can get your Transformers Combiner Wars toys here at TFSource
All the best
MazA Centurion American downtown multifamily project was given a second look Monday at the city’s Landmark Commission, but the panel remained underwhelmed with designs for the proposed seven-story building in the Harwood Historic District.
As reported in June, Centurion is the developer behind the restoration of The Statler Dallas and the adjoining Old Dallas Central Library in the 1900 block of Commerce Street. Centurion also bought up most of the city block next door; this is a surface parking lot addressed to 210 South Harwood Street.
With the recent completion of The Statler, Centurion planned to proceed with a six-level underground parking garage at the Harwood Street site. The subsurface garage is the first phase of what’s in store for that block.
In October, Centurion’s project architect, Yen Ong of 5G Studio Collaborative LLC met with the Landmark Commission Task Force to present conceptual renderings for the Jackson Apartments and fill in some details on the proposed residential complex.
The ground floor was to include a leasing office, fitness room, a few residential units, and indoor parking. The second level would be a car park. Residences would occupy floors three to seven, with a pool deck on the north side of the third floor. Centurion is still tinkering with the exact number of apartment units, but the working documents indicate there will be 142 parking spaces and at least 134 residences.
Ong presented an exterior comprised of a combination of yellow and dark brown brick with gold fiber cement panels. There were also concerns about the styling of the windows and the lack of a prominent main entrance, a common feature in the district.
Both Task Force members and city staff criticized the materials and color palette as inconsistent with the historic structures in the district.
This site is smack in the middle of the Harwood Historic District, a subdistrict of the city’s Main Street District that overlaps into the Farmers Market District and is home to some of downtown’s oldest buildings. These include the Old City Hall and the Lone Star Gas Co. Building — now Lone Star Gas Lofts — both stately edifices with stone or molded concrete exteriors.
When Ong appeared before the commission Monday, he had made few concessions. He offered a color palette he felt more closely matched neighboring buildings, but the other changes did not address the commissioners’ materials preference for stone and brick exteriors.
The district has an eclectic collection of buildings dating from the 1920s to the 1950s, and they represent several styles.
“As you can see, there is no cohesive architectural district. What we have now is an opportunity to define what this building will really be, in order to contribute to the larger district. What we would like to see is a building that undertakes a more modern tone.” — Yen Ong, 5G Studio Collaborative
Ong brought up the library’s architecture, now the home of the Dallas Morning News. It was built in 1954-1955 and designed by George Dahl, who was known for his art deco and modernist work. Ong said he would use the modernist library as a template, “and combine what we see along Jackson Street and try to improve upon that street.”
Commission Chair Katherine Seale, after first emphasizing she had a real problem with stucco and fiber cement, opined that the Harwood Historic District’s ordinance was a confusing guide because it tries to include all the architectural styles.
“You’re trying to meet the ordinance, but also responding to the building immediately across, the former Dallas Public Library,” Seale said. “I would just say pick which one your going to go with. There’s nothing wrong with abstract expressions of earlier 20th century buildings … but if you’re going to go modern, go modern. Be consistent with whatever route you’re trying to go.”
Ong made more progress in meeting the commission halfway in other areas. On the ground floor, he removed the only four apartment units on that level and reconfigured the floor plan to provide more office space and a lounge for residents.
“Our hope is that we want to enhance the pedestrian experience there in anticipation of a future park that is being planned across Jackson from us,” Ong said.
Addressing the streetscape, Ong said 5G would try to make it more pedestrian-friendly with more greenery and possibly artwork. This would include a green wall to obscure the first two floors of the east half of the building where the parking garage is located.
Commissioner Mattia Fabiano dinged Ong on the modest appearance of the main entrance.
“There’s really not a super strong entry portal like you see on some of the other buildings,” Fabiano said.
The lack of an imposing entrance was repeatedly mentioned as each commissioner took a turn at critiquing. In general, they found the concept less than compelling, but as a work in progress the commissioners told Ong he was going in the right direction.
Seale said the buildings in the neighborhood are some of the best in downtown.
“They’re special. You’ve got such a great opportunity to rise to the occasion. I think this site demands it,” she said.Video
Footage of the moment a cyclist narrowly missed being hit by a train has been released by police as part of a rail safety campaign.
The video shows a woman cycling past a lowered barrier at a level crossing in Cambridgeshire, before hitting the brakes and stepping back when she realised a train was approaching.
Richard Schofield from Network Rail, said the woman had put many lives at risk.
"The person using the crossing not only did not hear the train, but ignored the warning lights and barriers, putting her life, the lives of passengers and the train driver in danger," he said.
British Transport Police are appealing for witnesses and want to identify the woman involved in the incident at Waterbeach, at 6.30pm on 12 September.Tom Tagholm, Channel 4 Britain As the Paralympics get ready to start in a London, a form of natural doping called "boosting" has emerged.
It's a gruesome practice in which athletes with spinal injuries intentionally injure themselves in order to gain a competitive advantage.
Here's how it works:
Many quadriplegic athletes suffer from chronically low blood pressure. As a result, they don't get the automatic increase in heart rate and blood pressure that able-bodied people get from physical activity, spinal injury expert Dr. Andrei Krassioukov told Txhnologist. So, basically, they have less energy.
In order to trick the body into raising its blood pressure, an athlete will injure his or her lower body in an number of awful ways. According to the BBC, athletes have broken their toes with hammers, electroshocked their testicles, and blocked their catheters for days in order to make the bladder swell.
The athletes don't feel the pain (because they injure body parts below their spinal injuries), but their bodies automatically go into distress and kick into overdrive. This simulates the automatic boost able-bodied people get from physical activity, and gives the athlete an advantage on the field of play.
The practice is extremely dangerous though. Quadriplegic climber Brad Zdanivsky told the BBC, "You are getting a blood pressure spike that could quite easily blow a vessel behind your eye or cause a stroke in your brain."A perfect week for digging up the block.
If you care, you repair
The infrastructure or it will despair.
Bear with the noise! We aren’t made of air.
Tyrannosaurus rex on tires, gorging horribly,
Fucks the street in bursts and jerks.
The operator riding it bucks and charges forward
And resumes his hippopotamus mouthfuls.
The scene’s a slaughterhouse
With dead meat screaming.
Maybe the concrete is fully conscious?
Major surgery without anesthesia.
You’ll need earplugs and a hard hat
While this berserk year runs amok.
We actually need to talk.
What now? Now what?
We are poor little lambs who have lost our way.
We are little black sheep who have gone astray.
O say can you see what we’re about to be?
What am I, chopped liver?
O say can you see
We’re about to be
The Nuremberg Rally
In an alley?
I text the sky – hi, sky! –
O infinite and blue!
In a green pasture up in the blue sky a cow chews her heavenly cud,
A garland of orchids around her neck.
Cow-eyed Hera – goddess! – but not goodness –
Not calm, patient, selfless abundance –
Not Hindu! Not moo-cow moo!
But, Donald darling, unmistakeably you.We Need Your Help!
Toonami is starting up a sort of behind the scenes streaming podcast with the pictures and the internets. Hoping to have something up in a few weeks.
We’re going to be answering some questions, and showing some clips amongst other talking parts, and we need you guys’ help.
1) What was the first anime you watched? Tell us about it!
2) What general questions would you like to ask us? Keep it simple, and remember, we can’t talk about past, present, or future show acquisitions, so please don’t ask.
3) Send us the favorite promo (that you’ve made yourself) for a Toonami show that’s on the air now or has been on in the last year or two. You can send this link, for now, to Jason DeMarco’s Ask.fm account: Ask.fm/Clarknova. It’s cool if you haven’t made one, but if you have, send us a link! We’ll pick our favorite one and talk about it on the show!Izell Mayes says he can't remember the infraction that first earned him a fine in New Orleans traffic court back in 1989. All he remembers is he couldn't afford to pay it. So he missed court dates, a lot of them, and over the ensuing years, he racked up more tickets and tallied nearly $23,000 in additional fines and penalties.
Mayes, whose license was suspended in 1997, says driving to work was a terrifying, daily experience, with every police car representing the threat of being pulled over, handcuffed and thrown in jail. Not able to pay even a fraction of his court balance, Mayes says he resigned himself to the risk of imprisonment every time he got behind the wheel.
Then he heard about the Warrant Clinic, an event held in early March by Orleans Parish municipal and traffic court officials to help two groups of people: the nearly 30,000 people in the city who have outstanding warrants for missing court dates related to minor offenses - such as trespassing or public intoxication. And the countless number of people, like Mayes, saddled with thousands of dollars in traffic-related fines that resulted in the suspension of their driver's licenses, but can't afford to pay to break the cycle.
Over the course of 13 hours at the Corpus Christi Epiphany Catholic Church in the 7th Ward, more than 1,200 people showed up for the clinic, owing an average of $8,000 in court fines. They had their debts reduced in exchange for community service, while others had warrants cleared for misdemeanor offenses. The event was overseen by Municipal Court judges Desiree Charbonnet and Joseph Landry, and Traffic Court Judge Robert Jones.
Anza Becnel, an organizer with Stand with Dignity, the nonprofit that sponsored the event, said the purpose of the clinic was to eliminate obstacles that can prevent people from getting jobs and obtaining vehicle insurance, while removing the threat of jail from their lives.
"How many folks are living really desperately in poverty because they can't get employment, because they can't pass a criminal background check because they have a warrant?" Becnel said.
Mayes said he waited more than 12 hours before his name was called. The court clerk asked him what he thought he owed. Mayes said he told her around $14,000. She then wrote something on a piece of paper and slid it to him. It said he owed nearly $23,000.
Best case scenario, Mayes figured, he'd have to go on a payment plan to cover around 10 percent of the total. The woman then wrote the figure Mayes was required to pay, and slid that piece of paper towards him. Mayes said he picked it up and read the figure: $9.
"She asked me how I felt about that. So I asked her for a pen, wrote a smiley face on the piece of paper, and slid it back to her," he said. "She bust out laughing."
Now that he can drive legally, Mayes, 43, plans to apply for a position with the Regional Transit Authority, something he's wanted to do, but couldn't, for years.
"I feel like a new man," he said.
Municipal Court at the Mission: pilot program clears warrants for homeless Dozens of men and women lined up Thursday (Sept. 24), waiting to be seen by Judge Sean Early who, along with the Orleans Public Defenders Office and Chief Deputy City Attorney Charlene Larche-Mason, set up a temporary courtroom in an...
Thousands saddled with fines for minor violations
Stand with Dignity first got the idea for the Warrant Clinic from Municipal Court at the Mission, a program started in 2015 in which an ad hoc court was set up at a homeless shelter. That court clears warrants and fines for homeless men and women too poor to pay their debts, yet too afraid of possible arrest to go to the courthouse to try and resolve their issues.
Becnel said they wanted to expand that concept. They took the idea to Bill Quigley with the Loyola Law Clinic who put them in touch with Charbonnet. She recruited fellow judges Landry and Jones, after which the city attorney and Orleans Public Defenders agreed to take part. Quigley said the judges and all the various agencies were quick to sign on because they see the futility of the situation on a daily basis in the courtroom.
"It doesn't do any good to keep fines and fees on the books if you can't collect them," Quigley said. "And the law is clear, you can't put people in jail just because they can't afford to pay those fines and fees. I think the judges know it's better to have people with clear records who can get driver's licenses and insurance and a chance for a new start."
Jones said it is not unusual for people to rack up thousands of dollars in traffic violations. He said many people are pulled over and cited for more than one offense, such as speeding, an expired brake tag and no registration. That amounts to roughly $800, he said. If they fail to show up in court, which happens about 20 percent of the time, their license is automatically suspended. So the next time police stop them, they are hit with a $500 fine for driving without a license, in addition to the fines for whatever infractions caused the officer to pull them over in the first place, Jones said.
Now they are looking at close to $2,000. But they need to drive to get to work or school, risking additional police stops - each costing them upwards of $1,000 - in addition to being arrested, Jones said. That's how thousands of New Orleanians end up with crippling court debt.
Which explains why when word of the Warrant Clinic spread out, more than 1,200 people showed up - more than twice the 500 organizers expected.
"A majority of people we talked to have not had a driver's license since Katrina because they couldn't afford the $10,000 they owed in traffic fees," said Virginia Ryan with the Orleans Public Defender's Office. "This is a very progressive outlook and approach for New Orleans. The system typically criminalizes people because they are poor. That's what people are used to."
Stand with Dignity sees the clinic as part of a broader move towards reforming the city's criminal justice system. In January, the New Orleans City Council voted to allow people arrested for minor offenses to be released without bail. That came 10 months after the council passed an ordinance allowing police to issue tickets instead of arresting people for marijuana possession.
More changes are needed, advocates maintain. For example, driving with a suspended license remains one of only four driving-related offenses for which a person can be arrested in Orleans Parish. The other three - driving while intoxicated, reckless operation of a vehicle, and hit-and-run - put people at physical risk, which is not necessarily the case with someone not having a valid license.
Yet New Orleanians continue to be arrested and jailed for driving with a suspended license, though the number of arrests have steadily declined over the past several years, from a high of nearly 10,000 in 2009 to a low of 3,214 in 2014, according to statistics provided by the Metropolitan Crime Commission.
The reason, however, isn't because officers are choosing not to arrest people with misdemeanor warrants or suspended licenses, said Rafael Goyeneche, president of the Crime Commission. It's because the police department has all but stopped conducting traffic checkpoints.
"Traffic and drug enforcement have gone off the cliff. It's not because we don't have traffic violators or a drug problem," Goyeneche said. "We just can't commit resources to doing that enforcement action because it means (police officers) can't respond to more serious calls for service."
NOPD spokesman Beau Tidwell said NOPD has shifted its traffic enforcement strategies from checkpoints to technology-oriented solutions such as speed and red light cameras. That frees up officers to respond to emergency calls, he said. They still execute DWI checkpoints, however, such as the one the department held March 22 which resulted in 170 vehicles checked, two DWI arrests and 28 citations.
Grace period for New Orleans' new traffic cameras is over Mayor Mitch Landrieu said his administration will continue to install 45 new cameras at 32 sites to complement the 66 already in use at 42 locations.
More stable solution sought
Instead of holding periodic events such as the Warrant Clinic, Becnel said he would like to see the city enact a more permanent fix. This could include an ordinance that would eliminate warrants for minor non-violent offenses, while giving police the option of issuing summonses for people caught driving with suspended licenses instead of arresting them.
Something similar was done in Missouri in 2015 when the state passed a law that limits fines for minor traffic violations, eliminates charges for failure to appear in court, and prohibits a jail sentence for minor traffic offenses.
Charbonnet didn't comment on the prospect of passing such a law, but emphasized the people who attended the Warrant Clinic were not hardened criminals or convicted of violent acts.
"This is to address the difficulty many of the indigent defendants have paying fines and fees and then avoiding arrest because of that," she said. "These are misdemeanors, public intoxication, trespassing, disturbing the peace, not the crimes that place terror in our hearts when we read the newspaper every day. People had cases stemming 10 years back and they pretty much stayed out of trouble all that time."
The event was such a success that a second Warrant Clinic is being planned for the summer, Becnel said.
"This was a real win and an example of how grassroot organizations and institutions can come together to have major impact on people's lives," he said.A preschool class' poster of baby name suggestions is giving the name Saint West a run for its money.
Julie Siakpere, a 35-year-old teacher from La Crosse, Wisconsin who is currently five months pregnant, received the board plastered with baby name ideas from her class the day after she left early to attend a doctor's appointment.
"[The kids] asked where I was and it kind of sparked what [gender] I was having and the names," she said. "My co-teacher surprised me with it the next day," she told ABC News.
Julie Siakpere
The image went viral after Siakpere's cousin posted a link to the photo on Reddit, where it has more than 1.3 million views.
While the kids did suggest some classics like Henry and Anna, they also suggested Balloon, Racecar and Cindy Elf. Looks as though Siakpere has some interesting choices to make!
Also on HuffPost:Former UFC heavyweight champion Junior dos Santos is impressed with how Fabricio Werdum fought Cain Velasquez to snatch the belt earlier this year. However, 'Cigano,' who fought Velasquez three times and lost twice, believes Werdum hasn't seen the best of Cain just yet and should be careful in their rematch, as Combate reported.
"I think Werdum did well in his last fight, but in my opinion he did not fight the same Velasquez I fought. Velasquez was exhausted in the first round. That was a complete surprise for me. He was exhausted in the first round. That's unbelievable for someone like him, who fought 10 rounds against me. In the fifth round he was hopping like a kid, so that was odd."
Even though the rematch between Werdum and Velasquez has been announced by the UFC, the place has not been established yet. Since many believe the high altitude of Mexico City played a big factor draining Velasquez's cardio, Dos Santos thinks Cain will win the second encounter, provided he doesn't gas again.
"If Velasquez shows up in his usual shape. I think he beats Werdum. But if Werdum keeps the belt and I win my fight. I could be next. It could happen."
Junior dos Santos is expected to take on Alistair Overeem at UFC on Fox 17 on December 19, in Las Vegas.President Donald Trump's job approval rating stands at just 44 percent — a record low for a newly inaugurated commander-in-chief — and half of Americans say that his early challenges suggest unique and systemic problems with his administration, according to a new poll from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, NBC News reported.
In the poll, conducted February 18-22, 48 percent of Americans said they disapprove of Trump's performance as president and 32 percent said that his first month in office demonstrates that he is not up to the job. Asked about early challenges in the first month of his presidency, 52 percent called the issues "real problems" that are specific to his administration, while 43 percent of Americans attributed them to typical "growing pains" for any new president.
The new rating comes two days before Trump is set to address a joint session of Congress, a State of the Union-style speech in which new presidents typically lay out their vision for the country.by Sara R. Farris
The fact that some two dozen male asylum seekers and numerous men of North-African descent have been linked to the muggings and sexual assaults in Cologne and other German cities on New Year’s Eve is being shamelessly used by various right wing movements to brandish the trope of Muslim men as a threat to women’s rights.
This is, of course, nothing new. Historically, this trope was deployed by European colonizers and, more recently, it was rebranded by the Bush administration during the occupation of Afghanistan in 2001, when the bombing of the country was presented as necessary to liberate Afghani women from Islamic oppression.
Even more recently, other voices have joined the political right to invoke the hard-hand against Muslims in the name of women’s rights. In Germany, feminist icon Alice Schwarzer has been one of the most vocal critics of Islam, claiming that as both a religion and culture it is responsible for the oppression of women; over the years, Schwarzer has been joined by a wide array of political actors, including social democrat Thilo Sarrzin. This idea has become so widespread that according to a survey conducted by the polling agency Allensbach in 2012, 83 percent of Germans associate the word “Islam” with “oppression of women”.
It is incumbent on us to remember, however, that in Germany Muslims have not been the only ones accused of innate misogyny. Throughout the 1980s, well-known Christian feminists such as Gerda Weiler and Christa Mulack blamed Judaism for having introduced patriarchy into the West. During these years, even certain politicians linked to the Greens seemed to intimate that Judaism—as a religion—justifies sexual violence against women as well as pedophilia.
Thus, in recent German history, sexism has been repeatedly framed as a problem plaguing non-Christian religions and cultures. Yet, framing the problem in this way is very dangerous for the cause of gender equality and women’s safety, since it not only distort facts, but it also diverts attention away from the loopholes in the German legal system concerning women’s rights and the everyday reality of sexism and violence.
For instance, the German law on sexual harassment and rape makes it difficult to prosecute those responsible for cases of sexual assault, such as those reported |
and athletic training staff took a look at Jones' lower leg area, including his knee, as he remained down after the play.
Jones initially needed help walking to the sideline, and after a brief stop on the team's bench, he walked slowly on his own to the locker room alongside members of the athletic training staff.
The Patriots' depth at defensive tackle has been thinned over the past few days, as Sealver Siliga is expected to miss time after injuring his left hand in Tuesday's practice. Now Jones is expected to be sidelined for the near future, but the initial indication is that he has avoided a more serious long-term injury.include("/home/scifim44/public_html/gr/728x90_1.inc");?> Article CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY - PREVIEW
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
Starring: Johnny Depp, Freddie Highmore, David Kelly, Julia Winter, Franziska Troegner, James Fox, Annasophia Robb, Missi Pyle, Johnny Depp, Adam Godley, Jordan Fry
Director: Tim Burton
U.S. Opening Date: July 19, 2005
Yet another pointless remake? This time Tim Burton is filming a new version of the beloved Roald Dahl children’s classic tale, which was of course filmed as Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory back in 1971 with Gene Wilder. (This film has an unexpectedly large and dedicated fan following: when its studio released the movie in dreaded pan ‘n’ scan mode on DVD, fans actually pestered them into releasing a proper widescreen version — one of the few such successful campaigns to force a studio into doing the bidding of fans!) Fans of the original are obviously going “why?” and has to wonder whether Burton has learnt his lesson regarding the bland remakes with his 2001 version of Planet of the Apes and if Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has anything new to add. Still, if anyone can pull it off it’d be the team that gave us Edward Scissorhands... (By the way, will this fantasy tale ever be the same after Fry and his cohorts’ visit to the Slurm factory in Futurama?)
Plot description of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005): Charlie Bucket, a boy from an impoverished family under the shadow of a giant chocolate factory, wins a candy bar contest and is given a tour, along with four other children, of the amazing factory run by the eccentric Willy Wonka and his staff of Oompa-Loompas... — Some sources: Amazon.com, IMDb Trivia about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Steve Martin, Robin Williams, Christopher Walken, Nicolas Cage and Michael Keaton were all considered for the role of Willy Wonka. Marilyn Manson also badly wanted the part, and was apparently the director's first choice, but this could not be accomplished due to scheduling conflicts.
Johnny Depp's second chocolate-based movie (the first being Chocolat in 2000). Depp doesn't like the taste of good chocolate - he prefers the cheap, Easter bunny type.
Martin Scorsese was at one point attached to direct.
A camera lens worth $540,000, wasn't properly secured when trying to get a shot of a vat of chocolate. As a result, the camera fell into the vat which destroyed it.
This is the fifth film that Tim Burton and Johnny Depp have made together. The others are Edward Scissorhands (1990), Ed Wood (1994), Sleepy Hollow (1999), and Corpse Bride (2005).
Screenwriter John August had never even seen Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) when asked by Tim Burton to write the script. After finishing the screenplay, he finally watched the 1971 version, only to be surprised at how much darker the "family film" was to his own.
Johnny Depp was so impressed with Freddie Highmore's performance in Finding Neverland (2004) that he convinced Tim Burton to cast him as Charlie Bucket.
Johnny Depp used shock rocker Marilyn Manson as his inspiration for his performance as Willy Wonka; Manson himself wanted the whole of Wonka in the film. — Some sources: Amazon.com, IMDb Trailers: Windows Media 28-300k QuickTime: Small (56k), Medium (100k), Large (300k), Fullscreen (opens in a new window) Join our Facebook group today and get all the latest sci-fi movie news & rumors daily!
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include("/home/scifim44/public_html/gr/160x600_1.inc");?>Cricket pay deal huge for women as Australia's female cricketers get massive windfall
Updated
The pay dispute dividing Australian cricket is finally over, and this summer's Ashes series has been saved, but the new deal over cricketers' pay marks a historic boost to the women's game.
The pay deal reached between Cricket Australia (CA) and the Australian Cricketers' Association (ACA), following months of bitter negotiations, will apply to all male and female players for the first time in Australian cricket.
The deal is being lauded as the biggest pay rise in the history of women's sport in the country.
Female player payments will increase from $7.5 million to $55.2 million.
"[It's] a gender equity pay model, with the biggest pay rise in the history of women's sport in Australia," ACA chief executive Alistair Nicholson said.
In a modernised revenue-sharing formula, CA forecasts a player payments pool of $459 million, which covers all male and female players.
Furthermore, a performance pool will continue for male players while being extended to include the Australian women's team.
"The ACA is delighted for the men and women who play the game now and in the future," ACA president Greg Dyer said in a statement.
"And for the game of cricket which will continue to benefit from the partnership model which has served cricket so well.
"One MOU for men and women, the maintenance of the partnership model, and record investments for grassroots cricket is what we wanted and it's what has been achieved.
"The men and women have been rewarded for sticking together and for having the courage of their convictions. They have made history and created a legacy for generations of players to come."
The pay deal's key features: Player Payments Pool (PPP) (all male and female player payments and programs apart from Performance Pool)
A modernised revenue sharing formula achieved by developing a PPP to a dollar value based on external market benchmarks, internal equity and financial viability, and forecast cricket revenues
PPP of $459m (would be the equivalent of 27.5 per cent assuming Australian Cricket Revenue [ACR] of $1.67bn)
Includes player development program increased from $7 million to $14 million Performance Pool (PP) Continues for the Australian men's team on similar terms to the last MOU and extended to include the Australian women's team. Female player payments Female player payments will increase from $7.5 million to $55.2 million Adjustment ledger If ACR exceeds $1.67bn, players receive 19 per cent of the upside to $1.96 billion ACR and grassroots cricket receives 8.5 per cent. Above $1.96 billion, male and female players receive 27.5 per cent Additional grassroots funding Up to $30m that would otherwise have gone to the PPP under the old model. (all male and female player payments and programs apart from Performance Pool)
Nicholson said the resolved dispute sees male and female players engaged as partners in the game.
"To have retained the revenue-sharing model and increased the level we have and ensure that men, women, domestic and international players receive a fair share is great news for the players and for the game," he said in a statement.
"It's right that all players, men and women will be partners in the game because that's a fair outcome. It ensures a game with all parties pulling in the same direction.
"I pay tribute to all of the players for their resolve. Enduring uncertainty and unemployment has been very difficult. They are terrific young men and women who have been rewarded for their determination.
"I especially congratulate Steve Smith, David Warner, Meg Lanning, Alex Blackwell and all ACA delegates for their outstanding leadership. They led the players in this process and prevailed."
Topics: cricket, sport, australia
First postedJudges in Strasbourg have requested documents that contain details of how the CIA set up its "extraordinary rendition" centre outside Warsaw in 2002 where it subjected al-Qaeda suspects to water-boarding and other extreme interrogation techniques.
A month ago, a Polish whistle-blower alleged that a document existed which allowed the setting up of the prison – including procedures to adopt in the event of an inmate's death. It was said to have been signed by the head of Polish intelligence.
According to the leak, American officials "laughed" and refused to sign the document. "They considered us amateurs and explained that this kind of business could not be dealt with by means of formal agreements," the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza reported.
Polish officials have refused to confirm or deny the existence of the agreement, citing official secrets laws, as part of a four-year investigation into the jail.
However, in a decision hailed by civil rights lawyers, the court has asked the Polish government to confirm the existence of the agreement and "if that document exists... to supply a copy." Both Poland and the US have fought to keep operational details of the camp secret. Under European law Poland has until Sept 5 to comply with the court's request for information, a copy of which has been seen by this newspaper.
The court demand was made after US civil rights lawyers filed a compensation claim at the court in Strasbourg on behalf of Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, the man accused of masterminding the October 2000 suicide bomb attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors.
Lawyers for al Nashiri, who was detained at the Polish prison for six months from December 2002 to June 2003, said the court order was a "significant step forward" in the ongoing battle to lift the veil of secrecy surrounding the CIA's rendition programme. "It would be a significant step forward for relevant documents to be produced so that the truth can finally be aired," said Amrit Singh, of the New York-based Open Society Justice Initiative which filed the case.
"Every single case brought by a rendition victim in the United States has been dismissed, until now no rendition victim has had their day in court. The US has never officially acknowledged any of its secret locations.
"The US and Poland conducted this secret rendition and torture operation on European territory without any judicial review or oversight, and now a European court is showing that it takes these violations very seriously," she added.
The European court's demand for information is potentially deeply embarrassing for the US government as it puts al Nashiri on trial at a war crimes tribunal in Guantánamo Bay, which began hearing pre-trial motions on Tuesday.
The court questions could also circumvent US government attempts to block requests by the al Nashiri defence team for the release of official documents relating to his detention in Poland and other sites in Morocco and Thailand.
Prosecution lawyers have urged the war crimes tribunal not to give up documents relating to the "arrest, detention and rendition" of al Nashiri, arguing they are "not material" to his defence and that the Guantánamo tribunal has no power to order foreign governments to hand them over.
The CIA black site at the Stare Kijekuty army base 110 miles north of Warsaw has caused a major political scandal in Poland as details emerged about how al Nashiri was subjected to mock executions, kept hooded and naked and threatened with a power drill and the rape of his family members.
In evidence given to an earlier Guantánamo Bay hearing in 2007, al Nashiri said his physical torture was so severe that "before I was arrested I used to be able to run about 10km. Now, I cannot walk for more than 10 minutes".
The court has also demanded to know whether Poland knowingly allowed al Nashiri to be tortured and sent to a country – Morocco – that used the death penalty, which would be a serious breach of European law.Jon Stewart on Monday responded to Paul Krugman’s criticism of his “Daily Show” bit that mocked the idea of minting a $1 trillion platinum coin to avoid a debt limit fight with congressional Republicans.The Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist over the weekend called Stewart “lazy” and the show unprofessional.
“First of all, lazy?” Stewart said. “Motherfucker, I’m out here banging it out four days a week, 22 minutes a day. So don’t tell me I don’t work hard! And second of all, don’t blame my ignorance on my staff. That’s all me.”
In the end, Stewart said he stands by the show’s research and his own ignorant conclusion that minting a $1 trillion coin would be a stupid idea.
“I said, ‘Good day.’ And, I’m a fan of Paul Krugman,” Stewart said.A California lawyer is making sure an entire class of kindergartners can pay for college - and there's a big Indiana influence.
Most of the 26 students in Tessa Ashton's kindergarten class in Anaheim come from low-income, single-parent homes where the price of lunch - much less college - is out of reach, but not anymore.
Marty Burbank wants to pay for all of the students to attend college.
"I'm more than likely going to put off retirement a few years," Burbank told NBC Nightly News.
The lawyer was ready to buy his dream boat when he had an idea to share the wealth.
"Our pastor gave a sermon about charity and giving and sacrifice and, at that point, I really felt like I could invest in this boat, which would be a lot of fun, or I could invest in 26 kids and hopefully make a difference in their lives," Burbank said.
"The gift and the offer is life-changing," Ashton said. "This is a life and death situation, not to be dramatic, their future literally is different just because of this."
For their part, the children will need to write a letter or draw a picture about college to send to Burbank, who is investing over a million dollars in their future.
"I"m grateful for the opportunity to do this, because it brings me so much joy...help for the kids," Burbank said, trying to hold back his emotions.
Ashton talks about college with the students in their lessons every day and each Friday is "College Friday" in her class.
As for that Indiana connection?
According to CNN, Ashton is an Indiana University graduate and decorated her classroom full cream and crimson. To emphasize his gift, Burbank gave each kindergartner an IU sweatshirt with "Class of 2032" printed on the front.
That doesn't necessarily mean there are 26 future Hoosiers learning their ABCs in Anaheim, however. According to the Orange County Register, Burbank's offer is to pay for two years of community college and two years tuition to a university in the Cal State system (or the monetary equivalent if they attend a private college or University of California school). Books are also included in the cost, which Burbank believes will cost him and his wife $80,000 a year for the next 12 years.An 8-year-oldbrought a knife to school Wednesday, district officials confirmed, apparently "to stab another student."
The boy's plan was thwarted, and a possible tragedy averted, when two classmates at School 33 who were shown the knife, quickly alerted a security guard, a mother of one of the students told The Jersey Journal.
She said her son told her the knife-wielding student "brought the knife to school to stab another student."
Jersey City school district spokeswoman Paula Christen said she was unaware that a threat was made.
The boy with the knife has been suspended three days from the Union Street school and will spend 10 days in the district's Zero Tolerance program, Christen said. She added that the boy apparently was being bullied by another second-grader.
The classmate accused of bullying has also been suspended from school three days.
Jersey City police were not called, although that is the usual policy of the district involving students and weapons in schools, Christen said.
Since the incident involved a second-grader and the parents of both students quickly arrived at the school, police were not involved, she said.
Christen said the knife was actually a pen knife, although she did not specify how long it was. "I'm very proud of my son for telling the security guard -- something awful could have happened," said the mom of one of the second-graders who reported the knife. "He did the right thing."
Christen said the students who alerted teachers to the possible tragic situation will be given "good citizenship" awards.Mark Proegler, a spokesman for oil giant BP PLC, said a mile-long tube inserted into a leaking pipe over the weekend is capturing 210,000 gallons a day -- the total amount the company and the Coast Guard have estimated is gushing into the sea -- but some is still escaping. He would not say how much.
Several professors who have watched video of the leak have said they believe the amount spewing out is much higher than official estimates.
Proegler said the 210,000 gallons -- 5,000 barrels -- has always been just an estimate because there is no way to measure how much is spilling from the seafloor.
"I would encourage people to take a look at the changing amount of oil coming from the ocean floor," said Steve Rinehart, another BP spokesman. "It's pretty clear that now that we're taking 5,000 barrels of oil a day, there's a significant change in the flow reaching the sea."
A live video feed of the leak posted online Thursday at the insistence of U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., shows what appears to be a large plume of oil and gas still spewing next to the tube that's carrying some of it to the surface.
The well blew out after an explosion a month ago on the offshore drilling rig Deepwater Horizon that killed 11 people. At least 6 million gallons have spilled so far, making it the worst U.S. environmental disaster in decades. The Exxon Valdez tanker spilled 11 million gallons in Alaska in 1989.
Small amounts of light oil have washed up in delicate coastal areas of Louisiana over the past several weeks, but nothing like the brown ooze from the spill that started coating marsh grasses and hanging in the shallow water of a wetland Wednesday.
"This is the heavy oil that everyone's been fearing that is here now," Gov. Bobby Jindal said during a boat tour Wednesday in southeastern Louisiana. The wetlands at the mouth of the Mississippi River are home to rare birds, mammals and a wide variety of marine life.
Much of southeast Louisiana's coastal waters have been closed to fishing and oyster harvesting because of the oil. A vast area stretching east toward Florida in federal waters also has been closed to seafood harvesting.
Officials in Florida sought to reassure tourists that the state's beaches are clean and safe as government scientists said a small portion of the slick had entered the so-called loop current, a stream of fast-moving water that circulates around the Gulf before bending around Florida and up the Atlantic coast.
During a news conference, David Halstead, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, showed off a picture of a Coppertone bottle on a beach.
"What's the only oil on the beaches? Suntan oil," he said.
Tracking the unpredictable spill and the complex loop current is a challenge for scientists, said Charlie Henry, a NOAA environmental scientist.
The loop moves based on shifting winds and other environmental factors, so even though oil is leaking continuously it may be in the current one day, and out the next. The slick itself has defied scientists' efforts to track it and predict its path. Instead, it has repeatedly advanced and retreated, an ominous, shape-shifting mass in the Gulf, with vast underwater lobes extending outward.
Florida's state meteorologist said it will be at least another seven days before the oil reaches waters west of the Florida Keys. U.S. officials were also talking to Cuba about how to respond to the spill should it reach the island's northern coast, a U.S. State Department spokesman said.
BP, which was leasing the rig when it exploded, was marshaling equipment and conducting tests Thursday ahead of a new effort to choke off the oil flow. Crews hoped that by Sunday they can start a procedure known as a "top kill," which involves pumping heavy mud into the crippled equipment on top of the well, then permanently sealing it with cement.
The procedure has been used before to halt gushing oil above ground, but like other methods BP is exploring it has never been used 5,000 feet below the sea. That's why scientists and engineers have spent much of the past week preparing and taking a series of measurements to make sure the mission doesn't backfire.
"The philosophy from the beginning is not to take any action which could make the situation worse, and those are the final steps we're doing," said Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer.
Anger over the spill has mounted as the efforts to stop the leak have dragged on. Greenpeace activists scaled BP's London headquarters Thursday to hang a flag accusing the oil company of polluting the environment. The group said the action was prompted by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill as well as a controversial project in Canada.
"It takes some cheek to go and use a sunflower logo when your business is dirty oil," Greenpeace activist Ben Stewart said from a balcony above the headquarters' front door in a telephone interview.
BP spokesman Robert Wine called the action "a very calm and genteel protest," and said no employees had been prevented from getting to work.
(This report was written by Greg Bluestein and Michael Kunzelman of The Associated Press. Associated Press Writers Kelli Kennedy in Miami, Ben Evans in Washington, Chris Kahn in New York, Kevin McGill in Venice, La., Janet McConnaughey in New Orleans, and Mike Baker in Raleigh, N.C., contributed to this report.)Former co-host of “The Star & Buc Wild Morning Show” on WWPR-FM Star took to his “Live & Direct” online radio show to chastise Snoop Dogg for his recently donning whiteface in a series of Instagram posts. Snoop posted several images and videos of himself in a blonde wig playing a character he calls Todd. In one of the posts Snoop also promotes a dating website called White Guys Connect and says his interests are paintball, crotchet, and spoken word.
On his most recent edition of “Star: Live & Direct” the radio show host claims that the timing of Snoop’s stunt was poorly conceived given the racially charged tension in Ferguson, Missouri.
“Today is, just how racist is Snoop Doggy Dogg Friday? He’s gotten a pass long enough,” Star said. “I haven’t really went in on him—pause—like I have other people. There’s no particular reason why I haven’t, he just doesn’t affect me. I don’t take him seriously. He’s not a pimp. I’ve never really had an issue. I never gave a fuck about his music. What is it he did with Dr. Dre? The Chronic. The Chronic was banging. ‘Gin and Juice‘ was my shit. But after that, I couldn’t name one fucking Snoop Dogg track if you gave me a million dollars. I don’t know what the fuck he did down at Priority Records. I have no concept. But nigga you need to pump the fucking brakes. He’s now painting his face white, wearing a white wig, running around calling himself Todd. Nigga, what the fuck are you doing? People are down in motherfucking Ferguson, Missouri, this is the pulse of the nation right now. He picks this time to come out with some stupid shit. He’s got some corny people around him, amping him up, smiling.
Briefly offering his opinion on the context of the disguise, Star also mentioned Nick Cannon’s recent Whiteface portrayal in comparison.
“Now, there are many people who say, ‘Black people cannot be racist,’” he said. “I think Black people are some of the most racist people on the planet. I’m a bi-racial racist, race-baiter. That’s me goddamnit. Nick Cannon just did some whiteface dumb shit and people were like, ‘Nigga, kill yourself, we don’t give a fuck how much money you got.’ I wanna go in today on this nigga Snoop.
“I can’t sit here as an objectivist and give Snoop Doggy Dogg a fucking pass,” he added. “I can’t do it…White person puts on Blackface they come down on them, should Snoop Doggy Dogg get a pass? Or is it just fun? Why is a nigga of that caliber doing that dumb shit?”
During the show Star also spoke briefly about the ongoing aftermath in Ferguson, Missouri before redirecting his attention on the rapper.
“Just how racist is Snoop Dogg? I encourage White people to call in today. Don’t just assume because I’m a man of color that I’m gonna take the side of people of color. I think the mainstream press should come down on this nigga like a ton of bricks.”
RELATED: Instagram Flexin’: Snoop Dogg Has A New Alter Ego “Todd”Donald Trump speaking with the media at a hangar at Mesa Gateway Airport in Mesa, Arizona on December 16, 2015. Photo by Gage Skidmore, via Flickr
Saul Alinsky, the legendary community organizer, has long figured in the radical right’s conspiracy theories about contemporary liberal politics. Hillary Clinton wrote her honors thesis on Alinsky when she was an undergraduate at Wellesley College, and Barack Obama worked for a community-organizing group that based its approach on Alinsky’s methods when he first arrived in Chicago after law school. For people on the right, this was prima facie evidence that the two technocratic liberal centrists were secret revolutionaries burning with the desire to overthrow the republic.
Just as the radical right has long been obsessed with the radical left’s successes in the 1960s and early 1970s, it has also been obsessed with Alinsky. One of the figures whose efforts have now had the result of bringing the alt-right into the mainstream, Andrew Breitbart, was particularly fixated on Alinsky. This is significant in light of the fact that Breitbart’s protege, Stephen Bannon, has been anointed by Donald Trump as his senior adviser.
Before his death in 2012, Breitbart wrote at length about what the radical right could learn from Alinsky in his book Righteous Indignation. Riffing on the famous Alinsky quote that “the real action is in the enemy’s reaction,” Breitbart spins the idea this way: “If you do a good enough job, you can force them to make a mistake. When they do, you must be ready to exploit it.”
Trump and his entourage have been pursuing this strategy, with great success, from the beginning. On the day that Trump announced his candidacy, he declared that he was going to build that wall on the US border with Mexico. This created a great deal of laughter and derision on the right, but also outrage among liberals.
The pattern was established. Trump outraged his opponents. His opponents’ outraged response proved that they were every bit as intolerant as Trump made them out to be. This proof of fury and intolerance on the other side added to the certainty of Trump’s supporters that they had chosen the right man.
Related: Eight steps reporters should take before Trump assumes office
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Now that Trump has been elected president, his practice of Alinsky’s precept has intensified, especially with regard to the press. Trump knows that his supporters want a revolution, so he has adopted the style of a revolutionary. You think of Lenin’s terse definition of politics as “Who-Whom”: as the practice of one group or faction or social class acting against another. Trump is the “Who.” The media is the “Whom.” More often than not, Trump has been playing his media adversaries like a salmon.
Trump makes mostly nice on 60 Minutes then tweets something nasty about the media and the media responds full-throatedly, an example of wounded pride that Trump can then display, like the head of a moose, to his followers.
The furor in the media serves as more proof to Trump’s followers, who have been accused of intolerance, that the intolerance is all on the other side. After feeling like “Whoms” for so long, Trump’s supporters can feel like “Whos”–like people doing to rather than being done to. Trump can claim that he is not even the president yet–and look at all the outrage and opposition.
The dark irony is that the media is getting all the transparency it ever asked for. Trump could just as well have hidden Steve Bannon’s twisted influence and kept him as a private consigliere, a sort of Clark Clifford of the extreme right, as he may well do in the end. Instead he chose to use Bannon to incite the liberals, a tactical provocation that will keep inspiring and fortifying his supporters.
Revolutions–the imposition of martial law, the gradual curbing of precious liberties–are led by the lean and the hungry, not by comfortable, corpulent white males in their sixties and seventies.
Forced into the role of enemy, compelled to play the role of reactor, the media is caught in a dilemma: If they refuse to take the bait and allow Trump and his cronies to get away with inflammatory rhetoric and dangerous decisions, they risk allowing democracy to slip further into the gutter. But if they continue to take the bait and rise up in outrage and opposition, they add to Trump’s legitimacy in the eyes of his supporters.
A lot of journalism now is, understandably, being led by various scenarios, the worst of which play right into the hands of the impending administration. Perhaps the media should resist its tendency the follow the darkest master narrative, and contemplate a brighter future. Here is my stab at a chain of events that might temper the media’s hysterical reaction to Trump’s and his associates’ every word and move.
As other people have pointed out, Trump has no ideology. Without ideology, there is no impetus or rationale for an authoritarian instinct to become an authoritarian program–to become, in other words, a revolution.
Revolutions–the imposition of martial law, the gradual curbing of precious liberties–are led by the lean and the hungry, not by comfortable, corpulent white males in their sixties and seventies. And revolutions are made by dispossessed people with nothing to lose who are swept up into a vision of an ideal future, not by hard-pressed people trying to hang on to what they have who are lost in a memory of an ideal past.
In contrast to Trump, Reince Priebus, his new chief of staff, does have an ideology, but it is not a fervent vision. He wants to achieve the goal that has driven the American right since the New Deal, which is to virtually abolish the income tax and remove every regulation and social entitlement standing in the way of the accumulation of wealth.
Priebus, Ryan, and Mitch McConnell, guided by Vice President Pence, will quickly adapt to Trump’s inflammatory style because it both conceals their low-keyed revolutionary aims and makes their objectives look moderate compared to Trump’s rhetoric and symbolic gestures. Trump will quickly adapt to their genial fiscal extremism because it serves his lifelong greed.
In many ways, Trump is their hostage. That could be why he is now seeking counsel from people like Chuck Schumer, and even Mitt Romney. The images of Trump being escorted by Ryan through the Capitol building days after the election gave the impression of a wolf being led to slaughter.
In the end, this fragile entente of crazily conflicting interests and personalities will come crashing down, torn apart by its own self-defeating momentum, the way Trump’s competing casinos in Atlantic City drove each other out of business.
In the meantime, as the new regime’s policies, again and again, disappoint and betray Trump’s supporters, Trump will rely on people like Bannon and other extremist proxies, and on inflammatory gestures, in hopes of stirring the media pot in order to create “the enemy’s reaction.” If this happens, the enemy’s reaction will convince Trump’s supporters, despite the evidence to the contrary, that they have, at least, been vindicated.
The issue of how the press should react to Trump and to what degree is no small thing, especially at a time when the mainstream liberal media–up until the advent of Trump, anyway–has been on the verge of implosion. Its own crisis has the effect of making the media turn, against its will, into itself more than it ever has.
Lately it seems that the establishment media are pouring an inordinate amount of energy into addressing charges that it waited much too long to take a genuine, committed interest in the suffering part of the country that has made Trump president. Surely these resources are better spent on digging into every aspect of a Trump presidency, and on its associations, funding, and enablers. By dramatically responding to accusations of ignoring the rest of the country and spending time reporting on it now, the media makes its own shortcomings the story and turns its sudden new awareness into a virtue that is nevertheless irrelevant.
The media’s peculiar complaints about how Trump is limiting access to him and his team are another way the media, almost unconsciously, ease back into the center of whatever story they are telling. The days after Trump met with Obama in the White House were full of indignant reports of Trump, unlike previous president-elects, not allowing a pool of reporters to accompany him on his visit.
It’s not clear, however, that access to a president who holds the press in utter contempt would be more productive than no access at all.
It’s not clear, however, that access to a president who holds the press in utter contempt would be more productive than no access at all. What, exactly, would access to Trump and his inner circle achieve? The lies would come fast and furious. The contradictions would reach seismic proportions. The media would go from being an enemy whose reaction is a tactical blessing to a sometime friend, subject to all the manipulations and predations of an enemy. In this case, preserving the “Who-Whom” relationship that Trump has created with the press would provide a bracing clarity.
Related: Journalism’s moment of reckoning has arrived.
The complexities and the ethics of access are issues that journalists have wrestled with seemingly from time immemorial. In the case of George W. Bush, access facilitated the sowing of disinformation that had a fatal and still-reverberating effect in the Iraq War.
With Obama, the vaunted access and transparency of his administration seemed to induce semi-paralysis, at least for Obama’s first two years, in many of the journalists who were covering him. It’s surprising to read some journalists saying now that Obama’s administration was opaque. Obama was the subject of countless interviews and profiles, and at least two long, loving books about him and his presidency.
There Obama was, with both houses of congress controlled by Democrats and most of the country nearly brought to its knees by the events of the Bush years, ready to give him what he wanted. Yet as Obama withdraw from his healthcare initiative, seemingly stunned and disheartened by the militant opposition to it, refusing even to appeal to his fellow Americans on the subject from the Oval Office, the access-soaked journalists around him wrote eloquent, sometimes beautiful, tributes to his virtues, and to his place in history.
In that instance, access was an obstruction to clarity. In the case of Trump, a lack of access could turn out to be the strongest motivator behind great and consequential journalism. Think of Gay Talese’s profile of Frank Sinatra in Esquire, for which he never met or spoke with Sinatra, and multiply the free play of unmasking and demystification in that piece one thousand times.
We are living in a moment when, thanks to the Internet, words take on the aspect of worlds. Someone in West Virginia writes something ugly about the Obamas on social media, it gets picked up and the “enemy”–the opposition to Trump–loses all perspective, broadcasting the sentiment as if it were widely held and, in the process, making it part of the political discourse. In the 1930s, the far right, which portrayed FDR as a pernicious Jew and called him “Roosenfelt,” spread a rumor about Eleanor Roosevelt being given syphilis by a black man. But this atrocious slur never made its way out of the fetid swamps of fringe malice and paranoia.
Now, thanks to the digital echo chamber, similar linguistic atrocities are not just widely circulated rumors, they have the potential to become “fake news.” Even if they don’t end up in that category, because of the fact that they live on your screen, seen by millions of people, such sentiments can create the illusion of a collective movement when they are held by a relative small crowd of people. The effect, once again, is to incite hysterical reaction on the part of Trump’s adversaries, which will bring more and more supporters to Trump’s side, and increase the fervency of people already behind him.
It is another conundrum facing journalists now. On the one hand, Trump has been exposed, time and again, as a liar. On the other hand, a few words from his mouth or on his Twitter feed can abruptly change the news narrative for days.
In the eighties, people spoke of the “Reagan Revolution.” In terms of Reagan’s radical tax cuts, and draconian cuts to social programs, that’s exactly what it was.
At the same time, Reagan, as previous conservative administrations had done, wielded the specter of communist influence to great effect. American involvement in Latin America, especially El Salvador and Nicaragua, captured the American public’s imagination and dominated the evening news. Most Americans didn’t pay much attention to Reagan’s social policies. Trump will use the war against ISIS and wild, toothless gestures at curtailing civil liberties, in the same way.
In the case of Trump, a lack of access could turn out to be the strongest motivator behind great and consequential journalism.
On many levels, the media response to Reagan was patient, conscientious, relentless, and revelatory. But behind that was the creation of an oppositional culture which became so excessive that it gave conservatives ever new cultural pretexts to continue their reductive economic policies. The 1980s saw the birth of a politically correct thinking at the universities that, to some extent, made its way into mainstream culture.
The result was Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind, William Bennett’s The Book of Virtues, and the beginning of the so-called culture wars. The toxicity of this adversarial culture, created in opposition to Reagan, had, among other effects, the unlikely result of helping to bring about, after eight years of Reagan’s Republican presidency, the election of yet another Republican to the |
olly unconvincing in legal terms.”)
Those families and others then sued the United Nations, including Ban and the former Minustah chief Edmond Mulet, in federal court in New York. (In November, Ban promoted Mulet to be his chief of staff.) The United Nations refused to appear in court, claiming diplomatic immunity under its charter, leaving Justice Department lawyers to defend it instead. That case is now pending a decision from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York.
The redress demanded by families of the 10,000 people killed and 800,000 affected would reach $40 billion, Alston wrote — and that figure does not take into account “those certain to die and be infected in the years ahead.”
“Since this is almost five times the total annual budget for peacekeeping worldwide, it is a figure that is understandably seen as prohibitive and unrealistic,” he said. Still, he argued: “The figure of $40 billion should stand as a warning of the consequences that could follow if national courts become convinced that the abdication policy is not just unconscionable but also legally unjustified. The best way to avoid that happening is for the United Nations to offer an appropriate remedy.”
Alston, who declined to comment for this article, will present the final report at the opening of the General Assembly in September, when presidents, prime ministers and monarchs from nearly every country gather at U.N. headquarters in New York.(Beyond Pesticides, July 22, 2015) Months after the World Health Organization (WHO) formally associated the world’s most widely used herbicide -glyphosate (Roundup)- with cancer, one of the world’s leading experts on cancer risk, and co-author of the WHO’s report, Christopher Portier, PhD, told a scientific briefing in London that the herbicide can damage human DNA, which could result in increased cancer risks. This finding comes on the heels of a call by the Soil Association for a United Kingdom (UK) ban on the use of glyphosate after finding residues of the chemical in bread.
Earlier this spring, the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified glyphosate as Group 2a “probable” human carcinogen based on sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in laboratory animals. Since then industry has hit back defending its champion product, even attempting to undercut the WHO’s findings with an industry-based assessment that reached the opposite conclusion, based on classified industry reports. Now an internationally recognized scientist, Dr. Portier, former associate director, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, (NIEHS) and director of the Office of Risk Assessment Research at NIEHS, reiterated WHO’s findings at the UK Soil Association scientific briefing in Westminster on July 15. During his presentation, Dr. Portier said, “Glyphosate is definitely genotoxic. There is no doubt in my mind.” Genotoxicity is described as the ability of a chemical agent to damage the genetic information within a cell, causing mutations that may lead to cancer. According to Dr. Portier’s presentation, there is strong evidence that glyphosate and its formulated products are genotoxic and an oxidative stressor. Find Dr. Portier’s and other presentations from the scientific briefing at the Soil Association.
At this briefing, the Soil Association disclosed findings of glyphosate residues in bread being sold in the UK. The results of this study shows that glyphosate use in the UK increased by 400% in the last 20 years and is one of the three pesticides regularly found in routine testing of British bread -appearing in up to 30% of samples tested by the UK government.
According to the Soil Association’s policy director Peter Melchett, “If glyphosate ends up in bread it’s impossible for people to avoid it, unless they are eating organic. On the other hand, farmers could easily choose not to use glyphosate as a spray on wheat crops —just before they are harvested. This is why the Soil Association is calling for the immediate ending of the use of glyphosate sprays on wheat destined for use in bread.”
Glyphosate, produced and sold by Monsanto, is touted as a “low toxicity” chemical and “safer” than other chemicals by industry. Glyphosate has been shown to have detrimental impacts on humans and the environment. Given its widespread use on residential and agricultural sites, its toxicity is of increasing concern. A mounting body of data has found that formulated glyphosate (Roundup) products are more toxic than the active ingredient, glyphosate, alone. Roundup formulations can induce a dose-dependent formation of DNA adducts (altered forms of DNA linked to chemical exposure, playing a key role in chemical carcinogenesis) in the kidneys and liver of mice. Human cell endocrine disruption on the androgen receptor, inhibition of transcriptional activities on estrogen receptors on HepG2, DNA damage and cytotoxic effects occurring at concentrations well below “acceptable” residues have all been observed. A 2008 study confirmed that the ingredients in Roundup formulations kill human cells, particularly embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells, even at very low concentrations, and causes total cell death within 24 hrs.
In addition to WHO’s findings, previous studies have linked the toxicant to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and multiple myeloma. It is also a known endocrine disruptor, causes reproductive effects, kidney and liver damage, and is toxic to aquatic organisms. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1985 originally classified glyphosate as ”˜possibly carcinogenic to humans’ based on tumors in laboratory animals, but changed its classification to evidence of non-carcinogenicity in human years later, most likely due to industry influence.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has also contributed to glyphosate’s expanded use by deregulating crops, including the vast majority of planted corn and soybeans, that are genetically engineers crops to be tolerant to the chemical. In recent years, weeds have exhibited resistance to glyphosate and its efficacy has been called into question. Additionally, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) routinely finds glyphosate in U.S. waterways especially in the Midwestern states and the Mississippi River valley.
Glyphosate is registered for use on wheat and can be applied before harvest to control weeds. Residues of glyphosate and its major metabolite aminomethyl-phosphonic acid (AMPA) have been measured in the seed and foliage of wheat following preharvest applications, with residues increasing as the rate of application increased. While no formal testing of glyphosate residues on wheat (or other commodities) occurs in the U.S., EPA has indicated that due to growing public interest in the chemical it may recommend sampling for glyphosate in the future. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and its Pesticide Data Program is responsible for tracking pesticide residues in crops, but EPA has not requested glyphosate testing on any commodity. Testing for glyphosate is however, more expensive than for other pesticides, which is probably the reason tests have not been conducted before. But with growing concerns over the toxicity of glyphosate, and its widespread use on GE crops like corn and soybeans, federal agencies both in the U.S. and elsewhere are being urged to begin quantifying and tracking glyphosate residues in food.
Beyond Pesticides advocates for a regulatory approach that prohibits high hazard chemical use and calls for alternative assessments. We suggest an approach that focuses on safer alternatives that are proven effective, such as organic agriculture. Thus, the best way to avoid glyphosate residues in bread and other foods is to buy and support organic agriculture. Our database, Eating With a Conscience (EWAC) provides information on the pesticides that could be present in the food we eat, and why food labeled organic is the right choice. EWAC also includes information on the impacts chemical-intensive agriculture has on farm workers, water, and our threatened pollinators.
All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.
Source: Soil Association News Story, EWG’s AgmagFrank He gets his hands into Ready at Dawn’s first VR title and finds Lone Echo to deliver one of the best zero g experiences yet seen in VR, all thanks to clever design and of course the Oculus Touch motion controllers.
Out of the several high-budget games announced at Oculus Connect 3, one of the most mysterious might be Lone Echo, an Oculus Touch title by Ready at Dawn, developers of PS4’s The Order: 1886 (2015) and several God of War titles for PSP.
You may have struggled to grasp precisely what Lone Echo is all about having watched only the debut trailer (below), but after playing the single player demo at OC3, here’s my one line synopsis: Lone Echo is a first person VR adventure game, where you play a robot-piloting AI named Jack who serves a human crew investigating an anomaly in deep space.
With an original narrative, high quality art and sound direction, and an innovative movement system, it was one of the most promising demos for a VR game I’ve tried. The demo takes place entirely in zero gravity, and the locomotion they’ve developed for it hasn’t been seen in any other space themed VR game out currently, so let’s start there.
If you think back to the instances in movies or videos where astronauts are throwing themselves around in space by grabbing and pushing against a wall or a handle, ‘Lone Echo’ might be exactly what you’d imagine that should feel like in VR, at least with the limitations of today’s consumer hardware. I found Lone Echo finally edges closer to providing the zero gravity experience I’ve always wanted.
Previous VR experiences – ThreeOneZero’s ADR1FT for example – have mostly been about using thrusters to navigate space, but with the possibilities VR motion controllers open up, you can use your hands to reach out and grab any object and surface in the game, be it a railing, or another floating human, and push off the object in order to propel yourself.
There’s also a system where, when grabbing onto things, your virtual robotic hands get locked to the surface, with the the fingers properly configured as you’d expect them to, no matter what shape it is. This was a software technique Ready at Dawn pulled off just in time to show it at Connect, and – despite some glitches – it definitely helps sell your interaction with the environment. The game also allows you to traverse space via mounted thrusters, controlled by directional pointing of the Touch device.
While it did feel to me like this game truly let me explore in zero gravity with fewer constraints than before, the very nature of zero g movement will be alien to most people, and so nausea is a risk. However, I was told by one of the developers that slow acceleration, one of the primary agitators of motion sickness in VR, was mostly done away with in Lone Echo. Instead, velocity would ramp up almost instantaneously in most cases. There also seemed to be no artificial rotation that I could detect, with the player using their physical body to turn. That may explain why I felt totally comfortable playing through the demo, with none of the ‘swimmy’ feelings you might expect with such an experience.
With that compelling locomotion demonstrated, I was keen to see what the developers could do with it. Starting with a narrative introduction, I found it difficult to pay attention, as I was preoccupied with looking around, gazing at the environment. Plus, my new found robotic body, which was fully rendered and visible. According to the human, I was serving as Jack the AI, and that I needed to be calibrated first. That of course served as the convenient tutorial section, consisting of basic obstacle courses designed to get me up to speed on on movement, motion controlled laser-cutting, holographic button pushing, and the usual stuff you do in space as a digital-mechanical being.
An extra but notable little detail they added in the calibration phase was that when the captain came to investigate you, as she does in the above trailer, should actually reach out to try and touch her, she would react by leaning back to keep out of your grasp. If you were quick enough, you could also snag away her notepad, which she would also react to. Other NPCs showed similar behavior.
Once the demo begins, there isn’t a huge amount of action, as you’re sent too and control a device that somehow modulates the space anomaly, some interference from an unknown force occurs, and your captain gets you to go save her as her leg got stuck on something in the chaos. Then it fades to dark as you see a giant space ship come out of the anomaly. Most of the types of things I did in the demo could actually be seen from the trailer, but what made it all worthwhile was the combination of well crafted elements in sound, voice acting, art assets, and other small details, like the behavior from NPCs, that made for a consistently immersive story driven experience, especially when the locomotion system melts away like it did.
I came away impressed with what Ready at Dawn had to show at Connect with Lone Echo. The title exhibits originality in its choice of locomotion choices, and at the same time managed to convey the traversal of space better than any other VR title I’ve tried yet. Alas, we have no release date to look forward to as yet, but the developers did at least tell me that this will be no lightweight ‘VR Experience’ when it finally appears for the Oculus Rift and Oculus Touch.317 SHARES Facebook Twitter Sign up and we notify you about new features and Add-Ons
Life can be full of surprises in Korea especially if you look like an underpaid, vulnerable migrant worker from a South or Southeast Asian country, says Bonojit Hussain, an Indian national who brought the first racial discrimination case here in 2009.
Hussain, former research professor at Sungkonghoe University in Seoul, recalls that his three and a half years in Korea were full of unexpected moments and yet the most shocking moment came when he shared a taxi with two Samsung employees on a Friday night.
“One Samsung guy sitting behind me suddenly grabbed my neck and started to strangle me without any apparent reason,” Hussain said in a recent interview at The Korea Observer office in Yongsan, Seoul.
Fortunately, the driver pulled over and stopped the racist Samsung worker from strangling him.
He argues that the Samsung worker would not have attacked him if he looked like a Korean or a foreigner from a wealthy country.
Studies show that migrant workers, a term used to describe low-wage workers who undertake “3D” jobs (dirty, difficult and dangerous), often find themselves helpless even when verbally and physically abused, sexually harassed and forced to work overtime without pay.
Though he worked as a professor, Hussain also had to endure many “dehumanizing experiences” in Korea simply because of his appearances.
“If I took a seat, the seat next to me would often remain empty even during rush hours in crowded subways,” he said, adding that such reactions “make you doubt about yourself, lose confidence, forget that you are being discriminated.”
A 2013 Human Rights Commission survey of 161 migrant workers in rural areas of Korea found that 75.8 percent of them suffered from verbal abuses, 14.9 percent from physical abuses. Moreover, 30 percent of the female respondents answered that they had been sexually abused.
Hussain claims that “darker-skinned” people in Korea continue to encounter racial prejudice regardless of their economic status and nationality.
“I interviewed a person from Nepal who owns two Indian/Nepali restaurants in Bucheon,” he said, noting that the restaurant owner is a naturalized Korean citizen whose business is thriving.
“Every time he goes out to the city, every time he takes a taxi, the only question people are asking is ‘How much did you earn? How much did you send away from Korea?” He said, quoting the restaurant owner as saying, “For Koreans, I am still a migrant worker who is here to take away somebody’s job.”
In 2009, Hussain made the headlines for bringing the nation’s first racial discrimination case. Incheon District Court convicted and fined a Korean man, identified only as his surname Park, 1 million won ($964) for racial and sexist slurs at them.
He recalls that the incident drew a great deal of attention not only because it was the country’s first prosecution for a racist offense, but also had all the right elements to get the media spotlight, including violence, young woman and sexist remarks.
In the following video, Hussain explains what really happened on the evening of July 10, 2009 and why he and his friend decided to stand up against racial discrimination, even though the police refused to take any action on the grounds that “racial discrimination does not exist in Korea.”
In the wake of the incident, lawmakers proclaimed to propose an anti-racism bill but later scrapped the plan in the face of strong opposition from conservative Christian groups.
A Korean middle school textbook defines socially vulnerable people as “those in poverty, individuals with disabilities, elderly persons, migrant workers, mixed-blood people and those who are politically, economically and socially marginalized.”
This reflects a deep-seated belief among Koreans that they are a homogeneous race with “pure blood” lines, which refer to the notion that Korean people are a pure race descended from a single common ancestor.
The notion of pure blood often results in discrimination toward migrant workers and expats. However, law enforcement authorities cannot monitor or deal with racism cases as racial discrimination is not illegal.
The National Human Rights Commission may look into racial discrimination cases but it can only make non-binding recommendations.Dr. Pepper Snapple Group (DPS)
Case Abstract
Dr pepper Snapple group (DPS) is the leading producer of flavoured beverages in North America and the Caribbean, offering more than 50 brands. It is the third largest producer of carbonated drinks with an estimated market share of 5%. DPS trails behind only coca-cola and Pepsi co which have estimated market shares of 47% and 21% respectively. DPS specializes in Cola and flavoured soft drinks, with well known brands such as 7up, Canada dry, Schweppes and Clamato. DPS operates 24 production plants, with almost all beverage concentrates produced in a plant in St. Louis Missouri. The business model includes both the company- owned, direct-store delivery (DSD), and third party distribution.
Soft drink companies face an ever changing world market. The question DPS seeks to answer to guarantee their future include: how can DPS continue to grow at levels that will satisfy shareholders? To what extent should acquisition, joint ventures, licensing agreements, and or internal growth tactics be pursued? Should DPS diversify into other product markets such as snacks which Pepsi Co is using to create competitive advantage? What geographic growth options are best for DPS to pursue? Should any product or brands be divested?
Vision statement
To be the best beverage business in America.
Mission statement
Dr pepper Snapple Group’s vision statements are fused as follows: “At Dr Pepper Snapple Group, it is our vision to be the best beverage business in America.” DPS brands have been synonymous with refreshment, fun and flavour for generations, and their sales have the tendency to keep growing in the future. This statement is straightforward and informatively average. It establishes the company’s goal and core values. Also, it highlights DPS’s interest in future sales growth. The company includes its business strategy stating it focuses on building and enhancing leading brands, pursuing profitable channels, packages and categories, leveraging an integrated business model, strengthening routes to markets, and improving operating efficiency (Dr.Pepper Snapple Group)
External Audit:
Opportunities
DPS has great opportunities for growth owing to its exposure to international markets. Sale of DPS products enable people to have more discretionary income. With more acquisitions or alliances in other parts of the world the company can enhance its revenues. Increase in production of bottled water to meet the need of the market. Dr pepper Snapple Group can explore new emerging markets like fast growing BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China) with steadily growing appetite for carbonated drinks, water and low caloric drinks. Introduction of more innovative products other than beverages according to the taste and demand of native people. With healthy products from Dr Pepper Snapple group, they can enhance the reputation of the company among healthy conscious groups such as juices and non-carbonated drinks. The growing use of electronic technological innovations, global communication is rapidly increasing. This allows firms to collaborate within the country market and expand internationally into world markets. Growing Energy drinks and shot market.
Threats
Government policies and regulations affect business development and growth. Products have to be consistent with the USDA’s dietary guidelines and adhere to FDA’s standards for health claims. Due to the current post-recession economy, growth is expected to be slow since existing demand patterns are expected to change as consumers become more health conscious. The biggest rival of Dr pepper Snapple Group in the field of carbonated drink are Pepsi Co. and Coca Cola. Coca Cola drew in a revenue of $35.119 billion by the end of 2010, whilst Pepsi Co increased their revenue over 30% in 2010. During the period under review, Dr pepper Snapple group managed to increase revenue by a meager 1.89% in 2010. Reduced use of carbonated drinks may decrease the company’s revenues. Limited market opportunities in North America can also affect the sales of the company. Loss of partner bottlers and distributors, with 40% of their distribution network in the hands of competitors. The effect of Socio-cultural trend towards healthier lifestyles Increase in price of fuel along with increase in price of other commodities can also affect the pricing of Dr pepper’s products.
Competitive Profile Matrix
Dr pepper’s Score of 1.56 reveals a below average competitiveness when compared with Coca-Cola and Pepsi Co. This is partly due to a demerger of Cadbury Schweppes from Dr Pepper back in may 2008, and also its initial public offer in 2008/2009, a year of financial crisis in USA took a toll on shareholders’ equity.
EFE Matrix
Dr Pepper Snapple group received an above average rating of 2.10 from a possible 4.0. This can largely be attributed to its upcoming line of healthy drinks such as Dr Pepper ten (10) and also the availability of discretionary income by the populace after the depression.
Internal Audit
Strengths
1) Management team with wealth of experience in the LRB industry
2) Separation from Cadbury Schweppes allows continued ability to focus on their beverage business.
3) Strong relationship with key customers
4) Strong, recognizable brands in a number of markets (most brand are No 1 or No 2 in their product category)
Weaknesses
1) Continued focus on carbonated soft drinks rather than alternative and functional beverages.
2) Considerably smaller in size when compared with their two major competitors Coca Cola and Pepsi Co.
3) Lack of international exposure
4) Excessive dependence on few market players
5) Dr pepper acquired 85% of their revenues from North America that includes Canada, USA and Mexico.
Dr Pepper Snapple Group is a healthy company but with very low profitability ratios. This may be due to the fact that the company was recently listed as a public company and is inexperienced in the capital market.
Porter’s 5 Forces Analysis
Suppliers ‘Power – High
Suppliers’ power on Dr pepper Snapple’s Input is high. Dr pepper Snapple Group’s inputs include commodities such as sugar, corn, PET, fuel, aluminum, apple juice concentrates. A a result, DPS has very little power as there can be price fluctuations in the commodity market; though it can be said that Dr pepper still has little control over the prices they ultimately end up paying, by entering into forward contracts for the delivery of resources, and so on.
Barrier to Entry- High
Barriers to entry into Dr pepper Snapple’s industry are relatively high since brand recognition is incredibly important. Additionally, larger firm experience significant benefits from economics of scope and scale, making it difficult for new entrants to match their operational efficiencies. Independent brands are able to find success in niche and local markets.
Buyers’ Power – Range from low to medium
Depending on their buyers, buyers’ power ranges from low to medium. The Coca Cola Company and Pepsi Co inc. cover roughly 40% of Dr Pepper Snapple Group’s beverages concentrates distribution segment and are considerably larger in size than DPS. However, these agreements are contractual, so few changes can be made. Beyond this, other buyers of Dr pepper’s beverage concentrates have lower buyer’s power.
Threat of Substitutes- Range from low to medium
There are arguably three major players in the beverage and soft drinks industry, they are Coca Cola, Pepsi co and Dr pepper. Competition is generally among these players and they most times produce substitute products that may be cannibals of their previously established products. The reason for this is the high degree of competition, you either evolve with innovative products to suit customer’s ever changing taste, or you go out of business. However, since integrated beverage producers experience large benefits from economics of scale, all major players in the industry offer a very wide range of beverage options.
Degree of Rivalry- High
With only three major players in the integrated beverage industry, the degree of rivalry is very high. Coca-Cola Company, Pepsi Co and Dr Pepper Snapple Group all offer products in every major non-alcoholic beverage category which directly competes with one another. They offer superior brands with pricing power that has developed loyal customers. Since brand loyalty plays such an important role in this industry, major players compete on brand image rather than price, making marketing and advertising a very important aspect of these three companies’ sales.
Net Worth
IFE Matrix
Tows Matrix
SO Strategies
1) Acquire distributors in other parts of the world for forward integration (S5,O3)
2) Increase advertising costs by $30 million to reach a global audience (S8, O1)
3) Build and enhance leading brand by investing in innovation, and developing these brands to match consumer preference (S3,S4,S6)
WO Strategies
1) Enter into the bottled water market (W1, O4)
2) Strengthen the distribution network in the BRIC nations, by signing exclusive agreements with local distributors.
3) Focus on opportunities in high growth and high margin categories, alternative beverages such as flavoured waters and energy drinks. These beverages tend to be healthier than traditional soft drinks and/or provide a functional benefit such as caffeine or taurine. (W1,O4,O6,O7)
ST strategies
1) Market to consumers more readily the healthier products of DPS (S3, S6, T1, and T8)
2) Use the management expertise at its disposal to optimize operational cost and keep prices at a competitive level (S1 T9)
WT Strategies
1) Aggressive Advertisement to compete with Coca Cola and Pepsi co on the international scene. (W5, T4, T6)
2) Creative and market variety of functional products like energy drinks, coffee. (W1, T2, T5)
QSPM (Quantitative Strategic Plan Matrix)
RECOMMENDATION
1). Increase advertising budget by $30M over the next 2 years to invade international markets
2) initiate a forward integration process by acquiring distributors in local markets (at a cost of $66M)
3) Hire a market research firm to assess the feasibility of adding a new healthy line of drinks for a cot of $4m
Total Amount of Funds Needed = $100M
EPS / EBIT Analysis (In millions except for EPS and Share price)
Amount needed: $100M
Stock Price: $35
Shares outstanding: 254
Interest Rate: 5%
Tax Rate: 37%
From the above analysis, it would be better for DPS to finance the proposed recommendations through debt financing, because interests are tax deductible, and they increase the earnings per share for the equity holders.
EPILOGUE:
Dr Pepper’s net income is still very low compared to the income of its main competitors Coca Cola and Pepsi co. This is largely been due to their low market share in the international playing field, with most of their profit originating from North America. Dr pepper is initiating a strategy to tackle its distribution problems and make available its products in the international market by developing systems for third party bottlers and distributors to help them maintain priority for their brands in other companies’ systems. They are also focusing on opportunities in high growth and high margin categories. The most recent trend in liquid refreshment beverage (“LRB”) industry is the emergence of alternative beverages tend to be healthier than traditional soft drinks and/ or provide a functional benefit such as caffeine or taurine.
Recommended Readings
Marc Cosentino., Case In Point: Complete Case Interview Preparation, 8th Edition
Micheal Shearn., The Investment Checklist: The Art of In-Depth ResearchThe last couple of days have been unrelentingly serious and depressing, with posts on the (probably) preventable death of a young Australian woman named Jess Ainscough of a rare cancer because she made the mistake of choosing the quackery that is the Gerson protocol rather than conventional medicine. Unfortunately, the "natural health community" will almost certainly learn nothing from her story, in which Ainscough, facing the very unpleasant prospect of a radical amputation, instead chose Gerson therapy and became an evangelist for that particular form of cancer quackery and "natural healing." I felt sorry for her, even though I couldn't approve of how she potentially led people with cancer down the road of pseudoscience and quackery with her enthusiastic promotion of coffee enemas and the rest of the nonsense Charlotte Gerson sells based on her father's protocol.
I need to lighten up.
Who better to provide the comic relief from this thus far grim week than that buffoon of buffoons, Mike Adams? Even better, unlike Ainscough, who was herself a victim of whatever cancer quacks sold her on the Gerson protocol in the first place, Adams is no victim. He's also pissed off (his usual state of mind) Why is he so ticked off? Well, he's not happy with Jimmy Kimmel over this bit he did Friday night on his show:
Normally, I don't watch Jimmy Kimmel, even on the now rare times when I'm up that late. (My wife and I tend to be so beat on Friday nights that our typical ritual on most Fridays is to order pizza, maybe with a glass of wine—or not—and then fall asleep with the dog on the couch by 10 PM.) I saw it Saturday morning, as it was making the rounds on social media, and I thought it was hilarious.
Mike Adams was not so amused. doing that faux outrage schtick he does so well to fire up his minions against the evil depredations of big pharma and the government, he published a spittle-flecked rant (are there any other kinds from Mike Adams?) entitled OUTRAGE! Jimmy Kimmel makes fun of vaccine-damaged children, revives hate speech bigotry on national TV. I must admit, I was surprised it took him nearly four days to come up with this, but I did chuckle at the histrionic title of the post before I read a single word:
Throughout U.S. history, certain selected groups of citizens have been subjected to extreme verbal, judicial and even physical abuse at the hands of bigoted oppressors. The historical abuse of African-Americans -- subjected to generations of abusive language and racism that still lingers today -- was villainously summed up with a bigoted hate speech label I dare not utter here. Gay Americans were similarly subjected to the label of "f-@@-t," a hate-based derogatory slur invoked to demean a human being because of their sexual orientation. It was this campaign of verbal abuse and derogatory hate speech that helped give rise to violence against gays in America. Importantly, every effort to demean and denigrate a selectively targeted class of citizens -- whether for their skin color, their sexual orientation or their beliefs -- has been preceded by a campaign of verbal abuse intended to dehumanize that targeted group. The invocation and use of bigoted, derogatory labels lays the social and cultural groundwork for not only discrimination but even actual violence committed against the groups being targeted. Racism and hate speech are wrong. It is morally, politically and socially incorrect to use hate speech labels in a derogatory manner in a civilized society. These terms are hate-based forms of speech meant to emotionally hurt and demean targeted groups of innocent people. Yet, astonishingly, it has now emerged in America that it is socially acceptable to use precisely the same bigoted hate-speech language against another group: children who are damaged by vaccines (and children who are unvaccinated). This group is now being widely and aggressively disparaged with the hate-based term "anti-vaxxers."
Did you watch the video? I did. Kimmel didn't make fun of any children, "vaccine-injured," autistic, or neurotypical, or otherwise. Not at all. Rather, he made fun of "antivaxers," basically mocking their sense of entitlement and, above all, their apparent belief that their Google University knowledge trumps the actual knowledge of doctors, using a rather hilarious fake public service announcement with doctors complaining about this and using slightly profanity-laced exhortations to parents to get their kids vaccinated. It was an excellent deconstruction of the Dunning-Kruger effect that makes antivaccinationists antivaccinationists.
Kimmel's five minute comedy bit is not "hate speech," although complaining about "hate speech" or "bullying" has become the go-to whine from antivaccinationists facing criticism for their choices, a whine that's become even more intense in light of the Disneyland measles outbreak since Christmas. Criticism of pseudoscience and quackery is not "hate speech." It's just not. For one thing, hate speech usually involves attacking groups who are the way they are through no choice of their own. Think attacking Jews or African-Americans on the basis of their religion or race. Think attacking homosexuals because of their sexual orientation. Yes, those are the examples Adams used, but how is one of these things (antivaccinationists) not like the others (blacks or homosexuals)? That's right. Antivaccinationists choose to be antivaccinationists. Also, blacks and gays do no harm to society by being black or gay. Antivaccinationists, through their choices not to vaccinate, are largely responsible for the resurgence of diseases once thought vanquished—like measles.
Not that that stops Adams when he's on a roll even more ridiculous than one of his typical rants:
In a stunning demonstration of demeaning hate speech targeting children who have suffered brain damage from vaccines, comedian Jimmy Kimmel unleashed a satire comedy hit piece that, fifty years ago, would have almost certainly seen Kimmel making fun of black people. Twenty years ago, he would have been making fun of gay people. But today, in 2015, Jimmy Kimmel directs his ignorance, bigotry and demeaning hate speech toward vaccine-damaged children who are now labeled "anti-vaxxers."
Given that Adams brought race into this, you know where this is going; that is, if you've been following this blog at least since August and recall the kerfuffle over the trumped up "CDC Whistleblower" manufactroversy:
Not only is Jimmy Kimmel using bigoted hate speech language to demean crippled children who were damaged by vaccines; he's also doing so in a manner that is utterly ignorant of the special risks posed to African-Americans by vaccines. It was Dr. William Thompson, a top CDC scientist, who blew the whistle on the CDC's vaccine research fraud last year, going public with his confession that the CDC knowingly covered up data linking vaccines to an increased risk of autism in young African-American boys.
Except that the CDC study in question showed nothing of the sort, and there's no credible evidence of a "cover up," just the stress-induced claims of a single CDC psychologist whose claims have gained no traction and failed to be corroborated. This whole kerfuffle came to be known among antivaccinationists as the "CDC whistleblower"/#CDCWhistleblower saga. Let's just put it this way: Andrew Wakefield glommed onto this fake controversy. That ought to tell you all you need to know.
Adams even invokes a statement by Mahatma Gandhi, who, if the reference is accurate, was apparently amazingly ignorant about vaccination, leading me to wonder: Where did Gandhi get his medical degree? (For a more skeptical take on Gandhi's views on vaccines, check this out.) On a scientific basis, I care no more what Gandhi said about vaccines than what Mike Adams says, things like:
Vaccines, it turns out, are a form of medical violence against children for the simple reason that they provably cause extreme, permanent damage in many children year after year. But medical violence isn't the only violence that Jimmy Kimmel now seems to be promoting... he's also provoking individual acts of violence against so-called "anti-vaxxers" through his emotionally-charged, hate-filled rhetoric disguised as comedy. Historically, it was the public tolerance of hate speech against African-Americans and gays that encouraged some people to engage in violent acts against them. After all, a group of people who are verbally belittled with derogatory and bigoted hate speech by public figures is an easy target for those with violent tendencies.
Oh, please, Mr. Adams. Pot. Kettle. Black. This nonsense is from a man who routinely refers to scientists as being the equivalent of "Nazis" (no, actually, he likened Monsanto and pro-GMO advocates explicitly to Nazis and strongly implied that it would be right to kill them for their "heinous crimes," starting up and later shutting down a site called "Monsanto Collaborators") and castigates science itself as evil, while ranting against big pharma. Hypocrisy, thy name is Mike Adams (among others). By Adams' own definition, he engages in hate speech himself far beyond any accusation he can come up with against Jimmy Kimmel in his fevered imagination. It's just another example of what a joke Mike Adams is. Unfortunately, he's an influential joke.
Over the last few years, antivaccinationists have tried to liken themselves to traditionally oppressed or discriminated against groups, such as blacks, gays, or others in a transparent ploy to deflect criticism and paint it as "oppression." Adams' little screed takes that technique and hilariously puts it on steroids and cranks it up to 11. (Yes, when it comes to Adams, I like to shamelessly mix metaphors.) It's over-the-top, even by Mike Adams' standards.
For Mike Adams, it's always, "Do as I say, not as I do."
ADDENDUM: Jimmy Kimmel now has a followup. It's hilarious, as Kimmel shows actual Tweets directed at him and lets antivaxers advocate for a "child's right to choose":The Project Gutenberg EBook of San Francisco Relief Survey; the organization and methods of relief used after the earthquake and fire of April 18, 1906, by Charles James O'Connor This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, |
at boot, should it be missing.
and it is missing, create it first. If you cannot do that, because you dropped priviliges or suchlike, please consider dropping in a tmpfiles snippet that creates the directory with the right permissions early at boot, should it be missing. When you need configuration files in /etc to work properly, consider changing your application to work nicely when these files are missing, and automatically fall back to either built-in defaults, or to static vendor-supplied configuration files shipped in /usr, so that administrators can override configuration in /etc but if they don't the default configuration counts.
to work properly, consider changing your application to work nicely when these files are missing, and automatically fall back to either built-in defaults, or to static vendor-supplied configuration files shipped in, so that administrators can override configuration in but if they don't the default configuration counts. When you need a system user or group, consider dropping in a file into /usr/lib/sysusers.d describing the users. (Currently documentation on this is minimal, we will provide more docs on this shortly.)
If you are a packager, you can also help on making this all work:
Ask upstream to implement what we describe above, possibly even preparing a patch for this.
If upstream will not make these changes, then consider dropping in tmpfiles snippets that copy the bare minimum of configuration files to make your software work from somewhere in /usr into /etc.
into. Consider moving from imperative useradd commands in packaging scripts, to declarative sysusers files. Ideally, this is shipped upstream too, but if that's not possible then simply adding this to packages should be good enough.
Of course, before moving to declarative system user definitions you should consult with your distribution whether their packaging policy even allows that. Currently, most distributions will not, so we have to work to get this changed first.
Anyway, so much about what we have been working on and where we want to take this.
Conclusion
Before we finish, let me stress again why we are doing all this:
For end-user machines like desktops, tablets or mobile phones, we want a generic way to implement factory reset, which the user can make use of when the system is broken (saves you support costs), or when he wants to sell it and get rid of his private data, and renew that "fresh car smell". For embedded machines we want a generic way how to reset devices. We also want a way how every single boot can be identical to a factory reset, in a stateless system design. For all kinds of systems we want to centralize vendor data in /usr so that it can be strictly read-only, and fully cryptographically verified as one unit. We want to enable new kinds of OS installers that simply deserialize a vendor OS /usr snapshot into a new file system, install a boot loader and reboot, leaving all first-time configuration to the next boot. We want to enable new kinds of OS updaters that build on this, and manage a number of vendor OS /usr snapshots in verified states, and which can then update /etc and /var simply by rebooting into a newer version. We wanto to scale container setups naturally, by sharing a single golden master /usr tree with a large number of instances that simply maintain their own private /etc and /var for their private configuration and state, while still allowing clean updates of /usr. We want to make thin clients that share /usr across the network work by allowing stateless bootups. During all discussions on how /usr was to be organized this was fequently mentioned. A setup like this so far only worked in very specific cases, with this scheme we want to make this work in general case.
Of course, we have no illusions, just doing the groundwork for all of this in systemd doesn't make this all a real-life solution yet. Also, it's very unlikely that all of Fedora (or any other general purpose distribution) will support this scheme for all its packages soon, however, we are quite confident that the idea is convincing, that we need to start somewhere, and that getting the most core packages adapted to this shouldn't be out of reach.
Oh, and of course, the concepts behind this are really not new, we know that. However, what's new here is that we try to make them available in a general purpose OS core, instead of special purpose systems.
Anyway, let's get the ball rolling! Late's make stateless systems a reality!"There's no good reason that women don't have the events that men do"
The world progresses at a rapid pace, but in sport it often stands still. Sometimes for decades. Sometimes for hundreds of years.
On Thursday, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews announced that it will admit women as members. The 260-year-old institution sent out more than 2,400 ballot papers to its patrons, and the result was 85% for yes.
Golf is often regarded as being out of step in a modern society that dances to an ever-changing beat. In a world where women now box at the Olympics, England's female cricketers and rugby union players recently went full-time and hundreds of thousands of women play golf both recreationally and professionally, the sport retains many of its traditions, archaic rules and inequality.
It is not alone.
Here we look at six sports in which differences between men and women remain, and examine why those distinctions continue.
Gymnastics: Showing off the female's grace and flexibility and the male's power and strength
Boys and girls will learn the basics, such as handstands and forward rolls, together but once they start showing potential, which is usually about the age of five, they will be separated by gender.
"Predominantly it's the same sport," says Scott Hann, coach of Commonwealth all-around champion Max Whitlock. "A somersault is a somersault and, in terms of technique and skills, they are very similar."
Men have rejected proposals to have music accompanying their floor routines
But male and female gymnasts share only two common events - the vault and floor (only women perform on the floor to music).
Why? Each event is designed to show off the gender's natural qualities. An opportunity for the flexible and graceful sequined-wearing female to sparkle and the biceps-bulging male to test his strength and power. Peacocking for both sexes, just through different means.
While women compete in four apparatus (vault, uneven bars, balance beam and floor), men have six events (floor, pommel horse, rings, vault, parallel bars and high bar).
The rings, only competed on by men, test a gymnast's upper-body strength
"There have been no calls for women to do more," says Hann. "There have been a few suggestions to make the male floor routine to music, but there has been resistance as it would take the masculinity out of it.
"Female apparatus focus more on endurance, flexibility and legs. In the apparatus where they have to use their arms, like the uneven bars, they're usually hanging."
Athletics: No women's international decathlon competition of note 'for years'
The men's decathlon has been contested at every Olympics since 1912. But there is still no place at major championships for the women's event. Searching for details of the last women's decathlon competition to be held feels almost as energy-sapping as the event itself.
"This has been an official event for women for years, but it hasn't taken off," says BBC athletics statistician Mark Butler. "I can't remember the last time there was an international women's decathlon of significance."
Britain's Jessica Ennis-Hill won Olympic gold in the heptathlon in London
Toni Minichiello, coach of Olympic heptathlon champion Jessica Ennis-Hill, says organisational difficulties - he refers to "bottle-necking" in the past in competitions with both men's and women's decathlon - and a lack of desire to expand from heptathlon's seven to decathlon's 10 events are reasons it is not popular.
"I wouldn't be a supporter of it, not at this stage, but I would certainly support adding another track event, maybe the 100m, and making it eight events over two days," says Minichiello.
Minichiello on the changes to consider "The women hurdles are 2ft 9in while the men hurdle over 3ft 6in. Should the hurdles be higher? Are they favouring the shorter, faster flat sprinter? In the women's 400m hurdles, the barriers are so small they're insignificant, really. It's not a hurdling event. Elsewhere, the 1kg discus that the women throw, it's a bit pathetic because they are so much stronger than the implement."
"Every time women's decathlon has been raised by the International Association of Athletics Federations, there's been little support from athletes and organisers because of the logistics of putting it on. Budgeting and television also dictates a lot.
"If the event were to become, say, a decathlon next year, you would see a mass exodus and a new fraternity of athletes would appear. I certainly don't think Jess would attempt it."
Lacrosse: A no-contact rule which has remained unchanged for 124 years
When Dame Frances Dove returned from her voyage of America in 1890, the women's campaigner and headteacher of St Leonards School at St Andrews introduced lacrosse to her pupils, giving us the beginnings of the women's game.
Only stick contact was permitted, a rule still in place 124 years later, despite men being allowed full body and stick contact.
It was only this year that the sport's lawmakers agreed to unify the field size for men and women.
Lacrosse - the stick rule The ball has to be seen above the side wall (the stringed net) of the stick for women as there is no body contact and stick work is more skilful. For men, the ball can be below the side wall of the stick as this deeper pocket allows the ball to remain in the stick when a player is body-checked.
Is there an appetite to allow women to have full body contact?
"In Australia, some women players suggested the women's game be full body and stick contact but did not pursue this after playing a game in the men's competition," says Janet Jackson, chair of women's rules for governing body the Federation of International Lacrosse (FIL).
Bobsleigh: Do women have the power-to-weight ratio to push a four-man bobsleigh?
Men first began competing in the four-man bobsleigh at the 1924 Winter Olympics. The wait continues for women bobsledders.
Some have argued a woman's lower power-to-weight ratio, which results in a slower push start, is a hindrance, but former world champion Nicola Minichiello has a different opinion.
Minichiello became the first British female bobsleigh driver to become a world champion
"It could help prolong their careers because, with four in the team, that's less physical push exertion on the body," she says.
Women's bobsleigh is in its infancy - the two-woman bobsleigh entered the Winter Olympics in 2002 - and its growth continues.
This week the governing body, the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation (FIBT), agreed to allow four-woman bobsleigh demonstration races at this season's US trials, North America Cup races and the World Championships.
"It's too soon to be included at the 2018 Winter Olympics, but I expect by 2022 we will have equality," adds Minichiello.
Swimming: 'Allowing women to swim 1500m freestyle would add excitement for everyone'
Prior to 1968, when women were first allowed to compete in the 800m Olympic freestyle, the female of the species was regarded as too delicate to swim over long distances.
These days, the men's and women's Olympic schedule contains 17 events, with the only difference being men swim 1500m while women compete over 800m.
Women are said to be against losing the 800m freestyle as an Olympic event
Sports writer David Epstein, author of The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance,insists there is "no good physical reason" why women can't compete over 1500m at the Olympics.
Long-distance swimming 400m freestyle (men & women) 800m freestyle (women only) 1500m freestyle (men only) 10km marathon open water (men and women)
The women's 1500m freestyle is held at the World and European Championships, but the best long-distance female swimmers rarely compete. Why train for a non-Olympic event?
Fina, the sport's governing body, has looked at ensuring men and women race in the same events, but there is said to be reluctance from female athletes to lose the 800m as it would likely ruin their prospects over the shorter sprint events.
"In running events, the typical average difference between top men and top women is about 11% no matter the distance, from 100m to 10,000m. In long-distance swimming it closes to 6%," says Epstein. "There are women who would do very well in long swimming races."
Cycling: Is the sport's governing body missing a huge opportunity?
For female cyclists, the roads on which they race aren't paved with gold.
Female riders want equality in pay (there's no minimum wage for professional female road cyclists), equality in prize money and equality in racing (women can race up to 140km a day on the road, while men are allowed to ride 280km).
Female road cyclists also have concerns over coverage, funding and safety
Olympic silver medallist Emma Pooley and world road race champion Marianne Vos have set up the Tour Entier, a campaign for a women's race at the most prestigious event of them all, the Tour de France.
"Not having some of these sporting events for women is just inertia from a time when it was believed women weren't sturdy enough for serious training and competition," says Epstein.
Former Olympic champion Nicole Cooke's retirement speech "At the age of 12 one is unaware of the problems ahead. One expects there to be an infrastructure for both boys and girls to develop and demonstrate their talents; to nurture them. One does not expect that nothing is available if you are a girl or that worse still, girls will be specifically excluded, not allowed to compete. It is somewhat of a handicap trying to demonstrate just how good you are on a bike when you are not allowed to ride."
"In 1967, when Kathrine Swizer was the first woman to complete the Boston Marathon, critics told her her uterus would collapse if she ran too much.
"There is no doubt that there are important physical differences between men and women. They range from men's denser bones [which can support more muscle], taller stature, longer proportional limbs, to more oxygen-carrying red-blood cells.
"That, of course, is why we separate men and women for the purposes of competition. But the short answer is: there's no good reason that women don't have the events that men do."Arsene Wegner went on the defensive on Thursday as he dismissed reports surrounding Arsenal as “fake news.”
The under-fire Arsenal manager angrily refused to discuss the behaviour of a small group of fans who have staged protests calling for him to resign before their last home games against Bayern Munich and Lincoln. And he looked totally bemused when moved to defend the future of his long-time right-hand man Boro Primorac.
Wenger has worked alongside the Bosnian-Croat since 1994 and he denied reports Primorac will leave Arsenal before he does, with Turkish side Konyaspor reportedly keen to make him their next manager.
Wenger insisted: “That’s a complete invention. You say anything these days and everybody takes it without checking any information.
“Everybody just takes and takes it and makes it a a subject. It’s not serious. Fake news.”
The French coach was then asked if he was aware of Barcelona's continued interest in re-signing their former youth player Hector Bellerin, who has developed into a senior Spain international under Wenger's management.
Arsenal might struggle to hold on to players such as Alexis Sanchez this summer, but there is no way Wenger will allow one of the best young defenders in Europe to slip away so easily.A veritable household name when it comes to Italian karting, Dino Chiesa, who serves as the current head of karting manufacturer CRG's factory racing programme, has been filling up trophy cabinets for almost two decades.
And it was CRG that Chiesa worked at the end of last century when the offer came for him to run a separate team for two of karting's rising stars – one Nico Rosberg, the son of 1982 Formula 1 champion Keke, and one Lewis Hamilton.
“I first met Nico at the end of 1997,” Chiesa recalled, sitting in his office chair in CRG's factory, located near Lonato del Garda.
“I ran CRG at that time - and I met him because his father was friends was Domingos Piedade, then president of AMG. It was the time when Nico had to move from France to Italy to start racing internationally and Domingos told them: 'Listen, you have only one place to go, let me call Dino.'
Soon enough, Rosberg would join CRG, racing for the Italian manufacturer for two seasons in 1998 and 1999.
“In the end of 1999, Keke – at that time the manager of McLaren's [Mika] Hakkinen, asked me whether I would want to build a team separate to CRG, for two to three seasons, with Lewis – already a McLaren driver - and Nico."
As a result, the MBM team was born, the name having stood for Mercedes-Benz-McLaren. It still was a fully-fledged factory CRG operation, but was a different approach, focussing on just the two drivers specifically instead of adopting a bigger, more traditional line-up.
In comes Lewis
Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg Photo by: Chiesa Corse
Chiesa admitted that, when Lewis had first joined his team, he wasn't fully aware of the Briton's sheer potential: “We didn't know that much about him – we knew that he was already under McLaren's wing, that he did well in English championships, that he was obviously talented.
"But we had never seen him at the track because he hadn't yet come to Europe."
However, getting to run Hamilton has left an impression on the Italian team boss: “He came from nowhere – had little money in his pocket, had to do it all through talent. But, for sure, he is one of the most talented drivers in the world.
“He had no problem getting speed in any race, with any material. Sometimes, he didn't have the best material - but two tenths off, because of the material, and he would still manage to win the race.”
Different worlds
Nico Rosberg Photo by: Chiesa Corse
Back in 2014, before the two past world championships were settled in Lewis' favour, the Briton insinuated quite plainly that he was “hungrier” for success than Nico, because of the duo's radically different backgrounds.
But, as Chiesa recalled, that did not stop them from getting along back in the day – and, in fact, in some ways contributed towards the friendship.
“Don't forget – Nico lived in Monaco, he had no real normal life, not a lot of friends,” Chiesa said. “He'd come to the race weekend, to the track, to have fun with Lewis – who was from the outskirts of Stevenage and knew life, knew how to have fun.
“Lewis was, in some ways, a teacher of Nico's.”
That said, Chiesa insisted that Rosberg's background in no way affected how the German carried himself – or how he worked.
“He's a good guy. Having grown up in Monaco, it made no difference to him, he doesn't think: 'I am rich, I can do what I want.'
“He was very focussed in his work, he loves doing it - he doesn't care about the money, very grounded, just a really normal kid.”
Likewise, Chiesa reckoned that Hamilton's famous off-track lifestyle and persona had little to no impact on his ability to win.
“I think Lewis is a bit bipolar, he has two personalities. Out of the racing weekend, he's a little bit crazy, an emotional guy - but I think when the free practice starts on Friday morning and until the chequered flag on Sunday, he's a real professional, he just doesn't do anything wrong.
“He, like, switches on and off from Friday to Sunday - and on Sunday night, he starts again with the festivities until the next race. But he gets it done.”
Racing fathers
Keke Rosberg, Williams Photo by: Williams F1
As Chiesa remembers, both Keke Rosberg and Anthony Hamilton were ever-present throughout their sons' two-year stint with the team.
“I think all four were quite close – they slept in the same hotel, drove around in the same rental car. [Keke and Anthony] never had arguments, because both, I think, already knew their sons were destined for Formula 1.
“Anthony, when he first came to the first races - when I had already fielded Nico for two years - he had a little bit of doubt about the kart, that maybe I would give better material to Nico.
“But in karting you just can't do that - and the size and the weight of both Lewis and Nico was very similar. So any time I changed the kart during the free practice, they could see that it was the same for both.
"[Anthony] asked me some questions in the beginning, but he then never asked me again for the two seasons. Maybe because Lewis was winning and that's how he was sure the kart was good.
“Keke - he only ever had problems with his son, just fighting about driving mistakes or something. But that's normal. Anthony, of course, couldn't say much to Lewis cause he was never a driver himself - but when Keke said something, the boys couldn't say no because he was an F1 world champion.”
Still friends?
Start: Nico Rosberg, Mercedes AMG F1 and Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes AMG F1 lead Photo by: XPB Images
The relationship between Hamilton and Rosberg has become famously strained during the two seasons of Mercedes dominance, with points of contention ranging from the decisive Spa collision in 2014 to the passive-aggressive cap throwing last year in Austin.
But their former karting boss finds it hard to believe that the duo no longer get on.
“Are they still friends? You know better than I do, probably. It sure looks like they aren't anymore – but I think they still are.
“Together from 2000 for 15 years in this same world, same life – it's hard to be against one another. They can't be enemies."
He subsequently went on to recall the time when his two drivers trashed their hotel room in Oschersleben.
“It was the last race of the European championship – which Lewis had already won. They nearly destroyed their room, they put the mattress out of the window. The reception guys called me in the middle of the night and I had to hide that fact from their dads, cause they'd kill me if they knew.
“But all that time, Lewis and Nico slept in the same room. That is why I think they're still friends - if you stay for two years together in the same room when you are younger, you will never forget that. It's kind of like that when you serve in the army and you don't forget your friends from the army.”
Can Nico beat Lewis?
Second place Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes AMG F1 and polesitter Nico Rosberg, Mercedes AMG F1 in the post qualifying FIA Press Conference Photo by: XPB Images
Hamilton's dominant 2015 campaign raised some serious doubts over whether Rosberg could ever reliably match his teammate – and while the German quelled some of those fears with a three-race winning streak in the end, it's still up for debate whether he is capable of beating Hamilton to the title.
And this is a query Chiesa himself has no definite answer to. “It's a question mark,” he said.
“I think if Nico gets everything perfect, he can beat Lewis. If we go back to karting, where they did around 30 races, I believe that Nico, in qualifying, beat Lewis 20 to 10... or even 22 to 8.
“But Lewis won more races. He's more aggressive, more all-or-nothing. Nico is the kind of driver who's okay with finishing second to score points for the championship – but Lewis doesn't really care about the championship, he cares about every single race.
“The media sometimes says that Nico is more fragile, but that's not true – he's as strong in the head as Lewis. So I think he can win the championship.”
But while it's the rivalry between Hamilton and Rosberg that gets the most attention, Chiesa believes that, instead, their teamwork has been crucial to Mercedes' successes.
“I know it's the best car at the moment and it's easier for both to win races, but I think the work Nico and Lewis do together is better than that of any other drivers in any other team. They're the perfect pairing.
“Lewis gives you the limit immediately - Nico arrives there a little bit later, but Nico can work a lot to understand if that's really the limit or if there's more pace that can be added.
“Having Nico without Lewis or Lewis without Nico, Mercedes would not be as strong as it is now. At least, that's what I saw in karting - they helped each other and we won a lot of races, because we had two very good drivers who together were stronger than they were separately.”
Translation by Valentin KhorounzhiyWASHINGTON, D.C. -- U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer plans to warn Republicans in Congress today that he will fight attempts to privatize or cut back Medicare, the government-run health insurance program for seniors.
Schumer, D-N.Y., will ratchet up his defense of Medicare before the Senate holds a confirmation vote as early as this week on Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., the nominee to serve as President Donald Trump's top healthcare official.
As a congressman, Price pushed for a major overhaul of Medicare and wrote "nothing has had a greater negative effect on the delivery of health care than the federal government's intrusion into medicine through Medicare." Price is an orthopedic surgeon.
Trump said during his campaign that he would not change Medicare, but this week a spokesman said the president favors negotiating the program's prescription drug prices directly with pharmaceutical companies.
Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, said his caucus will oppose any plan to scale back or privatize parts of Medicare with a voucher-based program.
"Every senior and every American should hear this loudly and clearly," Schumer said. "I will fight with every fiber of my being to beat back these harsh efforts to weaken, wound and destroy Medicare."
Schumer said the nation must keep its promise to seniors who have planned their retirement with Medicare as a government-run program.
"After paying into the system throughout their working lives, it is unconscionable that right wing extremists and ideologues seek to pull the rug out from under millions who depend on these modest, earned benefits for dignity and health security," he said.
Schumer said any GOP plan to switch Medicare to a private program, in which recipients are given vouchers to purchase private insurance, would result in substandard care at a higher cost.
About 3.3 million New Yorkers and 84,026 in Onondaga County are enrolled in the Medicare program as of 2014, and the number of beneficiaries is expected to rise quickly as baby boomers retire in record numbers.
In Central New York, 65,918 people will become eligible for Medicare between 2015 and 2020, according to a study by Cornell University. An additional 70,033 Central New Yorkers will become eligible to enroll for Medicare between 2020 and 2025.
Contact Mark Weiner anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 571-970-3751It was the conflagration over inflation! The bash over fiat cash! Ron "End the Fed" Paul vs. Paul "QE IV-VII" Krugman, heating up the pixels at Bloomberg News the other day:
The video:
The transcript for all my pre-McLuhanites in the house.
And the aftermath:
*Mediaite sees Krugman being a dick in his supercilious, fact-free response to Paul afterward at the New York Times website:
what’s even more unnerving about Krugman’s post is the way he describes Paul’s rhetoric as “Gah gah goo goo debasement! theft!” This is how I imagine Nobel laureate Krugman hears all of his opponents. Dr. Paul, willing to engage a well-known popular economist, brings up serious points about monetary policy (points that have long been made by Nobel laureates like F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman), and Krugman behaves like the child with his fingers in his ears: “Nah, nah, nah, I can’t hear you!” Krugman, nose firmly pointing upward, describes his debate with Paul as “the perfect illustration of a point I’ve thought about a lot, the uselessness of face-to-face debates.” But contrary to what Krugman may think, the general consensus about the “Paul vs Paul” segment was that it was a truly thoughtful discussion, a refreshing break from the usual talking-heads banter. He continues on:
"Think about it: you approach what is, in the end, a somewhat technical subject in a format in which no data can be presented, in which there’s no opportunity to check facts (everything Paul said about growth after World War II was wrong, but who will ever call him on it?)."
No one will call Dr. Paul on it, because he was right about spending cuts after World War II. From 1944 through 1948, the federal government cut spending by roughly 75%. I don’t know how that could be at all ambiguous to Mr. Krugman.
Krugman's own response to the debate, which Mediaite quoted above. My favorite from his comment thread:
Let's pretend for a moment that the face-to-face debate was useless and didn't allow you to present the facts to prove Ron Paul wrong. You certainly didn't use the opportunity in this blog entry to dissect Ron Paul's points and present your data. The video is available for your viewing. If you wanted to you could easily use the video to take out Ron Paul's quotes and prove him wrong with dates, charts, numbers and historical facts. You did not do any of that. If it matters so much, why have you not done so?
Especially on that growth after WW II point, on which see this essay by Richard Vedder and Jason Taylor. David Henderson, while thinking Paul more than held his own against Krugman, notes Paul was wrong on the "slashed taxes" part after WW II.
Krugman also later weighed in with more contentless insults about how his enemies only talk about ancient history and not recent history, not explaining what distinguishes his currency debasement desires from Diocletian's, and not mentioning the 20th century history of inflation and economic crises and ballooning debt that Paul thinks can be blamed on central bank and government policy.
Despite what Krugman says, Paul and Paul fellow travelers such as best-selling author Thomas "Meltdown" Woods talk far more about the past century's history of what they see as government mismanagement, mistakes, bubbles, and even hyperinflations than they do ye olde Romans.
*Tyler Cowen weighs in, with a fair amount of what seems to me like deliberate pretending not to understand where Paul is coming from. Of course, one can understand what he's saying and disagree, but then one has to argue why, and I do understand every blog post isn't sufficient space to explain, say, why you think Misesian business cycle theory doesn't hold up.
I agree with Cowen that Paul doesn't explain what he means sufficiently when he talks of the need for "liquidation of debt," which could mean anything from repudiating sovereign debt to jubilee style debt forgiveness, but I think from context of hearing him talk about this elsewhere, he means that rather than shifting bad debt onto taxpayers, just letting lots of people who are owed money take a hit by admitting that they aren't ever going to get paid back, and letting people make decisions, earn income, produce, from there without having a debt hole to get out of. This gets complicated (everything is complicated) by the fact that someone's debt burden, if they pay it, is someone else's income, and I agree it's never entirely clear what Paul is advocating or why or what good he predicts will come of it when he talks of "liquidation of debt."
But it was fun to see Cowen poke at Krugman as well, as per:
Christie Romer (!) has shown that economic volatility was not higher before WWII. (Somehow that’s one Romer paper which isn’t discussed so much anymore.) That’s a major hole in K’s argument. Relative to the evidence, he is overreaching when a more modest point would suffice.... Modern liberals have a bad and selective case of 1950s nostalgia. Krugman is significantly overrating the role of policy here. More overreaching.... Demographics, plus government gridlock and lower productivity growth, make a higher debt-gdp ratio more problematic than Krugman admits.
Bob Wenzel makes an impassioned and angry Paulite defense of Paul from Cowen.
*The New York Sun thinks Paul represented a victory of Hayek over Keynes in the debate:
The point at which Dr. Paul started leaving Mr. Krugman in the dust was when the Bloomberg interlocutor asked him what Dr. Paul would do. Dr. Paul said he wasn’t pressing for ending the Federal Reserve in a fell swoop. He is, he said, for competition among currencies. At one point, Professor Krugman could be heard muttering “I have no idea what that’s about.” It seems that Professor Krugman hasn’t been paying attention to Congress. What Dr. Paul was talking about is a bill called H.R. 1098, which he introduced in Congress in September. It’s known as the Free Competition in Currencies Act. It is based on the work of Friedrich Hayek, himself a Nobel laureate. Hayek, in the latter part of the 20th century called for the denationalization of money and the free competition of privately issued currencies. The editor of The New York Sun wrote about the legislation in a column that ran under the headline “Ron Paul, Upping the Ante in His Campaign for Liberty, Hoists the Flag of Hayek.” It would not be too much to say that what one saw unfolding on Bloomberg was the power of the assertion of the ideas of Friedrich Hayek against the ideas of John Maynard Keynes....We would never gainsay the importance of fiscal and regulatory reform in igniting the growth our country is going to need to work itself out of debt. But neither of those strategies will suffice. They will have to be done in conjunction with a restoration of sound money. And the more debates we have like the one just aired on Bloomberg, the clearer it will become that no one in public life understands this issue as clearly as the congressman from Texas.
*My own reactions: Ron Paul is not a "pillar of economic thought" as he was introduced by Bloomberg--he is a remarkably effective political polemicist for the body of economic thought of which he is a student and supporter, the Misesian Austrian tradition. Krugman is in fact a Nobel Prize-winning economist. Given that, it is extraordinary how neither of them sounded like technical academic economists, speaking ideas or techniques above the ears of the average TV listener. That's probably deliberate. As Cowen noted, "given that Krugman is a Nobel Laureate in economics, and Paul a gynecologist, the score could have been more lopsided than in fact it was."
Paul I think was more sophisticated on points like economic imbalances caused by interest rate fixing, the dangers to the masses of inflation, the knowledge problems of planners, and the cronyism implicit in how the Fed makes its decisions about what assets to buy and how money enters the economy, and the value of competing currencies, and the actual realities of trying to use gold as currency in the current legal regime.
Krugman despite his airy attitude of "I'm too sophisticated for this" pretty much had one idea and one trick: we need much, much more government spending and debt to get us out of the Depression he thinks we are in. (I use language like that myself at times in blogging to reflect the continued employment problems, though the actual data don't support the belief that we are in a Depression and my Nobel Prize get lost in the mail.)
Paul believes that government actions actually launch or exacerbate recessions and Depressions, and are not necessary to get us out of them, because of his acceptance of Mises/Hayek business cycle theory, though it was something he chose not to talk about at length here (though he mentions it once and often talks about it at greater length in other contexts). Paul understands that real things are real and money is just money--you can't just create capital by printing money. Krugman wants to keep going higher with national debt. Would Krugman dare risk less government action and spending if that might get us out of the Depression? A trick question, because of course Krugman doesn't believe that's possible--despite the post-World War II example Paul brought up.
Other relevant links from my old blogging:
*Why some of us think Krugman did too essentially advocate a Fed-fueled housing bubble.
*Krugman's love for Asimov's scientistic central planning fantasy, Foundation.
Hey, I wrote a book about Ron Paul.The series formerly known as Heroes of Might & Magic returns, with a confusingly rearranged name, to a post-King’s Bounty landscape. Without access to publishers’ long and tedious spreadsheets, I of course couldn’t begin to guess whether 1C’s good-natured, wilfully silly turn-based strategy/semi-roleplaying game presents any kind of financial threat to HoMM. KB’s certainly made hay during HoMM’s six-year absence, however. Now daddy’s coming back for his crown – but what has he learned? I’ve been tinkering with some preview code to find out.
I have, I must confess, relatively limited experience with prior HoMMs, but it’s pretty obvious that this one’s a serious rethink after the lukewarm reception to game V. It’s intended to harken back to HoMM 2 and 3, oft-believed the series’ glory years, but with a thoroughly 21st century paintjob and interface. The essential structure – roam a map, acquiring units for your army and boshing |
take a moment to follow me on twitter – @LWOS_BSpiker. Support LWOS by following us on Twitter – @LastWordOnSport – and “liking” our Facebook page.
Main Photo by Andre Ringuette/Getty ImagesDuring his State of the Union address, President Obama repeated — again and again — that the families of Newtown, and other communities torn apart by gun violence, “deserve a vote.” It was the most powerful passage in his speech, and it resulted in a standing ovation among many members of both parties, with some gazing up at the families themselves, who were seated in the balcony. You can watch this stirring moment right here.
It’s a safe bet that Senators Mark Begich, Mark Pryor, Mary Landrieu, Heidi Heitkamp, Max Baucus, and Joe Donnelly — who remain undecided on the Manchin-Toomey compromise on background checks — were among those applauding. So now we’re going to find out: Are these Senators going to make good on that applause?
Because right now, the current situation really appears to be that the fate of the proposal rests in the hands of red state Dems. It would be one thing if it were earning enough GOP support to pass without most of them; in that case, Harry Reid might tacitly indicate that he were okay with a No vote. But right now, the only Republicans supporting the bill are Toomey, John McCain, Susan Collins, and Mark Kirk. The only two Republicans who still appear gettable are Dean Heller and Kelly Ayotte. Even with a total of six Republicans, you’d still need virtually all the red state Dems to break the GOP filibuster.
Senate aides are currently mulling a tweak to the Manchin-Toomey compromise that would exempt certain far flung rural communities in Alaska and North Dakota from some background check requirements. That could win over Heitkamp and Begich. It could also win over another Republican — Lisa Murkowski — which would give Dems a bit more flexibility.
But all of these details aside, it needs to be restated that these Senators have the option of voting Yes on breaking the filibuster, while voting No on the final vote. In that scenario, the proposal would likely pass with a simple majority. And so, if these Senators continue to hold out, they need to be pressed on whether they really think a proposal that has the support of eight in 10 Americans doesn’t deserve a straight up or down vote, at a time when the Newtown slayings have focused public attention on a problem that continues to claim the lives of thousands of Americans per year. Whatever their final vote, there’s no excuse for them to enable and participate in GOP obstructionism of a proposal with near universal public support.
By the way, it’s not just rhetorical gimmickry to point out that Senators applauded while Obama intoned that the Newtown families “deserve a vote.” The families have actually been in the Capitol in recent days asking for that vote, and will continue to do so. Now, perhaps you think what the families want shouldn’t override other concerns. Perhaps some of these Senators will reach the conclusion, on the merits, that the legislation does not deserve a simple majority vote in the Senate, and that filibustering it is justified. If so, they should be pressed to explain why. No more hiding behind the idea that the Senate has inexorably become a 60 vote chamber. No more excuses.
* New middle ground on guns emerges: Indeed, the Fix crew points to a new Post poll with striking findings:
Fifty-five percent of respondents say new gun laws could be instituted without impinging on the 2nd Amendment right of gun owners. That includes 50 percent of those who themselves own guns, 58 percent of people who have a gun owner in their home and, not surprisingly, 60 percent of people who have no guns in their homes. The findings contradict long-held conventional wisdom regarding the politics of guns that is premised on the idea that people — particularly those who support gun rights — view it as an all or nothing issue.
The Fix gang asks: “Is a middle ground on guns emerging?” The answer is Yes. And the Manchin-Toomey proposal gives these red state Dems a way to embrace it. By the way: the Post poll also finds that 86 percent of Americans, and 84 percent of Republicans, support the ideas in Manchin-Toomey.
* The sixth anniversary of the Virginia tech shooting is today: The Virginia tech shooting took place six years ago today — on April 16th, 2007 –and Harry Reid’s office has released a good video remembrance, with a focus on the fact that a better background check could have saved those 32 lives:
* No one in custody for Boston bombing: No one has been detained as a suspect, but the New York Times goes there, anyway:
Some law enforcement officials noted that the blasts came at the start of a week that has sometimes been seen as significant for radical American antigovernment groups: it was the April 15 deadline for filing taxes, and Patriots’ Day in Massachusetts, the start of a week that has seen violence in the past. April 19 is the anniversary of the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
Note that the source is law enforcement officials.
* Children injured, one killed: The latest tally from law enforcement officials: nine children were injured in the explosions, and one eight year old boy was killed. The Dorchester Reporter has the details surrounding the young boy’s death and his family’s place in the community.
* How Obama is talking about terrorism: Josh Gerstein:
The content of his three-and-a-half-minute speech Monday—in particular his notable aversion to labeling the incident as “terror” or “terrorism”—seemed to reflect a continuing desire not to stoke fears or make premature public judgments even as he made sure to offer the public presence that he’d initially avoided during his first experiences managing terrorist attacks as president.
* Senators to roll out immigration reform: The bipartisan Gang of Eight is set to introduce its immigration reform proposal today, and it includes a 13-year path to citizenship in exchange for this in the way of enforcement:
Billions of dollars would be invested in new border-control measures, including surveillance drones, security fencing and 3,500 additional federal agents charged with apprehending people attempting to enter illegally from Mexico.
The question remains, though, whether the path to citizenship will be tied to some kind of border security “trigger,” which the right wants and Obama doesn’t. Unclear whether that sticking point can be overcome.
* U.S. engaged in torture, new report finds: Scott Shane reports that a bipartisan task force is set to release a report that documents in great legal detail that the United States did, in fact, engage in torture after 9/11:
The C.I.A. not only waterboarded prisoners, but slammed them into walls, chained them in uncomfortable positions for hours, stripped them of clothing and kept them awake for days on end….It offers dozens of legal cases in which similar treatment was prosecuted in the United States or denounced as torture by American officials when used by other countries.
The question is whether this will prompt a serious debate over torture’s legacy; because as the report points out, as long as the question of whether what the United States did counts as torture remains in dispute, “it could happen again.”
* Debunking a “gun rights” talking point: The NRA likes to claim that guns are used defensively over 2 million times a year, but as Juliet Lapados notes, a look at reliable statistics conducted by the Violence Policy Center suggests that the numbers are far, far smaller. I’d only add that none of the proposals that have any chance of passing would take guns away from the law abiding in the first place, so…
* And GOP leaders are not whipping against Manchin-Toomey: An important bit of reporting from Dan Friedman:
Senate Republican leaders will not push their members to vote against a background check compromise, GOP senators said, in a sign party leaders will duck a public fight against the popular plan and the high-profile gun violence victims supporting it.
So perhaps Senators Heller and Ayotte remain gettable.
What else?[This post is by Dianne Hackborn and a supporting cast of thousands; Dianne’s fingerprints can be found all over the Android Application Framework — Tim Bray]
Android 3.2 includes new tools for supporting devices with a wide range of screen sizes. One important result is better support for a new size of screen; what is typically called a “7-inch” tablet. This release also offers several new APIs to simplify developers’ work in adjusting to different screen sizes.
This a long post. We start by discussing the why and how of Android “dp” arithmetic, and the finer points of the screen-size buckets. If you know all that stuff, you can skip down to “Introducing Numeric Selectors” to read about what’s new. We also provide our recommendations for how you can do layout selection in apps targeted at Android 3.2 and higher in a way that should allow you to support the maximum number of device geometries with the minimum amount of effort.
Of course, the official write-up on Supporting Multiple Screens is also required reading for people working in this space.
Understanding Screen Densities and the “dp”
Resolution is the actual number of pixels available in the display, density is how many pixels appear within a constant area of the display, and size is the amount of physical space available for displaying your interface. These are interrelated: increase the resolution and density together, and size stays about the same. This is why the 320x480 screen on a G1 and 480x800 screen on a Droid are both the same screen size: the 480x800 screen has more pixels, but it is also higher density.
To remove the size/density calculations from the picture, the Android framework works wherever possible in terms of "dp" units, which are corrected for density. In medium-density ("mdpi") screens, which correspond to the original Android phones, physical pixels are identical to dp's; the devices’ dimensions are 320x480 in either scale. A more recent phone might have physical-pixel dimensions of 480x800 but be a high-density device. The conversion factor from hdpi to mdpi in this case is 1.5, so for a developer's purposes, the device is 320x533 in dp's.
Screen-size Buckets
Android has included support for three screen-size “buckets” since 1.6, based on these “dp” units: “normal” is currently the most popular device format (originally 320x480, more recently higher-density 480x800); “small” is for smaller screens, and “large” is for “substantially larger” screens. Devices that fall in the “large” bucket include the Dell Streak and original 7” Samsung Galaxy Tab. Android 2.3 introduced a new bucket size “xlarge”, in preparation for the approximately-10” tablets (such as the Motorola Xoom) that Android 3.0 was designed to support.
The definitions are:
xlarge screens are at least 960dp x 720dp.
large screens are at least 640dp x 480dp.
normal screens are at least 470dp x 320dp.
small screens are at least 426dp x 320dp. (Android does not currently support screens smaller than this.)
Here are some more examples of how this works with real screens:
A QVGA screen is 320x240 ldpi. Converting to mdpi (a 4/3 scaling factor) gives us 426dp x 320dp; this matches the minimum size above for the small screen bucket.
The Xoom is a typical 10” tablet with a 1280x800 mdpi screen. This places it into the xlarge screen bucket.
The Dell Streak is a 800x480 mdpi screen. This places it into the bottom of the large size bucket.
A typical 7” tablet has a 1024x600 mdpi screen. This also counts as a large screen.
The original Samsung Galaxy Tab is an interesting case. Physically it is a 1024x600 7” screen and thus classified as “large”. However the device configures its screen as hdpi, which means after applying the appropriate ⅔ scaling factor the actual space on the screen is 682dp x 400dp. This actually moves it out of the “large” bucket and into a “normal” screen size. The Tab actually reports that it is “large”; this was a mistake in the framework’s computation of the size for that device that we made. Today no devices should ship like this.
Issues With Buckets
Based on developers’ experience so far, we’re not convinced that this limited set of screen-size buckets gives developers everything they need in adapting to the increasing variety of Android-device shapes and sizes. The primary problem is that the borders between the buckets may not always correspond to either devices available to consumers or to the particular needs of apps.
The “normal” and “xlarge” screen sizes should be fairly straightforward as a target: “normal” screens generally require single panes of information that the user moves between, while “xlarge” screens can comfortably hold multi-pane UIs (even in portrait orientation, with some tightening of the space).
The “small” screen size is really an artifact of the original Android devices having 320x480 screens. 240x320 screens have a shorter aspect ratio, and applications that don’t take this into account can break on them. These days it is good practice to test user interfaces on a small screen to ensure there are no serious problems.
The “large” screen size has been challenging for developers — you will notice that it encompases everything from the Dell Streak to the original Galaxy Tab to 7" tablets in general. Different applications may also reasonably want to take different approaches to these two devices; it is also quite reasonable to want to have different behavior for landscape vs. portrait large devices because landscape has plenty of space for a multi-pane UI, while portrait may not.
Introducing Numeric Selectors
Android 3.2 introduces a new approach to screen sizes, with the goal of making developers' lives easier. We have defined a set of numbers describing device screen sizes, which you can use to select resources or otherwise adjust your UI. We believe that using these will not only reduce developers’ workloads, but future-proof their apps significantly.
The numbers describing the screen size are all in “dp” units (remember that your layout dimensions should also be in dp units so that the system can adjust for screen density). They are:
width dp : the current width available for application layout in “dp” units; changes when the screen switches orientation between landscape and portrait.
height dp : the current height available for application layout in “dp” units; also changes when the screen switches orientation.
smallest width dp: the smallest width available for application layout in “dp” units; this is the smallest width dp that you will ever encounter in any rotation of the display.
Of these, smallest width dp is the most important. It replaces the old screen-size buckets with a continuous range of numbers giving the effective size. This number is based on width because that is fairly universally the driving factor in designing a layout. A UI will often scroll vertically, but have fairly hard constraints on the minimum space it needs horizontally; the available width is also the key factor in determining whether to use a phone-style one-pane layout or tablet-style multi-pane layout.
Typical numbers for screen width dp are:
320: a phone screen (240x320 ldpi, 320x480 mdpi, 480x800 hdpi, etc).
480: a tweener tablet like the Streak (480x800 mdpi).
600: a 7” tablet (600x1024).
720: a 10” tablet (720x1280, 800x1280, etc).
Using the New Selectors
When you are designing your UI, the main thing you probably care about is where you switch between a phone-style UI and a tablet-style multi-pane UI. The exact point of this switch will depend on your particular design — maybe you need a full 720dp width for your tablet layout, maybe 600dp is enough, or 480dp, or even some other number between those. Either pick a width and design to it; or after doing your design, find the smallest width it supports.
Now you can select your layout resources for phones vs. tablets using the number you want. For example, if 600dp is the smallest width for your tablet UI, you can do this:
res/layout/main_activity.xml # For phones res/layout-sw600dp/main_activity.xml # For tablets
For the rare case where you want to further customize your UI, for example for 7” vs. 10” tablets, you can define additional smallest widths:
res/layout/main_activity.xml # For phones res/layout-sw600dp/main_activity.xml # For 7” tablets res/layout-sw720dp/main_activity.xml # For 10” tablets
Android will pick the resource that is closest to the device’s “smallest width,” without being larger; so for a hypothetical 700dp x 1200dp tablet, it would pick layout-sw600dp.
If you want to get fancier, you can make a layout that can change when the user switches orientation to the one that best fits in the current available width. This can be of particular use for 7” tablets, where a multi-pane layout is a very tight fit in portrait::
res/layout/main_activity.xml # Single-pane res/layout-w600dp/main_activity.xml # Multi-pane when enough width
Or the previous three-layout example could use this to switch to the full UI whenever there is enough width:
res/layout/main_activity.xml # For phones res/layout-sw600dp/main_activity.xml # Tablets res/layout-sw600dp-w720dp/main_activity.xml # Large width
In the setup above, we will always use the phone layout for devices whose smallest width is less than 600dp; for devices whose smallest width is at least 600dp, we will switch between the tablet and large width layouts depending on the current available width.
You can also mix in other resource qualifiers:
res/layout/main_activity.xml # For phones res/layout-sw600dp/main_activity.xml # Tablets res/layout-sw600dp-port/main_activity.xml # Tablets when portrait
Selector Precedence
While it is safest to specify multiple configurations like this to avoid potential ambiguity, you can also take advantage of some subtleties of resource matching. For example, the order that resource qualifiers must be specified in the directory name (documented in Providing Resources) is also the order of their “importance.” Earlier ones are more important than later ones. You can take advantage of this to, for example, easily have a landscape orientation specialization for your default layout:
res/layout/main_activity.xml # For phones res/layout-land/main_activity.xml # For phones when landscape res/layout-sw600dp/main_activity.xml # Tablets
In this case when running on a tablet that is using landscape orientation, the last layout will be used because the “swNNNdp” qualifier is a better match than “port”.
Combinations and Versions
One final thing we need to address is specifying layouts that work on both Android 3.2 and up as well as previous versions of the platform.
Previous versions of the platform will ignore any resources using the new resource qualifiers. This, then, is one approach that will work:
res/layout/main_activity.xml # For phones res/layout-xlarge/main_activity.xml # For pre-3.2 tablets res/layout-sw600dp/main_activity.xml # For 3.2 and up tablets
This does require, however, that you have two copies of your tablet layout. One way to avoid this is by defining the tablet layout once as a distinct resource, and then making new versions of the original layout resource that point to it. So the layout resources we would have are:
res/layout/main_activity.xml # For phones res/layout/main_activity_tablet.xml # For tablets
To have the original layout point to the tablet version, you put <item> specifications in the appropriate values directories. That is these two files:
res/values-xlarge/layout.xml res/values-sw600dp/layout.xml
Both would contain the following XML defining the desired resource:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <resources> <item type="layout" name="main_activty"> @layout/main_activity_tablet </item> </resources>
Of course, you can always simply select the resource to use in code. That is, define two or more resources like “layout/main_activity” and “layout/main_activity_tablet,” and select the one to use in your code based on information in the Configuration object or elsewhere. For example:
public class MyActivity extends Activity { @Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(); Configuration config = getResources().getConfiguration(); if (config.smallestScreenWidthDp >= 600) { setContentView(R.layout.main_activity_tablet); } else { setContentView(R.layout.main_activity); } } }
Conclusion
We strongly recommend that developers start using the new layout selectors for apps targeted at Android release 3.2 or higher, as we will be doing for Google apps. We think they will make your layout choices easier to express and manage.
Furthermore, we can see a remarkably wide variety of Android-device form factors coming down the pipe. This is a good thing, and will expand the market for your work. These new layout selectors are specifically designed to make it straightforward for you to make your apps run well in a future hardware ecosystem which is full of variety (and surprises).A petition to the University of Victoria is at 500 signatures
Levi Hildebrand wants to make a point about the unsustainability of paper cups on the University of Victoria campus. (YouTube)
A petition to no longer have paper cups at the University of Victoria campus has gained more than 500 signatures in just one week.
Started by UVic student Levi Hildebrand, it asks the school to introduce a cup-share program, use mugs in campus cafes, or sell cheap travel mugs.
“At UVic, over 3,000 paper coffee cups are thrown out every day. That is the equivalent of one average-sized tree here on Vancouver Island,” the Change.org petition reads. “The paper cups sold on campus are compostable and recyclable, but due to a lack of education and clear signage, most of these cups end up in the garbage.”
To give people a sense of how bad they feel the situation is, Hildebrand and other dumped 3,000 paper cups on his head – and captured it all on video.
No comment so far from school officials.President Donald Trump's comments Tuesday serve as his strongest rebuke yet since being sworn in to the presidency last Friday. | AP Photo Trump threatens to'send in the Feds' to Chicago
President Donald Trump tweeted Tuesday that he would dispatch federal authorities to Chicago if they don't address violence in the city, which he described as "horrible 'carnage.'"
"If Chicago doesn't fix the horrible "carnage" going on, 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings (up 24% from 2016), I will send in the Feds!" the president tweeted.
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It was not clear whether he meant federal law-enforcement authorities or federal troops.
Trump's comments seemingly refer to a Chicago Tribune report from Monday that said 228 people had been shot in the city so far in 2017, a 5.5 percent increase from the same time period last year. The 42 homicides, as he noted, increased by 24 percent from the 34 reported to this point in 2016.
The statement echoes Trump's words during his inaugural address, when he called for an end to gang violence and "this American carnage."
“The crime and the gangs and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential,” Trump said at the Capitol on Inauguration Day. “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”
Trump has repeatedly spoken out against Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's handling of violence within the city, often alluding to potential federal intervention. But Trump's comments Tuesday serve as his strongest rebuke yet since being sworn in on Friday.
Earlier this month, Trump wrote of Emanuel and violence in Chicago: "If Mayor can't do it he must ask for Federal help!"
Chicago murder rate is record setting - 4,331 shooting victims with 762 murders in 2016. If Mayor can't do it he must ask for Federal help! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2017
Chicago had 762 recorded homicides in 2016, a steep jump over 2015 (492) and the highest since the 1990s. The city’s record for homicides in a year was 970 in 1974.
The president's late-night tweet Tuesday also comes a day after Emanuel bashed Trump and his administration for their ongoing feud with the media over the size of the audience at his inaugural address.
“You didn’t get elected to debate the crowd size at your inaugural," Emanuel reportedly said at a ribbon-cutting ceremony. "You got elected to make sure that people have a job, that the economy continues to grow, people have security as it relates to their kids’ education. It wasn’t about your crowd size. It was about their lives and their jobs.”
Trump's Tuesday tweet on Chicago was posted shortly after Fox News' Bill O'Reilly aired a segment on "The O'Reilly Factor" citing the same statistics.
The newly minted president also continued his war of words against CNN on Tuesday night by taunting the network for being bested by Fox News in terms of inaugural viewership.
"Congratulations to [Fox News] for being number one in inauguration ratings," Trump said in a partially congratulatory tweet. "They were many times higher than FAKE NEWS [CNN] - public is smart!"
Congratulations to @FoxNews for being number one in inauguration ratings. They were many times higher than FAKE NEWS @CNN - public is smart! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017
Trump slammed the outlet during his first news conference as president-elect on Jan. 11 over their report on a dossier of Russian intelligence on him.
"Don't be rude. No, I'm not going to give you a question. You are fake news," he said to CNN correspondent Jim Acosta.
The feud has continued in recent weeks, with Trump repeatedly lashing out at the network over social media.- Advertisement -
I watched with confusion as Nancy Pelosi bowed in front of the Dalai Lama. It was a great photo op for our erstwhile Speaker, but I confess that I have no idea what she was doing in India. Several days later I heard that Pelosi said that President Bush should consider boycotting the opening ceremonies to send China a message about their oppression of Tibet. It’s not that I think that the Dalai Lama and his followers do not deserve our support. As a practicing Buddhist, what is going on in Tibet is extremely painful to watch and read about. It’s just that I don’t think we hold the moral compass anymore, and I firmly believe we should clean up our own house before we tell others to clean up theirs. We have no business boycotting the Olympics.
Not until we stop torturing
There is evidence that the authorization for torture came from someone very close to the top. Could it have come from the President himself? Given Bush’s blatant disregard for the law and his willingness to compromise America’s value system, I certainly think it’s a possibility. The recently declassified John Yoo memo clearly shows that either Bush or someone in his employ wanted to see how far he could go when it comes to fighting terrorism. The Department of Justice apparently thought he could go pretty far.
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The memo gives President Bush carte blanche to run roughshod over the Constitution. It states that he has unlimited powers to order brutal interrogations. If that isn’t enough, the memo also states that he can bypass the Fourth Amendment (which protects against unreasonable search and seizures) and the Fifth Amendment (which covers the central due process guarantee). Basically the DOJ would have us believe that our imperial president can operate outside the limits of the law.
We are now in the eighth year of President Bush’s reign. Is there still any question about whether or not he took office with the intention of expanding his executive powers? That has been the intention of the Bush-Cheney tag team almost from the day they assumed power. Let’s stop ignoring the obvious. Our rights are eroding right in front of our eyes and we’re sitting back with the proverbial ‘deer in the headlight’ look. Yes, Virginia, it’s happening.
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The declassification of these memos proves one thing. There was intent on our government’s part to employ torture techniques during interrogation of detainees. What happened at Abu Ghraib was systemic, not the result of some underlings running amok as our elected leaders would have us believe. It just happened to leak out so someone had to take the fall. We know there are violations at Guantanamo. It must be closed. It is also a matter of public record that we are using “extraordinary rendition” with detainees, shipping them off to foreign countries where we know torture is practiced.
Not until we stop funding the illegal war in Iraq
President Bush authorized the invasion of a sovereign nation under false pretenses. In plain English, he lied and so did those serving him. Even Colin Powell’s participation in the lying dispelled any notion that he might have had a shred of integrity in an otherwise shameless administration. In April, Bush will ask Congress for an additional $107 billion to continue on with this endless, destructive war.
The estimates of Iraqi dead are staggering, perhaps as high as 1 million. It is reported that 2 million have been displaced to neighboring countries. The so-called “rebuilding” of Iraq that America has sunk millions of dollars into is a disgrace. Contractors have taken advantage of the bloated war trough and have raised structures that are either sub-standard or uninhabitable. We contract with Blackwater USA, a civilian freelance mercenary army, to fight on our behalf and they kill innocent civilians in our name. We rewarded Blackwater just recently by extending its contract in spite of the fact that there is an ongoing investigation.
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Let us not forget that President Bush lied and led our soldiers into a war with no justification. We were never in any danger from Saddam Hussein or Iraq. At my last count, we had lost 4, 013 American soldiers in Iraq. More than 40,000 have been injured either physically or psychologically as a result of serving in Iraq.
Next Page 1 | 2Unclaimed World is a single player, Windows PC game which draws inspiration from ‘The Settlers’, ‘Dwarf Fortress’ and Paradox games. Even though it’s fully released we keep adding additional patches — when you buy, you get access to all existing and future content.
FEATURES////
Indirect control – the colonists are free and have a democratic society. Dissatisfied people can either leave or vote for improving their colony: Only if you have ambitious inhabitants will you access more advanced technology and develop a camp into a comfortable town.
-Realistic sci-fi, pioneer setting
-Simulation of alien nature, human needs and frontier community
-Detailed, flexible crafting
SETTING////
The game takes place in a realistic sci-fi setting, in a plausible future without Faster-than-Light travel. Humans landed on a Tau Ceti planet in 2238 after a 100 year journey. Over the generations, the Tau Ceti colonists lost the advanced equipment which was brought to the planet and the descendants formed simple frontier societies based on farming, fishing and trade.
MAPS AND SCENARIOS////
In various scenarios and maps we explore the history of the planet’s colonization. The scenarios serve as an introduction to the game mechanics and will prepare you for the open-ended maps where you can challenge yourself, building up a colony from scratch. Below are descriptions of maps and scenarios that are available.
Fields of Tau Ceti are open-ended maps that take place in a primitive future centuries after planetfall. You begin with a community equipped for either hunting, farming or fishing and work off the land. Apart from an old robot, the people use simple technology such as smithing, small scale farming and black powder:
Fields of Tau Ceti currently has 2 maps + 1 large map version for powerful PCs.
Muckroot Mining Site is an open-ended map with a mining crew that extracts minerals surrounded by the dangerous Swarmers:
Twinkler Island is a scenario with a team of planet explorers that have crash-landed on an island and must wait for rescue. They are attacked by pack predators, the so-called “twinklers” and must locate their nests and come up with a way to clear them out:
Making Headway is an open-ended scenario where you grow a small farm community by expanding into rubber production, extracting sap from a dangerous swamp:
The Clay Pit is an open-ended tutorial where a scruffy crew of laborers make mudbricks for sale. See if you can turn the camp into a permanent settlement:
Castaways is a tutorial scenario that teaches you the game as you guide a group of stranded sailors to find food, fight ‘bush dragons’ and build a signal pyre on top of an island:
…You can read more about the game from the menu buttons above. Also, make sure you sign up for our newsletter in the box to the right!I’ve never really liked Metal Gear games, but I am loving Metal Gear Solid V so far. Not for the story, though, or the stealth. Mostly for the balloons.
Not since Armed and Dangerous’ Land Shark Gun has a video game tool been so funny and practical at the same time. You can steal jeeps! Kidnap soldiers! Get sleeping bad guys off the battlefield!
And did you know your horse uses one at the end of every mission? It’s how he gets home!
Like a lot of fancy military tech in Metal Gear games, there’s truth behind Kojima’s wackiness. The game’s fulton balloons are, from the name to their use, a tribute to one of the coolest pieces of actual Cold War spy gear, the Fulton surface-to-air recovery system, or STARS. It’s also commonly referred to as the “Skyhook” system.
Made kinda-famous by scenes in James Bond in 1965’s Thunderball (above) and Chris Nolan’s The Dark Knight, STARS was created and developed in the 1950s by Robert Edison Fulton, Jr., an old-school adventurer (he rode a motorbike from London to Tokyo!) and inventor. While working on another weird project (a flying car), Fulton had pondered how a person needing to be airlifted could be extracted if they were stuck somewhere neither aircraft or helicopters could land.
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Fulton worked with the CIA to tackle this challenge, the Agency recognising the value in getting agents off the ground and into an aircraft as quickly as possible, without the aircraft having to land. This not only avoided the need for an aircraft to expose itself to danger, but would allow the extraction of an agent from almost anywhere.
Fulton’s idea involved attaching a balloon to somebody, having that balloon lift them into the sky and then having an aircraft “scoop” them up once they reached a certain altitude.
Throughout the 1950s, Fulton tested STARS with weights, dummies and various aircraft on the way to developing a workable system, while the CIA secretly did its own testing—on humans—using a simpler design.
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If you think sticking balloons onto animals in MGSV is weird, consider this: one of the last tests Fulton performed on his design involved a pig, and went...well, the CIA tells it like this:
Fulton first used instrumented dummies as he prepared for a live pickup. He next used a pig, as pigs have nervous systems close to humans. Lifted off the ground, the pig began to spin as it flew through the air at 125 mph. It arrived on board undamaged but in a disoriented state. Once it recovered, it attacked the crew.
By 1958, Fulton’s research was almost complete. The system recorded its first human pickup in August, and the process had been pretty much finalised: an aircraft would drop a package that contained a harness, a braided nylon line, a helium bottle and a balloon. Someone on the ground would collect this, wear/attach the harness to cargo, inflate the balloon and be shot into the sky. So far so Metal Gear Solid V, but that was the easy part; an aircraft, normally a C-130 Hercules, would then have to collect the person/package, and this is the part you don’t get to see in the game:
The pickup aircraft sported two tubular steel “horns” protruding from its nose, 30 feet long and spread at a 70° angle. The aircraft would fly into the line, aiming at a bright mylar marker placed at the 425-foot (130 m) level. As the line was caught between the forks on the nose of the aircraft, the balloon was released and at the same time the spring-loaded trigger mechanism (sky anchor) secured the line to the aircraft. As the line streamed under the fuselage, it was snared by the pickup crew, using a J-hook. It was then attached to a powered winch and pulled on board. The aircraft also had cables strung from the nose to the wingtips to keep the balloon line away from the propellers, in case the catch was unsuccessful.
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STARS saw its first active service in 1962 on Operation Coldfeet when a pair of American agents were retrieved—despite atrocious visibility—following their survey of an abandoned Soviet research base. Below is a shot of one of those agents, Maj. James Smith, celebrating his successful retrieval on-board the specially-modified B-17 that picked him up.
Over the next three decades, STARS was used extensively by the US, not just on CIA missions but by the Air Force and Navy as well. And in spite of fears over how elaborate and dangerous it had appeared (the Navy had such concerns in 1961 that Operation Coldfeet had nearly been cancelled), between 1962 and the system’s demise in the 1990s only a single fatality was recorded.
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STARS was phased out in 1996 when the last branch of the services employing it, Air Force Special Operations Command, ceased supporting the tech. As useful as it had been to the US during the Cold War, advances in helicopter range and landing capabilities had rendered STARS unnecessary.
So the next time you’re sticking a balloon to an unconscious sheep and wondering, “what the hell am I doing here, Kojima, you’re crazy”, know that the only crazy thing about Fulton’s invention being in the game was Kojima being smart enough to include something so cool in the first place.Jammu, June 16 (PTI) Pakistan today violated the ceasefire by firing on forward posts along the LoC in Rajouri district of Jammu and Kashmir, killing an Indian Army jawan.
There have been six ceasefire violations in the past three days and a total 17 along the LoC and the international border in J |
+ Knight + H-Pawn
Rook Endgames
Tricky Rook + King vs Rook NEW!
The Lucena Position
[EP]Rook + 2 Pawns vs Rook
Four Pawns + Rook vs Three Pawns + Rook
Rook vs Knight Ending NEW!
Challenging Rook Endgame With Extra Pawn NEW!
Rook vs Bishop NEW!
Rook + Pawn vs Bishop NEW!
Tricky Win With Rook Vs Bishop NEW!
Tricky Win With Rook Vs Bishop II NEW!
Two Rooks vs Queen + Pawn NEW!
Bishop Endgames
Centurini's Position NEW!
Bishop + Pawn vs Bishop NEW!
Bishop vs Knight Endgame NEW!
Knight Endgames
Knight Maneuvering NEW!
Two Knights vs Pawn
Two Knights vs Pawn II NEW!
Force A Draw!
All of these are draws for white, if you can manage it!
Bishop vs Knight + Pawn Endgame NEW!
3 Pawns vs Rook
[EP]Philidor Position
Bishop vs Rook NEW!
Bishop vs Rook + Pawn NEW!
Famous Endgames
Positions from famous games, see how well you can play them!
Capablanca-Tartakower, 1924
Kasparov-Anand, 2003
Zilber-Tal, 1958
Looking for another endgame?
Why not create your own!
Crafty has made over 11 million moves battling our usersHerrerasaurus was one of the earliest dinosaurs. Its name means "Herrera's lizard", after the rancher who discovered the first specimen. All known fossils of this carnivore have been discovered in the Ischigualasto Formation of Carnian age (late Triassic according to the ICS, dated to 231.4 million years ago) in northwestern Argentina.[1] The type species, Herrerasaurus ischigualastensis, was described by Osvaldo Reig in 1963[2] and is the only species assigned to the genus. Ischisaurus and Frenguellisaurus are synonyms.
For many years, the classification of Herrerasaurus was unclear because it was known from very fragmentary remains. It was hypothesized to be a basal theropod, a basal sauropodomorph, a basal saurischian, or not a dinosaur at all but another type of archosaur. However, with the discovery of an almost complete skeleton and skull in 1988,[3][4] Herrerasaurus has been classified as either an early theropod or an early saurischian in at least five recent reviews of theropod evolution, with many researchers treating it at least tentatively as the most primitive member of Theropoda.[5]
It is a member of the Herrerasauridae, a family of similar genera that were among the earliest of the dinosaurian evolutionary radiation.[6][7]
Description [ edit ]
Scale diagram showing the holotype specimen (red) and the largest known specimen (gray), compared in size with a human.
Herrerasaurus was a lightly built bipedal carnivore with a long tail and a relatively small head. Adults had skulls up to 56 cm (22 in) long and were up to 6 metres (20 ft) in total length[4] and 350 kg (770 lb) in weight.[8] Smaller specimens were half the size, with skulls only about 30 cm (12 in) long.[9]
Herrerasaurus was fully bipedal. It had strong hind limbs with short thighs and rather long feet, indicating that it was likely a swift runner. The foot had five toes, but only the middle three (digits II, III, and IV) bore weight. The outer toes (I and V) were small; the first toe had a small claw. The tail, partially stiffened by overlapping vertebral projections, balanced the body and was also an adaptation for speed.[9] The forelimbs of Herrerasaurus were less than half the length of its hind limbs. The upper arm and forearm were rather short, while the manus (hand) was elongated. The first two fingers and the thumb ended in curved, sharp claws for grasping prey. The fourth and fifth digits were small stubs without claws.[4][10]
Herrerasaurus displays traits that are found in different groups of dinosaurs, and several traits found in non-dinosaurian archosaurs. Although it shares most of the characteristics of dinosaurs, there are a few differences, particularly in the shape of its hip and leg bones. Its pelvis is like that of saurischian dinosaurs, but it has a bony acetabulum (where the femur meets the pelvis) that was only partially open. The ilium, the main hip bone, is supported by only two sacrals, a basal trait.[9] However, the pubis points backwards, a derived trait as seen in dromaeosaurids and birds. Additionally, the end of the pubis has a booted shape, like those in avetheropods; and the vertebral centra has an hourglass shape as found in Allosaurus.[8]
Artist's impression
Herrerasaurus had a long, narrow skull that lacked nearly all the specializations that characterized later dinosaurs,[11] and more closely resembled those of more primitive archosaurs such as Euparkeria. It had five pairs of fenestrae (skull openings) in its skull, two pairs of which were for the eyes and nostrils. Between the eyes and the nostrils were two antorbital fenestrae and a pair of tiny, 1-centimeter-long (0.4 in) slit-like holes called promaxillary fenestrae.[12]
Herrerasaurus had a flexible joint in the lower jaw that could slide back and forth to deliver a grasping bite.[11] This cranial specialization is unusual among dinosaurs but has evolved independently in some lizards.[13] The rear of the lower jaw also had fenestrae. The jaws were equipped with large serrated teeth for biting and eating flesh, and the neck was slender and flexible.[11][14]
Skeletal reconstruction
According to Novas (1993), Herrerasaurus can be distinguished based on the following features:[15] the presence of a premaxilla-maxilla fenestra, and the dorsal part of laterotemporal fenestra is less than a third as wide as the ventral part; the presence of a ridge on the lateral surface of the jugal bone, and a deeply incised supratemporal fossa that extends across the medial postorbital process; the subquadrate ventral squamosal process has a lateral depression, and the quadratojugal bone overlaps the posterodorsal quadrate face; the pterygoid process of the quadrate has an inturned, trough-shaped ventral margin, and the presence of a slender ribbed posterodorsal dentary process; the surangular bone has a forked anterior process for articulation with the posterodorsal dentary process; the humerus' internal tuberosity is proximally projected and separated from the humeral head by a deep groove (also present in coelophysoids); possesses enlarged hands, which are 60% of the size of the humerus+radius, and the humeral entepicondyle is ridge-like with anterior and posterior depressions; and the posterior border of the ilial peduncle forms a right angle with the dorsal border of the shaft on the ischium.
According to Sereno (1993), Herrerasaurus can be distinguished based on the following features, all of which are unknown in other herrerasaurids:[16] a circular pit is present on the humeral ectepicondyle, a feature also present in Saturnalia; a saddle-shaped ulnar condyle of the humerus, and the articular surface for the ulnare on the ulna is convex; the articular surface of the ulnare is smaller than that of the ulna, a feature unknown in Staurikosaurus and Sanjuansaurus; the centrale is placed distal to the radiale; a broad subnarial process of the premaxilla, and a broad supratemporal depression (noted by Sereno and Novas, 1993);[17] the basal tuber and the occipital condyle are subequal in width (noted by Sereno and Novas, 1993)[17]
History [ edit ]
Herrerasaurus was named by paleontologist Osvaldo Reig after Victorino Herrera, an Andean goatherd who first noticed its fossils in outcrops near the city of San Juan, Argentina in 1959.[2] These rocks, which later yielded Eoraptor,[18] are part of the Ischigualasto Formation and date from the late Ladinian to early Carnian stages of the Late Triassic period.[19] Reig named a second dinosaur from these rocks in the same publication as Herrerasaurus;[2] this dinosaur, Ischisaurus cattoi, is now considered a junior synonym and a juvenile of Herrerasaurus.[14]
Reig believed Herrerasaurus was an early example of a carnosaur,[2] but this was the subject of much debate over the next 30 years, and the genus was variously classified during that time. In 1970, Steel classified Herrerasaurus as a prosauropod.[20] In 1972, Peter Galton classified the genus as not diagnosable beyond Saurischia.[21] Later, using cladistic analysis, some researchers put Herrerasaurus and Staurikosaurus at the base of the dinosaur tree before the separation between ornithischians and saurischians.[22][23][24][25] Several researchers classified the remains as non-dinosaurian.[26]
Two other partial skeletons, with skull material, were named Frenguellisaurus ischigualastensis by Fernando Novas in 1986,[27] but this species too is now thought to be a synonym.[14] Frenguellisaurus ischigualastensis was discovered in 1975, and was described by Novas (1986) who considered it a primitive saurischian, and possibly a theropod. Novas (1992) and Sereno and Novas (1992) examined the Frenguellisaurus remains and found them referable to Herrerasaurus.[28] Ischisaurus cattoi was discovered in 1960 and described by Reig in 1963. Novas (1992) and Sereno and Novas (1992) reviewed its remains and found them to be referable to Herrerasaurus.[28]
First known skull, specimen PVSJ 407, and left maxilla PVSJ 053
A complete Herrerasaurus skull was found in 1988, by a team of paleontologists led by Paul Sereno.[4] Based on the new fossils, authors such as Thomas Holtz[29] and José Bonaparte[30] classified Herrerasaurus at the base of the saurischian tree before the divergence between prosauropods and theropods. However, Sereno favored classifying Herrerasaurus (and the Herrerasauridae) as primitive theropods. These two classifications have become the most persistent, with Rauhut (2003)[31] and Bittencourt and Kellner (2004)[32] favoring the early theropod hypothesis, and Max Langer (2004),[9] Langer and Benton (2006),[33] and Randall Irmis and his coauthors (2007)[34] favoring the basal saurischian hypothesis. If Herrerasaurus were indeed a theropod, it would indicate that theropods, sauropodomorphs, and ornithischians diverged even earlier than herrerasaurids, before the middle Carnian, and that "all three lineages independently evolved several dinosaurian features, such as a more advanced ankle joint or an open acetabulum".[35] This view is further supported by ichnological records showing large tridactyl (three-toed) footprints that can be attributed only to a theropod dinosaur. These footprints date from the Ladinian (Middle Triassic) of the Los Rastros Formation in Argentina and predate Herrerasaurus by 3 to 5 million years.[36][37]
The study of early dinosaurs such as Herrerasaurus and Eoraptor therefore has important implications for the concept of dinosaurs as a monophyletic group (a group descended from a common ancestor). The monophyly of dinosaurs was explicitly proposed in the 1970s by Galton and Robert T. Bakker,[38][39] who compiled a list of cranial and postcranial synapomorphies (common anatomical traits derived from the common ancestor). Later authors proposed additional synapomorphies.[22][23] An extensive study of Herrerasaurus by Sereno in 1992 suggested that of these proposed synapomorphies, only one cranial and seven postcranial features were actually derived from a common ancestor, and that the others were attributable to convergent evolution. Sereno's analysis of Herrerasaurus also led him to propose several new dinosaurian synapomorphies.[4]
Classification [ edit ]
Skull shown from above, showing temporal fenestrae
Herrerasaurus was originally considered to be a genus within Carnosauria, which then included forms similar to Megalosaurus and Antrodemus (the latter is equivalent to Allosaurus[40]), even though Herrerasaurus lived many millions of years before them and retained multiple primitive features. This carnosaurian classification was amended upon by Rozhdestvensky and Tatarinov in 1964, who classified Herrerasaurus within the family Gryponichidae inside Carnosauria. The same year, Walker published a differing opinion that Herrerasaurus instead was allied with Plateosauridae, although it differed in possessing a pubic boot. Walker also proposed that Herrerasaurus may instead be close to Poposaurus (now considered a pseudosuchian[41]) and the unnamed theropod from the Dockum Group of Texas (now assigned to the rauisuchian Postosuchus[42]). In 1985, Charig noted that Herrerasaurus was of uncertain classification, showing similarities to both "prosauropods" and "carnosaurians". Romer (1966), simply noted that Herrerasaurus was a prosauropod possibly within Plateosauridae. In the description of Staurikosaurus, Colbert noted that there were many similarities between his taxon and Herrerasaurus, but classified them in separate families, with Herrerasaurus in Teratosauridae. In 1970, Bonaparte also proposed similarities between Herrerasaurus and Staurikosaurus, and while classifying them both clearly as in Saurischia, he stated that they appeared as though they could not be placed in a current family. This was further supported by Benedetto in 1973, who named for the taxa the new family Herrerasauridae, which he classified as saurischians, possibly within Theropoda but not in Sauropodomorpha.[43] However, in 1977 Galton proposed that Herrerasauridae only included Herrerasaurus, and found it to be Saurischian incertae sedis.[44]
Proposed in 1987 by Brinkman and Sues, Herrerasaurus has at times been considered basal to Ornithischia and Saurischia, although Brinkmann and Sues still considered it to be inside Dinosauria. They supported this on the basis that Herrerasaurus has a large pedal digit V, and has a well developed medial wall on the acetabulum. Brinkmann and Sues considered Staurikosaurus and Herrerasaurus to not form a true group called Herrerasauridae, and that instead they were successively more primitive forms. Also, they considered the characters used by Benedetto to be invalid, instead representing only the plesiomorphic state that was found in both taxa.[22] This was disagreed with in 1992 by Novas, who stated many derived synapomorphies of Herrerasauridae, such as a distinct pubic boot, but still classified them as basal to Ornithischia and Saurischia. Novas defined the family as the least common ancestor of Herrerasaurus and Staurikosaurus and all its descendants.[23] A differing definition of Herrerasaurus but not Passer domesticus first suggested by Sereno (1998), and more closely follows the original inclusion proposed by Benedetto.[45] Another group, Herrerasauria was named by Galton in 1985, and defined as Herrerasaurus but not Liliensternus or Plateosaurus by Langer (2004), who used the node-based definition for Herrerasauridae.[46]
Life restoration
In a revision of basal Dinosauria, Padian and May (1993) discussed the definition of the clade, and redefined it as the latest common ancestor of Triceratops and birds. They also discussed what this definition would do to the most basal taxa, such as Herrerasauridae, and Eoraptor. Padian and May considered that since both Herrerasauridae and Eoraptor lack many diagnostic features of Saurischia or Ornithischia, that they could not be considered inside Dinosauria.[47]
A later 1994 study by Novas instead classified Herrerasaurus within Dinosauria, and strongly supported its position within Saurischia, as well a provided synapomorphies shared with Theropoda. Novas found that the primitive features of lacking a brevis fossa and having only two sacral vertebrae were simply reversals found in the genus.[48] In 1996, Novas went further by supporting a theropod position for Herrerasaurus with a phylogenetic analysis, which placed it closer to Neotheropoda than Eoraptor or Sauropodomorpha.[49] Langer (2004) mentioned that this hypothesis was widely accepted, but that more later authors instead preferred to place Herrerasaurus as well as Eoraptor basal to Theropoda and Sauropodomorpha, a clade called Eusaurischia. Langer (2004) conducted a phylogenetic analysis, and found that it was much more likely that Herrerasaurus was a basal saurischian, than either a theropod or a non-dinosaurian.[46] Langer's proposal was supported by multiple studies until the discovery of Tawa, when Nesbitt et al. conducted a more inclusive analysis, and the resulting cladogram placed Herrerasauridae basal to Eoraptor, but closer to Dilophosaurus than Sauropodomorpha.[50][51] Unlike Nesbitt, Ezcurra (2010) conducted a phylogenetic analysis to place his new taxon Chromogisaurus, and found that Herrerasauridae was basal to Eusaurischia.[52]
In 2010, Alcocer and Martinez described a new taxon of herrerasaurid, Sanjuansaurus. It could be distinguished from Herrerasaurus based on multiple features. In the phylogenetic analysis, Herrerasaurus, Sanjuansaurus and Staurikosaurus all were in a polytomy, and Herrerasauridae was the most primitive group of saurischian, outside Eusaurischia, Eoraptor and Guaibasaurus.[1] In 2011, Martinez et al. described Eodromaeus, a basal theropod from the same formation as Herrerasaurus. In a phylogenetic analysis, Eoraptor was placed within Sauropodomorpha, Herrerasauridae was placed as the most basal theropods, and Eodromaeus was placed as the next most basal.[53] A more recent analysis, by Bittencourt et al. (2014), placed Herrerasauridae in a polytomy with Theropoda and Sauropodomorpha, with Eoraptor also being in an unresolved position. This cladogram is shown below.[54]
Herrerasaurus (large), Eoraptor (small), and Plateosaurus (skull), three early (large),(small), and(skull), three early saurischians
Dinosauria Ornithischia Saurischia Eoraptor Sauropodomorpha Herrerasauridae Staurikosaurus Herrerasaurus Sanjuansaurus Theropoda Eodromaeus Tawa Neotheropoda
Other members of the clade may include Eoraptor from the same Ischigualasto Formation of Argentina as Herrerasaurus,[55] Chindesaurus from the Upper Petrified Forest (Chinle Formation) of Arizona,[56] and possibly Caseosaurus from the Tecovas Formation of the Dockum Group in Texas,[57] although the relationships of these animals are not fully understood, and not all paleontologists agree. Other possible basal theropods, Alwalkeria from the Late Triassic Maleri Formation of India,[58] and Teyuwasu, known from very fragmentary remains from the Late Triassic of Brazil, might be related.[59] Paul (1988) noted that it had been incorrectly suggested that Staurikosaurus pricei was a juvenile Herrerasaurus. This claim was refuted when pelvic bones from a juvenile Herrerasaurus were discovered, which upon examination did not resemble the pelvic bones of Staurikosaurus.[8]
Paleobiology [ edit ]
The teeth of Herrerasaurus indicate that it was a carnivore; its size indicates it would have preyed upon small and medium-sized plant eaters. These might have included other dinosaurs, such as Pisanosaurus, as well as the more plentiful rhynchosaurs and synapsids.[60] Herrerasaurus itself may have been preyed upon by giant rauisuchids like Saurosuchus; puncture wounds were found in one skull.[11]
Coprolites (fossilized dung) containing small bones but no trace of plant fragments, discovered in the Ischigualasto Formation, have been assigned to Herrerasaurus based on fossil abundance. Mineralogical and chemical analysis of these coprolites indicates that if the referral to Herrerasaurus was correct, this carnivore could digest bone.[61]
An artist's impression; feeding on a small synapsid
Comparisons between the scleral rings of Herrerasaurus and modern birds and reptiles suggest that it may have been cathemeral, active throughout the day at short intervals.[62]
In a 2001 study conducted by Bruce Rothschild and other paleontologists, 12 hand bones and 20 foot bones referred to Herrerasaurus were examined for signs of stress fracture, but none were found.[63]
PVSJ 407, a Herrerasaurus ischigualastensis, had a pit in a skull bone attributed by Paul Sereno and Novas to a bite. Two additional pits occurred on the splenial. The areas around these pits are swollen and porous, suggesting the wounds were afflicted by a short-lived non-lethal infection. Because of the size and angles of the wound, it is likely that they were obtained in a fight with another Herrerasaurus.[64]
Paleoecology [ edit ]
Model depicted with prey
The holotype of Herrerasaurus (PVL 2566) was discovered in the Cancha de Bochas Member of the Ischigualasto Formation in San Juan, Argentina. It was collected in 1961 by Victorino Herrera, in sediments that were deposited in the Carnian stage of the Triassic period, approximately 235 to 221 million years ago. Over the years, the Ischigualasto Formation produced other fossils ultimately referred to Herrerasaurus. In 1958, A.S. Romer discovered specimen MCZ 7063, originally referred to Staurikosaurus in Carnian sediments. Herrerasaurus specimens PVL 2045 and MLP(4)61, were collected in 1959 and 1960, respectively, in sediments that were deposited in the Norian stage of the Triassic period, approximately 228 to 208 million years ago. In 1960, Scaglia collected specimen MACN 18.060, originally the holotype of Ischisaurus cattoi, in sediments deposited in the Carnian stage. In 1961, Scaglia collected Herrerasaurus specimen PVL 2558, in the Carnian beds of this formation. In 1990, the Cancha de Bochas Member produced more Herrerasaurus specimens, also from its Carnian beds.[65] Specimen PVSJ 53, originally the holotype of Frenguellisaurus, was collected by Gargiulo & Oñate in 1975 in sediments that were deposited in the Carnian stage.[9]
Although Herrerasaurus shared the body shape of the large carnivorous dinosaurs, it lived during a time when dinosaurs were small and insignificant. It was the time of non-dinosaurian reptiles, not dinosaurs, and a major turning point in the Earth's ecology. The vertebrate fauna of the Ischigualasto Formation and the slightly later Los Colorados Formation consisted mainly of a variety of crurotarsal archosaurs and synapsids.[66][67] In the Ischigualasto Formation, dinosaurs constituted only about 6% of the total number of fossils,[68] but by the end of the Triassic Period, dinosaurs were becoming the dominant large land animals, and the other archosaurs and synapsids declined in variety and number.[69]
Studies suggest that the paleoenvironment of the Ischigualasto Formation was a volcanically active floodplain covered by forests and subject to strong seasonal rainfalls. The climate was moist and warm,[70] though subject to seasonal variations.[71] Vegetation consisted of ferns (Cladophlebis), horsetails, and giant conifers (Protojuniperoxylon).[67] These plants formed lowland forests along the banks of rivers.[4] Herrerasaurus remains appear to have been the most common among the carnivores of the Ischigualasto Formation.[19] It lived in the jungles of Late Triassic South America alongside another early dinosaur, the one-meter-long Eoraptor, as well as Saurosuchus,[72] a giant land-living rauisuchian (a quadrupedal meat eater with a theropod-like skull); the broadly similar but smaller Venaticosuchus, an ornithosuchid; and the predatory therapsid chiniquodontids.[19] Herbivores were much more abundant than carnivores and were represented by rhynchosaurs such as Hyperodapedon (a beaked reptile); aetosaurs (spiny armored reptiles); and therapsids, including kannemeyeriid dicynodonts (stocky, front-heavy beaked quadrupedal animals) such as Ischigualastia and traversodontid cynodonts (somewhat similar in overall form to dicynodonts, but lacking beaks) such as Exaeretodon.May 1979 #74-1120
Historical Introduction
Silent weapon technology has evolved from Operations Research (O.R.), a
strategic and tactical methodology developed under the military management
in England during World War II. The original purpose of Operations Research
was to study the strategic and tactical problems of air and land defense
with the objective of effective use of limited military resources against
foreign enemies (i.e. logistics).
It was soon recognized by those in positions of power that the same methods
might be useful for totally controlling a society. But better tools were
necessary.
Social engineering (the analysis and automation of a society) requires the
correlation of great amounts of constantly changing economic information
(data), so a high speed computerized data processing system was necessary
which could race ahead of the society and predict when society would arrive
for capitulation.
Relay computers were too slow, but the electronic computer, invented in 1946
by J. Prosper Eckert and John W. Mauchly filled the bill.
The next breakthrough was the development of the simplex method of linear
programming in 1947 by mathematician George B. Dantzig.
Then in 1948, the transistor, invented by J. Bardeen, W. H. Brattain, and W.
Shockley, promised great expansion of the computer field by reducing space
and power requirements.
With these three inventions under their direction, those in positions of
power strongly suspected that it was possible for them to control the whole
world with the push of a button.
Immediately, the Rockefeller Foundation got in on the ground floor by
making a four year grant to Harvard College, funding the Harvard economic
research project for the study of the structure of the American economy. One
year later, in 1949, the United States Air Force joined in.
Side note "Project Grundge + Sign"
In 1952 the original grant period terminated, and a high level meeting of
the elite was held to determine the next phase of social operations
research. The Harvard project had been very fruitful as is borne out by the
publication of some of its results in 1953 suggesting the feasibility of
economic (social) engineering. (Studies in the Structure of the American
Economy -- copyright 1953 by Weenily Leontief, International Sciences Press
Inc., White Plains, New York.)
Engineered in the last half decade of the 1940's, the now Quiet War machine
stood, so to speak, in sparkling gold plated hardware on the showroom floor
by 1954.
With the creation of the maser in 1954, the promise of unlocking unlimited
sources of fusion atomic energy from the heavy hydrogen in sea water and the
consequent availability of unlimited social power became a possibility only
decades away.
The combination was irresistible.
The Quiet War was quietly declared by the international elite at a meeting
held in 1954.
Although the silent weapons system was nearly exposed 13 years later, the
evolution of the new weapon system has never suffered any major setbacks.
Side note ( Bolsheviks U.S. NFS Policies)
This volume marks the 25th anniversary of the beginning of the Quiet War.
Already this domestic war has had many victories on many fronts throughout
the world.
POLITICAL INTRODUCTION
In 1954 it was well recognized by those in positions of authority that it
was only a matter of time, only a few decades, before the general public
would be able to grasp and upset the cradle of power, for the very elements
of the new silent weapon technology were as accessible for a public utopia
as they were for providing a private utopia.
The issue of primary concern, that of dominance, revolved around the subject
of the energy sciences.
Side note (1954-6 USAEC reports)
ENERGY
Energy is recognized as the key to all activity on earth. Natural science is
the study of the sources and control of natural energy, and social science,
theoretically expressed as economics, is the study of the sources and
control of social energy. Both are bookkeeping systems: mathematics.
Therefore, mathematics is the primary energy science. And the bookkeeper can
be king if the public can be kept ignorant of the methodology of the
bookkeeping.
All science is merely a means to an end. The means is knowledge. The end is
control. Beyond this remains only one issue, "who will be the beneficiary?".
In 1954 this was the issue of primary concern. Although the so-called "moral
issues" were raised, in view of the law of natural selection it was agreed
that a nation or world of people who will not use their intelligence are no
better than animals who do not have intelligence. Such people are beasts of
burden and steaks on the table by choice and consent.
CONSEQUENTLY, in the interest of future world order, peace, and tranquility,
it was decided to privately wage a quiet war against the American public
with an ultimate objective of permanently shifting the natural social energy
(wealth) of the undisciplined and irresponsible many into the
self-disciplined, responsible, and worthy few.
In order to implement this objective, it was necessary to create, secure,
and apply new weapons which, as it turned out, were a class of weapons so
subtle and sophisticated in their principle of operation and public
appearance as to earn for themselves the name "silent weapons".
In conclusion, the only objective of economic research, as conducted by the
magnates of capital (banking) and the industries of commodities (goods) and
services, is the establishment of an economy which is totally predictable
and manipulatable (sic).
In order to achieve a totally predictable economy, the lower class elements
of the society must be brought under total control, i.e., must be
house-broken, trained, and assigned a yoke and long term social duties from
an early age, before they have an opportunity to question the propriety of
the matter. In order to achieve such conformity, the lower class family unit
must be disintegrated by a process of increasing preoccupation of the
parents and the establishment of government operated day care centers for
the occupationally orphaned children.
The quality of education to the lower class must be of the poorest sort, so
that the moat of ignorance isolating the inferior class from the superior
class is and remains incomprehensible to the inferior class. With such an
initial handicap, even bright lower class individuals have little if any
hope of extricating themselves from their assigned lot in life. This form of
slavery is essential to maintaining some measure of social order, peace, and
tranquility for the ruling upper class.
DESCRIPTIVE INTRODUCTION OF THE SILENT WEAPON
Everything that is expected from an ordinary weapon is expected from a
silent weapon by its creators, but only in its manner of functioning.
It shoots situations, instead of bullets; propelled by data processing,
instead of a chemical reaction (explosion); originating from bits of data,
instead of grains of gun powder; from a computer, instead of a gun; operated
by a computer programer (sic), instead of a marksman; under the orders of a
banking magnate, instead of a military general.
It makes no obvious explosive noises, causes no obvious physical or mental
injuries, and does not obviously interfere with anyone's daily social life.
Yet it makes an unmistakable 'noise', causes unmistakable physical and
mental damage, and unmistakably interferes with daily social life, i.e.,
unmistakable to the trained observer, one who knows what to look for.
The public cannot comprehend this weapon, and therefore cannot believe that
they are being attacked and subdued by a weapon. side note (i.e., the food
weapon)
The public might instinctively feel that something is wrong, but because of
the technical nature of the silent weapon, they cannot express their feeling
in a rational way, or handle the problem with intelligence. Therefore, they
do not know how to cry for help, and do not know how to associate with
others to defend themselves against it.
When a silent weapon is applied gradually to the public, the public
adjusts/adapts to its presence and learns to tolerate its encroachment on
their lives until the pressure (psychological via economic) becomes to great
and they crack up.
Therefore, the silent weapon is a type of biological warfare. It attacks the
vitality, options, and mobility of the individuals of society by knowing,
understanding, manipulating, and attacking their sources of natural and
social energy, and their physical, mental, and emotional strengths and
weaknesses.
THEORETICAL INTRODUCTION
"Give me control over a nation's currency, and I care not who makes its
laws." Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1743-1812)
Today's silent weapons technology is an outgrowth of a simple idea
discovered, succinctly expressed, and effectively applied by the quoted
Mayer Amschel Rothschild. Mr. Rothschild discovered the missing component of
economic theory known as economic inductance. He, of course, did not think
of his discovery in these 20th century terms, and, to be sure, mathematical
analysis had to wait for the Second Industrial Revolution, the rise of the
theory of mechanics and electronics, and finally, the invention of the
electronic computer before it could be effectively applied in the control of
the world economy.
GENERAL ENERGY CONCEPTS
In the study of energy systems, there always appear three alimentary
concepts. These are potential energy, kinetic energy, and energy
dissipation. And corresponding to those concepts, there are three idealized,
essentially pure physical counterparts, called passive components.
(1) In the science of physical mechanics, the phenomenon of potential energy
is associated with a physical property called elasticity or stiffness, and
can be represented by a stretched spring.
In electronic science, potential energy is stored in a capacitor instead of
a spring. This property is called capacitance instead of elasticity or
stiffness.
(2) In the science of physical mechanics, the phenomenon of kinetic energy
is associated with a physical property called inertia or mass, and can be
represented by a mass or a flywheel in motion.
In electronic science, kinetic energy is stored in an inductor (magnetic
field) instead of a mass. This property is called inductance instead of
inertia.
(3) In the science of physical mechanics, the phenomenon of energy
dissipation is associated with a physical property called friction or
resistance, and can be represented by a dash pot or other device which
converts system energy into heat.
In electronic science, dissipation of energy is performed by an element
called either a resistor or a conductor, the term'resistor' being the one
generally used to express the concept of friction, and the term 'conductor'
being generally used to describe a more ideal device (i.e. wire) employed to
convey electric energy efficiently from one location to another. The
property of a resistance or conductor is measured as either resistance or
conductance, reciprocals.
In economics these three energy concepts are associated with: (1) Economic
Capacitance -- Capital (money, stock/inventory, investments in buildings and
durables, etc.) (2) Economic Conductance -- Goods ( production flow
coefficients) (3) Economic Inductance -- Services ( the influence of the
population of industry on output)
All of the mathematical theory developed in the study of one energy system,
( e.g., mechanics, electronics, etc.) can be |
es comprising a tornado family. It also found that the tornado began 15 mi (24 km) to the west and ended 1 mi (1.6 km) farther east than previously known, bringing the total path to 235 mi (378 km). The 174 mi (280 km) segment from central Madison County, Missouri to Pike County, Indiana is likely one continuous tornado and the 151 mi (243 km) segment from central Bollinger County, Missouri to western Pike County, Indiana is very likely a single continuous tornado. Another significant tornado was found about 65 mi (105 km) east-northeast of the end of aforementioned segment(s) of the Tri-State Tornado Family and is likely another member of the family. Its path length of 20 mi (32 km) over about 20 minutes makes the known tornado family path length total to 320 mi (510 km) over about 5½ hours.[18] Grazulis in 2001 wrote that the first 60 mi (97 km) of the (originally recognized) track is probably the result of two or more tornadoes and that a path length of 157 mi (253 km) was seemingly continuous.[19]
Longest path and duration tornado family [ edit ]
What at one time was thought to be the record holder for the longest tornado path is now thought to be the longest tornado family, with a track of at least 293 miles (472 km) on May 26, 1917 from the Missouri border across Illinois into Indiana. It caused severe damage and mass casualties in Charleston and Mattoon, Illinois.[1]
What was probably the longest track supercell thunderstorm tracked 790 miles (1,270 km) across 6 states in 17.5 hours on March 12, 2006 as part of the March 2006 tornado outbreak sequence. It began in Noble County, Oklahoma and ended in Jackson County, Michigan, producing many tornadoes in Missouri and Illinois.[20]
Largest path width [ edit ]
Officially, the widest tornado on record is the El Reno, Oklahoma tornado of May 31, 2013 with a width of 2.6 miles (4.2 km) at its peak. This is the width found by the National Weather Service based on preliminary data from University of Oklahoma RaxPol mobile radar that also sampled winds of 296 mph (476 km/h) which was used to upgrade the tornado to EF5.[21] However, it was revealed that these winds did not impact any structures, and as a result the tornado was downgraded to EF3 based on damage.[22] However, another possible contender for the widest tornado as measured by radar was the F4 Mulhall tornado in north-central Oklahoma which occurred during the 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak. The diameter of the maximum winds (over 110 mph (49 m/s)) was over 5,200 feet (1,600 m) as measured by a DOW radar. Although the tornado passed largely over rural terrain, the width of the wind swath capable of producing damage was as wide as 4 mi (6.4 km).[23][24]
The F4 Hallam, Nebraska tornado during the outbreak of May 22, 2004 was the previous official record holder for the widest tornado, surveyed at 2.5 miles (4.0 km) wide. A similar size tornado struck Edmonson, Texas on May 31, 1968, when a damage path width between 2 to 3 miles (3.2 to 4.8 km) was recorded from an F3 tornado.[25]
Highest forward speed [ edit ]
The highest forward speed of a tornado on record was 73 miles per hour (117 km/h) from the 1925 Tri-State Tornado (other weak tornadoes have approached or exceeded this speed, but this is the fastest forward movement observed in a major tornado).[1]
Greatest pressure drop [ edit ]
A pressure deficit of 100 millibars (2.95 inHg) was observed when a violent tornado near Manchester, South Dakota on June 24, 2003 passed directly over an in-situ probe that storm chasing researcher Tim Samaras deployed.[26] In less than a minute, the pressure dropped to 850 millibars (25.10 inHg), which are the greatest pressure decline and the lowest pressure ever recorded at the Earth's surface when adjusted to sea level.[27][28]
On April 21, 2007, a 194-millibar (5.73 inHg) pressure deficit was reported when a tornado struck a storm chasing vehicle in Tulia, Texas.[29] The tornado caused EF2 damage as it passed through Tulia. The reported pressure drop far exceeds that which would be expected based on theoretical calculations.[30]
There is a questionable and unofficial citizen's barometer measurement of a 192-millibar (5.67 inHg) drop around Minneapolis in 1904.[31]
Early tornadoes [ edit ]
Earliest-known tornado in Europe [ edit ]
The earliest recorded tornado in Europe struck Freising (Germany) in 788. [32] [33]
The earliest-known Irish tornado appeared on April 30, 1054 in Rostella, near Kilbeggan. The earliest-known British tornado hit central London on October 23, 1091 and was especially destructive.[34]
Earliest-known tornado in the Americas [ edit ]
An apparent tornado is recorded to have struck Tlatelolco (present day Mexico City), on August 21, 1521, two days before the Aztec capital's fall to Cortés. Many other tornadoes are documented historically within the Basin of Mexico.[35]
First confirmed tornado and first tornado fatality in present-day United States [ edit ]
Exceptional tornado droughts [ edit ]
Longest span without a tornado rated F5 or EF5 in the US [ edit ]
Before the Greensburg EF5 tornado on May 4, 2007, it had been 8 years and one day since the US had a confirmed F5 or EF5 tornado. The last confirmed F5 or EF5 had hit southern Oklahoma City metro area and surrounding communities during the May 3, 1999 event. This is the longest interval without an F5 or EF5 tornado since official records began in 1950.
Years without tornado rated violent in US [ edit ]
2018 is the first year since official records began in 1950 that no tornado in the US was rated violent class (EF4/EF5, or, previously, F4/F5).[39]
Exceptional survivors [ edit ]
Longest distance carried by a tornado [ edit ]
Matt Suter of Fordland, Missouri holds the record for the longest-known distance traveled by anyone picked up by a tornado and survive. On March 12, 2006 he was carried 1,307 feet (398 m), 13 feet (4.0 m) shy of one-quarter mile (400 m), according to National Weather Service measurements.[40][41]
Exceptional coincidences [ edit ]
Codell, Kansas [ edit ]
The small town of Codell, Kansas, was hit by a tornado on the same date (May 20) three consecutive years: 1916, 1917, and 1918.[42][43] The United States has about 100,000 thunderstorms per year; less than 1% produce a tornado. The odds of this coincidence occurring again are extremely small.
Tanner/Harvest, Alabama [ edit ]
Tanner, a small town in northern Alabama, was hit by an F5 tornado on April 3, 1974 and was struck again 45 minutes later by a second F5 (however, the rating is disputed and it may have been high-end F4), demolishing what remained of the town. Thirty-seven years later, on April 27, 2011 (the largest and deadliest outbreak since 1974), Tanner was hit yet again by the EF5 2011 Hackleburg–Phil Campbell tornado, which produced high-end EF4 damage in the southern portion of town. The suburban community of Harvest, Alabama, just to the northeast, also sustained major impacts from all three Tanner tornadoes, and was also hit by destructive tornadoes in 1995 and 2012.
Moore, Oklahoma [ edit ]
The south Oklahoma City suburb of Moore, Oklahoma was hit by strong to violent tornadoes in 1973, 1998, 1999, 2003, 2010, 2013, and 2015, five of which were of F4/EF4 strength or greater. The 1999 and 2013 events were rated F5 and EF5, respectively. In total, about 23 tornadoes have struck within the immediate vicinity of Moore since 1890, the most recent of which was an EF2 on March 25, 2015.[44]
Jackson, Tennessee [ edit ]
The city of Jackson, Tennessee has been hit by an F4/EF4 tornado three separate times, in 1999, 2003, and 2008. All three of these tornadoes occurred after dark and were preceded or followed by a separate F3/EF3 tornado that caused additional destruction in the Jackson area.
Grand Island, Nebraska [ edit ]
The Grand Island, Nebraska area was hit by seven tornadoes in 4 hours.
See also [ edit ]As we all know, Limbaugh had drawn the fire of the Democratic Party and the liberal blogosphere when he said that he hoped President Obama would fail almost as soon as the....
He embarrassed himself further by saying that the GOP needed to go into rehab, baby, and work those 12 steps of recovery. But that didn't come close to the colossal blunder he made by attacking Rush Limbaugh on CNN.
Perhaps most significantly in the long run, Steele has had several bad stories emerge regarding his 2006 Maryland Senate campaign financial operations. In early February, this Washington Post investigative report disclosed that the finance director of Steele's failed 2006 Senate bid has told federal prosecutors that the campaign had funneled cash to a company run by Steele's sister. Steele strongly denied wrongdoing.
In less time than it takes to grow a 5 o’clock shadow, Steele was quickly implicated in a possible 2006 election scandal involving cash being paid to his sister's defunct company, which never performed any services. Nate Silver writes :
I don’t think that’s what the RNC had in mind when he was selected to head the national committee, but it was just a signal of what was to come.
You have absolutely no reason -- none -- to trust our word or our actions at this point.
That's what conservatives need. Just a dash of pop culture and rap to liven it up. Now, telling a national audience that government doesn't create jobs wasn't exactly a confidence-builder, but then he also said that the Republican Party just can't be trusted these days, bada bing! :
Newly-elected Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele plans an "off the hook" public relations offensive to attract younger voters, especially blacks and Hispanics, by applying the party's principles to "urban-suburban hip-hop settings."
That seemed like a wise move, because as soon as Steele took over the RNC after a long, drawn-out election process that took six ballots, he immediately promised to go "off the hook," baby, and bring a little more "hip hop" to the GOP.
This past week, Michael Steele took a break from speaking to the media by sending himself to the basement to focus on filling some vacant positions and begin the Herculean task of rebuilding the Republican Party (or was that the Augean Stables?).
From time to time here on The Ticket, we're inviting guest bloggers to share their views and our space with loyal Ticket readers. Today's guest is John Amato, who invented, writes and has driven Crooks and Liars to become in less than five years what Time magazine calls one of the world's top 25 blogs. We're delighted he agreed to visit today. Here's John:
...44th president had been sworn in. When Steele was asked to comment on Limbaugh’s inapt hatefulness, he said this on the now-defunct D.L. Hughley show:
STEELE: So let’s put it into context here. Let’s put it into context here. Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. Rush Limbaugh, his whole thing is entertainment. Yes, it’s incendiary. Yes, it’s ugly.
That was an accurate statement, but Rush Limbaugh immediately retaliated and, in less than two shakes, Michael Steele apologized to Limbaugh for the chairman's own words.
"My intent was not to go after Rush -– I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh,” Steele said in a telephone interview. “I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. … There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership. "I went back at that tape and I realized words that I said weren’t what I was thinking,” Steele said. "It was one of those things where I thinking I was saying one thing, and it came out differently. What I was trying to say was a lot of people … want to make Rush the scapegoat, the bogeyman, and he’s not. "I wasn’t trying to slam him or anything.”
Steele is the head of the RNC and as close to an official chief political figurehead as the GOP has right now. Apologizing to Limbaugh made him look weak and ineffectual, but it also angered many in the base because he fed right into the Limbaugh controversy that had been boiling over.
Insiders have said they are also afraid that donations from Limbaugh listeners could go down because of his actions.
The incident, said another prominent RNC member, would cost the party a significant amount of money from small-dollar contributors who listen to Limbaugh’s show. The RNC has counted on money from Limbaugh’s fans for decades. Republican strategists fret that fundraising will slow significantly under Steele.
That’s not the type of thing a leader does. Michael Steele has never won so much as an election on his own before, and it shows. After he was defeated in his bid to become a senator in 2006, he found a home as a talking head pundit on Fox News. That is a huge problem for him, because saying outrageous and incendiary things is part of the job at Fox, and frankly, that's what Limbaugh gets paid to do.
It seems that Steele doesn't understand he's not talking to only right-wing ideologue viewers on cable TV anymore, but he's representing the future of the entire Republican Party to America. And in this capacity he is failing miserably.
RNC members are calling for him to resign already, and that's never a good sign. The latest word on the street is that if he fails to deliver in the upcoming special election for the NY-20, a Republican district, he will be ousted, but Jim Tedisco has a solid lead in the polls.
According to multiple former high-level RNC staffers familiar with the dynamics involved, Steele is unlikely to survive in the post if favored Republican Jim Tedisco loses his open-seat race to Democrat Scott Murphy. The special election, scheduled for March 31, is to fill a vacancy left when Kirsten Gillibrand took Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat. If Tedisco loses, the ex-staffers said, “Steele is done.” Completely, definitively?
In all likelihood, NY-20 will turn Republican no matter who had won the RNC job, but that won't give Steele a reprieve for very long. The GOP has suffered serious blows to the credibility of two of the most prominent conservative leaders who would challenge for the presidency in 2012.
Sarah Palin has turned into a major disaster for their party except to the fringes, and Gov. Bobby Jindal's reputation took a serious hit after he gave a zombie-like performance in his response speech to President Obama's national talk to the nation about the state of the economy.
So what's a Steele to do? Take a quick trip to the basement, I guess. But while he's been there, it looks like there will be more sparks flying his way after an GQ interview was just published in which his views on abortion were somewhat astray from strict conservative dogma.
Less than 24 hours after beating back rumors of a no-confidence vote in his leadership, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele is on defense again over an interview he gave with GQ's Lisa DePaulo. The piece, which hit last night, features Steele giving something less than an unequivocal endorsement of the pro-life stance that is at the center of what it means to be a Republican for many of the people who elected the former Maryland lieutenant governor as chairman in January.
He hasn't faced the media or his own peeps yet over this interview, and that will likely upset the already very nervous RNCers who want him out already. Others in the media don't believe that Steele will be replaced just yet, but I'm not too sure of that myself.
Either way, it will be very interesting to see how Michael Steele performs after he comes out of the basement and faces the music again.
Breakdancing anyone?
-- John Amato
To read John's Crooks and Liars blog, go here.
Register over here for Twitter alerts on each new Ticket item.Russell Street Report Filmstudy OL Continues to Shuffle & Falter
This game looked a lot worse in person than it did when I scored it.
The Redskins got solid pressure with an economy of rushers, but it wasn’t as overwhelming as it seemed at the game.
So how was it that Joe Flacco threw for 112 yards less (see below) than expectation for his opportunity set? I think there were several contributing factors:
– The skill position players had a lousy day of pass catching. Breshad Perriman did a poor job of tracking Flacco’s bomb down the right sidelines (Q2, 9:19), but he also failed to fully extend. That alone explains more than 40% of the missing yards.
– There was little YAC. That should be self-evident by the fact Flacco dropped back 49 times, but did not complete a pass for more than 15 yards.
– The Redskins corners, in particular, did a good job minimizing opportunities on the outside.
– The injury to Steve Smith took away one of Flacco’s best receiving options on a day where Chris Moore was inactive.
– The Ravens lined up for 12 plays with 1 WR, 3 TEs, and 1 RB. That’s a combination the Ravens have not used frequently. It isn’t explosive and might have been run to cover weakness at tackle. The Ravens ran 7 times for 29, passed 4 times for 12, and had an illegal formation penalty.
– The ATS standard I use broadly categorizes opportunities into 2 groups based on a 3-second standard and room to step into the throw. However, the 4th second of protection (between the 3 second ATS requirement and 4 seconds) is exponentially more valuable than the 3rd. I don’t believe Joe had that 4th second very often versus the Redskins, but when he did (ex: Q1, 0:32), he didn’t make it count.
– The offense is still run primarily from the shotgun, which severely limits the effectiveness of play action.
Here are Joe’s results against the Redskins by ATS:
Summarizing his results relative to expectation:
Summarizing the Redskins pass rush by numbers and ATS:
Offensive Line Scoring
The Ravens ran 68 scored snaps versus the Redskins (excludes penalties).
Lewis: Alex returned to the starting lineup at LT after playing effectively at LG for the first 3 weeks. He didn’t play well, including portions of 8 pressure events. In racing form:
–(Q1, 11:37): Smith swims by inside for pressure
–(Q1, 10:55): Bulled by Kerrigan for pressure
–(Q1, 7:10): Bulled by Smith who then tips pass
–(Q2, 9:12): Bulled by Smith to compress pocket on sack charged 2/3 to Urschel
–(Q2, 8:31): Bulled by Smith for pressure shared with Wagner
–(Q4, 1:55): Bulled by Smith for pressure
–(Q4, 1:37): Shed by Smith for pressure
–(Q4, 0:20): Bulled and shed by Smith for QH
He had 4 blocks in level 2, including a nice combination on Hood then Foster to help lead West’s 35-yard run.
Scoring: 68 plays, 57 blocks, 3 missed, 5.5 pressures, 1 QH, 1/3 sack, 41 points (.60 per play). With adjustment for quality of competition, that’s a D. It’s just 1 game, but he didn’t play any better versus the Redskins than Hurst did versus the Raiders. If Wagner is out for an extended period, I expect Alex will get more time at tackle (left or right). His upside is clearly higher than Hurst’s, but this wasn’t an ideal first step.
Urschel: John had a poor outing at guard in his first start of the season that included parts of 2 sacks. On the first, he was beaten outside by a swim move from Ziggy Hood (Q2, 9:12) on which he got 2/3 of the charge. He later was part of a sack I split 3 ways when he and Zuttah were giving ground, but in the process of a stunt handoff (Q3, 10:09). Garvin hit Urschel, causing him to trip over Juszczyk and Zuttah could not hold up Murphy as Flacco went down for a loss of 8. Urschel pulled twice and on each occasion, he failed to find a block that contributed to a loss of 1 yard. He made 2 blocks in level 2, both of which were highlight combination blocks.
Scoring: 68 plays, 60 blocks, 2 missed, 1 (2 X 1/2) penetration, 1.5 pressures, 1 (2/3 + 1/3) sack, 52 points (.72 per play). That’s a D after adjustment for opponent quality.
Zuttah: Jeremy played his best game of the season, which included a first half with no negative events. I charged him with 1/3 of the sack described above under Urschel (Q3, 10:09). He also allowed 2 partial pressures, but he avoided the variety of problems which had been causing an unacceptable level of missed blocks (he had only 3). He had 2 blocks in level 2, 2 pancakes, and had 2 highlight blocks. The best of those was a pancaking of Ioannidis on West’s 27-yard run (Q3, 0:14)
Scoring: 68 plays, 62 blocks, 3 missed, 1 (2 X ½) pressure, 1/3 sack, 58 points (.85 per play). Including adjustment for quality of competition, that’s a B at center.
Yanda: Whatever the Ravens ask Marshal Yanda to do, he has delivered for them. He was his all-pro self in the first half with just 1 pressure and no other misses. In the 2nd half, he replaced Rick Wagner at RT and had just 1 miss in 31 blocks. He had just 1 highlight and no blocks in level 2, but Ravens fans will take this performance every week.
Scoring: 68 plays, 66 blocks, 1 missed, 1 pressure, 64 points (.94 per play). He scored an A prior to adjustment at each position.
Wagner: Rick had a dreadful game that came to an early close with the half-ending sack allowed to Kerrigan. The fact the Ravens ran that play is worthy of a game management discussion of its own, but I’ll just say I think they had a far better chance to return the FG attempt with a man deep, be that Hester or Tavon Young. Here are Wagner’s first-half, racing form notes:
–(Q1, 6:27): Beaten outside by Baker for shared penetration on Dixon RM-1
–(Q2, 8:31): Bulled by Kerrigan for pressure shared with Lewis
–(Q2, 5:54): Bulled by Kerrigan for pressure
–(Q2, 0:58): Beaten outside by Murphy for QH
–(Q2, 0:01): Beaten inside by Kerigan for sack, injured
He pancaked Murphy on West’s run right (Q1, 3:32), but the play went for no gain.
Scoring: 37 plays, 30 blocks, 2 missed, ½ penetration, 1.5 pressures, 1 QH, 1 sack, 17 points (.46 per play). That’s still an F after adjustment.
Jensen: Ryan played well at RG in the second half when Yanda was moved to RT. He was beaten outside by Baker for a QH (Q4, 2:33). He was previously beaten outside by Baker for a shared pressure (Q4, 13:50). On that play, it appeared Jensen might have pushed Baker by the pocket, but Flacco was unable to step up as Hood bulled Zuttah. Ryan had 2 highlight blocks, which included a pancake of Compton in level 2 on West’s 27-yard run (Q3, 0:14).
Scoring: 31 plays, 29 blocks, 0 missed, 1/2 pressure, 1 QH, 25 points (.81 per play). B.
If you’re interested in seeing scoring trends for the players this season, these charts will be updated weekly.
At this writing (10/12), the Ravens have not yet made a move to pick up a tackle. Street depth is rapidly thinning, particularly with this week’s signing of Jake Long by the Vikings. The Ravens did, however, sign interior lineman Vlad Ducasse, who spent the preseason with the team. That gives them a more normal total of 9 linemen, including 2 tackles out during the 2nd half last week. That tells me the Ravens either expect Stanley and/or Wagner will return this week, or they are comfortable with Yanda at RT for another week.
So what now for the offense?
Marty Mornhinweg inherits the OC role with a number of handicaps. The OL is in a state of flux and challenged both at tackle and on the inside. The best possession receiver may be out with an ankle injury.
His first job needs to be a rebuilding of the Ravens play-action passing game. That’s a complex task requiring:
– Joe to move back under center for a higher percentage of plays
– Continued effective run blocking to maintain the run as a credible threat
– The interior line to hold up effectively to the increased A-gap pressure other teams will use when Flacco is at the line of scrimmage
– Fakes that are good enough to freeze linebackers and fool edge rushers (I’m least concerned about this one)
– Timing to turn those opportunities into in-stride completions with potential for YAC
It’s a tall order indeed.The South Carolina Gamecocks will host the Florida Gators in a noon kickoff on Saturday, November 14, the SEC announced today. The final SEC game of the season for the Gamecocks will be televised nationally on either ESPN or ESPN2.
Florida leads the all-time series, 24-8-3 including a 10-6-1 advantage in Columbia, but the Gamecocks have won the last two and four of the last five contests between the two SEC Eastern Division rivals. The Gamecocks won in The Swamp last season by a 23-20 count in overtime. The Gamecocks were 19-14 winners in 2013 in the last meeting between the two schools at Williams-Brice Stadium.
Here are the SEC matchups for November 14:
North Texas at Tennessee Noon ET SEC Network
Georgia at Auburn Noon ET CBS
Florida at South Carolina Noon ET ESPN or ESPN2
Arkansas at LSU OR Alabama at Mississippi State 3:30 pm ET CBS
Kentucky at Vanderbilt 4:00 pm ET SEC Network
Western Carolina at Texas A&M 7:00 pm ET ESPNU
Arkansas at LSU OR Alabama at Mississippi State 7:15 pm ET ESPN or ESPN2
BYU vs. Missouri (in Kansas City) 7:30 pm ET SEC NetworkJackie Chan has a long and historic career in films, and he’s as passionate about panda conservation as he was about his death-defying stunt work during his heyday.
“I’m the ambassador of [the] panda,” Chan explained, showing off the two stuffed pandas he was toting on the Oscars red carpet Sunday night. After earthquake, they get hurt and I raise them. I have two pandas in China, my own. They go wherever I go. They meet all the famous people.”
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Chan wasn’t kidding: In May 2009, he visited the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, a year after a devastating earthquake ravaged the Sichuan region. Chan claimed the first time he’d actually seen a panda up close was in a Berlin zoo in 1999, and he said that looking at the animal made him forget about all his worries.
Moved by the animals’ plight after the earthquake, Chan donated nearly $150,000 to the facility and became the “adoptive parent” of two panda cubs born shortly after the earthquake. He named them “Cheng Cheng” and “Long Long,” after his Chinese name, Cheng Long. His stuffed pandas, meanwhile, are named Chan La and Chan Zy.
Chan was named the Chengdu base’s “Panda Ambassador” after his donation and adoption of the pandas, and he proceeded to start taking La & Zy all over the world with him, beginning in 2010 while he was promoting The Karate Kid. He apparently has plans to auction them for charity — that is, if he can ever bear to part with them.President Trump accused the media of “trying to take away our history and our heritage” at a campaign-style rally Tuesday night.
Trump repeatedly attacked the media during his speech, also accusing news outlets of “turning the cameras off” at the rally and cutting off coverage of the event. However, no major news outlets appeared to actually stop their livestreams or video coverage of Trump's speech.
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“For the most part honestly, these are really, really dishonest people, they’re bad people,” Trump said of the media at the rally in Phoenix. “I really think they don’t like our country, I really believe that.”
Trump railed against the news media during his speech, which addressed immigration issues, the border wall and violence in Charlottesville, Va., earlier this month.
He also defended his response to violence in the small college town, but failed to include or defend comments that said there was blame on "many sides" for the violence. Instead, Trump blamed news outlets for poorly covering his statements on Charlottesville.
Trump last week doubled down, saying that his first response was “excellent” and that liberal counterprotesters — whom he dubbed the “alt-left” — were just as much to blame as white supremacists for the violence.
“What about the alt-left that came charging at the — as you say, the alt-right?” Trump asked. “Do they have any semblance of guilt? What about the fact they came charging with clubs in their hands, swinging clubs? Do they have any problem? I think they do. As far as I am concerned, that was a horrible, horrible day.”Watch Fred Thompson's speech from the Republican convention.
Read the speech.
----
Tonight our thoughts are still with our friends and fellow citizens in the Gulf Coast area, and our thanks go to those who have worked so hard to keep them safe. There can be no more important work than this.
But what we are doing at this convention is also important to our country.
We are going to nominate the next President and Vice President of the United States of America.
We do so while taking a different view of our country than that of the other party.
Listening to them you'd think that we were in the middle of a great depression; that we are down, disrespected and incapable of prevailing against challenges facing us.
We know that we have challenges... always have, always will.
But we also know that we live in the freest, strongest, most generous and prosperous nation in the history of the world and we are thankful.
Speaking of the vice presidential nominee, what a breath of fresh air Governor Sarah Palin is.
She is from a small town, with small town values, but that's not good enough for those folks who are attacking her and her family.
Some Washington pundits and media big shots are in a frenzy over the selection of a woman who has actually governed rather than just talked a good game on the Sunday talk shows and hit the Washington cocktail circuit. Well, give me a tough Alaskan Governor who has taken on the political establishment in the largest state in the Union -- and won -- over the beltway business-as-usual crowd any day of the week.
Let's be clear... the selection of Governor Palin has the other side and their friends in the media in a state of panic. She is a courageous, successful, reformer, who is not afraid to take on the establishment.
Sound like anyone else we know?
She has run a municipality and she has run a state.
And I can say without fear of contradiction that she is the only nominee in the history of either party
who knows how to properly field dress a moose... with the possible exception of Teddy Roosevelt.
She and John McCain are not going to care how much the alligators get irritated when they get to Washington, they're going to drain that swamp.
But tonight, I'd like to talk to you about the remarkable story of John McCain.
It's a story about character.
John McCain's character has been tested like no other presidential candidate in the history of this nation.
He comes from a military family whose service to our country goes back to the Revolutionary War.
The tradition continues.
As I speak, John and Cindy McCain have one son who's just finished his first tour in Iraq.
Another son is putting "Country First" and is attending the Naval Academy. We have a number of McCains in the audience tonight.
Also here tonight is John's 96-year-old mother, Roberta. All I've got to say is that if Roberta McCain had been the McCain captured by the North Vietnamese, they would have surrendered.
Now, John's father was a bit of a rebel, too.
In his first two semesters at the Naval Academy, he managed to earn 333 demerits.
Unfortunately, John later saw that as a record to be beaten.
A rebellious mother and a rebellious father - I guess you can see where this is going.
In high school and the Naval Academy, he earned a reputation as a troublemaker.
But as John points out, he wasn't just a troublemaker. He was the leader of the troublemakers.
Although loaded with demerits like his father, John was principled even in rebellion.
He never violated the honor code.
However, in flight school in Pensacola, he did drive a Corvette and date a girl who worked in a bar as an exotic dancer under the name of Marie, the Flame of Florida.
And the reason I'm telling you these things, is that, apparently, this mixture of rebellion and honor helped John McCain survive the next chapter of his life:
John McCain was preparing to take off from the USS Forrestal for his sixth mission over Vietnam, when a missile from another plane accidentally fired and hit his plane.
The flight deck burst into a fireball of jet fuel.
John's flight suit caught fire.
He was hit by shrapnel.
It was a scene of horrible human devastation.
Men sacrificed their lives to save others that day. One kid, who John couldn't identify because he was burned beyond recognition, called out to John to ask if a certain pilot was OK.
John replied that, yes, he was.
The young sailor said, "Thank God"... and then he died.
These are the kind of men John McCain served with.
These are the men and women John McCain knows and understands and loves.
If you want to know who John McCain is, if you want to know what John McCain values, look to the men and women who wear America's uniform today.
The fire on the Forrestal burned for two days.
20 planes were destroyed.
134 sailors died.
John himself barely dodged death in the inferno and could've returned to the States with his ship.
Instead, he volunteered for combat on another carrier that was undermanned from losing so many pilots.
Stepping up.
Putting his "Country First."
Three months later John McCain was a Prisoner of War.
On October 26, 1967, on his 23rd mission over North Vietnam, a surface-to-air missile slammed into John's A-4 Skyhawk jet, blowing it out of the sky.
When John ejected, part of the plane hit him -- breaking his right knee, his left arm, his right arm in three places.
An angry mob got to him.
A rifle butt broke his shoulder.
A bayonet pierced his ankle and his groin.
They took him to the Hanoi Hilton, where he lapsed in and out of consciousness for days. He was
offered medical care for his injuries if he would give up military information in return.
John McCain said "No".
After days of neglect, covered in grime, lying in his own waste in a filthy room, a doctor attempted to set John's right arm without success... and without anesthesia.
His other broken bones and injuries were not treated. John developed a high fever, dysentery. He weighed barely a hundred pounds.
Expecting him to die, his captors placed him in a cell with two other POWs who also expected him to die.
But with their help, John McCain fought on.
He persevered.
So then they put him in solitary confinement...for over two years.
Isolation... incredible heat beating on a tin roof. A light bulb in his cell burning 24 hours a day.
Boarded-up cell windows blocking any breath of fresh air.
The oppressive heat causing boils the size of baseballs under his arms.
The outside world limited to what he could see through a crack in a door.
We hear a lot of talk about hope.
John McCain knows about hope. That's all he had to survive on. For propaganda purposes, his captors offered to let him go home.
John McCain refused.
He refused to leave ahead of men who'd been there longer.
He refused to abandon his conscience and his honor, even for his freedom.
He refused, even though his captors warned him, "It will be very bad for you."
They were right.
It was.
The guards |
on the other hand was the well-off daughter of a prominent New England family who enjoyed summers on Martha's Vineyard, meaning that it was Weinstein who appeared to be marrying above his rank.
And for the next two decades, as the money started pouring in and the A-list stars piled on, Eve stood quietly by her husband's side while giving birth to their three daughters.
The couple's union came crashing down in 2004 however, and they soon went on their separate ways after agreeing to the terms of their divorce.
In Weinstein's case that was into the arms of the two-decades younger British-born designer Georgina Chapman, with whom he now has a daughter India, 7, and 4-year-old son Dashell.
In the case of Eve it was to towards a more peaceful existence in the suburbs, where she remarried Sal Martirano.
The couple quickly combined their families as well, with Eve's new husband having two sons from his previous relationship that were roughly the same age as her daughters.
Friends in high places: The couple had three daughters over the course of their 17-year marriage: Lilly (22), Emma (19) and Ruth (14)
Fresh start: Eve is now remarried to remarried Sal Martirano (above) and lives with her three daughters and his two sons in the suburbs of New York
Photos of the pair on Facebook show the mother-of-three beaming alongside her new beau.
That was not always the case during her time with Weinstein, with Eve usually seen trailing him on a red carpet or sitting silently beside her husband as he shook hands and schmoozed whenever he got the chance at events and openings.
And Eve was no fan of small talk or public spectacle, according to those who interviewed her husband.
Among the many major profiles of Weinstein that ran over the years in publications such as Vanity Fair, New York, the New Yorker and The New York Times there was little to no mention of Eve and never a single comment from the wife of America's most infamously temperamental film executive.
That was because Eve, unlike her husband, did not care to be a public person or offer up any private information about her family.
This approach was likely the result of her upbringing and her family's ties to some of this nation's most esteemed forefathers.
Her mother Maude was a descendant of Edmund Randolph, the first Attorney General of the United States, and her great-grandfather founded the nation's first global law firm, Hunton and Williams.
Eve's father Tom meanwhile was an investment adviser who worked with clients in the Boston area as well as on Nantucket and the Vineyard.
The family also belonged to a number of prestigious clubs, most notably The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Bed with a view: The two kept the details of their divorce settlement under wraps, but it was revealed that Eve gained possession of their 5,500 square-foot apartment at 88 Central Park West
Stairway to heaven: She eventually sold off the 5-bedroom, 6 ½ bath apartment for $23 million
That is the all-but-impossible-to-join establishment that after three years of deliberating finally approved New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and his supermodel wife Gisele for membership this past summer.
Eve headed to New York after college, and former Miramax employee Mark Lispky speaks about the relationship that blossomed between her and Weinstein as soon as she began working at the company in Peter Biskind's 2004 book Down and Dirty Pictures.
'It seemed like not even a day [passed] before he was all over her,' said Lipsky, who was head of distribution at the time.
'For possibly a couple weeks or so there were a dozen roses on her desk when we walked in to work, to the point where we had to confront him and say: "You can't do this, it's an office not your personal, sexual playground.'
The pair were enamored however according to their fellow employees, who began calling the pair 'Beauty and the Beast.'
They married in 1987, and Eve and her sister Maude soon became crucial test audience members for Weinstein, who managed to earn the ire of the women when he made them sit through 'Reservoir Dogs.'
Eve is depicted as loving and devoted and selfless by all those who speak of her in the book, whether she was trying to get her husband to see a trainer, remodeling his office or avoiding the gossip and petty disputes her husband always found himself involved in.
Weinstein and Eve welcomed their first daughter Lily in 1995, followed by Emma in 1998 and in 2002 had Ruth.
After Eve, Weinstein (right) married the two-decades younger British-born designer Chapman (left)
Many of the sexual harassment incidents that were revealed in The New York Times expose occurred during these pregnancies or just after one of the three births.
Weinsten was also quarantined for two months at the turn of the century after coming down with a bacterial infection while on vacation in St Bart's, never offering up more of an explanation at the insistence of Eve according to a 2002 New Yorker profile written by Ken Auletta.
In 2004 the divorce was finalized, but the two still attended events together as though they were a couple, showing up in November of that year for the 32nd Annual Promise Ball in New York City.
The two kept the details of their divorce settlement under wraps, but it was revealed that Eve gained possession of their 5,500 square-foot apartment at 88 Central Park West.
She eventually sold off the 5-bedroom, 6 ½ bath apartment for $23 million, before movie to Rye and marrying Martirano.Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Advertisement
Australia has declared nearly 40 miles (60km) of beaches along its east coast as a disaster zone, following a massive oil and chemical spill.
More than 30 tonnes of oil are thought to have leaked from a Hong-Kong registered cargo ship, when it shed its load in stormy weather early Wednesday.
Queensland state officials say beaches along the Sunshine Coast, and Moreton and Bribie Islands are worst hit.
An investigation is under way into the state's worst oil spill in decades.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd pledged full government support for the clean-up effort, which could run into millions of dollars.
Queensland state Premier Anna Bligh said the ship's operators would be liable for the costs.
"We are investigating the entire incident and if there is any basis for a prosecution, we will not hesitate to take that action - the total cost of the clean-up will rest with this company."
The ship's owner, Swire Shipping, may face fines of up to A$1.5m ($977,000; £703,000) if found guilty of environmental breaches, as well as clean-up costs of A$100,000 a day.
Experts fear the toxic chemicals will suffocate fish and kill natural habitats
Maritime officials said 31 containers of ammonium nitrate fertiliser fell from the deck in huge swells, puncturing the Pacific Adventurer's hull and releasing the oil.
The ship was en route from a port south of Queensland's state capital, Brisbane, to Indonesia.
Environmental experts fear the nutrient-rich fertiliser could cause damaging algal blooms, suffocate fish and kill natural habitats.
Moreton and Bribie Islands are national parks - home to a range of sea birds and creatures, including turtles, dolphins and pelicans.
The Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) said it had begun removing the oil from the beaches and was treating oil-affected wildlife.
Radar-equipped aircraft are searching for the missing containers of fertiliser - which can be used to make explosives.Google's big October 4 announcement was a long time coming, with many people hotly anticipating new hardware since before the Google I/O conference. When the event finally arrived there was a boatload of stuff unveiled, and of course the stars of the show were Google's two brand new Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones - replacing the Nexus line-up.
However, another gem was something we'd seen talked about for some time, again, back at Google I/O the firm outlined its Android software plans for Project Daydream; a VR initiative which would see OEM partners making hardware to a certain spec. A few days ahead of October 4 there was a sudden, last minute rumour that some Daydream hardware would be announced and sure enough we were indeed treated to the Google Daydream View.
One of the main issues with Daydream View right now is lack of support. As it stands you only have a few options for Daydream-ready handsets, which are as follows: Google Pixel phones, Moto Z and the ZTE Axon 7.
Beyond this, other stumbling blocks with VR include a lack of clarity when wearing the headset. One big trend that will go a long way to improving this is 2017 is the rise of handsets with 4K displays.
Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8 and, potentially the Galaxy S8, or a model variant, are tipped to be one of the first handsets to pack in 4K AMOLED panels.
Sony, of course, has already done this. Though the handset itself was nothing to write home about. When Samsung brings its new handsets to market you can bet what we see will be very impressive with due consideration given to the affect of 4K visuals on power management.
Bringing 4K displays to market isn’t just a case of outfitting handsets with 4K panels. The entire phone needs to be optimised for the increased workloads associated with running 4K displays. This will likely mean thicker phones, larger batteries and more efficient chipsets.
The one thing nobody wants is 4K resolution and poor battery life. There has to be a happy medium, as users will not tolerate a considerable drop on battery performance for the sake of 4K visuals for improved VR experiences.
Below we'll go into more detail about the Daydream View, but just to keep things up-to-date, Google has revealed on November 1 that the headset will be available from November 10 for the previously stated price of $79 (£69 in the UK).
You can pick up the headset from the Google Play online store and pre-orders have now gone live. US customers can also buy via BestBuy and Verizon, while in the UK Carphone Warehouse and EE will also stock the VR kit. Although Google revealed he headset in a selection of colours, intially only the grey Slate options will be available, with other colours being introduced later.
Here's Where You Can Now Buy Google DayDream View:
As mentioned, we'd heard of Google Daydream before, the big G unveiled a few details of its plans for the VR space at Google I/O in Spring 2016; the main gist of it was a VR project for Android devices, complete with a set of minimum specs for Android smartphone OEMs to follow in order to produce compatible hardware.
Now though, with the official announcement of the Daydream View, we've got a clearer idea of how things fit together.
You may recall Google Cardboard; when Google released a downloadable template for printable cardboard goggles which would house a selection of smartphones for use with VR applications. Well, Daydream View appears to be an evolution of that, in the sense that it's inteneded as a VR device for the masses.
I mean, to put that in some kind of perspective, let's look at things as they stand for a moment. Devices such as HTC's Vive and the Oculus Rift have proven popular with the PC and console gaming scene, this does tend to be the territory of enthusiasts and early adopters - such devices have thus far required expensive, high-spec computers and a pretty extensive living room setup with all manner of components and accessories.
Not to mention a lot of fettling and calibration on the part of the user to get it working just right, and a lot of experimental, early-access, and somewhat janky VR software and games. In short, commercial VR to date has not been a particularly polished or accessible thing.
With Google's Daydream project the firm has already established a bespoke storefront for applications and games, so naturally it wants to get more people using that content. The Daydream View is similar to Google cardboard in being a simpler device that houses your smartphone to do the legwork (eyework?), but it's a more polished, permanent offering than the old cardboard cut-out.
The Daydream View is made from sythetic technical fabrics - the kind of stuff used in sports wear. This tackles a number of obstacles many users find with the aforementioned gaming VR headsets like the HTC Vive.
First, it's cheaper, costing only $79 for the headset. Of course you need a compatible phone, such as the Pixel, but this is expected to be more common in the Android space going forward and, on top of that, even the cost of most flagships plus the Daydream View is still going to be cheaper than an HTC Vive or Oculus Rift plus a capable enough gaming PC.
Second, it makes the headset very lightweight, with many users of Vive and Oculus headsets saying that extended play sessions are tiresome (not to mention sweaty). It's small, light, and portable, and not wired up to your PC like the Vive needs to be.
Lastly, the use of fabrics in construction means there's a flexibility to it you don't get with hard plastics - people who've sampled the Daydream View have talked about how easy it is to slip on over spectacles and it will adapt easily to fit most head sizes.
Inside there's a set of stereoscopic lenses for viewing your smartphone's display. The front of the Daydream View pops open to allow you to insert a smartphone into this space, and also neatly holds a wireless motion-sensor remote - this allows you to interact with what you're seeing on-screen and generally control the device. It is much more simple than something like the HTC Vive's dual controllers and functions similarly to a Wii controller, but the trade-off is something that is again accessible and easy-to-use for more users, as well as being compact, neat and portable.
It's still very early days, but with the Daydream View it does seem that Google is attempting to do with VR what it does best - make it simple, easy, and attractive to a wider range of people than just tech enthusiasts. And you know what? It might just work.
Google Reveals Full Extent Of Daydream VR App, Game & Content Ecosystem
Following the October 4 announcement of the Google Pixel and Pixel XL phones, as well as the firm's Daydream View VR headset (which works in tandem with them), Google has now revealed a full list of Daydream VR "experiences" users can enjoy.
Google has partnered with a wide range of brands to give Daydream adopters a fairly impressive starting catalogue of apps, games, and services, including HBO, Netflix, Hulu, WSJ, EA, and others. Naturally, at present the only people who will be accessing this content are those who've purchased a Pixel or Pixel XL and a Daydream View headset, but Google's plans for Daydream will allow for Android OEMs to make compatible smartphone handsets going forward - we'd take a guess saying probably headsets too.
Amongst the services offered there are exploration and location-based applications, including tooled-up version of Google Maps/Street View, and Google Photos, while Hello Mars and Ocean Rift offer quite different location-based experiences. There are also 30 VR-ready games, some of which are re-jigged ones from the Android space, such as Need For Speed: No Limits, while others are purpose-built VR games like Daydream Blue and film tie-in J.K Rowling's Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them.
Here's a bullet-pointed list of all titles announced so far (via PhoneArena):
Location & Exploration
Google Street View
NYT VR (New York Times Virtual Reality)
WSJ
CNN
US Today VR Stories
Google Photos
The Guardian
Ocean Rift
Hello Mars
Relax VR
Video Streaming, Films & Movies
YouTube
Hulu
Google Play Movies & TV
HBO Now
Netflix
Jaunt
Invasion!
Games
Wonderglade
Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them
Danger Goat
Gunjack 2: End Of Shift
EarthShape
Mekorama
Need for Speed: No Limits
Hungry Shark World
Hunters
Action Bowling
VR Karts Sprint
The Arcslinger
Home Run Derby
Archer E. Bowman
Underworld Overlord
Affected
Cosmic Chef
Daydream Blue
DRIFT
Classroom Aquatic
Claro
Layers Of Fear
Loco Motors
Poly Runner
Frostbound
Sisters
Avakin Life
Baskhead
Orbital Loop
Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes You can also learn more via Google's dedicated page.
Clever Bods Tweak Galaxy S7 EDGE For Google Daydream View
Although at present only the Pixel and Pixel XL are officially supported by the Google Daydream View (that's expected to change as more OEMs produce phones to the required spec), it appears some existing models can also be tweaked to work with the headset. Some enterprising souls in Canada have posted a Youtube video showing the Samsung Galaxy S7 EDGE running with the Google Daydream View, using Google's virtual museum application and faring quite well at it. It seems that the user is probably using Samsung's recently launched Android Nougat Beta program in order to have Nougat installed on the Galaxy S7 EDGE - officially it's still on Marshmallow, and Nougat is required for Daydream VR. The model in question seems to be the Exynos 8890-based Galaxy S7 EDGE.
Head over to page two for the pre-release rumours.Pokémon Go inspires proposed legislation
State Rep. Kelly Cassidy, joined by members of the Illinois Environmental Council, the Sierra Club, the Loyola Dunes Restoration group, and the Pokémon Go community, introduced a bill on Wednesday that would protect parks and other properties from Pokémon Go traffic. | Jacob Wittich/Sun-Times
Illinois may soon be on track to passing its first legislation in response to Pokémon Go with a new bill introduced by State Rep. Kelly Cassidy.
Cassidy introduced “Pidgey’s Law” on Wednesday during a news conference at the Loyola Dunes Restoration Site. Named after one of the game’s bird Pokémon, the bill aims to crack down on location-based game developers to remove problematic gaming sites from their maps.
“There have been national stories about Pokémon Go spots at places like the Holocaust Museum that were taken down very quickly,” Cassidy said. “Rolling out Pokémon Go internationally was a huge undertaking done by humans, who make mistakes, and what we’re doing with this bill is attempting to create a process by which those errors could be corrected.”
If passed, “Pidgey’s Law” would give game developers up to two days to remove a location-specific site from its game if that site’s property owner, manager or custodian requests its removal. After that, developers would be fined up to $100 each day until the stop is removed.
The bill is in response to a Pokéstop — real-life locations gamers can visit for in-game perks — that rests at the center of the dune restoration area, which is protected under state and federal law. The stop, based on an art installation that stood there a few years back, sometimes draws players off the designated path into areas where some endangered wildlife lives.
The hundreds of Pokémon Go players who frequent the area each night have caused increased littering and vandalism as well as occasional trampling of the wildlife when rare Pokémon appear in the augmented reality of the game.
“It’s all well and good until somebody gets hurt, and this site has been damaged,” Cassidy said. “But folks have come together beautifully to undo the damage... That’s being a good neighbor, and that’s what we’re asking the [game’s developer’s] to be.”
Niantic, Pokémon Go’s developer, launched a system in late July for people to request the removal of certain Pokéstops they deem problematic after drawing criticism for Pokéstops located in sensitive areas such as the Holocaust Memorial Museum or the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.
Cassidy said a couple hundred requests to have the Loyola Dunes Pokéstop removed have been filed in the last month, including requests from her office, the Chicago Park District, members of the Loyola Dunes Restoration Group and concerned Pokémon Go players. But they say Niantic has yet to act on any of those requests.
Phillip Davis, a member of the Loyola Dunes Restoration group who has filed several of those requests, said he is frustrated that he has not been able to talk to Niantic about the Pokéstop. But he is hopeful that the legislation could spark action.
“It’s hard to imagine that actual legislation like this won’t get the attention of people at Niantic and put them in a position to do something,” he said.
Niantic did not respond to requests for comment.Jasmine Zhao
SRF Summer Scholar
SRF Research Center
My name is Jasmine Zhao, and I am a rising senior at the University of California, Los Angeles majoring in Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology (MCDB) and minoring in biomedical research. Having the opportunity to work in different labs these past three years has not only increased my fascination with the applications of research in the treatment of diseases but also helped me develop as a young scientist. Currently, I am especially interested in fields such as regenerative medicine and developmental biology.
My first introduction to research was when I joined Dr. Amander Clark’s lab during my freshman year at UCLA. The major goal of the Clark lab is to understand the cell and molecular mechanisms underlying germline development. Primordial germ cells (PGCs), which are cells that give rise to the sperm or egg, are especially sensitive to radiation and chemotherapy. Thus, in order to improve reproductive health and rebuild tissues after cancer therapy, our lab uses stem cell models to understand this early period of human development. One of the projects the lab is working on is developing more efficient in vitro methods to generate human primordial germ cell-like cells (PGCLCs) that can be used to study gametogenesis.
My project in the Clark lab focuses on germ cell tumors (GCTs), which are a heterogenous group of tumors hypothesized to arise from a common cell of origin, the PGC (Stevens, 1967). Although GCTs are considered rare, they account for 15% of malignancies in the adolescent to young adult population (15-40 years), with testicular GCTs being the most common malignancy for males in this age group (Calaminus, 2016). The cause and progression of this disease is not well understood. However, it is speculated that improper nuclear reprogramming or the failure of differentiation of PGCs may result in the development of GCTs. Recently, PRDM14, a transcription factor, has been associated with a variety of human diseases and was identified as a susceptibility locus for testicular cancer and intracranial germ cell tumors (Ruark et al., 2013; Terashima et al., 2013). Using immunofluorescence and immunohistochemistry, we found that PRDM14 is expressed in a variety of patient GCT samples but is not detectable in differentiated tissues such as teratomas, a tumor with all three germ layers. Intracranial GCTs, which are tumors located in the brain, also have a molecular signature resembling pre-gonadal or late-stage PGCs, a time period in which PRDM14 should start to be repressed. Therefore, we hypothesized that the failure to repress PRDM14 may function to enhance the malignant transformation of GCTs, driving PGCs to diverge from the normal developmental pathway. Our results suggest that the overexpression of PRDM14 can alter both differentiation and proliferation of PGCs.
Optimizing the Allotopic Expression of ATP6 to Mitochondria in Mutant Cells
This summer, my project will be conducted under the mentorship of Dr. Amutha Boominathan and Dr. Matthew O’Connor at the SRF Research Center in Mountain View. The goal of this project is to design and test different constructs that can potentially improve the allotopic expression of ATP6 to mitochondria in mutant cell lines. Mitochondria are double-membrane bound organelles that provide energy in the form of ATP to power the biochemical reactions of a cell. Unlike other organelles, however, mitochondria have their own DNA separate from the nucleus, and 13 out of those 37 genes encode for oxidative phosphorylation complex proteins. Due to possible leakage of the high-energy electrons of the respiratory chain, which results in the formation of reactive oxygen species, the oxidative stress mitochondrial-DNA (mtDNA) is subjected to can lead to mutations, aging, and cell death. For instance, the ATP6 gene encodes for subunit a of the Fo structural domain of ATP synthase, also known as Complex V. The Fo structural domain is embedded in the inner membrane of the mitochondria and contains the membrane proton channel that allows for the synthesis of ATP. Mutations of ATP6 have been implicated in different human diseases that affect neural development, vision, and motor movement such as Leigh syndrome and Neuropathy, Ataxia, and Retinitis Pigmentosa (NARP).
Figure 1. Design of constructs to improve the allotopic expression of the mitochondrial ATP6 gene.
(A) Soluble gene sequence with V5 epitope tag to verify if the gene can be expressed in mammalian cells (B) Soluble gene sequence with V5 epitope tag that is appended to the ATP5G1 mitochondrial targeting sequence (MTS) and codon corrected ATP6 for location-specific targeting (C) ATP6 with the first transmembrane domain (TMD1) deleted and a DDK epitope tag (Constructs will be cloned into pCMV and pENTR vectors and transfected into mammalian cells)
Allotopic expression has been proposed as a gene therapy approach that can potentially treat mitochondrial-DNA diseases. This method aims to express a wild-type copy of an affected mitochondrial gene in the nucleus of a cell, target it to the mitochondria, and allow functional replacement of the defective protein. Dr. Boominathan et al. has previously shown that stable allotopic co-expression of ATP8 and ATP6 is able to rescue a patient cybrid cell line that is null for the ATP8 protein and has significantly lowered ATP6 protein levels (Boominathan et al., 2016). However, improving the exogenous amount of ATP6 that can be expressed or targeted to the mitochondria may be necessary in order to achieve complete restoration of ATP synthase activity and structure. Therefore, my project will investigate whether appending an additional gene sequence, the soluble tag, can help stabilize ATP6 and prevent unfolding before it is inserted into mitochondria. Derived from a thermophilic bacterium, this additional gene sequence might be able to enhance the expression of low but expressible proteins such as ATP6. Two constructs have been designed to address this hypothesis. As shown in Figure 1A and 1B, these two constructs will be cloned into pCMV and pENTR vectors and help us evaluate if the tag can be expressed in mammalian cells and if proper targeting and import of ATP6 to the mitochondria is possible, respectively. The last construct, which is depicted in Figure 1C will be focused on decreasing the mean hydrophobicity of the ATP6 protein. High mean hydrophobicity, especially in the first 100 amino acids is one of the largest barriers for successful allotopic expression of membrane proteins (Oca-Cossio et al. 2003). We hypothesize that the first transmembrane domain of ATP6 is not involved in critical functions for the protein and can be manipulated to diminish the mean hydrophobicity. As such, we also will utilize both deletion and site-directed mutagenesis of the first transmembrane domain of ATP6 to determine if ATP6 expression can be enhanced. If these constructs can provide more efficient expression of ATP6, similar methods can be applied to other mitochondrial genes to improve the rescue of mitochondrial function by allotopic expression.
Future Plans :
After graduating from UCLA, I plan on pursuing a career in medicine. I am appreciative of the opportunities that I have had and definitely view biomedical research as an important part of my future. My long-term goal is to practice in an academic setting so I can formulate research questions based on observations at the clinic and potentially translate new knowledge into better treatments.
References :
Boominathan, A., Vanhoozer S., Basisty N., Powers K., Crampton, A.L., Wang X., Friedricks, N., Schilling, B., Brand, M.D., O’Connor, M.S. Stable nuclear expression of ATP8 and ATP6 genes rescues a mtDNA Complex V null mutant. Nucleic Acids Research. 2016; 44(19):9342-9357.
Calaminus G, Joffe J. Germ Cell Tumors in Adolescents and Young Adults. Progress in tumor research 2016; 43:115-27.
Oca-Cossio, J., Kenyon, L., Hao, H., Moraes, C.T. Limitations of allotopic expression of mitochondrial genes in mammalian cells. Genetics. 2003; 165, 707-720.
Ruark, E., Seal, S., McDonald, H., Zhang, F., Elliot, A., Lau, K., Perdeaux, E., Rapley, E., Peto, J., Kote-Jarai, Z., Muir, K., Nsengimana, J., Shipley, J. Identification of nine new susceptibility loci for testicular cancer, including variants near DAZL and PRDM14. Nat Genet. 2013; 1038/ng.2635.
Stevens L. Origin of testicular teratomas from primordial germ cells in mice. J. Natl. Cancer Inst. 1967a; 38, 549–552.
Terashima, K., Yu, A., Chow, WY., Hsu, WC., Chen, P., Wong, S., Hung, YS., Suzuki, T., Nishikawa, R., Matsutani, M., Nakamura, H., Ng, HK., Allen, JC., Aldape, KD., Su, JM., Adesina, AM., Leung, HC., Man, TK., Lau, CC. (2013). Genome-wide analysis of DNA copy number alterations and loss of heterozygosity in intracranial germ cell tumors. Pediatr Blood Cancer. 2013; 61(4):594-600.StudioMDHR's 1930s cartoon-inspired run-and-gun indie title Cuphead will, in its ultimate form, be a trilogy, the game's creators told Kill Screen Daily.
Cuphead, which was shown during the indie game-focused segment of Microsoft's E3 press conference, is about 40 percent completed right now, according to developers Chad and Jared Moldenhauer. The pair, who have been working on the game since 2010 out of their respective homes in Toronto and Saskatchewan, are designing the mechanics after building the art — hence the slow going. The Moldenhauers ultimately plan Cuphead as a trilogy, with expansion packs building on the game's weapons and elements.
The title uses classic run-and-gun mechanics, but instead of running and shooting to the right, the levels are designed around a series of boss battles. Bosses can be engaged in combat from a world map that will be reminiscent of old school top-down action RPGs, such as the early The Legend of Zelda games, according to Kill Screen.
Cuphead is slated to launch in 2015 for Xbox One and via Steam for PC.The economy has collapsed, there’s a worldwide energy crisis and the once-great USA is in tatters. No, it’s not present day: the year is 2027, and North Korea has used its missiles to destroy South Korea and invade the States. Hmm, we could cover one eye, squint with the other and pretend we’ve never played this scenario before...
So the premise is hokey but don’t tell THQ: developer Kaos is eager to point out the Story Consultant role filled by grizzled Apocalypse Now writer John Milius. Given that Frontlines’ oil-starved story was one of the better FPS tales but still failed to capture gamers’ imaginations, we’re unconvinced of the impact Milius’ involvement will make. Short of boasting a Clancy/Patterson/McNab triple combo, it’s difficult to see how Homefront could hope to completely transform Kaos’ fortunes through narrative alone.
It’s not just the story that smacks of familiarity either. Homefront has Frontlines’ action written all over it, right down to the controllable drones. Admittedly, the weapons feel slightly weightier than the floaty-light combat of Fuel of War and level streamlining pushes the formerly open-ended action down a more funneled route a la Modern Warfare but everything else, from battlefields to mission objectives, mirrors Frontlines.
Frontlines didn’t set the world alight with monster sales figures, but it remained a fun shooter nevertheless. Kaos can easily build upon those successes, and its Homefront innovations are well realised. Case in point: the Drama Engine, a tool designed to merge the thrills of scripted events with the unpredictability of dynamic set-pieces. It tracks your position and triggers key sequences, not when you reach an invisible preset marker but when the pace demands interference. A good example involves firing a rocket-propelled grenade at a Jeep – regardless of where you’re standing the explosion’s calculations are quickly fixed to ensure that the flaming husk of the wrecked vehicle cartwheels in your direction, giving you just enough time to sidestep the metallic carcass before you’re transformed into icky pavement paint.1. FC Köln celebrates it 68th birthday on February 13, 2016. This will be the ninth time FC plays a competitive match on its birthday.
1. FC Köln will celebrate its 68th birthday by hosting Eintracht Frankfurt for the “Topspiel” of Matchday 21. Half of the eight competitive matches that fell on the 13th of February since 1948 went in favor of FC. One match resulted in a draw, with the remaining three ending in defeat. The Glory Years
Exactly one year following the founding of the club was the first ever birthday match: against VfB Lechenich. Just like a good guest would, the visitors left the three points in Cologne. What they took home with them were 5 conceded goals. The big win set the mood for FC to hold the club’s first ever Karnevalssitzung just one day later.
It took six years for the next birthday match to take place, and this time the opponent was VfL Bochum. FC won 1-0 and took home a critical three points in a season in which the team flirted with the relegation zone. The first birthday defeat took place ten years later when FC were reigning champions following the establishment of the Bundesliga. The 1-2 home defeat to Meidericher SV was one of six defeats that season, which resulted in FC ending as runner -up to Werder Bremen.
In 1971 1. FC Köln played their first ever birthday match on the road. VfB Stuttgart took the early lead, but goals from Wolfgang Overath and Thomas Parits helped turn the game and secure the 2-1 win for FC. The early 1970s were also one of the strongest phases for the club in terms of runs in the DFB Cup. Between 1970 and 1973 the club reached three finals and one semi-final. A New Era
In a span of 16 years Hamburger SV was the so-called back-to-back birthday opponent. In the 1982 matchup both sides scored a penalty to end the match 1-1 and split the points. However, in the year of the 50th anniversary of the club, everything went sour. The 1-2 birthday loss was a hiccup in comparison to what was to come. The season ended with the inconceivable result: relegation to the 2. Bundesliga.October 6, 2014
In this article published at his Syrian Revolution Commentary and Analysis website in late September, Australian socialist Michael Karadjis argues that the air strikes prove the opposite is the case: The U.S. is siding with the Assad dictatorship against the popular uprising--even though both Washington and Damascus both deny this officially.
U.S. warplanes and drones are carrying out air strikes in Syria against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). But though you likely wouldn't know it from the U.S. media coverage, the Pentagon is hitting other targets in Syria: Other Sunni Islamist groups, even though they have fought militarily against ISIS alongside the Free Syrian Army and other forces. This is the side that the U.S. government claims to support in the civil war with the murderous dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad.
IN AN extraordinary development, the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Jordan have launched a joint air war, on Syrian territory, with the full support of the Syrian tyranny of Bashar al-Assad, on the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
There are plenty of good reasons to oppose any U.S. war in any circumstances; and in this case, a war that is targeting only the Sunni-sectarian ISIS, yet sparing the viciously anti-Sunni Assad regime--indeed collaborating with the regime, which is responsible for a hundred times more massacre and destruction than ISIS, with which it has long collaborated in any case--is likely to boost support for ISIS among a large section of the poverty-stricken, dispossessed Sunni majority.
However, ISIS is so reviled that it was just possible a very well-targeted war on ISIS may have won some hearts and minds. Certainly, even for those of us solidly antiwar, there should be no talk of "defending" ISIS, whatever that may mean. Likewise, if last year's proposed (in my view, imaginary) U.S. attack on the Assad regime had become reality, it would have been necessary to oppose the, war without giving a skerrick of "defense" to the genocidal regime that had just gassed hundreds of sleeping children to death with sarin.
A building destroyed by U.S. air strikes in Idlib, a city in northwest Syria, far from ISIS's base
However, the U.S. is not only attacking ISIS--which the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the united rebel alliance has been at war with for the last year--but from the outset has also attacked Jabhat al-Nusra (JaN). Despite also being a sectarian organization which the FSA will have to deal with in the future in its own time, based on its own decision-making, JaN has, for the most part, been fighting on the side of the FSA and the other rebels against both the Assad regime and ISIS.
There have also been unconfirmed reports that the U.S. has attacked Ahrar al-Sham |
in this misery, others in this state of being evil or whatever comes with that, but a character like Olivia is so incredibly complex.
I think it’s wonderful what Chic did with the writers this season, they took a one or two-dimensional character into a really three-dimensional character with a lot of different characteristics and emotions and all of that kind of stuff. It’s just exciting to see.
Season 1 had the “vargulf” (werewolf) and obviously the interpersonal conflicts, but will there be a “big bad” as an over-arcing threat for Season 2?
Eglee: Yeah. Obviously “the money” in the show is really what happens with our characters, jointly and separately, what they are going through individually, but the idea that we are putting some sort of external stress on them as a unifying field for the season is something that we do. I learned the term “big bad” while working on Dexter. It gives you a unified field of action, gives the season a motor behind it, it’s a way to put all of our characters in motion against each other with something infringing from the outside.
Famke, you haven’t consistently done TV work outside of your role on Nip/Tuck. What goes into your decision to commit to long form of storytelling like Hemlock Grove?
Janssen: I think that we’re in a really exciting time in the entertainment industry. I just realized that in the last five years or something, we went through such a tremendous transformation where all of a sudden independent films took mini-steps back, it was really hard to get them into theaters. Then of course with the start of On-Demand and watching a movie, the same day it came out in the theater, on your television and these endless amounts of content available to anybody at all times, that movie theaters became for event movies like the X-Men films.
All of a sudden everything was changing around us and then comes the Netflix model. Of course, television was already showing that filmmakers were turning toward it as a storytelling medium – it’s just a big way to tell stories – but part of this whole Netflix model is that the quality of every part of their storytelling is on-par with the best films that are being made right now. A-list writers, directors, producers, actors, production design, music, you name it. All of a sudden it opened up this whole universe for all of us to explore.
Obviously, it was a long time ago that it was taboo or you were typecast as either television or movie actors, all these lines… everything is gone now and it’s prestigious to be part of a Netflix show. It’s a really great opportunity for us to explore that kind of storytelling and the new challenges and benefits that come with it. All of the eyes in the industry are on Netflix and what they are going to do next. How is what they are doing successful and not successful?
So it’s really exciting to be a part of that, and of course as an actor it enables you to act consistently for a long period of time. Not constantly going out and having to look for another job, wait for the phone to ring, whatever. For me the most exciting part is to be a part of something that’s new and exciting and really high quality, with tremendous filmmakers.
Eglee: Famke talks about how there is a certain novel-esque quality to this storytelling, that you can tell a story over time in many increments. The thing that drew Jim Cameron to TV some years back when he and I did [Dark Angel] together, he said “We finish a movie and just as we started to understand the characters and know them, and like them, and fall in love with them, the movie is over.” The idea is that in television these stories can continue on over time, over a course of years over many seasons, in which you can continue to excavate and pull back the layers of the onion. It’s very exciting.
Going back to what Famke said about looking for a job, will there be threads left open at the end of this season to continue for a Season 3 or did you try to tell a self-contained story?
Eglee: No more stories, it all just comes to a grinding halt. [laughs] No, with characters as rich and wonderful and with actors as gifted and as the ones we have, the television gods will let us know. But yeah I think these characters are so rich that they could go on and on to continue to surprise and entertain us for many years.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Season 2 of Hemlock Grove will debut in its entirety on Friday, July 11th, exclusively on Netflix.Okay, Reddit. You’ve been rallying the troops to fight for bitcoin acceptance on Menulog, and we’ve heard your demands.
Bitcoin is an attractive but complex concept. Let’s walk through it, shall we?
Bitcoin? What-coin?
You’ve probably heard bits and pieces about bitcoin floating around the media: “Bitcoin Prices Boom”, “Bitcoin Prices Crash”, “Huge Scandal Could Mean End Of Bitcoin”, “Bitcoin To Cop GST”. Confusing, right?
For the novices, bitcoin is a cryptocurrency and the equivalent of digitally paying cash.
The Bitcoin Basics
Bitcoin is a digital currency that removes the need for credit cards and even financial institutions. Existing outside of a central authority figure, bitcoin is instead controlled by the network of users’ computers and secured by encryption. One unit of the currency is called a bitcoin.
All bitcoin transactions are visibly stored on what’s called a ‘blockchain’ to prevent fraud and double-spending.
You can buy bitcoins at an online exchange with your normal Australian currency, through a bitcoin ATM, or by ‘mining’ bitcoins. There are 21 million bitcoins in existence, but they are yet to all be mined (and apparently won’t be until around 2040).
A user’s bitcoin wallet contains two keys—one private and one public. The public key is your bitcoin address, much like a username. The private key allows you to spend the bitcoins that belong to the public key. Private keys authorise transactions—if you don’t have the private key, you can’t spend the bitcoins on your public key.
The Birth of Bitcoin
Within bitcoin’s cradle lies an ideology that seeks to rebel against government control and our ingrained reliance on established financial systems.
The mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto — a hacker, or team of hackers, that first introduced bitcoin in January 2009 — provided a manifesto of sorts that explains the rationale behind the idea. The reasoning focuses on dissatisfaction with Internet commerce and its reliance on third parties for payment:
“What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.”
While Bitcoin enthusiasts are optimistic about the separation of our money and “The Man”, the public reaction has been varied. Some question its longevity, whereas others see cryptocurrency as being a thing of the future — a giant step beyond the likes of PayPal.
Bitcoin has the potential to threaten institutionalised banking, and yet many voices within the financial industry merely see an elaborate political statement covering an economically flawed idea in a delicious candy shell.
But the idea of simple peer-to-peer payments seems pretty convenient, right?
In reality, the trust we currently have in our financial institutions has its perks—namely, consumer protection. But we’ll open that bank account of worms a little later.
Why the Hype?
Anonymity
Bitcoin has the same sort of privacy levels as a cash transaction. In theory, you have 100% control over your bitcoins. Without your private key, an unauthorised transaction cannot be made, and multi-signature technology gives further protection. The transactions themselves are permanently and highly visible on the blockchain, but the identity of users behind each bitcoin address is anonymous.
Simply put, using PayPal, you send from email address to email address; and with bitcoin, you send from bitcoin address to bitcoin address.
Lower Fees
According to bitcoin etiquette, purchasers are encouraged to pay a tiny transaction fee to the miner that verifies the transaction, although it’s technically unnecessary. A far cry from credit card fees (the silent killer, ugh). This lack of high processing fees remains a major drawcard for potential bitcoin users and bitcoin-accepting businesses.
The Way of the Future?
Remember, Bitcoin is still in its infancy—whether it falls or flies (or both, many times) is another matter. For now, cryptocurrency is an innovative concept that offers an alternative to contemporary currency and has the potential to change the way the world transacts (particularly between currencies, borders and time zones in an increasingly globalised world).
A Forbes Magazine journalist attempted to live on bitcoin for a week in 2013. It was no walk in the park, but living in tech-geek heaven (otherwise known as San Francisco) proved somewhat advantageous. For everybody else — even after years of progress — it will still prove challenging. As this interactive map illustrates, Australia lags behind the likes of North America and Western Europe.
That said, there has been significant progress down under. The number of businesses accepting bitcoin for goods and services is growing. Westfield in Sydney’s CBD installed a bitcoin ATM in April 2014, followed by a second machine in Melbourne’s Emporium shopping centre in 2014.
These gradual installments of public acceptance seem to unconsciously legitimise a currency shrouded in skepticism, scandal and confusion.
Where To Spend
Unsurprisingly, the likes of Reddit and 4chan accept bitcoin for various purposes because it caters directly to the interests of their techie demographic. Big name companies like WordPress, Dell, Expedia and OKCupid, on the other hand, are also bitcoin-friendly, and even the CEO of Ebay has mentioned plans to integrate bitcoin as a PayPal payment option.
You can pay your bills, make bitcoin charity donations, pay for University tuition, buy a Canadian gold mine, or shout your friends some beers at the Old Fitzroy Hotel in Woolloomooloo.
Check out the Bitcoin Luxury Marketplace for a smorgasbord of extravagant items that can be purchased with your bitcoins.
Room For Improvement
Potential For Illegal Transactions
It isn’t difficult to see how anonymity + online transactions = illegal purchases and seedy activities.
Much of the bitcoin enthusiasm is thought to be from the ability to gamble and buy drugs anonymously online. Gambling website SatoshiDice is one of the most popular bitcoin addresses, and while the infamous Silk Road—a veritable Amazon for illicit substances and goods — was seized and closed by the FBI in 2013, similar retailers and illegal online marketplaces continue to thrive.
In fact, reports have shown that the Silk Road closure was largely insignificant for Australians selling drugs online. Instead, Australian black market retailers on the Deep Web are booming.
Consumer Protection
While cryptocurrency is an exciting and revolutionary idea, bank-backed payment systems are probably still preferable at this point in time.
A prime example of this is the Mt. Gox hacking scandal. Once the largest of its kind, the Japanese-based bitcoin currency exchange crashed into bankruptcy earlier this year after 744,000 bitcoins (worth $409m at the time) went missing via theft or hacking.
Bitcoin transactions are irreversible, and user anonymity makes stolen bitcoins hard to recover. A hacker only needs to identify a bug in an online exchange or wallet service website or distribute malware to computers that contain users’ private keys to pull off a major Bitcoin heist.
The best advertisement for legitimate financial institutions in this debate is legal protection and customer recourse. If your bank account is breached, you can rely on that bank to help retrieve the missing funds.
In November 2013, Welshman James Howells unwittingly threw out a USB containing his account information and the 7,500 bitcoins he had acquired in 2009. Unfortunately for Howells, the bitcoin value rose substantially, and his collection was suddenly worth several million dollars. He was unable to find the USB in the landfill, and thus the bitcoins are irretrievable.
Volatility
On a similar note, the current volatile value of bitcoins makes it a high-risk commodity. It is not uncommon for prices to swing 20 or 30 per cent in a day. 2013 saw price movements from $13 to $1,200, and back down to $535 a week later.
Bitcoin is still in its infancy, and volatility is expected to decrease over time with future progress and feature development. For today’s retailers who work on tight profit margins, bitcoin has some work to do before it becomes a truly viable business option.
Not Yet Mainstream
Firstly, most people have limited knowledge or understanding about the ins and outs of bitcoin. Despite growth in bitcoin-friendly retailers (that undoubtedly monopolize the business of current users keen to spend their bitcoins in offline establishments), the use of bitcoins as a way of purchasing goods and services is still pretty niche and experimental, especially in Australia.
Its novelty and curiosity factors may still outweigh its practicality.
Internationally, bitcoin is only banned outright in a few countries at this point, but Russia and China are potentially not far off, having already implemented heavy restrictions.
Closer to home, the ATO has declared that bitcoins will not be treated as money as such, but businesses will need to keep records and may be subject to GST when supplying and receiving them.
Verdict
It’s important to note that we, like the majority of bitcoin-curious people, are still seeking a thorough understanding of this intriguing idea and its benefits.
Your interest in the discussion is appreciated, and we understand why. Acceptance would increase the number of payment options for your online transactions, and growing numbers of current bitcoin users would have added opportunities to pay for real-world items with their digital currency—even daily tasks like ordering takeaway at Menulog.
In fact, as far as bitcoin folklore goes, the first real-world transaction using bitcoins was for pizza. In May 2010, Floridian programmer Laszlo Hanyecz convinced a fellow bitcointalk.org forum member to bring him 2 pizzas in exchange for 10,000 bitcoins. At the time, 10,000 bitcoins were worth about $US25, but today’s bitcoin value (at time of writing) means Hanyecz’s pizzas cost him almost $US4 million.
While Hanyecz’s pizzas were simply ordered by someone else from a brick-and-mortar retailer and delivered to him, the episode clearly sparked ideas for online takeaway systems — like Menulog — and bitcoin to forge relationships that could benefit consumers and retailers alike.
When we think about the ways we can currently pay for takeaway—with the likes of PayPass and PayWave, for example—payment in bitcoins doesn’t seem nearly so farfetched. Contactless and time-saving, these technologies have been thoroughly embraced around the globe and here in Australia as well.
Bitcoin offers the opportunity to pay for your food directly to the vendor—no muss, no fuss. You don’t need a wallet—just a smartphone with a wallet app.
With multiple cryptocurrencies in existence that rival the prominence of Bitcoin—like Litecoin, Peercoin and Darkcoin—it seems probable that cryptocurrency is here for the long haul.
If so, there’s little doubt that bitcoin and its descendants will revolutionise the way we buy online, and indeed the way we order takeaway online.
In the meantime, the dubious reputation that bitcoin holds in the general public needs to be addressed. Demystifying the idea of bitcoin to those less tech-savvy than the archetypal bitcoin user will undoubtedly remove much of the surrounding confusion.
After all, having even more ways to order takeaway from Menulog’s 9000 + restaurants sounds mighty handy to us!
We’ll keep you posted.Everything begun in 1863, when the American form of Chicken Salad was first served by Town Meats in Rhode Island. This first Chicken Salad recipe was made with a mix of leftover chicken, mayonnaise, tarragon and grapes. Since those times there were created millions of different combinations of amazing Chicken Salads.
Since the first Chicken Salad recipe, there were created terrible, bad, ok, good, great and amazing variations. Now, the big question is, where can you find the amazing ones?
You don’t need to search anymore, because here you will find the ultimate TOP 10 Chicken Salad Recipes of your life! You will eat and repeat.
Your only problem might be sharing these salads with your friends and family, but to avoid that, just make double and enjoy!
The only bad thing about this Chicken Salads Collection, is that after tasting at least one of them, every other salad served to you, might be disappointing.
But don’t worry, at least you know how to make Salad Heaven a reality in your home!Did you know Pandas have thumbs, much like those of humans? The front paws of a Giant Panda are distinctly different from other bears due to a special bone found in their wrists called the sesamoid bone. This bone crates their distinctive “sixth toe”, an opposable thumb, that is used for grasping bamboo.
This evolutionary adaptation inspired Stephen Jay Gould to write a book entitled The Panda’s Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History which contains an essay by the same name. In this essay, Gould reflects,
“As a childhood fan of Andy Panda, and former owner of a stuffed toy won by some fluke when all the milk bottles actually tumbled at the county fair, I was delighted when the first fruits of our thaw with China went beyond ping-pong to the shipment of two pandas to the Washington zoo. I went and watched in appropriate awe. They yawned, stretched, and ambled a bit, but they spent nearly all their time feeding on their beloved bamboo. They sat upright and manipulated the stalks with their forepaws, shedding the leaves and consuming only the shoots. I was amazed by their dexterity and wondered how the scion of a stock adapted for running could use its hands so adroitly. They held the stalks of bamboo in their paws and stripped off the leaves by passing the stalks between an apparently flexible thumb and the remaining fingers. This puzzled me.
Gould goes on to explore the adaptation further and concludes that, while it is no engineering marvel, “an enlarged wrist bone [is a] somewhat clumsy, but quite workable, solution” that “does its job and excites our imagination all the more because it builds on such improbable foundations.”
So the next time you are watching the Pandas on the cams in China – look a little closer – you might just be amazed.North Korean defectors Hangul 탈북자 Hanja 脫北者 Revised Romanization Talbukja McCune–Reischauer T'albukcha
Since the division of Korea after World War II and the end of the Korean War (1950–1953), some North Koreans have managed to defect for political, ideological, religious and economic reasons.
Since the North Korean famine of the 1990s, more North Koreans have defected.[1] The usual strategy is to cross the border into Jilin and Liaoning provinces in northeast China before fleeing to a third country, due to China being a close ally of North Korea. China, being the biggest of few economic partners of North Korea while the country has been under U.N. sanctions for decades,[2] is also the largest and continuous aid source of the country. To avoid worsening the already tense relations of the Korea Peninsula, China refuses to grant North Korean defectors refugee status and considers them illegal economic migrants.[3] About 76% to 84% of defectors interviewed in China or South Korea came from the Northeastern provinces bordering China.[4] If the defectors are caught in China, they are repatriated back to North Korea to face harsh interrogations and years of punishment, or even death in political prison camps such as Yodok camp or reeducation camps such as Chungsan camp or Chongori camp.[5][6]
A prominent defection occurred shortly after the signing of the armistice at the end of the Korean War, on September 21, 1953, when 21-year-old No Kum-Sok, a senior lieutenant in the North Korean air force, flew his MiG-15 to the South. His act, affiliated with Operation Moolah, was considered an intelligence bonanza because his fighter plane was the best in the Communist bloc. No was awarded a sum of $100,000 or ₩13,170,200 and the right to reside in the United States. An offer to return the MiG was ignored. The aircraft is now on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, Dayton, Ohio.[7][8]
Contents Terms 1
Demographics 2
By destination 3 China 3.1 Japan 3.2 Mongolia 3.3 Philippines 3.4 Russia 3.5 Europe 3.6 South Korea 3.7 Reward 3.7.1 Resettlement 3.7.2 Statistics 3.7.3 Status of North Korean Defectors Entering South Korea (2015.5) 3.7.3.1 Thailand 3.8 Laos 3.9 United States 3.10 Vietnam 3.11 Canada 3.12
Double defectors 4
See also 5
Fiction and non-fiction works 6
References 7
External links 8 Web sites 8.1 8.2 Articles Media 8.3
Terms
Different terms, official and unofficial, refer to North Korean refugees. On 9 January 2005, the South Korean Ministry of Unification announced the use of saeteomin (새터민, lit. "people of new land") instead of talbukja ("people who fled the North"), a term about which North Korean officials expressed displeasure.[9] A newer term is bukhanitaljumin (hangul: 북한이탈주민 hanja: 北韓離脫住民), which has the more forceful meaning of "residents who renounced North Korea".[10]
Demographics
Since 1953, 100,000–300,000 North Koreans have defected, most of whom have fled to Russia or China.[11] Some 27,000 have defected to South Korea.[12][13]
Based on a study of South Korean defectors, women make up the majority of defections. In 2002 they comprised 55.5% of defections to South Korea (1,138 people) and by 2011 the number had grown to 70.5% (2,706 people). More women leave the North because, as the bread-winners of the family, they are more likely to suffer financial hardships. This is due to the prevalence of women in service sector jobs whereas men are employed in the military—33% of defectors cited economic reasons as most important. Men, in contrast, had a higher tendency to leave the country due to political, ideological or surveillance pressure.[14]
By destination
Typical routes to South Korea by North Korean defectors are through China and South-East Asia.
China
As of 2012 there were an estimated 200,000 North Koreans hiding in China[15] making them the largest population outside of North Korea. These refugees are not typically considered to be members of the ethnic Korean community, and the Chinese census does not count them as such. Some North Korean refugees who are unable to obtain transport to South Korea marry ethnic Koreans in China and settle there; they blend into the community but are subject to deportation if discovered by the authorities. Those who have found 'escape brokers', try to enter the South Korean consulate in Shenyang. In recent years, the Chinese government has tightened the security and increased the number of police outside the consulate.
Today there are new ways of getting into South Korea. One is to follow the route to the Mongolian border; another is the route to southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, who welcome the North Korean defectors.[16]
During the mid 1990s, the percentages of male and female defectors were relatively balanced.[17] In early to mid-1990s, male labor was valuable since North Korean defectors could work in Chinese countrysides and factories and secure hideout in return.[17] However, due to rising social security issues including crime and violence involving North Koreans, the value of male labor decreased.[17] Females, on the other hand, were able to find easier means of settlement including performing smaller labor tasks and getting married to Chinese locals.[17] As of today, 80-90% of North Korean defectors residing in China are females who settled through de facto marriage and a large number of them experience forced marriage and human trafficking.[17][18]
Before 2009, over 70% of female North Korean defectors were victims of human trafficking[18] Due to their vulnerability as an illegal migrant, they were sold for cheap prices around 3,000 to 10,000 yuan.[18] Violent abuse started in apartments near
A film clip "George Bush Meets with North Korean Defectors and Family Members of Japanese Abducted by North Korea" is available for free download at the Internet Archive
Media
UNHCR protests Chinese deportation of North Koreans
"North Korean Refugees in China and Human Rights Issues: International Response and U.S. Policy Options", CRS Report to Congress, September 26, 2007
Wolfowitz, Paul, "How to Help North Korea's Refugees", The Wall Street Journal, June 16, 2009
, June 16, 2009 "North Korean Refugees in China: Findings", U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China, 2005 Annual Report.
MacIntyre, Donald, "Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide", Time magazine, Monday, Jun. 25, 2001
magazine, Monday, Jun. 25, 2001 NK agent disguised as defector detained [7]
Revised law aims to up state employment of NK defectors [8]
Lartigue, Casey, Jr. (2010-07-18). "Surprise — North Koreans love me!".
Articles
Crossing Heaven's Border PBS documentary follows North Korean defectors on a harrowing journey to freedom
"Seoul Train" by Jim Butterworth, Lisa Sleeth and Aaron Lubarsky, 2004 PBS documentary, at Independent Lens PBS website. ("Seoul Train" at Global Voices PBS website)
PBS website. ("Seoul Train" at PBS website) Human rights in North Korea
Web sites
^ Schwekendiek, Daniel (2011). A socioeconomic history of North Korea. Jefferson and London: Mcfarland. ^ "North Korea - Sanctions Wiki". Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported. ^ Kumar, T. (5 March 2012). "China's Repatriation of North Korean Refugees". Amnesty International USA. ^ Schwekendiek, Daniel. 2010. "A Meta-Analysis of North Koreans Migrating to China and South Korea", in: Korea: Politics, Economy, Society, R. Frank, J. Hoare, P. Koellner, S. Pares (eds.), Leiden and Boston: Brill, pp. 247–270. ^ "The Hidden Gulag – Exposing Crimes against Humanity in North Korea's Vast Prison System (pp. 111–147)" (PDF). The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. ^ "The Chosun Ilbo (English Edition): Daily News from Korea - N.Korea Sends Defectors' Families to Remote Camps". English.chosun.com. 2014-01-23. ^ National Museum of the USAF - MIKOYAN-GUREVICH MIG-15BIS ^ "1 in 10 NK defectors seeking asylum overseas". Koreatimes.co.kr. 2013-09-29. ^ North Korean officials express displeasure ^ Naver News (in Korean) ^ "Why This NGO Was Founded". Life Funds for North Korean Refugees. ^ a b c d e f g Bukhanitaljumin Hyunhwang" [Status of North Korean Defectors, 북한이탈주민 현황]" " ". Ministry of Unification. Resettlement Support Division. ^ Jason Strother (July 27, 2013). "North Korea defectors face long road to integration in South". ^ a b Shinui Kim (July 31, 2013). "Why are the majority of North Korean defectors female?". NKnews.org. ^ "China Extends North Korean Border Fences to Bolster Security". ^ Haggard, Stephen (December 2006). "The North Korean Refugee Crisis: Human Rights and International Response" (PDF). U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 March 2007. ^ a b c d e f Yeosang, Yoon; Sungchul, Park; Sunhee, Im (2013). "“Jaejungtalbukja Hyunhwang” [Status of North Korean Defectors in China, 재중탈북자 현황]". Junggukeu Talbukja Gangjaesonghwangwa Ingwonsiltae [Status of North Korean Defector Deportation and Human Rights in China, 중국의 탈북자 강제송환과 인권실태] (in Korean). Seoul: Database Center for North Korean Human Rights. pp. 20–27. ^ a b c d e f Yeosang, Yoon; Sungchul, Park; Sunhee, Im (2013). "“Jaejungtalbukjaeu Ingwonchimhae Hyunhwang” [Status of Human Rights Violation of North Korean Defectors in China, 재중탈북자의 인권침해 현황]". Junggukeu Talbukja Gangjaesonghwangwa Ingwonsiltae [Status of North Korean Defector Deportation and Human Rights in China, 중국의 탈북자 강제송환과 인권실태] (in Korean). Seoul: Database Center for North Korean Human Rights. pp. 37–42. ^ A Woman's Voice International (AWVI, an NGO that focused on the PRC's and DPRK's treatment of Intervention Agenda Item 12: Elimination of Violence Against Women at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in April 2004; speaker: Ji Sun JEONG for(AWVI, an NGO that focused on the PRC's and DPRK's treatment of North Korean refugees to China and of Christians). ^ a b c d e Yeosang, Yoon; Sungchul, Park; Sunhee, Im (2013). "“Junggukeu Talbukja Hangukhaengmit Gangjaebuksong” [North Korean Defectors Sent to Korea and Deported By China, 중국의 탈북자 한국행 및 강제북송]". Junggukeu Talbukja Gangjaesonghwangwa Ingwonsiltae [Status of North Korean Defector Deportation and Human Rights in China, 중국의 탈북자 강제송환과 인권실태]. Seoul: Database Center for North Korean Human Rights. pp. 28–36. ^ Kim Young-jin (17 February 2012). "'Repatriation of 24 NK defectors in China imminent'". Korea Times. ^ Kim Jung-yoon (30 April 2012). "Rep. Park's protests give China lessons". Korea Times. ^ (2013-11-18). "13 N. Korean defectors caught in China". Koreaherald.com. ^ "'"The Chosun Ilbo (English Edition): Daily News from Korea - China 'Repatriates Dozens of N.Korean Defectors. English.chosun.com. ^ "2013 Update "THE LIST" of North Korean Refugees & Humanitarian Workers Seized by Chinese Authorities" (PDF). North Korea Freedom Coalition. December 13, 2013. ^ "Sign the Petition Calling on China to Stop the Forced Repatriation of North Korean Refugees". North Korea Freedom Coalition. December 13, 2013. ^ Ryall, Julian (14 September 2011). "North Korean defectors rescued off Japanese coast". Telegraph (London). ^ "N. Korean defectors' rescued off Ishikawa". Yomiuri Shimbun. 14 September 2011. ^ "4 North Korean defectors reach Japan after six days on the open sea". Japan News Review. June 3, 2007. ^ Kyodo News (24 August 2007). "Amphetamines on defector similar to drugs seized in past". Japan Times. ^ "South Korea and Japan agreed on North Korean defectors". Japan News Review. June 3, 2007. ^ Asahi Shimbun - N. Korean defector admits drug use ^ "Nine North Korean refugees sail to Japan]". BBC News. 13 September 2011. ^ - Japan Focus - The Forgotten Victims of the North Korean Crisis ^ http://ajw.asahi.com/article/asia/korean_peninsula/AJ201403240051 ^ Demick, Barbara (2010). Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea. New York: Spiegel & Grau. ^ BBC News "N Korean refugees reach Philippines". BBC News. 15 March 2002. ^ Jerry E. Esplanada (16 January 2011). "Are there North Korean defectors in the Philippines?". Philippine Daily Inquirer. ^ Lee, Jeanyoung. "Ethnic Korean Migration in Northeast Asia" (PDF). Kyunghee University. ^ "North Korean refugees in Trouble". The Chosun Ilbo. 13 December 1999. ^ "A Case For Clarification: European Asylum Policy and North Korean Refugees", European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea, published March 2015 ^ "A spotlight on the UK's North Koreans", Migrant Voice, published 15th April 2015 ^ The Korean Republic of New Malden: how Surrey became home to the 70 year old conflict", ", The Independent, published 22nd February 2015 ^ "North Korean defectors learn to adapt in South". Usa Today. 20 December 2011. ^ Kirk, Don (29 Dec 2004). "N. Korean defectors face new challenges on journey South". Christian Science Monitor. ^ a b Bukhanitaljumin Ipguk mit jungchakgwajung" [Entrance And Settlement Procedure of North Korean Defectors, 북한이탈주민 입국 및 정착과정]" " ". Ministry of Unification. Resettlement Support Division. ^ Jung, Seung-im "진정한 통일은 사람과 사람의 통합" 탈북 주민과 머리 맞댔다 Hankook Ilbo. July 20, 2014. Retrieved August 18, 2014. ^ Kim, Eldo PSCORE's Got the Word on Helping New Defectors Joongang Daily 17 March 2010 ^ [5] Voice of America ^ [6] Chiang Mai University, 2012 ^ North Korea, National Geographic, February 2009 ^ "Japanese abductee's son among defectors sent back to N. Korea: report". The Mainichi. May 30, 2013. ^ "Abductee's son said among defectors". The Japan Times. May 30, 2013. ^ Chung Min-uck (2013-05-31). "Foreign ministry in hot water over defectors". The Korea Times. ^ John H. Cha (2013-08-25). Laos Nine' deserve international support"'". The Korea Herald. ^ "North Korean defectors sent back agonizingly close to freedom - CNN.com". Edition.cnn.com. 4 October 2013. ^ Damien Gayle. "Did North Korea execute these children for defecting? | Mail Online". London: Dailymail.co.uk. ^ "9 North Korean defectors may have been executed upon return: report". Washington Times. 2013-10-01. ^ Damien Gayle. "Did North Korea execute these children for defecting? | Mail Online". London: Dailymail.co.uk. ^ Ryall, Julian (2013-06-21). "North Korea parades defectors". London: Telegraph. ^ "U.S.-BASED North Korean REFUGEES A Qualitative Study" (PDF). www.bushcenter.org. Oct 2014. ^ Roberta Cohen (Sep 20, 2011). "Admitting North Korean Refugees to the United States: Obstacles and Opportunities". 38 North. ^ Buckley, Sarah (2004-07-28). "Escaping North Korea". BBC. ^ Jeffries, Ian (2013-06-17). North Korea: A Guide to Economic and Political Developments. Routledge. p. 94. ^ a b "Perilous Journeys; The Plight of North Koreans in China and Beyond" (PDF). The Nautilus Institute. 26 October 2006. ^ "Hundreds of North Koreans to enter South, reports say". San Diego Union-Tribune. Associated Press. 23 July 2004. ^ "Defector Activist Arrested in Vietnam". Daily NK. 25 June 2012. ^ "Vietnam detains S.Korean who helps N.Korean refugees". AFP. 24 June 2012. ^ "S. Korean activist detained in Vietnam for helping N. Korean defectors" (in 한국어). Yonhap News. 25 June 2012. ^ "Activist detained in Vietnam for helping NK defectors". Korea Times. 25 June 2012. ^ "S.Korean Activist Arrested in Vietnam for Helping N.Korean Refugees". The Chosun Ilbo. 27 June 2012. ^ "S. Korean activist deported from Vietnam for aiding N.K. defectors" (in 한국어). Yonhap News. 29 June 2012. ^ Han, Judy. "judyhan.com". North Korean refugees in Canada. ^ "Prime Minister Stephen Harper greets a North Korean defector". ^ a b c Ju-min Park (18 August 2013). "North Korea Is Promising No Harm And Cash Rewards For Defectors Who Come Back". Business Insider. Additional reporting by Se Young Lee in Seoul and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Dean Yates and David Chance. Reuters. ^ a b Chung Min-uck (2013-12-24). "More N. Korean defectors going back". Korea Times. ^ a b c d McCurry, Justin (22 April 2014). "The defector who wants to go back to North Korea". The Guardian. ^ "N. Korea's're-defector' to stand to trial in Seoul". Global Post. Yonhap News Agency. September 11, 2013. ^ "Almost 700 N. Korean defectors' whereabouts unknown". Yonhap News Agency. 27 September 2015. ^ Adam Taylor (26 December 2013). "Why North Korean Defectors Keep Returning Home". Business Insider.
References
[12][17][18][20][46 |
down their shutters to protect them
'F*** everyone get out of Selfridges now gun shots!!' How Olly Murs got caught up in the Oxford Circus panic Popstar Olly Murs was caught up in the Oxford Street panic after apparently overhearing people saying 'gun shots' inside Selfridges. The presenter, 33, live-tweeted as police descended on the streets following reports gunfire in a number of locations on Oxford Street and at Oxford Circus underground station. Murs wrote: 'F*** everyone get out of Selfridges now gun shots!! I'm inside.' He later confirmed he was taken to the back office for protection while other shoppers were'screaming' and 'running towards exits'. Murs added later he was evacuating the store and was told that there were no shots inside, contrary to earlier reports. He was later criticised by Piers Morgan, who told him to'stop tweeting'. But he responded: 'Listen piers! I was shopping and then all of sudden the whole place went mad, I mean crazy people running & screaming towards exits. 'We found a small office to hide to which loads of staff and people were saying there was shots fired. If you was there you'd have understood mate.' The singer later tweeted that he was glad 'nothing serious' happened and that he hoped everyone had got home safely.
Regan Warner wrote on Twitter that she saw a man bumping into another man on the 'overcrowded platform' at 4.35pm.
She said: 'They exchanged words, then a punch to the gut, then a full-out fight.'
'People were trying to break it up, there was lots of yelling. People were running away, a woman fainted, children were scared and crying.
'The emergency button was pressed. The fight was broken up and the parties walked in opposite directions.
'The fight was broken up and the parties walked in opposite directions. Then there was an announcement to evacuate the station. I jumped on a train.'
MailOnline journalist Keiligh Baker, who was walking towards Carnaby Street when the incident unfolded, said: 'Lots of armed police arrived and stormed Oxford Street. They were shouting "move, move, move!".
'Then the uniformed officers started shouting "go, go, go". People were sprinting and screaming.'
Ms Baker added: 'We ran along Oxford Street and there were lots of shops with people in them, some were locked, some were still letting people in.'
Another witness Ryan Smith, who was working in a building on the corner of Great Titchfield Street and Oxford Street, said: 'It seemed as if there were thousands of people running past the building. One girl who ran into the building said she heard several bangs. She was very shook up.
'It was just like a stampede – there were thousands of people running down the street. They started flocking into the building.
Do you know the men who were involved? Call 0203 615 1536 or email scott.campbell@mailonline.co.uk
'And then I have come up and I have gone to the window and then it was calm for a second. Then people started running into shops.'
Greg Bird told MailOnline he was sat outside a coffee shop near Oxford Circus station when he saw 'about 50 people sprinting around the corner and screaming'.
About 90 minutes after responding police said there was no evidence of any shots, casualties or suspects and stood down the operation just after 6pm.
A large section of Oxford Street was locked down at the height of the scare, but Oxford Circus and Bond Street stations later reopened. Cordons have been removed and the area has returned to normal.
British Transport Police confirmed the mass evacuation was caused by an 'altercation' between two men and urged those pictured in the CCTV images to come forward.
In a statement, they said: '[Officers] would now like to speak to these two people in the CCTV images, who they believe may have information about the incident and the circumstances around the incident.
'They would also like to speak to anyone who was at the station or in the area at the time and saw or heard anything that would have caused mass evacuation.'
Chief Superintendent Martin Fry said: 'Thank you to everyone for bearing with us this evening and also to colleagues from all the emergency services who helped carry out a swift response.
'Our officers, alongside those from the MPS, reacted quickly and responded professionally in line with our well prepared plans.
'I know incidents like these can cause concern, but our officers are highly visible around the network and across the country so if you ever need us please call us on 0800 40 50 40 or text 61016.'
Dozens of people were seen fleeing the station after it was evacuated following reports of gun shots inside the station
Later on, the centre of Oxford Circus was completely empty aside from police vehicles and 10 officers patrolling the street
People are seen taking refuge inside the Gap shop, on Oxford Street, in the cellar and inside the shop
Buses were told to pull over and evacuate as armed police stood around Oxford Circus keeping an eye out for suspects
The area was in lockdown and a cordon was in place while police scoured the area. People are seen on the phone as they wait for the all-clear by police
Several other pedestrians were seen on their mobile phones during the widespread panic yesterday evening
A cordon was set up near John Lewis, on Oxford Street, towards near Topshop and the Nike Store. Officers also partially cordoned off the right hand side of Regent Street, near All Saints
A police statement released at 5:40pm said: 'To date police have not located any trace of any suspects, evidence of shots fired or causalities. Officers continue to work with colleagues from British Transport Police in the area of Oxford Circus.
'Updates will be provided as soon as we have them.
'If you are in building stay in a building, if you are on the street in Oxford Street leave the area. Officers are continuing to search the area.'
At 6.08pm, Scotland Yard put out another statement saying: 'The Met response on Oxford Street has now been stood down.
'If you sought shelter in a building please now leave and follow the direction of police officers on the ground if you need assistance.
'At 16:38hrs on Friday, 24 November police started to receive numerous 999 calls within a short space of time reporting shots fired in a number of locations on Oxford Street and at Oxford Circus underground station.
'Given the nature of the information received, the Met responded in line with our existing operation as if the incident was terrorism, including the deployment of armed officers.
'Officers working with colleagues from British Transport Police carried out an urgent search of the area. No causalities, evidence of any shots fired or any suspects were located by police.'
The BTP spokesman added: 'A full and methodical search of the station and Oxford Street was conducted by officers.
'At this stage, we are examining the circumstances of the incident which resulted in the station being evacuated.
'During the station evacuation, one woman is believed to have sustained a minor injury.
'We continue to work with the Metropolitan Police Service and are working to reopen Oxford Circus and Bond Street Tube stations. '
A Kensington Palace spokesman confirmed that despite the incident, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge attended the Royal Variety Performance at the nearby London Palladium.
Do you know the men who were involved? Call 0203 615 1536 or email scott.campbell@mailonline.co.uk
Fire engines were also dispatched to the scene after people were evacuated safely from the area by police officers
Four heavily armed officers were seen talking as officers staged the cordons in the background of the shopping district
Stunned witnesses described seeing a stampede of shoppers and the a cordon was put in place while police swarmed the area
One man was seen speaking to a police officer during the chaos while holding his phone to his chest
A large group of people were seen looking around and filing out of the underground station later on
Police officers were seen standing on islands as people returned to the pavements afterwards
Several people were seen standing outside an exit point of Oxford Circus tube station earlier
Two officers looked on as people remained on the roads and walked around after the incident
Earlier, police officers blocked an exit point at Oxford Circus as people stood around and waited for instruction
Oxford Circus was extremely busy as people stood around and tried to work out what was happening
Due to the incident in Oxford Circus, despite police allowing the public back in, most of the shops remained closed
The shopping district is seen in pitch black as shoppers walked around Regent Street earlier this evening after the cordons were removed
Several people were seen carrying shopping bags after the incident and walking calmly around the district tonight
Despite Black Friday being a huge event for shops across the globe, several shops including Gap (which hid people in its basement hours before) remained shut
Terrified shoppers have told how they locked in the basement of a bar after gunshots were reportedly heard at Oxford CircusThe number of poor people in U.S. suburbs rose by 63.6% between 2000 and 2011, from 10 million to well over 16 million people. For the first time, there are now more people living in poverty in the suburbs than in cities.
In some metro areas, the number of poor people living outside the city proper has jumped even more rapidly. In the Atlanta, Ga., suburbs there are roughly 480,000 more people living below the poverty line than there were in 2000, an extraordinary 158% increase in the number of the suburban poor. Based on data collected by the Brookings Institution as part of a comprehensive study on suburban poverty, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the 10 cities with the biggest increases in suburban poverty between 2000 and 2011.
Click here to see the 10 cities where suburban poverty is skyrocketing
Most of the metropolitan areas where suburban poverty has grown the most in the past decade also have had the largest overall increases in population. The U.S. population grew by 9.7% between 2000 and 2010. The population of eight of these 10 metro areas grew by at least 15%, and the population of six of the 10 grew by more than 25%. The population of Las Vegas increased by 41.8%, more than any metro area in the country.
Substantial job opportunities in these areas can explain the sizable increase in the populations of these places, according to Brookings Institution fellow and study author Elizabeth Kneebone. Several of these cities, including Las Vegas and Phoenix, have increased employment by more than 10% between 2000 and 2011. Austin increased the number of people with jobs by 23.4% during that time.
The rising population and increased job opportunities both led to a major increase in home prices. This pushed poorer residents living in the city — as well as low-income new residents moving to the metro area from another city — to the city’s outskirts. Kneebone said, “as some of these really rapidly developing places have grown, families will drive until they qualify, they’ll move outwards until they can find a home they can afford.”
While the increase in population and rising home prices have clearly been a factor in the rising numbers of poor people outside of cities, Kneebone cautioned that this is not the only factor affecting suburban poverty. “It is also,” she noted, “long-term residents that have been hit hard by the economy in the last decade. The recession clearly has a role in this trend.”
While the recession had an impact by increasing suburban poverty even in the healthiest economies, it was especially the case in cities like Detroit and Minneapolis. These are cities where the population has either not kept pace with national grown or declined, and where new jobs have not been added. In these areas, the suburban poverty problem is increasingly due to declining the manufacturing and construction sectors — problems only worsened by the recession.
It should be noted that while these cities have rapid rises in the number of poor people living in the suburbs, in several cases these metro areas remain below the U.S. average for suburban poverty. If rates continue to go up at this astronomic rate over the next 10 years, however, that may soon change.
To determine the cities where poverty increased the most between 2000 and 2011, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed figures published by the Brookings Institution’s report, “Confronting Suburban Poverty in America.” Brookings also provided information on poverty rates and the number of impoverished residents at both the suburban and city levels for 95 of the nation’s 100 largest metro areas. Five were not considered in the report because they did not have complete data available. Additionally, 24/7 Wall st. considered figures on population growth between 2000 and 2010 published by the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2012 Statistical Abstract. Information on five-year change in home prices, through the first quarter of 2013, are from the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Home Price Index. Unemployment rates are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
These are the cities where suburban poverty increased the most between 2000 and 2011.Photons could travel side by side a specific distance from each other — similar to how two hydrogen atoms sit next to each other in a hydrogen molecule — theoretical physicists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland (with other collaborators) have shown.
“It’s not a molecule per se, but you can imagine it as having a similar kind of structure,” says NIST’s Alexey Gorshkov. “We’re learning how to build complex states of light that, in turn, can be built into more complex objects. This is the first time anyone has shown how to bind two photons a finite distance apart.
“Lots of modern technologies are based on light, from communication technology to high-definition imaging,” Gorshkov says. “Many of them would be greatly improved if we could engineer interactions between photons.”
For example, the research could lead to new photonic computing systems, replacing slow electrons with light and reducing energy loses in the conversion from electrons to light and back.
“The detailed understanding of the [physics] also opens up an avenue towards understanding the full and much richer many-body problem involving an arbitrary number of photons in any dimension,” the authors state in a paper forthcoming in Physical Review Letters.
The findings build on previous research that several team members contributed to before joining NIST. In 2013, collaborators from Harvard, Caltech and MIT found a way to bind two photons together so that one would sit right atop the other, superimposed as they travel.
Abstract of Coulomb bound states of strongly interacting photons
We show that two photons coupled to Rydberg states via electromagnetically induced transparency can interact via an effective Coulomb potential. This interaction gives rise to a continuum of two-body bound states. Within the continuum, metastable bound states are distinguished in analogy with quasi-bound states tunneling through a potential barrier. We find multiple branches of metastable bound states whose energy spectrum is governed by the Coulomb potential, thus obtaining a photonic analogue of the hydrogen atom. Under certain conditions, the wavefunction resembles that of a diatomic molecule in which the two polaritons are separated by a finite “bond length.” These states propagate with a negative group velocity in the medium, allowing for a simple preparation and detection scheme, before they slowly decay to pairs of bound Rydberg atoms.This post is going to be about crawling an entire domain in Node.js. You can find the first posts of the series here: Web Scraping / Web Crawling Pages with Node.js.
For testing purposes I have created a simple set of HTML pages, that should resemble a generic website. It has some page and we want our crawler to go through them and make sure it finds all of them, where they’re linked. That means when our crawler hits a page, it should keep track of the links it finds and then only proceed to pages it has not crawled yet.
In this example we’re just going to make those arrays, if you have a lot of data, if you want to shard the process or similar, you probably want to go for a message queue with redis or activemq or the likes.
To get the example below running on your machine, just install the following packages first: npm install lodash async cheerio request.
// core modules var fs = require('fs'); var url = require('url'); // third party modules var _ = require('lodash'); var async = require('async'); var cheerio = require('cheerio'); var request = require('request'); var base = 'projects.jonathanmh.com'; var firstLink = 'http://' + base + '/crawling-site'; var crawled = []; var inboundLinks = []; var makeRequest = function(crawlUrl, callback){ var startTime = new Date().getTime(); request(crawlUrl, function (error, response, body) { var pageObject = {}; pageObject.links = []; var endTime = new Date().getTime(); var requestTime = endTime - startTime; pageObject.requestTime = requestTime; var $ = cheerio.load(body); pageObject.title = $('title').text(); pageObject.url = crawlUrl; $('a').each(function(i, elem){ /* insert some further checks if a link is: * valid * relative or absolute * check out the url module of node: https://nodejs.org/dist/latest-v5.x/docs/api/url.html */ pageObject.links.push({linkText: $(elem).text(), linkUrl: elem.attribs.href}) }); callback(error, pageObject); }); } var myLoop = function(link){ makeRequest(link, function(error, pageObject){ console.log(pageObject); crawled.push(pageObject.url); async.eachSeries(pageObject.links, function(item, cb){ parsedUrl = url.parse(item.linkUrl); // test if the url actually points to the same domain if(parsedUrl.hostname == base){ /* insert some further link error checking here */ inboundLinks.push(item.linkUrl); } cb(); },function(){ var nextLink = _.difference(_.uniq(inboundLinks), crawled); if(nextLink.length > 0){ myLoop(nextLink[0]); } else { console.log('done!'); } }); }); } myLoop(firstLink);
This little crawler will go through all links on the page, for real world usage a couple of things are missing like:
check the content type if it really is “text/html”
check if the destination points to something with a 200 status code
lots of error handling (you would not believe what people run as a website)
The data we’re gathering on each page is up to you really. Anything cheerio can find in the DOM and I’m saving the request time until it’s received on top of that.
So for each page:
URL
title from <title>
requestTime in milliseconds
links as {linkText: (from within the <a> tag), linkUrl: (from href="")}
For now though, this example will do and should show the following output:
{ links: [ { linkText: 'about it', linkUrl: 'http://projects.jonathanmh.com/crawling-site/about.html' }, { linkText: 'all the posts', linkUrl: 'http://projects.jonathanmh.com/crawling-site/posts.html' } ], requestTime: 278, title: 'Web Crawling Example Site | Home', url: 'http://projects.jonathanmh.com/crawling-site' } { links: [ { linkText: 'HOME', linkUrl: 'http://projects.jonathanmh.com/crawling-site/about.html' }, { linkText: 'all the posts', linkUrl: 'http://projects.jonathanmh.com/crawling-site/posts.html' } ], requestTime: 119, title: 'About', url: 'http://projects.jonathanmh.com/crawling-site/about.html' } { links: [ { linkText: 'Post #1', linkUrl: 'http://projects.jonathanmh.com/crawling-site/post1.html' }, { linkText: 'Post #2', linkUrl: 'http://projects.jonathanmh.com/crawling-site/post2.html' } ], requestTime: 119, title: 'Posts List', url: 'http://projects.jonathanmh.com/crawling-site/posts.html' } { links: [], requestTime: 119, title: 'Post #1 about Web Crawling', url: 'http://projects.jonathanmh.com/crawling-site/post1.html' } { links: [ { linkText: 'the first post', linkUrl: 'http://projects.jonathanmh.com/crawling-site/post1.html' } ], requestTime: 121, title: 'Post #2 about Web Crawling', url: 'http://projects.jonathanmh.com/crawling-site/post2.html' } done!
Finally, when the difference of the arrays crawled and inboundLinks is an empty array, the crawler stops and notifies us, that it’s done!.
I hope you’ve enjoyed our little excursion into web crawling land and you’ll build something amazing with it! Feel free to leave a comment, ask all the questions or write me on twitter!From a nifty backheel to a long-range blast to a wicked curler, Week 13 had it all in the goals department.
There were more than enough quality finishes during the last round of MLS action, including Kamani Hill's impressive backheel strike for the Colorado Rapids, Jermain Defoe's strong finish for Toronto FC and Will Johnson's volley following some neat juggling moves from Portland Timbers teammate Fanendo Adi. Those tallies are up for Week 13's AT&T MLS Goal of the Week award, as are San Jose Earthquake midfielder Jean-Baptiste Pierazzi's cannon from distance and Timbers forward Maximiliano Urruti's top-shelf bender.
Whose goal did you think was the week's very best? Cast your ballot for your favorite goal before voting ends! The winner is determined by the total number of votes cast online and will be announced on Friday.
Voting runs until 11:59 pm PT on Thursdays. For complete coverage of the AT&T MLS Goal of the Week — including an archive of all of this season's nominees and winners — click here.FreedroidRPG showing area of effect. Screenshot fromshowing area of effect.
A term used in many role-playing and strategy games to describe attacks or other effects that affect multiple targets within a specified area. For example, in the role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons, a fireball spell will deal damage to anyone within a certain radius of where it strikes. In most tactical strategy games artillery weapons have an area of effect that will damage anyone within a radius of the strike zone.
Area of effect can also refer to spells and abilities that are non-damaging. For example, a powerful healing spell may affect anyone within a certain range of the caster (often only if they are a member of the caster's party). Some games also have what are referred to as "aura" abilities that will affect anyone in the area around the person with the ability. For example, many strategy games have hero or officer units that can improve the morale and combat performance of friendly units around them. The inclusion of AoE elements in game mechanics can increase the role of strategy, especially in turn-based games. The player has to place units wisely to mitigate the possibly devastating effects of a hostile area of effect attack; however, placing units in a dense formation could result in gains that outweigh the increased AoE damage received.
Point-blank area of effect (PBAoE) is a less-used term for when the affected region is centered on the character performing the ability, rather than at a location of the player's choosing.Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
May 2, 2017, 2:24 PM GMT / Updated May 2, 2017, 11:40 PM GMT By Pete Williams, Craig Melvin and Daniel Arkin
A white former South Carolina police officer pleaded guilty Tuesday to violating the civil rights of Walter Scott, the unarmed black motorist he shot dead in 2015.
The state of South Carolina, as part of a plea deal, will not file new charges against Michael Slager, who was fired after cellphone footage of Scott's killing in North Charleston went viral. Slager's murder trial ended last December in a hung jury.
"The defendant used deadly force even though it was objectively unreasonable under the circumstances," the plea agreement says.
Related: Judge Declares Mistrial in Murder Trial of Former Cop Michael Slager
Outside the courthouse Tuesday, Scott’s brother, Anthony, thanked federal prosecutors and said his family was grateful to have “justice.”
“For me and my family, the healing starts today,” Anthony Scott said, adding that Slager’s guilty plea was a “victory” for his city, state, country and the world.
Walter Scott’s mother, Judy, fought back tears as she told reporters she forgives Slager.
"I forgive Michael Slager because the forgiver is in me. That he [Slager] admitted he did it was enough years for me," she said.
Slager, 35, pulled over Scott on April 4, 2015, due to a broken taillight. Scott, 50, then ran from the traffic stop. The incident escalated, Slager has claimed, when Scott wrestled away the officer's Taser. Slager then fired his weapon as Scott ran away. Scott was struck five times in the back.
The defense in Slager's murder trial claimed the former North Charleston police department patrolman feared for his life and fired in self-defense. Scott's family has suggested he fled because he owed back child-support payments and did not want to be arrested.
Slager's federal trial was set to begin on May 15, and jury selection was slated to begin May 9.
The former officer pleaded guilty to violating Scott's civil rights by shooting him with no justification — formally known as deprivation of rights under color of law. The charge carries a maximum penalty of life in prison.
"We hope that Michael's acceptance of responsibility will help the Scott family as they continue to grieve their loss," Slager's lawyer, Andy Savage, said in a statement. Sentencing has not yet been scheduled, Savage said.
Slager was also indicted last year on charges of using a firearm in committing a crime of violence and obstructing justice. Those two charges will be dismissed under the terms of the plea deal.
After the mistrial in December, state prosecutors said they would seek to try Slager again, but no charges had yet been filed.
The infamous cellphone video was viewed millions of times worldwide. It was recorded by bystander Feidin Santana, who revealed himself first to "NBC Nightly News" anchor Lester Holt.
The shooting itself heightened tension nationwide over alleged excessive use of force by law enforcement and systemic racism in policing.Cardinals safety Tyrann Mathieu (32) runs with the football with safety Deone Bucannon (36) after a fumble by the Redskins during the fourth quarter at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale on Oct. 12, 2014. (Photo: Michael Chow/azcentral sports)
The Cardinals drafted Deone Bucannon as a safety. He's listed as one on the roster, the depth chart, the media guide, most everywhere except his driver's license. And Bucannon, a first-round pick out of Washington State, is emphatic that, yes, he is a safety.
So how many times has he lined up in a traditional safety spot, 10-to-15 yards from scrimmage?
"In the NFL? In a game?" he said, laughing. "No, I have not. In practice, I have."
What Bucannon has really been this year is an inside linebacker, the "Mike" in nickel and dime packages. Also called the "Dollar" linebacker, Bucannon's job varies, from reading blocks and dissecting run plays, to blitzing up the middle and from the outside, to defending tight ends.
NFL power rankings: Promoting the Cardinals
He's improved so much at it that his playing time has increased in each of the past three games, to a season-high 82 percent of the defensive plays last Sunday against Washington.
"In the beginning we were just playing him on pass downs," defensive backs coach Nick Rapone said. "But he's so physical and he can read the surface of the offensive line. Todd (Todd Bowles, defensive coordinator) has kept him in on run downs in the nickel. It's been his progress. He's such a physical player at 214 pounds.
"It really should be a mismatch, when you talk about weight, going against 300-pound linemen, but you also picked up a guy who runs 4.49 (in the 40-yard dash)."
Bucannon seems to relish the job, which often means managing chaos.
"No one's going to feel sorry for you, bro," he said.
Cardinals rewind: What we learned in win over Redskins
Bucannon, who played safety in high school and throughout his college career, was surprised in training camp when Bowles approached him about playing linebacker.
Bucannon was humble enough and smart enough to embrace the role. With the return of Rashad Johnson and Tyrann Mathieu, and the improvement of Tony Jefferson, it didn't look as if Bucannon was going to play much safety.
One of Bowles' strengths is finding roles for players, and he's done it with Bucannon.
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"I didn't know what 'dollar' was at the time," Bucannon said. "He told me it's kind of a hybrid role. I was totally excited about it. I just want to be on the field."
Bucannon also felt lost. He was accustomed to playing farther off the ball, where there is more time to diagnose plays. He knew nothing about reading what Rapone calls "the surface" of the offensive line.
"By how they're blocking, linemen for the most part will tell you where the play is going," Rapone said. "A guard pulls, a tackle pulls, a tight end offsets. He is now starting to be able to read the linemen. He's able to cross key and he's going to be able to get to the point of attack much quicker."
It's not an unusual job in the NFL, or with the Cardinals. Safety Yeremiah Bell played some "dollar" a year ago, but not to the extent Bucannon is playing.
Photos: Best of NFL Week 6 action
The increase is due partly to the suspension of linebacker Daryl Washington, perhaps the fastest inside linebacker in the NFL, and partly because it fits Bucannon's style.
He loves to hit, so much in fact, that coaches are trying to get him to use his hands more and shoulder pads less when taking on blockers.
"The first day he jumped out there, it was, 'Oh, he's going to be a natural at it,' " coach Bruce Arians said. "He allows us to do so many things and it adds to our speed level. This (Washington) was not his best game; it was probably his worst game. But again, he'll learn from it.
"He's a great kid. He studies and has a lot of pride."
Bucannon seems to know his place among veterans and coaches. He's quiet, rarely saying nothing more to Rapone than, "Yes, sir."
On Monday, Bucannon said he was humbled that coaches and would take so much time to teach him.
"They don't have to," he said. "It's not in their contract."
It probably is in their contract, but that's how Bucannon thinks.
Eventually, next year perhaps, Bucannon will spend some time as a traditional safety. His experience at the "dollar" spot should make him a better player, he said.
"What the linebacker does affects what the safety does, especially in our defense," he said. "Me knowing what he is thinking, I'll know, 'OK, this is where I have help. This is where I don't have help.'
"Safety is my position, safety is where I love to play. But this just broadens the horizon. I'm playing a lot and I love it. It's a lot of trust they are putting in me."
Photos: Arizona Cardinals fans - 2014
Stat pack
Safety Rashad Johnson had three interceptions in 59 career games before losing part of a finger in Week 3 last year. He has five interceptions in the 15 games since.
14-7: Cardinals record under Bruce Arians. Only Norm Barry (16-4-1) had a better record as Cardinals coach through 21 games.
223: Consecutive pass attempts without an interception by Arizona.
+8: Cardinals turnover margin this season.
20: Number of touchbacks kicker Chandler Catanzaro has this season. He has kicked off 29 times.
15: Number of consecutive games in which Carson Palmer has thrown a touchdown pass. It's the longest streak of his career.
Coach's corner
"Two very, very smart players. They dissect plays by formation, they see things, they study a ton of tape, they communicate very well. When a guy's smart, it's easy to communicate because he believes in what he's saying. JP, there's no doubt he's been our MVP so far defensively. Rashad has been as steady as you can get."
— Bruce Arians on cornerback Jerraud Powers and safety Rashad Johnson.
NFL Week 6 winners and losers:
UP NEXT
Arizona Cardinals (4-1) at Oakland Raiders (0-5)
Time/TV: Sunday at 1:25 p.m./Channel 10
Where: O.co Coliseum, Oakland, Calif.poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201609/684/1155968404_5142646151001_5142656227001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true Off Message 5 takeaways from the first presidential debate She hits him where it hurts, and his defensiveness makes him seem wimpy.
There were a couple of not-so-very-subtle signals here inside of Hofstra University that Donald Trump lost Monday night’s highly-anticipated debate against Hillary Clinton, and badly.
The first was the audible sound of groaning by some of his supporters (picked up by my attentive colleague Steve Shepard) inside the debate hall as Trump meandered self-defensively through a succession of answers against a very focused, very energized and very well-rehearsed Hillary Clinton.
Story Continued Below
Another tell: After the 90-minute sparring match finished, Clinton’s team practically bounded into the spin room – more in glassy-eyed disbelief than visible elation that things had gone so much better than expected. The GOP nominee’s people, by contrast, dribbled into the media pen like surly seventh-graders headed for homeroom the day before summer vacation. “F—k, let’s do this,” a prominent Trump surrogate said before diving into a scrum.
Trump and his new-ish messaging team have labored mightily to turn the avatar of populist rage into a reasonable facsimile of someone who you could see sitting in the Oval Office. But this best-laid plan unraveled on Monday – amid Clinton’s steely assault and the dignified interrogation of NBC’s Lester Holt, who struck a deft balance between facilitator, BS detector and lion tamer.
Within minutes of the opening bell, Clinton’s attacks forced domesticated Donald to go feral – he bellowed, interrupted her repeatedly, grunted, and toward the bedraggled end, became muted and pouty.
“It was bizarre,” said Barack Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe, who, like many Clinton allies, seemed visibly relieved. “He was clearly rattled, and clearly focused on defending himself, which I’m told narcissists are prone to do, and he clearly faded at the end. It’s not like she’s going to jump out to a 10-point lead, but this was good.”
Whether or not this reverses Trump’s momentum, or reestablishes Clinton's control of the race is an open question. Who won is not. Here are five takeaways.
Trump was wimpy when defensive. He is supposed to be the big meanie but it was Clinton who hit him where it hurt most. It doesn’t take a Jung (or even Dr. Phil after a couple of Bud Lights) to figure out that the GOP nominee – who boasts like a barfly – just might be over-compensating. Hence, Clinton, who started the debate a little tentatively, quickly launched into a carefully planned program of Freudian mind-games, contrasting her own middle-class businessman dad (who had his own issues) with Trump’s imperious, larger-than-life father Fred who launched his son’s business career but also was said to be extremely tough on him.
First she started in with a paean to her father’s running a small printing business in Chicago (This might be the first time a candidate has described, in detail, the silk-screen squeegee process on a debate stage) – then she pivoted to mocking supposedly self-made Trump’s start in the real estate business. “You know, Donald was very fortunate in his life and that's all to his benefit. He started his business with $14 million, borrowed from his father,” she said icily.
“My father gave me a very small loan in 1975 and I built it into a company that's worth many, many billions of dollars,” he responded weakly – and so it went on a range of topics.
Whether it was because Clinton was so well prepped, and Trump was so breezily unprepared – or had a simple case of opening night jitters – the bully-boy nominee abandoned his most effective mode of debate combat, answering an attack with a harsher one. She went right for Trump’s ego – questioning his questionable $11 billion net worth, his boastful record on job creation and picking apart his tough talk on fighting ISIS.
View The 10 most memorable moments of the presidential debate Here are the most memorable and important moments of the night from the first presidential debate at Hofstra University on Monday.
In 2007, preparing for a primary race she’d eventually lose, Clinton told me that the key to presidential political campaigns was understanding that the most effective attacks weren’t about exploiting someone’s weaknesses but challenging an opponent’s perceived strengths. When confronted with that assault, Trump wilted and offered a series of meandering answers that had his Republicans wincing. “It was a draw,” former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown said. “But he was on the defensive far too much. That’s a direct result of his inexperience.”
What |
PCLinuxOS 2010 LXDE internet applications installed by default.
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PCLinuxOS 2010 LXDE video applications installed by default.We recently published an article on Intel’s upcoming Devil’s Canyon and Pentium 20th Anniversary Edition chips which were planned for launch on 2nd June 2014. However, we have just received information that suggests that the Intel Devil’s Canyon processors would only be paper launched at the Computex 2014 event with availability of the chips planned for late September.
Intel Will Paper Launch Devil’s Canyon on 2nd June – Retail Availability Planned For Late September
To be honest, this is somewhat disappointing as many users who have been waiting to try out something new on the latest Z97 motherboards will have to wait longer for the new Core i7-4790K and Core i5-4690K processors. It is known that the new Devil’s Canyon processors ship with faster clock speeds, better packaging materials, design that’s built to sustain overclocking and most importantly, better TIM between the IHS and die of the processor to get better overclocking results.
Several retail sites have listed the Core i7-4790K, Core i5-4690K and Pentium G3258 processors for pre-order prior to their launch but the actual sales won’t commence until end of September 2014. Users who have purchased the Z97 motherboards specifically for Intel Devil’s Canyon processors will have to look into Haswell and its Refresh series until Devil’s Canyon launches.
While VR-Zone tells that this years Computex show will be more desktop oriented with Intel emphasizing a lot more than usual on their desktop users and platforms, their would be no actual chips available to prove it since Devil’s Canyon will launch in September and Haswell-E which will be next generation HEDT lineup is also planned for launch around the same quarter. Aside from Intel’s conference and booth, other manufacturers will actually be displaying several new motherboards based on Intel’s high-performance X99 chipset which will be powering the LGA 2011-3 socket motherboards. I have also received information that almost all of the motherboard makers are holding out for Devil’s Canyon to launch their high-performance and enthusiast minded Z97 boards. Currently, the Z97 boards available by ASUS, MSI, GIgabyte, ASRock haven’t seen the flagship parts such as the ASRock Extreme9, ASUS Maximus VII, etc. These boards will be launched with Devil’s Canyon and marketed as proper overclocking boards with support for Devil’s Canyon.
Desktop Broadwell Processors Pushed To Q2 2015
On the other hand, Intel also seems to have pushed the launch of their next generation Broadwell K-Series and Broadwell processors for their desktop platform to Q2 2015 from Q1 2015. Sources suggest that Broadwell for desktops is pushed to May – June 2015 from its original launch period of Q1, the same year. While Intel is pushing Broadwell for mobility devices in Holiday of 2014 (Q4 2014), the desktop lineup would be further delayed.
Broadwell CPUs will be the first to adopt 14nm process technology and on the desktop parts which have been confirmed to feature Intel’s latest Iris Pro graphics chips. Intel Iris Pro graphics chips features double the execution units of the HD 4600 graphics chip (40 vs 20) and comes with its own 128 MB of on-package eDRAM codenamed ‘CrystalWell’. This super fast LLC helps deliver the Iris Pro graphics chip with 25.6GB/s + 50GB/s eDRAM (bidirectional) which fulfills its bandwidth requirement. The Crystalwell eDRAM is located on a separate package on the CPU die.
We can also confirm that just like Haswell, Broadwell will have a Voltage Regulator on chip. There will also be a power controller on chip. This will allow as much as C10 level of low power state computing. the U and H variants will both have a Extreme Tuning Utility which will allow easy overclocking of both the CPU and GPU. In such a case, we can obviously expect better performance from the Broadwell line of Core processors.
But as much great the Iris Pro chip sounds for Broadwell, it should be pointed that the Haswell processors with GT3e graphics ended up with much higher prices compared to those with HD Graphics. Intel may add a cut down variant of the Iris Pro chip on desktop variants to reduce prices keeping them at the same levels as Haswell and Ivy Bridge before it otherwise it will just add more cost to these chips. I also don’t see the point of adding the Iris graphics on flagship Broadwell processors considering the users will almost certainly end up buying a discrete graphics card that offers better performance. The Iris Pro graphics will however become a much better deal in some budget tier Core i3 and Core i5 chips which could be placed directly against AMD’s Kaveri and next gen of Carrizo APUs that arrive in 2015.Spain's Stolen Babies (BBC, This World, 2011) - Antitheist Blog
Spain's stolen children is a harrowing story of Catholicism and Fascism working in partnership to commit what must rate up with some of the worst crimes ever committed. Parents or the mother alone deemed morally unacceptable by the Catholics and or against Franco's politics were told the child they had just given birth to had died. The baby was then stolen and sold to a family acceptable to the Catholics and politically acceptable. The babies came at a high price to the purchasers, the cost of a flat in one case stated.The exact numbers are unknown, it's estimated to be between 30 and 300 thousand babies. In recent cases of exhumations, coffins were found to be empty, or filled with rocks, one even had an adult human leg inside. The true scale of this horror is incomprehensible and the suffering immeasurable.The complete disregard for humanity and any decency whatsoever makes you wonder just how such a vile disgusting organisation continues and sports a membership of a billion plus. The Magdalene Laundries being another great abuse of people and the last Magdalene asylum only closed within the last twenty years.A North Korean company is advertising a domestic tablet computer under the copyrighted name of one of Apple Inc.’s flagship products – the “iPad” – the DPRK’s latest edition of Foreign Trade magazine shows. The term “iPad” is registered as an Apple trademark on its website and while there are occasions when the company’s terms can be used, these generally need Apple’s authorization.
Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.
North Korea technology company Ryonghung has recently released a new tablet using the trademarked name of Apple's popular device, the iPad. The company's tablet is called the "Ryonghung iPad" and lets users read the news, work on documents, and perform other actions across more than 40 different pre-installed apps (via Gizmodo ).Tech specs for the Ryonghung iPad detail a device with 1GB RAM, an 8GB hard disk, a quad-core 1.2GHz processor, HDMI compatibility, a keyboard, and "network connection" capabilities. The advertising material details a few apps as well, relating to programs like a calculator, a health encyclopedia, a medical app, and an agricultural program.As NK News pointed out, the heavy use of "iPad" in the device's marketing material violates Apple's trademarks.A different version of the Ryonghung iPad first appeared in North Korea in 2013, although then it lacked the "iPad" moniker and was called the "Ryonghung-trademarked tablet computer" by the media. North Korean versions of Apple devices have been seen in the past, with a computer bearing resemblance to the iMac showing up at a trade fair in Pyongyang in 2015. Created by a company called Blue Sky, the computer was an all-in-one device with an aluminum finish, black bezels, and white keyboard and mouse accessories.Similarly, in 2014 reports surfaced of North Korea's "Red Star" Linux operating system and its overall resemblance to OS X at the time. The Red Star OS included a similar dock, wallpapers, tool bar, and more visual similarities to Apple's MacBook and iMac computer operating system. However, the Ryonghung iPad appears to be the first device launched out of North Korea that directly uses Apple branding.Apple was asked if it would enter a trademark dispute with the North Korea-based company over the iPad brand, but a representative of the Cupertino company has yet to respond.A look at the invisible weapon of Bashar al-Assad's regime: the kidnapping and torture of tens of thousands of Syrians.
When Syrians first protested in the Spring of 2011, their only weapons were banners and songs and a deep desire for freedom. Syria has been ruled by a strong, strict and often merciless regime, handed down from father to son since 1970.
"We, the old guard, couldn't believe it. Protests like that? In the state of Hafez al-Assad? In Syria? For the old guard, it was impossible. Forty-five years of rule had brainwashed us. When the revolution began, our orders were to shoot," says Munir al-Hariri, a former member of the Syrian intelligence service.
The regime silenced the revolution and the country has sunk into civil war and chaos. Without boundaries, the government started to use different tactics and all of its military might to suppress any possible uprising to maintain power. One such tactic involves the arrest and 'forceful disappearance' of people accused of opposing the regime.
The countless disappearances reveal the relentless death machine secretly set up by the government in Damascus: teenagers are rounded up in their schools, protesters are sent in trucks to unknown destinations, and passers-by are arbitrarily arrested.
According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, more than 65,000 people have vanished in Syria since 2011. Beyond this, over 200,000 people are currently being detained by the Syrian regime. Arrested for various reasons, these detainees are secretly being held on police or army bases, and even schools or warehouses that have been turned into detention centres.
'It was worse than hell'
In March 2016, Rowaida Kanaan was released after three months in detention. Fear and uncertainty led her to leave Syria one month after her release and she now lives in Gaziantep, southern Turkey.
For Kanaan, the memories of pain, smells and overcrowded cells are vivid.
"I often felt I could have killed the prison guards... because they were so evil. Whatever anyone says, nothing can ever describe what went on in there. I won't say it was hell, it was worse than hell," Kanaan says.
"Detention always started with torture. They torture you, then interrogate you. Women are less tortured than men... They were a little more merciful with me - they didn't hang me up. But while I was being interrogated, they beat me again and again and again," she adds.
Kanaan was arrested on her way to Ghouta, the outskirts of Damascus. At a roadblock just outside of Damascus, the secret police saw her press card and arrested her. To them, a press card meant that she was working for Al Jazeera - a network they considered to be subversive.
Kanaan says that in some cases they used loved ones to make things even more terrible. They would torture fathers in front of their sons, and vice versa, knowing the implications and effects that this would have.
READ MORE: Monitor: 60,000 dead in Syria government jails
Kanaan was one of the lucky few to get out. She got out in a prisoner trade and although she rejoices in her freedom, she still remembers those left behind.
"Some women have been there for three or four years. They are being kept for exchanges and they are all innocent. But the court is keeping them to bargain with," she says.
According to Amnesty International, tens of thousands of people in Syria have been 'forcefully disappeared'. Amnesty describes this process as the process where "a person is arrested, detained or abducted by a state or agents acting for the state, who then deny the person is being held or conceal their whereabouts, placing them outside the protection of the law. The disappeared are cut off from the outside world, packed into overcrowded, secret cells where torture is routine, disease is rampant and death is commonplace."
Lessons in torture
Throughout the Middle East, the Syrian secret police is notorious for its intelligence gathering techniques and no tolerance towards the opposition. For this reason, high-ranking officers that defect tend to stay out of the media for their own safety.
Munir al-Hariri is a former chief of the so-called political security, a branch of the domestic intelligence service. He defected in November 2012 and speaks out for the first time.
Syria's Disappeared Enforced disappearances were a major human rights concern during the rule of Hafez al-Assad, who was president of Syria from 1971 until his death in 2000, but numbers have risen since 2011.
More than 65,000 people have vanished in Syria since 2011. Over 200,000 people are currently detained by the Syrian regime. Officers are trained on various interrogation techniques in Eastern Europe and Russia. In 2013, a forensic photographer for the secret police defected and smuggled out a total of 55,000 photos of dead detainees. The families of those that have been taken are often denied any information about their whereabouts or conditions.
"The most terrible thing in Syria is to be detained. The martyr is dead, may God bless his soul. The wounded, may God heal them. But the detainee dies a hundred times a day from the physical and psychological torture inflicted on him," Hariri says.
He explains that the torture techniques used by the police are extensive and there are special schools where the secret police are trained in torture methods. According to him, the instructors are trained in these techniques in Eastern Europe and Russia.
"They use every torture method and tool available. Sticks, whips, the wheel, they German Chair which breaks your back. They hang you from a wall and they electrocute you," he says.
These tortures are not designed to kill in the act, but this does not mean that they don't die afterwards.
Tarek Matermawi, a former detainee, was released after five months. He explains that, after interrogation, they would bring the detainee back to the small room in which many men were squished, and they would leave the suffering person in the back of the crowded room where there was the least air. Often, this would lead to death.
'Nothing but numbers'
Every Syrian knows about the thousands of people illegally detained in their country, but "usually we refrain from talking about detainees, and that's why they've become nothing but numbers," says one Syrian woman on Kanaan's radio show tackling detentions in Syria.
In almost every city still under the control of the Assad regime, there may be one or several detention centres. Damascus, the capital, has the largest number of them and there are roadblocks everywhere, controlled by the secret police, the army, or armed militias.
"There are thousands of detainees. It's impossible to count them. Let me give you an example: There is a detention centre that should hold around 200 people. It now holds 4,000. They've even taken over schools and turned them into detention centres... There are over 200,000 detainees in Syria," says Hariri.
On Syrian state-run television, the regime is presented as the defender of the people, a holder of Syria's unity. But it has used its military might against its own population and the government depends on fear and intimidation.
"The aim is not to kill. It's to prove the strength and tyranny of the state. And that everyone who dares to rise up against the government will be crushed. The aim is to kill one person in order to teach another a lesson," says Hariri.
The photos that reveal all
In August 2013, a Syrian military forensic photographer, known as 'Caesar', defected from the regime. He smuggled out of 55,000 photos, he had taken of dead detainees since 2011.
You can't even say we were treated like animals, but like insects... I have bite marks from a young guy from Hama. We were chained up together and he went crazy. The poor guy died shortly after. Basically, you lose all human feelings. You're just a living "thing" that perseveres in life. Nothing more than that. Tarek Matermawi, former detainee
In 2015, a selection of these photos was put on display at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.
Since then, a group of Syrians and international NGOs have been trying hard to identify these victims who, in the pictures, are only identified by a number.
The pictures reveal the evil techniques, mainly starvation, used to torture those of all ages until eventual death.
"It's madness.Torturing children and the elderly is crazy... every aspect of these photos show extreme suffering. Each crime is worse than the next. The main form of torture seen in these photos is extreme starvation. Almost 50 percent of the victims died of starvation... These photos along with prisoners' accounts show that the regime carries out systematic torture and murder of prisoners, in Damascus and elsewhere," says a member of the Syrian Association for Missing and Conscience Detainees.
Nadim Houry from Human Rights Watch explains that since the release of these pictures, they are able to form a two-part theory: the first being that they can now identify these photographs as a form of record-keeping by the military, and secondly what the pictures reveal about what happened to the bodies.
"They leave the corpses in the detention centres until they rot and the stench starts to spread to teach the detainees a lesson. It scares them and spreads disease....They transport the bodies in container trucks to mass graves. That way the people can't be identified. They are buried in mass graves in different places. Never in precise locations so that they're hard to find for families," says Hariri.
In the past, it was more difficult to identify the individuals, places or what may have happened to them. But today, as Houry explains, they have enough answers that make it easier to do something about the situation.
"Today, we know what is happening'real-time'. We know where these detention facilities are; in many cases, we know the names of those responsible for the detention facilities. In many cases we know exactly where the detainees are, we have testimonies indicating what happened to them. We know geo-location... and yet nothing is done," Houry says.
Despite all the evidence over the past few years, Bashar al-Assad's regime continues to deny the facts on the ground. And despite all the killings, it still remains in power in Damascus.
"We talk about this as though it was in the past, or just another story... But almost 200,000 people are still living it for real. The tragedy goes on in the most horrific way," says former detainee Tarek Matermawi.
Source: Al JazeeraIf the Democrats are serious about actual governing and fixing the many urgent problems that afflict our nation, they have to stop opposing any attempts to fix things like this. Charlie Pierce, who's now the political editor at Esquire.com, really lets loose his wrath on this latest example of sheer greed:
At a time when the president's getting some real traction with his new, not-quite-red meat rhetoric, and with an actual movement rising on the Left that, for all its diverse enthusiasms, is primarily about the opportunity buried in the visceral knowledge that we're all being swindled, and with the 2012 re-election utterly dependent on their doing something to turn the country's employment situation from surface-of-Mercury to merely bleak, the Democrats seem now ready to run the truck back over their own feet again. And it doesn't seem possible to believe that there are some Democrats who actually would sabotage the whole effort over something like this:
Other Democrats have expressed concern about a call to end the so-called carried interest loophole, which allows hedge fund and private equity managers to count their income as capital gains, and thus pay taxes at a significantly lower rate than most individuals.
There is no excuse for this tax break. None whatsoever. It has nothing to do with creating jobs. It doesn't do anything except make extraordinarily rich people even richer, for which they demonstrate their gratitude by crashing the whole economy. It has nothing to do with anything except the tender feelings of people who'd sell their white-haired grandmothers to the Somali pirates for whatever change fell out of their purses. If we are at all serious about The Deficit — and we're not, except as a vehicle for working out our economic sociopathy on the less fortunate — this monstrosity wouldn't exist at all. More than anything else, this tax break symbolizes perfectly the forces behind the ruination of responsible government and of a viable economy. This thing couldn't represent GREED more perfectly if it were drawn up by Thomas Nast. It is a perfect campaign issue for any Democratic party truly interested in economic justice. Andrew Jackson could run against it.
And this is what breaks the deal for some Democrats. The unbridled avarice of some hedge-fund cowboys. The ultimate feast of fat things, to turn Isaiah on his head for a minute. They deserve whatever befalls them. Truly, they do.Story highlights The FBI is involved in the investigation into the cyberattack, a spokesman says
A massive cyberattack is creating ripple effects for Internet users around the globe
The prolonged denial-of-service assault is targeting Spamhaus, a European spam-fighting group
Security expert: "These things are essentially like nuclear bombs"
Internet users around the globe are facing slowed-down service, thanks to what's being called the biggest cyberattack in history.
The prolonged denial-of-service assault is targeting The Spamhaus Project, a European spam-fighting group that has gone after CyberBunker, a data-storage company that offers to host any content "except child porn and anything related to terrorism."
The organization has been in a long-running feud with CyberBunker and claims spammers use it as a host from which to spray junk mail across the Web.
Internet security firm CloudFlare said Spamhaus contacted it last week, saying it had been hit with an attack big enough to knock its site offline.
Security experts say the attack uses more sophisticated techniques than most DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks and targets the Web's infrastructure, which has led to other sites performing slowly.
"It's the biggest attack we've seen," Matthew Prince, CloudFlare's CEO, told CNN.
JUST WATCHED Cybersecurity concerns for China, U.S. Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Cybersecurity concerns for China, U.S. 04:26
JUST WATCHED Cybersecurity scares on the rise Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Cybersecurity scares on the rise 03:00
The FBI is involved in the investigation into the cyberattack on Spamhaus, though a bureau spokesman didn't provide any details on the FBI's role or the scope of the probe.
The Spamhaus Project is a nonprofit organization that patrols the Internet for spammers and publishes a list of Web servers those spammers use. According to Prince, the group may be responsible for up to 80% of all spam that gets blocked. This month, the group added CyberBunker to its blacklist.
"While we don't know who was behind this attack, Spamhaus has made plenty of enemies over the years," Prince wrote in a blog post. "Spammers aren't always the most lovable of individuals, and Spamhaus has been threatened, sued and DDoSed regularly."
In a DDoS attack, computers flood a website with requests, overwhelming its servers and causing it to crash or become inaccessible for many users.
One way to defend against those attacks, Prince said, is to deflect some of the traffic targeted at a single server onto a bunch of other servers at different locations. That's what happened in this case, and why Web users experienced some slowdowns on other sites.
He told CNN the last big wave of the attack hit Tuesday morning, but that he doesn't "live under the illusion" that there won't be more.
For its part, CyberBunker isn't taking credit for the attack. But the Dutch company, housed in a former NATO nuclear bunker, isn't shying away, either.
"This here is the internet community puking out SpamHaus," CyberBunker founder Sven Olaf Kamphuis told CNN. "We've had it with the guys.... What we see right here is the internet puking out a cancer."
He said the owners of various websites got together on a Skype chat and hatched the plans for the attack. He says that StopHaus, a group organized to support CyberBunker in the dispute, ceased the attack after three days but that other hackers and activists kept it up after that.
Kamphuis and other critics say that Spamhaus oversteps its bounds and has essentially destroyed innocent websites in its spam-fighting efforts.
"Spamhaus itself is a more urgent danger" than spam, Kamphuis told CNN. "Pointing at websites and saying they want it shut down and then they get it shut down without any court order. That is a significantly larger threat to internet and freedom of speech and net neutrality than anything else."
Vincent Hanna, a researcher with The Spamhaus Project, said the group's record speaks for itself. He said the project has existed for over 12 years and its data is used to protect more than 1.7 billion e-mail accounts worldwide.
"We have 1.7 billion people looking over our shoulders to make sure we do our job right," he said. "If we start blocking things they want, they won't use our data any more."
He emphasized that Spamhaus doesn't have the power to block e-mail from anyone -- it merely makes its data available for service providers and other Web companies to use.
Hanna said Spamhaus experienced its first denial-of-service attack in 2003.
"This has been the biggest for us," he said, "but certainly not the first one."
Cloudflare's Prince said denying access to a website through cyberattacks is the truest assault on Web freedom.
"Our role is to allow the internet to achieve what it aspires to -- that anyone, anywhere can publish any piece of information and make it accessible to anyone, anywhere else in the world," he said. "It's blatant censorship.
"Whether Spamhaus is a good organization or a bad organization is irrelevant to me. We protect American financial institutions, which some people think are evil, and we protect WikiLeaks, which some people think are evil."So I've been seeing quite a bit of buzz about this new cloud miner called "the Hashlet" which is being promoted at every corner by GAWminers. Intrigued, I went to look at the product and found the following claims:
Guaranteed Profitability! Because the maintenence fee for Hashlets reduces over time, the hashlet will always be making money forever. There's no chance of a negative return.
Only Hashlets can mine on the "ZenPool", which can deliver twice the payout of any other pool.
In addition, Hashlets are instantly upgradable, which is very curious as I don't see how physically hardware could be upgraded in a click.
GAWminers has abandoned Bitcointalk because of too many negative customer reviews, and instead has created its own forum HashTalk, where commenters are paid to be upvoted and those who get downvoted are autobanned.
The claims of GAW are very questionable.
The combination of Zenpool and GAW's hashing contracts are the perfect storm for a Ponzi, and with the lack of transparancy or explanation of their claims, or an established reputation I fear the worst.
If GAW is a Ponzi it's a shame that this will be many newbies first introduction to the crypto world.Speaking in a weekly press conference here in Tehran on Tuesday, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Marziyeh Afkham renewed the Islamic Republic’s preparedness to help settle the lingering crisis in Syria, but noted that setting any precondition for Tehran’s attendance at the Geneva 2 Conference would “make no sense.”
Iran's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said on Monday in Doha, Qatar, that all countries in the region needed to reach across the sectarian divide to contain threats of violence and extremism, particularly in Syria.
"We should all work to end violence to bring about a political solution to end this tragedy that is a shame for both the Sunnis and Shiites," said Zarif.
And on the same day in Tehran, he stressed that a “political option” is the only solution to the Syrian conflict and warned that the civil war could cause the spread of extremism and sectarianism in the region.
“We believe that Syria’s future should be determined by the Syrian people only through ballot boxes,” Zarif said. “There is no solution to the Syrian crisis except by a political settlement. The military solution is an illusion.”
In relevant comments on November 26, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Iran is ready to attend the Geneva 2 Conference on Syria and to contribute to the resolution of the raging conflict in that country.
“If invited, Iran will attend the meeting with the aim achieving results and with no preconditions,” Zarif said.
Iran is definitely among the participants in the forthcoming International Geneva II Peace Conference on Syria, UN-Arab League Joint Special Envoy for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi was quoted as saying by a high-ranking official at the United Nations last week.
“Mr Brahimi made clear that Iran is certainly among the list of possible participants (in the Geneva II),” UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said in a press briefing on November 24 in response to a question about Iran’s presence in the peace talks on Syria.
The UN Secretary General announced on November 25 that the much delayed Geneva II Conference on Syria will be held on January 22, 2014.
He added the conference aimed to pave the way for "the establishment, based on mutual consent, of a transitional governing body with full executive powers, including over military and security entities."
The conference would bring representatives from Syria's government and elements of the opposition to negotiate an end to the fighting that has raged on since March 2011. Yet the opposition is hardly a single group; it consists of numerous factions that often oppose each other.
Geneva II is the second sequel of Geneva I conference held in June 2012 in which international parties laid out a peace plan for Syria that calls for a transitional governing body. It left open the question of whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must leave power.
Iran says it is the Syrian people who must decide who should rule them, in a free and fair election, and not the world powers.(I think we both know that pun was intended.)
Fuentes argues that findings based on “early hominins aren't valid for us anymore. Our bodies are substantially different. We have different birthing patterns than homo erectus.” The evidence is scant, he says, that a 45-degree curvature leads to better pregnancies. If men prefer backsides that are wedged at 45 degrees, and this desire has been around for millennia, then why are there still women whose bottoms protrude at every which angle? Wouldn’t those genes have been bred out by now?
Finally, “they don't even nod to the possibility that there could be cultural norms at play,” he said. “All of these young men might be watching porn. If you look at models, you'll see that stance is a common one in heels.” Might not seeing girls dressing up in heels as early as middle school, or watching the math-themed adult film A Beautiful Behind, have influenced these men’s derriere-based desires?
David Lewis, who now teaches at Turkey’s Bilkent University but who authored this study while at UT, countered that modern-day humans do resemble their predecessors in the sense that “women uniquely face the adaptive problem of a bipedal fetal load. That is an argument that is true for both early hominins and is—and always has been—valid for humans, from the beginning of our species’ history up until and including the present day.”
Lewis agrees that wearing heels makes women look like their spines curve the “right” way, but he argues that men prefer this look thanks to evolutionary underpinnings, not just because of cultural norms. “Has [Fuentes] considered that wearing high heels is a behavior designed to enhance women’s physical attractiveness, and that one of the bodily features that is accentuated by heels (in addition to the legs) is the curvature of the spine?”
After all, every morning when I’m trying to decide what shoes to wear, I think to myself, Let’s see, how many berries am I planning to gather after that 11 o’clock call? If the answer is “quite a few,” I go with stilettos. If they happen to simultaneously make my tush look more tempting, so be it.
I kid, of course. Having started this butt fight, I now feel I must bow out (pun inten... I don’t even know anymore). This is probably one of those studies that, for the lay man or woman, is worth filing away for a particularly racy, yet nerdy, cocktail shindig, but not to live one’s life by.
It’s great that we’re living in the golden age of dumps like a truck. But at various points in history, prominent tuchuses have been about as sexually appealing as Snuggies. The flappers of the 20s strived for an androgynous, pancake-flat physiques. Even just a few years ago, butt implants were practically unheard-of in plastic surgeons’ offices. As the lucky individuals who stocked up on mom jeans in the mid-90s might now attest, fashion changes faster than you can say, “Do these pants make my butt look big?”LOS ANGELES -- As a member of Northern California's famed Skrap Pack, Gilbert Melendez is one of the privileged few who finds himself inside Nick Diaz's inner circle.
And while the latter says he's finished with mixed martial arts, his Cesar Gracie teammate is convinced he'll come back for the right fight.
Speaking to reporters during a luncheon at a downtown restaurant Monday, Melendez, who meets Diego Sanchez on Saturday at UFC 166, says that he believes the former Strikeforce welterweight champion will compete again if a good offer catches his attention.
"I think with the right opportunity, for the right thing, he'll come out," Melendez said. "Whether it's boxing, whether it's kickboxing, whether it's whatever, some sort of challenge would be great."
With 36 career fights under his belt, Diaz has been at the game awhile. And after losing to UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre in the main event of UFC 158, Diaz likely would have had to take a step down in competition next time out. Melendez feels Diaz would rather hold out that allow his name to be used to build someone else.
"I don't think he has the desire to be a stepping stone or he doesn't want to play that role," Melendez said. "Sometimes you have to come back up the ladder in your career and I don't think he wants that. I think he wants to fight top-level competition. He doesn't need to fight just to take it."
In the meantime, Diaz kept himself busy by putting on the WAR MMA show in June in his hometown of Stockton, Calif. According to Melendez, Diaz didn't put on the show to bring publicity to himself, but rather simply to be able to put on a show in his hometown.
"Nick's goal is always to do something good for the sport and his community, believe it or not," Melendez said. "He just wanted to put on a show in his hometown and get his boys some fights. He had some money to do it and it's a write-off for him, but he's under a microscope, and people get wind of it, and they start critiquing it and they start saying the show's going to suck. I feel for the guy, he's under a microscope the whole time....
"[Diaz said] 'I didn't want to say it was my show,'" Melendez continued. "'The people behind me wanted to, in order for the show to be successful.' You know, he did the right thing and put his name behind it. He did the right thing. I don't think his goal is to be the next big promoter, I think he just wanted to do something good for the MMA community in his hometown."
Either way, Melendez feels if Diaz wanted to come out of his self-imposed retirement, he could do so at pretty much any moment.
"Nick is forever ready. He's always in shape, he's always sparring, he's always grappling. He does triathlons, he's in better shape than most guys who are relevant now in the game."Before you go on and explore this article in detail, please read “How to be dominant with women, Part 1” first.
Be physically dominant
Stand straight, shoulders back and head high, read “Badass body language” for more details on this. When you walk with her, grab her hand and lead her. If you walk on the side of the street, it’s your duty as the dominant figure to position yourself on the side of the passing car in order to protect her. Use her elbow to direct her smoothly in the right way.
When you stand still side by side, put your arms around her by crossing her shoulders or neck. Don’t hold her strong enough to inflict pain, but she needs to feel your strength. She needs to feel that you could crush her at any moment, but because you are in control, and because she is yours to love, you will never harm her, and you will only use that physical strength to protect her from any danger.
You need to physically lead the way. That’s where the gentlemanly door-opening thingy comes in; you’re always walking slightly in front of her, thus removing obstacles from the way.
You must look like a boss
Appearances are so important, especially for women. Pay attention to your corporal hygiene, clothes and accessories. A dominant man looks like they are in charge. Observe the difference between manager and employee, between officer and soldier. The one in charge is always slicker! When with other people, always take a noticeable spot in the group where everyone can see and hear you properly.
Besides, do I really need to mention how having a fit, well developed muscular body will give you an amazing edge? Just get the spartan training program and follow it, you lazy fuck.
You must reward and punish
Like previously mentioned, it is your job to maintain discipline and the respect of |
– and why not? He has billions enough, he has a private army, he has power enough to install a confederate in, say, Odessa as governor. And Mr K. is just one example: 16 other oligarchs were given governorships in the wake of the February coup.
Does the EU want that kind of country among its rightful members? Surely not; Ukraine will stay "associated” for an indefinite period of time, that’s one of the few certainties in a highly uncertain context.
Now, what do the EU, NATO, and primarily the US want with Ukraine such as it is? This "association” gimmick simply makes a country aspiring to EU membership a colony or semi-colony of the strong EU economies.
There is abundant evidence of that: Bulgaria, Romania, the Baltics – they are, by and large, mere markets for European producers, while Europe has no need at all for the products of the newly incorporated countries’ industries – which simply die out. Will anyone in Europe buy Zaporozhye cars? They are the butt of jokes, vicious or good-natured, in Russia even. No one wants them.
US plans to replace cheap Russian gas for Europe with its own more expensive gas are widely discussed both in Russia and in Europe. In pursuance of those plans the gas pipelines leading from Russia to Europe through Ukraine must be taken possession of or destroyed; it does not much matter which, provided Russia is squeezed out of the equation. Hence the "color” revolutions in Kiev, one after another, which are textbook CIA operations.
All this is quite obvious, but it is only part of the bigger, geopolitical picture. The EU and – let me say it again – primarily the US, see Ukraine’s main role as that of a battering ram against Russia, a weapon to hit not only at its economy but its very existence.
Why this onslaught on Russia? Elementary. The US can only lead the fine, prosperous life it now leads, with that beautiful $17 trillion budget deficit, by dominating the world. There is enough ideological camouflage for that – the doctrine of "exceptionalism,” world leadership, promotion of freedom and democracy throughout the world, whatever.
Crucially, these ideological gewgaws are solidly backed by some 800 US military facilities – bases and suchlike – the world over. Europe included. The other day Vice President Joe Biden gave the Europeans a resounding slap in the face: he boasted that the Europeans had been unwilling to join the sanctions against Russia, but the US had forced them to do it. It is worth wondering whether Obama would have been able to pull that trick in the absence of those military bases.
There are two main obstacles on America’s road to complete world domination – China and Russia; both conscious of their national interests, both prepared to stand up for them, and both nuclear armed. The US does all it can to weaken China – v. the "color”-type turbulence in Tibet, Xinjang-Uyghur Province, currently in Hong Kong – but China is too big, too strong, and its economy and finances are too closely interwoven with those of the US. Russia is the weaker unit of this duo; so it is first in line to be crushed by the world hegemon.
Here’s the order of threats to the world that Obama recently set out in his speech at the UN: ebola, "Russian aggression,” ISIS. Ebola is, of course, strictly for the media to blab about and to scare the hoi polloi with; "Russian aggression”, though, is more dangerous to the world than ISIS, according to Obama. In short, the same old song: Russia is America’s enemy #1. So, let’s bomb ISIS as a sort of sideline, but mainly let’s support the Russia-hating junta in Kiev.
A lot of preparation had gone into installing in February 2014 that ultranationalist, Russophobic regime: nearly twenty-five years (23, to be precise); also $5 billion – but that’s according to Nuland only; who knows how much came from CIA secret funds, how much was brought into Ukraine during the Maidan months in "diplomatic’ suitcases bypassing the customs – these were spotted time and again. So-called noncommercial organizations, training camps for "color” revolutionists in Poland and the Baltics, seminars in the arts of the "orange” revolutions – all that had taken plenty of funds, too, and they had been readily provided, being but an infinitesimal part of the above-mentioned, nice budget deficit.
It must be noted here that these efforts fell on fertile soil. I do not mean only the young and not so young individuals whose fathers and grandfathers once marched with the Waffen SS, murdered Jews, Poles, and communists; the men who started marching again in the "independent” Ukraine, wearing Nazi swastikas and other insignia. There were also subtler cases, like the urban educated classes, driven by mammoth-size inferiority complexes: these could only assume a distinct, separate identity by rejecting the fact that they were essentially, deeply Russian (even if it’s Little, or Smaller, Russian) in terms of language, culture, religion, history, etc.
Indeed, it’s really comical to watch on TV a Ukrainian official making a speech in Ukrainian, then stumbling and whispering to someone, in a Russian aside: "What’s the word for ‘negative’?” The other day the Rada speaker was exhorting his unruly colleagues to take their seats, got emotional, and let a Russian swearword slip in his harangue, very loudly. In Ukraine, whoever reads books at all, reads Russian books – just take a look at the shelves in the bookshops. I handed out a copy or two of my recent novel to some Ukrainian chaps who worked on my dacha this past summer – and they asked for more, for their friends back home. It just shows, doesn’t it.
The Ukrainian intelligentsia’s rebellion against their own roots sometimes takes incredibly ludicrous forms. Some of them invent perfectly fantastic tales for the consumption of the masses: that the hominids called Ukrs arrived here from Venus in times immemorial; that the Ukrainian nation is 140,000 years old; that a Ukrainian empire rivaled in antiquity the Roman Empire; that the Russian and Ukrainian name for the Crimea, Krym, is a shortened form of K Rymu "Toward Rome,” indicating the direction in which ancient Ukrainian hosts moved on Rome; and lots of similar balderdash poured into receptive ears starting from kindergarten on.
The main feature of the subversive work intended to foster Russophobia was its omnivorous character. Any ideology was grist to the CIA and State Department mill: Neo-Nazism, the intelligentsia’s hankering for the "European values,” religious separatists’ fight against Orthodox Christians’ centuries-old adherence to the Moscow patriarchy, anything at all – provided it was anti-Russian.
These strenuous efforts brought about two "color” revolutions – the bloodless "orange” one of 2004 and the bloody February 2014 coup. The latter, dominated by the ultranationalists, was accepted and actually welcomed by the West as a victory for democracy. Germany and France first brokered an agreement between President Yanukovich and the oligarchs who opposed him and funded the Maidan. The very following day, though, they forgot all about that agreement and simply looked on as the Right Sector and similar Nazi riffraff broke every letter of it, seized government buildings, chased the president out of the country, and generally grabbed all power in the land.
By that act, Ukraine, with the instigation and connivance of the Western powers, stepped right out of the constitutional field, thereby putting itself outside any legal framework. No constitution provides for coups; no constitution envisages the sending of strike teams with the express aim of murdering the legally elected president – there’s enough evidence of that; no constitution provides for changing the constitution overnight, in the absence of the Constitutional Court (kicked out by the putschists) and in total disregard for the prolonged procedure incorporated in both competing constitutions.
In the absence of any constitutional order in the country, any part of it which refused to recognize this illegal central authority had every right to pursue its own political course.
In the Crimea, there was an organized political force that took the region through all the necessary legal steps – declaration of independence from central authority, referendum, appeal to Russia to accept the results of the referendum. In Donbass no such unified, organized force emerged, the referendum was not conducted according to strict legal procedure, and – perhaps no less importantly – there was no Russian military base on Donbass territory, as there was in the Crimea – a base that had always been there, and that in the last 23 years had been there by agreement with Kiev, with Russia dutifully paying rent to Ukraine. Had there been such a base in Donbass, it could have played the same role of silent catalyst as in the Crimea; like in the Crimea, no shots would have been fired, no blood would have been shed. That’s why the Crimeans are now watching the blood-letting and total destruction in Donbass with horror – and unspeakable relief at having escaped the same appalling fate.
What happened after the coup is too well known. Kiev declared armed groups of ultranationalists to be the National Guard, in direct contravention of the above-mentioned February agreement – signed by France and Germany – that provided for disbanding all illegal armed formations. These "legalized” bands started murdering, taking hostage, and torturing anti-Maidan activists, actually persecuting whomsoever they did not like – the people who insisted on, or just happened to be speaking Russian, reading Russian, teaching Russian, or indeed expressing any anti-Maidan sentiments.
This sparked off resistance in many areas which proved to be strongest and better organized in Donbass, a totally Russian-speaking region that was only added to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1922 by Lenin’s decree. Donbass fighters operated at first as separate guerrilla units, but war soon taught them the need for organization and unified command. These fighters defended their right to be what they were; they fought for their own land, their livelihood, and their homes, and were thus incomparably better motivated than their enemies – aggressive Nazi bands and youths drafted into the Ukrainian army against their will. After initial defeats Donbass opolchentsy (literally, militia) began to trounce Ukrainian army units, the National Guards, and the oligarchs’ private armies, eventually forcing the conclusion of ceasefire.
To explain their inability to cope with the resisters in Donbass, Ukrainian politicians and the media propagate the myth of "Russian invasion,” a myth that most of the Ukrainian and Western public accepts as God’s truth. That’s a big, a very Big Lie, and it is the sand on which the policies of the US and EU toward Russia are cynically based.
Sure, there are people from Russia fighting in Donbass – Cossacks from the neighboring Don and Kuban regions, Tatars, Chechens, even Georgians – volunteers who see the Kiev junta as Fascist and believe it their duty to fight Fascism wherever it raises its nauseating head; they fight it just as their forefathers had fought it and defeated it. Donbass fighters’ command puts the number of these volunteers at five percent of their forces. But! Except for that single combat vehicle with nine servicemen that lost its way at night in the Ukrainian steppe, there has been not one scrap of evidence of any Russian Army units fighting in Donbass. Most of the proof for Russian invasion originates in countless fakes flooding the internet.
Feeding on these fakes, the Big Lie persists. In particular, it is cited as the reason for the sanctions and the threat of more sanctions to be imposed on Russia.
Personally, I am all for these sanctions; I believe they’re a useful incentive for Russia to stand on its own feet, but this need not be gone into here. And anyway sanctions are not the reason why we here in Russia spend hours listening to the news from Ukraine. The reason lies in what I said at the beginning: Ukraine is a failed state, in every way. It can only be held together as a single whole in the form of a totally militarized, ultranationalist, chauvinistic entity dominated by one single ideology – Ukrainianizing everything in sight, winning the war against Donbass, and dreaming about regaining the Crimea. Parading through Sevastopol, as the Ukrainian defense minister once put it. An interesting figure, that war minister; I’d say emblematic for the current set-up in Kiev – a police officer who never served in the army, a political appointee who did not know the first thing about directing military operations, led his forces to a resounding defeat, and was the other day kicked out of the office. A civilian militarist, you might say.
Trouble is, such personages rule the roost in today’s Ukraine. You only have to look at the candidates for the new Rada most likely to be elected soon: they are veterans of what Kiev idiotically calls an "anti-terrorist operation”; they have no other agenda except vindicating themselves and driving the country into more war ventures. Poroshenko may talk all he wants about his 60 reforms, for the benefit of the folks in Washington who installed him in his post, but who will listen to him? Not those battalion commanders who will be elected to the Rada. Just you wait and see.
Thus the purpose of creating an ever more militarized Ukraine run by characters set on joining NATO and embroiling it in a war with Russia has been achieved. The countless US advisors embedded in Ukraine, plus the endless stream of visiting US officials, have done their job. Therein lies the mortal danger to world peace. The past few months have shown that the Kiev government – incompetent, corrupt, thieving, torn apart by warring oligarchic cliques – is totally incapable of winning a war even with what is, or until recently was, essentially a partisan movement. Ukraine is already asking for military aid – and receiving it, if not from NATO as a whole, then from individual NATO countries. That is a sure way to the escalation of the conflict, for Russia will not leave the Russians of Donbass to the mercy of better armed and better trained Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian forces. Russia’s government will act, no doubt about that – if only to avoid bad trouble from its own populace. Russians are a divided nation, and they are sick and tired of it.
All this may sound alarmist, but it is in fact a moderate assessment and forecast. Who could have predicted just a few months ago that the authorities in Kiev might start what amounts to genocide against the population of a part of their own country? No one, and yet it is all there on our TV screens – dozens of civilians killed every day, even greater numbers wounded or shell-shocked, infrastructure destroyed, residential areas destroyed, schools and kindergartens and hospitals destroyed, no gas, no water, no food, no medicine, no electricity, nothing but ever fresh evidence of Ukrainian forces’ atrocities, fresh mass graves.
This full-scale genocide, carried out by Western-backed war criminals in Kiev, remains virtually unknown to the outside world. The information blackout achieves its purpose. The public in the West only catches rare glimpses of it all, while feeling convinced that it is all because of "Russian aggression” – information warfare at its most effective. I listen, more or less regularly, to the BBC World Service, but I might as well save myself the trouble and listen to the Kiev propaganda machine – except that the BBC’s even more powerful propaganda weapon is dead silence over the murder of children, old men, and women by the Kiev forces using heavy artillery and multiple rocket launchers that cover vast residential areas at a single salvo.
With a few exceptions, European governments accept the myth of "Russian aggression” – just listen to what is being said in the European Parliament (though, to be fair, one third of it is said to have voted against anti-Russia sanctions). Will these governments back, and participate in, aggression against such an awful aggressor as Russia? Will the peoples of Europe permit the governments to go into the spiral of escalation?
With these uncertainties and imponderables, we step into an extremely dangerous, unpredictable future – where nothing, not even a nuclear conflagration, is ruled out. We can only pray to God to save us from such a fate, and to rid us of McCain-type power-mad politicos who keep pushing the world toward such an end.By Chris Wright
When it comes to cheap World Cup tat, England seem to do it better than most, with piles and piles of naff St. George-smattered merchandise being piled high and sold cheap for weeks before any major tournament.
The quality control is usually fairly low on most of these aforementioned products, but a World Cup souvenir company have well and truly taken the spoils when it comes to the most spectacular merchandising cock-up of Brazil 2014.
The company, who do not wish to be named, have had to flog their entire stock of World Cup mugs after it was noticed that Chris Smalling’s mug featured a minor but noticeable printing error…
Ah.
After noticing the fatal flaw, the souvenir company have had to sell their entire 2,000-strong stock to a Dorset-based clearance wholesale company at pennies on the pound in a bid to get shot of them.
The fault was apparently that of an intern, who got it all kinds of wrong after being tasked with finding a royalty-free image of Smalling.
*Polite ripple of golf applause*
(Via Metro)“Climate change is a global challenge: we’ll all face the consequences of failing to tackle it,” van Beurden said. “Some parts of the Middle East, for example, could become hotter and drier than they already are. Other parts of the region, such as low-lying coastal areas here in Qatar, could suffer from rising sea levels.
“Energy is at the heart of economic development and climate change. Firstly, the world needs more energy. According to the International Energy Agency’s most recent outlook, global energy demand is expected to double from 2000 to 2050.
“Secondly, the world needs cleaner energy. It’s good that so many parties are meeting at the UN Climate Conference in Paris with the opportunity to take steps in the right direction. But more is needed to build policies and tools for addressing the climate challenge. And thirdly, the world needs affordable energy. Economic sustainability is as crucial as environmental sustainability.
“Along with implementing the right policies such as government-led carbon pricing systems, boosting technology is critical to this endeavour. Shell follows two technology routes. The first route is to make use of hydrocarbons in a cleaner and more efficient way. By producing cleaner fuels, for example. Another example is capturing CO2 and storing it safely under the ground - known as Carbon Capture and Storage, or CCS. The second route is to produce and distribute energy in potentially new ways. For example, we’re building our knowledge of hydrogen, of renewables like solar and biomass, and of ways to use and store heat and electricity.
“Shell has many partnerships in the field of technology. An example of the first route is a pilot project in Petroleum Development Oman. A company called GlassPoint harnesses and concentrates sunlight to produce steam for enhanced oil recovery. Gas that would otherwise be used for oil recovery can now be used for petrochemicals, LNG export or generating power locally.
“A second example of the first route is The Qatar Carbonates and Carbon Storage Research Centre. This research centre is jointly funded by Qatar Petroleum and Shell, with additional support from the Qatar Science and Technology Park. Its aim is to expand research capacity in CCS and cleaner fossil fuels.
“An example of the second route is the use of hydrogen in road transport. In Germany, Shell is building a network of about 400 hydrogen refuelling sites – together with the German government, Daimler and others. This refuelling network could become a starting point for activities in more European countries.
“To reiterate: the world needs more energy, it needs cleaner energy, and it needs affordable energy. Technology is a crucial factor to achieving all this. That’s why Shell aspires to be the world’s most innovative energy company.”A local Maasai tribesman places his hand on the tusk of a tranquilized wild elephant during an anti-poaching elephant-collaring operation near Kajiado, in southern Kenya, in 2013. Ben Curtis/AP
BEIJING (AP) — China imposed a one-year ban on ivory imports that took immediate effect Thursday amid criticism that its citizens' huge appetite for ivory has fueled poaching that threatens the existence of African elephants.
The State Administration of Forestry declared the ban in a public notice posted on its official site, in which it said the administration would not handle any import request.
In an explanatory news report, an unnamed forestry official told the state-run Legal Evening News that authorities hope the ban would be a concrete step to reduce the demand for African tusks and to protect wild elephants. The official said the temporary ban would allow authorities to evaluate its effect on elephant protection before they can take further, more effective steps.
China is the world's largest importer of smuggled tusks, although Beijing has campaigned against illegal ivory. Six tons of illegal ivory was pulverized last year in the southern city of Dongguan, and Chinese courts have stepped up prosecution of illegal ivory trade.
The government also has warned its citizens not to bring back any ivory, but critics say the public awareness campaign is inadequate as many Chinese do not know that tusks can only obtained by killing the elephant.
After China acquired a legal stockpile of ivory in 2008, demand for ivory has surged among increasingly affluent Chinese who see ivory as a status-defining luxury, and high profits have fueled a strong underground market for the product.There’s a lot of press building up to the Higgs announcement at CERN in just a few hours, and you’ll have Aidan’s live-blog for the play-by-play commentary. I just wanted to squeeze in more chatter about what to look for in the talks besides the usual “oh look how many sigmas we have.”
[caveat: the above cereal guy meme is purely hypothetical!]
Since we’re all friends here, I’ll be candid and say that many physicists have taken the existence of a 125 GeV-ish Higgs-like particle as a foregone conclusion—in large part because any alternative would be even more dramatic. (Recall: the Standard Model is begging for there to be a Higgs.) Whether the evidence for the Higgs is just above or just below the magic 5-sigma “discovery” threshold won’t change anything other than how much champagne Aidan will be drinking.
But that shouldn’t deter you from tuning into the 3am EST webcast. Besides getting a chance to see some famous faces in the audience, the thing to look for are hints that there’s actually more to the Higgs than the Standard Model. As described very nicely at Resonaances, the 2011 LHC data presented last December suggested that the Higgs (if it’s there) decays into photons slightly more often than the Standard Model predicts. Could this be a hint that there’s exciting (and unexpected) new physics right around the corner?
Let’s back up a little bit. Before we can talk about how the Higgs decays, we have to talk about how it’s produced at the LHC. The two main mechanisms are called gluon fusion and vector boson fusion (where the vector boson V can be a Z or W):
The gluon fusion diagram dominates at the LHC since there are plenty of high energy gluons in a multi-TeV proton beam. Note that the loop of virtual top quarks is required since the Higgs has no direct coupling to gluons (it’s not colored); the top is a good choice since it has a large coupling to the Higgs (which is why the top is so heavy). As an exercise, use the Standard Model Feynman rules to draw other Higgs production diagrams.
Once you have a Higgs, you can look at the different ways it can decay. The photon-photon final state is very rare, but particularly intriguing because the Higgs doesn’t have electric charge and photons don’t have mass—so these particles don’t tend to talk to each other. In fact, such a Higgs-photon-photon interaction only occurs when mediated by virtual particles like the top and W:
Why these diagrams? They’re heavy enough to have a large coupling to the Higgs and also charged so they can emit photons. (Exercise: draw the other W boson diagram contributing to h to γγ.) In fact, the W diagram is about 5 times larger than the top diagram.
The great thing about loop diagrams is that any particle (with electric charge and coupling to the Higgs) can run in the loop. You can convince yourself that other Standard Model particles don’t make big contributions to h → γγ, but—and here’s the good part—if there are new particles beyond the Standard Model, they could potentially push the h → γγ rate larger than the Standard Model prediction. This is what we’re hoping.
What to look for: keep an eye out for a measurement of the h → γγ cross section (a measurement of the rate). Cross sections are usually denoted by σ. Because we don’t care so much about the actual number but rather its difference from the Standard Model, what is usually presented is a ratio of the observed cross section to the Standard Model cross section: σ/σ(SM). If this ratio is one within uncertainty, then things look like the Standard Model, but otherwise (and hopefully) things are much more interesting.
The outlook on the eve of ‘the announcement’
[I thank my colleagues Jack, Mathieu, and Javi for sharing their insights on this.]
Given the assumption that there indeed is a particle at 125-ish GeV that does all the great things that the Standard Model Higgs should do, we would like to ask whether or not this is really the Standard Model (SM) Higgs, or whether it is some other Higgs-like state that may have different properties. In particular, is it possible that this particle talks to the rest of the Standard Model with slightly different strengths than the SM Higgs? And maybe, if we really want to push our luck, could this more exotic Higgs-like particle push the h → γγ rate to be larger than expected?
To answer this question, we don’t want to restrict ourselves to any one specific model of new physics, we’d rather be as general as possible. One way to do this is to use an “effective theory” that parameterizes all of the possible couplings of the “Higgs” to Standard Model particles. Here’s what one such effective theory looks like in sloppy handwriting:
Don’t worry, you don’t have to know what these all mean, but just for fun you can compare to this famous expression. The parameters here are the variables labelled a, b, c, and d. Of these, the two important ones to consider are a, which controls the Higgs coupling to two W bosons, and c, which controls the Higgs coupling to fermions (like top quarks). The Standard Model corresponds to a = c = 1.
Now we can start playing an interesting game:
If we increase the coupling a of the Higgs to W bosons, then we increase the rate for h → γγ via the W loop above. If, on the other hand, we increase the coupling c of the Higgs to the top quark, then we increase the rate of h → γγ via the top quark loop above.
Thus the observation of a larger-than-expected rate for h → γγ could point to either a or c >1 (or both). How would we distinguish between these? Well, note that (see the production diagrams above):
If the a (Higgs to W) coupling were enhanced, then we would also expect an enhancement in the “vector boson fusion” rate for Higgs production. When the Higgs is produced this way, you can [with some efficiency] tag the quark remnants and say that the Higgs was produced through vector boson fusion. On the other hand, if the c (Higgs to top) coupling were enhanced, then we would also expect an enhancement in the “gluon fusion” rate for Higgs production.
Thus we have some handle for where we could fit new physics to explain a possible h → γγ excess. (Again, by “excess” we mean relative to the expected production in the Standard Model.)
Here’s a quick plot of where we stand currently, including recent results from Moriond, from 1202.3697, I refer experts to that paper for further details and plots:
(There are many similar plots out there—some by good friends of mine—I apologize for not providing a more complete reference list… the Higgs seminar is only a few hours away!) The green/yellow/gray blobs are the 1,2,3 sigma confidence regions for the parameters a and c above. The red and blue lines are ATLAS and CMS exclusions. The reason why there are two green blobs is that there is a choice for the sign of c, this corresponds to whether the Higgs-top loops interfere constructively or destructively with the Higgs-W loops. For more details, see this Resonaances post.
The plot above includes the latest LHC data (Moriond, pre-ICHEP) as well as the so-called “electroweak precision observables” which tightly constrain the effects of virtual particles on the Standard Model gauge bosons. These are the blobs to keep an eye on—the lines indicate the Standard Model point a=c=1. If the blob continues to creep away from this point, then there will be good reason to expect exciting new physics beyond the Higgs… and that’s what makes it worth tuning in at 3am.
Tags: Higgs, ICHEP2012Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on China could explode iPhone 7 sales, Beijing threatens
Chinese state-run newspaper Global Times suggested in an editorial Sunday that the national government would elect to retaliate against Donald Trump should he launch a long-feared trade war with Asia’s biggest economy. Their method of counterattack? No more iPhones. And cars.
“A batch of Boeing orders will be replaced by Airbus. U.S. auto and iPhone sales in China will suffer a setback, and U.S. soybean and maize imports will be halted. China can also limit the number of Chinese students studying in the US,” read the editorial, which can be considered a conduit for government sentiment toward current events and might hint at actual policy or plans by Beijing.
“Not long after Barack Obama took office, US trade and commerce authorities announced a 35 percent import tariff on Chinese tires. In response, China took retaliatory steps of imposing tariffs on US chicken and automotive products,” the editorial takes pain to remind readers, trying to assert this is no mere threat to do what Samsung did to itself and explode iPhone 7 sales. “Both China and the US suffered losses as a result. From then on, the Obama administration waged no trade war against China. If Trump imposes a 45 percent tariff on Chinese imports, China-US trade will be paralyzed.”
Trump constantly attacked Mexico and China on the campaign trail, the former for attracting North American manufacturing jobs from the US because of lower wages and other overhead, and China for their alleged manipulation of currency. China’s manufacturing prowess is already well-known throughout the world, to the point that some worry their cheap manufacturing might actually cause China competitive issues later.
“Trump’s accusations against China for currency manipulation cannot hold water. If he does list China as a currency manipulator and slap steep tariffs on Chinese imports, China will take countermeasures,” the editorial read, tariffs that Trump’s campaign suggested could be as steep as 45 percent. “Trump is not obstinate with regard to ties with China. Making things difficult for China politically will do him no good.”
In the interim, anxiety bout Trump’s ambiguous security and economic policies have caused waxing and waning in global markets. The Mexican peso is down and there is fear Trump will crack down on Mexican-American remittances to their home country. A trade war with China might spark dramatic price increases on US consumers though, some economists have warned.
The presidency has limited capacity to implement tariffs — temporary 150-day taxes that cannot exceed 15 percent on goods.
“If Trump wrecks Sino-US trade, a number of US industries will be impaired. Finally the new president will be condemned for his recklessness, ignorance and incompetence and bear all the consequences,” the editorial concluded. “We are very suspicious the trade war scenario is a trap set up by some American media to trip up the new president.”In the news we cover Game Update 3.2.2, Chairgate, what’s happening with Game Update 3.3 on the PTS, and much more. Then in our discussion we cover the latest reveals about Knights of the Fallen Empire!
1. Introduction
In Knights of the Fallen Empire’s Sacrifice trailer, Ivilon identifies what could be a new theme for the expansion at 2:24. He also asks listeners to identify the very cool musical Easter Egg at 1:28: it’s a very recognisable piece of sound design from vanilla SWTOR that everyone should know.
2. Tip of the week
Congratulations to this week’s winner, Caomh! Thanks to Dekion, Areus and Bulaklak for entering.
Please send your tips to ootinicast@gmail.com by next Tuesday for a chance to win a Taunfawn or M8-3R droid code, courtesy of BioWare, and an OotiniCast-provided Cartel Market pack from the latest shipment.
3. Holofeed
4. Community
Thanks to our latest Ootini Patrons: Jerane, Kevin and OryansBelt.
Thank also to Master Liu for his iTunes review, and to the SWTOR Reddit community for supporting our posts!
5. Force Feedback
Throughmas believes that 8:30 to the end of this track reminds him of Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor.
Freedious believes the Cantina music 33 Smeelaaya Whao Tupee Upee reminds him of the opening song to Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom.
The Cantina song that Swtorista was singing was a rendition of Doe Azalus Ootmian.
John of The Progenitor provided this spreadsheet to help players analyse their own playtime with pretty graphs.
6. Sarlacc Digest
We discuss the latest information released about Knights of the Fallen Empire, coming 27 October. The articles we cover include:
7. Outro
On the show this week were Chill (@BrandonLStarr, twitch.tv/chillswtor), Teo (@jasonetheridge), Ivilon (@percomposer, stephenridley.com) and Swtorista (@Swtorista, swtorista.com, swtorstrongholds.com, Reddit).
Information about our guilds on The Harbinger, Ootini Knights (Republic) and Ootini Rage (Empire), can be found here.
You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. You can subscribe to us on iTunes, and listen to us on Stitcher and Spreaker. We record the show live every Wednesday at 4:30pm Pacific, goto ootinicast.com/live to find out how to join in!The saga of Faraday Future is full of weird twists and turns—and the last several weeks for the company have been no different. In the last month alone, FF has reportedly taken steps to prepare to file for bankruptcy, and has also scaled back its product plans from six vehicles to just one, the futuristic electric autonomous FF 91. But according to FF, nothing’s changed. And more weirdly, the company says the bankruptcy “plan” wasn’t created at all by FF.
The company’s still in the process of focusing its efforts on completing the FF 91, officials said, and finishing a new manufacturing facility in California.
At the same time, Jia Yueting—the face of the startup and its main financier—is battling accusations that FF’s parent company in China committed fraud during a 2010 fundraising effort. More on that in a minute.
Rumors of a possible bankruptcy reemerged last month in Chinese media, after a purposed document outlining plans for a Chapter 11 restructuring began to circulate among several new outlets. Based on the dates of the document (which you can see here), it appears it would’ve been created sometime over the summer, when FF was trying to raise $1 billion.
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“The company will likely be required to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy by the middle of August 2017 as raising fresh capital within this time frame remains unlikely,” the alleged document says.
The intention, according to the document, was to raise $150 million in conjunction with the bankruptcy filing, and then new investors would pay an additional $130 million to settle claims with “outstanding creditors” and then, by November, take control of the company.
The idea of FF preparing to enter bankruptcy court isn’t particularly shocking. By all accounts, the company hadn’t been able to secure investors for the $1 billion fundraising round. (Sources said investors have come to the table, but keeping Jia in the picture was a nonstarter. Jia, the sources said, has refused to step aside.) There’s probably an argument to be made that it could benefit from a bankruptcy.
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But here’s the thing—FF says the documents aren’t legitimate.
“These documents were not created by Faraday Future, nor were they created on behalf of Faraday Future or at Faraday Future’s request,” a spokesperson for Faraday Future told Jalopnik.
It’s a very, very unusual situation. Taking FF at its word, that means someone took the time to piece together a very detailed, very specific PowerPoint presentation that outlined specific remedies in bankruptcy court and how the company would be transferred to new ownership.
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What benefit does someone have to manufacture a false document like this? To spite FF or Jia? If someone would actually go that far to mess with the company as it’s trying to raise money, isn’t that, perhaps, an indictment in and of itself of the company’s top brass?
Nevertheless, Faraday says any discussion of a possible bankruptcy isn’t based in reality.
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“We can confirm that any bankruptcy rumors are false, that the company has not filed for bankruptcy protection, and that we continue to meet with potential partners interested in investing in FF,” the spokesperson said.
Product Plans Reduced
Beyond that, Faraday Future is no longer planning a product line-up of six vehicles, said Sam Fiorani, Vice President of global vehicle forecasting for AutoForecast Solutions, an auto consulting firm.
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Fiorani said the firm makes its forecasts based on “sources from all over the industry and throughout the world.”
Faraday had initially planned five models, in addition |
The most annoying thing about playing Minesweeper is when this happens:
It is entirely possible to lose the game in the first couple of moves, where the only valid strategy is to pick a panel at random. If the mines are placed randomly when the board is first created, then the user may accidentally reveal a mine on their first move. I wanted to eliminate this annoyance, and so this system doesn't actually place the mines on the board until after the user submits his first move.
In order to guarantee that the user's first move doesn't reveal a mine, and that s/he doesn't have to continue clicking randomly after the first move, I wanted an algorithm in which:
The player's first move does not reveal a mine AND
The player's first move reveals more than one panel.
In order to fit those rules within the game logic, the user's first move must always be to reveal a panel with 0 adjacent mines. There's a method in the GameBoard class called FirstMove() which implements this algorithm:
public void FirstMove(int x, int y, Random rand) { //For any board, take the user's first revealed panel + any neighbors of that panel to X depth, and mark them as unavailable for mine placement. var depth = 0.125 * Width; //12.5% (1/8th) of the board width becomes the depth of unavailable panels var neighbors = GetNeighbors(x, y, (int)depth); //Get all neighbors to specified depth neighbors.Add(GetPanel(x, y)); //Don't place a mine in the user's first move! //Select random panels from set of panels which are not excluded by the first-move rule var mineList = Panels.Except(neighbors).OrderBy(user => rand.Next()); var mineSlots = mineList.Take(MineCount).ToList().Select(z => new { z.X, z.Y }); //Place the mines foreach (var mineCoord in mineSlots) { Panels.Single(panel => panel.X == mineCoord.X && panel.Y == mineCoord.Y).IsMine = true; } //For every panel which is not a mine, determine and save the adjacent mines. foreach (var openPanel in Panels.Where(panel =>!panel.IsMine)) { var nearbyPanels = GetNeighbors(openPanel.X, openPanel.Y); openPanel.AdjacentMines = nearbyPanels.Count(z => z.IsMine); } }
This ensures that the first move will never reveal a mine, and will always reveal more than one panel. Consequently, the user is much more likely to engage with the game rather than just quitting out of frustration.
Finding the Neighbor Panels
One of the core functionalities that need to be provided by the GameBoard is that of finding the neighbor panels for a panel at specified coordinates. For example, take a look at this game:
The neighbors of that 3 panel are in all eight directions around the panel. So, we need a function which can find and return the neighbors of any given panel. Said function looks like this:
public List<Panel> GetNeighbors(int x, int y) { return GetNeighbors(x, y, 1); } public List<Panel> GetNeighbors(int x, int y, int depth) { var nearbyPanels = Panels.Where(panel => panel.X >= (x - depth) && panel.X <= (x + depth) && panel.Y >= (y - depth) && panel.Y <= (y + depth)); var currentPanel = Panels.Where(panel => panel.X == x && panel.Y == y); return nearbyPanels.Except(currentPanel).ToList(); }
Why do we have the depth overload? Remember that the FirstMove() function requires us to mark a certain "depth" of panels from the user's first move as unavailable for mine placement.
Revealing a Panel
Now that we've got the code that creates the game board, we can start writing the code that allows the user to actually play that game. To start off, let's write a function in our GameBoard class which reveals a panel at a specified coordinate. Said function shall adhere to this methodology:
Locate the specified panel and mark it as revealed. If the specified panel is a mine, end the game. If the specified panel has zero adjacent mines, reveal its neighbors in a cascade until numbered panels are revealed. Finally, check if the board is completed.
public void RevealPanel(int x, int y) { //Step 1: Find the Specified Panel var selectedPanel = Panels.First(panel => panel.X == x && panel.Y == y); selectedPanel.IsRevealed = true; selectedPanel.IsFlagged = false; //Revealed panels cannot be flagged //Step 2: If the panel is a mine, game over! if (selectedPanel.IsMine) Status = GameStatus.Failed; //Step 3: If the panel is a zero, cascade reveal neighbors if (!selectedPanel.IsMine && selectedPanel.AdjacentMines == 0) { RevealZeros(x, y); } //Step 4: If this move caused the game to be complete, mark it as such if (!selectedPanel.IsMine) { CompletionCheck(); } }
We also need to implement the methods RevealZeros() and CompletionCheck() called in Steps 3 and 4 respectively.
Reveal Zeros
When a user clicks on a panel with no adjacent mines, we need to cascade through all of the adjoining panels and reveal every neighbor panel until the panels have a non-zero number in them. We can accomplish this using recursion:
public void RevealZeros(int x, int y) { var neighborPanels = GetNearbyPanels(x, y).Where(panel =>!panel.IsRevealed); foreach (var neighbor in neighborPanels) { neighbor.IsRevealed = true; if (neighbor.AdjacentMines == 0) { RevealZeros(neighbor.X, neighbor.Y); } } }
Completion Check
After revealing a panel, if that panel happened to be the last hidden panel which does not contain a mine, the game is complete. We can write this method using LINQ to exclude the mined panels from the hidden panels; if the two collections contain the same items, the game is complete. Here's our CompletionCheck method:
private void CompletionCheck() { var hiddenPanels = Panels.Where(x =>!x.IsRevealed).Select(x => x.ID); var minePanels = Panels.Where(x => x.IsMine).Select(x => x.ID); if (!hiddenPanels.Except(minePanels).Any()) { Status = GameStatus.Completed; } }
Flagging a Panel
The final piece of functionality we need to implement is flagging a panel. The user may flag any hidden panel, but the existence of a flag doesn't guarantee that that panel has a mine. Here's the method:
public void FlagPanel(int x, int y) { var panel = Panels.Where(z => z.X == x && z.Y == y).First(); if(!panel.IsRevealed) { panel.IsFlagged = true; } }
Challenges
There are two major challenges inherent in building a solver for Minesweeper, and they both deal with fundamental issues with the structure of the game itself.
Minesweeper is NP-Complete
We must first come to terms with the fact that no Minesweeper automated-solver will ever be able to solve all possible boards. This is because Minesweeper has been proven to be an NP-Complete problem, meaning that calculating a solution for all possible boards might be possible but would take an exorbitant amount of time.
Guessing Is (Eventually) Required
There are a great number of scenarios in Minesweeper that ultimately force the user to guess; that is, there is no way for the user to be absolutely certain of what panel to reveal next or where to place the next flag. Advanced solvers will use probability calculations to determine the most optimal next move whenever guessing is required; my solution does not do this. I am creating a solver to demonstrate the ideas needed, not to solve as many boards as possible.
With these two challenges in mind, let's list some goals that the solver needs to be able to fulfill.
Solving The Game
We want to build two kinds of solvers: a single-game solver and a multi-game solver. The multi-game solver will be used heavily in the analysis section of this post, and so is detailed there; this section will focus on the single-game variant.
The single-game solver should be able to:
Start a game by randomly picking a panel. Use the strategies detailed below to reveal obvious panels and flag obvious mines. Allow the user to specify whether or not s/he wants the solver to use random guesses when a board becomes impossible to solve without guessing.
Game Solver Base Class
Let's start off by creating a class GameSolver, which will have properties and methods common to both the single-game and multi-game solvers.
public class GameSolver { protected int GetWidth() {... } protected int GetHeight() {... } protected int GetMines() {... } protected void WidthErrors(int width) {... } protected void HeightErrors(int height) {... } protected void MinesErrors(int mines) {... } }
The implementation of these methods is trivial; the source code for this file can be found in the GitHub repository.
Now we can start writing our single-game solver class.
Single-Game Solver
Here's the skeleton for the single-game solver; the rest of this post will be about filling in the functionality.
public class SingleGameSolver : GameSolver { public GameBoard Board { get; set; } public Random Random { get; set; } public SingleGameSolver(Random rand) { Random = rand; int height = 0, width = 0, mines = 0; while (width <= 0) { width = GetWidth(); WidthErrors(width); } while (height <= 0) { height = GetHeight(); HeightErrors(height); } while (mines <= 0) { mines = GetMines(); MinesErrors(mines); } Board = new GameBoard(width, height, mines); } public SingleGameSolver(GameBoard board, Random rand) { Board = board; Random = rand; } }
Random Number Generation
A big part of creating the Minesweeper board is the use of a random-number generator; in this case, that generator is the Random class. However, Random is not a true random-number generator (rather being psuedo-random), so when I was coding up this project I started noticing that a lot of the boards had the same mine placement, the same first move, etc.
Turns out that Random uses the current clock ticks as a seed, and so by creating a new Random class over and over again in quick succession, I would get the same "random" numbers many times in a row. Consequently, my solution passes a single instance of Random around to where it is needed, and therefore we won't see duplicate boards or duplicate move sets when running many games in a row (as we will do in the Analysis section).
Strategies
When attempting to solve a Minesweeper board, there are many simple strategies the player can use to up the odds of their winning the game. The four strategies below were the easiest to code for and can solve a great number of easy-to-intermediate boards.
Obvious Mines
Look at this game board:
I know from looking at the board that the three panels with flags on them must be mines. How do I know this? Because for each of those panels, there is an adjacent "1" panel that has no other hidden panels around it.
In general, this strategy is summed up as: "For any number panel, if the number of hidden adjacent panels equals the number in the current panel, all the adjacent hidden panels must be mines."
In our SingleGameSolver class, we write that as the following method:
public void FlagObviousMines() { var numberPanels = Board.Panels.Where(x => x.IsRevealed && x.AdjacentMines > 0); foreach(var panel in numberPanels) { //For each revealed number panel on the board, get its neighbors. var neighborPanels = Board.GetNeighbors(panel.X, panel.Y); //If the total number of hidden == the number of mines revealed by this panel... if(neighborPanels.Count(x=>!x.IsRevealed) == panel.AdjacentMines) { //All those hidden panels must be mines, so flag them. foreach(var neighbor in neighborPanels.Where(x=>!x.IsRevealed)) { Board.FlagPanel(neighbor.X, neighbor.Y); } } } }
With the obvious mines flagged, can we determine the inverse? Can we determine, for a single panel, whether or not all the hidden neighbors are not mines? We sure can.
Obvious Number Panels
Here's another sample game in progress:
See the 2 panel whose neighbors I've highlighted? Notice that, due to other panels, we've been able to flag two of that panel's neighbors as having mines. Consequently, any remaining hidden panels must not have mines:
In general, the logic for this strategy goes like this: for any given revealed number panel, if the number of flags adjacent to that panel equals the number in the panel, then all hidden adjacent unflagged panels cannot be mines.
public void ObviousNumbers() { var numberedPanels = Board.Panels.Where(x => x.IsRevealed && x.AdjacentMines > 0); foreach(var numberPanel in numberedPanels) { //Foreach number panel var neighborPanels = Board.GetNeighbors(numberPanel.X, numberPanel.Y); //Get all of that panel's flagged neighbors var flaggedNeighbors = neighborPanels.Where(x => x.IsFlagged); //If the number of flagged neighbors equals the number in the current panel... if(flaggedNeighbors.Count() == numberPanel.AdjacentMines) { //All hidden neighbors must *not* have mines in them, so reveal them. foreach(var hiddenPanel in neighborPanels.Where(x=>!x.IsRevealed &&!x.IsFlagged)) { Board.RevealPanel(hiddenPanel.X, hiddenPanel.Y); } } } }
Using just these two strategies, we can solve a lot of simple boards. But there's one other simple strategy I chose to implement: an endgame check for the number of remaining mines.
Endgame Flag Count
Near the end of the game, there's a simple way that we can determine whether or not we've solved the board. Check out this board:
On a beginner board, there are 10 mines; on this board, we have flagged 10 mines. Therefore all the remaining panels must not have mines:
The endgame strategy, in short, is that if the number of flagged panels equals the number of mines on the board, all the remaining panels cannot have mines. Therefore we can reveal all of those panels:
public void Endgame() { //Count all the flagged panels. If the number of flagged panels == the number of mines on the board, reveal all non-flagged panels. var flaggedPanels = Board.Panels.Where(x => x.IsFlagged).Count(); if(flaggedPanels == Board.MineCount) { //Reveal all unrevealed, unflagged panels var unrevealedPanels = Board.Panels.Where(x =>!x.IsFlagged &&!x.IsRevealed); foreach(var panel in unrevealedPanels) { Board.RevealPanel(panel.X, panel.Y); } } }
These three strategies comprise the portion of the solver that can actually solve the board. However, there's one more "strategy" (and I use the term loosely) that we need to implement.
Random Guessing
It's entirely possible (probable even, especially on harder boards) that at some point we will have to randomly reveal a panel in order to proceed with solving the board. Here's our function to do so:
public void RandomMove() { var randomID = Random.Next(1, Board.Panels.Count); var panel = Board.Panels.First(x => x.ID == randomID); while(panel.IsRevealed || panel.IsFlagged) { //We can only reveal an hidden, unflagged panel randomID = Random.Next(1, Board.Panels.Count); panel = Board.Panels.First(x => x.ID == randomID); } Board.RevealPanel(panel.X, panel.Y); }
With these four strategies in place, there's only one more question we need to answer: how do we know if there are still possible moves we can make without guessing?
Checking For Available Moves
One additional feature of this solver is that it needs to check if there are available moves; if there are no available moves we must guess randomly. The Obvious Mines and Endgame strategies can be run at any time without fear of failing the game (since they only flag panels, they don't reveal them), therefore the only strategy we need to check is the Obvious Number Panels strategy. Here's the function for that:
public bool HasAvailableMoves() { var numberedPanels = Board.Panels.Where(x => x.IsRevealed && x.AdjacentMines > 0); foreach (var numberPanel in numberedPanels) { //Foreach number panel var neighborPanels = Board.GetNeighbors(numberPanel.X, numberPanel.Y); //Get all of that panel's flagged neighbors var flaggedNeighbors = neighborPanels.Where(x => x.IsFlagged); //If the number of flagged neighbors equals the number in the current panel... if (flaggedNeighbors.Count() == numberPanel.AdjacentMines) { return true; } } return false; }
(Yes, I know this could be optimized, it's a lot of repeated code, etc. It's an example, not production code.)
Order of Operations
Now that we've got the four strategies coded up, let's determine in what order they should fire. Generally speaking, we need to flag mines first before revealing new panels so that the flagged panels are not able to be revealed. Here's the order of operations for the single game solver:
While the game is not solved or failed If zero panels have been revealed, submit user's first move. Flag the obvious mines. Check for available "Obvious Number Panel" moves. Reveal the obvious number panels. Check for the endgame mine count situation. If there are no available moves, randomly reveal a panel.
In other words:
public BoardStats Solve() { //Step 1 while (Board.Status == GameStatus.InProgress) { if (!Board.Panels.Any(x=>x.IsRevealed)) { //Step 2 FirstMove(); } //Step 3 FlagObviousMines(); //Step 4 if (HasAvailableMoves()) { //Step 5 ObviousNumbers(); } else //No available moves, we must guess to continue { //Step 7 RandomMove(); } //Step 6 Endgame(); } //Display messages }
Analysis
Now that we've got the game itself coded up and a single-game solver working, let's combine many game solvers to analyze how well our strategies perform on different kinds of boards. To do this, we must first create the Multi-Game Solver we mentioned earlier.
Multi-Game Solver
Before we can start solving (or at least attempting to solve) lots of Minesweeper games, we must first create a multi-game solver. The multi-game solver needs to know the following properties of the game:
The dimensions of the boards
How many mines exist on each board
How many boards to solve
The MultiGameSolver class in our solution looks like this:
public class MultiGameSolver : GameSolver { public int BoardWidth { get; set; } public int BoardHeight { get; set; } public int MinesCount { get; set; } public int BoardsCount { get; set; } public int GamesCompleted { get; set; } public int GamesFailed { get; set; } public MultiGameSolver() { //Get height, width, mines count, number of boards } public void Run() { Random rand = new Random(); List<BoardStats> stats = new List<BoardStats>(); Console.WriteLine("Solving Games..."); for(int i = 0; i < BoardsCount; i++) { GameBoard board = new GameBoard(BoardWidth, BoardHeight, MinesCount); SingleGameSolver solver = new SingleGameSolver(board, rand); var boardStats = solver.Solve(); stats.Add(boardStats); if(solver.Board.Status == Enums.GameStatus.Completed) { GamesCompleted++; } else if(solver.Board.Status == Enums.GameStatus.Failed) { GamesFailed++; } } Console.WriteLine("Games Completed: " + GamesCompleted.ToString()); Console.WriteLine("Games Failed: " + GamesFailed.ToString()); //Calculate and display stats } }
We also have the BoardStats class called out above:
public class BoardStats { public double TotalPanels { get; set; } public double PanelsRevealed { get; set; } public double Mines { get; set; } public double FlaggedPanels { get; set; } public double PercentMinesFlagged { get; set; } public double PercentPanelsRevealed { get; set; } }
With the Multi-Game Solver written, we can now start to get statistics for each board type, beginning with the Beginner boards.
Beginner Boards
First, let's take a look what a beginner board looks like. Here's a sample beginner board:
The dimensions of a beginner board are 9 panels by 9 panels, with 10 randomly-placed mines. This gives us a board density of 12.3%. These kinds of boards should be relatively easy to solve.
We're going to run five groups of 100 boards each, and analyze the number of boards solved and failed, as well as the number of mines flagged and panels revealed. Here's the data for these runs:
Run # Games Solved Games Failed % Mines Flagged % Panels Revealed 1 83 17 90.1% 95.54% 2 85 15 90.4% 95.68% 3 82 18 90.8% 95.64% 4 80 20 90.3% 95.27% 5 77 23 87.4% 93.7%
On average, we're solving about 80%-82% of the boards, with 88%-89% of the mines correctly flagged and 95% of the panels revealed. That's pretty darn good if I do say so myself.
Let's ramp up the difficulty a bit and see how well the solver holds up.
Intermediate Boards
In Minesweeper, intermediate boards look like this:
This time the board is 16x16 with 40 mines, given a board density of 15.6%. Let's run the same set of tests (5 runs of 100 boards each) and see how well the solver does this time.
Run # Games Solved Games Failed % Mines Flagged % Panels Revealed 1 49 51 86.82% 90.93% 2 41 59 83.75% 89.63% 3 45 55 83.58% 89.3% 4 39 61 82.88% 89.12% 5 44 56 84.4% 89.27%
This is where the results get interesting. We didn't solve more than half the intermediate boards on any run, so by that metric the solver's not doing so hot. But we still flagged approx 84% of the mines and revealed approx 89% of the panels, so we're getting a lot done before we fail the boards. What this tells me is that once the solver solves a large percentage of the board, it has to start guessing, and that's where it begins to fail.
Let's see if the this is born out by the expert level boards.
Expert Boards
Once again, here's an expert board for reference.
This time the board is 30 panels wide and 16 panels tall with a whopping 99 mines! That gives us a board density of 20.6%, the highest we've seen so far (after all, this is expert mode). With the high density, we should expect that we'll solve even less games than we did on the intermediate boards. Here's the data:
Run # Games Solved Games Failed % Mines Flagged % Panels Revealed 1 0 100 47.49% 58.59% 2 2 98 45.89% 56.57% 3 0 100 45.56% 56.17% 4 0 100 44.18% 54.86% 5 0 100 45.36% 55.29%
Well. I don't think the results could be any clearer than that. We solved 2 games out of a possible 500, so yeah, the solver's not going to get very far on these expert boards.
On the other hand, it did flag about 45% of the mines and revealed 56% of the number panels, so the solver's still making progress. It's just that with the much higher mine density, eventually the solver's going to have to make a guess, and eventually it's going to guess wrong. At this point, the simple strategies we've implemented for this solver won't help us very much except to get us started.
Summary
Our solver uses four strategies to solve Minesweeper boards:
Check for obvious mines
Check for obvious number panels
Check for "endgame" all mines flagged situation
If none of the above are available, randomly guess a panel
This solver, while not able to solve all boards, can complete a large percentage of them. It turns out that the solver does pretty darn well at the beginner boards and fairly well on the intermediate boards, but fails miserably once we get to the expert level. To be fair, that's kinda what we expected; we're not using any terribly advanced methodology here, just simple Minesweeper strategy. The fact that said strategies solve any number of the boards is amazing, frankly.
Don't forget to check out the repository for this project!
Let me know what you thought of this post: was it too deep, too shallow, too much, too little? I'd love to hear any feedback you have in the comments!
Happy Coding!A former aide to President George W. Bush and opinion writer for The Washington Post wrote Thursday night that it’s time for the GOP to “panic” about President Trump’s fitness for office.
Michael Gerson, who served as a deputy assistant and director of speechwriting in the Bush administration, writes that Trump’s personal conflicts with his advisers, aides and lawmakers in his own party should concern leaders that Trump's "unfitness" to serve as president could do permanent damage to the country.
“It is no longer possible to safely ignore the leaked cries for help coming from within the administration,” Gerson writes. “They reveal a president raging against enemies, obsessed by slights, deeply uninformed and incurious, unable to focus, and subject to destructive whims.”
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The president’s feud with Sen. Bob Corker Robert (Bob) Phillips CorkerBrexit and exit: A transatlantic comparison Sasse’s jabs at Trump spark talk of primary challenger RNC votes to give Trump 'undivided support' ahead of 2020 MORE (R-Tenn.) has made headlines this month, as have reports that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Rex Wayne TillersonHeather Nauert withdraws her name from consideration for UN ambassador job Trump administration’s top European diplomat to resign in February Pompeo planning to meet with Pat Roberts amid 2020 Senate speculation MORE called Trump a “moron,” that chief of staff John Kelly John Francis KellyMORE is frustrated to the point of wanting to leave his post and that Trump “hates everyone in the White House.”
In the op-ed, Gerson railed against the GOP and accused Speaker Paul Ryan Paul Davis RyanBrexit and exit: A transatlantic comparison Five takeaways from McCabe’s allegations against Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Sanders set to shake up 2020 race MORE (R-Wis.) of "bland complacency" in Trump's antics, warning that it is time for elected Republicans to voice their concerns about the president as Corker has.
“The time for whispered criticisms and quiet snickering is over," Gerson writes. "The time for panic and decision is upon us.”(Puck Daddy presents its annual look back at the year in hockey. Check back every day through the New Year for our many lists and hot takes.)
Hockey is a violent sport. At the NHL level, there’s an entire department dedicated to policing the game through suspensions and fines.
This past season, the league's Department of Player Safety saw quite a few rough acts by players through bodychecks or stick work. There were also several plays in other leagues that were both ferocious and anger driven.
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We tried to pare down some of hockey’s most vehement plays of the past year.
Here are the Top 10 Heinous On-Ice Acts of 2015. Please list anyone we missed, or your own list, in the comments!
10. Brandon Prust spears Brad Marchand in the groin area
In a game between the Vancouver Canucks and Boston Bruins on Dec. 6, Brandon Prust speared Brad Marchand in an area that Marchand later called his “fun spot.” Prust received a 10-minute misconduct and was fined $5,000 for the act by the NHL.
9. Ilya Kovalchuk slash on Alexander Radulov in the Gagarin Cup playoffs
The two former NHL stars faced off against one another in the Gagarin Cup’s conference Final last season where Kovalchuk took a whack at the back of Radulov’s leg. Radulov ended up being OK, but called Kovalchuk “psycho” for the slash.
8. Andrew Conboy’s crosscheck to the face
Conboy was suspended 20 games for the below play with the Elmira Jackals where he crosschecked another player in the face. As we noted in our blog about the incident, Conboy had a bit of a rap sheet, going all the way back to Michigan State in 2009. He’s also served suspensions on a different continent, having three with the Cardiff Devils in a stint with the EIHL.
7. Tyler Shedrake assaults a linesman
Story continues
On Feb. 14, Shedrake was suspended for the remainder of the SPHL season for the below incident.
At 10:42 of the third period, Sheldrake was assessed minor penalties for cross checking and roughing and a match penalty for attempt to injure whereby he punched a defenseless player who he had cross-checked to the ice in the face, then pulled him up off the ice in an attempt to fight the Peoria player. Furthermore, he struck a linesman several times, causing injury, then forcefully took the official to the ice in his attempt to get at the opposing players and continue the altercation.
6. Daniel Carcillo’s crosscheck of Mathieu Perreault
The whistle had blown the play dead in a Jan.16 game between the Chicago Blackhawks and Winnipeg Jets. And Chicago forward Daniel Carcillo decided to crosscheck a relaxed Mathieu Perreault in the arm. Perreault was out from the Jan. 16 contest until Jan. 27 at the Penguins. Carcillo was suspended six games. On the play, Carcillo received a two minute minor for crosschecking.
5. Dustin Byfuglien on J.T. Miller
Late in the Winnipeg Jets’ season, defenseman Dustin Byfuglien crosschecked the head/neck area of New York Rangers forward J.T. Miller. Winnipeg had five games left in the year and was pushing for a playoff spot – their first since the team was the Atlanta Thrashers. Byfuglien got four games, and Miller escaped serious injury. Byfuglien was not penalized on the play.
4. Joe Grimaldi spears Maxime Lengelier-Parent and then throws a helmet at him.
Grimaldi (who played for Edinburgh of the EIHL) unleashed a high hit at Evan Mosey of Nottingham. He was then was challenged by Lengelier-Parent, and responded by spearing Lengelier-Parent. Grimaldi then threw a helmet before Lengelier-Parent took down Grimaldi. After the game, Edinburgh released Grimaldi from his contract.
3. Zac Rinaldo’s high hit of Kris Letang
On Jan. 20 in a game between the Philadelphia Flyers and Pittsburgh Penguins, Flyers forward Zac Rinaldo hit into Pittsburgh defenseman Kris Letang high along the boards. Letang had his back turned to Rinaldo and didn’t see the hit coming. Rinaldo spoke about the play after it happened and even admitted he thought he was going to be suspended. Rinaldo got an eight-game ban for the play. He also received a major penalty for boarding.
2. Raffi Torres’ 41-game suspension for high hit of Jakob Silfverberg
Torres sat out all of the 2014-15 season because of an ACL injury. After a high hit on Anaheim Ducks forward Jakob Silfverberg in the preseason, he was forced to sit 41 more games. Following the completion of this 41-game suspension, Torres will have sat out a total of 74 games in his NHL career. This includes a 21-game ban from a hit on Marian Hossa in the 2012 Stanley Cup playoffs.
1. Andre Deveaux’s on-ice attack
Last March, Deveaux – who was playing for Rogle of Sweden’s HockeyAllSvenskan – slashed Vasteras defenseman Per Helmersson during warmups before a playoff game. Both players played the final two playoff games, and Helmersson was not injured. After the series, video of the attack surfaced, Rogle moved to terminate Deveaux’s contract. Authorities sought the arrest of Deveaux. Deveaux was banned by the Swedish Hockey Association until Feb. 16. Eventually authorities decided to drop their investigation into the attack.
Tomorrow: Top 10 Hockey Photos of 2015
Previously on the Year in Hockey 2015:
- Top 10 players of 2015
- Top 10 hockey people of 2015
- Top 10 social media moments of 2015
- Top 10 most shocking transactions of 2015
MORE FROM YAHOO HOCKEYhttp://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Pathologic
"You can escape anything, even the punishing hand of the Inquisitor... but you can't escape yourself."
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A 2005 game, the debut of the small Russian indie game developer Ice-Pick Lodge. As for its genre... uh... Well, for simplicity's sake, let's just call it a First-Person Psychological Survival Horror Adventure Game with some light RPG Elements — although that description might not entirely do the game justice.
Pathologic (or "Мор. Утопия" (lit: "Plague Utopia") in the original Russian) is set in a town in the middle of nowhere, beset by a strange disease. The game follows the story of three people - healers - who have all come to the town for their own reasons, and they all have drastically different methods. However, just as you arrive, an epidemic starts and the town is quarantined. At that point, the game puts you in control and gives you 12 in-game days to do quests and protect yourself and others from the disease... by some very dubious methods.
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The first storyline is that of a young Bachelor of Medicine, Daniel Dankovsky, who has been asked to come to the town to scientifically establish that one of the residents is over two hundred years old. However, the man dies as soon as he arrives — not of old age, however, but by the hands of an unknown culprit. Following this, Dankovsky finds himself strong-armed by the local aristocrats into using his skills and equipment to research the plague, and he quickly becomes buried in their intrigues.
The second storyline is that of a Haruspex, Artemy Burakh (pronounced "ahr-TYEH-mee BOO-rakh", with the "kh" sound like the "ch" in Bach or loch). He is one of very few people allowed the knowledge and right to cut open dead human bodies. His father shared his profession and lived in the town, but died recently, and he had called his son to take his place. However, the people believe that he killed his father, forcing him to dodge angry mobs.
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The third storyline is that of Clara, the Changeling, a young girl who many believe is either a saint or a steppe demon who brought the plague in the first place. She is able to either heal a person or utterly destroy them with a gesture of her hands. Mysterious and with an unclear past, she nevertheless performs her deeds in the certainty they will benefit... something.
There are three main families in the game, all in some way fighting against each other for the control of the town. Other than them, there are loads and loads of other characters, all somehow related to the story.
The game received many good reviews praising its atmosphere and picked up dozens of awards in its native country. Sadly, the English translation was, on release, absolutely incomprehensible. This - coupled with the developer being practically unknown outside Russia - resulted in poor sales. This game is not for everyone, and there is a lot to take in in order to master its brutally complex mechanics. It is, however, a very powerful, emotionally draining experience, and not to be missed.
A remaster - Pathologic Classic HD, featuring improved textures, new voice acting and (most importantly) a revised script0 was released on Gog.com and Steam on October 29th, 2015.
Ice-Pick Lodge also created a Kickstarter campaign to create a successor of this game in September 2014. This game is known as Pathologic 2, although it is not a plot sequel, instead retelling the original's story with more content and mechanics, as well as more polished graphics. It is frequently referred to as a "remake", but the developers came to reject this label, instead likening it to how games like Silent Hill 2 and Dark Souls 2 revisit and experiment with the concepts introduced in their predecessors. The release is currently planned for 2019 Q2, with the initial release only containing the Bachelor's story, and the stories of the Haruspex and Changeling coming later.
A limited demo version of the sequel... remake... thing, titled Pathologic: The Marble Nest, was released in 2017. It is not an excerpt of the game proper - it's more of a side story branching off late in the game's storyline, and it has an internal progression of its own. (The developers' notes at the beginning of the demo compare it to a short story.) You play as the Bachelor, waking up in an abandoned house that has served as a hospital-turned-morgue. He's been fighting the Sand Plague for some time, it seems, and has effectively quarantined the Stone Yard. |
, that enables the Samsung Galaxy S8 to play HDR movies and other types of videos from major content publishers. At the core of the capture experience is the Qualcomm Spectra™ 180 ISP, featuring dual 14-bit ISPs that support the Galaxy S8 8MP front camera and 12MP rear camera for the ultimate photography and ultra-high definition videography experience. Both still and video capture experiences are enhanced with advanced auto-focus technologies along with HDR true-to-life colors and perceptual quantization video encoding. The Snapdragon 835 also features the Qualcomm Haven™ security platform with enhanced security for biometrics and device attestation, which can be experienced in the Galaxy S8. The Galaxy S8’s signal performance, power efficiency and thermal performance are enhanced by an advanced RF front-end which includes Qualcomm Technologies’ envelope tracker, impedance tuner, diversity receive modules, aperture tuners, low-noise amplifiers, extractor and BAW filter.
“We value the long history of collaboration that we share with Qualcomm Technologies, and are excited to work with them on the Galaxy S8, the mobile industry’s first smartphone based on 10nm FinFET process technology to be available to consumers,” said Robert Kim, vice president, product strategy team, mobile communications business, Samsung Electronics. “Doing so provides our customers with a best-in-class mobile experience, which includes the most advanced features in connectivity, immersion, machine learning and security.”
More information on the Snapdragon Mobile Platform can be found at https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon/processors/835. For more information about the Samsung Galaxy S8, please visit www.samsung.com/galaxy or www.samsungmobilepress.com.
About Qualcomm
Qualcomm's technologies powered the smartphone revolution and connected billions of people. We pioneered 3G and 4G – and now we are leading the way to 5G and a new era of intelligent, connected devices. Our products are revolutionizing industries, including automotive, computing, IoT, healthcare and data center, and are allowing millions of devices to connect with each other in ways never before imagined. Qualcomm Incorporated includes our licensing business, QTL, and the vast majority of our patent portfolio. Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, operates, along with its subsidiaries, all of our engineering, research and development functions, and all of our products and services businesses, including our QCT semiconductor business. To learn more, visit Qualcomm’s website, blog, Twitter and Facebook pages.A federal judge issued a surprise ruling on Friday in a closely-watched court case over an illegal pact by big tech companies — Apple(s aapl), Google(s goog), Intel and Adobe — to suppress worker wages.
In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh complained that a proposed $324.5 million settlement was too low in light of an earlier deal in which Pixar, LucasFilm and Intuit paid to settle similar allegations last year.
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Koh wrote that on the basis of that earlier settlement (which offered $20 million to a much smaller pool of workers, who amounted to 5 percent of total defendants), the new settlement should be at least $380 million:
One way to think about this is to set up the simple equation: 5/95 = $20,000,000/x. This equation asks the question of how much 95% would be if 5% were $20,000,000. Solving for x would result in $380,000,000.
Koh also noted repeatedly that she was “disturbed” because the new proposed settlement offered workers a lower amount even though they were in a stronger legal position based on recent court rulings.
“[The] procedural posture of the case swung dramatically in Plaintiffs’ favor after the initial settlements were reached,” Koh wrote.
As a result of the settlement, which provides up to 25 percent for the workers’ lawyers, the parties will have to either propose a new figure, or else take their chances at trial.
The news of the initial settlement was leaked to the media in April, leading one of the engineers who was a lead plaintiff in the original case to object to the deal.
Steve Jobs as “central figure in the alleged conspiracy”
This week’s ruling also offers details of a sweeping conspiracy in which the big tech companies entered secret pacts to refrain from recruiting each other’s employees.
Those details are sometimes colorful, as Koh quoted communications from leading tech names, including Apple’s late CEO Steve Jobs (who she describes as “a, if not the, central figure in the alleged conspiracy”) as well Google’s Sergey Brin and Silicon Valley coach Bill Campbell.
“Steve just called me again and is pissed that we are still recruiting his browser guy,” Campbell told Brin and Google’s Larry Page.
The ruling also shows how Google’s participation in the scheme was driven in part by a desire to stop Facebook(s fb), which denied to participate in the conspiracy, from hiring its employees.
Here’s the ruling with some key parts underlined:
Koh Rejects No-poach SettlementGuns were designed with one purpose. They don’t cut rope, drive nails, or propel baseballs. They are built to kill or maim. Very much of what you read in the news revolves around guns. Firearms are central to almost every conflict, crime, uprising, or peacekeeping mission. Governments use guns to maintain order. Rebels use guns to challenge authority.
There are more guns per capita in the United States than in any other nation. Some people like guns for hunting, target practice, and skeet shooting. If you have a gentle nature, though, you probably abhor firearms. Every time a confused young person opens fire at a school, a worker assaults co-workers, a stray bullet enters an inner-city home, or a spouse, passerby, political figure, or store clerk is attacked with a deadly weapon – every one of those violent acts is a powerful argument for locking guns away.
If you believe in the right to self-defense and liberty, however, you probably see gun ownership as natural and just. Every assault, home invasion, robbery, or hostage taking is a powerful argument that a lawfully armed citizen might have been able to stop the crime in progress.
The balance between public safety and individual freedom is not easy. From the Revolution through the settling of the frontier to the 21st century, guns have been embedded in the American experience. The Second Amendment to the Constitution appears to enshrine the right of individuals to own and carry firearms. In 2008 and 2010, the US Supreme Court issued landmark rulings that ensured possession of firearms for lawful purposes. Since then, a slew of state laws have expanded access to firearms and the freedom to carry them in public.
In the years to come, it appears, there will be even more guns in more hands in more places than ever before. As a Monitor special report notes, no one can say for sure if that will make society more, or less, safe. Scholars such as economist John R. Lott Jr. and criminologist Gary Kleck cite evidence that people who carry concealed weapons have stopped thousands of crimes from happening. But it’s hard to be sure about cause and effect.
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, meanwhile, argues that easy access to firearms is the reason that almost 100,000 people are shot or killed in the US each year. But do we blame the gun or the person?
Another paradox: The spread of guns in the US is happening amid an overall decline in violent crime. Yet violent crime (more than 12,000 murders and 44,000 shooting attacks in 2008) is still far higher in the US than in other industrial countries.
Guns and gun lore flow through our culture. Many of us grew up with toy revolvers and plastic rifles. We may have learned to shoot at summer camp (I did). We honor the embattled farmers who fired the shot heard round the world; the Old West sheriff whose quick draw dispatched the bad guys; the heroic soldiers, police officers, and law-abiding citizens who band together to defend themselves in a thousand movies. We cringe at gangsters, assassins, and bullies who brandish firearms to intimidate the innocent.
But if you take your knowledge of guns from pop culture, you have an unrealistic view of what they can and can’t do. Guns are precise only in the hands of trained marksmen. Gun wounds are rarely something a good guy can shrug off. Silent silencers, impregnable bulletproof vests, and bottomless magazines for blazing away are Hollywood nonsense.
It is a shame that we are still a species that feels comfortable, even celebrates, an instrument built solely to maim or kill. We are, after all, the same species that believes in persuasion and reason and has seen the efficacy of nonviolent movements. Yet ending tyranny and oppression and defending life and liberty still seem to require firearms.
Martin Luther King Jr. once said that the power of nonviolence rests in the idea that “you not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.” One day, let’s hope, we’ll see that that radical concept, which runs through all religions and cultures, is far more powerful than black powder and lead.
John Yemma is the editor of The Christian Science Monitor.New Knicks point guard Derrick Rose takes a shot at some Q&A with Post columnist Steve Serby.
Q: How hungry or driven are you to approach the kind of elite player you were?
A: I’m always driven. I’ve always been driven. I always had the underdog mentality, no matter where I was at in my career. But going through the injuries, you could be down. At one point, I wanted revenge and all that, but actually just going through it, I’m taking it as a challenge. I’m putting in all the work that I’m putting in, I’m doing everything I could do to actually get back to that player, but it takes time. It takes patience.
That’s what I think I developed over these last couple of years is patience. Like dealing with everything I was dealing with. Being 23, 24 at the time, having the injuries, learning who I was becoming as a man, having a son, being the man of the household, taking care of my family, I was doing that at a young age, at 19. So having all that on my plate and just trying to find my identity in this world, I’m taking it all as a challenge now.
Q: Do you miss being that MVP player?
A: No. I know I could become better. … I was a dumb player at the time.
Q: Then how did you get to become MVP?
A: I was reckless. … I wasn’t being smart. I wish I never dunked the ball. … I was playing too fast, I wasn’t changing up my speeds. I wasn’t reading the game right. And I think my IQ of the game wasn’t as high as it is right now. I feel like I’m more in control. I’m more balanced.
Q: How would you describe your on-court mentality now versus when you were that reckless MVP?
A: I think I’m able to read the NBA game a lot better, and pick and choose my spots. When I was younger, I was trying to figure out the league. I was still trying to figure what type of player I was gonna become. And now, I feel like with the IQ that I have and with the experience I have after playing nine years, I could really go out there and pick and choose my spots, instead of just going out there shooting shots trying to win the game.
Q: So what does drive you now?
A: Greatness. I think it drives everybody. Being obsessed with greatness. … Not only in basketball, but in life, period. I watch a lot of documentaries. I just always have that curiosity of what ticks people to dedicate their whole life to one thing.
Q: Have you studied other athletes at all?
A: I wouldn’t say studied, but observe and try to watch as close as possible.
Q: Who would you try to watch?
A: People like Pele, people like Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali, like Bobby Fischer (smile). I try to see what ticks people and makes ’em obsessed with whatever their interests are.
Q: What has been the criticism of your game you think was the most unfair?
A: That’s been my whole career being in Chicago. I’m from the South Side, I used to go on the West Side and people used to say that I couldn’t do this, I couldn’t do that. I’ve been hearing ever since I was in sixth grade, in my own town. So I’m used to it. But, at the same time, when people critiqued me like that, it let me know that I have some type of ability that most don’t have, if you’re critiquing everything that I do. This league is full of people that specialize in certain areas. I’m an all-around player, so when you critique one part of my game, it lets me know that I’m great.
Q: Was your on-court mentality as a young player similar to Russell Westbrook’s?
A: It’s different with Wes. Wes plays with some type of meanness to him, mean streak to him. I never played with a mean streak to me, I just played to play. I can’t play that way, upset or mad. Wes seems like he thrives off that. When I’m on the court, I’m a totally different player. I don’t know where it comes from, I don’t know what it is but, I don’t know, it’s some type of confidence level in me just knowing how hard I work. If my mean streak is a Chicago way of playing basketball, like not backing down. We use the term “not going.” Like I’m not backing down away from no challenge. I play to win, then it comes out in that way.
Q: He plays more like Mike Tyson.
A: Yeah, something like that.
Q: During all of the rehabs, what was the low point?
A: I think all of them had some type of low point to them, but the process of getting up in the morning, I hate. I’m not a morning guy. So getting up in the morning, just knowing that you gotta work out every single day.
Q: Did you say, “Why me?”
A: You go through that here and there, but that’s when faith kicks in. I feel like everything that happened in your life, it happened for a reason. And me having faith in whoever’s watching me above, I know that I’ll be good, like I know that I’m blessed, I know that I’m here for a reason. I know that I’m spiritually stable and financially stable. I know I’m stable for a reason, you know?
Q: You never doubted you would make it back?
A: Never. Never.
Q: Murray Park was also known as Murder Park. What was the worst thing you ever saw?
A: The worst thing I ever saw was someone getting pistol-whipped in the park. Like someone stole from a neighbor a few blocks away from where I lived.
Q: Have you ever seen anybody shot and killed?
A: Not in the park, no, but in my neighborhood, yeah.
Q: What was that like growing up watching something like that?
A: Traumatizing. I saw my brother’s best friend die. Just seeing him like bleed out in front of you, and just being like helpless, no one can do anything for him, that was traumatizing. To tell you the truth, that was kind of regular in my neighborhood.
Q: How good were the games in Murray Park?
A: Oh, they were good. They were very competitive. The younger guys couldn’t get on the court. I was probably the only kid in my neighborhood to get on the court and play with the older guys, so like all my friends used to stand around the court and cheer me on whenever I used to go out there and play, and I’ll score, they’ll start like cheering for me, yelling for me, talking smack to all the older players that I’m actually like a kid out there scoring on the older guys (smile). I was probably the only kid that could play with the older guys.
Q: Describe your 4-year-old son, P.J.
A: His personality is totally different than mine. He’s an outgoing kid.
Q: Well then I’ll do a Q & A with him, why am I wasting my time with you for?
A: You should, yeah yeah yeah, you should, man (chuckle). He’s built for the spotlight, and that’s something in which I’m not built for.
Q: You were the No. 1-overall pick in the draft. What was that like for you?
A: My whole life I’ve been hearing like, “You have to be accustomed to the attention, be accustomed to all the fame,” and all that, but that’s something that I’ve done in the past and got used to over the past, but that’s not who I am. Being at 28 years old, I figured that out like a couple of years ago going through all my injuries that I’m just not built for it, but it’s my profession, and so I can’t whine and complain about it.
Q: And you started your career in Chicago and now you’re in New York …
A: I’m a loner. I stay to myself sometimes. It’s just who I am. And being 28, I could finally say that now when I was younger, I was learning the NBA, I was learning who I was as becoming a man, and now with me having a kid, it kind of dawned on me, I’d never be the guy that loves attention or the fans.
Q: How painful was losing that 2008 NCAA championship game to Kansas when you were at Memphis?
A: Very painful. Very painful. I mean literally. You know the fireworks that go off, like after they win? The s–t burns you. That’s what people don’t know. Like when the fireworks go off, the fire from the fireworks actually come down and burn you if you’re like walking off the court. So literally, it’s painful (laugh).
Q: John Calipari, what makes him Coach Cal?
A: His personality. His will to win. I think this is with every man — his ego. He loves to have good teams. And when his teams are playing good, he creates an environment where it’s you-against-everyone. We were in Memphis, little Memphis, and he created the mentality where it was us-against-the-world.
Q: Do you think he’ll ever come back to the NBA?
A: I hope not.
Q: Why?
A: He has the world in his hands down there in Kentucky. I don’t see why he would leave, like the way Kentucky is treating him, and the freedom and the happiness he’s having … like his son is playing for his team. What more can you ask for?
Q: What was it like when he recruited you?
A: I always tell people, like, he tricked my mom (laugh). He was bring so nice with my mom. Derrick Kellogg, he was an assistant at Memphis at the time, him and Coach Cal came into my house. Coach Cal was acting kind, nice, talking to her polite. I got to Memphis, and he was talking to me the totally opposite. He was cursing me out every day, like trying to kick me off the floor if he thought I wasn’t going hard enough. But at the same time, that’s his way of pushing his players, and I didn’t understand that when I first got there, but when I got used to him, I understood where he was coming from.
Q: He was sweet-talking your mom?
A: He did everything perfect (smile).
Q: What is your favorite Bulls memory?
A: Getting the [2010-11] MVP trophy.
Q: Describe Knicks coach Jeff Hornacek.
A: Coach Horn is an old-school type coach. He allows players the freedom to go out there and play the way that they want to play.
Q: What is it about Kristaps Porzingis’ game that really impresses you?
A: He’s always working. He’s never satisfied.
Q: He’s kind of like a freak, isn’t he?
A: Yeah, to be that mobile at 7-3. It’s a lot of guys that come in the league and change the league, but to be 7-3 though as like a center and be able to move and be that mobile, and just his balance. He doesn’t even run like a 7-3 guy. He runs like he’s a small forward, and plays and does moves, step-backs like he’s a small forward. I think he’s the first guy at that length on this league that we’ve ever seen move that way.
Q: What have you learned about Carmelo Anthony as a teammate maybe you didn’t know?
A: He’s very vocal. Like he wants to win. Like his will to win. Coming in the locker room, getting on guys, always being that voice on the huddles just letting guys know, “This is what we have to do, and this is how we’re gonna do it.” That’s something that I’m learning, like I’m a quiet guy. I always led by example. And for me, being vocal, that’s the next step for me, so it’s good to have him around.
Q: Describe Knicks fans.
A: The greatest in the world, to tell you the truth. They really know basketball. It’s different when you go in an arena and sometimes you hear chatter, like it’s not even about the game. The chatter is about business, lunch, where they’re going after the game. You don’t hear that here a lot. Like you hear a lot of fans that are into the game, telling the players what they need to do or what they should be doing on the floor. I just love to hear it just to get the feel for the crowd, and that’s what they have here.
Q: Have they embraced you from Day 1?
A: It seems like it. My job here is just to win, by any means. I don’t care about my average, I don’t care about my stats at all, I’m just here to help Melo and the other guys to win and push the team as far as we can, and try to rebuild this culture here.
Q: What was it like the first time you ever played on the Garden floor?
A: I was nervous. I was in high school. We played Rice, we played Kemba [Walker] and them in high school here. I played here in college, I felt the same way, and even as a pro my first time stepping on the court, you’re nervous.
Q: Who was your boyhood idol?
A: I didn’t have one. It was my mom. If I had an idol, it would have been her. My brothers, they were around here and there, they’re a lot older than I am. My mom had me when she was 34. My two oldest brothers were out of the house, and my third oldest brother was around, but not like that.
Q: Your grandmother helped raise you.
A: My grandmother passed when I was in sixth grade. She was a kind woman. She was like anybody’s grandmother — always be the one that protect you from being whupped (smile) from your moms. I’d run to her whenever I got in trouble, and we lived with her. My grandmother was too kind, a lot of people walked over her, so my mom took the approach where she saw her mom getting walked over and she said that she wasn’t gonna allow people to do that to her.
Q: Your father was never in the picture. Do you know where he is or do you have any relationship with him?
A: No, to tell you the truth, sir, I think he probably passed away. I haven’t heard anything from him, and I think by now, with me being where I’m at in my career, I think if he was alive, he would have reached out or something.
Q: You live in the city. Do you like it?
A: Love it.
Q: Why? You’re a loner. You’re a quiet guy.
A: Yeah, yeah, But I’m able to move around. I’m 6-2, 6-3, I’m not 7-feet tall like Joakim [Noah]. I’m able to move around with a hood on or a hat on to get around the city like an average person. And in Chicago, I really didn’t have the freedom to do that. So being here, they’re used to the celebrity here.
Q: Superstitions?
A: Before games, I don’t eat that much. I put on my shoes a certain way. Taking my supplements at a certain time, drink my energy drinks at a certain time. Little things like that.
Q: Three dinner guests?
A: Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, my grandmother.
Q: New York pizza?
A: Love it.
Q: Favorite pizza spot?
A: I order from Artichoke a lot, and I had a lot of people tell me about Joe’s Pizza.
Q: Favorite actor?
A: Leonardo [DiCaprio].
Q: Favorite entertainer?
A: Tupac.
Q: Favorite meal?
A: Linguini with marinara sauce and grilled chicken.
Q: Describe the Garden of Dreams experience this week with Michael Young, a boy who suffers from leukemia.
A: It means a lot, especially when a kid is a fan of yours, with me having a son too. I get worried when he has a cold, or when he falls or when he hurts himself, so let alone he has leukemia and you have to take him in for treatment. I can only dream about how devastating that must feel sometimes, but at the same time, it makes me value my time with my son, having those times with them kids like that, making their day, because my son is so blessed and he’s healthy, so it’s a blessing that my son is healthy, it’s a blessing that I get the little time that I have with them kids because they put a lot of things in perspective.
Q: A year from now, what kind of player do you want to be?
A: The best player Derrick Rose possibly can be.
Q: Could you see yourself, if all goes well, to play here in New York for a long time?
A: I would want it to be that way, but it’s not up to me.
Q: Why would you want it to be that way?
A: I love the environment here. I love just everything that comes with New York. I love it.
Q: I read where you said, “Great things are coming.” What were you referring to by that?
A: One of my best friends, his dad, he was like a father figure to me. His quote always to us ever since we were in sixth grade was, “It gets greater later.” I totally get it now … coming from Chicago, where a kid don’t cherish their life or treasure their life like they’re supposed to, and I grew up in that. And me being able to get out, and having the discipline and having the determination, and having a great family and having them protect me the way they did. … I could have been content just winning MVP and having a certain amount in my bank account.
A lot of guys would have quit having two knee surgeries, let alone three surgeries and an orbital eye surgery. Even after I get done playing basketball, not to sound cocky, I’m a hustler by heart, like it’s something that’s always gonna drive me to compete, or something that’s gonna push me to be better.
Q: Message to Knicks fans still dreaming that championship dream?
A: It takes time. We’re giving it everything we got. I know I’m giving everything I have. And as long as I’m a part of this organization, the goal is a championship.
Q: How realistic is that goal?
A: Very realistic. Like right now they thought we would be like 2-16 right now, something like that. For them to even think that, that drives us. Everybody on this team is chasing something right now from the starting five to the guys on the bench to the coaches to the GM to the owner. We all want that championship. But it takes time, it takes dedication, and it takes sacrifice.Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has accused the EU of hypocrisy and double-standards following its denouncement of the Catalonian referendum as illegal, while acknowledging the independence of the breakaway province of Kosovo.
"The question every citizen of Serbia has for the European Union today is: How come that in the case of Catalonia the referendum on independence is not valid, while in the case of Kosovo secession is allowed even without a referendum," B92 quoted Vucic as saying during a news conference.
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"How did you proclaim the secession of Kosovo to be legal, even without a referendum, and how did 22 European Union countries legalize this secession, while destroying European law and the foundations of European law, on which the European policy and EU policy are based?"
On Monday the European Commission echoed the Spanish government’s stance that the referendum held in Catalonia was illegal, describing the events on Sunday, which saw voters being beaten by Spanish riot police, as an “internal matter”. By contrast in 2010, the European Parliament adopted a resolution urging its member states to recognize Kosovo’s independence.
"This is the best example of the double standards and hypocrisy of the world politics," Vucic said.
The largely ethnic-Albanian province of Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 after a war in 1999 which saw the US and its NATO allies intervene on behalf of Albanian rebels against the government of what was then Yugoslavia.
NATO’s mission, however, lacked a UN Security Council mandate, and according to Human Rights Watch, up to 528 Yugoslav civilians were killed during the bombing campaign between March and June 1999.
Serbian sources put the death toll much higher, possibly as many as 2,500 civilian casualties including 89 children.
NATO's targets were not exclusively military sites, but also included civilian buildings, such as the Serb Radio and Television (RTS) headquarters in Belgrade, which led to 16 deaths.
After the war, many ethnic Serbs, who formed around 10 percent of the population, fled the province fearing reprisals from Albanian militias. The Republic of Kosovo is now split into seven administrative zones, with the region’s remaining Serbian population occupying the Mitrovica district in the north.
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Russia has consistently pointed out the hypocrisy in the EU allowing the Kosovars to declare independence at Serbia’s expense, but condemning the 2014 referendum in Crimea which saw the formerly Ukrainian peninsula join the Russian Federation.
The reunification of Crimea with Russia has been a contentious issue between Russia and Western governments which have attempted to hold Moscow accountable through sanctions.
“Our western partners created the Kosovo precedent with their own hands. In a situation absolutely the same as the one in Crimea they recognized Kosovo’s secession from Serbia legitimate while arguing that no permission from a country’s central authority for a unilateral declaration of independence is necessary,” President Vladimir Putin told the Russian parliament in 2014.
“It’s beyond double standards,” Putin said.
The central government in Madrid deployed thousands of extra police officers to Catalonia Sunday to prevent the independence referendum from taking place.
Nevertheless, millions of Catalans took to the streets to cast their ballots. The ensuing crackdown by Spanish security forces left some 893 people injured, according to Catalan authorities.
The Spanish government announced Monday that it would consider proposals to settle the crisis put forward by other political forces, provided they are aimed at the “common good and the defense of our democratic system.”
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy had already held consultations with other parties, including the Socialists and the centrist Ciudadanos, it said in a statement.
It further stated that Rajoy voiced support for the security forces, commending their handling of the referendum issue and also expressed gratitude to the EU leaders that backed Madrid in its dispute with Catalonia.Ian Logue
Looking at the last three games, the final quarter of play has been an area where Tom Brady has stepped up quite a bit recently compared to the first five weeks and he was already pretty good to begin with.
Brady overall on the season has completed 225-of-328 passing (69%) for 2709 yards along with 22 touchdowns and just two interceptions. Down in scoring territory, he’s 35-of-58 (60%) for 285 yards with 18 touchdowns and one interception.
But looking at the quarterback’s fourth quarter totals, it’s impressive to see just how good he’s been down the stretch, especially in the red zone.
Here’s a quick look at the numbers:
4th Quarter – First five games:
Tom Brady: 27-of-40 (68%) 331 yards 3 TDs
Red Zone: 5-of-7 (71%) 27 yards 2 TDs
4th Quarter – Last three Games:
Tom Brady: 25-of-32 (78%) 299 yards 5 TDs
Red Zone: 7-of-8 (88%) 74 yards 5 TDs
Those numbers are staggering, with Brady having missed just seven fourth quarter passes over the last three weeks, and completing nearly 90% down in scoring territory.
He’s a perfect 7-of-7 to Julian Edelman over that three week span, including 3-of-3 with two touchdowns in the red zone. He’s also 6-of-6 to Rob Gronkowski, which includes 2-of-2 and a touchdown down in scoring territory.
We already knew he was a clutch player at the end of the game. These numbers are just a further reminder of that and it’s obviously a big reason why this team is 8-0 heading into Sunday’s match-up against the Giants.Image caption Police found men living in squalor at the Greenacres caravan park in Bedfordshire last September
Four members of a traveller family have been found guilty of forcing destitute men into servitude.
Tommy Connors Snr, 52, his son Patrick Connors, 20, and daughter Josie, 31, kept the men in squalid conditions at Greenacres caravan park in Bedfordshire, the trial heard.
Josie's husband James John Connors, 34, has also been found guilty.
Luton Crown Court heard victims were made to work for nothing and slept in sheds and horseboxes.
The jury heard that victims were verbally abused, beaten and exploited for financial gain at the Greenacres caravan site near Leighton Buzzard.
Cold water
The court was told the complainants, who cannot be named for legal reasons, were forced to work in the Connors' block paving business.
Over 13 weeks the trial was told the men were given next to no food, forced to wash in cold water and paid little or no money for working up to 19 hours a day, six days a week.
Some were alcoholics, drug addicts or had previously been in trouble with the law, and were picked up off the streets, at soup kitchens or in centres for the homeless.
Josie, who sobbed in the dock, and her husband James John were convicted of two counts each of servitude and forced labour, with James John also guilty of actual bodily harm.
The jury failed to reach a verdict on James John's battery charge.
'Concentration camp'
Tommy Sr, 52, faced 11 counts and was convicted of one servitude charge and one forced labour charge, as well as one of actual bodily harm.
Patrick was convicted of conspiring to hold a person in servitude, as well as forced labour and actual bodily harm charges.
He was cleared of two other counts but the jury failed to reach a verdict on seven others.
A total of seven members of the family were on trial but the jury failed to reach verdicts on a number of charges against Tommy Snr's sons Tommy Jr, 27, Johnny, 28, and James Connors, 24.
The court heard one victim told police he had been warned he would be "murdered" if he ever tried to leave.
Another said that living at the caravan site was like being in a "concentration camp".
Most of the workers sooner or later managed to escape but remained fearful of being "recaptured", the jury heard.
Police raided the Greenacres caravan site on 11 September last year.
Judge Michael Kay QC told the court he will sentence the four defendants on Thursday when a decision will also be made about the charges where no verdict was reached.President Donald Trump should declare a national emergency in response to the nearly 142 Americans killed each day by the opioid crisis gripping the United States, a bipartisan White House panel has found.
In late March, Trump convened a commission to combat the abuse of deadly opioids like heroin, prescription painkiller medication, and the synthetic opioid fentanyl.
“With approximately 142 Americans dying every day, America is enduring a death toll equal to Sept. 11 every three weeks,” wrote members of Trump’s bipartisan committee, referring to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the American homeland that killed nearly 3,000 people. “Your declaration would empower your cabinet to take bold steps and would force Congress to focus on funding and empowering the executive branch even further to deal with this loss of life.”
“It would also awaken every American to this simple fact: if this scourge has not found you or your family yet, without bold action by everyone, it soon will,” they continued.
Members of the panel, led by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), described their request for Trump to declare a national emergency as their “first and most urgent recommendation.”
In May, Dr. Thomas Gilson, the chief medical examiner for Cuyahoga County in Ohio, dubbed the nation’s overdose capital in late 2016, told U.S. lawmakers that coroner’s offices across the United States are facing “personnel shortages” and equipment failures due to the number of overdose fatalities.
“There is a national crisis in death investigation,” he declared.
Preliminary data compiled by the New York Times (NYT) reveals that 2016 drug overdose deaths in the United States increased nearly 20 percent over the unprecedented 52,404 fatalities the previous year.
According to the latest figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the record overdose fatalities in 2015 included 33,091 opioid-linked deaths (more than 60 percent).
“All evidence suggests the problem has continued to worsen in 2017,” reports NYT, noting that the “deaths are rising faster than ever.”
The White House panel’s daily opioid fatality estimate (142) marks an estimated 35 percent increase from the 91 Americans the U.S. government believed were dying each day when Trump created the committee in late March.
Some analysts have designated the opioid crisis as one of the worst drug epidemics in U.S. history.
“The opioid epidemic we are facing is unparalleled. The average American would likely be shocked to know |
Mourinho after the Champions League clash with PSG Return: Torres could start for Spain against Holland after being dropped from the national team this yearA Utah judge who ruled on Tuesday that a 9-month-old foster child be removed from the home of a married same-sex couple and instead be placed with heterosexual parents, reversed his ruling on Friday after pressure from state officials, according to Ben Winslow, a reporter for Salt Lake City television station Fox 13.
In an order obtained by @fox13now, Judge Johansen canceled his decision to remove the child from lesbian couple’s home. #utpol #LGBT — Ben Winslow (@BenWinslow) November 13, 2015
The judge scratched his order that the child be put in a heterosexual couple’s home. @fox13now #utpol #LGBT pic.twitter.com/H9Uvx5EJ2F — Ben Winslow (@BenWinslow) November 13, 2015
The judge WILL allow the foster child to remain with the lesbian couple. @fox13now #utpol #LGBT pic.twitter.com/9djWoFzNMi — Ben Winslow (@BenWinslow) November 13, 2015
Judge Johansen has set hearings on the foster child at the end of the month and in December.
@fox13now #utpol #LGBT — Ben Winslow (@BenWinslow) November 13, 2015
The New York Times also reported that the judge reversed his order, but indicated that the couple’s fight to keep the child may not be over:
Judge Johansen eliminated a line saying that “it is not in the best interest of children to be raised by same-sex couples,” and another ordering the child removed and placed with a heterosexual couple. But the new order still says, “The court cited a concern that research has shown that children are more emotionally and mentally stable when raised by a mother and father in the same home.” And there is still a Dec. 4 hearing scheduled on the best interests of the child.
District Court Juvenile Judge Scott Johansen ruled on Tuesday that the child be removed from the foster home of Beckie Peirce and April Hoagland, citing unspecified research that shows children are better off with traditional parents.
Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R) said on Thursday that he was “puzzled” by the ruling, and he urged the judge to follow state law, which allows gay parents to adopt children. The Utah Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS) and the foster parents then filed petitions asking the judge to reverse his order.As of this writing, early Thursday morning, some Syrians are scheduled to pay with their lives for America’s “credibility.” The bombarding of an already war-ravaged country is acknowledged as “symbolic,” intended simply to “send a message.” This is an obscenity as great as the one Washington purports to answer. Another Middle Eastern society will come further unstitched, and those doing the unstitching will have nothing on offer to replace it.
The U.S. long ago squandered what credibility it may once have enjoyed or desired in the Mideast. If credibility were the cause, Washington need do no more than start dismantling the Potemkin village it has made of the principles it tediously mouths.But this thought goes nowhere these days.
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And so the U.S. stalks into another war in the Middle East. Unlike the Iraq and Afghanistan wars—American works of art, both—the conflict in Syria is somebody else’s canvas. But apart from this, the similarities among these three instances of Washington’s wanton hostility toward uncompliant regimes are astonishingly similar.
Make that tragically similar. History proceeds, we Americans insist on the virtue of ignorance, on learning nothing and knowing nothing. And what we are about to get is what we get, predictably and always. We are a singular people, no question. Maybe even exceptional.
As of these hours, the Obama administration is on the record as rejecting any deliberations the U.N. may judge just. On Wednesday evening, British Prime Minister David Cameron gave in to Labour Party objections to his support for Washington’s invasion plans. Britain now wants to see a U.N. report on the alleged chemical attacks from weapons instructors, and to give the Security Council process more time.
But listen closely to President Obama speaking Wednesday on PBS' "Newshour" and it is clear the U.S. could go it alone against the Syrian regime if need be. "We’re prepared to work with anybody – the Russians and others – to try to bring the parties together to resolve the conflict," Obama said. "But we want the Assad regime to understand that by using chemical weapons on a large scale against your own people... you’re also creating a situation where U.S. national interests are affected, and that needs to stop."
So not even the fig leaves of international assent matter now.
Events since the apparent attacks with chemical substances in four residential districts of Damascus last week bear all the marks of a disgraceful bum’s rush. Given that the cruise missiles the Obama administration is about to send into Syria will bear the chalk signatures of every American, like a World War II bomb, we are the chumps of the piece (once again, that is). This is a shared responsibility. It makes us complicit.
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The fabrications and duplicity put before us as Washington prepares to “respond” to the latest savagery in Syria are so strangely formed that it is hard to follow the bouncing ball. The Obama people have changed their story diametrically before our eyes, casting aside all consistency, self-evidently making it up as they go along. And it is the same story recited countless times before. Maybe it is the only story Americans can articulate or grasp—a disturbing thought, but one begging consideration at this point.
Stories require media, of course, and there they are, on the case in the Syrian crisis and delivering the goods with irresponsible single-source stories dressed up as responsible multiple-source stories. When was it that journalists began thinking of themselves as national security operatives? It is getting unbearable, this errand-boy act in the face of power. If journalists did their jobs properly we would get into fewer messes such as Syria and would be more nationally secure. As it is now, the press is a defective piece in the democratic mechanism.
Instantly after news of chemical weapons and fatalities arrived last week, Washington and its allies began clamoring for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to allow a team of U.N. inspectors to examine the sites in question. It absolutely had to be. Nothing else would do. We read this.
Within 48 hours, the Obama people asserted that any such scrutiny was beside the point. When Assad gave assent to the U.N. team’s visit, which was not much delayed given the shelled zone is a battlefield, he was “too late to be credible.” All the evidence would have “degraded,” as we also read.
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Too late? Degraded? The U.N. team is one of experts. They are in Syria to examine sites where chemicals were allegedly used months ago and would not be there if the question of degradation were authentic. This we did not read, with one exception. On Wednesday the New York Times’ science correspondent, William Broad, had the integrity and sense to cite non-government sources—Yikes!—to point out that chemical agents used in weaponry do not dissipate for a woefully long time. Skeptics can ask the Vietnamese.
The Broad piece got the bottom of page eight. As I.F. Stone once said of the Washington Post, the paper is always a kick because you never know where you will find a front-page story.
By early this week, if you can take this in, U.S. officials were privately urging the U.N. to abort the mission in Syria. Washington had plainly decided by this time that evidence was not quite the thing. We did not read this, either—not in an American publication.
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We come to the Mack truck Obama’s people want to park unnoticed in the driveway. “Evidence” of chemical weapons use, even as Obama’s people dodged from any, quickly became “undeniable” (Secretary of State Kerry), a matter of “no doubt” (Vice President Biden), and many other forcefully stated things. This language we read in abundance—and with no decent, professional scrutiny on the part of those conveying it.
And did you notice? Evidence of use became evidence of the Assad regime’s use. This is the trump suit in the game. No mention by any U.S. official that responsibility may lie with the awful-as-Assad insurgents. And of course one could not read of this prospect in U.S. newspapers or hear it from U.S. broadcasters. An indefensible lapse in logic also goes unnoted. I honestly cannot figure how dumb we are supposed to be.
We are promised incontrovertible evidence of Assad’s guilt in the course of Thursday. Needless to anticipate. In wars of imagery and spectacle, variants of the above-described routine are frequently rehearsed. Think yellowcake, or Colin Powell at the United Nations, or Judith Miller's "metal tubes" or "mobile weapons labs" in Iraq so eagerly reported by the New York Times.
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I aired my suspicions that the insurgents might well be the culprits in this space last week. I stand by these thoughts times two.
Assad’s opponents do not possess supplies of sarin gas or other chemical agents, it is suggested.
Rubbish. Not so by a long way. And they have behaved as savagely as anyone in Assad’s army.
The rebels could not be capable of mounting an attack of the scale apparent in Damascus last week, we are also advised.
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The defensible position is that of the Russians and responsible elements within Britain: They want a proper investigation and propose we all abide by it.
Carla del Ponte, the noted investigator of war crimes and a member of the U.N. inquiry on Syria, asserted in May that there was sound reason to examine whether the insurgents were responsible for an obscenity in Syria at that time involving sarin gas. The U.N. human rights investigator said that, "According to the testimonies we have gathered, the rebels have used chemical weapons, making use of sarin gas," adding that her commission's best understanding of the facts was that "sarin gas has been used... by opponents, by rebels, not by government authorities."
She was tarred and feathered, as our media are versed at doing in the best American tradition.
But Obama appears determined to circumvent the U.N. regardless of what its investigators suggest. On Wednesday Britain advanced a resolution in the Security Council calling for intervention, but this was pro forma. The Security Council is composed as it is so that alternative worldviews are properly represented. Obama honors alternative worldviews as much as George W. Bush treasured them. So no U.N., not with a veto in the offing from Russia, a Security Council member. Better to go lawless again, and that is the word to bear in mind as the fireworks display unfolds in the coming days.
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In the run-up, there is some piling on. We have once again the crummy “coalition of the willing” junk, familiar from the Iraq war: There are the batboy British, the flimsy resistance of Labourites notwithstanding, and the uncertain France of François Hollande, and Angela Merkel’s Germany (complicated motives there), and of course Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel, which is (on the record) eager to regionalize the Syria question so that Iran can be bombed. I have previously identified Bibi as the most dangerous man in the Middle East, and he earns the title once again.
The Arab League says no. The European Union says no. Even NATO equivocates as of this hour. Take it apart. Most of humanity is not on board for this adventure in theater.
I conclude with what I consider the caker, the preposterous-news- of-the-week prize, even if we cannot read about it in our country but online.
“The bulk of evidence proving the Assad regime’s deployment of chemical weapons—which would provide legal grounds essential to justify any western military action—has been provided by Israeli military intelligence.” That would be the reliable folk at Mossad. The quotation comes from the Guardian, which simply reported on a report in a German magazine called Focus.
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Aditya 651 4349 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 1 Influencer Aditya has earned the Influencer Level 1 badge as 100 people have Agreed or Recommended his/her comments on Timesofindia.com. Know more about Times Points. Level 4 Wordsmith Aditya has posted 100 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 4 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 3 News King Aditya has viewed 250 articles, photos and videos on Timesofindia.com to earn the News King Level 3 badge. Know more about Times Points. Badges Earned Influencer 1 Wordsmith 4 News King 3 Frequent Flyer 5 Member 1 Know more about Times Points.. 1 day ago - Follow. It''s normal salary for west coast 136k is pretty standard but why are you converting the same amount in rupees and making a news out of it? If Microsoft pays Rs. 1.5 criers in India office itself then it''s a news Hide responses 39 1 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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cashmir 118 132 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 1 Wordsmith cashmir has posted 10 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 1 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 1 News King cashmir has viewed 25 articles, photos and videos on Timesofindia.com to earn the News King Level 1 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 1 Member cashmir has registered on Timesofindia.com to earn the Member badge. Know more about Times Points.. Aditya - Wampor - 1 day ago - Follow. USD 136k standard salary for fresh graduates.. really? Show responses 4 2 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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Aditya 651 4349 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 1 Influencer Aditya has earned the Influencer Level 1 badge as 100 people have Agreed or Recommended his/her comments on Timesofindia.com. Know more about Times Points. Level 4 Wordsmith Aditya has posted 100 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 4 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 3 News King Aditya has viewed 250 articles, photos and videos on Timesofindia.com to earn the News King Level 3 badge. Know more about Times Points. Badges Earned Influencer 1 Wordsmith 4 News King 3 Frequent Flyer 5 Member 1 Know more about Times Points.. cashmir - 1 day ago - Follow. Yes sir... in west or east coast these giant companies will pay you so much Show responses 1 0 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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Subrata Pramanick 36604 213396 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 7 Influencer Subrata Pramanick has earned the Influencer Level 7 badge as 2500 people have Agreed or Recommended his/her comments on Timesofindia.com. Know more about Times Points. Level 1 Movie Buff Subrata Pramanick has reviewed 5 movies on Timesofindia.com to earn the Movie Buff Level 1 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 7 Wordsmith Subrata Pramanick has posted 2000 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 7 badge. Know more about Times Points. Badges Earned Influencer 7 Movie Buff 1 Wordsmith 7 Networker 2 News King 6 Frequent Flyer 6 Inboxer 1 Well Connected 1 Member 1 Know more about Times Points.. cashmir - Kolkata - 1 day ago - Follow. Don''t think so. Show responses 0 1 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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India Meer 1111 3889 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 1 Influencer India Meer has earned the Influencer Level 1 badge as 100 people have Agreed or Recommended his/her comments on Timesofindia.com. Know more about Times Points. Level 4 Wordsmith India Meer has posted 100 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 4 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 1 Frequent Flyer India Meer has visited Timesofindia.com 10 times to earn the Frequent Flyer Level 1 badge. Know more about Times Points. Badges Earned Influencer 1 Wordsmith 4 Frequent Flyer 1 Member 1 Know more about Times Points.. cashmir - Botswana - 1 day ago - Follow. It is base price. Considering the cost of living, standard of living.. It is not big salary. We Indians ssqueeze ourself to save on that and look in to it as big. If it is big salary, why Microsoft not recruit talent from their own country? Just imagine. No one is doing charity. They save by hiring Indians. Show responses 2 0 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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cashmir 118 132 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 1 Wordsmith cashmir has posted 10 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 1 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 1 News King cashmir has viewed 25 articles, photos and videos on Timesofindia.com to earn the News King Level 1 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 1 Member cashmir has registered on Timesofindia.com to earn the Member badge. Know more about Times Points.. India Meer - Wampor - 1 day ago - Follow. Your assessment assumes world''s finest talent can be sourced from America the wonderland. Aah! Show responses 0 0 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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Radhakrishna Lambu 534 4466 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 4 Wordsmith Radhakrishna Lambu has posted 100 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 4 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 2 News King Radhakrishna Lambu has viewed 100 articles, photos and videos on Timesofindia.com to earn the News King Level 2 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 3 Frequent Flyer Radhakrishna Lambu has visited Timesofindia.com 50 times to earn the Frequent Flyer Level 3 badge. Know more about Times Points. Badges Earned Wordsmith 4 News King 2 Frequent Flyer 3 Member 1 Know more about Times Points.. cashmir - 12 hours ago - Follow. Yes it is. It friends in location also. Show responses 0 0 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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India Meer 1111 3889 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 1 Influencer India Meer has earned the Influencer Level 1 badge as 100 people have Agreed or Recommended his/her comments on Timesofindia.com. Know more about Times Points. Level 4 Wordsmith India Meer has posted 100 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 4 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 1 Frequent Flyer India Meer has visited Timesofindia.com 10 times to earn the Frequent Flyer Level 1 badge. Know more about Times Points. Badges Earned Influencer 1 Wordsmith 4 Frequent Flyer 1 Member 1 Know more about Times Points.. cashmir - Botswana - 1 day ago - Follow. It is standard salary. To hire an expert of American National, they have to pay 3 times higher. They are hiring the finest talent from India by paying low salaries. Compared to USA standard it is not high they are paying. Show responses 0 0 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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Vincent Rajkumar 4025 975 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 2 Influencer Vincent Rajkumar has earned the Influencer Level 2 badge as 250 people have Agreed or Recommended his/her comments on Timesofindia.com. Know more about Times Points. Level 4 Wordsmith Vincent Rajkumar has posted 100 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 4 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 5 News King Vincent Rajkumar has viewed 1500 articles, photos and videos on Timesofindia.com to earn the News King Level 5 badge. Know more about Times Points. Badges Earned Influencer 2 Wordsmith 4 News King 5 Frequent Flyer 3 Member 1 Know more about Times Points.. cashmir - 1 day ago - Follow. Yes, it is specially with Intel and others in Bay area. But remember, he will be competing with the best and has to sustain. I must commend IIT for bringing something best of people and there are many from other schools equally good, unfortunately MS or Amazon never visit these campus. Show responses 0 0 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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Senior Citizen 17449 7551 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 5 Influencer Senior Citizen has earned the Influencer Level 5 badge as 1500 people have Agreed or Recommended his/her comments on Timesofindia.com. Know more about Times Points. Level 7 Wordsmith Senior Citizen has posted 2000 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 7 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 7 News King Senior Citizen has viewed 3500 articles, photos and videos on Timesofindia.com to earn the News King Level 7 badge. Know more about Times Points. Badges Earned Influencer 5 Wordsmith 7 News King 7 Frequent Flyer 7 Inboxer 1 Member 1 Know more about Times Points.. Vincent Rajkumar - 1 day ago - Follow. It is hard to get Kegriwals from any where except IIT Show responses 0 0 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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Kalrajitender 23400 1600 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 7 Influencer Kalrajitender has earned the Influencer Level 7 badge as 2500 people have Agreed or Recommended his/her comments on Timesofindia.com. Know more about Times Points. Level 1 Movie Buff Kalrajitender has reviewed 5 movies on Timesofindia.com to earn the Movie Buff Level 1 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 6 Wordsmith Kalrajitender has posted 1000 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 6 badge. Know more about Times Points. Badges Earned Influencer 7 Movie Buff 1 Wordsmith 6 News King 7 Frequent Flyer 4 Member 1 Know more about Times Points.. cashmir - 1 day ago - Follow. yes they do Show responses 1 0 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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Debashis Mohapatra 126 124 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 1 Wordsmith Debashis Mohapatra has posted 10 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 1 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 1 Member Debashis Mohapatra has registered on Timesofindia.com to earn the Member badge. Know more about Times Points.. Aditya - 1 day ago - Follow. £ 30000 or $ 45000 USD is the average income in London which happens to be the costliest city in the world.So you mean to say that 136k USD is more than average for a fresher...Well then West coast certainly needs to come in the list of best salaries but I search it every where and it doesn't come up Show responses 0 0 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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Patriotic Bharatiya 16686 8314 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 7 Influencer Patriotic Bharatiya has earned the Influencer Level 7 badge as 2500 people have Agreed or Recommended his/her comments on Timesofindia.com. Know more about Times Points. Level 3 Movie Buff Patriotic Bharatiya has reviewed 40 movies on Timesofindia.com to earn the Movie Buff Level 3 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 7 Wordsmith Patriotic Bharatiya has posted 2000 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 7 badge. Know more about Times Points. Badges Earned Influencer 7 Movie Buff 3 Wordsmith 7 Networker 2 News King 7 Frequent Flyer 4 Well Connected 1 Member 1 Know more about Times Points.. Aditya - 1 day ago - Follow. The only benefit I could find from our English education system is our top Engineers, Doctors, Scientists; executives etc are working abroad by keeping this country for poor, farmers, illiterates, slum dwellers, labourers, beggars and corrupt politicians.All white & majority mongoloids learn in their own language hence advanced people, Indian & African slaves learn in their master’s language hence most backward people & also known as tribal people Show responses 1 0 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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Robin Pandey 3521 1479 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 1 Influencer Robin Pandey has earned the Influencer Level 1 badge as 100 people have Agreed or Recommended his/her comments on Timesofindia.com. Know more about Times Points. Level 4 Wordsmith Robin Pandey has posted 100 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 4 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 4 News King Robin Pandey has viewed 750 articles, photos and videos on Timesofindia.com to earn the News King Level 4 badge. Know more about Times Points. Badges Earned Influencer 1 Wordsmith 4 News King 4 Frequent Flyer 4 Member 1 Know more about Times Points.. Aditya - Hyd - 1 day ago - Follow. US is a big country. In San fransisco-San hose area 136K starting salary might be normal but not in Seattle area. Seattle has some hi-tech companies like but salary is not as high as silicon valley.
Simillar in eastcoast. What you get in NY area, you won''t get in Delaware. Show responses 0 0 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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Rohan Seth 2823 2177 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 6 Influencer Rohan Seth has earned the Influencer Level 6 badge as 2000 people have Agreed or Recommended his/her comments on Timesofindia.com. Know more about Times Points. Level 5 Wordsmith Rohan Seth has posted 500 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 5 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 1 Networker Rohan Seth has acquired 10 followers to become Networker Level 1 on Timesofindia.com Know more about Times Points. Badges Earned Influencer 6 Wordsmith 5 Networker 1 News King 7 Frequent Flyer 7 Member 1 Know more about Times Points.. Aditya - Location - 1 day ago - Follow. The standard salary for a fresh graduate from a decent univ is in the range of 48,000 to 70,000 pa. In any case, this is news, and rightly so because it has been offered to a graduate from an Indian educational institution. The keyword here is Indian educational institution. Show responses 0 0 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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Praveen 12090 12910 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 5 Influencer Praveen has earned the Influencer Level 5 badge as 1500 people have Agreed or Recommended his/her comments on Timesofindia.com. Know more about Times Points. Level 1 Moderator Praveen has successfully flagged 10 comments on Timesofindia.com to become Moderator Level 1. Know more about Times Points. Level 7 Wordsmith Praveen has posted 2000 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 7 badge. Know more about Times Points. Badges Earned Influencer 5 Moderator 1 Wordsmith 7 Networker 1 News King 7 Frequent Flyer 7 Member 1 Know more about Times Points.. Aditya - 1 day ago - Follow. Very true this is Indian media. Show responses 0 0 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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Born In January 16335 8665 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 7 Influencer Born In January has earned the Influencer Level 7 badge as 2500 people have Agreed or Recommended his/her comments on Timesofindia.com. Know more about Times Points. Level 4 Movie Buff Born In January has reviewed 80 movies on Timesofindia.com to earn the Movie Buff Level 4 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 7 Wordsmith Born In January has posted 2000 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 7 badge. Know more about Times Points. Badges Earned Influencer 7 Movie Buff 4 Wordsmith 7 Networker 2 News King 7 Frequent Flyer 6 Member 1 Know more about Times Points.. Aditya - A Place Called Hell - 1 day ago - Follow. you earn in dollar, pay taxes in dollars, eat in dollars, stay in dollars, then where comes the picture of 1.5 crores?? and one thing $70K is the portion which includes ONE TIME joining bonus, relocation, stocks etc. from second year, he would get only $136K which is a normal trend in Redmond. Just for the best comparison, author should let readers know about the cost of leaving there. Show responses 0 0 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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Chandrak Baxi 5643 19357 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 3 Influencer Chandrak Baxi has earned the Influencer Level 3 badge as 500 people have Agreed or Recommended his/her comments on Timesofindia.com. Know more about Times Points. Level 4 Wordsmith Chandrak Baxi has posted 100 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 4 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 5 News King Chandrak Baxi has viewed 1500 articles, photos and videos on Timesofindia.com to earn the News King Level 5 badge. Know more about Times Points. Badges Earned Influencer 3 Wordsmith 4 News King 5 Frequent Flyer 6 Member 1 Know more about Times Points.. Aditya - Bangalore, India - 1 day ago - Follow. 13 years in IT as software engineer. These IITians are nothing better than normal graduate. Show responses 2 1 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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India Meer 1111 3889 more points needed to reach next level. |
from Creation Records and effectively broke up. Pygmalion’s drastic departure from dream-pop had prompted the dissolution in multiple ways. Drummer Simon Scott had left Slowdive the previous year, feeling disillusioned by the drum machines, computers, and loops that guitarist and vocalist Neil Halstead had used to make the album* *largely on his own. But this direction also drew sneers from the British music press, who at that moment seemed more content to boogie to Britpop than sway to shoegaze. “Yet more career suicide,” was how the NME described Pygmalion.
The “yet more” is crucial here. For as beloved as Slowdive have become among a younger generation of subterranean listeners, their first two albums—1991’s Just for a Day and 1993’s Souvlaki—hadn’t made them critical darlings like Creation labelmates My Bloody Valentine. But then shoegaze and dream-pop experienced an unexpected revival in the late ’00s, as acts like Beach House and M83 hit their strides, chillwave boomed, and MBV finally returned to the road. With it came a new appreciation for Slowdive. By 2014, the demand for their reunion was high enough to support a five-month world tour and a slew of festival performances—and come May 5th, a new album via Dead Oceans. Although it’s been more than two decades since the group ganged up on the delay pedals in the studio, the swirling guitars, woozy harmonies, and soaring choruses of Slowdive make it sound like Souvlaki’s long-lost sister.
Pitchfork spoke to Halstead about why Slowdive decided to come back, what cemented shoegaze’s legacy, and how records still should require a listening ritual.
Pitchfork: Were you surprised at all by the warm reception to your reunion shows?
Neil Halstead: We were completely taken off-guard! People said to us, “You should get back together, you guys would be surprised.” And we were. We were also surprised that the audience was a younger generation, which was brilliant. It was heartening to see that the records have resonated with not just kids of our age.
How did it go from playing some shows to recording a new album?
When we first talked about getting back together, the main emphasis was on trying to do a record. Doing shows on and off for a year and a half was a really good way for us to create some momentum to make a record. Obviously we didn’t hit the ground running—we had to crank the engine up again. Because for us, it was a bit like, What kind of record would we do? Would it be like Pygmalion—which was more electronic, sample-based, ambient—or would it be something closer to our earlier stuff, which was noisier and more band-based? We ended up going for something that has the momentum of playing live. It’s a stepping stone record for us in terms of getting back into doing Slowdive—a familiar record for anyone who's heard us.
We’re all really excited about doing another record at this point. I always think of records as a moment in time. The next moment is maybe where we push the boundaries a bit more, where it doesn’t have to necessarily be so familiar.
You were the primary composer on Pygmalion____. Was the process more collaborative this time?
This one was definitely a lot more collaborative than Pygmalion. A lot of Pygmalion was done in my bedroom, then I’d bring it to everyone. We were at a weird point in the band then. I was kinda dragging people along with that record.
Everyone had a hand in bringing the new songs to fruition. “Falling Ashes” was a song that Simon [Scott, drummer] had more input on—he's super into field music and ambient stuff. Which was interesting because Simon was the first person to leave the band, so he wasn't involved with Pygmalion at all. He still says that’s the record he wished he was involved with, because that’s more of where he’s at musically these days.
What’s one perspective you brought to this album that perhaps you didn’t have before?
Around Pygmalion, we were all just starting to get more familiar with how studios work and working away with our own selves. We finished the band right at the point when you could buy a laptop and a couple of microphones and make a record, where computers were getting smarter with this stuff. Bringing that part of how you can work now to Slowdive was interesting.
About a year and a half ago, we started popping in studios. We went back to the first studio we ever did anything in [Whitehouse Recording Studio in Somerset], which was exactly the same. What would happen is, we’d do a few days in a studio here and there, then I’d bring it back to my studio in Cornwall and play around with it, send stuff to the other guys. We’d get back together again and work on something else or rework the old ideas. In the same way we made our first album, it was written and recorded at the same time. We still work together quite well—it would’ve been pretty disastrous if we’d lost that part of the Slowdive chemistry.
Why do you think shoegaze has stuck around?
Partly because the bands were never big bands—they were always these little bands making underground music and then Britpop came. In England, that opened up the indie world to the mainstream world. But shoegaze never became part of the big music industry. So maybe it was ripe for rediscovery, in the same way that when those Nuggets collections and Pebbles compilations—the old garage rock and psych—were reissued in the ’80s, they became really influential. You’d never heard your parents playing those records—they were never mainstream music. But they were brilliant bands that got a second bite after they were re-released. Maybe the internet had a real good impact on shoegaze because it’s given kids now a chance to check it out.
Speaking of a younger generation finding shoegaze, you worked with Beach House producer Chris Coady on the new album. Why him?
We definitely wanted to work with Chris because we all love Beach House’s records, and we love the way they sound. The stuff he worked on previously definitely had an influence on asking him to get involved.
We recorded the whole record but we needed someone to come in and just polish it, bring it together. We sent out tracks to a few different people, and we asked Chris if he wouldn’t mind doing a demo mix for us. When his came back, we thought, *Yes, that’s the way we want to hear that song. *He works out of Sunset Sound in L.A., which has this kind of brilliant heritage in pop music—all the Doors records, Beach Boys. That was a bias, really—we didn't realize that when we asked Chris to do it—but we all went out there.
This is the first Slowdive album in the age of streaming. How would you prefer people listen to it?
I would prefer people listen to it as an album, but I know that’s old fashioned. Songs need homes—that's how you create it. We’re already conscious of making a record with an A-side and a B-side, which is how we made all our records. We’re definitely that generation that actually grew up going to buy albums, getting really into artwork, reading up on them, and really enjoying them as a piece of art. For me, there’s still a brilliant kind of buzz when you buy a record: the ritual of sitting down, putting on the record player, listening to the A-side, and then turning it over.Monday’s news that multinational consultancy Deloitte had been hacked was dismissed by the firm as a small incident.
Now evidence suggests it's no surprise the biz was infiltrated: it appears to be all over the shop, security wise.
On Tuesday, what seemed to be a collection of Deloitte's corporate VPN passwords, user names, and operational details were found lurking within a public-facing GitHub-hosted repository. These have since been removed in the past hour or so. In addition, it appears that a Deloitte employee uploaded company proxy login credentials to his public Google+ page. The information was up there for over six months – and was removed in the past few minutes.
We were tipped off to these pages by an eagle-eyed reader, and grabbed a couple of screenshots of the potentially offending data:
Screenshot of some of the alleged VPN details for accessing Deloitte's network that leaked onto GitHub – we've censored what looks like passwords
Screenshot of a portion of the Google+ page with Deloitte proxy login information
On top of these potential leaks of corporate login details, Deloitte has loads of internal and potentially critical systems unnecessarily facing the public internet with remote-desktop access enabled. All of this gear should be behind a firewall and/or with two-factor authentication as per industry best practices. And likely the best practices Deloitte recommends to its clients, ironically.
“Just in the last day I’ve found 7,000 to 12,000 open hosts for the firm spread across the globe,” security researcher Dan Tentler, founder of Phobos Group, told The Register today. “We’re talking dozens of business units around the planet with dozens of IT departments showing very different aptitude levels. The phrase ‘truly exploitable’ comes to mind.”
For example, he found a Deloitte-owned Windows Server 2012 R2 box in South Africa with RDP wide open, acting as what appears to be an Active Directory server – a crucial apex of a Microsoft-powered network – and with, worryingly, security updates still pending installation. Other cases show IT departments using outdated software, and numerous other security failings.
Here's an example system with NetBIOS open:
Hey look, a deloitte server with 445 exposed to the internethttps://t.co/BMFJqG0s3m
production tax dns server
what could possibly go wrong? pic.twitter.com/IeHSf7L1Vz — Dan Tentler (@Viss) September 25, 2017
Here's what appears to be an Active Directory server with RDP open...
...complete with administrative users and, if you look closely, Windows Updates still pending:
And as other infosec experts have spotted, plenty of other stuff is sitting online, searchable using Shodan, waiting to be prodded by miscreants and other curious minds:
Deloittes’ US offices have everything from Netbios to RDP to Exchange Admin (single factor) etc etc etc. They should get an auditor. pic.twitter.com/C8aoN5YQMn — Kevin Beaumont 🙃 (@GossiTheDog) September 25, 2017
These systems could be used as crucial footholds for hackers into the consultancy giant's internal networks.
The Google+ page appeared to show that a Deloitte employee has been writing down VPN access controls on his personal page in full view of everyone. Using Google’s vaunted search facilities, a hacker could easily find enough information to launch an attack with a good chance of success.
All this is embarrassing for Deloitte, which billed itself as the top IT security consultancy in the industry. The firm makes millions selling its tech guru services to others for a hefty price – and yet seems to ignore potentially gaping holes in its own IT infrastructure.
The details now emerging are also rather embarrassing for analyst firm Gartner, which in June named Deloitte the world’s best IT security consultancy for the fifth year in a row. Gartner has yet to respond to a request for information on how its conclusion was reached.
It doesn’t help that Deloitte isn’t much liked by other security researchers for its business practices. The firm has a reputation for low-balling contractors on fees – particularly for penetration testing – and the schadenfreude of Deloitte being so bad at its own security has delighted some.
Deloitte always wanted to break pentest prices, less than 1k / man day. Well, now you can see what you get for that price. — Responder (@PythonResponder) September 25, 2017
“Between Equifax and Deloitte, starting to see though the tissue paper of corporate America’s security industry companies making huge claims, when in reality it’s a whole bunch of hypocrites,” said Tentler.
“You’d think Deloitte claims to have all this super elder-god style security talent. If that was the case they might consider using that talent on its own infrastructure.”
Deloitte has not responded to a request for comment. ®As a young woman in the workforce, I am bombarded with media stories about the “Mommy Wars” between working mothers and stay-at-home moms and the “off-ramping/on-ramping” a woman’s career takes if she decides take an off-ramp from the freeway of corporate life to raise children. How to best approach working motherhood seems to be a loaded question, soliciting the harshest critics on either side with no sign of agreement in sight.
Is it possible for women to have it all—a career, a husband and a family?
In the Go-Go 80s, women were told and encouraged to have it all. Films like Baby Boom, Working Girl and even Mr. Mom all showed that women could have successful, high-powered careers as well as fulfilling personal lives—even if it took some creative arrangements to get there.
A generation later, the tides seem to be turning, with a flood of personal stories saying exactly the opposite—having a full-time career cannot be combined with full-time motherhood.
Brazen Careerist, Penelope Trunk, recently shared her story about hiring house manager to help run her household in addition to a nanny and a personal assistant. She argues that a stay-at-home spouse (or hired equivalent) is a necessity in an age where a high-powered career requires 24/7 focus.
“So I want you to know what it’s really like to be a woman competing with the men who have stay-at-home wives: Expensive. There are jokes about the hyperbole of the annual study that says that housewives are worth six-figures. I think it is not hyperbole. Those men are getting not just a house manager, but someone who adores his kids, is there all the time, and someone who is willing to have some sort of regular sex life. For all that, the estimate of $100,000 a year seems very low.”
“So here’s my advice to women who want a big career and a stable family: You need to earn a lot of money to make that happen. I don’t know a stay-at-home dad who is seriously taking care of kids full-time, over the course of five-to-seven years, without a lot of money in the bank. And I don’t know a woman who has a huge career without money to support a bunch of people to take care of things at home.”
The Wall Street Journal supports Penelope’s advice by showcasing words of wisdom from top executives who don’t apologize for putting their careers first:
“For years, many ambitious women were ducking criticism that a high-powered job meant they cared only about their careers and would never have a family — or have one that was neglected. Now, women who have climbed high up the corporate ladder are asserting that they have a lot to celebrate and nothing to apologize for.”
“After all, plenty of women toil at much lower-level jobs and work just as hard, but don’t get the big rewards of their high-placed counterparts — from substantial compensation to the chance to make decisions instead of just following them.”
It seems as if women are almost forced to choose between family and a career.
Should you work long hours or spend more time with your kids? Will your kids be better off having memories of playing catch or with a fully-paid college fund? What kind of lifestyle will make you happiest? Summers at the beach? Or networking with international titans?
These are the types of decisions that everyone with a family has had to make at some point in their lives, regardless of their gender. Only the individual can truly asses what values they have and what type of lifestyle they want and can afford. I worry that I won’t make enough money to quit my job should I want to stay-at-home with my future children and that I would be robbed of a choice at all.
Ultimately, I think women should feel lucky to even have choices and stop struggling with what others think of their decisions.
AdvertisementsCredit: Pat Sullivan/Associated Press Waller County Sheriff Glenn Smith insists there is no racism in his Texas county, where Sandra Bland died.
Waller County Sheriff Glenn Smith, who oversees the jail where Sandra Bland died, insists there's absolutely no racism in this Texas county where lynchings were once rampant.
"The average citizen goes about their life seven days a week enjoying it, everybody working together, eating in restaurants together and socializing," he told The Washington Post in a story published Monday. "I just don’t think it exists."
"Black lives matter to Glenn Smith," added Smith, who likes to refer to himself in the third person.
On July 10, a police officer pulled over Bland, 28, for a minor traffic violation (not signaling a lane change). The situation escalated after the officer ordered Bland to put out her cigarette, and he then arrested her for allegedly assaulting him. The stop was captured on video:
Three days later, Bland was found dead, hanged in her jail cell in Hempstead, Texas. Officials have called her death a suicide, but protesters have demanded answers about how it could have happened.
Just because restaurants are no longer segregated doesn't mean there's no more racism in Waller County.
In 2007, the predominantly black Hempstead City Council voted to suspend Smith, who was then Hempstead police chief, for two weeks without pay following allegations of racism against him and four other white officers.
Waller County is still one of 28 counties in the country monitored by the Justice Department under the Voting Rights Act, and Hempstead still has separate cemeteries for white and black residents. It also had a disproportionate number of lynchings in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In 2007, DeWayne Charleston, then a Waller County judge, told a black funeral home to help bury an unidentified white woman. There was an outcry over his order, and activists said officials intervened to make sure the white woman wouldn't be buried next to black people.
"This is the most racist county in the state of Texas, which is probably one of the most racist states in the country," Charleston told The Guardian.Looking for news you can trust?
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Sharif Mobley—an American accused by the US government of wanting to join Al Qaeda, and by the Yemeni government of shooting a prison guard—has disappeared from the Sana’a prison where he was being held, his lawyer, Cori Crider of the British charity Reprieve, said Monday. Crider believes the Yemeni secret police are holding Mobley in an undisclosed location, and has written to the US Embassy requesting the government’s help. “We have not had any news of [Mobley] for 39 days, despite strenuous attempts to locate him,” she wrote.
Mobley’s is one of the forgotten stories of the war on terror. In early 2010, the New Jersey-born Muslim was living in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital. He says he had moved there to study Arabic; US officials have told reporters that he planned to join Al Qaeda. Mobley was running errands one morning, he says, when he was kidnapped by Yemeni secret police, shot in the leg, and held incommunicado, tortured, and interrogated for weeks.
During this time, FBI agents visited and questioned Mobley, leading him to believe that the Yemeni government had arrested him and tortured him on behalf of the US government. (Documents Crider obtained through the Freedom of Information Act in 2012 proved that the US government was aware of Mobley’s detention even as US officials were telling his wife they did not know where he was.) Eventually, Mobley tried to escape, and US and Yemeni officials say he shot and killed a guard in the process. He’s been held in the Sana’a central prison ever since. His supporters believe that he was a victim of proxy detention—civil libertarians’ term for the US government’s practice of having allied countries detain suspects the United States doesn’t want to arrest and detain itself.
Mobley disappeared sometime between February 27, when Crider’s colleagues saw him there last, and March 22, when they visited the prison and discovered he was nowhere to be found. The timing is noteworthy for a couple reasons. The same week Mobley turned up missing, Kel McClanahan, an American lawyer who helped with Crider’s FOIA, filed suit in federal court in Washington alleging that the FBI had hacked his emails after he obtained classified documents relating to the case.
Moreover, just before Mobley disappeared, Crider and her team were about to publicize a bevy of US government documents they obtained through FOIA. “I am certainly concerned that this is about someone trying to discourage embarrassing evidence from coming to light,” she wrote in an email. “Why move him now? There have been security incidents in the centre of town, but that has been the case before. So all is very odd.”
The big question now is whether the US had any connection to Mobley’s latest disappearance. It’s not so far-fetched. Consider the case of Abdulelah Haider Shaye, a Yemeni journalist who had been accused of associating with Al Qaeda because he had interviewed Anwar al-Awlaki, the now-dead American Al Qaeda propagandist. In February 2011, Yemen was set to release Shaye. But, as Jeremy Scahill reported in The Nation, President Barack Obama intervened personally to prevent Shaye’s release. The journalist was held for another two years.
The State Department said it was aware of “reports” that Mobley had been moved but couldn’t comment further out of concern for his privacy. A spokesman for the Yemeni embassy said he didn’t know where Mobley was, but he’d check.
We have yet to receive any official confirmation of the information which you reported from Mohammad al-Basha, regarding Sharif [Mobley]’s presence in the Central Prison. To the contrary, we received a second email from the [US] Embassy last night, in which the representative wrote “We have contacted all the possible locations where he could be held. We have received denials from everyone except the Ministry of the Interior who said they would get back to us. We are sending a diplomatic note out tomorrow and pressing to visit Mr. Mobley… I agree we should be getting official confirmations on his whereabouts and his situation. However none of the officials we contacted feel comfortable giving us a direct answer.” So, from our side, we still very much believe Sharif to be out of contact.
You can read Crider’s full exchanges with the embassy here and here. Crider said in an email Wednesday that if Mobley is now in the central prison, “they moved him back because of your article.”
Here’s the letter Crider sent to the US Embassy:Dear MoPi friends, hello again! It has been a while :-)
Thanks for all your support over this past couple of years; with your help MoPi has been successful, and we're still hoping to do the second version that we promised!
The reason we've been slow is here: http://www.wegrow.social We've just launched a new crowdfunding campaign to try and boost a sustainable food technology called aquaponics — growing fish and vegetables in a closed loop water system. Since MoPi we've moved on to developing open IoT hardware for monitoring and control of aquaponics systems, and now we're hoping to spread the technique, gather more data and make a contribution to the safety of our communities' food supplies.
I think we can all see the danger we're in from climate chaos, never mind all the other bad news that haunts our screens daily. The good news is that technology can help us, if we can organise that technology outside of the crazy structures that are dragging us ever closer to the edge: if we can grow more, and grow more social :-)
Please take a peek at www.WeGrow.social, and pitch in if you can!
All the best, Hamish & LuboSAN FRANCISCO -- After their Game 1 loss, New Orleans Pelicans coach Monty Williams suggested that the crowd noise at Oracle Arena, home of the Golden State Warriors, may not be within the league rules.
Speaking before the Pelicans' morning shootaround ahead of Monday's Game 2, Williams complimented the Warriors' home crowd but suggested that the volume has gotten excessive.
"I'm not so sure the decibel level is legal, and I'm serious," Williams said. "They've done studies on that. For the competition committee, there's got to be something to that. It does get a little out of hand. Their fans, I've talked about it for years, they have some of the best fans in the league."
Anthony Davis says it's a "different atmosphere" playing the Warriors at Oracle Arena. Noah Graham/Getty Images
Williams did not directly claim any foul play on the Warriors' part.
Warriors coach Steve Kerr was sarcastic in reply when speaking to the media before Monday's game.
"I'm just going to make an appeal to our fans to be as quiet as possible tonight," Kerr said.
The eighth-seeded Pelicans lost Game 1 on Saturday 106-99 after falling behind by 15 points after the first quarter. Following the defeat, Williams and Pelicans players said the crowd noise and nerves had an effect on their play.
Before practice on Sunday, Pelicans star Anthony Davis said his first career playoff experience was "a little hectic."
"It's definitely a different level, a different atmosphere," Davis said of the Oracle Arena. "It's so loud I can't hear my teammates or my coaches."
Warriors guard Klay Thompson and forward Andre Iguodala said at shootaround Monday that they have heard the arena louder than it was Saturday afternoon. They said it is typically louder for night games.
Williams is in his fifth season as coach for New Orleans following a nine-year career in the NBA.
"The music before the game, they're playing old-school music and it's right above your locker room and you're like, 'These people are crazy, man. This is pretty cool,'" Williams said. "I'm sure it has an effect, but after a few minutes, it's just basketball."
The Warriors were an NBA-best 39-2 on their home floor in the regular season and have won 19 straight games there. Opened in 1966 with concrete walls that amplify sound, Oracle Arena is commonly known as one of the loudest home venues in sports.
Home-Court Dominance No matter how noisy Oracle Arena is, the Warriors' 41-2 home mark this season is among the best records ever.
Best Home Win Pct. (Including Playoffs)
Single Season in NBA History Team W-L Pct. 1985-86 Celtics 50-1.980* 1949-50 Lakers 36-1.973* 1995-96 Bulls 49-2.961* 1970-71 Bucks 42-2.955* 2014-15 Warriors 41-2.953 *Won NBA title
-- ESPN Stats & Information
Information from ESPN.com's Ethan Sherwood Strauss and The Associated Press contributed to this report.Anime fans, rejoice — Scarlett Johansson has officially signed on to star in the live-action movie adaptation of Ghost in the Shell. Fan art creators, your time is now.
A few months back, rumors swirled that the enviable lead for the beloved 1995 anime movie Ghost in the Shell would go to newcomer Margot Robbie. But now Robbie is out and big-time Hollywood star Scarlett Johansson is officially in. (Because casting an Asian woman in the role is apparently impossible for Hollywood executives to even fathom. Sigh.)
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Johansson's name has been attached to the Ghost in the Shell project for some time, most likely because a lot of people would really love to see this actress beat up a lot of people in a cyberworld wearing lingerie. Allegedly, she was offered the starring role back in October, which also tied to the news of Margot Robbie stepping out of negotiations for the part to focus solely on her new role as Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad. Now according to Variety, Johansson is now officially tied to the Ghost in the Shell movie.
The anime film is based around cyborg character Motoko Kusanagi (now taking guesses in the comments as to how Hollywood will completely bungle that name change). Kusanagi is a member of the Japanese National Public Safety Commission, a covert ops unit that fights cyber crime in the future. But it's really so much more than that, and the world itself is a gorgeous look at the melding of man and machine.
Snow White and the Huntsman director Rupert Sanders is attached to direct, which is a positive for the visual aspect of this translation. Sanders has an eye for gorgeous imagery and visual splendor, but here's hoping he can do the heavy lifting plot-wise as well. That all being said, the DreamWorks project still hasn't been officially greenlit yet, but casting a name like Johansson to this picture will certainly help its chances of moving forward.Good news, you lovers of freedom and justice. The FTC is going after AT&T for throttling the mobile internet speed of unlimited data customers. In the words of FTC chairwoman Edith Ramirez: "The issue is simple: Unlimited means unlimited."
Put a little bit more bluntly, the FTC is saying that AT&T broke the law by engaging in "unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce." The agency's done its research has the numbers to support that argument as well. In some cases, the suit reads, AT&T throttled the data of customers who'd paid for unlimited data by up to 95 percent—95 percent! At that rate, you might as well not even have a data plan.
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Of course, it's up to a judge to decide whether or not what AT&T did was actually illegal. But for now, those customers who've been throttled will be glad to hear that the government thinks they've "suffered and will continue to suffer substantial injury as a result" of AT&T's actions. And the complaint alone will certainly make other wireless companies think long and hard about their own throttling schemes. Seriously, nobody likes these schemes. [FTC via Washington Post]
[Update 2:11 PM] AT&T released a statement and it is predictably defensive:
The FTC's allegations are baseless and have nothing to do with the substance of our network management program. It's baffling as to why the FTC would choose to take this action against a company that, like all major wireless providers, manages its network resources to provide the best possible service to all customers, and does it in a way that is fully transparent and consistent with the law and our contracts. We have been completely transparent with customers since the very beginning. We informed all unlimited data-plan customers via bill notices and anational press release that resulted in nearly 2,000 news stories, well before the program was implemented. In addition, this program has affected only about 3% of our customers, and before any customer is affected, they are also notified by text message.
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"It's baffling…"Martin Daley, right, with his wife Jennifer Ceponis and their son Mason Daley in front of their home on Saturday Sept. 7, 2013 in Albany, N.Y. (Michael P. Farrell/Times Union) Martin Daley, right, with his wife Jennifer Ceponis and their son Mason Daley in front of their home on Saturday Sept. 7, 2013 in Albany, N.Y. (Michael P. Farrell/Times Union) Photo: Michael P. Farrell Photo: Michael P. Farrell Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close The Advocate: Broken tree at root of couple's frustrations 1 / 3 Back to Gallery
Albany
They don't want this. They don't want to be in this column. They don't want to be the ones with qualms about their city and neighborhood.
Martin Daley and Jennifer Ceponis love Albany and Pine Hills. But sometimes enough is enough. Everyone has a breaking point.
For Daley and Ceponis, that came Friday morning.
That's when the married couple discovered that some dimwit had vandalized their cherry tree, a sapling they'd planted in their small front yard several months back. The tree was snapped at its base, leaving it pathetically sprawled across the Myrtle Avenue sidewalk.
Who would do something so pointlessly stupid?
Daley, 34, and Ceponis, 31, immediately had an answer. It was college students, of course, the subset of scholars who drunkenly roam select parts of Albany at night. They often travel in packs. They make noise. They like to break things.
"It's just so brazen," Daley said. "That's the thing that really bothers me. It's almost sociopathic."
Daley has lots of examples. Here's one: He once watched as a student walked up to a house across the street and, for no particular reason, began pulling up yard ornaments.
More Information Have a story? Contact Churchill at 518-454-5700 or cchurchill@timesunion.com. The column appears Thursdays and Sundays.
"Seriously?" Martin asked.
"Yeah, seriously," the student said.
OK, so here's the part of the column where I note that most college students don't behave this way. The vast majority are thoughtful youths who work hard, respect their neighbors and add to the region's vibrancy.
What we're really talking about is a narrow group of dolts. You know them. They didn't light up their high schools, but somehow got into UAlbany. They wear their baseball caps backward. They think puking is hilarious. They grew up downstate. They think they're better than upstate.
"Albany is not a home to these kids," said Daley, who graduated from Albany High and has degrees from UAlbany and Saint Rose. "And I shouldn't call them 'kids,' because they're really adults."
This is a difficult time of year for residents of student-inhabited neighborhoods. Summer, after all, is wonderfully serene. The college kids are home, bothering their parents. Then September arrives and, suddenly, they're baaaack!
Late Sunday night, Ceponis went outside to ask 25 students gathered on the street if they could quiet down because the couple's baby was sleeping.
"It's a public sidewalk," Ceponis says she was told. "We can stand wherever we want."
Such irritations have Ceponis and Daley considering the unthinkable. Five years after they bought their house, they're thinking of moving to another neighborhood or maybe even — insert screaming sound here — the suburbs.
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See, Daley and Ceponis are serious city lovers, and Pine Hills is perfect for them in so many ways. They can walk to parks, shops and restaurants. They love their street's diverse mix of people.
The couple watched friends move to the suburbs and thought, "That'll never be us."
Now, Daley hates that some of those friends will read about their broken tree and think, "See, we told you so."
Daley and Ceponis don't want someone to use their complaints as a reason to avoid living in the city. They hope speaking out will help, because they really do want what's best for Pine Hills.
"It just seems that there's a line that's being crossed more and more," Daley said. "It's frustrating."
Somehow, I've written 500 words on this topic without mentioning the infamous kegs-and-eggs riot from two years back. That, you'll remember, was the black eye that led city officials to promise a crackdown on rowdy parties, code violations and other long-standing problems in the so-called student ghetto.
Deputy Police Chief Brendan Cox told me those efforts are ongoing — and changing the neighborhood. Cox said the wandering groups cited by Daley and Ceponis might even show that the crackdown on big parties and bad bars is working.
"The students," he said, "have nowhere to go."
Cox credited area colleges for working with police to improve Pine Hills. UAlbany, in a statement, said the school "is committed to being a good neighbor, and to guiding our students, both on- and off-campus, to become good neighbors."
But the broken tree on Myrtle Avenue is evidence that significant work remains.
And let's be honest — police aren't baby sitters, and there's only so much they can do. Students should have learned the basic rules of civility long before they got to Albany.
On Friday morning, Daley went out with a roll of tape and tried to put the damaged tree back together. He isn't sure it will survive.
cchurchill@timesunion.com • 518-454-5700 • @chris_churchillThe port declined to say why its top executive is away from the job.
The Port of Seattle’s CEO is on leave amid a performance review, officials said Thursday.
Ted Fick, who has led the Port for the past 2½ years, is on paid leave for an undetermined amount of time, according to a message distributed to Port employees.
Officials declined to say why or to make any additional comment, except to say that port operations will continue as normal.
Port Chief Operating Officer David Soike, who is now the acting CEO, told employees in the message that Fick is on leave “pending resolution of personnel issues.” He noted the process “presumes no outcomes.”
Fick has been out of the office for at least a few days.
He is in the middle of a closed-door performance review with the five-member Port Commission, a process that is not expected to be completed for another couple of weeks. Several of the elected port commissioners either did not respond to messages or said they would not comment until the process has been completed.
Fick did not respond to email and phone messages Thursday. His port email has an out-of-office message saying he is on paid time off.
Fick was charged with DUI in April while driving east across the Highway 520 bridge toward his home in Bellevue. A hearing is set for February. His attorney was unavailable for comment Thursday afternoon.
“My strategy is for my attorney to negotiate a lower infraction on the DUI matter and not go to trial,” Fick told port commissioners in a July email reviewed by The Seattle Times.
It is unclear whether the personnel issues are related to the DUI.
The Port of Seattle has 2,000 employees and encompasses operations at the port, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, cruise-ship terminals and marinas, as well as some local real estate.
At the time of his hiring, Fick, 57, was paid $350,000 per year.
Fick, whose family has roots in Tacoma, previously served as chief executive of |
the Wall Street Journal claimed Animal Crossing will launch in the "latter half" of 2017, with Zelda likely to follow in 2018.
Earlier this year, Nintendo CEO Tatsumi Kimishima noted in an earnings call that the company planned to release up to three new mobile games by March 2018. So far, only Animal Crossing has been made official.
Since the launch of its first mobile game Miitomo in March 2016, which became a surprise hit before quickly fading from the App Store chart, Nintendo has found greater success with Super Mario Run and Fire Emblem Heroes. Both have contributed to a small but growing stream of income, which totalled ¥20 billion ($176.4 million) for its fiscal year ended March 2017.
A Zelda mobile game could be its biggest hit yet. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which launched on Switch and Wii U in March, has become one of the most critically acclaimed games of all time. Ars called it "the best Zelda game ever" in its review.
While a mobile version is unlikely to hit the same critical heights, Nintendo does have some experience making Zelda work on touchscreens: both Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks can be controlled by touch.This is the face of a woman who just won her first Golden Globe. (Smallz & Raskind/The CW)
In a few short weeks, “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” has gone from that strange musical comedy show with the possibly offensive title that no one watches (1.07 million a week, which in the world of network TV is pretty paltry) to the award-winning, innovative TV program whose co-creator and star Rachel Bloom has just received a Golden Globe (she licked it and said “It tastes like winning and power. And the Illuminati.”) and Critics’ Choice award for her performance, and is the subject of a laudatory New York Times profile.
Tonight the show returns from a winter hiatus with 10 new episodes (8 p.m. on the CW). If you join the 1.07 million, you’ll see that the title is too limiting. “Crazy” is about how all of us go a bit nuts when it comes to love.
In the cast of unhinged romantics, the craziest is Bloom’s character, the titular ex-girlfriend Rebecca Bunch. She’s a Harvard-trained lawyer who is miserable in her lucrative Manhattan career and chucks it to move to seemingly drab West Covina, Calif., to pursue her long-ago love, handsome Josh Chan. He dumped her after their summer camp fling because she was “dramatic and weird.” (He is right.)
Josh, meanwhile, has his own affair of the heart: He’s moved in with a gorgeous yoga teacher who treats him like dirt. And Rebecca befriends Greg, a soulful bartender who aspires to earn an MBA but puts his dreams aside to care for his needy father. He seems perfect for her … but is he? A friend sagely tells Greg, “I’ve been watching ‘The View’ lately and you’re a commitment-phobe.”
Love also blooms in unexpected places. Rebecca’s divorced, middle-aged, mustachioed boss hosts a party for a couple of young friends. They watch pay-per-view boxing and eat pate. Then one of the bros lingers to help with clean-up — and kisses the boss on the cheek.
These are a few of the scenarios that will drive the show forward in the weeks ahead — and set up the signature musical numbers, which draw from rock, hip-hop and Broadway but add a distinctly “Crazy” touch. Tonight, a gaggle of teen girls deliver a mixed musical message to Bloom: “Never put a man first. Put yourself first in a sexy way.” With the goal being that some guy will end up saying, “Damn, you’re hot” and declare, “Let’s buy a home in Portland.”
When the show teeters toward the schmaltzy, as it sometimes does, the inspired one-liners bring it back to cynicism. Considering her feelings toward Josh, who’s Filipino, Rebecca tells a co-worker, “It’s not like I’ve been googling pictures of mixed raced babies” — and then adds, without missing a beat, “They’re so much cuter than the plain ones!”
Read more of Marc’s TV musings:
When Peak TV gets to be too much, turn to Off-Peak TV
Don’t bother watching the final season of ‘Downton Abbey’
Can you handle this season’s juiciest spoilers?The horrific ramifications of the Gulf oil spill Two years after the BP oil spill, deformed fish point to lasting environmental and health consequences
Almost two full years after the BP oil spill, a panel of experts gathered at the 17th annual Tulane Environmental Law Summit, to present the continuing impacts of the BP Oil Spill. That spill began with the April 20, 2010, explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling unit used by BP 40 miles off the Louisiana coast. Eleven men lost their lives. The resulting spill of oil into the Gulf of Mexico stands as the largest oil spill in U.S. history and the second largest environmental disaster in this country to date besides the nearly decade-long Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Scientists at the summit presented recent photographs of shrimp with no eyes and fish with cancerous tumors born long after the gulf was declared "safe" for fishing.
It turns out that testing water and fish flesh under the surface oil after the spill was not very telling about long-term impacts as oil and water don't mix and the chronic, toxic impacts were delayed until long after BP was put in charge of the "cleanup." When BP sprayed chemical dispersants containing a slew of toxic heavy metals including arsenic, the oil didn't magically disappear. It sank into the sediment. Disturbingly, the allowable levels set by the government for the toxins in our seafood are based on health impacts for a 176-pound adult eating less than two medium shrimp a day. The testing is for one chemical out of a crude oil mixture containing thousands of chemicals. No synergistic effects are considered. This in no way protects children, fetuses, people who weigh less than 176 pounds or anyone who eats seafood on a daily basis like the folks here on the Gulf Coast.
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Dr. Andrew Whitehead, Ph.D., associate professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Louisiana State University, who is studying the BP spill and has reviewed much of the scientific studies of the Exxon Valdez spill, explained that stock declines of species may take several years to develop as reproduction is impacted in successive generations and across species. The Exxon Valdez spill is now known to be responsible for the decline of many species, including marine mammals, marine birds, and fishes such as pink salmon and herring. Though we have a take on the immediate acute impacts of the BP spill on animals caught in the oil, the chronic ultimate impacts of the BP spill are still unknown. But we do know that the killifish, the most abundant forage fish for the bigger fish in Gulf Coast marshes, are being affected. Fish from oiled marshes show signs of direct toxicity and reproductive impairment. Dr. Whitehead's experiments involving exposures to oiled sediments, done in collaboration with colleague Dr. Fernando Galvez, show that killifish embryos are taking longer to develop or don't hatch at all. They are being born with malformed hearts and hearts that may not function properly when they mature. And as the impacts from the spill on the fish bioaccumulate and propagate across generations, liability is harder to prove without good and strategic scientific study that sadly is harder to fund.
But some impacts are being felt now, especially for sediment dwelling seafood. Current reports from fisherman up and down the coast are startling. The oyster harvest for 2010 was the worst in more than four decades and oystermen continue to report catches down as much as 75 percent. Crab catches are in steep decline. Brown shrimp production is down two-thirds. And the white shrimp season was even worse, leading to descriptions of "worst in memory" and "nonexistent." This from the region that before the spill provided 40 percent of the nation's seafood.
Dr. Patricia Williams, Ph.D., Diplomate of the American Board of Toxicology, Associate Professor, Coordinator of Toxicology Research Laboratories, Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Sciences, University of New Orleans, spoke at the summit about what she sees as a failure to properly assess the impact of the spill on seafood and on human health. She said:
In 1996, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration acknowledged that direct measurement of tissue for PAH (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon) concentrations generally does not provide a useful indicator of exposure of fish to PAHs from petroleum spills. Regardless, an extremely expensive seafood testing program was launched using this method. Testing included only 13 PAH parent compounds out of 200 PAHs present in crude oil. PAHs act on each other resulting in greater toxicity than expected from a single PAH (synergism). The synergistic nature of the PAHs were ignored in interpretation of the results. Additionally, the Levels of Concern were calculated for a 176 pound individual. This does not address toddlers and children or the developing fetus and placental transfer. The public was not warned of these deficiencies in the seafood testing program.
Dr. Williams explained that "PAHs are endocrine disruptors that interfere with the normal blood-borne hormones (e.g., estrogen and testosterone) that are responsible for the regulation of reproductive and developmental processes. Only very low amounts of chemicals are needed to disrupt the normal endocrine balance of both humans and animals. Evidence of reproduction imbalance is seen in the second generation of white shrimp in the 2011 harvest. Shrimp were harvested with defective eye stalks, pleopods, and pereiopods. Such anatomical defects are occurring in the markedly reduced white shrimp population in the Gulf and warn of endocrine dysfunction that could result in the loss of the species."
Furthermore, "The heavy metals known to be present in crude oil are being ignored in the testing of seafood. Metal toxicity can produce neurobehavioral abnormalities in sea life such as: alterations in avoidance or attraction responses; critical swimming speed; changes in social interactions (e.g. aggression), reproduction, feeding, and predator avoidance; food foraging with reduced feeding ability; loss or orientation in swimming and changes in schooling behavior. Heavy metal testing in BP Oil clean-up workers has documented increased arsenic levels in 24 hour urine specimens."
Finally, Dr. Williams warned that "The future chronic health effects from consumption of contaminated seafood and biomagnification along the food chain are yet to be realized in both sea life and humans. Chronic effects may take years to present and may elude an analysis of their causal origins. "
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On the second day of the summit, a settlement between private plaintiffs and BP was announced in the press. This settlement does not resolve the government cases, either civil or criminal, against the responsible parties. But the settlement of the private case raises the question whether the government prosecutions will be resolved without a trial and without jail time for executives ultimately responsible for the deaths of 11 workers and severe and ongoing environmental and economic impacts on the region. The summit attendees were abuzz with speculation about what will happen in the federal and State of Louisiana cases.
In Louisiana, petroleum is king. This state is the third largest producer of petroleum in America, Louisiana is responsible for more than one-quarter of the nation's natural gas production, and Louisiana is the third leading refiner of petroleum in the country. In addition, the state makes over 600 petroleum products making it the second in the nation in primary production of petrochemicals. The 20-mile stretch on the Mississippi from New Orleans to Baton Rouge known as "The Cancer Corridor" pumps out one-quarter of the chemicals made in America. Louisiana leads the United States in release of toxic chemicals into the environment. The seven-parish industrial corridor has the highest density of petrochemical industries in the nation and possibly the world.
All this money in petroleum has a huge impact on politics in Louisiana, just as it does on a national and international level. It's probably impossible to get elected to any Louisiana office without courting petroleum dollars and making campaign promises to that industry. A visit to the petroleum friendly website for the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources reveals the following section titled "Legacy Liability Reform."
This "Legacy Liability Reform" is less likely to ensure any protection for Louisiana's resources or its citizens than it is to assure petroleum companies that Louisiana and its resources are theirs for the taking. The reform is code for "don't worry about liability because immunity for really bad stuff is all part of the deal for investing in Louisiana." Oh, by the way, the Louisiana courts have been very protective historically of petroleum interests as well.
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From the 1950s on, drilling for oil and gas on federal lands and waters has produced the second largest source of revenue for the federal government besides taxes. This has led to a rather cozy relationship between the federal government and those corporations that extract petroleum here. Let us not forget that since the inception of the Minerals Management Service (now renamed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement to emphasize what it should be doing) has been involved in numerous scandals. For example, in 1990, MMS employees were linked to prostitution, and in 2008 the Department of Interior's inspector general reported that MMS employees were engaged in both drug use and sexual activity with employees from the very energy firms they were to be regulating. This wasn't just the foxes guarding the chicken coop, but the foxes actually in bed doing lines of coke with the chickens.
Clint Guidry, president, Louisiana Shrimp Association, spoke at the summit about the political ramifications of the spill and the unlikelihood of real justice coming from the government case. Mr. Guidry had worked for BP earlier in his career like so many Louisiana men have. He knows intimately both the oil industry and the fishing industry. When the spill happened, Louisiana shrimping was devastated. First, Guidry lobbied for jobs for all the shrimpers when the fisheries closed. Then he fought for job site safety for the workers and community residents impacted by the cleanup. Guidry's role became that of witness to the harms on fisherman response workers when they began to suffer from being exposed to aerial application of the chemical dispersant and being downwind from burn sites of the surface oil. For instance, on May 26 seven shrimpers from the offshore response crew were admitted to West Jefferson Hospital with chemical poisoning. Two days later, after Obama's May 27 visit to Grand Isle where he was photographed picking up tar balls, two more shrimpers were airlifted to West Jefferson Hospital for emergency medical treatment, also for chemical poisoning. Guidry met with the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety, and with other government representatives from the local to the federal including Secretaries Napolitano and Salazar and U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.
Mr. Guidry still has the following unresolved questions:
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Why did we allow people who caused the oil spill to be in charge of the cleanup? Everything they did was to limit liability, not to protect the environment, the resources or the people. How could the government announce on Aug. 5, 2010, that suddenly 75 percent of the oil had disappeared? Corporations run this country and they operate under the Golden Rule: Who holds the gold makes the rule. According to statements made by Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority Chairman Garret Graves, BP is choosing the direction of the environmental damage assessment. Shouldn't the Oil Spill Recovery fund be administered independently so it could fund real scientists like Dr. Whitehead? Oil companies are good at covering up spills and sinking the oil with additional chemicals, but they are no good at cleaning up spills. If we are allowing these companies to drill in the Gulf, shouldn't they be required to have the technology to prevent disasters and to clean them up? They don't. Even after the largest loss of life and oil, no laws have been changed. Eleven men are dead but I don't believe anybody will go to jail. The government is the keeper of the record of the criminal investigation and if they settle the case, the public will never see that information. If the record is not made public in a trial, how do we learn from this spill? I'm a third generation fisherman. We were the first environmentalists because if you don't take care of the environment, it doesn't take care of you. I love wildlife. The spill has devastated wildlife. What price do you put on a dead dolphin? The head of Minerals Management Service at the time of the BP disaster came from big oil. She was fired by Obama and MMS was split up but no one else was fired. Is that enough house cleaning? Can these people keep us safe when they have failed in the past?
As the federal government and affected states including Louisiana move toward trial or settlement, we should all be asking these questions.
How will the government cases be resolved? Potential penalties of more than $17 billion for environmental violations remain on the books for BP. Peter Lehner, executive director of Natural Resources Defense Counsel writes in his blog, "How the remainder of the case pans out says a lot about the future of energy in this country. Will the government allow BP, and the rest of the oil industry, to continue business as usual with nothing more than a slap on the wrist? Or will the company be put on trial and held accountable for its actions? Will the penalties be severe enough to make the oil industry clean up its act? BP reported profits of $21.7 billion in 2011, nearly 3 times the estimated cost of its settlement with private parties in the Gulf."
And one question looms even larger than the spill, the resulting legal cases or even BP profits: How can we establish a separation between the oil industry and our government?Bonus maps 27 and 28 are complete! These are challenging little bite sized maps, hope you like em!Whatup!I've spent the last few days reading through the feedback here, and rebalancing some things. Ammo, health, and armor have all been adjusted based on feedback, as well as a few bugfixes that I somehow missed.With that, I felt the time was right to present this to Doomworld. So it's there now. Levels 27-29 will be coming soon, but I've been suffering an injury that's really killed my concentration.I just wanted to thank you for all your support and feedback. Much love!Added level 26! Description below:(Evil laughter)Added levels 24 and 25!Level 24 completes the "main" game. Level 25 is the start of episode 5, which is going to be a series of challenging, "Thy Flesh Consumed" type maps. Hope you're up for a challenge!!Added the third and final secret level!Just finished up level 23!Good luck if you wish to beat this from a pistol start!I'm back! Added level 22! Starting on level 23 right now... Have fun!Today, I'm releasing levels 21 and 31!Level 21 is the first level of chapter 4, the "fire and brimstone" levels. I strongly recommend not playing these on the hardest difficulty the first time around. Level 31 has been a long time in the making, and I think it's going to be a "love it or hate it" type level. You will die the first few times playing it. That's all I'll say about that!Yo!Been down and out for a while, but I've begun work on the project again. Today, I'm releasing three new levels! 17, 19, and 20 will complete chapter 3. I've already begun the first level of chapter 4, so expect more updates very soon!Got a weird spurt of motivation and completed level 16!Added Level 15! This completes episode 2. If you're playing on the hardest difficulty, you can expect a spike in difficulty going forward. I've been working on level 16 while I have some downtime at the office, and due to theof the design, it really shouldn't take too long to complete.As always, thanks for playing, and I look forward to your feedback!Added Level 14! This one's a total bitch to pistol-start on hard. Have fun!Added level 12! This one's a bit divergent from the standard D64 design, gameplay-wise. There are two doors to choose from in the beginning; each path has its own benefits and difficulties to overcome before they converge later.There is a secret exit, but the level it leads to (31) is unfinished, and may stay that way for a while. 31 is a weird level, and it's going to take some time for me to really get the mechanics and feel of the thing really... right.(also, I forgot to update this when I added level 11 like a week or so ago. sorry!)This update effectively "fills the gap". There are now a solid 13 levels in a row (14, if you wanna count the secret level that's done). So now, it's time to start a new one!Added level 10, finally! As a warning, prepare to get your ass handed to you if you play this on Hard.Hope you like it!Added levels 9 and (why the hell not) 13! Fixed a few bugs that were mentioned to me here and in the r/doom subreddit. Added some custom level names, and custom text! Please feel free to let me know about any bugs you find, and feedback is always welcome!Level 9 is completely done, and level 10 is well underway. Progress is slowing down a bit, as hell levels provide a lot of opportunity for interesting "3d" stuff. But, here's a screenshot of a WIP!Added levels 7 and 8, completing Episode One!I've also been working on the beginning of Episode Two- Level 13 is done, and I'm about halfway through level 9. I'll release a chunk of hellish levels in the coming months... hopefully. In the meantime, here's some previews of whats to come!Thanks as always for playing. If you find any bugs, be sure to let me know and I'll squash em!Added levels 5 and 6!A bit of history: level 5 was one of the maps I had originally made for Jdoom. I redesigned huge portions of it to accommodate the scripting in EX, but there may be some leftover issues as it is a pretty large level. I test all my stuff very thoroughly before I put it out there, but ya'll know how it is sometimes.Currently, I am doing a bit of bugfixing/recoloring in level 8. After that, I plan on wrapping up level 7. Having a bit of "mapper's block" though. I have an interesting idea for the last section, but just need to work out the implementation.Hope you like them!I've been working on a Doom 64 megawad for many years now, and I'm happy to announce that the first episode is near completion. Levels 1-6, 8, and secret level 32 are completely done, and level 7 is about 50% done. When I get level 7 done, I'll release the first episode. Some screenshots!Originally, this project started out using the Jdoom platform, but after seeing what 64ex was capable of, I painstakingly converted all my work over. This is a pretty ambitious project; my aim is to replace all 32 levels with completely original maps. A lot of the preliminary sketches for the later levels are done.For Kaiser: I see that your next goal with 64ex is to expand modding features, would you care to elaborate? I would *love* to have a couple "custom" monsters in here. Is this going to be possible in the near future?There’s a lot of debate going around about whether US President Donald Trump is an anti-Semite. The debate is one which Trump has done all he can to spark and sustain. It is also one that asks entirely the wrong question.
It doesn’t matter if Donald Trump is an anti-Semite. But two things about this issue matter very much. How does his presidency affect anti-Semitism in the United States? And why are so many Orthodox and right wing Jews so willing to ignore the troubling words and actions from Trump and his administration?
What is in Donald Trump’s heart and mind is of no consequence. All that matters is what he says and does. He has, from the time he started making his run at the Republican nomination for the presidency, consistently refused to distance himself from racist, anti-Semitic supporters. More importantly, he has acted in a manner consistent with one who recognizes that anti-Semites constitute a base of support for him that he does not wish to alienate.
Those actions are all that matter. What matters is that he tried to divorce the Holocaust from the Jewish people, who were the primary targets for genocide, and then doubled down on that action by justifying it. What matters is that he has repeatedly used phrases and symbols that read like classic anti-Semitic code and has refused to apologize or show any concern for the damage that such things might cause. What matters is that dozens of bomb threats have been made to Jewish community buildings across the country and he has uttered not a single word of condemnation of these acts.
Those are the things that matter. Whether Trump is acting this way for political reasons, for stupid reasons, or because he really is anti-Semitic despite his Jewish son-in-law and converted daughter simply doesn’t matter. As President of the United States, all that matters is the effect he has, and that effect has been to fan the flames of anti-Semitism.
One can only imagine what the outcry would have looked like had Barack Obama behaved in such a manner. Imagine the outrage if Obama had told an orthodox Jewish reporter to “sit down” for asking what the President planned to do to address the wave of anti-Semitic threats.
But what do we get when Trump does it? The reporter, Jake Turx, who writes for an orthodox, right wing magazine called Ami, bends over backwards to make excuses for Trump. This came just a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threw himself into the line of fire after Trump steadfastly refused to denounce anti-Semitic attacks in the United States. It came just minutes after Trump’s friend and nominee for Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, was forced to testify that he “regretted” the language he used, though very pointedly not the views he espoused, in recent months that included calling the ADL “morons” and J Street “kapos.”
Meanwhile, Ku Klux Klan and Nazi leaders were beside themselves with glee after Trump’s performances this week.
I get the Jewish right. I was raised in it. At the age of 11, I met Rabbi Meir Kahane at a friend’s house, and I wore a custom-made knitted kippah that had my name inside a ring of Jewish Defense League fists. This segment of the Jewish community, despite living in the Diaspora, identifies with the negation of the Diaspora that is a central plank in the platform of many, though not all, strains of Zionism. They see a militarily strong Israel as a goal unto itself, transcending ethical concerns of any kind and in stark contrast to the centuries of their view of the “Diaspora Jew” as weak and helpless. Even those within this community who hold relatively liberal views on many issues, can be extremely illiberal when it comes to Israel, a schizophrenia that is so deep it is almost never even noticed.
We’ve seen this often enough in the past, in the ease with which these same segments of the Jewish community have easily slipped into alliance with Dispensationalist Christians who believe they are working to promote conflict in the Middle East to herald Armageddon, where Jews would either perish or be converted.
And so, today, we have the appalling spectacle of the Israeli Prime Minister warmly embracing a man who has acted, without doubt, in an anti-Semitic fashion. In part, he can get away with it because people are debating whether Donald Trump, with his obvious connections to the most right wing parts of the Jewish community can possibly be an anti-Semite.
It doesn’t matter if he is or is not. What matters is this: omitting any reference to Jews or anti-Semitism on Holocaust Remembrance Day is anti-Semitic; refusing to denounce acts of anti-Semitism being committed in your name, and for which you are being praised, is anti-Semitic; getting indignant when a Jew asks, in a manner clearly designed to give you an opening to address these issues, what you plan to do about rising anti-Semitism is anti-Semitic.
That’s what matters, and that’s what we are now dealing with from the White House. For now, the farthest right wings of the Jewish community are holding out hope that Trump will permit a final Israeli conquest of the Palestinians and annexation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. But they are already being disappointed, with Trump’s walkback of his promise to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and his more careful language about settlements.
The right is in for a bigger disappointment than that, however. Jewish history teaches us that the world is not kind to those of us who believe they can make gains by making common cause with anti-Semitic forces. Trump has already hinted at what fool’s gold this is, by his dressing down of the Ami reporter and his inability to recall the name of the Israeli Prime Minister who had just covered for the President’s anti-Semitic actions the day before. “Betinyahu,” who has so far distinguished himself as Trump’s lone and best cheerleader (Trump is still waiting for Vladimir Putin to speak as kindly about him as he has about the Russian President), certainly must have been disappointed.
So too will all those Jews who think Trump’s actions are going to benefit them. The important question is not whether Trump is an anti-Semite in his heart, but how high a price Jews, in the United States, Israel and all over the world, are going to pay for his anti-Semitic actions.MELBOURNE (Reuters) - The Australian government said on Tuesday it would introduce legislation to allow clean energy funds to back carbon capture and storage projects, a move that could see such money going to coal-fired plants even as the nation combats climate change.
Power lines are be seen in front of chimneys from the coal-powered Mount Piper power station near the town of Lithgow, located west of Sydney in Australia, February 26, 2017. REUTERS/David Gray
Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg said the government was seeking to amend the mandate for the Clean Energy Finance Corp (CEFC), which up to now has been limited to giving loans to wind, solar, bioenergy and energy storage projects.
CEFC’s mandate is to help cut carbon emissions and promote new technologies.
“This amendment that we’re introducing only applies to carbon capture and storage,” Frydenberg told reporters in Canberra.
However, if carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology is attached to a high efficiency-low emissions coal-fired power station, a gas-fired power plant or an industrial plant, that would be eligible for funding from the CEFC, he said.
CEFC would have the final say over what CCS projects get funding, he noted.
Australia’s conservative government wants a “technology neutral” approach to promoting stable power supply, seeing coal- and gas-fired power as essential to back up wind and solar energy when the wind is low and the sun is down.
“The decision that the government’s made is significant because it removes one of the barriers to CCS, which has been around the financing of it,” said Brad Page, chief executive of Melbourne-based Global CCS Institute.
He said CCS technology could be retrofitted to existing coal-fired, gas-fired and industrial plants, not just attached to new plants.
The Australia Institute, a think tank opposed to coal, said it did not make sense to take money from renewable energy to back CCS, as previous funding had not yielded much over the past two decades.
The announcement on the legislation comes about 10 days ahead of a highly anticipated report by Australia’s chief scientist on what steps the country needs to take to ensure power and gas supplies are secure, reliable and affordable, while also cutting carbon emissions.
The report was commissioned last year by the government following a string of blackouts and price spikes in the state of South Australia, which relies on wind and solar energy for more than 40 percent of its power.
After a decade of uncertainty over Australia’s carbon policy, major miners, like BHP, manufacturers and the power industry have called for a carbon price and emissions trading to help companies make investment decisions on new power stations.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull reiterated on Tuesday, however, that the government would not pursue an emissions intensity scheme, a system that would set limits on how much carbon a site could emit and give tradable credits to those that emit less than the limit.‘Red alert’ in Catbalogan after 2 blasts 1 SHARES Share it! Share Tweet
By Nestor L. Abrematea
Camp Ruperto Kangleon, Palo, Leyte — The Philippine National Police (PNP) has placed Catbalogan City in Samar on red alert after two explosions rocked the city yesterday morning resulting in two persons injured.
Chief Supt. Elmer C. Beltejar, Police Regional Office 8 (PRO8) acting Regional Director (RD), has formed a Special Investigation Task Group (SITG) to look into the two explosions that injured Faith Alegro Rosales, 17, of Barangay 10, and BJ Gacum Bernate, 6, of Barangay Canlapwas. The two were being treated at the Samar Provincial Hospital.
The victims were wounded in the first explosion that transpired at 1:30 a.m.
After 20 minutes, another explosion rocked Purok 1 in Barangay Silang, where a grenade was thrown at the house of Lucio Bacarra Pacle, municipal administrator of Hinabangan, Samar.
The grenade damaged the service vehicle of the town administrator.
Supt. Edwin F. Barbosa, city police chief, said the perpetrators were two male suspects on board a single motorcycle and in black jackets and bonnets.
Tags: Catbalogan City, explosion, Manila Bulletin, mb.com.ph, Philippine National Police (PNP), red alert, ‘Red alert’ in Catbalogan after 2 blastsIn the mid-eighties, Joel and Ethan Coen came up with an idea and some ten years later, approached George Clooney with the screenplay. That project never happened. But Clooney was so enamored with it that he decided to rewrite (with producing partner Grant Heslov) the 30-year-old script and direct it himself. The result is Suburbicon and, due to its many failures, an all-new appreciation for the endlessly gifted brothers Coen.
Suburbicon is an inferior mash-up of the Coens’ unforgettable 1996 Fargo and 2009’s somewhat forgettable A Serious Man. On one side, you have a blacker than black comedy of everyman Gardner Lodge (Matt Damon) committing an unspeakable crime. On the other, there is provincial Hollywood’s oft-stated certainty that only malevolence lurks beneath the perfectly trimmed lawns of post-war suburban America.
Clooney has the chunks required to make a great Coen brothers’ film, beginning with their screenplay. Then there is the $25 million budget, Damon, Julianne Moore, Oscar Isaac, a never-ending supply of offbeat character actors, and Robert Elswit’s superb photography. Clooney assembled a pretty solid band. As a conductor, though, he lacks the chops to make anything resembling music.
Other than Isaac’s one superb scene as a sideways insurance investigator, none of the characters ever come close to popping to life. If you recall, despite all the awful things he was guilty of, one of the many genius elements in Fargo is that you still rooted for William H. Macy’s Jerry Lundegaard to get away with it. Even as you were horrified by his escalating behavior, the pathos, the rich emotional life within that character, kept you on his side.
Damon’s Lodge has no inner life. You feel no empathy towards him or towards Julianne Moore’s dual characters. They are only despicable, white bread gone bad. These are not characters; rather, they are logos for Clooney’s undying belief in his own superiority over such people. On top of a weak script and bad direction, Damon and Moore (and, therefore, the audience) are also the victims of the talent they lack to overcome both — to broadcast our shared humanity without ever saying a word.
Another reason a Wisconsin boy like myself can love Fargo, which satirizes me and mine, is that beneath all the violence and funny accents, the Coens cannot hide their affection for us. And a real affection for their characters is always the difference between an A+ Coen experience (Blood Simple, Fargo, Miller’s Crossing, Raising Arizona, the grossly under-appreciated Man Who Wasn’t There, No Country for Old Men, True Grit) and a lesser Coen entry (Burn After Reading, Intolerable Cruelty, The Huduscker Proxy), which can come off as a bit smug.
This is primarily what so undoes Suburbicon. Clooney’s muse is his sanctimonious hatred for normal Americans, those he sees only as cancerous racists, marginally intelligent hypocrites, and vessels of quiet desperation — you know, because deep down inside, we really all want to be like George.
If you care not a whit for the characters, even the villains, there is no tension. Suburbicon is utterly and completely tension-free. Even the little boy Nicky (a winning Noah Jupe) feels like a plot device, a cheap way to fabricate suspense by putting a child in danger. Clooney deserves credit for not making Nicky clever, a conjurer of unrealistic solutions, but the kid has no personality, and thanks to the trailer, we already know the outcome of the scene where we should be most worried about him.
As good as Oscar Issac is (in everything), screenwriter Clooney even bungles this. We are promised a character of consequence who will be around awhile. Then he is abruptly removed. Same with Jack Hightower’s policeman, who just never comes back. Gary Basaraba’s Uncle Mitch is wonderfully realized but has so little screen time, it leaves you annoyed as opposed to wanting more.
The well-constructed plot moves smoothly from scene to scene; you just do not care. Visual jabs at generic, fifties suburbia are everywhere; you have just seen them all before. The irony of the American dream permeates every scene, but this has been a tired trope since the credits rolled on 1999’s American Beauty.
On top of all that is an intrusive score and, worst of all, a racially condescending subplot that belongs in another movie. Based on a true story, a sorry chapter in American history, and Clooney’s transparent desperation to elevate his pulp into something meaningful and important, a black family makes the mistake of moving into Suburbicon. |
passengers volunteered it, he’s cautious about creating a program that might give cardholders carte blanche to waltz through security.
The Travel Association study also says that the often criticized TSA security workforce should receive more training, particularly in detecting suspicious behavior by passengers.
Freeman said the will to make the system more flexible has to originate with Congress.
“Because TSA is always going to be subject to criticism from Congress, they’re always going to take the one-size-fits-all approach to security,” he said. “TSA may think that some of these are very fine ideas, but they are in a political hot seat. Nothing will happen until Congress changes the tone of the debate. Congress has to accept responsibility for risk management.”With comedian Jerry Lewis dying today at age 91, many people were shocked and upset by his passing. Not AntiFa though. The left wing communist group basically danced on his grave after it was announced he had died. According to left wing, CNN loves AntiFa, Jerry Lewis was a white supremacist or something. AntiFa also called Jerry Lewis’ humor, ‘unsafe humor.’ I bet they love Bill Maher and Chelsea Handler though. They actually posted this on their Facebook page:
AntiFa mocks Jerry Lewis death, calls him white supremacist
Antifa’s video statement on Jerry Lewis dead at 91 today.
The lonely comedian behind his facade was a man who harbored a lot of misplaced hate and his career is nothing to idolize.
Jerry Lewis embraced the power of white supremacy throughout his career. People who found comedy in his “jokes” and characters portraying POC stereotypes are as much to blame for why we continue to deal with this situation in 2017.
Unsafe humor, as well as many problematic comics of today who were inspired from Jerry (Gilbert Gottfried for example), should be given no further platform and no praise. Let the memory of an old bigot like Jerry fade away forever.
Hey AntiFa, you are representing Democrats, CNN and the rest of the media that fawns all over you. Let Nazi George Soros keep pouring money into your hate group. You are doing wonderful things for Democrats and the media.Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir by Amy Tan
(Memoir, Ecco)
The bestselling author of “The Joy Luck Club” reveals the inspiration for some of her fiction, describing a difficult childhood, unearthing family secrets and her relationship with her father.
Nightblind by Ragnar Jonasson
(Fiction, Minotaur)
The Icelandic lawyer-turned-suspense-author is back with another thriller. Local policeman Ari Thor Arason’s colleague has been killed in the middle of night in an abandoned house. With the killer on the loose, Ari begins to put together the pieces.
The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish
(Memoir, Gallery Books)
A memoir from the breakout star of “Girls Trip,” this funny, honest collection of personal essays covers everything from growing up in one of the poorest neighborhoods in South Central LA, where making people laugh became an important skill, to achieving her dreams.
Enchantress of Numbers by Jennifer Chiaverini
(Fiction, Dutton)
A biographical novel about Ada Byron Lovelace was the only legitimate child of Lord “Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know” Byron, a woman whose contributions to science and technology were many — and too long ignored.
A Hundred Small Lessons by Ashley Hay
(Fiction, Atria Books)
A novel of two families that are connected through the same house: Lucy Kiss and her young family, and former owner Elsie Gormley, who lived there for 60 years and is now in a nearby nursing home.
The Last Man in Tehran by Mark Henshaw
(Fiction, Touchstone)
Red Cell Chief Kyra Stryker has just been promoted into her new title when a dirty bomb is set off in an Israeli port and chaos ensues. The Mossad believes Iran is behind it, and they launch a campaign of sabotage — and all hell breaks loose.The new Big East will hold a press conference tomorrow morning at News Corp's headquarters in Manhattan -- in Fox News' Studio D (News Corp is the holding company that currently owns the Fox networks (thought the television businesses will be spun off soon into a separate entity). The location of the press conference suggests that the details of the leagues' television deal with the Fox Sports Network(s) will be at least one subject of the announcement, but there appears to be more news than that coming down the pipeline.
The television deal has been reported to be as much as $40 million per year for the league that will expand to 10 schools next season. Each school can expect a pay-out of just under $4 million annually.
Joel Fisher, the Executive Vice President for Madison Square Garden, will also attend the press conference, and a long-term agreement between the schools and the arena is also expected to be announced during the meeting. The term of that agreement hasn't been leaked, however, but it appears that, despite some ACC interest in the arena, the Catholic 7 schools moved quickly to circle their wagons around the venue they have called home each March since the early-1980s.
The ACC could still attempt to bring their tournament to the city, but that would mean finding an alternative venue, or an alternative timing for the event.
The Catholic 7/Big East described the announcements as, "milestone events" for the fledgling conference that has yet to hire a commissioner.
They were also expected to announce the identities of their new membership for next season by Wednesday, and that appears to be on track. Emails went out at both Xavier University and Creighton University to season ticket holders or students and alumni promising announcements about the future of their athletic programs to come tomorrow morning. Xavier's email cited 10:45am (Eastern), while Creighton's email cited 10:00am (Central) -- the difference in time-zones means that Xavier's announcement should happen just 15 minutes ahead of the Creighton announcement.
Butler is also expected to announce a move from the Atlantic 10 to the new league. Jumping after just one season in the A10.
All three new schools will join Villanova, Providence, Seton Hall, Marquette, Georgetown, St. John's and DePaul in founding the new Big East conference this summer, and they will begin play in all sports for the 2013-14 season.
Once these moves are announced, the league will have settled most of its major moves, with hiring a commissioner and league staff, finding a location for a league office and working out logistics for various leagues within the conference the other vital tasks that remain.
UPDATE: Butler University president James Danko sent the following message to students, faculty and staff:
It appears likely that the presidents of the three new universities will appear with the Catholic 7 presidents at tomorrow's press conference, with the live video feed of the event streamed to each campus.1. To make Filling: Heat oil in skillet over medium-high heat. Add onions, and sauté 7 minutes, or until beginning to brown. Add thyme and garlic, and sauté 1 minute. Remove from heat, and stir in artichokes, olives (if using), parsley, and zest. Cool.
2. To make Dough: Place flour, butter, sugar, and salt in bowl of food processor; pulse until mixture resembles fine meal. Add eggs and milk, and pulse until Dough comes together. Shape into log. Slice log into 12 rounds. Roll out each round into 1/8-inch-thick circle with rolling pin on well-floured work surface.
3. Preheat oven to 375°F; coat baking sheet with cooking spray. Brush Dough rounds with beaten egg (if using). Spoon 2 heaping tsp. cheese in center of each Dough round, then top with 3 Tbs. Filling, leaving 1-inch border. Sprinkle each tart with 2 tsp. cheese, then fold in edges to partially cover Filling. Brush edges with beaten egg (if using), and sprinkle with salt, if desired. Bake 20 to 30 minutes, or until tarts are golden.To find a Native American on a college basketball team is uncommon. To find two on the same roster is downright rare. That's why Wisconsin's Will Decorah and Bronson Koenig, both members of the Ho-Chunk tribe, won't shy away from being role models for those that need guidance and advocates for those that need a voice. | From Varsity Magazine
ANDY BAGGOT
Insider Related Content
Varsity Magazine
BY ANDY BAGGOT
UWBadgers.com Insider
Will Decorah and Bronson Koenig are more than just teammates on the Wisconsin men's basketball team.
They are more than just homegrown talents -- Decorah is a junior guard from Waunakee; Koenig a junior guard from La Crosse -- who helped lead their high schools to multiple state championships in football and basketball, respectively.
They are more than just good friends with thoughtful voices and even-keeled personalities.
They are uncommon symbols of cultural diversity.
Decorah and Koenig are Native Americans -- proud members of the Ho-Chunk tribe -- whose roles with the Badgers put them in remarkable company.
History shows that a tiny percentage of NCAA Division I men's basketball rosters are Native Americans. A year ago, there were 13 out of 5,432 players, according to data compiled by the NCAA. The year before that, there were 14 in a pool of 5,493.
That two would share the same uniform and walk the same prestigious Big Ten Conference campus -- Decorah is majoring in economics and is Koenig seeking a degree in community and non-profit leadership -- is something to explore and celebrate.
That's especially the case during 25th anniversary of Native American Heritage Month, which was formalized in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush and runs through November.
The concept of having two Native Americans on the same major college men's team came to life when Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan added Decorah to the roster after Decorah had spent the previous two seasons as manager.
Koenig, meanwhile, has started 29 of 82 career games and currently leads the Badgers in scoring heading into a non-conference game with Prairie View A&M on Wednesday night at the Kohl Center.
"To have two on one team is pretty incredible," Decorah said. "I think it's kind of a close bond that me and Bronson share. We've been friends since high school -- knowing each other through basketball -- and now being on the same team brings us together even more.
"I think it's spectacular. It's something that's really cool. I feel lucky to be a part of it and I feel very lucky that my friend in Bronson is a guy who is also sharing that with me."
It's a shared distinction to be sure, but Decorah will be the first to say that Koenig has set the tone of activism. Koenig said supporting the cause of Native Americans -- speaking out about issues and offering a hand of encouragement to all who seek it -- "is one of the biggest priorities in my life."
"I feel it's necessary to be an activist," he added. "I do because there aren't enough activists out there for Native Americans in general.".
"I feel it's necessary to be an activist," Koenig said. "I do because there aren't enough activists out there for Native Americans in general."
Koenig estimates that he's made five or six presentations to Native American audiences, including a remarkable one in March of 2014 when the Badgers were in Lincoln, Nebraska, to play the Cornhuskers in a Big Ten game.
Students and coaches from a high school in Winnebago, Nebraska, made the two-hour trip to hear Koenig give a 20-minute talk about his life and ask questions. At the heart of the presentation was Koenig's pride in his heritage and the sacrifices he's made to live a rare dream.
Aaron Bird Bear, the interim assistant dean of student diversity programs in the UW School of Education, said there are generally 300 to 350 self-identified American Indians or Alaskan Indians in the entire student body on the Madison campus of approximately 43,000 undergraduates. That translates to less than 1 percent of the academic population.
So the odds of being a Native American student-athlete at Wisconsin are extremely long.
"We don't see a lot of American Indian role models in Division I athletics," Bird Bear said. "That's incredible leadership (for Decorah and Koenig) to be a part of in a top-tier program" like the UW men's basketball team.
Bird Bear said he doesn't know Decorah or Koenig all that well -- their majors are outside the school of education, he notes -- but Bird Bear can accurately measure the optics of having two Native Americans in the UW athletic spotlight.
"It's astounding to see two tremendous young gentlemen succeeding in scholarship athletics," he said.
Decorah and Koenig say they have not yet sat down and discussed their new circumstances at length, but they expect to do so as the season unfolds.
"That will be really cool," Koenig said.
There's much to talk about.
Decorah, whose father, Tim, was a guard for Ryan during his days at UW-Platteville and is a member of the Ho-Chunk tribe, said he was in middle school when he first began to realize that he had a different background than his classmates.
He understood "it was something I should embrace" but was unaware of the plight facing most Native Americans because he was "spoiled a little bit" by his parents.
"Growing up in Waunakee it's kind of hard to... relate to people that actually go through struggles of growing up in poor economic times and places like the reservation where kids don't have a lot," he said.
Koenig said he first became aware of his heritage while in grade school before attending Aquinas High and evolving into the state Player of the Year and a highly-regarded prospect. College basketball bluebloods such as Duke, Kansas and North Carolina tried to recruit him, but a unique pitch by Ryan ultimately kept Koenig home. According to Koenig, whose mother, Ethel Funmaker, works for the Ho-Chunk in their technology department, Ryan emphasized that the Native American population in Wisconsin would be able to revel in his exploits.
"A big selling point," Koenig said.
"There are definitely a large number of people around here that obviously are looking to support me and Bronson," Decorah said.
Being a role model to Native Americans in the state -- Bird Bear said there are 12 tribes in Wisconsin -- is important to Koenig, but he doesn't draw the line at his heritage.
"I'm trying to be the best role model I can be," he said.
"Me and Bronson both are kind of representing," Decorah said. "We have to set an example not only on the court -- the level of skill that we can attain -- but also off the court by setting an example of getting involved in the community.
"A lot of kids are looking up to us whether they're Native American or not."
Is there a specific agenda? Yes, said Koenig.
"I like speaking to Native American youth and just kind of inspiring them," he said. "I just try to give them any motivation I can to help them better their lives, their selves and their situations."
"Even if their situation isn't always good, they can change that with hard work and belief in themselves. You see the suicide rates and the alcohol abuse and the drug abuse on some of these reservations. They're just incredibly high. Hopefully I can make an impact that way.
"But I also want to help (how) people view Native Americans in general. We're kind of like the forgotten race a little bit. We're the minority of the minority. That's kind of crazy because we were the first to ever inhabit this country."
Decorah wants to follow in his friend's footsteps.
"We have to set an example not only on the court - the level of skill that we can attain - but also off the court by setting an example of getting involved in the community," Decorah said. "A lot of kids are looking up to us whether they're Native American or not."
"Going forward, looking at what Bronson has done, I'd really like to try to be more aware of the cultural aspects of the Ho-Chunk Nation," he said. "People look at me and see Native American. It would be definitely something I'd be interested in going forward."
How should people embrace this cause? Koenig said most of us draw our knowledge of Native Americans from the Trail of Tears -- a series of forced relocations of multiple nations following the Indian Removal Act of 1830 -- while he often cites the 2011 documentary Off the Rez. That film chronicles Shoni Schimmel, a standout women's basketball player, and her family as they struggle to find the right path off an Oregon reservation.
"Educate yourself on a little bit of Native American history and appreciate Native Americans," Koenig said. "Just be aware of what we went through and why the Native American society is the way it is today."
Decorah said people should embrace the Native American culture because its roots in this state are deep.
"It's something to be proud of because it represents Wisconsin as a whole," he said. "All the tribes across Wisconsin are a huge part of what makes up Wisconsin. People know about the Ho-Chunk tribe. People know about the Potowatomi tribe. That's something that kind of makes Wisconsin unique."
Bird Bear, a member of the Mandan Hidatsa tribe out of the Dakotas, said Decorah and Koenig amount to "astounding representation" as student-athletes at Wisconsin.
But there's work to be done.
"I still have a long ways to go," Koenig said.As a teen, Simon Dunn questioned if a gay man could excel or even be part of the sporting environment. (Supplied)
A new benchmarking system will provide the opportunity for all national and state sporting organisations to have their LGBTI-related initiatives, programs and policies reviewed
Six major Australian sporting codes, including all professional football codes, have signed up to a new national benchmarking framework called the Pride in Sport Index (PSI).
The PSI will be used by the Australian Rugby Union, National Rugby League, Australian Football League, Football Federation of Australia, Cricket Australia and Water Polo Australia to regularly measure how they support their lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) players, staff, spectators and supporters.
The index has been developed following the release of the Out On The Fields study in 2015, which found only 1 per cent of respondents felt that same sex-attracted people were accepted in sporting culture, and almost 80 per cent believed that openly gay fans would not be safe as spectators.
Former rugby player Simon Dunn, who is now an Olympic bobsleigh hopeful, said he gave up on hopes of a professional rugby career because of the stigma associated with being openly gay in Australian sporting culture.
Simon Dunn playing at the Bingham Cup gay rugby tournament in Sydney.
"Week in and week out you’d hear the opposition or weaker players being called 'faggots'. Those watching the game would do the same." he said.
"As a teen I started to believe in this and questioned if a gay man could excel or even be part of the sporting environment. When you’re questioning yourself every time you run on to the field, the fun and love for the sport quickly disappears."
"I came out in my final year of high school, and within my own club my team mates - who I’d played with for years - questioned my place on the team and publicly expressed not wanting to be in the scrum with me. So if this was the reaction from my own 'friends', you can only imagine what the opposition was like. So I gave it up."
Simon Dunn at the 2014 Bingham Cup in Sydney.
Dunn, who is now based in Calgary, Canada, said the PSI would be important for holding sporting organisations accountable in their efforts to stamp out homophobic behaviour.
"Unfortunately, the sporting world isn’t full of David Pococks and the LGBTI community generally don’t make up a large or visible part of the codes' fan base," he said.
"It seems they’ve been able to ignore and sweep the issue under the rug for way too long. Having this code makes their efforts - or lack thereof - noticeable."
Recommended All the reasons we love David Pocock David Pocock is an ally to women, feminism, and queer people - oh, and a damn good professional rugby union player.
PSI results will be published every year to show how participating organisations measure up, and awards will be provided to participating organisations and individuals demonstrating excellence in the promotion of LGBTI inclusion. The first awards ceremony will be held in May 2017.
Co-founder of the PSI, Andrew Purchas, said the index will be more than just a signature on a piece paper.
"It will provide the means for sporting organisations to demonstrate how they’re reducing homophobia and transphobia and making sport more accessible for all," he said.
Australian Rugby CEO Bill Pulver. (Photo: Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
Australian Rugby Union CEO Bill Pulver said Australian rugby is committed to providing environments where everyone involved is treated with respect and dignity.
"By committing to participate in the Pride in Sport Index Australian Rugby will continue to strive for greater inclusion and constant improvement in our policies and behaviours throughout the game. Every individual, whether they’re players, supporters, coaches or administrators should feel safe, welcome and included, regardless of race, gender or sexuality.”
Cricket Australia’s CEO James Sutherland said there is no place for homophobia in cricket either.
"Sport has a unique ability to drive and support social change and, in recognising the Pride in Sport Index, Australian cricket further emphasises its commitment to ensure the genuine diversity and inclusiveness of our sport," he said.
"Our vision is to be a sport for all Australians, irrespective of gender, sexuality, religion or background. We believe that the Index will play an important role in supporting our efforts to eradicate homophobia in cricket."MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
As Think Progress noted, Elizabeth Warren, Democratic Party senatorial candidate in Massachusetts (for the seat once held by Ted Kennedy), got to the heart of the matter about the difference between people and corporations. Warren admonished the one-time governor of her state, Mitt Romney, that:
No, Governor Romney, corporations are not people. People have hearts. They have kids. They get jobs. They get sick. They thrive. They dance. They live. They love. And they die. And that matters. That matters. That matters because we don’t run this country for corporations, we run it for people.
That's cutting to the chase.
It's not easy sharing the one prime time hour of a convention night with the master of crowd seduction, Bill Clinton, but Warren wooed the delegates and guests with words that spoke to the importance of individual lives over corporate institutions. She rebutted the deification of companies -- the bestowal of a corporate divinity that is at the epicenter of the Republican ticket -- over the value of hearts that beat in human souls. Ironically, the only lives that merit protection in the GOP platform are the unborn, not those who come into this world and are in need.
It has become a cliché to appeal to the travails of the working family, but Warren lit a spark of truth to the reality of living on the “ragged edge” of surviving:
I’m here tonight to talk about hard-working people: people who get up early, stay up late, cook dinner and help out with homework; people who can be counted on to help their kids, their parents, their neighbors, and the lady down the street whose car broke down; people who work their hearts out but are up against a hard truth--the game is rigged against them.
The game is rigged by institutions that profit off the work of those who are barely able to get by. When life is monetized, when the value of an individual with a beating heart is valued as nothing more than dollar signs in the eyes of vulture capitalism, then we have lost our values.
Not leaving the playing field of God to the GOP, Warren recalled:
I grew up in the Methodist Church and taught Sunday school. One of my favorite passages of scripture is: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” Matthew 25:40. The passage teaches about God in each of us, that we are bound to each other and called to act. Not to sit, not to wait, but to act--all of us together.
No, corporations don't have hearts. They should be at the service of people who do.
Call it a divine spark or just the radiant human soul, Elizabeth Warren spoke to the heart of the matter: the blood and spirit of life run through the veins of people, not corporations.Obama on health revamp: Debate is `not a game'
Barack Obama AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais
President Barack Obama said Wednesday night that Medicare and Medicaid are the "biggest driving force behind" massive federal deficits, and must be tamed as part of any health care legislation.
At a prime-time news conference marking six months in office, Obama said health care legislation was key to a strong economic recovery, and he added, "If we do not control these costs, we will not be able to control our deficit."
The president noted he took office with the economy in the worst recession in half a century. "As a result of the action we took in those first weeks, we have been able to pull our economy back from the brink," he said.
The president stepped to the microphone as Congress labored over his call for sweeping legislation to expand health care to millions who lack it, as well as control the costs of medical care generally.
In his opening statement, he stressed the second of those two goals.
"In the past eight year, we saw the enactment of two tax cuts, primarily for the wealthiest Americans, and a Medicare prescription program, none of which were paid for."
He vowed anew that he wouldn't sign health care legislation that wasn't paid for, although his administration has exempted from that pledge an estimated $245 billion to raise Medicare fees for doctors.
"This debate is not a game for these Americans, and they cannot afford to wait for reform any longer," Obama said. "They are looking to us for leadership. And we must not let them down."
“This debate is not a game for these Americans, and they cannot afford to wait for reform any longer.” President Barack Obama
The stakes are huge not just for everyday Americans, but also for Obama, who is putting much of his credibility on the line to gain passage of congressional legislation. His stepped-up public role comes as he faces rising criticism from Republicans, sliding public approval ratings and divisions within his party.
Holding his 10th extended news conference, Obama was renewing a message that the White House says he cannot pound enough: making health coverage affordable and sustainable is so vital that anything less will erode the economic stability of families, businesses and even the government.
The complex work of getting bills through the House and Senate is proving difficult. Republican leaders contend Obama's effort and the emerging bills are rushed and risky, and members of Obama's own Democratic Party are split on how to structure and pay for a daunting overhaul.
Obama sought to get beyond that and connect with Americans - and, in turn, the White House hopes, to pressure Congress. "I understand how easy it is for this town to become consumed in the game of politics, to turn every issue into a running tally of who's up or who's down," he said.
His words came as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Democrats have the votes to pass a massive health care bill in that chamber, prompting surprise and some criticism from conservatives within her party.
Congress is struggling to figure out how to pay for adding millions to the ranks of the insured and slowing the long-term costs of health care in the U.S.
In his comments, Obama reiterated his pledge that any bill he signs will not add to the nation's soaring deficit. "And I mean it," he said.
Meanwhile, a nervous public is being hit by TV ads and claims from all sides.
And other issues haven't gone away as Obama steps before the cameras. Still looming are an economy that keeps losing jobs, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Obama's January deadline to shut down the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.
The timing is critical as Obama appeals Wednesday night to a national viewing audience.
He wants the House and Senate to vote on comprehensive health care bills before they break for the summer, a window that is scheduled to shut by the first week in August. That timetable is growing tenuous, though, with up-and-down developments by the day.
So Obama is everywhere on health care: giving Rose Garden statements, visiting health clinics, talking to bloggers, granting interviews.
"He's prepared to do this as many times as he has to," said Michael Traugott, a University of Michigan professor who specializes in political communications. "The president has a special advantage because he's readily identifiable. The Congress is a less well known institution, and less popular in the public's eye."
Obama's approval rating stands at 55 percent, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll, down from 64 percent in late May and early June. Some 50 percent approve of his handling of health care, but 43 percent disapprove, and that number has risen sharply since April.
With public opinion still waiting to be shaped on health care, and with the legislative details in flux, what's clear is that people care.
Nearly 80 percent of those polled say health care is an important issue to them. Obama is seeking to extend coverage to millions who don't have it and to hold down the long-term costs of health care. How to pay remain a complex political question.
It didn't help the White House when the Congressional Budget Office last week said the bills moving through Congress would add to the nation's long-term costs, not reduce them. Obama has been emphatic that he will not sign a bill that adds to the government's deficit.
Meanwhile, unemployment is at 9.5 percent and rising.
Talk of Obama inheriting an economic mess from George W. Bush is fading, and the American public is now grading the new president. His approval rating on handling the economy has been slipping as impatience grows.
Obama says the country is moving in the right direction, and he points to legislation from his first half-year in office: a massive economic stimulus bill that is ultimately designed to work over two years, a law to overhaul the credit card industry, and another to keep tobacco companies from marketing to kids.
Still, he told CBS News on Tuesday: "As long as the economy is still shedding jobs and people don't feel confident about a recovery, then, you know, I think there's going to continue to be frustration. And rightfully so."
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Wednesday that Obama is "feeling optimistic that he's on track, after his first six months in office, to fulfill his promise to sign a health care reform bill before the end of the year."
(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR are closing in on German Under-21 star Jeremy Toljan, according to reports.
The 22-year-old Hoffenheim defender, who can play either full-back position, has just a year left on his deal with the Bundesliga club.
Getty Images 4 Tottenham are said to be close to a deal for Hoffenheim full back Jeremy Toljan
Rex Features 4 The highly-rated youngster helped Germany win the U21 Euros last month
And according to Portuguese newspaper Record Sport, Spurs are set to beat Benfica to the highly-rated youngster.
The Eagles are said to have given up the chase for Toljan, knowing they can't compete financially with Spurs.
Toljan, who made his debut for Hoffenheim aged 18 in 2013, is tipped as a future star for the German national team.
He has been capped at every level from Under-17 to U21 - helping that side win the U21 Euros last month.
The athletic Toljan, who stands 6ft tall, had been linked with Chelsea and Napoli earlier this year.
Right-footed, Toljan has spent much of his career playing as a left-back, but he is expected to compete with Kieran Trippier for the right-back berth if he moves to north London.
Getty Images 4 Spurs boss Mauricio Pochettino is yet to bring in any new players
Alamy 4 Kyle Walker was sold to Man City for a record fee for a defender
Mauricio Pochettino is seeking another defender after the blockbuster sale of Kyle Walker to Manchester City last week.
The England defender was sold for a fee that could rise to £53million - making him the most expensive defender of all time.
Spurs have faced criticism from some of their fans this summer over a lack of transfer activity.
They are the only Premier League team yet to make a first-team addition to their squad, despite their rivals spending hundreds of millions.
Tottenham continue to be linked with Paris Saint-Germain right-back Serge Aurier and Leicester City winger Riyad Mahrez.
£30miillion flop Moussa Sissoko could be sold.
Keep up-to-date with all the latest transfer news and gossip in our live blogGeneva | One of CERN’s top scientists has been arrested after “highly dangerous operations” were conducted under his authority at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider based in Geneva.
Russian physicist Alexandreï Ziouganov has been accused of “breaking CERN security rules” by “attempting highly risky and dangerous maneuvers” after he urged technicians to push the giant 27 km long particle accelerator to its limits, avoiding potential warning signs given by his coworkers while intoxicated by alcohol and under heavy medication.
The operation is believed to have caused an earthquake of 3.2 magnitude on the Richter scale, comparable to the impact of a large lightning bolt, assess experts.
« No serious damage was dealt to the Large Hadron Collider but several hyper-capacitors were damaged during the tests » – CERN spokesman, Olaf Gaardsteen
A history of recklessness
The Russian physicist known for his bold character has been an outspoken CERN critic since he joined the team of international scientists nearly 5 years ago.
“He is a man of extremes” explains his coworker, Romanian physicist Yuri Malania. “He is possibly one of the 100 most brilliant minds in the world, but his character is like that of an erupting volcano. He wants everything to go faster, he strongly believes we are decades backward in science. He wishes humanity would already be colonizing Mars and the Moon, he wishes to leave his mark and push the limits of science into the 21st century,” he adds.
In a 2013 interview with Russian science magazine атомный, the physicist known for his outspokenness said that CERN scientists “were a bunch of wimps”, “incapable of understanding the importance of this technology” and that “they would never understand his genius”.
Creating a black hole
The controversial physicist is also known for his obsession with dark matter and black holes.
“His dream is clearly to recreate a black hole within the LHC” explains French science journalist, Jeanne Legrand.
“He has always been a strong supporter within the European scientific community of increasing the capacities of the LHC and is at the origin of the highly controversial proposition of the LHCx, a process which would accelerate particles at speeds a thousand times faster, although most scientists do not approve of such tests for the moment,” she explains.
Last year his controversial views and statements on the LHC provoked a wave of hysteria after Pope Francis warned such tests could “have disastrous consequences for humanity” and could “open the gates of Hell”.About This Film
This is a 24 Roll of Fujicolor Superia X-Tra 35mm film purchased out of Windham, Maine. There are a total of 27 images.
This entire set takes place out on the water, on a sailboat, just off the coast of what could be Maine. Also, the photos are date stamped January 9th, 1998.
This could be a touring boat. It’s sunset, and there’s a lot of people on board.
The Adidas hoodie could confirm the date stamp. The girl’s hoodie in the back can’t be read in total. Something-Nation ap-something. The pepsi can has a logo on its side a well, but I can’t tell what for. Looks like an “N”.
Some great shots of the sun setting.
Not a single man in the group, I didn’t even notice at first. Lots of happy faces, and people from a wide range of age and background. People are super friendly and posing for more than one photo. This could have been the wrap up to some kind of larger project. I get the impression new friends were made.
thumbHouse Speaker Paul Ryan promised that Republicans would begin marking up a repeal bill next week. | Getty Exclusive: Leaked GOP Obamacare replacement shrinks subsidies, Medicaid expansion The replacement would be paid for by limiting tax breaks on generous health plans people get at work.
A draft House Republican repeal bill would dismantle the Obamacare subsidies and scrap its Medicaid expansion, according to a copy of the proposal obtained by POLITICO.
The legislation would take down the foundation of Obamacare, including the unpopular individual mandate, subsidies based on people’s income, and all of the law’s taxes. It would significantly roll back Medicaid spending and give states money to create high risk pools for some people with pre-existing conditions. Some elements would be effective right away; others not until 2020.
Story Continued Below
The replacement would be paid for by limiting tax breaks on generous health plans people get at work — an idea that is similar to the Obamacare “Cadillac tax” that Republicans have fought to repeal.
Speaker Paul Ryan said last week that Republicans would introduce repeal legislation after recess. But the GOP has been deeply divided about how much of the law to scrap, and how much to “repair,” and the heated town halls back home during the weeklong recess aren’t making it any easier for them.
The key House committees declined to comment on specifics of a draft that will change as the bill moves through the committees. The speaker's office deferred to the House committees.
In place of the Obamacare subsidies, the House bill starting in 2020 would give tax credits — based on age instead of income. For a person under age 30, the credit would be $2,000. That amount would double for beneficiaries over the age of 60, according to the proposal. A related document notes that HHS Secretary Tom Price wants the subsidies to be slightly less generous for most age groups.
The Republican plan would also eliminate Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion in 2020. States could still cover those people if they chose but they’d get a lot less federal money to do so. And instead of the current open-ended federal entitlement, states would get capped payments to states based on the number of Medicaid enrollees.
Another key piece of the Republican proposal: $100 billion in “state innovation grants” to help subsidize extremely expensive enrollees. That aims to address at least a portion |
imer also appear in several guises to give the inside scoop on what it's like to work with Steve Coogan - while Steve himself appears as his Irish auntie Peggy and Mickey Gold - his first showbiz agent. Narrated by Mark Williams.
Part of the BBC Christmas 2009 season.Janet Fletcher, with two of her children, Maddy and Joseph. She has been told she cannot leave Dubai until she has paid her medical bills.
A mother with young children is stranded in Dubai after her passport was confiscated when surgical complications left her with medical bills she cannot afford to pay.
Christchurch woman Janet Fletcher, 47, travelled to Dubai last month to have a gastric sleeve operation at the Canadian Specialist Hospital. It was expected to cost about $16,500.
But she had to be admitted to intensive care when a small tear in her stomach left her with septic shock and acute kidney failure.
123RF President of the NZ Association of Plastic Surgeons Sally Langley said travelling overseas for an operation was dangerous.
She spent an extra two weeks in hospital, which caused her bill to grow to $36,348 – an amount her family cannot afford to pay. She was not covered under either medical or travel insurance.
READ MORE:
* Record number of Kiwis seek out weight loss treatment
* How to lose 80kgs
* Obese teens should go under the knife
* Tackling diabetes with weight loss surgery
She was discharged from hospital on Thursday, but the United Arab Emirates government confiscated her passport, saying she could not leave while she had unpaid medical expenses.
Fletcher said she was aware of the UAE's stance on medical bills before she went under the knife, but decided to take the risk.
"I can't point the finger at anyone, it is just one of those things.
"I miss my husband and my children. I don't know when I am going to be able to go home."
She chose to have the surgery in Dubai because a family member living there had the same operation in the same hospital five years earlier. She is currently recovering at the family member's home.
Husband Graeme Fletcher said he was trying to raise enough money to get his wife back.
"It is vital I get her home, it is the most important thing I need to do right now," he said
The couple, who have five children together, have not told the two youngest that their mother is stranded.
The family have been based in Tonga for the past two years, and are in the process of shifting back to Christchurch.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it had not been contacted by Fletcher's family, but was restricted in what help it could give in the circumstances.
"As is the case with all illness overseas affecting New Zealanders, Mfat cannot act as guardians, provide a guarantee of payment, or fund the repatriation of New Zealanders who fall ill while travelling.
"New Zealanders travelling abroad should take out comprehensive travel insurance for this purpose."
However, Insurance Council chief executive Tim Grafton said travel insurance did not typically cover people who were travelling overseas for a medical procedure.
NZ Association of Plastic Surgeons president Sally Langley said travelling overseas for an operation was dangerous.
"All people having surgery are far better to have it in New Zealand, in a system they know. Especially when there is a small risk of things going wrong..."
WHAT IS A GASTRIC SLEEVE?
* Also known as bariatric surgery, its purpose is to limit a person's food intake, usually by surgically removing a large portion of the stomach.
* In 2015, a total of 417 people received publicly funded bariatric surgery in New Zealand.
* The 2015-16 national price for a publicly funded bariatric procedure was $19,800, excluding GST.
* Before being considered for surgical treatment in New Zealand, a patient must have been obese for at least five years.The state of Indiana has been no stranger to controversy lately, but according to WSBT News, one local chef has recently decided to fan the flames of a different restaurant-related conundrum: that of the ethicality of foie gras.
There are few controversies in the food world as prickly as that of the ethics of the production and sale of foie gras. Literally meaning "fat liver," foie gras, which is created by force-feeding geese and ducks for the purpose of artificially fattening their livers, is reviled by animal rights activists but defended by many in restaurant industry.
Kurt Janowsky, proprietor of Cafe Navarre in South Bend, Ind., belongs firmly in the latter camp, to put it mildly. Janowsky post an epic, angry rant on Facebook against diners and others who have left negative reviews for Cafe Navarre because of the restaurant's policy of serving foie gras on its menu. In one post, which was deleted minutes ago, he decried "food terrorists," vowing that because "you have made me angry we are going to serve foie on every menu from now on" and declaring "I will not make decisions based on what people who have never been to our restaurant and who do not live in this area tell me to do."
In a later post, which has also been deleted, Janowsky doubled down on his earlier statement and said that for every negative review that mentioned foie gras that the restaurant received, he would give away a different preparation of foie gras:
Many prominent chefs, like Ludo Lefebvre and José Andrés, support the use of foie gras in restaurants. Others, like Wolfgang Puck and the late Charlie Trotter, have gone on the record against the use of the luxury liver product.There are a lot of pieces to this lego set but they are all very organized. They are organized by number and you assemble it per bag number. Keep the order and you will not have any problems. The pieces are fairly sturdy after assembly so you do not have to worry about it falling apart. I was actually really surprised by the sheer size of the lego set. It is not something you can just put on the corner of your desk because the wings are long. They are about 12 inches if not more just from end to end. So if you are planning to put it on a shelf know that it will take a good amount of space. It has a shooting mechanism to shoot two darts from the bottom of the tie fighter. It also comes with 4 lego figures. Kylo, stormtrooper, pilot, and a droid. The details on the stormtrooper and pilot are great! The helmet is huge but very detailed. Overall I was very happy with this. It has great deal, easy to assemble(took about 3 hours), and very detailed in design.Aaaaaaaaaalright, here we go! Here’s the second minor update for the very much very well received 0.9 update (thanks for that, by the way).
Improvements
- We’ve added a monitor selection drop down menu to the launcher. Now you get to choose which of your sixteen screens you want to play on!
- Launcher settings (fullscreen/resolution/monitor) will now save so you don’t have to click around every time you launch the game. Comfort.
- Instead of crystals being heal-machines, Bricktrons and Corruptrons will now regenerate health very, very slowly, anywhere out of the map, as long as they’re out of combat. Healing wards still heal at any time, at a much quicker rate.
- Sentinels no longer block the line of sight of other sentinels.
- Made the archer’s sketch on the workbench look better.
- Improved performance with the knowledge system.
Fixes
- Fixed an issue where players were unable to load multiplayer games.
- Fixed an issue where loading an invasion game from 0.9 broke the UI.
- Fixed the landscape task not removing tree stumps anymore. Oh yeah, did you know that the landscape task removes tree stumps? ;)
- Fixed an issue where Corruptrons wouldn’t destroy doors.
- Fixed an issue where double-clicking Bricktrons wouldn’t select all the other ones on screen that had the same class.
- Fixed an AI issue where Corruptrons would follow a target Bricktron everywhere, ignoring everything else around it, including other enemies and attacks. It’s too late for your Corruptron x Bougre fanfic now.
- Fixed unwanted reflection on stockpiles at certain camera angles.
- Fixed an issue where you could steal an ally’s kits from their weapon stands in Multiplayer co-op.
- Fixed an issue where you couldn’t see pylons’ power range if you hovered one that was physically higher than the others.
- Fixed an issue where Bricktrons would show as warriors or archers on the screen-side compass if you unequipped their kits after they died.
- Fixed an issue where Bricktrons couldn’t successfully dig voxels beneath surface resources such as iron, brimstone, plants, boulders, etc.
- Fixed an issue in multiplayer co-op where Bricktrons would pick up resources from allies’ stockpiles by default for the furnace and workbench.
- Fixed an issue where quarries would accept up to 8 Bricktrons, causing mass panic and confusion in there.
- Fixed an issue where entering edit mode wouldn’t deselect Bricktrons.
- Fixed an issue in Invasion where Corruptrons would split up – the faster ones reaching your base first.
- Fixed an issue where the workbench and furnace’s overheads collided with the cursors even when hidden.
- Fixed a visual issue where the quiver’s blueprint on the workbench wasn’t rotated the right way.
- Fixed an issue where Corruptrons’ health bar would appear if they threw a rock.
- Fixed an issue where archers had a hard time firing at doors and stockpiles.
- Fixed an issue where wards’ health and cooldown bars wouldn’t disappear when full.
- Fixed an issue where blueprints would disappear if they were under the vertical yellow construction beacon.
- Fixed an issue where Bricktrons would sometimes pick up resources from partially built structures to use elsewhere.
- Fixed an issue where the Bricktrons’ disgustingly cute sound when they spawned wasn’t playing.
- Fixed an issue where the fog of war was removed if the host continued playing as a spectator after losing.
- Fixed an issue where Corruptrons were being healed by their crystal.
- Fixed an issue where Bricktrons gathering plants destroyed a layer of crust beneath the plant.
- Fixed an issue where a task would get automatically deleted if all goals were completed, even if you were still in edit mode.
- Fixed an issue where several Bricktrons could be on the same voxel.
- Fixed an issue in the world editor where using the boulder brush at the bottom of a cliff would remove plants on top of that cliff.
- Fixed an issue where Bricktrons wouldn’t be able to cut down trees when the game was lagging.
- Fixed an issue where units were standing too close during combat.
- Fixed an issue where user settings weren’t reset to default when updating the game.
There we have it! Don’t stop submitting your bug reports, suggestions and love letters. We’re ramping up for 1.0 and are super busy, but we still hang out on the Discord a lot. You should join us. :)By Ransom
Hey summoners! Today we’re showcasing a visually stunning and emotionally powerful film by League player and acclaimed writer/director Mickey Finnegan. In “Godlike,” a League of Legends player loses his mother, and sets out to find himself through the high stakes world of competitive esports.
Read on to learn about Mickey and his work!
What inspired you to make Godlike?
I’ve been directing professionally for eight years and playing League for three. I also followed the LCS during that time and was inspired by some of the pro player stories and experiences I’d heard about. This gave me the opportunity to bring together two of my favorite things in the world: film and gaming. Once I got the idea in my head, I brainstormed with Jennifer Khoe (“Godlike” producer) to come up with a narrative that would resonate with both fans of the game and people who know nothing about esports.
Why is esports such an inspiration?
One of the things that really drew me to this project was seeing how the personal stories of professional gamers shared relatable themes, emotions, and origins. Many of them have experienced depression, loneliness, being bullied at school, or feeling like outcasts. But through online games, they are often able to find themselves and encounter other like-minded people. Some of them are even fortunate enough to make lifelong friendships and careers out of gaming.
What was the most fun part of making the film?
The most fun part was getting to work with Team Liquid. Having them was a huge boost to bringing the world of the film to life. It’s also fun to see them as actors. They did a great job and we were thrilled to have them participate. I also think they had a good time as well!
Do you have any funny stories that came about during your process of making the film?
We had to shoot the scenes that take place in a PC Bang during working hours, since we couldn’t close down the place. So we filmed at the PC Bang before it opened, and then the place would fill up. On the day that Team Liquid was there, I could tell there were a number of people who were showing up just to play League and were surprised to see the team filming. There were these three guys in particular that were taking pictures from afar. So I asked them, “If I let you guys take a picture with the team, will you be extras in the film?” They said yes, and they got real photos of themselves with Team Liquid while we rolled camera!
Do you have any plans to make more League-inspired films?
I certainly hope so. We would love to make a feature film where we get to dig deeper into the League esports community and tell a full coming-of-age story through the lens of gaming. (It would also be really cool to see more live action shorts and films using League characters!) Whatever it might be, I would certainly love to create more.
What was your favorite part of the film? Let us know in the comments!We all have that one friend with a profound fear of amusement park rides, and we will never, ever scoff at them again after seeing what happened to this ride in Xinxiang city, Henan province yesterday. All 19 people on board were thrown off the “Flying Saucer” attraction at a street fair at Tongta Temple when the saucer actually flew off of the machine.
Fortunately, no one was killed and everyone remained fastened in their seat belt, although one of the visitors broke a bone during the crash landing.
The machine was running when the spinning rod broke, according to Sina News. While it all looks terrifying and is pretty much any theme park-goer’s nightmare come alive, it could’ve been way worse—imagine the carnage that would’ve ensued had this been one of those flying chair rides.
If it puts anyone at ease, the owner of the ride has been detained by cops, so it doesn’t look like he’ll be operating his Saucer of Doom ride at a fun-fair any time soon. We hope.
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PrintCLOSE 19-year-old Johnathan Cruz faces three murder charges in connection with the shooting deaths of Billy Boyd and Jay Higginbotham on May 12, and Jose Ruiz on May 15. Michael Anthony Adams / IndyStar
Johnathan Cruz, 19, is accused of killing three people at random during a four-day stretch in May. (Photo: Provided by IMPD)
Johnathan Cruz talked about leaving town after he'd started his "purge," according to court documents.
The 19-year-old had already killed twice, court documents said, and he told one of his girlfriends he needed to leave Indianapolis "asap."
But another man died before Cruz finally would be arrested, ending a four-day crime spree modeled after the plot of the horror film series "The Purge," in which the United States government designates a 12-hour period where all crimes, including murder, are legal.
Cruz now faces three murder charges in connection with the shooting deaths of Billy Boyd and Jay Higginbotham on May 12, and Jose Ruiz on May 15. He also faces a slew of other felony charges connected to the alleged crimes, including robbery, intimidation and more. Prosecutors are also pursuing a criminal gang enhancement.
His initial hearing is set for 1:30 p.m. on June 2 in Criminal Court 3, and, because of the circumstances of the crimes, prosecutors say Cruz could face life in prison without parole, or the death sentence.
"We will not make that decision any earlier than at least 30 days down the road," said Marion County Prosecutor Terry Curry during a press conference Wednesday, also noting that the teen's victims "appeared to be 100 percent random."
After Curry announced charges against Cruz, Mayor Joe Hogsett released a statement: "Senseless acts of violence such as those alleged in this case are incomprehensible, but thanks to the swift actions of IMPD detectives, Prosecutor Terry Curry and witnesses willing to come forward, we are one step closer to providing answers for these victims’ families.”
A probable cause affidavit describes the disturbing details of the four-day spree — one that, detectives believe, is affiliated with criminal gang activity.
Buy Photo The 3900 block of North College Avenue, where Billy Boyd was fatally shot in the midnight hour of May 12. (Photo: Michael Anthony Adams / IndyStar)
Cruz's violent "purge," as he described it to witnesses, according to court documents, started in the early morning hours of May 12. Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officers found a man, later identified as Boyd, lying dead on the sidewalk in the 3900 block of North College Avenue. He'd been shot twice in the head, and Cruz is suspected of pulling the trigger.
Hours later, in the 900 block of North Denny Street, police found another man, later identified as Higginbotham, also lying dead on the sidewalk. He'd been shot multiple times, court documents said, as he tried to run away from Cruz.
That morning, Cruz's mother sent him a text message to ask what he was doing. He responded by sending her a screenshot of a news article about the killings of Boyd and Higginbotham.
Buy Photo The 900 block of North Denny Street where IMPD officers found Jay Higgenbotham fatally shot on the Morning of May 12. (Photo: Michael Anthony Adams / IndyStar)
"Delete those after u read it," Cruz told her.
"Do u know they can still pull up deleted history," his mother responded, presumably referring to police.
"Yep Ima get a new phone soon say mine was stolen," Cruz said.
On May 14, Cruz and another man, 18-year-old Steven Clark, are then accused of robbing a man at gunpoint near the intersection of East 10th Street and North Linwood Avenue. Cruz and Clark stole the man's money and cellphones, according to court documents, before pistol-whipping him and running away.
Clark also has been charged with armed robbery in connection with the incident.
Later that same day, documents said, Cruz met a teen girl he'd been selling drugs to at an east-side Wendy's. After an argument, the girl tried to leave the restaurant. Cruz grabbed her, pulled a gun from his pocket and told her he'd kill her if she left him. A manager at the Wendy's confronted them in the parking lot and was able to take Cruz's attention off the girl long enough for her to escape to her car.
When interviewed by detectives about the incident, the teenage girl told investigators that Cruz followed her after she left, documents said. She ended up going back to Cruz's friend's apartment, where Cruz tried showing her a video of him gunning down Higginbotham.
Buy Photo The area of East Washington Street and Linwood Avenue where IMPD officers found Jose Ruiz fatally shot in the driver's seat of a Pontiac car on May 15. (Photo: Michael Anthony Adams / IndyStar)
The following morning, near the intersection of East Washington Street and North Linwood Avenue, IMPD officers found Ruiz shot dead in the driver seat of a Pontiac car.
Ruiz would be Cruz's final victim, documents said, before he was arrested May 16 on charges stemming from the incident at Wendy's two days prior.
During the investigation, homicide detectives found dozens of photos and videos that show Cruz flashing cash, throwing gang signs and waving and firing pistols.
Even while locked up in the Marion County Jail, court documents said, Cruz called to ask a friend to control his Facebook page.
"Change my profile picture to me and my kid," Cruz told her, referring to a baby girl that can be found on his Facebook page. "Make everything where people can post on my page."
The Facebook page also includes a video from May 14, the day of the alleged robbery, where Cruz and another man display wads of cash before Cruz says, "Get yo money."
NEWSLETTERS Get the Breaking News newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Urgent developments you should know now, not later. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-888-357-7827. Delivery: varies Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Breaking News Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters
Several other videos show Cruz pointing a black revolver at the camera — similar to the one detectives say was used in the slayings.
And in one video, filmed in the dark, several gunshots ring out as two people laugh.
Here are the charges 19-year-old Jonathan Cruz is facing, includes 3 murder charges. pic.twitter.com/3PHVU5219y — MichaelAnthonyAdams (@MichaelAdams317) June 1, 2016
Re murder charges for Jonathan Cruz-Here today because someone cooperated. This is a surprising case, shocking case pic.twitter.com/GOLiqfJh5C — Troy Riggs (@IMPD_Chief) June 1, 2016
Call IndyStar reporter Michael Anthony Adams at (317) 444-6123. Follow him on Twitter: @michaeladams317.
Read or Share this story: http://indy.st/1sN1NLnWork features in sleevenotes for new Beefheart box...
Work features in sleevenotes for new Beefheart box…
Tom Waits has written a poem dedicated to Captain Beefheart.
“Don Is Like The Bones In A Watermelon” will feature in the sleeve notes for a new four-disc Beefheart collection, Sun Zoom Spark: 1970 To 1972.
You can read the poem below.
Sun Zoom Spark: 1970 To 1972 is released by Rhino on November 10, and includes the albums Lick My Decals Off, Baby, The Spotlight Kid and Clear Spot, which have been remastered for the first time, as well as an entire disc featuring 14 previously unissued outtakes from that era.
Waits is a long-term fan of Beefheart – aka Don Van Vliet.
Following Van Vliet’s death on December 17, 2010, Waits told the Los Angeles Times: “He was like the scout on a wagon train. He was the one who goes ahead and shows the way. He was a demanding bandleader, a transcendental composer (with emphasis on the dental), up there with Ornette [Coleman], Sun Ra and Miles [Davis]. He drew in the air with a burnt stick. He described the indescribable. He’s an underground stream and a big yellow blimp.
“I will miss talking to him on the phone. We would describe what we saw out of our windows. He was a rememberer. He was the only one who thought to bring matches. He’s the alpha and the omega. The high water mark. He’s gone and he won’t be back.”
Here’s Waits poem in full:
NOW DON IS LIKE THE BONES IN A WATERMELON
OR THE SEEDS IN A FISH AND YOU CAN SEE HIM
THROUGH THE BLUE SMOKE OF A TRAMPS FIRE
IS HE STILL IN 1129 AT THE DAVENPORT HOTEL
IN SILO, MISSOURI? NO…YOU SEE MY FRIEND YOU
WILL NOT FIND HIM THERE. HE CAME FROM THE CLAY
AND HE HAS GONE BACK…LIKE RATS, LIKE RAVENS
ROOKS, AND COAL BLACK ROSES…SHARKS, SHADOWS,
SHOES AND SHEEP. HE IS NOW LIKE THE PLACE ON
THE COUNTER, WORN AWAY FROM YEARS OF MAKING CHANGE.
HE IS NOW A SIREN IN THE NEXT TOWN OVER…ONLY HIS
TAIL IS STICKING OUT OF THE GROUND.
DON, HE WAS A GIANT AND HE WALKED AMONG US ON THIS
EARTH, NOW LONG GONE…
HE HAS GONE BACK INTO THE FROGS CROAKING THROAT…
LISTEN, IN THE DESERT THERE IS A FORK STUCK IN A TREE…
PUT YOUR EAR UP TO IT AND THUMP IT, BOW IT, SWALLOW THE
SOUND AND THEN GROW IT…
DON SEEMS TO BE TELLING US ALL…DO NOT FOLLOW HIM
JUST TAKE WHAT CLUES HE LEFT AND WITH THEM, GO AND BUILD
A STRANGE HOME OF YOUR OWN
The Sun Zoom Spark: 1970 To 1972 box set can be pre-ordered here.
The tracklisting for Sun Zoom Spark: 1970 To 1972 is:
Lick My Decals Off, Baby (October 1970)
1. “Lick My Decals Off, Baby”
2. “Doctor Dark”
3. “I Love You, You Big Dummy”
4. “Peon”
5. “Bellerin’ Plain”
6. “Woe-Is-uh-Me-Bop”
7. “Japan in a Dishpan”
8. “I Wanna Find a Woman That’ll Hold My Big Toe Till I Have To Go”
9. “Petrified Forest”
10. “One Red Rose That I Mean”
11. “The Buggy Boogie Woogie”
12. “The Smithsonian Institute Blues (or the Big Dig)”
13. “Space-Age Couple”
14. “The Clouds Are Full of Wine (not Whiskey or Rye)”
15. “Flash Gordon’s Ape”
The Spotlight Kid (January 1972)
1. “I’m Gonna Booglarize You Baby”
2. “White Jam”
3. “Blabber ‘n Smoke”
4. “When It Blows Its Stacks”
5. “Alice in Blunderland”
6. “The Spotlight Kid”
7. “Click Clack”
8. “Grow Fins”
9. “There Ain’t No Santa Claus on the Evenin’ Stage”
10. “Glider”
Clear Spot (November 1972)
1. “Low Yo Yo Stuff”
2. “Nowadays a Woman’s Gotta Hit a Man”
3. “Too Much Time”
4. “Circumstances”
5. “My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains”
6. “Sun Zoom Spark”
7. “Clear Spot”
8. “Crazy Little Thing”
9. “Long Neck Bottles”
10. “Her Eyes Are a Blue Million Miles”
11. “Big Eyed Beans from Venus”
12. “Golden Birdies”
Out-takes
1. “Alice in Blunderland” – Alternate Version
2. “Harry Irene”
3. “I Can’t Do This Unless I Can Do This/Seam Crooked Sam”
4. “Pompadour Swamp/Suction Prints”
5. “The Witch Doctor Life” – Instrumental Take
6. “Two Rips in a Haystack/Kiss Me My Love”
7. “Best Batch Yet” – (Track) Version 1
8. “Your Love Brought Me To Life” – Instrumental
9. “Dirty Blue Gene” – Alternate Version 1
10. “Nowadays a Woman’s Gotta Hit a Man” – Early Mix
11. “Kiss Where I Kain’t”
12. “Circumstances” – Alternate Version 2
13. “Little Scratch”
14. “Dirty Blue Gene” – Alternate Version 3
Visit our new, dedicated features section, with plenty of our best long pieces archived there. You can find it here.
Uncut is now available as a digital edition! Download here on your iPad/iPhone and here on your Kindle Fire or Nook.Acme's Wine Bottle Klein Bottle
After 5 years of experimentation, I'm delighted to offer the Acme Klein Bottle Wine Bottle.
Yes, you can store wine in it, and pour wine into and out of it. But no, it's not very practical as a wine carafe.
The chimerical Wine Bottle Klein Bottle is now reality! As impractical as it is elegant.
The Wine Bottle Klein Bottle is difficult to fill with wine, because of vapor-lock. As you pour water (or wine) into it, there's no place for the air to go. So the wine is trying to go down while the air is trying to go up the spout. Result is slow filling. Pouring wine out is equally frustrating.
I've made the Wine Bottle Klein Bottle in two different shapes. The long-handle is shown above.
Not only are these difficult to fill and empty, but cleaning them is a real challenge. Since there's little air circulation within the Klein Bottle, moisture doesn't evaporate. Worse, you can't reach in with a towel. So you'll need to dry the interior surface using alcohol. I've had good luck with a pair of small magnets wrapped in cotton cloth.
I've designed these to balance with or without contents. However, they're easy to tip over, especially when empty.
Again, these are about the most impractical Wine Bottle / Caraffes ever made. But what's life with only utility and efficacy? Living without spontaneity, risk and danger? Besides, what else costs under 100 clams?
photo below shows the short-handled variety:
The short handled Wine Bottle Klein Bottle below:
notice the handworked glass pouring spout!
First, this isn't the most practical wine bottle. In fact, I don't recommend that you use it for wine, water, or any liquid, because once you put liquid inside, it's hard to get out. And it's even harder to clean and dry the "inside". Despite its limited utility, this is a real 3-D immersed Klein Bottle. Think of this as a mathematical shape which comes close to a wine carafe. Guaranteed to frustrate even the most dedicated wine connoisseur: it's difficult to fill, difficult to pour, and difficult to clean. I've made 2 styles - a short handle and a long handle. Both represent formidable glassblowing - it's a challenge to get the curves just right, and the welding around the mouth requires exacting torchwork. (The pour-spout is especially hard to do) I've made about a dozen of these - they're not easy! (I showed my first experimental model at the 2006 TED conference - after 5 years of experiments and refinements, I've made these two versions.) For optimal aerodynamic performance, your Wine Bottle Klein Bottle has smooth, spline-like curves. You can take advantage of this lustrous continuity to differentiate this manifold everywhere! Tested by simulated undergraduates and fully covered by Acme's Unconditional Guarantee. It's best considered more of a Klein Bottle and less of a Wine Bottle. This limited utility, rustproof, borosilicate zerovolume manifold can be yours for a mere $95... noticeably less than the cost of a Napa Valley vineyard! To order a Long Handle Klein Bottle Wine Bottle for $95, click here: Or, you can enjoy the frustration of a short-handle Wine-Bottle-Klein-Bottle for a mere $90: - Height 210mm (8 inches)
- Diameter 120 mm (5 inches)
- Weight: 275gm (10 oz)
- Displacement 1.2 liters (40 fl ounces)
- Actual volume 0.0 ml (0 fl ounces)
- Includes calibration decal Like ACME's other fine Klein Bottles, this is handcrafted from pure Borosilicate Glass... Pyrex, Kimax, Bomex, or Simax. It has a bulk density: 2.23 gm/cm3 and expands just 0.000326% per degree C. This means that it'll shrink only a few microns when you trek from Tucson to Nome. Nor should you worry about it dissolving -- we've tested samples in water, acetone, methyl-ethyl-ketone, maple syrup, and jello.
Go to Acme's Home Page, home to plenty of one-sided Klein Bottles
This page last updated June 2, 2018University of Oregon Ducks play Stanford
Oregon Ducks forward Ben Carter (32) reaches for control of the ball against Stanford's Dwight Powell (33) on Jan. 12 at Matthew Knight Arena.
(Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian)
SEATTLE -- If Oregon was ever looking for a tailor-made road trip to break its four-game losing streak in Pac-12 games, Washington is it.
The Huskies, like the Ducks, do not possess an imposing center. They are next-to-last in points allowed per game (Oregon ranks as the worst) and worst in field-goal percentage defense. On Sunday, the Ducks will face Washington State, which was beaten easily by Oregon State on Wednesday evening. The Cougars are 11th in conference field-goal percentage defense, have just one of two negative scoring margins in the Pac-12 and their best player, DaVonte Lacy, is out at least two more weeks due to injury.
Next week, Oregon travels to Los Angeles to face UCLA and USC, which played the role of conference doormat at 0-5 until putting the league on notice by stunning Cal on Wednesday evening. A pair of losses there for the Ducks isn't out of the realm of possibility, suddenly.
Wins help in the standings, of course, but ever since Oregon's losing streak began at Colorado, coach Dana Altman has been frank with the media about the team's decreasing confidence level that suggests a win's biggest benefit might be to the team's psyche.
"It’s a fragile game," Altman said. "At times players, like I said, they respond to pressure differently so we’re trying to change things up. If I had the answer and I knew it was the answer we’d be doing it but this isn’t an exact science and it’s my job to get them going again."
It would seem appropriate, then, that in a two-week stretch that has turned what we knew about Oregon on its head, a player with a once-minimal role could be a spark to turn it around.
Sophomore 6-foot-8 forward Ben Carter scored a season-high 11 points in 16 minutes against Oregon State and showed why coaches and teammates were so disappointed he missed the season's first nine games with a suspension for selling team-issued apparel. It was his best game of the season, and possibly his career at UO, after averaging 3.0 points and 2.0 rebounds entering Sunday.
Junior guard Joseph Young said Wednesday that Carter's range extends to about 18 feet and that he consistently drains jumpers from the free-throw line elbow in practice. On the pick-and-roll, he would seem to be a candidate for Johnathan Loyd or Dominic Artis to hit on the "roll" for a mid-range jumper if he can increase his 33 percent shooting this season.
One game does not a trend make, of course. But there are positive signs developing, most notably his rating of 102.5 points allowed per 100 possessions, which is fourth-lowest on the team, and if Oregon's corps of undersized big men need anything, it's an infusion of defense right now.
"I thought he played pretty good, he gave good offensive moves inside and defensively was pretty solid," Altman said Tuesday. "He needed to rebound better but he did play pretty well. He was at a disadvantage missing those first nine games and has worked himself into shape and he did play well at Corvallis."
Now we'll see if he can play well enough, and by extension his team, in Washington to turn UO's small positive signs into its first win of 2014.
Of course, Oregon isn't alone in this search. After KEZI's
Ohio State, Wisconsin and Oregon were all top-10 teams only a couple weeks ago, I realized we needed to throw Iowa State into that mix, too. The result? A lot of once-elite teams are on a brutal 14-game combined losing streak.
OK, onto the links:
Here's part of
. It involves a lot of Joseph Young.
Addicted to Quack offers its preview of
.
The Register-Guard has its own preview of
.
KEZI posted the raw interviews of all the basketball interviews in case you wanted the see the team's psyche
Yep, it's almost Oregon baseball season. Here are amateur videos by me of Oregon RHP Jake Reed, who is UO's new closer
And here's another video of head coach
about the rotation.
Yesterday was the first
on 2014 Oregon football recruits. Another will be released this morning at 9 a.m., on a massive o-line recruit.
Thanks for reading, everybody.Oakland Raiders legend Charles Woodson is playing his safety role better than ever at age 39.
It’s a point of pride for the 18-year veteran — particularly as he heads into a Sunday showdown with the team he won a Super Bowl with, the Green Bay Packers.
Woodson via Jason Wilde of ESPN.com: “Father Time is definitely undefeated, that’s for sure. But does it feel good to have some people eat their words about what they said about me as a player? Yeah, that’s fun.”
Article continues below...
The Packers cited Woodson’s age and durabilty when they released him in 2013. But the 2009 NFL Defensive Player of the Year has overcome both obstacles in his second stint in Oakland; Woodson hasn’t missed a start this year and is tied for third in the league in interceptions with five.
Woodson might be the one that got away from Green Bay. Head coach Mike McCarthy called No. 24 a "generational player" this week. And the Packers reportedly still use Woodson’s highlight reels from 2006-12 as a teaching tool for young defensive backs.
"I mean, a guy that can (still) cover the way he can cover, can rush the passer, can tackle, can cause fumbles, can sack the quarterback — there’s nothing he can’t do," Packers cornerbacks coach Joe Whitt told ESPN. "He left the hospital with that."
He left Green Bay with those skills intact, too |
, I did get a phone call saying they thought they found Ellie. The cat they found had six kittens with her,” Hueser recalled. “I thought, ‘No way!'”
Ellie's kittens were given to other families in #ymm that lost cats to #ymmfire – but the family kept one, named him Phoenix. #yeg pic.twitter.com/o6qMPs2iYZ — Sarah Kraus Global (@SarahNKraus) December 2, 2016
“I was in denial until they showed up in my driveway and they opened up their truck and there she was. I didn’t have to open the cage or anything, I knew it was her.”
Ellie was in good health, but wouldn’t let any of the volunteers touch her until she saw Hueser.
“I was so happy. I was in the driveway crying and everything.”
Ellie’s kittens were given to families who lost their cats to the wildfire as well.
Hueser decided to keep one for her girls.
“We had lost hope. My kids wanted their two cats back. It was nice to have him so Ellie wasn’t lonely anymore,” she explained.
Ellie and Minnie were found 2.5 and 6 months after the #ymmfire evacuation, both were healthy, escaped fire and had kittens. #yeg #cats pic.twitter.com/ikOWFh9Uqd — Sarah Kraus Global (@SarahNKraus) December 2, 2016
They named their kitten Pheonix, after one of the companies that helped with water bombing to save Fort McMurray.
Months later, on Halloween, Hueser got a phone call she’ll never forget – a volunteer looking for lost pets said she’d found Minnie, alive.
“I was like, ‘Are you serious? Are you sure?’ Because I couldn’t believe it because it had been a really long time and Minnie was only seven months when she went missing. So I just lost hope.”
It turns out Minnie, like Ellie, had also given birth to a litter of kittens. Minnie was relatively unscathed after spending half a year fending for herself.
“I’m very grateful. I’m happy they’re all home,” Hueser said. “They’re all my babies.”
She has one message to anyone else from Fort McMurray that might still be missing a pet.
“Just never give up hope. Because the worst thing you can do is give up hope. I gave up hope and ended up with another kitten and now I have three cats!”Editor’s note: The images below may be upsetting to some readers.
When photographer Paul Hilton arrived at a clearing in Sumatra, Indonesia, last year, there was just a backhoe, a couple of law enforcement officials and an open pit about to be set on fire ― the final act of a major wildlife crime bust.
The day before, Hilton had been in a warehouse in the city of Medan when police raided the building on a tip that a seafood trading company was trafficking in smuggled creatures hunted for their valuable body parts. He photographed the raid and the lucky critters that made it out alive. Though he found it heartbreaking, “visually, it wasn’t that impactful,” Hilton said.
But it was the pit a few miles away that made it hard to lift his camera. The warehouse had been hiding boxes, crates and shipping containers full of frozen pangolins, the world’s most trafficked animal, destined for consumption abroad.
The trench Hilton strode up to that day was a mass grave, filled with nearly 4,000 pangolins that the authorities had seized from the seafood company.
“I stood there for a while and I couldn’t even take a photograph,” said Hilton, who was on assignment for the Wildlife Conservation Society at the time. “It was the early morning, a very stark landscape with just a few police officers. And I’m just standing there looking into this pit thinking, ‘What an absolute disgrace.’”
Credit: Paul Hilton/Wildlife Photographer of the Year Awards Paul Hilton's prize winning photograph, titled "The Pangolin Pit," shot after the raid.
One of Hilton’s photographs from that day, above, won first prize in the single image category at the Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards last month. It’s a stark and depressing shot that reflects the dire struggle pangolins face as humans hunt them to extinction.
Pangolin scales are highly prized in traditional medicine and the meat is considered a delicacy in some parts of Vietnam and China. Like rhino horn, the scales are made of keratin, the same material as human fingernails, and hold no medicinal value whatsoever.
But demand for pangolin parts is staggering, and all eight species across southeast Asia and Africa are threatened by poaching. More than 10,000 of the animals are estimated to be killed every year. Hilton said in some areas the scales can sell for up to $600 a kilogram.
The pangolins Hilton photographed that day were worth an estimated $1.8 million.
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES, recently banned the trade of pangolins and their parts in an effort to squelch demand.
Hilton’s photographs from the raid and the burn pit show just how vast the wildlife trade can be, and how easy it is for one species ― humans ― to eat one of the world’s mammals to extinction.
Take a look below.Whenever a psychic claims they can predict the future, skeptics quickly point out that if this were true, the soothsayer wouldn’t read palms at twenty bucks an hour, but would make their fortune placing bets on sporting events or in the stock market.
Even though we developed a new technology with the capacity to make predictions, we at Unanimous A.I. are skeptics at heart, and have put ourselves under this same scrutiny. We’re constantly testing to see if novice users of our UNU platform can beat the Vegas odds.
It turns out, they can beat Vegas… and have, again and again.
The UNU platform allows groups of users to form “human swarms” and unlock their collective intelligence, making group predictions of great insight. For example…
Before the NHL playoffs started, a swarm of users used UNU to predict the 7 to 1 underdog Chicago Blackhawks would win the NHL championship. Over the two months since, the Blackhawks have not only advanced to the Stanley Cup finals, they’re leading the series 1-0 and are now heavily favored to hoist the Stanley Cup.
Similarly, a swarm used UNU to predict the Golden State Warriors would navigate the treacherous West en route to their first NBA title in 40 years. At the time, the Warriors were paying 3 to 1. Just like the Blackhawks, the Warriors are leading the Finals 1-0 and heavily favored to win it all.
As reported in the past, these are not the first predictions UNU has made. A swarm of users were asked to predict how many yards Marshawn Lynch would run during the super bowl. They nailed it to within 2%, and likely would have been perfect if he’d been given the ball on that terrible final play of the game.
So, if you’re looking to place bets, UNU recommends the Blackhawks and Warriors. Obviously, there’s a long way to go in both series. But hey, many minds are better than one.
If you are interested in participating in swarms as a beta-tester, sign up here.
Want to read our latest paper, click here.Another Shuttle Hangar falls under Boeing’s control – this one for the secretive X-37B spaceplane
It was announced on Florida Today that NASA's Orbiter Processing Facility 1 will be used to process the U.S. Air Force's X-37B spaceplane. Photo Credit: Jason Rhian / SpaceFlight Insider
Jason Rhian
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla — It looks like Boeing is making up for lost time. According to a report by James Dean appearing on the website for Florida Today the aerospace company, fresh off the heels of signing the lease for the space shuttle’s Orbiter Processing Facility 3 (OPF-3), will be taking control of Orbiter Processing Facility 1 (OPF-1). Whereas Boeing will use OPF-3 for the company’s CST-100 commercial space “taxi” – OPF-1 will have a more clandestine task in store for it.
According to Florida Today’s report, the acquisition of the structure, which has been dormant since the departure of space shuttle Atlantis in 2012, will be used to process the U.S. Air Force’s X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle. Naturally, given the secretive nature of the X-37B program, no comment has been forthcoming regarding this recent revelation from the U.S. Air Force. This effort could provide a possible boon to Florida’s struggling Space Coast. Economically, the end of the space shuttle era severely impacted the region. While there have been statements that NASA’s commercial efforts would bring jobs to the Space Coast – to date an appreciable change has not yet taken place.
For the U.S. Air Force’s X-37B program, this will mark a departure from the current processing flow. Ordinarily the mini-shuttle launches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 501 rocket. After an undisclosed amount of time, the X-37B (also known as an Orbital Test Vehicle) lands at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
Having OPF-1 utilized so as to process these unmanned spacecraft (the first flight was conducted in 2010) could mean that, rather than having to ship the X-37B back from California – missions could launch from and land back in Florida – at the Shuttle Landing Facility located at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The U.S. Air Force is researching the potential cost savings by altering to this method. Moreover, neither the U.S. Air Force nor Boeing revealed many specifics as to the amount of jobs this move might create.
To date there have been three OTV flights from Cape Canaveral, two have concluded, the third of which is still on orbit. Each X-37B spacecraft is derived from Boeing’s X-40. An earlier flight test article of the spacecraft, the X-37A, was carried aloft by the WhiteKnightOne aircraft. Nearly 30 feet long and with a 15-foot wingspan, the mini space shuttle could almost fit inside one of the payload bays of NASA’s retired space shuttles.
In 2011, under much fanfare, it was announced that OPF-3 would be used for processing of Boeing’s CST-100. The CST-100 is designed to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. Boeing finalized that contract last year. NASA has been directed to open facilities it does not have a current use for to commercial users. As mentioned here, SpaceX will be taking over historic Launch Complex 39A, which was where many iconic missions got their start – including the launch of Apollo 11. It is likely that in the coming months, more such announcements will be made.
This article uses content written by James Dean, originally appearing on Florida Today and can be viewed here: OPF-1
Welcome to The Spaceflight Group! Be sure to follow us on Facebook: The Spaceflight Group as well as on Twitter at: @SpaceflightGrpWrenching on cars can be exhausting, both physically and financially. We know that and also know that we have a lot of beginning wrenchers in Roadkill’s audience. This site has put up lists of potential project cars from time to time here, but we thought this time around we’d list off some smaller, more affordable, and more attainable motorized projects for wrenchers new and old. We know this list isn’t exhaustive, but we figure it’s a good start to brainstorming the kinds of projects our young fans can begin with and for the experienced mechanics to take up while waiting for parts from Jegs. Here are 10 ways to turn wrenches on motorized non-car projects.
Lawnmowers
For many people, lawnmowers—both push and riding mowers—were their first experiences with internal combustion engines. Small two-stroke push-mower engines can give a chance to learn about basics like tune-ups and even rebuilding. There is some collectability and tuning among the lawn-tractor culture, like Justin Kramer—who ran the LeMons Rally in a Ford LTD—and his eBay-tuned turbodiesel Cub Cadet. It’s a pretty cool customized mower for the sake of tuning mower. Also, lawnmower racing is absolutely a thing. Be careful though, because if you have a lawnmower, someone is probably going to expect you to mow the lawn.
Go-karts
For cheap speed, you can’t get much more affordable than a go-kart. Karts range from little casual transportation to white-knuckle puckermobiles and you can find what you’re looking for price- and speed-wise anywhere along that spectrum. Last summer, I drove this kart built by my friend, Andre Molina, which is powered by the common Briggs and Stratton LO206 engine. With 8.8 horsepower, Andre’s kart has enough grunt to hustle the bantamweight chassis at wide-eyed speeds. You can spend less coin—this is probably $1,500 to $2,000 of racing kart—and have ample fun with lower-output engines.
Snowmobiles
Top speed shouldn’t be limited to paved (or gravel) surfaces. Snowmobiles provide both basic transportation in northern climates and satisfy the need for speed after the snow has piled up. You can still find old running (or close to it) sleds around for cheap and the numbers of them around in winter can make for readily available parts. As we see above, these are simple machines that can be rebuilt with relative ease; this Ski-Doo Elan project on PowerModz was totally disassembled in about an hour.
Two-wheeled things
This is obviously a broad category to lump everything together, but half the wheels can be many times more fun than cars. We obviously love minibikes, having featured them on a Roadkill episode and regularly on the website here. Friend of Roadkill Laura Conrad (right, with Roadkill editor Elana Scherr) rebuilt her first minibike—you can read about it in the Spring 2017 issue of Roadkill Magazine—as a way to see that wrenching isn’t as intimidating as it first seems. This category isn’t just minibikes, of course; you can throw dirtbikes and motorized bicycles in the cheap-and-fun category, too.
Tractors
We’re well aware that farmers are the OGs of Roadkill wrenching: They were making the most of what’s around on non-existent budgets before it was cool. Most farmers cut their mechanics’ teeth on old tractors simply to keep half-century-old workhorses in service. Tractor projects may very well cost as much as (or more than) cars, but an old tractor can be a great first “big” project for the aspiring rural wrench. When it’s done, it can of course till a field or pull a wagon around the farm, too.
Agricultural engines
If a big multi-cylinder tractor engine is too big a project, there are always early agricultural single-cylinder internal combustion engines to restore or to build from scratch. Sure, these mechanical antiquities are usually the refuge of old farmers and machinists, but what better way is there to learn the principles of internal combustion engines than from their humble beginnings? These various engines operated water pumps, ran a variety of other farm equipment, and sometimes worked as generators, giving them a modicum of utility even today.
Boats and outboard engines
You don’t have need hundreds of outboard engines in a collection like John Herberg. Like all things, that kind of dedication starts with one boat motor. As with most things on this list, outboard engines tend to be relatively simple and could be a good starting point to learn about small engines. And when you’re done cranking one up, you can head out to the lake for a nice weekend of fishing. Or jump into something like the Dinghy Derby (above), if you’re more adventurous.
Radio-control airplane and cars
Motorized projects don’t always need to be capable of doing work or transporting people. The RC hobby remains an immense and cool place to learn about building things. Airplanes, boats, cars, helicopters…It’s all cool stuff. The gas-powered RC stuff is particularly awesome once you’re neck-deep in the hobby. Airplane modelers build some fantastically accurate replicas as big as ⅓-scale (above). As for RC cars, you can do all kinds of things with them, including race. Above is one our favorite videos of radio-controlled drag racing in Brooklyn.
Tether cars and airplanes
Once upon a time, tether racing was a huge deal in the United States. While there are far fewer venues for it these days, you can still find tether racing in a few places stateside and further afield in Europe and Australia. In tether racing, the motorized vehicle—planes, cars, and boats all still race on tethers—run a circular track on a line (the tether) mounted to a spinning hub on a post in the middle of the track. The cars make short (well under a minute) top-speed runs and attain some incredible speeds with the top-class cars eclipsing 200 miles per hour. The sounds of those fastest cars are simply otherworldly.
Generators
Nothing says a great project like real utility and a rebuilt old generator just might save your bacon. We mean that literally, since emergency power can keep you from having to toss out that most delicious of food items. If you can manage to find a generator and get it running again, that gives you the power to plan for contingencies from storm-induced power outages to zombie-wasteland-scrounging-for-gas apocalypses (Be sure to add a muffler or two, though). Here’s a great generator restoration that we found on the YouTube.
Like we said, we know our readers have every kind of hobby and project imaginable from vintage chainsaws to homebuilt airplanes. Let’s hear what you’d add to this list for the aspiring wrench.LONDON/ISLAMABAD: Malala Yousafzai, the 16-year-old Pakistani girl who ascended to global fame and adoration following her recovery from gunshot wounds in her native Swat Valley of South Western Pakistan and for her book “I Am Malala”, has triggered a long-simmering backlash in Pakistan.
Since her airlift to United Kingdom last year, Malala has not only received free reconstruction surgery on her face and neck, but her father was granted a job by the Pakistani government at a consulate there.
The young girl has also received a multi-million dollar book deal for her recent publication of “I Am Malala” and has enjoyed the company of the world’s movers and shakers.
Malala has also made various television appearances, spoke before the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Meeting with U.S. President Barak Obama and the first lady as an honored guest at the Oval Office for a private audience, speech at the World Bank in Washington and visited Buckingham Palace in London.
A portrait of her, created by British painter Jonathan Yeo, went on display in the National Portrait Gallery in London last month.
U.S President and his family thanked and appreciated her “for her inspiring and passionate work on behalf of girls’ education in Pakistan.”
According to a statement from the White House “The United States joins with the Pakistani people and so many around the world to celebrate Malala’s courage and her determination to promote the right of all girls to attend school and realize their dreams,”.
The only accolade the blithe spirit failed to snag was the Nobel Peace Prize.
According to the International Business Times, “but all this praise has come at a steep price — grumbling voices in Pakistan — and some of the gathering opprobrium has reached Malala’s ears.”
Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported that she has responded to such criticisms by asserting that she is neither a “Western puppet” nor ashamed to be Pakistani. “My father says that education is neither ‘Eastern’ or ‘Western.’ Education is education: it’s the right of everyone,” Malala told the BBC. “The thing is that the people of Pakistan have supported me. They don’t think of me as ‘Western.’ I am a daughter of Pakistan and I am proud that I am a Pakistani.”
She added: “On the day when I was shot, and on the next day, people raised the banners of ‘I am Malala.’ They did not say ‘I am Taliban.’ They support me and they are encouraging me to move forward and to continue my campaign for girls’ education.”
She also cited that she wants to help women and children in other troubled spots and detailed her future ambitions. “We want to help every child in every country that we can,” she said. “We will start from Pakistan and Afghanistan and Syria now, especially because they are suffering the most and they … need our help. Later on in my life I want to [enter] politics and I want to become a leader and to bring the change in Pakistan. I want to be a politician in Pakistan because I don’t want to be a politician in a country which is already developed.”
But some Pakistani bloggers are not convinced of Malala’s credibility or sincerity. “She may not understand everything that is going on around her, but unfortunately she is being used and given a great deal or air time only to push and justify this whole ‘War against Terror’ by the so-called people of justice-democracy-freedom,” one Pakistani commenter bitterly complained. Another skeptic lamented: “It doesn’t matter if she denies [it]. She is, what she is; that is, [a] Western puppet… Yes, you are an American puppet.”
Another blogger declared that Malala could probably never return to Pakistan and would prefer to remain in the West. “She is being managed by the [world’s] largest PR company,” he wrote. “Unfortunately she does not realize that she can never go back to Pakistan. She will be given a British passport in five years time and will become a naturalized Westerner.”
Other bloggers pointed out that Malala was only one of thousands of brave girls in the Swat Valley seeking an education by attending school, still at an immediate threat of the Taliban. “If award should be given because Taliban shot her, then award should be given to each and every girl shot by the Taliban,” one sarcastically declared. “Malala only got [a] magic bullet and magic surgery that didn’t [give] her even a small scar, there are girls [in Swat who] lost their lives and many others with their limbs [lost]. They deserve more.”
Some Pakistan bloggers made even graver accusations. “She is being used for some anti-Islamic purposes,” one angry person charged. “She talks as if there is [a] ban on girl’s education in Pakistan. All she talks is nonsense.” Another ominously added: “[Malala] is in the hands of the West, controlled by the Jews. A conspiracy in reality.”
An Indian blogger blasted her by charging: “She actually meant she is the [whore] of the west. Anything for fame and money.” Another Indian observer commented that Malala would probably fit in perfectly in Pakistan’s deeply corrupt political system. “If the Community Organizer [Obama] with his financial advisors, etc could become the President, Malala Yousafzai could also be the Prime Minister [of Pakistan], with the right people in her government,” he noted. “Since Pakistan became a nation, [it] has deteriorated and survives from foreign aid.”
AFP described the mania surrounding the girl as “Malala Inc.,” noting among other things that she has retained one of the world’s biggest public relations firms, Edelman, which is seeking to transform her into a ”global brand.” Edelman, whose other prominent clients include Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), has also begun to represent Malala’s whole family. Edelman told AFP that there is now a “two-month waiting list” for people who want interview Malala.
Malala herself referred to the whirlwind engulfing her life in her autobiography, insisting that she is the same girl she was in her earlier days in Swat. “My world has changed, but I have not,” she wrote.CLOSE Water tests released on Wednesday revealed high levels of leand in the water at all Ithaca schools in 2005. Journal Staff Video
In a letter sent Wednesday, Superintendent Luvelle Brown announced ICSD would shut off drinking water in all buildings.
Buy Photo Ithaca City School District Superintendent Luvelle Brown. (Photo: NICK REYNOLDS / Staff Photo)Buy Photo
The Ithaca City School District will shut off drinking water in all school buildings until all can be tested for lead and copper levels, the district announced Wednesday afternoon on its website.
Superintendent Luvelle Brown said in a letter on the website that the district was exercising an "abundance of caution" in the wake of the discoveries that schools in the district have not been tested for lead in the water since 2005.
High lead levels in water have been found at Caroline and Enfield elementary schools following tests in August, January and February.
All water sources have now been tested at Caroline and Enfield elementary schools. Ninety-one samples were taken at Caroline Elementary School; of those, 51 are above action level, as defined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. At Enfield Elementary School, 65 samples were taken, and 11 results are above action level.
Theresa Lyczko, a spokeswoman for the Tompkins County Health Department, said approximately 35 children from the schools had been tested for lead and all results came back negative. She said the department maintains its stance that parents should call their pediatricians and health care providers before undergoing testing.
Fall Creek Elementary School (Photo: File Photo)
The district said it is working with the county Health Department, TST BOCES and other agencies to establish a time frame to test the water in all city schools.
"As we are able to clear them so they meet EPA standards, we will be allowed to return water to those buildings," Brown said. "We will do a complete evaluation of all buildings."
Bottled water will be provided to students and staff.
According to the letter, the most recent round of districtwide water testing in Ithaca city schools was conducted in August 2005 and, at the time, showed some school's water samples exceeded action levels of 20 parts per billion, including seven faucets in Ithaca High School; a kitchen fountain in Lehman Alternative; two fountains in DeWitt Middle School; five in Boynton Middle School; 17 fountains at South Hill Elementary; nine in Northeast Elementary; 16 in Fall Creek Elementary (including a fountain in the teacher's lounge 16.5 times above action levels); two at Cayuga Heights Elementary; seven in Beverley J. Martin Elementary; and 12 at Belle Sherman Elementary.
Action levels for lead have since been upgraded to 15 ppb, and every school had multiple fountains exceeding that number a decade ago. Brown said since that information was released, no work on the pipes had taken place, and district officials were looking into whether any actions had taken place following the release of the results in 2005.
According to an email to The Ithaca Journal from EPA spokeswoman Mary Mears, there is no federal law requiring testing of drinking water in schools and child care facilities, except for those that have their own water supply. She added the EPA suggests schools implement programs for reducing lead in drinking water as part of the school’s overall plan for reducing environmental threats.
In the letter to the community Wednesday, Brown said the district would be determining other fixes and what is behind the lead issue, including an investigation into the cause of the delay in notifying parents of the contamination, and securing a third party to evaluate the next steps the district needs to take.
Beverly J. Martin Elementary School (Photo: File Photo)
Action plans include:
Sampling the water in all school buildings for lead and copper levels.
Turning off drinking water sources in all buildings.
Monitoring the usage of hand-washing sinks that exceed the 15 ppb action level.
Sharing new and historical sampling data as it is received.
Develop plans addressing water quality management.
Investigating and evaluating past sampling procedures.
"With those sources shut off, it gives us an opportunity to look at these results scientifically and figure out what could be causing this," Lyczko said. "Right now, the kids aren't drinking the water, and that's what we can do immediately."
Follow Nick Reynolds on Twitter @IJCityWatch.
Read or Share this story: http://ithacajr.nl/1XNfIes"Orchid" redirects here. For other uses, see Orchid (disambiguation)
The Orchidaceae are a diverse and widespread family of flowering plants, with blooms that are often colourful and fragrant, commonly known as the orchid family.
Along with the Asteraceae, they are one of the two largest families of flowering plants. The Orchidaceae have about 28,000 currently accepted species, distributed in about 763 genera.[2][3] The determination of which family is larger is still under debate, because verified data on the members of such enormous families are continually in flux. Regardless, the number of orchid species nearly equals the number of bony fishes and is more than twice the number of bird species, and about four times the number of mammal species.
The family encompasses about 6–11% of all seed plants.[4] The largest genera are Bulbophyllum (2,000 species), Epidendrum (1,500 species), Dendrobium (1,400 species) and Pleurothallis (1,000 species). It also includes Vanilla–the genus of the vanilla plant, the type genus Orchis, and many commonly cultivated plants such as Phalaenopsis and Cattleya. Moreover, since the introduction of tropical species into cultivation in the 19th century, horticulturists have produced more than 100,000 hybrids and cultivars.
Description [ edit ]
High resolution image of orchid
Orchids are easily distinguished from other plants, as they share some very evident, shared derived characteristics, or synapomorphies. Among these are: bilateral symmetry of the flower (zygomorphism), many resupinate flowers, a nearly always highly modified petal (labellum), fused stamens and carpels, and extremely small seeds.
Stem and roots [ edit ]
Anacamptis coriophora. The protocorm is the first organ that will develop into true roots and leaves. Germinating seeds of the temperate orchid. The protocorm is the first organ that will develop into true roots and leaves.
All orchids are perennial herbs that lack any permanent woody structure. They can grow according to two patterns:
Monopodial : The stem grows from a single bud, leaves are added from the apex each year and the stem grows longer accordingly. The stem of orchids with a monopodial growth can reach several metres in length, as in Vanda and Vanilla.
: The stem grows from a single bud, leaves are added from the apex each year and the stem grows longer accordingly. The stem of orchids with a monopodial growth can reach several metres in length, as in and. Sympodial: Sympodial orchids have a front (the newest growth) and a back (the oldest growth).[5] The plant produces a series of adjacent shoots, which grow to a certain size, bloom and then stop growing and are replaced. Sympodial orchids grow laterally rather than vertically, following the surface of their support. The growth continues by development of new leads, with their own leaves and roots, sprouting from or next to those of the previous year, as in Cattleya. While a new lead is developing, the rhizome may start its growth again from a so-called 'eye', an undeveloped bud, thereby branching. Sympodial orchids may have visible pseudobulbs joined by a rhizome, which creeps along the top or just beneath the soil.
Anacamptis lactea showing the two tubers showing the two tubers
Terrestrial orchids may be rhizomatous or form corms or tubers. The root caps of terrestrial orchids are smooth and white.
Some sympodial terrestrial orchids, such as Orchis and Ophrys, have two subterranean tuberous roots. One is used as a food reserve for wintry periods, and provides for the development of the other one, from which visible growth develops.
In warm and constantly humid climates, many terrestrial orchids do not need pseudobulbs.
Epiphytic orchids, those that grow upon a support, have modified aerial roots that can sometimes be a few meters long. In the older parts of the roots, a modified spongy epidermis, called velamen, has the function of absorbing humidity. It is made of dead cells and can have a silvery-grey, white or brown appearance. In some orchids, the velamen includes spongy and fibrous bodies near the passage cells, called tilosomes.
The cells of the root epidermis grow at a right angle to the axis of the root to allow them to get a firm grasp on their support. Nutrients for epiphytic orchids mainly come from mineral dust, organic detritus, animal droppings and other substances collecting among on their supporting surfaces.
Prosthechea fragrans The pseudobulb of
The base of the stem of sympodial epiphytes, or in some species essentially the entire stem, may be thickened to form a pseudobulb that contains nutrients and water for drier periods.
The pseudobulb has a smooth surface with lengthwise grooves, and can have different shapes, often conical or oblong. Its size is very variable; in some small species of Bulbophyllum, it is no longer than two millimeters, while in the largest orchid in the world, Grammatophyllum speciosum (giant orchid), it can reach three meters. Some Dendrobium species have long, canelike pseudobulbs with short, rounded leaves over the whole length; some other orchids have hidden or extremely small pseudobulbs, completely included inside the leaves.
With ageing, the pseudobulb sheds its leaves and becomes dormant. At this stage, it is often called a backbulb. Backbulbs still hold nutrition for the plant, but then a pseudobulb usually takes over, exploiting the last reserves accumulated in the backbulb, which eventually dies off, too. A pseudobulb typically lives for about five years. Orchids without noticeable pseudobulbs are also said to have growths, an individual component of a sympodial plant.
Leaves [ edit ]
Like most monocots, orchids generally have simple leaves with parallel veins, although some Vanilloideae have reticulate venation. Leaves may be ovate, lanceolate, or orbiculate, and very variable in size on the individual plant. Their characteristics are often diagnostic. They are normally alternate on the stem, often folded lengthwise along the centre ("plicate"), and have no stipules. Orchid leaves often have siliceous bodies called stegmata in the vascular bundle sheaths (not present in the Orchidoideae) and are fibrous.
The structure of the leaves corresponds to the specific habitat of the plant. Species that typically bask in sunlight, or grow on sites which can be occasionally very dry, have thick, leathery leaves and the laminae are covered by a waxy cuticle to retain their necessary water supply. Shade-loving species, on the other hand, have long, thin leaves.
The leaves of most orchids are perennial, that is, they live for several years, while others, especially those with plicate leaves as in Catasetum, shed them annually and develop new leaves together with new pseudobulbs.
The leaves of some orchids are considered ornamental. The leaves of the Macodes sanderiana, a semiterrestrial or rock-hugging ("lithophyte") orchid, show a sparkling silver and gold veining on a light green background. The cordate leaves of Psychopsis limminghei are light brownish-green with maroon-puce markings, created by flower pigments. The attractive mottle of the leaves of lady's slippers from tropical and subtropical Asia (Paphiopedilum), is caused by uneven distribution of chlorophyll. Also, Phalaenopsis schilleriana is a pastel pink orchid with leaves spotted dark green and light green. The jewel orchid (Ludisia discolor) is grown more for its colorful leaves than its white flowers.
Some orchids, such as Dendrophylax lindenii (ghost orchid), Aphyllorchis and Taeniophyllum depend on their green roots for photosynthesis and lack normally developed leaves, as do all of the heterotrophic species.
Orchids of the genus Corallorhiza (coralroot orchids) lack leaves altogether and instead wrap their roots around the roots of mature trees and use specialized fungi to harvest sugars.[6]
Flowers [ edit ]
The Orchidaceae are well known for the many structural variations in their flowers.
Some orchids have single flowers, but most have a racemose inflorescence, sometimes with a large number of flowers. The flowering stem can be basal, that is, produced from the base of the tuber, like in Cymbidium, apical, meaning it grows from the apex of the main stem, like in Cattleya, or axillary, from the leaf axil, as in Vanda.
As an apomorphy of the clade, orchid flowers are primitively zygomorphic (bilaterally symmetrical), although in some genera, such as Mormodes, Ludisia, and Macodes, this kind of symmetry may be difficult to notice.
The orchid flower, like most flowers of monocots, has two whorls of sterile elements. The outer whorl has three sepals and the inner whorl has three petals. The sepals are usually very similar to the petals (thus called tepals, 1), but may be completely distinct.
The medial petal, called the labellum or lip (6), which is always modified and enlarged, is actually the upper medial petal; however, as the flower develops, the inferior ovary (7) or the pedicel usually rotates 180°, so that the labellum arrives at the lower part of the flower, thus becoming suitable to form a platform for pollinators. This characteristic, called resupination, occurs primitively in the family and is considered apomorphic, a derived characteristic all Orchidaceae share. The torsion of the ovary is very evident from the longitudinal section shown |
broadcast of the second season, the first season—condensed into 11 one-hour episodes— began airing in July 2014.[32] The fourth episode was cancelled due to similarities with a real life murder.[33] Director Naoyoshi Shiotani apologized for this in his Twitter account. Nevertheless, Funimation streamed the episode.[34] A Blu-ray box set was announced with a scheduled release on October 15, 2014. This set contains both the original first season broadcast and the edited one-hour rerun episodes.[35]
The second series aired on Fuji TV's Noitamina programming block between October 10, 2014 and December 19, 2014.[36] The series was collected in a total of five DVD and Blu-ray volumes between December 17, 2014 and April 15, 2015.[37]
China ban [ edit ]
On June 12, 2015, the Chinese Ministry of Culture listed Psycho-Pass among 38 anime and manga titles banned in China.[38]
Related media [ edit ]
Films [ edit ]
In September 2013, it was announced in the official site of Noitamina that a second season and a new-original theatrical film project was in development.[39] The film was rated as R15+ due to its strong violence scenes including murder and human body's damage.[40][41] On September 2014, the release date was announced for January 9, 2015, Urobuchi and Makoto Fukami are contributing together as the film's writers.[42] A 30-second trailer streamed on Nico Nico Douga on September 5, 2013, showing Shinya, Akane and Ginoza.[43] A 2-minutes trailer, the second promotional video for the film, was released on September 2013, containing footage from the original anime television series.[44] On February, 2016, Funimation released a preview for the Dub version and announced that the film will run over 100 theaters in the United States and Canada.[45][46] The theme song was performed by Ling Tosite Sigure.[47]
In March 2018, it was announced in the livestream of Fuji TV that a three-part theatrical film project is in development, titled Psycho-Pass: Sinners of the System. The first film, titled Case.1 Tsumi to Bachi (Case.1 罪と罰), will premiere on January 25, 2019. The second film, titled Case.2 First Guardian, will premiere in February 15, 2019. The third film, titled Case.3 Onshū no Kanata ni ____, will premiere on March 8, 2019.[48] Naoyoshi Shiotani and Yugo Kanno reprised their roles as the director and music composer, respectively.[49] Ryō Yoshigami wrote the screenplay for the first film, while Fukami returned from the anime series to write the screenplays for the second and third films. Production I.G returned for animation production and Toho is distributing.[50]
A collaboration visual with Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle has also been developed with Akane being the Psycho-Pass character used.[51]
Manga [ edit ]
A manga adaptation illustrated by Hikaru Miyoshi, titled Inspector Akane Tsunemori (監視官 常守朱, Kanshikan Tsunemori Akane), began serialization in Shueisha's Jump Square magazine from November 2, 2012.[52] Its first tankōbon volume was released by Shueisha on February 4, 2013.[53] In November 2013, it was announced that 380,000 copies of the manga were shipped in Japan with three volumes.[54] The manga had over 1 million copies in print as of December 2014.[55]
Another manga titled Psycho-Pass: Inspector Shinya Kogami (監視官 狡噛 慎也, Kanshikan Kōgami Shinya) premiered in the August issue of Mag Garden's Monthly Comic Blade magazine on June 30, 2014. Natsuo Sai is illustrating the series and the story is written by Midori Gotou and Production I.G.[32] The manga is published by Dark Horse Comics in North America since November 9, 2016.[56]
Novels [ edit ]
A novelization of the series by Makoto Fukami has been published by Mag Garden in two volumes released on February 4 and April 4, 2013.[57][58] Shiotani said the novels were more violent than the television series.[12] A prequel titled Namae no Nai Kaibutsu (名前のない怪物, lit. "The Monster with no Name") was written by Aya Takaba, who worked on the television series. Before the novel was released, it was first published on the "Noitamina Novel" page on Noitamina's official website. The novel was released on February 4, 2013.[59]
A new series of novels focusing on four characters by Ryō Yoshigami began publication in the August issue of Hayakawa Publishing's S-F Magazine on June 25, 2014. After the serialization ends, Hayakawa Bunko JA revised the novels and published them in October 2014. Other stories will focus on Choe Gu-sung, Shusei Kagari, Yayoi Kunizuka and Shion Karanomori.[32] Hayakawa Bunko JA also published the Psycho Pass Genesis book in December 2014, which revealed the origins of Sybil and Tonomi Masaoka's involvement.[32]
Video games [ edit ]
Interactive visual novels titled Chimi Chara Psycho-Pass, which feature chibi versions of the series' characters in original stories, were included with Blu-ray Disc volumes of the anime and are playable on any Blu-ray playing device.[60][61] In May 2014, it was announced by Anime News Network that a video game based on the series, named Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness, was being developed by 5pb. for the Xbox One; with a PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 4 port announced in December 2015.[62] The game features an original story written by Urobuchi, which takes place during the time period of the anime's first six episodes and focuses on a new set of protagonists confronting a new enemy on a remote island.[63] NIS America has localized Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness for the PlayStation 4, Vita and an exclusive PC version via Steam. It was released on September 13, 2016 in North America, and on September 16, 2016 in Europe. The Xbox One version of the game will not be localized.[64]
Reception [ edit ]
Fuji TV producer Akitoshi Mori said Psycho-Pass was the first work under his control. Early screenings of the series at the Noitamina Shop & Café attracted few viewers, which bothered Mori. However, as the series continued, the quantity of viewers increased. By the final episode, over 1,000 people had queued to watch the finale even though the venue could only accommodate seventy people. This made Mori happy because he realized how many fans were following and supporting the show; he wanted to see a bigger audience at future screenings.[32] DVDs and Blu-ray discs of the series achieved good sales.[65][66] In April 2014, the series was nominated for the Seiun Award.[67] In the Newtype anime awards from 2013, it was voted as fourth best title of the year.[68] Episode 11 of the series was awarded "Best Episode" in the Noitamina 10th anniversary fan vote. Shinya Kogami, Akane Tsunemori and Shogo Makishima also appeared in such polls as winners of their own categories.[69] Anime News Network also listed as the fifth most accessible anime series for people who have not watched Japanese animation.[70]
The first season has garnered critical acclaim.[71] Rebecca Silverman from Anime News Network praised the show for its "high level of interest" in depicting its dystopian world. However, she said that its violent scenes were so gruesome they might scare viewers.[20][72] Kotaku's Richard Eisenbeis called it a "compelling cyberpunk mystery", praising the society depicted and the series of murders orchestrated by Shogo Makishima. However, he criticized the use of advanced technology and compared it with other science fiction films despite saying that it handled the themes better whereas Makishima's immunity to it was left unexplained.[2] DVD Talk gave high praise to Makishima because of his achievements across the story and his personality.[73] Certain episodes have been referred as "filler" because they are used as a build-up to the climactic ones.[20][74] Bamboo Dong of Anime News Network gave high praise stating that from episode 12, the series was "a real blast to watch" and that she was glad with the development of the protagonist, Akane Tsunemori. However, she severely criticized the plot twist regarding the Sybil System's true identity calling it "one of the stupidest revelations in the history of anime".[75]
Thomas Zoth from The Fandom Post praised the show's focus on the relationships between the protagonists and the development from these. Akane's growth across the series earned major praise by multiple reviewers.[76][77] Zoth enjoyed the series' climactic action scenes between Kogami and Makishima, and the scenes portraying the status quo. He said the sixteenth episode is "Urobuchi's masterpiece."[78][79] Silverman commented on the parallelism between Akane's and Kogami's development, which resulted in an ambiguous ending that should be decided by the viewers.[72] The supporting cast received similar praise by DVD Talk but the reviewer said some were underwhelming and Shion is the least-explored character.[80]
During the streaming of the series, Silverman criticized the animation because of the low lighting levels that might make it hard to understand.[20][72] Hiroko Yamamura from Japanator noted the series' high budget and praised the animation style and the focus on details and technology. She was attracted by its premise and expected the quality to remain consistent across the entire series.[81] Similarly, Jacob Hope Chapman from ANN praised the animation for its high quality.[1] Episode 18, which is known for its flawed animation, was improved for the home media release of the series.[75]
Feedback to Psycho-Pass 2 has ranged from mixed to negative. Dan Rhodes from UK Anime Network noted that Psycho-Pass 2, while entertaining, lacked the twists of the first season and appeal of Gen Urobuchi's writing.[82] Richard Eisenbeis from Kotaku praised the origins of the Sybil System which was unexplained in the first season. While also praising the differences between Akane and the new Inspector, Mika Shimotsuki, Eisenbeis criticized the new antagonist and how much gorier the series was in contrast to the first one.[83] Nick Creamer from Anime News Network was more negative during his review as he felt the new writer, Tow Ubukata, did not make the anime appealing despite his previous enjoyable works. He went on to say "overall, Psycho-Pass 2 stands as one of the most disappointing works I've ever watched to completion," citing it a failure as both a sequel and an independent series.[84]
The first Psycho-Pass film gathered positive reactions winning the 5th "Newtype Anime Award" and the Japan Sci-Fi Con's Seiun Awards.[85][86]
See also [ edit ]
Crime Coefficient zero (out-of-self perception)
Crime Coefficient analysis
Sibyl System
Holism
Holon
Fallacy of composition (Sibyl System is made up of Criminally Asymptomatic individuals, but it itself is not (it has a Crime Coefficient of over 300).)
References [ edit ]From top to bottom: Ivory Lace, Rustic, Moss and Ivy, Woolen Sweater
(yes I am getting my eyebrows done soon to avoid looking like a yeti any longer)
Classic Lolita
Lolita is a Japanese fashion based on Victorian style clothing, etiquette, and modesty. Classic Lolita mostly refers to the color scheme - more demure, earth tones - as well as the style of dress. Most jumperskirts, skirts, or one piece dresses will be in tones of ivory, earth brown, light green, sometimes a pop of color like mint green!
Personally, I have always admired Lolita fashion and if I were to start getting into it and purchasing pieces, I would be partial to Classic Lolita. Victorian fashion is so so so beautiful, elegant, and exquisite, and my closet would explode of it. Petticoats are my weakness. Petticoats and bows. And lace. But alas, the graduate student budget hardly allows me to buy more than sample baggies of eyeshadow, so $50+ coords are not in my foreseeable future. One day. romantic sigh
Some examples of classic Lolita fashion are:
From top to bottom: Petticoat, Innocent World, Star Shine Bright, Chocolate Macaron (and can I please just comment on the fact that "macaron" is spelled with one O, as opposed to the coconut turd, macarOOn with two O-s.)
(I swear I'm getting my eyebrows done)
Visual Kei
Visual Kei is a Japanese fashion based in the music scene. The music varied from orchestral hard rock to punk and electronica. The fashion has spiked hair, crazy makeup, and outfits that are ripped or with chains. On the other hand, they can be absolutely pristine and Victorian-style.
I feel like I went through an unintended Visual Kei phase in the eighth grade...
Google provided the following images:
From top to bottom: Visual Shock, Androgynous Aesthetic, Candelabra, Nephilim
(Can you tell I worked really hard to fit all 4 colors on my itty bitty lid?!)
That's all, folks! Summer classes + work + training are eating me alive. I'll be back with more complete reviews and sassypants pictures after my life decides to slow down a little bit. Sayonara for now, and hope everyone had a safe and fun-filled 4th of July weekend!
Uponaworld Cosmetics released a collection that is inspired by Japanese fashion. It is comprised of four sets of four eyeshadows, and each set is based on a different style of fashion. They are available as loose shadows. At the present moment, the pressed shadows are unavailable, but hopefully they will be back soon!I picked up the sets Mori Girl, Classic Lolita, and Visual Kei. There is also a Gyaru set, but I do not feel like the pinks and blues of that collection are for me.All swatches were done over Too Faced Shadow Insurance, on my NC30 skin with yellow undertones leaning slightly olive/bronze.Here are the swatches! Descriptions in bold below are taken directly from Uponaworld's website.Mori GirlSome examples of Mori Girl fashion from a quick Google search produced the following:EXCLUSIVE: Netflix has renewed its deal with Miramax to keep some of its 700-plus title library within their streaming service. Netflix said that some titles are staying put and others falling out but they would not release the number of titles they are keeping. Although Netflix’s corporate strategy is heavily on developing original content, the library made up roughly 10% of the streaming service’s total content right now.
No terms of the deal have been disclosed, but the deal is surprising given that Netflix chief Ted Sarandos underscored to Deadline earlier this month about the importance of original content. He noted, “What I’m trying to do is take the benefits and the beautiful byproduct of the Internet, which is all about consumer choice, and apply it to movies where no one else has.” In talking about content deals, he only included Disney and The Weinstein Company.
The Miramax library pact with Netflix was set to expire yesterday, May 31. The Miramax library “refresh” comes only months before the streaming service’s deal with Disney kicks in and as its multi-year pact with The Weinstein Company gets underway. In September, Netflix will have the exclusive rights for streaming/pay TV of the latest live-action and animated films from Disney, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Marvel Studios, Pixar Animation Studios, Disneynature and Lucasfilm for all films released this year. That means The Jungle Book, Captain America: Civil War, Zootopia and Alice Through The Looking Glass as well as Finding Dory, Doctor Strange and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
The deal also includes direct-to-video titles and all will be made available for Netflix members to watch instantly in the pay TV window on multiple platforms including television, tablets, computers and mobile phones.
In addition, the two giants pacted on a multi-year catalog deal for Disney classics like Dumbo, Pocahontas and Alice In Wonderland.
The Weinstein Co. deal includes such titles as Django Unchained, Silver Linings Playbook, The Hateful Eight and Philomena to name a few.
With the Miramax library, Netflix keeps hold of such titles as Pulp Fiction, Good Will Hunting, Shakespeare In Love, No Country For Old Men and The English Patient as well as Life Is Beautiful, Amelie, The Crying Game, Strictly Ballroom, My Left Foot and Cinema Paradiso (again, to name only a few).
Miramax has gone through various incarnations in ownership but most recently was bought by Qatar-based media and entertainment company beIN Media Group. The company was originally launched in 1979 by Bob and Harvey Weinstein who now helm The Weinstein Company.
This month, Netflix will release Jurassic Park: The Lost World, this year’s Best Picture Oscar winner Spotlight; in July it drops The Big Short; and in August it will premiere another critical favorite in The Little Prince along with The Fast & The Furious, The Wedding Planner and St. Vincent.
In response to inquiries from Deadline, Netflix said, “We refreshed our agreement with Miramax … summer is a time when we refresh a large part of our film catalogue and this year is no exception.”This November, a wave of student activism drew attention to the problem of racism at colleges and universities in the US. Sparked by protests at the University of Missouri, nicknamed Mizzou, we saw actions at dozens of colleges. It was a spectacular show of strength and solidarity and activists have won many concessions, including new funding, resignations, and promises to rename buildings.
Activists’ grievances are structural — aimed at how colleges are organized and who is in charge, what colleges teach and who does the teaching, and what values are centered and where they come from — but they are also interpersonal. Student activists of color talked about being subject to overtly racist behavior from others and being on the receiving end of microaggressions, seemingly innocuous commentary from others that remind them that they do not, as a Claremont McKenna dean so poorly put it, “fit the mold.” That dean lost her job after that comment. Many student activists seem to embrace the policing of offensive speech, both the hateful and the ignorant kind.
Negative reactions to this activism was immediate and widespread. Much of it served only to affirm the students’ claims: that we are still a racist society and that we, at best, tolerate our young people of color only if they stay “in their place.” Other times, it was confusion about the kind of world these young people seemed to want to live in. Why, some people asked, would anyone — especially a member of a marginalized population — want to shut down free speech?
Well, it may be that the American love of free speech is waning. The Pew Research Center released data measuring attitudes about censorship. They asked Americans whether they thought the government should be able to prevent people from saying things that are “offensive to minorities.” Millennials — that is, today’s college students — are significantly more likely than any other generation to say that they should.
In fact, the data show a steady decrease in the proportion of Americans who are eager to defend speech that is offensive to minorities. Only 12% of the Silent generation is in favor of censorship, compared to 24% of the Baby Boomers, 27% of Gen X, and 40% of Millennials. Notably, women, Democrats, and non-whites are all more likely than their counterparts to be willing to tolerate government control of speech.
Americans still stand out among their national peers. Among European Union countries, 49% of citizens are in favor of censorship, compared to 28% of Americans. If the Millennials have anything to say about it, though, that might be changing. Assuming this is a cohort effect and not an age effect (that is, assuming they won’t change their minds as they age), and with the demographic changes this country will see in the next few decades, we may very soon look more like Europe on this issue than we do now.
Re-posted at Pacific Standard.About
What is the Lightning Foundry? The Lightning Foundry is a project to re-create super-long discharge effects normally found only in lightning. Two 10-story Tesla Coil towers will fill an area the size of a football field with lightning-like discharges hundreds of feet in length. If we trigger super-long discharge effects the arcs could strike considerably further.
Final Update --- Although our project didn’t get funded, rest assured that we’ll continue to scour the surplus markets for obtainium and build as we can. Check our website from time to time for progress updates.
Thanks again to everyone for supporting this fundraiser and getting the word out there. Just over 36,000 people visited this page during the campaign! We actually achieved 10% of the funding goal, which is *by far* the closest the Lightning Foundry has ever come to reality. It was great to experience how many people out there value the pure research potential of this project and the mysteries it might help resolve.
And a special thanks to Kickstarter, for revolutionizing how new projects are funded. Cutting-edge advances in scientific research are returning to the hands of independent scientists, engineers, and inventors.
A ‘Million Volt Ride’ in the top electrode of the 40kW experimental coil in San Francisco… G. Leyh directing an arc at a 10ft stepladder.
Jamie Hyneman directing an arc at a test subject from the top of the 40kW experimental coil, using his custom salt-water cannon.
Mike Kennan and his ‘Tesla Roadster,’ the world’s first [and currently only] vehicle powered completely by wireless power. [Click here for video]Series: Mini Challenge (Contact)
Cars: Mini Challenge Cooper AM, R56 Cooper S & JCW
Teams: ExcelR8 // AReeve Motorsport
Location: Snetterton 300
Start / Finish Line: 52 27’48.2″N 0 56’41.0″E (Track Map / Track Guide)
“That car is in a completely different Universe to the Cooper AM…”
Testing 3 similar looking cars from the same manufacturer in a single morning, you’d be forgiven for assuming they’d all be similar to drive.
As it turned out, comparing a Cooper AM car to a full fat, JCW Class car with its Quaife sequential box and a library of high competition racing parts installed is like comparing chalk to cheese.
On a cold, windy and occasionally wet day at Snetterton, I arrived to a sight of pure joy. A near completely empty circuit.
This is the quietest test day I’ve ever seen at a major UK racing circuit.
There’s a solitary F3 car and a Radical Spyder at the bottom of the pit lane.
Motorbase are running MINI Challenge title winner David Grady, claiming his prize for winning the UK Mini Challenge Championship. Aside from the thrum of BTCC media people in box number 1, the place was eerily quiet.
Perfect for a test day with a difference. I’m here to test 3 very, very different Mini Challenge cars.
Mini Challenge: The Series
2017 will be the 16th anniversary of this single make series with the Mini Challenge Cooper AM, Pro and Open Class cars running under the MSVR banner. The JCW class cars will support British GT in 2017, making the series an ideal launchpad for drivers looking to graduate up the racing ladder.
The championship winner of the JCW class gets a BTCC test drive as part of the prize package for the 2017 season.
Entry is extremely inexpensive at the AM level, with a starting budget of £10,000 enough to convert a donor car to the basic race specification.
Costs increase the further through the categories you progress, but it’s easy to avoid actually owning and running a car.
For example, a full test day with Areeves Motorsport is in the region of £550 + insurance and “arrive and drive” days in their R56 is £2795 + insurance per round.
For someone looking to get more racing experience, a bit of budget can go a long way in this series.
The Cars
On the day, we ran 3 different cars. The AM (entry level) car, an R56 Cooper S (Open Class) and the John Cooper Works (JCW) Class Car.
Mini Cooper AM Class
The Cooper AM car uses the same 1.6lt normally aspirated engine as the track day Cooper. The regulations allow a little deviation on suspension damper choice, as long as they’re single way.
Treaded tyres and fixed transmission regulations also help to reduce budgets, whilst the specification allows competitors to cost effectively upgrade their cars to Cooper Pro spec after a season or two of racing.
The Ride
The Cooper AM is a very soft and compliant car, set up to be easy to manipulate; weight transfer is slow and predictable. This car is very, very easy to drive. For a beginner of any age this car would be perfect.
Leaving the pit lane I immediately found I had the confidence to push the car to see where the grip levels were.
The window to get this car moving around on the edge of its available grip is very easy to find and play around in.
Getting the car to the limit of the available grip in the tyres is as simple as turning in a little too aggressively.
This exposes the nature of the car; it’s prone to understeer unless you’re particularly aggressive at turn in with the steering wheel or you’re trailing in a little too emphatically on the brakes. The resulting oversteer is very easy to manage and you soon learn to adapt your driving style to the car.
The Cooper AM is so compliant that it’s easy to recover any over adventurous corner entries. The track biased treaded tyres give plenty of grip and let go very, very gently. This is important in a track tyre aimed at novices. They’re predictable.
There’s also just enough power that you can get away with a lot more mistakes then the less forgiving but equally exciting Funcup Evo 1 car.
Onboard
I’ve included the footage from my first few laps in the car rather than an all out fastest lap because I think it’s quite interesting to see how aggressive you can be with it. This is a terrific beginner’s car, inspiring confidence from the first few corners:
If you can carry enough speed through the corners, you feel a little push (understeer) on power. It’s manageable; just apply the throttle smoothly and the tyres hold on. I was initially surprised by the sensation of throttle on understeer on a corner exit; not something I’ve been used to in my rear wheel drive car. Nevertheless the experience was completely predictable and easy to manage.
R56 Cooper S (Open Class)
This is Aaron Reeve’s Open Class R56 Cooper S.
It’s most definitely a step up from the much more basic AM car. In the cockpit I’m greeted by a fully lit and rather gorgeous Cosworth dash. The interior is stripped bare and there’s just a racier feel to the whole thing. Aaron talks me through the key differences in the car.
Regulations in the Open category are a little more open to interpretation. Power is limited to 180 bhp per ton, meaning that equality on performance can be enforced while encouraging the mechanically minded to tinker for optimal performance.
This is precisely where Aaron excels, as the man who built it, he knows this car inside out. Sympathetic to the challenge I face in my first day of driving front wheel drive cars on circuit, he explains how his diff setup helps with traction on the exit of slow and medium speed corners.
This is the essence of the Open Class, regulations are relatively open allowing drivers and teams to enhance their cars though proper engineering. This is a much more tricked out racing car, but still perfectly affordable (second hand around the £10k mark).
The Ride
They said this car would be quite different to the Cooper AM. I didn’t think it would be. It was. Exiting the pitlane, I’m spinning up the front tyres in every gear.
Aaron had explained, and now it sunk in. This car has a turbo and a lot more torque than the AM car I’d just been driving. It wasn’t the tyres spinning that made me put this all together, though; it was the dump valve and the “pssshhhhht!” sound with every gearchange.
Tyre warming was more of an issue with this car. With warming fronts but cold rears, initial turn in oversteer was quite exaggerated. Aaron explained a technique to help me warm the rears more quickly. You sort of flick the car into a corner at first, quickly loading the outside rear. This will, of course, induce a slide but the outcome worked just fine.
Onboard
Within a few laps I’m upto speed. This is a faster car, but it still has that familiar, easily forgiving nature to it. I find the setup suits me well, a little entry oversteer is easy to induce and there’s much less push (understeer) on the corner exit. Aaron’s differential setup is helping me along just fine.
During my test session, I’m catching the JCW class car with ease. This bodes well for my final drive – or so I thought.
Mini JCW Class
When you read the spec of these cars it looks like someone decided Christmas was coming early.
The 2017 spec JCW features a lightened shell, 2.0lt turbo engine with Forge intercooler, radiator and induction system, delivering 255bhp through a Quaife sequential dogbox, bespoke Quaife driveshafts, a Tran X plated LSD and a lightweight flywheel.
The pedalbox is OBP with Alcon master cylinders, with the final stopping power provided by Mintex pads.
It looks and sounds like a seriously different car to the others.
The Ride
While I’m getting my briefing I have to remind myself to mentally record the procedure for getting started.
I’ve never driven a car with a sequential box before: clutch down, pull stick backwards while holding the little blue paddle at the top of the stick. You’re in 1st gear. Let clutch up to pull away, pull backwards for 2nd gear, and so on. But, use the clutch for downshifts!
There’s also a little sensor on the top of the shifter that seems to kill the engine for a tiny fraction to assist the shift.
I’m warned: don’t rest your hand on the stick because it’ll make the engine grabby, a little like it’s misfiring.
Suddenly I realise I’m sat in a full fat racing car. The JCW is a universe apart from the AM and R56. In fact it’s closer to a BTCC spec car, only smaller. Pace wise it’ll probably scare most touring cars.
I’ve been lucky all morning in an unseasonably dry Snetterton. Not some much for the big one; the heavens open and we put wets on the car.
I’m a lot more cautious leaving the pits. I instinctively want to press the clutch on the downshift. While the sequential I also have to learn a fundamentally different car. The JCW is stiffer, and far less tolerant of my spikey inputs.
The brakes are immense, so much so that in the wet I’m locking the fronts. A quick turn of the brake bias to the rear and it gets easier but that problem doesn’t completely go away. I’m shifting at too high an engine speed – engine braking, of course is happening at the front of the car.
I go straight on at turn two and provide Mr Palmer with a free grass cut. You’re welcome.
The JCW is an angry little car.
The challenge in the wet of course is to find the grip, but I found myself initially overwhelmed and it took a lap to start to become acclimatised in this new cockpit. Trying to find the best wet line, learning a new gearbox, a new car… This is harder than I thought it’d be.
Onboard
After a few laps it all starts to settle down. The JCW is a car you have to respect in the wet. It wants to spin the front tyres in almost every gear and is lively at the rear to put it mildly.
There are, of course some sweet moments where the car feels planted and communicative. As I near the end of the session I’m becoming more comfortable, gears and braking are getting smoother and my warmer tyres have found enough grip to start providing respectable lap times.
My time in the cockpit is over too soon. The JCW is a car you need to spend some time in to fully come to terms with. It’s racing platform provides the access to a stage you’d need to develop for touring car and GT classes. A serious piece of racing hardware!
Mini Challenge – a Great Entry Level, Intermediate and Pro Series
Mini Challenge is a very complete package for drivers at any level. The JCW series supports British GT, while Open, Pro and AM classes are all running under the MSVR banner.
Images: courtesy of Oliver ReadCLOSE Officials believe a video that appears to show a man kicking a squirrel off a cliff was shot at the Grand Canyon.
A half-dressed man appeared to kick a squirrel off the edge of the Grand Canyon in a video that has gone viral. (Photo: 12 News)
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is offering a reward of up to $15,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of a half-dressed man who appeared to kick a squirrel off the edge of the Grand Canyon in a video that has gone viral.
A spokeswoman for Grand Canyon National Park said Sunday that officials believe the video was shot at the natural wonder which gave Arizona its nickname, and they are working with YouTube to obtain additional information.
"If he is prosecuted and found guilty, he could spend up to six months in jail and be fined $5,000," park spokeswoman, Maureen Oltrogge, said Wednesday morning.
There are different versions of the video that was uploaded to YouTube and posted to the Daily Mail's website.
YouTube has removed the clip Republic Media linked to in its Sunday story because it violated the company's term's of service. But clips of news coverage of the incident are still available via search.
The video shows two shirtless men standing on a cliff.
One scene shows a man shooting video while another man dressed in black shorts lays a trail of food to the edge.
Another scene shows the man in black shorts putting on his shoe. A squirrel follows the trail of food to the edge.
In another scene, the man in black shorts appears to kick the squirrel over the edge.
PETA wants anyone with information to contact Grand Canyon Chief Ranger Bill Wright at 928-638-7888.
Read or Share this story: http://azc.cc/1sdlQ2R(Once a month, The Exponent is featuring posts from members of the Exponent II board. This is the second in the series. Suzette serves as the Treasurer of Exponent II on the Executive Board – and also writes the 4th Sunday Poll on this blog. She lives in the Washington DC area.)
Single and chaste is a precarious way to live. There are (at least) two sides to the situation. On one side, making the difficult and committed choice of chastity gives confidence and grows sensitivity for ones own body. One the other side, this unnatural way of life, leaves a hurt that is difficult and sorrowful.
Last year, an article in the New York Times generated a lot of discussion around this topic in my single social circles. The author describes her decision to leave her celibate, Mormon life to explore sexual experiences. She writes: “Most troubling was the fact that as I grew older I had the distinct sense of remaining a child in a woman’s body; virginity brought with it arrested development on the level of a handicapping condition, like the Russian orphans I’d read about whose lack of physical contact altered their neurobiology and prevented them from forming emotional bonds. Similarly, it felt as if celibacy was stunting my growth; it wasn’t just sex I lacked but relationships with men entirely. Too independent for Mormon men, and too much a virgin for the other set, I felt trapped in adolescence.”
On one side
This article states that the lack of touch leaves one feeling adolescent and handicap, but, for me, that same lack builds a deeper consciousness of my body. I consider my sexual feelings deeply because I am compelled to consistently reconcile my beliefs and my passions. I have considered my choices and fully own my sexuality. This depth of feeling creates, for me, a keener understanding of intimate relationships, rather than a feeling of adolescence.
Additionally, I grow tired of the word “virgin” being tied to ideas like naive, simple, scared, fragile, and ashamed. I would like to see the word make a shift to connect with ideas like courageous, determined, strong, clean, and sound … all attributes of a fully aware and responsible adult.
On the other side
I give the author credit for describing a situation that has my complete empathy. Living chaste, at arms length with ones sexuality, into mid-adulthood is a hard way to live. Sex is a normal part of adult life. It is, however, a missing part of my live or the lives my friends who live single and chaste. We are not only missing the act of sex, but the intimacy of shared living.
Many adults live without sex for a few years into adulthood while they finish college or “find the right one”, but we live without sex for an additional 15, 20 years or more. Over time, this physical isolation changes us; creating a wound in body and spirit. It is a dark hurt of longing, unsatisfied yearning, aloneness, and insufficient closeness.
The situation is exacerbated by the feeling that this wound is invisible to our married brothers and sisters who see only the benefits of a chaste life. It seems that for them there is no real difference between chastity at age 17 and chastity at age 40. Their sermons about the benefits of saving ourselves for marriage don’t fall on deaf ears, but seem to lack understanding. The emphasis on “not slipping up in the backseat” misses the mark because |
]
In 2013, Digimarc, a company representing Elsevier, told the University of Calgary to remove articles published by faculty authors on university web pages; although such self-archiving of academic articles may be legal under the fair dealing provisions in Canadian copyright law,[153] the university complied. Harvard University and the University of California, Irvine also received takedown notices for self-archived academic articles, a first for Harvard, according to Peter Suber.[154][155][156]
Months after its acquisition of Academia.edu rival Mendeley, Elsevier sent thousands of takedown notices to Academia.edu, a practice that has since ceased following widespread complaint by academics, according to Academia.edu founder and chief executive Richard Price.[157][158]
After Elsevier acquired the repository SSRN in May 2016 academics started complaining that some of their work has been removed without notice. The action was explained as a technical error.[159]
Sci-Hub and LibGen Lawsuit controversy [ edit ]
In 2015 Elsevier filed a lawsuit against the sites Sci-Hub and LibGen, which make available copyright protected articles for free. Elsevier also claimed illegal access to institutional accounts.[160][161] Multitudes of researchers, writers, and artists wrote an open letter in support of Sci-Hub and LibGen.[162]
Imprints [ edit ]
Imprints are brand names in publishing. Elsevier uses its imprints to market to different consumer segments. Many of them have previously been the company names of publishers that were purchased by Reed Elsevier.
See also [ edit ]
List of Elsevier periodicals
2collab, a free researcher collaboration tool launched by Elsevier in 2007 and discontinued in 2011
Sci-Hub, a website providing free access to otherwise paywalled academic papers on a massive scale that is involved in a legal case with Elsevier
References [ edit ]
Citations [ edit ]
Sources [ edit ]Universal Pictures is teaming with MRC for the project, which Jackson is co-writing and producing but not directing. Instead, a longtime protege will sit in the big chair.
Universal has landed Peter Jackson’s next big fantasy project, the adaptation of Philip Reeve’s science-fiction fantasy book series, Mortal Engines.
Jackson and Fran Walsh, his wife and partner in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies, wrote the script with their collaborator Philippa Boyens. Jackson will not sit in the director’s chair for this one, instead handing helming duties to longtime protege Christian Rivers, who will make his feature directorial debut with the fantasy.
Universal, which announced the news Monday, is teaming with frequent partner MRC on the project, co-financing the film together. Universal also will serve as worldwide distributor, with production slated to begin in the spring in New Zealand.
First published by Scholastic in 2001, the four-book series is set in a future world devastated ecologically and technologically and where certain cities such as London are run on engines and mobility, giving them the ability to prey on others for resources. The story centers on a teen named Tom Natsworthy who, along with a young woman from a territory known as the Outlands, uncovers a mystery that could change the world order.
Mortal Engines was followed by Predator’s Gold, Infernal Devices and A Darkling Plain.
Jackson fell for the books’ trapping of steampunk, a genre that combines Victorian Age aesthetic and futuristic technologies, with trimmings like airships thrown in. He and Walsh have been quietly working on an adaptation since 2009, when he optioned the rights from Scholastic, and recently his longtime manager, Ken Kamins, brought it to MRC. (Kamins will serve as an executive producer on Mortal Engines.)
“Peter, Fran, Philippa and Christian are all visionary storytellers with the gift of turning their passion projects into beloved blockbusters for a worldwide audience,” Universal Pictures' Donna Langley said in making the announcement.
The movie will be the first time that Walsh, Boyens and Jackson have written a project that Jackson has not directed. Rivers slides into the chair having spent the majority of his 25-year career working closely with Jackson, beginning as a storyboard artist, moving into supervising visual effects and finally serving as splinter unit director on the Hobbit trilogies, where he was involved in many of the action set pieces. He shared a Oscar for his work on Jackson’s 2005 film King Kong, and recently served as second unit director on the remake of Pete’s Dragon.
“Christian is one of my closest collaborators,” said Jackson, “The combination of emotion and jaw-dropping visuals in Mortal Engines makes this the perfect movie for his move into feature directing. What Christian intends to do with Philip Reeve’s terrific story is going to result in an original and spectacular movie. I wish I could see it tomorrow!”
Said Rivers: “Mortal Engines is one of those stories that was made for the big screen. A fantastical, futuristic world that has to be seen to be believed. At its heart though, it’s a beautiful love story and a richly complex character driven adventure. To be the director who gets to bring Philip Reeve’s incredible universe to life is a dream come true.”
Jackson will produce with Walsh, along with Zane Weiner (LOTR, Hobbit trilogies), Amanda Walker (Hobbit) and Scholastic’s Deborah Forte (The Golden Compass, Goosebumps). Boyens will co-produce.
Law firm Nelson Davis repped Walsh, Boyens and Rivers. Reeve is repped by Philippa Milnes-Smith at Lucas Alexander Whitley Ltd. in the U.K.Music streaming service Spotify is updating its iOS app today with features reminiscent of two other popular apps out today, Snapchat and Tinder and their press-to-play and swiping gestures. Perhaps not a moment too soon, considering Snapchat’s potential interest in a music service of it own.
Specifically, a new Touch Preview option lets users listen to a song by pressing their finger on it; and you can now swipe left to save a song to your collection, or swipe right to add it to the current listening queue. The features will be coming to other platforms in the future, with Android next, a spokesperson tells me.
The move comes at a crossroads of sorts for Spotify on mobile. On the one hand, it’s looking to drive more usage of its mobile apps, capitalising on the fact that 52% of Spotify usage is already happening on phones and tablets among its 60 million (15 million paid) users. On the other, the very limited real estate of a phone screen, and the general problems with music discovery when you have too much choice (30 million tracks, in Spotify’s case) makes using these apps for discovery kind of a pain, leading to a reduction in how much potential use they could drive.
Spotify acknowledges this conundrum itself.
“For decades, music fans have had to rely on a rather clumsy way of scanning through songs, albums and playlists,” Sten Garmark, VP of Product at Spotify, says in a blog post announcing the new features. “With Touch Preview we’re taking music discovery to the next level, offering our listeners a unique and entirely new way of finding out what to listen to. It means less time looking for the perfect music, and more time actually listening to it.”
There are other reasons why Spotify may have been keen to add these features.
Snapchat’s press-to-action feature, whether it’s to view an image or a video, has turned into something of a goldmine for the company — one that it’s reportedly looking to charge up to $750,000 per pop to use — because when it comes to advertising, it’s a way of ensuring that users are paying attention (figuratively and literally). In the case of Spotify, it’s really to hold attention so far rather than to monetise. The company does not plan to add adds “at this time” into previews, a spokesperson tells me. But that does not rule out the option in the future.
Both the swipe and press features tap into ways of interacting with apps that are now becoming increasingly ubiquitous with a particular age group, specifically those under 30. While Spotify has built out how it serves older and more high end customers (through in-car systems, integrations with fancy hi-fi equipment and so on) adding these gestures fits with a demographic that Spotify’s increasingly trying to make sure that it continues to court — not least if Snapchat does move ahead with those music services.
This is the first time that either a press-to-play or swipe feature has been added into Spotify but not the first time to preview, which was first unveiled as a priority back in 2013 when Spotify first started to add in more social features. Interestingly, Spotify says it plans to bring the “press” feature even to non-touch devices.
“The ability to preview is already available in most aspects of Spotify. Whether it’s Browse, album or playlist view you can already preview tracks. If there are other areas where we think it might improve the service we’ll definitely look at adding Touch Preview,” the spokesperson says. “In terms of other platforms, it’s a mobile first product obviously (android will come next) but we are looking at getting it to desktop in one form or another.”There’s lots of good things about the iterative development model. You start with something very basic, and slowly build it up, adding layers of functionality, optimisation or polish – testing and retesting with your customers to ensure that the software and their needs are coming into congruence.
And then there’s Second Life’s software development, which is sort of iterative, but just seems to stop dead on release.
Second Life’s features iterate through previews, betas and release-candidates, all the way up to the point that the feature is actually released to the broader customer-base for the first time and then… development stops – unless there’s some serious bugs that need fixing, in which case they’re gotten to… eventually.
And there’s the thing. In iterative development, the release in front of the customers is just a step towards a goal. That goal being a level of polish where the customers can (metaphorically) see their faces in it.
Second Life’s features don’t seem to get that polish. A feature gets a version one release, and then development rushes off in some other direction, without sticking around to assess, refine, adapt, optimise and polish the feature. It remains a sheenless first-revision until eventually someone comes along and replaces it with something entirely different (cf. Second Life Viewer 2).
There’s a reason that Second Life often seems so rough and unpolished. That’s because it is. It’s composed mostly of rough parts that just haven’t really seen any dedicated iteration since release. It always seems as if someone planned to do more, but it just never really happened.
Actually providing customers with features that gleam with ongoing attention would probably make a heck of a difference to just about every part of Second Life.
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Tags: Opinion, Second Life, Second Life viewer, Second Life viewer 2, software, Virtual Environments and Virtual WorldsSnapchat has filed for a temporary restraining order against Reggie Brown, the man who claims to have invented the idea for disappearing messages. According to court documents filed today, the ousted founder allegedly leaked confidential information to the press, prompting Snapchat to file a motion with the court.
Within the motion, Snapchat’s counsel Quinn Emanuel wrote that Brown has refused to comply with the Protective Order, which designates almost all of the information provided in the case as confidential.
Brown admitted to having leaked information (including these deposition videos on Business Insider) and he “reserves the right” to continue leaking court materials to the press, says the filing.
If the court grants the temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction request, Brown and his lawyers will be subject to fines, contempt sanctions, and a number of other punishments including reimbursement of resources and even dismissal of the lawsuit altogether.
The filing states that Snapchat would incur irreparable harm if more of its confidential information were to enter the public arena. Apparently, the company has submitted materials related to future business plans, sensitive personal information about the defendants, as well as thousands of pages worth of sensitive financial information in the discovery portion of the trial.
Here’s a direct excerpt from the filing:
The requested relief is necessary to prevent great or irreparable injury to Snapchat. Snapchat has produced substantial amounts of commercially sensitive and private information in this case, including among other things highly confidential financial and investment information related to Snapchat’s business, sensitive information regarding Snapchat’s business plans, and private, personal communications of individual third parties subject to rights of privacy under the California Constitution. Plaintiff and his counsel purport to reserve the right to disclose any and all such information to the public at any time. Indeed, plaintiff has apparently scheduled imminent “exclusive” interviews with additional media outlets to discuss this case. In the absence of the relief sought, it is highly likely that plaintiff and his counsel will commit additional violations of the Protective Order.
The motion mentions that Reggie Brown plans to give an “exclusive interview” to GQ magazine.
It’s also worth noting that Snapchat investors, who are named as defendants in the case, have changed their legal representation. As you may recall, there’s been some drama in the lawyer department during this never-ending legal battle.
Originally, Snapchat was represented by Cooley LLP, and then changed in April to Quinn Emanuel. Brown then filed a complaint with the court claiming that Quinn Emanuel had, for a very short time, represented him. After a few months, the court decided to deny Brown’s motion to disqualify Snapchat’s representation.
Now, Snapchat’s investors have switched legal representation, from Quinn Emanuel to Durie Tangri, LLP. We’ve reached out to both Quinn Emanuel and Durie Tangri, as well as some Snapchat investors to see why this switch was made.
Here’s the full text of the motion for a Restraining Order:
Snapchat Files Restraining OrderI once was the guy you are talking about.
Should I have been fired? Probably yes, although not for the reasons you think.
I was working in a 9-5 Java shop. I only had two gripes with it: 9-5 and Java.
Unfortunately, I could not articulate it this clearly (read: not at all) back then: I was fresh out of college, making fantastic money, Java was a white-hot technology (yes, this was in the past century :), the domain was interesting, colleagues nice… yet I knew something is wrong, but I couldn’t pinpoint what.
I believe there are a lot of developers in the same shoes, but they have no idea there’s a need for, or the possibility of, a radical change. Alternatively, they think everything around them is OK and ‘the problem is all inside their head.’
I belonged to the second group: believing that all the uneasiness I was experiencing was caused by my introverted nature, unfamiliarity with J2EE and related enterprise technologies, the super-long commute etc. and all I had to do is to ‘man up’ and deal with it.
Time passed, and it didn’t get any better: I found some painkillers though: Python, then later Ruby and blogging. Writing my blog or hacking on OSS in Ruby not only dulled the pain, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself during those activities.
I realized I have a knack for writing. I appeared a few times on the front page of del.icio.us, dzone, and reddit - people seemed to like my Ruby, Rails and Web 2.0 (remember that it was a buzzword once upon a time?) articles.
One day, an Indian gentleman contacted me offering to set up an Internet startup together - me doing everything related to the development of the web application, and he as the business development/marketing guy.
I immediately said ‘yes’ and went on an incredible ride to Bangalore, India - I lived among the locals, worked 20 hours per day, overwhelmed by the vivid colors, irresistible tastes and intense smells that are so unique to India. But this is a story for another post.
You are probably thinking right now: Cool story bro, but what what is the point?
The point is: After going through this experience, I realized that I’m a born digital nomad. A restless traveler. A bootstrapper. An entrepreneur. A startup idea validator. In short, pretty much the opposite of a 9–5 coder, working on a monolithic enterprise application, taking a week or two off on occasions, otherwise confined to a cubicle.
And that is the reason they should have fired me - I was standing out like a sore thumb. If there ever was a mismatch between an organization and employee, well… my case belonged to a top 10.
I was doing a good enough job - not outstanding, but not too shabby either (hustling on the side or not): we were using SCRUM, and I usually finished my tasks by the end of the sprint. Thus, lack of performance wouldn’t be a good reason for firing me.
However, my colleagues noticed that I’m just… different. As time went by, it took a toll on team morale and cohesion. So after the India experience, I decided to leave, and it was the best decision of my life. I’m a happy remote worker ever since.
Now I have the opposite problem: I’m enjoying the work I’m doing so much that I have to force myself to find time for the family and leisure. Quite the opposite I went through in my initial job.
Of course, this is my experience. Your guy probably has a very different set of issues.
Conclusion: it depends on the situation, the reasons your employee has for this behavior, the impact it has on your team, the long-term ramifications etc. You have to find out whether you can make this relationship work, or there are too many downsides: mismatch between him and his colleagues, between him and the management, he is simply not the right guy for this position (see my example above) etc. If that is the case, it’s in the best interest of both parties to say goodbye.
I know it sounds though, especially for an employee, but firing shouldn’t be viewed as something utterly bad, if necessary, move: but rather as a new beginning for both parties.
It is also possible the problem is worth solving (sometimes downright trivial) and then it’s a win-win again.
By solving I don’t mean finding creative ways to ensure the employee doesn’t work on his/her side project: that’s not a solution, but a surface treatment of symptoms, deepening, rather than fixing the problems.
The solution is a mutually beneficial setup where the employe can thrive, delivering great value to the company. Sometimes this can be found only outside of the organization (as in my particular case), but it’s possible that with a few tweaks, it can work within!
Don’t keep the elephant in the room. Communicate and find the solution. There is always one, no matter how tough it looks!
Good luck.
Would you like to see more great content like this? Please upvote for 'yes'!A year ago, a lot of my Twitter friends were raving about Sketch and I thought it was really interesting as well.
That article that I linked to was what really intrigued me about Sketch. Meng To, a designer that I’ve been following for quite some time, really was a big promoter of it. It seemed like such a great tool that was perfect for UI/UX designers. Although I really wanted to try Sketch out, I didn’t want to get out of my comfort zone. And everyone at my job used Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, so I told myself that I would try it out later.
Time for something new
I recently took on a new role as a product designer for SmartRecruiters and on my first day at work (March 2nd), I had a conversation with my fellow designer, Jason Hegyessy about the tools and processes of the design team.
Me: So what does the team use? Photoshop? Sketch?
Jason: I’ve been using Sketch and I really like it. You’re free to use whatever you would like. Your machine has Adobe Creative Cloud, so you can still use Photoshop if that’s what you want.
Me: I think I’m gonna give Sketch a try. I’ve wanted to learn it and now is the perfect time to finally give it a try.
Veering away from what you’re already comfortable with is always nerve-wracking, especially when you’re doing it at your new job. But I’ve always thought that the best way to learn is by diving right in, so I decided that I would immerse myself in it for 30 days. If it sped up and improved my current workflow, then I would make the switch permanent.
Teaching an old dog new tricks
I received my first project at work, and I was off to the races. After reading through the spec and a doing a few sketches, it was time to finally use Sketch. I opened it up and started designing. Everything was pretty straightforward, and although there were a few nuances, I was quickly getting the hang of it.
One thing that did slow me down quite a bit was not knowing the shortcuts. As a Photoshop user for 10+ years, I could work incredibly fast because I did everything with the keyboard. Sketch keyboard shortcuts were quite different, and that was extremely frustrating to me. In order to learn the keyboard shortcuts, I took some advice from Google designer Jean-Marc Denis and decided to hide my toolbar.
Look Ma, no toolbars!
It was a bit painful at first, but I finally learned most of the shortcuts and have since went back to using the toolbar.0 SHARES Facebook Twitter
Hello and welcome to Part IV of the Makoto Shinkai series. In Part III, we took a look at the first part of an anime adaptation of the Light Novel ef: A Tale of the Two called ef – A Tale of Memories. This time we will take a look at the back half of that adaptation, ef – A Tale of Melodies, in which Makoto Shinkai also had a hand in creating as he was on the storyboard team during its production!
Let’s jam!
The Story (Stories)
Just like with Memories, there are two major stories being told here.
The first pertains to the characters of Yuuko and Yuu. These two were supporting characters in Memories, but now they take the center stage as the main characters here in Melodies. Yuuko and Yuu are childhood friends ever since they met each other at an orphanage. One day, Yuu tragically loses his younger sister in an earthquake. Because of this, Yuu pushes Yuuko away, but regrets every bit of it when he discovers how brutal her life had become after leaving the orphanage.
The second story has to deal with Kuze and Mizuki. Mizuki was introduced to Kuze by Renji’s mom when she visited Renji one summer in Australia. Mizuki heard a beautiful song played by the violin one day, and Renji’s mom insisted that Mizuki and Kuze spend time together. Mizuki and Kuze spend a few days together inside Kuze’s barren home and it leads to Mizuki falling in love With Kuze. Eventually, Mizuki confesses to Kuze, but shortly after, Kuze began pushing Mizuki away to avoid hurting her due to something going on in his life. This doesn’t deter Mizuki, however, as she is determined to stay by his side no matter what it takes. She goes to some pretty big lengths for Kuze to try and make him happy and it makes for a pretty interesting story. More on Kuze in the characters section because they do pull a bit of deception over your eyes with him.
These stories, while good, were said to have a lesser impact than that of the original stories from Memories. There has been an outcry from fans because of this as many feel that the first part of the series was clearly superior to the second part from a storytelling point of view, but on the opposite side of the coin, there are fans who say that Melodies blew Memories out of the water. It certainly can be debated one way or the other, but I do fall on the side where I’d have to agree (to a little degree) that the stories didn’t have as much impact, but it doesn’t mean that they are bad in any way shape or form. They are still VERY well-written stories that will tug at your heart strings and I can pretty much almost guarantee that you will enjoy them. Whether or not you enjoy them more than Memories’ stories is all within the eye of beholder, but either way, I don’t believe anyone would be disappointed with what has been written here. I mean, come on! It’s Makoto Shinkai, people!
The Characters
Yuuko Amamiya & Yuu Himura
I’m lumping these two together because to explain one, you pretty much have to explain the other. I’ll start with explaining Yuuko. She plays the role of the lead female protagonist in this series, while Yuu is the main male protagonist. Orphaned, Yuuko meets Yuu Himura, who was revealed as Chihiro’s guardian in Memories. The two become friends, but Yuuko becomes distanced from Yuu when Yuu tells her she can’t replace his sister whom he lost in an earthquake. This rejection breaks her heart and causes her to self harm herself. Later, Yuuko gets adopted by Akira and is subjected to a life of rape, child molestation, and abuse all because Yuuko reminds Akira of the little sister he also lost in the earthquake. Two people losing a sister in the same earthquake? You’d swear that Yuuko and Akira were brothers! Oh wait… they are! But even though Yuuko and Akira are brothers, they are not related by blood. She keeps this quiet until she attends school and is reunited with Himura. Himura wants to make it up to Yuuko and apologize for what happened in the past, thus begins their budding love for one another.
Yuuko is a character that you become attached to. A lot of things get explained here and the questions you had in the first part of series get answered. After everything she’s been through, it’s amazing how humble she remains. It’s a testament to her will and her character. Once you realize everything, you really feel sad for Yuuko because of everything she’s had to endure and has been through. The conclusion of their story I will refrain from spoiling, but it will bring a tear to your eye one way or another, but I will say you will find out why Yuu was hanging around the church and who exactly he was waiting for. This story does do some time leaping, however, so keep that in mind when watching this as you will be brought back and forth from the past to the present, but it will all make sense in the end…. trust me.
Kuze Shuiichi & Mizuki Hayama
Since it worked well for the first pair, might as well lump the second pair together, too. Mizuke and Kuze met each other when they were children and Mizuke fell in love with Kuze… especially over Kuze’s musical talents. When they grow older, Kuze is misconceived as a drug addict. You see him popping pills left and right while living in a barren and empty house. His home could easily pass as a drug addict’s and that’s how they wanted Kuze to be perceived at first. However, we learn that six months before Mizuki went to go visit Kuze, he was diagnosed with a fatal disease, hence the reason for all of the pill popping. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone so he decides to end all of his relationships, including the one with his fiancée at the time. That’s when he starts burning all of his letters and memories. He even goes as far to empty his house of his furniture and possessions. Enter Mizuki. She doesn’t give up on Kuze and Kuze realizes he has something to live for.
It’s really touching, and sometimes comical, to see the lengths that Mizuki will go to make Kuze happy, but it’s also sad and depressing to see how far Kuze had fallen just because he simply gave up. When you are a terminal patient and you know that you can only wait for your time to come, it’s painful and that’s what you get when with the Kuze character. To me, this pairing represents the light and darkness of life. No matter how dark things seem, there’s always that light that shines. It sends a message that even when things are grim and hopeless that there’s always at least one thing in this world worth living for.
Also..be on the lookout for the violin scene with Mizuki and Kuze. It’s more than just a music piece, but the lyrics themselves kind of sum up the overall tone of the series. It’s beautiful and symbolic at the same time and probably one of the best scenes in the entire ef series!
Akira Amamiya
He his Yuuko Amamiya’s non-blood related brother. He treats Yuuko as though she were a princess until he realizes that he was just trying to replace his lost sister with Yuuko. When he comes to this reality, he starts to despise Yuuko and begins to physically assault and abuse her. Akira is also the art teacher of the high school Himura attended. Despite being a teacher in the school, he breaks the rules and smokes within the facility. As an art teacher, he repeatedly provokes Himura to join the art club. The perfect role model for any man out there, am I right?
Art & Animation
As I said with Memories, the art is gorgeous. This isn’t your typical anime artwork as there was a lot of attention paid to the details of the characters, down to the props and the backgrounds. A lot of people say that the entire ef series is like a painting that has been brought to life and I couldn’t agree more!
I know this section isn’t really full of detail, but there really isn’t anything I can say that hasn’t already been said in my review of ef- A Tale of Memories. They were both produced by the same studio (Shaft) with the same artists so it is just a continuation of beauty that carried over from the first series. The quality they upheld doesn’t change and that’s a good thing, ladies and gentlemen!
Overall Thoughts
It’s another amazing series that I would highly recommend to anyone who is in the mood for tragic stories of romance. Again, whether or not it’s as good a Memories is debatable… there are definitely fans that sit on either side of the fence in that regard. For me, it felt a bit less, but not by much. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that many call this a sequel and we are conditioned to compare both series to see if they measure up once we hear that dastardly word, but I wouldn’t really call Melodies a sequel per se… I would think of it more as a continuation of the first part and both Memories and Melodies as one series rather than two separate ones.
There is an overall story to be told here, afterall and it is very satisfying from beginning to end. This should be on anyone’s anime list if you’re into this kind of genre!
Also, if you can, go out of your way to check out the opening theme, “Ebullient Future”, performed by ELISA. It’s in the same vein as her opening theme from Memories, “Euphoric Field.” Both songs are incredible and really set the tone. They are also both sung in English, but if you prefer Japanese, ELISA recorded them in her native language as well. In fact, there are hybrid versions of the songs available, too, that contain both English and Japanese lyrics. She even performed them at Animelo Summer Live 2008, which is something else I highly suggest you check out because the live version is better than the studio recording!
This wraps up the anime and shorts portion of the Makoto Shinkai series… in Part V, I will start looking at Shinkai’s movie productions starting with 5 Centimeters per Second.. the film that got his name recognized in the anime industry.
If you enjoyed this review, consider following me on Twitter @TheAnimePulse
Until then,
Ja ne!Image copyright Mojang Image caption Most people who used Lizard Squad's Stresser site took aim at people playing Minecraft
Hacking group Lizard Squad has been hit by an embarrassing attack that exposed the entire database of people who signed up to use its services.
The group claimed to have knocked the Xbox and PlayStation gaming networks offline over Christmas.
Soon after, it set up a website that let anyone who paid use its software to deluge other sites with data.
The attack that exposed the customer list is one of several aimed at the group and its tools.
Address list
Investigative journalist Brian Krebs broke the news that the database behind the Lizard Stresser tool had been compromised. The Stresser let those who paid use it to overwhelm websites or kick people offline by bombarding the sites they were using with data.
Mr Krebs did not name who got at the data but said he had acquired a dump of the entire roster of 14,241 people who signed up.
Anyone visiting the Stresser site was warned about the attack by text on the main page's login box which urged people to change the password they created when they registered.
In a blogpost, Mr Krebs said the Lizard Squad had not taken many precautions to protect the login and contact information surrendered by users.
"All registered usernames and passwords were stored in plain text," said Mr Krebs, adding that only a few hundred of those who signed up had paid to use it.
Tech news site Ars Technica also got hold of the database dump which was briefly posted on the Mega file-sharing system. It said most of those who used it were gamers keen to stop rivals playing a particular game. Minecraft servers were a favourite target of the Stresser users, it said.
Ars Technica said the dump of the database could spell problems for anyone who had used it because the IP addresses of many of them were poorly obscured and could, with a little work, be recovered.
The plundering of the database comes soon after other computer experts took apart the tools that Lizard Squad has been using. One exposed the source code of a program used to attack people on IRC chat networks,
In addition, soon after the Stresser site was created, computer science student Eric Zhang managed to enumerate the names of all the people who had signed up using a very simple script.
"That took just 10 minutes to do," he said.
He said he was not surprised that the entire database was plundered because when he looked at the site, public access to the server behind it had not been closed off.
"If you look at the site it's clearly run by someone who does not have much formal experience in software engineering," he said.
"Most of what they are doing is not really impressive," he said. "Anyone can do it. All it takes is time."
Mr Krebs said Lizard Squad was being targeted by security professionals irked by their sudden notoriety.
He said: "There seems to be a general sense in the security research community that these guys are in way over their heads, and that if we can't bring to justice a bunch of teenagers in Western nations who are rubbing it in everyone's faces, then that's a sad state of affairs."
However, he added, the time it took to carry out investigations and find members of the group had helped it survive. Recent arrests of Lizard Squad members seemed only to have scooped up some of its hangers-on but had let some of the core members remain at large.Revealed: The day Britain's top civil servant rolled naked on the floor ranting about the end of the world
New job: Sir William Armstrong after he joined the Midland Bank in 1975
Britain's top civil servant ‘cracked up’ and lay on a floor at 10 Downing Street talking incoherently in the final days of Ted Heath’s Conservative Government.
According to a new book about No10, Sir William Armstrong, Heath’s Permanent Secretary of the Civil Service Department and his most senior mandarin, was taken to hospital after telling colleagues the world was coming to an end.
Last night, Whitehall insiders revealed Armstrong had, in fact, been naked while lying on the floor at No10, and that after hospital treatment he was sent by the then Lord Rothschild - a fellow senior civil servant - to recover at Lord Rothschild’s villa in Barbados for a month.
In Downing Street Diary Volume Two, Bernard Donoughue, a former senior policy adviser to Labour Prime Ministers Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, reveals he was told about the bizarre incident by Heath’s Principal Private Secretary Robert Armstrong - no relation to Sir William - who later became Cabinet Secretary to Margaret Thatcher.
Donoughue writes: ‘Robert [also] told me the incredible story of William Armstrong’s crack-up during the last days of the Heath administration in 1974.
‘William Armstrong came through to No10 to see Robert, looking very distraught, and said they must talk somewhere “not bugged”.
‘Robert took him to the waiting room where WA [William Armstrong] lay on the floor, chain-smoking, and talking “very wildly” about the whole system collapsing and the world coming to an end.
‘In the middle of this, Gordon Richardson, Governor of the Bank [of England], walked in and “took it all calmly”.
'Robert then took William upstairs and tried to calm him down but he was still fairly mad.’
The book adds: ‘Next day WA summoned a special meeting of all the permanent secretaries and told them all to go home and prepare for Armageddon.
‘He was babbling incoherently. Douglas Allen [Treasury Permanent Secretary] led him away, phoned his wife and the hospital, and WA was taken off to hospital for treatment.
‘Robert phoned Heath, who was out of London, and told him that the head of the civil service had been locked up.
'Heath was not surprised, saying that he “thought William was acting oddly the last time I saw him”.’
Later, the top mandarin became a life peer as Baron Armstrong of Sanderstead and was chairman of the Midland Bank from 1975 until 1980, when he died.
Downing Street papers released three years ago revealed that Armstrong knew a secret that could have toppled Harold Wilson in 1970.
Lengthy files disclosed how the widow of Michael Halls, Wilson’s Principal Private Secretary at No10, battled for five years for compensation after her husband’s premature death from a heart attack.
Marjorie Halls claimed the stress of dealing with the problems arising from the personal lives of Wilson’s inner circle led to her husband’s death.
In a letter in 1972 to Sir William, Mrs Halls said her husband had enjoyed his job until 1968 when Wilson’s private secretary, Marcia Williams, became pregnant by her lover Walter Terry, a political journalist on the Tory-supporting Daily Express.
Mrs Halls, a senior civil servant in the Lord Chancellor’s Department, wrote: ‘The Prime Minister became so obsessed with the affairs of his personal political staff that it became increasingly difficult for Michael to get him |
later came out firmly against ACTA. The main European political parties announced their opposition to ACTA, except for the largest, the EPP Group. More recently, five out of five European Parliament committees recommended that the European Parliament should reject ACTA in the plenary vote on ratification.
That final vote is scheduled to take place this Wednesday, and the surprises keep on coming. First, we had a rumour that the right-of-centre EPP Group would ask for a secret vote, but that never happened. Then today we heard that the EPP Group would be asking for a postponement of the ACTA vote until after the European Court of Justice has given its verdict on the compatibility of ACTA with the European Union's treaties. That decision probably won't be handed down for a year or two, so this was plainly a delaying tactic. It was believed that the call for postponement would come at the meeting setting the agenda for the coming week, but once more nothing happened.
And then, unexpectedly, the the EPP Group posted the following message on its Twitter account: #EPP will ask during tomorrow's debate on #ACTA for a postponement of the vote until we have ECJ's ruling. It's not entirely clearly under what procedure the EPP Group will do this, although Jérémie Zimmermann from La Quadrature du Net suggested it might be under Rule 177 : Adjournment of a debate and vote, of the Rules of Procedure of the European Parliament.
However, there are also some rumors that the EPP Group is divided over whether it should attempt to postpone the vote – understandably, since it would be a huge slap in the face of the European electorate if this procedural trick were used to put off a decision on ACTA for a year or two. So, it's still not really clear what will happen tomorrow once the plenary session of the European Parliament begins. Or rather, one thing is clear: that the ACTA battle is by no means over, and that the EPP Group is fighting desperately to stave off defeat in the final vote on Wednesday.
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Filed Under: acta, epp group, eu parliament, europe, sopaThe Movie (4/5)
The biggest mistake Body Snatcher: The Invasion Continues made is with its title. With a title like that, and 2 very popular films based on the 1955 novel The Body Snatchers released before it, one in 1956 and one in 1978, one could easily go in with the wrong kind of expectations. Directed by Abel Ferrara, and released to theaters by Warner Bros in a limited platform, the movie is an updated adaptation of the original novel written by Jack Finney, starring new characters and featuring a brand new setting, isolating this new movie from its predecessors. The premise is the same, but there’s no connection to either previous movie, except that producer Robert H. Solo also produced the 1978 version of the film. I guess he just likes the book. Who knows.
Body Snatchers: The Invasion Continues follows the Malone family, who has been sent on a summer long road trip across the country to investigate the presence of toxic chemicals at various US military bases for the Environmental Protection Agency. Along with him is his wife, his daughter, and his son who must stay on the army base in Alabama while he performs his duties. While there, his daughter begins to socialize with the troops, and his son enters daycare, where they start to notice strange behaviors in the people living there – lack of emotion, strange speech patterns, the works. As the world they know dissolves around them, they discover that everyone on the base is being replaced by alien replicas – the titular Body Snatchers. The remaining humans must then work together to escape the grasp of the aliens, and warn the world of what’s coming after them.
Body Snatchers is a B movie from end to end, featuring a blend of melodramatic acting, cheesy effects and camera work, and a goofy premise to tell a gripping, but light on its feet kind of story. Body Snatchers’ script is all about the here and now, moving with a vengeance towards an intense climax that capitalizes on the final third of the film. We don’t get a justification, or any sort of real depth, which actually works in the movie’s favor. Modern films often drop the speed of their storytelling in order to explain every detail to the audience. Body Snatchers moves fast, and goes for thrills and intensity, allowing us to better experience everything with the characters. These people that are getting preyed upon by alien invaders don’t care why they’re being attacked, and neither should we. Instead, the film focuses on the desperate struggle they have to mount against their invaders, which makes for a more aggressive, engaging film.
I could argue that on occasion the film is far too lean, and heavily under develops many of its supporting casts members, such as the base’s doctor, played in an over the top style by Forrest Whittaker, or the general’s daughter, who just kind of shows up twice without any real reason or importance other than plot convenience, but the alien monster effects are so good, and the editing and camera work during the film’s more action packed sequences is so rock solid that I’m willing to excuse the lack of depth. This a B movie caliber script, and you can tell the cast and crew know it, so it’s safe to not take it too seriously.
The original story could be taken as an allegory for the disasters that arose from McCarythism in the 1950s, but this 90s adaptation strips all of that subtext out, favoring a straight sci-fi horror hybrid story that serves as more of a satisfying light snack than a full scale meal. The practical effects are great, the camerawork and editing are wonderful, and as long as you don’t take it too seriously, Body Snatchers: The Invasion Continues is a goofy at times, but overall satisfying experience.
The Video (4.5/5)
Body Snatchers was the first to be shot using the then brand new Arriscope anamorphic lenses. It was shot on 4-perf 35mm film, for an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 for release prints. This new high definition master of the film was prepared by Warner Archive, and is presented in 1080p, maintaining the original 2.35:1 aspect ratio presentation.
Body Snatchers was not exactly a high profile production, but it’s clear that a lot of work has gone into making it live again for this Blu-ray release. Colors are muted, but come off as natural, depicting the rather bland setting of a southern military base as such. Detail is excellent, especially in close ups and effects sequences that feature the lovely pod creatures that perform the body snatching. There are a few composite sequences that look a little ugly, especially at the end of the film’s climax, but that can be attributed to the techniques used to construct the film in the early 90s. The transfer is sharp overall, and features a lovely layer of natural film grain throughout. Warner Archive’s 1080p presentation of Body Snatchers will be the definitive home video presentation of this film for years to come.
The Audio (5/5)
Body Snatchers was originally released to theaters using the Dolby SR optical soundtrack format according to IMDB, which is a 4 track stereo surround format. That original soundtrack has been mixed in 5.1 DTS-Master Audio for this presentation of the film.
If the film wasn’t engaging enough for you, the soundtrack will definitely draw you in. The sound designers of this film clearly championed the idea of directional sound effects, as cars zoom across the front speakers, people walk in from the surrounds to the front, and choppers soar across the frame. Dialogue is mostly centered, which is mildly disappointing, but there is plenty of resounding force from the subwoofer and speakers during action sequences to make up for it. Whoever prepared Body Snatchers’ 5.1 sound mix has done an incredible job, creating a surprisingly active soundscape for such a small scale production.
Special Features/Packaging (2/5)
Body Snatchers: The Invasion Continues has been released to Blu-ray by Warner Archive, and come packaged in a standard blue keepcase. The front artwork features the film’s theatrical poster, which is presented in vibrant color to show off the gruesome nature of the image. The back artwork features a large, heavily recolored frame from the film, as well as another recolored shot to make it look more eerie. These images are paired with a review quote, a few paragraphs about the film, credits, and technical information for the feature.
Onto the film’s single supplement:
Theatrical Trailer – the film’s original release trailer.
Body Snatchers has nice packaging, but an anemic set of supplements that really do the excellent movie a disservice.
Technical Specs (click for technical FAQs)
Video
Codec: AVC
Resolution: 1080p
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Audio
5.1 DTS-Master Audio (English)
Subtitles
English
Runtime: 87 minutes
Overall (4/5)
Body Snatchers: The Invasion Continues is a tense and exciting action-horror film that drops depth and exposition for a thrilling experience where we don’t know any more than the characters on screen do. The film is well directed, acted and features fantastic special effects that cement it as a solid B movie effort that’s never really been given much of a chance by mainstream audiences. Lucky for us, the folks at Warner Archive have released the film to Blu-ray featuring a great video transfer and an amazing 5.1 surround sound mix that really drew me into the film. The features are nonexistent, but packaging is decent. This one deserves your attention.Can coral survive a bleaching event? If the stress-caused bleaching is not severe, coral have been known to recover. If the algae loss is prolonged and the stress continues, coral eventually dies. Download this infographic: In English | In Spanish
Warmer water temperatures can result in coral bleaching. When water is too warm, corals will expel the algae (zooxanthellae) living in their tissues causing the coral to turn completely white. This is called coral bleaching. When a coral bleaches, it is not dead. Corals can survive a bleaching event, but they are under more stress and are subject to mortality.
In 2005, the U.S. lost half of its coral reefs in the Caribbean in one year due to a massive bleaching event. The warm waters centered around the northern Antilles near the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico expanded southward. Comparison of satellite data from the previous 20 years confirmed that thermal stress from the 2005 event was greater than the previous 20 years combined.
Not all bleaching events are due to warm water.Mikayla Danielle Hull
GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- The woman who allegedly snatched a purse off an outdoor table of a downtown eatery -- before she was captured and held by bystanders in an incident caught on video -- is to face two charges, police say. Police identified Mikayla Danielle Hull, 24, as the suspect held for the 1:20 p.m. Tuesday purse-snatching at Ottawa Avenue NW and Monroe Center. She is jailed and awaiting arraignment. The video has generated high interest among MLive readers, mostly because of a physical exchange between Hull and bystander Jonathan Damon. As Damon holds Hull down until police arrive, the woman can be seen biting his wrist and Damon, in response, punches her head.
Related:
The owner of the purse, a 75-year-old woman, sustained a minor injury after she fell and hit her chin while trying to stop the snatcher. Hull is to be charged with larceny from a person and aggravated assault, Grand Rapids police Capt. Pete McWatters said. McWatters said she also has made admissions about her involvement in a Monday home invasion in the 600 block of Grand Avenue NE. When she was arrested Tuesday, police allegedly found a checkbook, two passports and other identification related to the Grand Avenue address in a backpack Hull was wearing. The suspect was riding a bicycle when she reached out and grabbed the purse from a table at Parsley Mediterranean Grille, witnesses said. Bystanders managed to quickly grab her, however. McWatters said he watched the MLive video and he does not plan to pursue any action against Damon. "I don't think a crime was committed by him. To the contrary, he was defending himself," McWatters said. "Based on the circumstances, we have not considered charging him," McWatters said. However, he said Kent County prosecutors will make any final decision on whether Damon did anything wrong. A police report will be forwarded to prosecutors for review.
E-mail John Tunison: jtunison@mlive.com and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/johntunisonThe world has been graced us with yet again another oddball food item, and it’s nothing sparkly or rainbow.
On Sept. 14, the Bagel Nook — a bakery in Freehold, New Jersey, known for wacky renditions of the breakfast staple — posted a photo to Instagram of a new menu item: the Fireball whiskey bagel. What a time to be alive!
A majority of the remarks provided in the comments section are positive, and people actually really want to try it — but Twitter is another story entirely.
“Nobody asked for this,” wrote @lucyyymills.
According to Delish, the bagel’s creator, Alex Berkowitz, pours Fireball into the dough before baking it. Then, once it’s out of the oven, he reduces more of the alcohol in a skillet, creating a cinnamon-whisky glaze to coat the bagel’s exterior.
The official Twitter account for The Bagel Nook suggests pairing the boozy bagel with apple pie cream cheese. You can order this product in-store only, but the bakery has “other crazy delicious bagels to choose from” for mail order.
For more wild and wacky products, take a look at the world’s freakiest milkshakes.
The article originally appeared on The Daily Meal.CAMDEN � Ben Simmons played point guard alongside projected starters Markelle Fultz, JJ Redick and Robert Covington on Tuesday.
Following Tuesday's initial 76ers' training camp workout, Fultz gushed about being paired with Simmons, saying "I feel sorry for the teams that are going to have to go against that."
Yes, watching the No. 1 pick in the 2016 NBA Draft (Simmons) and the No. 1 pick last June (Fultz) develop should be a lot of fun. Simmons and Fultz are comfortable handling the ball and playing off it, with Simmons' terrific passing ability and Fultz's versatility making them potential high-level players in the league.
Imagine what a blast it should be once Joel Embiid is healthy.
{{tncms-inline account="TomMoorePhilly" html="<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Sixers?src=hash">#Sixers</a> Brown on what Embiid is doing: <a href="https://t.co/FBOrFL3jhc">pic.twitter.com/FBOrFL3jhc</a></p>— Tom Moore (@TomMoorePhilly) <a href="https://twitter.com/TomMoorePhilly/status/912735547864567808">September 26, 2017</a></blockquote>" id="912735547864567808" type="twitter"}}
Journeyman big man Kris Humphries joined those four guys on the first unit Tuesday. While Humphries is a defensive-minded blue-collar player with experience, he can't come close to replacing what Embiid provides the Sixers. Nobody else on the roster can.
Coach Brett Brown knows it, as does everybody else at the team's training facililty on the Camden waterfront and around the NBA.
"He's different (than the other big men)," Brown said on Tuesday of Embiid. "He's a difference-maker."
{{tncms-inline account="TomMoorePhilly" html="<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Joel Embiid working on low-post moves on far court with <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Sixers?src=hash">#Sixers</a> staffer <a href="https://t.co/25VmrfYflZ">pic.twitter.com/25VmrfYflZ</a></p>— Tom Moore (@TomMoorePhilly) <a href="https://twitter.com/TomMoorePhilly/status/912732096296255489">September 26, 2017</a></blockquote>" id="912732096296255489" type="twitter"}}
The centers in camp are Embiid, Richaun Holmes, Amir Johnson, Jahlil Okafor, veteran Emeka Okafor (who has been out of the NBA for four years) and Humphries.
While Holmes might be the second-best fit in the middle for the Sixers, he has nowhere near Embiid's impact at the defensive end, as a rebounder or on offense due to Embiid's ability to score inside and outside.
Holmes could be the replacement starter for Embiid, though Brown kept Embiid with a second team of T.J. McConnell, Jerryd Bayless, Nik Stauskas and Dario Saric on Tuesday.
{{tncms-inline account="TomMoorePhilly" html="<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Sixers?src=hash">#Sixers</a> 1st group and Humphries doing fullcourt drills. <a href="https://t.co/C4FGcIvKF4">pic.twitter.com/C4FGcIvKF4</a></p>— Tom Moore (@TomMoorePhilly) <a href="https://twitter.com/TomMoorePhilly/status/912731223352643584">September 26, 2017</a></blockquote>" id="912731223352643584" type="twitter"}}
Embiid participated in camp drills but not 5-on-5 scrimmaging. Jahlil Okafor (right knee soreness) and Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot (right knee tendinitis) are in the same situation and, like Embiid, won't be scrimmaging in the final three days of camp, either.
Embiid, who wasn't required to talk to the media Tuesday because of not being a full participant, did some shooting and worked on his low-post moves with Sixers staffers during the latter portion of the workout. He rode an exercise bicycle as Brown spoke.
On Monday, Embiid said he hopes to be ready for the Oct. 18 season opener against the Wizards, though he conceded he doesn't expect to appear in all 82 games during the 2016-17 campaign.
{{tncms-inline account="TomMoorePhilly" html="<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Fultz: First day of training camp 'went better than I expected.' <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Sixers?src=hash">#Sixers</a> <a href="https://t.co/svFnm2YXZx">pic.twitter.com/svFnm2YXZx</a></p>— Tom Moore (@TomMoorePhilly) <a href="https://twitter.com/TomMoorePhilly/status/912741209071931392">September 26, 2017</a></blockquote>" id="912741209071931392" type="twitter"}}
The Sixers' preseason schedule consists of five games, beginning Oct. 4 home against the Grizzlies and ending Oct. 13 vs. the Heat in Kansas City. For Embiid to be in the lineup for the opener, he's going to have to play in a few exhibition contests and Sixers officials have repeatedly said they're not going to let him on the floor until he's 100 percent.
Last week, team president of basketball operations Bryan Colangelo said the organization is more concerned about Embiid's long-term health than any potential short-term gains that could result from Embiid playing prematurely.
Colangelo pointed to Embiid's "very hyper-conservative progression toward returning to basketball" when explaining why Embiid still isn't scrimmaging six months after what the Sixers called "successful minor surgery" to repair a torn meniscus in his left knee.
{{tncms-inline account="TomMoorePhilly" html="<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Sixers?src=hash">#Sixers</a> Simmons: 'I'm a winner' <a href="https://t.co/PPgZd8Gntx">pic.twitter.com/PPgZd8Gntx</a></p>— Tom Moore (@TomMoorePhilly) <a href="https://twitter.com/TomMoorePhilly/status/912739709352382467">September 26, 2017</a></blockquote>" id="912739709352382467" type="twitter"}}
Embiid needs to increase his cardiovascular workouts and drop a little weight as he progresses to full basketball activities.
While saying all the right things, Embiid clearly is itching to show what he can do.
"I can't wait to be back on the court," Embiid told reporters Monday.
Brown and his teammates can't wait, either.
{{tncms-inline account="TomMoorePhilly" html="<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Sixers?src=hash">#Sixers</a> group meeting on court after practice <a href="https://t.co/8U2CUupPOP">pic.twitter.com/8U2CUupPOP</a></p>— Tom Moore (@TomMoorePhilly) <a href="https://twitter.com/TomMoorePhilly/status/912730185023320064">September 26, 2017</a></blockquote>" id="912730185023320064" type="twitter"}}
Brown repeated Tuesday that the Sixers' 2017-18 goal remains to make the playoffs, which figures to require 40 or more wins. But the chance that happens decreases each time Embiid, who has played in 31 of a possible 246 games, sits out in the regular season.
Wanting Brown to develop a young core and win with the likelihood of Embiid being on a minutes restriction and not playing in back-to-back games � which might be the best-case scenario � to start the season might be expecting too much.
Tom Moore: 215-345-3127; email: tmoore@calkins.com; Twitter: @TomMoorePhillyIt has been revealed that 55 traffic and speed cameras in the state of Victoria, Australia, have been accidentally infected with the WannaCry ransomware that struck organisations hard around the world last month.
Local radio station 3AW broke the news, after receiving a tip from a listener that the highway and intersection cameras operated by Redflex Traffic Systems had been infected by a maintenance worker who inserted a malware-infected USB stick into devices earlier this month.
That explanation makes some sense, as the cameras are reportedly not connected to the internet. In many ways, it’s a throw back to the old days when malware was spread by “sneakernet”.
The Department of Justice says that the cameras have continued to operate correctly despite the infection – aside from the occasional reboot, and that anyone who has been caught speed or committing traffic offences by the camera will not be able to argue that the integrity of the collected data has been compromised by the malware.
A spokesperson from the Victoria Justice and Regulation Department told AW3 that patches have now been installed on vulnerable traffic cameras:
“A system patch has been applied, which prevents the spread of the virus. The Department is in the process of removing the virus from the affected cameras. The remaining sites will be rectified in the next couple of days.”
Although the full fury of the WannaCry outbreak has died down, we are still receiving reports of some businesses battling with the ransomware. For instance, just this week it was reported that Honda had temporarily shut down a production line at a Japanese plant, as it discovered its networks across Japan, North America, Europe, China and other regions had been infected.
The incident in Australia isn’t, of course, the first time that police cameras have been hit by ransomware.
Days before Donald Trump’s inauguration as US President, for instance, Washington DC police discovered that 70% of its public surveillance cameras were suffering at the hands of ransomware attacks, leaving the authorities unable to record footage.
Needless to say, it would make sense for all organisations to apply Microsoft’s MS17-010 security update, which patches against WannaCry’s primary method of spreading.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed in this guest author article are solely those of the contributor, and do not necessarily reflect those of Tripwire, Inc.A picture posted on Twitter by Danish journalist showing Israeli citizens sitting on a hilltop and cheering the Palestinian territory of Gaza being bombed has gone viral on social media.
The picture, which was uploaded on Wednesday by Allan Sørensen, the Middle East correspondent for Denmark-based newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad, was accompanied by the message “Sderot cinema: Israelis bringing chairs 2 hilltop in sderot 2 watch latest from Gaza. Clapping when blasts are heard.”
So far, the photo - which was taken near the Israeli border city of Sderot - has been retweeted over 7,000 times.
Many users of the popular micro blogging site Twitter expressed outrage at the depicted event.
“Morality of a people so skewed that murder is a public spectle. an astonishing thing to see in this day/age,” wrote one user.
“That is just inhumane, abominable and disgusting. Shame on you, Israel,” wrote another, while one user wrote that the people in the picture were “encouraging a culture of death.”
A follow-up article published in English on the Kristeligt Dagblad website on Friday describes the scene in detail.
“People have dragged camping chairs and sofas to the top of the hill. Several sit with crackling bags of popcorn, while others smoke hookahs and talk cheerfully,” according to the article.
A spectator quoted by the daily described coming up on the hilltop as a “a quest for excitement,” while another said: “We are here to see Israel destroy Hamas.”
Since Tuesday, Israeli security forces have conducted strikes in Gaza to retaliate against Hamas fighters, who they claim have launched rounds of rocket fire into Israeli territory – much of which has been intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile defense system.
Gaza officials say that almost 100 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli air strikes over the last four days.
Despite a U.S. offer to help negotiate a ceasefire with militants, Israel said it was determined to end cross-border rocket attacks that intensified last month after its forces arrested hundreds of activists from the Islamist Hamas movement in the occupied West Bank following the abduction there of three Jewish teenagers who were later found killed. A Palestinian youth was
killed in Jerusalem in a suspected Israeli revenge attack.
Israel's campaign “will continue until we are certain that quiet returns to Israeli citizens,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. Israel had attacked more than 1,000 targets in Gaza and there were “more to go.”
Last Update: Saturday, 12 July 2014 KSA 08:08 - GMT 05:08The post-apocalypse of Naughty Dog's survival-action game The Last of Us is a bleak and hopeless one. But one of the game's scrapped alternate endings, which took a turn for the improvised and musical, provided a swelling, romantic sense of hope (and plenty of laughter).
At PAX Prime, The Last of Us game director Bruce Straley and creative director Neil Druckmann walked Naughty Dog fans through the original pitch for their PlayStation 3 game, offering a very early look at the game's story, combat mechanics and influences.
(Note: While the plot details Straley and Druckmann discussed played out differently in the final version of the game, the two also touched on late game story events that should be considered spoilers.)
The two Naughty Dogs showed a version of the game's ending that turned a playable scene into an extended cut scene. In an earlier version of the game, the story ended with Joel bringing Ellie to a medical facility where doctors researched her unusual gift: her immunity to the infection that all but wiped out the planet. In the scene, Joel learns that the surgery that would be performed on Ellie in search of a cure would also result in her death. Joel takes the news poorly, killing the entire lab staff and escaping with an unconscious Ellie.
Naughty Dog played video of a motion capture session from the take, showing how actors Troy Baker (Joel) and Merle Dandridge (Marlene), decked out in mocap suits and armed with toy guns, played out the early version of the scene. Joel takes a hostage, they argue and, despite Marlene's pleading that Ellie would be better off dying on a surgical table than possibly being raped and murdered by survivors, Joel shoots Marlene as she's begging for her life.
According to Druckmann, Baker flubbed that scene multiple times, dropping his replica gun as he burst into the room. Druckmann said that, during one of the following takes, he took Marlene aside and gave her some private direction. Then he spoke to Baker privately, saying that no matter what happened in the scene, he simply must continue. Whether he dropped the gun or something else unforeseen should happen, keep going.
On that take, when Baker ran into the room, Dandridge broke into song, belting out a beautiful rendition of her lines with musical flair. Even as Dandridge sang the lines "Raped and murdered! Raped and murdered!" Baker didn't flinch, instantly improvising his own sing-songy version of the dialogue, momentarily turning the climactic scene from The Last of Us into a Broadway musical. Impressively, neither actor broke character, completing the scene wholly in song.
The improvised musical performance drew an ovation from the PAX crowd.
Straley and Druckmann also touched on a very different version of The Last of Us that saw Joel's partner Tess play the role of antagonist. In earlier versions of the story, Tess' brother joins Joel, Tess and Ellie on the initial leg of their journey. Tess' brother soon dies in a firefight with the military that Joel instigates, and Tess blames Joel for his death. When Joel and Tess go their separate ways, the latter begins to resent Joel and with the help of a gang of survivors, attempts to hunt Joel down.
Near the end of the game, Naughty Dog planned to have Tess' gang catch up with Joel and chase them down into a ranch house. With Joel's help, Ellie would escape. Tess would then torture Joel for information about Ellie's whereabouts with the intent of finding her and killing the girl — "She knows you're the only thing I care about," Joel would have told Ellie.
The torture scene would have ended with Tess pointing her gun at Joel's head, then a gunshot and a smash to black.
During her escape, Ellie would have doubled back, seen the torture taking place and shot Tess. It's her gunshot players would have heard.
Among the other scrapped ideas for The Last of Us was another character along for the ride: Ellie's dog. Naughty Dog showed concept art of the scrappy pup in Ellie's arms, but no in-game footage of her faithful companion.
"We wanted to make a Naughty Dog game with an actual dog," Druckmann said.
Update: The official PlayStation YouTube account has uploaded a video of the game's alternate ending.Manley P Hall
“[The Masonic/Illuminati] are the invisible powers behind the thrones of earth, and men are but marionettes, dancing while the invisible ones pull the strings. … We see the dancer, but the master mind that does the work remains concealed by the cloak of silence.” Manley P. Hall.
This is quite a well known and misunderstood anomaly when it comes to the spelling of 'illuminati' backwards- so I decided to investigate further; [I first wrote this in April 2010] and here's likely the 'truth' behind it all. I keep saying the Masonic/Illuminati love to ‘play on on words’ and I show examples of this throughout the book. Try typing itanimulli.com into your browser, - itanimulli is of course, “illuminati” spelled backwards. And itanimulli.com, will take you directly to the U.S. National Security Agency’s website, http://www.nsa.com
And perhaps now you can see why many people say that the US government is a bought-and-paid-for subsidiary of the New World Order. Though it’s also been discovered that a bloke called John Fenley, who lives in Provo, Utah, purchased the domain name “Itanimulli” and is apparently redirecting visitors to the NSA. On the 13th December 2009, a fellow named Harry Thomas wrote to Fenley asking him what was his reason/s for registering iianimumIIi.com etc. He also asked him: “The website redirects to the NSA website. Many of us are wondering why that is? Are you an employee of the NSA or DARPA?” [DARPA is also connected to the HAARP program.] Fenley replied, [This is just part of the reply];
“I decided to forward the domain Itanimulli.com domain to the NSA as a joke… /...I don’t believe that the Illuminati actually exists, and only one black helicopter has ever buzzed my house [that’s a whole other story]. I’m not sure what the New World Order Plan is, but if you have more information, I’ll gladly tell you what I think of it. - I am not an employee of the NSA or DARPA, though I have participated in several DARPA contests including the 2 Grand Challenges, the Urban Challenge and the recent Network Challenge. Thanks for your interest, John Fenley.” So who can say what’s true or not, other than the NSA would hardly register it in “their” name. And who knows for sure if Fenley works for the NSA or not? He had to admit his involvement with DARPA as he knew Thomas must have known something about his connection to ask the question to begin with. So as I say, who knows for sure and it’s just another of those things that makes you go hmm...? [1]
Cosmic Trigger Vol 1
Cosmic Trigger Vol II - 1991
I first read and heard about the Illuminati in the early 1990’s, when I read a book titled Cosmic Trigger II: Down to Earth [1991] by Robert Anton Wilson and whilst I was still in prison. It continues on from an earlier book he wrote in 1987 titled the Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the Illuminati. Wilson continues the Illuminati-based coincidence of events that have taken place since Cosmic Trigger I was first published.[1a] The book is an exploration into the future of cyberspace; the peculiarities of Irish legal system, [the Irish have long been controlled by the Freemasons, only the Irish people don’t know it, just take a look at the Masonic style of buildings in Dublin, Ulster Bank HQ, and the Supreme Court of Ireland], links to the Mafia, the CIA and the Catholic Church; anal-eroticism in the White House; the Dog Castrator of Palm Springs, and much more. The book combines humour, twists in logic and zen-like koans to get its messages across, a widely known kōan is “Two hands clap and there is a sound; what is the sound of one hand?” or “You’re sick, but want me to take the medicine!” [2]
Robert Anton Wilson
The book is made up of ninety-four chapters, [like my book, though not as short as Wilson’s; I've extended and updated or corrected many a subject Wilson covers, as in Trapped in a Masonic World there's in excess of 360,000+ words], with the main themes interwoven throughout in a non-linear fashion. In part, this volume of the series outlines Wilson’s intellectual development, from his religious education under the [‘sadistic’] nuns at Catholic school, through to his materialist-atheistic standpoint as an engineering student, and his eventual development of the ‘model agnosticism’ which informs much of his published work. Other recurring themes relate to conspiracies, involving the Vatican and allegedly Masonic societies such as P2. He discusses the controversial death of ‘God’s Banker Roberto Calvi as I do, and even discusses Aleister Crowleyean magick rituals, again like I do, though I come from it at quite a different angle than Wilson, but as you can see, the topics he covers and of those I do, - I’ve re-researched many, due to new evidence and developments since 1991, and supply more facts in general. I would be lying to say his books have not in some way influenced my choice of subjects, and I recommend you read Wilson’s books as soon as you get the opportunity.
The Black Nobilty Game...
To this day Venice has remained in the hands of the Venetian Black Nobility [BN] that in fact extends far beyond its borders and felt in every single corner of the globe. “The Black Nobility”, were and still are the oligarchic families of Venice and Genoa, Italy, whom since the 12th century held the privileged trading rights [monopolies]. The first of three crusades, from 1063 to 1123, established the power of the Venetian Black Nobility and solidified the power of the wealthy ruling class. The BN aristocracy achieved complete control over Venice in 1171, [3] when the appointment of the Doge [the chief magistrate and leader of the Most Serene Republic of Venice for over a thousand years], was transferred to what was known as the Great Council which consisted of members of the commercial aristocracy, among them the infamous House of Medici or de’Medici was a political dynasty banking family and later royal house that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de’Medici in the Republic of Florence during the late 14th century, rising until they were able to found the Medici Bank. The bank was the largest in Europe at one time. [4]
The |
stretch known as "The Crookedest Street in the World" runs one-way down a steep hill making eight hairpin turns. Oversized vehicles such as pickup trucks, sport utility vehicles, and recreational vehicles should NOT attempt to pass through the winding stretch of Lombard Street. Driving and parking tend to be easier in the Western portion of the city, especially in the more suburban Sunset District and surrounding areas.
The most difficult problem with your car in San Francisco will be parking. Parking throughout the city is extremely scarce. Car break-ins are extremely frequent; if you do park on the street, never leave anything whatsoever in your car (and don't be surprised if it gets broken into anyway). Garages, where they are available, are quite expensive ($20-30/day downtown), and downtown street parking is often metered. San Francisco has some of the strictest parking laws and enforcement in the country. For more information, see SFMTA's parking information page. For day trips into the city, consider a park-and-ride at a Peninsula Caltrain [61] station, at a Peninsula BART [62] station, or at an East Bay BART station.
When parking on a hill (and there are many of them in San Francisco), remember to always apply that parking brake and turn your wheels so that the tires are against the curb (Facing uphill, the front wheels should be turned out until the tires are resting against the curb. Facing downhill, the front wheels should be turned in so that they are set against the curb). Failure to park properly doesn't just run the risk of having your car roll downhill, but it is also against the law and you may be ticketed.
Motorcycles and Scooters are a common sight on San Francisco streets; in fact, San Francisco is known as one of the most motorcycle-friendly places in the US. Street parking for motorcycles is plentiful and relatively inexpensive ($0.40 to $0.70 an hour), but note that parking on sidewalks is usually illegal. There are several motorcycle rental shops like Dubbelju Motorcycle Rentals, along with many dealers, service shops, and motorcyclist hangouts. As elsewhere in California, motorcyclists must wear helmets. Motorcycle theft is a problem; always use a disk lock or secure your bike to a stationary object using a cable or chain. Scoot offers electric scooters for short-term rental; they also have 48-hour passes for visitors ($79). No motorcycle license is required.
Segways, though more novel, are fairly common in San Francisco. So far there is only one authorized Segway dealer that rents out Segways, though various tour operators (many of whom operate from Fisherman's Wharf) offer guided trips throughout the city.
Ride share programs [ edit ]
Ride Sharing is becoming increasingly popular as an alternative to taxi cab services in San Francisco. Using Lyft[63] or Uber[64] involves downloading a mobile application to request a ride. These companies utilize drivers who usually do not have a taxi license and who may or may not know the city well. Driver photos and their cars are displayed to the rider before pick up to ensure rider safety.
To request rides, the ride share programs usually requires the rider to download their mobile application and create an account and store credit card information. When requesting a ride, the rider enters their pick-up location, and drop-off location. When a driver confirms your ride request, a GPS map will track the driver's location, ETA, as well as show a picture of the driver and their car.
All forms of payment are done through the mobile application, so there is no need to carry cash. Fares vary depending on demand; during off-peak hours, they are often cheaper than taxi fares, but "surge pricing" can result in extremely high prices at certain times.
San Francisco has much to see — these are just the most significant sights. For more detail see the individual district sections, often linked from this entry.
Two passes are available which offer discounts to many interesting attractions:
San Francisco CityPASS [65]. A relatively cheap and easy way to cover many attractions of the city is the CityPASS. For a fare of $89 for adults and $66 for children 5-12, you get admission to the California Academy of Sciences, a Blue and Gold Fleet bay cruise, the Aquarium of the Bay, and the Exploratorium or the Legion of Honor and the de Young Museum (both must be visited on the same day). A CityPASS works for 9 consecutive days starting with the use of your first ticket (each ticket only accounts for one visit to each attraction). The pass also includes three consecutive days of Cable Car and MUNI fares.
Go San Francisco Card - An all-inclusive pass that lets you visit multiple San Francisco attractions for one price, starting at $65. You can save up to 55% on top museums, tours, and activities vs. paying at the gate. The pass is available in 1, 2, 3, or 5 day increments, and includes admission to dozens of top San Francisco attractions including a Hop-On/Hop-Off Trolley Tour, the California Academy of Sciences, a Golden Gate Bay Cruise, and many more.
Aerial tour if you are adventurous, you can see San Francisco from the air. There is a new modern power gilder at Palo Alto airport about 25minute south of San Francisco. You can see Stanford, get an idea of how long SLAC is, and be exposed to some of the most beautiful natural vistas. Check out power glider tours at palo alto airport http://www.powerglidertours.com [66]
The city is strongly associated with the Beat Generation literary movement, notable for authors like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. City Lights Bookstore and the Beat Museum make for excellent places to learn about the Beats, but there are many other bars, cafes, and apartments where Beat history was made.
Itineraries [ edit ]
There are many highlight walks you can take to really capture the feel of the city and see a whole lot of attractions at the same time. Some of the best ones are:
Chinatown. Grant from Bush to Broadway takes you through the heart of the famous district. Returning by the parallel Stockton or Powell will give you a better feeling of the day to day life of the residents, and are both good for those looking for imported commodities such as tea or herbs.
. Grant from Bush to Broadway takes you through the heart of the famous district. Returning by the parallel Stockton or Powell will give you a better feeling of the day to day life of the residents, and are both good for those looking for imported commodities such as tea or herbs. Ocean Beach. Ocean Beach is entirely open to pedestrians in both the Richmond and Sunset districts from the Cliff House restaurant and Sutro Baths in the north to the zoo in the south. For a shorter walk, the windmills near Lincoln at the end of Golden Gate Park offer a good base for a stroll north.
. Ocean Beach is entirely open to pedestrians in both the Richmond and Sunset districts from the Cliff House restaurant and Sutro Baths in the north to the zoo in the south. For a shorter walk, the windmills near Lincoln at the end of Golden Gate Park offer a good base for a stroll north. Telegraph Hill. Greenwich and Filbert Steps on the east side of Telegraph Hill, both strenuous and unforgettably beautiful, offer cottages and a flock of wild parrots to enjoy on the way up to the Coit Tower.
. Greenwich and Filbert Steps on the east side of Telegraph Hill, both strenuous and unforgettably beautiful, offer cottages and a flock of wild parrots to enjoy on the way up to the Coit Tower. North Beach. Columbus runs from North Point in Fisherman's Wharf, through the grand church and famous cafés at the heart of North Beach to the landmark Transamerica pyramid, accessible to transit on nearby Market.
. Columbus runs from North Point in Fisherman's Wharf, through the grand church and famous cafés at the heart of North Beach to the landmark Transamerica pyramid, accessible to transit on nearby Market. Haight Ashbury. Haight from Divisadero to Stanyan covers the shopping district famous for hippie culture; at Stanyan the street becomes a path through Golden Gate Park to a popular site (then and now) for relaxing and concerts.
. Haight from Divisadero to Stanyan covers the shopping district famous for hippie culture; at Stanyan the street becomes a path through Golden Gate Park to a popular site (then and now) for relaxing and concerts. Cow Hollow. Union Street between Gough and Fillmore is one of the finest shopping streets outside of the city center.
. Union Street between Gough and Fillmore is one of the finest shopping streets outside of the city center. Mission. Mission between 15th and Cesar Chavez streets provides a look at a neighborhood famous for its murals, Latino food and culture, as well as occasional gang activity east of Mission Street. Parallel to Mission, Valencia Street is the artery of the many higher end boutiques and offbeat cafés starting to characterize the neighborhood, and has little of the grit of Mission St. 16th Street between Mission and Guerrero Streets offers a diversity of cuisine and several hip bars.
. Mission between 15th and Cesar Chavez streets provides a look at a neighborhood famous for its murals, Latino food and culture, as well as occasional gang activity east of Mission Street. Parallel to Mission, Valencia Street is the artery of the many higher end boutiques and offbeat cafés starting to characterize the neighborhood, and has little of the grit of Mission St. 16th Street between Mission and Guerrero Streets offers a diversity of cuisine and several hip bars. Pacific Heights. Fillmore between Pine and Broadway is lined with a good mix of shopping, views, steep slopes, and some of the city's largest and most expensive homes.
. Fillmore between Pine and Broadway is lined with a good mix of shopping, views, steep slopes, and some of the city's largest and most expensive homes. Fillmore. Post from Laguna (near 38 bus stop) to Fillmore takes you through upscale shopping and restaurants in Japantown, and turning left onto Fillmore across Geary and on to Turk takes you past the internationally known jazz venues and a mix of Black and Korean owned shops.
. Post from Laguna (near 38 bus stop) to Fillmore takes you through upscale shopping and restaurants in Japantown, and turning left onto Fillmore across Geary and on to Turk takes you past the internationally known jazz venues and a mix of Black and Korean owned shops. Castro and Noe Valley. Market from Church to Castro St. and a left down Castro St to 19th takes you through the center of the city's famous gay mecca. Continuing up Castro St over the hill from there takes you to 24th St, the main drag of bohemian Noe Valley.
Landmarks [ edit ]
The Palace of Fine Arts
Perhaps the most recognizable landmark in San Francisco and one of the most famous bridges in the world, the Golden Gate Bridge, spanning the Golden Gate, has been called one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World and is the first thing you see of San Francisco if driving in from the north, as it is one of the major road routes into and out of the city. Overlooking the Golden Gate is the Presidio, a former military post with beautiful architecture and a very scenic park setting. Within the Presidio is the gorgeous Palace of Fine Arts, built for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition and reminiscent of Roman and Greek architecture.
Within the center of the city, the famous cable cars run up and down the hills of San Francisco between Market Street and Fisherman's Wharf and offer quite a ride (see above under Get around for more info). Atop one of those hills, Telegraph Hill in North Beach, is Coit Tower, a gleaming white tower dedicated to the San Francisco firefighters. At 275' high, the hill is a healthy hike from the nearby neighborhoods just below. Another prominent tower nearby is the Transamerica Pyramid, formerly the tallest and still the most recognizable building in the San Francisco skyline, located among the skyscrapers and highrises of the Financial District. Perhaps the most famous view of that skyline is from Alamo Square Park in the Western Addition district, home to the famous Painted Ladies row of Victorian houses, with many other pretty Victorians encircling the lovely park.
Over on Russian Hill is the famous stretch of Lombard Street between Hyde & Leavenworth, the (nearly) crookedest street in America. The city also has a twistier but less scenic stretch of street, Vermont Street on Potrero Hill. Other street oddities in San Francisco include 22nd Street between Vicksburg and Church in Noe Valley and Filbert Street between Leavenworth and Hyde on Russian Hill — At a 31.5% grade, these streets share the honor of the steepest streets in San Francisco.
Neighborhoods [ edit ]
Chinatown
San Francisco is also well-known for its collection of unique and intriguing neighborhoods. Most tourists start with Fisherman's Wharf; although many of the locals consider it a tourist trap, it is a great place to see amazing street entertainers, watch sea lions, visit museums, or take a cruise to the infamous Alcatraz Prison or the pleasant Angel Island. Working fishing boats still come into the small harbor here, and the district is home to several excellent seafood restaurants. The fresh breeze from the bay can provide a bracing setting.
The Downtown area around Union Square-Financial District | Union Square, is the heart of the city's main shopping and hotel district. Many other interesting areas are in walking distance or a short Muni ride from there.
Chinatown, just north-west of Downtown, centered around Grant Street from Bush to Columbus, is part tourist trap, part an exhibit of local life. Good eating places abound, and the side streets especially have stores one wouldn't find in a mall. Stockton Street is where most locals do their shopping for groceries; be sure to sample some of the dim sum and other specialties offered in the many bustling shops. However, many local Chinese prefer to eat and shop in the new Chinatowns located in other neighborhoods such as on Clement Street between 2nd and 12th Avenues in the Inner Richmond neighborhood. The Muni #1 (California) and #2 (Clement, does not run at night) buses get people from one Chinatown to the other.
South of Downtown is the Civic Center, with its impressive Beaux Arts buildings including City Hall and the War Memorial Veterans Building, the celebrated Asian Art Museum, music and theater venues (including large concert halls and a renowned Symphony and Opera), and the main public library.
The SoMa, across Market and Mission streets from Downtown to the south-east is rapidly gentrifying. Ii is the loaction of the city's main convention center and several new museums.
Further south is the Mission District, home to the Mission Dolores Church, one of the oldest structures in the city, and a fantastic collection of murals of all sorts on the walls of many nearby buildings, especially on alleys between Market and Valencia. BART and the Mission street #14 bus go there.
At the southern end of Market Street is the Castro, the center of San Francisco's Lesbian/Gay/Bi/Transgender (LGBT) community, with numerous theaters, small shops and restaurants. The Muni historic F-line is the best way to go there, although most underground Muni-trains stop there as well.
Further west is Haight Ashbury, famous for being a center of the Hippie movement in the 60s and 70s. While tourism has softened the image of the neighborhood somewhat, the area still retains its distinct feel with small organic coffee shops and store after store selling marijuana-themed goods, tie dye tee shirts and hand bands. The Muni Judah N-line and the Parnassus #6 bus from market street go there.
Treasure Island, an artificial island half-way between San Francisco and Oakland connected to the Bay Bridge, has excellent views of the San Francisco and Oakland skylines and quirky structures from the international fairground-turned-navy base-turned-neighborhood. Accessible by Muni bus #108 from the Transbay Terminal in SoMa.
Museums [ edit ]
When the morning is foggy, you may want to spend a few hours in one of the city's many world-class museums. Golden Gate Park is home to the copper-clad M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, which houses an impressive collection of contemporary and indigenous art. The de Young Museum's former Asian collection is now permanently housed in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, located in the Civic Center. Across from the de Young Museum stands the California Academy of Sciences, which holds a huge array of science exhibits, including an aquarium, a planetarium, and a natural history museum.
The California Palace of the Legion of Honor is in Lincoln Park in the northwest corner of the Richmond district. In Nob Hill, the Cable Car Museum offers exhibits on the famous moving landmarks of San Francisco. Near the Castro is the Randall Museum, a lovely little children's museum. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Moscone Center, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Zeum, the Cartoon Art Museum, the Museum of the African Diaspora and the Museum of Craft and Folk Art are all located in SoMa, south of Union Square. The Contemporary Jewish Museum, which was designed by Daniel Libeskind and opened in June 2008, is the latest major addition to San Francisco's museum scene.
At the Hyde Street Pier in Fisherman's Wharf you can go on board several historical ships, including the 1886 Balclutha clipper ship, a walking-beam ferry, a steam tug, and a coastal schooner. At Pier 45 just to the east, the World War II submarine USS Pampanito and the World War II Liberty Ship SS Jeremiah O'Brien can be visited. Nearby is the Aquarium of the Bay on Pier 39 and the newly opened Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. The Musee Mecanique on pier 45 contains hundreds of coin operated amusement machines, many from the 19th century. Most can be used for just a quarter.
The newly relocated and bigger and better than ever Exploratorium on Pier 15 is walking distance from Embarcadero and will keep you busy for an entire day with their science and perception exhibits. In the Marina district is Fort Mason, home to a few cultural museums.
Many museums offer free admission on certain days during the first week of every month.
Parks and outdoors [ edit ]
Baker Beach
San Francisco has numerous parks, ranging from the tiny to the huge. The most famous of them is Golden Gate Park in The Avenues district, a massive (roughly 1/2 mile-by-four mile) urban oasis with windmills, bison, museums, a carousel and much more hidden among its charms. The park contains the antique palatial greenhouse of the Conservatory of Flowers, the modern and ethnic art focused de Young Museum, the large Japanese Tea Garden, the new California Academy of Sciences building designed by Renzo Piano and the Strybing Arboretum, a collection of plants from across the temperate world. Defining the extreme Northwestern corner of the city is Lincoln Park in Richmond, which provides majestic views of the Marin Headlands, the Golden Gate Bridge from the ocean side, and the Pacific Ocean itself. At the extreme western end the well known Cliff House provides both semi-casual and a more formal eating and drinking place. The Legion of Honor museum at the center of the park houses many incredible artworks.
Near the physical center of the city is Twin Peaks, one of San Francisco's highest points (925' above sea level); providing spectacular views in all directions. Tour buses can get backed up here during the day, but it's a great place to really appreciate the city from above, especially at and after sunset. Temperatures up there can be quite a bit lower than in the rest of the city, so bring a jacket. Nearby in the Lake Merced area is the San Francisco Zoo, a large and well maintained zoo which is a great place to go if you are traveling with children or have a fondness for penguins, primates, lions or llamas.
While not particularly well known for its beaches, San Francisco has a couple of good ones along the Pacific Ocean — but the water is brisk, the winds can be rough, and due to strong rip currents swimming at any of them is not recommended. Ocean Beach along the Sunset district is the largest and most famous beach, with plenty of sand and people enjoying themselves. China Beach in Richmond and Baker Beach in Golden Gate are smaller, rather secluded beaches with lovely views.
On sunny days hipsters flock to Mission Dolores Park, so named due to its location across the street from the Mission Dolores Basilica. The park often comes to resemble a large party, with music, coolers of beer and, er, uh...medical marijuana treatment. Mission Dolores Park is situated on a slight slope in the Noe Valley neighborhood, just a few blocks from the many restaurants and bars in the Mission. The east side of the park is bounded by Dolores Street, a hilly and scenic drive lined with palm trees and Victorians. During the fire of 1906 that destroyed much of the city, one of the few working fire hydrants was located near the Southwest corner of the park. This fire hydrant provided water that helped stop the fire. The fire hydrant is still functioning and is repainted gold once a year on the anniversary of the 1906 earthquake.
In the southern half of the city is the often overlooked but wonderful Bernal Heights Park, a small park on top of a hill overlooking the entire eastern half of the city, with excellent views of the skyscrapers in the Financial District, the Mission District, and the hills in the southeastern corner of the city. A wide trail runs around the base of the park below the peak which can be walked in ten to fifteen minutes. Bernal Heights Park is dog friendly, so much so that a coyote is often observed there.
Harbor tours [ edit ]
Approaching the Island of Alcatraz
One of the best ways to see San Francisco is from the waters of San Francisco Bay. There are many companies offering harbor tours of varying durations and prices but they all provide marvelous views of the bay, the bridges, the island of Alcatraz, Angel Island and the city.
Only specific island tours are allowed to land at Alcatraz, but the typical harbor tour will circle the island at a slow crawl, giving you plenty of opportunity to photograph the now-inactive prison from the water.
Also consider taking a ferry from San Francisco across the bay to Tiburon, Sausalito, or Alameda. Same views for a fraction of the price.
Most tours leave from docks at Fisherman's Wharf near Pier 39 (Pier 33 for Alcatraz). Tickets can be purchased at kiosks along the waterfront walk. Buy tickets a day or two in advance during the summer high season. For Alcatraz island tour, you may need to book weeks in advance (but you can also buy waitlist tickets - if there's spaces left you get on, if not you get a full refund). It's well worth it though - you get an extensive audio tour of the prison, with stories of various escape attempts.
Boats usually leave roughly hourly starting around 10am and ending around 5pm. Multi-lingual guides are available on some tours. Prices range from $20-$40, more for sunset, dinner, or whale watching tours.
Even on a sunny day the bay can be chilly, so be sure to bring a sweater as well as sun screen.
Some boats have snack bars on board, but bring your own water and treats to avoid paying high costs or going without. There are now limited refreshments and a souvenirs shop on Alcatraz.
Performing arts [ edit ]
The diversity of options to enjoy music and theater is huge. An excellent source for finding current offerings is the edited San Francisco Classical Voice, in addition to specific venues listed here. Concerts by small groups, classical to modern, and often free are listed at the San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music page. The SF Classical Music Examiner provides insightful reviews and previews.
Davies Symphony Hall
San Francisco has a Half-Price Ticket Booth located right in the middle of Union Square, where tickets for most San Francisco theatre performances can be purchased the day of the performance for half-price. Run by Theatre Bay Area, the income from all service fees collected from the sale of tickets by TIX Bay Area goes right back into the theatre community.
Musicals from Broadway and Los Angeles are shown at the traditional Golden Gate and Orpheum theaters on Market, near the Civic Center. For outrageous fun, princes and paupers go to Beach Blanket Babylon [68] in North Beach. Teenagers are welcome at the Sunday matinees. It considers itself the longest running musical revue in theater history
For jazz, rock, or folk music the choices are diverse. A new, attractive venue with a wide variety of offerings is SFJAZZ [69], a few blocks from the Civic Center. There are performances most days, popular artists often sell out early. San Francisco also has many jazz clubs, best found by browsing the web (an excellent site is SFStation.com [70]). Contemporary bands are featured at The Fillmore Auditorium [71] and less frequently at the large Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in the Civic Center. There is an annual blues festival in late September, at various locations [72], and at least two great bluegrass music festivals each year — during February [73] around the area and late September or October [74] in Golden Gate Park. Many, but certainly not all, events are listed by the City Box Office [75].
Ballet of the world class variety is performed in the Spring by the San Francisco Ballet [76] at the War Memorial Opera House in Civic Center. Standing room tickets, with excellent views from the back of the orchestra section, are available for only $10 during the afternoon of each performance as well as two hours before showtime. In winter, the popular The Nutcracker is performed; those tickets often sell out early.
Silent, rare, and classical movies are frequently shown, accompanied by a live organist, and sometimes a band, in the classical 1930's Castro Theater just off Market street in the Castro district. Tickets are available on-line or on the day of the performance. Popular features may sell out early. The Castro theater is also a venue for various film festivals. The Opera Plaza Cinema often shows rare classical and foreign movies in its cozy theaters. Opera Plaza is located just a few blocks up van Ness Avenue from the Opera and Symphony. The San Francisco Symphony shows movies in its large auditorium, accompanied by its orchestra, several times a year. Both silent movies and movies with intense musical contents, as Walt Disney's Fantasia, are presented. They are a great way to introduce kids to classical music.
Events [ edit ]
There is an incredible array of events going on in San Francisco — virtually every day there will be something of interest to anyone going on, and San Francisco's mild climate ensures that practically every weekend will bring another major festival or some sort of large event. Listed here are just some of the really big events going on:
Cultural events [ edit ]
Cherry Blossom Festival, Western Addition, [77]. April. In Japantown, this kid-friendly event includes a parade, a street fair, and music.
, Western Addition, [77]. April. In Japantown, this kid-friendly event includes a parade, a street fair, and music. Fringe Festival, taking place at various theaters in the Civic Center-Tenderloin area, [78]. Just after Labor Day. A 10 day festival about theatrical experimentation and having fun, even if you don't know what you're doing exactly.
, taking place at various theaters in the Civic Center-Tenderloin area, [78]. Just after Labor Day. A 10 day festival about theatrical experimentation and having fun, even if you don't know what you're doing exactly. Haight Ashbury Street Fair, Haight, [79]. On the second Sunday of June, people pack the Upper Haight for this event featuring local bands, food stalls and plenty of shopping.
, Haight, [79]. On the second Sunday of June, people pack the Upper Haight for this event featuring local bands, food stalls and plenty of shopping. San Francisco International Film Festival, based at the Presidio in Golden Gate, but smaller events take place throughout the city, [80]. Two weeks in Apr/May. Organized by the San Francisco Film Society who are based in the Presidio, but the arthouse movies, documentaries, and short films are shown throughout the city.
, based at the Presidio in Golden Gate, but smaller events take place throughout the city, [80]. Two weeks in Apr/May. Organized by the San Francisco Film Society who are based in the Presidio, but the arthouse movies, documentaries, and short films are shown throughout the city. Tet Festival, Civic Center-Tenderloin area, [81]. Mid-January to mid-February. Celebrate New Year's Vietnamese style at this festival. It's a great opportunity to sample some of the delicious Vietnamese dishes that they have in the area.
, Civic Center-Tenderloin area, [81]. Mid-January to mid-February. Celebrate New Year's Vietnamese style at this festival. It's a great opportunity to sample some of the delicious Vietnamese dishes that they have in the area. Union Street Art Festival, Golden Gate, [82]. First weekend in June. This festival attracts many local artists who line the streets displaying their arts and crafts, along with live jazz and classical music performances and an organic farmer's market.
Holidays [ edit ]
Chinese New Year Festivities, Chinatown, [83]. January or February. The San Francisco version of the Chinese New Year dates way back, with a colorful, vibrant parade with decorative costumes, lions, deafening firecrackers, "lucky-money" envelopes, colorful banners, ornately themed floats, martial arts groups, stilt walkers, acrobats, and, of course, a 200 foot Golden Dragon.
, Chinatown, [83]. January or February. The San Francisco version of the Chinese New Year dates way back, with a colorful, vibrant parade with decorative costumes, lions, deafening firecrackers, "lucky-money" envelopes, colorful banners, ornately themed floats, martial arts groups, stilt walkers, acrobats, and, of course, a 200 foot Golden Dragon. Columbus Day Parade, North Beach, [84]. This hugely popular parade celebrates Christopher Columbus and Italian heritage. Handmade floats run all the way from Fisherman's Wharf up Columbus Avenue through North Beach.
, North Beach, [84]. This hugely popular parade celebrates Christopher Columbus and Italian heritage. Handmade floats run all the way from Fisherman's Wharf up Columbus Avenue through North Beach. Easter Parade and Spring Celebration, Union Street in Golden Gate. The kid-friendly but diverse festivities include a petting zoo, pony rides, live music, train rides, alfresco dining, and a parade.
, Union Street in Golden Gate. The kid-friendly but diverse festivities include a petting zoo, pony rides, live music, train rides, alfresco dining, and a parade. Fourth of July. San Francisco's main Independence Day celebrations take place on Fisherman's Wharf. There is lots of free entertainment during the day, culminating with an impressive fireworks display from the foot of Municipal Pier, and at the other end of the Wharf from barges moored off the north of PIER 39.
. San Francisco's main Independence Day celebrations take place on Fisherman's Wharf. There is lots of free entertainment during the day, culminating with an impressive fireworks display from the foot of Municipal Pier, and at the other end of the Wharf from barges moored off the north of PIER 39. Tree Lighting Ceremony at Ghirardelli Square, Ghirardelli Square, Fishermans' Wharf. End of November. Ring in the holiday season by attending the festivities at Ghirardelli Square. There's theater, live music, and then at the end they decorate a 45 foot Christmas tree with ornaments, lights, and chocolate bars.
LGBT community events [ edit ]
San Francisco is famous for its exuberant and visible lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community, who always put together some very festive events:
Halloween in the Castro. Halloween, the holiday when everyone puts on a mask, has long been a special time for gay, lesbian and bisexual people to take off the "straight-looking mask" they sometimes wore all year, and be themselves. What remains today is a huge, sometimes poorly controlled, street party in the Castro on the evening of October 31st each year. In recent years, the police have cracked down, and it has been much diminished.
. Halloween, the holiday when everyone puts on a mask, has long been a special time for gay, lesbian and bisexual people to take off the "straight-looking mask" they sometimes wore all year, and be themselves. What remains today is a huge, sometimes poorly controlled, street party in the Castro on the evening of October 31st each year. In recent years, the police have cracked down, and it has been much diminished. Pink Saturday is a street party in the Castro on the Saturday night before the Pride Parade and Celebration.
is a street party in the Castro on the Saturday night before the Pride Parade and Celebration. Folsom Street Fair is a street fair, generally the last Sunday in September. One of the largest leather / kink events in the world, attracting a wide range of straight, gay, and queer attendees.
is a street fair, generally the last Sunday in September. One of the largest leather / kink events in the world, attracting a wide range of straight, gay, and queer attendees. The San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Parade and Celebration [85] is one of the largest and oldest gay pride parades and festivals in the world, centered in the Civic Center area. It's a huge, happy, chaotic celebration of diversity, politics, sexuality, and San Francisco wackiness, on the last weekend in June. About a dozen stages and spaces offer everything from square dancing to hip-hop, from a family garden to Leather Alley. It's a movement, it's a market, it's a party. Both parade and celebration are for everyone -- straight as well as gay are welcome.
Outdoor and recreational events [ edit ]
Bay to breakers parties during the race
Bay to Breakers, [86]. Third Sunday in May. An annual footrace that is one of the largest in the country. The route runs from Downtown to Ocean Beach. Many runners do the whole thing in costume, wearing anything from elaborate costumes to wearing almost nothing at all, lending a party atmosphere to the event.
, [86]. Third Sunday in May. An annual footrace that is one of the largest in the country. The route runs from Downtown to Ocean Beach. Many runners do the whole thing in costume, wearing anything from elaborate costumes to wearing almost nothing at all, lending a party atmosphere to the event. Critical Mass. On the last Friday of each month, bicyclists in San Francisco (and about 200 like-minded cities world-wide) gather at the north end of Market Street on the Embarcadero and ride en masse to some destination, militantly demonstrating their right to occupy the roads. If you are driving in SF on a Critical Mass day, you will want to listen for radio traffic reports, but if you are stopped by the mass the best thing to do is maintain a good sense of humor and remember that it will all pass in about 5 minutes. Although, tempers can and do flare, and there have been cases where run ins with drivers and bicyclists have gotten violent. If your car is surrounded by bikes, definitely do not move until they have passed or they might feel threatened.
. On the last Friday of each month, bicyclists in San Francisco (and about 200 like-minded cities world-wide) gather at the north end of Market Street on the Embarcadero and ride en masse to some destination, militantly demonstrating their right to occupy the roads. If you are driving in SF on a Critical Mass day, you will want to listen for radio traffic reports, but if you are stopped by the mass the best thing to do is maintain a good sense of humor and remember that it will all pass in about 5 minutes. Although, tempers can and do flare, and there have been cases where run ins with drivers and bicyclists have gotten violent. If your car is surrounded by bikes, definitely do not move until they have passed or they might feel threatened. Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon, [87]. Second Sunday in June. Participants (which often include world champions and Olympic medalists) swim 1.5 miles through chilly waters, bike 18 miles, and then run an extra 8 miles. The course winds its way throughout the city, but the transition and finish line is at Marina Green in the Golden Gate area.
, [87]. Second Sunday in June. Participants (which often include world champions and Olympic medalists) swim 1.5 miles through chilly waters, bike 18 miles, and then run an extra 8 miles. The course winds its way throughout the city, but the transition and finish line is at Marina Green in the Golden Gate area. Fleet Week, Fisherman's Wharf, [88]. Usually held in the first week of October, it's a tribute to the men and women in the armed forces. A flotilla of Navy ships dock on the Wharf in parade fashion, and there are many free Deck tours available from crew members. There are also several air displays by the Navy flyers.
, Fisherman's Wharf, [88]. Usually held in the first week of October, it's a tribute to the men and women in the armed forces. A flotilla of Navy ships dock on the Wharf in parade fashion, and there are many free Deck tours available from crew members. There are also several air displays by the Navy flyers. Sunday Streets, [89]. Sundays in the Summer, various locations. See the website for where and when Sunday Streets is happening and head out for some good times with other walkers, bicyclists, skateboarders, roller skaters, etc. The cars are kicked off of the streets for some hours allowing the neighborhoods to come alive. There are food vendors, bike workshops, music performances, and all kinds of other great events. Sunday Streets is modeled after Bogotá's Ciclovia.
Sports [ edit ]
AT&T Park
San Francisco has several professional sports teams, although the spread-out nature of the Bay Area means there are also teams nearby in San Jose and Oakland.
The San Francisco Giants are the city's Major League Baseball team, playing their home games at the lovely AT&T Park in SoMa. The other major league team in San Francisco is the San Francisco 49ers, the city's National Football League team, who used to play their games at Candlestick Park on Candlestick Point in Southeast San Francisco. |
UK national co-ordinator. 'But for security reasons we can't reveal details of how or where yet.' Similarly, a massive protest in London on 10 March will be the subject of intense cyber comment. In response, the site has fallen victim to increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks. Investigations have traced the sources back to China, leading to speculation that the Chinese authorities are trying to sabotage the site to stop online critics.
Least likely to post 'Hey guyz, any hotties in the Nepal region?!'
studentsforafreetibet.org
22. Jezebel
Last year Gawker Media launched Jezebel – a blog which aimed to become a brilliant version of a women's magazine. It succeeded quickly, in part by acknowledging the five big lies perpetuated by the women's media: The Cover Lie (female forgeries of computer-aided artistry); The Celebrity-Profile Lie (flattery, more nakedly consumerist and less imaginative than the movies they're shilling for); The Must-Have Lie (magazine editors are buried in free shit); The Affirmation Crap Lie (you are insecure about things you didn't know it was possible to be insecure about); and The Big Meta Lie (we're devastatingly affected by the celebrity media). Their regular 'Crap Email From a Dude' feature is especially fantastic, as is their coverage of current stories (opinionated and consistently hilarious) and politics. It offers the best lady-aimed writing on the web, along with lots of nice pictures of Amy Winehouse getting out of cars.
Least likely to post 'How To Look Skinny While Pleasing Your Man!'
jezebel.com
23. Gigazine
Created by Satoshi Yamasaki and Mazaki Keito of Osaka, Gigazine is the most popular blog in Japan, covering the latest in junk foods and beverages, games, toys and other ingredients of colourful pop product culture. Visitors first witness 'eye candy' such as David Beckham condoms (from China), 75 turtles in a fridge, the packaging for Mega Frankfurters or a life-size Ferrari knitted from wool, learn of a second X-Files movie moving into pre-pre-production, watch a vacuum-cleaning robot being tested and compare taste reports of Kentucky Fried Chicken's new Shrimp Tsuisuta Chilli.
Least likely to post 'Anyone seen these charming croquet mallets?'
gigazine.net
24. Girl with a one-track mind
Following in the footsteps of Belle de Jour – the anonymous blogger claiming to be a sex worker – the girl with a one track mind started writing in open, explicit terms about her lively sex life in 2004. By 2006, the blog was bookified and published by Ebury, and spent much time on bestseller lists, beach towels and hidden behind the newspapers of serious-looking commuters. Though she was keen to retain her anonymity and continue her career in the film industry, author 'Abby Lee' was soon outed as north Londoner Zoe Margolis by a Sunday newspaper.
Least likely to post 'I've got a headache'
girlwithaonetrackmind.blogspot.com
25. Mashable
Founded by Peter Cashmore in 2005, Mashable is a social-networking news blog, reporting on and reviewing the latest developments, applications and features available in or for MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and countless lesser-known social-networking sites and services, with a special emphasis on functionality. The blog's name Mashable is derived from Mashup, a term for the fusing of multiple web services. Readers range from top web 2.0 developers to savvy 13-year-olds wishing for the latest plug-ins to pimp up their MySpace pages.
Least likely to post 'But why don't you just phone them up?'
mashable.com
26. Greek tragedy
Stephanie Klein's blog allows her to 'create an online scrapbook of my life, complete with drawings, photos and my daily musings' or, rather, tell tawdry tales of dating nightmares, sexual encounters and bodily dysfunctions. Thousands of women tune in for daily accounts of her narcissistic husband and nightmarish mother-in-law and leave equally self-revealing comments transforming the pages into something of a group confessional. The blog has been so successful that Klein has penned a book, Straight Up and Dirty, and has featured in countless magazine and newspaper articles around the globe. Not bad for what Klein describes as 'angst online'.
Least likely to post 'Enough about me – what's your news?'
stephanieklein.blogs.com
27. Holy Moly
If a weekly flick through Heat just isn't enough, then a daily intake of Holy Moly will certainly top up those celeb gossip levels. The UK blog attracts 750,000 visitors a month and 240,000 celeb-obsessees subscribe to the accompanying weekly mail-out. It's an established resource for newspaper columnists – both tabloid and broadsheet – and there's a daily 'News from the Molehill' slot in the free London paper The Metro. Last month Holy Moly created headlines in its own right by announcing a rethink on publishing paparazzi shots. The blog will no longer publish pics obtained when 'pursuing people in cars and on bikes', as well as 'celebrities with their kids', 'people in distress at being photographed' and off-duty celebs. But don't think that means the omnipresent celeb blog that sends shivers round offices up and down the country on'mail-out day' is slowing down – there has been talk of Holy Moly expanding into TV.
Least likely to post 'What do you think of the new Hanif Kureishi?'
holymoly.co.uk
28. Michelle Malkin
Most surveys of web use show a fairly even gender balance online, but political blogging is dominated by men. One exception is Michelle Malkin, a conservative newspaper columnist and author with one of the most widely read conservative blogs in the US. That makes her one of the most influential women online. Her main theme is how liberals betray America by being soft on terrorism, peddling lies about global warming and generally lacking patriotism and moral fibre.
Least likely to post 'That Obama's got a lovely smile, hasn't he?'
www.michellemalkin.com
29. Cranky flier
There's nowhere to hide for airlines these days. Not with self-confessed 'airline dork' Brett Snyder, aka Cranky Flier, keeping tabs on their progress. He's moved on from spending his childhood birthdays in airport hotels, face pressed against the window watching the planes come in, and turned his attention to reporting on the state of airlines. His CV is crammed with various US airline jobs, which gives him the insider knowledge to cast his expert eye over everything from the recent 777 emergency landing at Heathrow to spiralling baggage handling costs and the distribution of air miles to 'virtual assistants'.
Least likely to post 'There's nothing wrong with a well-conducted cavity search'
crankyflier.com
30. Go fug yourself
It's a neat word, fug – just a simple contraction of 'ugly' and its preceding expletive – but from those three letters an entire fugging industry has grown. At Go Fug Yourself, celebrity offenders against style, elegance and the basic concept of making sure you're covering your reproductive organs with some form of clothing before you leave the house are 'fugged' by the site's writers, Jessica Morgan and Heather Cocks. In their hands, the simple pleasure of yelping 'Does she even OWN a mirror?' at a paparazzi shot of some B-list headcase in fuchsia becomes an epic battle against dull Oscar gowns, ill-fitting formalwear and Lindsay Lohan's leggings. The site stays on the right side of gratuitous nastiness by dishing out generous praise when due (the coveted 'Well Played'), being genuinely thoughtful on questions of taste and funnier on the subject of random starlets in sequined sweatpants than you could possibly even imagine.
Least likely to post 'Oprah looked great in those stretch jeans'
gofugyourself.typepad.com
31. Gaping void
In the middle of a career as an adman in New York, Hugh MacLeod found himself doodling acerbic and almost surreal cartoons on the back of people's business cards to pass the time in bars. Everyone seemed to like the idea, so he kept going. Things started going gangbusters when he pimped his cartoons on the internet, and as he built an audience through his blog, he started writing about his other passion – the new world of understanding how to adapt marketing to the new world of the net. Remember when everybody was madly printing off vouchers from the web that saved you 40 per cent? That was one of his: aimed at helping shift more bottles from Stormhoek, the South African vintner he works with.
Least likely to post 'This product really sells itself'
gapingvoid.com
32. Dirtydirty dancing
If someone stole your camera, took it out for the night to parties you yourself aren't cool enough to go to and returned it in the morning, you would probably find it loaded up with pictures like those posted on DirtyDirtyDancing. The site seems pretty lo-fi – just entries called things like 'Robin's birthday' and 'FEB16' featuring pages of images of hip young things getting their party on. And that's it. The original delight was in logging on to see if you'd made it on to the site – your chances increase exponentially if you're beautiful, avant-garde and hang out at clubs and parties in the edgier parts of London – but now the site can get up to 900,000 hits a month from all over the world.
Least likely to post 'Revellers at the Earl of Strathdore's hunt ball'
dirtydirtydancing.com
33. Crooked timber
With a title pulled from Immanuel Kant's famous statement that 'out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made', it's an amalgam of academic and political writing that has muscled its way into the epicentre of intelligent discussion since its conception in 2003. Formed as an internet supergroup, pulling several popular intellectual blogs together, Crooked Timber now has 16 members – largely academics – across the US, Europe, Australia and Asia. The site has built itself a reputation as something of an intellectual powerhouse; a sort of global philosophical thinktank conducted via blog.
Least likely to post 'Did anyone see Casualty last night?'
crookedtimber.org
34. Beansprouts
Combining diary, opinion and green lifestyle tips, Beansprouts is a blog that covers one family's'search for the good life'. Melanie Rimmer and her family of five live in a'small ex-council house' with a garden on the edge of farmland in Poynton, Cheshire. They grow food on an allotment nearby, keep chickens and bees and 'try to be green, whatever that means'. Rimmer set up the blog nearly two years ago when she first got the allotment and says she felt it was something worth writing about. With one post a day, often more, topics for discussion can range from top 10 uses for apples to making scrap quilts.
Least likely to post 'Make mine a Happy Meal'
bean-sprouts.blogspot.com
35. The offside
Launched by 'Bob' after the success of his WorldCupBlog in 2006, Offside is a UK-based blog covering football leagues globally, gathering news and visuals on all of it, inviting countless match reports and promoting discussion on all things soccer, from the attack by a colony of red ants on a player in the Sao Paulo state championship third division, to the particular qualities of every one of Cristiano Ronaldo's goals so far this season. Considered by many to be the best'serious' blog in the game, it nevertheless promises irreverently, 'If there is a sex scandal in England, we'll be stuck in the middle of it. If a player is traded for 1,000lb of beef in Romania, we'll cook the steak. And if something interesting happens in Major League Soccer, we'll be just as surprised as you.'
Least likely to post 'Check out Ronaldo's bubble butt'
theoffside.com
36. Peteite Anglaise
The tagline of a new book hitting British shelves reads 'In Paris, in love, in trouble', but if it were telling the whole story, perhaps it should read 'In public' too. Bored at work one day in 2004, expat secretary Catherine Sanderson happened upon the concept of blogging. With a few clicks and an impulse she created her own blog, and quickly gathered fans who followed her life in Paris, the strained relationship with her partner and adventures with her toddler. And there was plenty of drama to watch: within a year her relationship had broken up, and she'd met a new man who wooed her online. Readers were mesmerised by her unflinching dedication to telling the whole story, no matter how she would be judged. Soon afterwards, however, Sanderson's employers found out about the blog and promptly fired her. Defeat turned into victory, however, with the press attention she gathered from the dismissal not only securing victory in an industrial tribunal, but also helping her score a lucrative two-book deal with Penguin.
Least likely to post 'J'ai assez parle de moi, qu'est-ce que vous pensez?'
petiteanglaise.com
37. Crooks and liars
Founded in 2004 by John Amato (a professional saxophonist and flautist), Crooks and Liars is a progressive/liberal-leaning political blog, with over 200m visitors to date, which is illustrated by video and audio clips of politicians and commentators on podiums, radio and TV. Readers post a variety of comments on political talking points of the day, although 9/11 conspiracy theories are often deleted, and there is a daily round-up of notable stories on other political blogs.
Least likely to post 'So just what is a caucus?'
crooksandliars.com
38. Chocolate and Zucchini
For Clothilde Dusoulier, a young woman working in computing and living in the Paris district of Montmartre, starting a blog was a way of venting her boundless enthusiasm for food without worrying she might be boring her friends with it. Five years later Chocolate and Zucchini, one of the most popular cooking blogs, has moved from being a hobby to a full-time career. The mixture of an insider's view on gastronomic Paris, conversational, bilingual writing and the sheer irresistibility of her recipes pull in thousands of readers every day. This, in turn, has led to multiple books and the ability to forge a dream career as a food writer.The name of the blog is, she says, a good metaphor for her cooking style: 'The zucchini illustrates my focus on healthy and natural eating... and the chocolate represents my decidedly marked taste for anything sweet.'
Least likely to post 'Just add instant mash'
chocolateandzucchini.com
39. Samizdata
Samizdata is one of Britain's oldest blogs. Written by a bunch of anarcho-libertarians, tax rebels, Eurosceptics and Wildean individualists, it has a special niche in the political blogosphere: like a dive bar, on the rational side of the border between fringe opinion and foam-flecked paranoid ranting. Samizdata serves its opinions up strong and neat, but still recognisable as politics. On the other side of the border, in the wilderness, the real nutters start.
Least likely to post 'I'd say it's six of one, half a dozen of the other'
samizdata.net
40. The daily dish
Andrew Sullivan is an expat Brit, blogging pioneer and defier-in-chief of American political stereotypes. He is an economic conservative (anti-tax), a social liberal (soft on drugs) and a foreign policy hawk (pro-war). He endorsed George Bush in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004. Barack Obama is his preferred Democrat candidate in 2008. So he is either confused, a hypocrite or a champion of honest non-partisanship – depending on your point of view. He is also gay, a practising Roman Catholic and HIV-positive, a set of credentials he routinely deploys in arguments to confuse atheist liberals and evangelical conservatives.
Least likely to post 'Sorry, I can't think of anything to say'
andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com
41. The F word
Founded in 2001, the UK's first feminist webzine is responsible for reviving debates around feminism in Britain. Edited by Jess McCabe, the site, which receives around 3,000 hits a day, is dedicated to providing a forum for contemporary feminist voices, with a daily news blog, features on stereotypes and censorship, podcasts on pornography and regular feminist film reviews.
Least likely to post 'What's the difference between a woman and a condom?'
thefword.org.uk
42. Jonny B's private secret diary
Growing in popularity since its debut in 2003, Jonny B's diary – which is clearly neither private nor terribly secret – catalogues the rock and bowls lifestyle of one man in the depths of rural Norfolk. With the mocking self-awareness of a modern Diary of a Nobody, the author tells tales of wild nights at the village pub and the fortunes of the local bowls team. As a slow, gentle satire on modern village life, it is often held up as an example of blog as sitcom, and has not only attracted a loyal band of readers, but a dedicated fan club on Facebook desperate to work out the real identity of the wit behind the site. Previous guesses have included Chris Evans and Johnny Vaughan, though both have been strenuously denied.
Least likely to post 'OMG, I saw Jessica Simpson in Lidl and she signed my bum!'
privatesecretdiary.com
43. Popjustice
When Smash Hits! died, Popjustice became the new home of pop music. Founded in 2000 by Peter Robinson, it combines fandom with music news and raw critique, all hilarious, and all blindingly correct. Recent features include a review of Eurovision failure Daz Sampson's new single 'Do A Little Dance' ('The listener is invited to muse on the sad inevitability of their own death') and a furious debate about the future of Girls Aloud.
Least likely to post 'I prefer Pierre Boulez's interpretation of Mahler's third'
popjustice.com
44. Waiter rant
Rant isn't quite the right word for this collection of carefully crafted stories from the sharp end of the service industry in a busy New York restaurant. 'The Waiter', as the author is known, has been blogging his experiences with fussy customers and bad tippers since 2004, winning a gong at blogging's biggest awards, the Bloggies, in 2007. It's representative – but by no means the first – of the so-called 'job-blogs', with people from all walks of life, from ambulance drivers (randomactsofreality.net) and policemen (coppersblog.blogspot.com) to the greatly loved but now defunct Call Centre Confidential. Between them they chronicle life in their trade, and usually from behind a veil of anonymity. Something about the everyday nature of The Waiter – a person we like to pretend is invisible or treat with servile disdain – deconstructing the event later with a subtle, erudite typestroke, has captured the public imagination and (hopefully) made some people behave better in restaurants than they otherwise might.
Least likely to post 'The customer is always right'
waiterrant.net
45. Hecklerspray
The internet's not exactly short of gossip websites providing scurrilous rumours of who did what to whom, but some stand out from the rest. Sharply written and often laugh-out-loud funny, Hecklerspray has been called the British alternative to Perez Hilton, but it's different in important ways: the emphasis here is on style and wit, with a stated aim to 'chronicle the ups and downs of all that is populist and niche within the murky world of entertainment'. Basically, it's gossip for grown-ups.
Least likely to post 'If you can't say anything nice…'
hecklerspray.com
46. WoWinsider
WoWinsider is a blog about the World of Warcraft, which is the most popular online role-playing game in the world, one for which over 10m pay subscriptions each month in order to control an avatar (a character, chosen from 10 races) and have it explore landscapes, perform quests, build skills, fight monsters to the death and interact with others' avatars. WoWinsider reports on what's happening within WoW ('Sun's Reach Harbor has been captured'). It also reports on outside developments and rumours ('A future patch will bring a new feature: threat meters'). Supporters of US presidential candidate Ron Paul promoted on WoWInsider their recent virtual mass march through the WoW. And the blog recently reported that America's Homeland Security are – seriously – looking for a terrorist operating within WoW.
Least likely to post 'Who fancies a game of space invaders?'
WoWinsider.com
47. Angry black bitch
Angry Black Bitch, which has the tagline, 'Practising the Fine Art of Bitchitude', is the four-year-old blog of Shark Fu of St Louis, Missouri. She has never posted a photo of herself and this 'anonymity' has led recently to her having to fend off claims she's really a white man, even a drag queen. But taken as read, Shark Fu is a much-discussed, 35-year-old black woman, tired of the 'brutal weight' of her 'invisibility'.
Least likely to post 'I'm off to anger-management'
angryblackbitch.blogspot.com
48. Stylebubble
Fashion blogger Susie Lau says Stylebubble is just a diary of what she wears and why. But few diaries are read by 10,000 people a day. Lau, 23, admits to spending up to 60 per cent of her pay from her day job in advertising on clothes, but now she's viewed as a fashion opinion former, she's being paid in kind. Her influence is such that fashion editors namecheck her blog, Chanel invites her to product launches and advertisers have come calling.
Least likely to post 'I even wear my Ugg boots in bed'
stylebubble.typepad.com
49. AfterEllen
Afterellen takes an irreverent look at how the lesbian community is represented in the media. Started by lesbian pop-culture guru Sarah Warn in 2002, the name of the site gives a nod to the groundbreaking moment Ellen DeGeneres came out on her hit TV show, Ellen, in 1997. Since then, lesbian and bisexual women have moved from the margins on to primetime TV, and this blog analyses the good, the bad and the ugly of how they're portrayed. It's now the biggest website for LGBT women, with half a million hits a month.
Least likely to post 'George Clooney – I wouldn't kick him out of bed'
afterellen.com
50. Copyblogger
It's dry, real, and deafeningly practical, but for an online writing-for-the-internet blog, Copyblogger, founded in 2006, is remarkably interesting. Swelling with advice on online writing, it's an essential tool for anyone trying to make themselves heard online, whether commenting on a discussion board or putting together a corporate website.
Least likely to post 'Social networking – it's just a phase'
copyblogger.com
· Join the Debate: If you would like to comment about our choice of blogs, go to blogs.theguardian.com/digitalcontent
· This article was amended on Friday March 14 2008. In the article above we wrongly said that Ryan Block founded Engadget and co-founded gadget blog Gizmodo. They were actually founded and co-founded by Peter Rojas. This has been corrected.At last night’s presidential debate Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton made all kinds of attacks on each other. But on one notable issue, they were in complete agreement: they both think people on the federal government’s “no fly list” should be categorically denied their right to buy guns under the Second Amendment. Both candidates have repeatedly said so for months. Trump’s stance on this issue should be deeply troubling to those who care about gun rights – and also to people concerned about constitutional rights generally, even if they don’t care much about this one.
As both the ACLU and conservative commentators point out, the no fly list is notoriously inaccurate. It is also provides little or no due process protections. The process is secret, people are not told the reasons why they were placed on the list, and they are not given any advance opportunity to challenge the designation. And, once on the list, even a completely innocent person might find it difficult and time-consuming to get off it.
If Trump is committed to the idea that your Second Amendment rights can be stripped on such a flimsy basis, with so little due process, then virtually any other politically feasible limitation on gun rights is also acceptable. The sort of reasoning that would uphold this restriction on gun ownership would permit pretty much any other. That should give pause to people supporting Trump because they think he is going to protect Second Amendment rights. It is also yet another reason to doubt that he would appoint originalist judges committed to protecting important constitutional rights generally. Most such judges are unlikely to uphold these kinds of gun regulations (as well as many other items on his political agenda).
Trump’s disdain for Second Amendment rights is not limited to the no fly list. At last night’s debate, he also said he wants police to use “stop and frisk” searches to take away guns from “bad people.” It’s not entirely clear what he means by this remark (it could be interpreted as being limited to people the police believe to be “felons” or “gang members” whom he also mentioned in the same part of the debate). But, at the very least, it’s another example of him advocating gun confiscation without due process. It also indicates a disturbing level of confidence that the government can identify “bad people” and take away their guns without victimizing the innocent.
Even people who do not care much about gun rights and the Second Amendment have reason to be concerned about Trump’s position on this issue. As liberal legal commentator Mark Joseph Stern (who is no fan of gun rights), points out, if this constitutional right can be taken away with so little due process, others can be as well:
If the government can revoke your right to access firearms simply because it has decided to place you on a secret, notoriously inaccurate list, it could presumably restrict your other rights in a similar manner. You could be forbidden from advocating for causes you believe in, or associating with like-minded activists; your right against intrusive, unreasonable searches could be suspended. And you would have no recourse: The government could simply declare that, as a name on a covert list, you are owed no due process at all.
Stern believes that the Second Amendment should not be interpreted as protecting an individual right to bear arms. But so long as the Supreme Court continues to hold otherwise, revoking this right on the basis of a secret list with no due process sets a dangerous precedent for other constitutional rights.
In fairness to Trump, Hillary Clinton is no better than he is on the no fly issue. It is, as already noted, one of the few things they agreed on last night. While I believe that she is, on balance, a lesser evil than Trump, this is not one of the issues that makes her so. On other gun control issues, she almost certainly favors more extensive regulation than he does.
But there is this difference: Hillary Clinton – and many other liberals – make no bones about the fact that they believe either that the Second Amendment does not protect an individual right to bear arms at all, or that the right in question is an unimportant one that should be relegated to second-class status compared to what they see as more significant parts of the Bill of Rights. I think they’re badly wrong about that. But their reasoning at least creates the possibility that they – and the judges they pick – could approve the no-fly list gun ban without creating too much of a dangerous precedent for other constitutional rights. Like Stern, I believe that many liberals seriously underrate the risk of dangerous slippery slope effects in this area. But at least they are making some effort to contain them.
By contrast, Trump repeatedly claims that he’s a strong supporter of the Second Amendment. If he’s nonetheless willing to undermine it so blatantly, that does not bode well for the many constitutional rights for which he has (even) less regard.
UPDATE: Commenters on Twitter point to Trump’s seeming support of a GOP bill sponsored by Sen. John Cornyn that would allow the government to ban people on the “no fly list” from buying guns for only 72 hours, after which they would have to go to court to provide evidence of links to terrorism, in order to extend the ban. It’s a fair point, and one I should have addressed in the original post. But I don’t think it much changes the bottom line on the dangerous implications of Trump’s position on this issue.
While it is entirely possibly that Trump would sign the Cornyn bill if it passes, he has never clearly stated that he supports it. Much more significantly he has never said that he will only support the “no fly, no buy” policy if it includes a right to a judicial hearing. And, in the debate last night, he suggested the contrary by emphasizing his essential agreement with Hillary Clinton on the issue. He even said he “quite strongly” agrees with her. This implies he would be just as happy to sign a bill with no such judicial safeguards (which is the approach Clinton advocates). Trump did indicate that there should be a legal way for people to get off the no fly list if they should not be there. But, of course, that is no different from the status quo. People can already – entirely legally – get off the no fly list by asking the federal government to remove them. It just often takes many months or even years to happen.
The important broader issue here is not whether Trump would sign the Cornyn bill. It is Trump’s cavalier approach even towards those constitutional rights, such as the Second Amendment, that he claims to strongly support.One thing that is very evident here in Mexico is how important family is, it is the heart of the country. Parents deeply love their children and want to provide the best possible future for them, this being what brings people from all over Mexico to Los Cabos in search of a more fruitful future. The result is some very humble beginnings. People come from other parts of Mexico hearing of the opportunity to start a new, more abundant life in Cabo. It is true that there are many jobs to be had here and the quality of life is better then in many other parts of the country, but the fact of the matter is that not everyone is flourishing as they expected. As you take one turn off the strip of luxury resorts you are quickly faced with the reality of what life is life for many local people.
This gives professionals like Michael Rensink, MD, an ENT (Ear Nose and Throat) physician, and Jim O’Hara, an audiologist the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others. The team started coming to Cabo twice a year starting back in 1992. Over the last two+ decades, they have witnessed the evolution of the Amigos De Los Ninos foundation and continue to support the cause. Thier intention, along with the intention of Amigos is to provide free medical care to local children in need, that would otherwise not have access.
The doctors shared with me that over the years of coming to Cabo to provide free audiology clinics, the clinic locations have been questionable at times, but were the best they had to work with. There was a time when they and their patients had to walk around the block to find a restroom. That fact never stopped them from fitting well over 300 hearing aides over the years, giving parents the ability to show their children the unconditional love they have and giving many children the opportunity to change the course of their future. Many of the children they see today are special needs cases that no other doctors are willing to see. For some of the patients, the parents are coming as a last effort, being directed from one social assistance program to another trying to find what is stifling their child’s development. I witnessed one desperate mother with a two-inch thick folder of her sons medical documents containing no answers…yet.
With the completion of the new building project, there is now a space that is clean, safe and comfortable to serve the families of the community. Not only is the new space great for the doctors, but it also pleasant, bright, and equip with toys for the sometimes frightened children. Amigos De Los Ninos welcomes needy families with open arms willing and able to help, with the assistance of kind professionals like Michael Rensink, Jim O’Hara and many more. The audiology programs that have been able to exist here in Los Cabos over the last 2+ decades are thanks to more foreign and local donors then we can list and Amigos is forever grateful.
Details of the first Audiology Clinic of 2016:
Saw 27 kids
Distributed 10 hearing aids
8 ear molds for November clinic
3 audio tests
27 cleanings
$18000 in-kind donations yearly
$4000 for 20 hearing aids purchased by ADLN
We are so very grateful to all the donors and volunteers who allow us to do what we do for the children of Los Cabos. Thank you from all of us at Amigos De Los Ninos, patience, board of directors and support staff for your continuous and generous support.In the so-called "Fight of the Century," the experts and oddsmakers were proven correct.
Using his four-inch reach advantage to score quick points with jabs, and his defensive shoulder roll to avoid getting hurt on the inside, Floyd Mayweather outpointed Manny Pacquiao in a 12 round decision for the World Welterweight Championship tonight at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. Mayweather, 38 years old, remains perfect--48-0 with 26 KOs. The 36 year old Pacquiao fell to 57-6-2 with 38 KOs.
On their short walks to the ring Pacquiao was smiling and relaxed, like he was headed to a party; Mayweather tightlipped and serious, the look of someone going to the biggest business meeting of his life
It was a good fight (but certainly not a great one)--I thought Mayweather won seven rounds and Paquiao two with three even--and I felt I got my $100 worth. That said, it wasn't close to being as exciting a fight as either the first or third bouts in the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier trilogy in the 1970s. Tonight's battle was more of a chess match than a brawl and unlike the first Ali-Frazier fight (the original Fight of the Century when both combatants were undefeated) there were no knockdowns.
Nor was it close to being as exciting as Roberto Duran-Sugar Ray Leonard I in 1980, when Duran took the welterweight title from Leonard. That fight had tremendous action (Leonard was willing to go to-to-to with the Hands of Stone) and both fighters were near their peak.
Here's how I saw tonight's bout:
In the first round the two spent most of the time in the middle of the ring exchanging jabs, though Mayweather landed two solid overhand rights to win the round in my opinion.
In the second, Pacquiao was more aggressive, backing Mayweather against the ropes a few times and landing an overhand left to the head. Mayweather grabbing Pacquiao around the waist a couple of times in middle of the ring. Crowd chanting Manny! Manny! Probably an even round.
Third round seemed even too, with each fighter landing one solid punch to the face his opponent. Lots of holding by Mayweather.
Fourth round a big one for Pacquiao. Landed three clean shots to Mayweather's head and had him pinned on the ropes for several seconds. Seemed like Pacquiao was gaining some confidence.
Mayweather came to life in the fifth round and hit Pacquiao with four or five clean shots to body and and face. Pacquiao inactive. Couldn't get inside. Big round for Mayweather.
Thought Pacquiao had a slight advantage in the sixth, pinning Mayweather against the ropes for several seconds and throwing a flurry of punches with a few of them landing on the body. Mayweather just shakes his head no.
The seventh round very even, fought almost entirely in the middle of the ring. Mayweather got in some good jabs and prevented Pacquiao from charging in close. Round to Mayweather.
The eighth was boring. Few punches, most landed by Mayweather but of the pitter patter variety. Probably got him the round, thought.
The ninth round belonged to Mayweather as he again keep the fight in the middle of the ring mostly, and even backed Pacquiao up a couple of times, mostly with his jab but once with a straight right to the face of Pacquiao. Mayweather's round.
A boring 10th round with few punches thrown by either fighter. Pacquiao now seems to be chasing Mayweather, unable to get close enough to score either in the center of the ring or closer to the ropes. Round probably to Mayweather.
The 11th clearly belonged to Mayweather. He seems much quicker at this point in the fight. Hit Pacquiao with a right uppercut that didn't slow down Pacquiao but was his perhaps his hardest punch of the fight. Pacquiao keeps charging straight at Mayweather but Mayweather much too quick at this point for Pacquiao to catch. Again, not much action from either fighter but round to Mayweather.
Mayweather ran entire 12th and Pacquiao couldn't catch him often and when he did Mayweather popped him with his jab. Not much action. Round to Mayweather.
Waiting for decision. Announcers unanimously think it will go to Mayweather. I agree. Pacquiao was by far the aggressor, but he had difficulty catching Mayweather, who also did a lot of holding and grabbing, especially in the first half of the fight when Pacquiao was fresher and did some bull rushes to get inside. Mayweather landed many more punches.
Judges agree and all three give it big to Mayweather.
But both fighters won at the bank. The money for the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight eclipses any other. Ticket revenue at the MGM Grand Garden Arena will yield $74 million in gate receipts, and the foreign rights to the fight sold for a record $35 million. The fight's total gross is expected to be over $300 million and could hit $400 million depending on the pay-per-view numbers.
The thinking in the days before the fight was that a record 3 million PPV buys for between $90 and $100 a pop. But while I was waiting for the fight to start announcer Jim Lampley said there was a delay because cable companies said so many people were buying the fight there was "an electric overload" that needed to be dealt with. Mayweather, who negotiated a 60%-40% split in his favor, should make at least $180 |
General’s office that were more than 90 days old, making it difficult for the public to know how -- or whether -- his office investigated bank fraud in the lead-up to the financial crisis of 2008. In the Cuomo administration’s announcement this week, the governor's chief information officer, Maggie Miller, justified the new email purge as a cost-saving measure aimed at “making government work better.”
But former prosecutors and open-government advocates interviewed by IBTimes say the move seems designed to hide information.
“The government belongs to the people and the government has to be transparent,” said Hal Hardin, a former judge and U.S. Attorney who famously investigated Gov. Ray Blanton of Tennessee. “Citizens ought to be able to know what our government is doing. The average email generated by a government owned by the people should be available to the people.”
Melanie Sloan, a former Clinton Justice Department official, said the timing of the move raises significant legal questions.
“This is potentially obstruction of justice,” she told IBTimes. “The only reason that the government destroys records is so no one can question what it is doing, and no one can unearth information about improper conduct. There’s no reason for New York not to preserve this information.”
Sloan said U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who is spearheading the Albany probe, could issue a letter to Cuomo ordering him to preserve all documents that could be relevant to the public corruption investigation. In May 2014, Bharara issued such a letter to state legislators. Bharara’s office declined to comment when asked by IBTimes if it had now issued a similar directive to Cuomo.
John Kaehny, the head of a coalition of transparency group called Reinvent Albany, said the purge order may be designed to circumvent obstruction of justice statutes that are designed to prevent deliberate document destruction.
“[The policy] may mean that you could never be accused of obstructing justice or destroying evidence because you could claim that the machine automatically deleted it,” he told IBTimes. “It creates a loophole and opportunity to destroy embarrassing emails.”
The technological mechanics of the Cuomo administration’s email purge remain murky. According to a document from New York’s Office of Information Technology Services, the state’s new Microsoft Office 365 system purges deleted mail after 90 days and makes sure that mail “cannot be recovered.” The document says that all mail -- whether manually deleted or not -- “will be subject to the 90 day retention policy.”
When Cuomo officials in 2013 announced the state government’s move to the Microsoft Office system, they said agencies would be utilizing a cloud-based system, which raises the possibility that copies of government emails may continue to exist on offsite servers. That, however, doesn't necessarily mean they can be obtained, whether through the state’s Freedom of Information Law or by criminal subpoena. Microsoft, for example, says “we require a court order or warrant before we will consider releasing content” and also says it does reserve the right to “reject U.S. subpoenas from government entities seeking content data.”
While Cuomo officials have suggested that the purge policy is a technical necessity to consolidate email systems, researcher Dave Maass of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said, “There's no technological reason that New York can't maintain these records indefinitely.”
Cuomo’s new policy stands in contrast to the federal government’s, which mandates that emails be retained for three to seven years. That federal policy change followed high-profile revelations that the Securities and Exchange Commission shredded documents related to financial investigations.
In the states, though, there's little uniformity. North Carolina appears to have some of the strongest legislation, according to a report by Stateline.org, mandating that no e-mail whatsoever be deleted for five years. The governor’s office in Texas, on the other hand, auto-delete e-mails every seven days.
New York appears to be the only state that has mandated auto deletion for all of state government. In most states, public employees have ample discretion to delete emails, but there's no mandate for system-wide purge.
Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, says beyond questions about legality, the public should be concerned about how the policy may preclude journalists from reporting on state government.
“This policy will allow the Cuomo administration, in many cases, to delete newsworthy emails faster than reporters can even request them,” Timm said. “It looks like an attempt to avoid accountability.”Russia’s President Putin held a meeting a few days ago to discuss the state of the Russian shipbuilding industry. This meeting comes on the heels of confirmation that the Russian navy is now absorbing a bigger share of budget spending than the Russian air force or army.
One subject that is certain to have been discussed is Russian plans to start construction next year of helicopter carriers for the Russian naval infantry to replace the cancelled French Mistrals.
The Russian naval infantry – Russia’s marine force – is a relatively small elite force very differently configured to the far bigger and more powerful US Marine Corps and with a very different role. The Russians have never used their naval infantry as a power projection force in the way the US Marine Corps is often used, and Russian naval infantry – unlike US marines – scarcely ever operate independently. To the extent that the Russians have a power projection force, that role is traditionally fulfilled by their much bigger paratroop forces.
The role of the naval infantry has traditionally been to carry out sea borne landings in the enemy’s rear in support of the ground operations of the Russian army. The Russians appear to have carried out exactly that sort of a landing on the coast of Georgia during the 2008 South Ossetia. Russian naval infantry alongside Russian paratroopers and special forces have also been deployed to Syria to support Russian military operations there, with naval infantry landing ships of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet being used to ferry supplies there.
Though the troops of the Russian naval infantry have managed to maintain their elite status and their high level of training in the years since the Soviet collapse, their sea-lift capability has severely declined since the Soviet period with a sharp reduction in the number of amphibious warfare ships they can call on. Moreover these ships, of the Ropucha and Alligator classes (below), are now old and outdated, lacking the helicopters which modern marine forces today consider essential for effective landing operations.
The Russians sought to make up for this weakness by buying Mistral helicopter carriers from France. The Mistral sale was however hugely controversial both with France’s NATO allies and in Russia, where the shipbuilding industry was unhappy that such an important order had been placed abroad. In the event the Mistral sale was cancelled by France after construction of the first carrier had already been completed as a result of the Ukrainian crisis. This has however opened the way for the Russians to design and build helicopter carriers themselves to their own design replace the Mistrals.
Two different designs have been proposed, a larger design called the Lavina (below) – at 24,000 tonnes and with a maximum speed of 22 knots bigger and faster than the Mistrals – able to carry 500 troops, 16 helicopters and 50 armoured vehicles, and a smaller design called the Priboy (below) – of just 14,000 tonnes and carrying only 8 helicopters but apparently also able to carry a similar number of troops and vehicles to the Lavina.
Of the two designs a definite decision has been made to build the Lavina class, with construction of the first due to start next year.
Some Russian spokesmen have hinted that there are also plans to build the Priboy class (below) as well, apparently to complement the larger Lavina class. This would follow the deployment plan intended for the Mistals, where the 6,000 tonne Ivan Gren class (below) – the first example of which has now been finished and is now on trials – was planned to be built to complement the Mistrals.
The Ivan Gren class (below) has had a protracted and difficult construction history (work on the first started as long ago as 2004 and has only just been finished) largely because of lack of enthusiasm for the class from the naval infantry, who saw it as already outdated since it can only carry 2 helicopters. A decision has been taken to discontinue construction of the Ivan Gren class after completion of the second ship, which is expected next year. It is possible that the far more capable Priboy class is intended as the successor.
Though the Mistral sale was ultimately unsuccessful, it enabled the Russians to familiarise themselves with modern amphibious warfare helicopter carriers of the type nowadays used by marines and naval infantry. This was a type of ship the Russians had never previously operated or built. The Russian shipbuilding industry is claiming that building helicopter carriers like the Lavina and the Priboy is cheap and easy, far more so than building frigates or submarines, which Russia already builds in quantity.
Whilst there is no indication so far of how many of these ships the Russians intend to build, it likely they will build at least two of the Lavina class and possibly as many as four. If the Russians do decide to order the Priboy class to complement the Lavina class, then a possible order for these type of ships might be six. Together with the two Ivan Gren class the Russian naval infantry would then finally have the potent sea-lift capability they have long wanted.WORLDVIEW:The special position of the Catholic Church in international law is a vital part of its armoury, writes PATRICK SMYTH
WHEN US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice visited the Vatican in February 2005, she was caught off guard by Cardinal Angelo Sodano.
After discussions on Iraq, the Middle East and religious liberty, Sodano asked her if she could do something about an irksome court case in Kentucky.
As reported by John Allen, veteran Vatican correspondent for the US National Catholic Reporter( NCR), Sodano explained that the case, a class action to make the Vatican accountable for child sexual abuse by priests in the US, was a violation of the internationally recognised principle of “sovereign immunity”.
The Vatican, as a recognised state, cannot be subject to the jurisdiction of other states, an extension of the old British maxim rex non potest peccare, the king can do no wrong.
Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls confirmed as much. “It’s obvious and reasonable,” he told Allen, “that the Holy See would present its positions as a sovereign entity to the American state department, and recall the immunity for its acts that international law anticipates.”
Normal inter-state diplomacy at work... and the legal rationale for the Vatican’s recent brush-off to the Murphy commission – not a pompous rejoinder to someone who doesn’t understand diplomatic etiquette, but the deployment of an essential legal weapon in the Vatican armoury for protecting itself.
Rice replied that it was for the Vatican to assert immunity in the Kentucky court itself, and it has pleaded immunity successfully in, by Allen’s reckoning, some two dozen US cases.
A 1976 law, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, did make it easier, however, to sue sovereign entities in US courts under certain conditions – notably, when that entity engages in commercial activity in the US or its agents cause injury there by “tortious” act or omission.
In an Oregon case that is breaking new ground, Holy See vs John Doe, the supreme court last month agreed to hear an argument from a lower court that the Vatican can be sued – the “tortious” exception to immunity could apply because an abusive Irish priest, Andrew Ronan, could be argued to have been its agent.
The suit sought damages from the Vatican (and the archdiocese of Portland, the bishop of Chicago, and the Order of the Friar Servants) for sexual abuse in 1965 and 1966 by Ronan who had admitted abusing a child in Armagh, was transferred to Chicago and then Portland where he abused four others. The church knew of his admissions of abuse and failed to act against him or notify the police.
Among those cases where the Vatican successfully pleaded immunity is the long-running Alperin vs Vatican Bank, a case originally filed in San Francisco in 1999. The plaintiffs are Serb, Jewish, Roma and Ukrainian concentration camp survivors and their relatives and organisations representing over 300,000 Holocaust victims and their heirs. Their claim is for the return of some $50 million of the treasury of the Ustashe, the genocidal, Nazi-collaborating government of Croatia that, according to the US state department and others, was illicitly transferred to the Vatican, the Franciscan Order, and other banks after the end of the war.
In 2007 the Vatican got itself off the hook, leaving the Franciscans alone to fight the case, a ruling that puts the deeply anomalous position of the Vatican in sharp relief – while it may not be sued, an international Catholic order, and indeed any other international religious body, may.
In order not to jeopardise that valuable position, Vatican sources admitted to the NCR, the Holy See remained reluctant to enter into the details of sex abuse policy in the US. Indeed, Colm O’Gorman argues most plausibly that the failure of the Vatican to promulgate a mandatory worldwide code of conduct, with a reporting requirement – particularly important in the developing world – stems precisely from a fear of acknowledging its authority over national churches and implicitly conceding that priests and bishops, whom it appoints, are actually its agents in a legal sense.
It has also been careful for the same reason to insist repeatedly on the responsibility of the Irish dioceses for the issue.
The remarkable special position of the Catholic Church in international law is also reflected both in the diplomatic immunity of its nuncios and in its position at the United Nations.
Unlike any other religious organisation or NGO, the Holy See (not the Vatican state) participates in the business of the UN as a “non-member state permanent observer”, a designation that entitles it to participate but not vote in the General Assembly. It is allowed in practice also both to attend and vote at UN-sponsored international conferences.
Because such meetings operate by consensus the Holy See has played an important, some argue deeply reactionary, role in debates on a wide range of social policy issues from population, to the rights of women, to Aids. That has prompted a campaign led by the US organisation Catholics for Choice to have the status and rights of the Holy See at the UN reduced to that of any other observer NGO.
In the wake of the Murphy report, it is arguable that while Ireland should maintain a strong relationship at diplomatic level with an organisation representing one billion faithful, it is worth considering whether that should necessarily be conducted on a state-to-state basis. With all that that entails.A new analysis in the California Law Review, the student-run publication of the University of California at Berkeley’s law school, argues that flaws in the student editing system in that same journal paved the way for John Yoo to publish a career-launching article in 1996. The article set forth a dubious legal basis for practices like waterboarding, which Yoo later applied to U.S. policy as the Bush administration official chiefly responsible for the infamous “torture memos.”
A critical look at the article by any mainstream historian, though, would have thrown cold water on Yoo’s interpretation of the Constitution, claims Janet Cooper Alexander, a Stanford law professor and a former editor of the California Law Review. But like most such reviews, she explains, the CLR is edited and fact-checked by law students who are not expected to get extra input from established scholars on articles that deal with highly technical areas or detailed historical analysis.
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As a result, Yoo’s 139-page article was published in the journal’s respected pages despite its flawed reasoning. That made a crucial difference in the aftermath of 9/11. Yoo, by then a junior Justice Department staffer, was able to present himself as one of the administration's few experts on the constitutional limits of presidential power, thanks in part to the California Law Review article. This helped push him to the top of the Bush policymaking apparatus despite his lack of experience outside of academia, where his 1996 article received strong criticism and only tepid praise.
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The Obama administration’s intervention in Libya, the killing of bin Laden, and federal wiretapping of domestic terrorism suspects have all kept the issue of executive powers in the headlines — with Yoo a much-cited contributor to the discussion.Throughout the season, stlouisblues.com will feature first-person accounts of stories from within the St. Louis Blues organization. The series, titled "My Turn," will give fans unparalleled access to personal stories from current Blues players and alumni. This one comes from defenseman Vince Dunn, who shares his feelings about scoring his first career NHL goal in Florida on Oct. 12.
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I spent years dreaming about scoring a goal in the National Hockey League. I had a little celly planned in my head. I imagined some yelling, some high fives from all the boys and a big smile on my face.
It didn't happen like that, though.
I had to keep my emotions intact since we were trailing 5-2 in the game, even though inside I was thinking about everyone that helped me get here.
I'll never forget that goal. Petro was skating up the ice and Uppy was posted up on the blue line. Uppy drew a few guys to him and the puck spit out to the middle. It was loose, so I jumped on it. I pulled it around the D a little bit and shot through a screen.
Video: STL@FLA: Dunn scores his first NHL goal
It happened fast, and it was a dream come true. Scoring on Roberto Luongo who just moved into fourth all time in wins was cool for me, but I didn't know how to celebrate. After the game, they asked me to take a picture with the game puck in the locker room and I wasn't even sure if I should smile.
Now that I've had time to think about it, it's starting to set in. It feels pretty real now. We've got a lot to be excited about being 4-1 through our first five games. The goal was a big moment for me, and it happened in the rink I was drafted in, so maybe it was meant to be.
After the game, I looked at my phone and had a lot of messages, way more than I did for my first NHL game last week. I guess everybody is pretty proud of me for getting my name on the scoresheet and that's a good feeling. My parents, trainers, family, friends and old coaches, but it was my poppa's text that might have been the one that hit me the most. He's been my biggest fan and one of my biggest supporters since I was a little kid. He invested a lot of time into me being a hockey player by taking me to practices and stuff, and he came to my first NHL home and away game. I owe a lot to him and I know this goal mattered more to him than anybody.
At the end of the day, I'm pretty happy inside. To be 4-1 and have a goal in just my fifth NHL game, that's something to be proud of.
Maybe I'll save that celly I planned for my next one.Five Grappling Super League 8-Man Tournament Preview
On Saturday, December 3rd, eight of the toughest light and middleweight grapplers on planet earth will do battle in a unique and unprecedented format. Five Grappling is back and will play host to this powerful gathering of competitors. While there are other matches on the card, the big draw for the event is the 8-man super-bracket.
I will be there live calling the action and wanted to do my best to preview this exciting event. The first round match-up’s for the tournament have yet to be decided. The event organizers will be doing the brackets by random draw starting Friday night.
While the brackets could end up being key for determining a winner, there are some clear favorites heading into the tournament. Below, I’ll highlight those favorites, give you some predictions, and provide the underdog paths to victory.
Who’s competing in this thing?
The 8-man, single-elimination event will feature a lineup of world-class Brazilian jiu jitsu black belts from very different backgrounds. The competitor list is as follows:
Marcelo Mafra, Checkmat
Dillon Danis, Alliance Mansher Khera (Marcelo Gracia) – REPLACEMENT*
Sean Roberts, Ralph Gracie/Checkmat
John Combs, Easton BJJ
Brian Morizi, Clark Gracie
Edwin Najmi, Gracie Barra (Romulo Barral)
Michael Liera Jr., Atos Jiu Jitsu ( Andre Galvao)
Bill Cooper, Paragon
So, who has the best chance of winning? It’s best we break down each competitor one by one; as there is a lot to consider.
Preview of competitors
Marcelo Mafra
Mafra may not have a profile as big as some of the other competitors on the list, but he is absolutely one fo the tournament favorites. Mafra has the skills out of the box to beat everyone listed above. He is one of the few competitors that does not need to have his best day to win the whole thing. He simply has to fight at his ability level.
Although viewers at home may not have seen a lot of Mafra, he is actually one of the more experienced competitors in the tournament. This experience should help keep him from making a critical error that costs him. That error could come in the form of being too conservative as well.
Several years ago at the Pan Jiu jitsu Championship, he was caught late in the match by Clark Gracie, as he was attempting to protect a lead that would have seen him earn a decision that would deliver him the gold medal.
My prediction: Mafra is very likely a semi-finalist and quite possibly a finalist
REMOVED & REPLACED Dillon Danis
Danis will be taking a break from jet-setting around the world with Connor McGregor and feuding with Gordan Ryan to take part in this stellar 8-man tournament. Danis has not been as active in tournament jiu jitsu as he has in the past, but it’s obvious he’s been training for competition nonetheless.
Danis is another tournament favorite. He is a grinder. He is the guy in the tournament that may be able to win simply because he will be very hard to beat. He is also a very well-rounded competitor; which will lend itself very well to this type of format.
His relentless, high-risk style could put him in danger in certain match-ups. His bracket will be worth watching. He matches up better with some guys better than others. For example, I think Najmi is one of the more difficult matches for him in the tournament. If he could overcome some of the field, and hold off Najmi until the finals, he could see his name atop the podium.
My prediction: Dillon will make it past the first round and is a potential finalist
Mansher Khera
Mansher Khera has stepped in for an injured Dillon Danis.
Khera is an interesting late addition. He presents many of the same problems to the rest of field that Danis did. Khera has been relatively active recently, and is coming off a big ADCC trials tournament win.
Khera is now a dark horse for the finals and is a danger to everyone in the tournament. However, winning this tournament will be his biggest accomplishment yet.
My prediction: Khera is likely a semi-finalist. Depending on how prepared he is (he is last minute), he could make a run at the finals.
Sean Roberts
Roberts is a wild card in this entire tournament. He has not been overly active in the past few years. However, Roberts has as strong a reputation in the gym as anyone in the entire bracket.
Roberts is known as a dangerous and naturally talented competitor. His technique is very fluid and full of tricks. He will require all of his opponent’s attention. He is capable of overcoming everyone in the tournament by submission, but he would need to be in rare form to make that happen.
Roberts clearest path to victory is through his guard. The match length is short, and Roberts could frustrate and trap his opponents if they aren’t careful. However, the talent in this tournament will prove to be a tall test to Roberts, who still does not have a ton of tournament experience at black belt.
My prediction: Roberts can be a semi-finalist, but will need a superb performance to secure a spot in the finals
John Combs
If there was a fan favorite award for the competition, John Combs may just be the recipient. Combs burst onto the scene earlier this year with a dynamic performance at the pan Jiu Jitsu Championship. Since then, Combs has ridden a train of ups and downs.
Although Combs is coming off a submission loss several weeks ago to DJ Jackson, he has proven to be both unpredictable and incredibly lethal in every match he is in. If he can channel the performance from this year’s Pan, he may have a shot at this whole shebang.
Unfortunately for Combs, there is a lot of experience in this tournament to overcome. He is clearly the underdog in this bracket, but that is a spot he is used to. He has the potential to be the upset pick if he can navigate the deep waters early.
My prediction: Combs will need a strong performance to make it past the first round, but could upset anyone on the list.
Brian Morizi
Morizi is a guy that has sort of toiled away in silence. If you look at some of his titles and accomplishments, they are comparable to nearly anyone in the tournament; yet he doesn’t get the credit that some of the others have. Nevertheless, Morizi is a name to watch once the brackets are drawn.
Few competitors on the list will be more impacted by the seeding draws than Morizi, in my opinion. He tends to get better as a match goes on, and if he can sneak out of the first round he could a be a problem for just about anyone.
Ultimately, this tournament could be a tough test for Morizi, but he does already have some big signature victories to his name, so you never know. He is one of the hardest guys to predict in this whole thing.
My prediction: If he can get out of the first round, he will be a dangerous semifinal match-up
Edwin Najmi
Another clear favorite for the tournament finals, Najmi has been earmarked for greatness since purple belt. He came up just shy of a black belt world championship at his first year at black belt after securing a Pan Championship just months before.
Edwin is a terrible match-up for many of the competitors above; however there are a few match-up’s that could prove troublesome for him. Najmi has the reputation of running hot and cold. When at his best, he is almost unbeatable. However, when cold, he can be beat.
Edwin will need to get rolling early. Look for him to find his groove with a submission in the first match. If he can secure a fast start, he may very well run the table.
My prediction: Edwin is likely a finalist and a favorite to win the whole thing.
Michael Liera Jr.
Another favorite for the finals, Liera Jr. is one of the most dangerous competitors in the tournament. Liera Jr. has proven himself at the black belt level and matches up well with everyone in the tournament.
Although he is arguably less versatile than some of the other competitors, his A-game is enough to see him through to the finals. He and Najmi have had some close matches in the past, and another showdown between them looms in the background of this tournament.
Liera Jr. cannot afford any mistakes in his matches. He does best when in control of the match and there are many in the bracket that will bring the fight to him early. He will need his best performance to see himself crowned the winner.
My prediction: I can easily see him in the finals with someone like Najmi, but if he is not at his sharpest he could struggle with any one of the other challengers.
Bill Cooper
Perhaps we’ve saved the best for last. There is no competitor in this tournament more experienced than Bill Cooper. He has the veteran of the bunch, and therefore cannot be discounted. He has proven that he has what it takes to come out on top of a bracket like this.
The hard question with Cooper is what will we see from him. Will we see Bill at his best, or will we see him still shaking the rust off from a layoff from competition. Cooper at his best is a formidable opponent, but he will absolutely have to be at his all-time best to be the winner of this tournament.
I can see Cooper being a surprise to some of the younger competitors. He should not be underestimated. The right match-up’s could see him through to the finals.
My prediction: Cooper is probably a semi-finalist; the match-up’s will determine just how far he can go.
So, who wins it?
You decide. Follow me on Instagram (@tylerbishopbjj). I will be providing live updates on Friday once the final brackets are released. I’ll also be doing some live stories and more the day of the event before we go live.
Who do you think will take the whole thing? Leave your comments below.Now the hashtag has its own handy spreadsheet that shoppers can use to avoid such businesses as the retail holiday season heats up.
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“For a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the Dark Times. Before the Empire.”
Ben Kenobi
“This is how liberty dies: with thundering applause.”
Senator Padme Amidala
Listen to Scott’s interview with Mark Thornton
stream download mp3
Many of us grew up on Star Wars, and some of us, as 10-year-olds on rainy Saturday afternoons, even spent time trying to piece together the story before the story. What were the Clone Wars? How did the Old Republic become the Empire? How could the emperor have defeated what were presumably thousands of Jedi and taken over the galaxy?
Now we know the answer: Deception. Just like in the real world.
Before the movie was even released, people began making the connection between the war on terror and Vader’s declaration near the end of Revenge of the Sith, “You are either with me or you are my enemy.” Lucas, however, when asked if this was a reference to the War on Terror, said at the Cannes film festival, “When I wrote it, [the current war in] Iraq didn’t exist. We were just funding Saddam Hussein, giving him weapons of mass destruction; we didn’t think of him as an enemy at that point. We were going after Iran, using [Saddam] as our surrogate just as we were doing in Vietnam. This really came out of the Vietnam era and the parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we’re doing in Iraq now are unbelievable.”
Some neocons have expressed their dismay that the new Star Wars movie seems so antiwar, saying it was perhaps even rewritten as an anti-Bush diatribe. This cold desperation comes as no surprise, but it also strengthens my appreciation of Lucas’ decision to make episodes IV, V, and VI before I, II, and the now-completed III. This establishes first the generally agreeable premise that it’s right to overthrow oppressive government, before bringing into focus something more discomforting that the corrupt tyranny referred to is our own. The story being told this week was written over 30 years ago, as Lucas has explained. Star Wars “was really about the Vietnam War, and that was the period where Nixon was trying to run for a [second] term, which got me to thinking historically about how do democracies get turned into dictatorships? Because the democracies aren’t overthrown; they’re given away.”
I suppose that explains why Supreme Chancellor Palpatine works out of an oval office, and why his aide looks so much like Henry Kissinger.
According to the Chicago Tribune,
“Lucas said he wrote the screenplay’s politically pointed elements before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the subsequent war on terror. So when Palpatine announces that he intends to remain at war until a certain General Grievous is captured, no parallels to the hunt for Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein were intended.
“‘First of all we never thought of Bush ever becoming president,’ Star Wars producer Rick McCallum said, ‘or then 9/11, the PATRIOT Act, war, weapons of mass destruction. Then suddenly you realize, ‘Oh, my God, there’s something happening that looks like we’re almost prescient.'”
In other words, it is not George Lucas’ fault that George W. Bush is acting just like the evil Sith Lords of the story, destroying forever what was once a limited republic in the name of protecting it. Perhaps Bush is a Star Wars fan, and truly believing that power denied is power wasted, he is deliberately following the example of the Sith.
There can be no doubt that the Star Wars saga is about humanity’s, especially America’s, history and future. The historical analogies clearly go much further than just Vietnam and Iraq. In the old movies, there were references to various episodes in American history. For example, the battle on the ice planet Hoth alludes to the long winter at Valley Forge during the American Revolution. Throughout episodes IV, V, and VI, the leaders of the Rebel Alliance are all portrayed by American actors (or are aliens in rubber masks), while the Empire’s forces are all played by Brits. And as Lucas has said, the Ewoks of Return of the Jedi represent the Vietnamese who, though lacking industry and technology, help to bring the Empire to its knees.
Ludwig von Mises Institute scholar Mark Thornton has written a few articles on the politics of the Star Wars prequels, so I invited him on my radio show Saturday May 14 to talk about the historical references [stream] [download]. As Thornton has written, Episode I: The Phantom Menace draws heavily on the history of British domination of India and Jamaica in the 19th century. (Jar Jar Binks isn’t Stepin Fetchit, just a terribly annoying depiction of an outcast Rastaman who makes good.) The rise of the Evil Galactic Empire begins with a blockade by Lucas’ version of the British East India Company, the Galactic Trade Federation. Acting on an official “franchise” from the central government, the viceroy of the Trade Federation is frustrated in his attempts to collect taxes from the planet of Naboo. At the instruction of a cloaked Sith lord named Darth Sidious who turns out to be Augustus Palpatine, Naboo’s representative to the Galactic Senate the Trade Federation invades and occupies the planet.
Using the crisis he created as an excuse, Palpatine then tricks the trusting young queen of Naboo into calling for a vote of no-confidence in the current supreme chancellor of the Galactic Republic. Explaining to her that the Senate has become corrupt and that the current chancellor has been weakened by accusations of corruption, he tells her that their best option is to push for his replacement by a strong chief executive who can “get things done.” Palpatine, of course, framed up the old supreme chancellor, and is elected the new one. “I feel confident that our situation will create a strong sympathy vote for us,” he cheerfully reports to the queen before the vote.
One of the movie’s main points seems lost on many reviewers. The story is not only about each man’s ability to choose good or evil, or how wars destroy limited republics and empires alike; it is also about how the subtle manipulation of power behind the scenes helps make it all possible. By fooling all of the various characters into thinking they are doing the right thing, or at least acting in their own interests, Darth Sidious (AKA Palpatine) implements the final phase of the Sith Lords’ long-term plan to take revenge on the Jedi and total power for themselves.
Between the events of The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, a decade goes by in which Palpatine recruits as his apprentice a former Jedi master named Count Dooku taken from doku, a Buddhist term meaning to govern or poison to prepare the galaxy for a civil war. Dooku first hires the bounty hunter Jango Fett to be the genetic basis for the clone army of the Republic. In the time it takes them to reach fighting age (10 years, as they are engineered to age twice as fast as regular folks), he goes off and creates a separatist movement of the planets allied with mercantilist groups who have fallen into disfavor with the central government, the Confederacy of Independent Systems. He also creates an army of droids for them.
Though some have criticized Lucas for being anticapitalist in his portrayal of the commercial interests in Attack of the Clones, the names of these organizations Trade Federation, Commerce Guild, Corporate Alliance and Banking Clan suggest that they are greedy and corrupt crony capitalists, not free marketeers.
Because antiwar factions in the Senate refuse to allow the creation of a standing army unless they are attacked, Darth Sidious arranges events so that the separatists are seen as the aggressors, and manipulates the dumbest character of the new movies, Jar Jar Binks, into proposing to the Senate that he be granted emergency powers over the galaxy. He then announces the creation of a “Grand Army of the Republic” to “counter the increasing threats of the separatists.” The Jedi then lead the massive clone army into battle across the galaxy to “save” the Republic. These clones, of course, become the Imperial Stormtroopers of the later chapters.
The name “Grand Army of the Republic” is a direct reference to the Union Army during America’s war over secession. For many, that war marked a major shift in their conception of the country from one in which a limited central government presided |
transcendentalism, to which it is fundamentally similar. Immanuel Kant, judged by history the greatest of secular philosophers, addressed moral reasoning very much as a theologian. Human beings, he argued, are independent moral agents with a wholly free will, capable of obeying or breaking moral law: "There is in man a power of self-determination, independent of any coercion through sensuous impulses." Our minds are subject to a categorical imperative, Kant said, of what our actions ought to be. The imperative is a good in itself alone, apart from all other considerations, and it can be recognized by this rule: "Act only on that maxim you wish will become a universal law." Most important, and transcendental, ought has no place in nature. Nature, Kant said, is a system of cause and effect, whereas moral choice is a matter of free will, absent cause and effect. In making moral choices, in rising above mere instinct, human beings transcend the realm of nature and enter a realm of freedom that belongs exclusively to them as rational creatures.
Now, this formulation has a comforting feel to it, but it makes no sense at all in terms of either material or imaginable entities, which is why Kant, even apart from his tortured prose, is so hard to understand. Sometimes a concept is baffling not because it is profound but because it is wrong. This idea does not accord, we know now, with the evidence of how the brain works.
In Principia Ethica (1903), G. E. Moore, the founder of modern ethical philosophy, essentially agreed with Kant. In his view, moral reasoning cannot dip into psychology and the social sciences in order to locate ethical principles, because those disciplines yield only a causal picture and fail to illuminate the basis of moral justification. So to reach the normative ought by way of the factual is is to commit a basic error of logic, which Moore called the naturalistic fallacy. John Rawls, in A Theory of Justice (1971), once again traveled the transcendental road. He offered the very plausible suggestion that justice be defined as fairness, which is to be accepted as an intrinsic good. It is the imperative we would follow if we had no starting information about our own future status in life. But in making such a suggestion Rawls ventured no thought on where the human brain comes from or how it works. He offered no evidence that justice-as-fairness is consistent with human nature, hence practicable as a blanket premise. Probably it is, but how can we know except by blind trial and error?
Had Kant, Moore, and Rawls known modern biology and experimental psychology, they might well not have reasoned as they did. Yet as this century closes, transcendentalism remains firm in the hearts not just of religious believers but also of countless scholars in the social sciences and the humanities who, like Moore and Rawls, have chosen to insulate their thinking from the natural sciences.
Many philosophers will respond by saying, Ethicists don't need that kind of information. You really can't pass from is to ought. You can't describe a genetic predisposition and suppose that because it is part of human nature, it is somehow transformed into an ethical precept. We must put moral reasoning in a special category, and use transcendental guidelines as required.
No, we do not have to put moral reasoning in a special category and use transcendental premises, because the posing of the naturalistic fallacy is itself a fallacy. For if ought is not is, what is? To translate is into ought makes sense if we attend to the objective meaning of ethical precepts. They are very unlikely to be ethereal messages awaiting revelation, or independent truths vibrating in a nonmaterial dimension of the mind. They are more likely to be products of the brain and the culture. From the consilient perspective of the natural sciences, they are no more than principles of the social contract hardened into rules and dictates -- the behavioral codes that members of a society fervently wish others to follow and are themselves willing to accept for the common good. Precepts are the extreme on a scale of agreements that range from casual assent, to public sentiment, to law, to that part of the canon considered sacred and unalterable. The scale applied to adultery might read as follows:
In transcendental thinking, the chain of causation runs downward from the given ought in religion or natural law through jurisprudence to education and finally to individual choice. The argument from transcendentalism takes the following general form: The order of nature contains supreme principles, either divine or intrinsic, and we will be wise to learn about them and find the means to conform to them. Thus John Rawls opens A Theory of Justice with a proposition he regards as irrevocable: "In a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests." As many critiques have made clear, that premise can lead to unhappy consequences when applied to the real world, including a tightening of social control and a decline in personal initiative. A very different premise, therefore, is suggested by Robert Nozick in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974): "Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights). So strong and far-reaching are these rights that they raise the question of what, if anything, the state and its officials may do." Rawls would point us toward egalitarianism regulated by the state, Nozick toward libertarianism in a minimalist state.
The empiricist view, in contrast, searching for an origin of ethical reasoning that can be objectively studied, reverses the chain of causation. The individual is seen as predisposed biologically to make certain choices. Through cultural evolution some of the choices are hardened into precepts, then into laws, and, if the predisposition or coercion is strong enough, into a belief in the command of God or the natural order of the universe. The general empiricist principle takes this form: Strong innate feeling and historical experience cause certain actions to be preferred; we have experienced them, and have weighed their consequences, and agree to conform with codes that express them. Let us take an oath upon the codes, invest our personal honor in them, and suffer punishment for their violation. The empiricist view concedes that moral codes are devised to conform to some drives of human nature and to suppress others. Ought is the translation not of human nature but of the public will, which can be made increasingly wise and stable through an understanding of the needs and pitfalls of human nature. The empiricist view recognizes that the strength of commitment can wane as a result of new knowledge and experience, with the result that certain rules may be desacralized, old laws rescinded, and formerly prohibited behavior set free. It also recognizes that for the same reason new moral codes may need to be devised, with the potential of being made sacred in time.
The Origin of Moral Instincts
IF the empiricist world view is correct, ought is just shorthand for one kind of factual statement, a word that denotes what society first chose (or was coerced) to do, and then codified. The naturalistic fallacy is thereby reduced to the naturalistic problem. The solution of the problem is not difficult: ought is the product of a material process. The solution points the way to an objective grasp of the origin of ethics.
A few investigators are now embarked on just such a foundational inquiry. Most agree that ethical codes have arisen by evolution through the interplay of biology and culture. In a sense these investigators are reviving the idea of moral sentiments that was developed in the eighteenth century by the British empiricists Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, and Adam Smith.
What have been thought of as moral sentiments are now taken to mean moral instincts (as defined by the modern behavioral sciences), subject to judgment according to their consequences. Such sentiments are thus derived from epigenetic rules -- hereditary biases in mental development, usually conditioned by emotion, that influence concepts and decisions made from them. The primary origin of moral instincts is the dynamic relation between cooperation and defection. The essential ingredient for the molding of the instincts during genetic evolution in any species is intelligence high enough to judge and manipulate the tension generated by the dynamism. That level of intelligence allows the building of complex mental scenarios well into the future. It occurs, so far as is known, only in human beings and perhaps their closest relatives among the higher apes.
A way of envisioning the hypothetical earliest stages of moral evolution is provided by game theory, particularly the solutions to the famous Prisoner's Dilemma. Consider the following typical scenario of the dilemma. Two gang members have been arrested for murder and are being questioned separately. The evidence against them is strong but not irrefutable. The first gang member believes that if he turns state's witness, he will be granted immunity and his partner will be sentenced to life in prison. But he is also aware that his partner has the same option, and that if both of them exercise it, neither will be granted immunity. That is the dilemma. Will the two gang members independently defect, so that both take the hard fall? They will not, because they agreed in advance to remain silent if caught. By doing so, both hope to be convicted on a lesser charge or escape punishment altogether. Criminal gangs have turned this principle of calculation into an ethical precept: Never rat on another member; always be a stand-up guy. Honor does exist among thieves. The gang is a society of sorts; its code is the same as that of a captive soldier in wartime, obliged to give only name, rank, and serial number.
In one form or another, comparable dilemmas that are solvable by cooperation occur constantly and everywhere in daily life. The payoff is variously money, status, power, sex, access, comfort, or health. Most of these proximate rewards are converted into the universal bottom line of Darwinian genetic fitness: greater longevity and a secure, growing family.
And so it has most likely always been. Imagine a Paleolithic band of five hunters. One considers breaking away from the others to look for an antelope on his own. If successful, he will gain a large quantity of meat and hide -- five times as much as if he stays with the band and they are successful. But he knows from experience that his chances of success are very low, much less than the chances of the band of five working together. In addition, whether successful alone or not, he will suffer animosity from the others for lessening their prospects. By custom the band members remain together and share equitably the animals they kill. So the hunter stays. He also observes good manners in doing so, especially if he is the one who makes the kill. Boastful pride is condemned, because it rips the delicate web of reciprocity.
Now suppose that human propensities to cooperate or defect are heritable: some people are innately more cooperative, others less so. In this respect moral aptitude would simply be like almost all other mental traits studied to date. Among traits with documented heritability, those closest to moral aptitude are empathy with the distress of others and certain processes of attachment between infants and their caregivers. To the heritability of moral aptitude add the abundant evidence of history that cooperative individuals generally survive longer and leave more offspring. Following that reasoning, in the course of evolutionary history genes predisposing people toward cooperative behavior would have come to predominate in the human population as a whole.
Such a process repeated through thousands of generations inevitably gave rise to moral sentiments. With the exception of psychopaths (if any truly exist), every person vividly experiences these instincts variously as conscience, self-respect, remorse, empathy, shame, humility, and moral outrage. They bias cultural evolution toward the conventions that express the universal moral codes of honor, patriotism, altruism, justice, compassion, mercy, and redemption.
The dark side of the inborn propensity to moral behavior is xenophobia. Because personal familiarity and common interest are vital in social transactions, moral sentiments evolved to be selective. People give trust to strangers with effort, and true compassion is a commodity in chronically short supply. Tribes cooperate only through carefully defined treaties and other conventions. They are quick to imagine themselves the victims of conspiracies by competing groups, and they are prone to dehumanize and murder their rivals during periods of severe conflict. They cement their own group loyalties by means of sacred symbols and ceremonies. Their mythologies are filled with epic victories over menacing enemies.
The complementary instincts of morality and tribalism are easily manipulated. Civilization has made them more so. Beginning about 10,000 years ago, a tick in geological time, when the agricultural revolution started in the Middle East, in China, and in Mesoamerica, populations increased tenfold in density over those of hunter-gatherer societies. Families settled on small plots of land, villages proliferated, and labor was finely divided as a growing minority of the populace specialized as craftsmen, traders, and soldiers. The rising agricultural societies became increasingly hierarchical. As chiefdoms and then states thrived on agricultural surpluses, hereditary rulers and priestly castes took power. The old ethical codes were transformed into coercive regulations, always to the advantage of the ruling classes. About this time the idea of law-giving gods originated. Their commands lent the ethical codes overpowering authority -- once again, no surprise, in the interests of the rulers.
Because of the technical difficulty of analyzing such phenomena in an objective manner, and because people resist biological explanations of their higher cortical functions in the first place, very little progress has been made in the biological exploration of the moral sentiments. Even so, it is astonishing that the study of ethics has advanced so little since the nineteenth century. The most distinguishing and vital qualities of the human species remain a blank space on the scientific map. I doubt that discussions of ethics should rest upon the freestanding assumptions of contemporary philosophers who have evidently never given thought to the evolutionary origin and material functioning of the human brain. In no other domain of the humanities is a union with the natural sciences more urgently needed.
When the ethical dimension of human nature is at last fully opened to such exploration, the innate epigenetic rules of moral reasoning will probably not prove to be aggregated into simple instincts such as bonding, cooperativeness, and altruism. Instead the rules will most probably turn out to be an ensemble of many algorithms, whose interlocking activities guide the mind across a landscape of nuanced moods and choices.
Such a prestructured mental world may at first seem too complicated to have been created by autonomous genetic evolution alone. But all the evidence of biology suggests that just this process was enough to spawn the millions of species of life surrounding us. Each kind of animal is furthermore guided through its life cycle by unique and often elaborate sets of instinctual algorithms, many of which are beginning to yield to genetic and neurobiological analyses. With all these examples before us, we may reasonably conclude that human behavior originated the same way.
The online version of this article appears in two parts. Click here to go to part one.
A Scientific Approach to Moral Reasoning
MEANWHILE, the mélanges of moral reasoning employed by modern societies are, to put the matter simply, a mess. They are chimeras, composed of odd parts stuck together. Paleolithic egalitarian and tribalistic instincts are still firmly installed. As part of the genetic foundation of human nature, they cannot be replaced. In some cases, such as quick hostility to strangers and competing groups, they have become generally ill adapted and persistently dangerous. Above the fundamental instincts rise superstructures of arguments and rules that accommodate the novel institutions created by cultural evolution. These accommodations, which reflect the attempt to maintain order and further tribal interests, have been too volatile to track by genetic evolution; they are not yet in the genes.
Little wonder, then, that ethics is the most publicly contested of all philosophical enterprises. Or that political science, which at its foundation is primarily the study of applied ethics, is so frequently problematic. Neither is informed by anything that would be recognizable as authentic theory in the natural sciences. Both ethics and political science lack a foundation of verifiable knowledge of human nature sufficient to produce cause-and-effect predictions and sound judgments based on them. Surely closer attention must be paid to the deep springs of ethical behavior. The greatest void in knowledge for such a venture is the biology of moral sentiments. In time this subject can be understood, I believe, by paying attention to the following topics:
* The definition of moral sentiments, first by precise descriptions from experimental psychology and then by analysis of the underlying neural and endocrine responses.
* The genetics of moral sentiments, most easily approached through measurements of the heritability of the psychological and physiological processes of ethical behavior, and eventually, with difficulty, through identification of the prescribing genes.
* The development of moral sentiments as products of the interactions of genes and the environment. Research is most effective when conducted at two levels: the histories of ethical systems as part of the emergence of different cultures, and the cognitive development of individuals living in a variety of cultures. Such investigations are already well along in anthropology and psychology. In the future they will be augmented by contributions from biology.
* The deep history of moral sentiments -- why they exist in the first place. Presumably they contributed to survival and reproductive success during the long periods of prehistoric time in which they genetically evolved.
From a convergence of these several approaches the true origin and meaning of ethical behavior may come into focus. If so, a more certain measure can then be taken of the strength and flexibility of the epigenetic rules composing the various moral sentiments. From that knowledge it should be possible to adapt ancient moral sentiments more wisely to the swiftly changing conditions of modern life into which, willy-nilly and largely in ignorance, we have plunged.
Then new answers might be found to the truly important questions of moral reasoning. How can the moral instincts be ranked? Which are best subdued and to what degree? Which should be validated by law and symbol? How can precepts be left open to appeal under extraordinary circumstances? In the new understanding can be located the most effective means for reaching consensus. No one can guess the exact form that agreements will take from one culture to the next. The process, however, can be predicted with assurance. It will be democratic, weakening the clash of rival religions and ideologies. History is moving decisively in that direction, and people are by nature too bright and too contentious to abide anything else. And the pace can be confidently predicted: change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard, even when they are demonstrably false.
The Origins of Religion
THE same reasoning that aligns ethical philosophy with science can also inform the study of religion. Religions are analogous to organisms. They have a life cycle. They are born, they grow, they compete, they reproduce, and, in the fullness of time, most die. In each of these phases religions reflect the human organisms that nourish them. They express a primary rule of human existence: Whatever is necessary to sustain life is also ultimately biological.
Successful religions typically begin as cults, which then increase in power and inclusiveness until they achieve tolerance outside the circle of believers. At the core of each religion is a creation myth, which explains how the world began and how the chosen people -- those subscribing to the belief system -- arrived at its center. Often a mystery, a set of secret instructions and formulas, is available to members who have worked their way to a higher state of enlightenment. The medieval Jewish cabala, the trigradal system of Freemasonry, and the carvings on Australian aboriginal spirit sticks are examples of such arcana. Power radiates from the center, gathering converts and binding followers to the group. Sacred places are designated, where the gods can be importuned, rites observed, and miracles witnessed.
The devotees of the religion compete as a tribe with those of other religions. They harshly resist the dismissal of their beliefs by rivals. They venerate self-sacrifice in defense of the religion.
The tribalistic roots of religion are similar to those of moral reasoning and may be identical. Religious rites, such as burial ceremonies, are very old. It appears that in the late Paleolithic period in Europe and the Middle East bodies were sometimes placed in shallow graves, accompanied by ocher or blossoms; one can easily imagine such ceremonies performed to invoke spirits and gods. But, as theoretical deduction and the evidence suggest, the primitive elements of moral behavior are far older than Paleolithic ritual. Religion arose on a foundation of ethics, and it has probably always been used in one manner or another to justify moral codes.
The formidable influence of the religious drive is based on far more, however, than just the validation of morals. A great subterranean river of the mind, it gathers strength from a broad spread of tributary emotions. Foremost among them is the survival instinct. "Fear," as the Roman poet Lucretius said, "was the first thing on earth to make the gods." Our conscious minds hunger for a permanent existence. If we cannot have everlasting life of the body, then absorption into some immortal whole will serve. Anything will serve, as long as it gives the individual meaning and somehow stretches into eternity that swift passage of the mind and spirit lamented by Saint Augustine as the short day of time.
The understanding and control of life is another source of religious power. Doctrine draws on the same creative springs as science and the arts, its aim being the extraction of order from the mysteries and tumult of the material world. To explain the meaning of life it spins mythic narratives of the tribal history, populating the cosmos with protective spirits and gods. The existence of the supernatural, if accepted, testifies to the existence of that other world so desperately desired.
Religion is also mightily empowered by its principal ally, tribalism. The shamans and priests implore us, in somber cadence, Trust in the sacred rituals, become part of the immortal force, you are one of us. As your life unfolds, each step has mystic significance that we who love you will mark with a solemn rite of passage, the last to be performed when you enter that second world, free of pain and fear.
If the religious mythos did not exist in a culture, it would quickly be invented, and in fact it has been invented everywhere, thousands of times through history. Such inevitability is the mark of instinctual behavior in any species, which is guided toward certain states by emotion-driven rules of mental development. To call religion instinctive is not to suppose that any particular part of its mythos is untrue -- only that its sources run deeper than ordinary habit and are in fact hereditary, urged into existence through biases in mental development that are encoded in the genes.
Such biases are a predictable consequence of the brain's genetic evolution. The logic applies to religious behavior, with the added twist of tribalism. There is a hereditary selective advantage to membership in a powerful group united by devout belief and purpose. Even when individuals subordinate themselves and risk death in a common cause, their genes are more likely to be transmitted to the next generation than are those of competing groups who lack comparable resolve.
The mathematical models of population genetics suggest the following rule in the evolutionary origin of such altruism: If the reduction in survival and reproduction of individuals owing to genes for altruism is more than offset by the increased probability of survival of the group owing to the altruism, then altruism genes will rise in frequency throughout the entire population of competing groups. To put it as concisely as possible: the individual pays, his genes and tribe gain, altruism spreads.
Ethics and Animal Life
LET me now suggest a still deeper significance of the empiricist theory of the origin of ethics and religion. If empiricism were disproved, and transcendentalism compellingly upheld, the discovery would be quite simply the most consequential in human history. That is the burden laid upon biology as it draws close to the humanities.
The matter is still far from resolved. But empiricism, as I have argued, is well supported thus far in the case of ethics. The objective evidence for or against it in religion is weaker, but at least still consistent with biology. For example, the emotions that accompany religious ecstasy clearly have a neurobiological source. At least one form of brain disorder is associated with hyperreligiosity, in which cosmic significance is given to almost everything, including trivial everyday events. One can imagine the biological construction of a mind with religious beliefs, although that alone would not disprove the logic of transcendentalism, or prove the beliefs themselves to be untrue.
Equally important, much if not all religious behavior could have arisen from evolution by natural selection. The theory fits -- crudely. The behavior includes at least some aspects of belief in gods. Propitiation and sacrifice, which are near-universals of religious practice, are acts of submission to a dominant being. They reflect one kind of dominance hierarchy, which is a general trait of organized mammalian societies. Like human beings, animals use elaborate signals to advertise and maintain their rank in the hierarchy. The details vary among species but also have consistent similarities across the board, as the following two examples will illustrate.
In packs of wolves the dominant animal walks erect and "proud," stiff-legged and deliberate, with head, tail, and ears up, and stares freely and casually at others. In the presence of rivals the dominant animal bristles its pelt while curling its lips to show teeth, and it takes first choice in food and space. A subordinate uses opposite signals. It turns away from the dominant individual while lowering its head, ears, and tail, and it keeps its fur sleek and its teeth covered. It grovels and slinks, and yields food and space when challenged.
In a troop of rhesus monkeys the alpha male is remarkably similar in mannerisms to a dominant wolf. He keeps his head and tail up, and walks in a deliberate, "regal" manner while casually staring at others. He climbs objects to maintain height above his rivals. When challenged he stares hard at the opponent with mouth open -- signaling aggression, not surprise -- and sometimes slaps the ground with open palms to signal his readiness to attack. The male or female subordinate affects a furtive walk, holding its head and tail down, turning away from the alpha and other higher-ranked individuals. It keeps its mouth shut except for a fear grimace, and when challenged makes a cringing retreat. It yields space and food and, in the case of males, estrous females.
My point is this: Behavioral scientists from another planet would notice immediately the parallels between animal dominance behavior on the one hand and human obeisance to religious and civil authority on the other. They would point out that the most elaborate rites of obeisance are directed at the gods, the hyperdominant if invisible members of the human group. And they would conclude, correctly, that in baseline social behavior, not just in anatomy, Homo sapiens has only recently diverged in evolution from a nonhuman primate stock.
Countless studies of animal species, whose instinctive behavior is unobscured by cultural elaboration, have shown that membership in dominance orders pays off in survival and lifetime reproductive success. That is true not just for the dominant individuals but for the subordinates as well. Membership in either class gives animals better protection against enemies and better access to food, shelter, and mates than does solitary existence. Furthermore, subordination in the group is not necessarily permanent. Dominant individuals weaken and die, and as a result some of the underlings advance in rank and appropriate more resources.
Modern human beings are unlikely to have erased the old mammalian genetic programs and devised other means of distributing power. All the evidence suggests that they have not. True to their primate heritage, people are easily seduced by confident, charismatic leaders, especially males. That predisposition is strong in religious organizations. Cults form around such leaders. Their power grows if they can persuasively claim special access to the supremely dominant, typically male figure of God. As cults evolve into religions, the image of the Supreme Being is reinforced by myth and liturgy. In time the authority of the founders and their successors is graven in sacred texts. Unruly subordinates, known as "blasphemers," are squashed.
The symbol-forming human mind, however, never remains satisfied with raw, apish feeling in any emotional realm. It strives to build cultures that are maximally rewarding in every dimension. Ritual and prayer permit religious believers to be in direct touch with the Supreme Being; consolation from coreligionists softens otherwise unbearable grief; the unexplainable is explained; and an oceanic sense of communion with the larger whole is made possible.
Communion is the key, and hope rising from it is eternal; out of the dark night of the soul arises the prospect of a spiritual journey to the light. For a special few the journey can be taken in this life. The mind reflects in certain ways in order to reach ever higher levels of enlightenment, until finally, when no further progress is possible, it enters a mystical union with the whole. Within the great religions such enlightenment is expressed by Hindu samadhi, Buddhist Zen satori, Sufi fana, and Pentecostal Christian rebirth. Something like it is also experienced by hallucinating preliterate shamans. What all these celebrants evidently feel (as I felt once, to some degree, as a reborn evangelical) is hard to put in words, but Willa Cather came as close as possible in a single sentence. In My Antonia her fictional narrator says, "That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great."
Of course that is happiness -- to find the godhead, or to enter the wholeness of nature, or otherwise to grasp and hold on to something ineffable, beautiful, and eternal. Millions seek it. They feel otherwise lost, adrift in a life without ultimate meaning. They enter established religions, succumb to cults, dabble in New Age nostrums. They push The Celestine Prophecy and other junk attempts at enlightenment onto the best-seller lists.
Perhaps, as I believe, these phenomena can all eventually be explained as functions of brain circuitry and deep genetic history. But this is not a subject that even the most hardened empiricist should presume to trivialize. The idea of mystical union is an authentic part of the human spirit. It has occupied humanity for millennia, and it raises questions of utmost seriousness for transcendentalists and scientists alike. What road, we ask, was traveled, what destination reached, by the mystics of history?
Theology Moves Toward Abstraction
FOR many, the urge to believe in transcendental existence and immortality is overpowering. Transcendentalism, especially when reinforced by religious faith, is psychically full and rich; it feels somehow right. By comparison, empiricism seems sterile and inadequate. In the quest for ultimate meaning the transcendentalist route is much easier to follow. That is why, even as empiricism is winning the mind, transcendentalism continues to win the heart. Science has always defeated religious dogma point by point when differences between the two were meticulously assessed. But to no avail. In the United States 16 million people belong to the Southern Baptist denomination, the largest favoring a literal interpretation of the Christian Bible, but the American Humanist Association, the leading organization devoted to secular and deistic humanism, has only 5,000 members.
Still, if history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth. The human mind evolved to believe in gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology. Acceptance of the supernatural conveyed a great advantage throughout prehistory, when the brain was evolving. Thus it is in sharp contrast to the science of biology, which was developed as a product of the modern age and is not underwritten by genetic algorithms. The uncomfortable truth is that the two beliefs are not factually compatible. As a result, those who hunger for both intellectual and religious truth face disquieting choices.
Meanwhile, theology tries to resolve the dilemma by evolving, sciencelike, toward abstraction. The gods of our ancestors were divine human beings. The Egyptians represented them as Egyptian (often with body parts of Nilotic animals), and the Greeks represented them as Greek. The great contribution of the Hebrews was to combine the entire pantheon into a single person, Yahweh (a patriarch appropriate to desert tribes), and to intellectualize his existence. No graven images were allowed. In the process, they rendered the divine presence less tangible. And so in biblical accounts it came to pass that no one, not even Moses approaching Yahweh in the burning bush, could look upon his face. In time the Jews were prohibited from even pronouncing his true full name. Nevertheless, the idea of a theistic God, omniscient, omnipotent, and closely involved in human affairs, has persisted to this day as the dominant religious image of Western culture.
During the Enlightenment a growing number of liberal Judeo-Christian theologians, wishing to accommodate theism to a more rationalist view of the material world, moved away from God as a literal person. Baruch Spinoza, the pre-eminent Jewish philosopher of the seventeenth century, visualized the deity as a transcendent substance present everywhere in the universe. Deus sive natura, "God or nature," he declared, they are interchangeable. For his philosophical pains he was banished from his synagogue under a comprehensive anathema, combining all the curses in the book. The risk of heresy notwithstanding, the depersonalization of God has continued steadily into the modern era. For Paul Tillich, one of the most influential Protestant theologians of the twentieth century, the assertion of the existence of God-as-person is not false; it is just meaningless. Among many of the most liberal contemporary thinkers the denial of a concrete divinity takes the form of "process theology." Everything in this most extreme of ontologies is part of a seamless and endlessly complex web of unfolding relationships. God is manifest in everything.
Scientists, the roving scouts of the empiricist movement, are not immune to the idea of God. Those who favor it often lean toward some form of process theology. They ask this question: When the real world of space, time, and matter is well enough known, will that knowledge reveal the Creator's presence? Their hopes are vested in the theoretical physicists who pursue the final theory, the Theory of Everything, T.O.E., a system of interlocking equations that describe all that can be learned of the forces of the physical universe. T.O.E. is a "beautiful" theory, as Steven Weinberg has called it in his important book Dreams of a Final Theory -- beautiful because it will be elegant, expressing the possibility of unending complexity with minimal laws; and symmetrical, because it will hold invariant through all space and time; and inevitable, meaning that once it is stated, no part can be changed without invalidating the whole. All surviving subtheories can be fitted into it permanently, in the manner described by Einstein in his own contribution, the General Theory of Relativity. "The chief attraction of the theory," Einstein said, "lies in its logical completeness. If a single one of the conclusions drawn from it proves wrong, it must be given up; to modify it without destroying the whole structure seems to be impossible."
The prospect of a final theory by the most mathematical of scientists might seem to signal the approach of a new religious awakening. Stephen Hawking, yielding to the temptation in A Brief History of Time (1988), declared that this scientific achievement "would be the ultimate triumph of human reason -- for then we would know the mind of God."
A Hunger For Spirituality
THE essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. Can we find a way to erase the dilemma, to resolve the contradictions between the transcendentalist and empiricist world views?
Unfortunately, in my view, the answer is no. Furthermore, the choice between the two is unlikely to remain arbitrary forever. The assumptions underlying these world views are being tested with increasing severity by cumulative verifiable knowledge about how the universe works, from atom to brain to galaxy. In addition, the harsh lessons of history have taught us that one code of ethics is not always as good -- or at least not as durable -- as another. The same is true of religions. Some cosmologies are factually less correct than others, and some ethical precepts are less workable.
Human nature is biologically based, and it is relevant to ethics and religion. The evidence shows that because of its influence, people can readily be educated to only a narrow range of ethical precepts. They flourish within certain belief systems and wither in others. We need to know exactly why.
To that end I will be so presumptuous as to suggest how the conflict between the world views will most likely be settled. The idea of a genetic, evolutionary origin of moral and religious beliefs will continue to be tested by biological studies of complex human behavior. To the extent that the sensory and nervous systems appear to have evolved by natural selection, or at least some other purely material process, the empiricist interpretation will be supported. It will be further supported by verification of gene-culture coevolution, the essential process postulated by scientists to underlie human nature by linking changes in genes to changes in culture.
Now consider the alternative. To the extent that ethical and religious phenomena do not appear to have evolved in a manner congenial to biology, and especially to the extent that such complex behavior cannot be linked to physical events in the sensory and nervous systems, the empiricist position will have to be abandoned and a transcendentalist explanation accepted.
For centuries the writ of empiricism has been spreading into the ancient domain of transcendentalist belief, slowly at the start but quickening in the scientific age. The spirits our ancestors knew intimately fled first the rocks and trees and then the distant mountains. Now they are in the stars, where their final extinction is possible. But we cannot live without them. People need a sacred narrative. They must have a sense of larger purpose, in one form or another, however intellectualized. They will refuse to yield to the despair of animal mortality. They will continue to plead, in company with the psalmist, Now Lord, what is my comfort? They will find a way to keep the ancestral spirits alive.
If the sacred narrative cannot be in the form of a religious cosmology, it will be taken from the material history of the universe and the human species. That trend is in no way debasing. The true evolutionary epic, retold as poetry, is as intrinsically ennobling as any religious epic. Material reality discovered by science already possesses more content and grandeur than all religious cosmologies combined. The continuity of the human line has been traced through a period of deep history a thousand times as old as that conceived by the Western religions. Its study has brought new revelations of great moral importance. It has made us realize that Homo sapiens is far more than an assortment of tribes and races. We are a single gene pool from which individuals are drawn in each generation and into which they are dissolved the next generation, forever united as a species by heritage and a common future. Such are the conceptions, based on fact, from which new intimations of immortality can be drawn and a new mythos evolved.
Which world view prevails, religious transcendentalism or scientific empiricism, will make a great difference in the way humanity claims the future. While the matter is under advisement, an accommodation can be reached |
rank fifth out of all active athletes.
Comparatively, the Oklahoma City Thunder’s Russell Westbrook has a $50,000 estimated appearance fee, $15,000 Twitter post fee and $20,000 Instagram post fee. Westbrook ranks 13th in the NBA in Twitter followers (2.4M) and eighth for Instagram followers (2.1M). Westbrook ranks second in both categories when it comes to players on the Thunder, outshined by Kevin Durant, last year’s NBA MVP.
The 2014-15 NBA MVP comes next, along with Anthony Davis of the New Orleans Pelicans, as far as TPR among MVP candidates. Curry has a $35,000 appearance fee to go along with a $15,000 fee for both Twitter and Instagram posts. Curry ranks 16th and 11th in the NBA in Twitter followers (2.1M) and Instagram followers (1.6M), respectively. The NBA’s next big star, Davis, has a slightly higher appearance fee at $40,000, but has a smaller asking price for both Twitter and Instagram posts ($12,500 each).
Closing out the field is Harden, who ranks 12th in the NBA in both Twitter (2.7M) and Instagram followers league-wide, but ranks second on the Rockets for Twitter followers behind Dwight Howard. Harden does beat Howard in Instagram followers with over 1.58 million followers. Harden has a $30,000 appearance fee in conjunction with a $12,500 Instagram post fee and a $10,000 Twitter post fee.
While the rankings may differ slightly off the court, the easiest way for these players to continue moving up the list is to perform on it. It will be interesting to keep note of how the TPR and social figures for these players continue to change throughout the playoffs and into the offseason.Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
A GROUP of cannibals have been locked up after they ate a friend who offered to cook them dinner.
Alexander Stepaniuk, 41, had invited four pals to his house for a meal.
But the teacher ended up on the menu after the two men and two women beat him to death with a hammer.
The cannibals, who had been drinking vodka, cut Mr Stepaniuk's body up before barbecuing the parts.
They were arrested after worried neighbours in Chernovtsi, Ukraine, called police.
Alexander Woytseshko, 34, Dmitri Chuba, 45, Lilia Kisilitsa, 23, and Svetlana Lupan, 26, admitted murder.
The monsters told cops: "We had nothing against him personally - we just wanted to see what human meat tasted like."
They were sentenced to between three years and life in prison.The Premier League has announced the value of their broadcast and commercial payments to their clubs for 2016/17 and champions Chelsea lead the way with £150.8m.
Bottom club Sunderland, who were relegated to the Sky Bet Championship along with Middlesbrough and Hull City, received £93.4m and, overall, the Premier League paid out a total of £2.398billion to its 20 clubs.
The ratio of earning between the highest club (Chelsea) and the lowest club (Sunderland) is 1.61:1 - the lowest in any of Europe's major leagues.
The payments consist of UK broadcast income, international broadcast income and central commercial income.
The UK broadcast income is distributed as follows:
50 per cent is shared equally by the clubs (£35.3m per club)
25 per cent is paid on 'Facility Fees' based on each time a club's matches are broadcast in the UK
25 per cent is paid in 'Merit Payments' based on each club's final league position
The international broadcast income totalled £781.8m, with each club receiving a payment of £39.1m.
The central commercial income totalled £95.2m, with each club receiving £4.8m.
Premier League 2016/17 Payments to Clubs Club UK Live Domestic TV Overseas TV Commercial Total (£) Chelsea 28 106,961,183 39,090,596 4,759,404 150,811,183 Tottenham 25 101,611,325 39,090,596 4,759,404 145,461,325 Man City 28 103,077,965 39,090,596 4,759,404 146,927,965 Liverpool 29 102,272,439 39,090,596 4,759,404 146,122,439 Arsenal 25 95,786,498 39,090,596 4,759,404 139,636,498 Man Utd 28 97,253,138 39,090,596 4,759,404 141,103,138 Everton 18 83,950,699 39,090,596 4,759,404 127,800,699 S'ton 15 78,600,841 39,090,596 4,759,404 122,450,841 B'mouth 13 74,387,066 39,090,596 4,759,404 118,237,066 West Brom 11 70,173,291 39,090,596 4,759,404 114,023,291 West Ham 15 72,776,014 39,090,596 4,759,404 116,626,014 Leicester 16 71,970,488 39,090,596 4,759,404 115,820,488 Stoke 10 63,212,381 39,090,596 4,759,404 107,062,381 C. Palace 14 65,815,104 39,090,596 4,759,404 109,665,104 Swansea 10 59,329,163 39,090,596 4,759,404 103,179,163 Burnley 10 57,387,554 39,090,596 4,759,404 101,237,554 Watford 13 58,854,194 39,090,596 4,759,404 102,704,194 Hull 10 53,504,336 39,090,596 4,759,404 97,354,336 M'boro 13 54,970,976 39,090,596 4,759,404 98,820,976 S'derland 10 49,621,118 39,090,596 4,759,404 93,471,118 Total (£) 1,521, 515, 773 781,811,920 95,188,080 2,398,515,773
In addition, the Premier League also released details of their parachute payments to clubs which have been relegated to the Championship over the previous four seasons.
Reading and Wigan Athletic, who were relegated in 2012/13 along with Queens Park Rangers, each received a payment of £16.3m.
Cardiff and Fulham, who were relegated in 2013/14 along with Norwich, also received a payment of £16.3m.
QPR gained promotion back to the Premier League in 2013/14 before dropping out again in 2014/15 and therefore receive a payment of £31.2m
Norwich performed a similar feat, gaining promotion straight back to the Premier League in 2014/15 before being immediately relegated again in 2015/16 and therefore receive a payment of £40.9m.
The other two clubs promoted in 2015/16, Aston Villa and Newcastle United, also received payments of £40.9m.
The collective nature and financial structure of the Premier League mean that it can support the development of the sport throughout the English football pyramid, and the wider community in terms of investing in facilities, running sports participation programmes, and supporting schools.
In the latest financial year the League has contributed £200m towards this activity (roughly 7% of its audio-visual rights income). This figure excludes Parachute Payments to relegated clubs.Huge haul of drugs and mobiles seized from jails in England and Wales
Huge haul of drugs and mobiles seized from jails in England and Wales
More than 200 kilograms of drugs and 13,000 mobile phones and 7,000 sim cards were found in prisons last year, as the Government admitted the situation was "unacceptable".
Prisons minister Sam Gyimah said the problem would not be resolved quickly but praised the efforts of staff to tackle the problems and highlighted the Government's recruitment drive to boost officer numbers.
Ministry of Justice figures showed 225kg of drugs were recovered across the prison estate in England and Wales in 2016.
The ministry said seizing mobiles and sim cards helps to stop inmates continuing to plot further crimes from behind bars.
The Government said a £2m investment in technology to detect phones and 300 specialist dogs trained to find drugs had helped recover the illegal items.
Image: Prisons Minister Sam Gyimah says more needs to be done
Mr Gyimah admitted more needed to be done to tackle the problem and that there was a need to recruit more prison officers.
He said: "I have been clear that the current levels of violence, drugs and mobile phones in our prisons is unacceptable.
"We have put in place a number of measures to help disrupt this illegal activity as it is an issue I am absolutely determined to resolve.
"These figures highlight the determination of prison staff to disrupt this behaviour, whilst at the same time sending a clear message that we will push to prosecute anyone who involves themselves in this kind of activity.
"The issues within our prisons will not be resolved overnight, but we must make progress in tackling these problems. Bringing in more frontline staff is an integral part of that.
"The number of prison officers in post is on the rise, meaning we are on track to achieving the recruitment of 2,500 officers by 2018."(Image
via JACoury
)
I woke up the other day and felt something in the air. Was it the pollen count? No, though my watery eyes would say otherwise. Was it the faint smell of dissipating weed? Yes, but that's par for the course. No, this was something else, a feeling that was uncommon and undeniable. I felt a special electricity that had made its way into the gallows of my Chiptole-filled tummy.
That would finally be the day Surf would drop. I knew it.
For the past week, I have been on Surf Defcon 1. I've been refreshing Donnie Trumpet's SoundCloud constantly and would occasionally check Chance's too. After all, he's the one who said it would drop this week. My obsession with #Surf makes Lil B's #GirlTimeUSA look like child's play. By Thursday it had reached a fever pitch. Sure, I had Oddisee's album, sure Knxwledge's album was there too, and let's not forget about Snoop-A-Loop, but all I could think about was Surf. I needed it. It's why I sent Chance and Donnie a gif ever hour or so. I was going to will this album onto the internet if it killed me, and it almost did.
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As the sun began to set on the day, I realized what I was doing was ineffective and borderline clinically insane. I had to admit that I was a grown man tweet-spamming two other grown men and I had to force myself to go on with my life. After all, there were rent checks to drop off, groceries to buy and dogs to walk. I tried as hard as I could, but I came up short. Still, I left it all on the field, I'd live to fight another day. But just as I had finished willing my thirst away, I pulled up to a red light, did a Twitter check and I saw this.
Holy shit! Holy shit! Sweet baby Jesus, holy shit! I let out a little yelp - half orgasm, half getting a Razor scooter on my 10th birthday - and immediately called Nathan. I couldn't wait to break the news. With his kid jumping on a trampoline in the background of our phone call, we plotted how we would break the internet.
"I'm tied up monitoring this trampoline playdate," Nathan said. "A 1 Listen Review is all yours if you want it. You want it?"
"Hell fucking yeah I do," I responded.
I could see it now. Penning an amazing review inspired by a revolutionary project, sitting back with popcorn, watching analytics rise like Rick Ross' cholesterol level after a Taco Bell binge, and counting the pageviews that would be rolling in to the tune of Donnie's trumpet. What a way to spend a Thursday night. I envisioned Chance and Donnie calling to tell me how my gifs were the driving force behind the release, how amazing my review was, how I was now an honorary member of their clique; the Cappadonna of SaveMoney. I hadn't eaten since lunch, but food wasn't important. I passed by three Chipotle's but never even thought about stopping. I ran red lights. I may or may not have hit three mailboxes...were those mailboxes? I didn't have time to check. Had I gotten pulled over, I would have demanded a police escort home because I have to protect and serve too.
I parked haphazardly, rushed to my door, and flubbed with my keys. You know how in horror movies the people being chased can't seem to function as normal human beings - can't open doors, can't find the right key? I used to laugh but now I totally understand. I thought about how Donnie first stole my heart at a Kids These Days show. I thought about how I've listened to "Juice" more than any other song in the last three years. Finally. FINALLY all of the fandom, all of the articles, everything I had ever done culminated here; before this my life was pure and utter shit. I flung open my computer with so much force I thought I might break it in two. Surf was here! It was time! I dove into the spiraling Twitter tornado. I was ready.
Surf never dropped...
If you ever see those crazy people yelling about god, Obama, and the apocalypse on a street corner and wonder how they got there, I think you'll find my tweet sequence from last night very informative. You can literally trace my descent into madness.
First, I couldn't find a link, but still assumed it dropped, or was going to any minute:
A part of me knew then and there that it wasn't going to happen, but I couldn't let go:
I begged and groveled:
I started to lose hope for real this time:
I can only express my thoughts, feelings and desires through gifs:
As a "journalist" I always try to maintain some aspect of professionalism, but I love music too much to try and play it cool. The day I'm not a fan first is the day I quit:
A few hours and four gifs later:
Midnight was the new time according to randoms on Twitter; I was so sprung I believed 'em. It's amazing the way your brain will suspend rational thinking when you really want something. Midnight rolls around and:
Then I was informed it wasn't midnight in the Chi, so I waited around until 1:30. Gotta give him a half-and hour grace period right?
I went to bed tired, hungry, alone and Surf-less. Thank god for Oddisee. If I didn't have that album I may have gone on revenge mission that would make Liam Neeson's voice tremble.
Before bed though, I tried to find the source of this leak. I had to know who was responsible. Maybe it's this Kanyetothe forum, maybe it's a random tweet (like this one) that spiraled out of control. I'm sure Reddit had something to do with it too. By the end of the night I felt like Charlie in the mailroom.
I woke up refreshed, sad and determined, ready to find out who gave me musical blue balls. Unfortunately, the internet moves too fast to track anything and it's too easy to get swept up in the hype. There's no accountability, no ramifications for filling the feed with pure and utter bullshit. Trying to find the source is like trying to find a needle in a haystack, except instead of a needle it's a piece of bullshit and instead of a hay it's a stack of more bullshit.
I'm convinced nobody wanted Surf more than me (well, maybe Aaron who was sharing in my misery all night), but like with To Pimp A Butterfly, most of these people didn't want Surf because they've watched "Zion" a million times, they wanted to start a rumor for the sake of followers or retweets. If they are right, they can make their conjecture look like an "inside source," they can brag about it. If they are wrong they don't apologize, don't say they were wrong, they merely go on with their internet lives like nothing happened. But I'm no longer concerned with who turned me into a chicken with its head cut off (at least that's what I'm telling myself). I'm more concerned with why I felt the way I did in the morning. Before the rumors, before the gifs, why did I feel like I needed Surf? Why did I feel entitled to something I had no right to be entitled to?
Social media is an incredible force, it connects us with artists who would otherwise never know we exist. It gives a face to the face in the crowd. To even think Black Thought read my words is amazing. I saw myself that close to Donnie and Chance. If Black Thought saw my tweets, maybe they would too. Before Twitter, Kanyetothe and Reddit, before Beyonce and Drake albums started falling from the sky without warning, we read a release date in a magazine, circled it on the calendar and camped outside of Best Buy. We had no choice, no influence, no say in the matter. We were completely passive recipients. Now, all it takes is 1000 retweets and we have a new song. We have an agency in the music like never before and with independent artists like Chance, an artist who seems so normal, so close to us, that sense of agency increases ten fold. We aren't passive anymore, instead we are active participants in making music history. It's remarkable. It's amazing. It's also very, very dangerous. It's how expectations get out of control, bloggers go crazy, fans get offended.
Think of how many tweets there were about Surf that night. Not one, I repeat, NOT ONE SINGLE TWEET, came from Chance or Donnie. No cryptic, illusive tweets, no Vines, nothing. They literally said nothing, and yet we were all convinced Surf was imminent. We thought we could will it out. Do they know about the rumor? I can picture Chance scarfing down Junior Mints and watching the new Avengers while the internet goes crazy, his phone lighting up in his pocket as Thor drops the hammer. Then emerging from the movie, checking his phone and seeing how many people were disappointed that he didn't give them something he never said he was going to give them.
Here's a crazy thought; what if Surf isn't ready? What if they are waiting on a guest verse form Kendrick that will make us flip our shit? What if Donnie doesn't like his horn section on the "All Day (Remix)"? If they had caved into the pressure and released it early, when it wasn't finished, my 1 Listen Review would reflect that and I would be unhappy. I'd call it sloppy or unfinished. I see that it's a trap for artists. Fans demand perfection, transcendent art, and they demand it NOW.
I could end this with, "let's give artists space and time to create," and that'd be true. But as fans I also think it's ok to want an album so bad you think you can hashtag it into existence. We love music. We're excited. We're anxious. There's nothing wrong with wanting more music, the key is finding a balance between art and time, business and pleasure, our demands and the artist's supply. What exactly that balance looks like I don't know, but I know it's nothing like my night last night.
Seriously though, where the fuck is Surf?
[Lucas Garrison is a writer for DJBooth.net. His favorite album is “College Dropout,” but you can also tweet him your favorite Migos songs at @LucasDJBooth]Chennai: The Tamil Nadu government will start a metro service in Coimbatore and expand the network in Chennai, Chief Minister K Palaniswami said on Wednesday.
Considering the increasing traffic in Coimbatore, the government has decided to have a metro rail service in the city. A detailed project report will be prepared on its feasibility, Palaniswami told the assembly.
He said the report will be prepared by Chennai Metro Rail Ltd and the proposed project will be secured from German agency KFW.
Also, the government has given policy-level clearance for the second phase of metro rail service in Chennai involving an outlay of around Rs 88,897 crore, Palaniswami said.
He said the proposal has been sent to the central government for clearance.
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.Conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh. AOL is one of several companies to pull ads from his show.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- AOL joined the growing list of companies on Monday to announce suspensions of advertising on the Rush Limbaugh Show, responding to the radio host's comments about a Georgetown law student who advocated health care coverage for contraception.
"At AOL (AOL) one of our core values is that we act with integrity," the company said in a Facebook post. "We have monitored the unfolding events and have determined that Mr. Limbaugh's comments are not in line with our values."
Also announcing ad pulls Monday was legal adviser Tax Resolution Services and herbal supplement maker Heart & Body Extract. Other companies that had previously pulled ads in response to the controversy include QuickenLoans, technology services provider Citrix Systems (CTXS), data backup service Carbonite (CARB) and mattress company Sleep Number, a unit of Select Comfort (SCSS).
In addition, insurer Allstate (ALL, Fortune 500) and clothing maker Bonobos said Monday that they inadvertently had ads placed on Limbaugh's show and would be discontinuing them. A dozen companies have now ordered their ads pulled in response to the controversy.
Outcry over Limbaugh's comments began last week after he criticized Sandra Fluke, a student at Georgetown Law, for stating her views about contraception coverage at a hearing on Capitol Hill. Limbaugh said Fluke's advocacy made her a "slut" and a "prostitute."
Limbaugh apologized for his remarks Saturday, saying his "choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir."
Top Republicans and Democrats have denounced the talk-show host, the most popular in the nation, and President Obama called Fluke on Friday to offer his support.
Premiere Networks, the CC Media Holdings (CCMO, Fortune 500) unit that syndicates Limbaugh's radio show, said in a statement Monday that it would keep running Limbaugh, saying his show is part of its mission to air various political viewpoints.
"We believe he did the right thing on Saturday, and again this morning on his radio show, by expressing regret for his choice of words and offering his sincere and heartfelt apology to Ms. Fluke," Premiere said.
Limbaugh's remarks have sparked a wave of online activism, with thousands signing petitions calling for advertisers to withdraw from his program.
Sears Holdings (SHLD, Fortune 500) is among the firms that have been listed as Limbaugh advertisers in online petitions, though it denied this Monday and said a local radio station had instead apparently run a recent ad "adjacent" to Limbaugh's program.
The company said in a statement that it "does not buy media or sponsorships on the Rush Limbaugh Show" was "looking into" the matter.
Three female Iraq War veterans have also called for the program to be removed from the American Forces Network, which broadcasts to American service members around the world. Pentagon press secretary George Little said Monday, however, that the Defense Department had no plans for such a move.
- The CNN Political Unit and CNN's Barbara Starr contributed to this report.Rob Dyrdek I'm Selling Burritos Now... FOR POTHEADS
Rob Dyrdek -- I'm Selling Burritos Now... FOR POTHEADS
EXCLUSIVE
Forget-- the only beef's got now is in his brand new line of frozen burritos... and he's marketing them directly to STONERS.No joke -- the MTV star and his cousinhave spawned a frozen burrito company called-- which they claim will "revolutionize the age-old eating experience by combining Mexicana and Americana flavors under the roof of a tortilla."The "" duo is hawking two options for now: Cheeseburger -- stuffed with hamburger meat, cheese, ketchup and mustard... and Pepperoni Pizza -- with mozzarella, pepperoni and tomato sauce.And the best part -- the burritos are only 420 calories each. GET IT?!?!?!The frozen goods are currently being sold at several 24-hour Kum and Go and Maverik convenience stores -- perfect for those late night munchies -- and they're hoping to expand to 10,000 locals by the end of summer.Taco Bell... you've been warned.Protesters gathered outside Portugal’s presidential palace to donate money and food to the head of state after he complained about a drop in his pension due to the government’s austerity measures.
His remarks sparked a storm of protest.
Thousands have signed a petition calling for President Anibal Cavaco Silva to resign, bearing in mind the majority of Portugal’s elderly exist only a fraction of their president’s income.
The man who started the petition, Nuno Luís Marreiros, was pragmatic about what it might achieve: “If the petition has no other impact, maybe it will at least show to our politicians that the Portuguese are beginning to protest a bit more and to make their opinions known,” he said.
Cavaco Silva’s FaceBook page was also targeted. He has a declared income of 10,000 euros a month as well as investments, whereas average Portuguese has to survive on only 900 euros.
Cartoonists have had a field day over his remarks but the president has apologised admitting he expressed himself badly.Industry overview The Swiss Watch Industry shows first signs of recovery. In Q2 2017, watch exports were worth CHF 5.0 billion, compared to CHF 4.8 billion in Q2 2016 (+3%). There has been a strong recovery of watch exports to China in particular with double-digit growth rates since Q4 2016. After a sharp downward trend from Q2 2015 to Q4 2016, watch exports to Hong Kong, the most important export market for Swiss watches, stagnated in Q1 2017 and slightly rose in Q2 (+1%).
Industry outlook Swiss watch executives surveyed are now more optimistic about the future and think the recent positive change of trend should continue. 52% of respondents have indeed a positive growth outlook for the Swiss watch industry in the next 12 months, up from 2% in 2016. Only 15% consider the outlook to be negative. In 2016 this number was 82%. There is also growing optimism about the outlook for the Swiss economy and the main export markets.
Swiss-Made legislation Twice as many watch executives (44%) consider the impact of the revised Swiss Made rules to be positive rather than negative for the industry. The new rules will not necessarily bring production back to Switzerland but are essential to maintain the undisputed leadership in the luxury watch market.
Digital channels The fact that a large proportion of offline purchases are influenced by what the consumer has discovered digitally is also true for the luxury and watch industry. Many customers do not want to miss the experience of visiting a boutique, see the watch pieces in person, look at the material and touch it. According to our consumer survey that was conducted in six countries among a total of 4,500 consumers, the vast majority of people surveyed are still likely to buy a watch in-store. At the same time 60% of consumers use online and digital channels to research watches before they go in-store e.g. to check prices or find product information.
Smartwatches Even though Apple continues to grow its offering and other players announce partnerships to gain market share, Swiss watch executives do not see smartwatches as a threat to their business, 72% do not expect them to have an impact on their sales and 14% see smartwatches as an opportunity. However, perception could differ depending on the target audience of the brand, its price positioning and development strategy.
Download reportSodium salts point to subsurface ocean on Enceladus
25 June 2009
CDA measurements
The E ring is the largest of Saturn's rings, extending from about 180 000 kilometres to about 2 000 000 kilometres out from Saturn's centre. It is a diffuse ring comprising mostly micron-sized water ice particles. The main source of these particles is considered to be the south polar plumes of the cryo-volcanically active moon Enceladus. The plumes of material originate from vents in the moon's surface ice. Enceladus orbits Saturn within the E ring at an average distance of 283 000 kilometres from the planet and its orbit coincides with the densest and brightest part of the E ring [Figure 1].
During Cassini's tour in the Saturnian system the CDA has taken thousands of in-situ mass spectra of the particles present in Saturn's E ring. These spectra reveal the different constituents of an ice particle based on the mass of ions which form after a hyper velocity impact (~10 kms-1) of the particle onto the instrument. Postberg and colleagues have analysed the CDA mass spectra and distinguish three main types based on the amount of sodium and organic compounds present:
Types of in-situ CDA mass spectra of icy E ring particles Type Description Percentage
of spectra I Almost pure water ice with traces of Na + K > 90% II Water ice with organic compounds or silicates and traces of Na + K III Water ice containing abundant sodium salts ~ 6%
3
2
3
The majority (> 90%) of these spectra are Na-poor: these are classed as types I and II [Figure 2a]. Type III spectra, however, show a much larger concentration of Na. They also exhibit other mass peaks indicative of the mineral salts NaCl, NaHCOand/or NaCOas the main Na-bearing compounds [Figure 2b].
Laboratory mass spectra of different sodium solutions with different sodium concentrations were obtained and compared with the CDA mass spectra by Postberg and his team. Solutions that produced mass spectra matching those of type I and type II required a low Na concentration with a sodium/water ratio of Na/H 2 O < 10-7. However, to match the average type III spectrum required sodium/water ratios of Na/H 2 O > 10-3, or four orders of magnitude larger.
Subsurface ocean
The high concentrations of sodium and the identified sodium minerals in type III mass spectra lead the authors to infer the presence of a slightly alkaline sodium salt water reservoir enriched in carbonates (CO 3 2-) beneath the surface of Enceladus. The water reservoir could even be linked with a subsurface ocean.
Since only liquid water can contain significant amounts of salts the authors suggest that the sodium-rich water-ice particles (type III, which contain about 1% salt) are directly frozen droplets from the liquid phase [Figure 3a]. The salts must have been leeched out from rocky material within Enceladus. This points to an interface between the hot rocky moon core and the ocean. However, whether the water that feeds the Enceladus plumes is still in contact with the core cannot be determined from these CDA measurements. The frozen droplets are sub-micron sized and additional water vapour condenses on them as they travel upward through the plume ice vents in Enceladus' ice crust.
The other two types of particles that contain mainly water ice and only traces of sodium (type I and II) can also be explained with a scenario that involves a subsurface ocean. These particles form after evaporation of the salty ocean that leads to nearly pure water vapour and only very low concentrations of salts in the particles after they are frozen and vented out in the plumes [Figure 3b].
Related publication
Postberg, F. et al., "Sodium Salts in E-Ring Ice Grains from an Ocean below the Surface of Enceladus", Nature, Vol. 459, Issue 7250, pp 1098-1101, 25 June 2009, doi:10.1038/nature08046
Last Update: 25 June 2009Rob Pelinka's new role causes Harden, Ariza, and Gordon to find new agent
Just days ago, Rob Pelinka was in full agent mode, joining James Harden at All Star weekend appearances, congratulating Eric Gordon moments after his 3-point contest victory.
By Tuesday, he was no longer their agent. Pelinka, who has represented many top players including the Rockets' Harden, Gordon and Trevor Ariza, had told his clients he would join Magic Johnson with the Lakers as general manager.
Gordon and Ariza believed Pelinka, a former guard on Michigan's Fab Five team, would be as successful on the other side of the table as he was as their agent.
"He is going to be Lakers GM over there," Gordon said. "I think he's going to be good. He had a good reputation as an agent. I definitely expect nothing but good things from him. It's a different challenge. I think he's going to be just fine. He knows basketball for sure.
"All of us, as far as me, James and Trevor, we were kind of surprised. He said it happened quickly. We were all surprised."
Harden was given Tuesday off after the All Star weekend and was unavailable for comment. But Ariza also thought the Lakers will make a strong addition to the front office once the move becomes official.
Houston Rockets guard James Harden (13) looks downcourt during the third quarter of an NBA game at the Toyota Center, Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2017, in Houston. ( Jon Shapley / Houston Chronicle ) Houston Rockets guard James Harden (13) looks downcourt during the third quarter of an NBA game at the Toyota Center, Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2017, in Houston. ( Jon Shapley / Houston Chronicle ) Photo: Jon Shapley, Staff Photo: Jon Shapley, Staff Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close Rob Pelinka's new role causes Harden, Ariza, and Gordon to find new agent 1 / 4 Back to Gallery
"If that does happen and he gets that job, I think he'll be unbelievable in that role," Ariza said. "He knows basketball. He has a really, really good eye for talent. And he knows team chemistry. If anybody can put together a team he will be one of those... people that can do a really good job in that position."
Pelinka's move does mean his clients will have to choose a new agent. Harden is signed for three more years, the third at his option. Gordon also has three seasons after this season on his contract. Ariza, a former Lakers player, is signed through the 2017-18 season.
"I'm just worried about what we're doing here right now at this time," Ariza said. "I have no interest in what's going on... but what we have to accomplish. It's getting closer to playoff time for us. We all have to be locked in and dialed in to what we're doing here. That's my main concern."
Gordon also was not worried about representation. He laughed easily when told his phone will start ringing with agents ready with recruiting pitches. But Gordon had just signed last July, giving him time before he and anyone he chooses as an agent face that decision again.
"Good thing I'm not a young guy too much now," Gordon said. "There's not rush to anything. I'm here for four years so I don't have to worry about much now. Stuff like that, you don't have to worry too much about."Image caption Quantum systems are notoriously fickle to measure and manipulate
A fragile quantum memory state has been held stable at room temperature for a "world record" 39 minutes - overcoming a key barrier to ultrafast computers.
"Qubits" of information encoded in a silicon system persisted for almost 100 times longer than ever before.
Quantum systems are notoriously fickle to measure and manipulate, but if harnessed could transform computing.
The new benchmark was set by an international team led by Mike Thewalt of Simon Fraser University, Canada.
"39 minutes may not seem very long. But these lifetimes are many times longer than previous experiments Stephanie Simmons, Oxford University
"This opens the possibility of truly long-term storage of quantum information at room temperature," said Prof Thewalt, whose achievement is detailed in the journal Science.
In conventional computers, "bits" of data are stored as a string of 1s and 0s.
But in a quantum system, "qubits" are stored in a so-called "superposition state" in which they can be both 1s and 0 at the same time - enabling them to perform multiple calculations simultaneously.
The trouble with qubits is their instability - typical devices "forget" their memories in less than a second.
There is no Guinness Book of quantum records. But unofficially, the previous best for a solid state system was 25 seconds at room temperature, or three minutes under cryogenic conditions.
In this new experiment, scientists encoded information into the nuclei of phosphorus atoms held in a sliver of purified silicon.
Magnetic field pulses were used to tilt the spin of the nuclei and create superposition states - the qubits of memory.
The team prepared the sample at -269C, close to absolute zero - the lowest temperature possible.
When they raised the system to room temperature (just above 25C) the superposition states survived for 39 minutes.
What's more, they found they could manipulate the qubits as the temperature of the system rose and fell back towards absolute zero.
At cryogenic temperatures |
operating an electric vehicle over 10 years will fall below that of a comparable combustion-engine vehicles by 2021.
In addition, more stringent environmental targets in many countries will push vehicle manufacturers to add some form of electrification, including hybrid electric-gasoline powertrains, to reduce exhaust emissions after 2020.
Even as costs drop and more advanced technology is introduced over the next 12 years, BCG said it expects 86 percent of new vehicles to continue using some form of combustion engine by 2030.
Mosquet said a gradual shift to ride sharing in big cities and larger metropolitan areas, especially in the United States, will drive demand for EVs, in large part because the shared vehicles will accumulate miles more rapidly and thus narrow the gap in operating costs with combustion-engine vehicles.
Likewise, a shift to self-driving vehicles, particularly in ride-sharing fleets, will boost EV demand after 2025. The cost per mile for a battery-powered self-driving vehicle could drop as low as 74 cents by 2030, making such vehicles less expensive than those with combustion engines, BCG said.Mitt Romney was far from being the only Republican thinker “shellshocked” by his defeat. So was the author of this elegant communication I’d received after a column predicting that the 2012 election would mark the end of Richard Nixon’s “Southern strategy.”
“You are such a liar. You are not a journalist or a columnist, but rather a whore for the Democratic Party… November will solve the problem when we kick your Satanic ilk out of our government. May you get a form of incurable cancer and die a long and painful death.”
Needless to say, my pious interlocutor mentioned no particulars. People like him never do. However, my intuitions proved correct: As far as the electoral college is concerned, the GOP has turned into a strictly Confederate/Cow State party.
In the short term, stunned disbelief and futile posturing are apt to prevail. Why change what’s never worked since 1865?
But the rest of us shouldn’t feel too smug. The nation has experienced a brush with disaster. Who’d have guessed that The $250 Million Man was as vulnerable to having smoke blown up his wazoo as George W. Bush?
There’s no telling what mad crusades Romney’s neoconservative advisors might have talked him into launching.
One expects a degree of competence in a tycoon; a money guy is supposed to be a numbers guy. That Mitt Romney was as deluded about his chances as Karl Rove, Dick Morris, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Mike Huckabee, Peggy Noonan, Charles Krauthammer and the rest of the GOP Marching and Chowder Society comes as a shock.
Even The Washington Post’s persnickety George Will forecast a Romney landslide. The scholarly pundit opined that even Minnesota would back Mitt. Will reasoned that a marriage amendment would bring out hordes of Michelle Bachmann supporters.
Final tally: Obama 53 percent, Romney 45 percent — Minnesota’s 10th consecutive Democratic presidential vote. Not even close.
Adepts of the Fox News infotainment cult ought to be asking themselves tough questions. “On the biggest political story of the year,” writes The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf, “the conservative media just got its [posterior] handed to it by the mainstream media. And movement conservatives, who believe the MSM is more biased and less rigorous than their alternatives, have no way to explain how their trusted outlets got it wrong, while The New York Times got it right. Hint: The Times hired the most rigorous forecaster it could find.”
His name is Nate Silver, a number-crunching whiz-kid who came to politics after helping to revolutionize baseball stats. His FiveThirtyEight blog aggregates and analyzes data from as many state and national polls as he can find—operating on the principle that the larger the sample, the smaller the margin of error.
In 2008, Silver called 49 of 50 states correctly.
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759Summer is almost over for most of the country but here in Arizona we have a few more months. So when we received a bottle of Sonoma Syrup Co Lavender Simple Syrup we knew we wanted to create a refreshing recipe. Early on, we thought to do some sort of cocktail. Then in dawned on us, that this syrup would be delicious in a popsicle recipe. Thus our Strawberry Lavender Popsicle recipe was born!
The inspiration for the flavor combination of strawberry and lavender actually came from one of our favorite cocktails. Here in Scottsdale, Counter Intuitive has a drink on their latest menu called the Loverzall. It features: Strawberry Jalapeno Jam, Peychaud’s Bitters, Demerara, Lavender, Azunia Blanco Tequila, Fernet Branca, and Cointreau. Wanting to make a popsicle recipe that was simple and not boozy (hey we don’t always drink), we took 2 of our favorite component and voila!
This Strawberry Lavender Popsicle recipe is super easy to make and tastes delicious! What are some of your favorite popsicle flavor combinations? Have you tried any of Sonoma Syrup Co’s other flavors? What was your favorite? Inquiring minds want to know! Leave a comment below or use the hashtag #GeekEats!
Print 3 Ingredient Strawberry Lavender Popsicle Recipe Yield: 6 popsicles Serving Size: 1 popsicle Ingredients 1 lb fresh strawberries, washed and tops cut off
1 cup water
1/4 cup Sonoma Syrup Co Lavender Simple Syrup Instructions Combine all ingredients in food processor and puree.
Pour into popsicle mold.
Freeze for 4-8 hours.
Enjoy! Notes We use a Koji 6 pop mold and this made exactly enough. Recipe Management Powered by Zip Recipes Plugin 5.0 https://2geekswhoeat.com/strawberry-lavender-popsicle-recipe/
*The Geeks were given product samples by The Sonoma Syrup Co to facilitate the creation of this recipe; However, opinions are wholly our own. View our Disclosure Policy for more info.This advertisement suggests a healthy diet helps to prevent cancer.
Dietary factors are recognized as having a significant effect on the risk of cancers, with different dietary elements both increasing and reducing risk. Diet and obesity may be related to up to 30-35% of cancer deaths,[1] while physical inactivity appears to be related to 7% risk of cancer occurrence.[2] One review in 2011 suggested that total caloric intake influences cancer incidence and possibly progression.[3]
While many dietary recommendations have been proposed to reduce the risk of cancer, few have significant supporting scientific evidence.[3] Obesity and drinking alcohol have been correlated with the incidence and progression of some cancers.[3] Lowering the drinking of beverages sweetened with sugar is recommended as a measure to address obesity.[4] A diet low in fruits and vegetables and high in red meat has been implicated but not confirmed,[5] and the effect may be small for well-nourished people who maintain a healthy weight.[3]
Some specific foods are linked to specific cancers. Studies have linked eating red or processed meat to an increased risk of breast cancer, colon cancer,[4] prostate cancer,[6] and pancreatic cancer, which may be partially explained by the presence of carcinogens in foods cooked at high temperatures.[7][8] Aflatoxin B1, a frequent food contaminate, causes liver cancer,[9] but drinking coffee is associated with a reduced risk.[10] Betel nut chewing causes oral cancer.[9] Pickled vegetables are directly linked to increased risks of several cancers. The differences in dietary practices may partly explain differences in cancer incidence in different countries. For example, stomach cancer is more common in Japan due to its high-salt diet[9][11] and colon cancer is more common in the United States. Immigrant communities tend to develop the risk of their new country, often within one generation, suggesting a substantial link between diet and cancer.[12]
Dietary recommendations for cancer prevention typically include weight management and eating "mainly vegetables, fruit, whole grains and fish, and a reduced intake of red meat, animal fat, and refined sugar."[3]
Types of diet [ edit ]
Restrictive diets [ edit ]
A number of diets and diet-based regimes are claimed to be useful against cancer. Popular types of "anti-cancer" diet include the Breuss diet, Gerson therapy, the Budwig protocol and the macrobiotic diet. None of these diets has been found to be effective, and some of them have been found to be harmful.[13]
Dietary patterns [ edit ]
Nutritional epidemiologists use multivariate statistics, such as principal components analysis and factor analysis, to measure how patterns of dietary behavior influence the risk of developing cancer.[14] (The most well-studied dietary pattern is the mediterranean diet.) Based on their dietary pattern score, epidemiologists categorize people into quantiles. To estimate the influence of dietary behavior on risk of cancer, they measure the association between quantiles and the distribution of cancer prevalence (in case-control studies) and cancer incidence (in longitudinal studies). They usually include other variables in their statistical model to account for the other differences between people with and without cancer (confounders). For breast cancer, there is a replicated trend for women with a more "prudent or healthy" diet, i.e. higher in fruits and vegetables, to have a lower risk of cancer.[15] A "drinker dietary pattern" is also associated with higher breast cancer risk, while the association is inconsistent between a more westernized diet and elevated risk of breast cancer. Pickled foods are linked with cancer.
Dietary components [ edit ]
Alcohol [ edit ]
Alcohol is associated with an increased risk of a number of cancers.[16] 3.6% of all cancer cases and 3.5% of cancer deaths worldwide are attributable to drinking of alcohol.[17] Breast cancer in women is linked with alcohol intake.[3][18] Alcohol also increases the risk of cancers of the mouth, esophagus, pharynx and larynx,[19] colorectal cancer,[20][21] liver cancer,[22] stomach[23] and ovaries.[24] The International Agency for Research on Cancer (Centre International de Recherche sur le Cancer) of the World Health Organization has classified alcohol as a Group 1 carcinogen. Its evaluation states, "There is sufficient evidence for the carcinogenicity of alcoholic beverages in humans. …Alcoholic beverages are carcinogenic to humans (Group 1)."[25]
Processed and red meat [ edit ]
On October 26, 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health Organization reported that eating processed meat (e.g., bacon, ham, hot dogs, sausages) or red meat was linked to some cancers.[26][27][28]
Fiber, fruits and vegetables [ edit ]
The evidence on the effect of dietary fiber on the risk of colon cancer is mixed with some types of evidence showing a benefit and others not.[4] While eating fruit and vegetables has a benefit, it has less benefit on reducing cancer than once thought.[4]
A 2014 study found fruit but not vegetables protected against upper gastrointestinal tract cancer.[29] While fruit, vegetable and fiber protected against colorectal cancer and fiber protected against liver cancer.[29]
Flavonoids [ edit ]
Flavonoids (specifically flavonoids such as the catechins) are "the most common group of polyphenolic compounds in the human diet and are found ubiquitously in plants."[30] While some studies have suggested flavonoids may have a role in cancer prevention, others have been inconclusive or suggested they may be harmful.[31][32]
Mushrooms [ edit ]
According to Cancer Research UK, "there is currently no evidence that any type of mushroom or mushroom extract can prevent or cure cancer", although research into some species continues.[33]
Nutrient bioactives [ edit ]
According to the American Cancer Society, although laboratory research has shown the possibility of some connection between soybeans and cancer, as yet there is no conclusive evidence about the anti-cancer effect of soy on human beings.[34]
Laboratory experiments have found that turmeric might have an anti-cancer effect.[35] Although trials are ongoing, large doses would need to be taken for any effect. It is not known what, in any, positive effect turmeric has for human beings with cancer.[36]
Although green tea has been promoted for its anti-cancer effect, research into it has produced mixed results; it is not known if it helps people prevent or treat cancer.[37][38] A review of all published studies by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2011 concluded it is very unlikely that green tea prevents any kind of cancer in humans.[38]
Resveratrol has shown anti-cancer activity in laboratory experiments, but as of 2009, there is no evidence of an effect on cancer in humans.[39][40]
Vitamin D supplements have been widely marketed on the internet and elsewhere for their claimed anti-cancer properties.[41] There is however insufficient evidence to recommend that vitamin D be prescribed for people with cancer, although there is some evidence that hypovitaminosis D may be associated with a worse outcome for some cancers.[42] A 2014 systematic review by the Cochrane Collaboration found, "no firm evidence that vitamin D supplementation decreases or increases cancer occurrence in predominantly elderly community-dwelling women."[43]
Mechanisms of action [ edit ]
Methionine metabolism [ edit ]
Although numerous cellular mechanisms are involved in food intake, many investigations over the past decades have pointed out defects in the methionine metabolic pathway as cause of carcinogenesis.[44][45] For instance, deficiencies of the main dietary sources of methyl donors, methionine and choline, lead to the formation of liver cancer in rodents.[46][47] Methionine is an essential amino acid that must be provided by dietary intake of proteins or methyl donors (choline and betaine found in beef, eggs and some vegetables). Assimilated methionine is transformed in S-adenosyl methionine (SAM) which is a key metabolite for polyamine synthesis, e.g. spermidine, and cysteine formation (see the figure on the right). Methionine breakdown products are also recycled back into methionine by homocysteine remethylation and methylthioadenosine (MTA) conversion (see the figure on the right). Vitamins B 6, B 12, folic acid and choline are essential cofactors for these reactions. SAM is the substrate for methylation reactions catalyzed by DNA, RNA and protein methyltransferases.
Growth factor (GF) and steroid/retinoid activation of PRMT4.
The products of these reactions are methylated DNA, RNA or proteins and S-adenosylhomocysteine (SAH). SAH has a negative feedback on its own production as an inhibitor of methyltransferase enzymes. Therefore, SAM:SAH ratio directly regulates cellular methylation, whereas levels of vitamins B 6, B 12, folic acid and choline regulates indirectly the methylation state via the methionine metabolism cycle.[48][49] A near ubiquitous feature of cancer is a maladaption of the methionine metabolic pathway in response to genetic or environmental conditions resulting in depletion of SAM and/or SAM-dependent methylation. Whether it is deficiency in enzymes such as methylthioadenosine phosphorylase, methionine-dependency of cancer cells, high levels of polyamine synthesis in cancer, or induction of cancer through a diet deprived of extrinsic methyl donors or enhanced in methylation inhibitors, tumor formation is strongly correlated with a decrease in levels of SAM in mice, rats and humans.[50][51]
According to a 2012 review, the effect of methionine restriction on cancer has yet to be studied directly in humans and "there is still insufficient knowledge to give reliable nutritional advice".[52]
Signaling pathways [ edit ]
Multiple oncogenic signaling pathways have been involved in the processes of cancer cell invasion and metastasis. Among these signaling pathways, Wnt and Hedgehog signaling pathways are involved in the embryonic development, in the biology of cancer stem cells (CSCs) and in the acquisition of epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT).[35]
See also [ edit ]A hospital in the French city of Clermont-Ferrand will open a wine bar where terminally ill patients will be able to enjoy a “medically supervised” glass or two with their families.
“Why should we refuse the charms of the soil to those at the end of their lives? Nothing justifies such a prohibition,” the Clermont-Ferrand University Hospital Center said in statement.
The center’s head, Dr. Virginie Guastella, said terminally ill patients had the right to “enjoy themselves.”
The bar will be the first in France to offer such a facility for patients and their families. Staff will be specially trained before it opens in the hospital’s palliative care center in September.
“Medically supervised tastings will help brighten what is often a difficult daily life,” the hospital said.
Although some researchers have long held that an antioxidant found in red wine is good for the heart, some recent research has determined that wine’s health benefits are exaggerated.Fwd: FW: Office decorations
From:esepp@hillaryclinton.com To: john.podesta@gmail.com CC: mfisher@hillaryclinton.com Date: 2015-05-04 23:10 Subject: Fwd: FW: Office decorations
John--see email below from Campaign Ops. Aparently every department is coming up with a cool slogan for their corner of the office. Bottom line: we have to be funnier than the finance team. Theirs is “Don't FEC With Us.” Pretty funny. Has to include use of the H logo, but that's the easy part. We were JUST told about this today, but we have to get your choice to them soon so the campaign office can be decorated by the end of the week. * You could have one by yourself, or with Robby. Thoughts on what you want yours to be? Suggestions: If we're going for funny:- The Vote is Out There- Beam me up, electorate!- A funny thing happened on the way to retirement... (Hell, it’s funny--might as well reuse it)Stuff we’ve heard you say when you’re being motivational:- Onward and upward! (All in Hillvetica font)Again, Robby didn’t make one, but if he wants to combine his with yours, I think a Law and Order theme is in... uh, order. See attached photo but here's the plain text:"Robby & John” (in the Law and Order font, but with the first letters L&O in "Hillvetica" font)In the campaign system, the staff and volunteers are led by two separate but equally important people: the Campaign Manager, who inspires us through long nights and cold takeout; and the Chairman, who makes sure we're not f%&^ing it all up. There are their stories." (followed by H logo) Thoughts? Thanks,Eryn* > > > *From:* Marisa McAuliffe [mailto:mmcauliffe@hillaryclinton.com] > *To:* Robby Mook; Jennifer Palmieri; Kristina Schake; Jesse Ferguson; > Jake Sullivan; Oren Shur; Teddy Goff; Katie Dowd; Tony Carrk; Stephanie > Hannon; Huma Abedin; Alex Hornbrook; Robert Russo; Elan Kriegel; Sadia > Iqbal; Marlon Marshall; Ashleigh Tevelin; elizabeth renda; Dennis Cheng; > Rebecca Leal; Beth Jones; David Levine; Marc Elias; Elizabeth Gramling > *Subject:* Office decorations > > > > Hi all - we're figuring out a plan for the office decor and have a few > ideas (below). > > > > For each of your departments it would be great to use the brand guidelines > of having the H filled in with different imagery (see attached screenshot) > to reflect your individual department (dollar signs for finance?). This > should go alongside a team slogan you've developed that clearly identifies > the department (don't FEC with us) and will be displayed on poster/foam > board and hung from the ceiling over your respective areas. The goal is to > have these up by next week. > > > > A little down the road we will also be incentivizing departments to come > up with a creative idea to decorate/make the office better. More on that > later. > > > > We have a volunteer who is an artist and has offered her services to paint > the space so is spending the next few days working on sketches and will > hopefully get started soon.Let me know if you have any questions. Best, > Marisa > > > > *Reception area* > > *Pictures of volunteers in the states with the phrase 'We are Hillary for > America... volunteers' > > *Hillary for... and individuals contribute why they are for HRC > > > > *Call Center* > > Hillary for America and logo painted around the room along with quotes, > pictures of volunteers and informational materials > > > > *Conference Rooms/Teaming rooms* > > Name them after early states and decorate accordingly > > > > *Throughout the space* > > *Logo in a varying blue and red color scheme on columns > > *Hillvetica > <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/04/14/create-your-own-hillary-clinton-slogan-using-her-h-typeface/> > logos > > *Hillary for America vinyl banners > > *Values document > > *Tentative: Picture of HRC > > *Field signs/placards on a wall > > *Map of states near States >The malware springs into action before the operating system has even begun to load
Source: Trend Micro Anti-virus experts at Trend Micro have discovered ransomware which blocks systems from booting. In contrast to the localised trojans, which are widely spread around Europe, it does so by inserting itself into the master boot record (MBR). It then restarts the system and instructs the user to pay a ransom of 920 Ukrainian hryvnia (equivalent to about 90 euros) to the criminals via payment service QIWI.
If victims pay up, the criminals send them a code to unlock their computers. Users can, however, save themselves 920 hryvnia by following the experts' instructions for removing the infection. This essentially consists of running the recovery console from the Windows Installation DVD and restoring the original MBR using the fixmbr command.
According to Trend Micro, the virus is spread via crafted web sites or is injected onto systems by other malware. Malware which overwrites the MBR to prevent booting was discovered in early 2010, though it did not demand a ransom. There are dozens of versions of the BKA-style trojans in the wild, most of which do not corrupt the MBR, relying instead on autostart or special registry entries to hook themselves into the system.
(djwm)As we wait for that fanmade hack of Pokémon FireRed to replicate the mythical Pokémon Black, you can carry the next best thing in your DS – Pokemon Ghost Black ReTold, a homebrew visual novel of the tale!
Developer Multiple: Option, creator of many intriguing DS games/apps like Game Trivia Catechism and Snatcher Pilot DS, has created this visual novel for the ongoing Neoflash 2010 Coding Contest.
It’s a simple program that displays text from the “super creepy Pokémon hack” post on the bottom screen, but throws in some images on the top display for extra flavor/creepiness. It’s almost like a special edition version of the story!
[Update: Oh God, there’s an extended ending in this homebrew edition, and it’s wayyyy scary.]
See also: Super Creepy Pokemon hack(CNN) -- Two men will appear in court Sunday in the hit-and-run deaths of three men during the riots that roiled Britain last week.
Police charged the two, ages 26 and 17, with three counts of murder in the incidents in Birmingham, Britain's second largest city.
Their names have not been released.
Residents say the three victims were mowed down by a car while protecting businesses from looters.
Haroon Jahan, 21, along with two brothers, Shazad and Munir Hussein -- both in their 30s -- were keeping watch outside a gas station following a break-in by looters during the riots, relatives said.
"The guy who killed him drove directly into the crowd and killed three innocent guys," said Tarik Jahan, father of the youngest victim. "Why? What was the point of doing that? I don't understand."
Two others remain in custody while another two were bailed out pending further investigations.
"All they wanted to do was to protect their business and other businesses within the community," said Abdullah Khan, an uncle of the two brothers.
Shazad Hussein was looking forward to the birth of his first child in a few months, the uncle said.
"A father will never hold his child, a child will never be held by his father, a wife without a husband, parents who have lost two sons. Words can never express what we are going through at this moment," he said.
Khan appealed for justice, and asked witnesses to come forward.
Community groups are planning a peace rally Sunday for the victims.
Birmingham, like many other areas in Britain, was rocked by riots that started after the shooting death of a man who protesters said was killed by police.
The violence first broke out about a week ago August 6 following protests over the death of Mark Duggan in the north London neighborhood of Tottenham. He was shot after a police unit that deals with gun crime stopped a cab carrying the 29-year-old father of four.
Police have arrested more than 2,200 people around the country, many of whom have appeared before magistrates.
Hearings are being held around-the-clock.
CNN's Elizabeth Joseph and Faith Karimi contributed to this report.The Rev. Louis Farrakhan told churchgoers on Sunday that Israelis and “Zionist Jews” played key roles in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks that left nearly 3,000 people dead.
“We now know that the crime they say is at the root of terrorism was not committed by Arabs or Muslims at all,” the Nation of Islam leader said in Chicago Sunday at Saviours’ Day 2015 Part 2, a local CBS affiliate reported.
“It is now becoming apparent that there were many Israelis and Zionist Jews in key roles in the 9/11 attacks,” Mr. Farrakhan said. “Now look, if they can prove me wrong, like I said, I’ll pay with my life. Since they want to kill me anyway. Prove me wrong. We’re dealing with thieves and liars and murderers. Listen to this: We know that many Israelis were arrested immediately after the attacks, but quickly released and sent to Israel.
“We know that the World Trade Center was insured by its owner Larry Silverstein right before the attack,” he continued. “We know that an Israeli film crew dressed as Arabs were filming the Twin Towers before the first plane went in. In other words, these Israelis had full knowledge of the attacks.
“We know that many Jews received a text message not to come to work on September 11th. Who sent that message that kept them from showing up?” Mr. Farrakhan asked. “Within minutes of the attacks, Ehud Barak, the founder and master of the Israeli military’s covert operation force, was in a London studio of the BBC blaming Osama bin Laden and calling for a war on terror. And we know that Benjamin Netanyahu told an audience in Israel, we are benefitting from one thing and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon and the American struggle in Iraq. He added that these catastrophes and wars would swing the American public opinion in the favor of Israel.”
Mr. Farrakhan then called on the U.S. to investigate these claims.
“Why won’t America investigate what these scholars and scientists have uncovered about 9/11 and who was really behind it?” he asked. “It now appears that 9/11 was a false flag operation, which is an attack by one country but made to appear like that attack came from another in order to start a war between them. Is this what friendship is?”
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Jewish NGO that fights against anti-Semitism, said Mr. Farrakhan’s latest speech “reaffirms his status as the leading anti-Semite in America.”
“Farrakhan is the pied piper of bigotry. No one perhaps since Father Coughlin has been able to so use and abuse his status as a religious leader with a large audience to obsessively harp on about perceived Jewish power and influence,” Abraham H. Foxman, ADL national director, said in a statement Thursday. “At a time when anti-Semitic attitudes in America are at historic lows, Farrakhan’s unabashed promotion of anti-Semitism is a throwback to the intolerance of another era.”
Mr. Foxman added, “Unlike most fringe anti-Semites, Farrakhan still has a significant following who not only listen raptly, but who cheer him on with every new insult.”
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Author's Notes:
Alright, I obviously don't own any of these people… nor mean them any disrespect… just for fun. I don't ACTUALLY think Alton Brown and Rachael Ray are having an affair… that would be weird.
But yes, I originally had this up on … as I felt it was rather fan fiction-y… but I guess not. You know… considering I was a FAN writing FICTION about people. They deleted it. SO, I figured I might as well try it out on here. Even though they're not original characters… where else am I supposed to put this if won't accept it.
I plan on writing more of these, out of my boredom. Unless a lot of people end up hating it. Then oh well.
Food Network Fan-Fiction: Installment #1 --- Good Meals
By Casey… Please don't sue me, Food Network
Rachael Ray had been slaving all day in her kitchen! Actually it was in under 30 minutes. Some say she has super powers. I just say she hauls ass. We all KNOW it would take the normal person at least 45 minutes to finish those things…
"I do NOT have a fat ass!" Rachael screamed, throwing a non-stick skillet across the room. "Damn that Giada from Everyday Italian! We all know that bitch is a robot! And her food is plastic that melts easily in the microwave! Gah!" She sank to her knees and sobbed robustly.
Rachael and Giada had been sworn enemies for years. But lately the skinny, far-too-charismatic-to-be-human evil-doer had teamed up with Michael Chiarello to thwart Rachael and her many television shows. Many had suspected that Bobby Flay and Tyler Florence were next, but no. We all know how cruel women and… men? are. Especially the hungry ones (Giada), and those so desperate to come out of the food pantry to the entirety of Food Network-land like Michael.
Previously that day, while passing one another at the studio, Giada had made several, hurtful comments to Rachael, saying that her ass was like a sack of wet laundry and that she caught her chugging extra virgin olive oil spiked with vodka in the ladies restroom.
Rachael continued sobbing, meanwhile eating sticks of butter for comfort. She had no friends in Food Network-land. Everyone always pried at her as to why SHE didn't have dinner guests on the show, while everyone else did.
"Michael Chiarello! I'll kick that flamer's ass, WHICH MINE IS NOT FAT!! No one can make a party that good, that fast! No one can beat me! I make 30-Minute Meals, dammit!" She said these hurtful things because it had been he who had made fun of her loneliness, noting that he ALWAYS had dinner guests (and so did Giada). She crawled over, grabbed the same skillet, and threw it in the opposite direction she had earlier, meanwhile cramming another stick of butter into her mouth. "I wouldn't even mind if someone used me… just for my delicious, low-carb recipes!" She choked out the words, gasping for air.
Just then, the light came on in her studio and she hurriedly wiped away the excess of butter forming around her lips.
"No! I'd never do a thing like that! I came here to announce my love for you, Rachael!" shouted the man who had suddenly burst onto the area where 30-Minutes Meals was shot.
"Alton Brown?!"
"Yes! It is I, Alton Brown!! I was at the Laundromat! While watching a woman walk away with a rather large sack of wet laundry, when I suddenly realized that I, Alton Brown (!), was madly in love with you!"
"Oh, Alton! I thought you'd never tell me such things! I watch your show everyday! I even have it set to record! Even though half the time I set it wrong and end up recording Seinfeld… but that doesn't matter! Because I st-- I mean… because I love you! And don't stalk you! Now Giada… I heard she's a stalker… her nickname's Celery for God's sake!" She stopped. "Alton… I have a question to ask you…"
They drew closer.
"Yes, my darling?"
"Do you…" She stumbled. "Do you think… that I have a fat ass?"
"No, no, no! You're gorgeous! Unlike that Everyday Italian bitch… ugh…"
They drew CLOSER!
(Ah! Tension! Run!)
"I love you, Rachael! But not as much as Miss Piggy! She's my hero you know… no one could ever replace her… But you come in at a close second!" shouted Alton.
"No one turns me on like you… especially in that one episode… where you dressed up as a cowboy…" said Rachael who does not have a fat ass.
"Not even… the episode… where I made DOUGHNUTS?!" He grabbed her, throwing her against the counter.
"Oh, God, Alton! MAKE THE DOUGHNUTS!!!"
"With the glaze?"
"Oh, God!!! The CHOCOLATE GLAZE!!"
All of a sudden Emeril burst into the room, "Looks like they're takin' it up a notch!"
"Takin' it up a notch?" asked Rachael, tearing herself away from Alton. "That's not nearly as catchy as 'BAM!' You disappoint me, Emeril… Julia Child is ashamed of you!!! She visits me in visions!"
Even though Rachael had to wake up early in the morning and start on her new show, Tasty Travels, she decided it wouldn't hurt to spend the night with Alton and do some tasty traveling of her own…
Tune in next time…Fox News highlights Trump's "historic victory" (screen grab)
Fox & Friends on Wednesday empaneled a group of voters to relive President Donald Trump’s “historic victory” instead of acknowledging Tuesday’s huge win for Democrats.
Host Ainsley Earhardt began the segment by replaying highlights from the night of Trump’s win, noting that he had victories in Ohio, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Iowa and Pennsylvania.
“We all remember where we were when that news broke,” Earhardt beamed. “It has been one year after President Trump’s historic victory over Hillary Clinton. We are back now with our panel talking about where we all stand today.”
“Hillary Clinton was the worst candidate I’ve seen run on a national stage,” panelist David Webb opined. “Donald Trump reflected what other said around the country: it’s our kitchen table, our economics — and we need a change in Washington.”
“We’re not hearing that the Democrats — as they have always been with identity politics are interested in dividing the country.” he complained.
Within minutes, the panel devolved into a shouting match about whether NFL players should be allowed to kneel during the National Anthem.
“No one can hear you at home when you all yell,” Earhardt scolded. “It’s annoying at home.”
Watch the video below from Fox News.Congratulations! You’ve finally started to consistently lose weight. Welcome to the other side! Here you’re allowed to have opinions about food, dieting, and exercise and because you’re thin, your hunger obeys you.
Hold up! Do you feel drunk with power? It’s okay if you do; that’s a totally normal response to losing those last few stubborn pounds.
As you continue to lose weight, you may find yourself thinking, Is it really this simple? Is discipline and mindfulness all it takes? Or are you an actual deity? Sometimes it’s hard to tell, especially in relation to the others. If only you could make them see! They, with their cakes and candy and sweets! Do you ever join them in their hedonistic feast? No! You’re better than them; better than all of them! You alone know the truth and it is the truth which makes you mighty!
Which is why it’s important to manage your expectations. For example, do not let your godlike mastery of your own form get in the way of your personal relationships. You must be ready for their unsmiling eyes when they ask, “Have you been losing weight?” Of course you have. They are jealous. They will ask how you do it, the fools. Can’t they see your baggie of carrots and celery waiting obediently to be munched? Can’t they see the effervescent glow of your FitBit heralding your daily 12,000 steps? Are they too blind to notice that you’ve entered the egg white omelet you just ate into your weight-tracking app? YES. They are blinded by their own huge, weak bodies in the same way you once were! Still, you must never show it.
So, smile! Wave your hand and acknowledge the compliment. Say, “Oh, stop it. If anything, I’ve GAINED weight.” You must be a benevolent leader, for if they knew of the true power within you they would try to take it from you.
It’s always important to honor your own hard-earned achievements. After all, you had no help. You clawed your way through the seemingly endless darkness and into the light all by yourself. Only the chosen few—the strong, the truly great—should be permitted to experience the almighty high of stepping onto a scale and seeing that the number has gone DOWN. And you can have a hit whenever you fucking want because you are |
than 70 new products in four themed rooms (Dine, Mingle, Brunch and Gift Giving), and, from November 13 to December 19, Torontonians can go there to sample PC’s new holiday treats (like Speculoos Cookie Butter and Smoky Bacon–Flavoured Maple Syrup). Chang—who praised the company’s gochujang-sauced chicken wings—said it’s becoming more acceptable for restaurants to serve certain items that aren’t house-made (like Momofuku’s steamed buns, for example, which come from Brooklyn’s Peking Food). “When you’re put in a situation where you can get something from a trusted source, that’s what you use. I think PC’s a perfect example of that. We use their argan oil. I’m not kidding when I’m saying this, but their Black Label product is really good,” he said. “If you stop putting categories on where you get your food, all of a sudden supply becomes so great. As long as it’s delicious, and responsibly produced, who cares?”
November 13–December 19, 363 King St. W.After getting matched up, I received a message from my gift giver saying they were having trouble with getting my Amazon wish list. Unfortunately, I was having problems of my own at the time, as my classroom had been flooded in a major storm. My gift giver did end up receiving my list eventually, and came through with an awesome assortment of books and supplies for my students! She loved the fact that I wanted a book about a black cat, since she is the owner of a black cat! Everything in the box, from the markers to the chapter books, will make a huge impact on my students this year. Also, I will finally get to do a live butterfly garden in the classroom this year thanks to this awesome lady!Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia announced he is checking himself into an alcohol rehab center.
The team released the shocking statement Monday, one day before the Yankees start their postseason against the Astros in the wild-card game.
“I love baseball and I love my teammates like brothers, and I am also fully aware that I am leaving at a time when we should all be coming together for one last push toward the World Series,” Sabathia said. “It hurts me deeply to do this now, but I owe it to myself and to my family to get myself right. I want to take control of my disease, and I want to be a better man, father and player.
“I want to thank the New York Yankees organization for their encouragement and understanding. Their support gives me great strength and has allowed me to move forward with this decision with a clear mind.”
Sabathia informed general manager Brian Cashman and manager Joe Girardi on Sunday of his plan to begin treatment. He is believed to be in a rehab facility in Connecticut.
At a Yankee Stadium press conference Monday, Cashman said he previously was unaware of Sabathia’s condition and he was “surprised by the phone call yesterday.” Girardi said he was “shocked.” He wouldn’t comment on whether there was a specific incident that precipitated Sabathia entering rehab, though he noted: “If something happened when somebody was away from the park, typically it gets videotaped or reported and that hasn’t happened.”
“I think CC’s demonstrated a great deal of courage in trying to tackle this problem,” Cashman said. “Time and place have no bearing. There is something here that needs to be taken care of, and I applaud him for stepping up and doing everything necessary to solve this problem for himself as he moves forward.”
Sabathia is well thought of in the game and his decision sent shockwaves through the baseball community. The hefty lefty made news earlier in the season when he had to be restrained in an early-morning melee outside a Toronto nightclub. Sabathia said at the time that the heckler “caught him at a bad time.”
At the time, Sabathia defended his lifestyle and said the most difficult part of the situation was explaining the headlines to his 12-year-old son.
“That’s the toughest part: ‘Dad had a bad night. Made a bad decision. Sometimes these things happen,’ ” Sabathia said.
In a separate incident this summer, Sabathia was photographed smoking on a hotel balcony, but said it was a cigar and refused to pay off the shutterbug.
“As difficult as this decision is to share publicly, I don’t want to run and hide. But for now please respect my family’s need for privacy as we work through this challenge together,” said Sabathia, who has four children with his wife, Amber.
“Being an adult means being accountable. Being a baseball player means that others look up to you. I want my kids — and others who may have become fans of mine over the years — to know that I am not too big of a man to ask for help. I want to hold my head up high, have a full heart and be the type of person again that I can be proud of. And that’s exactly what I am going to do. I am looking forward to being out on the field with my team next season playing the game that brings me so much happiness.”
The Yankees were mulling using Sabathia out of the bullpen against Houston, and the veteran was going to be in the team’s rotation if it advanced to the ALDS against the Royals. Sabathia had rebounded from an awful start, and was the starter for the Yankees’ wild-card-clinching victory against the Red Sox last week.
Cashman said no one considered proposing Sabathia wait until after the postseason to leave the team.
“When someone comes to you with the issue that he came to us with and said that he needs to get help and he needs it immediately, that’s the only focus,” Cashman said.
“He’s carried this franchise on his back in the past and led us to places we wanted to go, but now he’s raised his hand and said, ‘I need someone to help and guide me through some circumstances that are really tough.’ We’re certainly willing to everything we possibly can to assist.”
The 35-year-old is scheduled to make $25 million next season and has a $25 million vesting option for 2017.Comcast's Top Lobbyist Pens Editorial To Remind Americans That US Broadband Service Is Awesome
from the statistics-currently-enjoying-a-deep-tissue-massage dept
We live in a nation of wondrous technological advancement, where our average broadband speed and super low prices are the envy of the world, And if Google shows up to throw fiber around, the local citizenry simply shrugs its shoulders in indifference. Life is good... especially if you're paid to believe it is.
Karl Bode at Broadband Reports points us in the direction of a ridiculous "op-ed" piece written for the Philadelphia Inquirer by David Cohen, lobbyist and policy man for Comcast. It's filled with relentless, self-serving optimism and features Cohen's miraculous ability to take mediocre broadband statistics and transform them into "proof" of American superiority.
After cherry picking and massaging statistics to an almost painful degree, Cohen takes a little shot at Google Fiber, insisting that users don't really need 1 Gbps.
"For some, the discussion about the broadband Internet seems to begin and end on the issue of "gigabit" access. To be sure, a one-gig connection has value, especially for those who have invested in "inside" networks and equipment to handle that 1-gigabit firehose of data.
The issue with such speed is really more about demand than supply. Our business customers can already order 10-gig connections. Most websites can't deliver content as fast as current networks move, and most U.S. homes have routers that can't support the speed already available to the home. As consumer demand grows for faster speeds, a competitive marketplace of wired and wireless broadband providers will be ready to serve it."
are objects of lust and desire
Cohen claims that 82% of Americans have access to wired high-speed Internet access of speeds exceeding 100 Mbps. But these services, provided in 85% of the country by only the local cable incumbent (the large cable companies never enter each others’ territories, and Verizon FiOS is available to just 15% of the country) are extraordinarily expensive: Comcast charges $114.95 per month for 105 Mbps download services. In Seoul, you can get symmetrical 100 Mbps (equal upload and download) access for $30/month, and there are three or four competitive choices.
By focusing on whether you need 1 Gbps, companies like Time Warner Cable and Comcast hope to steer the conversation away from how a lack of competition allows them to offer slow speeds and ever-higher prices (or the fact they're being outclassed in their own industry by a search engine)...
If the United States leads in anything in the broadband sector -- it's the use of denial and distortion by those with a vested interest in protecting the status quo. If you can convince people that everything is fine, nobody tries to fix things and your profit margins as a predatory, lumbering duopoly benefiting from regulatory capture remain high. You can legitimately argue that things are improving in many regions -- but to insist the United States is the global broadband leader is an obnoxious level of hubris, even for Comcast.
Today there is a cottage industry of critics who always want to tell us that our broadband Internet is not fast enough or satisfactory for one reason or another. The reality is that the United States is leading the way in speed, reach, and access - and doing so in a vast, rural nation that poses logistical connectivity challenges unlike any other country.
Consumersdemanding faster speeds, though. This is why services like Google Fiber interest them. Sure, many broadband companies offer higher speed connections, but at very prohibitive prices. When someone like Google comes along and offers a gigabit connection for $30/month, it's delivering what consumers actually want: higher speeds and lower prices. To date, broadband providers are only willing to give consumers either/or -- never both. (Additionally, service providers like Comcast frequently throw data caps into the mix, which nullifies the positive aspects of a speed boost. Cohen's piece never mentions data caps or their effect on consumer behavior -- both in terms of limiting consumption and increasing costs.)So, it's not really a question of. Most consumers won't fully utilize a gigabit connection. But, they will have faster service at a lower price, and that's what really matters. What Google's entrance into the market does is add somecompetition, rather than the cooperation and collusion that has masqueraded for years as "competition."Cohen's article paints a broadband picture so rosy one almost expects a "sponsored content" banner to be flying above it. He even takes a moment towards the end to bash the broadband industry's (many) critics.As Bode pointed out, a strain of hubris runs through Cohen's piece, but here it comes to a head. Comcast itself has MANY critics but Cohen acts as though the negative attention is undeserved. This "cottage industry" exists in part to battle the kind of misinformation Cohen and his cohorts portray as "facts." His attempt to belittle broadband critics as some sort of self-interested fringe "industry" is where his hubris comes to a head. It's obviously more than that if Cohen feels the need to tout his industry's "stellar" service via a major newspaper.
Filed Under: broadband, lobbying, us
Companies: comcastOne hundred years ago a great conflict began that would change the world forever. World War I, also known as the Great War, would leave 17 million people dead or missing in action. Stuck in the squalid conditions of the trenches, it was a living hell for those on the front line.
But it was made even worse by the work of industrial chemists.
In July 1917, troops based in Ypres, Belgium, reported a shimmering cloud around their feet and a strange peppery smell in the air. Within 24 hours they started to itch uncontrollably and developed horrific blisters and sores. Some started coughing up blood.
They’d been poisoned by mustard gas – one of the most deadly chemical weapons deployed in battle.
And because mustard gas can be absorbed through the skin, gas masks were useless. Even fully clothed soldiers weren’t fully protected. It could take up to six weeks to die from mustard gas, and it was a terrible way to die.
Towards the end of the Great War, this gas had not only killed and crippled but instilled terror across the battlefield. The first use in Ypres alone left up to 10,000 people dead, with many more injured.
Mustard gas was one of a number of weaponised poison gases developed by Fritz Haber, a Professor at the prestigious University of Karlsruhe. Haber was a brilliant chemist, who invented a process for the industrial scale production of ammonia-based fertiliser. This brilliant discovery, known as the Haber process, played a huge role in avoiding worldwide famines and now feeds about a third of the world’s population. It won him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918.
But Haber’s role in chemical weapons’ development means his legacy will always have its dark side.
Even after the war, Haber enthusiastically promoted the use of poison gas. And his colleagues would go on to make other deadly gases – World War I is known to some as the chemists’ war.
But the story of mustard gas didn’t end there. And it has a brighter ending than you might think.
“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity”- Einstein
Two decades later, with World War II looming, researchers on the side of the Allied Forces feared a repeat of the mustard gas attacks of the Great War. So they tried to create antidotes.
What they discovered led them into a very different battle.
Two doctors at Yale University, Louis Goodman and Alfred Gilman, delved into the medical records of soldiers affected by mustard gas, and noticed that many of them had a surprisingly low number of immune cells in their blood – cells that, if mutated, can go on to develop into leukaemia and lymphoma.
Goodman and Gilman hypothesised that if mustard gas could destroy normal white blood cells, it seemed likely that it could also destroy cancerous ones.
After successful animal trials, Goodman and Gilman looked for a human volunteer with white blood cell cancer to test mustard gas as a cancer therapy. They found a patient with advanced lymphoma, known today only by his initials: J.D.
A massive tumour on J.D.’s jaw meant he couldn’t swallow or sleep – he couldn’t even fold his arms across his chest because the tumours in the lymph nodes in his armpits were so big. He was encased, front and back, by cancer. His doctors tried everything they could, but his outlook was considered hopeless.
With nowhere else to turn, J.D agreed to try the new experimental drug. At 10am on the 27th of August 1942 he was given the first injection of what they called “synthetic lymphocidal chemical”. This was in fact nitrogen mustard, the compound used to make mustard gas. Because of the war, J.D.’s treatment was a secret and it was referred to in his records only as “substance X”.
He received a number of treatments with substance X and with each one he became a little better. He could sleep, he could swallow and he could eat. He was much more comfortable and the pain faded away.
This was a monumental moment in the history of medicine. It was the beginning of what we now know as chemotherapy.
Mustard gas to modern medicine
Back in the UK and after WWII, another brilliant chemist, Professor Alexander Haddow, became Director of the Chester Beatty Research Institute – an Institute funded by one of the founding charities that merged to form Cancer Research UK. He was working on compounds that could block the growth of tumours and treat cancer.
All he needed to make a breakthrough in cancer treatment was a lead – an effective molecule to start from. Mustard gas gave him that much needed and crucial starting point.
In 1948, Haddow published a ground-breaking piece of research in the journal Nature, showing exactly which bits of the nitrogen mustard molecule were needed to kill cancer cells. Perhaps more importantly, he also found out how to make the chemical less toxic, but with more potent cancer-killing activity.
Haddow began by showing that nitrogen mustards could stop the growth of tumours in rats. Then in experiments akin to tinkering with Lego, he altered bits of the molecule, replacing them with different ‘bricks’. Replacing certain bits, in particular either of two chlorine atoms, rendered the molecule useless and it no longer blocked tumour growth in his rats.
This was an important finding, showing that the molecule needed both chlorine atoms to work. And replacing certain other parts of the molecule altered its activity too. Through this molecular puzzle Haddow worked out which pieces were needed to make a treatment that would benefit cancer patients across the globe.
He continued his research, showing how these chemicals actually worked – it was by somehow linking together other molecules inside the cancer cell, ultimately leading the cell on a suicidal path. Other researchers then went on to show that these linked molecules were in fact strands of DNA. This triggered the cell’s self-destruct mechanism – causing the cell to shut down and break apart, destroying it.
The future is changing
And so mustard gas went from the very real battleground of the WWI trenches into the frontline of cancer treatment. But for J.D, the treatment came too late. Although it worked initially, giving him an immensely important extra few months with less pain and greater comfort, he lost his life six months after his experimental treatment was started. There is just one entry in his medical records from the 1st of December 1942. It simply says “Died”. J.D passed away unaware of the impact that his life and death would go on to have.
But Haddow’s subsequent work launched the start of a new era of cancer treatment – chemotherapy. All of the drugs that followed worked in the same basic way as Haddow described. And in fact, nitrogen mustard derived chemotherapy is still used to treat some cancers today.
The chemical structure Haddow published is only a few atoms away from the structure of the drug chlorambucil, which is still used to treat a type of leukaemia called chronic lymphocytic leukaemia and another blood cancer called non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). Survival from NHL has nearly trebled since the early 1970s and now over 60 per cent of people survive for at least 10 years, thanks in part to this drug. And work continues on these sorts of treatments to make them kinder, with fewer side effects.
Haddow’s research led to the development of more chemotherapy treatments that have completely changed the outlook for other types of cancer. Cisplatin and carboplatin work in a similar way to the nitrogen mustards. Cisplatin even has two critical chlorine atoms, the same as mustard gas. And it’s largely responsible for the fact that 96 per cent of men with testicular cancer now survive the disease long term.
But chemotherapy is just one of the ways we treat cancer at the moment. And anyone who’s been through it knows that, despite decades of evolution away from the trenches, chemotherapy is still, for many, a very difficult and unpleasant experience.
So we have developed, and will continue to develop, more and more targeted treatments designed to pick out specific cancer targets – like a sniper selecting precisely who to ‘take out’. And immunotherapies – designed to switch on our own defences against cancer – acting like the Black Ops of cancer treatment.
But for now there’s still a place for chemotherapy – one of the first chemical weapons in our ever-growing arsenal against cancer.
Sarah
With many thanks to the BBC, in particular Giles Harrison – Producer of the series Pain, Pus and Poison: The Search for Modern Medicines for allowing us the use content for the Poison episode.
Reference:
Nature, 162 (4125), 824-825 DOI: HADDOW, A., KON, G., & ROSS, W. (1948). Effects upon tumours of Various Haloalkylarylamines(4125), 824-825 DOI: 10.1038/162824a0
Images via Wikimedia Commons (trenches, poppies, chlorambucil)
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Richard Garriott returns with a fresh take on the classic, fantasy RPG. Known for his work on the Ultima series, Ultima Online, Lineage I and II, City of Heroes, and Tabula Rasa, Richard Garriott's new Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues (SotA) brings the classic fantasy RPG back in style.
Claim your Shroud of the Avatar Steam key today and enter a world full of adventure.
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About Shroud of the Avatar:
Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues is a new type of third person fantasy RPG that combines a single player narrative with a sandbox MMO. It is being created by a team that includes: Richard "Lord British" Garriott the creator of the Ultima series, Starr Long the original Director of Ultima Online, and Tracy Hickman the author of the beloved Dragonlance Novels and Dungeons & Dragons modules.
Episodic Content: Five episodes of virtue based stories created by Richard Garriott and Tracy Hickman; supported by prequel novels starting with Blade of the Avatar.
Single Player Offline Mode: Players will adventure through over 40 hours of story in an interactive world where their choices during ethical paradoxes have consequences.
Selective Multiplayer Modes: You can also play with everyone in a single world with three different online modes (Single Player, Friends Only, and Open).
Classless Character System: Vast customization options with hundreds of skills and spells in over 20 different skill trees.
Player Driven Economy: Deep crafting system where the best items are made by players and player items are the main source of loot found in the game.
Skillful Combat: A new way to prepare and fight in an RPG by building custom decks of skills and dynamically activating them in combat.
PVP: Consensual with Open PVP flags, zones, and Guild Warfare.
Pay Once to Play: No subscription fees. Each episode (released approximately annually) is a one time fee and everything in the game can be purchased with in game gold that can be earned (except for some exclusive backer rewards).
Player Housing: Non instanced, finite, and embedded in the world with multiple group living options.
Social: Full Guild System, Highly Active Community and Player Owned Towns.
Crowd Sourced & Funded: Support the project by contributing content (and receive compensation) or by pledging (and receive exclusive rewards).
Open Development: Players help shape the game by giving feedback on monthly early access releases, videos, weekly updates, blog postings, forums, chat, etc.
Shroud of the Avatar is still in Early Access.
For more information, please visit www.shroudoftheavatar.com.Fourteen years ago, the author of a series of popular personal-finance books predicted that 2016 would bring about the worst market crash in history, damaging the financial dreams of millions of baby boomers just as they started to depend on that money to fund retirement.
Broader U.S. stock markets are recovering from the worst 10-day start to a year on record. But Robert Kiyosaki — who made that 2016 forecast in the 2002 book “Rich Dad’s Prophecy” — says the meltdown is under way, and there’s little investors can do but buy gold or silverand hope the Federal Reserve slows the slide.
Kiyosaki is convinced: The pullback he predicted is happening.
“We’re right on schedule,” he said in a recent interview with MarketWatch.
A market destined to collapse
Investors are seven years into a bull market some fear is getting a bit long in the tooth, with the Dow industrials DJIA, -0.13% and the S&P 500 SPX, -0.08% SPX, -0.08% up 0.9% and 0.3%, in 2016. That’s after 2015 saw major U.S. indexes snap multiyear winning streaks amid falling commodity prices, concerns about economic growth, and the Federal Reserve’s December decision to raise interest rates.
In 2002, Kiyosaki wrote that the stock market would crash in 2016 as the first wave of baby boomers began to hit 70 1/2 in 2016 and started taking required-by-law distributions from traditional individual retirement accounts.
He still believes that: “Demography is destiny,” he said in the interview.
Courtesy Rich Dad Co. Robert Kiyosaki.
According to U.S. Census Bureau data, more than 76 million individuals were born between 1946 and 1964; researchers at the Population Reference Bureau determined in 2014 that 65 million of them were still living. After immigrants are added in, according to that 2014 report, the number of living U.S. baby boomers was back above 76 million.
A market meltdown could imperil those boomers’ retirement plans, taking a badly timed bite out of hard-earned balances in their retirement accounts. And while the sheer number of aging boomers could contribute to stock-market selling pressure, Kiyosaki said, the larger issue today is that it’s hard for investors to figure out where to put money.
“Interest income or cash flow on savings is virtually nonexistent, and capital-gains plays in the stock market are thwarted because stock prices are at record highs,” he said.
Whatever burden millions of boomers might put on the market, he said, the situation is being made worse by events overseas, where one big country is wielding the monkey wrench.
“China has been in a bubble for 20-something years,” said Kiyosaki. “It has propped up the U.S. economy falsely. When [China] stops importing, the world crashes with them.”
Down the China rabbit hole
First to go, Kiyosaki said, will be commodity producers like Australia, Canada and African countries, which will drag down the rest of the world’s economies.
The collapse in oil prices has been particularly tough for economies such as Australia’s. The S&P/ASX 200 XJO, +0.36% down 14% over a 12-month period, suffered its first annual decline in four years last year. The Shanghai Composite SHCOMP, -0.52% meanwhile, has cratered, sliding nearly 15% in three months after earning the title of Asia’s best-performing stock market in 2015 with a gain above 9%.
Market watchers are largely divided about the outlook for China, though every piece of negative data raises new questions about the country’s ability to drive global economic growth. Recent data showed Chinese exports down 25.4% from a year earlier; economists had forecast a drop of 15%. It was the eighth consecutive decline in exports.
Read: China may swap ‘zombie’ companies for ‘zombie’ banks
Kiyosaki is hardly alone in his bearish view: The “high” probability of a “sharp economic slowdown“ in China was cited in mid-March as a top global risk by the Economist Intelligence Unit. Its concerns included a buildup of bad debt in the country, a weak currency and worries that the government may not be able to shore up its economy.
And ballooning government debt was a key reason Moody’s Investors Service cut its outlook on China’s credit rating in March, also citing money fleeing the country.
Kiyosaki, who has written or co-written more than two dozen books — including New York Times best seller “Rich Dad Poor Dad” — has built a fortune mostly on real estate and authorship, rather than the stock market. (His licensing company, Rich Global LLC, has filed for bankruptcy and is being sued by a seminar promoter in connection with that filing. A spokesman said Kiyosaki “has the money to withstand an adverse ruling” and expects the case to be settled this year.)
Forbes estimated Kiyosaki’s worth at $80 million in 2012, a figure he declined to address.
But from the outside looking in, he said, investors are ignoring danger signs. The next crash, he said, could have a harsher effect on the economy than the market crashes that have occurred so far in the 21st century.
Those crashes included the market rout that ended the dot-com boom in 2000, which erased $5 trillion in market value between March 2000 and October 2002, and the financial crisis of 2007-08, which inspired both a market collapse and a real estate bust. Better Markets, a nonprofit pro-financial-reform watchdog, has estimated that the final price tag for the 2007-08 crash will exceed $20 trillion in lost gross domestic product.
Kiyosaki said two key factors have emerged since he wrote “Rich Dad’s Prophecy”: the likelihood of a bust in China and the “insanity” of quantitative easing, the Federal Reserve’s controversial multibillion-dollar bond-buying program, which ended in 2014 amid criticism that it had increased demand for risky investments even as supporters said it sustained economic growth.
Opinion: China’s banks could be the next big problem
Meanwhile, China has been throwing money at its banks to keep lending going, and debt quality at financial institutions is a constant theme among worried onlookers. Kiyosaki said he is in the camp that fears Chinese banks will be at the forefront of the next crash.
Waiting for the Fed’s fire hose
Kiyosaki told MarketWatch that the combination of demographics and global economic weakness makes the next crash inevitable — but the Fed could stave it off with another round of quantitative easing, which might stimulate the economy.
The Fed turned more dovish at its March meeting, with the central bank penciling in fewer interest-rate hikes this year than were previously part of its implied framework. The Fed signaled those hikes would happen more slowly than had been anticipated earlier, owing to a weak global economic environment and a volatile stock market.
“The big question [whether] we do ‘QE4,’” said Kiyosaki. “If we do, the stock market will come roaring back, but it’s not rocket science. If we stop printing money, it crashes; if we print money, it goes up. But, eventually, it’s all going to come down.”
Reuters Shanghai’s Pudong financial district as seen this month.
For baby boomers beginning to withdraw funds from the stock market, he said, another round of quantitative easing, or QE, might be a particularly welcome occurrence.
If Janet Yellen “even hints” about such fresh stimulus, Kiyosaki said, he’d be ready to go back into he stock market himself, if only for a short time. Money left in the bank in an ultra-low-rate environment — a big topic as central banks in Japan and the European Union have bitten the negative-rate bullet — returns nothing for savers, he noted.
And for the Fed another round of quantitative easing “could be the last time they pull this stunt,” in Kiyosaki’s view. “The markets might rally, then crash.”
Opinion: Don’t rule out the possibility of Fed quantitative easing (part four)
Because preparing for that coming storm is vital, Kiyosaki often invokes investors to “build a financial ark.”
He thinks investors should own some gold or silver, based on the view that central banks will just have to print money to get out of the next crisis and precious metals are often deployed as a perceived hedge against inflation. Some investors, meanwhile, might look for investments geared toward income, such as rent payments or dividends, rather than appreciation.
“If you know what you’re doing and are investing for cash flow, baby boomers — or any investors — may see some gains,” he said. “But for those whose wealth is tied up in the [equity] markets, it’s more like gambling than investing.”
Providing critical information for the U.S. trading day. Subscribe to MarketWatch's free Need to Know newsletter. Sign up here.TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- Damien Harris was visibly frustrated. He snapped off his helmet, bolted from the huddle and stood by himself on the sideline when he was pulled from Saturday's game on fourth-and-goal from the 1-yard line midway through the second quarter against Tennessee. His replacement, Bo Scarbrough, then leaped over the top of the offensive line for an easy touchdown. Alabama celebrated as it extended its lead, and as the offense gathered between series, Harris found a quiet spot on a stationary bike where he sat idly by.
Make no mistake: Harris has bought into the team-first concept preached by coach Nick Saban and running backs coach Burton Burns. He understands he’s not the only back who needs touches, and he knows full well the long-term benefits of not having to carry the rock 25 to 30 times per game. He never would have picked Alabama over in-state Kentucky out of high school had he felt the need to be a so-called feature back. Still, when sophomore Josh Jacobs got the call on the very next series, Harris did not look pleased.
But what goes around comes around, and after Jacobs had back-to-back rushes of 22 yards and 1 yard, he needed a breather. A refreshed and eager Harris subbed in and immediately took the handoff on the read-option, darted through the middle of the line and split two defenders as he dove into the end zone for an 11-yard touchdown. It was his 10th trip to the end zone this season, and he’d reached that milestone on fewer than 80 carries. He would end the day with 697 yards rushing for the season and a spot in the Heisman Trophy conversation.
With 697 yards rushing, 10 touchdowns and an average of 8.6 yards per carry, Alabama's Damien Harris has emerged as a legitimate Heisman Trophy candidate. Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
It’s been a remarkable turn of events for a running back so often overshadowed by his own teammates. Harris, at 5-foot-11 and 214 pounds, doesn’t get the label of physical freak like Scarbrough, his 6-3, 235-pound backup. But Harris’ vision and patience set him apart. His ability to do everything, including blocking, has made him a starter each of the past two seasons. It also last year led to one of the quietest 1,000-yard rushing seasons you’ll ever find. He somehow was a forgotten star of a playoff team.
As it turns out, all he had to do was give up honey buns to gain everyone’s attention.
Entering his junior season, in which he would become draft eligible, Harris took a hard look at what was in his pantry. And sometime in the middle of his grueling summer workouts under strength and conditioning coach Scott Cochran, he decided it was time for a change, he said. So he put himself on a diet and ran extra, losing weight and feeling better in the process. He has since sworn off sugar entirely and says he hasn’t had a honey bun since June or July.
“It hurts to talk about it,” he said of missing those fried swirls of high-fructose goodness.
Last season, part of the reason he wasn’t on the list of the best running backs in the country was because he scored just two rushing touchdowns. Twice he broke runs of 60 yards or more only to get caught from behind and stopped short the goal line. “We used to mess with him all the time about that,” center Bradley Bozeman said.
Not anymore, though. Against Arkansas last week, he took the opening handoff 75 yards to pay dirt. It was his third rushing touchdown of 60 yards or more this season.
“He’s really busting these,” Bozeman said. “He’s flying down the field.”
Said linebacker Shaun Dion Hamilton: “He’s taken his game to the next level.”
Harris’ numbers are undeniable. He’s the only running back in the top 30 of rushing this season with fewer than 100 carries. Among all qualifying backs, he ranks sixth in yards per carry, at 8.6. More than half of his runs go for 5 yards or more, and he has rushed for 10-plus yards 17 times.
Penn State running back Saquon Barkley is a presumptive Heisman favorite, but if you stack up his numbers against Harris’, there are some interesting distinctions. While Barkley has 60 more rushing yards, he has done so while averaging 6.5 more carries per game. Harris, meanwhile, has two more rushing touchdowns and averages two more yards per carry. Twelve percent of Harris’ carries result in touchdowns, compared to 6.8 for Barkley.
How’s this for consistency: Barkley has been stopped at or behind the line of scrimmage on 21.4 percent of his carries. For Harris, that number is 9.9 percent.
“Damien makes plays,” quarterback Jalen Hurts said. “He’s probably one of the top running backs in the country, and I get to watch it every Saturday.”
Wide receiver Calvin Ridley thinks Harris should be in Heisman contention, but Harris isn’t going that far yet. Like any smart running back, he’s deflecting all praise to his offensive line. Everyone wants to know what’s clicked since last season, he said, but there’s nothing on the field that’s any different.
But there is his diet. That’s the one topic he can’t avoid.
“How long am I going to have to talk about honey buns?” he joked after rushing for 125 yards and two touchdowns against Arkansas.
The answer: as long as he continues running over and past defenses.
Harris might have to give up carries from time to time, but there’s no doubt anymore that he is Alabama’s top dog. He has become the rare feature back who doesn’t have to touch the ball 20 times per game to make a difference. With more rest and fewer calories, he's able to show off his new wheels.
“You want to progress from year to year,” Hurts said. “Obviously, it’s something he wanted to work on. And he hasn’t been caught yet.”NORTH KOREAN HACKERS may be stealing bitcoin and other virtual currencies in a bid to evade sanctions and obtain hard currencies to fund the regime.
That's according to a blog post by security firm FireEye. While state-sponsored North Korean cyber-criminals have been targeting banks and the global financial system for some time in order to fund the isolated state, FireEye believes that hackers are now attempting to steal virtual currencies too.
Since May 2017, FireEye says it has observed North Korean actors target at least three South Korean cryptocurrency exchanges with the suspected intent of stealing funds.
"The spearphishing we have observed in these cases often targets personal email accounts of employees at digital currency exchanges, frequently using tax-themed lures and deploying malware (PEACHP |
certain attributes. I liked that kind of depth in progression. Another neat aspect is that you can train with specific associations... kind of like picking a team to fight for or be associated with. A fun little thing is the 'endorsement' that is involved in the game. You unlock different brands and can decorate your gear with their emblems. This will contribute to money you earn between fights. I haven't tried multiplayer. I highly suggest you get this game if you are into career modes for these type of games. Its pretty engrossing.
Read moreAn Atheist billboard campaign aiming to foster “rational inquiry” into all areas of people’s lives, that has already made rounds in Vancouver and Sudbury, will be unveiled in Calgary on Friday.
The key message from the Centre for Inquiry, the group behind the crusade, wants to challenge the idea of god and religion using their key message, “Without God, we’re all good.”
Nate Phelps, Alberta executive director of the Centre for Inquiry, said this is about taking the status quo head-on.
“There exists an idea out there that you can’t be good, you can’t be hopeful, you can’t be positive, you can’t lead a good life unless you subscribe to some religious ideology,” said Phelps.
The billboard features a young woman with the caption “Jen 13:1 Praying won’t help. Doing will, without God, we’re all good”
“We do best when we are making decisions and choices based on experience,” said Phelps.
The ad will be located on the south side of Edmonton Trail in the northeast.NewsGender, Homosexuality
June 1, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services has instituted sweeping changes to its policies and procedures in caring for children who experience gender dysphoria that essentially weed out all employees and volunteers who cannot in good conscience support and promote transgender ideology.
Illinois now "requires that all LGBTQ children and youth be placed in an affirming safe housing, receive LGBTQ competent medical and mental health services, and have equal opportunity and access to care."
However, in order to assure consistent achievement of that goal, the new policy requires "any person who is involved with DCFS children/youth will complete mandatory training in LGBTQ competency." This will be an integral part of DCFS core training and will be a requirement to attaining a child-welfare license.
Purging t ransgenderism’s non-believers
According to attorney Mary Hasson, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C, “The new DCFS policies are less about safety and well being and more about using state power to ‘overrule’ basic, empirical (and common sense) truths about human beings and to replace them with ideological assertions that validate adult feelings rather than benefit children.”
The revised procedures command, "In no instance should LGBTQ children/youth be placed with a non-affirming caregiver who is opposed to sexual orientations that differ from the caregiver's own. Nor should LGBTQ children and youth be placed with caregivers who are unwilling/unable to support children and youth whose gender identity or gender expression differs from traditional expectation.”
The revision goes further, insisting that “The child/youth's chosen name and preferred gender pronoun (including gender-neutral pronouns such as ‘they’ or ‘ze/hir’) must be respected.”
Guided by left forces
The new procedures and standards were created under the guidance of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois (ACLU), Pride Action Tank and other pro-gay and transgender organizations. While the ACLU had sought, but was not granted, the right to review the final version of the policy revisions, the progressive rights group said it was “pleased that DCFS incorporated nearly all of the changes requested by the ACLU.”
Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council observes that, “While this portrays itself as being based in science, it is 100 percent ideological.”
Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute agrees. “There is no research proving that children are best served by having gender dysphoria affirmed. Quite the contrary, the best research to date suggests that if gender dysphoria is not affirmed in young children, it diminishes over time,” she explained. “Does the DCFS believe it’s better for children to endure castration or double mastectomies, a lifetime of cross-sex hormone-doping with its unknown health risks, and social struggles than to accept their immutable sex?
In a landmark report published last year, authors Lawrence S. Mayer, M.B., M.S., Ph.D., scholar-in-residence in the Department of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University and a professor of statistics and biostatistics at Arizona State University, and Paul R. McHugh, M.D., professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, found that only a minority of children who express gender-atypical thoughts or behavior will continue to do so into adolescence or adulthood. There is no evidence that all such children should be encouraged to become transgender, much less subjected to hormone treatments or surgery.
Mayer and McHugh added, “There is little scientific evidence for the therapeutic value of interventions that delay puberty or modify the secondary sex characteristics of adolescents, although some children may have improved psychological well-being if they are encouraged and supported in their cross-gender identification. There is no evidence that all children who express gender-atypical thoughts or behavior should be encouraged to become transgender.”
Discrimination Over Diversity and Care
Beyond being harmful policy, the new directive is, according to Sprigg, “Discriminatory against anyone with traditional moral values, in particular, Christians” and “will hurt children” by limiting available resources.
Illinois Family Institute’s Higgins added, “Denying people of... faith the opportunity to foster or adopt children constitutes the antithesis of a commitment to diversity and puts the lie to DCFS’s claim to care about the needs of children. The number of available foster and adoptive families will decrease.”
The revised procedures will have “a chilling effect on DCFS staff, volunteers, foster parents, and others whose ‘speech and behavior’ will be monitored and evaluated according to ideological criteria by the state of Illinois,” Hasson said.
She continued, “Forget the democratic process. Forget free speech, freedom of religion, and the conscience rights of American citizens. Forget the welfare of vulnerable children. The state of Illinois heels to the commands of LGBTQ activists; it has embraced a new creed based on the LGBTQ vision of the human person. The only winners are progressive activists and lawyers eager to fill their litigation dockets. The losers? Illinois’ most vulnerable children.”Japan-based GMO Coin Co., the newly started up digital currency exchange launched in May 2017 has announced they will start selling five additional cryptocurrencies including Ethereum (ETH) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) by the end of September.
Buying and selling
Currently, GMO Coin only offers the ability to purchase and sell bitcoin, stating that their volume has been increasing with the current price rise and fluctuation.
Noting the rise across other blockchain assets, exchange users had been requesting GMO Coin to support more dealings than just bitcoin transactions.
In response to customer wishes, GMO Coin has announced the listing of five new tokens for the remainder of 2017, including:
Late September
Ethereum (ETH)
Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
October
Litecoin (LTC)
Ethereum Classic (ETC)
November
Ripple (XRP)
In addition to the just buying and selling, GMO Coin is planning to offer margin trading within a year or once there is sufficient liquidity in its order books. The exchange is also looking at expanding trading tools and settlement services.
It was recently announced that beginning next year, according to current plans, the exchange is expecting to receive mined bitcoin from its parent company GMO Internet Corporation, who will enter the mining sector in 2018.August 10, 2012 - TF2 Team
Were you thinking, "I really like playing TF2, but I wish there was a King of the Hill map set in a Chinese cityscape"? Well, your oddly specific and scarily prescient dreams have come true! Introducing Kong King - TF2’s first city-themed map! - created in collaboration with Sleeping Dogs and community member Valentin Levillain, aka 3Dnj.
We’re a little disappointed that Valentin is spending all of his time making TF2 maps and not fulfilling his true destiny as a roguishly handsome super-villain, but it gives us a chance to finish our costumes for our inevitable battle atop a snowy mountain where we will fight for the love of Cassandra Prosciutto.
You may be able to capture her physical form with your hyper-advanced laser-traps, Levillain, but you will never capture…her heart!Caitlin Flanagan is a contributing editor at the Atlantic and the author of “Girl Land.”
When Donald Trump brought three women who have accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct to the second presidential debate last Sunday, his aides said he had three goals. He wanted to throw Hillary Clinton off her game by putting them in her sightline (although the debate committeenixed his original plan to seat them in his VIP box). He wanted to remind voters that Bill Clinton’s presidency had been marked by accusations far more serious than the acts Trump described to Billy Bush on the “Access Hollywood” bus. And he wanted to reinforce a central belief of the most energetic anti-Clinton forces: that Hillary was deeply complicit in the ruin of the women who accused her husband.
Never has a political strategy been so shortsighted. Within days, women began to come forward to accuse Trump of the acts he had described on the bus. It was only a matter of time before he turned to the next page of the low-life playbook: defending himself by implying that the women were too ugly for a man of his taste to grope. “Look at her,” he said in disgust about People magazine reporter Natasha Stoynoff, who says he pushed her against a wall and forced his tongue into her mouth in 2005.
Trump is crass, bullying — and no dummy. Yes, he had all but invited women to come forward and accuse him. But by pairing his accusers with Bill Clinton’s, he made us confront a potent reality: A man facing the allegations Clinton did might not be electable today.
* * *
When Clinton was confronting serious accusations of abuse, the country had a different attitude toward women who came forward with unverified (and often, unverifiable) accounts of sexual assault. Clinton’s inner circle was able to dismiss the women — on the basis of their backgrounds and sexual history — as crazies or trailer trash ; as the accusations piled up, advisor Betsey Wright coined the repugnant and resonant phrase “bimbo eruption.” (Clinton employed the “nuts and sluts defense,” as Patricia Ireland, then president of the National Organization for Women, eventually called the tactic.) What’s more, these stories appeared within a larger and widely held belief system that women would readily lie about sexual assault for purposes of financial gain, romantic revenge or mere attention.
The accusers then — like Trump’s today — lacked witnesses, evidence and immediate reporting to the authorities. Paula Jones says that while working as a $6.35-an-hour Arkansas state employee, she was summoned to the hotel room of Clinton, then the governor. She had hoped he wanted to discuss a promotion; instead, she says, he grabbed her, exposed himself to her and propositioned her. Juanita Broaddrick says that while she was volunteering for one of his gubernatorial campaigns, he invited himself to her hotel room to discuss the work. Once there, she says, he violently raped her. Kathleen Willey says that when she visited Clinton in the Oval Office, he took her to a side room and groped her.
The Clinton defense strategy centered on blatantly misogynistic practices. Even progressive feminists and traditionally liberal late-night comics did their part to discredit and ridicule the women. In an act of proto-revenge porn, an ex-boyfriend of Jones sold private sexual photographs of her to Penthouse a few months after her claim became public. She was immediate fodder for harsh jokes, many focusing on her appearance. (Several years later, she capitalized on her notoriety by posing nude for the magazine, further marginalizing herself.) Today, there is far greater sympathy for women whose nude photographs are made public, as well as a gathering consensus that work in the sex industry does not delegitimize a claim of assault.
Willey’s claim was disbelieved at the time, in part because she had once told a pal that she was sexually attracted to Clinton — and that she had voluntarily visited him a second time after he grabbed her. But we now understand that sexual assault can exist within a complex pattern of human behavior, and that no attitude or subsequent action of the woman excuses a criminal act.
Gloria Steinem’s defense of Clinton is the most difficult to imagine taking place today. In 1998, she wrote in the New York Times that he had not assaulted Willey or Jones. Rather, she wrote, the fact that he had not raped either of them after they pushed him away was evidence that he “took ‘no’ for an answer.” To combine the language of Trump (speaking to Billy Bush) with the philosophy of Steinem: It is okay for a man to move on a woman “like a bitch,” so long as he doesn’t force the sex act on her if she fights back.
* * *
Clinton and his defenders got away with this approach partly because he was a pro-choice progressive who fiercely defended the causes most important to feminists. But more than that, it was a different time, and something really has changed.
Consider, as one example among many, the public shaming of Nate Parker, the director of the new “Birth of a Nation.” He was accused of rape in 1999 while an undergraduate at Penn State. Unlike so many college men who are accused of rape, he went to trial, where he was found not guilty — which ought to be the gold standard for absolving oneself of an accusation of sexual misconduct. But he has never escaped the charges, which have shadowed the release and reception of his movie. Several of Bill Cosby’s accusers have no witnesses and no evidence, and they have come forward many years after the events they say took place — yet we are willing to hear them out. College women, whose claims of rape by fellow students were for many years interpreted as a natural consequence of the sexual revolution, are now taken seriously as crime victims.
Trump’s defenses — advanced, as were Clinton’s, by his surrogates — have been straight out of Little Rock. The women are said to be politically motivated (Joe Scarborough: They’re part of a calculated “October surprise”); attention hungry (Ben Carson: The media has told them, “Look, if you’re willing to come out and say something, we’ll give you fame”); liars (Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson on Jessica Leeds’s claim that Trump groped her after lifting the armrest between their airplane seats: “First-class seats have fixed armrests”). This way of treating accusers used to work, but it doesn’t anymore. Even Bill Clinton would have to find a different tack. Yet unlike with Clinton’s accusers, who have no more or less proof of their accounts than do Trump’s, this time the public seems more inclined to believe.
The nature of culture is progressive and cumulative. In 1987, Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg’s nomination to the Supreme Court was rejected because he admitted to having smoked pot as a law professor at Harvard. Today we have a president whose high school yearbook attests to his high times and whose memoir describes his having done “blow” as a rootless young college graduate. And what was once an acceptable way to treat women who come forward with stories like Jones’s or Broaddrick’s is acceptable no longer. At long last — far too late and just in time — something has changed.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misidentified the Clinton strategist who coined the phrase “bimbo eruption” during the 1992 campaign. It was former Clinton chief of staff Betsey Wright, not advisor James Carville.
Read more:
I edited the People reporter who says Trump groped her. Here’s why she didn’t come forward.
Many men talk like Donald Trump in private. And only other men can stop them.
Bill Cosby raped me. Why did it take 30 years for anyone to believe my story?Edmonton police warned the public Wednesday about the release of a convicted sexual offender with a history of crimes against children as young as 18 months.
Jason Robert Moors, 31, is considered to be “a sexual offender who poses a risk of significant harm to children,” a statement released by the Edmonton Police Service said.
In 2006, Moors was sentenced to 6-1/2 years in prison for repeated sexual assaults against seven children, who ranged in age from 18 months to five years old.
During that hearing, court heard Moors, then 22, had taken a babysitting course at Bow Valley College, then advertised his services on an Internet site.
Court heard the offences involved multiple incidents of major sexual assaults. In once case, Moors sexually assaulted a toddler five days a week for nearly three months.
The Journal was not immediately able to confirm details about the offences on which Moors was more recently being held at the Calgary Correctional Centre. An Edmonton Police Service spokesperson could not be reached for comment late Wednesday afternoon.
Moors was described as five-foot-nine in height, weighing about 170 pounds, with blue eyes and brown hair.
jpruden@edmontonjournal.com
Twitter.com/jana_prudenZimbabwe’s bank managers, already strapped for cash for their customers may soon have to worry about where to put cattle if a new law comes into operation which would allow people to use their livestock as collateral.
Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa told parliament this week that people in the huge informal sector should be able to use their moveable assets such as cows and goats, as well equipment such as lorries and ploughs, to secure loans.
Zimbabwe has been broke since President Robert Mugabe, facing defeat at elections in 2000, encouraged his political supporters to invade and take over nearly all productive white-owned farms.
With an unemployment rate as high as 90 per cent, most people surviving in the informal sector but they cannot raise loans from banks as they have no security.
Mr Chinamasa said the Movable Property Security Interest Bill would make it much easier for those with moveable assets, such as livestock to get bank loans.
“As minister in charge of financial institutions, I feel there is need for a change of attitude by our banks to reflect our economic realities,” Mr Chinamasa said.
The bill provides for a collateral registry to be set up by the central bank of all movable assets, including cattle to be used as security for loans. Most Zimbabweans live in the rural areas and even those in towns have access to small farms.Vodafone, one of the world's largest mobile phone groups, has revealed the existence of secret wires that allow government agencies to listen to all conversations on its networks, saying they are widely used in some of the 29 countries in which it operates in Europe and beyond.
The company has broken its silence on government surveillance in order to push back against the increasingly widespread use of phone and broadband networks to spy on citizens, and will publish its first Law Enforcement Disclosure Report on Friday. At 40,000 words, it is the most comprehensive survey yet of how governments monitor the conversations and whereabouts of their people.
The company said wires had been connected directly to its network and those of other telecoms groups, allowing agencies to listen to or record live conversations and, in certain cases, track the whereabouts of a customer. Privacy campaigners said the revelations were a "nightmare scenario" that confirmed their worst fears on the extent of snooping.
In Albania, Egypt, Hungary, India, Malta, Qatar, Romania, South Africa and Turkey, it is unlawful to disclose any information related to wiretapping or interception of the content of phone calls and messages including whether such capabilities exist.
"For governments to access phone calls at the flick of a switch is unprecedented and terrifying," said the Liberty director, Shami Chakrabarti. "[Edward] Snowden revealed the internet was already treated as fair game. Bluster that all is well is wearing pretty thin – our analogue laws need a digital overhaul."
In about six of the countries in which Vodafone operates, the law either obliges telecoms operators to install direct access pipes, or allows governments to do so. The company, which owns mobile and fixed broadband networks, including the former Cable & Wireless business, has not named the countries involved because certain regimes could retaliate by imprisoning its staff.
Direct-access systems do not require warrants, and companies have no information about the identity or the number of customers targeted. Mass surveillance can happen on any telecoms network without agencies having to justify their intrusion to the companies involved.
Industry sources say that in some cases, the direct-access wire, or pipe, is essentially equipment in a locked room in a network's central data centre or in one of its local exchanges or "switches".
The staff working in that room can be employed by the telecoms firm, but have state security clearance and are usually unable to discuss any aspect of their work with the rest of the company. Vodafone says it requires all employees to follow its code of conduct, but secrecy means that it cannot always verify that they do so.
Government agencies can also intercept traffic on its way into a data centre, combing through conversations before routing them on to the operator.
"These are the nightmare scenarios that we were imagining," said Gus Hosein, executive director of Privacy International, which has brought legal action against the British government over mass surveillance.
"I never thought the telcos [telecommunications companies] would be so complicit. It's a brave step by Vodafone and hopefully the other telcos will become more brave with disclosure, but what we need is for them to be braver about fighting back against the illegal requests and the laws themselves."
Vodafone's group privacy officer, Stephen Deadman, said: "These pipes exist, the direct access model exists.
"We are making a call to end direct access as a means of government agencies obtaining people's communication data. Without an official warrant, there is no external visibility. If we receive a demand we can push back against the agency. The fact that a government has to issue a piece of paper is an important constraint on how powers are used."
Vodafone is calling for all direct-access pipes to be disconnected, and for the laws that make them legal to be amended. It says governments should "discourage agencies and authorities from seeking direct access to an operator's communications infrastructure without a lawful mandate".
All states should publish annual data on the number of warrants issued, the company argues. There are two types – those for the content of calls and messages, and those for the metadata, which can cover the location of a target's device, the times and dates of communications, and the people with whom they communicated.
For brevity, the Guardian has also used the term metadata to cover warrants for customer information such as name and address. The information published in our table covers 2013 or the most recent year available. A single warrant can target hundreds of individuals and devices, and several warrants can target just one individual. Governments count warrants in different ways and New Zealand, for example, excludes those concerning national security. While software companies like Apple and Microsoft have jumped to publish the number of warrants they receive since the activities of America's NSA and Britain's GCHQ came to light, telecoms companies, which need government licences to operate, have been slower to respond.
In America, Verizon and AT&T have published data, but only on their domestic operations. Deutsche Telekom in Germany and Telstra in Australia have also broken ground at home. Vodafone is the first to produce a global survey.
It shows that Malta is one of the most spied on nations in Europe. The former British protectorate has a tiny population of 420,000, but last year Vodafone alone processed 3,773 requests for metadata.
In Italy, where the mafia's presence requires a high level of police intrusion, Vodafone received 606,000 metadata requests, more than any other country in which it runs networks. The number of warrants across all operators is potentially many times that number, but the government does not publish a national figure for metadata.
Italy's parliament does disclose content warrants, however, and it issued 141,000 in 2012, compared with just 2,760 in the United Kingdom. In contrast to the UK, terrorism concerns mean Ireland does not allow any information on the number of content warrants to be made public.
Spain, which has suffered terrorist strikes from Islamists and Basque separatists, allowed Vodafone to disclose that it had received over 24,000 content warrants. Agencies in the Czech Republic made nearly 8,000 content requests from the network. After Italy, the Czech Republic is the biggest user of metadata, issuing 196,000 warrants nationally in the most recent year for which information has been published. Tanzania, one of several African countries in which Vodafone operates, made 99,000 metadata requests from the company.
Peter Micek, policy counsel at the campaign group Access, said: "In a sector that has historically been quiet about how it facilitates government access to user data, Vodafone has for the first time shone a bright light on the challenges of a global telecom giant, giving users a greater understanding of the demands governments make of telcos. Vodafone's report also highlights how few governments issue any transparency reports, with little to no information about the number of wiretaps, cell site tower dumps, and other invasive surveillance practices."
On the question of whether the UK uses direct-access pipes, Vodafone's Deadman said such a system would be illegal because Britain did not permit agencies to obtain information without a warrant. The law does, however, allow indiscriminate collection of information on an unidentified number of targets. "We need to debate how we are balancing the needs of law enforcement with the fundamental rights and freedoms of the citizens. The ideal is we get a much more informed debate going, and we do all of that without putting our colleagues in danger."
Snowden, the National Security Agency whistleblower, joined Google, Reddit, Mozilla and other tech firms and privacy groups on Thursday to call for a strengthening of privacy rights online in a "Reset the net" campaign.
Twelve months after revelations about the scale of the US government's surveillance programs were first published in the Guardian and the Washington Post, Snowden said: "One year ago, we learned that the internet is under surveillance, and our activities are being monitored to create permanent records of our private lives – no matter how innocent or ordinary those lives might be. Today, we can begin the work of effectively shutting down the collection of our online communications, even if the US Congress fails to do the same."President Trump woke before dawn on Monday and burrowed in at the White House residence to wait for the Russia bombshell he knew was coming.
Separated from most of his West Wing staff — who fretted over why he was late getting to the Oval Office — Trump clicked on the television and spent the morning playing fuming media critic, legal analyst and crisis communications strategist, according to several people close to him.
The president digested the news of the first indictments in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's probe with exasperation and disgust, these people said. He called his lawyers repeatedly. He listened intently to cable news commentary. And, with rising irritation, he watched live footage of his onetime campaign adviser and confidant, Paul Manafort, turning himself in to the FBI.
Initially, Trump felt vindicated. Though frustrated that the media were linking him to the indictment and tarnishing his presidency, he cheered that the charges against Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, were focused primarily on activities that began before his campaign. Trump tweeted at 10:28 a.m., "there is NO COLLUSION!"
But the president's celebration was short-lived. A few minutes later, court documents were unsealed showing that George Papadopoulos, an unpaid foreign policy adviser on Trump's campaign, pleaded guilty to making a false statement to the FBI about his efforts to broker a relationship between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The case provides the clearest evidence yet of links between Trump's campaign and Russian officials.
For a president who revels in chaos — and in orchestrating it himself — Monday brought a political storm that Trump could not control. White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, along with lawyers Ty Cobb, John Dowd and Jay Sekulow, advised Trump to be cautious with his public responses, but they were a private sounding board for his grievances, advisers said.
"This has not been a cause of great agita or angst or activity at the White House," said Cobb, the White House lawyer overseeing Russia matters. He added that Trump is "spending all of his time on presidential work."
[Three former Trump campaign officials charged by special counsel]
But Trump's anger Monday was visible to those who interacted with him, and the mood in the corridors of the White House was one of weariness and fear of the unknown. As the president groused upstairs, many staffers — some of whom have hired lawyers to help them navigate Mueller's investigation — privately speculated about where the special counsel might turn next.
"The walls are closing in," said one senior Republican in close contact with top staffers who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly. "Everyone is freaking out."
Trump is also increasingly agitated by the expansion of Mueller's probe into financial issues beyond the 2016 campaign and about the potential damage to him and his family.
This portrait of Trump and his White House on a day of crisis is based on interviews with 20 senior administration officials, Trump friends and key outside allies, many of whom insisted on anonymity to discuss sensitive internal matters.
Trump and his aides were frustrated that, yet again, Russia steamrolled the start of a carefully planned week of policy news. Trump is preparing to nominate a new chairman of the Federal Reserve and is scheduled to depart Friday for a high-stakes, 12-day trip across Asia, and House Republicans are planning to unveil their tax overhaul bill.
"I'd like to start the briefing today by addressing a topic that I know all of you are preparing to ask me about, and that's tax reform," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at Monday afternoon's news briefing. It was a lighthearted prelude to a question-and-answer session immediately overtaken by queries about the indictments.
Away from the podium, Trump staffers fretted privately over whether Manafort or Gates might share with Mueller's team damaging information about other colleagues. They expressed concern in particular about Gates because he has a young family, may be more stretched financially than Manafort, and continued to be involved in Trump's political operation and had access to the White House, including attending West Wing meetings after Trump was sworn in.
Some White House advisers are unhappy with Thomas J. Barrack Jr., Trump's longtime friend and chairman of his inauguration, whom they hold responsible for keeping Gates in the Trump orbit long after Manafort resigned as campaign chairman in August 2016, according to people familiar with the situation. Barrack has been Gates's patron of late, steering political work to him and, until Monday, employing him as director of the Washington office of his real estate investment company.
Trump and his aides tried to shrug off the ominous headlines, decorating the South Portico of the White House in black bats and faux spider webs to welcome costumed children for Halloween trick-or-treating. As the sun set on Monday, the president and first lady Melania Trump handed out goody bags to little princesses and pirates.
[Mueller’s moves send message to other potential targets: Beware, I’m coming]
The Russia drama has been distracting and damaging for Trump — from a public relations perspective if not, eventually, a legal one. The president's inner circle on Russia matters has tightened in recent months. In addition to his lawyers, Trump has been talking mostly with Kelly and members of his family, including Melania, as well as daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, both senior White House advisers. Trump also leans on two senior aides, counselor Kellyanne Conway and communications director Hope Hicks, as well as some outside friends for advice.
Still, Trump has little ability to influence the ongoing Russia probe save for firing Mueller — the sort of rash decision that his lawyers insisted Monday he is not considering.
"Nothing about today's events alters anything related to our engagement with the special counsel, with whom we continue to cooperate," Cobb said. "There are no discussions and there is no consideration being given to terminating Mueller."
Sekulow, one of Trump's outside lawyers, said: "There's no firing-Robert-Mueller discussions."
Asked whether Trump is considering pardons for Manafort or Gates, Cobb said, "No, no, no. That's never come up and won't come up."
On Capitol Hill, meanwhile, some of Trump's allies are privately revving up their own version of a counterattack against Mueller. Several top Republican legislators plan to raise questions in the coming days about the FBI's handling of a "dossier" detailing alleged ties between Trump and Russian interests. They intend to argue that Mueller's team has become overly reliant on a document that was funded in part by Democrats, according to two people involved in the discussions. Mueller does not appear to have relied on the dossier for the cases revealed on Monday, however.
For Trump and his team, the bad news began as disconcerting drips last Friday, when CNN first reported that indictments were probably coming Monday. The only question: of whom?
The White House had no inside information beyond what was public in news reports, officials said, and was left to scramble and speculate as to what might happen. Reliable information was hard to come by, as Trump's team was scattered. Cobb was at his home in South Carolina until Monday afternoon, while Trump spent much of Saturday at his private golf club in Virginia and went out to dinner with Melania and their son, Barron, at the Trump International Hotel's steakhouse in Washington.
Among the many unknowns, the Trump team arrived at an educated guess that Manafort was likely to be indicted — in part, according to one White House aide, because of reports that television news crews were preparing to stake out Manafort's Virginia home.
"This wasn't a shocking development," Sekulow said.
[As Russia case unfolds, Trump and Republicans go to battle with Clinton and Democrats]
When the first pair of indictments came naming Manafort and Gates, there was palpable relief inside the West Wing. The 31-page document did not name Trump, nor did it address any possible collusion between Russia and the president's campaign.
Moreover, aides were simply happy that the initial batch of indictments did not include Michael Flynn, Trump's former and controversial national security adviser, who was fired from his top White House perch after misleading Vice President Pence about his contacts with Russian officials. Flynn had been intimately involved in both the campaign and the early days of the administration, and a Flynn indictment, most staff believed, would have been far more damaging.
The indictment of Gates — who had played a quiet, behind-the-scenes role in Trump's orbit — was more of a surprise, though he had served as Manafort's campaign deputy and protege. Trump's team quickly settled on a messaging plan: The duo's alleged misdeeds, the White House argued, had nothing to do with the president or his campaign.
Privately, aides and allies acknowledged that the campaign had perhaps not sufficiently vetted the two men before bringing them on board.
Michael Caputo, a former campaign adviser whom Trump praised Monday morning on Twitter for his appearance on Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends," later called the indictments "one big, huge fail."
"Rick and Paul, I would consider them friends of the president because they worked so closely with him," Caputo said. "The president's watching closely, and he should be concerned for his friends' welfare, but he has absolutely no concern about collusion with Russia because there was none."
On Sunday, Trump had attempted to seek refuge from the political squall with another round of golf at his Virginia club. Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) were set to join him, according to two people briefed on the plans — an afternoon of camaraderie and talk about his tax proposal.
It was not to be. Rainy weather forced the White House to cancel the outing — yet another disappointment, beyond the president's control.
John Wagner contributed to this report.Health insurers sit pretty at their customers' expense
'People aren't getting the care they need because they have to pay more out of pocket,' says the president of Consumer Watchdog.
That "reduction in utilization of healthcare services" basically means fewer people went to the doctor. Did we all suddenly become healthier? Not likely.
Well, that sounds fine and dandy until you parse what exactly he's saying.
Aetna CEO Ronald Williams was more expansive. He cited "a reduction in utilization of healthcare services after the surge we saw in 2009, combined with appropriate pricing and effective medical quality and cost management."
Three of the biggest names in the insurance game reported rock-solid profits last week. Aetna said its third-quarter net income jumped 53% over the same period last year, to $497.6 million. WellPoint, parent of Anthem Blue Cross in California, said its profit rose 1.2% to $739.1 million. Health Net posted a net income of $62.7 million, compared with a loss of $66 million a year earlier.
Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, a Santa Monica advocacy group, said Americans are skipping doctor visits because they've switched to plans with higher deductibles or their employers have jacked up co-pays.
"People aren't getting the care they need because they have to pay more out of pocket," he said.
This raises an interesting question about the looming reform of the nation's healthcare system, under which everyone will be required to have insurance. If available coverage is too pricey for people to use, will Americans be any better off, health-wise?
While most insurance policies will cover catastrophic events, it's entirely possible that healthcare costs will be too high for the sort of routine care or preventive treatment that can head off illnesses before they become debilitating.
Then there's that bit from Williams about "appropriate pricing." What's that mean?
"Rate increases," answered Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute. "It means higher rates, as well as more aggressive underwriting that excludes people for certain conditions or charges them higher premiums."
In September, the California Department of Insurance approved a 19% rate increase for 65,000 Aetna policyholders.
This followed rate hikes of as much as 29% for Anthem Blue Cross, Blue Shield and Health Net, affecting more than 1 million policyholders.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, workers now pay 47% more for family health coverage they receive through their jobs than they did five years ago, while wages have gone up only 18%.
And what about "effective medical quality and cost management"?
Court at Consumer Watchdog said this is just another way of saying that insurers are denying more claims. "It's code for some bureaucrat somewhere telling people that a treatment isn't necessary," he said.
The average health insurance agent now receives more than 200 requests annually from clients to provide |
was a hope, though a slender one, that they might stop the machine and escape. But under the ocean—not all the brains and the machinery in the great mother ship could save them. No one could have devised a more perfect trap. T'sinadree had been examining the wall map with great attention. Its meaning was obvious, and along the line connecting the circles a tiny spot of light was crawling. It was already halfway to the first of the stations marked. "I'm going to press one of those buttons," said T'sinadree at last. "It won't do any harm, and we may learn something." "I agree. Which will you try first?" "There are only two kinds, and it won't matter if we try the wrong one first. I suppose one is to start the machine and the other is to stop it." Alarkane was not very hopeful. "It started without any button pressing," he said. "I think it's completely automatic and we can't control it from here at all." T'sinadree could not agree. "These buttons are clearly associated with the stations, and there's no point in having them unless you can use them to stop yourself. The only question is, which is the right one?" His analysis was perfectly correct. The machine could be stopped at any intermediate station. They had only been on their way ten minutes, and if they could leave now, no harm would have been done. It was just bad luck that T'sinadree's first choice was the wrong button. The little light on the map crawled slowly through the illuminated circle without checking its speed. And at the same time Torkalee called from the ship overhead. "You have just passed underneath a city and are heading out to sea. There cannot be another stop for nearly a thousand miles." * * * Alveron had given up all hope of finding life on this world. The S9000 had roamed over half the planet, never staying long in one place, descending ever and again in an effort to attract attention. There had been no response; Earth seemed utterly dead. If any of its inhabitants were still alive, thoughtNew Delhi: Indian Express newspaper has reportedly sent a legal notice to the editor and publisher of Open and Outlook magazines for publishing an interview with Vinod Mehta that allegedly discredits the daily by discussing its military coup story.
In the interview, Vinod Mehta calls the Indian Express story 'the mother of all mistakes'.
Mehta has reportedly responded to the legal notice by saying that such matters ought to be resolved through debate and rather than in a court of law. He added he didn't have a problem with the notice.
The Indian Express story, which spoke about two Army units marching towards Delhi on the night of January 16 without any prior notification, was interpreted by many as hinting towards a possible coup. The newspaper denied making any such claims through the report.
The government, the Army chief and ex-Army personnel openly dismissed the speculations generated by the story as 'baseless'.Review: Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn
It's been almost three years since I purchased the Collector's Edition of Final Fantasy XIV. At the time I couldn't have been more excited. Six years of playing World of Warcraft on and off and trying every alternative under the sun had left me craving something new, and what better than an MMO set in the charming world of Final Fantasy. It's worth noting that I was a huge Final Fantasy XI fan. I played it at launch and reached level cap quicker than I would care to admit to.
Unfortunately, FFXIV turned out to be a disaster, and one that myself and many others would mark as one of the greatest disappointments in gaming history. So when Square Enix announced that it would be rebuilding the game from the ground up I was happy but reserved. I knew just like the development team did that it would require an exceptional amount of effort to successfully rectify the game's shortcomings. Now that Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is here, has Square Enix conquered its greatest challenge yet?
As with all Final Fantasy games, FFXIV: A Realm Reborn emphasizes its story. Placing you and your allies against the invading Garlean forces, you'll be quick to make friends and enemies. The game's character design and presentation summon light nostalgia for Final Fantasy XII, but this is in a different world entirely. The majority of the game's character interactions are placed in real-time motion cutscenes, some of which are voice acted. While the minimal voice acting creates inconsistency, the cutscenes bring the game's diverse cast to life. Even if you don't follow the story word-for-word, you'll become familiar with the game's most key characters, so when it comes time to battle with and against them, you'll have context.
The story in FFXIV: A Realm Reborn never leaves you out to dry. Plot development proceeds with just about each new level earned. There are some great battles to be fought even early on in the story arch. The appearance of Ifrit and other iconic figures further reminds you that you're playing a Final Fantasy game. However, some might dislike the pacing. A small but noticeable portion of the story missions feel trivial with lots of travel time and menial tasks given in-between. If nothing else they're worth the effort if only to see and experience what happens next.
FFXIV: A Realm Reborn is busting from the seams with content. The first 10-15 levels are a tutorials of sorts to ease-in even the most inexperienced MMO players, but from 15 and beyond the content is unrelenting. You'll be using the Duty Finder to queue up for Guildhests and dungeons, choosing which Grand Company to join, earning your beloved companion Chocobo—who you can ride and use in battle—, and traveling between the gorgeous capital cities using airships. This is all before level 25, mind you. From then until the level cap of 50 the game makes a strong effort to always introduce something new to you. Completing hunting logs requires some exploration of the game's massive zones but is rewarded heavily. Unlocking your first job is a highlight of the experience, as is defeating your first primal. Most substantial are FATEs, which are essentially public quests. They are scattered throughout every zone and present not only great opportunities for experience and reward, but bring players together for a social experience without the headaches of parties. This might be a re-launch of FFXIV, but the content is every MMO fan's dream.
FFXIV: A Realm Reborn's combat system is flashy but not revolutionary. It is a tab-target game with the same style of spell rotations and cooldowns as many other games of past and present. Spell effects are gorgeous and make using abilities feel much more substantial. It's slow-paced, though. There's some waiting around between skills, especially during the early levels, and the small number of action-oriented abilities makes this a much more methodical experience. On the plus side, as you unlock more skills you'll become increasingly concerned with using the correct abilities at the right time, which isn't easy when you have three full bars of skills. Since the game's global cooldown is 2.5 seconds, if you make any mistakes they are amplified.
One great benefit to the game's combat style is its friendliness to console players. It's rare that an MMO makes its way to consoles, but to have one with this much depth is unprecedented. While the game takes some getting used to on a gamepad, it's fully functional. Even then, console gamers have the choice of plugging-in a keyboard and mouse if desired. The end result of this is a game that is approachable by much more than just a PC gamer audience. You'll have an easier time talking friends and family into playing the game with you when you don't have to worry about building them a gaming PC—assuming they don't have one, of course.
Arguably the best part of FFXIV: A Realm Reborn is its class system. There are eight classes to choose from at the beginning of the game which range from the stout Gladiator to the powerful Thaumaturge. Upon hitting level 10 you'll be able to switch to any of the other classes and level them up as well, all on one character. You can then utilize skills from the other classes you've played. Upon hitting level 30 with a class you can even unlock a job. Jobs are very specialized in their role and are particularly potent for groups. While this all might seem confusing, it's a fantastic system that lets you play as anything whenever you want, and offers reward for those who put in the time. So long are the days of making alts with weird character names and losing all the progress of your main character.
Eorzea has been brilliantly redesigned. From its forests to its deserts, you'll be met with beautiful vistas whether you're playing on a PC or console. A day-night cycle adds a sense of life to the world, and so does the impressive weather system. This same level of quality is present in the game's menus and character models as well. There are the little details like being able to see earrings equipped on your character that add nice touches to the game.
As great as the game looks, it sounds just as good. The soundtrack lives up to the Final Fantasy name with wonderfully composed tracks that encapsulate the mood of each city and zone. Sound effects are crisp and give extra weight to attack and spell delivery. Unlike other games in the genre, you'll hear chatter and commotion when in large groups of players. FFXIV: A Realm Reborn's world is easy to fall in love with.
Where other games make MMO play a chore, it's fun to log-in to FFXIV: A Realm Reborn. Collecting gear isn't an inventory nightmare due to the armory system which grants inventory slots exclusively for equippable items. The group finder eliminates spamming in general chat to find groups—although DPS classes will be waiting a while in queue. You can customize the layout of the UI easily from the menu. Travel is made easy with airships, mounts, teleports, and more. If you run out of quests while leveling additional classes there are Leves, Guildleves, and more pools of content to dig from. The list goes on and on.
Square Enix has somehow managed to completely revitalize Final Fantasy XIV. The result is a Final Fantasy MMO that does the series justice. While there are hints of its original form, every single quality, from gameplay to presentation, has undergone drastic transformation. Enthusiasts of the series, old and new, will find fan-service from the subtle to the obvious. Everyone looking to play a modern MMO will find a stellar game that incorporates all the features they expect from a fully developed MMO. Its gameplay and story are a departure from the fast-paced games of present, but this is a superb online game that is an exemplary display of why Final Fantasy and the MMO genre are a match made in heaven.
Jonathan Leack is the Gaming Editor for CraveOnline. You can follow him on Twitter @jleack.
We received one review copy of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn from Square Enix for PC. We were held to the embargo date of Tuesday, August 27th, 2013.
Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn ScreenshotsTurkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused Germany of "Nazi practices" for blocking his ministers from speaking
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday accused German Chancellor Angela Merkel of "supporting terrorists", in a spiralling row with EU states after the blocking of poll rallies by ministers.
"Mrs Merkel, why are you hiding terrorists in your country?... Why are you not doing anything?" Erdogan said in an interview with A-Haber television, accusing Berlin of not responding to 4,500 dossiers sent by Ankara on terror suspects.
"Mrs Merkel, you are supporting terrorists," he added.
Erdogan said Germany, which Turkey has long accused of harbouring Kurdish militants and wanted suspects from the failed July 15 coup, was "giving support to terror in a ruthless way".
He also lambasted Merkel for her public backing of Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte in the diplomatic crisis sparked by The Hague's refusal to let Turkish ministers hold rallies in the country ahead of an April 16 referendum on expanding Erdogan's powers.
German authorities had also last week blocked rallies from taking place, infuriating Ankara.
Referring to the developments across Europe in recent days, Erdogan reiterated his controversial comparison with the Third Reich.
"Nazism, we can call this Neo-nazism. A new Nazism tendency," he said.The 15th annual Tour de Troit will be held on Saturday, September 17. Last year’s ride saw 7,500 cyclists, and this year the organizers are expecting more.
Here is this year's route map.
The starting location of this year’s ride is Roosevelt Park in Corktown. The 30-mile ride will begin at 9 a.m. and will pass through several city neighborhoods before concluding at Roosevelt Park. The ride goes down Rosa Parks, east down Chicago, south down John R, down Milwaukee and Grand Boulevard, south down Mt. Elliot to East Vernor, then south down Iroquois. Riders will then ride down Lafayette and around Belle Isle, then back downtown along Larned, then to West Jefferson back up to Roosevelt Park.
Expect road closures throughout the morning.
The 62-mile metric century ride for advanced riders will start between 7 a.m. and 8:30 a.m.
Funds raised from the Tour de Troit have helped develop more than 17 miles of bike lanes as part of the Southwest Detroit Greenlink. Tour de Troit has also raised money for the Villages of Detroit Community Development Corporation, the Connor Creek Greenway, and other non-motorized projects.
Riders can also do the international Bike the Bridge ride October 9. The ride is limited to 750 people, and a valid passport is required.ISLAMABAD: The Senate on Friday passed a bill that criminalises for the first time sexual assault against minors, child pornography and trafficking.
The amendment to the penal code, which will go into force after being ratified by the president, also raises the age of criminal responsibility from seven to 10 years of age.
Under the revised legislation, sexual assaults will now be punishable by up to seven years in prison. Previously, only rape was criminalised.
Likewise, child pornography, which was previously not mentioned in the law, will be punishable by seven years in prison and a fine of Rs0.7 million.
The country was rocked last August by a major paedophilia scandal when it was revealed that hundreds of pornographic videos of children from the village of Hussain Khanwala in Kasur district had been created and were being circulated.
Child abuse: Cruel numbers, toothless laws
About 20 arrests were made, but only the acts of rape and sodomy were punishable by law. The new amendment also criminalises child trafficking within the country.
Previously traffickers were only liable for punishment if they removed children from the country.
The legislation would help protect the children against any kind of mental and physical abuse.
The new Sections 292 A, 292 B and 292 C, 328 A, 369 A, 377 A and 377 B have been incorporated in Pakistan Panel Code, 1860, making child pornography and exposure to seduction, a punishable crime.
Take a look: Kasur scandal: 'I thought of killing myself everyday'
“This is a very important step to realise the obligations of Pakistan under the Convention on the Rights of the Child,” said Sara Coleman, chief of child protection at Unicef.
“Now we have to turn our attention to the law's implementation,” said Valerie Khan, the director of Group Development Pakistan, a local NGO which advocates legal reforms.
She also called for the “establishment of a national commission on child rights, which is essential to monitor and coordinate the implementation of the law.”
Pakistan ratified the United Nation's Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1990 and is under obligation to implement its provision by harmonising polices, legislation, programmes, plans of action with it and report progress to the UN committee on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), Geneva after every five years.
To undertake this task, existing laws are required to be harmonised with the UNCRC to effectively initiate requisite actions for meeting the standards set forth under the UNCRC.
According to a recent study from Sahil, a non-government organisation (NGO) working against child sex abuse, the total number of young boys being abused increased by 4.3 per cent in the first half of 2015 compared to the same period last year.
The report said that 178 boys aged 6 to 10 were abused compared to 150 girls of the same ages.Former biologist Tim Lee takes the stage at TEDx for the second time this year. Lee’s medium of choice: the all too often mind-numbingly boring PowerPoint presentation, but when he unleashes his deck, it’s anything but. Within seconds, the audience is in hysterics of laughter and clapping loudly to show its appreciation … for his PowerPoint. You may be wondering why this has not happened to you.
Lee is one of a growing number of comedians equally at home on a business stage. As the lines between information and entertainment blur, speakers like him are in high demand. (Lee actually has sold out shows where people pay money to see him give PowerPoint presentations. Sounds strange, I know.) Apart from being funnier than most, he has one big additional advantage over regular business speakers: He is onstage way more often.
Comedians’ content and delivery are honed through years of practice as they master their craft. In doing so, they are among the few public speakers that clock up the 10,000 hours Malcolm Gladwell says make a master. It’s forcing regular business presenters to up their game.
With that in mind, here are 23 tips from Lee and other top 10,000-hour comedians for you to become a better and funnier public speaker:
1. Use the Rule of 3
“This rule is a basic structure for jokes and ideas that capitalize on the way we process information,” says Lee. “We have become proficient at pattern recognition by necessity. Three is the smallest number of elements required to create a pattern. This combination of pattern and brevity results in memorable content.”
2. Draw Upon Your Real-Life Experiences
The safest humor involves personal stories, because they are guaranteed to be original and can be easily practiced and perfected. As Ricky Gervais says, “As a creator, it’s your job to make an audience as excited and fascinated about a subject as you are, and real life tends to do that.”
3. Identify the Key Part and Get There Fast
U.K. comedian Jimmy Carr says, “Writing comedy isn’t really about writing; it’s more about editing. It’s about what you don’t say. What are the fewest words I can get down here in order to get to the funny bit?”
4. Find the Funny in Pain Points
“To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it,” Charlie Chaplin said. While he likely didn’t mean customer pain points, the same wisdom applies.
5. Think Fails and Firsts
“So many people ask me for help creating a funnier speech,” says Darren LaCroix. “They want to know where to ‘find funny.’ I suggest starting by looking in the mirror! Start by looking at your fails and your firsts. The first time you did something wrong. Audiences love the humility and openness.”
6. Screen Your Jokes
“Presentations have an extra advantage over most traditional standup sets–a giant friggin’ screen that the audience is staring at the whole time you’re onstage,” says Sammy Wegent. “And in a world where funny Photoshopped images, memes, and GIFs dominate our devices, visual humor has never been bigger. So don’t just say funny things in your presentation. Show funny things, too.”
7. Think Fun Over Funny
“Making people laugh is only one type of humor; getting them to smile is another,” says Andrew Tarvin. “When starting out, focus on making things fun as opposed to making things funny.”
8. Tell a Joke
If people laugh, a joke already added value. “It helps if it segues into a point. But it doesn’t have to,” says Rajiv Satyal. One of his favorites that’s both hilarious and yet clean enough for a corporate presentation: A guy joins a monastery and takes a vow of silence. He’s allowed to say two words every seven years. After the first seven years, the elders bring him in and ask for his two words. He says, “Cold floors.” They nod and send him away. Seven more years pass. They bring him back in and ask for his two words. He clears his throat. “Bad food,” he says. They nod and send him away. Seven more years pass. They bring him in for his two words. He goes, “I quit.” One of the elders looks at him and says, “That’s not surprising. You’ve done nothing but complain since you got here.” I’ve never had that joke miss in any context, says Satyal. And it’s easy to tie it into something going on at a company, e.g., a reorg. (Every place is always doing a reorg.)
9. Like Jerry Seinfeld Does, Use Inherently Funny Words
Some words are funnier than others and can be amusing without any given context. Words with a k in them are funny. Alka-Seltzer is funny. Chicken is funny. Pickle is funny. L‘s are not funny. When writing his bit about Pop-Tarts, Jerry Seinfeld took foods from the ’60s in all its strange, frozen, unhealthy forms and narrowed his focus on Pop-Tarts. Why Pop-Tarts? Because Pop-Tarts sounds funny. “The Pop-Tart suddenly appeared in the supermarket … and we were like chimps in the dirt playing with sticks.” According to Seinfeld, what makes the joke, “is you have got chimps, dirt, playing, and sticks. In seven words, four of them are funny. Chimps, chimps are funny.” (See the interview here.)
10. Paint a Picture for Others to See
“Comedy is in the details, but you don’t want to over do it,” says Reggie Steele. “Just enough to set the scene. Talk to people as if you’re talking to a blind person or you’re doing something for the radio. Details matter.”
11. Do Something Memorable
“This can be good or bad. But memorability is more powerful than likability,” says Sammy Obeid.
12. Jokes are: 1, 2 … 4!
“They look like they’re about to establish a pattern but then break it just when it’s about to become one,” says Rajiv Satyal. “In this example, you think I’m counting but, when you hear “4,” you realize I was doubling the numbers. It makes sense in retrospect. (But they’re not 1, 2 … 7! That would just be random.) Jokes work due to the element of surprise. Too many business presentations are stuff people already know (1, 2 … 3!) or stuff people don’t know what to do with (1, 2 … 7!). Give ‘em something both memorable and fun.”
13. Use the Art of Misdirection
“The beautiful thing about a business presentation versus standup comedy is that the presentation audience can be misled into a funny line much easier,” says Cody Woods. “Due to the many boring presentations they have been subjected to, they are suspecting it less. Use this to your advantage.”
14. Put the Word the Joke Hinges on at the End of the Sentence
For example, if the fact it’s a cat is the surprise or twist, don’t say, “There was a cat in the box.” Say, “In that box was a cat.” That way you’re not still talking when they’re meant to be laughing, says Matt Kirshen.
15. Use Tension
“There has to be tension for a punch line to land,” says Zahra Noorbakhsh. “Tension sets up the desire to see a problem–however big or small–get resolved. If you can identify what is making your audience restless, anxious, or uncomfortable, you can work backward to find the joke that chills them out.”
16. Avoid Ever Going Blank Onstage
Use the Memory Palace memorization technique. To do this, it is useful to have the image interact with the environment, Richard Sarvate says. “For my sushi joke, I picture a sushi chef,” he says. “If I put him in the elevator in the lobby of my apartment; I picture him mashing the buttons on the elevator in frustration. Now that he is interacting with the environment, it’s a lot easier to visualize and recall. It’s useful to make the image bizarre in order to make it more memorable. For my Mexican Indian joke, I picture Krishna wearing a sombrero. A ridiculous image, which is almost tougher to forget.”
17. Use Your Hands
“Speak with your hands in front of you, not flopped down to your side,” says Matt Morales. “Pretend your double fisting a couple of drinks that you’re going to spill if you put your arms down. Or just double fist a couple of beers. Granted, that might not make your presentation better, but eventually you won’t care anymore.”
18. Use Metaphors and Analogies Combined With Hyperbole (Exaggeration)
“Figure out the pattern of something you’re criticizing, and then choose a metaphor that makes that look ridiculous,” says Brian Carter. “For example, I might teach that trying to do organic social marketing without ads, maybe hoping for it to go viral, is like trying to drive a car that only other people can fill up with gas when they feel like it, and hoping they will. Exaggerating anything makes it funnier. So I could exaggerate the previous example and say that it’s like the Star Trek Enterprise trying to fly to a new star system without any dilithium crystals, and hoping that some Klingons show up and give them some. Now, I just made those up and they’re probably horrible, but that illustrates the process (Trekkies get it).”
19. If the Energy Is Down, Bring It Up
“If the host didn’t introduce you with a strong round of applause, this is a good time for you to ask the audience to offer a round of applause,” says Sarah Cooper. “Feel free to ask for a round of applause for the presenter, the host, some of the presenters before you, the sponsor or organizers of the event, and even one for the audience themselves (even though they think they’re clapping for themselves, it still feels like they’re clapping for you).”
20. Trust Your Funny Bits
“Your jokes are funny, so have confidence in them,” says Brandon Scott Wolf. “Deliver your punch lines emphatically, and then give the audience a moment or two to process what you said so they can laugh.”
21. Have Fun
“Don’t put something out there that bores you. If it bores you to tell it, you can bet it will bore your audience to hear it,” says Sal Calanni.
22. Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance
Overpreparation will help you be ready for anything and give you the knowledge and confidence that you can handle whatever comes your way onstage. As Steve Martin says, “Persistence is a great substitute for talent.”
And last but not least, from Irish comedian Dylan Moran:
23. Don’t Rely on Potential
“Don’t do it! Stay away from your potential,” Moran says. “You’ll mess it up. It’s potential; leave it. Anyway, it’s like your bank balance–you always have a lot less than you think.”
As Mark Twain said, “The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.” That type of arms race may be one worth all our time. Most presentations are really boring. With applications of these tips, yours will not be.Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
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Mission accomplished for Daniel Ricciardo on Sunday at the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race at Texas Motor Speedway.
He met Dale Earnhardt Jr., and completed a helmet swap.
Ricciardo told NBCSN Formula 1 pit reporter and insider Will Buxton at the United States Grand Prix at Circuit of The Americas last month he planned to see Earnhardt’s final race at Texas before he hangs up his helmet as a full-time driver at the end of the year. A lifelong fan of the Earnhardt family, Ricciardo said he wanted to see him in person.
“The Earnhardt family is a huge name in motorsport, not only in America but all over the world. Yeah I wish him well,” Ricciardo told NBCSN. “Hopefully I get to see him perform well in Texas. I’m gonna try to do a helmet swap with him. We’ll see how we go.”
The Red Bull Racing driver will be back in action in F1 next week at Brazil, but with an off week between Mexico last week and Brazil now, he headed to Texas this weekend.
As it was, Ricciardo was a guest of Chase Elliott at Sunday’s Cup Series race and toured the grid and soaked in the atmosphere before the race. He was wearing a Dale Earnhardt No. 3 shirt, with “The Black Knight” signage.
Here’s the helmet swap, which Earnhardt said was Ricciardo’s idea. Earnhardt also said at his media availability on Friday he needs to get to a Formula 1 race.
“I’ve never been to a Formula 1 race. It’s something, you have to check that box,” he said Friday before expanding on that on Sunday, “I’m bound for an F1 race to see Daniel wheel it next year!”
Ricciardo posted several times to his Instagram story and also took a few photos with drivers and teams on pre-grid.
Instagram story posts via @DanielRicciardo
Tweets/Instagram postsTwo Vallejo Officers Survive Coffee Shop Ambush From Suspect Armed With Rifle
Vallejo, CA – A suspect with a rifle ambushed two Vallejo police officers inside a coffee shop Sunday night. Both officer’s survived the attack.
Two officers said they were inside the Starbucks located at Lincoln Road West when they observed a man swing open the door and point a long-rifle directly at them in what is believed to have been an ambush style attack. Police described the rifle as having what appeared to be a “high capacity drum.”
Officers said the suspect’s weapon appeared to malfunction during his initial attempt to shoot them. The officers, fearing for their lives, pulled their own weapons, but did not immediately fire.
The suspect began wrestling with the rifle, as if he was still intent on firing on the officers, before he fled on foot. Both officers began chasing the suspect due to the continued threat the man posed to the public. The chase continued through a busy area off of I-80 next to a gas station where a second encounter occurred between the suspect and the officers.
Police said the chase ended at Magazine and Sheridan Street when officers, fearing for their lives, shot the suspect three times. The suspect was taken to the hospital with what was reported as being life-threatening injuries.
Witnesses reported hearing multiple gun shots in the area at the time of the shooting.
I just spoke to Vallejo police- they say the man officers shot last night survived the night but is in critical condition — Amy Hollyfield (@amyhollyfield) October 17, 2016
Vallejo police said they will provide a statement later with more information on this officer involved shooting.
These officers are very fortunate to have survived this attack. Every time an officer puts on a uniform they are faced with a very real threat to their personal safety. Fortunately, these brave heroes made it out alive.
Anti-police rhetoric continues to be the trendy-norm of entitled and misinformed groups of social hand-wringers. Meanwhile, police continue to face very real threats posed by fringes who are motivated by the misinformation spread by these “activists.”
This latest attack could have ended up much worse. In 2009 four Lakewood, WA officers were ambushed and murdered while on coffee break in a coffee shop. It’s a miracle that the Vallejo officers were not injured in this attack.Adnan Hajj was found to have used Photoshop to clone and darken the smoke in this 2006 photo of Beirut to exaggerate the bombing damage. This photo was distributed throughout the media before the manipulation was caught by a blogger. Reuters news agency, which worked with the freelance photographer, immediately fired him. Reuters then withdrew all 920 photographs by Hajj from its database after it was discovered that he had manipulated a second photo. Adnan Hajj
Mistakes, misrepresentations, and downright deceptions in photojournalism are as old as the practice itself. And according to photojournalist Michael Kamber, founder of the Bronx Documentary Center and curator of its exhibit “Altered Images: 150 Years of Posed and Manipulated Documentary Photography,” these problems are only getting worse.
“The newspaper industry is disintegrating before our eyes, thousands of professionals have been laid off, and freelancers who came up in the digital age are used to changing things and altering things. Then you have some professionals who feel that as standards are slipping they can fake and lie and cheat,” he said.
This iconic photograph from World War II shows a triumphant Red Army soldier waving a Soviet flag over the Reichstag building in Berlin, signifying communist conquest over Nazi Germany. Many discoveries regarding the construction and continued manipulation of this photo have been made since its original publication. Yevgeny Khaldei
Arthur Rothstein, a photographer for the Farm Security Administration, moved and photographed a steer skull at several locations in South Dakota during a severe drought in the region in 1936. Several frames of this exist, all showing different backgrounds. After one of the photos was distributed by the Associated Press, Republican opponents of President Roosevelt seized on the opportunity, and articles about the staging of this photo were published in conservative newspapers around the country. Arhtur Rothstein (Library of Congress; The Crowley Company)
Eugene Smith’s photo essay “Spanish Village,” which depicts a small rural village in Spain under the rule of dictator Francisco Franco, was published in Life magazine in 1951. In this photograph, an intimate scene of the wake of a Deleitosa villager, Smith retouched the wife and daughter’s eyes. Originally the two women had been looking toward the photographer, but in the darkroom he printed their eyes much darker and then applied bleach with a fine-tipped brush to create new whites, thereby redirecting their gazes downward and to the side. Eugene Smith
In decades past, manipulation was harder but still prevalent. Fewer photographers had the capacity to expertly airbrush or retouch—Eugene Smith was a notable exception—but there were other ways of misrepresenting or altering reality. As early as 1936, for example, Farm Security Administration photographer Arthur Rothstein moved a steer skull around South Dakota to illustrate drought there. And during World War II, Yevgeny Khaldei gave a homemade Soviet flag to soldiers in Berlin and asked them to pose with it. The photo was later altered to hide the fact that the soldiers had been looting. Clouds of smoke were also added.
Today, altering images is easy and fairly commonplace, and it’s a problem not just among young freelancers but professionals at the top of their game. The most prominent instance came to light this spring when the World Press Photo contest took away a prize it had awarded to Giovanni Troilo after it emerged that he had staged and lit a photo of a couple having sex in a car. That event sparked a conversation about the increasingly blurry line between art and photojournalism, but Kasper said the distinctions should be clear.
“I met young photographers at portfolio reviews and they’re telling me, ‘I’m re-enacting my dream states and my sexual fantasies with my friends and this is documentary work.’ I’m like, ‘No, it’s not. That’s you doing some personal artistic vision and in my opinion it has nothing to do with documentary work,’ ” he said.
The photograph, taken in the earliest days of the Iraq invasion, is a composite of two images taken seconds apart. After the Hartford Courant published the image, a Courant employee noticed a duplication of civilians in the background. The Los Angeles Times, which first published the image on its cover, confronted the photographer, Brian Walski, who confessed to having digitally merged the two photographs to improve the composition. He was immediately fired. Brian Walski/Los Angeles Times
Giovanni Troilo’s photo was part of a winning photo essay in the 2015 World Press Photo awards. This image, of the photographer’s cousin and a woman having sex in a car, lit by the photographer’s remote flash inside the car, was set up. WPP judges eventually rescinded the award after numerous other complaints surfaced. Giovanni Troilo
In the digital age, a pressure to “feed the Web” has also led to sloppiness in newsrooms. “I think the bottom line is there’s literally hundreds of millions of images ricocheting around the Internet everyday and editors are looking for new material, and they’re grabbing things that are not coming from trusted sources,” Kamber said. That problem showed up in April as riots broke out in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray. FOX13 Memphis posted a picture to Facebook of what was described as Baltimore in flames. The photo was actually taken in Venezuela a year earlier.
While the Internet has been the cause of many problems in photojournalism, Kamber said it also frequently provides the solution. Independent researchers and bloggers online can often catch manipulations or mistakes before editors do, using reverse image search on Google. Still, as long as economic pressures make newspapers depend on cheap, unreliable workers and ethical codes remain inconsistent between publications and contests, Kamber said problems will likely continue to arise. His primary source of hope for the industry lies with some of the younger photojournalists he meets.
“Since I came back from Iraq three years ago, there’s been a steady stream of young photographers coming to the Bronx Documentary Center. They’re coming with new work, with questions, and they’re constantly asking about what’s fair, what’s ethical, what’s right. If young people didn’t care they wouldn’t be beating down my door with these questions. It’s the new generation that’s going to change things because the old generation has mucked it up pretty bad.”
“Altered Images: 150 Years of Posed and Manipulated Documentary Photography” is on view at the Bronx Documentary Center until Aug. 2.Slow |
from the restart, Ulster scrum-half Paul Marshall was sin-binned for stamping on Donnacha O'Callaghan on what was a forgettable night for the half-back pairing of Marshall and Niall O'Connor.
Munster scored a try in the 45th minute, just before Marshall returned to the field, when Zebo spotted a huge gap in the Ulster midfield and ran in under the posts.
Flanker O'Mahony added a third try for Munster after 50 minutes as the home side cranked up the pressure in search of a bonus-point victory.
However, Ulster's defence held firm to deny their provincial rivals the all-important fourth try.
Ulster's management decided to empty their bench and there were impressive cameo performances from Michael Heaney and Birch who combined for a stoppage-time try.
Heaney's flip-pass back inside to Robbie Diack gave Birch the opportunity to score his first try for Ulster.
Rookie out-half Stuart Olding added a difficult conversion.
The win moved Munster up to third in the table but they will be disappointed not to have secured a five-point haul.
Ulster remain nine points clear of second-placed Scarlets, who visit Ravenhill in a top-of-the-table clash on Friday night.
Munster: Hurley, Howlett, Laulala, Downey, Zebo, Keatley, Murray, du Preez, Varley, Botha, Donnacha O'Callaghan, Holland, O'Mahony, O'Donnell, Butler.
Replacements: Sherry, Horan, Archer, Dave O'Callaghan, Coughlan,Stringer, O'Gara, Jones.
Ulster: D'Arcy, Cochrane, Allen, L Marshall, Gilroy, O'Connor, P Marshall, Black, Herring, Macklin, Stevenson, McComb, Diack, McComish, Wilson.
Replacements: Annett, Lutton, Court, O'connor, Birch, Heaney, Olding, Andrew.
Sin bin: P Marshall (35)
Referee: Alain Rolland (IRFU).Share Pin Share Email Shares 0
As we get nearer to election season the rhetoric surrounding one of the biggest tax issues this year is coming at us at a feverish pace. The Bush Tax Cuts are expiring this year, and without them being renewed for all taxpayers we could see one of the largest tax increases in some time. Both parties vow to at least renew the tax cuts for those making up to $250,000, but if they aren't able to come to an agreement, the tax rates will go up for everyone come January 1st. With the inability of the two parties to work together, it is starting to become a distinct possibility in my view that nothing is done in time to prevent them from going up for everyone.
Bush Tax Cuts Expire January 1st. What Is To Be Done?
Within the past few days the GOP has come out with what they call a concession, a temporary 2 year extension of the tax cuts for all taxpayers. The idea is one that was promoted by Obama's former budget directory, Peter Orszag earlier this week.
House GOP Leader John Boehner offered a concession on tax cuts, suggesting Republicans would accept a two-year extension of all the Bush-era tax breaks rather than the permanent extension they have been seeking. The GOP proposal is an alternative to Democratic leaders’ plan to allow the top two rates to rise next year to pre-Bush levels. A Republican release described Boehner’s alternative as a way to prevent “job-killing tax hikes” on small businesses. Boehner, an Ohio Republican, outlined the plan Wednesday morning on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” a day after the White House made it clear it had no interest in a two-year extension. The idea had been floated on Tuesday by Obama’s former budget director, Peter Orszag, in an op-ed. Obama says he instead favors permanently extending current tax levels for the middle classes, defined as families making less than $250,000, while allowing tax breaks for higher earners to expire at the end of the year. The president and Democratic congressional leaders evidently have decided they like the political contrast with the GOP, even though some of their rank-and-file members and candidates have defected to the Republican view.
The Obama administration and congressional leaders seems dead set against renewing the tax cuts for all taxpayers, saying that they want those making more than $250,000 to have their rates go back up. They've drawn a line in the sand that they don't seem willing to cross, even if some rank and file democrats and candidates seem to think an extension would be wise.
Despite their stand right now, some think that a temporary extension could become part of a deal AFTER the election, when the posturing and campaigning is done.
Despite the White House’s statements rejecting the two-year extension of all the Bush tax cuts, that could yet become the basis for a deal, probably after the November elections.
Small Business Owners Ask For Extension Of Tax Cuts
As the debate rages, small business owners are jumping into the fray. The Obama administration has trumpeted a small business lending fund that it will be pushing later this week that would make more than 30 billion available in loans to small business owners, along with tax breaks for capital investments. But independent business groups are saying that an extension of the Bush tax cuts would help them more.
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The Obama administration has targeted small business with laser-like focus, pushing a $30 billion small-business lending fund in Congress and, later this week, rolling out a tax break allowing businesses to deduct 100% of qualified capital investments. But the chief economist at the National Federation of Independent Businesses said today that small business doesn’t need more tax relief. Instead, he said, Washington should aim its firepower at consumers so they begin spending money and creating demand for the products and services small companies provide. “If you give a small business guy $20,000 he’ll say, ‘I could buy a new delivery truck but I have nobody to deliver to,’” said William Dunkelberg, chief economist for NFIB. Rather than aim more tax relief at business, Dunkelberg said Washington should extend the Bush-era tax cuts for everyone – including those making above $250,000. “History shows that letting Washington have the money and spend it is very ineffective,” he said. The administration’s latest idea, which would allow businesses to temporarily deduct 100% of “qualified” capital investments, can help “on the margin,” Dunkelberg said. With capital-spending by small business at a 35-year low, some firms will naturally take advantage of a temporary tax incentive to replace products. But Dunkelberg said he thinks most small businesses will hold on to their cash until more certain economic times
Economists Discuss an Extension Of The Bush Tax Cuts
Others, including economists have said that an extension of some sort should be considered. Economist Tom Gallagher says what form he thinks an extension should take:
They should extend the rates for the top two brackets for one year (through 2011) and the rates for the bottom four brackets for three years (through 2013). This would accomplish several things. First, it would address the uncertainty about the near-term economic outlook. Second, by de-linking the rates for the top two and bottom four brackets, it would automatically put in place something like Obama’s plan for 2012, when the economy should be able to withstand some further fiscal drag. Third, it should trigger a broader debate over deficits in the year after the presidential election, thanks to the expiration of the tax cuts for the bottom four brackets.
Only time will tell what is done, but at this point, it is looking more and more likely that any extension of the tax cuts, for everyone, or just for the lower tax brackets may have to wait until after the election. I do think we may want to consider the fact that an extension might not take place at all if no agreement can be made, and then each party will blame the other for getting nothing done. We shall see!
What do you think will happen with the Bush tax cuts? Will they expire for everyone, or be extended for only lower tax brackets? Will they be extended for everyone? Do you think they're a good idea, in combination with some form of reduction in government spending? Tell us your thoughts in the comments.In the following video, reigning FIDE world champion Magnus Carlsen moves his king forward one space on a chessboard. He then picks up his pen, pauses, and records the move. You can tell he’s recording the move slowly because he’s still writing as his opponent, five-time world champion Vishy Anand, begins taking in the board. Carlsen then puts down the pen and waits. Anand stays still for 35 seconds, then he crosses his arm and moves his A-file pawn forward one space. Anand immediately records the move — but Carlsen doesn’t. Instead, his head drops into frame. He rests it on his forearm and shakes it from side to side. After a beat, Carlsen does record Anand’s move. Then, after another beat, he folds his arms on the table in front of him and drops his head again.
Here are seven ways to contextualize what may well prove to be the most dramatic back-to-back plays in any game — in any competition, athletic or otherwise — this year.
1. Big chess matches are shown simulcast with grandmasters commentating and powerful computers quickly simulating all possible future outcomes into a win-expectancy chart. Without these aids, the match would be incomprehensible. Despite the ubiquity of chess — an estimated 700 million people globally play at least one game of chess per year — what Carlsen and Anand are doing exceeds the understanding of all but a few thousand people. That said, numbers are in some ways a poor proxy for competing stratagems.
When followed from a purely numerical perspective, chess matches between top grandmasters usually take one of three forms: stalemates, one player consistently pressing their advantage until the other acquiesces, or a match that starts as one of the above two and then swings wildly on a single blunder. When watched on a computer, the win expectancy charts look familiar to any sports fan, even if the phrases “stalemate,” “pressing their advantage,” and “blunder” have little to do with what’s happening in the minds of the players.
But in one minute of an hours-long round, the win expectancy did swing massively in both directions due to simple blunders. Carlsen accidentally put himself one move away from a board position from which any top player would have throttled him. Anand then failed to make that move. Carlsen walked the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth in Game 7 of the World Series and Anand hit into a triple play. Carlsen butt-fumbled in the Super Bowl and Anand kicked the ball out of bounds as he tried to pick it up.
AFP
2. Chess involves two people looking deeper and deeper into the future, attempting to account for all the variation that could exist going forward, knowing that no matter how hard they think, their analysis is doomed to be incomplete. Given that the development of the frontal lobes of our brains is both what allows us foresight and that which separates us from other hominids, chess is a game of two people trying to be the better human.
A generous interpretation of a world championship in chess, then, would be to say that it’s the crowning of the ultimate human.
3. I once heard someone describe the pauses in the plays of Harold Pinter as “containing the life and death of an entire world in them.” Watch Carlsen’s pen stop moving when he realizes the mistake he’s made. I cannot imagine what’s happening in Carlsen’s head, but I imagine that the explosion of the entire world isn’t far off.
4. The round in the above video was the sixth in this year’s FIDE World Championship, and the two players entered locked in a 2.5-2.5 tie. Before this pair of moves, the match belonged to Carlsen, playing with the white pieces and imposing his will on Anand. After these moves, Anand eventually conceded and Carlsen picked up the win. The pair then drew the seventh and eighth rounds, leaving the match at 4.5 to 3.5 with four rounds to play.
Last year’s FIDE World Championship was also contested between these two men. The score was 2-2 after four rounds before Carlsen went on to rout Anand 6.5-3.5 to claim his first world championship.
Oli Scarff/Getty Images
5. Magnus Carlsen, at 23, is arguably the greatest chess player ever. Historically, chess players peak at 35, so Carlsen occupies a staggering, unprecedented position. He’s also, by his lofty standards, struggling.
At the 2014 Sinquefield Cup, contested in St. Louis, 22-year old Fabiano Caruana grabbed headlines by winning his first seven matches against one of the strongest fields in chess history. Carlsen finished a distant runner-up, and his current ELO ranking is down to 2863 from his record peak of 2882. He’s still the best player in the world, but the distance between him and the field seems to be closing.
The conventional wisdom among grandmasters watching this match is that Anand is outpreparing Carlsen in his opening, and that — with the exception of Round 6 — Carlsen has been forced to work his way back into every round. This has led to some exhausting and thrilling showdowns (including a 122-move draw in Round 7), but it also means that the world championship is being contested at a lower level than usual.
6. The match is being held in Sochi, Russia, about a 14-hour drive from the home of FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. Ilyumzhinov is perhaps best known for claiming he was given a tour of the galaxy by a spaceship full of aliens. His 1997 claims were taken seriously enough that a member of the Russian parliament petitioned former president Dmitry Medvedev to investigate the matter.
Reports out of Russia suggest that FIDE does not currently have the money in its bank accounts required to pay out the event’s €1 million prize fund. Meanwhile, the promotional organization that runs chess’s most prestigious event was just sold by American entrepreneur Andrew Paulson to Ilya Merenzon for £1 under opaque and suspicious circumstances. Unconfirmed suspicions suggest that Ilyumzhinov has a large proxy stake in this promotional organization. Merenzon, for his part, has guaranteed that all obligations will be met, and with Russian natural-gas giant Gazprom, a company with more than $150 billion in revenue, functioning as the primary sponsor for this tournament, that seems likely.
These issues did not pop up out of nowhere, though. Carlsen was almost stripped of his title after threatening to refuse to play in the world championship because of the venue and lack of funding. He pushed for the tournament to take place in March 2015, only to acquiesce at the last minute rather than lose his crown. Had Carlsen backed out, Sergey Karjakin would have taken his place after finishing second to Anand in the tournament qualifier. Karjakin is Russian Ukrainian, and he supported Ilyumzhinov’s decision to wear a Vladimir Putin T-shirt during his FIDE election campaign against former world champion Garry Kasparov.
A less generous interpretation of this world championship in chess, then, would be that it’s a politically motivated, ill-timed pageant orchestrated by Putin and a wealthy politician who believes he was abducted by aliens.
7. I didn’t see the blunder. I mean, I saw it. I was watching the match at about five in the morning, but I didn’t see what happened as it happened. The Houdini computer I was watching along with immediately registered the swing in win expectancy, but it frequently shows wild results in the first few seconds after a move. I’ve grown numb to the initial burst that suggests a move may have been a crucial blunder, as the computer often needs to push a little deeper before seeing that the status quo has not shifted. Additionally, the broadcast had gone to a break, so there was no live commentary on the moves. You can hear a snippet of the ad in the YouTube capture of the moment. Anand had already played before the commentators were back on air.
To a stronger mind than mine, it was obvious.
When Magnus blundered with Kd2, I was in the playing hall, and wanted to scream NE5!!! It could have changed chess history I guess;-). — Sergey Karyakin (@SergeyKaryakin) November 15, 2014
Having had the position explained to me, I now see that Anand could move his knight, eventually take two pawns, and press a massive advantage into a relatively easy win.
But to Anand, it was such an out-of-character mistake for Carlsen to make that he couldn’t see his simple path to a huge advantage. None of the futures he had visualized involved receiving a gift from Carlsen, so when one was presented to him, it was impossible for him to recognize and accept it. Anand was so distracted by what he assumed the future would be, he couldn’t see that he had already won the game. And so he didn’t.Porn star August Ames, a rising star in the adult film industry, reportedly died Tuesday in California. She was 23.
The Ventura County Medical Examiner's office confirmed her death to The Blast.
Friends of the actress tell The Blast they suspect it was a suicide. Image by: @msmaplefever via Instagram
Porn star August Ames revealed depression struggles before death
The outlet reports that her cause of death is currently unknown, but friends suspect it was a suicide, as Ames was prone to depression.
Law enforcement sources said she was pronounced dead at the scene, and there was no indication of foul play.
"She was the kindest person I ever knew and she meant the world to me," her husband, director Kevin Moore, told industry trade magazine Adult Video News (AVN), which first reported news of her death. "Please leave this as a private family matter in this difficult time."
Ames was born Mercedes Grabowski in Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1994, and worked in a bar and at a tanning salon before joining the adult film industry in 2013, according to AVN.
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Swedish DJ Avicii, best known for his 2013 song "Wake Me Up", died in Muscat, Oman on Apr. 20, 2018 at the age of 28. Avicii, whose real name was Tim Bergling, was nominated for two Grammyâs throughout his career - for working with David Guetta on 2012's "Sunshine" and for his song "Levels" in 2013 - and released two full-length albums and an EP between 2013 and 2017, the latter of which was nominated for a 2018 Billboard Music Award for top dance/electronic album. He retired from touring in 2016 due to health issues. ▲ New York Hip Hop artist Craig Mack, known for his 90s single "Flava In Ya Ear," died at age 46, on March 13, 2018. Mack died of heart failure at a hospital near his Walterboro, S.C. home, according to his producer. ▲ British actress Emma Chambers, who starred as Alice Tinker in the BBC's "The Vicar of Dibley" and had the role of Honey in "Notting Role," has died, the BBC reported. She was 53. Her agency said that she died from natural causes and will be "greatly missed." She is survived by her husband, fellow actor Ian Dunn. ▲ Daryle Singletary, a country singer who earned himself numerous Top 40 Country songs in the '90s and early 2000s, died on Feb. 12, 2018 at his home in Nashville. He was 46. No cause of death was given. Singletary had most recently performed at a show at the Cowboys Nightclub in Louisiana days before his untimely passing. ▲ Rapper Fredo Santana died from a seizure on Jan. 19, 2018, family members told TMZ. He was 27. The Chicago-born rapper, who was Chief Keef's cousin, was found by his girlfriend around 11:30 p.m. A number of rappers took to social media to pay their respects, including Drake who posted an Instagram photo of the two of them along with the caption, "Rest In Peace Santana." ▲ Dolores O'Riordan, the lead singer of "The Cranberries," has died, her publicist said on Jan. 15, 2018. She was 46. The Irish-born musician was in London at the time for a short recording session. "Family members are devastated to hear the breaking news and have requested privacy at this very difficult time," the statement read. ▲ Former child star Jon Steuer, best known for appearing on "Star Trek" before landing a role on the ABC sitcom "Grace Under Fire," died on Jan. 1, 2018. He was 33. News of Steuer's tragic death was confirmed by his members of his band P.R.O.B.L.E.M.S in a touching tribute. "It is with heavy hearts and saddened minds that we announce the passing of our dear friend and singer Jonny Jewels, AKA Jon Paul Steuer," the band wrote on Facebook. "We've lost our singer, but far, far more than that we've lost a friend. Rest in peace, Jonny... we love you. Jon Paul Steuer March 27, 1984 - January 1, 2018." The actor-turned-musicians cause of death was not made public. ▲ Reggie Osse, known to many as "Combat Jack," has died after a battle with colon cancer, according to multiple media and social media reports. He was 48. The legendary podcast host announced his diagnosis back in October and said that he underwent surgery and chemo treatment. "Take care of your health," he added. Osse was the host of the famous "The Combat Jack Show," which featured a slew of influential guests. Prior to his hosting gig, he was a marketing executive and attorney who represented JAY-Z, Damon Dash and more in the '90s. Osse is survived by his wife and three children. ▲ Continue to Full Gallery
Throughout her four years in the business, she appeared in more than 270 X-rated films for companies like Evil Angel, Smash Pictures and Lethal Hardcore.
Her popularity had risen steadily since she nabbed a nomination for Best New Starlet at the 2015 AVN Awards; she scored a nomination for Female Performer of the Year in 2016, 2017 and the upcoming 2018 Awards, set for January.
She also had a large social media following, though friends tell The Blast her prominent online presence may have contributed to her death.
Ames's Twitter feed was littered in recent days with cyberbullies accusing her of being homophobic after she publicly chose not to work with an unidentified actor who had previously shot gay porn.
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Porn star August Ames died Tuesday, Dec. 5. Image by: @msmaplefever via Instagram
"Whichever (lady) performer is replacing me tomorrow for @EroticaXNews, you're shooting with a guy who has shot gay porn, just to let cha know. BS is all I can say. Do agents really not care about who they're representing? #ladirect I do my homework for my body," she wrote Dec. 3.
Shortly after posting the tweet, Ames was forced to defend herself against a flood of online harassers.
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"NOT homophobic. Most girls don't shoot with guys who have shot gay porn, for safety. That's just how it is with me. I'm not putting my body at risk, I don't know what they do in their private lives," she wrote.
A day later, on Dec. 4, she expressed frustration with the criticism.
"Choose who YOU want to work with"
"Don't do anything that makes you uncomfortable"
Peter Baldwin, Emmy-winning ‘Wonder Years’ director, dead at 86
"Share your thoughts."
Hmm. Well, I did all three, and twitter took a dump on me," she wrote.
She defended herself again after a user responded to the tweet urging her to apologize.
"F--k you guys for attacking me when none of my intentions were malicious. I f--king love the gay community! What the f--k ever! I CHOOSE who I have inside my body. No hate," she wrote.
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Ames was remembered on social media by her fellow porn stars, including Charlie Sheen's ex-girlfriend Brett Rossi.
"A beautiful life is GONE because people like to use their 'fan base' to bully others because THEIR opinion doesn't agree with YOURS," she wrote on Twitter. "RIP to a sweet, kind, soul...I'm so sad & so angry. A life wasted simply because HER opinion didn't mesh with YOURS."
Added Anikka Albrite, "My heart is broken for my industry sister. People are cruel and depression is a bitch. Please be good to each other. #RIPAugust."Turn away from the mob. Ignore the angry brigade. Let their spittle run down the walls. This is the moment for the coalition to rise above the yells of the left. The government is about to be tested to what it must not allow to be its destruction. If hollow outrage is all Labour cares to offer, then reason and calm explanation must be the coalition's answer. Outrage fails in the end. It poisons rationality, it repels the moderate, it frightens the balanced. It lures zealots into a world where everyone inside thinks the same way and no one outside wants to enter. It is where Labour is going now.
The coalition mustn't follow. Its members must steel themselves for abuse. It is tempting, of course, when you are sniped at, to snipe back. David Miliband, who has taken to Twitter like a duck to quacking, is spending his days typing out edgy little digs at the coalition, particularly the Lib Dem part of it, puffed up by righteous indignation. But a political movement cannot be sustained by resentment. Rage against the machine is an emotion, not a policy.
The Liberal Democrats need to be reminded of this now, as they endure Labour's scorn. The party is unaccustomed to provoking reactions. Some MPs are wobbling. Many are worried about the VAT rise – forgetting that not long ago they believed Labour's VAT cut would have no economic effect. Lots will be worried about Danny Alexander's search for theoretical 40% cuts. They are alarmed by jeers from a party that has no alternative economic policy.
Nick Clegg is under serious internal pressure. His understandable response has been to promote the things from the coalition that Lib Dems like. Last week we got his freedom campaign, and on Tuesday we get more detail on the alternative vote referendum. All this is fine. But AV – whose impact either way it suits everyone to exaggerate – will prove peripheral beside the budget. The coalition cannot afford liberal political reform to look like a trade-off for Tory economics. That is Labour's line. Lib Dems mustn't fall for it.
So far they haven't, quite. The budget went down surprisingly well: voters agreed with George Osborne's description of it as unavoidable. The next battle is for the spending review this autumn to be seen as fair. Some will point to the unpicking of the budget measures by the Institute for Fiscal Studies as evidence – though taken as a whole, these stand up. They'll point to the scale of cuts too. But fairness is not another term for precise financial redistribution. Indeed, a heavily redistributive budget would be seen by many as unfair.
Instead, the key to fairness is inclusivity – and this is where the coalition must direct its efforts. There must be no sense that one group is exploiting others: the rich the poor, or the poor (through welfare) everyone else. Or Conservatives the Lib Dems, of course.
You don't have to agree with the Daily Mail to understand that some people who get incapacity benefit don't deserve it, and some who could work don't; or that housing benefit has become a racket paying millions to private landlords. Labour cannot be allowed to get away with the idea that it stands as the defender of an outraged majority, victims of an ideologically extreme government.
The left is beginning to smell like sour yoghurt, a long moan against the world as it is and how the last government left it. The problem is not that Labour is heading towards interesting ideological isolation. The varied shades from pale pink to light magenta in which its serious candidates are painting themselves are not socialism. The problem is that the party is being bundled up in all sorts of shallow resentments and is assuming that the public will share this negativity.
UK politics is often characterised as a contest for the centre ground, but that misdescribes the nature of the quest. Centrism implies banality, but I don't think voters want their governments to be mundane. There is a willingness to endorse radical action if it is explained and if it looks practicable. It worked for the left under Attlee and Blair; it worked for the right under Thatcher; and it is working – so far – for this government.
That a large number of people oppose what you are doing, very strongly, can become a strength, so long as they are seen to be opposing something rooted in a kind of imperative. Eight years ago almost half a million people marched through London with the aim of blocking the hunting ban – and to their dismay, the public took the government's side. The miners' strike, the Iraq war – examples are legion. Half a million people and more will probably be marching against the budget cuts soon, and will feel just as strongly that their solidarity brings invincibility. They may be proved wrong.
Keep calm and carry on has become a cliche, but it is good advice for a government. Stay pragmatic and keep explaining, firmly, in moderate language and with courtesy. The left will howl at budget cuts that their own economic legacy makes necessary, just as the right will howl against political reform. That doesn't mean these things won't get through. The nosiest causes often fail.
There are 110 days until the spending review is published. That is not long to win people over to an understanding that the new government will be attempting a fair distribution of an unavoidable shock. But unless that case is made, the coalition endeavour cannot last.photo by: Richard Gwin
University of Kansas Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little will step down from the job next summer, she and the university announced Thursday.
Gray-Little, 71, is KU’s first black and first female chancellor. The university’s 17th chancellor overall, she has held the job since 2009.
The chancellor’s announcement comes as several of her key initiatives are recently completed or winding down.
“During the past seven years, we have made tremendous strides as a university and positioned KU for even greater achievements in the future. We have completed many critical initiatives, and many more are nearing completion,” Gray-Little wrote in a message to campus shared Thursday.
“Now is an ideal time for the University of Kansas to identify a new leader to guide the next chapter in the university’s history.”
Details about the search for Gray-Little’s replacement have yet to be shared, but Kansas Board of Regents representatives said her early announcement allows them to conduct a thorough search and possibly eliminate the need for an interim chancellor.
“She’s given us a good long time so we can be thoughtful and deliberative about crafting the process,” Regents Chairwoman Zoe Newton said. “We’ve got some time.”
Gray-Little told the Regents several months ago she was considering retirement, Regent Bill Feuerborn said.
“Most of us knew that it was probably going to come sooner than later,” he said.
Newton and Feuerborn said they anticipate a closed search, meaning candidates or finalists will not be publicly announced until one is hired. The Regents currently are conducting a search — also closed — for a new president at Kansas State University.
“You just have so many more applicants,” Feuerborn said. “If somebody has a job at a university, then it’s on the nightly news that they’re applying for a job in Kansas, it can come back on them professionally.”
Feuerborn called the KU chancellor’s job — which oversees both KU’s Lawrence campus and KU Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan. — among the most important in the state. Gray-Little’s current salary is $510,041, the most of any state university leader, according to figures from the Kansas Board of Regents.
“We have to be sure we get the right person,” Feuerborn said. “It needs to be a person that is high in academics and high in business, because you’re running a billion-dollar business. It takes a special person.”
Feuerborn said Gray-Little has done an excellent job and “raised the standard” of academics at KU. Newton called her a “transformative” leader, praising her guidance and also her fundraising success.
Bold Aspirations, the five-year strategic plan rolled out during Gray-Little’s tenure, wraps up in 2017.
It includes the goal of redeveloping KU’s Central District. Plans and financing for the $350 million Central District project have been approved, shovels are turning and construction is slated to be completed before the end of 2018.
KU Endowment’s “Far Above: The Campaign for Kansas” ended June 30 with a total of $1.66 billion raised, the largest higher education fundraising effort so far in state history.
KU cited a number of Gray-Little’s other achievements in a news release on Thursday, including:
• Creating new admission procedures — which took effect this semester — and revamping financial aid by creating four-year renewable scholarships and expanding the Jayhawk Generations Scholarship. Those and increasing resources for marketing led to four straight years of freshman class growth.
• Securing state funding for KU’s Foundation Distinguished Professor initiative, which hired 12 “eminent” scholars to support the university’s strategic initiative themes. The final hire was announced earlier this year.
• Launching KU’s first universitywide curriculum, the KU Core, which incorporates both classes and experiences.
• Overseeing the university’s expansion of its KU School of Medicine-Wichita program from a two-year program into a four-year program in 2011, and the creation of the new School of Medicine at Salina the same year.
• Overseeing the “Changing for Excellence” efficiency and cost-saving initiative.
Though it will be her last at KU, the coming school year will remain busy, Gray-Little wrote.
“We have much work to do as an institution between now and then, including improving our retention, persistence and graduation rates; enhancing our research enterprise; growing further our faculty scholarship and sponsored inquiry; and continuing to attract investment in our people and programs,” she said in her campus message.
In addition to her role at KU, Gray-Little holds several national positions in academia.
In 2013, she was named to the boards of directors of the Association of American Universities and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. She currently is chairwoman of the board of directors of the APLU.
Prior to being hired at KU, she was executive vice chancellor and provost at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a native of eastern North Carolina.
A professor of psychology, Gray-Little received her bachelor’s degree from Marywood College in Scranton, Pa., and her master’s and doctoral degrees in psychology from Saint Louis University, according to her KU biography.
She was not available for additional comment Thursday afternoon.Steve Watson
Infowars.com
December 14th, 2010
A California woman is suing the TSA following an incident at Albuquerque International Sunport where she was subjected to an invasive breast groping in full public view by the TSA, despite making it known that she had been forced to undergo a mastectomy last year.
Adrienne Durso describes how a female TSA officer pulled her out of line after she had gone through the metal detector and proceeded to pat her down, “Heavily concentrating on my breast area” in a search that “just seemed to go on and on”.
Relating her story to KOB Eyewitness News 4, Ms. Durso explained how she was made to feel humiliated in front of her seventeen year old son and the rest of the queuing passengers.
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
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“I felt as though I didn’t have any rights other than I had to stand there and let them do what they want to do to my body,” Durso said.
Feeling violated and embarrassed, Ms. Durso asked to speak to a TSA supervisor.
As if things couldn’t get any worse, when the supervisor arrived and Ms. Durso’s son asked why he had also not been subjected to the body search, the TSA agent told the boy “well you don’t have boobs”.
Following that statement, Ms. Durso decided to take legal action, with her attorney arguing that the incident is a violation of 4th Amendment rights and constitutes unreasonable search and seizure.
Details of the lawsuit can be accessed here.
“I thought, ‘you know, surely this story must mean something to somebody, maybe this will help somebody who is trying to change the situation at airports because I don’t think anybody should have to go through this,” Ms. Durso added.
Below is a KOB Eyewitness News 4 report on the incident:
Clearly the TSA supervisor who made the lewd statement is either just plain stupid or took such umbrage with a seventeen year old boy daring to question his actions, that he snapped back with the statement as a pathetic way of re-exerting authority, suggesting that ‘yes the TSA can grope your mom’s breasts if it wants to and there’s nothing you can do about it boy’.
There have been scores of complaints against the TSA recently by women who say they were singled out for enhanced screening based on their figures.
Eliana Sutherland recently flew from Orlando International Airport and told Local 6 News she felt the two male TSA workers were staring at her breasts and chose her for additional screening because of their size.
“It was pretty obvious. One of the guys that was staring me up and down was the one who pulled me over,” said Sutherland. “Not a comfortable feeling.”
Former Baywatch star Donna D’Errico also recently claimed she had been singled out for the same reasons.
Another disturbing incident, which is subject to an ongoing lawsuit, involved a 21-year-old college student from Amarillo Texas. |
also unable to recognise a fearful facial expression on another person.
Doctors note this is an isolated defect: she has normal intelligence and feels other emotions such as joy, sadness, anger in the same way as others.
Scientists have identified only about 400 people worldwide with Urbach-Wiethe disease.
University of Iowa scientists were able to induce fear in her in 2013, when they made her inhale carbon dioxide.
Even at low concentrations, if the amygdala detects carbon dioxide in the body, it normally triggers fear and panic as it is a sign of possible suffocation.
Scientists predicted that SM wouldn’t panic after inhaling the gas, but in fact, she did.
Professor Antonio Damasio, a neuroscientist at the University of Iowa who has been studying SM, says what is remarkable about her is that her lack of fear means she has no traumatic memories.
When faced with poisonous snakes that would make most people shiver with fright, SM is so curious she has to be held back from touching them. She has also been held at knifepoint, at gunpoint and nearly been beaten to death. Her genetic condition meant she didn't feel scared in these situations and has no bad memories
If bad events happen in SM’s life, they are not registered as bad or threatening, and she doesn’t experience them as such, he said.
Even if her husband almost beat her to death, the memory is not traumatic, and leaves no 'emotional footprint' which could cause psychological problems for others.
‘If you have no fear, more terrible things will happen to you, but you don't personally experience them as terrible,’ Professor Damasio told NPR journalists.
‘If you have a lot of fear, fewer bad things are likely to happen, but it's very probable that your life is more painful to you. So is it better to be fearful or fearless?’
Scientists are now looking into whether SM’s case could help others with traumatic memories, such as soldiers with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, according to LiveScience.Quote Hello everyone!
Here is a fresh update on where we are at in terms of hitting our schedules for the Summer of SWTOR, and a recap of all the exciting things we have in the works for the months ahead. All of the below dates are the dates the teams are shooting for. As you saw with Game Update 2.2 which had to be moved back by one day, it’s entirely possible these will move!
Double XP Weekends! We’d like to help you stay cool in the heat of the summer with three sessions of double XP, beginning with this weekend:
Double XP Weekend 1: Start: June 21st @6pm GMT
End: June 24th @7am GMT Double XP Weekend 2: Start: June 28th @6pm GMT
End: July 1st @7am GMT Double XP Weekend 3: Start: July 4th @11am GMT
End: July 8th @7am GMT
On July 9th we will launch Nightmare Mode Scum and Villainy as a part of Game Update 2.2.2! This Nightmare Mode Operation is currently up on Public Test Server!
On July 23rd look for a return of the Relics of the Gree Event for a nice two week long run: Per community request the event will scale up to level 55 on this next run, including better loot rewards, commendations, and achievements
Possible drops include a new Sphere Transport Enclosure vehicle
August 6th is still our target date for Game Update 2.3. *Watch for lots more details on the features below in upcoming blogs, mailers, and community meet and greets!* Some of the bigger parts of this update are: New Flashpoints
New Daily Area
Game-wide color vibrancy improvement
New Recurring Event: Bounty Contract Week
Even though it’s part of Game Update 2.3 we are planning to start the Bounty Contract Week on August 13th. Bounty Contract Week is a monthly event, so if you miss it the first time, don’t worry – it will return next month! The event above was actually teased in our Community Meet & Greet last week and we’ll be sharing more details soon. Here is a snippet for now:
Bounty Contract Week provides new missions with full voice-over that will take you on a hunt for high-value bounty targets across the galaxy. Each bounty contract scales to your level, from 15 to 55, providing experience, credits, Commendations, and Reputation with the Bounty Brokers Association.
Game Update 2.4 is also in the pipe and being worked on for an October release. Even though our mantra is smaller more frequent patches this particular update is shaping up to be very big, with tons of new content and big PvP updates especially targeting Ranked play. We’ll start sharing details next month. If you absolutely *have* to glimpse the potential future, enter a Force trance and focus on these key phrases. Oricon. Warzone Arenas. Dread Masters.
This isn’t an exhaustive list, and we are also working on some longer term stuff. As we get closer we’ll have a lot more juicy details on what’s above. Keep your eyes peeled to the forums and SWTOR.com for more information! Bruce Maclean | Senior Producer
Follow us on Twitter @SWTOR | Like us on Facebook
[Contact Us] [Rules of Conduct] [F.A.Q.]How much paper does a person use on average in a year?
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WHATEVER happened to the “paperless office”? Thirty years ago the rise of computers was hailed as the beginning of the paperless-office era. In a 1980 briefing in The Economist entitled “Towards the paperless office”, we recommended that businesses trying to improve productivity should “reduce the flow of paper, ultimately aiming to abolish it”. Since then, alas, global paper consumption has increased by half. The average American uses the paper equivalent of almost six 40-foot (12-metre) trees a year. In Belgium paper consumption is pushed up by the EU bureaucracy in Brussels, which must produce its documentation in an array of different languages. The chart shows apparent paper consumption (production plus imports minus exports), which can distort results as it includes paper exported as other products. Finland, for instance, produces a lot of paper and converts it into packaging domestically, exaggerating its paper usage. The same is true for Austria, Sweden and Germany.Once again, not true.
CBO nailed the % of people who would gain coverage by 2016 under ACA. They said 89% of population. It's 89%. https://t.co/Y9WGnFND8t — Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) June 26, 2017
Of course, this crew of critics is also fond of saying that Obamacare is collapsing, in spite of several CBO assurances that it is not, so their antipathy is in some sense a kind of natural enmity between liars and people who strive for accuracy.
A number of conservatives outside the official party apparatus has put forth the subtler claim that the CBO overrates the incentive effects of the individual mandate. If true, it would imply the CBO had overestimated the expected coverage loss under Trumpcare.
Unfortunately, there’s no reason to think this is true, and even if it were true—indeed, even if the individual mandate had no incentive effect at all—the bulk of coverage loss CBO anticipates is attributable to massive GOP-proposed Medicaid cuts. Even if CBO adopted assumptions about the mandate that were as friendly as possible to Republicans, these conservatives would still be left to defend kicking more than 10 million people off of their health plans.
The Congressional Budget Office is right—about freedom.
This argument is more popular among congressional Republicans and this one guy at National Review. As House Speaker Paul Ryan told Fox News, “What they’re basically saying at the Congressional Budget Office is that, if you’re not going to force people to buy Obamacare, if you’re not going to force people to buy something they don’t want, then they won’t buy it.”
Perhaps he could use an explanation of the individual mandate. Force buy = higher insured. Choice = some choosing not to. (Freedom vs gov) https://t.co/Bh2urG7UV1 — Josh Holmes (@HolmesJosh) June 27, 2017
This is … not what the CBO said. But even if it were, it would be equivalent to saying Republicans want to unleash the power of the market which will produce plans that 20-plus million people will decide are garbage. This is not what these Republicans intend to be conveying, but it is consistent with their final excuse for the horrible Trumpcare CBO scores.
Insurance is stupid anyhow (for you).
This is a critique conservatives apply only to Medicaid, because to extend it to private insurance—the kind of insurance conservative policy wonks have, and would not voluntarily part with—would reveal its hollowness and insincerity.
The purpose here is to devalue the kind of insurance most people will lose under Trumpcare. The method is to ignore the bulk of scholarship on the impact insurance has on health outcomes in order to hyperfocus an Oregon study which was too underpowered to detect an effect on mortality, but did find that Medicaid populations are financially and psychologically better off than comparable populations who have been denied Medicaid.
Avik Roy, who has been on a P.R. offensive for a bill he refuses to say whether he helped to write, falsely describes Medicaid as “a program that researchers have shown has health outcomes no better than being uninsured.”
I would wager that zero conservative pundits would voluntarily surrender their health plans, even if those plans provided them only financial and psychological security. I would also wager that zero of those pundits would refuse to enroll their families in Medicaid were they to become unexpectedly impoverished.
What they will happily do is try to convince other families that their insurance is worthless, and convince the government to take huge risks with those families’ livelihoods, on the presumption that they will never be poor or uninsured themselves.PATNA: Chief minister (CM) Nitish Kumar has again raised the demand for special category status and special assistance to Bihar to take at the state at par with development states of the country.In a three page letter to PM Narendra Modi, which was handed over to him by Nitish on Saturday but made public on Sunday, the CM said even after achieving double digit growth rate in past several years Bihar is still behind the national average on major developmental parameters such poverty line, per capita income, industrialisation, and social and physical infrastructure.“A new policy framework is needed to uplift Bihar from backwardness and bringing it to the national mainstream,” he said adding “Special category status would ensure further growth because of greater availability of resources due to increased central share in the centrally sponsored schemes and incentivise private investors.”He even mentions in the letter state government has raised this issue through numerous letters and also placed it in the meetings of the NITI Aayog and Inter State Council in the past.The CM even pointed out that special category status would give concessions in direct and indirect taxes, thus generating greater employment opportunities for the people of the state.NOW here’s a brain bender: an extra set of female genes appears to make males more masculine. The surprising discovery suggests that sex chromosomes play a role in directing behaviour that extends beyond the effects of hormones.
“The predominant idea is that the difference between male and female behaviours is down to hormones,” says Emilie Rissman at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. This starts early in life – male fetuses are exposed to testosterone from 4 weeks old, while females are not.
To find out if sex chromosomes play a role in sex-specific behaviours beyond dictating which hormones are present, Rissman’s team took advantage of a mutation in mice that causes the sex-determining region of the male Y chromosome to jump to a non-sex chromosome. The mice are male but have two X chromosomes.
While these XX male mice had the same level of testosterone as normal XY mice, they displayed more masculine sexual behaviours – mounting females more often and ejaculating more frequently.
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Male mice with two X chromosomes mounted females more often than normal XY males did
To confirm that the differences were a result of a hidden factor on the X chromosome and not the lack of a Y chromosome, the team compared XY male mice with XXY male mice, which carry an extra X chromosome. Sure enough, the XXY mice also showed more male sexual behaviours (Hormones and Behaviour, DOI: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2012.02.003).
The finding tallies with research that suggests a female’s second “inactivated” X chromosome may actually express a quarter of its genes. These could alter the expression of genes on other chromosomes, and might be partly responsible for behavioural differences between the sexes, says Rissman.
“The extent to which these findings are generalisable to humans remains to be seen,” says William Davies at Cardiff University, UK. However, the idea may provide an explanation for evidence that XXY men have more sex than men with the regular XY.
If Rissman’s team can identify a region of the X chromosome that is linked to sexual activity, its protein products could be a target for libido-boosting therapies.By Heidi Stevens – The people have spoken, and the people hate my hair.
“How could anyone take seriously anything written by an author whose accompanying picture makes her look like a tramp, with greasy, matted, uncombed hair?” a fellow named David wrote me recently
“For heaven sake, comb your hair,” offered a woman named Jacquie. “Your picture instills not one iota of a knowledgeable person.”
“I would ask you to develop some insight,” wrote Amy, “but anyone who thinks the hairstyle you have is attractive likely is overflowing with too much narcissism to grasp the idea of personal insight.”
And, my personal favorite, from Karen: “My neighbors and I give you permission to shoot your hairdresser.”
They flow in by the week, these notes.
Each one takes me aback. Not because my hair is above reproach, but because my hair is completely beside the point.
It’s unremarkable in appearance (not dyed fuchsia, not shaved on one side) and has no relevance to my job: I’m not a model; I’m not selling hair products; I don’t work at a salon. (Though pity my poor hairdresser who does, what with the figurative crosshairs and all.)
I realize we have a cultural habit of turning women’s hair into a talking point, even when it doesn’t have much place in the conversation.
I realize we have a cultural habit of turning women’s hair into a talking point, even when it doesn’t have much place in the conversation. Hillary Clinton’s locks have inspired many an impassioned debate, from her headbands to her scrunchies to her layers.
Sheryl Sandberg’s hair has launched a thousand Google searches.
Remember when Michelle Obama got bangs?
But those women command real power and attention.
I command no power. I can’t even get my kids to go to bed on time. How does my hair capture even a single moment of attention? Simply because my photo appears in the newspaper?
I asked some fellow writers if they ever get hair harassed. They do.
“One woman literally wrote ‘I pushed a baby out. What have you ever done? Grow your hair!'” Meghan Daum from the Los Angeles Times told me.
The Tribune’s Mary Schmich, a Pulitzer Prize winner, has been fielding hair complaints for decades.
“Over the years, several readers have written to scold me for wearing my hair long, which they think shouldn’t be done past the age of 25,” she told me. “A few times, they’ve cut my column out of the paper and drawn new hairstyles for me — a flip, a blunt cut — and hand-written a note suggesting that I might be attractive if only I did something about my hair. I kept one of the drawings tacked to my cubicle for a while but, alas, it did not prompt me to improve my hair.”
I couldn’t find any male writers with hair stories, though Christopher Borrelli said readers often tell him to trade in his Red Sox ball cap for a Cubs hat.
Is this really where we’re stuck as a culture? At a place where we drown out women’s voices with critiques of their hair?
I called Carolyn Bronstein, a DePaul University professor whose research focuses on media representation and social responsibility, with an emphasis on gender.
“Hair is a powerful symbol for women,” she said. “It’s where a woman’s appearance sort of begins, at the top of the body. When women have unruly hair they are considered to be disobedient and uncontrollable.”
Is this really where we’re stuck as a culture? At a place where we drown out women’s voices with critiques of their hair?
I suppose the fact that I don’t get routine keratin treatments and salon blow-outs renders my hair unruly.
Bronstein likened it to Lena Dunham appearing nude on HBO’s “Girls.” Her body is not extraordinarily different than most women’s. But she doesn’t look like Scarlett Johansson, and she doesn’t live under a cloud of shame for this fact. Those two realities are enough to be a bucking of
“Women who dare to present themselves as they are, without subduing their hair and subduing the naturalness of their body, without dyeing and conditioning and waxing and plucking and dieting are deeply threatening to our society,” Bronstein said. “If we lived in a culture where women’s appearance no longer defined them and controlled them, women would be a much more visible and threatening force.”
Why is that, I wondered?
“Women are pressured to spend so much time and energy controlling our bodies,” she said. “Making sure our body is slim, hair-free, waxed and contoured, making sure our hair is carefully colored and cut stylishly and not frizzy. What if that energy went into something else?”
I reminded her that many (most, actually) of my hair haters are female. Schmich told me the same is true of her detractors.
“Women are not unaffected by the discourses in our society,” Bronstein said. “If we were able to resist them, we wouldn’t have so many women suffering from eating disorders and low self-esteem.”
That’s a pretty fantastic point. And a demoralizing one.
The notion that women should focus first and foremost on our appearance is so deeply ingrained that our fellow women scold us for failing to do so.
“Anyone who seems to have just a little bit of freedom, who allows themselves just a little bit of laxity in their appearance, I think, threatens the order of things,” Bronstein said.
My hair is naturally very curly, and despite the wishes of the aforementioned readers, does not respond well to combing. (Picture a lion’s mane, only bigger.) Believe it or not, I sort of straightened/styled it for my column photo.
I have spent moments of my life hating my hair and other moments liking it OK. Mostly though, I admit, I sort of ignore it.
I hope others can learn to do the same.
About the contributor
Heidi Stevens is the Balancing Act columnist and lifestyles writer for the Chicago Tribune, where she has worked since 1998. You can follow Heidi on Twitter.Share This Article:
The San Diego Chargers will hold a private workout for former Oregon quarterback and 2014 Heisman Trophy winner Marcus Mariota on April 15, according to College Football 24/7.
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Mariota is ranked as the No. 2 quarterback by most draft experts behind former Florida St. quarterback Jameis Winston.
To draft Mariota the Chargers would more than likely have to trade up from their No. 17 slot in the 2015 NFL Draft.
Rumors of the Chargers trading up for a quarterback, like Mariota, have swirled since Philip Rivers candidly expressed his interest to not move his family to Los Angeles in an interview with U-T San Diego.
Rivers has been documented as serving as a mentor to Mariota, making it possible that the team could draft Mariota and have Rivers groom him as the team’s quarterback of the future.
Rivers’s contract is set to expire at the end of the 2015 season and according to the interview with U-T San Diego he has not been in talks with the team about an extension yet.
Chargers to Hold Private Workout for Heisman Winner Marcus Mariota was last modified: by
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Follow Us:Is that you, Doctor Strange? Photo by ADRIAN SANCHEZ-GONZALEZ/AFP/Getty Images
Not content with popping up in just two massively popular film franchises, Benedict Cumberbatch is reportedly “in negotiations” to star as Doctor Strange in the upcoming movie adaptation of the Marvel comic.
The news doesn’t seem to be set in stone quite yet: Deadline’s Mike Fleming Jr. sounds confident, but he doesn’t offer confirmation from anyone at Marvel or representing the actor that Cumberbatch will definitely get the part. Yet, as could be expected, Cumberbatch fans are excited to see him as the Sorcerer Supreme. The actor is about to appear in the prestige picture The Imitation Game, playing Alan Turing, a role that many observers expect to land him an Oscar nomination.
Other details about the movie are at a minimum at the moment. (Could the comics’ Illuminati storyline finally emerge in film form via Doctor Strange? That’d be interesting.) Scott Derrickson, who has mostly made horror movies (Deliver Us From Evil, most recently) is directing, and the movie is scheduled for a July 2016 release.Former University of British Columbia president Arvind Gupta said he regrets his sudden resignation last summer and wishes he had pushed back harder against complaints about his performance.
"I now regret … resigning from the presidency and not pushing back harder from the board," Gupta told CBC Radio The Early Edition's Rick Cluff Thursday morning. It was his first broadcast interview since his resignation.
"I often wonder if I had not resigned whether wonderful scholars we have like Jennifer Berdahl wouldn't have had to go through what they went through," he said.
Berdahl, a UBC professor, spoke out last summer about Gupta's resignation in a blog, writing that he had lost a "masculinity contest" with the school leadership. Later, she said UBC's chair of the board of governors, John Montalbano attempted to gag her by calling to complain about the post.
Montalbano later resigned after an internal report concluded the university failed in its obligations to protect Berdahl's academic freedom.
Gupta said that he supports the academic freedom of professors. In fact, he wanted them to "stand up and take control, to run the university."
"They are on the ground. They're talking with the students. They're talking to other stakeholders. They know the reality of the situation."
'I did not have their confidence'
Gupta said that he wondered in hindsight if it would have been better "to take on these issues at the front end and not let things devolve the way they did."
He said the decision to resign was painful, adding he had hoped to transform UBC into a "truly 21st century university" when he took on the job.
He said he was never a "career administrator" and had hoped to create a university that was "well connected to the community, that is part of the community, that our students' education is going to be a partnership with the wonderful things that are happening in our society."
He was surprised to learn the board did not support him, saying he had positive feedback from professors. Instead, he said he learned late last summer that an ad hoc committee of the board had met and decided that "I did not have their confidence."
"I felt I was being put between a rock and a hard place. How do you manoeuvre when what you are hearing is so different from what I am being told?"
Gupta said there was no opportunity for him to speak to the board about their concerns.
'No choice but to resign'
"It was a very painful decision, but at that point I decided that I had no choice but to resign."
Gupta's interview follows the mistaken release of unredacted documents related to his departure from the university.
Those documents revealed a growing rift between UBC's board of governors and Gupta in the months ahead of the then-president's sudden resignation.
Gupta said he felt "compelled" to comment on the documents following their release. He also released a written statement on Wednesday before speaking to CBC.
UBC faculty call for review of board
The UBC Faculty Association released a statement Thursday afternoon lambasting the board of governors for its lack of transparency and accountability in the affair, and calling for an independent investigation.
"Given the events that have unfolded thus far and the information that has been revealed, we believe it is time for an external review of the UBC Board and its practices," the statement read.
"Such a review should be an open process that engages fully the faculty, students, staff, and alumni."
To listen to the full audio, click the link labelled: Arvind Gupta speaks out about UBC resignation.Image copyright Getty Images
Reported sexual offences on trains have more than doubled in the past five years, according to statistics obtained by BBC Radio 5 live.
British Transport Police figures show 1,448 offences were reported in 2016-17, up from 650 in 2012-2013.
Campaigners say the rise shows the importance of work done by authorities to encourage women to report incidents.
The majority of the incidents recorded were sexual assaults on females aged 13 and above.
The reports cover England, Scotland and Wales and include the London Underground.
The figures came to light following a freedom of information request from BBC Radio 5 live Investigates to British Transport Police (BTP).
One charity said the rise in the figures might be a response to better awareness of how to report offences among victims, rather than a rise in incidents.
Rachel Krys, co-director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, praised the effort BTP and train companies have put into campaigns to encourage victims to report abuse. She said the rise in reported offences does not suggest women are more at risk than a few years ago.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Jessica Brady was sexually assaulted whilst travelling home on the Tube
"It is really important that these campaigns continue. When the scale of sexual violence is better understood, police forces take it more seriously and measures can be taken to reduce the risks to women and tackle perpetrators, who for too long had been acting with impunity."
"Research on the London Underground last year showed that the majority of these offences happen during rush hour, dispelling the myth that this is anything to do with a late-night drinking culture.
"These figures showed that it is sober men, travelling to and from work who thought they were entitled to assault women passengers, and that they would get away with it."
'He was rubbing himself against me'
Journalist Imogen Groome was a victim of such a rush hour attack earlier this year on the London Underground.
Image copyright twitter.com/imigroome Image caption Ms Groome's experience has encouraged others to come forward
"I felt something against me, at first I just thought it was someone's bag or something but it continued. I realised what was happening, he was rubbing himself up against me. I was unable to move for about 10 minutes until the carriage got quieter. Then he moved away.
"My first thought was don't shout, he might have a knife, I felt angry and upset, I spoke to my editor when I arrived at work who said I should write it down.
"I didn't report it, felt like there was nobody to tell at the time. I didn't feel comfortable doing it.
"I have spoken to other women since telling my story in public and encouraged them to report incidents, I think it is the right thing to do.
"I don't feel like I can travel on public transport when it will be crowded. I plan ahead and get the bus."
Detective Chief Inspector Darren Malpas from BTP said: "When the 'Report it to stop it' campaign launched, we fully expected to record a rise in sexual offences and it is pleasing that previously reluctant victims of sexual offences now have the confidence to report this to us.
"Tackling all forms of unwanted sexual behaviour on public transport is a priority for British Transport Police and we have worked hard in recent years to send a clear message to victims that they will be taken seriously and we will investigate offences."
BTP say if you are a victim of a sexual offence on trains or the underground you can text them in confidence on 61016.Susanna and the Strictly Come Dancing star, 69, went head-to-head as they discussed women's rights in light of the marches that occurred over the weekend. Clearly siding with Susanna's co-host Piers Morgan, who has incessantly slammed the marches, Ann blasted the protests as "pathetic". "I can remember when women were unequal and nowadays it's gone completely the other way. All of these women shortlists, women have advantages on all custody cases in the court," she began.
ITV Ann Widdecombe and Susanna Reid went head-to-head during today's Good Morning Britain
ITV Ann didn't hold back when it came to giving her view on the women's marches
I can remember when women were unequal and nowadays it's gone completely the other way. Ann Widdecombe
"They weren't arguing, they were shouting. We've got advantages which men haven't got and I think that it's gone very unfairly the other way." And Ann didn't hold back when it came to giving Susanna, 46, a piece of her mind after the journalist claimed that women still weren't paid the same wages as their male counterparts. "That's nonsense!" Ann fumed, before the broadcaster attempted to interject. "May I finish Susanna," the Sugar Free Farm star demanded, before insisting that women often work part-time or take more time off than men because of childcare. While Piers, 51, is no stranger to challenging his co-host on the breakfast show, to seemed the star still wasn't taking things far enough as Ann ordered: "Stand up for yourself, Piers!"
ITV Ann labelled the marches 'pathetic' as Piers Morgan nodded in agreement
Celebrities join the Women's March Tue, January 24, 2017 Madonna, Scarlett Johansson, Cher & Emma Watson joined a host of celebrities supporting the Women's March protests around the world. Play slideshow Getty 1 of 26 Women's March: Madonna, Scarlett Johansson, Cher & Emma Watson
ITV Ann didn't take lightly to Susanna interrupting herAbout This Game
PT Boats is dedicated to a small group of little known but perhaps some of the most daring naval combatants of World War II: the torpedo boat crews. These ships are small, fast and agile, and extremely dangerous due to the on-board torpedo launchers. But they are also the most vulnerable of all military vessels. More than once in the history of WWII, a handful of those little deadly boats helped decide the course of an entire battle and executed seemingly impossible missions.
They were called the "mosquito fleet" because of their unique combat tactics. Using speed and agility, dodging enemy fire, PT boats approached seemingly giant enemy ships in a fight of David against Goliath, stung them with well aimed torpedo volleys - and immediately withdrew!
The casualties were immense, but the results often worth these lives and sacrifices. These small heroes of the great war made an unforgettable contribution to the Allied victory.
Key features:View 2 Photos
I'm an honest person.
But I happen to work in car sales. I got into car sales out of curiosity. My stepfather sold cars, and he made it seem like a romantic profession. He liked to talk about the freedom it gave him, and the thrill he got every time he sold a car. I love cars, so I thought selling cars would be a fun job.
But when I got into car sales, I discovered it has very little to do with cars. Car sales are about people, not cars. And really, the best background you could have to be successful in car sales wouldn't be in engineering, or anything to do with cars. It would be in psychology. Because everything in car sales turns on human psychology.
Human beings are simply not rational when it comes to three things: love, war, and cars. People are, to put it frankly, crazy when it comes to the purchase of automobiles.
Let me give you two examples. When I worked at a GM dealership, a middle-aged couple came in to look at SUVs. The woman clearly wanted an Equinox, but her husband wasn't interested. He steered her toward a Traverse, which is larger and more expensive, but more in line with what he thought she should have. The woman went along with her husband. So we test drove the Traverse and "worked numbers," which took about two hours, and came to a deal. I got my paperwork ready and we walked across the parking lot to the main building where the finance office was.
The instant we walked into the main building, she saw it. A brand-new Buick Regal sitting on the showroom floor. The woman nearly fell over.
"Oh my God!" she exclaimed. "What is that?!"Posted by
Aaron Nielsen,
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For those who enjoy reading soccer novels, many will be familiar with the theme of "my year with the club". Most are written following the top clubs in Europe, but there is one that is on many people's list as not just the best in the genre, but one of the best soccer books ever, and that is the "The Miracle of Castel di Sangro". In 1996, American author Joe McGinness, who unfortunately passed away last year from cancer, followed the day-to-day experience of Italian Serie B club Castel di Sangro Calcio; a club playing way over their heads and trying to survive. So far, no one has written one regarding an MLS club. Although to be honest, other than a "tell all" book about the behind the scenes from MLS head office on the structure/rules of the league, nothing has happened over the last nineteen years to create the same type of drama. Until arguably this season, with the Montreal Impact making it to the 2014-2015 CONCACAF Champions League Final. Each year, writers of RNO are asked who they think are going to win that edition of the Canadian Championship. Last season, based on both Toronto and Vancouver fighting for MLS playoff positions, I had a feeling Montreal had nothing to lose out of 2014 MLS contention that they could win it. My prediction didn't look good from the beginning, losing 2-1 to NASL-side FC Edmonton and a game that put Hanson Boakai on the map as a Canadian prospect for the future. Despite being up 3-0 at home in the return leg, it took a dramatic and controversial penalty in the 97th minute by Patrice Bernier to give the Impact a 4-2 win, otherwise Montreal would of been eliminated on away-goals.
Montreal played Toronto in the 2014 Canadian Championship Final, and after a 1-1 draw in Toronto where Ryan Nelsen played his typical conservative style that did not include Micheal Bradley, Julio Cesar or Jermain Defoe, the Impact used players like Marco Di Vaio and should of got more out of the game. This led to a winner-take-all final in Montreal where Jermain Defoe did suit up for Toronto, although still no Bradley or Cesar as they were off to the 2014 World Cup. Meanwhile, Montreal used their strongest eleven from the 2014 season, were going to go through on away goals with a nil-nil draw, until Felipe came off the bench to secure the Championship and advance the Impact to the CONCACAF Champions League with a goal in the 91st minute. Like many North American soccer tournaments, the CONCACAF Champions League tends to be a tournament set up for the television viewing of American and Mexican interests, with the goal each year of having the final eight clubs being four American teams and four Mexican teams. The Canadian team and other CONCACAF teams are drawn and play either one Mexican or American, and another team from the region. They play a three team home-and-away round robin group with the top team advancing. In Montreal's case, they were drawn with fellow MLS side New York Red Bulls and El Salvadorian club FAS. The tournament was set up unevenly in terms of schedule, with Montreal playing both FAS fixtures first before playing any games against the Red Bulls. Montreal swept the games against FAS, winning 1-0 at home and 3-2 away, with Marco Di Vaio being the hero in both games scoring the only goal at home and scoring two away, including the game winning penalty at the 60th minute. New York beat FAS in their first game eliminating the El Salvadoran club before losing to the Impact in Montreal on another goal by Marco Di Vaio. When the Red Bulls drew in El Salvador it guaranteed the Impact passage to the knock-out round. Montreal could have made things easier for themselves by beating New York in the final group game, but a 1-1 draw ment Montreal had the 4th seed and would have to play Pachuca in the quarter-finals. The CONCACAF Champions league scheduling creates an interesting scenario with four months between the group stage and the knockout stage. It also means the end of one MLS season and the beginning of a new one. Montreal, outside of CONCACAF success, ended a very disappointing season last place overall in MLS with just six wins in 34 games and 28 points. It also saw the retirement of Marco Di Vaio who was the Impact's talisman both in MLS and also the CONCACAF group stage success. The club would also lose Herman Bernardello, Nelson Rivas and Sanna Nyassi through moves during the 2014 off season. Although, the club did bring in Ignacio Piatti, who was just coming off another remarkable cup run with Argentinian side San Lorenzo. That club had just won their first Copa Libertadores against fancier Brazilian clubs Gremio and Cruzeiro and beating Nacional of Paraguay in the final 2-1 on aggregate. Regardless how they finished the season, I wrote my 2014 Montreal Impact season review with optimism, saying how they could forge a unique path in MLS and North American soccer. I was impressed with the club being the first to embrace the Academy and USL program in Canada, how the offseason provided an opportunity for change, and most importantly to me how the 2014-2015 CONCACAF group stages had played out. Many of the larger clubs had been eliminated and there was a hope that the Impact themselves would see this window to make significant moves and embrace the challenge, not only from a player perspective, but |
,000 years ago. This adds to an ever-growing body of research questioning the textbook presentation of when and how the Americas were populated.
According to Science News, numerous stone artifacts and bones of giant sloths were found at the rock shelter site of Santa Elina between 1984 to 2004. It is believed the small, bony sloth skin plates were perforated and notched to become ornaments for humans living in the area. Apart from the sloth remains and stone artifacts, remnants of hearths were also found in the sediment layers.
The Santa Elina Brazilian rock shelter (left) and sloth bones unearthed at the site. (right: top and bottom) ( D. Vialou et al/Antiquity )
Dating of the sediment, charcoal particles, and sloth bones suggest that people had reached Santa Elina at least 20,000 years ago. The dates also show that people were in the area again from about 10,120 to 2,000 years ago.
Another find suggesting a much earlier occupation of Brazil was made in 2014. That discovery included stone tools which were embedded in a rock shelter dated to 22,000 years ago. April Holloway reported on the discovery for Ancient Origins : “The stone tools were found in Serra Da Capivara National Park, Brazil, a region steeped in history with thousands of rock art paintings across 945 separate sites. The tools were dated using thermo luminescence, a technique that measures the exposure of sediments to sunlight, to determine their age.”
A previous discovery suggested that humans had used tools on a set of 30,000-year-old fossilized bones of giant sloths, saber-toothed cats, oversized armadillos, and other mega fauna that roamed the Americas until around 11,000 years ago. That discovery was made in Uruguay.
Remains of a Giant ground sloth (Eremotherium laurillardi). ( CC BY SA 2.5 )
With an even more controversial date, research presented in April 2017 about an Ice Age site in San Diego, California proposes people were already in the Americas 130,000 years ago. The proof supporting that date comes from a trove of ancient bones that were also apparently modified by early humans.
Each of these three finds fits into the category of the common evidence provided for earlier migration dates into the Americas – artifacts and hearths. These finds are usually dated by using the sediment they contained. Critics of these studies often claim that artifacts appearing to have been manipulated by humans do not provide strong enough evidence to ascertain that humans were in the Americas earlier than the accepted view. It is much rarer to hear of human bones older than 10,000 being discovered anywhere in the Americas. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t any.
In September 2017, researchers published their findings on a prehistoric human skeleton found in the Chan Hol Cave on the Yucatán Peninsula which is at least 13,000 years old. Unfortunately, the site of the find was looted shortly after the discovery of the human skeleton in February 2012; unknown divers stole all the bones lying around on the ground of the cave. The hip bone investigated by the German-Mexican researchers remained however - it was protected by the rock-hard lime-sinter of the stalagmite.
Prehistoric human skeleton in the Chan Hol Cave near Tulúm on the Yucatán peninsula prior to looting by unknown cave divers. ( Tom Poole/Liquid Jungle Lab )
There are also many recent studies which go against the mainstream perspective as to how the Americas were inhabited. For example, one emerging view suggests that ancient maritime travelers set out from Beringia about 16,000 years ago, and within just 1500 years their followers had ended up all the way down the Pacific coast to modern day Chile.
It is also worth noting that a recent analysis of human skulls provides evidence that the Americas were not just populated by one wave of migration – in fact, researchers have said that it took several migrations of ancient Asians and possibly Australian or Polynesian people to populate the Americas thousands of years ago.
Native Americans traveling by boat. ( Public Domain )
The old belief in ‘Clovis-first’ regarding the peopling of the Americas is now falling by the wayside as recent discoveries and improved dating techniques show time and again that the old picture doesn’t quite fit with the new information.
Top Image: Paleoindians hunting a Glyptodon. (c. 1920) by Heinrich Harder. Source: Public Domain
By Alicia McDermottToday a federal appeals court rebuked police in Orange County, Florida, for mounting a warrantless, SWAT-style raid on a barbership under the pretense of assisting state inspectors. "We have twice held, on facts disturbingly similar to those presented here, that a criminal raid executed under the guise of an administrative inspection is constitutionally unreasonable," says the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. "We hope that the third time will be the charm."
On August 19, 2010, two inspectors from the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR) visited the Strictly Skillz Barbershop in Orlando and found everything in order: All of the barbers working there were properly licensed, and all of the work stations complied with state regulations. Two days later, even though no violations had been discovered and even though the DBPR is authorized to conduct such inspections only once every two years, the inspectors called again, this time accompanied by "between eight and ten officers, including narcotics agents," who "rushed into" the barbershop "like [a] SWAT team." Some of them wore masks and bulletproof vests and had their guns drawn. Meanwhile, police cars blocked off the parking lot.
The officers ordered all the customers to leave, announcing that the shop was "closed down indefinitely." They handcuffed the owner, Brian Berry, and two barbers who rented chairs from him, then proceeded to search the work stations and a storage room. They demanded the barbers' driver's licenses and checked for outstanding warrants. One of the inspectors, Amanda Fields, asked for the same paperwork she had seen two days earlier, going through the motions of verifying (again) that the barbers were not cutting hair without a license (a second-degree misdemeanor). Finding no regulatory violations or contraband, the officers released Berry and the others after about an hour.
Although ostensibly justified as a regulatory inspection, the raid on Strictly Skillz, like similar sweeps of other barbershops that same day, was part of an operation hatched by Fields and Cpl. Keith Vidler of the Orange County Sheriff's Office (OCSO), who hoped to find drugs, "gather intelligence," and "interview potential confidential informants." The barbershops chosen for the sweeps "were apparently selected because they or barbers within them had on previous occasions failed to cooperate with DBPR inspectors," the court says. "All of the targeted barbershops were businesses that serviced primarily African-American and Hispanic clientele."
The 11th Circuit concludes that the Strictly Skillz raid, as described by Berry and the other plaintiffs, was "clearly established to be illegal from its inception," violating state law as well as the Fourth Amendment. "The facts of this case—when viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs—adequately establish that the 'inspection' of Strictly Skillz amounted to an unconstitutional search," the court says, "and that the unconstitutionality of such a search was clearly established at the time that the search was executed." Hence a federal judge was right to rule that Vidler and Deputy Travis Leslie do not deserve qualified immunity.
At this stage of the case, where Vidler and Leslie are trying to get the lawsuit dismissed based on the qualified immunity enjoyed by officers who do not blatantly disregard well-established constitutional law, judges are supposed to assume that the plaintiffs can prove the facts they allege. But there seems to be little real dispute about what the cops did that day; the exact number of officers involved, for example, is not going to be crucial in judging whether the search was legal.
"The August 21 search was executed with a tremendous and disproportionate show of force, and no evidence exists that such force was justified," the court says. "Despite the fact that neither OCSO nor the DBPR had any reason to believe that the inspection of Strictly Skillz posed a threat to officer safety, the record indicates that several OCSO officers entered the barbershop wearing masks and bulletproof vests, and with guns drawn; surrounded the building and blocked all of the exits; forced all of the children and other customers to leave; announced that the business was 'closed down indefinitely'; and handcuffed and conducted pat-down searches of the employees while the officers searched the premises. Such a search, which bears no resemblance to a routine inspection for barbering licenses, is certainly not reasonable in scope and execution....The show of force and search were all the more unreasonable in view of the fact that DBPR inspectors visited Strictly Skillz a mere two days before the search and had already determined that the barbershop and its employees were in compliance with state regulations."
Radley Balko noted the Florida barbershop raids, along with other examples of criminal searches disguised as regulatory inspections, back in 2010.
[Thanks to John K. Ross for the tip.]DALLAS — In the final seconds on Sunday, Dawn Staley gave a group hug to her assistant coaches. As confetti showered South Carolina’s first women’s basketball title winners, she put on a championship cap she had waited a career to wear.
Later, she wore a net like a necklace.
The 67-55 win over Mississippi State, a fellow member of the Southeastern Conference, was a victory that represented a diversity of opportunity, both for coaches and for teams playing for a championship.
Staley became the second African-American coach to win a title since the N.C.A.A. began sponsoring a women’s basketball tournament in 1982. (Carolyn Peck coached Purdue to the 1999 championship.) And for the first time in five years, a program not named Connecticut won a national title.
After Peck won her championship, she gave Staley a piece of the net that Purdue cut down in celebration that night, telling her to return it when she won her own title. For years, Staley kept the strand of net in her wallet.So it took forever, but I have just typed out the entire script for Frozen Fever!
Here you go! :D
Elsa: Okay, okay. Here we go. So lonely… Stiff. *GASP* Can’t do that! Come on Elsa. This is for Anna you can do this.
Kristoff: Relax. It looks great!
Elsa: I just want it to be perfect!
Kristoff: Speaking of perfect, check this out!
Elsa: Kristoff, are you sure I can leave you in charge here?
Kristoff: Absolutely.
Elsa: Because I don’t want anything to happen to this courtyard!
Kristoff: What could happen? It’s all set.
Elsa: Olaf, what are you doing!?!?
Olaf: I’m not eating cake.
Elsa: Olaf…
Olaf: But it’s an ice cream cake!
Elsa: And it’s for Anna.
Olaf: And it’s for Anna…
Elsa: *GASP* Oh, it’s time!
Olaf: Its time! For what?
Elsa: Okay… ahhhhhahh. Are you sure you’ve got this?
Kristoff: I’m sure.
Elsa: Don’t let anyone in before we’re ready.
Kristoff: I won’t.
Elsa: And don’t touch anything!
Kristoff: I’m just gonna stand here!
Olaf: I’m probably gonna walk around a little.
Elsa: And keep an eye on that cake!
Kristoff: She thinks you’re an idiot! Well clearly she’s wrong! Alright its fine.
Olaf: I can’t read… or spell!
Elsa: Pssst! Anna…
Anna: Yeah….
Elsa: Happy birthday!
Anna: To you…
Elsa: It’s your birthday!
Anna: To me… it’s my birthday…
Elsa: C’mon!
Anna: It’s my birthday?!?!
Elsa: Mm hmm, and it’s going to be perfect because…
You’ve never had a real birthday before
Except, of course, the ones just spent outside my locked door
So I’m here way too late to help you celebrate
And be your birthday date if I may…Achoo!
Anna: Elsa, I’m thinking you might have a cold
Elsa: I don’t get colds. Besides…
A cold never bothered me anyway
Anna: Woah… Fancy.
Elsa: Just follow the string!
Anna: Wait, what?
Elsa: I’ve got big plans, I’ve got surprises for today
Nothing but nothing’s gonna get in our way
I’ve worked for weeks, planned everything within my power
Olaf: Hello…
I even got Kristoff and Sven to take a shower
If someone wants to hold me back
I’d like to see them try
I’m on the birthday plan attack
I’m giving you the sun, the moon, and the sky! Achoo!
Olaf: Little brothers!
Elsa: I’m making today a perfect day for you
Anna: Ooh, a sandwich!
I’m making today a blast if it’s the last thing I do
For everything you are to me and all you’ve been through
I’m making today a perfect day for you
Achoo! Achoo!
Anna: They come in threes!
Elsa: I’m fine…achoo!
Surprise, surprise this one especially…achoo!
Anna: Wow! You’ve got me reeling, but I’m still concerned for you
I think it’s time that you go home and get some rest
Elsa: We are not stopping cause the next one is the best…ah…achoo!
Anna: Elsa, you gotta go lie down
Elsa: No way, we have to paint the town
Anna: But you need medical attention
Oaken: Are you sick? How ‘bout a cold remedy
Of my own invention
Elsa: No thanks
Anna: We’ll take it
Children’s Chorus: We’re making today a perfect day for you
Elsa: Making today a special day
Children’s Chorus: We’re singing a birthday song to make your wishes come true
Elsa: Wishes come true
Children’s Chorus: We love Princess Anna
Elsa: And I love you too
Children’s Chorus: So we’re making today a perfect day…in every way
Yes we are making today a perfect day
Olaf: I can fix it!
Kristoff: No, no!
Olaf: All fixed!
Kristoff: “Dry banana hippy hat”?!?!
Elsa: Come on! Now we climb!
Anna: Elsa that’s too much. You need to rest!
Elsa: No…we need to get to our birthday chills…I mean thrills!
Making dreams
Making plans
Go go go go!
Follow the string to the end
You are my very best friend
Anna: Elsa?!
Elsa: What? I’m fine
We’re gonna climb
We’re gonna sing
Follow the string
To the thing
Happy happy happy
Merry merry merry
Hot.. cold.. hot…birthday!
Anna: Woah! Elsa, look at you. You’ve got a fever. You’re burning up!
All right, we can’t go on like this
Let’s put this day on hold
Come on, admit it to yourself
Elsa: Okay…
I have a cold
I’m sorry Anna. I just wanted to give you one perfect birthday, but I ruined it. Again
Anna: You didn’t ruin anything. Let’s just get you to bed
Everyone: Surprise!
Anna: Wow!
Elsa: Wow…
Chorus: We’re making today a perfect day for you
Elsa: Achoo!
We’re making today a smiley face all shiny and new
Kristoff: There’s a fine line between chaos
Olaf: And a hullabaloo
Chorus: So we’re making today a perfect day
We’re making today a perfect day
A! N! N! A!
We’re making today a perfect day for you
Kristoff: Happy birthday
Chorus: Making today a happy day and no feeling blue
Kristoff: I love you baby!
Chorus: For everything you are to us
And all that you do
Kristoff: I do
Chorus: We’re making today a perfect day
Making today a perfect day
We’re making today a perfect day
Elsa: Perfect day
Anna: Okay, to bed with you.
Elsa: No, wait! Wait! All that’s left to do is for the queen to blow the birthday bugle horn!
Anna: Oh, no no no no no no no…
Elsa: ACHOO!
Anna: Best birthday present ever
Elsa: Which one?
Anna: You letting me take care of you
Elsa: Achoo!
Olaf: This way, Sludge and Slush and Slide and Ansel and Flake and Fridge and Flurry and Powder and Crystal and Small Patch and William!
Kristoff: Don’t ask…Custom Medical Stock Photo/SPL
Bacteria have been discovered in our guts that depend on one of our brain chemicals for survival. These bacteria consume GABA, a molecule crucial for calming the brain, and the fact that they gobble it up could help explain why the gut microbiome seems to affect mood.
Philip Strandwitz and his colleagues at Northeastern University in Boston discovered that they could only grow a species of recently discovered gut bacteria, called KLE1738, if they provide it with GABA molecules. “Nothing made it grow, except GABA,” Strandwitz said while announcing his findings at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Boston last month.
GABA acts by inhibiting signals from nerve cells, calming down the activity of the brain, so it’s surprising to learn that a gut bacterium needs it to grow and reproduce. Having abnormally low levels of GABA is linked to depression and mood disorders, and this finding adds to growing evidence that our gut bacteria may affect our brains.
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Treating depression
An experiment in 2011 showed that a different type of gut bacteria, called Lactobacillus rhamnosus, can dramatically alter GABA activity in the brains of mice, as well as influencing how they respond to stress. In this study, the researchers found that this effect vanished when they surgically removed the vagus nerve – which links the gut to the brain – suggesting it somehow plays a role in the influence gut bacteria can have on the brain.
Strandwitz is now looking for other gut bacteria that consume or even produce GABA, and he plans to test their effect on the brains and behaviour of animals. Such work may eventually lead to new treatments for mood disorders like depression or anxiety.
“Although research on microbial communities related to psychiatric disorders may never lead to a cure, it could have astonishing relevance to improving patients’ quality of life,” said Domenico Simone of George Washington University in Ashburn, Virginia.
Read more: Psychobiotics: How gut bacteria mess with your mindby Judith Curry
Paul Voosen has written a remarkable article in Science about climate model tuning.
Background
In November 2009 following ClimateGate, I made a public plea for greater transparency in an essay published at ClimateAudit: On the credibility of climate research.
When I started blogging at Climate Etc. in 2010, a major theme was a call for formal Verification and Validation of climate models:
In my 2011 paper Climate Science and the Uncertainty Monster, I raised concerns about IPCC’s detection and attribution methods, whereby the same observations used for validation were used either implicitly or explicitly in model calibration/tuning. A group of IPCC authors (led by Hegerl) responded to the uncertainty monster paper [link]. I further responded with a formal response to the journal. In a blog post, I highlighted one of the Climategate emails from Gabi Hegerl:
So using the 20th c for tuning is just doing what some people have long
suspected us of doing…and what the nonpublished diagram from NCAR showing correlation between aerosol forcing and sensitivity also suggested. Slippery slope… I suspect Karl is right and our clout is not enough to prevent the modellers from doing this if they can. We do loose the ability, though, to use the tuning variable for attribution studies.
In the blog post, I concluded:
To me, the emails argue that there is insufficient traceability of the CMIP model simulations for the the IPCC authors to conduct a confident attribution assessment and at least some of the CMIP3 20th century simulations are not suitable for attribution studies. The Uncertainty Monster rests its case (thank you, hacker/whistleblower).
Those of you who have followed the climate debate for the past decade will recall the reception of the climate community to my writings on this topic.
In 2013, a remarkable paper was led by Max Planck Institute authors Mauritsen, Stevens, and Roeckner:. Tuning the climate of a global model, which was discussed in a CE blog post:
“Climate models ability to simulate the 20th century temperature increase with fidelity has become something of a show-stopper as a model unable to reproduce the 20th century would probably not see publication, and as such it has effectively lost its purpose as a model quality measure. Most other observational datasets sooner or later meet the same destiny, at least beyond the first time they are applied for model evaluation. That is not to say that climate models can be readily adapted to fit any dataset, but once aware of the data we will compare with model output and invariably make decisions in the model development on the basis of the results.”
This paper led to a workshop on climate model tuning, and a subsequent publication in Aug 2016.The art and science of climate model tuning, which was discussed in this blog post. My comments:
This is the paper that I have been waiting for, ever since I wrote the Uncertainty Monster paper.
The ‘uncertainty monster hiding’ behind overtuning the climate models, not to mention the lack of formal model verification, does not inspire confidence in the climate modeling enterprise. Kudos to the authors of this paper for attempting to redefine the job of climate modelers.
Voosen’s article
Paul Voosen’s article in Science Climate scientists open up their black boxes to scrutiny follows up on the climate model tuning issue. Its a short paper, publicly available, it is well worth reading. Some excerpts:
Next week, many of the world’s 30 major modeling groups will convene for their main annual workshop at Princeton University; by early next year, these teams plan to freeze their code for a sixth round of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), in which these models are run through a variety of scenarios. By writing up their tuning strategies and making them publicly available for the first time, groups hope to learn how to make their predictions more reliable, says Bjorn Stevens, an MPIM director who has pushed for more transparency. And in a study that will be submitted by year’s end, six U.S. modeling centers will disclose their tuning strategies—showing that many are quite different.
Indeed, whether climate scientists like to admit it or not, nearly every model has been calibrated precisely to the 20th century climate records—otherwise it would have ended up in the trash. “It’s fair to say all models have tuned it,” says Isaac Held, a scientist at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, another prominent modeling center, in Princeton, New Jersey.
For years, climate scientists had been mum in public about their “secret sauce”: What happened in the models stayed in the models. The taboo reflected fears that climate contrarians would use the practice of tuning to seed doubt about models—and, by extension, the reality of human-driven warming. “The community became defensive,” Stevens says. “It was afraid of talking about things that they thought could be unfairly used against them.”
But modelers have come to realize that disclosure could reveal that some tunings are more deft or realistic than others. It’s also vital for scientists who use the models in specific ways. They want to know whether the model output they value—say, its predictions of Arctic sea ice decline—arises organically or is a consequence of tuning. Schmidt points out that these models guide regulations like the U.S. Clean Power Plan, and inform U.N. temperature projections and calculations of the social cost of carbon. “This isn’t a technical detail that doesn’t have consequence,” he says. “It has consequence.”
Aside from being more open about episodes like this, many modelers say that they should stop judging themselves based on how well they tune their models to a single temperature record, past or predicted. The ability to faithfully generate other climate phenomena, like storm tracks or El Niño, is just as important. Daniel Williamson, a statistician at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, says that centers should submit multiple versions of their models for comparison, each representing a different tuning strategy. The current method obscures uncertainty and inhibits improvement, he says. “Once people start being open, we can do it better.”
JC reflections
Well finally, we are seeing climate modeling move in a healthy direction, that has the potential to improve climate models, clarify uncertainties, and so build understanding of and trust in the models.
Its about time: the response of the climatariat to my writings about climate models circa 2009-2011 was to toss me out of the tribe, dismiss me as a ‘denier’, etc.
I find it absolutely remarkable that this statement was published in Science:
The taboo reflected fears that climate contrarians would use the practice of tuning to seed doubt about models—and, by extension, the reality of human-driven warming. “The community became defensive,” Stevens says. “It was afraid of talking about things that they thought could be unfairly used against them.”
This reflects pathetic behavior by the climate modelers (and I don’t blame Bjorn Stevens here; he is one of the good guys). You may recall what I wrote in my post Climategate essay Towards rebuilding trust:
In their misguided war against the skeptics, the CRU emails reveal that core research values became compromised.
So the climate modelers were afraid of criticisms by skeptics, and hence kept climate models opaque to outsiders, to the extent that even other climate modeling groups didn’t know what was going on with their climate models. And hence:
best practices in climate model tuning were not developed
scientists conducting assessment reports had no idea of the uncertainties surrounding conclusions they were drawing from climate models
scientists doing impact assessments and policy makers relying on this information had no idea of the uncertainties in the climate models and hence in their conclusions and the implications for their policies.
Well done, team climate modelers, all of this because you were afraid of some climate contrarians.
Well, it is a relief to finally see the international climate modeling community tackling these issues, thanks to the leadership by the MPI modelers.
But I wonder if these same climate modelers realize the can of worms that they are opening. In my blog post The art and science of climate model tuning, I wrote:
But most profoundly, after reading this paper regarding the ‘uncertainty monster hiding’ that is going on regarding climate models, not to mention their structural uncertainties, how is it possible to defend highly confident conclusions regarding attribution of 20th century warming, large values of ECS, and alarming projections of 20th century warming?Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams was rumoured to have set up a notorious IRA gang for ambush by the SAS as they tried to blow up a police station in May 1987, previously secret files have revealed.
A Sinn Féin spokesman on Friday dismissed the claim as ‘utter nonsense’.
Eight members of the Provisional’s East Tyrone Brigade were shot dead after they loaded a 200lb bomb onto a stolen digger and smashed through the gates of the RUC barracks in Loughgall, Co Armagh.
British Army special forces were lying in wait and killed them all, along with innocent bystander Anthony Hughes.
Declassified documents released through the National Archives in Dublin revealed that ballistic tests on weapons found on the dead were used in 40-50 murders, including every republican killing in Fermanagh and Tyrone in 1987.
Three civilian contractors had been murdered in the counties that year along with officers in the RUC and British Army’s Ulster Defence Regiment.
The rumour about Mr Adams was passed on to the Department of Foreign Affairs by the highly respected Fr Denis Faul about three months after the Loughgall operation.
The priest, who had been at school in St Patrick’s Academy, Dungannon with Padraig McKearney, one of the IRA gang, said the theory doing the rounds was that “the IRA team were set up by Gerry Adams himself”.
Fr Faul said he was “intrigued” by the theory.
Mr Adams declined to comment on the contents of the file when contacted in recent days.
A spokesman for Sinn Féin said on Friday the suggestion that Mr Adams might have “set up” the Loughgall gang was “utter nonsense”. He said he had spoken with Mr Adams’s office about the matter but not with the former party leader.
Fr Faul, a school teacher and chaplain in Long Kesh prison who died in 2006, said the rumour was that two of the gang - Jim Lynagh, a councillor in Monaghan, and McKearney - “had threatened to execute Adams shortly before the Loughgall event”.
It was being claimed that Lynagh and McKearney “disliked Adams’ political policy” and that they were leaning towards Republican Sinn Féin.
Weapons recovered
Eight guns, including six automatic rifles, a shotgun and a pistol, were recovered from the bodies of the attackers. In a letter to Brian Lenihan – then tánaiste and minister for foreign affairs – dated May 20th, Northern Ireland secretary Tom King disclosed that ballistic tests showed that “the weapons recovered were responsible for every single murder and attempted murder in Fermanagh and Tyrone this year, and indeed further afield as well”.
Those killings included three civilian contractors as well as members of the RUC and Ulster Defence Regiment.
The wreckage of the mechanical digger and the van used by the IRA men at Loughgall. Photograph: Tom Lawlor
Details of the government’s response, and reactions to it, are contained in State papers relating to Lenihan. They show how the government held firm in the face of criticism from republican elements in Ireland and the United States, as well as from within Fianna Fáil, but also baulked at a suggestion from King that an appreciative letter from him be made public to underscore joint British-Irish resolve to defeat terrorism.
On May 9th 1987, the day after the attack, the tánaiste condemned it as a “futile act of violence of the Provisional IRA”, which he said had “warped policies”.
In a follow-up statement to the Dáil on May 12th, Lenihan branded the IRA’s campaign of violence “morally wrong” and instanced how it had murdered a civilian and used his body “as bait to murder two policemen” as well as torturing informers.
Lenihan said the only way to address injustices in the North was through politics and not “indiscriminate violence”, a position not adopted by Sinn Féin, the IRA’s political wing until 1996.
‘Security benefit’
Two days after that Dáil statement, Daithí Ó Ceallaigh, an Irish diplomat at the Anglo-Irish Secretariat (the Belfast-based bureaucracy operating the Anglo-Irish Agreement), cabled Dublin following a briefing from the British giving details of the attack and noting that “one particular security benefit has been the removal of three very experienced paramilitaries – Lynagh, Paddy Kelly and McKearney”.
The cable also says King was very grateful for Lenihan’s Dáil statement, which he felt would have “significant benefits in convincing unionists in Northern Ireland of the determination of the Irish government to co-operate with the British government on security matters” and bolster nationalists who support constitutional methods and eschewed violence.
He wished to write a letter of thanks to Lenihan and to publish it.
“Speaking personally,” wrote Ó Ceallaigh, “I told my opposite number that I saw no advantage in publishing such a letter. I have consulted [Michael] Lillis [head of the Irish team in Belfast], who considers it would be very damaging to publish any such letter.”
Dublin cabled back that it agreed fully with this – “the sec. state should not repeat not publish letter”, it said.
In the following days, another Belfast-based Irish official, David Donoghue, embarked on a series of meetings with Catholic religious figures and the deputy leader of the SDLP, Seamus Mallon, filing reports back to Dublin each time, each marked “Secret”.
Bishop Cathal Daly wanted the RUC to give a full account of what had happened, nationalist reaction to which he thought would not benefit Sinn Féin in west Belfast.
Bishop Edward Daly said Lenihan “got it about right” in his reaction to Loughgall. The bishop told Donoghue he was “struck by the lack of sympathy in the Derry area with the dead IRA men”, whom he described as having been “armed to the teeth”.
The bishop was “affected by his own abhorrence of the Provisional IRA and the disgust he felt at their hypocrisy”, Donoghue reported.
“As a further example of the IRA’s hypocrisy, [Daly] mentioned a recent case in which a Derry post office was robbed by two men, one of whom the post mistress recognised as a prominent Sinn Féin spokesman. Within half an hour a Sinn Féin councillor had called round to sympathise with the postmistress and, within an hour, Sinn Féin had issued a statement deploring such anti-social acts.”
‘Madman’ Lynagh
Bishop Joseph Duffy told Donoghue that Sinn Féin had tried to organise the funeral of Lynagh but he had refused to deal with them, talking only to the family.
Duffy told Donoghue that Lynagh, who came originally from Monaghan, “was regarded locally as a ‘madman’ who would ‘have to have been put away, one way or the other’,” and had been responsible for “some 20 murders”.
Other voices, however, attacked the government’s condemnatory response.
Lenihan responded to Rev Joseph McVeigh from Fermanagh that he would “make no apology for condemning the campaign of violence of the IRA”.
The Irish United Counties Association of New York, of which Martin Galvin – director of Noraid, Sinn Féin and the IRA’s US fundraising arm – was secretary, wrote to Lenihan, asserting the IRA men had been “summarily executed”.
“The Irish Republican Army volunteers were Irishmen fighting on Irish soil for the freedom of a portion of Ireland. The British barracks which they intended to attack, as well as the British troops, constitute an illegitimate fort and foreign army of occupation,” said their letter, signed by Galvin and the organisation’s president, Frank Feighary.
Uinseann MacEoin, an architect and republican activist, told Lenihan he had been “viciously anti-Irish”, a view rejected by the minister who told him and a handful of Fianna Fáil members who objected to his comments that they were in line with party policy of supporting peaceful politics only. - Additional reporting PADemocrats wasted no time Saturday evening casting Reps. Michele Bachmann Michele Marie BachmannGillibrand becomes latest candidate scrutinized for how she eats on campaign trail Trump will give State of Union to sea of opponents Yes, condemn Roseanne, but ignoring others is true hypocrisy MORE (Minn.) and Ron Paul (Texas) — the top two finishers at the Ames straw poll — as extremists.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.), the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), said that the results of the unofficial poll of Iowa Republicans' preference in a presidential candidate showed that the Tea Party had effectively seized control of the GOP.
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"All of the Republican candidates have made clear their allegiance to the Tea Party, supporting extreme policies that would hurt the middle class, seniors, and students," Wasserman Schultz said in a statement. "The only winner tonight was the Tea Party."
Bachmann's been an unabashed supporter of the grassroots conservative movement, and Paul is seen as somewhat of a forefather of the Tea Party movement. They finished in first and second place, respectively, at about 29 percent and 28 percent of the final tally.
Democrats had been on the ground in Iowa throughout the week to push back against Republican rhetoric emanating from the straw poll and the GOP presidential debate held Thursday. They've gleefully played up moments from the field of candidates that highlight the party's deeply conservative elements.
"Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul represent the extreme right wing, which is the core of the Republican Party today," Wasserman Schultz said on MSNBC following the announcement of straw poll results.
Democrats feel as though they benefit from casting the GOP as extreme, so much so that it makes it largely irrelevant in terms of who wins the nomination, and faces President Obama in the general election.
"It doesn't much matter who their nominee is," the DNC chief said on MSNBC. "They're all trying to out-right wing each other."Adversário da Chapecoense na final da Copa Sul-Americana, o Atlético Nacional soltou uma nota na tarde desta terça-feira na qual solicita à Conmebol que o título da competição seja entregue à equipe catarinense. Com três parágrafos, o clube colombiano mostrou solidariedade a parentes, amigos e torcedores das vítimas do voo que deixou mais de 70 mortos na última madrugada e pediu que a taça vá para Chapecó. O GloboEsporte.com apurou que a Conmebol deverá aceitar o pedido, mas que ainda não há data para a confirmação do título ao clube brasileiro por se tratar de um caso sem precedentes.
+ Siga a cobertura do acidente e toda a repercussão em tempo real
Nota em que Atlético Nacional pede à Conmebol que o título vá para a Chapecoense (Reprodução / Atlético Nacional )
- Depois de estar muito preocupado pela parte humana, pensamos no aspecto competitivo e queremos publicar esse comunicado no qual o Atlético Nacional pede para a Conmebol que o título da Copa Sul-Americana seja entregue à Associação Chapecoense de Futebol como louro honorário pela sua grande perda e em homenagem póstuma às vítimas do fatal acidente que deixa o nosso esporte de luto. Da |
downed Malaysia Airlines jetliner, is seen during a ceremony in Berchem, Antwerp 47/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Mourners dressed in white leave flowers as they gather in remembrance of the owners of the Asian Glories restaurant, after they were killed in the Malaysia Airlines MH17 plane crash over eastern Ukraine, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands 48/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 The Dutch government honors the victims of the MH17 plane crash in Ukraine with a full-page advertisement in Dutch newspapers, as seen here in Rijswijk, The Netherlands. The advertisement with the title 'Geschokt en verdrietig' (Shocked and sad) contains the 298 names of the victims 49/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A pair of clogs with a message for Dutch citizens killed on the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 is seen in front of the Netherlands Embassy in Washington 50/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 People surround a refrigerator wagon as monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and members of a forensic team inspect the remains of victims from the downed Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, at a railway station in the eastern Ukrainian town of Torez 51/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and members of a forensic team inspect a refrigerator wagon containing the remains of victims from the downed Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, at a railway station in the eastern Ukrainian town of Torez 52/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko (C) leaves the Netherlands embassy in Kiev after signing his condolences ceremony 53/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Pro-Russia rebels guard a train containing the bodies of victims of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH 17 crash in Torez, Ukraine 54/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Alexander Hug (L), Deputy Chief Monitor of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, speaks to reporters after visiting a train containing the bodies of victims of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crash in Torez, Ukraine 55/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Tirso Pabellon, brother of Irene Pabellon Gunawan, one of three Filipinos who perished in the Malaysia Airlines MH17 passenger plane crash over East Ukraine, leave the Department of Foreign Affairs after obtaining his passport at suburban Pasay city south of Manila, Philippines 56/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Bodies are removed from the site AFP/Getty 57/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Members of the Ukrainian Emergencies Ministry gather the remains of victims at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 near the village of Hrabove, Donetsk region 58/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Ukrainian workers handle debris at the main crash site of the Boeing 777 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 59/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Mourners attend a memorial service held for a family of five killed in the flight MH17 disaster, in the suburb of Eynesbury in Melbourne, Australia 60/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Dutch King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima sign a condolence register at the Ministry of Safety and Justice in The Hague, the Netherlands 61/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte signs a condolence register at the Ministry of Safety and Justice in The Hague, The Netherlands 62/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Malaysian youth gathers during a candlelight vigil for passengers and crew of the Malaysian Airline crash flight MH17 in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia 63/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Journalists look at debris from the Boeing 777 Malaysia Arilines flight MH17 64/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Pro-Russian separatists block the way to the crash site of MH17, near the village of Grabove AFP/Getty 65/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Local people roam the wreck of MH17 AFP 66/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Men carry a stretcher with a bodybag at the crash site EPA 67/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A local resident stands among the wreckage at the site of the crash Getty Images 68/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Passengers' belongings lie at the site of the crash Getty Images 69/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Floral tributes are left at the gates of the Dutch Embassy in London and the Dutch flag flies half mast a day after a Malaysian airliner was brought down over Ukraine carrying over 170 Dutch passengers REX 70/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A woman crosses herself as people lay flowers and light candles in front of the Embassy of the Netherlands in Kiev, to commemorate passengers of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 carrying 295 people from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur which crashed in eastern Ukraine 71/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Personal belongings and luggage of passengers between debris of the Boeing 777, Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which crashed during flying over the eastern Ukraine region near Donetsk 72/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Armed pro-Russian militants pass next to the wreckage of a Boeing 777, of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 debris, which crashed during flight over the eastern Ukraine region near Donetsk 73/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Members of the Ukrainian Emergency Ministry search for bodies near the site of Thursday's Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane crash near the settlement of Grabovo, in the Donetsk region 74/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 People search for bodies at the site of the crash of a Malaysian airliner near the town of Shaktarsk, in rebel-held east Ukraine 75/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A diver searches for a black box on the site of the crash of a Malaysian airliner near the town of Shaktarsk, in rebel-held east Ukraine 76/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Rescuers stand on the site of the crash of a Malaysian airliner near the town of Shaktarsk, in rebel-held east Ukraine 77/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Debris is seen at the site of Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane crash near the settlement of Grabovo, in the Donetsk region 78/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Belongings of passengers on the site of the crash of the Malaysia Airlines near the town of Shaktarsk, in rebel-held east Ukraine 79/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A woman grieves for victims of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 crash as she arrives to lay flowers at the the Dutch embassy in Moscow, Russia 80/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Relatives of a passenger who was on board Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur react over the news at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang 81/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Widi Yuliono a relative of John Paulisen, shows photographs of John Paulisen (Top-L), Yuli Hastini (Top-R), Arjuna Martin Paulisen (L) and Sri Paulisen (R) who are victims of the Malaysian Airline flight MH 17 plane disaster in eastern Ukraine, at his residence in Solo, Central Java, Indonesia 82/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 People bring flowers and candles to the Dutch embassy to commemorate the victims of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane crash in Kiev 83/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A young boy lights a candle in commemoration of the victims of Malaysia Airlines plane accident in eastern Ukraine in front of the Dutch embassy in Kiev 84/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A woman holding a sign that reads, "Putin is a murderer", lies down near flowers left by people to commemorate victims of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane crash, at the Dutch embassy in Kiev 85/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A family member cries as she receives the news of the ill fated flight MH17 on the phone in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 86/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Family members of the crashed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 cry at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang, Malaysia 87/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A firefighter sprays water to extinguish a fire, amongst the wreckages of the Malaysian airliner after it crashed, near the town of Shaktarsk, in rebel-held east Ukraine 88/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Flames and smoke amongst the wreckages of the Malaysian airliner near the town of Shaktarsk, in rebel-held east Ukraine 89/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A firefighter stands as flames burst amongst the wreckages of the Malaysian airliner near the town of Shaktarsk, in rebel-held east Ukraine 90/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Self-proclaimed Prime Minister of the pro-Russian separatist 'Donetsk People's Republic' Alexander Borodai (C) stands as he arrives on the site of the crash of a Malaysian airliner, near the town of Shaktarsk, in rebel-held east Ukraine 91/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Debris of the Boeing 777, Malaysia Arilines flight MH17, which crashed during flying over the eastern Ukraine region near Donetsk 92/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 People walk amongst the debris, at the crash site of a passenger plane in Ukraine AP 93/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 The wreckages of the Malaysian airliner Getty Images 94/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 An armed pro-Russian separatist stands at a site of a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane crash in the settlement of Grabovo in the Donetsk region of Ukraine Reuters 95/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 People stand near part of the wreckage of a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane near Grabovo Reuters 96/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Taken from an amateur video, smoke rises from a fireball seen in the distance shortly after a Malaysia Airlines passenger plane crash AP 97/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A man works at putting out a fire at the site of the plane crash in the settlement of Grabovo in the Donetsk region of Ukraine Reuters 98/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Smoke rises up at a crash site near the village of Grabovo AP 99/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Smoke rises from the wreckage at the crash site near the settlement of Grabovo in the Donetsk region of Ukraine Reuters 100/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A part of the wreckage of a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane is seen after it crashed near the settlement of Grabovo Reuters 101/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Alleged image of smoke from the crash 102/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 In a picture taken from a mobile phone smoke is seen rising from the crash site AP/Andrei Kashtanov 103/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A general view of the crash site in the Grabovo settlement in the Donetsk region of Ukraine Reuters 104/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Emergencies Ministry members work at the site of a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane crash in the settlement of Grabovo in the Donetsk region Reuters 105/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 takes off from Schiphol airport near Amsterdam EPA 106/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Outgoing Belgian vice prime minister and foreign minister Didier Reynders makes a statement on the crash AFP/Getty Images 107/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 The upper floor of Schiphol Airport is closed for media and reserved for family and relatives of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Reuters 108/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A closed Malaysia Airlines counter at Schiphol airport near Amsterdam EPA 109/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Airport security personnel look at the flight information board in the departure hall, at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, where flight MH17 was flying to AP 1/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A man cycles past a piece of the wreckage of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in Petropavlivka, Ukraine 2/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Dutch military personnel carry a coffin containing the remains of the victims of the MH17 plane crash to a hearse at the airbase in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. A Dutch Air Force C-130 Hercules plane and an Australian Royal Australian Air Force C17 transport plane brought back 74 more coffins containing remains of the victims of the Malaysia Airlines MH17 plane crash, from Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine to the Eindhoven air base in the Netherlands 3/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A couple is backdropped by pictures of victims of the MH17 air crash during a memorial concert in Kharkiv, Ukraine 4/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A man lights a candle as family and friends attend a multi-faith service at St. Paul's Cathedral in Melbourne for those who lost their lives on Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 5/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A woman cries after leaving a photograph (L) on the altar during a multi-faith service at St. Paul's Cathedral in Melbourne for those who lost their lives on Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 6/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Sympathizers hug in front of flowers tribute at the entrance to the Korporaal van Oudheusdenkazerne, army barracks, in Hilversum, The Netherlands, where bodies of the people killed in the Malaysia Airlines MH17 air crash in Ukraine will be identified 7/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Angela (R) and George Dyczynski (L), walk past a Flight MH-17 memorial after arriving at Schiphol Airport, the Netherlands. Mr and Mrs Dyczynski have flown from Perth, Australia, to search for their daughter, Fatima, who was on board Malaysia Airlines flight MH-17 which crashed in the Ukraine 8/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 The tower and airport buildings are reflected in the window of a terminal building as an airline hostess arranges floral tributes placed at the the Schiphol Airport, near Amsterdam, The Netherlands 9/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Members of the church share their grief at a Multifaith memorial service held for victims of the MH17 disaster at St Paul's Cathedral in Melbourne, Australia 10/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 The column of funeral hearses drive near Boxtel after leaving the airbase in Eindhoven to Hilversum, The Netherlands, after the arrival of a Dutch Air Force C-130 Hercules plane and an Australian Royal Australian Air Force C17 transport plane with the first bodies of the 298 victims of the Malaysia Airlines MH17 plane crash in eastern Ukraine arrives from Kharkiv, Ukraine 11/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A procession of hearses carrying the bodies of victims in the Malaysia Airlines flight MH-17 crash, depart after a ceremony at Eindhoven Airbase, the Netherlands 12/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 (L-R) King Willem-Alexander, Queen Maxima and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte at the airbase in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, during the arrival of a Dutch Air Force C-130 Hercules plane and an Australian Royal Australian Air Force C17 transport plane with the first bodies of the 298 victims of the Malaysia Airlines MH17 plane crash in eastern Ukraine arrives from Kharkiv, Ukraine 13/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Bodies of victims in the Malaysia Airlines flight MH-17 crash are transferred to funeral hearses by Dutch military personnel during a ceremony at Eindhoven Airbase, the Netherlands. The bodies were flown from Kharkiv, Ukraine, to the Netherlands after being recovered from the crash site 14/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Relatives of victims of the downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 react as people wearing white clothes gather in memory of the victims, in Amsterdam 15/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 People release white balloons in the air during a silent march in memory of the victims of the downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, on July 23, 2014 in Amsterdam Getty Images 16/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 People gather during a silent march in memory of the victims of MH17, in Amsterdam Getty Images 17/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Hearses carry coffins containing unidentified bodies from the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 leave the airport in Eindhoven, Netherlands EPA 18/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A column of funeral hearses carrying the bodies of Dutch passengers after leaving the airbase in Eindhoven EPA 19/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 The extent of the wreckage at the site where Malaysia Airlines MH17 crashed near Hrabove (Grabovo) close to Donetsk Reuters 20/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A Malaysian man lights up candles during a vigil in remembrance for passengers and crew of the Malaysian Airline flight MH370 & MH17 in Petaling Jaya near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia EPA 21/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Belongings of victims are pictured at the crash site of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in a field near the village of Grabove, in the Donetsk region AFP 22/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Flowers lie on the tarmac of Kharkiv airport as a Hercules transport aircraft, belonging to the Royal Dutch Airforce, prepares to take off AFP 23/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Honour guards load a coffin of one of the victims of Malaysia Airlines MH17 downed over rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine on to a transport plane heading to the Netherlands at Kharkiv airport 24/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A coffin containing the body of a victim of the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 is loaded onto a plane for transport to the Netherlands during a departure ceremony in Kharkiv, Ukraine 25/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A coffin containing the body of a victim of the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 is loaded onto a plane for transport to the Netherlands during a departure ceremony on July 23, 2014 in Kharkiv, Ukraine 26/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Honour guards take part in a ceremony with coffins of some of the victims of Malaysia Airlines MH17 downed over rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine before they are being loaded on to a transport plane heading to the Netherlands at Kharkiv airport 27/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A coffin containing the body of a victim of the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 is loaded onto a plane for transport to the Netherlands during a departure ceremony in Kharkiv, Ukraine 28/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Dutch flags fly half-staff in honour of 3 citizens, a mother,17 year old daughter and 13 year old son were among the victims of flight MH17 in Delft, Netherlands 29/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 On-lookers during a ramp ceremony at Kharkiv Aiport 30/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A worker uses a forklift to load coffins containing some of the remains of the victims of Malaysia Airlines MH17 downed over rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine on to a transport plane before they head to the Netherlands at Kharkiv airport 31/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 People lay coffins containing some of the remains of the victims of Malaysia Airlines MH17 downed over rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine on the tarmac before loading them on a transport plane heading towards the Netherlands at Kharkiv airport 32/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Ukrainian officials attend a farewell ceremony near the transport plane used to carry some of the remains of the victims of Malaysia Airlines MH17 downed over rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine, before it heads off to the Netherlands at Kharkiv airport 33/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 The train carrying the bodies recovered from the downed Malaysian flight MH17 arrives at the Malyshev Plant, in the government-held Ukrainian city of Kharkiv 34/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A Ukrainian policeman watches as a train carrying the remains of the victims of Malaysia Airlines MH17 downed over rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine arrives in the city of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine 35/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Police officers secure a refrigerated train loaded with bodies of the passengers of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 as it arrives in a Kharkiv factory for a stop 36/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A guard stands on a train carrying the remains of victims of Malaysia Airlines MH17 downed over rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine after it arrived in the city of Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine 37/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 An armed pro-Russian separatist stands guard as monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and a team of Malaysian air crash investigators inspect the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, near the village of Hrabove (Grabovo), Donetsk region 38/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Malaysian experts check debris at the main crash site of the Boeing 777 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which crashed flying over the eastern Ukraine region, near Grabovo, some 100 km east from Donetsk 39/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Members of the Malaysia Special Disaster Assistance and Rescue Team, on hand to assist in the investigation into the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, wait near the gate of the Malyshev Factory, a state-owned producer of heavy machinery where a train transporting the victims was taken in Kharkiv, Ukraine 40/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Two black boxes recovered from the crash site of the MH17 jet being handed over to Malaysian officials during a press conference in Donetsk 41/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A Malaysian expert (L) examines a black box belonging to Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 during its handover from pro-Russian separatists, in Donetsk 42/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Aleksandr Borodai (C), self proclaimed Prime Minister of the self proclaimed 'Donetsk People's Republic', looks up after speaking at a news conference in which he he handed over the two black boxes of the crashed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 to Colonel Mohamed Sakri (2-R) of the Malaysian National Security Council during a press conference organized in Donestk 43/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Donetsk People's Republic official (L) and Colonel Mohamed Sakri of the Malaysian National Security Council signing documents during the handing over to Malaysia of the two black boxes recovered from the crash site of the MH17 jet at a press conference in Donetsk 44/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Malaysian activist holds banners during a protest at the United Nations office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 45/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Netherlands Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans speaks after a vote at the United Nations. With the backing of Russia, the UN Security Council unanimously condemned the downing of a Malaysian passenger jet and demanded crash site access in rebel-held east Ukraine. Timmermans who flew to New York to attend the Security Council session expressed outrage over the delays in securing the crash site 46/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A photo of Belgian national Benoit Chardome, one of the victims of the downed Malaysia Airlines jetliner, is seen during a ceremony in Berchem, Antwerp 47/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Mourners dressed in white leave flowers as they gather in remembrance of the owners of the Asian Glories restaurant, after they were killed in the Malaysia Airlines MH17 plane crash over eastern Ukraine, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands 48/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 The Dutch government honors the victims of the MH17 plane crash in Ukraine with a full-page advertisement in Dutch newspapers, as seen here in Rijswijk, The Netherlands. The advertisement with the title 'Geschokt en verdrietig' (Shocked and sad) contains the 298 names of the victims 49/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A pair of clogs with a message for Dutch citizens killed on the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 is seen in front of the Netherlands Embassy in Washington 50/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 People surround a refrigerator wagon as monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and members of a forensic team inspect the remains of victims from the downed Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, at a railway station in the eastern Ukrainian town of Torez 51/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and members of a forensic team inspect a refrigerator wagon containing the remains of victims from the downed Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, at a railway station in the eastern Ukrainian town of Torez 52/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko (C) leaves the Netherlands embassy in Kiev after signing his condolences ceremony 53/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Pro-Russia rebels guard a train containing the bodies of victims of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH 17 crash in Torez, Ukraine 54/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Alexander Hug (L), Deputy Chief Monitor of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, speaks to reporters after visiting a train containing the bodies of victims of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crash in Torez, Ukraine 55/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Tirso Pabellon, brother of Irene Pabellon Gunawan, one of three Filipinos who perished in the Malaysia Airlines MH17 passenger plane crash over East Ukraine, leave the Department of Foreign Affairs after obtaining his passport at suburban Pasay city south of Manila, Philippines 56/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Bodies are removed from the site AFP/Getty 57/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Members of the Ukrainian Emergencies Ministry gather the remains of victims at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 near the village of Hrabove, Donetsk region 58/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Ukrainian workers handle debris at the main crash site of the Boeing 777 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 59/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Mourners attend a memorial service held for a family of five killed in the flight MH17 disaster, in the suburb of Eynesbury in Melbourne, Australia 60/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Dutch King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima sign a condolence register at the Ministry of Safety and Justice in The Hague, the Netherlands 61/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte signs a condolence register at the Ministry of Safety and Justice in The Hague, The Netherlands 62/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Malaysian youth gathers during a candlelight vigil for passengers and crew of the Malaysian Airline crash flight MH17 in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia 63/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Journalists look at debris from the Boeing 777 Malaysia Arilines flight MH17 64/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Pro-Russian separatists block the way to the crash site of MH17, near the village of Grabove AFP/Getty 65/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Local people roam the wreck of MH17 AFP 66/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Men carry a stretcher with a bodybag at the crash site EPA 67/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A local resident stands among the wreckage at the site of the crash Getty Images 68/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Passengers' belongings lie at the site of the crash Getty Images 69/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Floral tributes are left at the gates of the Dutch Embassy in London and the Dutch flag flies half mast a day after a Malaysian airliner was brought down over Ukraine carrying over 170 Dutch passengers REX 70/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A woman crosses herself as people lay flowers and light candles in front of the Embassy of the Netherlands in Kiev, to commemorate passengers of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 carrying 295 people from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur which crashed in eastern Ukraine 71/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Personal belongings and luggage of passengers between debris of the Boeing 777, Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which crashed during flying over the eastern Ukraine region near Donetsk 72/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Armed pro-Russian militants pass next to the wreckage of a Boeing 777, of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 debris, which crashed during flight over the eastern Ukraine region near Donetsk 73/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Members of the Ukrainian Emergency Ministry search for bodies near the site of Thursday's Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane crash near the settlement of Grabovo, in the Donetsk region 74/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 People search for bodies at the site of the crash of a Malaysian airliner near the town of Shaktarsk, in rebel-held east Ukraine 75/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A diver searches for a black box on the site of the crash of a Malaysian airliner near the town of Shaktarsk, in rebel-held east Ukraine 76/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Rescuers stand on the site of the crash of a Malaysian airliner near the town of Shaktarsk, in rebel-held east Ukraine 77/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Debris is seen at the site of Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane crash near the settlement of Grabovo, in the Donetsk region 78/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Belongings of passengers on the site of the crash of the Malaysia Airlines near the town of Shaktarsk, in rebel-held east Ukraine 79/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A woman grieves for victims of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 crash as she arrives to lay flowers at the the Dutch embassy in Moscow, Russia 80/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Relatives of a passenger who was on board Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur react over the news at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang 81/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Widi Yuliono a relative of John Paulisen, shows photographs of John Paulisen (Top-L), Yuli Hastini (Top-R), Arjuna Martin Paulisen (L) and Sri Paulisen (R) who are victims of the Malaysian Airline flight MH 17 plane disaster in eastern Ukraine, at his residence in Solo, Central Java, Indonesia 82/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 People bring flowers and candles to the Dutch embassy to commemorate the victims of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane crash in Kiev 83/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A young boy lights a candle in commemoration of the victims of Malaysia Airlines plane accident in eastern Ukraine in front of the Dutch embassy in Kiev 84/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A woman holding a sign that reads, "Putin is a murderer", lies down near flowers left by people to commemorate victims of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane crash, at the Dutch embassy in Kiev 85/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A family member cries as she receives the news of the ill fated flight MH17 on the phone in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 86/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Family members of the crashed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 cry at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang, Malaysia 87/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A firefighter sprays water to extinguish a fire, amongst the wreckages of the Malaysian airliner after it crashed, near the town of Shaktarsk, in rebel-held east Ukraine 88/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Flames and smoke amongst the wreckages of the Malaysian airliner near the town of Shaktarsk, in rebel-held east Ukraine 89/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A firefighter stands as flames burst amongst the wreckages of the Malaysian airliner near the town of Shaktarsk, in rebel-held east Ukraine 90/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Self-proclaimed Prime Minister of the pro-Russian separatist 'Donetsk People's Republic' Alexander Borodai (C) stands as he arrives on the site of the crash of a Malaysian airliner, near the town of Shaktarsk, in rebel-held east Ukraine 91/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Debris of the Boeing 777, Malaysia Arilines flight MH17, which crashed during flying over the eastern Ukraine region near Donetsk 92/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 People walk amongst the debris, at the crash site of a passenger plane in Ukraine AP 93/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 The wreckages of the Malaysian airliner Getty Images 94/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 An armed pro-Russian separatist stands at a site of a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane crash in the settlement of Grabovo in the Donetsk region of Ukraine Reuters 95/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 People stand near part of the wreckage of a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane near Grabovo Reuters 96/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Taken from an amateur video, smoke rises from a fireball seen in the distance shortly after a Malaysia Airlines passenger plane crash AP 97/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A man works at putting out a fire at the site of the plane crash in the settlement of Grabovo in the Donetsk region of Ukraine Reuters 98/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Smoke rises up at a crash site near the village of Grabovo AP 99/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Smoke rises from the wreckage at the crash site near the settlement of Grabovo in the Donetsk region of Ukraine Reuters 100/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A part of the wreckage of a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane is seen after it crashed near the settlement of Grabovo Reuters 101/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Alleged image of smoke from the crash 102/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 In a picture taken from a mobile phone smoke is seen rising from the crash site AP/Andrei Kashtanov 103/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A general view of the crash site in the Grabovo settlement in the Donetsk region of Ukraine Reuters 104/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Emergencies Ministry members work at the site of a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane crash in the settlement of Grabovo in the Donetsk region Reuters 105/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 takes off from Schiphol airport near Amsterdam EPA 106/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Outgoing Belgian vice prime minister and foreign minister Didier Reynders makes a statement on the crash AFP/Getty Images 107/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 The upper floor of Schiphol Airport is closed for media and reserved for family and relatives of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Reuters 108/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 A closed Malaysia Airlines counter at Schiphol airport near Amsterdam EPA 109/109 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 Airport security personnel look at the flight information board in the departure hall, at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, where flight MH17 was flying to AP
In one of the calls a man going by the name Bezler can be heard saying: "Just now a plane was hit and destroyed by the miners group."
In a post on Russian social media site Vkontake, Igor Girkin, also known by the nom de guerre Strelkov, the commander of the pro-Russian Donbass People's Militia, is reported to have claimed that his forces shot down a plane in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine at 5.50pm (GMT+4), shortly before reports emerged the passenger jet was missing.
According to a translation obtained by The Independent, he allegedly wrote: "We warned [sic] not to fly in our sky."
Kiev has branded the event an "act of terrorism" and demanded a UN investigation, while Russian president Vladimir Putin has insisted it would not have happened if the Ukrainian government had agreed to a ceasefire.
Nine Britons died in the crash, along with 54 Dutch passengers, 45 Malaysians, 27 Australians, 12 Indonesians, four Germans, four Belgians, three Filipinos and one Canadian.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.
Subscribe nowEcuador's President Rafael Correa has ordered 20 Pentagon officers and staff to leave the country.
Correa ordered the US Department of Defense personnel out of the country on April 7, said Jeffrey Weinshenker, a spokesman at the US embassy in Quito.
In a statement released to AFP on Friday, Weinshenker said the US respects Ecuador's right as a "sovereign" nation to expel the US military staff, but regrets that the move "will severely limit our bilateral cooperation on issues related to security".
The expulsions make good on a months-old threat by Correa to drastically pare back the presence of US military officers and staff in Ecuador, over concerns about US "espionage" and "American imperialism."
Quito in January said it wanted to reduce the number of US military staff on its territory, and also warned it would not allow US "espionage equipment" on its soil.
Correa said he became aware of what he described as a bloated US military presence in his country after learning that four Pentagon personnel were aboard an Ecuadoran military helicopter that came under fire in October near the border with Colombia.
Bilateral relations also have been strained by the controversy over US surveillance of foreign governments, which was brought to light by fugitive intelligence leaker Edward Snowden.
In 2009, Correa opted not to renew a lease that had allowed the United States to operate its counter-narcotics operation in South America.AUSTIN, Texas -- The Texas Legislature ended its 85th regular session Monday, having passed hundreds of bills but leaving several high-profile issues unresolved.
While both chambers successfully passed a two-year $217 blllion budget — the only item the Legislature is required to pass — other controversial items, such as a "bathroom bill" to regulate which restrooms transgender Texans can use, didn’t make it to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk, prompting speculation that a special session is inevitable.
Meanwhile, some measures that did make it to the governor are likely headed for a lengthy court battle.
And, then of course, there are hundreds of less controversial bills that the governor can not decide whether to sign, veto or become law without his signature.
Here are answers to some questions about what to expect in the coming weeks:
For how long and when would a special session happen?
The Texas Constitution requires lawmakers to meet every two years for no more than 140 days. Beyond that, the governor can call the Legislature back for as many special sessions as he wants, with each lasting no more than 30 days.
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“I can tell you this, and that is when it gets to a special session, the time and topics are solely up to the governor of the state of Texas,” Abbott told reporters Monday at a bill-signing event. He added he would make an announcement about a possible upcoming special session “later this week.”
In a special session, lawmakers can’t consider anything that isn't on the governor’s call, though they can file bills on other topics in hopes that the governor might add their issue to the agenda.
A special session also can be a lot shorter than 30 days. In 2009, then-Gov. Rick Perry called lawmakers back to the Capitol for a special session on July 1 — a full month after the end of that year's regular session — with three items on the agenda. Members addressed all three issues the next day, returning home in time to celebrate the Fourth of July with their families.
In the final weeks of the most recent session, Lt. Gov. Dan |
representation.
Push 5 into an empty stack:
5
Push 3 into the stack:
3
5
Push 9 into the stack:
9
3
5
Take one item from the stack:
3
5
The big thing to notice here is that new items are added to the top of the stack. In a “Last-In First-Out” (LIFO) fashion. Meaning that when you take (pop) an item from the stack, it will be the last item that was pushed into it.
Another way to visualize how this works is by thinking about a stack of plates. If you put one plate on top of another you can’t take out the bottom plate without taking out the top plate first.
That’s all you are doing with a stack, pushing things to the top or poping things out. There is no indexing.
Let’s see some code examples on how this can be used.
Example 1 (flatten)
One classic example is to flatten an array. In other words, convert a multi-dimensional array into a one-dimensional array.
arr = [1,2,3,[4,5],6] arr.flatten
In Ruby we have the flatten method which does this for you. But what if you didn’t have this method? And how does this method work?
This is where the stack comes in!
Ruby implements the push & pop methods, so we can treat an array like a stack.
Note: Both push & << are the same method. I will be using << in my code examples.
The idea is to go over every element and check if it’s an array or something else. If it’s an array then we will push the elements inside this array back into the stack.
What happens is that we keep removing array layers (like an onion) until there are none left. This will leave us with a flattened array.
Here’s is the code:
arr = [1,2,3,[4,5],6] flat = [] arr.each do |thing| if thing.is_a? Array thing.each { |i| arr << i } else flat << thing end end p flat # [1, 2, 3, 6, 4, 5]
You will notice there is no pop method call in this code. This is because I'm letting each do the hard work of taking the items from the stack & feeding them to my algorithm. Also notice how the order of the elements is not mantained when doing things this way.
Another version using until & empty? :
until arr.empty? thing = arr.pop if thing.is_a? Array thing.each { |i| arr << i } else flat << thing end end p flat # [6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1]
Since we are using pop now, instead of letting each do its thing, we are getting the flattened array in the correct order... But in reverse.
This reveals an interesting property of stacks:
Whatever list of things you put in, it will come back in the same order but in reverse.
Tip: The Array#flatten method takes an argument, which lets you define how many layers of nesting you would like to remove (by default all of them).
Example 2 (balanced parenthesis)
Here is another example, where there is no equivalent Ruby method to do everything for you. And it's also another classic problem in computer science: matching balanced parenthesis.
The idea is that you are given a string & you need to validate if the parenthesis make sense.
For example, let's say you are writing a math evaluation program. You want to make sure the input is valid before processing it.
Example (Valid Input):
input = "1 + (4 + 6) * 2"
Example (Invalid Input):
input = "1 + (4 + 6 * 2"
You can use a stack to keep track of any parenthesis you have found in the input & then when you find a new parenthesis you check the top of the stack to make sure it matches the closing parenthesis.
If there is no match that means that you have invalid input.
Example:
PARENS = { "(" => ")", "{" => "}", "[" => "]" } OPENING_PARENS = PARENS.keys CLOSING_PARENS = PARENS.values def valid_parentheses(string) stack = [] string.each_char do |ch| if OPENING_PARENS.include?(ch) stack << ch elsif CLOSING_PARENS.include?(ch) ch == PARENS[stack.last]? stack.pop : (return false) end end stack.empty? end p valid_parentheses("(){}[]") # true p valid_parentheses("[(])") # false
Another thing you will notice is that I ended this valid_parentheses method with a stack.empty?. That's to make sure we don't end with unclosed parenthesis.
If all the parenthesis are correctly closed then the stack should be empty 🙂
Example 3 (directions)
One more example to make sure you understand how to apply this.
In this case we are given a set of directions & we are told that we need to optimize it to save our traveler some time.
Here is an example set:
["NORTH", "SOUTH", "SOUTH", "EAST", "WEST", "NORTH", "WEST"]
You will notice that if you go north then south you will end up in the same place (assuming it's the same distance both directions). That's what we need to optimize & we can do that using a stack.
Example:
input = ["NORTH", "SOUTH", "SOUTH", "EAST", "WEST", "NORTH", "WEST"] directions = [] opposites = { "NORTH" => "SOUTH", "SOUTH" => "NORTH", "EAST" => "WEST", "WEST" => "EAST" } input.each do |dir| opposites[dir] == directions.last? directions.pop : directions << dir end p directions
Conclusion
I hope you learned something new & that you start looking for ways to use stacks to solve programming challenges.
Don't forget to share this post so more people can read this!
RelatedLocal retailers feel fashion pain as global brands expand
Posted
After 20 years working in Australian fashion, designer Fiona Wood is launching her own label, called Wonderwood.
Putting together her first collection has meant doing everything herself — from design, to patternmaking, to developing a catalogue.
But starting small and focusing on quality has always been part of Ms Wood's plan.
"I really wanted to focus on well-made garments that are made in Australia, and also support our local industry," she said.
It is the very opposite of the global fast fashion chains that are sending Australian operators to the wall.
Since December, half a dozen well-known brands have collapsed: the women's retailers Marcs and David Lawrence; the children's label Pumpkin Patch; cut-price shoe store Payless Shoes; suit-maker Herringbone; and its stablemate Rhodes and Beckett.
It all adds up to almost 4,000 jobs on the line so far.
Former chief executive of David Jones, now global retail advisor at PwC, Paul Zahra, says that is just the beginning.
"It's murder on the dancefloor, it's tough," he said.
"People are trying to work through the different dynamics that are occurring, and actually work out how do they play in this new world."
He cautioned that retailers would see further disruption when Amazon and Alibaba arrive in Australia.
"We're about to see a lot more blood," he said.
Zara, H&M, Uniqlo, take over market share
Last year, global brands including Zara, H&M and Uniqlo took $600 million out of Australian clothing retail.
Industry consultant Steve Kulmar, from Retail Oasis, said these international brands were hollowing out the middle market.
"This erosion is causing businesses to simply go broke," he said.
"They haven't been able to grow, their cost of rent, their cost of staff, their cost of supply has all increased, but their sales line hasn't."
Australian brands are also behind in logistics. While the average local fashion retailer sees new stock once a month, Zara has it down to twice a week.
Zara also tracks every garment from the sewing machine to the sales floor.
"Now that logistics is quite magnificent, there isn't a retailer in Australia that has anything comparable," Mr Kulmar said.
Mr Zahra said bigger volumes meant global brands were winning on the pricing front too.
"A lot of the product that Marcs and David Lawrence offered was, dare I say it, available in the international retailers at a cheaper price," he said.
Last year's late winter and cold spring forced retailers to cut prices to move stock, while 2016 Boxing Day sales have been extended.
But Mr Zahra said shoppers were learning to expect continual discounts.
"Traditional retailers have actually discounted to survive, and to drive growth. It's certainly not a sustainable strategy," he said.
"What customers are wanting is lower prices, so if that means discounting then that's what that means, but it's best to be setting the price, the right price, front up, and getting the volume."
Flight to online
There is also the ever-growing competition from online sales to consider.
Mr Kulmar said for many Australian brands it had simply meant a flight to safety.
"Thinking about what's the safest design to follow, what's the safest colour to follow. And so what they're doing is accidentally commoditising their offer," he said.
"So when they finally bring that product to market it looks the same as the retailer next door — and regretfully it looks the same as the international retailer."
For women at least, clothes are at their cheapest in almost 30 years.
But designer Ms Wood said cheap fashion came at a cost to consumers, and the environment.
"I hope to encourage consumers to buy less and buy well," she said.
"That may sound strange coming from someone who wants to sell clothes, but I do believe it's better to have a small concise wardrobe that you get value out of."
Topics: retail, business-economics-and-finance, company-news, economic-trends, australiaThe last time he was stopped, searched and questioned by New York City police while walking in the Bronx, Joseph Reed had some questions of his own.
"I asked him, what's the probable cause? Who's your supervising officer? Who's the officer in charge? What's his name?" the 47-year-old veteran recounted on a rainy day last week at the corner of West 42nd St. and 8th Ave., a flashpoint for stop-and-frisks in midtown Manhattan.
Reed said that during the police check last month he was made to stand against a wall. According to police, he matched the description for a black perp in red shorts who had just pinched a phone from a passenger on the 4 train.
But his insistence on getting the officer's identity seemed to be particularly irksome, especially when police found no contraband on him.
"The lieutenant who put his hands on me, he didn't want to give me no name," Reed said. "I asked and I asked. They didn't try to hear it."
Joseph Reed, 47, stands at the corner of 42nd Street and 8th Avenue, where he has been stopped, frisked and released by police on multiple occasions. The intersection in midtown Manhattan recorded 1,633 stops in 2011, according to an analysis by the website DNAinfo, making it the biggest hotspot for stop-and-frisks in the city that year. (Matt Kwong/CBC)
Technically, according to civil rights experts, police didn't have to supply a name. But that was in early September. And what a difference a month can make.
Under new NYPD rules following a federal judge's 2013 ruling that declared stop-and-frisks unconstitutional, police have formally introduced a system of issuing stop "receipts" to justify reasons for every such encounter.
The paperwork requires officers to fill out special forms identifying themselves, as well as providing their badge numbers and a written explanation for what prompted a stop that doesn't result in an arrest.
Controversial tactic
The new NYPD policy mirrors changes that the Toronto police introduced in June, allowing officers to continue the controversial practice of "carding" individuals suspected of criminal activity, but requiring police to provide a receipt with an explanation for each interaction.
To civil-rights activists who have long condemned stop-and-frisk as a tactic that unfairly targets Hispanics and blacks, the new NYPD measures could restore some degree of public trust in New York's finest.
"These policy changes are important first steps in reducing illegal and discriminatory stops," said Chris Dunn, associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
The new NYPD stop-and-frisk "receipts" require officers to include their name and shield number, as well as a reason for making the stop in the first place. (NYPD)
"The new receipts (scheme) will improve accountability and hopefully de-escalate tensions during police stops."
But just because the NYPD is compelled to go along with the new receipts policy doesn't mean they have to like, the head of the policing union said.
Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, warned the receipts would endanger public safety, calling the program "another nail in the coffin of practical policing."
Police commission Bill Bratton has defended the aggressive stop-and-frisk policy, arguing it's a necessary criminal deterrent.
"You cannot police without it," he told a local radio station. "If you did not have it, then you'd have anarchy."
Instead of improving community relations, these receipts will accelerate an increase in crime and disorder. - Patrick Lynch, president of Patrolmen's Benevolent Association,
Lynch added that the receipts policy will do little else "but invite retaliatory complaints against police officers" trying to protect the citizenry.
"Instead of improving community relations, these receipts will accelerate an increase in crime and disorder, which will damage the city's economic health while hurting those crime-ridden communities who need our protection the most," he said.
Reed isn't completely sold on the idea himself.
He concedes the reforms might have saved him the trouble of demanding that officer's name last month. But as far as trusting the "the jump-out squad" to follow through the rules during each and every pat-down? He's not so sure about that.
"If you're recording the cops in some violation, they can grab your phone and smash it. So what can a receipt do?" he said. "That's like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. That is not a solution to the problem."
Reed, who says he's filed at least four grievances with the Civilian Complaints Review Board alleging he was unjustifiably stopped and frisked, hasn't been randomly searched in the city since the new stop forms debuted.
Kenoris Brooks, left, displays a pink summons ticket he was issued on Sept. 13 for "disorderly conduct." Brooks, 36, said the only verbal explanation he was given for being stopped was that he was loitering in a high-crime "hotspot," a reason that would not be deemed acceptable under the new NYPD stop rules. (Matt Kwong/CBC)
His friend, Kenoris Brooks, believes he might have avoided getting a court summons if it had been this week that he was stopped by police. Instead, he received a notice for "disorderly conduct" on Sept. 13, according to the pink slip tucked in his wallet, apparently owing to his presence in a high-crime area.
Brooks, 38, said he was having a coffee with a friend on a corner of the Inwood neighbourhood's Dyckman Street Strip — another stop-and-frisk hotspot in a district of northern Manhattan dubbed "Alcohol Alley."
"I'm standing there talking to my man and all that, and then the TNT jumps out," Brooks said, using the acronym for the city's tactical narcotics team. "They asked us for ID and give me a ticket. No explanation. I say what's this ticket for? He says, 'You know what this is about. This is a hotspot.'"
That explanation wouldn't fly under the new regime. According to a September 21 NYPD internal memo obtained by the New York Daily News, two factors once cited as reasons for a stop — a person making furtive movements and being in a high-crime neighbourhood — are no longer acceptable.
Brooks was free to go. Police gave him his ID back. But what he really wanted, he says, was an explanation, something that would have at least been afforded to him had he been issued an NYPD stop receipt.
They were just saying, 'You know what this is about.' Well no, I don't," Brooks said. "That's exactly my point."
Crime reduction?
There's little evidence to support the assertion that stop-and-frisk reduces crime.
New York University sociologist David Greenberg analyzed the relationship between the policing tactic and crime rates, and concluded there was "no evidence that misdemeanor arrests reduced levels of homicide, robbery, or aggravated assaults."
Of the 46,235 instances in which New Yorkers were stopped by police last year, the party being searched was innocent 82 per cent of the time, according to the NYCLU.
The controversial practice has slowed since Mayor Bill De Blasio assumed office. In the first half of this year, New Yorkers were stopped by the police 13,604 times. In 2011, there were 685,724 stops.Easy tomato pickle recipe- a very delicious and easy alternative to traditional sun dried tomato pickle that you can make in 30 minutes. This delicious, flavorful and spicy pickle goes good with so many dishes and comes very handy. Here is how you can make best quick tomato pickle at home with step by step photos.
Of all the pickle recipes from Indian cuisine, tomato pickle and thokku are my favorites. I can have it with just anything. It tastes great with rice, roti, poori, idli, dosa and even bread. Have a bottle of this versatile pickle handy and you will never run out of side dish.
Tomato Pickle Recipe- Traditional Vs Instant
Tomato pickle recipe is a classic pickle recipe from Andra cuisine. The traditional recipe for tomato pickle is long, slow and true labor of love.
Basically you would sun dry the chopped tomatoes with picking spices thoroughly and mix hot oil in it. This type of picking is the authentic method of making tomato pickle and tastes absolutely delicious.
But if you are busy or do not have a proper place for sun drying the tomatoes or simply you crave for good tomato pickle anytime, here is a simple recipe for you that you can make in 30 minutes.
Though simple to make, this pickle is so good, flavorful and very addictive. I love this pickle with curd rice,
Tomato pickle recipe with step by step photos. Sharing here an interesting pickle recipe today. Pickles are an integral part of our meal and we have 3-4 varieties of pickles always handy. Unlike the most I know, I am not a great fan of lemon or citron pickle. I always like to have tomato thokku or mango pickle.
Now coming to tomato pickle recipe, I just love the authentic tomato pickle prepared in a elobarate way, sun dried and pickled for few days before consumption, but that is a luxury for me and I can afford to eat only when I am offered some by my relatives :). Whenever I crave for tomato pickle, I either make this instant tomato pickle recipe or some thokku. I like this pickle more because it has tiny pieces of tomatoes.
This is a very easy and quick to make tomato pickle recipe, I mean it needs around 30 minutes to cook but you can easily do other things while the pickle is in the making.
To make tomato pickle recipe mentioned here, you need very few ingredients. First an instant pickle spice powder has to be prepared by dry roasting mustard,asafoetida,turmeric powder and methi seeds. Here I have used mortar and pestle for grinding the spices as the uantity is very less, ou can use a dry grinder to grind the same if you prefer. You can make this spice powder ahead and make pickle in a jiffy. You can even use this spice powder for recipes like achari paneer etc.
I used big ripe and firm tomatoes fo this pickle and kashmiri red chilli powder for a vibrant color. You can use any type of tomato. If you use salad tomato just add some tamarind pulp for some tangy taste.
Here is how to make eas tomato pickle recipe, do give it a try and share a picture with me!
If you are looking for more easy tomato recipes do check tomato kuzhambu, tomato sagu, tomato curry, tomato dosa
Tomato pickle recipe with step by step photos:
1. Wash, pat dry and finely chop the tomatoes.
2. Heat kadai and when hot add mustard seeds, asafoetida,turmeric powder and fenugreek seeds.Roast in low flame till the methi seeds change in color and the whole spice mixture turns aromatic. Let cool and grind to a dry powder.
3. In the same kadai add 5 tablespoons gingely oil and heat it. Once hot add 1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds and let them crackle.
4. Add the chopped tomatoes and mix well. Cook in medium flame for 5-6 minutes.
5. Once the tomatoes start leaving out water, add salt and red chilli powder. Mix well and continue to cook in medium flame for 10 minutes.
6. Now once the tomatoes are partly cooked add jaggery and mix well.
7. Add the ground spice powder and mix well.
8. Cook for 12-15 minutes, till the tomatoes are well cooked and starts to leave out oil.
9. Add 1 tablespoon gingely oil, mix well and remove from flame. Cool thoroughly and store in a clean, dry bottle or jar. Tomato pickle is ready to be served. Always use a clean spoon, preferably wooden, to serve pickles. This will keep well for up to 1 week in fridge and 2-3 days outside.
Tomato pickle recipe card below:
5 from 1 vote Print Tomato pickle recipe | Easy tomato pickle recipe Prep Time 10 mins Cook Time 30 mins Total Time 40 mins Tomato pickle, easy and quick recipe with minimum ingredients! Course: condiment Cuisine: Indian Servings : 1 cups Calories : 312 kcal Author : Harini Ingredients (1 cup=250 ml) 6 large tomatoes
1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds
2 teaspoons red chilli powder
salt
1/2 teaspoon jaggery
6 tablespoons gingely oil
To dry roast and powder:
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1/4 teaspoon methi seeds/vendhayam
1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder
1/4 teaspoon asafoetida powder Instructions Wash, pat dry and finely chop the tomatoes. Heat kadai and when hot add mustard seeds, asafoetida,turmeric powder and fenugreek seeds.Roast in low flame till the methi seeds change in color and the whole spice mixture turns aromatic. Let cool and grind to a dry powder. In the same kadai add 5 tablespoons gingely oil and heat it. Once hot add 1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds and let them crackle. Add the chopped tomatoes and mix well. Cook in medium flame for 5-6 minutes. Once the tomatoes start leaving out water, add salt and red chilli powder. Mix well and continue to cook in medium flame for 10 minutes. Now once the tomatoes are partly cooked add jaggery and mix well. Add the ground spice powder and mix well Cook for 12-15 minutes, till the tomatoes are well cooked and starts to leave out oil. Add 1 tablespoon gingely oil, mix well and remove from flame. Cool thoroughly and store in a clean, dry bottle or jar. Tomato pickle is ready to be served. Always use a clean spoon, preferably wooden, to serve pickles. This will keep well for up to 1 week in fridge and 2-3 days outside Recipe Notes 1. Adding oil towards the end acts as preservative, so do add that oil.
2. Add gingely oil (nallennai) for best flavor and authentic taste.
3. Mustard also acts as preservative.
Sharing is caring!The mysteries of infinity could lead us to a fantastic structure above and beyond mathematics as we know it
WHEN David Hilbert left the podium at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, on 8 August 1900, few of the assembled delegates seemed overly impressed. According to one contemporary report, the discussion following his address to the second International Congress of Mathematicians was “rather desultory”. Passions seem to have been more inflamed by a subsequent debate on whether Esperanto should be adopted as mathematics’ working language.
Yet Hilbert’s address set the mathematical agenda for the 20th century. It crystallised into a list of 23 crucial unanswered questions, including how to pack spheres to make best use of the available space, and whether the Riemann hypothesis, which concerns how the prime numbers are distributed, is true.
Today many of these problems have been resolved, sphere-packing among them. Others, such as the Riemann hypothesis, have seen little or no progress. But the first item on Hilbert’s list stands out for the sheer oddness of the answer supplied by generations of mathematicians since: that mathematics is simply not equipped to provide an answer.
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This curiously intractable riddle is known as the continuum hypothesis, and it concerns that most enigmatic quantity, infinity. Now, 140 years after the problem was formulated, a respected US mathematician believes he has cracked it. What’s more, he claims to have arrived at the solution not by using mathematics as we know it, but by building a new, radically stronger logical structure: a structure he dubs “ultimate L”.
The journey to this point began in the early 1870s, when the German Georg Cantor was laying the foundations of set theory. Set theory deals with the counting and manipulation of collections of objects, and provides the crucial logical underpinnings of mathematics: because numbers can be associated with the size of sets, the rules for manipulating sets also determine the logic of arithmetic and everything that builds on it.
These dry, slightly insipid logical considerations gained a new tang when Cantor asked a critical question: how big can sets get? The obvious answer – infinitely big – turned out to have a shocking twist: infinity is not one entity, but comes in many levels.
How so? You can get a flavour of why by counting up the set of whole numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5… How far can you go? Why, infinitely far, of course – there is no biggest whole number. This is one sort of infinity, the smallest, “countable” level, where the action of arithmetic takes place.
Now consider the question “how many points are there on a line?” A line is perfectly straight and smooth, with no holes or gaps; it contains infinitely many points. But this is not the countable infinity of the whole numbers, where you bound upwards in a series of defined, well-separated steps. This is a smooth, continuous infinity that describes geometrical objects. It is characterised not by the whole numbers, but by the real numbers: the whole numbers plus all the numbers in between that have as many decimal places as you please – 0.1, 0.01, √2, π and so on.
Cantor showed that this “continuum” infinity is in fact infinitely bigger than the countable, whole-number variety. What’s more, it is merely a step in a staircase leading to ever-higher levels of infinities stretching up as far as, well, infinity.
While the precise structure of these higher infinities remained nebulous, a more immediate question frustrated Cantor. Was there an intermediate level between the countable infinity and the continuum? He suspected not, but was unable to prove it. His hunch about the non-existence of this mathematical mezzanine became known as the continuum hypothesis.
Attempts to prove or disprove the continuum hypothesis depend on analysing all possible infinite subsets of the real numbers. If every one is either countable or has the same size as the full continuum, then it is correct. Conversely, even one subset of intermediate size would render it false.
A similar technique using subsets of the whole numbers shows that there is no level of infinity below the countable. Tempting as it might be to think that there are half as many even numbers as there are whole numbers in total, the two collections can in fact be paired off exactly. Indeed, every set of whole numbers is either finite or countably infinite.
Applied to the real numbers, though, this approach bore little fruit, for reasons that soon became clear. In 1885, the Swedish mathematician Gösta Mittag-Leffler had blocked publication of one of Cantor’s papers on the basis that it was “about 100 years too soon”. And as the British mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell showed in 1901, Cantor had indeed jumped the gun. Although his conclusions about infinity were sound, the logical basis of his set theory was flawed, resting on an informal and ultimately paradoxical conception of what sets are.
“A Swedish mathematician once blocked publication of one of Cantor’s papers on the basis that it was ‘about 100 years too soon’”
It was not until 1922 that two German mathematicians, Ernst Zermelo and Abraham Fraenkel, devised a series of rules for manipulating sets that was seemingly robust enough to support Cantor’s tower of infinities and stabilise the foundations of mathematics. Unfortunately, though, these rules delivered no clear answer to the continuum hypothesis. In fact, they seemed strongly to suggest there might even not be an answer.
Agony of choice
The immediate stumbling block was a rule known as the “axiom of choice”. It was not part of Zermelo and Fraenkel’s original rules, but was soon bolted on when it became clear that some essential mathematics, such as the ability to compare different sizes of infinity, would be impossible without it.
The axiom of choice states that if you have a collection of sets, you can always form a new set by choosing one object from each of them. That sounds anodyne, but it comes with a sting: you can dream up some twisted initial sets that produce even stranger sets when you choose one element from each. The Polish mathematicians Stefan Banach and Alfred Tarski soon showed how the axiom could be used to divide the set of points defining a spherical ball into six subsets which could then be slid around to produce two balls of the same size as the original. That was a symptom of a fundamental problem: the axiom allowed peculiarly perverse sets of real numbers to exist whose properties could never be determined. If so, this was a grim portent for ever proving the continuum hypothesis.
This news came at a time when the concept of “unprovability” was just coming into vogue. In 1931, the Austrian logician Kurt Gödel proved his notorious “incompleteness theorem”. It shows that even with the most tightly knit basic rules, there will always be statements about sets or numbers that mathematics can neither verify nor disprove.
At the same time, though, Gödel had a crazy-sounding hunch about how you might fill in most of these cracks in mathematics’ underlying logical structure: you simply build more levels of infinity on top of it. That goes against anything we might think of as a sound building code, yet Gödel’s guess turned out to be inspired. He proved his point in 1938. By starting from a simple conception of sets compatible with Zermelo and Fraenkel’s rules and then carefully tailoring its infinite superstructure, he created a mathematical environment in which both the axiom of choice and the continuum hypothesis are simultaneously true. He dubbed his new world the “constructible universe” – or simply “L”.
L was an attractive environment in which to do mathematics, but there were soon reasons to doubt it was the “right” one. For a start, its infinite staircase did not extend high enough to fill in all the gaps known to exist in the underlying structure. In 1963 Paul Cohen of Stanford University in California put things into context when he developed a method for producing a multitude of mathematical universes to order, all of them compatible with Zermelo and Fraenkel’s rules.
This was the beginning of a construction boom. “Over the past half-century, set theorists have discovered a vast diversity of models of set theory, a chaotic jumble of set-theoretic possibilities,” says Joel Hamkins at the City University of New York. Some are “L-type worlds” with superstructures like Gödel’s L, differing only in the range of extra levels of infinity they contain; others have wildly varying architectural styles with completely different levels and infinite staircases leading in all sorts of directions.
For most purposes, life within these structures is the same: most everyday mathematics does not differ between them, and nor do the laws of physics. But the existence of this mathematical “multiverse” also seemed to dash any notion of ever getting to grips with the continuum hypothesis. As Cohen was able to show, in some logically possible worlds the hypothesis is true and there is no intermediate level of infinity between the countable and the continuum; in others, there is one; in still others, there are infinitely many. With mathematical logic as we know it, there is simply no way of finding out which sort of world we occupy.
That’s where Hugh Woodin of the University of California, Berkeley, has a suggestion. The answer, he says, can be found by stepping outside our conventional mathematical world and moving on to a higher plane.
Woodin is no “turn on, tune in” guru. A highly respected set theorist, he has already achieved his subject’s ultimate accolade: a level on the infinite staircase named after him. This level, which lies far higher than anything envisaged in Gödel’s L, is inhabited by gigantic entities known as Woodin cardinals.
Woodin cardinals illustrate how adding penthouse suites to the structure of mathematics can solve problems on less rarefied levels below. In 1988 the American mathematicians Donald Martin and John Steel showed that if Woodin cardinals exist, then all “projective” subsets of the real numbers have a measurable size. Almost all ordinary geometrical objects can be described in terms of this particular type of set, so this was just the buttress needed to keep uncomfortable apparitions such as Banach and Tarski’s ball out of mainstream mathematics.
Such successes left Woodin unsatisfied, however. “What sense is there in a conception of the universe of sets in which very large sets exist, if you can’t even figure out basic properties of small sets?” he asks. Even 90 years after Zermelo and Fraenkel had supposedly fixed the foundations of mathematics, cracks were rife. “Set theory is riddled with unsolvability. Almost any question you want to ask is unsolvable,” says Woodin. And right at the heart of that lay the continuum hypothesis.
Ultimate L
Woodin and others spotted the germ of a new, more radical approach while investigating particular patterns of real numbers that pop up in various L-type worlds. The patterns, known as universally Baire sets, subtly changed the geometry possible in each of the worlds and seemed to act as a kind of identifying code for it. And the more Woodin looked, the more it became clear that relationships existed between the patterns in seemingly disparate worlds. By patching the patterns together, the boundaries that had seemed to exist between the worlds began to dissolve, and a map of a single mathematical superuniverse was slowly revealed. In tribute to Gödel’s original invention, Woodin dubbed this gigantic logical structure “ultimate L”.
Among other things, ultimate L provides for the first time a definitive account of the spectrum of subsets of the real numbers: for every forking point between worlds that Cohen’s methods open up, only one possible route is compatible with Woodin’s map. In particular it implies Cantor’s hypothesis to be true, ruling out anything between countable infinity and the continuum. That would mark not only the end of a 140-year-old conundrum, but a personal turnaround for Woodin: 10 years ago, he was arguing that the continuum hypothesis should be considered false.
Ultimate L does not rest there. Its wide, airy space allows extra steps to be bolted to the top of the infinite staircase as necessary to fill in gaps below, making good on Gödel’s hunch about rooting out the unsolvability that riddles mathematics. Gödel’s incompleteness theorem would not be dead, but you could chase it as far as you pleased up the staircase into the infinite attic of mathematics.
The prospect of finally removing the logical incompleteness that has bedevilled even basic areas such as number theory is enough to get many mathematicians salivating. There is just one question. Is ultimate L ultimately true?
Andrés Caicedo, a logician at Boise State University in Idaho, is cautiously optimistic. “It would be reasonable to say that this is the ‘correct’ way of going about completing the rules of set theory,” he says. “But there are still several technical issues to be clarified before saying confidently that it will succeed.”
Others are less convinced. Hamkins, who is a former student of Woodin’s, holds to the idea that there simply are as many legitimate logical constructions for mathematics as we have found so far. He thinks mathematicians should learn to embrace the diversity of the mathematical multiverse, with spaces where the continuum hypothesis is true and others where it is false. The choice of which space to work in would then be a matter of personal taste and convenience. “The answer consists of our detailed understanding of how the continuum hypothesis both holds and fails throughout the multiverse,” he says.
Woodin’s ideas need not put paid to this choice entirely, though: aspects of many of these diverse universes will survive inside ultimate L. “One goal is to show that any universe attainable by means we can currently foresee can be obtained from the theory,” says Caicedo. “If so, then ultimate L is all we need.”
In 2010, Woodin presented his ideas to the same forum that Hilbert had addressed over a century earlier, the International Congress of Mathematicians, this time in Hyderabad, India. Hilbert famously once defended set theory by proclaiming that “no one shall expel us from the paradise that Cantor has created”. But we have been stumbling around that paradise with no clear idea of where we are. Perhaps now a guide is within our grasp – one that will take us through this century and beyond.Theogene Ngamije celebrates with his family upon completing his recruit training at Kapooka.
After decades of waiting, an African refugee who fled terrible conflict has been granted his wish of becoming a soldier in the Australian Army.
Theogene Ngamije, from war-torn Rwanda, has become one of the Army's newest recruits and is beside himself.
"It's unbelievable, I still can't believe it. This morning I was getting dressed and thinking is this real?" Private Ngamije said.
The soldier said his motivation to join the forces came from meeting an Australian peacekeeper |
this language to rail against the Black Power movement in the 1970s and tie organizations like the Black Panther Party to neighborhood crime and increased drug use. They pointed to the ongoing race riots and the increase in urban crime that accompanied the migration of black Southerners to Northern cities during that period, as evidence that the Panthers’ philosophy of armed self-defense was contributing to violence and criminal activity. Nixon declared the war on drugs in 1971, prior to the explosion of the drug trade mid-decade, in a tough-on-crime move that functioned as a crackdown on the black people and communities that were supposedly “causing” crime, and the philosophy of racial equality that had contributed to it. (And similarly coded language was used to justify criminal-justice policies that targeted black communities and produced the nation’s mass incarceration crisis in the late 1980s and 1990s.)
Now Fox News has targeted the Black Lives Matter movement in the same way. The movement is calling for an end to violence, and its national voices have condemned violence against the police on numerous occasions. But the right insists it is to blame for murders of police officers. The number of peaceful protests dwarfs the number that have seen looting and property destruction, but conservative pundits insist Black Lives Matter protesters are “thugs” and that the movement’s rhetoric encourages violence. Just as they sought to discredit the movement to upset the Jim Crow social order, these right-wing voices now seek to discredit the movement to upend the current system of racist policing.
Murders of police aren’t the fault of the Black Lives Matter movement. But don’t expect to hear that on Fox News anytime soon.Join us Sunday, April 23rd for a fun bike ride around (& around & around…) the Boston Public Garden to demonstrate to the City of Boston that we need safe bike facilities connecting our neighborhoods, paths, and parks NOW!
Meet us at Copley Square at 2pm, and we’ll ride to the Public Garden at 2:30. We’ll do laps around the Garden from 2:30pm-4:00pm. Feel free to ride as much or as little as you want and as slowly or as quickly as you want. This is not a race, but feel free to keep track of how many loops you do and brag about it to your friends at the after-party**. The ride will feature music, friends, and if we’re lucky a few fun-loving people will wear duckling costumes! (Costumes not required, but highly encouraged)
This ride is named after the popular children’s book “Make Way for Ducklings” because it perfectly illustrates how the roads surrounding the Public Garden feel dangerous and uncomfortable for most people since they encourage high motor vehicle speeds. However, these streets can easily accommodate protected bike lanes around the Public Garden with little impact on motor-vehicle capacity, while simultaneously making pedestrian crossings easier and safer.
This area, in the very heart of Boston, is a major missing link in the bike network. People biking along the Charles River who cross the Fiedler Footbridge are stranded on Beacon and Arlington Streets, which function as multi-lane speed ways at many times of day. Providing safe bicycle accommodations here will enable people to make connections toward Downtown, the Connect Historic Boston bike trail, Harborwalk, and the Southwest Corridor Bike Path.
The City of Boston has set a goal of quadrupling biking by 2030, but in order to achieve that goal, we need a connected network of protected bike lanes and low-stress routes, and the streets around the Public Garden are a great place to start.
Families are certainly welcome to join in the fun. In addition to having volunteers at all of the corners of the Gardeb, we are organizing a “Family Group Ride” with volunteers helping wrangle kids as a group. While there is safety in numbers, please keep in mind that we will be riding in mixed traffic, and sharing the road with cars. If you are interested in helping / volunteering to be a Kids Ride Marshal please email Jon Ramos: jramos@bostoncyclistsunion.org
**After-Party**
After the ride, please join us at “Cheers” located at 84 Beacon Street (you’ll pass it a bunch of times on the route).
More information can be found here.Vancouver’s eye-popping housing market is seemingly defying gravity, with sales in January rising nearly 32 per cent — the second busiest January on record.
[np_storybar title=”Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town” link=”https://business.financialpost.com/entrepreneur/fp-startups/without-affordable-housing-vancouver-risks-becoming-an-economic-ghost-town”%5D
The tech economy in Vancouver and across Canada has never looked brighter. Yet the reality, in some respects, has never been bleaker.
Continue reading.
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With prices in Metro Vancouver slowly creeping up to the $2 million mark, the searing pace of housing in the city has many worried.
But the state of the market makes sense if you look at the market as a U.S. dollar play, say economists Derek Holt and Dov Zigler of Scotiabank. Because so much of the market is being fuelled by foreign buyers, many of whom purchase in U.S. currency, the Canadian dollar price surge makes a lot of sense.
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. estimates that foreign buyers own 3.5 per cent of the condos in Metro Vancouver, up from 2.3 per cent in 2014.
But Holt and Zigler called those estimates “ridiculously low ball.”
A much higher foreign investment rate would explain the surging prices and sales in the market even as wages remain stagnant in Canada and the economy slows.
The pair point out that in U.S. dollar terms, Vancouver still remains affordable to foreign buyers and in fact is a bargain compared to some other cities in the Pacific Rim such as Sydney, Hong Kong and San Francisco.
The buyers who are out of luck are Canadian buyers purchasing homes with domestic currency. The gap between home prices in U.S. dollar terms and Canadian dollar terms is at its widest in more than a decade.
“A strong USD has kept Vancouver’s house prices relatively affordable if one is entering the market as a buyer with funds in U.S. dollars,” the economists write. “That has pushed Canadian dollar house prices through the roof over the past couple of years. This can be taken as one piece of evidence that it is U.S. dollar flows that are driving Vancouver real estate regardless of what are likely ridiculously low balled estimates for foreign buying.”Mike Tyson’s Bitcoin ambitions don’t stop with a branded ATM. Now, the former boxer is launching a Bitcoin wallet in collaboration with Bitcoin Direct, the company behind his ATM. Users will be able to buy and sell Bitcoin from the branded wallet by going through the Gildera exchange and can use it to store Bitcoin they purchase at any digital currency ATM, including Tyson’s own. Both iOS and Android users can download the wallet.
The wallet’s menu background consists of Tyson’s face tattoo, taking cryptocurrency branding to a literal level. Bitcoin Direct says it hopes Tyson’s approval will convert a wider section of the population, including his international fans, to the digital currency. Meanwhile, as Tyson tries to turn general consumers into devout Bitcoin users, the search continues for the real Satoshi Nakamoto.The sun will come out in the city of Atlanta tomorrow morning. Contrary to what you may be feeling after seeing the city’s best chance of winning a championship in 21 years go down in flames in truly heartbreaking fashion, there is hope ahead for sports in Atlanta.
In just 27 days (as of Monday), Atlanta United will begin their inaugural MLS season against the New York Red Bulls at Bobby Dodd Stadium. That should be enough time for you to wipe this awful feeling from your mind and get appropriately excited for possibly the best sports franchise to represent this city. Yes, that’s a bold statement with them not having played a single match yet, but it’s not as crazy as it sounds.
The whole club from Arthur Blank and Darren Eales all they way down to the small people behind the scenes we don’t know about have been hard at work to put a very exciting team on the field from day one. The roster is shaping up better than anyone could have ever imagined and it’s looking likely that they’ll be competitive in their first season. In fact, some are even claiming they are the most exciting team in MLS already. While we’re not going to go that far out on a limb, we will say that they can certainly be a playoff team in their very first year, which would be incredible in this day and age in MLS.
The Falcons coming so close to winning the Super Bowl hurts now, but in less than a month Atlanta United will take the city by storm with their young and dynamic talent and sold out (hopefully) crowds and raise the bar for sports in the city. There’s no doubt in my mind that Atlanta will fall in love with United from the first time they play. It hurts now, but we’re oh so close to mending those wounds with an exceptional soccer team on the way. Cheer up, Atlanta. Better days lie ahead.A new Chevrolet Malibu burns after allegedly being set aflame by the owner's spurned ex-girlfriend. Screenshot: WJLA-TV
GERMANTOWN, Md., May 20 (UPI) -- A Maryland woman who torched her ex-boyfriend's new car for allegedly cheating on her told police she was inspired by a music video.
The Montgomery County Police Department said Hopesy Henriquez, 18, of Clarksburg, was still on the scene about 3:30 a.m. May 10 when police and firefighters responded to a report of a car on fire in Germantown.
The responders discovered the gray Chevrolet Malibu engulfed in flames and Henriquez told an officer she set fire to the car, which belonged to her ex-boyfriend, as punishment for cheating on her.
"I should have set his house of fire," WJLA-TV quoted the woman as telling police.
The 24-year-old owner of the $29,000 car said he had ended his relationship with Henriquez earlier in the night and left her home when she became physical.
Henriquez was taken to the fifth district police station, where she told officers she purchased lighter fluid and a lighter from a 7-Eleven store before catching an Uber ride to the victim's house and burning the car.
"I put it all over. Front, side, back... I just wanted to do something crazy, a lot of things have been happening to me," Henriquez allegedly told officers.
Henriquez allegedly said her inspiration to commit arson came from an unusual source: "I watched this music video and that's when I thought about lighting his car on fire... I hope he never forgets it."
Henriquez is due in court June 3 to face a charge of first degree malicious burning. She faces up to 28 years in prison if convicted.NBC has picked up “The Blacklist” for Season 4. The news isn’t a surprise, but the means by which it was delivered was a little unconventional.
Creator Jon Bokenkamp said on “The Blacklist Exposed” podcast that the show will be back for the 2016-17 season. “We knew about that a while ago,” he says. “It’s one of those things that’s hard to keep quiet. But yes, we’re renewed through the fourth season. Hopefully we don’t tank that out. We’ve got a lot of story to tell.”
“The Blacklist” averages a 1.5 same-day rating in adults 18-49, making it NBC’s top show on Thursday nights. The series has taken a ratings hit since moving from Monday to Thursday midway through last season but is still above NBC’s scripted average. It doubles to a 3.0 in Live +7 ratings.
The show joins three other NBC shows — “Chicago Fire,” “Chicago PD” and “Blindspot” — on the network’s 2016-17 schedule. You can also see everything renewed for 2016 and beyond.Did You Know O‘ahu Has Seven Special Districts? Here’s What That Means
Get to know O‘ahu’s special districts.
By Rachel Ross Bradley
Photo: Eric Broder van Dyke
Occasionally, we hear about building restrictions or limitations due to special districts. There are seven on O‘ahu, most formed in the 1970s and ’80s, aimed at preserving what makes each area, well, special.
Hawai‘i Capitol Special District has height restrictions, and open space and mall rules. The area extends farther than you’d guess, from Vineyard above The Queen’s Medical Center, makai to Aloha Tower; and toward Diamond Head, from Alakea to Cooke Street. The areas we love around the Capitol, ‘Iolani Palace and Honolulu Hale, look like they do in part because of restrictions that ensure adequate lawns and open space for the public to enjoy the historical heart of our city.
Diamond Head, one of the most recognized landmarks in the world, has its own special district as well, created to preserve that special view, as well as the parklike setting around it. The core area is around Diamond Head and Kapi‘olani Park, with Diamond Head Road and Monsarrat Avenue as boundaries, where 25-foot height limits for buildings are in place. The official district is larger and stretches from ‘Elepaio on the Koko Head side, along Kīlauea and Alohea streets mauka, around Ala Wai Golf Course on the ‘Ewa side and down Kapahulu to Kalākaua. When building new residential properties in those areas, architectural limitations go beyond building heights to include roof slope and front yard size. Next time you walk, run or drive around the mountain, take a look at roof alignment and you’ll see that most align with the slope of the hillside—that’s no coincidence.
Punchbowl Special District puts height restrictions that range from zero to 100 feet in an area surrounding Punchbowl, or Pūowaina, as far as the Pali Highway and Vineyard Boulevard. A national monument and one of Hawai‘i’s most important landmarks, it was in danger of overdevelopment in the 1970s, thus the special district was created. The rules use the word “serenity” frequently and focus on preserving that feeling, as well as view planes both to and from the site.
Chinatown Special District is approximately a square bordered by Vineyard Boulevard, the canal past River Street, Nu‘uanu Avenue and Nimitz Highway. It was created to preserve the historic character that we love Chinatown for, including the low-rise urban mix of retail, office and residential properties, as well as the walkability of the area. This district has 40-foot height limits along the street; 40 feet from the street, heights max out at 80 to 230 feet.
Thomas Square Honolulu Academy of Arts Special District, created in 1995, has the Honolulu Museum of Art and Thomas Square at its heart, and includes the area two blocks surrounding them mauka, Diamond Head and ‘Ewa. Across the street, Hawai‘i Community Development Authority rules overrule the district down Ward Avenue to Kapi‘olani. Buildings surrounding the museum are limited to 25 feet in height, and the taller buildings farthest away from the museum are limited to 150 feet with specific envelope ratios. Rules regarding setbacks and lighting exist as well. Both the park and the museum are on the state and national registers of historic places.
Perhaps the largest is the Waikīkī Special Design District, which is bound by the Ala Wai, Kapahulu Avenue and the ocean. This one is by far the most complicated, divvied up into small areas with varying height limitations, with preserved view corridors and rules that supersede normal zoning regulations, making it hard to know what can and can’t be built. It was created to ensure Waikīkī stays a place prime for hospitality, welcoming to pedestrians from around the world. Miniparks, open-air lobbies and vending carts are all part of the plan.
Ever wonder how Hale‘iwa stays so cute? Indeed, the Hale‘iwa Special District helps keep it that way, with height and building restrictions that stretch from the Joseph P. Leong Highway, aka the bypass road, to just makai of the town’s main road. The special district rules are aimed at enhancing the attractiveness of the area, especially at entry points, maintaining that old plantation town feel and ensuring it remains a safe place for residents and tourists alike to spend an afternoon walking around.
Want to learn more? Maps are available online, along with descriptions and other information.Dark matter and its origin are one of the biggest riddles of the modern physics. It is thought that dark matter is responsible for 80% of the total mass of the Universe. Although little is known about the particles dark matter consists of, it is speculated that there are two principal classes of dark matter particle candidates.
The first class is considered to be annihilating dark matter candidates, called weakly interacting massive particles or WIMPs, which are supposed to interact with ordinary matter via electroweak and gravitational interaction. The second class consists of dark matter candidates, which can decay into Standard Model (SM) particles. For example, a bosonic candidate may decay into two photons, which produce a signature of this process in a form of a narrow spectral line, which then can be measured and interpreted. Many studies have already been carried out in the search of the dark matter decay and now even more are coming up.
A team of scientists from University of Geneva, Switzerland, Instituut-Lorentz for Theoretical Physics, Universiteit Leiden, The Netherlands, Ecole Polytechique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland, Bogolyubov Institute of Theoretical Physics, Ukraine, National University “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy”, Ukraine and CERN Physics Department, Switzerland presented their research on the potential of an upcoming Large Observatory For x-ray Timing (LOFT) telescope to detect dark matter.
The study is available at arXiv.org.
LOFT will yield an essential sensitivity improvement for the detection of decaying dark matter in the X-ray region, according to the researchers. LOFT mission is being executed by the European Space Agency as one of the candidates for “Cosmic Vision” program that will launch after 2020.
As reported in the paper, a potential for dark matter decay detection with different instruments may be seen by comparing their energy resolution and the so called “grasp”, the product of the effective area and the field of view of the detector. The team evaluated the mentioned properties of various X-ray telescopes and concluded that LOFT’s Large Area Detector (LAD) will be superior to other dark matter detectors in terms of sensitivity for the spectral line detection.
According to the study, LOFT’s excellent sensitivity characteristics may help to detect non-interacting sterile neutrinos and prove the Neutrino Minimal Standard Model, which serves as an expansion of the SM and takes into account some problems beyond the Standard Model, including neutrino oscillations, baryon asymmetry of the Universe and the existence of dark matter. Thus, LOFT telescope could prove to be of extreme importance to the theoretical models of modern physics.
Source: www.technology.orgPHILADELPHIA - DECEMBER 17: U.S. Postal Service carrier Ron Comly carries parcel packages to a home while delivering mail along his postal route December 17, 2003 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. December 17 is expected to be the busiest delivery day for the U.S. Postal Service. (Photo by William Thomas Cain/Getty Images)
Door-to-door postal delivery could be soon coming to an end.
To trim nearly $4.5 billion a year for the cash-strapped agency, Congressman Darrell Issa of California is proposing that the U.S. Postal Service do away with door-to-door delivery and shift service to curbside and neighborhood cluster boxes.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will vote on the measure Wednesday, which could affect about 37 million residences and businesses.
The U.S. Postal Service lost about $16 billion last year and spends about $30 billion annually on mail delivery. The federal service does not receive any money from the federal government and relies mainly on postage sales, delivery services and other products.
Mail services has dropped nearly 25% since 2006.
Unions have said the proposal is a bad idea, especially since it would impact the elderly and disabled.
The postal service proposed ending Saturday service earlier this year -- a decision that it later reversed.Former Parti Québécois leader Jacques Parizeau, September 1989. In 1994, he became the second leader of the separatist PQ to become premier (photo by Jim Merrithew). Founder of the Bloc Québécois and later premier of Québec (courtesy Office of the Premier, Government of Québec). Image: Simon Villeneuve/Wikicommons.\r
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Held on 30 October 1995, the referendum on Québec sovereignty was settled by a narrow victory for the “No” camp — as had been the case in the 1980 referendum.
The failure of the Meech Lake Accord and the Charlottetown Accord left considerable uncertainty about the constitutional future of Canada. The first sign was a dramatic change in the political landscape of the House of Commons following the 1993 election. The Progressive Conservative Party, associated with former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and the failed accords, was virtually wiped out. While the federalist Liberals under Jean Chrétien won a majority, the opposition was fractured along regional lines, between the western-based Reform Party of Canada and the avowedly separatist Bloc Québécois, which formed the Official Opposition.
Growing Discontent
The rest of Canada was tired of constitutional matters. However, the alienation of Québec, attributable in part to the poisoned atmosphere following the debate over distinct society, brought the separatist Parti Québécois (PQ) back into power. Premier Jacques Parizeau promptly promised that a referendum on Québec separation would be held some time during 1995. In preparation for the referendum, draft legislation was prepared and a series of public consultations were held. The referendum was originally scheduled for the spring of 1995 but was delayed until 30 October 1995. The question posed in the referendum read as follows: "Do you agree that Québec should become sovereign, after having made a formal offer to Canada for a new economic and political partnership, within the scope of the Bill respecting the future of Québec and of the agreement signed on 12 June 1995?"
The Bill referred to in the question was Bill 1, An Act respecting the future of Québec (Loi sur l’avenir du Québec), which included a declaration of sovereignty in its preamble and the agreement of 12 June 1995, was the text of the agreement between the Parti Québécois and the Action démocratique du Québec (the ADQ) ratified by Premier Parizeau, Lucien Bouchard (leader of the Bloc Québécois) and Mario Dumont (the leader of the ADQ). The referendum itself was conducted under the provisions of the Québec Referendum Act.
At the beginning of the referendum campaign, the so-called "No" side (opposed to separation) had a substantial lead in the polls. But as the campaign progressed, and particularly when Lucien Bouchard took over the leadership of the "Yes" side from Parizeau during the final three weeks of the campaign, the "Yes" side gained momentum.
Result of the Referendum
Ultimately, after an emotional and somewhat controversial campaign, the "No" side achieved victory by a narrow majority of 50.58 per cent.
Following the vote, there was considerable controversy relating to the counting of the ballots (because of the large number of "spoiled" ballots), the enumeration of eligible voters and other concerns. Parizeau resigned and Bouchard assumed the leadership of the Parti Québécois and became premier of Québec. He had announced, prior to becoming premier, his intention to conduct another referendum on separation in 1997.
During the final days of the campaign, federal politicians announced their intention of meeting some of Québec’s concerns. For example, Prime Minister Chrétien said that he would take steps toward recognizing Québec as a "distinct society" and guaranteeing Québec a de facto veto over constitutional changes.
Reaction of the Federal Government
Chrétien created a special Cabinet committee to formulate a new constitutional proposal. The proposal that emerged, primarily designed to address Québec's long-standing concerns, provided for three non-constitutional initiatives to be enacted by the House of Commons.
The first initiative, in the form of a motion in the House of Commons, would recognize Québec as a distinct society within Canada (i.e., a society characterized by the French language, its unique culture and a civil law system). The motion was adopted by Parliament.
A second initiative would grant a veto to the Western region, the Atlantic region, Ontario and Québec over all future constitutional changes to national institutions such as the Senate, the creation of new provinces and any amendments regarding the distribution of powers. That is, such constitutional changes would require the consent of any two of the four western provinces, provided the two provinces constituted 50 per cent of the population of the West, and any two of the Atlantic provinces, provided the two provinces constituted 50 per cent of the population of the Atlantic region, as well as Ontario and Québec. At the insistence of British Columbia, this was changed so that BC became a separate region and would have a veto over major constitutional change. The Prairie provinces would also have a veto, in that consent would now be required of any two Prairie provinces, provided the provinces constituted 50 per cent of the population of the Prairie region. Demographically, this in effect gives the province of Alberta a veto.
Under the third initiative, the federal government would give up any role it plays in labour/market training, apprenticeship programs, co-operative education programs and workplace-based training, thus allowing the provinces to assume this responsibility.
The Calgary Declaration, which was presented for discussion in 1997 by all the provincial premiers except Québec’s, recognized the unique character of Québec society, but added the condition that all the provinces would be equal and would receive whatever was given to Québec by virtue of the interpretation of the “distinct society” clause. All the provincial legislatures adopted the Calgary Declaration except Québec’s National Assembly.
Impasse
None of these initiatives promised an end to Canada's constitutional uncertainty, particularly with the prospect of another referendum in Québec. This uncertainty led to litigation in the courts as to the legal rules regarding the rights of a province to secede, under domestic constitutional law and under public international law.
In 1998, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Québec does not have the right to unilaterally secede from Canada. Nonetheless, the nine justices expressed the opinion that the other provinces and Ottawa would be obliged to enter into negotiations with Québec if voters in Québec unequivocally expressed their desire for independence by a clear majority (see Reference re Secession of Quebec).
On 29 June 2000, the Governor General gave Bill C-20 (commonly referred to as the Clarity Act) royal assent. The Bill was presented by the Chrétien government in response to the Supreme Court’s Québec Secession Reference, which stipulates that "political actors" are responsible to determine what, among other things, constitutes a clear question and a clear majority, and that, following a referendum, a province or territory can initiate its secession from Canada.
When a Liberal government was elected in Québec in 2003, the PQ and the question of separatism were put on the back burner until the PQ’s return to power under Pauline Marois in 2012. At that juncture, however, Québec sovereignty was again put on hold due to the government’s minority standing — the PQ with 54 seats, the Liberals 50, Coalition avenir Québec with 19, and Québec solidaire with 2 seats. Though the centre-left Québec solidaire also stood for Québec independence, the party contributed to the division of the sovereigntist vote.
Confident that a majority of seats could be won, Marois called an early election in spring 2014 — just 18 months after the minority PQ government had formed. At the beginning of March, the announcement of Pierre Karl Péladeau’s candidacy and his profession of faith in Québec independence rekindled the debate concerning a possible third referendum. The PQ, ahead in the polls at the beginning of the campaign, was relegated to the Official Opposition after the election. The Quebec Liberal Party led by Philippe Couillard came to power, and the independence project was again dropped from the political agenda.
See also Constitutional Law; Constitutional History; Québec Referendum (1980).My first memories of celebrating the Fourth of July with any sense of history are from 1960. I was only eight at the time, but I had already acquired an unquenchable thirst for the Civil War, nurtured in part by a visit to Gettysburg and a doting third-grade teacher.
We did the day up right. With American flags flying from the handlebars, my brother and I rode our bicycles around the house and into the backyard as if we were Phil Sheridan’s cavalry charging into action.
My grandfather, at my direction, climbed onto the sandbox cover and read Lincoln’s hallowed words to the assembled crowd—all six of us.
What I remember as well from that day is a clipping I cut from the local newspaper about the 15th anniversary of the end of World War II.
To an eight-year-old whose main connection to that conflict was a fading uniform that hung in the back of his father’s closet, it seemed almost as remote as the Civil War.
In the years afterward, my father’s generation observed many more World War II anniversaries. This Independence Day marks the beginning of the 75th round of them.
While the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor was still five months away in the summer of 1941, war clouds were in the air and that Fourth of July 75 years ago marked the last peace that would be known for five long years. Europe was already at war and, truth be told, America was also involved: drafting young men, sending Lend-lease convoys to Great Britain, ratcheting up American industry, and imposing an oil embargo against Japan. Yet, there was also a lingering innocence.
At Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, 60,000 fans planned to watch the New York Yankees take on the Washington Senators as Joe DiMaggio sought to extend his record-breaking hitting streak to forty-six games. When a heavy rain forced a postponement of the much-anticipated holiday doubleheader, DiMaggio had to wait until the next day to belt a two-run homer over the left-field fence his first time up to continue the streak.
If the Yankees had played their rained-out games that Fourth of July, umpires intended to pause play at 5:00 pm to hear President Franklin Roosevelt’s holiday broadcast from his study at Hyde Park. “We know,” Roosevelt told millions of listeners, “that we cannot save freedom in our own midst, in our own land, if all around us—our neighbor nations—have lost their freedom.”
Following the president’s remarks, Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone led everyone within earshot of a radio or public address system in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. “In a world aflame with war and conquest,” the New York Times subsequently reported, “Americans paused to celebrate the Fourth of July in the most solemn mood with which they had observed the day in many years.” The ensuing four years would deeply affect every man, woman, and child in the country.
That Fourth of July of 1941, Robert B. Brunson worked a summer job before starting his junior year at Kansas State University. Short and wiry, Brunson wanted to fly and figured he could improve his chances for pilot training by changing his major from agriculture to engineering. By December 1942, he was in the US Navy, eventually flying F4U Corsairs in an elite night-fighter squadron off the deck of the aircraft carrier Enterprise. Brunson saw action off Kwajalein, Truk, and the Marianas and flew cover for amphibious flying boats assigned to rescue downed flyers.
Robert H. Krear was another recent graduate working hard that summer of 1941. From Emlenton, Pennsylvania, Krear was headed to Penn State to study forestry. All the forestry majors joined the Enlisted Reserve Corps and after the spring semester in 1943 most went into the armed forces.
An accomplished skier, Krear volunteered for the storied 10th Mountain Infantry Division, taking his training high in the Colorado Rockies at Camp Hale. By the time the war was over, Krear had fought with the 10th Mountain Division as it spearheaded the advance of the US Fifth Army into the mountains of northern Italy.
After his return stateside, Brunson flew as a night-fighter instructor and engineering test pilot before going back to Kansas State and getting his engineering degree. His long career in engineering included a stint as senior managing director for Stearns-Roger. Krear earned a doctorate in ecology and animal behavior from the University of Colorado and had a long teaching career. His notable field experiences included Olaus and Mardie Murie’s 1956 Brooks Range Expedition.
Krear swam daily until he was past ninety. Brunson just celebrated his ninety-fifth birthday. Both men remain venerated heroes in the little mountain town of Estes Park, Colorado where the three of us live.
As we begin the march through the anniversaries of their selfless service three-quarters of a century ago, they and all surviving veterans of World War II stand poised to receive one last round of salutes.
The accolades will not signal a final farewell, of course. Our thanks, our gratitude, and our resolve to emulate their example will reverberate long after their presence among us. But this is indeed the beginning of their last hurrah.
In the next few years from this Fourth of July onward, we will honor them on the 75th anniversaries of the names their actions and shared experiences made famous: Pearl Harbor, Midway and Guadalcanal; Kasserine Pass, Anzio and Normandy; Bastogne, Okinawa and more.
This Fourth of July, as I think of the World War II veterans I am proud to call my friends, I don’t know what became of my father’s uniform. Like so many of his comrades, he has received his final salute. But if I could, I would reach into that darkened closet, bring his uniform into the light, and once again hang it the way he did when it was first issued, with unquestioned pride.
I don’t have any plans to climb onto the backyard sandbox and recite Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, but perhaps I should do that, too.Dishonour among Thieves is yours to play right now – the latest episode in the Sixth Age 'Stone of Jas' storyline that began with Missing, Presumed Death.
Use your invitation box to head to the Empyrean Citadel, then talk to Moia to get started.
Rogues' Gallery
In Missing, Presumed Death, Sliske threw down the gauntlet to the gods, challenging them to claim the Stone of Jas: an elder artefact with world-shaping powers.
Zamorak has a plan to claim the Stone for himself – thus clawing back some of the power he lost at the Battle of Lumbridge – and he needs your help to do it.
In Dishonour among Thieves, you'll help Zamorak to gather a multi-skilled team of rogues and rapscallions – all loyal to the chaos god's cause. Your mission: to swipe the Stone of Jas from under Sliske's nose.
Joining you are Zemouregal, the werewolf Jerrod, the player-voted Nomad, and many more of Zamorak's faithful.
Once you've gathered your band of thieves, it's heist time. Enter Sliske's lair and use your team's unique set of skills to break in, get past the guards, and head for the ultimate prize.
Ill-Gotten Gains
You can be sure to come away from the heist with your cut:
Jerrod's cape: a mid-level, hybrid-style cape with passive thieving benefits when worn:
80% chance to note items stolen from bakers' stalls. Triple coins and 1-3 noted gems from Rogues' Den safes. Coshing volunteers in the Thieves' Guild yield items from the rogue's pickpocket drop table.
Mask of Sliske upgrade: when worn in the head slot or carried in the pocket slot during combat, the improved Mask of Sliske will occasionally spawn an undead archer, who'll deal damage to your current target before dissipating.
Tiny Hazeel pet: the pint-sized Ardougne autocrat joins the bobble-headed ranks.
XP in Agility, Dungeoneering, Thieving and a choice of combat skills.
Keep your eyes peeled during the quest for loot chests, which can be opened for XP, coin and resource rewards.
Once the quest's over, you can return to Zamorak's lair for further XP rewards in three more chests, which can be opened when all your skills exceed 50, 70 and 90 respectively.
Enjoy!
If you've a larcenous heart, or just want to be part of the 6th Age's world-shaking events, this quest's not to be missed. Have fun, and tell us what you think over on the forums.
Mod Ollie and the RuneScape 'Dukes' Team
Solomon's Store - Nomad Pack
Style yourself after the Scourge of Souls himself with the Nomad Pack – available now from Solomon's Store.
Comprising a full outfit - plus weapon overrides for staffs, javelins and any two-handed melee weapons - it's perfect for adopting the mantle of the mysterious mage.
The pack also contains animation overrides for walking or running.
Note that you don't need to have the Nomad outfit override active to use the animation.
Pick up the Nomad pack now! If you need more RuneCoins, you can redeem Bonds, or purchase them via the website.
Aquarium
Remember the poll where you chose a new Construction room, and how the aquarium came out on top?
Well, the Guardians have been working hard prototyping and designing the new aquarium feature, and we've got the full design document available for your perusal. Inside you'll find the aims for the project, how the aquarium will work and all of the rewards you can get.
We're looking for feedback on this document so make sure you get involved over on the forums. Remember, your feedback can change how the aquarium will work so do let us know your ideas and suggestions.
There'll also be a live stream on Tuesday 24th February, 16:00 UTC, where we showcase the aquarium. If you'd like to see how it will work in game, be sure to visit our Twitch channel.
The RuneScape Team
In Other News
On 1st March 2015, the price of RuneScape |
to choose the aesthetically pleasing device over the supercomputer."
Well, that’s certainly true.
"Once the bones of the structure are in the right place," Forsyth adds, "we look at form and colors, the all-important visual side of things, to deliver the complete package."
Breaking the rules
Finally, how would they like their new handsets to be regarded, as crafted pieces of engineering or emotional creations?
"Well, the things we are fighting for as designers are not logical, some of our choices may, to the untrained eye, look the same and cost more.’ Mcphail explains. "However, those are the features which give a smartphone its emotional appeal. And we’ve learned when to break the rules. Even when phones sell, the design team often doesn’t get the kudos as people often assign the success to technical specifications. But it is easy to get bored by the spec race. We think it is time to give people real choice, and the only way to do that is through design."
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Nokia 5 Review: Is Affordable Android In A Stylish Case A Smart Return To Form?GETTY Donald Trump has denied the existence of manmade climate change
Evolutionary biologist John Wiens, a Professor from the University of Arizona, said the President-elect is a “global disaster” because he is in a position to help save the environment but has previously denied the existence of manmade climate change. In his latest study titled ‘Climate-Related Local Extinctions’, published in the research journal Plos Biology, Wiens produced data that revealed the extent to which species are suffering from the negative effects of climate change.
GETTY Obama's Department of Water has adopted a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
People are going to die and it's going to be the fault of our country and other big polluters Professor John Wiens
Within the paper, a concluding sentence said: "The results suggest that local extinctions related to climate change are already widespread." Wiens added: “We are on track for the sixth mass extinction to happen, although we’re not there yet. “But if we don’t do anything it seems like it will happen in the next 50 to 100 years.”
The biologist expressed his fears over the impact of Trump’s presidency as the 70-year-old billionaire appointed climate change skeptic Scott Pruitt to lead the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), an agency which is supposed to "protect the environment".
Air pollution across the world Tue, May 22, 2018 Take a look through these stunning drone images, highlighting the effects of pollution on planet earth but also the opportunities to tackle this scary problem. Play slideshow Mark Baker 1 of 11 The tanks and stacks of Fawley Refinery in the New Forest
If he had the chance to meet Trump and explain the climate situation, Wiens said he would ask the President-elect: "What would you think if there was a country on the other side of the world releasing gas that would cause extinctions in our country, hurt our crops and make people starve?"
GETTY American protestors march against climate policy in Dakota
He jokingly said the Republican would respond saying: "Tell me where it is and we'll bomb them tomorrow." But in a more serious tone, the Professor said he would then say: "This is what we're doing to other countries because we are the big polluters.
"People are already having serious problems with food security. People are going to die and it's going to be the fault of our country and other big polluters." Environmental groups have been in a state of chaos since the appointment of Pruitt was announced because they fear he will ruin Obama’s climate legacy and endanger the clean air and water Americans have enjoyed for the past 40 years.
GETTY Climate change skeptic Scott Pruitt, is now head of the EPAThe Chicago White Sox have landed All-Star Todd Frazier from the Cincinnati Reds in a seven-player trade that also involved the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The Reds will receive infielders Jose Peraza and Brandon Dixon and outfielder Scott Schebler from the Dodgers. The White Sox will send pitcher Frankie Montas, infielder Micah Johnson and outfielder Trayce Thompson to the Dodgers.
Frazier's arrival will probably push new White Sox infielder Brett Lawrie from third base to second. Last season, Frazier, 29, batted.255 with 35 homers and 89 RBIs. He won the All-Star Home Run Derby in Cincinnati and was an NL All-Star each of the past two seasons.
Todd Frazier heads from Cincinnati to the South Side of Chicago. AP Photo/Al Behrman
"I'm pretty excited," Frazier said. "I've got to be truthful with you. I know it's the American League. I know it's gonna be a little different. It might take a little time to get acclimated, but I just saw the lineup on TV. It kinda put a smile on my face to see the guys we've got."
In a statement Wednesday, White Sox general manager Rick Hahn said: "Todd is one of the finer all-around third basemen in the league. He is a high-character, smart baseball player who will provide an impact bat in the middle of our order. He solidifies us defensively at third base and provides a great presence in our lineup and in the clubhouse."
Editor's Picks White Sox, Dodgers make out well in three-way trade with Reds The White Sox gave their lineup a boost, acquiring Todd Frazier from the Reds, and the Dodgers set themselves up to shed an expensive outfielder.
Frazier has a $7.5 million salary next year and can become a free agent after the 2017 season.
According to MLB.com, Peraza was the Dodgers' fourth-ranked prospect last season, and Schebler was ranked 13th. Montas was the White Sox's third-ranked prospect, Johnson was fifth and Thompson 14th.
The Dodgers haven't made an extraordinary splash this winter, but Andrew Friedman, the team's president of baseball operations, said he believes this deal bolsters his roster and puts Los Angeles in position to make bigger moves.
"We're obviously having a lot of conversations that involve us trading prospects and different scenarios," Friedman said. "[This trade] wasn't necessarily directly connected, but every move we make has some connection, and extending our talent base is helpful on multiple fronts. I do know some teams that have some interest in some of the guys that we acquired, but these guys are really interesting. They're good, young players."
Thompson, brother of Golden State Warriors guard Klay Thompson, played 44 games in the big leagues last year and batted.295 with five homers and 16 RBIs. He could spell Joc Pederson in center field.
Friedman said Thompson is an "exceptional athlete with strong bloodlines. We feel like he has a chance to really continue to improve, really feel like the arrow is still pointing up."
Montas, a 6-foot-2 right-hander, struck out 20 in 15 major league innings last season. A hard thrower, he probably will start the season in the rotation at Triple-A Oklahoma City, but Friedman said he thinks Montas could be an impact starter in the majors as soon as 2016.
"I feel like he's got a real good chance to be a real good major league starting pitcher," Friedman said, even suggesting Montas had a shot to crack new manager Dave Roberts' Opening Day rotation. "And if not, we feel like he can be a real impact bullpen arm."
ESPN.com staff writer Mark Saxon and The Associated Press contributed to this report.The Cyber Trade War
On Oct. 8, the House Select Intelligence Committee released a report on the cybersecurity threat posed by China’s Huawei and ZTE, the world’s second- and fourth-largest telecommunications suppliers. The report, which described the companies as potential espionage risks and asked the U.S. government and U.S. firms to refrain from doing business with them, drew an angry response from Chinese media: Xinhua, China’s state news agency, called its conclusions "totally groundless" and arising out of "protectionism"; the nationalistic tabloid Global Times said the United States is becoming an "unreasonable country"; and the state-run English language newspaper China Daily labeled the accusations "unreasonable and unjustifiable." But the fear of vulnerability from foreign technology, whether reasonable or not, is as present in China as it is in the United States — now more than ever.
The threats China sees from dependence on foreign telecommunications, software, and hardware suppliers echo many of the concerns raised in the House report: both countries fear that dependence on foreign technology makes them vulnerable to spying and threatens network security and economic development. According to an April 2012 article in Outlook Weekly, a Xinhua publication, 90 percent of China’s microchips, components, network equipment, communications standards and protocols, as well as 65 percent of firewalls, encryption technology, and 10 other types of information security products rely on imported technology. Foreign producers also dominate the market for programmable logic controllers, devices used to control manufacturing and other industrial processes. As a result, "all core technologies are basically in the hands of U.S. companies, and this provides perfect conditions for the U.S. military to carry out cyber warfare and cyber deterrence," according to a January article in the military newspaper China Defense.
Beijing has long strived to limit the use of foreign technology and develop indigenous alternatives. The "Regulations for the Administration of Commercial Encryption," implemented in 1999, require government approval for the manufacturing, sale, use, import or export of any product containing encryption, restricting the use of foreign encryption technology within China. Introduced in 2007 by the Ministry of Public Security, the "Multi-Level Protection Scheme" prohibits non-Chinese companies from supplying the core products used by the government and banking, transportation, and other critical infrastructure companies. And the May 2010 Chinese "Compulsory Certification for Information Security Scheme" forces foreign companies wishing to sell to the Chinese government to disclose their intellectual property for security products.
But it’s China’s over-reliance on pirated goods that makes it extra-susceptible to security breaches. Chinese software companies have been unable to develop competitive products, and as a result Chinese users pirate software from foreign companies. Because stolen software is not updated automatically by the producer, and users rarely patch on their own, it’s easier to hack. In October 2008, when Chinese users with pirated copies of Windows on their computers downloaded a new Windows upgrade, their screens went black. The blackout screen could be turned off but returned every hour with a reminder to buy legitimate products. Chinese netizens were enraged at the intrusion, and many Chinese policymakers were suddenly presented with the unpleasant truth that a U.S. company was controlling computers inside their country. As Tang Lan, an expert in information security at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, wrote in a February 2012 article in China Daily about the incident, "It’s right to attack piracy, but the incident also exposed China’s online vulnerability to high-tech intrusion from overseas."
Beijing has been working to reduce the use of pirated software, especially in government offices. As part of a 2012 national anti-piracy campaign, the government spent $156.9 million on legitimate operating system licenses, office software, anti-virus, and other special-purpose software. Overall, the proportion of China’s personal computers with pirated software installed fell from 92 percent in 2003 to 77 percent in 2011. Government ministries and state-owned industries, however, are still not immune to the lure of pirated software: In September 2012, Microsoft asked the Chinese government to stop the country’s largest energy company, China National Petroleum Corporation, and three other state-owned enterprises from using pirated software.
Chinese analysts also worry that as the People’s Liberation Army becomes increasingly dependent on computer and communication networks, it will become more vulnerable to cyberattacks. As evidence of the threat, Science and Technology Daily, the official newspaper of China’s Ministry of Science and Technology, claimed in an Oct 14 article that the United States sold virus-laden computers to Iraq via France prior to the Gulf War in order to paralyze its air defense system (an allegation that has never been confirmed). The article says the result was a "soft knife without spilling blood" — meaning an attack that causes undetectable harm, and implies that the United States could perform a similar attack against China. The Stuxnet virus, which the United States and Israel reportedly used to attack the Iranian nuclear program, has reinforced the Chinese perception of vulnerability and of the United States’ willingness to use cyber weapons.
Foreign attacks on China’s networks could also threaten domestic stability, the maintenance of which is Beijing’s top priority. China must have its "own discourse on cyberspace," wrote Liu Zengliang of Beijing’s National Defense University in an August 2011 cover story in the state-owned People’s Tribune, and so must master the "integrated trio of video, voice, and data" and fully exploit technology like cellphones, blogs, podcasts, and microblogs to disseminate its message and restrict foreigners from influencing public opinion within China. A December 2011 article on the military website China Military Online argues that "online games, online shopping, and online movies, etc., which represent new online industry models, are also influencing people’s lifestyles and systems of values, and are becoming important components in seizing strategic high ground for the dissemination of information online." The goal is not only to block Twitter, Google, and other foreign social-networking sites, but to ensure that the hardware and software that enables their Chinese competitors is also secure.
Keeping out foreign companies and growing domestic ones also helps China avoid a technology trap, where Chinese producers dominate at the labor-intensive, low-value end of production while paying expensive royalties to Japanese, European, and U.S. patent owners.
The House report will likely reinforce the existing policy dynamic of distrust and protectionism, instead of a cooperative and transparent inspection process for information technology that would be beneficial for both countries. Chinese entrepreneur and activist Fang Xingdong argues in an October article in the technology journal Communications Weekly, that China’s response to the House report should be to "study the United States and establish an even more open, fair, and impartial security investigation mechanism so that we can use their standards to protect the interests of Chinese companies."
The Chinese government is unlikely to follow Fang’s advice and the House report dismisses suggestions for a global, transparent inspection system as insufficient and overly complicated. The result: a wave of protectionism that harms both sides.On Media Blog Archives Select Date… December, 2015 November, 2015 October, 2015 September, 2015 August, 2015 July, 2015 June, 2015 May, 2015 April, 2015 March, 2015 February, 2015 January, 2015
Dennis Kucinich interviews Bashar Assad
Former congressman Dennis Kucinich and Fox News correspondent Greg Palkot sat down with Syrian President Bashar Assad recently for a wide-ranging interview that will air on Fox News, according to the Syrian presidency's Twitter and Facebook accounts.
Palkot and Kucinich, a Fox News contributor, conducted the interview in Damascus during the visit of an American delegation that included former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.
#President al-Assad gives an #interview to American Fox News channel, to be broadcasted on 01:00 am – Damascus. pic.twitter.com/gVHjyIpPMA — Syrian Presidency (@Presidency_Sy) September 18, 2013
The news of the interview was first reported by Britain's ITV News on Tuesday morning. UK Sunday Times reporter Hala Jaber later reported on Twitter that the interview had been conducted today. Neither ITV or Jaber cited the sources of that information. Sources familiar with the interview told POLITICO that Kucinich had been trying to secure the interview for at least two weeks.
The interview is Assad's second with an American television network this month, following his interview with Charlie Rose on Sept. 8.
(WATCH: Charlie Rose interview with Assad - hints at response if U.S. attacks)
Kucinich previously met with Assad in 2011 and drew criticism after reportedly praising the foreign leader as “highly loved and appreciated by the Syrians.” The Ohio Democrat later issued a statement saying he had been misquoted by Syrian media.
Follow @politicoNow that the Supreme Court has agreed to take on the Hobby Lobby case (though they may still duck out of the biggest questions) it seems as if interested parties on both sides are rushing to define what it all means before the first word of the eventual decision is written. As with many such high profile cases, this really has very little to do with the published corporate policies of one particular employer and what will show up in their workers’ benefits handbook next year. This is a case which, if a full, unambiguous decision is rendered, will be dredged up as precedent for years to come in cases across the nation. But we can’t seem to agree on what it is that’s being decided.
For a very liberal reading of the “deeper meaning” of it all, the New York Times helpfully provides the opinion of Linda Greenhouse. As you might guess, I think this misses the point by about as large a margin as one could imagine.
The religious-based challenges that have flooded the federal courts from coast to coast – more than 70 of them, of which the Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to hear two – aren’t about the day-in, day-out stuff of jurisprudence under the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause: Sabbath observance, employment rights, tax exemptions. They are about sex. As such, the cases open a new front in an old war. I don’t mean the overblown “war on religion” that some Catholic leaders have accused the Obama administration of waging. Nor do I mean the “war on women” that was such an effective charge last year against a bevy of egregiously foot-in-mouth Republican politicians. I mean that this is the culture war redux – a war not on religion or on women but on modernity. All culture wars are that, of course: the old culture in a goal-line stance against a new way of organizing society, a new culture struggling to be born. Usually, that’s pretty obvious. This time, somehow, it seems less so, maybe because the battle is being fought in the complex language of law, namely a 20-year-old law called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
In her essay, Greenhouse seeks to quickly poo poo the idea that this is part of some grand War on Women or War on Religion, and then goes on to proclaim it to be exactly that, only in different words. But all of this seems to miss the mark.
Ed normally tackles the religious liberties side of these cases here, but the Hobby Lobby question seems to go much deeper than that. While it’s become somewhat toxic to keep invoking the Citizens United decision, one part of this case really does go back to the question of whether or not corporations are “people.” My consistent answer to that question is to say poppycock. A corporation is a stack of legal documents, buildings, property and equipment. But it’s equally true that the leadership of a corporation is most assuredly comprised of people (or one person in the case of some small businesses) who must make decisions and then live with the results, both in terms of the fortunes of their company and the peace of their souls.
Should the government be able to force a business owner to conduct their affairs in a way which doesn’t comport with their beliefs – religious or otherwise – with the only other option being to not engage in business? There may be exceptions to the rule, particularly when it comes to minimum safety standards, but it would seem that the default answer would be no. This is particularly true when we’re discussing offering a “benefit” to employees which is readily obtainable elsewhere.
But this leads us to what I think should be the real debate at the heart of this case. The question I would like to hear the SCOTUS justices ask the participants in this case is as follows: “Do you believe that the government has the power to tell employers how many days of paid vacation they have to offer their employees?”
Employers offer a collection of things to prospective applicants for job openings which the HR department collectively refers to as a compensation package. This goes far beyond the wages offered, covering items such as vacation, sick time, casual Fridays, employer contributions to 401K plans and, yes, health care options. Different companies offer different packages, and as you would expect, those who offer the best collection of benefits will attract the most and the best applicants. The employer must balance the costs of all this against their bottom line.
Conversely, an employer who offers virtually nothing but the bare minimum wage will attract only those who can’t find a position anywhere else. They may show up for work most of the time, but they will hardly be motivated to excel and further the company’s goals, generally keeping an eye on the clock and the door, hoping for a chance to bolt to a better situation. Such a company is unlikely to do well. It’s the invisible hand of the market at work yet again. So the real question I’m asking is not if the employer has the religious freedom to single out certain items of health care which they will or will not offer, but rather if they have the freedom to decide which – if any – benefits they offer the employee of any kind and to live with the consequences of those decisions. If the Hobby Lobby case actually settles anything, I’d hope it would be that question rather than the religious liberty debate which dominates the headlines.WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump called the U.S. air traffic control system out of date on Thursday and criticized its $10 billion yearly price tag but stopped short of calling for privatization of the program.
“I hear we’re spending billions and billions of dollars, it’s a system that’s totally out of whack,” Trump said during a picture-taking session at the White House ahead of his sitdown with airline and airport executives.
His comments heartened advocates of privatization who have long sought to move away from the system they see as outdated.
“We want to get the government out of the role of managing the air traffic control system,” Gary Kelly, Southwest Airlines Co’s chief executive officer, told Trump during the picture-taking session.
The Federal Aviation Administration spends nearly $10 billion a year on air traffic control funded largely through passenger user fees, and has about 28,000 air traffic control personnel.
Trump said he had been informed that ongoing modernization efforts to the air traffic control system were already obsolete by the pilot of his private jet.
“I hear the government contracted for a system that’s the wrong system,” Trump said. “It’s way over budget, it’s way behind schedule and when it’s complete it’s not going to be a good system.”
The FAA has spent nearly $3 billion since 2007 to implement an updated system, “NextGen,” which would utilize satellites to monitor aircraft instead of radar and make other changes.
“NextGen is one of the most ambitious infrastructure and modernization projects in U.S. history,” the agency said in a statement. “The FAA invited airline stakeholders to help develop the blueprint for NextGen and they continue to have a seat at the table in setting NextGen priorities and investments through the NextGen Advisory Committee.”
The Government Accountability Office said in a 2016 report that the United States “is generally considered to have the busiest, most complex and safest ATC system in the world.”
(bit.ly/1Q9oiOF)
The chief executives of United Airlines Inc, Delta Air Lines Inc, Southwest and JetBlue Airways Corp were among those who attended the meeting.
After the meeting, Airports Council International-North America President and CEO Kevin Burke told reporters on a conference call that airport officials had urged Trump to lift the cap on airport passenger fees to address airport infrastructure needs.
Trump proposed during his campaign to spend $1 trillion over a decade to upgrade the country’s infrastructure.
FOREIGN CARRIERS
Trump also told the executives he recognized that U.S. airlines were facing pressure from foreign carriers.
A jet departs Washington's Reagan National Airport next to the control tower outside Washington, February 25, 2013. REUTERS/Larry Downing
Heads of the three largest U.S. passenger carriers - American Airlines Group Inc, United and Delta - have urged the Trump administration to denounce the U.S. Open Skies agreements with the three major Middle Eastern carriers, which they accuse of having been unfairly subsidized by their governments. The three airlines, Qatar, Etihad and Emirates [EMIRA.UL], have denied that their governments unfairly subsidize them. The Gulf airlines operate around 200 flights per week to 12 U.S. cities.
“I know you’re under pressure from a lot of foreign elements and foreign carriers,” Trump said, adding that he wants foreign carriers also to do well.
“They come with big investments, in many cases those investments come from their governments, but they are still big investments,” he said.They told me when I was pretty young that I’d never be able to have a baby. And that was that. No therapy, no consolation, no nothing. I was given the knowledge and left to my own devices to deal with it. They wouldn’t have to see me crying at night. Every night. For years and years. I kept it all under wraps, despite hating myself inside. Hating my failure. Hating my parts that didn’t work. Hating the jealousy I felt for the women who had that gift and squandered it. I needed to try something. Anything.
It didn’t take long before I was ordering fertility drugs online. Diethylstilbestrol. Clomiphene. GnRH. I took them all. Then I had to get sperm. A few quick ads on Craigslist, a couple pictures sent back and forth, and a meet up. An hour later, I’d have a condom full of what I needed.
I gave the drugs a week to kick in before doing anything else. They made me dizzy and nauseous. It was a small price to pay, I guess, and less invasive than my next task, which was to inject the sperm into myself. I had to try lots of spots; I was aiming for where I thought ovaries would be. I figured an ectopic pregnancy was still a pregnancy. And maybe the doctors could fix it if I was lucky enough to encounter that problem in the first place.
In the time that passed between my self-medicating and material gathering, I’d find myself drifting off to sleep and imagining a baby — my baby — warm and soft in my lap. A little bundle of warmth capable of melting the impossibly-cold center of my being. Of my identity. A precious life who would love me as much as I loved him or her. My hands would travel over my belly and I’d dream of a life growing inside. I swear, I could almost feel the kick.
Waking from those dreams brought both a renewed sense of purpose and a renewed sense of hopelessness. It was the latter that threatened to end my quest entirely. The impulse to sleep forever with the hope I’ll be joined by my newborn was almost too tempting to pass up. Reopening old scar tissue on my arms and legs did little to quiet that voice. I had to stop waiting.
The needles were long and fat and the contents were cold from the refrigerator. In that week, I’d been with 30 men. My body ached and my self-esteem was gone, but they’d given me what I required. I carefully dissected the abdomens of the two homeless women I’d lured up to my apartment and exsanguinated earlier this morning. Organs look so different in person, but I found my way around. I did some damage, but I’m sure whatever ova I was able to suck into the syringe had to be healthier than what my body — the body of a failure — could produce.
I injected myself with all of it, sperm and eggs, over the course of the day. My belly was a hole-filled, leaky wreck by the time I was done. The medication left me dizzier than I’d ever been. But it’s all going to be worth it when this works. When this works, I’m going to have a beautiful baby of my own. One who will be loved. One who won’t be told he can’t follow his dreams just because he’s a boy.by
“Fake facts!” exclaimed a senior Iraqi official in exasperation, as he pointed to photographs online allegedly showing the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in Kirkuk, orchestrating the Iraqi government retaking of the city last month. He said that in reality the picture, tweeted by a Kurdish leader as evidence of Iranian hegemony, dates from 2014.
The greatest threat to the growing stability of Iraq is the differences between the US and Iran being fought out politically – and even militarily – in Iraq. The Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said in an interview with The Independent earlier this week that his greatest concern is a US-Iran crisis. He added that “it is not my job to solve their differences, but it is my job to prevent their confrontation inside Iraq”. He hoped that mutual denunciations by Washington and Tehran would turn out to be rhetorical.
Given US hostility to Iran, the Baghdad government is alarmed by what it sees as an attempt to portray it as an Iranian proxy manipulated by Mr Soleimani and reliant on the Shia paramilitary Hashd al-Shaabi or Popular Mobilisation Units (PMUs). “Today’s offensive by Iraq, PMU Shia militia commanded by Iranian IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] on Kirkuk have sadly started a new war in Iraq & Kurdistan,” reads a tweet from Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurdish leader and former Iraqi foreign minister, last month.
The senior Iraqi official said that Mr Soleimani never meets Mr Abadi or anybody else of real importance in Baghdad and has also failed to get an audience with the Shia supreme religious authority, Ali Sistani, in the holy city of Najaf. He said: “In fact, Iranian influence over the Hashd has been going down over the last two years because they are no longer paying most of the groups, aside from Ketaeb Hezbollah.”
The propaganda war is intense and unscrupulous, with Kurdish leaders in Irbil and much of the Arab media claiming that Iran pulls the strings in Baghdad, though the US is the government’s main military ally. The PMUs are portrayed as sectarian death squads which are leading the offensive into Iraqi Kurdistan. One video posted online purports to show the Kurds blowing up a bridge over the Lesser Zaab river at Altun Kupri, where Kurdish and Iraqi forces confront each other, to block the PMUs advancing into the Kurdish heartlands. In reality, the bridge is still standing and the much-watched video is of an entirely different bridge in Topeka, Kansas being destroyed in a controlled explosion to make way for new construction.
The US has always been paranoid about Iranian influence in Iraq, and tends to conflate Iraqi Shia fighting for their community and variant of Islam with proxies under the control of Iran. The US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, on a visit to Baghdad last month, said the Hashd should “go home”, apparently believing that its members were IRGC fighters from Iran. Mr Abadi speaks out vigorously in defence of the Hashd, but says he is determined that they must be under strict government control.
The power of the Hashd has become more limited today than when they were created as a mass movement three years ago, by a fatwa from Grand Ayatollah Sistani – though several paramilitary organisations like the Badr Organisation, Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Ketaeb Hezbollah have a much longer history. This was in June 2014 when the Iraqi army had lost Mosul to Isis and looked as if it would be unable to defend Baghdad.
The Hashd was central in defending the capital and in early counter-offensives against Isis, but has increasingly had a secondary role in military operations which are now led by the highly trained and experienced Counter-Terrorism Force (CTF). In the nine-month siege of Mosul, the Hashd occupied territory outside the city, but the assault was led by the CTF, Federal Police and Emergency Response Division. There were no Hashd units in Kirkuk city earlier this week, though they do have joint checkpoints with the army along the road back to Baghdad.
The Hashd, who are part of the Iraqi security forces and paid for by the state, are becoming less independent and less influenced by Iran because the Iraqi government is much more powerful than it used to be. But there is no doubt that Sunni and Kurds are frightened of them and they have a nasty reputation for sectarianism and criminality. For all their claims to be obedient to the state, there is an Iraqi saying that there are four givers of the law in Iraq: the government, the religious authorities, the tribes – and the Hashd.
Qais al-Khazali, 43, the leader of the Asaib Ahl al-Haq Shia paramilitary group, denies that it is under the control of Iran or is sectarian. Dressed in a white turban and black robes, he answers questions swiftly and articulately, showing a moderation that feels out of keeping with his violent past. Once a lieutenant of the nationalist populist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, from whom he split in 2004, he set up Asaib Ahl al-Haq which rapidly gained a reputation for ferocity and close links to Iran. Arrested by the British in 2007, he was released in exchange for a British hostage in 2010. Speaking in his office in Najaf in an interview with The Independent, he was keen to emphasise that his group were neither sectarian nor pawns of Iran. “It is one of their lies,” he says in response to the charge of sectarian killings. “There has been no sectarian cleansing. I am adamant – we did not bring in any Shia families to a Sunni area.”
He says that American forces should leave Iraq because they are no longer needed. “They don’t want to leave, but we can force them to,” he says. “We have experience in resistance. If there is a mandate from the Iraqi parliament and the Iraqi people, then we will stand up to them.” This would be the sort of nightmare envisaged by Mr Abadi, in which Iraqi Hashd – which the US believes are under Iranian direction – start killing American soldiers.
As for the role of Iran and Mr Soleimani in the taking of Kirkuk, Mr Khazali says that they were supportive to Mr Abadi and Iraqi government forces. “The reason the Prime Minister gets the credit is because he galvanised a great force to show he was serious.” He says that what Mr Soleimani did was to pass on to the Kurds that Mr Abadi really meant business and they would not be able to resist.
As for the future of the Hashd, he says that “in future it should be completely amalgamated with the Iraqi military and should not be involved in politics.” Much here will depend on whether or not there is a prolonged confrontation with the Kurds in northern Iraq, in which case Baghdad will continue to need large military forces, including the Hashd. As of Thursday, Baghdad is threatening to end a truce and take military action after the failure of talks about the central government taking control of the borders of Kurdistan.
Speaking of more general developments in Iraq, Mr Khazali made an interesting point. He said that after the US invasion of 2003, it was the Shia and the Kurdish communities, long opposed to and oppressed by Saddam Hussein, who held power. But this Kurdish-Shia bloc was dissolved when the Kurds voted for independence in the referendum on 25 September, and cannot be rebuilt. He says it might be time for the Shia community to look to the Sunni rather than the Kurds as their new partners in running Iraq. Asked if he thought the era of wars in Iraq was over, Mr Khazali, replied: “Iraq is similar to Alice in Wonderland – you cannot predict what is going to happen next.”NEWARK --It is, by any measure, an astonishing offer.
On Monday, New Jersey put a deal worth up to $7 billion in tax credits on the table to lure Amazon to the Garden State.
If the company picks New Jersey as the site to develop its new HQ2 headquarters, the deal would become the second-largest economic development package ever offered to a company in the U.S., an NJ Advance Media study found.
The $7 billion incentive would dwarf the highest subsidy held by a company in New Jersey -- $390 million given to Ameream LLC and Meadow Amusement in 2013 to develop the retail and entertainment American Dream complex, which has been under construction in the Meadowlands in East Rutherford for more than 10 years.
The offer, announced by officials during a news conference Monday, is New Jersey's latest attempt to entice a corporation to the state by handing out massive tax breaks. New Jersey has handed out a total of $8.9 billion in subsidies since 1996, most of them awarded since 2010 and ending up in Camden, according to data released by Good Jobs First, a national policy resource center in Washington.
It is difficult to know whether the investments, including those in Camden have paid off because a lot of the information needed to make that determination, such as the number of jobs created per subsidy awarded, is not always accessible, said Kasia Tarczynska, a research analyst with the center.
"There is a real issue with transparency on all kinds of subsidies throughout the country," she said.
So far, analysts looking at potential Amazon sites have not included New Jersey as a potential front runner for the Amazon headquarters and Amazon is not commenting on any of the bids.
And though it is not known how much other bidders are offering Amazon in incentive packages, New Jersey's $7 billion deal is likely to be the highest, analysts say.
"New Jersey is the only state that came out with its number. I don't think we would have done it that way if we were managing this, but I get it, they wanted to make a splash," said Peter Kasabach, the executive director of New Jersey Future, a non-profit research and policy institute. "Such an extreme position might not be a bad gamble."
The dollar amount New Jersey put forward comes just behind the $8.7 billion Boeing received from Washington back in 2013.
While most states in the U.S. use subsidies as a way to attract corporations, New Jersey is one of the few that frequently taps into just one source of funding, Grow NJ, a tax-incentive program overseen by the state's Economic Development Authority aimed at attracting businesses to some of the most economically depressed cities.
Analysts say the payoff is not always enough.
"One of |
legal test for careless driving”.
In Ontario traffic law, careless driving is driving “without due care and attention or without reasonable consideration for other persons using the highway.” The Supreme Court has ruled that a collision that happens because of “momentary lapses of attention” can lead to a careless driving conviction under provincial traffic law.
With that description, it would seem pretty easy to convict someone of careless driving, if they were clearly at fault and someone was harmed.
On paper, a careless driving charge can land you in fairly deep water, for a traffic offence: up to six months in jail, a $2,000 fine, a two-year licence suspension.
In practice, though, few lead to convictions. Last year, 34,084 people in Ontario were charged with careless driving, but only 6,747 were convicted. (Only 16 were sentenced to any time in jail.)
Since 2011, about one in five Ontario drivers who were charged with careless driving has ended up convicted.
Typically, careless driving charges are dropped in exchange for a guilty plea to a lesser charge, Brown explains.
It helps busy courts — which couldn’t cope if more than a handful of cases went to trial — operate efficiently.
“There has been a backlog in our court system, so certainly there’s a real incentive to move the cases along, get them resolved, and avoid trial. The system is overburdened.”
“What I’ve seen is that it is dropped to a lesser and included offence, and the person will plead out and avoid any trial time. Certainly they approach my clients on a regular basis with that proposition, in many cases.”
Where that breaks down, in Brown’s view, is in cases where somebody is injured or killed.
“It’s a compromise by the system, but certainly in the larger cases, where there is bodily harm or death, I don’t think the same approach should be taken.”
Domenico Zentena, who had been married to Susie for over 58 years, looked “tired, sad and defeated,” his son, Mike Zentena, wrote in a statement read by Cooper.
“He would walk to the site and sit there, the site of where she passed, on the roadway. He would sit there on the corner. He would come back and tell us something he observed, or thought might have been the reason Mom was struck, trying to search for answers.”
WATCH: Life is cheap: Trudi Mason recounts harrowing story of losing her friend to a car
Trudi Mason of Lethbridge, Alta. was cycling with her best friend when a car hit both of them. Mason’s friend died. Mason says the court process ignores the fact a person was killed.
If you spend time with people who advocate for ‘vulnerable road users’ — cyclists and pedestrians, mostly — you will sooner or later hear about ‘road violence,’ and be told that ‘if you want to kill someone, kill them with your car.’
This isn’t strictly true, of course. If you kill someone with your car on purpose that’s murder, just as if you killed them with a knife, or a brick.
But if you kill someone not through anger or malice, but through carelessness, we seem oddly helpless to deal with it in a way that reflects its seriousness — less than murder, more than making an unsafe turn.
Drivers who kill through carelessness aren’t murderers. On the other hand, what they’ve done can’t credibly be put in the same category as blowing a red light. (Somewhere between murder and blowing a red light covers a lot of territory, of course. )
Whose fault is that? Well, to a certain extent it’s the courts and their tradeoffs, and to a certain extent it’s just the way the laws are structured.
And in the end it comes down to budgets, lawyers with experience of the system and its compromises explain. Trials are expensive; guilty pleas are cheap. Serious consequences mean that more cases go to trial, as drivers lawyer up and fight back; settling cases with guilty pleas keeps the traffic court system humming cost-effectively along.
Courts for minor offences get little guidance about sentencing, wrote provincial court judge Rick Libman in a 2010 paper published by the Law Commission of Ontario:
“Justices of the peace who impose sentences for regulatory offences do not have before them a guiding rationale or legislative statement explaining what aims are to be addressed by the court’s sentence, or what goals are to be furthered through the imposition of punishment. ”
“While the state of sentencing for regulatory offences in Canada may not be in “chaos,” it certainly appears that there is in the courts a lack of uniformity, and marked inconsistency, in applying sentencing purposes and principles to such offences.”
“We are hoping to use the strength taught to us by Susie, of forgiveness, to overcome this,” Cooper said.
“Every time we are in the area of the accident, we see Ms. Manimtim, who lives on the corner. We see her car. We see the same vehicle that still has a dent in it from my mother-in-law’s body drive by us.”
For drivers who kill, and are at fault, Brown would like to see a system that emphasizes license suspensions and community service – and having to face the victim’s family in court in a difficult but necessary ritual. ‘Careless driving causing death’ could be created as an offence.
Jail is rarely appropriate, Brown argues, and fines have too different an impact on rich and poor: “$500 to one person could be a month’s rent. $500 to another person could be a night out for dinner.”
A more meaningful process might in the end be redemptive for the driver, he says.
“I do see individuals who are beside themselves with what they’ve done, they have genuine remorse, but the fact is that all they got was a $500 fine.”
“I do think it’s therapeutic, perhaps, to the offender that they’re put to more responsibility for their actions. Community hours, licence suspensions or being in the courtroom to listen to the family as to what happened.”
Brown cites Oregon’s ‘vulnerable road user law’ as an example to imitate.
Aimed at protecting cyclists and pedestrians, Oregon’s law imposes fines, 100 to 200 hours of community service, licence suspension and driver education on at-fault drivers who kill. The driver is required to go before a judge up to a year after sentencing to show that the requirements have been met, or the suspension will continue.
“At least it provides a measure of justice, something approaching justice, something that says, well you know, your parent was killed, that person shouldn’t be back on the roads in two or three months,” says Osgoode Hall law professor Albert Koehl.
“That person should have a serious license suspension, that person should be in court, that person should be taking re-training courses, so at least trying to approach something that looks closer to justice.”
Oregon’s system, which has been in place for 10 years, provides a measure of accountability, says Portland, Ore. lawyer Robert Mionske.
“Once you have to show up at the hearing, once you have to face the victim’s families, it’s not easy to dismiss what you have done. The accountability gets broadcast into society and on the news, but it also hits home with the individual. When you have to do 100 hours or 200 hours of community service, especially if it’s directed at driving issues, you really do educate people.”
“But when you make a mistake and you hurt someone, and the system just sends you a ticket, you haven’t learned anything and you haven’t sent any message to the rest of the drivers. “
Across Canada, about 390 pedestrians and 75 cyclists are killed each year.
Last June, Ontario’s legislature debated a private member’s bill that would have created an offence of careless driving causing death or bodily harm, with increased penalties – jail for up to two years, a fine of up to $50,000, a licence suspension of up to five years and mandatory retraining. The bill was introduced by Burlington Liberal MPP Eleanor McMahon, whose husband, an Ontario Provincial Police sergeant, was killed in 2006 while cycling by a driver with five convictions for driving under suspension.
READ: Liberal MPP wants new offence of careless driving causing death or bodily harm
Nine legislators, from all parties, spoke in favour of the bill; Wayne Gates, an NDP member from Niagara Falls, called for it to include a provision forcing drivers to show up to hear victim impact statements.
But the bill died when Ontario’s legislature was prorogued last September.
McMahon is now a cabinet minister; the bill might be re-introduced by Liberal MPP Ted McMeekin, but McMeekin would prefer that it be a government bill, according to a statement from his office.
“We’re definitely going to have an update before the end of this year, and it could be sooner than that,” transport minister Steven Del Duca told Global News on Thursday. “We will take concrete steps to give satisfaction to the families of victims.”
“I know this is not an entirely satisfying answer,” he conceded, asking for “a little bit of patience while we sort through this.”
WATCH: Life is cheap: What provincial ministers have to say about careless drivers facing minor penalties
Global News sought out responses from 8 of 10 provincial governments regarding whether the justice system fairly deals with people who kill with their cars. Three ministers agreed to do an on camera interview.
Have you or someone you know been involved in the legal aftermath of a serious accident? Is there a story you’d like to tell? Let us know using the form below.By Ken Roseboro
Last year, Kade McBroom launched a non-GMO soybean processing plant in Malden, Missouri, and was optimistic about the potential to serve the fast-growing non-GMO market.
But now McBroom sees a potential threat to his new business from herbicide drift sprayed on genetically modified crops. This past spring, Monsanto Co. started selling GM Roundup Ready Xtend soybean and cotton seeds to farmers in Missouri and several other states. The seeds are genetically engineered to withstand sprays of glyphosate and dicamba herbicides. The problem is that the Xtend dicamba herbicide designed to go with the seeds has not yet been approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), leading many farmers to spray their GMO soybeans and cotton with older formulas of dicamba—illegally.
An aerial photo showing drift damage on a non-dicamba resistant soybean field next to a dicamba resistant soybean field. Kade McBroom
May Not Be Able to Grow Non-GMO Soybeans
While Monsanto’s GMO crops can tolerate sprays of dicamba, other crops can’t. As a result, dicamba, which is known to convert from a liquid to a gas and spread for miles, is damaging tens of thousands of acres of “non-target” crops in southern Missouri and nine other states, mostly in the South. An estimated 200,000 acres are affected in Missouri alone, though the EPA puts that number at 40,000. Non-GMO and even GMO, soybeans that aren’t dicamba resistant are damaged as well as peaches, tomatoes, watermelon, cantaloupe and other crops.
“Farmers are so mad,” said McBroom, who has spoken with several farmers in his area about the problem. “I’m assuming there will be lawsuits.”
Two farmers who grow non-GMO soybeans for Malden Specialty Soy told McBroom that they may be forced to grow dicamba tolerant GMO soybeans to protect their farms from dicamba drift.
Damaged soybean plant leaves. Kade McBroom
“When my suppliers say ‘I’m going to have to quit growing non-GMO soybeans and start planting dicamba beans just to protect myself’ it becomes an issue,” he said. “They don’t want to go that route, but they may not have a choice.”
For now, McBroom says his business is fine, but warns: “If they don’t get this under control it will be a threat.”
Peach Producer Lost 30,000 Trees
The dicamba drift problem extends beyond non-GMO soybeans to many other crops. Missouri’s southern “Bootheel” region is known for its agricultural diversity. Farmers grow a wide range of crops including cotton, rice, wheat watermelon, tomatoes, cantaloupe, peaches, sweet potatoes, peas, popcorn and peanuts. Many of those crops are threatened by dicamba drift.
“At its core, this is a concern for the diversity in southeast Missouri agriculture,” McBroom said. “This is affecting everyone that isn’t growing dicamba tolerant crops including non-GMO crops, fruits, vegetables and home gardens.”
A damaged peach tree. Kade McBroom
Bader Peaches, Missouri’s largest peach producer, is suffering massive losses according to owner Bill Bader. “We will lose 30,000 trees,” he said.
Bader, who also grows soybeans on his farm in Campbell, Missouri, estimates his yield loss on the beans may be as much as 40 percent.
Bader estimates that 400-500 farmers in his region have been affected. “If they don’t get compensation 60 percent will be out of business in two years,” he said.
Who is to blame for the problem? “We need to go after Monsanto. These farmers are being hung out to dry,” Bader said.
University of Arkansas weed specialist Bob Scott agrees. “This is a unique situation that Monsanto created,” he said in an interview with National Public Radio.
Monsanto responded by saying that they introduced the new GMO seeds because they promised farmers better yields. The company also said that farmers were warned to not use the older dicamba formulations and that their new formula will have lower volatility to reduce the drift threat
GMO-Herbicide Treadmill Continues; Loss of Farmer Choice
Soybean and cotton farmers in the South face significant weed problems, particularly with palmer’s amaranth or “pig weed,” which has developed resistance to glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide. Monsanto developed the Xtend system with dicamba to address the resistance, allowing the company to continue keeping farmers on a GMO-herbicide treadmill.
But the effectiveness of the dicamba GMO system—like that of the Roundup Ready GMO system—is likely to be short-lived. A University of Arkansas study published earlier this year found that pigweed plants would develop resistance to dicamba in just three generations.
This year farmers grew an estimated 2 million acres of dicamba tolerant GMO soybeans. The biotech giant aims to increase that to 15 million acres, a troubling prospect to Kade McBroom.
“If 2016 is a preview of the dicamba era, anybody not growing dicamba resistant crops is in trouble, plain and simple,” he said.
One of the worst parts of this whole debacle is that farmers—by being forced to grow dicamba resistant GMO soybeans—are losing the choice of what they can grow. Ironically, Missouri passed a “Right to Farm” measure in 2014 that protects farmers’ right to grow what they want. Now, the rich agricultural diversity of southern Missouri could turn into an industrial monoculture of GMOs and toxic herbicides.
“If this keeps up, ‘right to farm’ will become more like the right to farm dicamba tolerant crops,” McBroom said. “Neighbors are determining what the people around them can and can’t grow. When you start taking options away from farmers, you start taking away opportunities.”
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Original article
Other articles of interest can be found at EcoWatch
xxx
Find out about our great (WOW) TLB Project Membership package and benefits, add your voice and help us to change the world!If you’re about to take on your first tier 3 solo, here are some helpful rules of thumb.
Use the empty lobby trick to gain time
This trick skips the GO animation when the raid begins, bringing you directly into battle. Usually you can start ~3 seconds earlier than usual, even more on older phones. See our article to learn how to do the trick.
In general, dodge charge moves only
Dodging fast moves costs too much time to be viable. When a guide says that a Pokemon is reliant on dodging, it means dodging charge moves only.
Avoid wiping out with your first team
Wiping out brings up the “all your Pokemon have fainted” screen. If you don’t have a second team to rejoin the battle, you’ll have to revive the first team or use the recommended team.
If you’re the only player in battle, leaving battle causes the raid boss to regain a little HP. All of this costs valuable time. If you’re way ahead, then re-entry may be viable.
Dodge less if you’re barely timing out
Pokemon gain energy from taking damage. Therefore, tanking charged moves may let you use your own charge moves sooner, increasing DPS. Dodging itself costs about 0.5 s.Bear strikes up unlikely friendship with a WOLF as photographer captures both animals sharing dinner on several nights
Both are meant to be isolated hunters that strike fear into everything they meet.
But this male bear and female wolf clearly see the softer side in one another and eat dinner with one another.
Each evening after a hard-day's hunting this pair of unlikely friends could be seen sharing a romantic deer carcass meal together as the sun set over their wilderness home.
Dinner for two: Each evening after a hard-day's hunting this pair of unlikely friends met for supper
Rare pictures show how the young brown bear and grey wolf would sit down to eat together and even enjoy romantic views over the landscape for up to two-hours
The unlikely friends could be seen sharing a romantic deer carcass meal together as the sun set over their wilderness home
Rare pictures show how the young brown bear and grey wolf would sit down to eat together and even enjoy romantic views over the landscape for up to two-hours.
The heart-warming pictures of this unusual partnership were captured by nature photographer Lassi Rautiainen, 56, in the wilds of northern Finland.
'No-one can know exactly why or how the young wolf and bear became friends,' said Lassi.
'I think that perhaps they were both alone and they were young and a bit unsure of how to survive alone.
These best friends were spotted meeting up every night for ten days straight
Share with me! The predators would happily share their spoils with each other
Welcome to the club: The bears seemed to welcome the lone wolf into their company in Finland
'It seems to me that they feel safe being together, and so every evening met up for their dinner.'
These best friends were spotted meeting up every night for ten days straight for the time Lassi spent with them.
From between 8pm and 4am they would stay in each other's company for hours.
Lassi said: 'When I realised that no one had observed bears and wolves living near each other and becoming friends in Europe, I concentrated more and more on getting pictures to show what can happen in nature.
'Then I came across these two and knew that it made the perfect story.
'It's very unusual to see a bear and a wolf getting on like this.A consideration of the police institution encounters nothing essential at all. Its power is formless.
— Walter Benjamin, Reflections
whos gonna rake all these leaves up?? the police? #TheThursdayNiteRant
— @dril
The most obvious fact about the police is also the most unsettling, which might be why it’s rarely mentioned: cops aren’t real. This isn’t to say that they’re some kind of figment of the collective imagination; they’re plainly here, but theirs is a presence that doesn’t seem to have the same kind of existential rootedness as more usual objects: tables and chairs and criminals and so on. Cops seem to hover just on the wrong side of any sensible ontology; for all the direct physicality of their violence, there’s also a lingering sense of the unearthly and the spectral. This might be why people tend to get so spooked by them: approval ratings for the police tend to fall after any kind of encounter. It doesn’t matter if they’re baton-charging your picket line or returning your lost cat: there’s something about cops that produces a kind of queasy, crawling revulsion. The sense of a ghost at the feast. It comes out in the names we find for them: scum, filth, pigs. Cops induce abjection; they’re neither subject nor object but disturbingly liminal. You can see this in Gogol’s short stories: whether it’s someone’s nose running off on its own accord and impersonating a minor noble or the ghost of a civil servant stealing overcoats, all spectral happenings end up coming under the domain of the police. No wonder TV schedules are saturated with reality shows about them. We’re shown an unending montage of cops chasing down speeders and rounding up drunks, giving a weary smile to the camera after making their arrests, all to make sure we know that they’re people just like us. All this desperate propaganda only points towards the hideous truth: they’re not like us at all; they’re something entirely alien.
There’s a story about an American anthropologist who married into a Yanomami tribe after living with them for several years; eventually he left, bringing his wife with him into what is still occasionally called civilisation. The Yanomami had heard of the police, but they imagined them to be a particularly fierce and sadistic tribe that all lived in the same village. In Caracas, she’d eye street cops warily, looking out for cop children and cop babies, wondering what their presence amongst normal people could mean. Of course, her analysis of the police is completely correct. There are cop children and cop babies. Cops can take on any form, and anything has the potential to be a cop. Last year, it was discovered that police in the UK were using the identities of dead children as covers for undercover work. As activist groups across the world have discovered, any movement with more than ten people most likely harbors a parasitic, shapeshifting cop. The first game of shifting ontologies that children learn to play is cops and robbers, and it’s always so easy to turn yourself into a baton-swinging policeman. In earlier times it was known that inorganic objects could at any point become infected with vampirism and turn against their owners; now we know that everything has the potential to become a cop. Media coverage of a ‘cops off campus’ demonstration in London predominantly focused on a single bin that had been set on fire by protestors. Why? Was the bin a cop? Are all bins cops? How many of the objects we take for granted are secretly watching us, concealing a hollow core of cop unreality?
Left-wing criticism of the police in society tends to focus on the rupture between what the police are ostensibly for — helping lost tourists; catching serial killers; and other such noble tasks — and what it is they actually end up doing — routinely harassing people of color, sex workers, and the economically underprivileged; breaking up protest movements; forming the last line of defense for capital. This functional gap is important, but it’s not all that it seems. Throughout history, all social institutions have had some kind of dual articulation. Egyptian pharaohs claimed to be avatars of the divine temporarily manifesting themselves among mere mortals; in fact they were petty tyrants degenerated through successive generations of incest and sacrificing needless thousands to their obscene pyramidal obsessions. Feudal lords claimed to be divinely appointed guarantors of the safety of their loyal but non-consanguineous subjects, while in truth being rentiers with pretensions and silly hats. Today this double structure is everywhere. Schools and universities pretend to be dedicated to the universal ideal of knowledge while in reality imparting the skills and ideologies of the workplace, courts pretend to deliver holy justice while lending false legitimacy to the prison system, militaries pretend to protect global human rights while engaging in the same old resource-grabbing, and so on ad nauseam. Any organ of an essentially unjust order needs to plug itself into some grand metaphysical narrative to do its work unimpeded. Cops are different. Uniquely, they dissimulate, pretending to be more boring and quotidian than they actually are. They’re hiding something.
The story we’re told about the police centers on the idea that police work is a series of everyday, unconnected incidents. Their job description might be accommodatingly vague — upholding law and order, protecting and serving — but what it involves is essentially reactive. A crime appears, or a situation develops, and the police come along to return things to normal. This is why reality cop shows appear as a slow procession of events without narrative, and why detective dramas start each week’s episode with a new mystery. The leftist charge that cops ultimately exist to protect the interests of capital falls victim to this too: it presents cops as static guardians, knocking away various incoming threats to their moneyed masters. (Even Marx falls into this trap, describing in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 how the labour of the criminal sustains the legal system.) The truth is very different.
Cops don’t uphold the law, they haunt it: the police only uphold the law in the same sense that a poltergeist upholds a cabinet as it drifts menacingly through the air. Cops are to the law as poltergeists are to interior design: it’s a process of deliberate and malicious reconfiguration. Legality — which is for the most part a static, regulatory structure — has existed for thousands of years without needing a police force to enforce its regulations. More often than not, cops follow the law less than they constitute it: something becomes illegal because a cop decides you can’t do it, or it becomes legal because they do it themselves. Until the passing of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984, law enforcement in the UK were technically banned from questioning arrestees before trial. The Act only put on vellum what the cops had already been doing for decades. The harassment of ethnic minority individuals through stop-and-frisk policies isn’t just a simple reflection within the police of a general societal racism; often it’s a process by which that racism is constituted. Every time a kid is detained and searched on the street for the crime of being black, structural racism isn’t just perpetuated but produced.
To really excavate the horror of cop-being you have to examine not their everyday brutality, but their strangely sinister positive self-image — the role they’ve allotted for themselves. Each of their mundane tasks eventually unfurls to reveal itself as an enormous metaphysical project. The friendly helpful police of the bourgeois imagination are those whose job it is to work things out — they solve mysteries, they give directions, they match crimes directly to perpetrators. In other words, the order they’re supposed to maintain isn’t so much a socio-political order as a linguistic one (if the two can be distinguished). They’re here to straighten out the sometimes unruly network of significations. In detective dramas the killer is generally someone quite mild and unassuming; the task of the police is to make sure all bad guys are properly identified and attached to their name as bad guys, to protect against any kind of ambiguity of meaning. They are mobile agents of a very immaterial network of signs, giving a designation to everything and everything to its designation.
What this actually looks like can be seen on a grand and terrifying scale in the aftermath of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. Public institutions and transport networks were closed, residents were asked to stay in their homes, the tenth-largest city in the country was completely shut down. The contrast with the 9/11 attacks — after which Americans were told to go out, shop, and continue as normal — couldn’t have been more stark. Cops didn’t put Boston on lockdown because of the threat posed to the population; other triple homicides don’t tend to provoke the same reaction. The threat posed was to the order of signs. There was no claim of responsibility for the bombings; as the smoke cleared there were those who automatically blamed foreign Islamic radicalism and others who suspected the white far right. When the Tsarnaev brothers were identified it was as a zone of indistinction — US citizens but foreign-born; Muslims but not particularly devout, and not only Caucasian but actually born in the shadow of the Caucasus mountains. The only response to these tangled ambiguities was for the cops to straighten out the entire city, keeping everyone attached to their official residences while the militarised SWAT teams went from door to door making sure everything was in its proper place.
It’s not that this imposition of semiotic order has to follow the contours of reality — after all, reality is often very messy and ambiguous, and in a disordered world the imposition of order is always in a sense arbitrary. It’s something imposed on the world from outside, by unworldly means. Whenever cops are involved strange and supernatural things always seem to happen: drugs will mysteriously pop into existence on someone’s person, innocuous objects will briefly transform themselves into guns or knives, something like demonic possession will overcome members of the public, turning them into violent monsters that need to be put down. Of course, all this magical energy will often play havoc with any sound or video recording equipment in the area, wiping out any record of what took place. It doesn’t matter that none of this makes any sense, as long as everything’s nicely in order. Anyone shot by police must have been doing something wrong, otherwise they wouldn’t have shot them.
This power to attach every referent to its signifier requires judicious use of the gaze — or as it’s often termed today, surveillance. Again, this isn’t a hidden or secret function: the stated role of the police is not only to untangle every mystery, but to watch and observe everything and everyone. Cops have schemes and projects. In 2003, the NYPD launched a project to meticulously document every activity among the city’s entire 9,000-strong Moroccan community. As the leaked documents that revealed the project made clear, it was only a trial run. The broader plan is to turn our world from the one we still occasionally recognise into Planet Cop. Children seem to grasp all this intuitively: when they’re forced into a corner they know how to react. I’ll tell the police on you. It works. The invocation of the police is the same as the police itself; it’s an appeal to the police as the universal gaze. It’s not a voyeuristic gaze, but the uncanny paranoid sensation that you’re being watched — being watched in the passive voice, with the gaze emanating from a void. As Lacan makes clear, the gazer does not exist and the gaze can only be something that happens to you, but if you go and investigate this gazing void, chances are you’ll find a cop there, watching you. The conclusion is difficult but impossible to ignore. Cops can change their form at will, they can bend the laws of physics, they operate on the level of the immaterial, and their gaze comes from a void. They’re not real.
But despite all this, every knock of truncheon against skull affirms the actuality of the police. Where did these spectral beings come from, and how did they get here? At this point it’s only possible to speculate. The most likely and logical explanation is that cops come from some pocket universe or some spectral realm, a shadow-land trapped between real existence and the nothingness that surrounds it, and that somehow they broke through into our existence and started rearranging it according to their whims. It’s not inconceivable that all our inchoate messing around with repressive state apparatuses didn’t just open up a breach between worlds but actually invited them in. The object of the cop invasion, of course, is to steal our ontology, our quality of being, and take it for themselves.
It’s a doomed project. If there’s a quality that distinguishes something real from something unreal, it’s a capacity to exist beyond its own image. We’ve understood for a while that there’s a deep and perilous gulf between the sign and the referent; that you can never refer to anything in its totality with the insufficiency of language. There’s always an essential remnant, something left over that can’t be said. This applies in particular to human beings: we always have an incredible potential to transform ourselves and our modes of existence far beyond anything we yet have a name for. This is what the cops want for themselves. They think they can take it by denying us this potential and by imposing the rigid order of names and signifiers. It’s not working.
The innumerable instances in which armed cops have gunned down members of the public at random could be considered as a desperate act of frustration with this situation. In 2012 a gunman killed a former co-worker outside the Empire State Building; in response police fired sixteen rounds at the surrounding bystanders, injuring nine people. In separate incidents during the Christopher Dorner manhunt in Los Angeles, cops opened fire on two cars entirely unlike that driven by Dorner, driven by people who didn’t match his description. Recently, as angry crowds demanded justice for the killing of Mike Brown in Ferguson, cops unleashed a vast armory of weapons against them. Why are they doing this? It might be necessary to try to imagine what it must be like to be a cop, however great the divide that separates us from them. Cop ontology is pain, unending pain: the sensation of manifesting in the world while only being half-real can only be a constant, unendurable agony. Over the centuries this pain has been rising to a fever pitch, and these random shootings are acts of desperation. They’re trying to draw themselves into being using the violence that they’ve by now become so accustomed to. Their problem is that the power and influence they’ve gained over this world is so total that they can do anything they want except transform themselves. Juries tend not to find against cops, even when the cops are revealed to have been lying, as in the Mark Duggan inquest. The signifier ‘police’ encompasses and justifies everything they do, and they can’t break out of it.
All good ghost stories end with the ghost resolving its attachment to the world and finally being able to pass on to the other side, but what we need to write is a good human story. Perhaps the only way for us to defeat the cops is to give them what they want. Not to give over altogether our potential for radical transformation, as their mad plan would have us do, but to redefine their role in such a way that they might be able to pull themselves into reality. Eggon Bittner remarked that as things stand, ‘no human problem exists, or is imaginable, about which it could be said with finality that this certainly could not become the proper business of the police.’ This needs to be rolled back. Maybe we should have the police tending gardens or breaking rocks for a couple of years. Have them create a sense of order that doesn’t directly restrict the capacities of others, that aligns with reality rather than being opposed to it, that arranges actual matter rather than playing an impossible game with linguistic signifiers. We need to bring them into intimate contact with the full materiality of our world. Afterwards, maybe, they might be able to shed their cop-unbeing and enter society once more — not as ghostly parasitic invaders, but as normal, peaceful, fully real people.Team Record Last Week 1 Northwest Missouri State 6-0 1 2 Grand Valley State 6-0 2 3 North Alabama 3-1 3 4 Shepherd 5-0 4 5 Midwestern State 5-0 5 6 Sioux Falls 6-0 7 7 Emporia State 5-1 11 8 Ashland 5-1 14 9 Texas A&M-Commerce 4-1 6 10 Tuskegee 6-0 13 11 California (Pa.) 5-0 16 12 Harding 6-0 17 13 Indiana (Pa.) 4-1 9 14 Minnesota Duluth 5-1 19 15 Central Missouri 4-2 20 16 Valdosta State 4-1 21 17 West Georgia 4-2 10 18 Henderson State 5-1 8 19 LIU-Post 6-0 22 20 Azusa Pacific 5-1 12 21 Bemidji State 5-1 23 22 Slippery Rock 5-1 24 23 Fort Hays State 5-1 NR 24 Ferris State 4-2 15 25 Wayne State (Mich.) 5-1 NR
Fort Hays State moved into the D2Football.com Top 25 Poll for the first time in program history on Tuesday (Oct. 11). The Tigers are ranked No. 23 in the latest poll. The D2Football.com poll is a supplemental poll generated by writers that are dedicated to covering NCAA Division II Football. The AFCA Poll released each Monday is the official Division II poll for national rankings.Fort Hays State is one of four MIAA teams referenced in this week's poll. Northwest Missouri State is No. 1 in the nation to match its AFCA Poll national ranking. Emporia State is No. 7 in the D2Football.com Poll, while ranking No. 12 in the AFCA Poll. Central Missouri is No. 15, but is behind FHSU in the receiving votes section of the AFCA Poll. FHSU is the second-highest team in the receiving votes section of the AFCA Poll released on Monday (Oct. 10).Fort Hays State (5-1 overall) heads to Washburn this weekend and currently sits in a tie with Emporia State in the MIAA standings for second place. Both are looking to chase down Northwest Missouri State, which is the only unbeaten team remaining in the MIAA.Below is the D2Football.com Poll for October 11, 2016.'Cultural bearing landform': Sand dune that has been preserved through European land practices, such as land clearing/levelling of the ground. (Supplied)
Aboriginal groups vow to fight to preserve the largest ever find of Indigenous artefacts in Sydney.
The discovery of more than 22,000 Indigenous artefacts believed to be 3000 years old on a construction site for Sydney’s Light Rail line is just the tip of the iceberg, say Indigenous heritage experts and a Darug elder.
Discovered among the artefacts were spear tips, knife blades, scrapers, cutters and about 12 marriage stones, given to a man when he comes of age and gets married.
Some of the artefacts found at the light rail site. Picture: Tocomwall
It’s prompted calls to stop work at the Randwick stabling yard site, which Transport for NSW is developing in a public-private partnership with ALTRAC Light Rail.
Uncle Des Dyer says there is a realistic need for better transport, but the huge find has “stirred up a hornet’s nest” and now “needs to be preserved, no matter what”.
He says when a site such as this is found, there is usually |
bour he knew that the Syrian army posed no threat to Israel.
In reality any hope the Johnson administration had of stopping the Israelis had been destroyed by their attack on the Liberty.
That evening, Thursday 8 June, Nasser intervened to stop the Syrians – in the hope of stopping the Israelis. The Egyptian President sent the following message to his Syrian counterpart, Nur ed-Din al Atassi: “I believe that Israel is about to concentrate all of its forces against Syria in order to destroy the Syrian army and regard for the common cause obliges me to advise you to agree to the ending of hostilities and to inform U Thant immediately, in order to preserve Syria’s great army. We have lost this battle.”
The message ended:
“May God help us in the future. Your brother, Gamal Abdul Nasser.”[xxxi]
That Nasser message, no doubt like all others, was intercepted by Israeli military intelligence. In the margin of a copy of it, Dayan scribbled the following note:
“Eshkol,
1. In my opinion this cable obliges us to capture maximal military lines.
2. Yesterday I did not think Egypt and Syria would collapse in this way and give up the continuation of the campaign. But since this is the situation, it must be exploited to the full.
A great day. Moshe Dayan.”[xxxii]
The Syrian leadership took Nasser’s advice and announced its acceptance of the cease-fire. It came into effect at 0520 hours the following morning, Friday 9 June. So far as the Arabs and the organised international community represented by the UN were concerned, the war was over.
Six hours and ten minutes later, the IDF invaded Syria.
Dayan had postponed the attack to allow for the redeployment of IDF units from Sinai and the West Bank – a redeployment that could not be completed while the Liberty was capable of listening to IDF movement orders.
Contrary to Dayan’s expectations and his prediction to the IDF’s northern commander, General David (“Dado”) Elazar, who had never been less than gung-ho for war with Syria, the Syrians fought well. Apart from honour – the eyes of the Arab world were upon them – there were probably two reasons why they did so. The Golan Heights were thought to be impregnable and they felt secure in their bunkers and fox holes. But when Israeli paratroops and armour were landed behind them, they were effectively cut-off, with nowhere to run; they had to fight or die. Because the IDF had an audacious enough plan to capture the Golan Heights, they became less of an impregnable fortress for their Syrian defenders and more of a death-trap.
On Friday 9 June 1967, and for the best part of 24 hours, the Syrians fought with all their strength, and there were great and true acts of courage under fire on both sides, not least on the part of those IDF officers who led their men into the jaws of certain death that the bunkers and fox-holes of the Golan Heights were. But by the evening of Saturday 10 June, in defiance of what had been agreed secretly with the Johnson administration before the war, the Golan Heights were in Israel’s hands. The war was over. In six days the creation of Greater Israel was a fait accompli. Dayan had made Zionism’s mad dream come true.
In his conversations with Rami Tal which were not made public until after his death, Dayan was astonishingly honest. At the heart of the great myth about Israel’s actions on the Syrian front in 1967 is the claim – it remains an article of faith among Israelis and most Jews everywhere – that the IDF seized the Golan Heights to stop the fiendish Syrians shelling Israeli settlements down below. (As we have seen, it was Israeli provocations that provoked Syrian shooting in the countdown to the war). When Tal demonstrated his belief in this Israeli claim, Dayan cut him short and said the following:
“Look, it’s possible to talk in terms of ‘the Syrians are bastards, you have to get them and this is the right time,’ but that is no policy. You don’t strike every enemy because he is a bastard but because he threatens you. And the Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us.”[xxxiii]
Israel’s last land grab of the war did provoke the threat, a real and serious one, of Soviet military intervention. For some hours there was the prospect that gut-Zionism’s territorial ambitions and what Lilienthal rightly called “Israel’s unconscionable use of military force” would provoke a superpower confrontation and possibly World War III. But at the brink, catastrophe was averted by use of the White House-Kremlin hot line.
For Israel’s hawks and those in the Johnson administration with whom they conspired, there was one big disappointment. The humiliation the Israelis had heaped on Nasser did not bring about his downfall, but… There was a moment when it had seemed that he was finished.
On the evening of 9 June, live on television from his home and headquarters in Manshiet el-Bakri near Heliopolis on the road to the airport, Nasser resigned. He was looking drawn and haggard and appeared to be a broken man. The explanation he gave his people for the catastrophe Egypt had suffered was short and simple. He had listened, he said, to the warnings of President Johnson and the Soviet Union not to strike the first blow.
That said, Nasser announced he was resigning the presidency in favour of Vice-President Zacharia Mohieddin, (the man who, on Nasser’s instructions, and given the chance by the Israelis, would have made the necessary concessions in discussions with U.S. Vice-President Humphrey to avert war).
Nasser did actually resign but before the next day was out, in response to mass demonstrations in his favour, he was President again.
Israelis, leaders and ordinary folk, had their own explanation for this turnaround in Cairo. The whole thing had been stage-managed. Nasser was not serious when he resigned. He was playing a game. The popular demonstrations in his favour had not been spontaneous. His secret police had bullied and bribed Egyptians to take to the streets to demand that Nasser stayed in power. (Israel’s intelligence chiefs knew that the CIA’s plan for toppling Nasser included paying Egyptians to take to the streets to denounce him. They assumed that Nasser had done the same thing in reverse, so to speak).
My Israeli friends, and many others who said such things, were kidding themselves. It was what they wanted to believe. The truth about what happened in Cairo is this.
Nasser did not inform his chosen successor of his intention to resign and, consequently, he did not ask Mohieddin if he was prepared to take over. Mohieddin did not want to be President in any circumstances, but especially those now prevailing in Egypt and throughout the Arab world because of the scale and speed of Israel’s victory which, for the Arabs, was an even bigger humiliation than that of 1948. Like all Egyptians and other Arabs, Mohieddin did not know that Nasser was intending to resign until he said so live on TV and radio. As soon as the broadcast ended, Mohieddin drove at top speed to Nasser’s home – to refuse the succession for himself and to tell the resigned President that he could not abandon his post while remnants of his army were still trapped in Sinai.
An argument followed. Nasser insisted there was no going back on his decision. “You are now responsible”, he said to Mohieddin, “you cannot refuse.”[xxxiv] Mohieddin gave as good as he got. He told Nasser that he had no right to choose his successor. Only the National Assembly could decide who would be President.
While the two men continued to argue, the cabinet was assembling in another room for a meeting Nasser had called to ratify his hand-over of power to the Vice-President. Meanwhile, in the streets outside, the people were having their say. Contrary to what Israelis believed at the time, it was an entirely spontaneous happening. The best summary description of it was in a report filed to Le Monde by the perceptive Eric Rouleau, one of the best French correspondents of his generation. He wrote:
“In the twilight and semi-blacked-out streets, hundreds of thousands, some of them still in pyjamas and the women in nightgowns, came out of their houses weeping and shouting, ‘Nasser, Nasser, don’t leave us, we need you.’ The noise was like a rising storm. Tens of thousands threatened to kill any deputies who did not vote for Nasser. Half a million people massed along the five miles from Nasser’s home, millions more began to pour into Cairo from all over Egypt to make sure that Nasser stayed.”[xxxv]
The following day, while the IDF was going for the Golan Heights, the National Assembly, by a unanimous decision, invited Nasser to remain as President.
It might have been that he resigned in the hope and even the expectation that his announcement would trigger a popular response in his favour, but there can be no doubt that it was spontaneous. Why, really, did it happen?
In my analysis the best way to explain it is by comparing perceptions.
Zionism had succeeded in selling its lie for the war. As a consequence (generally speaking), Nasser was perceived in America and throughout the Western world as the common enemy in general and, in particular, the Arab aggressor who had gone to war to annihilate the Jewish state. If that’s what you believed, whether you were Jewish or not, the events in Cairo following Nasser’s resignation statement were perplexing. He had led his people to catastrophe. He was a disaster for them. Surely now they would see that and, if he did not quit, they would overthrow him. Or ought to.
The perception of the people of Egypt and almost all Arabs everywhere was rather different and rooted in reality. In it the Zionist state was the aggressor and the Arabs were the victims of aggression. There were, of course, some Egyptians who realised that Nasser had made mistakes and miscalculations which had contributed to the disaster – given Israel’s hawks and their American conspirators the pretext they wanted for war. But such criticism as there was of Nasser for his leadership failings was the small-print on the invoice for catastrophe.
In summary: The vast majority of Egyptians, and very many other Arabs, still saw Nasser for what he really was – the symbol of their wish not to be dominated, not to be controlled and exploited by the combined forces of emerging American imperialism (replacing British and French imperialism) and its Zionist ally.
That’s why Nasser survived.
I think the best account of the 1967 war by any Jewish writer, Israeli or other, is in Avi Shlaim’s revision of modern Israel’s history: but I think his conclusions about what really happened on the Israeli side in the war miss a fundamental point. (I remain puzzled by the fact that he did not mention the attack on the Liberty, let alone the reasons for it). Shlaim wrote:
“Dayan’s various accounts of the reasons for war against Syria are so alarmingly inconsistent that one indeed needs to be a psychologist to fathom his behaviour. But one thing emerges clearly from all his contradictory accounts: the Eshkol government did not have a political plan for the conduct of the war. It was divided internally, it debated options endlessly, it improvised and it seized opportunities as they presented themselves. It hoped for war on one front, was drawn to war on a second front and ended up by initiating war on a third front. The one thing it did not have was a master plan for territorial aggrandisement. Its territorial aims were defined not in advance but in response to developments on the battlefield. Appetite comes with eating. The decision-making process of the Eshkol government during the war was complex, confused, convoluted. It did not bear the slightest resemblance to what political scientists like to call ‘the rational actor model.’”[xxxvi]
The notion that one needed to be a psychologist to fathom Dayan’s intentions was inspired by a remark made by Eshkol’s aide-de-camp, Israel Lior. He said that, hard as he tried, he was unable to fathom Dayan’s intentions, and thought his decisions needed to be examined by a psychologist no less than by a historian.
In Shlaim’s overview Greater Israel was created by chance. It just happened, was not policy. In my analysis that conclusion is both right and wrong. Right because Israel’s national unity government did not go to war with the intention of creating the Greater Israel of gut-Zionism’s mad dream. Wrong because Dayan did. From the moment he became Defence Minister and consigned to the dustbin of history the Rabin-Eshkol plan for limited military action, it was his war, not the government’s war. It was Dayan who took most if not all of the critical decisions, and in the case of his decision to attack Syria, he took it without consulting or informing Prime Minister Eshkol and Chief of Staff Rabin until after the attack had been launched.
Dayan’s “appetite” for more land came not from “eating” – not simply because the opportunities to eat were there. He was hungry because he was a gut-Zionist, conditioned by centuries of persecution, traumatised by the Nazi holocaust, driven by the belief that Gentiles were never to be trusted and, above all, convinced that the world would one day turn against the Jews again. I know he was convinced because he told me so. When that day came, Israel had to be big enough and secure enough to serve as the refuge of last resort for all the Jews of the world. Israel confined to its pre-1967 borders was not big enough and did not possess sufficient natural resources, water especially.
I once said the following to Dayan in private conversation: “What you really fear is that a day will come when the major powers will require Israel to be the sacrificial lamb on the altar of political expediency – just as in 1947 and 1948 they required the Palestinians to be the sacrifice on that altar.” Dayan replied, “You could put it like that.” Then, after a long pause, he added, “But we won’t let it happen.” Though he did not say so, he meant, “We have an independent nuclear deterrent and nobody is going to make Israel do what it does not want to do.”
So is there really need to call in the psychologists to explain Dayan’s behaviour, including and especially his truth-telling in conversation with Rami Tal for publication after his death? I think not. If the Syrians “were not a threat to us”, why did he order the IDF to attack them and grab a chunk of their territory – i.e. if not for the sole purpose of completing Zionism’s Greater Israel project? There was a part of the Dayan I knew that wanted to say out loud: “I created Greater Israel. I delivered on the promise our founding fathers made.” But there was also a part of Zionism’s warlord that knew it would not be a good idea to say so – in case the Greater Israel of his creation turned out to be, as it has, a ghastly mistake.
Dayan was never entirely comfortable in the presence of non-Jews and gave me the impression that he was sometimes uncomfortable with himself. I think he went to his grave wondering whether he had done the right or wrong thing for the best interests of Jews everywhere. On that basis the main difference between Moshe Dayan and Golda Meir defines itself. In the privacy of her own conscience (as I indicated in Volume One, Chapter One) she had the courage at the end of her days to consider the possibility that Zionism might have done the wrong thing. Dayan, at times the most charming and most engaging war criminal I ever met, did not have that kind of courage. It was moral courage and he allowed Zionism to rob him of it.
As it happened, the most vivid expression of Zionism’s Great Lie about the 1967 war was given voice by Prime Minister Eshkol himself. In the Knesset on 12 June he asserted that the war had been started by “the Arab invasion of Israeli territory.” He then said: “The very existence of the State of Israel hung upon a thread, but Arab leaders’ hopes of annihilating Israel have been confounded.”
A week earlier, in the first moments of the war, Foreign Minister Eban had launched the lie with an equally remarkable and astonishing statement. In the course of his assertion to reporters (including me) that Israel was acting in self-defence, he said: “Never in history has there been a more righteous use of armed force.”[xxxvii] In retrospect, it could and should be said that never in history has a country’s foreign minister talked such nonsense. Thereafter Israel’s ambassadors around the world spoke from Eban’s script.
We know that our leaders tell lies in war (and peace), and that disinformation is sometimes necessary if right is to triumph over wrong. But why, really, did Israel’s leaders lie, and lie so completely, in 1967?
Prime Minister Eshkol lied after the war because he had no choice. He could not say, “I lost control of events of my side to those who were determined to create the Greater Israel of Zionism’s mad dream.”
And the logic that drove the lie so far as Dayan was concerned can be summarised as follows: the bigger the lie, and the greater the authority with which it was told, the smaller the chance of Israel being branded where it mattered most – in the Security Council – as the aggressor.
Why, really, was it so important that Israel not be branded as the aggressor when it was?
Aggressors are not allowed to keep the territory they take by force. They have to withdraw from it unconditionally. That is the requirement of international law and also a fundamental principle which the UN is committed to uphold, as, for example, President Eisenhower did when Israel invaded Egypt in 1956. That is on the one hand.
On the other is the generally accepted view that when a state is attacked, is the victim of aggression, and then goes to war in self-defence and ends up occupying some or even all of the aggressor’s territory, the occupier has the right, in negotiations, to attach conditions to its withdrawal.
The point?
If in 1967 Israel had been branded as the aggressor, as it should have been, the Johnson administration would have had the choice of:
taking the lead in demanding that Israel withdraw unconditionally, which would have required the Johnson administration to confront Zionism ; or
; or admitting that the U.S. had taken sides and was irrevocably committed to Zionism right or wrong – whatever the consequences for America’s own longer term best interests. In this case the world would have known, before 1967 had run its course, that the U.S could not be an honest and therefore an effective broker of peace in the Middle East.
In the process of taking sides with Zionism’s child, the Johnson administration not only gave Israel’s hawks the green light for war with Egypt, and not only used its diplomatic clout first to delay a Security Council demand for a cease-fire and then to block calls for an unconditional Israeli withdrawal. The Johnson administration assisted the IDF’s war machine by providing aerial reconnaissance in the form of some very special U.S. aircraft, the American pilots to fly them and the necessary technical support on the ground.
So far as I am aware the only published account of U.S. participation in the war on Israel’s side is in Stephen Green’s book. He stated that his principal source for the story was somebody who claimed to have been involved in the still Top Secret mission from start to finish. Though he had to protect the identity of his deep-throat and therefore did not name him, Green said he had “verified the story circumstantially” by checking “Air Force unit histories, commanders’ names, technical details and so forth.” He also noted that while he was seeking to confirm the story through contacts with other individuals who might have participated in the operation and senior officials in the Pentagon, White House and State Department, Air Force intelligence contacted several members of the units involved “reminding them of their obligations to maintain silence on any previous intelligence missions in which they had been involved.”[xxxviii] (The main reason for Green’s satisfaction that the story was true was, he said, that “certain of the details provided by the source would have been very difficult to learn other than by participation in such a mission in Israel.”)
Assuming Green’s clinically detailed account to be correct – an assumption I make without reservation and not least because of the confirmation in principle I obtained from very high-level Israeli and American sources of my own – the American military contribution to the IDF’s war effort was spearheaded by planes and pilots of the 38th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron of the 26th Tactical Reconnaissance Wing, U.S. Air Force. The 38th was based in Ramstein, West Germany. Its participating planes (four) were flown from there to the U.S. air base at Moron in Spain where they were joined, before flying to Israel on 4 June, by supporting elements from the 17th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron of the 66th Tactical Reconnaissance Wing based at Upper Heyford near Oxford in England. At an Israeli air base in the Negev, the 38th’s planes were painted over with a white Star of David on a blue background and new tail numbers corresponding to actual inventory numbers in the Israeli Air Force.
The 38th’s planes were RF-4Cs. They were modified versions of the F-4 Phantom jet fighter. In June 1967 the RF-4C was state-of-the-art military reconnaissance and had been operational for only three years. It utilised cameras of various focal lengths and forward and side-looking radar (SLR) to provide both low and high altitude reconnaissance. Using radar and infrared sensors, which provided a thermal map of the area under reconnaissance, the RF-4C could operate by day or – this was the main reason for U.S. involvement – by night.
Without air cover because their own planes had been destroyed in the first two hours or so of the IDF’s aerial blitzkrieg, the Egyptians had to move their ground forces by night to avoid as much as possible the unopposed attacks of Israeli planes. The Israeli Air Force did not then have the necessary night-time aerial reconnaissance or strike capability. So the main task of the RF-4Cs was to track and photograph the movements of Egypt’s ground forces through the night so that, by dawn the following morning, IDF ground and air forces would know precisely where the enemy was and in what strength, and were positioned to attack without delay. The Sinai campaign of June 1967 was the most one-sided fight in the history of modern warfare. The Egyptians really had no more of a chance than turkeys awaiting the annual Christmas slaughter.
This American military assistance was provided to guarantee that the IDF achieved its objectives on the Egyptian front in the shortest possible time – before the U.S. came under irresistible pressure to stop blocking a Security Council resolution demanding a cease-fire and, initially, an unconditional Israeli withdrawal. The pre-war calculation of those in Washington’s war-loop was that the U.S. would not be able to delay things in the Security Council for probably more than three days. (In retrospect it is not difficult to understand why, before the war, the leaders of America’s intelligence community, CIA director Helms in particular, were so confident in their assurances to President Johnson that the IDF would achieve complete victory on the Egyptian front in three or four days. They had correctly assessed the effectiveness of the contribution the RF-4Cs were to make).
Initially the RF-4Cs were assigned to assist the IDF on only the Egyptian front. But their mission was extended when Israel went to war with Syria. The need then from Washington’s perspective was to help the IDF get that campaign done and dusted before the Soviet Union went over the brink and intervened.
Without American operational assistance it is at least possible that the IDF would have needed more time to destroy the Egyptian army in Sinai, and that in the extra time the U.S. might have come under irresistible international pressure to support a Security Council demand for a ceasefire earlier than it did. In this event the creation of Greater Israel – control of all of the West Bank and the grabbing of the Golan Heights – might not have happened.
For serious seekers of the truth, the record as set down for the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library Oral History Project is a goldmine, especially if the researcher is really focused. Some years after the 1967 war, the previously quoted Harry McPherson made the following contribution to that Oral History. He was reflecting on the nature of the “service” advisers give American Presidents.
“… you tend to view everything in terms of whether it hurts your Administration, your President and that sort of thing; or helps. You look at almost nothing from the point of view of whether it’s true or not. It’s only the sort of PR sense; what effect it will have on public support or lack of support for your Administration. And that’s a terrible way to get. It makes you very efficient. You become very quick. And you become good at offering advice on what your principal should do instantly. But you may miss the boat badly, because you haven’t really understood and taken in what the concern of the country is.”[xxxix]
For “concern of the country” read America’s own longer term and best real interests.
It was the case that the Middle East did not get enough of President Johnson’s quality time because he became increasingly distracted by the prospect of defeat for America in Vietnam; and that and other policy priorities, including his noble fight for the civil rights of black Americans, laid him open to manipulation by the supporters of Zionism right or wrong in his administration.
An example of how Zionism’s power brokers never missed an opportunity to manipulate Johnson was signposted by Macpherson’s recall of a particular comment the President made in an unguarded moment: “Damn it, they want me to protect Israel, but they don’t want me to do anything in Vietnam!”[xl]
“They” were both the government of Israel and the Jewish Americans who were in the vanguard of the growing anti-Vietnam war movement. The background context revealed by declassified documents makes it clear that Johnson was really pissed off (he undoubtedly would have put it like that in private) by the refusal of Israel’s government to support his “free world effort” in Vietnam, and by the opposition to that war of many Jewish Americans. (Except on the matter of Israel and the Palestinians, many Jewish Americans were and are, like many Jews everywhere, liberal, even left leaning, against injustice and for human rights).
Through 1965 and the early months of 1966, at President Johnson’s request, the State Department made strenuous efforts to get Israel to support the American war effort in Vietnam. The support required by the U.S. was the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and the Thieu regime in Saigon and the sending of Israeli rural health teams. In February 1966, when Israel was still saying “no” to American requests, Secretary of State Rusk instructed the American Ambassador in Tel Aviv to give the following message to Israeli Foreign Minister Eban. “Israel would rightly be the first to be frightened if the U.S. were to ‘cut and run’ in Vietnam. You should note that the U.S. is being most helpful to Israel currently, and that reciprocal gestures would be well received in Washington.”[xli]
In April 1966 U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Raymond Hare was sent to Israel to plead with Prime Minister Eshkol. Hare told him that the Vietnam problem was “now the touchstone of American foreign policy”, and that the U.S. government considered closer relations between Israel and the Thieu government to be “important.”[xlii] Eshkol still said “no”. He stuck to the line that Israel’s relations with Asian and African developing nations would suffer if Israel supported America’s war in Vietnam.[xliii]
So it was that President Johnson became increasingly irritated by Israel’s refusal and that of many Jewish Americans to support and be seen to be supporting his Vietnam War policy. (Hence his comment as quoted by McPherson.)
And that gave Zionism’s power brokers an opening to do some manipulating. They chose their moment well. On 7 June, the third day of the war, David Brody, Director of the Anti-Defamation League, was instructed to call at the White House to speak with two of President Johnson’s staffers, Larry Levinson and Ben Wattenberg. The Jewish community of America, Brody said, was concerned that the administration should not force Israel to “lose the peace” after it had won the war, as had been the case with Eisenhower after the Suez war.[xliv] The reality was that Zionism’s power brokers were concerned that President Johnson might not yet be fixed in his determination to prevent Israel being required to withdraw unconditionally from occupied Arab territories. Brody went on to suggest that in future public statements on the war, the President ought to stress the “peace, justice and equity theme”, and should specifically not mention “territorial integrity” (as he had done in his pre-war statements).[xlv] Levinson and Wattenberg then wrote a memorandum to the President quoting Brody’s advice and saying that it was good. “It could lead”, the memorandum stated, “to a great domestic political bonus – and not only from Jews. Generally speaking, it would seem that the Middle-East crisis can turn round a lot of anti-Vietnam, anti-Johnson feeling, particularly if you use it as an opportunity to your advantage.”[xlvi] Translated that meant the Zionist lobby in all of its manifestations would do its best to see that Jewish American opposition to the war in Vietnam was stifled – if President Johnson stuck to his guns and did not require Israel to withdraw without conditions as Eisenhower had done.
On its own the Levinson and Wattenberg memorandum probably did not have a major influence on President Johnson’s thinking, but it was part of a well-executed campaign, inside and outside the White House, to manipulate him by taking advantage of his preoccupation with the war in Vietnam.
True and tragic is that President Johnson knowingly took sides with Israel out of fear of offending Zionism and risking the loss, for himself and his party, of Jewish votes and Jewish campaign funds. And that required him to “miss the boat badly” by putting Zionism’s interests before America’s interests in the Middle East.
The man who had seen it all coming and tried to stop it happening before it was too late was the first U.S. Secretary of Defence, James Forrestal. As we have also seen, President Eisenhower shared Forrestal’s concerns, and for his two terms in office did insist that America’s interests should have priority over Zionism’s interests. And it is reasonable to speculate that a second-term President Kennedy would have followed Eisenhower’s lead. The problem by the time Lyndon Johnson became the leader of the so-called Free World can be simply stated – there was nobody with real influence on U.S. policy who was prepared to argue seriously for putting America’s own best interests first.
Secretary of State Dean Rusk and others knew that support for Zionism right or wrong was bound to have catastrophic consequences for America, eventually. But they also knew they could not buck their pork-barrel system.
Since this book was first published more information has come to light, much but not all of it from Liberty survivors, about who knew what when the spy ship was attacked.
It includes the fact that American intelligence agencies had taped intercepts of Israeli pilots telling ground control that their target was an America ship and asking if they were still required to attack it. The answer was, “Yes, follow orders.” Ray McGovern, 27 years with the CIA under seven presidents and the man who briefed some of them every morning, has confirmed that the NSA destroyed many tapes which proved the Israelis were lying when they said it was an “unfortunate accident” and a “case of mistaken identity”.
In this book I’ll leave the last word on why the Liberty was attacked to a senior IDF officer in conversation with Liberty survivor Don Paegler.
His task after the Israeli attack was to collect and try to re-assemble the bodies of those blown to pieces by Israeli bombs and torpedoes. Don’s own account, which he e-mailed to me, included this:
“The torpedo hit were I worked in the research spaces (commonly called the spook shack). I had top secret crypto security clearance, and when we reached Malta after the attack and put the ship in dry-dock, I was one of the first to go down to the torpedoed spaces to clean-up. Within the first 15 to 20 minutes, I picked up a piece of equipment. Under it was an arm. Although it had been soaked in salt water for a week, I knew whose arm it was. Phil Tiedke was a body builder and I could tell by the muscle structure it was his. It was like having an out of body experience. One of the men said, ‘You have to find the rest of the pieces of his body and make sure they all get in the same body bag.’ Another said, ‘They’re all blown apart, just put it in a bag and get on with it.’ Of the two days I spent down there cleaning up that is all I remember... When I arrived in Norfolk I was debriefed. I was told: ‘You have the highest security clearance anyone can get in this country. Never speak about this to anyone including your family.’”
There reason why Don decided to speak out was to do with his health. The post-traumatic stress caused by keeping the truth bottled up inside him had become a life threatening phenomenon. He put it this way:
“In 1985 I began to lose my vision. I could no longer see the centre strip in the road while driving. An optometrist examined my eyes and said I had a physical problem, not an eye problem. He referred me to a doctor who came in looking as white as a sheet after running his tests. He told me I should have died a long time ago. One of my major organs should have popped. My blood pressure was 240/145. He said it had been that way for a long time according to the damage to my eyes. Luckily I was having strokes in the retina of my eyes, instead of my heart or brain, where they could have killed me. I worked with Greg Jarvis who was on the Challenger shuttle when it blew up. After that I started having nightmares. Late in that year, balling like a baby, I drove off the San Diego Freeway on my way home to Orange County from work at Hughes Aircraft Co. in El Segundo. I cried for 10 minutes before I realized I was thinking about the Liberty. My doctor put me on heavy blood pressure medication for a year and a half. During that time my marriage of 20 years was dissolved.
“In February of 1987, I found out about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) while watching a Simon & Simon episode. I finally called the VA hospital in Long Beach. They said they did not do the necessary treatment at their facility. The closest Vet Center to me was 5 blocks north of Disneyland. Within a month of being able to talk about the Liberty both blood pressure numbers dropped 30 points. In the late 1990’s I came down with Type II diabetes. While my doctor says stress is not the cause, he believes stress has contributed greatly to the severity of the disease.
“I attended group therapy from April 1987 to March 1990. During that time I had to confront many issues. One night a Marine from Viet Nam looked at me and said, ‘You guys got screwed as bad if not worse than anyone I knew in Viet Nam. You have every right to be as angry as you can be. But what are you going to do about your anger?’
“It took me over 4 years to answer that question. I would never write Congress. I’m not stupid. I have a college degree. I knew they would not do anything about it. Finally I realized that the only way I was going to get rid of my anger was by giving it to Congress. I wrote a three-page letter with 30 pages of documentation, including my medical charts, to every California and Kansas Congressman and Senator. They all passed the buck back to my local Congressman, Dana Rohrabacher. He asked me to come in and see him. He looked at me and said: ‘I have read everything you have written and all the material you sent me. There is no way I believe this was a mistake on the part of the Israelis. But I have to tell you, Congress will not touch this until after there is peace in the Middle East.’ That will not be in my life time. But I succeeded in getting rid of my anger (at least to a great degree). This man who fancies himself a supporter of Veterans had to face me and say, ‘You’re right and we don’t have the courage to do anything about it.’”
Don still shakes when he is stressed, but he has learned to live with the fact that his memory won’t allow him to recall everything that happened during the Israeli attack and the gathering up of the body parts after it. “This memory failure is only the body’s way of protecting you from pain,” he says.
And so to Don’s recall of his meeting with a senior IDF officer.
“I believe it was the fall of 2003 or 2004. My wife Eva and I (he had married again) were staying at a Best Western hotel in Taos, New Mexico. While we were walking down the hall, my wife noticed a man looking at my Liberty T-shirt. She said to him, “Are you interested in that shirt?” I heard her and turned to look at him. He had a sheepish look on his face and said, “I have to tell you, I was an officer in the Israeli Army in 1967 when you were attacked.” I was so impressed that he had the courage to say anything to my face that we asked him and his wife to meet us in the bar for a drink. I showed him my note book of the slide show I had created – 51 pages, 11 word charts and 100-plus photos. When I finished he looked at me and said: “I never could understand why the U.S. government spent so much time covering this up. When the Six Days War day war was over, Moshe Dayan briefed the entire officer cadre in the Israeli forces. When he came to the Liberty he made no bones about it. He said, ‘We tried to take out the Liberty because we did not want them to find out what our plans were.’”
The lesson of the cold-blooded attack on the Liberty was that there is nothing the Zionist state might not do, to its friends as well as its enemies, in order to get its own way.
http://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/government-corruption-1/the-loss-of-liberty.html
Also see : Dead in the Water |
a t-shirt or coffee mug visit my online shop (Click here to visit the shop)
Thank you for your support.Hey there, steampunk and gaming fans! I have a worthwhile project here for you! We want to get our role-playing game into distribution. For that, we need your help! By contributing to this kick starter, you help us spread our love of steampunk and tabletop gaming to stores around the country! The game is already completed, and has gone through a few small runs. Our goal is to raise enough money to have the book traditionally printed and sent to distributors so that game stores nationwide can order our book. Our deepest thanks to contributors!
Setting Synopsis
SteamCraft is a skill-based steampunk tabletop role-playing game set in an alternate world, where gears, goggles, and coal-powered airships dominate life. It is a world that mixes the scientific wonder of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells with elements of gritty, futuristic cyberpunk. SteamCraft is inspired by late 19th century Earth, where steam power dominates, and the industrial revolution is in full swing. While much is similar to this time period on Earth, technology is more advanced due to the completion and use of the difference engine. It is a world in conflict between the old ways of magic, new technologies, and those who attempt to meld the two for profit and power. For humans, dwarves, elves, and other races, it is a time when society threatens to plunge into either a dystopian future controlled by corporations and authoritarian governments, or one where individuals use information and technology to bring about a better future.
We presented the setting two ways. First, there is just the direct explanation of the setting. Spliced into the book are various newspaper articles. These contain information from mainstream newspapers, as well as the more tabloid like papers. These newspaper clippings give details about the setting, but also ideas to be used as plots. GMs can stick with the ideas in the reputable papers and have players participate in covert actions against one company for the benefit of another, or perhaps chase down airship pirates (or maybe become airship pirates!). On the other hand, if the GMs want, players can uncover government conspiracies to silence dissidents in an insane asylum, or become wrapped up in the technomancy conspiracy. The setting provides the usual details of religions, governments, and various groups. We tried to give GMs a substantial amount of world information, but leave plenty of room for the GM to add to the world as he or she sees fit in order to make the setting detailed their group’s interests.
The book provides all of the information needed to make Tellus into whatever steampunk world you want. Our goal is to provide you with just enough information to allow you to tailor your games to your groups’ interests, whether it is corporate espionage, weird west, adventure pulp, or conspiracy.
Interior sample
Here is a picture of how the interior will look demonstrating how the setting is presented. This is from a print of demand we have been selling at conventions.
System
SteamCraft uses an intuitive d100/percentile system designed specifically for the game. Being a skill-based game, there are no classes, allowing players the freedom to create any type of character they desire. Archetypes are provided to help players build effective characters as well as to give them ideas about the types of characters that exist in SteamCraft. Character creation uses a point-based system for fast and effective creation of characters. The combat system is fast paced, where players describe what their characters do in combat. SteamCraft is unique in that it includes not only magic, but rules for the creation of scientific wonders, coal-powered airships, and detailed rules for airship combat.
What We have Done and Where We are Going
While this kickstarter is to do a high quality run of hardback books, we would like you to know that you are not just investing in the production of the book, but the company. We have decades of experience in role-playing games. Our first production is a fantasy RPG known as Perilous Journeys that has been received well. (We liked it so much we made it out company name.) SteamCraft is our second RPG. The reviews of the game are very positive. We are currently play testing an adventure set in SteamCraft we hope to release soon. We are also writing the first world supplement for SteamCraft that we hope to have available at the end of the year. Also on the drawing boards are a card game and a board game.
The financing of the hardbacks will put us in a better position to produce these products. With your help, we will be putting these hardbacks into distribution. That money will be used to finance other projects. We would like you to know that we are personally and financially vested in our products. In addition to the time and money spent on producing SteamCraft, we have been going to conventions to promote the game. The money raised from conventions has been directly reinvested into this project. With your help, we hope to take our company to the next level.
The book is 216 pages. It will be printed on high quality white paper. The book will be casebound (hardback) and the binding will be smyth sewn. This is the highest quality possible and is what is used with textbooks and library books. Most other books are glued, but we will have these smyth sewn to make sure that these books will last. Below you will find the cover of the book.
Sample PDF
There is a sample of the PDF available at our website. You can view it here:
http://www.perilousjourneys.com/downloads/SCKickpreview.pdf
Sample Art
StreamCraft is set in an alternate world known as Tellus. It is a world where the industrial age, meets the information age, meets the resurgence of magic. While magic was gone from the world, technology took over. With magic’s return, there is both conflict and opportunity. Some see magic as a way to return to the similar life. Corporations see it as another tool to exploit for their own purposes. However, magic is limited. When magic returned, people attempted to mix magic with machine and the results have been disastrous leading to all civilized governments banning the practice. It is rumored that a few of these technomancers have succeeded in mixing magic with machine. But these are merely rumors and no reasonable person would believe such things!
The world features humans as the dominant race, but there are also races such as gnomes, dwarves, elves, fomorians, tegs, and scaths. It is a “new world” setting on the southern continent of Laurentia, which is filled with some of the most exotic animals ever to be discovered. Countries created colonies on Laurentia, thinking it was previously unclaimed land. Later they realized that this “new continent” was actually an old continent that contained the Khemetic Empire. This, however, did not deter colonists and soon colonies spread throughout the continent's western coast. Those colonies are now part of the Commonwealth of Arcadia. The Commonwealth is now the dominant power on the western coast after gaining independence. However, foreign powers continually interfere in the Commonwealth’s affairs in attempt to gain access to the world’s largest known coal reserves. The Chen Empire and the Ryoko Republic both interfere with the Commonwealth's internal affairs through covert actions, support of the white lotus trade, and manipulations of the economy and politics through the use of megacorporations.
The sands of the Badlands border the Commonwealth to the northeast and hide untold ancient wonders from bygone civilizations of extraordinary power. The Badlands is a source of conflict between the Commonwealth, the Khemetic Empire, and the city-state of Ironskeep. South of the Badlands is the Central Savannah. It is an area filled with crime and opportunity as airship pirates keep secret bases in the area. It is filled with exotic animals and even more exotic people. To the south are the mysterious jungles of the Shadowlands, where no expeditions have ever returned.
Production/Release Schedule
Our goal is to get SteamCraft into stores for the holiday season in the U.S. Below you will find the timetable we are working with to give you an idea of what we are doing, when you will get your rewards, and when the book will be in stores.
Now-September 8th – proofreading by additional people who have not read the book before
September 9th-22nd – correct the text, order new proof copy, and have it proofread again
September 25th – place order with printer
Late September to early October – PDF sent to backers
Late October – receive books
November 1st-8th - ship books to distributors and rewards to backers
November 19th-26th - SteamCraft should be showing up on shelves at game stores across the United States (and possibly Canada depending on if the distributors do business there.)
Custom Dice
Here is a picture of the 2 dice you can receive as a backer
Custom Goggles
Below are some representative samples of the goggles that are used as rewards for backers. Given that these are hand crafted, no two sets of goggles will be exact.The Senate of Canada (French: Sénat du Canada) is the upper house of the Parliament of Canada, along with the House of Commons and the Monarch (represented by the Governor General). The Senate is modelled after the British House of Lords and consists of 105 members appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister.[1] Seats are assigned on a regional basis: four regions—defined as Ontario, Quebec, the Maritime provinces, and the Western provinces—each receive 24 seats, with the remaining portions of the country—Newfoundland and Labrador receiving 6 seats and the three northern territories each assigned the remaining one seat. Senators may serve until they reach the age of 75.
While the Senate is the upper house of Parliament and the House of Commons is the lower house, this does not imply the Senate is more powerful than the House of Commons. It merely entails that its members and officers outrank the members and officers of the Commons in the order of precedence for the purposes of protocol. As a matter of practice and custom, the Commons is the dominant chamber. The prime minister and Cabinet are responsible solely to the House of Commons and remain in office only so long as they retain the confidence of the House of Commons.
The approval of both chambers is necessary for legislation and, thus, the Senate can reject bills passed by the Commons. Between 1867 and 1987, the Senate rejected fewer than two bills per year, but this has increased in more recent years.[when?][2][not in citation given] Although legislation can normally be introduced in either chamber, the majority of government bills originate in the House of Commons, with the Senate acting as the chamber of "sober second thought" (as it was called by Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's first prime minister).[3]
History [ edit ]
The Senate came into existence in 1867, when the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed the British North America Act 1867 (BNA Act), uniting the Province of Canada (which was separated into Quebec and Ontario) with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick into a single federation, a dominion called Canada. The Canadian parliament was based on the Westminster model (that is, the model of the Parliament of the United Kingdom). Canada's first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, described it as a body of "sober second thought" that would curb the "democratic excesses" of the elected House of Commons and provide regional representation.[4] He believed that if the House of Commons properly represented the population, the upper chamber should represent the regions.[5] It was not meant to be more than a revising body or a brake on the House of Commons. Therefore, it was deliberately made an appointed house, since an elected Senate might prove too popular and too powerful and be able to block the will of the House of Commons.
The original Senate chamber was lost to the fire that consumed the Parliament Buildings in 1916. Subsequently, the Senate sat in the mineral room of what is today the Canadian Museum of Nature until 1922, when it relocated to Parliament Hill.
Change in number of Senators over time Modifying act Date enacted Normal total §26 total Ont. Que. Maritime Provinces Western Provinces N.L. N.W.T. Y.T. Nu. N.S. N.B. P.E.I. Man. B.C. Sask. Alta. Constitution Act, 1867 July 1, 1867 ( ) 72 78 24 24 12 12 Manitoba Act, 1870 July 15, 1870 ( ) 74 80 24 24 12 12 2 British Columbia Terms of Union July 20, 1871 ( ) 77 83 24 24 12 12 2 3 Prince Edward Island Terms of Union as per §147 of the Constitution Act, 1867 July 1, 1873 ( ) 77 83 24 24 10 10 4 2 3 Alberta Act and Saskatchewan Act September 1, 1905 ( ) 85 91 24 24 10 10 4 2 3 4 4 Constitution Act, 1915 May 19, 1915 ( ) 96 104 24 24 10 10 4 6 6 6 6 Newfoundland Act as per ¶1(1)(vii) of the Constitution Act, 1915 March 31, 1949 ( ) 102 110 24 24 10 10 4 6 6 6 6 6 Constitution Act (No. 2), 1975 June 19, 1975 ( ) 104 112 24 24 10 10 4 6 6 6 6 6 1 1 Constitution Act, 1999 (Nunavut) April 1, 1999 ( ) 105 113 24 24 10 10 4 6 6 6 6 6 1 1 1
Senate reform [ edit ]
Reform of the Senate has been an issue since its creation, and mirrors pre-Confederation debates regarding appointed Legislative Councils in the former colonies. The federal Parliament first considered reform measures in 1874 and the Senate debated reforming itself in 1909.[6]
There were minor changes in 1965, when the mandatory retirement age for new Senators was set at 75 years and, in 1982, when the Senate was given a qualified veto over certain constitutional amendments.[7] There have been at least 28 major proposals for constitutional Senate reform since the early 1970s and all have failed.[7]
1960s and '70s [ edit ]
Discussion of reforming the appointment mechanism resurfaced alongside the Quiet Revolution and the rise of Western alienation, usually with the chief goal of making the Senate better represent the provinces in parliament. It was often suggested that provincial governments should appoint senators, as was done in the United States before the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Others suggested that senators should be members of provincial legislatures, similar to the Bundesrat of Germany. The discussions also suggested redistributing Senate seats to the growing western provinces
1980s [ edit ]
Formal suggestions for equality of seats between provinces occurred in 1981. Schemes to create an elected Senate did not gain widespread support until after 1980, when Parliament enacted the National Energy Program in the wake of the energy crises of the 1970s. Many Western Canadians then called for a "Triple-E Senate", standing for elected, equal, and effective. They believed that allowing equal representation of the provinces, regardless of population, would protect the interests of the smaller provinces and outlying regions.[8]
The Meech Lake Accord, a series of constitutional amendments proposed by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, would have required the federal government to choose a senator from a list of persons nominated by the provincial government; the accord, however, failed to obtain the requisite unanimous consent of the provincial legislatures.
Before the failure of the Meech Lake accord, Alberta had passed the Senatorial Selection Act of 1987, which provided for the direct election of Alberta senators. The first of such elections was held in 1989. The results of these elections are non-binding, and only prime ministers Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper have appointed senators that had won these elections.
1990s [ edit ]
The Charlottetown Accord, involved a provision under which the Senate would include an equal number of senators from each province, each elected either by the majority in the relevant provincial legislature or by the majority of voters in the province. This accord was defeated in the referendum held in 1992.
2000s [ edit ]
Prime Minister Stephen Harper was an advocate of an elected Senate, and had said that he would not appoint any new senators until there is reform.[9] In his first two years as prime minister, he appointed two. One of his appointments was Bert Brown, who was one of Alberta's elected nominees and is the second unofficially elected senator in Canadian history after Stan Waters in 1990.[10] Harper appointed a further 57 senators between 2009 and the end of his tenure as prime minister in November 2015.
The Cabinet while headed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper moved to institute reforms to the process by which senators would be selected and the amount of time they could hold a seat in parliament.[11]
In 2006, Bill S-4 was introduced in the Senate, proposing an amendment to the Constitution Act, 1867, so as to limit the term of a newly appointed senator to eight years, though sitting senators would serve out their term to age 75.
In June 2006, Progressive Conservative Senator Lowell Murray and Liberal Senator Jack Austin introduced an amendment to the constitution to alter the makeup of the Senate[12] by enlarging the chamber to 117 members and giving a greater number to the western provinces of British Columbia (12), Alberta (10), Saskatchewan (7), and Manitoba (7). The amendment would also have increased both the number of divisions to five—by separating British Columbia into its own division—and the number of additional senators the monarch could appoint to five or ten. The amendment was debated on June 27 and 28, 2006, and then sent to a special committee on Senate reform. That committee considered the amendment and, on October 26, 2006, endorsed it.
Later in the year,[13] Bill C-43, for "the consultation of the electors... in relation to the appointment of senators",[13] was tabled in the House of Commons. It was intended to, pending a constitutional amendment, institute in each province direct elections, held concurrently with either provincial or federal general elections, for senatorial candidates who would then be recommended by the prime minister for appointment by the governor general.[14] Both bills died at the end of the first session of the 39th parliament, but were reintroduced in the second session as C-19 (with modifications) and Bill C-20,[15][16] respectively. C-19 was reintroduced in 2009 as Bill S-7, with one change: senators appointed between October 14, 2008 and the date the bill was granted Royal Assent would remain senators for eight years after the law came into force.[17]
Saskatchewan's new government lead by premier Brad Wall considered running senate nomination elections in Saskatchewan akin to Alberta's, but these plans were ultimately dropped.[9]
In December 2006, Conservative Senator David Tkachuk, seconded by Liberal Senator Larry Campbell, proposed an addition to the proposed constitutional changes that would provide for 24 senators for British Columbia. The proposal died on the Order Paper when the writ dropped for the 2008 federal election.
Simon Threlkeld, a former Toronto lawyer who writes about democracy, proposed in the National Post that the Senate be chosen by randomly sampled juries of Canadians who meet together face-to-face to make an informed choice after deliberation. He said: "Such a Senate will be independent from political parties, and chosen in a highly democratic, non-partisan and well informed way."[18]
The Conservative Party was committed to the idea of elected senatorial candidates being appointed by the governor general on the advice of the prime minister. Accordingly, Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2007 recommended the appointment of Bert Brown, who was elected in Alberta's Senator in waiting election,[19] but otherwise followed the standing rules in the absence of other elected nominees.[20][21][22] Harper later stated that the Senate "must either change or—like the old upper houses of our provinces—vanish".[23]
2010s [ edit ]
The New Democratic Party (NDP) has consistently called for the Senate's abolition.[24] In 2013, the NDP appeared ambiguous over whether it would appoint Senators if elected to government,[25] although it emphasized its pro-abolition platform. The provincial branches of the NDP follow the same stance as their federal counterpart[26] and the Saskatchewan Party caucus has also voted to support Senate abolition.[27]
The Green Party of Canada passed a resolution during its 2010 convention supporting a Senate elected using proportional representation.[28]
A private member's bill introduced to by Liberal Member of the Legislative Assembly John Les to the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia on June 2, 2011, with the support of the premier, sought to have elections conducted for BC Senate nominees.[29] The bill was never enacted as law.
In January 2014, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau announced that all 32 Liberal senators would no longer be members of the party's caucus. Trudeau announced that, as Prime Minister, he would only appoint future Senators as independents chosen by a non-partisan committee.[30] In response, the Senate caucus chose to designate themselves as "Senate Liberals" and continue their own internal caucus.
The Supreme Court of Canada was given several reference questions in 2013 to make clear how Senate reform can be undertaken within the current framework of the Constitution of Canada. In their 2014 response, Reference re Senate Reform, the court declared that the applicable amending procedure depended upon the type of reform sought:[31]
The Parliament of Canada can amend or repeal the s. 23(4) minimum property value requirement on its own; The s. 23(3) property possession requirement can be fully repealed only when accompanied by a resolution passed by the National Assembly of Quebec, because of its relationship to the special requirements for Quebec senators under s. 23(6); Under s. 42(1)(b) of the Constitution Act, 1982, any change to "the powers of the Senate and the method of selecting Senators" (which would include consultative elections and senatorial term limits) can only be done under the general amending procedure; and Under s. 41(e), the abolition of the Senate would require the unanimous consent of the Senate, the House of Commons, and the legislative assemblies of all Canadian provinces, as it would require the removal of the Senate from all aspects of the constitutional amending procedure.
Following the ruling, Prime Minister Stephen Harper stated that "Significant reform and abolition are off the table", and many constitutional experts consider abolition to be virtually impossible. In the 2015 general election, the Liberal Party proposed a reform of the process of appointing senators.[32]
2015 appointment reform [ edit ]
Within a month of the Liberals under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau being sworn in, in December 2015, the Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef, with the new House leader Dominic LeBlanc, announced a major overhaul of the appointment process as had been promised during the election campaign. The Independent Advisory Board for Senate Appointments was created as a non-partisan body to review applications of prospective appointees and make recommendations to the prime minister on appointments. Five board members—three federal appointees and two from the provinces—pick independent candidates, not officially affiliated with any political party, based on merit.[33] This reform is in line with Trudeau's January 2014 announcement that began reducing Senate partisanship by making Liberal senators independent and no longer part of the Liberal caucus.[34]
The stated goal of the December 2015 reform was to improve the effectiveness of the Senate which had been "hampered by its reputation as a partisan institution", according to Monsef. She indicated that this reform would not require an amendment to the constitution. Only hours later, the Liberal Premier of British Columbia (BC), Christy Clark, stated that her province would not support the changes because they did "not address what's been wrong with the Senate since the beginning".[34] BC is under represented in the Senate, based on population size; BC with 4.7 million people has only six senators, while the Atlantic provinces have 24, although their population is below 2 million. Correcting this imbalance would require a constitutional amendment that is agreed to by seven or more provinces with 50 per cent of the population, and that is unlikely to happen. Clark's other objection was that the senators are appointed, not elected, so they are not accountable to the Canadian public;[35] hence this house should not be legitimized in her estimation.[36]
The advisory board was appointed by the end of December 2015. The criteria for appointment to the Senate will be "... outstanding personal qualities that include integrity and ethics and experience in public life, community service or leadership in their field of expertise". As of December 14, there were 22 Senate vacancies.[37][38] On March 18, 2016, seven new senators, selected under this procedure, were appointed to fill some of the vacancies.[39]
On January 19, 2016, the names of the members of the Independent Advisory Board for Senate Appointments was announced. The chair is former deputy minister Huguette Labelle. There will be two other permanent members: McGill University dean of law Daniel Jutras and former University of Alberta president Indira Samarasekera. Two ad hoc members from Manitoba, Quebec and Ontario were also named. This board is to make up a short list of candidates to be considered for the 22 Senate vacancies, based on merit instead of partisan politics.[40] However, the slate of recommended candidates is not binding on the Prime Minister who will make the final decision as to who is appointed.[41]
In 2017 it was reported that the independent senators voted with the government 95% of the time, compared to 78% for Liberal Party identified senators.[42]
Chamber and symbols [ edit ]
The Senate of Canada and the House of Commons of Canada sit in separate buildings in the Parliamentary Precinct, located in Ottawa, Ontario.
The chamber in which the Senate sits is sometimes colloquially known as the Red Chamber, due to the red cloth that adorns the chamber, as well as the Throne. The red Senate chamber is lavishly decorated, in contrast with the more modest, green Commons chamber. This decorative scheme, consistent with the Canadian conception of the Westminster system, is modelled on the British Houses of Parliament, where the Lords chamber is a lavish room with red benches, whereas the Commons chamber is more sparsely decorated and is furnished in green.
There are chairs and desks on both sides of the chamber, divided by a centre aisle. The Speaker's chair is at one end of the chamber; in front of it is the Clerk's table. Various clerks sit at the table, ready to advise the Speaker and the senators on procedure when necessary. Members of the governing party sit on the benches to the Speaker's right, while members of the Opposition occupy the benches on the Speaker's left.
The three thrones at the head of the Canadian Senate chambers.
There are three seats in the front of the chambers:
The Queen of Canada or the Governor General uses the seat with the Royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom
The second chair to the left is for the consort of the monarch or the viceregal consort. The seat has the coat of arms of the Princess Louise (at the time Marchioness of Lorne) (no helm or motto, as borne by a lady; the escutcheon is the arms of Queen Victoria with a label of three points, signifying a child of the Sovereign, with an inescutcheon of the shield of Saxony (for Prince Albert, the Princess' father) and, instead of a crown, the coronet of a child of the Sovereign)
The first two seats are vacant but present during the regular sitting of the Senate.
The Speaker of the Senate uses the third seat with the Arms of Canada. This seat is removed during the throne speech.
At either end of the chamber, on the second floor, are the visitors galleries, with total seating in stadium arrangement for 350.[43] The north gallery's lower seating area, or tribune, is reserved for journalists.
The Canadian Heraldic Authority on April 15, 2008, granted the Senate, as an institution, a heraldic achievement composed of a depiction of the chamber's mace (representing the monarch's authority in the upper chamber) behind the escutcheon of the Royal Arms of Canada (representing the Queen, in whose name the Senate deliberates).[44]
Senators [ edit ]
The Governor General is the Queen's representative and holds the power to make normal senatorial appointments, although, in modern practice, the Governor General makes appointments only on the advice of the prime minister.
Senators used to hold their seats for life; however, under the British North America Act, 1965 (now known as the Constitution Act, 1965), members, save for those appointed prior to the change, may not sit in the Senate after reaching the age of 75. The last member of the Senate who served past the age of 75 was John Michael Macdonald, who had been appointed on the advice of John Diefenbaker in 1960 and served until his death, at the age of 91 in 1997.[45] Orville Howard Phillips was the last senator appointed for life to leave the body: he was appointed on the advice of Diefenbaker in 1963 and served in the Senate until 1999, when he voluntarily resigned a month before turning 75.[46] While most senators hold their seat until the mandatory age of retirement, Andy Thompson stepped down 20 months ahead of his scheduled retirement after critics drew attention to his poor attendance record while he continued to draw his salary. It was also the first time that the Senate had voted to suspend one of its members,[47] which prompted his resignation shortly afterwards.
Prime ministers normally choose members of their own party to be senators, though they sometimes nominate independents or members of opposing parties. Some members of the Senate are ex-Cabinet ministers, former provincial officials, and other eminent people. The first Aboriginal senator was James Gladstone, who sat as an Independent Conservative.[2][not in citation given]
Under the constitution, each province or territory is entitled to a specific number of Senate seats. The constitution divides Canada into four areas, each with an equal number of senators: 24 for Ontario, 24 for Quebec, 24 for the Maritime provinces (10 each for Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and four for Prince Edward Island), and 24 for the western provinces (six each for Manitoba, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Alberta). Newfoundland and Labrador, which became a province in 1949, is not assigned to any division and is represented by six senators, while the three territories (the Northwest Territories, the Yukon, and Nunavut) are allocated one senator each. Quebec senators are the only ones to be assigned to specific districts within their province. This rule was adopted to ensure that both French- and English-speakers from Quebec were represented appropriately in the Senate.
Like most other upper houses worldwide, the Canadian formula does not use representation by population as a primary criterion for member selection, since this is already done for the House of Commons. Rather, the intent when the formula was struck was to achieve a balance of regional interests and to provide a house of "sober second thought" to check the power of the lower house when necessary. Therefore, the most populous province (Ontario) and two western provinces that were not populous at their accession to the federation and that are within a region are under-represented, while the Maritimes are the opposite. For example, British Columbia, with a population of about four million, sends six senators to Ottawa, whereas, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, with populations of fewer than one million, are each entitled to 10 senators. Only Quebec has a share of senators approximate to its share of the total population. For comparison, Canada has roughly one senator for about 300,000 citizens, while the United States Senate has one elected senator for about three million citizens.
There exists a constitutional provision—Section 26 of the Constitution Act, 1867—under which the sovereign may approve the appointment of four or eight extra senators, equally divided among the four regions. The approval is given by the monarch on the advice of the prime minister, and the governor general is instructed to issue the necessary letters patent. This provision has been used only once: in 1990, when Prime Minister Brian Mulroney sought to ensure the passage of a bill creating the Goods and Services Tax (GST). The appointment of eight additional senators allowed a slight majority for the Progressive Conservative Party. There was one unsuccessful attempt to use Section 26, by Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie in 1874. It was denied by Queen Victoria, on the advice of the British Cabinet.[49] The invocation of Section 26 does not oblige the Governor General to appoint four or eight senators—it could theoretically be used to appoint just a single extra senator (for example, the representation of a senator under 75 who has been permanently incapacitated could be replaced by invoking Section 26 without the need to appoint senators from other regions) although the clause has never been used in such a manner. Also, this clause does not result in a permanent increase in the number of Senate seats, however. Instead, an attrition process is applied by which senators leaving office through normal means are not replaced until after their province has returned to its normal number of seats.
Since 1989, the voters of Alberta have elected "senators-in-waiting", or nominees for the province's Senate seats. These elections, however, are not held pursuant to any federal constitutional or legal provision; thus, the prime minister is not required to recommend the nominees for appointment. Only three senators-in-waiting have been appointed to the Senate: the first was Stan Waters, who was appointed in 1990 on the recommendation of Brian Mulroney; the second was Bert Brown, elected a Senator-in-waiting in 1998 and 2004, and appointed to the Senate in 2007 on the recommendation of Prime Minister Stephen Harper; and the third was Betty Unger, elected in 2004 and appointed in 2012.[50]
The base annual salary of a senator was C$150,600 in 2019.[51] and members may receive additional salaries in right of other offices they hold (for instance, the title of Speaker). Most senators rank immediately above Members of Parliament in the order of precedence, although the Speaker is ranked just above the Speaker of the House of Commons and both are a few ranks higher than the remaining senators.
Qualifications [ edit ]
The Constitution Act, 1867 outlines the qualifications of senators. Individuals must be both citizens of Canada and at least 30 years of age to be eligible for appointment to the Senate. Senators must also maintain residency in the provinces or territories for which they are appointed.[1] In the past, this criterion has often been interpreted quite liberally, with virtually any holding that met the property qualification, including primary residences, second residences, summer homes, investment properties or even lots of undeveloped land, having been deemed to meet the residency requirement;[52] as long as the senator listed a qualifying property as a residence, no further efforts have typically been undertaken to verify whether they actually resided there in any meaningful way.[52] Residency has come under increased scrutiny, particularly in 2013 as several senators have faced allegations of irregularities in their housing expense claims.[53]
The constitution also sets property qualifications for senators. A senator must possess land worth at least $4,000 in the province for which he or she is appointed. Moreover, a senator must own real and personal property worth at least $4,000 above his or her debts and liabilities.[1] These property qualifications were originally introduced to ensure that senators were not beholden to economic vagaries and turmoil. Now, however, the sum in question is far less valuable due to the effects of inflation. Nevertheless, the property qualification has never been abolished or amended and initially caused problems with the 1997 Senate appointment of Sister Peggy Butts, a Catholic nun who had taken a vow of poverty.[54] (The situation was resolved when her order formally transferred a small parcel of land to her name.[54])
Under s. 31 of the Constitution Act, 1867, a senator will be disqualified where he or she:
fails to attend two consecutive sessions of the Senate; becomes a subject or citizen of a foreign power; is declared to be bankrupt or insolvent, applies for protection in such cases, or becomes a public defaulter; is convicted of treason or a felony; or ceases to be qualified in respect of property or of residence (except where required to stay in Ottawa because they hold a government office).
S. 33 of the Act provides for the Senate to determine any questions of qualification or vacancy.
The first constitution of Canada did not explicitly bar women from sitting as senators. However, until the end of the 1920s, only men had been appointed to the body. In 1927, five Canadian women—known as The Famous Five—requested that the Supreme Court determine whether women were eligible to become senators. Specifically, they asked whether women were considered "persons" under the British North America Act, 1867, which provided: "The Governor General shall... summon qualified Persons to the Senate; and... every Person so summoned shall become and be a Member of the Senate and a Senator." In Edwards v. Canada (Attorney General) (commonly known as the Persons Case), the Supreme Court unanimously held that women could not become senators. The court based its decision on the grounds that the framers of the constitution did not foresee female senators, as women did not participate in politics at the time; moreover, they pointed to the constitution's use of the pronoun he when referring to senators. On appeal, however, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (Canada's highest court of appeal at the time) ruled that women were indeed persons in the meaning of the constitution. Four months later, the government of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King recommended the appointment of Canada's first female senator, Cairine Wilson of Ontario. There was, in 2001, a greater proportion of women in the Senate (35.6%) than in the House of Commons (20.6%).[2][not in citation given]
Current composition [ edit ]
Canadian Senate seat count in each Province
Notes
a b [56] On January 29, 2014, Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau announced all Liberal senators had been removed from the Liberal caucus and would henceforth sit as independents. The senators refer |
The belief has become common in the United States that if a man of African descent commits a crime, he is a thug, a criminal. If a Muslim man commits a crime, he is a terrorist. But if a man of European descent commits a crime, he is emotionally troubled, and requires assistance to help him regain his rightful place as a productive member of society.
In the U.S., over half a million people are homeless every day of the year, sleeping in shelters or on the street; of these, about 8% are veterans, men and women who have done the U.S. military’s dirty work around the world, and now, troubled by guilt resulting in substance abuse, domestic violence, inability to keep a job and other problems, the government simply dismisses them to live on the streets.
One of the basic human rights described in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a “Standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family”.
The official poverty level in the U.S. is ridiculously low: for a family of four, a family income below $24,600 annually is considered ‘poverty’. A report from the Economic Policy Institute from August of 2015 indicates the following:
“The basic family budget for a two-parent, two-child family ranges from $49,114 (Morristown, Tenn.) to $106,493 (Washington, D.C.). In the median family budget area for this family type, Des Moines, Iowa, a two-parent, two-child family needs $63,741 to secure an adequate but modest living standard. This is well above the 2014 poverty threshold of $24,008 for this family type.”
Based on this report, a more realistic poverty line would be $49,000.00.
Determining a poverty level of $24,600 may reduce the number of people that U.S. statistics say live in poverty, but it doesn’t hide the fact that millions more are actually living in poverty.
One of the many myths that the U.S. perpetuates about itself to its citizens is the concept of ‘U.S. exceptionalism’. This is the belief that the United States has a unique mission to order the world to its concept of freedom and democracy. It also includes a sense of superiority over all other nations.
In 2014, President Barack Obama said “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being.”
Some more quotes on this bizarre topic: Texas Senator Ted Cruz said this: “And it was American exceptionalism that stood up to the Soviet Union and freed hundreds of millions from behind the Iron Curtin.” He proved once again that he has no concept of history, as when, while bowing at the unholy AIPAC altar, he proclaimed that the nation of Palestine didn’t exist.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio, when campaigning for the presidential nomination in 2015, made this peculiar statement: “We are the greatest nation in the history of all mankind. Never be afraid to teach that to your children…. Our kids need to know the truth — that they were born citizens of the single greatest nation in the history of all of mankind.”
When South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham was campaigning for the Republican nomination for president, a press release from his office said this: “Now he is ready to take those leadership skills to the White House, to restore faith in America's exceptionalism, and our belief that the United States is still the leader... and best hope... for a free and safe world."
This dangerous concept probably had its origins in an equally ugly and destructive concept, that of Manifest Destiny.. The term is believed to have been coined by John O'Sullivan, the cofounder and editor of The United States Magazine and Democratic Review in 1845.The term signified “...the mission of the United States ‘to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.’” Mr. O'Sullivan further told his readers: “Until every acre of the North American continent is occupied by citizens of the United States, the foundation of the future empire will not have been laid.” Manifest Destiny became a catchphrase for what many considered to be a divinely-authorized continental expansion.
It is easy to see how that sense of superiority that belief that the United States was destined by Deity to occupy the entire North American continent, would evolve into today’s idea of exceptionalism. And it must be remembered that the U.S. stole large parts of Mexico, and invaded Canada in 1812, with the hope of conquering it and making it part of the U.S.
So a nation whose citizens feel it is divinely authorized to control the entire planet will naturally have no allegiance to international law; such laws are for other countries, not the mighty United States.
This is the United States, that self-proclaimed beacon of peace and justice. This is international hypocrisy at its most blatant and deadly. People within the U.S. and without are working tirelessly to resolve these issues, but they are opposed by powerful interest groups. Yet such shocking cruelty and violations of international law and the human rights of millions of innocent people cannot continue forever. The end of the injustices perpetrated by the United States will be a welcome day around the world.Kids today might be used to various electronic toys and gadgets, but electronic toys are hardly new. There are plenty of retro electronic toys out there, and some are even making a comeback. They might not be as advanced as some more modern electronic toys but when growing up, they were every bit as fun.
From nostalgic video game systems to electronic dolls and stuffed animals, let’s take a look at ten retro toys that came before today’s electronic playthings. They’re listed in alphabetical order.
1. Atari
The Atari is one of the original video game systems that ultimately led to the popular consoles you know and love today. I still play some of these old games through emulators on my PC. What’s your favorite old Atari game?
2. Gameboy
The original Gameboy was Nintendo’s first handheld video game system. Looking at it now, it’s hard to believe we used to think of that as advanced game technology.
3. Glo Worm
Glo Worms were popular dolls in the 1980s. When you squeeze them they light up and play a lullaby. There was also a Glo Friends TV show.
4. Lite Brite
This simple but clever toy involves a light board that you put pegs into. You can put a black pattern sheet on top of the board that tells you which color pegs go where. It lets kids create lit works of art.
5. My First Sony
My First Sony was a precursor to modern day mp3 players. For many kids, this sturdy cassette player was their first portable music player.
6. NES
Who could forget the original Nintendo Entertainment System? It brought us video game classics like Super Mario Brothers and Zelda, which continue to thrive with new releases on newer video game systems.
7. Simon
This was one of the more popular electronic toys back in the day, modeled after the game Simon Says. The goal is to tap the colored lights in the correct succession after a pattern is played for you.
8. Speak and Spell
This educational toy let kids insert different cartridges to learn about spelling or play spelling-related games (similar to hangman). It was originally released in the late 1970s, but I remember playing this while growing up in the 1980s.
9. Star Projector
Another retro toy was the star projector. There were several different brands available (and even more advanced models today), allowing kids to enjoy a home-based version of a planetarium.
10. Teddy Ruxpin
Teddy Ruxpin was one of the first animatronic toys around — a toy bear that could tell stories to kids. The image below is of a more recent version released when Teddy Ruxpin made a comeback. The original used cassette tapes to play different stories.
These retro electronic toys might not be as advanced as some of today’s gadgets, but you can’t deny that many of them were fun. And some were so loved that they’ve seen a resurgence in recent years.
Do you have any favorite electronic toys from when you were a kid? Share your favorite electronic retro toys in the comments below.The Beach Boys will celebrate the 50th anniversary of their critically-acclaimed album Pet Sounds tomorrow (16 May 2016). It has been five decades since the Californian band released the masterpiece, which is widely regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time. Pet Sounds cemented The Beach Boys' place in history and contributed to the change in musical landscape forever.
Pet Sounds was not always a respected body of work. Brian Wilson and co. took a gamble when they strayed from the commercial sound found on their earlier albums to experiment with a concept style album. The double-sided album peaked at number 10 on the Billboard 200 chart in the US but was better received in the UK where it reached number one.
The album features the singles Wouldn't It Be Nice, God Only Knows, Sloop John B and Caroline, No, which became some of the most-played songs of the late 1960s. Reflecting on the album's iconic status, Wilson told Rolling Stone: "It's a nostalgic feeling. I go back to when I was 23-years-old. It brings back a lot of good memories. It makes me really proud."
In March 2016, The Beach Boys launched the Pet Sounds world tour to mark the album's 50th anniversary. Speaking about the live shows when they were announced in January 2016, Wilson, 73, said in a statement: "It's really been a trip to sit here and think about releasing Pet Sounds 50 years ago. I love performing this album with my band and look forward to playing it for fans all across the world."
To mark the momentous occasion, the Beach Boys will release a special edition of Pet Sounds on 10 June featuring remastered versions of the songs, out-takes from studio sessions, remixes and isolated solo recordings from the various members.
As fans relive the release of one of music's most treasured collections, IBTimes UK lists some facts you may not have known about the album.Image copyright Kate Benyon-Tinker Image caption Ibrahim Bolgaith was born with severe malnutrition; his twin brother died
In the hands of the doctor, baby Ibrahim's head seems impossibly small. He cradles the child gently, conscious of his fragility. Everything around him seems improbably large.
The nappies Ibrahim wears are the smallest available but are still too big. With his large eyes and hollowed-out face, with ribs which press against his skin, the baby looks as if he is shrinking back into himself.
It seems perverse to describe a child in this state as "lucky". But Ibrahim has survived 21 days and doctors are hopeful he will endure. His twin brother died soon after he was born.
His mother, Wafaa Hatem, sits on the bed with her son, stroking his fingers when he cries.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Fergal Keane's report from Ahim contains some distressing images
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Like three million other Yemenis, the family was displaced by the war. Their daily existence is circumscribed by the challenge of finding food to eat.
Ibrahim's father is a taxi driver but with a collapsing economy, he struggles to find customers.
"Sometimes my husband gets work," says Wafaa, "sometimes he can't find any. We eat sometimes, and sometimes we cannot provide anything."
System disintegrating
It is one testimony from a war that has caused child malnutrition rates to jump by 200% in two years.
Fifty per cent of medical facilities no longer function. Some have been bombed by the Saudi-led coalition, others have ground to a halt because there is no funding.
Key roads and bridges are frequently attacked, making the delivery of assistance even more difficult.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Large parts of Yemen have been destroyed by the fighting
The flow of aid is frequently held up by rebels who want to control its distribution. Many civil servants, including those in the health sector, have not been paid in at least four months.
Charities like Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) try to alleviate some of the distress but it is a huge task with such limited resources.
I met the MSF head of mission, Colette Gadenne, at the overburdened al-Jumhouri Hospital in Hajjah, one of the areas worst affected by the conflict.
"There is a system in place - feeding centres, nutritional programmes, but it is very difficult to monitor those programmes, and I fear that many families cannot just afford to even go, to even reach the facility, to be screened and to be admitted in the programme," she said.
"The whole system is really collapsing, hospitals are closing regularly, so it's very frightening to see how this country, which was already affected by poverty and poor governance, is going deeper and deeper every day."
Walk the corridors of the hospital and the war reveals itself.
You see farmers who were on their way to market, shredded by the high explosives and shrapnel of a Saudi air strike; the children emaciated from malnutrition and disease.
'Blind eye'
Out in the villages, among those too poor to afford the transport to hospital, people approach foreign visitors in the hope that they bring aid.
A boy brought his sick baby sister and crouched in front of us. An old man, not begging but looking at us with hope, had gathered his four hungry grandchildren.
Image copyright Kate Benyon-Tinker Image caption At just nine months old, Asma Ahmed was suffering from malnutrition and jaundice
Aisha Ali, who lost one child to malnutrition five months ago, presented her chronically ill four-month-old daughter Asma. The child's eyes were yellowed from liver problems brought on by malnutrition.
"We need treatment, if you have. What do you have? Any treatment, any medicines? We need anything, we need medicines. If you can give us any, thank you," she pleaded.
Local workers from the Save the Children charity run mobile health clinics in the area but they too are simply overwhelmed by the scale of demand.
The lack of clean water has deepened the crisis with a recent outbreak of cholera. There are countless cases of pneumonia and acute diarrhoea, which are devastating to vulnerable young lives.
Image copyright Fergal Keane Image caption Hemedia Hamdi was three years old and suffering from severe malnutrition
Image copyright Kate Benyon-Tinker Image caption Last year, Save the Children said one in three children in Yemen were malnourished
The crisis in Yemen has been overshadowed by the wars in Syria and Iraq. Barely 50% of the funding promised by donors has actually been delivered.
The senior UN official in the country, Jamie McGoldrick, is clearly exasperated at the international response.
"The politics of the situation has overcome the humanity," he says.
"The humanity doesn't work anymore here. The world has turned a blind eye to what's happening in Yemen... right now we are so under-resourced for this crisis, it's extraordinary."
On the waterless, baking plain at Al Manjurah in Hajjah governorate, 17,000 people live in shelters made of tarpaulin, straw and mud.
Mahdi Ali Abdullah exists here with his wife and nine children. "We are scared of the air strikes. We move from one place to another," he tells me.
I struggle to hear his voice. His words make sense. They are formed in proper sentences. But all energy has been drained out of him. Only the war has any vitality left, trampling over the life of the nation.Calories: 10 per cup
Clear beef, chicken, miso, seafood, or vegetable broth is a dieter’s secret weapon, nourishing and filling your body for almost zero calories, especially if you toss in leafy greens and lean meat. Broth is the ultimate “high volume food,” meaning you can eat large amounts for very few calories and still feel full. It all comes down to calories per bite, or in this case, slurp.
"By choosing foods that have fewer calories per bite, your portion size grows, but your overall calorie count decreases," explains Barbara Rolls, PhD, the creator of Volumetrics and author of the new book The Ultimate Volumetrics Diet. "So you end up with a satisfying amount of food."
The bad: This food is very high in Sodium. Read More
Try this recipe: Light French Onion SoupOne Nation has trumpeted its voter preference deal with the Liberal Party, saying it should guarantee the party the balance of power and the ability to block the part-sale of Western Power if Colin Barnett is re-elected next month.
In a bizarre consequence of the preference-swapping arrangement, the Liberals admit they have done a deal with Pauline Hanson that could result in their $11 billion plan to reduce debt and build new infrastructure being torpedoed in the Upper House of Parliament.
“I have to deal with the reality that there’s a rejuvenated One Nation party out there,” the Premier said yesterday when asked if he had been forced into the preference deal. “I wish I didn’t but I do. We’re not endorsing One Nation candidates or policies in any sense.”
He said the plan to sell 51 per cent of Western Power would be put to Parliament and be negotiated like any other legislation.
In another twist late yesterday, One Nation’s WA leader Colin Tincknell said his party would have put Liberals ahead of Labor, the Greens and Nationals whether or not a deal had been done.
“We were always going to preference the Liberals before Labor and the Greens and the Nationals anyway,” Mr Tincknell said. “That’s always been our policy,”
Earlier, he declared his party the “third alternative” in WA politics thanks to the Liberal deal.
He said the deal would allow his party to have “double the number” of people in Parliament.
“Before this preference deal we were looking at getting just a few people in Parliament — probably not enough to get balance of power,” Mr Tincknell told 6PR radio.
“However, since this preference deal we should be able to gain the balance of power and that will enable us to stop the sale of Western Power, stop the sale of the TAB and stop the sale of the (Fremantle) port.”
Mr Barnett said he anticipated that a “difficult” Upper House would form regardless of how well One Nation polled and that the preference deal with Senator Hanson was just a “mathe-matical exercise”.
The deal means One Nation will give the Liberals its second preferences in the Lower House seats where it has candidates running.
In return, the Liberals will put One Nation candidates ahead of the Nationals, Greens and Labor in Upper House seats.
“The objective is to maximise the Liberal Party vote, particularly in the Lower House,” Mr Barnett said. He described One Nation as a “more moderate and more responsible group of people” than in the 1990s.
Has Colin Barnett sold his principles to do a deal with Pauline Hanson? The West Australian Play Video Video Has Colin Barnett sold his principles to do a deal with Pauline Hanson?
Nationals leader Brendon Grylls said the deal would damage Mr Barnett’s chances of winning a third term in government.
“Colin Barnett has decided it would be easier to work with Pauline Hanson,” Mr Grylls told ABC radio.
“This decision can be judged by the voters for what it is.”
The deal does not damage the Nationals’ chances in the Lower House because the Liberals will still preference their partners in Government in whatever seat they are contesting.
The deal means the Liberals will place One Nation candidates higher than the Nationals running for the Upper House.
Senator Hanson claimed yesterday Labor had tried to do a preference deal but a Labor spokesman denied the claim.The famous and all-rounder entertainer Gackt makes his first appearance this year. His last release was last year with 暁月夜-DAY BREAKERS, a single that was a little bit more on the ballads side, but it wasn’t something unexpected from Gackt since he’s already released numerous singles like this before taking the example of Hakuro and they were a sucess. His huge reportoire gets even bigger with his 46th single. So let’s get in to the details.
At the moment the only details that were disclosed are the month of its release, which is in July, the title, cover art and tracklist are yet to be revealed.
Regarding any bonuses:
the premium editon of the single will have a “Sleep with GACKT Life-Sized Bedsheets” available in white and black.
Pre-orders can already be made on the official website.
Source: Gackt’s official websitebears vs saints 2014 Drew Brees jube: New Orleans Saints at Chi
Quarterback Drew Brees (9) led the Saints to wins in two of their final three games in 2014, including a 31-15 victory against the Bears in Chicago in Week 15. (Michael DeMocker, Nola.com / The Times-Picayune)
(Michael DeMocker)
The New Orleans Saints' salary cap challenges won't entirely disappear in 2016, but the team will enter next season with a much cleaner slate than they did after finishing 7-9 in 2014.
The Saints have 35 players under contract for 2016 at an estimated cap number of $130.23 million.
Most expect the league's salary cap to increase from $143.8 million in 2015 to at least $150 million in 2016. Some think it could approach $160 million.
Whatever the case, the Saints will either be under the cap or in the ballpark next March, not $20 million over as they were this spring.
That doesn't mean there won't be challenges, or tough decisions next year.
Quarterback Drew Brees will be entering the final year of his contract, which means the only way to reduce his cap number would be through a contract extension. (The only scenario in which a trade seems plausible is if the Saints struggle again in 2015 and the team decides to commit to a rebuilding project).
The Saints won't have much flexibility on the contracts of veteran safety Jairus Byrd or edge rusher Junior Galette, so the team will have to hope both players remain productive.
The same players who took pay cuts in 2015 could face that fate again in 2016, including offensive lineman Jahri Evans and nose tackle Brodrick Bunkley.
If linebacker Dannell Ellerbe or cornerback Brandon Browner don't live up to expectations in 2015, the Saints could escape both contracts with a minimum of pain.
On the whole, however, many of the Saints' tough decisions this spring will pay dividends next year. The $21.67 million in dead money (including $9 million in bonuses to Jimmy Graham, $6 million to Ben Grubbs and $5 million to Curtis Lofton) will fall off the books.
The Saints can't afford to be spendthrifts in 2016, but they won't have to worry as much about pinching every penny.
The biggest extra cost to add to this list would be defensive end Cameron Jordan, who will be an unrestricted free agent after the 2015 season. If the Saints re-sign him, he won't be cheap. Defensive lineman Akiem Hicks and receiver Nick Toon will also be unrestricted free agents.There are many free foreign language courses online, but not all of them are equal in content and quality. Generally, OpenCourseWare doesn't award college credit. Here is a ranking of the best foreign language education sources based on school reputation and breadth of course offerings. Schools offering Spanish degrees can also be found in these popular choices.
#1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers more than 100 free foreign language courses through the university's OpenCourseWare (OCW) site (ocw.mit.edu). Both undergraduate and graduate language classes can be found in languages such as Japanese, Chinese, German and Spanish. For each course, you can access the syllabus, calendar, text information and assignments. Most courses consist mainly of PDF files, but some are supplemented with audio, video and slide presentations.
#2 University of Cambridge
The Language Centre at University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom offers several language courses via its OCW site (www.langcen.cam.ac.uk). Courses in German, Chinese, Italian, Russian and French can be downloaded for use. To be able to fully access the courses, you'll need an updated web browser and Adobe Flash Player.
#3 FSI Languages
FSI Language is a community site that distributes language courses developed by the Foreign Service Institute, a U.S. Government training institution. The site includes language program documentation and audio courses in 31 foreign languages, including Arabic, Finnish, Hebrew, Hindi, Swahili, Thai and many others (fsi-language-courses.org).
#4 Open University
The United Kingdom's Open University offers many modern language courses to the general public through its OpenLearn site (www.open.edu). Course materials include text and multimedia elements. Languages offered include German, Gaelic, Chinese, Spanish, Welsh, Italian and French, and there are additional courses that focus on culture and history.
#5 Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University offers free online language courses through its Open Learning Initiative (www.cmu.edu). Current offerings include courses in American English speech, Arabic for global exchange and elementary French. An elementary Spanish course is in the works. These courses are free, but you'll need to sign in to access the learning materials.
#6 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
The BBC offers extensive foreign language resources on its website (www.bbc.co.uk). You'll find courses and tutorials in French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Portuguese, Greek, Japanese, Welsh, Scottish, Gaelic, English and many others. Text, audio guides, video guides, quizzes and games, like crossword puzzles, are helpful resources for learners of all ages.
#7 eLanguage School
The eLanguage School offers a large repository of foreign language learning materials on its website (www.elanguageschool.net). Users can choose from ten different languages, including Russian, Portuguese, Korean, Dutch and Spanish. Vocabulary lists, videos, audio files and links to other language resources supplement the text-based lessons and tutorials.
#8 Utah State University
Utah State University publishes two Chinese language courses as part of its OCW program (ocw.usu.edu). First-year Chinese I and Chinese II courses include PDFs, audio files, video files and supplementary textbooks.The Brazilian government announced Monday that it has reversed President Michel Temer's decree last month to open up a protected Amazon reserve to mining.
Temer's controversial proposal had allowed mining in the National Reserve of Copper and Associates (Renca), a 17,800-square-mile nature reserve the size of Switzerland that's known to be an essential carbon sink. The area is believed to be rich in gold, manganese, iron and copper.
Temer's decree had been met with widespread international condemnation over fears of deforestation. The country's congress even called it the "biggest attack on the Amazon in 50 years," the Guardian reported. A judge suspended the president's plan just a few days later.
The Ministry of Mines and Energy said in its statement that the government has re-established the conditions of area based on a document that created the reserve in 1984.
The Amazon is Earth's biggest rainforest and is estimated to be home to 10 percent of Earth's known species and several indigenous tribes.
Greenpeace Brazil's Marcio Astrini cheered the reversal. "It is victory of society over those who want to destroy and sell our forest," he said.
"Renca," however, "is just a battle," he noted.
"The war against the Amazon and its different peoples, promoted by Temer and big agribusiness, is still on."
Indeed, the Ministry of Mines and Energy signaled in its announcement that the fight is not over yet.
"The country needs to grow and generate jobs, attract investment to the mining sector, and even tap the economic potential of the region," it said.Colin Kaepernick’s national anthem protest might not be all that popular but his jersey certainly is. The San Francisco 49ers quarterback currently has the fifth-best selling jersey on NFL.com, less than a year after it was put on clearance sale.
Kaepernick, who made the team’s 53-man roster, has been at the center of a firestorm since his protest of the national anthem went public last month. He refused to stand during the playing of the anthem in the preseason, though it was only noticed and made national headlines during the 49ers’ third preseason game.
Kaepernick said he’s protesting because he won’t "show pride for a country that oppresses black people and people of color." Instead of sitting, he kneeled in the 49ers’ final preseason game, which took place during the Chargers’ Salute to the Military night, as a way of showing respect to the military while continuing his boycott.
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Kaepernick added he will donate the first $1 million he makes this season to two organizations that help promote awareness of social concerns.Canadians, like North Carolinians, say they prefer the safer alternative for marijuana commerce – government control of retailing. The RAND Report for Vermont explains why government stores are safer, and more cautious. This HuffPo article explains why government stores are not impossible in the United States.
Here are the results of the recent poll in Canada, where several provinces allow liquor sales only through government outlets. :
“When asked how legal marijuana should be produced and sold, the largest group opts for a distribution system where large corporate growers only are licensed to grow marijuana and it is sold through government agencies like liquor boards (45%), followed by minorities who would allow private citizens to grow and sell it themselves (16%) and those who expect it to be grown under license and sold at retail, such as convenience stores (12%). One tenth think another system is appropriate (11%), and just fewer either do not support marijuana legalization at all 7%) or think none of these distribution and production systems is preferred (6%). Very few don’t have an opinion on this measure (3%).”
The full Canadian polling results, with cross-tabs, are here.
The 2013 North Carolina poll offered only two choices. When faced with two models for legalization, state monopoly and taxed private sales, 58 percent of voters in North Carolina (where the only retail seller of liquor is the state ABC monopoly) chose monopoly, 19 percent chose private sales, and 23 percent were undecided. The detailed results with cross-tabs, from Public Policy Polling, are here.
Thanks to Steve Rolles of Transform Drug Policy Foundation in the United Kingdom for bringing the Canadian results to my attention.
AdvertisementsThe Ben Carson political phenomenon continues to win new supporters, with the National Draft Ben Carson for President Committee recording its 100,000th unique donation, a sign of the depth of grassroots support for the Obamacare critic in the upcoming 2016 presidential race.
The committee told Secrets that the 100,000th donation came just after the group celebrated a record breaking $3.3 million raised in the second quarter of 2014. It also arrived just shy of the one-year anniversary of the committee’s founding, a validation of its effort to talk the neurosurgeon into running for president.
“To rally 100,000 donors in less than a year, more than two years before the presidential election, is simply an astonishing achievement,” said John Philip Sousa IV, national chairman of the committee. “The American people are clamoring loudly for Dr. Carson to enter the race, and we will continue to do everything we can to make that happen,” he added in a statement.
“In addition to 100,000 unique donors supporting this work, the committee is engaged with more than 17,000 volunteers around the nation who are working to raise awareness of Dr. Carson’s unique qualifications and convince him to enter the race,” added said Vernon Robinson, the committee’s campaign director.
For comparison, the group’s high second quarter take beat the pro- Hillary Clinton committee, "Ready For Hillary," which also hit a quarterly record with $2.5 million. The Carson group, which has no contact with him, has raised over $8 million since August 2013.
The group also claims that more than 300,000 people have signed petitions encouraging Carson to run.
Carson hasn't indicated what his presidential plans are, but his hits on Obamacare and populist speech themes, especially those against political correctness, have given him a wide fan base.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com.Specs at a glance: BenQ/Kogan Agora 4G Screen 1280×720 5.0-inch IPS (294 PPI) OS Android 4.4.2 CPU 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 (quad-core Cortex A7) RAM 1GB GPU Qualcomm Adreno 305 Storage 8GB NAND flash expandable via microSD Networking 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, 2G 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900MHz, 3G 850 / 900 / 2100MHz, 4G 900 / 1800 / 700MHz Ports Micro-USB, headphones Camera 8MP rear camera, 2MP front camera Size 5.63" × 2.87" × 0.35" (143 x 73 x 9.0 mm) Weight 4.76 oz. (135 g) Battery 2520mAh Starting price $229 off-contract
You don't have to pay $600 for an unlocked smartphone anymore. That much was true before the $179 Moto G won our hearts late last year, but that phone was one of the first examples of a new class of smartphone, the kind of device that could give you a budget phone that didn't feel like a budget phone.
The problem is that there still isn't a whole lot of choice in this segment yet. Heavy hitters like Samsung, HTC, and LG continue to price their flagship devices as they always have, and going for cut-down "mini" versions of the same phones generally only saves you $100 or $150. So if you like larger phones—say, five inches and up—but you didn't have a lot of money to spend, your hands were tied by the options available.
That's one of the reasons why we were intrigued by the Kogan Agora 4G when it was announced earlier this month. It's got a bit of an odd pedigree—it was actually built with BenQ, but it's branded and sold by Australian retailer Kogan—but it's an unlocked phone available in the US that sells for $229. That's more expensive than the $179 Moto G base model, but within spitting distance of the $219 Moto G LTE. It also comes with a five-inch screen, though, and this makes it look and feel more like a Samsung-esque flagship than a nice-but-cheap midrange phone.
The stream of inexpensive Android phones is only going to keep flowing—here's what we think of the latest entry.
Look and feel
This is the third Agora phone and the first one we've reviewed, but based on our research it’s a decent leap forward from the second-generation hardware (which was itself a substantial improvement on the first one). The first was a chunky thing with a 5-inch, 800x480 display that ran Ice Cream Sandwich, and the second upgraded to a 720p display and Android 4.2. Both prioritized value over power, at $149 and $189 respectively.
The Agora 4G bumps the price up again, but you finally get a phone that's less-obviously a budget model. The 5-inch 720p display stays the same, but it's got a sleeker profile and better styling and some respectable internal upgrades—we'll discuss those in more detail later, but suffice it to say this is essentially a Moto G in a larger shell.
Andrew Cunningham
Andrew Cunningham
Andrew Cunningham
Andrew Cunningham
Andrew Cunningham
Andrew Cunningham
The phone is all-plastic on the back and the sides and it doesn't feel quite as sturdy as the Moto G, but it's still nice for the price—Samsung's plastic phones have a similar heft in the hand but cost three times as much. The Agora uses grey matte plastic around the edges and a black rubberized removable back cover that feels really nice to hold. We're also fans of the subtle red accents on the front and rear speakers and the rear camera.
Past Kogan Agora phones, including the $189 model launched late last year, look less refined, and to add insult to injury they saddled Jelly Bean and Ice Cream Sandwich with Gingerbread-era capacitive buttons. The Agora 4G uses modern Android buttons in the standard alignment—back, home, and recent apps, from left to right in that order—and making those buttons capacitive rather than rendering them onscreen saves you a strip of screen real estate compared to the Moto G.
If we've got one complaint about them, it's that they're difficult to see when they aren't lit up. Like the capacitive buttons on Galaxy phones, they light up briefly when you're interacting with them and dim when you aren't, and they're small enough that they're easy to miss in the dark.
Peel off the back of the phone to expose its micro SD card slot, compatible with cards up to 64GB in size, and its micro SIM slot. Like the Moto G, its battery is sealed away under a second cover, which means you won't be able to replace it yourself.
Past Agora phones have reportedly had some trouble with audio quality through the headphone jack while using a set with an integrated microphone, but that appears to have been fixed in this phone—music and podcasts sounded just as clear from the Agora as they do through any other Android phone. The audio quality through the phone's integrated earpiece is a little tinny but not unusable for calls, and we found the GPS to be wanting—it could usually find approximately where I was, but would do a bad job of tracking my exact location while walking, and you can forget using it to figure which direction you're facing. On something with larger, easier to detect movements (a car, say), its lack of precision is less pronounced.
At five inches, the phone's screen size is what really separates it from the Moto G. The two share the same 1280×720 resolution, but the Agora's screen is a full half-inch larger. It makes things a little easier to read, despite the fact that the screen is less dense—at around 294 PPI, it falls short of the 326 PPI bar set by the various iPhone 4 and 5 designs. It's also much lower than the 400-and-up PPI numbers you'll get from a Galaxy S5 or an HTC One. It's still more than crisp enough to render detailed text and images, though. I use a lot of phones, and I generally find that I can notice the difference when jumping from a 720p display to a 1080p display, but I don't really miss the density when moving from a 1080p display back to a |
thaway and Huda Sha’arawi) as well as the indigenous Amazigh who are steadfast in their fight to preserve their matriarchal traditions. These are fascinating women who have either pioneered the movement or are still very active today in Morocco and beyond. I encourage you to look into their work and movements because MENA and Arab feminism is an entire subject of its own.
Some women have internalized sexism in Morocco, which to me is more disturbing than the street harassment. I’ve personally been called a racist and a colonizer by other women for A) criticizing men’s behavior and B) suggesting that “just ignoring it” ultimately doesn’t change it for the greater good of all women. As a foreign woman, it was made pretty clear to me by a select few that I have no place trying to change things in Morocco. I was told it is impossible and it is not my place. But sexual harassment in Morocco is a women’s issue and I am a woman living in Morocco. It affects me personally. It affects my experience, it affects my family, and ultimately it affects every woman I know here. I live in the world just as you do and I can and will speak out against issues concerning my gender no matter where I happen to reside. To change the culture of street harassment requires a movement brought by us women (local and foreign), by the men who stand against it, and by Morocco’s political and religious leaders. It starts first with respecting, validating and supporting one another!
How To Respond In A Way That Works For YOU
When I first arrived and was shocked by the glut of harassment I was experiencing, I turned to women living here and asked them what to do. Nine times out of ten, I was told to just ignore it. This is obviously the path of least resistance. You give the harasser zero response and go about your business. This may work for many women (the locals are the largest advocates for this) but, personally, I’m not a big fan of the path of least resistance especially when it comes to sexism and misogyny. When men behave badly toward me, I tend to respond. I never want Moroccan men to think I welcome, enjoy or tolerate this behavior. I also believe firmly that ignoring it may work individually in the moment, but it does nothing permanently for the larger collective. It doesn’t challenge the status quo; it doesn’t reject the harassment; and it certainly doesn’t change the culture. Those are my $0.02 on the issue, but every woman must decide for herself what response (if any) works best for her. Here are some options.
Ignore it. Put on your best RBF (resting bitch face), walk with purpose and confidence, and ignore any and all unwanted male attention. This is the easiest option without question and often the most effective in diffusing the behavior. It’s pretty hard to engage with someone who isn’t engaging back. The men harassing you do not even exist. Move on dot com.
Dress conservatively. If you want less attention, show less skin. Women in full niqab still get harassed so I’m not sure this is fully the solution, but there is no harm in dressing modestly and I do believe it works in your favor. Certainly women who dress in more revealing clothing get more attention. If you are part of the “I’ll Wear What The Hell I Want Club”, I’m afraid this is not your option and you are indeed going to attract more attention.
Hollaback. Hollaback to your aggressors to let them know you do not accept, enjoy or tolerate their harassment. Shout at them in your native language, learn a few phrases in Darija (see below), scream angrily or find a tactic that works for you. Connect with others for support and advice. There is a grassroots movement working to combat street harassment globally based on the concept that our bodies are not public space just because they exist in the public space. Check out Hollaback.org for more information. I hollaback! Do you?
Shame them. “Hshuma“ is the Moroccan concept of shame. It carries great weight in Moroccan culture because shame is considered repugnant. Moroccans do look externally for validation so how Moroccans behave in public is of paramount importance. The expression is used in various contexts and situations toward behaviors that are deemed socially wrong and culturally unacceptable. Generally speaking, any behavior that falls outside the social norm is referred to as hshuma including speaking ill of others, swearing, disrespecting elders, anything haram (forbidden) in Islam, etc. The concept of hshuma is best explained as the conscious feeling of guiltiness resulting from doing something perceived as wrong. When in doubt, use hshuma! It works!
Threaten to go to the police. While the police are largely ineffective and won’t likely help you at all with street harassers, Moroccans still fear them. Threaten to report your aggressor to the police and take a photograph of their face or license plate number with your smart phone or camera. This will typically send them packing. I’ve used this method numerous times. So far, 100% efficacy! Please beware that some men respond quite negatively when you defy, deny or challenge them. Only threaten them if you are in a public place during the day and there are other people around you. Do not attempt this alone at night where your aggressor may turn violent toward you. Moroccans are generally not violent people and I never fear anyone here, but you do need to be careful. Situations can escalate and turn ugly real quick. I know women who have experienced physical violence and I myself have been in situations that have scared me a little. Put your safety first.
Learn some phrases. If you want your aggressor to know that you aren’t down for harassment, arm yourself with some phrases in Darija. I highly recommend this if you are going to be in Morocco for an extended period of time, want to maintain some semblance of your dignity, and want to shame/shock them using their native language. Here are some phrases to start you off:
Hshuma alik or 7achouma 3lik: Shame on you. *If you remember nothing else, remember this one! Shame is big in Morocco and this phrase can stop an aggressor in his tracks.
Sir f halek: Go away!
Sir t khra: [literally: go to shit] or fuck off!
Sir t9awed: Fuck off! [most offensive]
B3d menni: Get away from me!
3tini tissa3: Give me space!
Mat9aisnich: Don’t touch me!
Mat3awdS t-tb3ni: Don’t follow me anymore!
Radi nbllR l-bulis: I’m going to call the police!
Don’t be a bystander. Sorry to generalize here, but Moroccans are notorious bystanders. I have yet to see anyone intervene in situations involving aggressive fights, violence against women in public, car accidents, etc. Don’t be a bystander! If you see a woman being harassed, intervene and help her!
Get creative. Women in Mexico are combatting street harassment by pointing confetti guns at their aggressors. Women in the US are handing out flyers to their aggressors. Check out these amazing responses from @ Women in Mexico are combatting street harassment by pointing confetti guns at their aggressors. Women in the US are handing out flyers to their aggressors. Check out these amazing responses from @ EverydaySexism.
Sexual harassment hurts Morocco. It not only degrades women, but it degrades the nation itself. It gives the country a bad reputation which is known throughout the world and it makes women hesitant to come here. I was once hesitant to come here not knowing exactly what to expect or if I would be in constant danger. I know women who refuse to come to Morocco because they either don’t want to deal with the harassment or are simply afraid. Some women are willing to travel to Morocco, but not without a male companion. That is unacceptable in 2016!
It’s not enough to examine the causes of sexual harassment and discuss ways in which to respond to it, we must also implement strategies to obliterate it! I think this has to be done on every level from the personal to the political or as Mona Eltahawy advocates, we must tackle the trifecta of misogyny within the state, the street, and the home. Women must first start by rejecting it rather than just ignoring it. We must stand in solidarity against sexual harassment and do so individually and collectively. We must organize rallies and take it to the streets. We must launch awareness campaigns in schools, universities and cultural centers. We must challenge the topic in our homes. Women need to address their husbands, brothers, uncles, grandfathers, sons. We need to raise our sons to be feminists so they learn to value women and treat them with dignity and respect. Women must encourage and even demand a change in the culture through their political leaders and holy imams. Old laws need to be changed and new laws need to be implemented. Law enforcement needs to be properly trained to combat harassment and violence against women. Imams need to encourage Moroccan men to stop this behavior and behave respectively. There is a lot of work to be done. But change is possible. This Just In! A prospective new law has just come forth in Morocco which stipulates that “any person who commits physical or verbal harassment of a sexual nature, in the public space, shall be sentenced from one to six months in jail, or will be subject to a fine ranging from 1,000 to 10,000 Dirhams ($100 to $1,000), or will be subject to both.” I don’t when or if this law will pass and go into effect, but this is a very smart move for the Kingdom, if nothing more than to send a very strong message that harassment will no longer be tolerated. First the law needs to pass, then it actually needs to be implemented and enforced. It could prove to be a logistical nightmare as harassment is so ubiquitous. Some commenters on social media have balked, “We’ll need to build more jails because half of Morocco would be arrested!” Regardless, I think this is a very important step in the right direction. Quotes By Moroccan Women
Saadia F. (52), a housewife from Casablanca says: “It hurts Morocco. It hurts the citizens. It shouldn’t exist, but we somehow have to live with it. I always tell my daughters to be careful and to run away if someone is approaching them inappropriately. My two daughters are taking self-defense classes. I think a woman should know how to defend herself. Morocco is a beautiful country, but as you can see it’s a country that still needs a lot of improvement.”
Anonymous woman. “You know, I wasn’t always wearing the hijab. At first I was harassed every time I went out, sometimes it was awful and just too much to bear. Then I wore the hijab and thought now that I’m a bit covered and more modest in the way I dressed, harassment would stop or at least diminish, but it didn’t. Then, I felt all guilty about it and was wondering maybe it’s me, maybe I’m not well covered and maybe I’m still a source of “fitna” and I felt very bad about it. I decided to wear the full niqab, no more colors (very dark colors, mostly black), and no more clothes that shows the figure. I felt and still feel very good and at peace with my decision, but I would lie if I say that harassment stopped because it didn’t.I still get the harassing gazes and the harassing words about my eyes (though my face is covered). But at least, I feel that it’s not my fault.”
Leila A. (22), a translation student in Rabat says: “I see it and live it every day. It makes me crazy and it makes me want to punch them. Sometimes I try to not pay attention and it doesn’t really bother me. But sometimes when I am alone in some weird streets or when it gets dark outside, I get scared because the harassment might go a bit too far.”
Jihane B. (35), a secretary from Casablanca says: “I think it’s a shame that in the year 2015 some men still don’t know the difference between flirting and sexual harassment. I have been harassed a lot. It’s frightening! You can wear whatever, and they would still annoy you and stare at you. I wish there would be more policemen out there. Maybe this will keep those men at ease.”
Maryam N. (29) a mother says: “During my pregnancy, I thought men would understand that I am married and leave me alone, but I was always bothered by horrible comments that I do not want to recall at the moment. Sexual harassment is everywhere in Morocco and all women suffer from it, even young girls and also pregnant women. It’s a nightmare.”by Music-News.com Newsdeskhas only ever let his life get out of control "a little bit".The musician-and-actor formerly enjoyed partying and used to have a member of staff employed to roll him marijuana cigarettes. The 49-year-old star has now mellowed and focuses on working out and eating healthily."I eat some meat every now again but it has to be organic and grass-fed," he told British newspaper The Times. "There were some wild times. But I didn't let it get out of control. Well, maybe a little bit. But I reeled it in. I'm balanced now. I'm chill."Lenny portrays flamboyant Cinna in The Hunger Games movies, the second instalment of which, Catching Fire, is out this month. It's brought him a huge new fan base, with the star joking many are oblivious to his back catalogue. "These kids come to me and they have no idea about my musical career," he said.Lenny went to Beverly Hills High School in California, which is famed for the amount of stars who attended. When studying, it was music and not film which really captured the star's attention. He wasn't in the drama club and never made it on to stage."I played in the band," he said. "I would be in the pits with the orchestra playing percussion. We did a production ofand I looked up on stage and it was Nicolas Coppola, who later became Nicolas Cage. So I wasn't acting in high school. Not on the stage at least.'Lenny ended up leaving school early because he was so adamant his future was in music. He even changed his name in a bid to be recognised, going by Romeo Blue for a while."It just felt ridiculous. I was searching and experimenting until I said to myself, 'You know what? I'm Lenny Kravitz. I've got to deal with that.' I thought it was the most un-rock 'n' roll name you can have. 'Lenny Kravitz?' It doesn't make any sense. So I took my name back and here we are," he explained.Pro-Clinton PAC offers money for fresh dirt on Donald Trump
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump (Photo11: Evan Vucci, AP)
Correct the Record, a super PAC aiding Democrat Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, has decided on an unorthodox approach: It will pay tipsters who dig up fresh dirt on Republican Donald Trump.
The group, run by stalwart Clinton ally David Brock, has launched TrumpLeaks to "uncover unreported video or audio" of Trump "so voters can have access to the Donald Trump who existed before running for president and before his recent affinity for teleprompters," according to the group's website. The group says it can provide "compensation" to tipsters "who have usable, undoctored video or audio that has been legally obtained or is legally accessible."
Brock told NBC News that his group is "chasing everything" — from material about Trump's business empire to his tax returns or more personal matters. He acknowledged that the move is unusual, but told the network: "We're going to extraordinary lengths because this is an extraordinary situation."
Brock is a former journalist who has described himself as a conservative hit man in the 1990s, intent on toppling Bill and Hillary Clinton. He's since become one of Hillary Clinton's staunchest defenders and sits as the center of an array of well-funded super PACs working to elect her and other Democrats.
He's also known for his unusual political gambits.
Earlier this year, he said he had found an anonymous donor who pledged to donate $5 million to help veterans if Trump released his tax returns. (In a Medium post this week, LinkedIn's billionaire founder Reid Hoffman offered $5 million to help a Marine veteran who has promised to donate money he raises through a website called Crowdpac to veteran's charities if Trump releases his tax returns by Oct. 19, the date of the final presidential debate.)
Correct the Record coordinates its activities with Clinton's campaign.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2cq3kzyThe lengthy crack on this guitar top’s lower bout is due to low humidity, but don’t fret—these types of cracks
can be repaired.
Let’s face it: Sometime during the life of an average acoustic guitar, it will likely develop at least a small crack. You are carrying around a wooden box made of exotic hardwoods measuring anywhere from about.090" to.150" in thickness. That’s a pretty fragile thing in and of itself. When you factor in that the strings are applying upwards of 180 pounds of force to the top via the bridge, it’s really a wonder that guitar bodies hold together at all.
Cracks vary as much as all other things guitar, but there are some commonalities that can be addressed to give us a better understanding of them and how to proceed with a repair. Since cracks most often occur in the body woods, let’s first look at the body, panel by panel.
The top. Most of the worst and hardest-to-repair cracks happen on a guitar’s top. One of the most common instances is actually not a crack at all, but a center-seam separation. This usually happens when the guitar is allowed to dry out, causing the two halves of the top to come unglued at the center seam. It most often occurs in the area from the bridge to the end block.
With all top cracks, timing of the repair is critical. The longer you wait to fix the crack, the less likely it can be done invisibly. Also, try and resist the temptation to run your finger over the crack to feel it. This puts oils and dirt from your hand into the crack, which makes it hard to re-glue and can leave a dark line that can’t be removed.
If you know that you’re not looking at a finish crack and the top is indeed cracked, remove the string tension and get the guitar to a good repairperson as soon as possible. Center-seam separations or other lengthy top cracks can be made stable (if not invisible) without removing the bridge and “overspraying” the top. Overspraying (spraying over the existing finish) is an option if you just can’t live with the cosmetic imperfection of a crack, but it should be avoided on any vintage guitar.
Don’t try this at home, but with cracks caused by low humidity, we always start by putting a trash bag over the entire body and adding humidity inside the bag for a couple of weeks. This will close up the crack dramatically before we proceed with the repair. We use thin Super Glue for most of the crack-sealing operations.
The longer you wait to fix the crack, the less likely
it can be done invisibly.
If the crack has been open for years, the humidity method with the trash bag won’t work as well, and a splint may be needed to close the crack. Top cracks are tricky because that’s where the most stress is applied, but also because the light color of spruces and cedars most often used for tops makes for a much harder, cosmetic repair.
Sides. Since the guitar sides are usually the thinnest woods on the body, and since they are in just the right position to get whacked on something (often while playing), they sometimes get cracked. Even if the sides of a body are braced, a crack can still run right through the brace. I’ve seldom seen a case where a brace stopped a crack on a guitar.
The sides are the most likely place for a crack to occur when shipping an instrument. Always make sure that your guitar fits in its case well (not loose) when shipping it or traveling by plane. Cracks on the sides are repaired much the same way as top cracks, but repairs will usually look better cosmetically. This is because of the darker color of most side woods and the grain and grain fillers have a bit more going on to catch the eye and mask a crack than a top does.
Backs. The backs of guitars probably finish third in terms of frequency of cracks. The backs are usually a little thicker than either the top or sides, therefore a bit tougher. Matters of improper humidity usually don’t affect the thicker, harder woods on the back as much. The repair procedure is much the same as the top and sides, but the person doing the repair should be diligent on the interior cleanup of the guitar since the work could be visible through the soundhole.
When it comes down to it, I personally feel that you should enjoy and play your guitar, live with the little cracks and dings that inevitably happen, and not make yourself miserable about cosmetics. If you have a repair that needs to be made, just be sure to get a qualified person to do a good job. Until next time, keep on pickin’!WASHINGTON -- The share of Americans without health insurance has dropped sharply since enrollment under the Affordable Care Act began in 2013, according to survey results published by Gallup on Monday. And the law's effects are even more dramatic in states that cooperated with the federal government instead of fighting Obamacare.
Nationwide, the uninsured rate fell from 17.3 percent in 2013 to 11.7 percent through the first half of this year, following two years of sign-ups for private health insurance on the Obamacare exchanges and for expanded Medicaid benefits, the pollsters found. The contrast between Obamacare-friendly states and those hostile to the law is stark. Rhode Island has the lowest uninsured rate, 2.7 percent, while Texas comes in last at 20.8 percent.
States have the option of establishing health insurance marketplaces of their own, such as Covered California and Kentucky's Kynect; to partner with federal authorities, as Delaware, Illinois and others did; or to leave the task entirely to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which the majority of states did. States also can choose whether to offer Medicaid coverage to more poor adults under the law, which 30 states and the District of Columbia have done.
The consequences of those choices are clear in the Gallup findings: States that set up exchanges or collaborated with the federal government and also expanded Medicaid saw a much bigger drop in the share of residents without health insurance.
In the 22 states that had done both things by Dec. 31, the uninsured rate declined by 44 percent, and now is 8.9 percent. In states that did neither, the drop was 28 percent, and the uninsured rate is currently 13.4 percent. Collectively, the 28 states that are resisting the Affordable Care Act already had higher uninsured rates prior to the law's enactment than the 22 that have accepted it.
The Huffington Post
Seven states now have uninsured rates below 5 percent: Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Vermont, Connecticut, Iowa and Hawaii. Each created its own health insurance exchange and expanded Medicaid. Prior to this year, Massachusetts was the only state with an uninsured rate that low.
Arkansas, Kentucky, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington state each saw their uninsured rate go down by 10 percentage points or more, and they all have a state-run exchange or a marketplace jointly managed with the federal government and expanded Medicaid.
Gallup
Indiana and Pennsylvania adopted Medicaid expansions this year, but are not counted with other states that did because the policy wasn't in place at the beginning of 2015. The District of Columbia is excluded from the survey.
The results of this Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index survey are consistent with every public survey released since new Obamacare benefits became available at the beginning of last year, including recent findings by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.BARCELONA, Spain (Reuters) - The leaders of Catalonia’s two biggest political forces signed a pact on Wednesday to overcome their enormous divide on economic and social issues and defy Madrid by holding a referendum on secession from Spain in 2014.
The centre-right Convergence and Union (CiU) leader Artur Mas (L) and Republican Left (ERC) leader Oriol Junqueras sign an agreed alliance at Parlament de Catalunya in Barcelona, December 19, 2012. REUTERS/Albert Gea
Growing Catalan separatism is a political headache for Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who is struggling to keep Spain’s finances on track and dodge an international bailout. Vice President Soraya Saenz de Santamaria said on Wednesday the government would try to block the referendum in the courts.
It is still unclear how and when the vote can be legally organized but the deal will have more direct consequences for Spain’s push to control regional finances as the two parties have agreed not to implement more spending cuts.
The agreement between the center-right Convergence and Union alliance, or CiU, and the radical Republican Left, or ERC, falls short of a governing coalition but the ERC will support CiU’s budget and the two will push together for the referendum.
“We will face a lot of adversaries, powerful ones, without scruples,” CiU leader Artur Mas said at the signing. But he said that acting together the CiU and ERC had enough power in the local parliament to push ahead with the vote.
A deep recession and unemployment have stoked separatism in Catalonia, a region in northeastern Spain that generates one-fifth of the country’s economy and has its own language and distinct culture.
Mas, who has implemented unpopular spending cuts, held early elections November 25 to test support for his new drive for independence for Catalonia. Many Catalans believe that their region will be better off economically if it leaves Spain, saying that too many of their taxes go to help out poorer regions.
In the election Mas’s CiU alliance ended up with 50 seats in the local legislature, losing 12 seats, while the traditional separatist party ERC gained 11 seats and has 21.
Together they have an absolute majority in the 135-seat Catalan parliament.
However, it will be an uneasy alliance. The ERC has opposed CiU’s policy of deficit cutting, which has hit social services, schools and hospitals in the last two years.
To win over the ERC, CiU has shown willingness to place levies that will hit the wealthiest Catalans and impose a tax on bank deposits. The ERC has signaled it is willing to make concessions in order to get to the referendum.
Analysts said shared passion for the referendum could make the unlikely alliance hold for two years.
“I’m not naive enough to say it will be easy, but I believe the pact will last through the referendum,” said Salvador Cardus, professor of sociology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
“There is a strong personal commitment between the two leaders for Catalans to express their opinion about their political future.”
Constitutional scholars said that there will be many legal twists and turns over the next two years, but that Catalonia will probably be able to hold some form of public consultation, though it may end up being a non-binding or symbolic vote.
The centre-right Convergence and Union (CiU) leader Artur Mas (L) speaks next to Republican Left (ERC) leader Oriol Junqueras after signing the agreed alliance document at Parlament de Catalunya in Barcelona, December 19, 2012. REUTERS/Albert Gea
Unlike the self-determination effort in Scotland, which has received the go-ahead from the conservative government of British Prime Minister David Cameron, Catalonia will probably have to test various alternatives, said Ferran Requejo, political science professor at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.
Mas’s government will likely pass a Referendum Law in the Catalan legislature, Requejo said, which is likely to be struck down by the Constitutional Court.
“Eventually this will probably be played out in an international legal context, beginning with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” he said, referring to the United Nations agreement in force since 1976 that allows for self-determination. “Spain signed that pact.”The Senate has passed a resolution that calls for President Donald Trump to make a drastic break from both his Democratic and Republican predecessors and move the U.S. embassy in Israeli from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Last Thursday, Trump followed in the footsteps of his predecessors and signed a waiver that delays the embassy relocation. Trump promised to move the embassy to Jerusalem during the campaign. He said he is delaying the move as he hopes to advance a peace negotiation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
The Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, which was passed by Congress to establish the embassy’s move, allows for the president to delay it for six-month intervals in the interest of national security. (RELATED: Trump Delays Moving American Embassy In Israel From Tel Aviv To Jerusalem)
Despite this justification, the Senate has now passed a bipartisan resolution on a 90-0 vote for “commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War and the reunification of the city of Jerusalem,” which also “calls upon the President and all United States officials” to follow the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995.
Senate Leadership was united behind this resolution, with Politico quoting Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as saying “While we know that Israel continues to face a number of threats, bipartisan passage of this resolution will serve as yet another indication of the United States’ commitment to standing by our Israeli friends.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer shared this sentiment, saying in a statement that, “I am proud to sponsor this resolution, which reaffirms the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 that states Jerusalem should remain an undivided city and Israel’s capital – in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are celebrated, valued and protected.”
While Trump has chosen to delay his fulfillment of a campaign promise, there is no guarantee that this waiving will continue. Press secretary Sean Spicer stated that the situation is “not if that move happens, but when.”There’s been plenty of discussion already about Camden’s West End Project – on Cyclescape, and in detailed blog form on Fitzrovia News, City Cyclists, I Bike London, VoleOSpeed and Rachel Aldred, as well as this open letter from the Movement for Liveable London. A summary can also be found on the Cycling Embassy forum.
So I won’t bore you by writing a long post to go with these detailed analyses, principally because my position is virtually identical to that of Rachel’s and David’s – namely, that whatever the merits of the scheme, and the good intentions of Camden as a borough (both of which are undeniable) it falls short on cycling, and to such an extent that it really has to be improved.
I also think it might be more worthwhile to summarise some of the central issues, both with this scheme, and more generally for cycling in London (and Britain as a whole).
It seems that there is broad agreement, from pretty much everybody, that this scheme is inadequate for cycling, whatever its wider benefits. Even Camden Cycling Campaign – who support the proposals currently on the table from Camden – state that
we feel that it will not do much to encourage new people to cycle
So the debate centres on whether the broader scheme objectives should be supported by cycling campaigners, despite that failure, and, relatedly, how the scheme should be approached by them, either in terms of ‘engagement’ or ‘criticism’ (although it’s not entirely clear where the boundary between the two lies; when ‘engagement’ becomes ‘criticism’, and vice-versa).
What is quite fascinating to me is how cycling campaigners – people who think that cycling can and should play a significant role in making our towns and cities more attractive places – are often happy to sacrifice the quality of the transport mode they want to see more of, in the interests of wider scheme objectives. This isn’t necessarily a comment about the Camden scheme in particular; it’s more an observation about how cycling campaigners almost expect themselves to be selfless.
I can’t imagine pedestrian user groups arguing something along the lines of ‘well, the pavements in this scheme are a bit awful, and not suitable for children. But bus users get a great deal – let’s support it!’
But effectively that’s what’s happening with this scheme, and has happened many times in the past. It’s almost expected. People wanting to see more cycling will defer to those wanting to see improvements in the bus network (for instance) in a way that would never happen in reverse.
Of course a large part of this is due to existing mode shares in London, and other British towns and cities. It seems unreasonable to demand more for a mode of transport that, while increasingly visible, and on the agenda, doesn’t really exist, at least compared to bus travel and walking.
I also get the impression that the fact cycling is very much a minority mode has informed how the West End Project scheme has developed. Cycling is an afterthought, and is fitted in around other modes. If it’s too difficult to accommodate, then sharing with a relatively large volume of motor traffic will just have to do. This is completely understandable, even if it is unacceptable from a strategic, long-term point of view, one where we are aiming for a cycling modal share well into double figures, in percent.
Conversely, in a city like Utrecht, where something like 50% of all trips in the city centre are made by bike, a scheme that neglected the quality of the cycling environment would be completely unthinkable.
This gets us to the nub of the issue, and a Catch-22 that bedevils cycle campaigning in Britain. Namely, it’s politically difficult to allocate space for cycling, and to prioritise it as a mode of transport, when so very few people cycle, and so many people are excluded from it. But to get us to a position where it is politically easy to prioritise cycling requires those changes to the street environment that open up cycling to everyone. Which won’t happen while nobody cycles. And round we go.
Seeing a child cycling in central London is incredibly rare, outside of a closed road event. Children get driven, or they walk, or they take the bus. So why should we create conditions that would allow children to cycle, when they don’t cycle now? Again, we’re stuck in a vicious circle.
How do we get out of this rut? The answer has to lie, somewhere, with the advantages cycling would bring at an individual level – the ease of making short trips without having to worry about parking, independence of children under 17, and so on – combined with the economic, social, health, transport and environmental benefits that would come with much greater levels of cycling, at a general level.
But it’s not going to be easy, and the West End Project scheme points to the level of difficulty. It is being developed by a borough that, to my mind, probably ‘gets’ cycling more than any other authority in Britain – on streets they control. It’s an area that already has (for Britain) relatively high levels of cycling use, declining private motor traffic, very good public transport below ground level (and soon to get even better with the arrival of Crossrail), and wide building-to-building widths (although obviously with many competing demands on that space).
Yet apparently the best that can be achieved for cycling, with all these factors in play, won’t be good enough to make any significant difference.
That’s profoundly depressing. If the surface can barely be scratched here, with all the good intentions, and opportunities, then the prospects for the rest of the country are grim. It suggests a glacial pace of change.
Is there a way forward? David and Rachel both have a number of good suggestions about possible alternative arrangements on the two main N-S streets that form the central part of this scheme. As Rachel writes
surely one of them should be good for mass, inclusive cycling. That shouldn’t be an unreasonable thing to hope to see, in 2018, which is when it’ll be built, surely?
It’s hard to disagree. The proposed scheme involves two inadequate approaches on both streets; one with with no separation at all from plenty of buses and a fair amount of traffic passing through (and of course open to all in the evening), the other with inadequate separation on what will likely prove to be a busy road.
At the very worst, we should consider the space required for just one good approach, on either of the streets in question. They are only around 200 feet apart, so as long as the connections between the two are good enough (and they should be) it won’t be too arduous to divert to the other to make a north or south journey by bike.
It’s up for discussion what form that ‘good route’ could take, but it’s worth bearing in mind the dimensions of these streets at worst. The smallest building-to-building width on Tottenham Court Road is 17 metres. The smallest building-to-building width on Gower Street is 15 metres.*
So if we consider these two streets together, as a whole (this is reasonable enough as the layout of both is being completely altered by this scheme) there is a total of 32m of width available, even at the very narrowest points of both of these streets, within which to create a high quality cycling route, suitable for all potential users.
‘High quality’ means 4m of width, either in the form of a bi-directional track, or two 2m tracks, properly constructed. That leaves 28m of width for footways, bus lanes and motor traffic, at – to repeat – the very narrowest combined point of both of these streets.
Now of course this will be complex, and there will have to be discussion about how this could be achieved. The point, in quite general terms, is that if 32m of space, at minimum, can’t be imaginatively arranged to allocate just 4m of it to proper cycling provision, in a sympathetic borough with all the opportunities detailed above, then we are really in a tremendous pickle.
Even if we accept the difficulties at these narrowest points, the quality of the cycle provision could, at worst, be compromised or abandoned at these ‘pinches’; there’s no reason to jettison the potential to implement high-quality cycling infrastructure in places where it is easily achievable, simply because it’s difficult in other places.
Making the case for the value of designing well for cycling shouldn’t mean trashing Camden’s scheme, or trampling all over it. It should be about improving it, and ensuring that it has cycling provision within it that will enable cycling for all, rather than making things slightly better for the tiny minority of existing users. Doing so would make this scheme considerably better.
I think this is tremendously important; we have to break out of the current model of incremental changes that do |
mission, six took their lives.
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The Globe investigation examined the lives and deaths of four infantry soldiers who killed themselves after serving in Afghanistan, including the suicide of Corporal Jamie McMullin. They were all fathers and husbands, based in Gagetown near Fredericton. They all struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder, alcohol and the military's universality-of-service rule – which removes soldiers from the Forces if they are deemed unfit to deploy.
The Globe investigation found that questionable decisions were made in their care, and in the handling of their army careers. A shortage of mental-health staff and support programs was also a persistent problem, as was the military's process for releasing mentally wounded soldiers from the army.
Mr. Maxwell of Wounded Warriors said the organization hopes that Gen. Vance's review will lead to additional measures to help ill and wounded members and their families and to reduce the stigma surrounding mental illness.
With a report from Steven Chase
Are you a member of a military family with a similar story? E-mail Renata D'Aliesio at rdaliesio@globeandmail.com as she continues to bring attention to this important issue.With architecture, words are not enough.
Consider the World Trade Center Transportation Hub.
In recent weeks, readers of The New York Times have compared it to a cathedral and a Venus fly trap, a pigeon deterrent and a bird carcass, the collapsing twin towers and the steel pieces that remained after they fell. Santiago Calatrava, its principal architect, sees it as a dove. I thought in 2005 that it was becoming more of a stegosaurus.
How can architecture get through so many verbal thickets to reach readers?
In the work of Fred R. Conrad.
For 37 years at The Times, Mr. Conrad has let buildings speak for themselves.
You’d think it would be easy to photograph buildings. They don’t squirm or tell you they don’t want their picture taken. As a rule, they stay put from one week to the next.0 SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Whatsapp Pinterest Print Mail Flipboard
Democrats are going on offense in three red states, while Hillary Clinton is raising huge sums of money for Democratic Party organizations.
NBC News reported on the Democrats expanding the 2016 map into Georgia, Arizona, and Utah, ” The Democratic National Committee is launching a new field program to expand its footprint beyond the typical battleground states where Hillary Clinton campaign’s already has a large infrastructure…. In the short term, the goal is to take advantage of Donald Trump’s weakness in so-called expansion states by boosting Clinton and forcing Republicans to spend precious resources defending them…. In the longer term, the effort harkens to former DNC Chair Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy. It aims to build up Democratic infrastructure in places that don’t have much, like red or purple states where Democrats hope to make gains, but aren’t quite battlegrounds.”
Democrats are using Trump’s historically bad campaign to not only win in 2016, but they are also trying to build field organizations in red states that could pay dividends for years to come.
The effort is being funded because Clinton and the DNC are taking advantage of a joint fundraising agreement that is allowing Democrats to raise large sums of money together.
The New York Times reported, “Hillary Clinton is raising massive amounts of campaign cash for the Democratic National Committee and dozens of state parties, according to figures released by her campaign on Wednesday, laying the groundwork for a substantial investment in swing states during the fall.”
Meanwhile, thanks to Republican nominee Donald Trump’s decision to mooch off of the party, RNC fundraising has hit its lowest point since 2004.
Donald Trump’s campaign is making the Democratic Party stronger, and the decision to nominate Trump may haunt the GOP for years to come because Democrats are putting together the kind of field operation that Republicans have always feared.
If you’re ready to read more from the unbossed and unbought Politicus team, sign up for our newsletter here! Email address: Leave this field empty if you're human:Like a simple parlor trick, the networks are able to make skeptical scientists vanish, at least from the eyes of their viewers.
In some cases, the broadcast networks have failed to include such scientists for years, while including alarmist scientists within the past six months. ABC, CBS and NBC's lengthy omission of scientists critical of global warming alarmism propped up the myth of a scientific consensus, despite the fact that many scientists and thousands of peer-reviewed studies disagree.
Neither CBS nor ABC have included a skeptical scientists in their news shows within the past 1,300 days, but both networks included alarmists within the past 160 days -- CBS as recently as 22 days ago. When the networks did include other viewpoints, the experts were dismissed as "out of the scientific mainstream" or backed by "oil and coal companies."
The networks were able to promote the myth that there is a scientific consensus for man-made, catastrophic climate change by including climate alarmists much more often than skeptical scientists and by challenging the credentials of the skeptics that they did include.
There are thousands of skeptical scientists, so it's not like the networks couldn't find any. Marc Morano, who runs the website Climate Depot, has published a special report listing more than 1,000 dissenting scientists worldwide who dispute man-made global warming claims made by the likes of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former Vice President Al Gore.
CBS was the worst, ignoring skeptical scientists for 1,391 days, ever since the May 15, 2010, "Evening News." That night, CBS interviewed former NASA climatologist, Dr. Roy Spencer during an extensive profile of alarmist meteorologist, and non-Ph.D., Dan Satterfield.
It was just 22 days ago, on Feb. 12, 2014, that CBS included an alarmist physicist, Dr. Michio Kaku on "This Morning." Kaku is a contributor to "This Morning" and that day he warned of the "heating up of the North Pole" which "could cause gigantic storms of historic proportions."
ABC last included a skeptical scientist 1,383 days ago. During the May 23, 2010, segment of "World News," ABC played a brief, 23-second clip of Princeton-educated Dr. Fred Singer expressing his skepticism over man-made climate change, along with clips of two alarmist scientists. Singer's was the only opposing view in that report and his views were actually taken from a much earlier interview aired on ABC March 23, 2008.
Dr. Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton professor, appeared on ABC "World News" Sept. 27, 2013, arguing that climate change is "bearing down on us," only 160 days ago.
NBC did a far better job than the other broadcast networks, but the last time they included a skeptical scientist was still a whopping 298 days ago. NBC's May 13, 2013, "Today" included Dr. Jay Lehr of the Heartland Institute. Lehr criticized the supposed link between carbon dioxide and global temperatures.
An alarmist scientist appeared on NBC much more recently, however, only 115 days ago. On Nov. 11, 2013, "Today" Dr. Raghu Murtugudde predicted the increase of high-intensity hurricanes during a segment on how global warming would make hurricanes more powerful.
The business and economic reporting of CNSNews.com is funded in part with a gift made in memory of Dr. Keith C. Wold.We have a bit of a problem in western society. Sex has become a commodity that seems to be in full supply but comes at a steep price, and I’m not talking about a wedding ring and 50 years of indentured servitude or existential bliss whichever you deem it. We’ll come back to the price later.
Sex has become a weapon.
Now your first inclination is to gravitate to rape, and that indeed is using sex as a weapon. However this is not the only way sex is used as a weapon, regardless of what feminists, pastors, and the media will lead you to believe.
From the first time children are given the birds and the bees talk, sex is taught as being something special you only give up for something in return. But only for girls. We are going to toss the sex before marriage argument aside, because it’s not pertinent to this discussion.
43% of men between 18-22 in college and high school are sexually assaulted. 95% by women. This is an epidemic of epic proportions. Little boys are being taught “don’t rape” and little boys and girls are being taught “boys can’t be raped”. The fact that 60% of boys in the US are circumcised further reinforces the acceptance of sexual abuse as morally justified.
Western society has unleashed a wave of sexual violence and abuse on men. Feminism is leading the charge. These gender bigot ideologues have been teaching these young women that men always want sex. In essence, it’s impossible to rape a man. As Victoria Brownworth a pulitizer prize nominated feminist writer has said “Rape is a crime of male violence”.
So what is feminism teaching women that makes sexual abuse so pervasive?
1. Withholding sex is acceptable because “it’s your body”. When you enter into marriage or a sexual relationship with someone you give up part of your own bodily autonomy for the sake of the needs of someone else. If you are not willing to have robust regular sex and aren’t having robust regular sex with your intimate partner, you are engaging in sexual neglect. Withholding sex in a marriage is an at fault reason for divorce if you can prove it. Cases in Italy and France have resulted in successful lawsuits for this behavior. It is by definition emotional abandonment. If you are in a relationship with someone who treats you like a leper get out.
2. If it’s not intimate, or for you, don’t do it. This is the biggest excuse for starfishing and refusing to have robust sex. No one wants someone who lays there. If your partner needs something you absolutely will not do, you are a sexually selfish individual. You have no right to hold your partner sexually hostage. Now keep in mind here, I’m making the distinction between wants and needs. You should accommodate all their wants that you can. You must provide for their needs. Example. If you as a female have a full hysterectomy and cannot have vaginal sex, you don’t get to say “I don’t do anal or oral sex”. At that point your relationship is done. I’ll say it again and again. You have no right to hold your partner sexually hostage. It doesn’t matter if you don’t find blowjobs or muff diving intimate. It’s not about you. It’s about the needs of your partner. Women expect cunnilingus, but refuse to engage their partner’s needs.
3. Having sex when you really don’t want it to make your partner feel like a rapist is ok. This is illustrated best by Taylor Malone. You can find her disgusting false rape accusation here. This is one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever read on the internet. When you need to say no to an intimate partner, YOU SAY NO. To change the appearance of consent is fraud. It’s sexually abusive, and according to Diana Davison “a form of rape”. This includes situations where fraud is used to gain consent for a sexual encounter. Much like Amanda Holden.
4. Dropping birthcontrol to get pregnant is good relationship insurance. This goes back to using fraud to gain consent for a sexual encounter. This is the best example of feminist pressure to block male contraceptive methods for the express ability to use pregnancy and the birth of a child to secure monetary funds. Efforts to block the male pill and vasalgel have come almost exclusively from feminists. Heaven forbid a man have reproductive control and not father children to deceptive women who are looking for a child support check.
5. Blueballing teaches him his lesson. If you’re not willing to do what it takes to give your partner an orgasm, you’re being a sexually abusive asshole. This is a direct attack to the psyche of a man, and horribly manipulative. It’s one thing to make yourself sexually unavailable, it’s another to make yourself available with the intent to sexually torture your partner. There’s a case where a woman was having sex with a man and as soon as his ejaculatory response hit she withdrew consent in a effort to have him thrown in prison for rape. And feminists threw a fit when it didn’t work.
6. Sex makes a great carrot. If you use sex as a carrot you’re a fucking prostitute. The difference is sex workers have honor. This falls back into withholding sex, this time for money.
This is just a preliminary article, I hope to elucidate more on specifics in later articles so we can come to a knowledge together as both genders of having healthy sexual relationships based on mutual love and trust.
All of these sexually abusive behaviors I have been subjected to in some form or another. I’ve sought support from malesurvivor.org only to be called a rapist and an abuser by feminists for daring to suggest that I deserved in my intimate partner a robust, loving, and equal sexual relationship.
Feminism has sold meaningful sex down the river for cheap imitations and abusive relationships. Most of the victims are men. So much for equality.
To everyone currently in an abusive relationship, you probably don’t realize it’s abusive. You have options. You deserve to be loved. You don’t have to stay. You can get out.
For those of you who need a voice, who need the courage to get out.
AdvertisementsThe amusement park will discontinue the controversial practice as part of a comprehensive company overhaul
Seaworld is to scrap theatrical orca performances as part of a wider business review in response to criticisms that the San Diego attraction mistreats the animals it keeps captive.
During a webcast yesterday (9 November), the brand's chief executive Joel Manby said he had taken on board visitors' concerns regarding the theme park's Shamu stadium whale circus.
"Guests want to know that they're making a difference for the world we share and our parks deliver on that promise," he said, and added that a new orca experience will "highlight more f the species' natural behaviours."
SeaWorld came under scrutiny in 2013 following the release of documentary Blackfish. The film chronicled the fatal attacks by performing killer whales and was highly critical of the company's Orlando base, focusing on an animal named Tilikum which had been involved in the deaths of three people.
The attraction has been experiencing slumping sales ever since, with city authorities saying that visitor numbers dropped by 17 per cent last year to 3.8 million. Despite discounts, promotions and a marketing campaign to improve its reputation, the second quarter of this year saw income drop by 85 per cent to $5.8m, with revenue declining by 3 per cent to $391.6m.
The brand's change in direction also follows a growing tide of negative public opinion across social, pressure from animals rights' groups and condemnation from celebrities such as Ewan McGregor, Eli Roth and Harry Styles.
Speaking to investors on Monday, Manby asserted: “People love companies that have a purpose, even for-profit companies, just look at WholeFoods… I don’t see any reason why SeaWorld can’t be one of those brands.”Nothing can come between a sister's love — not even an overseas adoption.
Aubrey and Avery Lumpkins were living at the same Chinese orphanage until Aubrey was adopted by an American family when she was 9. When Aubrey flew to her new home in Kentucky, she left Avery behind — without ever knowing they were actually sisters.
Read: Family Discovers Adopted Daughter's Long Lost Twin At Chinese Orphanage And Now Wants To Adopt Her Too
But last year, her adopted mom, Lisa Lumpkins, was scrolling through Facebook and noticed a young girl that looked remarkably like her daughter. She contacted the orphanage and DNA tests found the girls were indeed related.
Last week, Avery flew to America to reunite with her sister. The Lumpkins family, who gathered at the airport to welcome her, adopted her, too.
The girls, both 13, have picked up right where they left off, their mom said.
"They're loving being together," Lumpkins told InsideEdition.com. "They remembered being [at the orphanage in China] together, but they had no clue they were sisters."
She said that while Avery has been bonding with everyone else in the family, including four other adopted children and two biological children, it's obvious she and Aubrey have a special relationship.
"She's so protective," Lumpkins said about Avery, whom she suspects is Aubrey's twin.
Both girls have cerebral palsy, but Lumpkins said Aubrey has more trouble walking.
"Aubrey likes being really independent," she said. But when Aubrey approached a set of steps, Lumpkins said she watched Avery instinctively stick her arm out, and offer her support. "She knows Aubrey won't ask for help, but she was afraid Aubrey was going to fall."
Likewise, Aubrey has become extremely attached to her sister, even though Aubrey doesn't speak Chinese, and Avery has not yet learned English.
The long-lost sisters were only able to be reunited last year, when Lumpkins saw a picture of a girl on Facebook that looked nearly identical to Aubrey, whom she adopted in 2013.
"I was speechless. I was like, ‘Wow! She looks just like my daughter,'" Lumpkins told InsideEdition.com in a previous interview.
She eventually asked the adoption agency to run a DNA test, which confirmed the two girls are related. Lumpkins decided she would have to bring the sister home.
After a battle against time (a Chinese adoption law required children to be adopted before age 14 or face eviction from the orphanage) and a scramble to raise enough money through their GoFundMe, Aubrey's biological sister, Avery, became the latest addition to the Lumpkins clan.
Read: Mom Who Wrote a Letter to Adopted Daughter 20 Year Ago Gives it to Her on Her Wedding Day
As Avery met her new family at the airport last week, Lumpkins said "Avery's hollering Aubrey's Chinese name, 'Ha Mei.' All the way down the escalator, she was crouching down, yelling her name."
Leading the way was another girl they decided to adopt at the last minute, Molly: "Her face lit up like a Christmas tree. She was like 'Mom, mom!' She hollered as loud as she could."
"I think that made everybody cry," Lumpkins said.
Watch: Couple Drives 32 Hours to Adopt Blind Dog as 'Brother' to Blind Dog They Already Own
Related Articles:All life on Earth could be alien life.
So says professor Steven Benner, who has presented a thesis that life in our solar system may have developed not on our blue planet, but on Mars.
“The evidence seems to be building that we are actually all Martians; that life started on Mars and came to Earth on a rock,” he told the BBC.
The surprising idea was presented by Benner — from the Westheimer Institute for Science and Technology in Gainesville, Florida — at the Goldschmidt conference in Florence.
Benner argues that life needs very specific conditions to develop. Adding energy to the primordial soup of early Earth, Benner says, wouldn’t have created RNA, one of the three key molecular building blocks of life (along with DNA and proteins).
Generating RNA, Benner says, would have needed very specific “templating” minerals — specifically boron and molybdenum, which are far, far more abundant on Mars than they are on Earth.
“It’s only when molybdenum becomes highly oxidized that it is able to influence how early life formed,” Benner told Metro UK.
Because of this, he sees the origins of life on Mars, not Earth.
“This form of molybdenum couldn’t have been available on Earth at the time life first began, because three billion years ago, the surface of the Earth had very little oxygen, but Mars did,” he told the BBC. “It’s yet another piece of evidence which makes it more likely life came to Earth on a Martian meteorite, rather than starting on this planet.”
He does concede, of course, that Earth has been the better of the two planets at sustaining life, though he doesn’t rule out the possibility of new life forming on the Red Planet.
“In addition recent studies show that these conditions, suitable for the origin of life, may still exist on Mars,” Benner told the Daily Mail.Ivan Rodionov sits in his office at Berlin's Postdamer Platz and seems to relish his role as the bad guy. He rails in almost accent-free German, with a quiet, but sharp voice, on the German media, which, he claims, have been walking in "lockstep" when it comes to their coverage of the Ukraine crisis. During recent appearances on two major German talk shows, Rodionov disputed allegations that Russian soldiers had infiltrated Crimea prior to the controversial referendum and its annexation by Russia. He says it's the "radical right-wing views" of the Kiev government, and not Russia, that poses the threat. "Western politicians," he says, "are either helping directly or are at least looking on."
Rodionov defends President Vladimir Putin so vehemently that one could be forgiven for confusing him with a Kremlin spokesperson. But Rodionov views himself as a journalist. The 49-year-old is the head of the video news agency Ruptly, founded one year ago and financed by the Russian government. The eighth floor of the office building has a grand view of Germany's house of parliament, the Reichstag. It's a posh location and the Kremlin doesn't seem to mind spending quite a bit of money to disseminate its view of the world from here. Around 110 people from Spain, Britain, Russia and Poland work day and night in the three-floor office space on videos that are then syndicated to the international media.
At first glance, it's not obvious that Ruptly is actually Kremlin TV. In addition to Putin speeches, there are also numerous other video clips available in its archive, ranging from Pussy Riot to arrests of members of the Russian opposition. When it comes to eastern Ukraine, however, the agency offers almost exclusively videos that are favorable towards pro-Russian supporters of the "People's Republic of Donetsk," which was founded by separatists. You'll also find right-wing radicals like Britain's Nick Griffin or German far-right extremist Olaf Rose, an ideologist with the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD), stirring up hatred towards the European Union and its Ukraine policies.
Propagating the Kremlin's Position
Rodionov says that, since its founding, Ruptly has attracted 14 subscribers and over 200 customers, including German broadcasters "both public and private." Subsidies from Moscow enable Ruptly to offer professionally produced videos at prices cheaper than those of the private competition.
The battle over Ukraine is being fought with diverse means -- with harsh words and soft diplomacy, with natural gas, weapons and intelligence services. But perhaps the most important instruments being deployed by Moscow are the Internet, newspapers and television, including allegedly neutral journalists and pundits dispatched around the world to propagate the Kremlin position.
"We're in the middle of a relentless propaganda war," says Andrew Weiss, vice president of studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, an influential Washington think tank. Weiss describes this propaganda as a crucial tool used by Russia to conduct its foreign policy.
Moscow is looking beyond the short-term, seeking to influence opinion in the long-run to create "an alternative discourse in Western countries as well," says Margarita Simonyan, editor in chief of Kremlin foreign broadcaster RT, formerly known as Russia Today, which owns Ruptly.
The Kremlin invests around 100 million ($136 million) a year in Russian media abroad in order to influence public opinion in the West. This effort also helps explain why Putin addressed Germans directly in his speech on the annexation of Crimea. Noting the Kremlin had supported Germany's reunification process, he called on Germans to back Russia's reunification with Crimea. Putin's popularity in Germany has declined steadily over the years, but his worldview remains quite popular.
A Triumphant Media Advance
Sources within the Kremlin express satisfaction these days when talking about Moscow's information policies. "We may have won the war in Georgia in 2008, but we lost the propaganda battle against America and the West by a mile," says one. "Thanks to RT and the Internet, though, we are now closing the gap."
Whereas Ruptly is seeking to establish itself as an alternative to Reuters and the Associated Press in providing video footage, RT has already successfully established itself in the nine years since its creation, recently surpassing even CNN when it comes to clips viewed on YouTube. With close to 1.2 billion views, the BBC is the only media outlet ahead of RT. In Britain, RT has more viewers than the Europe-wide news station Euronews and in some major US cities, the channel is the most-viewed of all foreign broadcasters. RT's 2,500 employees report and broadcast in Russian, English, Spanish and Arabic with German to be added soon.
The triumphant advance of Putin's broadcaster began in a former factory in northeast Moscow. Founding RT editor Simonyan was just 25 at the time Putin appointed her in 2005. Her assignment from the Russian president: to "break the monopoly of the Anglo-Saxon mass media."
It's a mandate she has been pursuing successfully ever since. "There's large demand for media that doesn't just parrot the uniform pulp from the Western press," says Simonyan. "Even in Western countries." RT gives pro-Russian representatives from Eastern Ukraine far more air time than supporters of the government in Kiev, and not even Simonyan disputes this fact. "We're something along the lines of Russia's Information Defense Ministry," her co-workers say, not without pride.
Ruptly and RT are only the most visible instruments being used by the Kremlin. Other propaganda methods being exploited can be less obvious.
For example, when German talk shows invite Russian journalists to speak about the Ukraine crisis, they are almost always pundits who could have been taken directly out of the Kremlin propaganda department. Programmers, of course, like to book these guests because they generate heated and provocative discussion. But it's also a function of the fact that experts critical of the government either don't want to talk or are kept from doing so. Take the example of Sergej Sumlenny, who served until January as the German correspondent for the Russian business magazine Expert. Early on, he appeared often on German talk shows, intelligently and pointedly criticizing Putin's policies. He has since been driven out at the magazine.
In his stead, the Russian perspective is now represented on German talk shows by people like Anna Rose, who is generally introduced as a correspondent for Rossiyskaya Gazeta, or Russian Gazette. The name sounds innocuous enough, but eyebrows should be raised immediately when this "serious" Russian journalist begins claiming that the Ukrainian army could be shooting "at women and children" and that Russian soldiers need to provide them with protection. Her positions suddenly become more understandable with the knowledge that Rossiyskaya Gazeta is the Russian government's official newspaper.
Manipulating Comments and Social Media
Those who read comments posted under articles about Ukraine on news websites will have noticed in recent months that they have been filled with missives that always seem to follow the same line of argumentation. Moscow's independent business daily Vedomosti reported recently that, since the start of the Ukraine crisis, the presidential administration in Moscow has been testing how public opinion in the United States and Europe can be manipulated using the Internet and social networks. The paper reported that most of the professional comment posters active in Germany are Russian immigrants who submit their pro-Russian comments on Facebook and on news websites.
In addition, journalists and editors at German websites and publications report receiving letters and emails offering "explosive information about the Ukraine crisis" on an almost daily basis. The "sources" often mention they have evidence about the right-wing nature of the Kiev government that they would like to supply to journalists. The letters are written in German, but appear to include direct translations of Russian phrases. They would seem to have been written by mother-tongue Russian speakers.
Other forms of propaganda have also been deployed in recent months. For example, there have been frequent incidences of intercepted conversations of Western diplomats or Kiev politicians getting published in ways that serve Russia's interests. From the "Fuck the EU" statement by Victoria Nuland, the top US diplomat to Europe, right up to statements made by Estonia's foreign minister that were apparently supposed to prove who was responsible for the deaths of protesters on Maidan Square. The Russian media also seemed to take pleasure in reporting in mid-April that CIA head John Brennan had traveled to Kiev.
There's a high likelihood that this confidential information and the content of intercepted communications is being strewn by Russian intelligence. Officials at Western intelligence agencies assume that even communications encrypted by the Ukrainian army are being intercepted by the Russians.Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol is looking to recruit National Review staff writer and Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran David French for an independent presidential run, sources confirmed Tuesday to Fox News.
French is a constitutional lawyer, a recipient of the Bronze Star, and an author of several books who lives in Columbia, Tenn., with his wife Nancy and three children, according to his bio on the National Review website.
Sources told Fox News on Tuesday that, “he’s (French) talking with lots of people (donors, strategists, etc.), but in the mode of planning for it not just considering it.”
Kristol kicked off the speculation, and the backlash, when he claimed Sunday: “There will be an independent candidate -- an impressive one, with a strong team and a real chance.”
When reached Tuesday by Bloomberg, which first reported the efforts to recruit French, Kristol declined to comment.
Kristol first mentioned French in the Standard’s June 6 issue, when he wrote that “the fact of Trump's and Clinton's unfitness for the Oval Office has become so self-evident that it's no longer clear one needs a famous figure to provide an alternative.”
He then mentioned French, writing “to say that he would be a better and a more responsible president than Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump is to state a truth that would become self-evident as more Americans got to know him.”
Kristol has been engaged in a personal Twitter battle over the long weekend with presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump regarding the prospect of another candidate entering the race.
Kristol, along with other conservative pundits, long has been working to attract an independent candidate to run in November amid lingering concerns in some wings of the Republican Party about Trump’s conservative credentials. This effort to date has struggled to recruit a willing candidate, while running into logistical hurdles -- including the rules and deadlines for getting new names on the ballot.
Kristol’s latest prediction prompted Trump to warn that the mystery candidate could act as a “spoiler” in November.
Kristol fired back on Monday, mocking Trump over his reaction.
I'm traveling, so hadn't realized I'd so upset @realDonaldTrump. I'm sorry the mere mention of an independent candidate has so unnerved him. — Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) May 30, 2016
Fox News' John Roberts contributed to this report.NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday raised with his Australian counterpart Malcolm Turnbull India's concern over the brutal killing of a 29-year-old Indian-origin bus driver, who was burned to death when a man poured some flammable liquid on him in Brisbane Prime Minister Modi telephoned Turnbull to wish him Diwali greetings and also conveyed a "sense of concern being felt in India over the recent brutal killing of Mr Manmeet Alisher, a person of Indian origin, in Australia," a Prime Minister's Office statement here said.Alisher, a well-known singer in the Punjabi community, was driving a Brisbane City Council bus on Friday when he was targeted by the man who threw an "incendiary device" at him which sparked a fire.Alisher died on the spot while several passengers on board the bus at the time managed to escape through the rear door.Turnbull expressed shock at the killing and conveyed to Modi that the matter is being investigated.Prime Minister Modi reiterated his invitation to Premier Turnbull for a visit to India in 2017, the statement said.Police had earlier said that there was "no apparent motive" including terror or race related in the killing of the Indian-origin man.A 48-year-old man had been taken into custody over the incident.Before a former schools officer allegedly left a police dog in a patrol car for hours this month, he may have shot and killed another police dog in 2012, the Cherokee County Marshal’s Office said Wednesday.
Daniel Peabody, 50, who was arrested this week in connection with both deaths, resigned last week from his position as a lieutenant with the Cherokee schools police.
The resignation came just days after a dog named Inca died from heatstroke on June 10. Peabody said he forgot about Inca, a 4-year-old Belgian Malinois, when he went into his house about 4:15 p.m., Cherokee Chief Marshal Ron Hunton said.
The car, which had no agency-approved kennel or heat alarm system, was not equipped to transport a police dog, Hunton said. When Peabody said he remembered Inca about 7 p.m., the dog was dead.
It was the investigation into Inca’s death that produced evidence suggesting Peabody shot and killed the other dog, Cherokee marshal’s officials said Wednesday.
That dog, a yellow lab named named Dale, was assigned to Peabody from 2007 to 2012 when he lived in Paulding County.
“Peabody initially claimed Dale’s death was accidental due to Dale choking on a toy,” the marshal’s office said in a statement. “However, the investigation yielded evidence that Dale was in fact shot and killed.”
On Monday, investigators found remains thought to be those of a dog at Peabody’s former home in Paulding while executing a search warrant. Those remains are being analyzed by a forensic veterinarian to try to identify the breed and cause of death, the marshal’s office said.
Peabody is in the Cherokee County Adult Detention Center on charges of aggravated cruelty to animals and making a false statement to investigators in lieu of $22,400 bond.
In a case unrelated to the dogs’ deaths, Peabody’s wife, Tyler Verlander, was cited for operating a boarding and training business without a Cherokee County occupation tax certificate, sheriff’s officials said. Also, Verlander was charged with operating a boarding and training business inside a residential zoned district, and operating a boarding and training business within 75 feet of a residential property, sheriff’s officials said.
Also, the Cherokee County school district did not know of the allegations about Dale’s death until the marshal’s office released the information, spokeswoman Barbara Jacoby said Wednesday. She said school police policy allowed a handler to apply to adopt a retiring dog, which Peabody did, and he was granted ownership of Dale.CEO 2014, sponsored by Smashboards, has launched a crowd funding initiative to increase the prize pool for the tournament. The tournament will feature Super Smash Brothers Melee and Project M, along side other fighting games. Each shirt purchased will support a $5 increase to the prize pool of the players choice and the shirts retail for a fair $14.95. This initiative gives the community a chance to get in on the sponsorship of the tournament while also getting something material in return for that support.CEO is in it's 5 year and will be held in Orlando, Florida June 27th-29th. The tournament has become the second largest fighting game event of the year and is one of the summers "big 3" Melee tournaments. Special to CEO though is it's inclusion of Project M - the fantastic game and community driven project. This is a great chance to raise the prize pool for what may be one of the largest Project M tournaments of the entire year.Are you attending CEO 2014? RSVP on the Smashboards event page. Looking for housing? Rides? Check out the dedicated CEO 2014 forum More information is available at the CEO 2014 website - the title sponsor is teespring.comHistorically and even today, many religious groups and organizations have promoted the view that any sexual activity outside the context of heterosexual marriage is immoral and harmful. One of the most vocal such groups in recent years has been the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as LDS or Mormon). Not only have they spoken out against masturbation (e.g., consider this recent PSA likening a guy who doesn’t stop his college roommate from masturbating to leaving a wounded soldier on the battlefield), but they have also repeatedly communicated their belief that homosexuality is wrong (e.g., consider that they were one of the biggest financial backers of California’s 2008 same-sex marriage ban, Prop 8). In light of their views, it is perhaps not surprising that the LDS church has also been a big proponent of the idea that sexual orientation change is possible, and they have encouraged gay, lesbian, and bisexual members to seek treatment designed to alter their sexuality. So what happens to LDS church members who follow these directives to “convert” their sexual orientation? Are religiously motivated individuals able to successfully eliminate their feelings of attraction to members of the same sex?
In a new study published in the Journal of Counseling Psychology, researchers conducted an online survey of 1,612 adults, all of whom had been baptized into the LDS church and reported experiencing at least some same-sex attraction in their lifetime. The sample was predominately male (76%) with an average age of 37, and most participants lived in the United States (94%; about half of whom were from Utah). Participants were asked about their sexual history, how they coped with their same-sex attractions, and their current psychological well-being.
Most of the men (73%) and about half of the women (43%) reported having engaged in at least one attempt to change their sexual orientation. Most commonly, this involved attempted change through “personal righteousness” (e.g., reading bible verses, praying, and/or going to church more frequently). However, many also reported seeking church counseling, psychotherapy, group therapy, and/or support groups. Participants’ self-reported ratings of effectiveness for these treatments varied considerably; however, for all treatments considered in this study, a majority of participants reported that they were either ineffective or more harmful than helpful. The two most common methods of change (personal righteousness and church counseling) were generally regarded as the least effective and most harmful.
When comparing those who sought treatment for their sexual orientation to those who did not, there were no differences in current levels of same-sex attraction or frequency of adopting a gay or bisexual identity, suggesting that the treatments did little to change people’s sexuality. This was true for both male and female participants. In addition, it is worth noting that only one participant in this entire sample reported that they now had exclusive attraction to members of the other sex after undergoing treatment.
The researchers also found that those who had sought treatment to change their sexual orientation reported more current distress about their sexuality and (at least among men) lower self-esteem than those who had not sought such treatment.
Overall, these findings are |
rather than stumble in blankly and hunt for them.
In 72 hours, I’ve changed many of my “preconceived notions” of GamerGate. Because I was writing a personal blog instead of a professional story, I shared all those notions — and how they changed.
Regardless, none of those notions will affect AirPlay, because I’m just the moderator. Other people are going to do all the talking.
“It could be the vindication we need, or it could be another exercise in circle-jerking.”
HALF TRUE — because it might be neither. What’s so wonderful about face-to-face debates is that anything can happen.
You might think your side sucked, yet you attract new fans. You might think your side nailed it, yet newcomers yawn.
Here’s what makes me so happy about how things have gone so far:
More than 12,000 people have read these posts from an itinerant journalist who knew as much about GamerGate as Jesus Christ knew about air conditioning. Nearly 500 have commented — demanding a discussion on journalism ethics when SPJ can’t even get journalists to talk about the topic.
Who knows what’s going to happen with AirPlay. It could totally suck. I could totally screw it up and piss off all 12,000 people. But it won’t be boring, and that’s the most important thing.Image copyright Thinkstock
Mental health services in England risk being overwhelmed by a combination of rising demand and staff shortages, a survey of NHS trusts suggests.
The poll by NHS Providers, which represents trusts, found seven in 10 mental health leaders expected demand to increase this year.
But fewer than one in three was confident they had enough staff to deliver services.
Ministers said extra money being invested would help improve care.
It comes as an investigation by BBC Radio 5 live Daily found the growing demand for mental health support was being felt in the ambulance service too.
Responses obtained under the Freedom of Information Act showed there was a growing number of ambulance call-outs to people suffering from suspected mental health problems.
In 2015-16, there were nearly 279,000 call-outs, up from 240,000 the previous year, according to the 13 out of 14 UK services that responded.
Louise Rubin, of the charity Mind, said part of the rise was likely to be down to an increasing trend for people with mental health problems who come into contact with the police to be transported by ambulance rather than with them.
She said this was a positive move, but it was "unlikely to be the full picture".
"We are concerned that people coming forward and seeking help for mental health problems are not getting the support they need early enough, which means they are more likely to become more unwell and reach crisis point."
'Gap between ambition and reality'
Saffron Cordery, of NHS Providers, said the biggest growth in demand was being seen in children's mental health services.
The survey carried out by her organisation received responses from 43 chairs and chief executives from 37 trusts, nearly two-thirds of the total number of mental health trusts in England.
She said the findings were concerning.
Image copyright Thinkstock
"These concerns point to a growing gap between the government's welcome ambition for the care of people with mental health needs and the reality of services they are receiving on the front line."
A Department of Health spokeswoman said: "We're committed to seeing mental health services improve on the ground."
She said by 2021 services would be getting an extra £1bn a year. Last year they were given £11.6bn.
She said that would help improve crisis resolution, home treatment teams and mental health support in A&E in particular.By Miguel Rivera
To push along their middleweight ranks, the World Boxing Council has confirmed that Jermall Charlo (26-0, 20 KOs) and Hugo Centeno (26-1, 14 KOs) will fight for the interim WBC championship.
The fight will be taking place because the full WBC middleweight title is tied up - as champion Gennady Golovkin is currently negotiating a potential May rematch with Mexican superstar Saul "Canelo" Alvarez.
Canelo and Golovkin fought to a controversial twelve round draw back in September, at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Charlo is the mandatory challenger to the middleweight crown.
According to the information that was passed over to WBC President Maurcio Sulaiman, Charlo and Centeno will battle on a date in the month of January.
There would be no surprise if that contest landed on the undercard to Errol Spence vs. Lamont Peterson, which takes place on January 20 from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Both Charlo and Centeno have fought in the venue, both are managed by Al Haymon, and both of them fight under the Premier Boxing Champions banner.
"The WBC has ordered an interim title fight, precisely so that there are no impediments (for Canelo-GGG 2) and that fight can be made without any problem of affecting the rights of some other boxer. (Jermall) Charlo accepted it, he understands the magnitude and everything is ready for (Canelo, GGG) to negotiate and make the rematch of their fight," said Sulaiman to ESPN Deportes.
"It will be Hugo Centeno (to fight Charlo), the next one who is available to fight for the interim title and it was already set down for January. So in the event that Golovkin does not reach an agreement for the fight with Canelo Alvarez, he would have the possibility of making a voluntary defense before thinking about Charlo or Centeno, or again the rematch with Canelo."
The last time Charlo was in action, he battered Jorge Sebastian Heiland back in July at the Barclays Center. It was Charlo's middleweight debut after vacating the IBF belt at 154-pounds to move up in weight.
Centeno has won two in a row, by knockout, since suffering a TKO loss to Maciej Sulecki in June 2016. Centeno knocked out undefeated Immanuwel Aleem in August.President Obama got elected on competence.
President \Obama speaks at the commencement address to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point's Class of 2014 in West Point, N.Y., on May 28. (Susan Walsh/AP)
For all of the talk about "hope" and "change" — and both were powerful slogans for Obama in 2008 — the core of Obama's appeal to many independents and even some Republicans was the idea that he would restore competence back to the White House after President George W. Bush's eight years, years defined by mistaken intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and a mishandling of the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast. Obama openly embraced the idea that he was the anti-Bush on nothing much more than his commitment to putting the best people in the right places within his administration. (Remember the whole "Team of Rivals" thing?)
As conservative columnist Jeff Jacoby writes in the Boston Globe: "Running to succeed the deeply polarizing George W. Bush, Obama held himself out not just as a leader who would never 'pit red America against blue America,' but as a natural-born manager whose hallmark was smarts and competence."
Which is what makes the series of problems within his administration of late all the more politically problematic for Democrats trying to hold onto their Senate majority — and narrow their House minority — this November. The current scandal engulfing the VA is the latest example of competence questions surrounding this White House, but they include everything from the rollout of HealthCare.gov to the targeting of tea party groups by a Cincinnati IRS office. While none of these problems are easily tied directly to a decision Obama made (or didn't make), they have all eroded the public's faith that he knows what he's doing.
"I think there is an increasing appetite and desire for just fundamental competence and accountability," said Republican media consultant Mark McKinnon. "A steady hand on the wheel. Or even a shaky hand on the wheel. Just find the wheel."
The collapse is striking. In CNN/Opinion Research Corp. polling in December 2008, more than three quarters of Americans said that the phrase "can manage the government effectively" applied to Obama; by March 2014 — before the VA debacle — just 43 percent said the same. A late 2013 Washington Post/ABC poll found a similar result, with just 41 percent of respondents saying that Obama "is a good manager." And polling by Pew also gets to this competence erosion. Here's their table on the question of whether Obama is able to get things done or not.
Now, it's worth noting that every president — those named Obama and those not — tends to have strong poll numbers on virtually every measure at the start of a term. And it's also true that those numbers — again, across the board — tend to fade the longer he's in office.
"I think that confidence in government competence started to be undermined with the war in Iraq and Katrina, the collapse of the economy and the roll-out of the [Affordable Healthcare Act]," said Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster. "It's hard to see how it gets much worse."
Maybe not. But Obama's numbers on competence are already low enough to trouble many party strategists charged with electing (or reelecting) Democrats to the Senate and the House. In conversations over the past several weeks with these folks, it's become clear that worries over Obamacare specifically have given way to a broader concern that the combination of the pained rollout of HealthCare.gov, coupled with the problems at the VA and other motivators of the Republican base (IRS, Benghazi), could combine into a toxic "This guy (and his party) don't know what they're doing" message this fall.
It's not clear whether Republicans have picked up on the "competence trumps all" message. The party does appear to be moving away from its insistence on the repeal of the Affordable Care Act to a less absolute position focused instead on replacing parts of the law that they believe don't/won't work. And Republicans like Mitch McConnell have made quite clear that they believe their path to victory lies in tying their opponent to Obama.
As we saw with George W. Bush in the 2006 midterms, a collapse of confidence in competence can have disastrous effects. Not only does it serve as a jolt of energy to the other side's base, but it also can turn independents from your side and even dampen enthusiasm for your side. Given the seats Democrats need to hold to keep control of the Senate — Arkansas, Alaska, North Carolina, Louisiana, etc. — any sort of damage done among independents might well be impossible for Democrats in those states to overcome.
What can Obama do? Hope that the VA scandal doesn't linger for months at or near the top of the news. Act swiftly to get rid of the people who clearly didn't do their jobs. (Obama started that process with Eric Shinseki last Friday.) And hope like hell there is no other management issue lingering in his administration that bubbles up between now and November.The NDA government's shake up of its Council of Ministers has started in probably the last major rejig ahead of the 2019 polls.
Here's the list of nine names who have been inducted as ministers in what can be touted as Modi's 2019 team. Sources say the new ministers have been drafted in based on the 4 P Principle: Passion, proficiency and political acumen for progress.
Also read: Cabinet Reshuffle LIVE: Who will PM pick for Team 2019?
Below are nine names, as well as brief profiles of each. All are from the ruling BJP.
Shiv Pratap Shukla
Rajya Sabha MP from Uttar Pradesh, Shiv Pratap Shukla, who was imprisoned for 19 months under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act during the Emergency, is also a member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Rural Development.
An LLB from Gorakhpur University, Shukla began his innings in politics early as a student leader in the 1970s.
He was elected the member of the UP Legislative Assembly for four consecutive times in 1989, 1991, 1993 and 1996.
Later, he served as a cabinet minister in the UP government for eight years between 1996 and 2002.
During his terms as a cabinet minister in UP he handled the Ministry of Jails and later the Ministery of Rural Development.
He’s known for initiating the education for all scheme in UP that tied ten districts together for the first time and for jail reforms in the state.
Alphons Kannanthanam
Alphons Kannanthanam is more familiar to the people as Delhi’s Demolition Man after he cleared Delhi Development Authority (DDA) areas of encroachment by removing around 15,000 illegal buildings while serving as the Commissioner of DDA during 1992 and 1997.
He reclaimed land worth Rs 10,000 crore belonging to the DDA and is action prompted Time magazine to adjudge him as one of the 100 young global leaders in 1994.
Kannanthanam was born in a non-electrified village, Manimala in Kottayam district of Kerala and later he became an IAS officer of the 1979 batch from the Kerala cadre.
As the District Collector of Kottayam he pioneered the literacy movement in India and made his town the first 100% literate town in India way back in 1989.
A practicing advocate, Kannanthanam, set up an NGO called Janshakti in 1994, that works to develop the ability in citizens to believe in making government accountable to people.
He retired as IAS in 2006 to join politics. Currently, he is a Member of the Committee to prepare the final draft of the National Education Policy 2017.
He has also written a bestselling book named Making a Difference.
Satya Pal Singh
A scholar of Vedic studies and Sanskrit, Satya Pal Singh is a Lok Sabha MP from Baghpat, UP. He was born in Basauli village of Baghpat and has an illustrious career in academia.
Singh has an MSc and MPhil in Chemistry, MBA in Strategic Management from Australia, MA in Public Administration as well as a PhD in Naxalism.
An IPS officer of the 1980 batch of the Maharashtra cadre, Singh has been recognised with medals like the Antrik Suraksha Sewa Padak and a Special Service Medal for extraordinary work in the Naxalite areas of Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh in 1990 by the government.
Singh is known for breaking the backbone of organised crime syndicates in Mumbai in the 1990s as the financial capital’s commissioner of police. He also served as the commissioner of Pune and Nagpur police.
He has also written best-selling books, including on topics like tribal conflict resolution and Naxalism.
Hardeep Singh Puri
A decorated former IFS officer of the 1974 batch, Hardeep Puri, has a four decade long distinguished career in diplomacy, foreign policy and national security.
The Delhi-born diplomat was a student leader during his days at the Hindu College and was active during the JP movement.
Puri, as the head of the Indian delegation to the UN Security Council has served as the Chairman of the Counter Terrorism Committee of the UN. He was also appointed the President of the UNSC in August 2011.
He has also served as the ambassador and permanent representative of India to the United Nations, ambassador to Brazil and UK and permanent representative of India to Geneva.
Currently, he is the President and Chairman of a think tank called Research and Information System for developing countries (RIS).
Raj Kumar Singh
Lok Sabha MP from Arrah, Bihar, Raj Kumar Singh is a former IAS officer of the 1975 batch from the Bihar cadre.
Raj Kumar Singh has served in multiple roles and handling responsibilities as Defence Production Secretary and Joint Secretary Home during the NDA government between 1999 and 2004.
He headed Home, Industries, Public Works and Agriculture amongst other departments in the Bihar Government.
Between 2011 and 2013, he rose to the ranks and was entrusted upon the responsibility of the Union Home Secretary of the country.
Currently, he is a member of the Parliamentary Standing Committees on Health and Family Welfare, Personnel, Pensions and Public Grievances and Law & Justice.
Raj Kumar Singh studied English Literature at St. Stephens College and got a Bachelors Degree in Law thereafter. He also went on to study at the RVB Delft University in Netherlands.
Virendra Kumar
Six-term Lok Sabha MP, Virendra Kumar is from Tikamgarh, Madhya Praddesh. He was an active participant of the JP movement in the 1970s he went to jails for 16 months under MISA during the Emergency.
Coming from the Scheduled Caste community, Virendra Kumar has been engaging youth in removing the barriers of caste and class and has been working to eliminate child labour.
Apart from these areas he has been involved in building orphanages, schools for the differently abled and old age homes.
Currently, Virendra Kumar is the chairperson of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Labour and has been the Chairman of the Joint Committee on Office of Profit and a Member of National Social Security Board.
Kumar has an MA in Economics and a PhD in Child Labour.
Anantkumar Hegde
Practitioner of Tae-kwon-do, a Korean martial art, Anantkumar Hegde is a Lok Sabha MP from Uttara Kannada, Karnataka.
He was elected as an MP at a young age of 28 years and since then he is now a fifth term Lok Sabha MP.
He has been a member of multiple Parliamentary Standing Committees including the likes of Finance, Home Affairs, Human Resource Development, Commerce, Agriculture and External Affairs during his multiple stints in the Parliament.
Hegde has been working in the area of rural development for a long while. He is the founder president of an NGO named Kadamba that works for rural health, self help groups, rural marketing and other rural welfare programmes.
Hegde has been a member of the Spices Board of India for four terms between 1996 to 2009 onwards.
Ashwini Kumar Choubey
Ashwini Kumar Choubey, with his above 90 percent attendance in the parliament, is an active face of the saffron party in Bihar.
Choubey is a Lok Sabha MP from Buxar, Bihar and he has been elected to the Bihar Legislative Assembly for five times in a row.
He had shifted from his home district Bhagalpur to contest the Lok Sabha elections from Buxar. Known as a Modi loyalist, Choubey has been part of the Modi wave when BJP came to power in 2014. The BJP candidate prior to Choubey had lost the Buxar seat to RJD's Jagadanand Singh. Choubey, drawing votes from all castes, won the seat back for BJP even when most parts of Bihar were not under the party’s spell.
Choubey, the former health minister of Bihar in Nitish Kumar’s cabinet, has held several significant positions over time. Presently, he is member of the Parliament Committee on Estimates along with being a member of the Standing Committee on Energy.
Active in student politics from the late 60s, the Bihar politician has made a steady climb in terms of political stature. In his student politics years, Choubey had participated in the Gandhian Socialist Jayaprakash Narayan-led JP Movement that launched mass protests against Indira Gandhi’s government back in 1974. He was taken into custody afterwards during Emergency.
As a serving health minister of the state on 2012, he had gotten into controversy after threatening to “chop off” hands of the junior doctors who were planning a strike to increase their allowances. But later he clarified that the seemingly threatening phrase was only used in a manner of speaking. He was known to have a very stringent position on doctors and their performances, leaving no leeway for them.
The man has also been credited for the slogan "Ghar - Ghar me ho Shouchalaya ka nirman, Tabhi hoga Ladli Bitiya ka Kanyadaan". He helped to build thousands of toilets for Mahadalit families.
The Kedarnath floods in 2013 devastated Uttarakhand and Choubey was there with his family. Afterwards, he wrote a book on the incident called ‘Trinetra’.
Gajendra Singh Shekhawat
One among the nine new ministers to be inducted into Narendra Modi-led Cabinet, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat is a Lok Sabha MP from Jodhpur, Rajasthan.
The 49-year-old is a popular face in the Bharatiya Janata Party and will be the second Rajput after Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore to secure a place in Modi's cabinet.
He is currently a Member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance and Chairperson of the Fellowship Committee. His social media popularity is huge with more than 55,000 followers on Quora, a popular question-answer blogging website.
He is also popular among the youth owing to his likes for technology and gadgets. The National General Secretary of BJP's farmer's wing BJP Kisan Morcha, Shekhawat is popular with the rural community.
Shekhawat completed his higher education from Jai Narain Vyas University in Jodhpur, obtaining a MPhil and MA in philosophy. During his days in JNVU, he was involved in student politics under the banner of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP).
Currently, a member of All India Council of Sports, his involvement in sports is also known to many. He has participated in the National and All India Inter University level in Basket Ball and right now is the President of Basketball India Payers Association.Share On more Share On more
1. The Full Situp To achieve the full situp, you must begin with the genuine intention of exercising your abs and promptly fall asleep midway through the task. This position is extremely advanced and not recommended for amateur sleepers.
2. The Awkward Spoon The goal here is not so much intimacy as it is the socially uncomfortable sharing of a physical space with someone. Bonus points if your arm falls asleep but you're too embarrassed to move it.
3. The Semicircle Tuck your tail between your legs and imagine that you are an omelet.
4. The Sunbather The trick is to look like someone who is acting comfortable whilst also appearing extremely uncomfortable. Let's take this excellent opportunity to coin the term "meta-comfortable."
5. The Double Bed You will need a partner for this one. The goal is not so much comfort as an expression of sheer, unadulterated greed.
6. The Half-Box Any old box will do, but two of your feet - preferably on opposite sides of your body - must remain outside the container at all times.
7. The Backstroker Do not even attempt unless you have tiny, tiny, precious little legs.
8. The Sleeping Baby Find a baby. Imitate the baby.
9. The Fur Pile For this, you will need at least three friends who are not averse to your sleeping on them.
10. The Full-Box Just get your whole damn body in there no matter what it takes. Be the box.
11. The Drunken Radiator Just because you are obviously some kind of gin-addled hobo doesn't mean you can't be nice and warm.
12. The Sleeping Dog Find a dog. Imitate the dog.
13. The Librarian Bury your furry little head in your paws and try to look as contemplative and bookish as possible before drifting off.
14. The Ruler Measure the floor with every inch of your tiny body.
15. The Windowsill The whole world is your hammock.
16. The Clothes Dryer Imagine that you are a wet T-shirt, fresh from the washing machine. Drape yourself accordingly.
17. The Pot Luck Think of yourself as a last-minute fruit salad that everyone will be very polite about but probably not enjoy all that much.
18. The Head-Rush Head to the ground, paws in the air - let gravity do the rest.
19. The Odd One Out For this one you will need first to find two willing conformists.
20. The Mid-Sentence Only recommended for individuals with extreme forms of narcolepsy.
21. The Bag Of Limbs (Box Edition) Have a friend or loved one take you apart and put you back together haphazardly inside a box.
22. The Bag Of Limbs (Couch Edition) Same as above, except (obviously) without the box.
23. The Dog Bed Not a bed for dogs, but a bed that is made of dogs. I.e., the most comfortable bed you will ever sleep on that also smells kind of funky.
24. The Office Worker Fall asleep on the job. LOL.Cisco Blog > Threat Research
Threat Research
Threat Spotlight: Group 72, Opening the ZxShell
This post was authored by Andrea Allievi, Douglas Goddard, Shaun Hurley, and Alain Zidouemba.
Recently, there was a blog post on the takedown of a botnet used by threat actor group known as Group 72 and their involvement in Operation SMN. This group is sophisticated, well funded, and exclusively targets high profile organizations with high value intellectual property in the manufacturing, industrial, aerospace, defense, and media sector. The primary attack vectors are watering-hole, spear phishing, and other web-based attacks.
Frequently, a remote administration tool (RAT) is used to maintain persistence within a victim’s organization. These tools are used to further compromise the organization by attacking other hosts inside the targets network.
ZxShell (aka Sensocode) is a Remote Administration Tool (RAT) used by Group 72 to conduct cyber-espionage operations. Once the RAT is installed on the host it will be used to administer the client, exfiltrate data, or leverage the client as a pivot to attack an organization’s internal infrastructure. Here is a short list of the types of tools included with ZxShell:
Keylogger (used to capture passwords and other interesting data)
Command line shell for remote administration
Remote desktop
Various network attack tools used to fingerprint and compromise other hosts on the network
Local user account creation tools
For a complete list of tools please see the MainConnectionIo section.
The following paper is a technical analysis on the functionality of ZxShell. The analysts involved were able to identify command and control (C2) servers, dropper and installation methods, means of persistence, and identify the attack tools that are core to the RAT’s purpose. In addition, the researchers used their analysis to provide detection coverage for Snort, Fireamp, and ClamAV.
Table of Contents
Background
ZxShell has been around since 2004. There are a lot of versions available in the underground market. We have analyzed the most common version of ZxShell, version 3.10. There are newer versions, up to version 3.39 as of October 2014.
Distribution and Delivery
An individual who goes by the name LZX in some online forums is believed to be the original author of ZxShell. Since ZxShell has been around since at least 2004, numerous people have purchased or obtained the tools necessary to set up ZxShell command and control servers (C&C) and generate the malware that is placed on the victim’s network. ZxShell has been observed to be distributed through phishing attacks, dropped by exploits that leverage vulnerabilities such as CVE-2011-2462, CVE-2013-3163, and CVE-2014-0322.
Analysis of the Main ZxShell Module
To illustrate the functionality of main ZxShell module, Let’s take a look at the following sample:
MD5: e3878d541d17b156b7ca447eeb49d96a
SHA256: 1eda7e556181e46ba6e36f1a6bfe18ff5566f9d5e51c53b41d08f9459342e26c
It exports the following functions, which are examined in greater detail below:
DllMain
Install
UnInstall
ServiceMain
ShellMain
ShellMainThread
zxFunction001
zxFunction002
DllMain
DllMain performs the initialization of ZxShell. It allocates a buffer of 0x2800 bytes and copies the code for the ZxGetLibAndProcAddr function. To copy memory, the memcpy function is invoked. It is not directly used from msvcrt.dll but is instead copied to another memory chunk before being called. Finally, the trojan Import Address Table (IAT) is resolved and the file path of the process that hosts the dll is resolved and saved in a global variable.
Install
ZxShell.dll is injected in a shared SVCHOST process. The Svchost group registry key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SvcHost is opened and the netsvc group value data is queried to generate a name for the service.
Before the malware can be installed a unique name must to be generated for the service. The malware accomplishes this through querying the netsvc group value data located in the svchost group registry key which is HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SvcHost.
At startup, Svchost.exe checks the services part of the registry and constructs a list of services to load. Each Svchost session can contain multiple shared services that are organized in groups. Therefore, separate services can run, depending on how and where Svchost.exe is started.
Svchost.exe groups are identified in the above registry key. Each value under this key represents a separate Svchost group and appears as a separate instance when you are viewing active processes. Each value is a REG_MULTI_SZ value and contains the services that run under that Svchost group. Each Svchost group can contain one or more service names that are extracted from the following registry key, whose Parameters key contains a ServiceDLL value:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Service
On a Windows machine, the netsvc group contains names of both existing and non-existing services. ZxShell exploits this fact by cycling between each of the names, verifying the existence of the real service. The service’s existence is verified with the ServiceExists function, which attempts to open the relative registry sub-key in HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services. The first service name that is not installed on the system becomes the ZxShell service name.
A new service is then created using the service parser function ProcessScCommand. ZxShell implemented its own version of the Windows SC command. There are minor differences between the ZxShell implementation of this command and the original Windows one, but they are irrelevant for the purpose of the analysis The command used to install the service is:
sc create <service name> <service name> “%SystemRoot%\System32\svchost.exe -k netsvcs”
where <service name> is the chosen infected service name.
The installed service registry key is opened and the 2 values under its Parameter subkey are created. These 2 values, ServiceDll and ServiceDllUnloadOnStop are needed for services that run in a shared process.
Before the service is started ChangeServiceConfig is called to modify the service type to shared and interactive. If the service fails to start then a random service name formatted as netsvc_xxxxxxxx, where xxxxxxxx represent an 8-digit random hex value, is added to the netsvc group and the entire function is repeated.
ServiceMain
This function is the entry point of the service. It registers the service using the RegisterServiceCtrlHandler Windows API function. The ZxShell service handler routine is only a stub: it responds to each service request code, doing nothing, and finally exits. It sets the service status to RUNNING and finally calls the ShellMain function of ZxShell.
ShellMain
The ShellMain function is a stub that relocates the DLL to another buffer and spawns a thread that starts from ShellMainThreadInt at offset +0xC0CD. The ShellMainThreadInt function gets the HeapDestroy Windows API address and replaces the first 3 bytes with the RET 4 opcode. Subsequently, it calls the FreeLibrary function to free its own DLL buffer located at its original address. Because of this, the allocated heaps will not be freed. It re-copies the DLL from the new buffer to the original one using the memcpy function. Finally, it spawns the main thread that starts at the original location of ShellMainThread procedure, and terminates. At this point, the ZxShell library is no longer linked in the module list of the host process. This is important because if any system tool tries to open the host process it will never display the ZxShell DLL.
ShellMainThread
This thread implements the main code, responsible for the entire botnet DLL.
First, it checks if the DLL is executed as a service. If so, it spawns the service watchdog thread. The watchdog thread checks the registry path of the ZxShell service every 2 seconds, to verify that it hasn’t been modified. If a user or an application modifies the ZxShell service registry key, the code restores the original infected service key and values.
The buffer containing the ZxShell Dll in the new location is freed using the VirtualFree API function. A handle to the DLL file is taken in order to make its deletion more difficult. The ZxShell mutex is created named @_ZXSHELL_@.
ZxShell plugins are parsed and loaded with the AnalyseAndLoadPlugins function. The plugin registry key HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\zxplug is opened and each value is queried. The registry value contains the plugin file name. The target file is loaded using the LoadLibrary API function, and the address of the exported function zxMain is obtained with GetProcAddress.
If the target filename is incorrect or invalid the plugin file is deleted and the registry value is erased. That is performed by the function DeleteAndLogPlugin. Otherwise, the plugin is added to an internal list. Here is the data structure used to keep track of the plugins:
typedef struct _ZX_PLUGINS_STRUCT { LPSTR lpStrRegKey; // + 0x00 - ZxShell Plugins registry key string // (like 'SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\zxplug') DWORD dwUnknown2; // + 0x04 - Unknown DWORD value LPVOID lp138hBuff; // + 0x08 - Plugins list DWORD dwZero; // + 0x0C - Always zero HANDLE hReg; // + 0x10 - Handle to plugin registry key } ZX_PLUGINS_STRUCT, *PZX_PLUGINS_STRUCT;
The thread KeyloggerThread is spawned and is responsible for doing keylogging on the target workstation. We will take a look at the keylogger later on. Finally the main network communication function GetIpListAndConnect is called.
GetIpListAndConnect
This function is at the core of the RAT’s network communication. It starts by initializing a random number generator and reading 100 bytes inside the ZxShell Dll at a hardcoded location. These bytes are XOR encrypted with the byte-key 0x85 and contains a list of remote hosts where to connect. The data is decrypted, the remote host list is parsed and verified using the BuildTargetIpListStruct function. There are 3 types of lists recognized by ZxShell: plain ip addresses, HTTP and FTP addresses.
If the list does not contain any item, or if the verification has failed, the ZxShell sample tries to connect to a hardcoded host with the goal of retrieving a new updated list.
Otherwise, ZxShell tries to connect to the first item of the list. If ZxShell successfully connects to the remote host, the function DoHandshake is called. This function implements the initial handshake which consists of exchanging 16 bytes, 0x00001985 and 0x00000425, with the server. The function GetLocalPcDescrStr is used to compose a large string that contains system information of the target workstation. That information is the following:
local hostname
organization
owner
operating system details
CPU speed
total physical memory
The string is sent to the remote host and the response is checked to see if the first byte of the response is 0xF4, an arbitrary byte. If it is, the botnet connection I/O procedure is called through the MainConnectionIo function.
Otherwise, the ZxShell code closes the socket used and sleeps for 30 seconds. It will then retry the connection with the next remote host, if there is one.
It is noteworthy that this function includes the code to set the ZxShell node as a server: if one of the hardcoded boolean value is set to 1, a listening socket is created. The code waits for an incoming connection. When the connection is established a new thread is spawned that starts with the MainConnectionIo function.
MainConnectionIo
The MainConnectionIo function checks if the Windows Firewall is enabled, sets the Tcp Keep Alive value and Non-blocking mode connection options and receives data from the remote host through the ReceiveCommandData function. If the communication fails, ZxShell disables the firewall by modifying the registry key:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SharedAccess\Parameters\FirewallPolicy\StandardProfile
Then the connection is retried. The received command is then processed by the ZxShell function with the ProcessCommand function.
The command processing function starts by substituting the main module name and path in the hosting process PEB, with the one of the default internet browser. The path of the main browser of the workstation is obtained by reading the registry value:
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\HTTP\shell\open\command
This trick renders identification by firewall more cumbersome. A host firewall will recognize the outgoing connection as originated by the browser instead of the ZxShell service host process. The browser process always performs outgoing connections and the firewall shouldn’t block them.
The command processing is straightforward. Here is the list of common commands:
COMMAND MEANING Help /? Get help Exit / Quit Exit and shut down the botnet client SysInfo Get target System information SYNFlood Perform a SYN attack on a host Ps Process service Unix command implementation CleanEvent Clear System Event log FindPass Find login account password FileTime Get time information about a file FindDialPass List all the dial-up accounts and passwords User Account Management System TransFile Transfer file in or from remote host Execute Run a program in the remote host SC Service control command, implemented as the Windows one CA Clone user account RunAs Create new process as another User or Process context. TermSvc Terminal service configuration (working on Win Xp/2003) GetCMD Remote Shell Shutdown Logout, shutdown or restart the target system ZXARPS Spoofing, redirection, packet capture ZXNC Run ZXNC v1.1 – a simple telnet client ZXHttpProxy Run a HTTP proxy server on the workstation ZXSockProxy Run a Sock 4 & 5 Proxy server ZXHttpServer Run a custom |
that isn’t talked about as much as the Andre Ward’s, Gennady Golovkin’s, or Deontay Wilder’s is the top pound-for-pound fighter in boxing, Roman Gonzalez.
Gonzalez, the Lineal Flyweight champion, is coming off his 45th victory over a game, but over-matched McWilliams Arroyo on the undercard of the borderline irresponsible fight between GGG vs Dominic Wade. Roman’s outing in April didn’t go as many thought it would. What some expected to be another showcase of the “Little Drama Show” instead turned out to be a relatively competitive fight despite Arroyo only having half of one shoe. It was in stark contrast to Gonzalez’ win over Brian Viloria last October.
In the days following the fight against Arroyo, Gonzalez was interviewed on several occasions where he discussed the future of his career. The most notable pieces of information that were revealed were that Roman was contemplating a move up in weight, citing a lack of competition in addition to having trouble making 112 lbs. Judging by the performance that Gonzalez put on against Arroyo, maybe something was off that night and two possibilities come to mind. First, the bad news. Sorry, Gonzalez fans, Arroyo was much better than many gave him credit for. Second, is that Gonzalez showed signs of a fighter outgrowing his division. Hey, it happens.
It is common knowledge for boxing hipsters who followed “Chocolatito” before it was cool that he had a barn-burner with Juan Francisco “El Gallo” Estrada of Mexico at Light Flyweight. At a quick glance it would be easy to say that they fought, Estrada lost by UD, and that’s that. But is that the case here? Since they met at Light Flyweight, a weight Estrada had never fought at before, Estrada has gone on to win 7 straight and captured the WBA and WBO Flyweight titles, looking better with every fight.
Not long after Gonzalez was in the news talking about a move up in weight, Estrada was seen soon after discussing the possibility of moving up as well. It’s clear to anyone who follows the smaller divisions that the top 2 Flyweights in the world are Gonzalez and Estrada. It’s becoming a common theme that fighters are wanting to be paid top dollar to fight dangerous opponents and it has found its way to Flyweight. Gonzalez is undoubtedly keeping tabs on Estrada, watching his rival string together win after win and the rematch is inevitable, but here we are listening to him talking about not having fights to make at 112.
Gonzalez has talked himself into a corner. An obvious fight for him to make is the rematch with Estrada at Flyweight. They’re both on winning streaks and those who follow the smaller divisions are ready to see them fight again. But wait! Gonzalez said he’s not comfortable making 112 anymore, so fair point to him. Let’s play it out and follow him up to Super Flyweight.
Waiting to welcome Gonzalez to 115 is the “Monster” Naoya Inoue of Japan, and they don’t call him “Monster” for nothing. Here is a rival already established in a division with the talent to beat “Chocolatito” (and Estrada for that matter). If you’re Gonzalez, a fighter being marketed heavily, this is a “Monster” of a risk and you may not be able to afford to take it. And also consider that if Gonzalez moves up to Super Flyweight without the Estrada rematch, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to say that Gonzalez is running from his past. There would be a strong expectation that the rematch would at least take place at Super Flyweight instead.
So if you’re Roman Gonzalez, you’re stuck with very few options. Estrada has made it clear that he is open to the rematch with Gonzalez. There’s no denying that Gonzalez-Estrada II would be as good, if not better, than the first fight. A “Monster” is waiting at Super Flyweight if he decides to move up. No matter which way Gonzalez turns, there’s a fight that wouldn’t be a good look to avoid. Or take the easy way out and continue fighting mediocre-at-best opposition for easy cash while HBO continues marinating chocolate.That was fast. Earlier today we shared that an unlocked Nokia Lumia 1020 would be available at some point in the future through the Microsoft Store. Turns out it's available right now and will work with both AT&T and T-Mobile.
Head to the Microsoft Store website and you'll find an unlocked Nokia Lumia 1020 available for purchase. It will set you back $549, but it is SIM-unlocked. It's also has the bands to work properly with not just AT&T, but T-Mobile.
Specs are the same as, but here you'll get support for the bands that will net you LTE on T-Mobile here in the United States.
Anyone thinking of picking up the unlocked Nokia Lumia 1020? Sound off below.
Source: Microsoft Store
Thanks for the tip Powerman777!
This post may contain affiliate links. See our disclosure policy for more details.July 5, 2011
In a scholarly paper on Mahayana Buddhism, the famous buddhologist Paul Harrison reflects on the nature of Buddhist meditation. He argues that such meditation is much more scripture-based than often assumed. Bringing his argument one step further, one could ask to what extent meditation is open and inclusive, as is often claimed by modern Buddhists, and to what extent it is merely a suggestive way of inducing an “experience” of preconceived “truths”.
Prescribed impermanence
According to Harrison, the Buddhist meditator (at least in some early versions of the kind) brings his attention to prescribed aspects of reality, such as “form”, “feelings”, “thoughts” and “dharmas”, based on lists found in scholastic texts. In the end the meditator is not only to identify these aspects of reality, but also to evaluate them as, for instance, “impermanent” (in accordance with Buddhist ideology). Harrison also argues that visualisation techniques later introduced in Mahayana Buddhism also build on textual representations, and that these texts read as boring lists until we understand that they are scripts for the inner visualisation of a buddha in his “buddha-field”.
Scriptural self-hypnosis
If we divide forms of meditation into technical and thematic, therefore, it seems that these forms are (or at least were) much more on the thematic side than on the technical. In this they resemble the most common Christian, Judaic and Islamic forms of meditation, which built on recitation or visualisation, ultimately derived from holy scripture. There is nothing wrong in this, except that it gives a very different image of the meditator than that of someone employing a technique to achieve direct and unmediated access to subtler aspects of reality. Crudely speaking, it leaves the impression of meditation being a form of scriptural self-hypnosis, which is the way another scholar, Livia Kohn, has described it.
Open process?
On the basis of my experience with Acem Meditation, I have often wanted to argue against such a narrow view of meditation, believing that a meditative process is basically an open process. Harrison’s article seems to suggest that I have been largely wrong, and that even (many) Eastern forms of meditation tend to be based on what, again quite crudely, might be called scriptural or ideological self-indoctrination. I still hesitate to accept that this is all there is to traditional meditation – whether in the East or in the West – but Harrison’s article suggests that the phenomenon is much more widespread than usually assumed.
(Paul Harrison (2003): “Mediums and Messages: Reflections on the Production of Mahāyāna Sūtras”, The Eastern Buddhist XXXV, 1 & 2, pp. 115-151.)Recently, we finalized the rankings for our site’s Top 20 Leafs Prospects. Review them from the top down here, starting with Auston Matthews. As you’ll note, we had Mitch Marner at #2 and William Nylander at #3. I, however, did not.
My personal rankings had Nylander at 2 and Marner at 3 and I’d like to get into details as to why that is. I teased this analysis in my Nylander post so I apologize for taking this long to get it out here. I want to make absolutely sure that I’m aware the difference is very small. They’re basically on the same pyramid tier. But I had to put one at 2 and this is why I made that Nylander.
Position
Everyone is aware that centers are more valuable than wingers. It’s a topic of debate at every draft, on whether to take the most talented player or the one at the more valuable position. Most notable here would be the debate between Strome and Marner where Strome, the center, was selected one position higher than Marner, despite them being largely equal talents (Marner being the more talented one if anything).
In the last 2 years, Mitch Marner has not played center for more than a few games. It’s pretty clear that he fit better in the Knights system as a right winger, and I expect the same to be true for him as a Leaf. There has been very little, if any, indication that the Leafs intend to develop Marner as a center.
However, the same cannot be said of William Nylander. He played all of last year at center, including in the NHL. Additionally, his time in the SHL the previous year was played at center. There’s a real opportunity for Nylander to be a top-level, puck controlling center not unlike Nicklas Backstrom, Logan Couture or Claude Giroux.
For me, while when drafting you should take the more talented player (BPA) every time. But, the same is not true when ranking prospects against each other post-draft. Even if we were to say Marner and Nylander are equally talented, Nylander would be more valuable for playing a more important position. +1 for Nylander.
PRODUCTION PROJECTION
Production itself isn’t a great tool to use as a comparison. Sure, Marner scored 119 points in the OHL. But how does that rank against Nylander’s 45 points in the AHL, or 13 NHL points? On their own, comparing the numbers against each other isn’t easy.
Instead, we’ll use projection tools to compare them. These tools amass the production stats from their junior careers, account for the leagues they played in, and create an output that suggests how successful they will be in the NHL. We’ll compare Marner and Nylander’s outputs against each other to see whose is better.
Before I start, I know there are gripes with NHLe. But I’m going to use it here because if there are two leagues that have an abundance of data available to make reliable projections, it’s the AHL and the CHL, where Nylander and Marner respectively played last season.
I’m also going to use the pGPS stats that were shown in the prospect rankings, which will be compared in a table below.
NHLe ES NHLe ES PrimP NHLe Nylander 46 29 22 Marner 53 29 22
We can see that the all-situations NHLe numbers clearly favour Marner, but when you break it into even strength only (a far more stable production measure) Nylander and Marner are exactly even. Still, Marner is projected to score more, so +1 to Marner.
pGPSn pGPSs pGPS% pGPS PPG pGPS PP82 pGPSr Nylander 25 22 88.0% 0.65 53.08 56.96 Marner 25 16 64.0% 0.82 67.11 52.38
I want to clarify the meanings of those numbers before we continue. The most important number there is pGPSr, which is a hybrid of the pGPS% and pGPS PPG numbers to produce an overall score. While Marner’s comparables scored more in the NHL, there were fewer of them, so Nylander gets the edge in this regard. +1 to Nylander.
PROBABILITY OF FAILURE
Of course, we all know that Nylander is a year older than Mitch Marner, This itself doesn’t necessarily favour Nylander. However, what does favour Nylander is the level of competition to which he has proven himself. He has been dominant in the SHL at 18, as well as dominant in the AHL at 19, to complement a strong outing in the NHL, again at just 19.
Marner, while absolutely destroying junior hockey, has only destroyed junior hockey. This isn’t a negative against Marner, but it leaves room for uncertainty. The longer a prospect is successful, the lower the probability of failure.
So, if both players are playing at very high levels, essentially equally impressive at their respective levels, the one further along in their development path, is more valuable. I’ve drawn up a generic graph below to illustrate my point. Assume that ceiling and floor are functions of performance, and that value is average of ceiling and floor. Also assume that performance level relative to the league their in stays constant.We get something that looks like this:
I see this as the general trendline for a prospect. We can see the ceiling and floor estimates converge to actual NHL value. Usually, this takes longer than 4 seasons, around 5-6, but I’ve shown 4 for simplicity. We also see the value steadily rising as the players progress, despite the assumption above that their performance has gotten no more or less impressive along this time. The reason I set it up like this is that the probability of failure (a player talent dropping to their floor) decreases as the seasons go on. Thus, the floor rises. And because of this, value rises. Nylander’s floor is higher than Marner’s floor due to us seeing the same level of elite performance for an additional year. So, I see him as more valuable. +1 to Nylander.
CONCLUSION
So by my completely arbitrary and meaningless scorecard, Nylander wins 3-1. We can also note that each and every win was squeaky close. That’s why everyone sees these prospects as so equally valuable. However, since Nylander got more of those wins, he is the more valuable prospect. And that is why he should be ranked as the Leafs #2 prospect.He is only 22 years old, but it feels as though he's been playing at the top level of the game forever. David de Gea has developed from that baby-faced new arrival into Manchester United's first-choice keeper, a role that he has settled into very naturally.
Q. You were the Premier League's best goalkeeper last season. What are you expecting this season?
A. It's an important season for me to establish myself in the Premier League and achieve great things. The World Cup is just around the corner and I'll do everything I can to be there.
Q. You said goodbye to the Under-21s in June, with an amazing track record. How would you assess your time there?
A. I'm very pleased, but also sad. I left having won the European Under-21s Championship twice, but closing that chapter saddens me due to the many people I'd grown close to.
Q. Thiago was close to signing for Manchester United.
A. Yes, I tried to convince him, but it wasn't to be. He chose to join Bayern, which is a great club, and I'm sure he'll do well there.
Q. And Fàbregas?
A. He'll have to make a decision whether to stay at Barcelona or join us. He'd be a great signing as he'd help us improve a lot.
Q. Do you think that the mass influx of Spaniards to the Premier League makes it the best league in the world?
A. It's the best organised league. Everything is well organised on every level, even financially. You can see this; the players know it. It's a very attractive league and I like it a lot. The grounds are full for most games. It's normal that Spaniards should want to come here. It's important that there are more Spaniards so that the Premier League is followed more in Spain.Bernard-Henri Lévy, The Genius of Judaism (New York: Random House, 2017), 256 pp., $28.00.
BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY has been the recipient of vast quantities of acclaim, a copious dose of scorn and even a handful of projectile pies. This likely would have been the destiny of any semiprominent ex-Marxist French intellectual who openly (and practically unilaterally) turned against the European Left, calling it out for its complicity in secular totalitarianism. This was almost inevitably the destiny of a person who is brilliant, who inherited a massive fortune, who has been involved in a number of high-profile dalliances and marriages, and who has spent forty years in the international spotlight as a philosopher, filmmaker, war correspondent, playwright, columnist and human-rights activist. Lévy claims on his résumé, among other achievements, more than thirty books—including works of philosophy, fiction and biography—countless articles and multiple lifetimes’ worth of harrowing foreign adventures. He’s been hailed in the pages of the world’s leading publications as “a star,” “a phenomenon,” “a commanding figure,” “a fearless intellectual risk-taker,” even “Superman.” Perhaps the greatest proof of his stature is that he’s widely known simply as “BHL.”
Lévy returns to his roots in his latest book. Born in 1948 in the iron ore shipping port Béni Saf to affluent Jewish Algerians, his family moved to Paris a few months after his birth. He became a Zionist in 1967. His timing was propitious. Arriving in Israel days following the Six-Day War, he found “the most unexpected of inner homelands.” Yet for much of his life, he remained uninformed of his religious inheritance. His family embraced the adage of the atrabilious and haunted nineteenth-century German poet Heinrich Heine that Judaism “was a source of ‘insults and pain’ that one would not wish on one’s worst enemy.” He’s since discarded that chilly sentiment and embraced an “affirmative” rapport with his faith. After much deliberation, he decrees that “the genius of Judaism” is that Judaism is actually a religion without borders.
Contrary to other religions, Lévy contends, Judaism’s “first commandment” is “the commandment of universalism,” “responsibility for the world,” the ethical directive to expose oneself “to the shadow of the outside world, the shadow of the Other, even the radically other,” a directive anyone, anywhere, anytime can promptly embrace. To be sure, this isn’t the thrust of Judaism; it’s the religion’s totality. All of Torah’s other duties “shrivel and become dead letters” in comparison. Torah-observant Jews won’t read The Genius of Judaism, for a number of sociological reasons. If they were to, they would certainly take umbrage at its conclusion. Mainstream Jews—particularly of the Reform denomination, by far the largest denomination in America—will read it, and they’ll constitute the majority of its readership in the United States. And while they’ll celebrate its conclusion, they will still be taken aback by Lévy’s inconsistency in reaching it.
TO GRASP the impetus behind Lévy’s latest effusion, one must first recognize that Lévy is a disillusioned radical soulfully seeking atonement. The book is part of a very personal and protracted effort to construct and disseminate an outlook, a disposition, an anti-ideology capable of defeating the dogmas that deceived him during his youth. Lévy was educated at the elite École Normale Supérieure in Paris in the 1960s, “the bastion of the aristocracy of the revolutionary movement known as Maoism.” There in the French capital, in that topsy-turvy era, the leviathans of poststructuralism nourished his mind. Ginned up, he along with many of his classmates rallied behind the Khmer Rouge, the chic insurgency du jour, because the regime’s leaders had studied at the Sorbonne. Steeped in the theories of Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Georges Canguilhem, the Khmer Rouge (purportedly) uniquely possessed the innovative knowledge needed to finally extinguish the oppressive quality of language, erase fascism from culture and fashion “the new man.” It would triumph because it would elude all the pitfalls that had derailed all previous Marxist enterprises. “We were sure,” Lévy writes, “that we were at the apogee of the age in which God had died. It had been beautiful. It had been huge.”
Needless to say, they were wrong. The Khmer Rouge carried out a genocide, murdering in four years around two million people, close to a quarter of the Cambodian population. History had repeated itself, for human nature had proven itself, once again, insufficiently malleable for Communism. Dazed and eager for reorientation, Lévy met and befriended philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and Catholic literary critic René Girard. Through them, he discovered the academic study of Torah. He also connected with philosopher André Glucksmann and founded Les Nouveaux Philosophes, a group that proceeded to blast progressivism driven by devotion to reason and inevitable progress. In 1977, he broke out with La barbarie a visage humain (Barbarism with a Human Face), in which he lamented, while examining the prevailing intellectual currents of the continent, that “Hitler did not die in Berlin” and “Stalin did not die in Moscow nor at the Twentieth Congress.” The following year, shortly before Pol Pot and his homicidal comrades fled to the jungles, Lévy produced Le testament de Dieu (The Testament of God), a polemic in favor of Mosaic Law over the utopian and secular “cult of the Political.”
Nearly four decades later, he has penned the volume’s next chapter, The Genius of Judaism, a translation of L’esprit du judaisme (The Spirit of Judaism). The title pays homage to the landmark nineteenth-century book by diplomat-historian François-René de Chateaubriand, The Genius of Christianity, which was meant to remind fellow Catholics of their religion’s former glory. Not insignificantly, Lévy’s book was intended for French readers. This is apparent, not least because France is referred to as “our country.” He also declares, for example, there are “not too many people” who “believe that the war on faith is an urgent matter.” This won’t raise alarms in France, whose foundation, after all, is state-sanctioned secularism in the public square. Yet it will sound odd to American readers, given their country’s long-running culture war. And the absence of a translator’s note, let alone the lack of initiative to tailor language, is strikingly parochial for a book whose lesson is about pluralism.
Lévy’s tract is dedicated to uncovering and publicizing the commandment of universalism. So what sources are cited to support his provocative interpretation of Judaism? He spends much of the book exalting the corpus of traditional Jewish thought. Rashi, Maimonides, Chaim of Volozhin and Nachman of Breslov, for instance, are singled out for praise. “The sage,” he insists, “is greater even than the prophet.” He further lauds the Talmud, whose very likeness subtly appears on the title page, as “the table of a house of study.” The Talmud, which means “learning,” is the body of Jewish ceremonial and civil law comprising the Mishnah; the oral Torah transmitted from God to Moses on Sinai and set down by Judah the Prince around 200 CE; and the Gemara, rabbinic elucidations of the Mishnah. Lévy avers that “the citizens of the treasured people have a duty to read it in a certain way: fervently, passionately, using all of their mind, all of their mental strength, and, sometimes, their life, too.” The Talmud, which comprises sixty-three shelf-warping tractates, is the backbone of yeshiva study in the observant Jewish community. It barely has a presence in “mainstream” Jewish denominations for two main reasons. First, most mainstream Jews, by virtue of being mainstream, dismiss the notion that God literally communicated with Moses. Second, few non-Torah-observant Jews know Tannaitic Hebrew and Babylonian Aramaic, the two ancient languages in which the Mishnah and Gemara are composed, respectively.
In a volte-face, though, Lévy asserts by sweeping aside the Talmud that the prophet is really greater than the sage. The commandment of universalism is not just the whole of Judaism, and it’s not merely found in the Book of Jonah; it reaches its “maximum intensity” in “that book of fire.” Jonah, due to the brevity of his exchange with God, is included among the Twelve Minor Prophets. But Lévy believes Jonah deserves to reign in perpetuity alongside Moses specifically because he was the first prophet to speak to the Other. Jonah, as the eighth-century BC story goes, is commanded by God to travel to Nineveh, the Assyrian capital, a supremely sinful metropolis, and heal its wicked denizens so they might be spared heavenly wrath. The twist is that Nineveh is the sworn enemy of Israel. Jonah’s dilemma is whether “to be the instrument of his people’s loss, or to think first of his people and disobey the voice.” Jonah opts for the latter. He heads in the opposite direction of Nineveh and boards a ship in Jaffa for Tarshish. At sea, a typhoon arises, and he’s thrown overboard by the crew once it discovers he’s the cause of the misfortune. He’s swallowed by a sea creature and spends three days and nights in its belly. Jonah repents, he’s spat back onto shore, and he proceeds to obey God’s call to prophecy.
It’s obvious that Lévy is portraying the Book of Jonah as “the heart of Jewish thought” to justify his progressive politics. But why does he counsel a life of learning, discovery and growth if he’s going to rush the reader straight to the finish line? Why does he gladly offer the key of it all, especially when that key, universalism, neither typifies the Talmud (as if the limitless Talmud could be typified by any one particular idea) nor resembles the deductions reached for millennia by the sages he himself reveres? If there were some truth to this, then thousands of years of Jewish history would be replete with peripatetic social-justice warriors, not self-effacing scholars dedicated first and foremost to God, family and community.
Also confounding is that Lévy seems to believe he’s brought an earth-shattering tablet down from the summit. The notion that Judaism is about breaking down walls is not only a simple interpretation; it’s also an utterly conventional one in the modern era. Innumerable Jewish philosophers, writers and rabbis over the past two hundred years—Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig and Hermann Cohen, just to name a few—have avowed that the essence of Judaism is found within the Latter Prophets. The entire denomination of Reform Judaism, birthed by the Enlightenment in the nineteenth century, reranked the duties to man before those to God, replaced fear of heaven with individual solace, and substituted faith in otherworldly reward with this-worldly action. In fact, Reform Judaism is frequently referred to as “prophetic Judaism.”
While Lévy’s emphasis on Jonah is unique, his take is little more than the concept of tikkun olam (“repairing the world”), which draws upon the Major Prophets of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel and is ubiquitous within the mainstream Jewish-American community. In reality, tikkun olam translates to social justice and is the community’s equivalent of kumbaya—and it habitually has the acoustic guitars, to boot. From synagogues and temples in Boston to Miami to San Francisco, tikkun olam is preached from the bema (pulpit), imparted in Hebrew school, and plastered over social and traditional media. It’s exploited to validate every progressive cause, from increasing the minimum wage to fighting for women’s reproductive rights to switching to alternative energy sources.
Lévy actually complains that his coreligionists are “fussing about ‘the migrants’” and discounting that Muslims are their “brothers in Adam.” Has he been living under a rock? Jews on both sides of the Atlantic have carried the banner for Syrian resettlement in the West. As early as December 2015, the charitable organization HIAS (formerly the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) delivered to Congress a letter signed by more than 1,200 American rabbis, principally of the Reform denomination, proclaiming, “we take seriously the biblical mandate to ‘welcome the stranger.’” That the comprehensive Global 100 index of the Anti-Defamation League, the “world’s leading organization fighting anti-Semitism,” demonstrates the overwhelming majority of Middle Easterners are anti-Semitic seems immaterial to these rabbis. And that, arguably, “the stranger” who persecutes others forfeits the right to kindness because they are violating the spirit of the Noahide Laws, the seven imperatives given by God to all humanity, looks to be lost on them.
Lévy might not admit it, but he’s on well-trodden ground. Because Reform Judaism is by far the largest Jewish denomination in America, a bulk of the world’s Jewish population already reveres the teaching found within The Genius of Judaism. It’s one thing to postulate that the genius of Judaism promises an “adventure... inspired by moral rather than economic or political concerns.” It’s another to act as if the adventure won’t also end exclusively with economic and political concerns. Almost seventy years ago, Irving Kristol remarked that mainstream Judaism was guaranteeing the right to strike, “providing Holy Writ with the satisfaction of having paved the way for the National Labor Relations Act!” More recently, Reform Judaism has been labeled “the Democratic Party platform with holidays thrown in.”
LÉVY CONSEQUENTLY leaves the reader with the impression that the chronicle of Jewish thought ceased at the start of the French Revolution. This, apparently, isn’t the first time he’s neglected to identify precedents. When the American historian W. Warren Wagar reviewed Barbarism with a Human Face for the Washington Post thirty-eight years ago, he noted that the author failed to acknowledge he was echoing the quarrels of the intellectuals depicted in Simone de Beauvoir’s 1954 roman à clef, The Mandarins. “He prefers to make heroes of Nietzsche and Solzhenitsyn,” Wagar wrote. “But it is the mature Camus, and Sartre himself before his entanglement in Marxism, whom Lévy most closely resembles.” It now might be said that while he prefers to make a hero of Jonah, it is the mature Abraham Joshua Heschel before his entanglement with the Vietnam War whom Lévy most closely resembles.
For Lévy, to praise Judaism is to undercut its essential and distinguishing precepts. “Genius” is often defined as “an exceptional intellectual or creative power.” So it’s not just a distinct quality; it’s a rare one too. We revere genius in the arts, letters and professional disciplines precisely because it’s uncommon. If we are not either blessed with it at birth or fortunate enough to cultivate it through great effort later, genius still has the capacity to rouse us to betterment. For when we come into contact with it, we’re made aware of the upper reaches of the human spirit. But if the genius of Judaism is easily obtainable, it’s neither that splendid nor praiseworthy. And if it’s obtainable by all, the Jewish people aren’t “chosen”—for we’re all chosen—and they play no special role in history.
Furthermore, because in The Genius of Judaism the commandment of universalism is the first commandment, there is hardly any room left for what has for three thousand years been the first commandment: “I am the Lord thy God.” “No Jew,” Lévy attests on the final page, “from the most learned to the most ignorant, from the grandest (who is also the smallest) to the smallest (who is also the grandest), is required to ‘believe in God.’” By cutting out the ultimate moral arbiter, he is denying the worth of the Lord of the Hosts. He’s also being duplicitous. He’s fostering the same metaphysics that stirred and continue to stir his own adversaries. He’s pretending his values are not relativistic and, thus, denying they’re not also those of the Enlightenment, those that gave rise to the romantic postmodern mirages he strives to dispel: the ending of history, the speeding up of time and “the flooding of all things by an absolute light.” It’s not without irony that “prophet” in Hebrew—navi—means not someone who possesses the ability to foretell future events, but “spokesperson” for God. And while he acknowledges that the people of Nineveh didn’t know “their right from their left,” he’s indifferent that Joshua, who led the Israelite tribes out of the wilderness into the Promised Land, was charged not to deviate “right or left” from his instructions by God.
By bulldozing what’s considered literally sacred by many, Lévy is being intentionally audacious. As such, one would hope, given his chutzpah, not to mention his request for pluralism, he would at the least be keen to respectfully engage those who think differently. One would hope for naught. By mirroring the worldview of many mainstream Jews, he reserves special ire for Torah-observant Jews. In the pages of The Genius of Judaism, I can hear my own family members, who were raised in the Conservative and Reform denominations, griping, “They don’t consider us Jewish!” My family members, like most mainstream Jews, have rarely bothered to approach a Torah-observant Jew, let alone start a conversation about Judaism with them. As with their often-cautious attitude toward Christians, far more is revealed about themselves, specifically an insecurity—an uncomfortable awareness of their own lack of knowledge and faith.
Rather than refer to Jews who heed the commandments of Torah as “observant,” Lévy calls them “orthodox”—with ironic quotation marks. They are the radicals because, unlike him, they’re not willing to leave their families and friends to track down beheading terrorists among the alleyways of Pakistan and rally the disputatious masses in the squares of Libya. Yes, they are the radicals because they prefer a life of calm, custom and charity in their own community. The orthodox with their “sidelocks and caftans” deserve censure because they lock themselves in their “houses of study, in what is sometimes called ‘Jewish life,’” and “devote all of their time to endless dissection of individual verses of the Torah, to commentary on each verse, and to commentary on the existing commentary and so on, ad infinitum.” Lévy also fleetingly refers to two incidents in 2015: the stabbing of a sixteen-year-old girl in Jerusalem’s gay pride parade and the firebombing of a Palestinian home in Duma. In short, he reduces all of observant Judaism to Mea Shearim, a neighborhood in Jerusalem known for its insularity.
Even though the universalistic and prophetic “genius of Judaism” is the guiding doctrine of most mainstream Jews, they too are the subjects of belittlement. They bother Lévy because they’re “Jews on Yom Kippur” alone, “splendid in the happy nudity of renewal,” and they exude “a nettlesome air of frivolity.” It is they “who, from Mascara to Paris or New York, prefer the empty light of easy and low-stakes community life to the shadows of Nineveh.”
The author of The Genius of Judaism is Goldilocks, and the servings of matzah-ball soup are not up to snuff. He does intimate the existence of a dialectical “third bowl”: “a true Jewish messianism both ambitious and modest, aspiring to the infinite but respectful of the laws of this world and choosing, ultimately, tikkun over apocalypse.” Really, given its inimitability, it’s one that only his refined palate can appreciate.
PERHAPS THE most surreal moment is Lévy’s confession on page 208 of his 230-page work: “I can barely read Hebrew. I do not say daily prayers. I do not follow the dietary laws. I am, moreover, a lay Jew who seldom visits synagogues and has not devoted so much time or energy to study.” Excusez-moi? (This comes after Lévy, who I would hazard does not possess a mastery of classical Arabic either, has authoritatively pronounced that Islam is divided between “throat-slitters” and the “enlightened,” that Islam needs “a Muslim Talmud,” and that fanatical imams are “the exception,” not “the rule.”)
Alas, eclipsed earlier in the book are novel insights into Judaism’s myriad contributions to French culture and Western civilization, as well as incisive reflections on anti-Semitism, namely its evolution and one of its most arresting contemporary expressions: the demonization of Israel. Lévy’s inadvertent accomplishment is to furnish an illustration of the shallowness of today’s mode of mainstream Judaism. To warrant his beliefs, Lévy, like many other secular Jews, readily cites the concept of “seventy faces of Torah.” “That the Torah has faces means, first,” he affirms, “that the act of reading it brings it to life and that the reader animates it by making it his own.” Yet a person must at some point actually read it. He urges “difficult Judaism” and Talmud study, “a practice that some would you believe is the invisible church of ultraorthodoxy.” Alas, hardly any nonobservant Jews are able to even name one tractate of Talmud. Instead of learning Hebrew to understand prayers, mainstream Jews switch from Conservative synagogues to Reform temples and from Reform temples to, well, nothing. If they remain within the fold at all, they almost have to accept at face value the word of their rabbis. If they instinctively disagreed with it, they wouldn’t have the faintest idea where to begin to look within Torah. That we live in an age of instant gratification has only made matters worse. Even the creator of the universe must be rendered all-accessible, all |
well known for Soviet-era gulags and bitter cold. Yet this scarcely populated region contains one fifth of the world’s forests and is also the scene of massive environmental degradation that goes largely unreported. A case in point: when an independent investigation revealed that an estimated 80 percent of the timber exported from Siberia is illegally logged, the follow up coverage was practically non-existent.
Siberia is the source of Russia’s oil and gas deposits—the country is the world’s third largest producer of oil (after Saudi Arabia and the United States) and the world’s second largest producer of natural gas (after the U.S.). Siberia is also chock full of mines, helping make Russia the third largest producer of diamonds, the third largest producer of gold, and the second largest producer of nickel.
In recent years, most of the environmental news coming out of Siberia concerned large craters produced by the popping of methane bubbles as the permafrost melts.So after 3 months, my Secret Santa gift has finally arrived and oh boy is it a doozy! I could not even begin to say how awesome these gifts are.
Firstly, a T-shirt from my favourite show, Game of Thrones! The design is great and it fits me perfectly. Next, a set of earphones! The one I am currently using is faulty and I was really hoping for a new one. Next is my most favourite item by far, which are the headphones. Oh my God, thank you so much, it looks absolutely stunning and I can't wait to play all my music through it! Last but not least, a calendar with some of the most gorgeous Earth porn from Canada I've seen.
Whoever you are, wherever you are now in Canada, you are awesome!! You made me feel like a kid on Christmas morning again. Best Secret Santa yet, 10/10!After 209 games, Farren Ray has announced his retirement from the AFL.
The veteran managed just four games with North Melbourne after playing with the Bulldogs and St Kilda in career that spanned thirteen seasons.
“I sat down with ‘Scotty’ [Brad Scott] about three weeks ago and told him that I would be finishing up at the end of the year,” Ray told NMFC.com.au.
“Although my time at North was brief, I cannot thank the club enough for the opportunity it gave me to extend my career.”
Ray’s year with the Roos was a frustrating one and included a serious hamstring injury and concussion.
“The way things panned out wasn’t ideal and I would have liked to have played some more footy, but that’s the way it all unfolded and I am just glad to have had the opportunity.”
North General Manager List Management Cam Joyce said Ray’s impact on the club was profound.
“From the moment ‘Faz’ walked into the club, he slipped in seamlessly and added more professionalism and leadership to the group,” Joyce said.
“He has a tremendous team-first attitude and displayed some fantastic qualities that our younger players really took on board.
“It’s our understanding that Faz wants to continue to work in football, perhaps in player welfare, and he would definitely suit such a role.”
Ray was originally recruited to the Bulldogs from the Peel Thunder in 2003, and was traded to St Kilda in 2008 where he featured in three grand finals.
North Melbourne picked Ray up in the Rookie Draft in 2015.
Meanwhile, North Melbourne has made further changes to its list with experienced small forward Robin Nahas delisted.
The Roos pounced on the former Tiger as a delisted Free Agent at the end of the 2013 season and he played 34 games for the club including 18 in 2015. In that year, he booted 24 goals.
“North was absolutely fantastic to me and gave me a lot of opportunities at the highest level which I’ll always be grateful for,” Nahas said.
“To be able to extend my career with North for a further three years was fantastic and I’ll always cherish my time there.”
Nahas said he doesn’t know what his future holds, but regardless, the 28-year-old’s career was a solid one and included 117 games and 135 goals.
“Robbie was a great fit for us and gave us some real quality up forward with his elite pressure and tackling ability,” Joyce said.
“We sincerely thank Robbie and Farren for their professionalism and effort, and commend both on their respective careers.”Looking for some cheap games? Then Electronic Arts and its mobile subsidiary Chillingo would like to offer you a selection for just a dime a piece (assuming you live in the US, Canada, Mexico, and a few other places). None of the games are particularly new with the exception of Power Ping Pong (which is pretty great) and the horror adventure game In Fear I Trust (which was just published), but most of them cost $4-5 at their regular prices. Here's the full list with links:
*Note: EA has announced that it's ending support for a large amount of its mobile games, including Dead Space. 10 cents is still a pretty great deal for a port of a well-regarded console game, but it's worth keeping in mind that there's no guarantee that the game will continue to work.
We don't know how long this promotion will last, but these things tend to go for at least a week or two. Right now it looks like the prices have been reduced in the US, Canada, Mexico, and many South American countries including Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, and Chile, but no European countries that we can spot, no Australia, no India. (To be fair, this probably has more to do with EA's international sales than anything else.) Grab those cheap games if you can, and remember that any in-app purchases are unlikely to be discounted along with the full price.EXCLUSIVE: San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing acquired by Sapporo
Jim Stitt, the man behind the hand drawn label on Anchor Steam beer, shows of a few of his early label efforts for Anchor Steam on Monday Nov. 2, 2009 in Sausalito, Calif. Jim Stitt, the man behind the hand drawn label on Anchor Steam beer, shows of a few of his early label efforts for Anchor Steam on Monday Nov. 2, 2009 in Sausalito, Calif. Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 32 Caption Close EXCLUSIVE: San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing acquired by Sapporo 1 / 32 Back to Gallery
Anchor Brewing, San Francisco’s beloved 121-year-old brewery and creator of the city’s most famous beer, is being sold to Japan’s Sapporo Holdings Ltd. in a landmark deal.
According to Keith Greggor, Anchor’s president and CEO, the move was a year in the making and the result of speaking with “many, many” larger breweries all over the world to find the right fit.
Anchor Brewing Co. is considered the leading pioneer of the craft beer movement, and is credited with reviving and modernizing some of today's most popular American beer styles. The price of the deal was not disclosed. Anchor Distilling, which produces spirits such as Junipero Gin and Old Potrero whiskey, is not involved in the deal and will become a separate company.
The news comes as the latest in a line of high-profile craft breweries purchased by larger beverage companies, following in the footsteps of Heineken’s acquisition of Lagunitas, Constellation’s 2015 takeover of Ballast Point, and AB InBev’s purchases of Goose Island and Wicked Weed, among many others.
Yet Anchor representatives said its beer would continue to be brewed at its Potrero Hill headquarters, and there would be no changes to its beer recipes. Additionally, Anchor will open a new public taproom on De Haro Street, across the street from its current brewery.
“When you take a brand like Anchor, its very soul exists in the heart of San Francisco,” Greggor said. “Of all the people we spoke to, (Sapporo) respected Anchor the most, what it stood for and the importance of its connection with San Francisco.”
Anchor Brewing has proven itself as a company of firsts. Established in 1896, it bills itself as America’s “first and oldest” craft brewery and has long been San Francisco’s homegrown pride. It weathered the 1906 earthquake and is the inventor of the California common style of beer, which it trademarked as steam beer.
But by 1965, Anchor was in dire shape and on the verge of bankruptcy when Fritz Maytag, working off a tip from an Old Spaghetti Factory bartender, bought the capsizing company for a few thousand bucks.
The most popular American beers of the era were bland, fizzy and very pale; they were cheap to make and cheap to buy. Maytag, however, didn’t see such beer as the way to salvage his new company, so instead he began making what he — and a small handful of employees — deemed good beer.
He rethought the entire brewing operation and began bottling the flagship Anchor Steam. In subsequent years, he added four beers to Anchor’s repertoire that no one else in America was making: the dry-hopped Liberty Ale, a dark porter (Anchor Porter), a barley wine (Old Foghorn Barleywine Ale) and, in a tradition that continues today, the first Anchor Christmas Ale. In 1977, he moved brewing operations to Anchor’s current Potrero Hill headquarters. Before long, the brewery was turning a profit, and set the stage for the emergence of the modern craft beer movement.
In 2010, Maytag sold Anchor to Greggor and Tony Foglio. At the time, Foglio said that the sale was “something we want to build on for the rest of our careers and pass on to the next generation.”
Yet Anchor’s new move signals a direction that is not so much trailblazing as it is increasingly conventional. It follows the trend established by many other craft breweries that have been acquired by global companies in recent years. Noting that critics also thought the idea of Maytag selling the brewery in 2010 was “heretical,” Greggor is quick to refute any potential “naysayers” surrounding the Sapporo deal.
“People bleed Anchor, they’re passionate about it,” he said. “It’s that passion that makes handcrafted beers successful in terms of its quality. Maintaining that sense in the brewery is very important, but this is something that Sapporo understands and respects.”
Anchor Brewing management said it did not specifically plan for a complete acquisition. However, to support the brewery’s long-term future and further international expansion (it currently distributes to 20 countries), it needed to relinquish full ownership to Sapporo.
The appeal of Sapporo, Greggor said, was an organization that mirrored Anchor’s values. He said that the Japanese company — founded in 1876, two decades before Anchor — understood Anchor’s commitment to keeping operations in San Francisco.
In a statement, Masaki Oga, Sapporo Holdings’ president and representative director, likened the lengthy histories of the two breweries, noting that Anchor has inspired a “new generation of brewers and beer lovers around the world.”
So what does the deal mean for the San Francisco brewery’s future?
Greggor said that Anchor’s main sticking point in the deal was to continue using the Potrero Hill brew house — at least for the time being.
”Sapporo committed to investing in the Potrero Hill brewery until we exceed capacity of that brewery, but I have no idea when that would be,” Greggor said. “We are currently running at about 55 to 60 percent of that capacity.”
However, the deal also likely means that Anchor’s long-delayed Pier 48 expansion is more likely to be dead in the water, though Anchor would not comment on the status of the project.
The company will update its production systems and its packaging process. “We have a rather inefficient canning system,” he said. “They would invest in much better canning equipment. We have a rather difficult, labor-intensive management of our glass (bottles). Automatic palletizing, things like that, will be looked at.”
When asked whether this deal jeopardizes Anchor’s “craft” designation, a commonly accepted definition dictated by the Brewers Association, the brewery’s executives did not seem concerned about that imminent debate, due to the brewery’s long history.
“Anchor has been making handcrafted beer since long before ‘craft’ was coined,” Greggor said. “I would argue (Anchor’s beer) is more handcrafted than any of the craft beer out there today. However, while it might not fit the definition of some self-appointed organizations, we’ll always be the original, and we’ll still be handcrafted in San Francisco.”
Alyssa Pereira is a pop culture and beer reporter at SFGate and The San Francisco Chronicle. Email: apereira@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @alyspereiraA Thai perspective on Cambodia’s market
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Realestate.com.kh caught up with Dr Sopon Pornchokchai, President of the Association of Real Estate Agents (AREA), Thailand, to get his view on the Cambodian property market.
KT: What is your real estate experience in Thailand, and in Cambodia? Tell us about your career so far.
Dr. Sopon: I was involved in real estate since 1982 as a lecturer, planner, researcher and valuer – but I am not a broker or a developer, so that I can stay academically and professionally neutral. I visited Cambodia in 2000 and have conducted surveys on housing estates in Phnom Penh since 2004. I have come back on many occasions to lecture at Cambodia’s Ministry of Finance as well as the Cambodian Valuers and Estate Agents Association since 2010.
KT: What are the current issues in the Cambodian valuation industry?
Dr. Sopon: Since I came to teach valuation in Cambodia, I have observed that this profession has developed very quickly. This comes from the great efforts of the related government agency, namely, the Ministry of Finance, as well as the leaders of the industry – the presidents and board members of the CVEA who have helped establish the industry very strongly with the help of the many individual companies within it. However, good and reasonable transaction data must be disclosed in order to have reliable sources of information for valuation, transaction and taxation purposes.
KT: How can these issues be resolved into the future?
Dr. Sopon: The government must enforce the proper tax and land laws. Everyone must pay tax in accordance with their real transacted value. This tax must not be levied too highly though. It could be as low as 0.1 percent.
However, in the case of annual property tax, the central government must allow local authorities to tax people themselves. Meanwhile, the budget which came from indirect taxes from the central government must be minimised. Then a good system of taxation and a sound property database can be established.
KT: Why are valuation standards so important for a sustainable real estate market?
Dr. Sopon: Actually, valuation standards are the same everywhere in the world. It is rooted in economic concepts and there are only very slight differences in different standards worldwide. With that in mind, don’t let those more advanced countries fool us into assuming that we are substandard. The matter should be more focussed on the indemnity insurance and proper control of the practices of the professionals in our country.
KT: How is the Thailand real estate market different to Cambodia?
Dr. Sopon: Thailand and Cambodia were very similar some 60 years ago. Cambodia was even considered the “Paris of the East”. Due to civil wars, Cambodia stopped their development. However today, Cambodia is learning from other neighbouring countries very quickly and will be developed at the same pace with others soon.
In real estate, landed shophouses are still popular in Phnom Penh (35 percent of the stock); whereas, condominiums are the majority of developments in Bangkok (60 percent). Also, Thailand has a lot more commercial properties due to the fact that people have higher purchasing power.
KT: How is the Thailand real estate market the same as Cambodia?
Dr. Sopon: The similarities between the two countries is the lifestyle and the housing preferences. We are on the same path of development, albeit Thailand sits a bit in advance. In Thailand, we are now in a rather ‘dark’ age where politics and the economy are both slow and problematic. Whereas Cambodia has a better political atmosphere for the future. Yet, Phnom Penh’s real estate markets may reach a peak and cool down somewhat in the near future.
..
..I've always had a keen interest in implementing security in webapps. I implemented container-managed authentication (CMA) in AppFuse in 2002, watched Tomcat improve it's implementation in 2003 and implemented Remember Me with CMA in 2004. In 2005, I switched from CMA to Acegi Security (now Spring Security) and never looked back. I've been very happy with Spring Security over the years, but also hope to learn more about Apache Shiro and implementing OAuth to protect JavaScript APIs in the near future.
I was recently re-inspired to learn more about security when working on a new feature at Overstock.com. The feature hasn't been released yet, but basically boils down to allowing users to login without leaving a page. For example, if they want to leave a review on a product, they would click a link, be prompted to login, enter their credentials, then continue to leave their review. The login prompt and subsequent review would likely be implemented using a lightbox. While lightboxes are often seen in webapps these days because they look good, it's also possible Lightbox UIs provide a poor user experience. User experience aside, I think it's interesting to see what's required to implement such a feature.
To demonstrate how we did it, I whipped up an example using AppFuse Light, jQuery and Spring Security. The source is available in my ajax-login project on GitHub. To begin, I wanted to accomplish a number of things to replicate the Overstock environment:
Force HTTPS for authentication. Allow testing HTTPS without installing a certificate locally. Implement a RESTful LoginService that allows users to login. Implement login with Ajax, with the request coming from an insecure page.
Forcing HTTPS with Spring Security
The first feature was fairly easy to implement thanks to Spring Security. Its configuration supports a requires-channel attribute that can be used for this. I used this to force HTTPS on the "users" page and it subsequently causes the login to be secure.
<intercept-url pattern="/app/users" access="ROLE_ADMIN" requires-channel="https"/>
Testing HTTPS without adding a certificate locally
After making the above change in security.xml, I had to modify my jWebUnit test to work with SSL. In reality, I didn't have to modify the test, I just had to modify the configuration that ran the test. In my last post, I wrote about adding my 'untrusted' cert to my JVM keystore. For some reason, this works for HttpClient, but not for jWebUnit/HtmlUnit. The good news is I figured out an easier solution - adding the trustStore and trustStore password as system properties to the maven-failsafe-plugin configuration.
<artifactId>maven-failsafe-plugin</artifactId> <version>2.7.2</version> <configuration> <includes> <include>**/*WebTest.java</include> </includes> <systemPropertyVariables> <javax.net.ssl.trustStore>${project.build.directory}/ssl.keystore</javax.net.ssl.trustStore> <javax.net.ssl.trustStorePassword>appfuse</javax.net.ssl.trustStorePassword> </systemPropertyVariables> </configuration>
The disadvantage to doing things this way is you'll have to pass these in as arguments when running unit tests in your IDE.
Implementing a LoginService
Next, I set about implementing a LoginService as a Spring MVC Controller that returns JSON thanks to the @ResponseBody annotation and Jackson.
package org.appfuse.examples.web; import org.appfuse.model.User; import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired; import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Qualifier; import org.springframework.security.authentication.AuthenticationManager; import org.springframework.security.authentication.BadCredentialsException; import org.springframework.security.authentication.UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken; import org.springframework.security.core.Authentication; import org.springframework.security.core.context.SecurityContextHolder; import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller; import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping; import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMethod; import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestParam; import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.ResponseBody; @Controller @RequestMapping("/api/login.json") public class LoginService { @Autowired @Qualifier("authenticationManager") AuthenticationManager authenticationManager; @RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET) @ResponseBody public LoginStatus getStatus() { Authentication auth = SecurityContextHolder.getContext().getAuthentication(); if (auth!= null &&!auth.getName().equals("anonymousUser") && auth.isAuthenticated()) { return new LoginStatus(true, auth.getName()); } else { return new LoginStatus(false, null); } } @RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.POST) @ResponseBody public LoginStatus login(@RequestParam("j_username") String username, @RequestParam("j_password") String password) { UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken token = new UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken(username, password); User details = new User(username); token.setDetails(details); try { Authentication auth = authenticationManager.authenticate(token); SecurityContextHolder.getContext().setAuthentication(auth); return new LoginStatus(auth.isAuthenticated(), auth.getName()); } catch (BadCredentialsException e) { return new LoginStatus(false, null); } } public class LoginStatus { private final boolean loggedIn; private final String username; public LoginStatus(boolean loggedIn, String username) { this.loggedIn = loggedIn; this.username = username; } public boolean isLoggedIn() { return loggedIn; } public String getUsername() { return username; } } }
To verify this class worked as expected, I wrote a unit test using JUnit and Mockito. I used Mockito because Overstock is transitioning to it from EasyMock and I've found it very simple to use.
package org.appfuse.examples.web; import org.junit.After; import org.junit.Before; import org.junit.Test; import org.mockito.Matchers; import org.springframework.security.authentication.AuthenticationManager; import org.springframework.security.authentication.BadCredentialsException; import org.springframework.security.authentication.TestingAuthenticationToken; import org.springframework.security.core.Authentication; import org.springframework.security.core.context.SecurityContext; import org.springframework.security.core.context.SecurityContextHolder; import org.springframework.security.core.context.SecurityContextImpl; import static org.junit.Assert.*; import static org.mockito.Mockito.*; public class LoginServiceTest { LoginService loginService; AuthenticationManager authenticationManager; @Before public void before() { loginService = new LoginService(); authenticationManager = mock(AuthenticationManager.class); loginService.authenticationManager = authenticationManager; } @After public void after() { SecurityContextHolder.clearContext(); } @Test public void testLoginStatusSuccess() { Authentication auth = new TestingAuthenticationToken("foo", "bar"); auth.setAuthenticated(true); SecurityContext context = new SecurityContextImpl(); context.setAuthentication(auth); SecurityContextHolder.setContext(context); LoginService.LoginStatus status = loginService.getStatus(); assertTrue(status.isLoggedIn()); } @Test public void testLoginStatusFailure() { LoginService.LoginStatus status = loginService.getStatus(); assertFalse(status.isLoggedIn()); } @Test public void testGoodLogin() { Authentication auth = new TestingAuthenticationToken("foo", "bar"); auth.setAuthenticated(true); when(authenticationManager.authenticate(Matchers.<Authentication>anyObject())).thenReturn(auth); LoginService.LoginStatus status = loginService.login("foo", "bar"); assertTrue(status.isLoggedIn()); assertEquals("foo", status.getUsername()); } @Test public void testBadLogin() { Authentication auth = new TestingAuthenticationToken("foo", "bar"); auth.setAuthenticated(false); when(authenticationManager.authenticate(Matchers. anyObject())).thenThrow(new BadCredentialsException("Bad Credentials")); LoginService.LoginStatus status = loginService.login("foo", "bar"); assertFalse(status.isLoggedIn()); assertEquals(null, status.getUsername()); } }
Implement login with Ajax
The last feature was the hardest to implement and still isn't fully working as I'd hoped. I used jQuery and jQuery UI to implement a dialog that opens the login page on the same page rather than redirecting to the login page. The "#demo" locator refers to a button in the page.
Passing in the "ajax=true" parameter disables SiteMesh decoration on the login page, something that's described in my Ajaxified Body article.
var dialog = $('<div></div>'); $(document).ready(function() { $.get('/login?ajax=true', function(data) { dialog.html(data); dialog.dialog({ autoOpen: false, title: 'Authentication Required' }); }); $('#demo').click(function() { dialog.dialog('open'); // prevent the default action, e.g., following a link return false; }); });
Instead of adding a click handler to a specific id, it's probably better to use a CSS class that indicates authentication is required for a link, or -- even better -- use Ajax to see if the link is secured.
The login page then has the following JavaScript to add a click handler to the "login" button that submits the request securely to the LoginService.
var getHost = function() { var port = (window.location.port == "8080")? ":8443" : ""; return ((secure)? 'https://' : 'http://') + window.location.hostname + port; }; var loginFailed = function(data, status) { $(".error").remove(); $('#username-label').before('<div class="error">Login failed, please try again.</div>'); }; $("#login").live('click', function(e) { e.preventDefault(); $.ajax({url: getHost() + "/api/login.json", type: "POST", data: $("#loginForm").serialize(), success: function(data, status) { if (data.loggedIn) { // success dialog.dialog('close'); location.href= getHost() + '/users'; } else { loginFailed(data); } }, error: loginFailed }); });
The biggest secret to making this all work (the HTTP -> HTTPS communication, which is considered cross-domain), is the window.name Transport and the jQuery plugin that implements it. To make this plugin work with Firefox 3.6, I had to implement a Filter that adds Access-Control headers. A question on Stackoverflow helped me figure this out.
public class OptionsHeadersFilter implements Filter { public void doFilter(ServletRequest req, ServletResponse res, FilterChain chain) throws IOException, ServletException { HttpServletResponse response = (HttpServletResponse) res; response.setHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Origin", "*"); response.setHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Methods", "GET,POST"); response.setHeader("Access-Control-Max-Age", "360"); response.setHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Headers", "x-requested-with"); chain.doFilter(req, res); } public void init(FilterConfig filterConfig) { } public void destroy() { } }
Issues
I encountered a number of issues when implementing this in the ajax-login project.
If you try to run this with ports (e.g. 8080 and 8443) in your URLs, you'll get a 501 (Not Implemented) response. Removing the ports by fronting with Apache and mod_proxy solves this problem.
If you haven't accepted the certificate in your browser, the Ajax request will fail. In the example, I solved this by clicking on the "Users" tab to make a secure request, then going back to the homepage to try and login.
The jQuery window.name version 0.9.1 doesn't work with jQuery 1.5.0. The error is "$.httpSuccess function not found."
Finally, even though I was able to authenticate successfully, I was unable to make the authentication persist. I tried adding the following to persist the updated SecurityContext to the session, but it doesn't work. I expect the solution is to create a secure JSESSIONID cookie somehow. @Autowired SecurityContextRepository repository; @RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.POST) @ResponseBody public LoginStatus login(@RequestParam("j_username") String username, @RequestParam("j_password") String password, HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) { UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken token = new UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken(username, password);... try { Authentication auth = authenticationManager.authenticate(token); SecurityContextHolder.getContext().setAuthentication(auth); // save the updated context to the session repository.saveContext(SecurityContextHolder.getContext(), request, response); return new LoginStatus(auth.isAuthenticated(), auth.getName()); } catch (BadCredentialsException e) { return new LoginStatus(false, null); } }
Conclusion
This article has shown you how to force HTTPS for login, how to do integration testing with a self-generated certificate, how to implement a LoginService with Spring MVC and Spring Security, as well as how to use jQuery to talk to a service cross-domain with the window.name Transport. While I don't have everything working as much as I'd like, I hope this helps you implement a similar feature in your applications.
One thing to be aware of is with lightbox/dialog logins and HTTP -> HTTPS is that users won't see a secure icon in their address bar. If your app has sensitive data, you might want to force https for your entire app. OWASP's Secure Login Pages has a lot of good tips in this area.
Update: I've posted a demo of the ajax-login webapp. Thanks to Contegix for hosting the demo and helping obtain/install an SSL certificate so quickly.Election polls: What they said versus what actually happened
Election polls: What they said versus what actually happened
Pollsters have taken some flak over the last few years - but do they deserve it?
Pollsters have taken some flak over the last few years. But has the criticism always been fair?
Sky News' Head of Data Harry Carr takes a look at how they've done recently against what happened in reality.
Emmanuel Macron wins French election
The French Election
In the first round, the pollsters - in a time of huge political change creating very difficult circumstances - nailed it, getting within a percentage point for each candidate.
They correctly predicted the key events to the election. Firstly the rise of Emmanuel Macron with his new party En Marche!
They correctly foresaw that right-wing eurosceptic Marine Le Pen would join him in the second round, beating the scandal-plagued candidate from the mainstream centre-right Francois Fillon.
They also called the unlikely rise of Jean-Luc Melenchon from the far left to run it close.
Lastly they predicted the catastrophic result for the Socialist Party of outgoing President Francois Hollande, their candidate Benoit Hamon finishing a dismal fifth.
The second round was moderately successful for the pollsters.
They got the winner right, but underestimated the margin of Emmanuel Macron's victory by around three percentage points.
As often is the case, so long as the overall winner is called right, the polling industry can get away with it - it might have been a very different story in a much tighter race.
Overall pollsters grade: A-
Dutch PM sees off far-right Wilders' challenge
The Dutch Election
From outside the Netherlands, the main story of the Dutch election was all about Geert Wilders, a strikingly coiffured politician of the far right who frequently compares the holy book of Islam - the Koran - to Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf.
For many months he topped the polls, but fell back in the run-up to the vote - as indeed had been the case ahead of previous general elections.
In the end he finished with the second largest proportion of the vote - the polls got the vote for Mr Wilders' Party for Freedom right.
However, they underestimated the victory of the mainstream centre-right People's Party for Freedom and Democracy by four to six percentage points - though Mr Wilders will claim a moral victory in dragging the rhetoric of the main parties around immigration far closer to his own throughout the campaign.
Again, they called the right result, but were perhaps lucky to do so.
Overall grade: B
Donald Trump takes to the stage after winning the US election
US Presidential election
Across the nation, the pollsters got the US Presidential election pretty much spot on. Yes, you did read that correctly.
The national polls showed Hilary Clinton with a lead of around 2 points over Donald Trump - which is exactly what happened in terms of the popular vote.
However, in some individual states the polls did fall down, with large errors in the 'Rust Belt' states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
With these states, which had been expected to be safe for Mrs Clinton, Mr Trump won the vote in the Electoral College, giving him victory in the USA's convoluted electoral system.
Grade for national pollsters: A
Grade for (some) state pollsters: F
Image: The voting slip for the EU referendum
EU referendum
Politicians and pundits routinely talk about the polls getting the EU referendum wrong - if I worked for polling organisations Opinium or TNS I would rightly be seriously miffed.
They both got the EU referendum result right to within a percentage point. Indeed for a week before the vote the polls had frequently showed Leave ahead, with the common consensus being that it was too close to call.
Some pollsters did get it wildly wrong, swinging the polling averages more heavily in favour of Remain.
The final poll of polls did show a narrow Remain win by around one point - but it was never clear cut in the way some have suggested.
Had this been a less competitive race - or indeed had the problem been underestimating rather than overestimating the Remain vote - then the size of the error for most pollsters would not have been noticed.
As it was, the industry - in many cases unfairly - has been seen as misreading perhaps the most important electoral outcome in recent years.
Overall grade: C (though an A* for those companies that got it bang on and an F for those who got it wildly wrong)
Image: Sinn Fein Leader in the North Michelle O'Neill on a victorious night
UK regional elections
Elections to the devolved parliaments in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales get less coverage than general elections, and are polled less frequently.
However, there have been some real successes in a difficult time for the UK industry. The one pollster publishing polls for the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2017, Lucid Talk, got the result pretty much bang on.
YouGov got the main story of the Welsh Assembly election right in 2016, correctly measuring the vote for Labour, the Conservatives and Plaid Cymru, though they overestimated UKIP by three points.
For the Scottish Parliament elections, the SNP were slightly overestimated and the Conservatives slightly underestimated, though the absolute collapse of the Labour Party was perfectly predicted.
And for the London Mayoral election the polling was exactly right, predicting Sadiq Khan's second round win over Zac Goldsmith to within a percentage point.
A mixed bag and not perfect, but these were a good set of results for an industry frequently written off by pundits.
Overall grade: B+
Image: Jeremy Corbyn has won the last two Labour leadership elections hands down
Labour leadership elections
YouGov have done a fantastic job in predicting both wins for Jeremy Corbyn in back-to-back Labour leadership elections.
Their polls gave credence to rumours of unexpected momentum building behind Mr Corbyn in 2015, and showed him in no trouble at all in 2016. On both occasions they got the end result spot on.
Overall grade: A*
Image: The polls in 2015 predicted that Ed Miliband would be our next PM
2015 general election
There's no getting around the fact that this was a huge embarrassment for the pollsters.
Much of the coverage was around a likely hung parliament with Ed Miliband looking the more likely Prime Minister.
The polls consistently showed Labour and the Conservatives neck-and-neck, and Mr Miliband had the more natural potential allies in the Scottish National Party.
In the end, David Cameron's Conservatives won a majority.
Pollsters will point to the fact they got the rise of UKIP and the collapse of the Liberal Democrats pretty much spot on - on paper the more difficult stories to predict.
But they missed the most important story - and have been in the doghouse (in some cases unfairly) ever since.
Overall grade: FThe Surface Pro 4: The iPad I actually wanted. Mostly.
Julian Finn Blocked Unblock Follow Following Nov 29, 2015
Decisions, decisions.
When my new employer asked me what I wanted for a day to day computer, I didn’t hesitate. I asked for an iPad Pro.
I’ll pause while you recover from your laughing fit. It took him about 4 minutes.
Then I started making my case for it.
I have to attend a lot of new client meetings; as part of those meetings I wind up going over blueprints, walking clients through slide decks, marking up pdfs, etc. When I’m not interacting with clients, I’m creating marketing collateral, scripting short video content, and pushing out updates to our social media channels. I’m out of the office more than I’m in the office.
In short, I am the perfect candidate for a tablet as a productivity device. A traditional laptop, with its footprint and compromises on battery life, doesn’t really make sense for me. I also read a lot, both for work and for pleasure/personal growth, and reading on a smart phone has never been a really enjoyable experience, so I’ve almost always carried a tablet in my bag, along with whatever my primary computing device happens to be. That gets heavy, especially when I use a mix of public transit and Uber to get around, which means my bag is almost always on.
So I’ve spent a lot of time looking for the perfect all in one device. iPads, and their Android counterparts, have always felt too cramped for me, Chromebooks don’t offer a really good tablet experience for reading, and the Surface…well, I’ve had 3, and not one of them lasted more than a week before getting repacked.
So the iPad Pro made sense. I may be one of the few customers out there for whom it does. It’s bigger than the typical 10 inch screen offerings that dot the iOS and Android landscapes, which I like, because it gives me more room for presentations. It’s got a killer battery, can multitask (finally!), and it weighs about the same as the first gen iPad, so I know I can hold it in one hand and read on it. Adding the Pencil and a keyboard, it becomes pretty much my ideal mobile computing solution. It’s almost that “perfect” all in one.
So why am I writing this on a Surface Pro 4, and actually quite enjoying the experience?
Because Apple sucks at launching products.
My boss ordered me the iPad Pro with Pencil and Smart Keyboard on launch day. It was supposed to arrive last Tuesday. When it didn’t, I logged into the purchase portal to check the status of the order and was told to contact Apple to determine what had gone wrong with my shipment. Apparently, depending on who you talked to, it had either:
a) fallen victim to UPS’ hectic holiday delivery schedule, and UPS was trying to figure out |
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